Broken Wizard combo?

[IanB]

I think the 'after the save is rolled' thing makes for a pretty good compromise, yeah.

 

[shadowoflameth]

remember that distinction between wizard powers, and others sucha s paragon path powers. Also remember to only stack bonuses that are of different types: an item bonus (orb) with the feat you mention, and with a power bonus if you find one. Remember that with sleep or most other 'stun' effects, you have to hit the bad guy with it.

You can also rule that you live by the cheese you die by the cheese. Have a foe (occasionally) do the same thing to a party member.

Also consider a foe that has other bonuses to saves of the applicable type or immunity to the wizards favorite power (again occasionally). grey slaads transfer conditions back on the attacker, and the newly released miracle worker paragon can transfer all conditions on allies within 5 squares to a foe.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Why Destructive Salutation and not Sleep? That's the one that was pounced on the day after 4E's release....

(One house rule I've seen is that penalties to saves don't stack. That serves to cut down on this cheese quite handily.)

Not allowing any non-condition penalty to stack is a more broad rule that solves a number of other problems at the same time.

 

[Saeviomagy]

This is one of those combos... wow...

It can be used once, maybe twice, per day. It is not a game breaker unless the DM literally only uses 1 encounter per day, and then, only if there is a single vastly important entity involved in that fight. If the DM builds encounters like I do, then usually there are no "OMG! Kill it!!" creatures involved. Instead, there is a team of enemies working together to end the PC's lives, or capture them at least.

Also, this tactic does absolutely nothing when the only encounters the PC's face in a given week is social encounters, lol... The game isn't always about combat.

It destroys 1-2 combats per day that use elites. It basically forces the DM to change how he structures his adventures. It makes having a solo elite effectively verboten.

I don't see how you can avoid defining that as game breaking.

And saying "well, if you never have combat, this combat combo is fine!" is a particularly silly argument.

 

[evilbob]

In response to the OP, your player's wizard is really behind the times. There are tons of ways to gather stacking save penalties; it's easy to get to a -16 (the magic number required for solos) and honestly you can get higher than that, especially in epic tier. I think a few have already been mentioned.

In my opinion, the problem isn't the player - unlike others have implied - but rather the wizard class. Wizards have below-average at-will powers and encounters, but game-altering dailies. It really starts as early as level 5: stinking cloud changes how the game works. It gets worse from there.

As many have said, the only real solution seems to be to up the number of encounters per day, so that the wizard can't use all their encounter-clearing dailies every time. The problem with this is that you end up in a situation where the wizard player gets a really lop-sided perspective of their character: either they are almost useless, or they kinda ruin the fun for everyone by dominating the board.

If you manage to solve that problem, please let me know. My own wizard is interested in a solution.