List of Broken Powers

[Lord Ernie]

Yeah.

I can see where 24 or 28 free surges of temporary hits points per day at level 16 is a loose definition of the word broken and being used every encounter is situational.

You're talking about Cloak of Courage, I take it? I'll admit it's the closest to actually broken of the powers I've seen listed, but mostly because of the rules of how Temporary Hitpoints work, not because of the power itself.

Making THP disappear after 5 minutes and/or simply disallowing this power outside of combat is an easy enough houserule; the power is perfectly balanced if it actually eats up an action in combat. In fact, I'm willing to bet that's how it was supposed to be balanced in the first place: the standard action is supposed to be the drawback.

So... yeah, that's one. Can you defend the others from 'situational, but strong'?

 

[Mengu]

Brokenness of a power may also depend on campaign. I make it a point to tax my player's healing surges. So any power that hands out inordinate amounts of surgeless hit points (in the form of real healing or temporary hit points), to me feels broken, though I have no problem with a few of them in existence or even a few daily resources that recover healing surges. But in a game where PC surges are never taxed because you only ever play one or two encounters a day, the surgeless healing is probably not as much of an impact.

In some campaigns, Changeling Disguise is utterly broken. Again, I for instance won't allow that power in my current game. I've reskinned the Changeling as a Chameleon, taking out that at-will power and replacing it with a racial feature that allows them to make two rolls and use the higher for stealth checks to hide. In a dungeon crawl game, Changeling Disguise might not be broken at all, it might be down right worthless, and some would probably say my chameleon double roll for stealth to hide would be broken in their spy game.

Broken is a relative term to different people in different contexts.

 

[KarinsDad]

So... yeah, that's one. Can you defend the others from 'situational, but strong'?

It depends on what you define as situational. If you consider all Daily powers are situational because they are once per day, then how could one have a broken Daily power at all?


I ran a 4th level fight with a BBEG that did 2d8+5 damage, two attacks per round, if both attacks hit, then an additional 1d6+1 damage.

Astral Condemnation which works regardless of whether it hit that foe stopped 9 points of damage per damage roll.

So, instead of doing 14 average points of damage per attack and 32 average points if both hit, the BBEG was neutered down to 5 average points of damage and 10 average points if both hit.

That's one third. Yes, I consider neutering the BBEG to 1/3rd damage with a power that does not even require a to hit roll to be broken.

This isn't just strong. It's turning the BBEG into a Standard monster threat, just one with a lot of hit points. He's no longer a BBEG. At 4th level, that could be as much 100 hits points of the equivalent of free healing or ~8 healing surges.


Granted, there is the traditional workaround for this power. Stun the Cleric or knock him unconscious so that he cannot sustain it.


How would you as a player feel if your Striker started doing 1/3rd average damage automatically without a to hit roll? If the DM said "I'm sorry, the monster just nerfed your PC. And, there are several such monsters in this dungeon, so expect to have it cast on your again tomorrow.".

One definition of broken could be that any power if used on the PCs, would make them bitch and moan to the point that they might consider quitting. Another definition would be any single power that drops an N+3 encounter down to an N+1 encounter is broken.


If I'm in a dungeon, I expect to run into a potent Elite or Solo at some point in time. So, I don't consider this Daily to be situational either. I expect it to be used most days. That's pretty typical for a Daily and not situational at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, it can be situational as to what is 'broken'. I think the reason clerics come up so often is they have the deepest skillset in terms of effecting the resource usage of the party, and the game is fundamentally a resource allocation problem at its core. Anything that can make a big difference there has a large effect on how the game goes. Defensive powers in general tend to run into the problematic, for the kinds of reasons KD brings up, if they debuff the enemy more than a moderate amount the overall impact is high. If the power works automatically then it creates a huge advantage whenever used. If it has to hit or whatever then it does the same thing but it is swingy. You can't really balance potency of a power vs how often it will work, this is just bad game design and always fails (and designers seem to be irresistibly drawn to make this mistake like lemmings).

Seems to me the game is going in the direction of being a bit more swingy though. Early PHB1 4e was hard into the 'no swinginess' thing (not that worked as planned, but the general design was based around that). Almost 3 years in we have increased damage outputs and thus more margin for rolls of the dice to swing things. So you will see a difference in what powers work well and why.

 

[Cyronax]

I must be the first to admit that I can't crunch numbers relating to all the powers like all of you. For instance, I have a really hard time remembering all of the powers by name. When my players (I am usually a DM) want to ask me about a specific power or feat I usually require them to cite the sourcebook, level, and character class. Those citations are missing most of the time when I read threads on EN World and on the WotC boards (especially Char Op, which is fun to read sometimes).

Anyway, that all said, I have seen a fair bit of 4e in action.

As I read this thread, I tried to think about all I have seen as most broken in 4e. And yes, I've taken advantage of some of these elements, or at least let them appear in campaigns I DM.

1) obviously low-level (early to mid heroic tier) cleric powers stand out as broken, because many people play(ed) clerics in the early days of 4e. It was only one of two leaders for an entire year.

2) Adventurer's Vault (1) weapons. Why isn't there more sniping about these weapons? The Brutal quality is insane. I currently play a great weapon (mordenkrad) dwarf fighter (in our group's side campaign) who is power-gamed beyond my normal. I gave him one 'personality feat' and he has a really low Reflex, but the rest of him is taking pure advantage of the rules. He does damage like a striker and as I look at his stats, he seems to even be on par with some of the strikers in the Essentials (not the Rogue).

3) The Essentials Magic Missile. Its awesome. Too awesome. I know there is a long thread elsewhere about this.

4) Vehicle rules. Broken, but on the crap side of the scale. Adventurer's Vault 1 fails yet again. On their face the vehicle rules (especially the airship) seems elegant and simple, but it falls apart quickly. Its also not ideal for an adventuring group.

5) Dispel Magic and its ilk. There are too few options for PCs and NPCs to end effects outside of the saving throw. I know that Dispel Magic was made into an encounter power through errata, but there is a screaming lack of something I miss from 3.5 --- COUNTERSPELL and other specific countermeasure and protective boons.

6) Immediate Interrupts. In some cases its too many, too much. I find that certain builds with this quality just slow down the game to a crawl. This is probably one of my pet peeves, but I mention it. Consider it a small rant.

C.I.D.

 

[Mapache]

1) obviously low-level (early to mid heroic tier) cleric powers stand out as broken, because many people play(ed) clerics in the early days of 4e. It was only one of two leaders for an entire year.

A lot of low-level Cleric powers yield damage reduction which is proportionally huge at the point where you first get them. Stuff like Moment of Glory completely nerfs enemies without directly winning the encounter or even speeding it up, so you get to see it operate for a long time, leading to feelings of hopeless ineffectiveness on the parts of the GM playing the enemies. As you level up, it becomes more reasonable, and the change to higher-damage monsters has helped to bring these powers into line by reducing their relative effectiveness (e.g. resisting 5 of 10 damage is better than resisting 5 of 15 damage).

2) Adventurer's Vault (1) weapons. Why isn't there more sniping about these weapons? The Brutal quality is insane.

The only insane thing about it is how fiddly it is. Rerolling is a really annoying way to implement having one more point of average damage (with slightly lower variance, including no increase to crits). 2d6 (avg 7) with Brutal 1 is 2d5+2 (avg 8) and 1d12 (avg 6.5) with Brutal 2 is 1d10+2 (avg 7.5). That's all there is to it.

3) The Essentials Magic Missile. Its awesome. Too awesome. I know there is a long thread elsewhere about this.

It's not awesome. It starts out half-decent and quickly turns to garbage as you level because it falls behind options that scale properly.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I would very much like to see a 4E Cleric attempt to solo an @level party sized encounter like CoDzilla could.

Never had that problem in my long-running 3.5E campaign, and the cleric tended to be a focal point of the campaign, as her deity was an arch rival of the evil deity the players were up against. I guess we did something wrong.

 

[BobTheNob]

When the damage was increased last year, CaGI turned from an encounter ending power to one that just got the fighter almost instantly gibbed.

Really? Our fighter uses it still. tactic didnt change at all : use cagi and back it up with a strong defensive option

i.e. Has "Eyes in the back of your head", pops shielded sides or Second wind (or something else to give defence on a minor) and has plenty of options for DR.

Even with the damage increase in monsters, this power is still a center point of our parties fighters approach (he does try to be anything else, hes a tank through and through) and the best thing he has got for locking down a mass of enemies.

Even if he takes a crap load of damage in the process...better him than someone else!!!

 

[Aegeri]

The fighter in my game was dealing with demons. If he used his second wind like that, he'd eat 2-3 free soul stealer attacks (most "leader" type demons like Mariliths, Balors, Molydeus tend to get that in my games), dealing +5 damage and with a +5 bonus to accuracy. Easily annihilating his surge HP and then leaving him unconscious (at worst) or well on his way to being gibbed on the creatures turn. Demons really are truly ridiculous by epic tier if you replace variable resistance with the options in the book :O

 

[Cyronax]

The fighter in my game was dealing with demons. If he used his second wind like that, he'd eat 2-3 free soul stealer attacks (most "leader" type demons like Mariliths, Balors, Molydeus tend to get that in my games), dealing +5 damage and with a +5 bonus to accuracy. Easily annihilating his surge HP and then leaving him unconscious (at worst) or well on his way to being gibbed on the creatures turn. Demons really are truly ridiculous by epic tier if you replace variable resistance with the options in the book :O

It sounds like you're breaking the rules. How can you have fun without the rules? Have you ever considered stifling your creativity and sticking to the game we all love? If you do that, I'm sure you and your group will find a better, less badwrongfun experience.

C.I.D.