Battlerager Vigor limiting it - ideas?

[keterys]

Personally, I think I'd like BRV to work as follows:

Battlerage Vigor:
Once per round when you make an attack, you may treat that attack as Invigorating. If you're already attacking with an Invigorating power, you gain double the normal temporary hit points on a hit.
If you have temp hp, you deal +1 damage with all melee attacks. If you're wearing chainmail or lighter armor, this bonus increases to +2.

Why?
* Completely removes any really broken things like temp hp stacking and immunity to low damage attacks.
* Simplifies things immensely
* Gives the enemy a reason to burn through their temp hp, because it removes their damage bonus, rather than a reason _not_ to attack them
* Makes their combat challenge and opportunity attacks more powerful via either allowing them to pick up temp hp if they missed during their turn or deal increased damage from the temp hp they already got

And it's still immensely powerful and encourages Invigorating attacks.

 

[Kzach]

Hmm... that could work... but what about multiple attacks? Do those temp hit points stack or do you eliminate the stacking of temp hit points from the class altogether?

 

[keterys]

Eliminated altogether. No stacking.

 

[Cadfan]

Before limiting it, consider whether you really need to. Remember, it doesn't really matter to a specific game whether an item can hypothetically be broken, it matters whether its actually broken by an actual character in your specific game.

1. Battlerager Vigor tends to break when you get a character who pumps his constitution specifically to pump the vigor ability (14 strength, 20 constitution dwarf brv fighter, etc). When a character uses a relatively normal build (18 strength, 14 or 16 constitution), it is much less broken.

2. Battlerager Vigor is frontloaded, as are most abilities which are scaled to an ability score mod and nothing else. At level 1, a character with a relatively normal battlerager vigor fighter will be soaking 2 to 3 points of damage per hit. This is pretty significant when your enemies are dealing 1d6+1 damage. Now fast forwards to level 10. This character is now soaking 3 to 4 points of damage, but his enemies are dealing 1d10+5 damage. He began soaking about 75% of the damage per hit, and now he's soaking about 30%. This ratio will continue to fall as the character advances in level.

3. Battlerager Vigor breaks most consistently in battles with lots of melee only minions. There are other reasons besides Battlerager Vigor that battles against mostly (or nothing but) melee only minions are poor ideas. At mid heroic tier or so, you can expect battles of this type to end extremely quickly, with or without a BRV fighter. At paragon tier, such battles can be almost an afterthought. The number of area of effect attacks that target only enemies grows as you advance in level to the point where large mobs of minions become speedbumps to many parties. So the ability to exploit this sort of encounter is perhaps not a major problem, given that this sort of encounter is most likely going to be exploited with or without a brv fighter.

So... basically, I wouldn't worry about things unless you've got a character starting with more than a 16 constitution, and unless you intend to play only at low levels. I do wish that Vigor weren't so frontloaded, but it is, and changing it can be obnoxious (and result in changes that are unnecessary at higher levels), so I probably wouldn't bother.

 

[Kzach]

Ketery's solution also scales better at higher levels.

 

[Garthanos]

Don't mean to be rude but I don't even understand that solution let alone think it's simpler or a fix.

Are you referring to the solution where they only get temporary hit points from attacks which cause them to lose real hit points? (and only as many as they lost).

 

[Elric]

1. Battlerager Vigor tends to break when you get a character who pumps his constitution specifically to pump the vigor ability (14 strength, 20 constitution dwarf brv fighter, etc). When a character uses a relatively normal build (18 strength, 14 or 16 constitution), it is much less broken.

18 Constitution seems like a pretty normal build for a Con-based fighter. Buy 16 Str/Con and take a race with a +2 to Con (Dwarf/Goliath).

2. Battlerager Vigor is frontloaded, as are most abilities which are scaled to an ability score mod and nothing else. At level 1, a character with a relatively normal battlerager vigor fighter will be soaking 2 to 3 points of damage per hit. This is pretty significant when your enemies are dealing 1d6+1 damage. Now fast forwards to level 10. This character is now soaking 3 to 4 points of damage, but his enemies are dealing 1d10+5 damage. He began soaking about 75% of the damage per hit, and now he's soaking about 30%. This ratio will continue to fall as the character advances in level.

A fighter who starts with 16 Con and takes the Improved Vigor feat will have his temp HP scale pretty well against monster damage.

The "normal damage expression" in the DMG is about 6+0.6*level (using this for convenience). Though this character can start out with temp HP=60% of level 1's "approximate normal damage" (if he has the Improved Vigor feat) and it quickly declines below 50% (level 4), it never gets below 40% for more than a level at a time and stays around 40-47% for almost his entire career. If you assume he takes Improved Vigor at level 4, the ability is actually slightly worse on average at levels 1-3 than it is over the rest of his career.

Of course, BRV far more powerful in the hands of an 18-Con Dwarf who takes both Improved Vigor and Dwarven Stoneblood.

 

[Garthanos]

I love minions and battlerager vigor and currently my players tend to not build ultra optimized characters so I am looking ahead and investigating...

If you tie brv to an attack you break its style completely in my opinion.

My idea where you only get thp only when you lose actual real hit points from an attack is rather guaranteed to keep things under control.... no matter how high their brv ability is or how great or minimal their opposition... no matter how many times they get hit because until they lose thp they dont normally lose real hp (see alternate critical hit option) until they lose real hp they dont gain thp... it is self policing. And dwarven stoneblood and improved vigor just stretch out the time between gaining more thp.

 

[Elric]

My idea where you only get thp only when you lose actual real hit points from an attack is rather guaranteed to keep things under control.... no matter how high their brv ability is or how great or minimal their opposition... no matter how many times they get hit because until they lose thp they dont normally lose real hp (see alternate critical hit option) until they lose real hp they dont gain thp... it is self policing. And dwarven stoneblood and improved vigor just stretch out the time between gaining more thp.

This idea only guarantees that a Battlerager will take some damage from repeated attacks. If a Battlerager is being attacked by enemies who do more damage on a hit than his BRV temp HP, it doesn't limit the ability at all (though it might dissuade him from using Invigorating powers on top of that to some extent).

It also has some weird effects, like a Battlerager who gets 4 temp HP being more vulnerable to minions that do 4 damage than minions that do 5 damage.

 

[keterys]

If you tie brv to an attack you break its style completely in my opinion.

The inherent problem with the 'when I'm attacked' model is that it's anti-role - he's encouraging his enemies not to actually fight him. It also heavily impacts on the DM in unpleasant ways, dictating what types of attacks or even what types of creatures to use.

The 'only when you take actual damage' was my first suggestion, but it's overly complex for a lot of players, creates some odd cases (like the one Elric just mentioned, or for multiattack creatures like hydras), and still has that problem, which is why I looked towards another solution.

is rather guaranteed to keep things under control...

Well, it's guaranteed to prevent the situation in which minions can never harm the battlerager, ever, but it doesn't deal with the 'I ended the combat at 35 temp hp, now I choose to not short rest' problem which is another part of the equation. Also, a BRV who gets 7 temp hp per whack attacked by things that do 8 (or 4) is still nigh invulnerable.