List of Broken Powers

[Lord Ernie]

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.

A few points here:

• In an equal-level encounter, the Elite should be about 2/5th of the challenge, in a level+2 encounter (which, let's be honest, BBEG fights should be) it's less.
• This power is specifically designed to use on elite's and solo's, seeing as its use on a standard issue monster is rather a bit of waste. That's exactly what it did - IMO, it worked as intended (yeah, it neutered your encounter, but more on that in a bit).
• Given proper focus fire (and decent luck on the dice), the PC's should be able to destroy an equal-level elite in, say, 3-4 rounds? Let's make it 4. So that means your cleric neutered about 4 attacks from the big guy; very potent, yes, but that's what dailies are for in the first place.
• Much like Moment of Glory, Astral Condemnation is a spell that starts out extremely potent and loses a lot its glory around Paragon level or so.
• Unlike Moment of Glory, Astral Condemnation requires a Wis + Cha focus, which means our cleric has two weak NAD's, leaving him rather vulnerable.

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

Bingo. If the cleric severely neuters the boss, team monster responds by pounding him into the ground. More savvy monsters (who know he's the healer) could go for dazing him and use his inability to heal to their advantage.

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.

My main concern when I DM is to entertain my players, and in combat, this usually means make them feel like the powerful heroes they are supposed to be. It's a totally different approach from actually being a player, when I'm not responsible for the enjoyment of others (well... not as much as when DM'ing).

This means my reaction to a power like Astral Condemnation is totally different depending on the hat I'm wearing. If I'm wearing my player hat, I would indeed call foul, probably be slightly annoyed, and try to encourage the team to do kill the offending monster as quickly as possible. If this happened every few encounters with all kinds of different monsters, I would indeed get upset, and feel the DM may have it out for my character.

However, if I'm wearing my DM hat, I would congratulate the player on a power well used, and to make up for the loss in tension for the Elite that encounter, compare the damage numbers it would have rolled, and then point out how much of a difference the cleric is making. After a few rounds of this, I would shift the focus of team monster to the cleric (and make it clear to the players that I'm doing this) and take every risk to go after him. This makes the cleric feel like he had a meaningful impact on the encounter (which he did), and turns Astral Condemnation from annoying to awesome.

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.

Again, this is a daily power designed to screw over solo's and elite's. In your standard combat, it's overkill, and it's not really useful to save the party in a pinch outside of the solo/elite situation.

Maybe it's that I don't usually rely overly much on elite's (definitely not solo's), and I tend to use at least level+1 encounters if I do (which means the elite represents less of the actual challenge). Maybe it's that, as the DM, I only cheer if the players get to be entertained, whether they screw over my intended encounter or not. Regardless, I still see Astral Condemnation as 'situational, but strong'; unlike some dailies, it's a kind of daily that you only want a single one of, cause it's unlikely you'll run into more than a single Solo / Elite per day.

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).

People don't complain much, because if you run the numbers, Brutal has not nearly as large an impact as it seems, and most of its impact comes on high [W] powers. Let me show you:

A Maul does 2d6 damage, which is an average of 7 damage: 2 * ((1+6)/2 = 7); a Mordenkrad does 2d6 brutal 1. What this means is that instead of doing between 2 times between 1-6 damage, a MordenKrad does two times between 2-6 damage, which is 2 * ((2+6)/2), is 8 damage on average. So it's an increase of about 1 damage per [W].

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

Actually, the lack of a damage roll severely neuters MM's damage potential, which is by design. As pointed out by Mapache, it starts out decent and quickly becomes useless.

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.

Counterspelling was pretty much a losing tactic in 3.5 as it was, and the old Dispel Magic is famous for the amounts of headaches it created through recalculation of all kinds of buffs and penalties.

Its replacement are using monsters that grant saving throws, and picking up on post-MM3 solo design, that gives them a much-needed and inherent resistance to status effects.

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.

This is mostly player-dependent, but yeah, having lots of Immediate Interrupts dramatically increases the amount of decision points in the game. With a quick-thinking player, this is not much of an issue, but it's generally not a good idea for people who need lots of time to make decisions.

Note that Immediate Interrupt attack powers that deal damage actually speed up combat, by decreasing the number of rounds needed to take down the enemy. They're actually one of the most effective ways to really frontload on damage - a good example is a properly built archer ranger, who can have nothing but Immediate Action encounter powers, which makes him very scary.

 

[Psikus]

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.

Another reason for having so many cleric posers in the black list is that overpowered defensive powers are less obvious targets for errata their offensive analogues. Stuff that deals too much damage are easy to spot for the errata team, but examples of nerfed defensive options are far more rare- only Battlerager fighter comes to mind. So it is not a matter of clerics being inherently stronger, but of them being better at dodging errata.

And this reminds me - a sorcerer's Adamantine Echo (daily 9) and Platinum Scales (daily utility 22) deserve a place of honor in the list of brokenness, as they make a character absurdly difficult to kill for a whole encounter.

 

[KarinsDad]

A few points here:

• In an equal-level encounter, the Elite should be about 2/5th of the challenge, in a level+2 encounter (which, let's be honest, BBEG fights should be) it's less.
• This power is specifically designed to use on elite's and solo's, seeing as its use on a standard issue monster is rather a bit of waste. That's exactly what it did - IMO, it worked as intended (yeah, it neutered your encounter, but more on that in a bit).
• Given proper focus fire (and decent luck on the dice), the PC's should be able to destroy an equal-level elite in, say, 3-4 rounds? Let's make it 4. So that means your cleric neutered about 4 attacks from the big guy; very potent, yes, but that's what dailies are for in the first place.
• Much like Moment of Glory, Astral Condemnation is a spell that starts out extremely potent and loses a lot its glory around Paragon level or so.
• Unlike Moment of Glory, Astral Condemnation requires a Wis + Cha focus, which means our cleric has two weak NAD's, leaving him rather vulnerable.

In this particular encounter, the BBEG was a solo. So, it dropped a very high percentage of the encounter out the window (it was N+3, definitely dropped to at least N=1). That's just free XP for the taking with zero real risk.

Even if a given BBEG fight uses an Elite, it's still doing the equivalent of an auto-kill. The Elite is being turned into a Standard, hence, one monster equivalent instead of two. Again, pretty much free XP.

As for it using both Wis and Cha, this is true. This particular Cleric is fairly vulnerable for Fort and Reflex, but not all Clerics have to be that way. Starting stat of 16+2 Wis and 16 Cha would still prevent 8 damage and the Cleric could focus on other non-Cha stats for all future stat boosts.

Bingo. If the cleric severely neuters the boss, team monster responds by pounding him into the ground. More savvy monsters (who know he's the healer) could go for dazing him and use his inability to heal to their advantage.

He should if he could.

We both know that this isn't going to happen 99% of the time.

The monster is neutered. The Defender and Controller have too many ways to prevent the monster from getting near the Cleric.

He isn't going to pound the Cleric into the ground at all and typically, the Cleric isn't going to use this power in round one unless he has a strong notion that the foe is a badass. One way to know this is that if the foe had a stunning type power, he often would have used it already. Even if the foe has a stunning power remaining, there's still the fact that the other PCs aren't going to let the foe anywhere near the Cleric.

 

[bganon]

Maybe I'm misremembering how this works, but as a ranged 5 power, doesn't the cleric need to stay within 5 of the solo to keep it neutered when sustaining Astral Condemnation? Or is this only necessary for conjurations?

It seems like if I were a BBEG and some uppity bastard laid Astral Condemnation down on me, I'd just toss a few minions in the party's face (the extra xp cost is negligible), run off for a minute, and pop back in for a rematch.

I don't think the problem is so much with the power, as with lone solo monsters in general being susceptible to total shutdown with the right tactics. I rather wish WOTC hadn't called them "solo" monsters, since IMO they should always, always have some kind of terrain/minion/escape-and-regroup-plan backup (or MM3-style abilities to shrug stuff off).

 

[Mapache]

Maybe I'm misremembering how this works, but as a ranged 5 power, doesn't the cleric need to stay within 5 of the solo to keep it neutered when sustaining Astral Condemnation? Or is this only necessary for conjurations?

Zones and Conjurations need to stay within range of the original power, but there's no such rule that effects in general end if you leave the range of the original power.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't think the problem is so much with the power, as with lone solo monsters in general being susceptible to total shutdown with the right tactics. I rather wish WOTC hadn't called them "solo" monsters, since IMO they should always, always have some kind of terrain/minion/escape-and-regroup-plan backup (or MM3-style abilities to shrug stuff off).

I ignore the word solo. Solos are just tougher monsters that have to be accounted for in the encounter XP. In this fight, it was a solo and 2 elites. With the exception of an occasional loner type creature like many dragons (who should have traps and other escape plans), most of my solos are the BBEGs, the elites are just lieutenants, and solos and elites can be encountered with a bunch of their allies, not just minions. Doing it this way also lowers the level of the solos I throw at the PCs so that they can hit them easier and avoid grind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, frankly I am not all that up on even using solos. I WILL now and then, but given their large amount of hit points they are really mostly useful as very specific monsters. I use them when the monster is the focus of an adventure and defeating it is the big goal. I wouldn't and don't make anything a solo simply because it is a 'boss'. Most bosses are elite monsters, especially humanoid type ones. The dragon you are questing to kill and spend half of paragon tier going after? Yeah, he's a solo. The guildmaster of the thieves' guild? That guy is an elite. He may have great plot significance and be a significant opponent, but he's still just a normal guy in a fight. His significance is who he knows, what he can do, and the forces he commands.

Of course this will vary a lot depending on your play style and such. A really optimized team of PCs may not find monsters less than solos stick around long enough to really impact the encounter enough.

 

[fba827]

I ignore the word solo.

Same; in my mind, when I see the word Solo, i replace it with "BBEG" or "Uber"

(/end thread tangent)

 

[Dausuul]

I don't regard solos as something that I have to use as singleton foes.. but I often do use them that way, because there are a lot of monsters that I don't regard as "social." Dragons are a good example. I've always felt that a dragon should neither need nor want allies--it's just not how they roll. I don't want to have to pad my dragons out with minions or regular monsters to make them fit challenges for the party.

 

[KarinsDad]

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

Ok, let's look at Moment of Glory.

The time to use it is in an N+2 or stronger encounter.

Average NPC damage at low level tends to be ~level+7.5 for single target attacks, ~level+5.5 for area attacks with the MM3 damage system.

Moment of Glory is a close burst 5, so it almost always targets every single PC and NPC in the party. And, it can knock foes down for some minor control. The only downside to it is that the Cleric has to maintain it, but that typically isn't a problem since the enemies tend not to do too much damage in return (yes, it can be negated with a Stun, but that's a bit rare at low level).

That changes the NPC damage to ~level+2.5 for single target attacks, ~level+0.5 for area attacks. In N+2 encounters, foes will tend to be in the level +1 to +3 range. So, 4.5 to 6.5 damage and 2.5 to 4.5 respectively for level 1 PCs.

That means that the Cleric stops almost 50% of single target damage and almost 60% of area target damage in an N+2 encounter. Just shy of 40% and 50% for an N+4 encounter.

That effectively doubles the number of PC attacks against the NPCs. It doesn't matter that it also doubles the number of rounds, this is the equivalent of doubling PC damage output because it takes twice as many attacks to knock a PC unconscious as without Moment of Glory. Think of it as the equivalent of the Rogue doing 5 rounds of 40 points of damage (as opposed to the reality of it being 10 rounds of 20 points of damage). And because it is so effective, the PCs really do not have to use up a lot of action points and other Dailies that they normally might in a tough encounter.

And since it does this by preventing damage, it is the equivalent of saving a healing surge at low level for every 2 successful attacks against the PCs. So, in a long tough 10 round encounter where the PCs might get hit 20+ times (or more with area attacks), that's a saving of upwards of 10 healing surges (depending on when the Cleric casts it). Compare this to the 16th level Daily Cure Critical Wounds that saves 3 healing surges

And, it negates most low level Ongoing Damage completely. And at Paragon level, it is still pretty decent since effects like Ongoing Damage are even more common, even if it is 10 damage being lowered to 5. Granted, its potency drops by about 2% per level and it will only be stopping 20+% of all damage at low Paragon, but that's still not lame.


As for it being situational, it only has minimal frequency if the DM rarely throws a tough encounter at the PCs. In two of our campaigns, the Cleric used it nearly every single adventuring day of multiple encounters and every single time, it changed a tough encounter to just a lengthy one with virtually no real threat.