How does Furious Assault work on burst/blast attacks?

[MrBeens]

But for an area attack you only make one damage roll for the attack. the Effect is to the damage roll of the attack, even though it is triggered by hitting one enemy.

It doesn't matter which enemy you successfully hit and trigger this power the Thunderwave attack (for example) has it's deal an extra 1d8.

If you really think that adding an extra d8 to every attack of an area spell is not overpowered for a racial ability then go for it in your game.
It is clearly meant to be something similar to sneak attack or hunters quarry extra damage.

 

[DracoSuave]

Twin Striking rangers and tempests have a pretty good chance of getting a crit each encounter.

Avengers too!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But for an area attack you only make one damage roll for the attack. the Effect is to the damage roll of the attack, even though it is triggered by hitting one enemy.

It doesn't matter which enemy you successfully hit and trigger this power the Thunderwave attack (for example) has it's deal an extra 1d8.

No. You are correct that an attack rolls one damage roll, but that does NOT mean the attack deals the same damage to all targets. If one of the attack rolls is a crit, that target takes a different amount of damage, and there may be extra dice rolled as part of that extra damage. HQ or SA could also cause extra dice to one target in an area, etc.

As already noted, the power is expended as soon as the damage is rolled on the target it is used on. That damage will not carry over to anyone else in the area, it is just an extra d8 you get against that one target.

That being said, this IS probably the single most powerful racial trait power in the game. To be honest overall the Half-orc is rather overpowered. They have low-light vision, the best overall attribute bonuses in the game, 2 good skill bonuses, and THREE other racial trait features which are all individually quite good. Half-orcs are the optimized choice for more character builds than any other race, even dragonborn (which are themselves head and shoulders the overall best PHB1 race). WotC largely managed to avoid power creep with the PHB2 classes, but the races, not so much. And I still don't see why they hate classic Fantasy RPG races so much. True to form Gnomes join dwarves, elves, half-elves, and halflings at the bottom of the barrel...

 

[MrBeens]

No. You are correct that an attack rolls one damage roll, but that does NOT mean the attack deals the same damage to all targets. If one of the attack rolls is a crit, that target takes a different amount of damage, and there may be extra dice rolled as part of that extra damage. HQ or SA could also cause extra dice to one target in an area, etc.

As already noted, the power is expended as soon as the damage is rolled on the target it is used on. That damage will not carry over to anyone else in the area, it is just an extra d8 you get against that one target.

That being said, this IS probably the single most powerful racial trait power in the game. To be honest overall the Half-orc is rather overpowered. They have low-light vision, the best overall attribute bonuses in the game, 2 good skill bonuses, and THREE other racial trait features which are all individually quite good. Half-orcs are the optimized choice for more character builds than any other race, even dragonborn (which are themselves head and shoulders the overall best PHB1 race). WotC largely managed to avoid power creep with the PHB2 classes, but the races, not so much. And I still don't see why they hate classic Fantasy RPG races so much. True to form Gnomes join dwarves, elves, half-elves, and halflings at the bottom of the barrel...

I don't think dwarves belong on your list there - their resitance to force movement and prone are great, and second wind as a minor is massivly good.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think dwarves belong on your list there - their resitance to force movement and prone are great, and second wind as a minor is massivly good.

Devoted Cleric is the ONLY build in 4e that matches dwarven ability modifiers. In fact it is the ONLY build that would be best built as a dwarf, so yes, I think dwarves are quite shortchanged. BRV fighter MIGHT arguably be another, but even then it depends on what sorts of armor you intend to wear.

I didn't say that any of the races necessarily have bad racial traits. However the traits of the various races are mostly fairly balanced, so while resistance to forced movement is nice, and minor SW is pretty nice they are no more than balancing, at best, other race's traits. Thus the thing that really determines build suitability for a race is pretty much entirely whether or not their attribute bonuses match the key attributes of the build. If they don't, then the character IS taking a permanent -1 someplace that can never be made up for. With a few builds that -1 is just for one or two powers and you can argue that synergy between the role of the build and the race's traits more than makes up for it, but those are judgment calls.

Just as an example, the Dwarf better matches the attributes for a Devoted Cleric than any other race, except humans, which are equal. OTOH the DragonBorn is the best match in 5 of the 14 PHB1 builds and an equal or better choice for 8 of them, more than any other race, except Half-orc.

Analyzing the other 'classic' races, Elves and Half-elves are the best match in ZERO cases each. Halfling is the best match for Artful Dodger, but nothing else. Eladrin come out SLIGHTLY better (though it is arguable if you would consider them a 'classic' race), being clearly superior in one build, War Wizard. Tieflings are actually kind of the orphan of the new races, with only one superior build, Deceptive Warlock. Gnomes again have zero builds where they best match, depending on exactly how you define best match. At most they are best in one build.

Given their 'flex' attribute allocation, humans come out as second choice in all builds, and in about 1/3 of them they are equal to the best build.

Of course you can build a viable character of any race/build combination, but you will find that when you get into paragon and especially epic tier the character will suffer at least minor and often major penalties. These penalties CANNOT be made up due to the nature of the 4e scaling math.