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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RLBURNSIDE" data-source="post: 5576089" data-attributes="member: 94650">If you ban Wintertouched / Lasting frost (something I worry my DM might do, or even Wizards-Of-The-Nerf), the melee ranger will just take prime punisher and called shot. Will you ban those too? They're from Dragon Magazine, which is still Core. Beware banning one issue of Dragon and not others, or your players will point out favoritism if someone else gets that nifty power from another dragon article. This has happened to a group I was in, and the DM was basically left with either a) ban ALL dragon mag content, which meant 2 other characters would lose feats and powers, or b) risk the player re-speccing their character from one of the other PHB 1 options, which are quite often, just as powerful. Wintertouched / Lasting frost is PHB-1. If they errata that now, three years later, a pox on you Wotc, if it's too cheesy now it was too cheesy then, by far, since there weren't other options such as Called Shot or Headman's Chop back then, to offer some extra DPR options at the cost of building your entire character and playstyle around.Called Shot is about as iconic a concept to rangers as anything else I've seen, really, and doesn't incur the cost of the frost weapons, which are darned expensive. (if a player can even buy them to begin with, that is).E.g. I made this new ranger / sorc hybrid for a 4e game, and came up with better stats, more fun, more playability, cheaper and more optimal in every way, by using Called Shot and taking hybrid talent for prime shot rather than TWF style. Even taking Toughness as an extra feat was no problem, to be on-par in terms of HP. The double weapon I used I just handwave is two weapons in my head. Bonus : All my sorcerer powers, not just cold ones, benefit from the +5 from called shot. On top of that, When I do have CA AND Prime Shot bonuses (via powers or situationals), my max-to hit is 1 greater than the cold-cheesed TWF ranger. It works out even better for me, as I can get a Jagged Double-ax for less than half the price of two frost weapons, at level 11, and benefit from enchanced crit rate ten levels sooner. Also, mechanically, I can do stuff with my offhand like use my Star of Correlon for implement powers on my turn without having to swap weapons.The main reason I decided to go the Called Shot route is because I have no faith in Wotc, or the idea that frost weapons will be accepted in the new game I'm joining, or if the DM will just keep throwing cold-resist creatures at us, so I sort of said screw this option. There is nothing wrong or cheesy about an entire character based on cold spells, cold breath weapon, cold feats, and cold weapons, since they're part of the system and it opens you up to being foiled quite easily by certain monsters having resistances. Even that can be bypassed, but can you buy the ice gloves to do that? not necessarily.  I always thought, for the longes time that Frostcheese was, well, cheesy, but actually, Called Shot is better for a ranger IMO, and frost does have it's place if you have a good theme going on for your character. That removes the "cheese" part for me. And unless the DM bans that Prime Punisher/Called Shot, it works by changing the way you fight and making you exposed and off on your own to fight enemies solo, which is risky for a ranger to do. So, there is some balance there, and doesn't depend on items whatsoever so the side benefit for the DM is no item wish-lists are needed to make the build function properly. It works at range, with multiclass powers, whatever. That's a huge plus. If anything, frost cheese should have been fire cheese focusing on pure damage, and lasting frost would have dazed instead of extra damage instead. Firetouched would have prevented regen or bypassed fire resistance or something useful. Wintertouched is a little of redundant for rangers who don't exploit Called Shot and fight off on their own, IMO. Just wait to have CA normally before you nova. If anything, I would worry about those ranger who take BOTH those extra +5 options. That, would be too crazy indeed for me if I were DMing. But think about it this way. Monsters HP go up 5x as fast as player's DPR by epic, do you really want to ban that? All you need to do is not drop frost weapons for now : problem solved. No banning necessary. Or have them be so rare they only find one or two per tier, max, and have to re-enchant their favorite weapons one at a time, so as to ramp up damage more gradually.Rogues, on the other hand....love them some Wintertouched.</blockquote>

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