D&D 4E Dark Sun 4E - Defilers?

[True_Blue]

Part of the penalty for being a defiler is that the other PCs in the group should almost instantly try to kill your character once they find out that's what you're doing, assuming they were role-playing the setting. I suppose if it was a party of evil characters, that would be something, but even then, if I'm evil on a world that's dying of thirst, I'd still probably want to kill anyone who was destroying all nearby plant life (which contains water) and potential to grow it for centuries, because that's MY water they're destroying. How can I rob & plunder food & water if you go around destroying it (and the potential for it ever to grow back)?

As a GM, I wouldn't even allow defiling to be an option for the PCs, just as I wouldn't allow Evil characters to be an option.

I think a lot of raiders and such do not necessarily care about the future, they think about the now. If things get bad, they just move onto the next area. I personally believe you are giving the average person too much credit. Most people who are adventuring, raiding, pillaging, etc are not going to throw too much of a fit over a defiling act once in awhile. This is just my opinion though.

I do not believe the benefit of defiling really makes it worth it to use the ability honestly. I'm having a hard time believing I would actually ever use it, but I will have a PC wizard in a Dark Sun campaign starting in a couple of weeks, so we'll see if it happens. Having so many allies take that much damage just does not seem worth it at all.

 

[Theroc]

I agree TB. The benefit is nice... but weren't people really complaining about the Darkspiral Warlock before? That hurt allies too. Imagine a Darkspiral Warlock rerolling with Arcane Defiling every time he throws a daily? Ouchies for his teammates. I think they'd kill him right quick.

In an IC sense, if I were in a game and a Defiler smacked me, I'd probably start including them in my Bursts and Blasts, so they can feel remotely similar pain and see how they like being hurt by allies. >.>

 

[bganon]

The ability to reroll attacks is generally a VERY GOOD option. There's a reason Elven Accuracy is considered one of the strongest racial powers. Daily arcane powers tend to be powerful things themselves (sleep, anyone?). Half surge value in damage is 1/8 or less of your hp total; the party's 30 hp level 1 fighter will only take 3 damage, for example. I can easily imagine groups where the party would be happy to sacrifice a few hp so the caster can land a stun or something similar on the solo. It's actually a quite tempting option with a predictable and limited downside.

The dark-pact warlock stuff was a bit different, in that there were a number of different effects, but often the ally damage didn't scale with ally hp, wasn't predictable (often a dice roll), and was a straight damage trade.

RP-wise... there's a pretty classic example of "heroic defiling" in the novels: Sadira, one of the heroes who slew Kalak, defiled when she thought she had no other option. Basically, in her mind it was a terrible thing, but worth it if she could defeat an even greater evil. The Veiled Alliance, however, never really forgave her for it.

More generally, it's not so much that arcane magic is bad because even preserving magic slightly defiles the environment. It's that arcane casters are dangerous because even a preserver can succumb to the temptation to defile anytime they cast a spell. Every arcane caster is like a walking cache of biological WMD, and people aren't going to trust them just because they've (so far) chosen not to dip into their arsenal.

 

[Theroc]

Half surge value in damage is 1/8 or less of your hp total; the party's 30 hp level 1 fighter will only take 3 damage, for example. I can easily imagine groups where the party would be happy to sacrifice a few hp so the caster can land a stun or something similar on the solo. It's actually a quite tempting option with a predictable and limited downside.

And this is why I shouldn't do fractions in the wee hours of the morning. >.>

The penalty isn't as large as I thought, haha.

 

[True_Blue]

I definitely agree that rerolling is great. It would make one of my players very happy to do so, since she thinks she has bad luck rolling. But I'm not sure all the PC's will be willing to give up one fourth of their hp's in order to do so. If it happened against one other PC, or even two, maybe. But against all allies, which I believe the area is pretty big, I think PC's will get annoyed to see their hp's go down.

While being able to reroll your daily is going to help the encounter, you've also come pretty close to having to have all your allies needing to do a Healing Surge also. I know there are ways to negate that damage, it just seems a little worrisome to me and not quite worth it at lower levels.

I think the problem I have with it, is that it hits *all* allies. So now I need to find ways to heal up all those people somehow (in my opinion). Again, not saying I would never use it, but I'm not sure of a time off the top of my head where I would. But there may be Daily spells that are just that critical, that it needs to be done.

 

[Theroc]

I definitely agree that rerolling is great. It would make one of my players very happy to do so, since she thinks she has bad luck rolling. But I'm not sure all the PC's will be willing to give up one fourth of their hp's in order to do so. If it happened against one other PC, or even two, maybe. But against all allies, which I believe the area is pretty big, I think PC's will get annoyed to see their hp's go down.

While being able to reroll your daily is going to help the encounter, you've also come pretty close to having to have all your allies needing to do a Healing Surge also. I know there are ways to negate that damage, it just seems a little worrisome to me and not quite worth it at lower levels.

I think the problem I have with it, is that it hits *all* allies. So now I need to find ways to heal up all those people somehow (in my opinion). Again, not saying I would never use it, but I'm not sure of a time off the top of my head where I would. But there may be Daily spells that are just that critical, that it needs to be done.

True Blue,Defiling only takes half of a healing surge, and a healing surge is 1/4th max HP.

So, 1/2 of 1/4 is 1/8.

I sucked at math the other night hence the 1/4th comment. It's actually 1/8th which isn't too awfully bad, though since it doesn't really guarantee anything, I think it'd be a bit limited.

 

[Stumblewyk]

But I'm not sure all the PC's will be willing to give up one fourth of their hp's in order to do so.

As it's been stated above - it's not 1 surge value of HP, it's 1/2 surge value in HP. So, if your surge value is 6 at first level, you'd be losing 3 HP, if your surge value was 5, it would be 2, etc.