Good on paper, bad in play.

[keterys]

A defensive fighter with this can ruin a solo's day, quite honestly. Add in Sacred Flame to make it nigh impossible for the solo to win.

 

[JDillard]

I wonder whether the original poster missed this? It isn't clear in the original post whether he did or not.

Certainly the fighter in my campaign is finding this utility absolutely fantastic - a real life saver and tactically vital.

I was thinking the same thing. The fighter in our group often uses it at the beginning of combat... assesing the situation and deciding that it would be useful then using it as his first or second minor action. You don't have to be bloodied to activate it, just bloodied for it to have any effect. It then kicks in whenever he is bloodied.

This usually means the healers don't even have to worry about him. Every time he gets hit enough to go down to bloodied it kicks him back up to above it. As far as second level utilities go, this one is one of the best from what I've seen.

 

[Runestar]

A defensive fighter with this can ruin a solo's day, quite honestly. Add in Sacred Flame to make it nigh impossible for the solo to win.

I am concerned that making a tough fighter even harder to kill may just end up discouraging the enemies from wanting to attack the fighter, and opting to focus on the more fragile PCs at the back instead. In this case, it would then become too much of a good thing. After all, a ready source of healing is good only if you are actually taking damage.

Just think - the fighter will normally have the most hp and the best AC in the game. Given him regen, and the monster in question may feel that it is more worth it to just suck up the to-hit penalty and attack someone else, rather than waste its efforts smashing its head against a brick wall.

In the end, you may just end up becoming the proverbial "tortoise with a toothpick". You are tough to crack, but with negligible damage output. And foes get around your high AC by simply not attacking you. Which then defeats the purpose of being a defender in the first place. Conversely, by being too good at your role, you are actually sealing the fate of your other party members!

 

[Kzach]

*bangs head repeatedly against wall*

I KNOW HOW THE GODDAMN POWER WORKS!

That was NOT what this thread was about. I seriously feel like I have to write a disclaimer to any thread I start stating the bleeding obvious, ie. this is the topic, not this, that or the other.

 

[keterys]

I am concerned that making a tough fighter even harder to kill may just end up discouraging the enemies from wanting to attack the fighter, and opting to focus on the more fragile PCs at the back instead. In this case, it would then become too much of a good thing. After all, a ready source of healing is good only if you are actually taking damage.

Yep - good thing that combat challenge and superiority are good for more than a -2 to hit and can force an enemy to attack you in many cases.

Definitely one of the downsides of the rogue though... on the opposite side of the monster is not necessarily where you want to be when it decides to attack anyone it can get to other than the fighter.

But once the rogue is dropped, the monster still has to deal with the fighter and at least he got twice as many attacks in the meantime.

 

[KarinsDad]

Don't underestimate slow.

You are Wizard. Improved Initiative is practically mandatory for you. Get the drop on them. Sleep them. They're slowed, so they don't get that chance to close in on you before they drop. Sure you don't get -all- of them, but you usually get enough that you're happy.

Assuming the Wizard wins initiative over the foes, that he gets 5 foes in an area, and he knows that Sleep is best used in this encounter:

With a 60% chance to hit, it hits 3 foes out of 5 on average.

Each of these save 55% of the time, so typically, the Wizard Slows 3 and makes 1 of these 3 unconcious (1.35 unconscious guys to be precise on average). That one comes out of unconsciousness typically within 2 more rounds.

So, 2 guys are slowed for 1 round and 1 guy is slowed for 1 round and then unconscious for 2 rounds. That's 2 to 5 actions that the Wizard has stopped (note: Slowed foes can still Charge 4 squares or use ranged attacks, so Slow might not do much of anything except against the unconscious guy).

If he uses an Orb, he increases the one foe's unconsciousness by some factor, but it isn't much until level 11 and Spell Focus (typically less than half of the encounters before that level).

Compare this to surprising the foes. The PCs get 5 ranged attacks (if they have them) versus 0 from the foes.

More or less, surprise is often better than Sleep without an Orb and probably close to equal to Sleep with an Orb (except unless the Orb user catches a Leader or Solo or something).


I think Sleep is overrated. It allows the PCs to finish an encounter about a round early (effectively stopping enemy attacks for one round on average) and saves the resources accordingly. But, it gives up a daily to save one rounds worth of healing surges and dailies (i.e. the average number of these used in a round).

Against a solo, Sleep is better due to the coup de grace factor, but then again, solos tend to have good Defenses and good save boosts.

 

[Danceofmasks]

1) Sleep slows (save ends) on a miss.
2) Will is by far the weakest save for monsters that come in crowds.
3) Most wizards will be looking to pick up spell focus, It's scary like that.
4) Unless a wizard is looking to start with an 18 in a secondary stat, a 20 in int is almost standard practice.

It's a lot more consistent than you think.

 

[KarinsDad]

*bangs head repeatedly against wall*

I KNOW HOW THE GODDAMN POWER WORKS!

That was NOT what this thread was about. I seriously feel like I have to write a disclaimer to any thread I start stating the bleeding obvious, ie. this is the topic, not this, that or the other.

It didn't sound like it.

No Opening is fairly lame. It typically does not stop jack and is weaker than Shield (one has to declare using it before getting hit and it only works against Combat Advantage attacks and only gives the foe -2 to hit, so ~90% of the time it is totally wasted).

Boundless Endurance for a minor action is fairly decent, even if for once per day.

With a CON of 16, that's nearly the equivalent of a Healing Word every other round when bloodied at 2nd level. If not bloodied, sure it does nothing. But, the Fighter does not really need healing if he is not bloodied.

This allows the Leader to do other things as well (like do healing on other PCs, etc.).


Granted, as the PC gets higher level, the percentage of healing per bloodied round decreases. But even at 10th level with a CON of 18 (as an example), the Fighter gains 6 points per round out of 87. So, it takes 2 rounds instead of 1 round to get the same percentage healing (12 out of 87 instead of 5 out of 37).

Even so, at 2nd level, 2 rounds of it saves a Second Wind Healing Surge and 3 rounds of it saves a Healing Word Healing Surge.

It's a trade of a Daily for one or more Healing Surges plus it frees up the Leader to help other PCs.


Boundless Endurance works nice when the Cleric gives the Fighter temporary hit points with Sacred Flame.

 

[Kzach]

It didn't sound like it.

So, what powers have you encountered that aren't as good as you thought they'd be? Or heck, let's be positive and also list powers that were far better than you anticipated!

Yeah, you're right. It totally doesn't sound like I'm asking for people to post things they thought were good but they decided weren't as good as they thought.

What I should've done was said, "Hey guys, I think Boundless Endurance sucks! What do you think?" Then people would've posted examples of powers they thought were cool on paper, but not in play.

To make things easier for everyone, this topic is now about Boundless Endurance.

This topic is about powers you thought were good or bad, but turned out to be different IN YOUR OPINION.

 

[Kzach]

It's like Regeneration but with a ceiling of half hit points rather than full hit points.

It's the half hit point ceiling that, to me, makes it next to useless.

As a defender, my job is to get hit. Staying at half health is not a good idea. You want to heal up before the enemies get their round again, and if you can avoid it, not to go below bloodied at all.

Even with a 21 AC at 2nd-level in KotS, my fighter has been knocked below bloodied in just one round numerous times. Therefore staying at bloodied just so I can get a piddly 4 points of regeneration, is just silly. Next round I'll be killed.

But I can only use Boundless Endurance once per day, which means I want to save it for the boss encounter. But let's make it an encounter power, just for argument's sake. Even if I get a tick of Boundless Endurance before I get kicked in the guts again, that's what? 4 points of regeneration for the entire encounter? Big whoopy.

So maybe I get knocked down below bloodied twice and nobody has another go before my turn. Eight total points of regen just isn't that great. And if I get knocked below bloodied three times in an encounter, then the encounter isn't going very well and it's going to take far more than 4 points of regen a round to help me out.

I'm far better off negating damage altogether (No Opening) or getting 4 to 14 temporary hit points (Unstoppable) to keep me above bloodied in the first place.

In the times that I was in dire straits and needed to use Boundless Endurance, I was up against goblins that were doing extra damage with combat advantage. In one instance, it was close to the end of the encounter, so wasn't worth blowing a daily. In another, it was a boss and I used it, but died anyway because of massive damage. After getting healed, I got up and used second wind and comeback strike plus the healer's healing word to get myself back way above bloodied. There was no way that I was going to sit there and stay on one healing word's worth of hit points. I just would've dropped the next round.

In both instances, No Opening would've negated the bonus damage and I would've stayed up, and healed again to stay close to full. In both instances, Unstoppable would've given me the bonus points needed to stay up and heal again close to full without going unconscious.

I'm pretty clear in my view that Boundless Endurance just isn't that good. Sounds good, but isn't.