Elven Accuracy + attack twice powers

blargney the second

blargney the minute's son
I DMed a quick little 4e game for the first time tonight, and something odd came up. There were two encounters, and both times the elf ranger wanted to use Elven Accuracy with powers that let her shoot two arrows. The first time was with Twin Strike, the second Two-Fang Strike. We couldn't quite figure out how those racial and class powers were supposed to combine.

As far as we could tell, there are two options:
1) Roll both d20s simultaneously, then reroll whichever one you want.
2) Roll a d20, decide if you want to reroll it, then move on and roll the next d20.

Which is the correct way to do it? The first one is certainly faster to play at the table by a huge margin, but I'm not sure if it's wrong, and if so how overpowered it is. Is there another answer that I haven't listed yet?
-blarg
 

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I would go with 1).

Only "support" I can offer from the rules is, that on p. 269 PHB it says, that you can take Actions on your Turn in any order.

Bye
Thanee
 

And I'd go with )2.

I don't see p269 having relevance here.

You declare the use of Twin Strike, roll your first attack, decide to use Elven Accuracy or not. Move on to the next.
 

I try and interpret Twin Strike and related 2-attack powers as happening somewhat "simultaneously". That is, you use a single power that has two simultaneous attacks. As such, I would go with option 1: roll both attacks at the same time, and then decide whether or not to use Elven Accuracy for either.
 

I think officially #2 is the answer but I would use #1 just for ease of play.

Edit: BTW, are you forcing him to declare Elven Accuracy BEFORE he rolls anything ??!???
 

Unless the DM is hiding the AC of the target or isn't telling the player "this one hit, this one missed", what difference does it make? If you're going to use EA then you're going to use it on an attack that missed. It's only if you don't know if your rolls missed or not that the order you decided to use it matters.

Personally the player can do it either way for me, they know what number they need to hit up front, I give them that after the first attack roll. If they want to roll one and then use EA or roll both dice and use EA makes no difference the way I do it.

I'd be interested in hearing how the order might make a difference?
 

Edit: BTW, are you forcing him to declare Elven Accuracy BEFORE he rolls anything ??!???
Nope. Always after the d20.

I'm kind of perversely happy to see people chiming in on both sides. It means that it's not so cut and dry that one of us was totally out to lunch. Barring any further critical information, I think we'll go with option 1.

Thanks, everybody!
-blarg
 


And knowing AC or not isn't the question. You know if you hit or miss, and use EA based on that.

But let's say you miss on both attacks and want to reroll one. There's a ton of situations where order would matter then.

Or, you want to kill that pesky flanking minion, but don't want to waste both attacks trying to hit when only one will do. Order matters then, too.
 


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