Eyebite & Divine Challenge Combo

[Yair]

I have a Tiefling character in my group, a warlock multiclassing into paladin. He took the eyebite power, and uses it (as well as hiding) with his Divine Challenge. The result is that the target can't hit him or even approach towards him since it doesn't know where he is, so it takes the full (8 hp) damage each round, effectively.

Is this legal? Should it remain legal in your opinion, or is a house rule in order?

Keep in mind he's a paladin of Correlon, and explained his challenge as challenging the opponent to withstand or outdo his magic.

 

[cdrcjsn]

* You can do a perception check as a minor action to pin-point invisible creatures and attack their square. Unless he used a feat to pick up Stealth, his stealth is probably gonna suck (even if he did use a feat, Dex is probably not high so it'll still suck).

* Area effects aren't affected by invisibility or concealment.

* Eyebite lasts only until the beginning of the warlock's round. You can have your foe ready an attack when he appears and before he attacks.

* He can only use Divine Challenge on one target per encounter since he's getting it from an MC feat. It goes away if he doesn't attack the target or he doesn't end up adjacent to it. If anyone else is attacking it, then it goes down in two rounds or so.

It's an effective combo...but hardly gamebreaking.

 

[Lucas Blackstone]

This is legal as long as the warlock/paladin follows the rules.

First off he needs to make stealth checks every round. If he moves more then 2 squares these checks receive a -5 penalty. The enemy's passive perception is the dc. Second, eyebite needs to hit each round, or else the paladin is visible to the enemy. Third, nothing stops the enemy from approaching the warlock/paladin. The DM just needs to use the rules made for fighting invisible opponents. And lastly, the divine challenge only makes an enemy take damage if the enemy attacks someone other then the paladin. Walking around unable to see isn't attacking things, so no damage from the divine challenge.

Also the divine challenge doesn't have to represent a challenge in character. Though that's a nice bit of flavor that the player chose.

 

[bert1000]

Legal and not game breaking. Key limiting factors are:

- 1 / encounter
- eyesbite has to hit every round (look at irontooth from KoTS, +4/5 vs. will of 17) to keep up the invis
- anyone can try to target a invis creature. monsters with high perception will be able to pinpoint the warlock unless he is built for this (skill training, high dex)

 

[Lucas Blackstone]

Cdr brought up a fantastic point that I had missed. The enemy can just ready an action to attack the warlock/paladin when he can see him ( which would be at the start of the paladin's turn ).

 

[Kordeth]

The result is that the target can't hit him or even approach towards him since it doesn't know where he is, so it takes the full (8 hp) damage each round, effectively.

You are aware that the monster only takes this damage if it attacks someone other than the paladin, right? Seems like best-case scenario the paladin keeps this one monster from attacking his friends (which, you know, is kind of a defender's job) for a few rounds at a time. If the monster has area attack abilities, this tactic becomes even less useful, as it can blast away at the paladin's general vicinity and still not take the damage as long as the invisible paladin remains in the area.

 

[bardolph]

You are aware that the monster only takes this damage if it attacks someone other than the paladin, right? Seems like best-case scenario the paladin keeps this one monster from attacking his friends (which, you know, is kind of a defender's job) for a few rounds at a time. If the monster has area attack abilities, this tactic becomes even less useful, as it can blast away at the paladin's general vicinity and still not take the damage as long as the invisible paladin remains in the area.

The monster knows where he WAS, doesn't he? Couldn't he move to a square adjacent to the warlock's last known position, and hope he ends up adjacent?

 

[James McMurray]

Divine Challenge only deals damage once, and only if you make an attack that doesn't include the person who challenged you before the start of their next turn. The enemy can just take the damage and then fight as normal, or do something miscellaneous or area-affecting for one round and then fight as normal. The only way to continually damage someone with Divine Challenge is to continually re-apply it, which someone multi-classed into Paladin can't do.

 

[Yair]

You are aware that the monster only takes this damage if it attacks someone other than the paladin, right? Seems like best-case scenario the paladin keeps this one monster from attacking his friends (which, you know, is kind of a defender's job) for a few rounds at a time. If the monster has area attack abilities, this tactic becomes even less useful, as it can blast away at the paladin's general vicinity and still not take the damage as long as the invisible paladin remains in the area.

The monster knows where he WAS, doesn't he? Couldn't he move to a square adjacent to the warlock's last known position, and hope he ends up adjacent?

The warlock is focused on moving a lot, teleporting to here and there, cloaking himself with concealment as he moves, and so on. So the result is that he generally isn't where he was when he cast his eyebite on the poor target.

However, you'all convinced me there are reasonable ways to handle this, so this ain't too bad. And that it's legal. So I won't be house-ruling it.

 

[Yair]

Divine Challenge only deals damage once, and only if you make an attack that doesn't include the person who challenged you before the start of their next turn. The enemy can just take the damage and then fight as normal, or do something miscellaneous or area-affecting for one round and then fight as normal. The only way to continually damage someone with Divine Challenge is to continually re-apply it, which someone multi-classed into Paladin can't do.

Whoa. It is my understanding the the divine challenge is applied each and every round until it is broken-off by the character not attacking or being adjacent to the target. A real paladin can then invoke a new challenge, but our tiefling mutliclassed character can't. If this is not the case, then both me and the player did some serious misunderstanding....