FRPG Channel Divinity Feats: Power level over 9000?

[Zinovia]

When I first started my current 4E campaign, I made a house rule that clerics and pallies got their deity's associated Channel Divinity feat for free. I felt that most of them were highly situational, and you can only use one CD power in an encounter anyway. Furthermore, it was important to me that clerics and pallies be able to do *something* that related to which god they worshipped. With the addition of 2 more divine classes, and the info from FRPG, I'm not sure if I should keep that house rule or not.

Forgotten Realms added a slew of new Channel Divinity options to go along with the vast number of deities populating that setting. Those seem to me to be far more useful and overall better than the Channel Divinity feats in the PH. A couple of them are better to the point of being broken. So where should the power level of Channel Divinity feats lie? More along those in the PH? Or should they be more useful and powerful like those in the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide? Which ones are really broken? All of them? Just Righteous Rage of Tempus? or do we add Power of Amaunator to that list (Invokers I'm looking at you!)

Channel Divinity feats of the level of those in the FRPG would probably be worth a feat to take them. I'm still not convinced that those in the PH would be. So how powerful *should* deity-specific Channel Divinity feats be?

 

[Solodan]

Other than RRoT, I don't feel any of them are of a power level much beyond what I'd expect. Of course, most of them are of a power level higher than the default channel divinities, so giving them for free certainly does boost your characters somewhat.

We have to be realistic here, there are some very good CD feats in the PH too. Look at Raven Queen's Blessing.

 

[Obryn]

Apart from RRoT, I think the Channel Divinity feats in the FRPG are about where they should be. Many of the PHB feats are too weak; about the only decent ones (IMHO) are Pelor, the Raven Queen, and Bahamut.

-O

 

[Zinovia]

In general even the more useful CD feats in the PH are situational - you cannot choose to use them at any time, but must instead wait for a triggering event to occur.

Armor of Bahamut - triggers when an enemy scores a critical hit on you or an ally.
Raven Queen's Blessing - triggers when you (not anyone else) reduce an enemy to 0 hit points or less.

As opposed to some of those in Forgotten Realms, which can happen any time you like, such as Power of Amaunator - Free action that triggers when you hit an enemy with any power with the radiant keyword. So you hit, then choose to use the power. You can use it effectively in every encounter. I so want to take this one for my new invoker, but I have trouble justifying it. +1d10 against every target I hit with that power? When invokers have big area spells that hit only enemies? There's a reason this is favored in the WotC character optimization forums.

Or Righteous Rage of Tempus: Automatic critical if you hit with your next weapon attack. That one isn't automatic, but the time to use it is when you just got a big bonus to hit from the Warlord and are flanking. You are pretty likely to hit. Auto crit pretty much every encounter? Sign me up! (Yes, this one is widely acknowledged as being broken).

Some of the FRPG ones have no trigger and can be used whenever you choose to. Powers such as Sune's Touch are probably going to be used every encounter. It grants +2 to an adjacent ally's to hit roll or skill check roll. Is there a fight when that isn't a good thing?

From my perspective, I either need to provide some better alternative channel divinity feats to replace the weaker options in the PH (likely stolen right out of the Forgotten Realms book), or limit the use of the FR feats. Unfortunately that means that some of the deities in the PH have kind of lousy CD feats.