How do you deal with Battle Standards?

[kaomera]

So, the players in my 4e game want to pick up some battle standards... Probably the most significant one would be the Battle Standard of the Hungry Blade. They're 13th level now, so a 9th-level item shouldn't be too bad...

I'm not completely sure how to deal with the standard, once they plant it. The basics of how it works are pretty straightforward, but there's a few odd bits. Fore on thing, the resist it gets when it's planted - what is that? I'm assuming it's basically pointless as there aren't really any rules for breaking magic items, right? And I'm not entirely sure how monsters should react to the thing - they're very liable to end up pulled right up to it, so it seems kind of obvious to uproot the thing at the first opportunity, that would provoke an opportunity attack if someone's in range (or multiple OAs if the PCs actually coordinate that much), but otherwise it seems pretty pointless to plant it just to have it pulled up...

And I'll be honest, I'm a little bit worried about this being an encounter power. Between this and the Spirit of Athas I'm concerned that fights may end up getting pretty static...

 

[Aulirophile]

It really isn't that bad. It isn't moveable, for one thing, takes a Standard to plant for another. If you just let them have it, you'll see how they use it for a few encounters, and you can bear that in mind when designing future encounters. The fact that it doesn't do damage and there are fairly similar encounter powers for several class that do do damage, or at least can, makes me pretty indifferent to it. It shores up a weakness of the Warden class handily (till level 17, anyway), but other then that... eh.

Though I no doubt fall into the minority on this issue.

 

[Jools]

I've been wondering about standards too. Surely one of their opponents are just going to come by and run off with it, aren't they?

 

[kaomera]

I'm letting them have it at this point, I'm just not 100% sure how to handle it, specifically how to have the monsters react to it that will be cool and fun and not jerky. I got scolded for not having monsters take many swings at the Shaman's spirit companion after he took a power that IMO said "Hey! Don't hit my spirit companion!" (and when, imo, taking swings at the companion is a losing proposition anyway... but that should probably be another thread...) I'd like for it to be a positive, fun thing and I just suspect it's going to be an added complication to not much real overall benefit.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I had a character take a Standard in a low-paragon hack'n'slash game with some leftover gold from building. I thought it would be pretty neat, and a good way to inject some flavour into an otherwise vanilla formula.

I never used it. Not once. I found that there was ALWAYS something better to do with my Standard Action.

 

[jcayer]

Weird, I gave one that increased healing a bit to the party cleric. He always rolled well for init and had nothing to do, so he would plant the Standard and get a small healing bonus. For me, it really wasn't a big deal.

 

[jimmifett]

Before errata, there would be a group of players that would plant the battle standard fo healing and questionably stack on healing bonuses that no longer stack (and didn't really back then either, but the water was muddy). They would trounce through adventures with rediculous healing.

That was of course until they encountered a graduate of the Rat Bastard school of DMing. First oppurtunity, I had a minion pull it up, killing it's effect, and take off as fast as it could escape. They lost the flag the rest of the module, getting it back at the end and learning a valuable lesson about leaving items unattended.

Another player learned a similar lesson dropping a +2 sword in the first enounter to switch weapons while fighting thieves. Thief took one look, grabbed the sword, and took off at double run actions. Th eplayer should have been suspsicious when I asked exactly which squared he dropped his sword.

 

[Evilhalfling]

My party uses the Inn sign from the inn they all owned before they became adventures. The inn burnt down in the second session, but the group is still known as the Angry Badgers. The symbol is a heraldic badger (like hufflepuff's symbol) but carrying a flagon of beer.

Later when the group spent 75% of the parties cash to make the last surviving flask of homebrewed beer into a L3 magic item, the sign was spontaneously enchanted to become a battle standard of Healing(L4).

It has rarely been used in combat, even when it could have saved lives. Instead they use it between encounters. So really few enemies get a chance at it. On the odd occasion when they have been attacked while resting I mostly forgot about it.
I love the idea of a minion stealing it.

 

[Riastlin]

To me, I think it really depends on who the enemies are. Are the monsters smart enough to realize what the standard is doing? Do they realize that removing it from the ground can cause it to stop helping the PCs? In the case of highly intelligent eladrin fighting the PCs, then yes, odds are that at least one of them understands the importance of the standard (even if they don't recognize all of its effects). In the case of mindless zombies on the other hand, chances are that they don't recognize the significance of the flag, other than that it lacks tasty brains.

When in doubt, you could always simply have the monsters make an arcana check to see if they recognize what is going on. If they fail the check, then they leave the flag alone. If they pass, then they have to evaluate whether its worth passing up an attack (and possibly provoking one or two) to grab the standard.

 

[Thatwackyned]

With the battle standard, my DM ruled that if a Standard action was to place it, a standard action was to remove it. So, the Warden would move in and place the Standard. The baddies tank moved in and grabbed the standard, AoO to remove. The Baddies had the standard now. Placed it down. The two tanks when for 4 rounds of Gimmie-Gimmies before they won. Too funny.

None breakable, so can't be "attached", only removed.