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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Ernie" data-source="post: 5434538" data-attributes="member: 58517">A few points here:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Unlike Moment of Glory, Astral Condemnation requires a Wis + Cha focus, which means our cleric has two weak NAD's, leaving him rather vulnerable.</li> </ul>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.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.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.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].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.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.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.</blockquote>

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