'Fog of War' Feature Needs a Home

[chronoplasm]

OK, so I have this idea for a class feature;

Fog of War
Whenever an enemy starts its turn within your reach, you can make a basic melee attack against it as an Opportunity Action.

A class with this feature would have powers that can be used as basic melee attacks for purposes of the Fog of War feature.


I'm having a hard time figuring out though if this should go into a new class or onto an existing class, and whether this would be most appropriate on a Striker, or on a Controller, or on some kind of Striker/Controller combination.

Your thoughts?

 

[Alex319]

Well, the idea itself seems overpowered to me. Since the attack occurs at the start of the enemy's turn, once the user is within reach of the enemy there is no way for the enemy to avoid the attack, short of being moved out by an ally in the interim.

Even adjusting it to "end of turn" seems not good enough. If the user has a reach weapon and is adjacent to the enemy, there is no way for the enemy to safely leave range (and avoid taking either a Fog of War special attack or an OA) without burning his standard and move actions for a double shift.

Here's what I would do:

- Make it go off at the end of the enemy's turn rather than the start.
- Make it only work on adjacent enemies, regardless of reach.
- Make it an Immediate Action, thus limiting it to one per round.

This makes it so that the enemies always have a chance to avoid the extra attack, unless they are boxed in or somehow otherwise unable to move. This means that the extra attack will become a tactical element in the battle that requires effort to take advantage of or avoid, rather than free bonus attacks that you get every round.

 

[chronoplasm]

Makes sense.

The Immediate Action idea gives me another idea for a class feature and powers to go with this...

Tempest Fury
You may perform two immediate actions per round instead of just one.
In addition, you gain Quick Draw as a bonus feat.

...and a power...

Hailstorm Barrage- ??? Attack
Daily. Power-source. Weapon
Standard-Action
Close burst 1
Target: Each creature in blast.
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage. The next time the target is attacked this round, you may shift the target ?Wisdom? modifier squares as an immediate reaction.
Effect: You may perform an additional immediate action until the end of your next turn.

What do you think?

 

[Starfox]

I have something similar on my Martial Controller class; one of the builds gets to attack everyone adjacent to them at the beginning of their turn. I did a bit of thinking on the pacing here, and found that the beginning of the player's turn seemed best - the idea is to discourage creatures from standing close, thus increasing the melee controller's survivability.