How powerful is Crimson Edge?

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

I wonder if a good yardstick for the powers is:

At Will (Heroic Tier)
Per Encounter (Heroic Tier) = At Will (Paragon Tier)
Per Day (Heroic Tier) = Per Encounter (Paragon Tier) = At Will (Epic Tier)
Per Day (Paragon Tier) = Per Encounter (Epic Tier)
Per Day (Epic Tier)

That way, each Tier would be a sort of de facto Retraining.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

a rogue will need to choose between utility powers and attack powers with the same "pool" of available slots.

My interpretation is very different.

The have said they are "siloing" utility powers from combat powers.

 

[Mad Mac]

Just a thought - crimson edge does a flat 5/round as part of its extra effects. That damage isn't scaling. Also, if the target's saving every round, he's got a pretty decent chance of throwing it off before the damage adds up to anything significant for a high level bad guy. It's the "grants combat advantage" that matters, IMHO. That probably opens the target up for nasty rogue attacks predicated on the target granting CA, moreso than just Sneak Attack

True, but the bleed damage isn't totally ignorable either, especially at low levels. If you have a 9th level Rogue with 16 St, he's causing 8 bleed damage a round. If we assume he also has 18 Dex and 12 Con...Our 9th level Rogue has 64 HPs. A Sucessful use of Crimson Edge against his clone (we'll say with a dagger) could do 2d4+4 damage, which would about 10 damage, 17 if he also has combat advantage and combines a sneak attack. If he has the Brawny Rogue build, then he could add +3 for strength, doing about 20 total damage on average. That takes off about 1/3rd of his HPs in one blow.

On the second, if his opponent fails his save, He takes 8 bleed damage, and opens himself up to another sneak attack for 1d4+4+3+2d6 Dam, which is about 25 total. At this point he's down to 19 HPs. At this point just bleeding for another two rounds will almost finish him off, but he'll likely get whalloped by someone before then anyway.

 

[Sadrik]

I wish they would use this formatting for powers:

Power level = 1-10

then is would describe the effectiveness of the power at levels +10 paragon and +20 epic.

This would be similar to how they described sneak attack: 1st +2d6, 11th +3d6, and 21st +5d6.

So, as an example "crimson edge" would be a 9th/19th/29th level power and the power would get a boost at 19th and 29th. This would make some powers not useless at later levels!

 

[olshanski]

These abilities are not really even comparable.

Crimson edge: Target takes a minor bit of damage each round AND all rogue attacks do sneak attack damage until target saves.

Binding Strike: Target cannot attack anyone except you for one full round.


If you have a character with a very high amount of armor, and you have a bunch of allies with low armor but the ability to do a lot of damage, then the Binding Strike is an awesome ability.

Say you need to get a group of 10 peasants past a Hydra... your paladin runs up and with a binding strike forces the hydra to concentrate only on the paladin... then all of the peasants run past the hydra free of attacks. Crimson edge is going to be absolutely useless in this scenario.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My own guess is that characters will typically gain attack powers at odd levels and utility powers at even levels.

My guess is that it will be powers at odd levels and feats at even levels.

 

[Sitara]

These abilities are not really even comparable.

Crimson edge: Target takes a minor bit of damage each round AND all rogue attacks do sneak attack damage until target saves.

Binding Strike: Target cannot attack anyone except you for one full round.


If you have a character with a very high amount of armor, and you have a bunch of allies with low armor but the ability to do a lot of damage, then the Binding Strike is an awesome ability.

Say you need to get a group of 10 peasants past a Hydra... your paladin runs up and with a binding strike forces the hydra to concentrate only on the paladin... then all of the peasants run past the hydra free of attacks. Crimson edge is going to be absolutely useless in this scenario.

While not exactly relevant to the ongoing discussion(s) thats a very sweet example of situationally effective powers. However, maybe you ought to have chosen a monster other than the hydra, since it has 9 heads (aka 18 eyes), I don't think a single smite will blind them all

@planesailing: Its rather apparent that is indeed how the progression will be (it better be,IMO). Except at level 10+ you also somehow squeeze in paths.

 

[fafhrd]

My guess is that it will be powers at odd levels and feats at even levels.

How does that work? The examples "Paladin 27" and "Rogue Utility 2" make it difficult for me to imagine a framework that makes sense.

 

[olshanski]

While not exactly relevant to the ongoing discussion(s) thats a very sweet example of situationally effective powers. However, maybe you ought to have chosen a monster other than the hydra, since it has 9 heads (aka 18 eyes), I don't think a single smite will blind them all .

The ability is "BINDING" smite, which forces a combatant to focus solely on the paladin.
The ability is not "BLINDING" smite.

It also seems to me that part of this discussion is the relative power levels of different abilities attained at different character levels. You've got a low level per day ability "Crimson Edge", and a high level per-encounter ability, "Binding Smite". I think that the two are not really comparable, whereas if they both were equivalent, a high level per-encounter ability that did a flat 20 points of damage per round, and a low level per-day ability that did 20 points of damage per round... that you would have a better baseline for making comparisons.

 

[fafhrd]

Thank you. Your fervency is appreciated.