Hand of Radiance too powerful?

[Flipguarder]

I (the DM) and the op had a long conversation on the topic. At the end of the day, I acquiesced that I would allow his character, under the simple condition that he wouldn't throw a hissy fit if I nerf it after a few sessions. My reasoning is it isn't the type of overpowered that completely breaks a game and makes things come to a grinding halt. I'll give him a few sessions with it and then decide whether or not I have a problem with his comparative power level.

The thing is really a difference in opinion. I see at-wills as powers that should be situational, or they should be used if one wishes to "save" most of his dailies encounter powers. He seems to see at-wills as just more powers that are "working as intended" even if you forgo the usage of encounters for it regularly.
I was also able to pinpoint my precise problem with the character as a whole. I have little problem with the power, or even the build for that matter. But I DO have a problem with attempting to stack as much critical benefits on top of it. When first mentioned to me I allowed the build but said "It's fine as long as you don't pile a bunch of crap on top of crits" and was met with "But that's why the build is good!" That precise moment, I had a problem with the build.

 

[FrozenChrono]

We both have no problem with the original powers, it's the stuff that can be added to it that seemed to be the issue.

For reference I was unaware of Punishing Radiance (stacks with itself . . . really? Who thought that would be a good idea?) when I was coming up with the character concept. I'd personally nerf that feat into the ground (well, reasonably nerf it) in any of my campaigns. I also don't allow items that are non weapon, armor, amulet to stack. So when I'm thinking of picking up two feats and and maybe an item that boosts crit damage, many of the people seeing this as broken are probably seeing stacking +3d6 on crit items and Punishing Radiance going off 3 times in 2 rounds.

 

[Nifft]

My Wizard sometimes forgoes his Encounter powers for his at-wills, since some of his Encounter are rather situational.

For example: Color Spray is brilliant if I can catch 5+ foes in it, but less than brilliant if I would catch an ally in it.

Another example: Staffstrike Corrosion (aka "delayed auto-kill obnoxious minion") is worse than my at-wills if I've already used Staff of Defense, so it gets ignored entirely if I need to use Staff of Defense early in an encounter, or if the encounter features no minions, or if the encounter is with an acid-spewing demonic hydra solo (okay that last one only happened once).

Cheers, -- N

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the only problem I have with this build being considered OP is that it just isn't. Yes, its powerful, but IMHO it is well within the expected power level for PCs at the levels we're talking about here. I could list 20 other builds, probably at least one and often 4 or 5 for any given class that can achieve similar power levels. You almost have to TRY to NOT have this kind of synergy at paragon tier.

I mean just consider a couple of options players have:

Wizard's can super buff Magic Missle to almost absurd levels of power. A Master's Wand of MM combined with the feat that buffs force damage, throw in MC to ranger to get the Spitting Cobra thing going, etc. Trust me, it can be highly lethal!

There are also a ridiculous number of Daggermaster based builds which can crit on 18-20 and do all sorts of crazy stuff. Ranger MC rogue PP Daggermaster and toss around two daggers a round with preposterous effectiveness.

Lets not forget a whole number of barbarian based supercharger builds, nor the polearm based "you are stuck to me forever with no hope of escaping" builds, etc.

And what about the various Blood Mage builds? Those can be combined in various ways with dagger based sorcerer for all sorts of fun. It just goes on and on.

Most of these builds at their core rely on a good synergy between at-wills, items, paragon path, etc. Its simply the expected effectiveness level of decently built 4e characters once they hit paragon tier. If this Invoker build falls under the category of unacceptable cheese, then you're going to have to throw away essentially all of the good builds at higher levels. How much fun is that? 4e was designed to be able to cope with this level of optimization with no real problems. Worst case the DM has to throw some harder encounters at the players, but in ANY given party unless the players are utterly ignorant of how to build a decent character they're going to be using good builds. Heck there are enough good builds out there that even total 4e noobs are likely to hit on some of them pretty quick. 4e charop is just not really rocket science, most of the good stuff is pretty obvious when you look at it and even players with nothing but PHB 1 have a lot of good options.

Basically I think people should reassess what they think is OP because in the context of this discussion the bar for that has been lowered to a pretty low level IMHO.

 

[KarinsDad]

Its simply the expected effectiveness level of decently built 4e characters once they hit paragon tier.

I disagree.

Most of the uber (or even just strong) builds on various sites were put together with input from a lot of people on the Internet and/or a lot of research by the original author.

I don't think that doing 60 or more average points of damage per round 2 rounds out of 5 is normally expected for 11th level PCs created by Joe Average or Susi Normal players using At Will powers.

 

[ShaggySpellsword]

The thing is, this a power/feat combo that isn't anti-intuitive (like the Wizard/Ranger Magic-Missile pro).

Anybody could sit down and say, "I like this Radiant Servant PP. I want to build a character that can use this well."

Then you look at classes with lots of radiant powers. You figure, with a warlord in the party, you need a radiant basic attack of some kind. Where do you find it? Invoker. In early Paragon tier you notice that Hand of Radiance crits a bunch--as do all your many radiant powers. You start taking all of the feats you can find that empower your radiant damage and crits. Whenever you can afford them, you pick up items that enhance crits.

Has this fairly obvious combo broken the game?

Now, the stacking of identical items and feat usage seems suspect...but is hand of radiance/staff of ruin/radiant servant/invoker's blaze/devestating critical/invigorating critical/war ring/executioner's bracers/sublime flame/punishing radiance/font of radiance/epic resurgence/radiant advantage really any different from someone who wants to be good at anything else?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I disagree.

Most of the uber (or even just strong) builds on various sites were put together with input from a lot of people on the Internet and/or a lot of research by the original author.

I don't think that doing 60 or more average points of damage per round 2 rounds out of 5 is normally expected for 11th level PCs created by Joe Average or Susi Normal players using At Will powers.

Yeah, and as often happens, we just disagree. I have some players playing in a game now that are almost 7th level. None of them has played 4e before, though 2 of them are long time D&Ders and play/dm a 3.x game. Another one is a pretty smart guy and he's played other RPGs before. Still, they are far short of being 4e charop experts.

Yet they started out at 1st level and built fairly decent characters right off. One built a very nice STR cleric (and I know she hasn't even read the PHB, probably just skimmed the cleric section). The character is certainly not broken by any means (and its hard to be seriously broken at 6th level anyway) but she's figured out what works and 4e is simple enough in general that she's reasonably optimized. The other characters are a BIT less optimized, but again the players have obviously grasped what the good choices are, they're just choosing options based on whatever they started with (starlock, dwarf 2h ftr, brutal scoundrel, eladrin orb wizard) but the options they choose are pretty good. Any one of them could easily have come up with this invoker build and I fully expect they'll either figure out ways to optimize the characters they have now or their next round of characters will be a LOT stronger at the very least.

4e is just not rocket science. Sure, there are numerous tricky builds that will only show up in the hands of someone who has thoroughly gone through the books and knows the game system well, but it doesn't take a genius to see that daggermaster plus X,Y, and Z makes a really nasty combination.

I'm sure we all know people who will NEVER optimize their characters even slightly and won't likely hit on great builds on their own, but they'll still probably figure out some decent synergies and that's really all good 4e builds are.

I guess my fundamental problem is, if you outlaw this invoker build, then what next? You're PUNISHING the players for playing well. Its unnecessary. The game expects players to make strong characters. Its part of the fun. If you nerf every single item and power that makes any appreciable synergy possible you'll just end up with a bunch of frustrated players with really mediocre characters that aren't that fun in combat. I guess that might be fine for some people's games, but I don't see where it makes things better.

 

[Flipguarder]

I guess my fundamental problem is, if you outlaw this invoker build, then what next? You're PUNISHING the players for playing well. Its unnecessary. The game expects players to make strong characters. Its part of the fun. If you nerf every single item and power that makes any appreciable synergy possible you'll just end up with a bunch of frustrated players with really mediocre characters that aren't that fun in combat. I guess that might be fine for some people's games, but I don't see where it makes things better.

Hey, I'm the first to admit that as a DM I am fairly conservative about what I allow. But I wouldn't go as far to say I punish players for playing well. So far, my players seem to be enjoying every single session very thoroughly. I don't have a problem with synergistic builds. (I have a warden who uses many synergistic things). I do have a problem when a player's character goes outside what I believe to be the intended power level. Let's look at the things I'm willing to allow that are all synergistic with this build.

hand of radiance 4 attacks
19-20 crit range
devestating critical 1d10
5d6 extra damage on a crit from magic iems

To me that build is just fine. They have nearly a 30% crit chance, and when they do crit they get extra damage on top of what one would normally get.

If you add the bracers that increase your crit chance thats another 3d6 and if you add in font of radiance I then have an issue.

Synergy is fine. All of ones eggs in one basket are not.

Not to get into a more heated discussion, but if you wanted to houserule nerf a power feat or feature that I didn't think was overpowered, I would not go so far as to claim you are "punishing your players needlessly". I think that's blatantly unfair.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OK, I wasn't saying it in the way of trying to make it a criticism of the intent of what your doing. I just think its such a fuzzy line and where do you draw it? I mean I guess if I was a player in said game I'd start to feel like I don't know what I'm going to be told is out of line for me to do. I'd also feel kind of like "what is the logic of this" in game terms. I can use X, and Y, and Z, but if I have all 3 of them I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing? It wouldn't make me all that comfortable. Personally I'm not a power gamer, but I'd like to think I can use rules legal options for my character and not worry that 6 months down the road I'll get told I'm not going to be allowed to do X.

Of course every group is unique and that need not be an issue for your players. As a DM though I just tend to let the players do whatever they want with the options given to them. If they create super powerful characters, then they'll just fight super powerful monsters, etc.