Martial Power Preview

[Turtlejay]

Giving the fighter reach for free over other classes is pretty broken IMO. One of the only reasons to take a paladin is because he can mark at a short range, allow fighters to do it and you might as well play a fighter multiclassed into cleric for the same thing, only better.

Plus, allowing fighters to have reach free is sort of working towards the 3eism of having 8 different weapons on you, each for a different job (I did this! An archer with cold iron, adamantine, silvered, and various enchanted arrows, plus bludgeoning and slashing backup weapons, and a piercing melee weapon too i guess, etc...). This lets folks who chose to specialize benefit even more. You can already attack at reach, allowing OAs at reach, especially for a fighter, is super powerful. you essentially lock down a 5x5 square of the battlefield, and if you hit they lose their action. You get a bonus to hit equal to your wisdom.

Mebbe I am overreacting.

Jay

 

[James McMurray]

Many of the paragon paths are specializations, so I'm not sure where the idea that they shouldn't be came from.

 

[Gunpowder]

What it should be is a 'heroic path' (although that isn't a route they have taken (as yet)). That is the place where 'polearm master' makes a bit of sense, rather than in the 'saviour of the kingdom' paragon tier IMO.



Cheers

Cúchulainn and Lü Bu disagree.

 

[Cadfan]

That's not what Plane Sailing is saying, I'm pretty sure.

He's saying that some of the benefits of the paragon "polearm master" are really the sorts of generic bonuses that a polearm specialist is going to want from level 1.

I guess all my comments in this thread could be mitigated by other material in the martial heroes book. It just seems to me that there is very, very little reason to play a polearm user from levels 1 to... 10 or 15 or so. Maybe this won't be an issue.

 

[questing gm]

I agree that the Polearm Master PP seems to solve most of the problems of the Polearm Fighter rather than enhancing their lethality in combat.

Longarm Grasp should have been at level 11 instead of level 16 because it solves one of the fundamental problems of Fighters not getting to maximize their combat challenge earlier on.

I hope that we'll see more powers for reach weapons in the book.

 

[Gunpowder]

That's not what Plane Sailing is saying, I'm pretty sure.

He's saying that some of the benefits of the paragon "polearm master" are really the sorts of generic bonuses that a polearm specialist is going to want from level 1.

I guess all my comments in this thread could be mitigated by other material in the martial heroes book. It just seems to me that there is very, very little reason to play a polearm user from levels 1 to... 10 or 15 or so. Maybe this won't be an issue.

Ah, yes that would probably make more sense. Though I got to make a reference to Cúchulainn. That should be some sort of inverse godwin's law or something.

So on the subject power level wise. Conceptually this seems to be on the same tier of the pit fighter(guy who fights dirty) and iron vanguard(walking wrecking ball). How it compares in effectiveness i don't know since I don't have my books to compare. But it looks cool.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

That's not what Plane Sailing is saying, I'm pretty sure.

He's saying that some of the benefits of the paragon "polearm master" are really the sorts of generic bonuses that a polearm specialist is going to want from level 1.

I guess all my comments in this thread could be mitigated by other material in the martial heroes book. It just seems to me that there is very, very little reason to play a polearm user from levels 1 to... 10 or 15 or so. Maybe this won't be an issue.

Indeed, it seems lame.

Not just because of my Dynasty Warrior fanboiness, but even excluding that.

Brad

 

[DracoSuave]

Indeed, it seems lame.

Not just because of my Dynasty Warrior fanboiness, but even excluding that.

Brad

Dance of Steel immobilizes, and it keys off of polearms. Remember as well, Polearms have a second weapon type, so you can have Deadly Axe action or HBO action in there as well as your usual reach weapon shinanegans

 

[Jhaelen]

I'm underwhelmed, too. This looks a lot like a fix for a sub-par weapon choice that comes too late in a pcs career to be truly useful. It definitely doesn't have the flavour that a Paragon Path should have. Actually, it's extremely disappointing.

 

[WalterKovacs]

On the subject of Wisdom: Polearm Gamble [the pseudo-threatening reach feet] keys off Strength and Wisdom. It's the paragon feat that allows you an OA when a non-adjacent enemy enters an adjacent to you, with the drawback that you give them combat advantage until the end of their next turn as a result.

There will likely be more powers at the various levels to allow for more weapon choice specific power options. The DDI articles for Swordmage, for example, gave new powers to allow an "all fire" or "all cold" or "all thunder/lightning" build. The warlock article provided ways to make the starlock nearly all Con or all Cha based, even an Int based attack. They could likely allow for powers at every level to key off each of the weapon groups. [And of course, there are secondary weapon groups on every polearm, meaning it's a polearm + another weapon group].

It may not be a "must have" paragon path, but if someone wanted to be a polearm fighter ... it could make them the "best" polearm fighter they can be. Certain people are going to make a "suboptimal" choice for character reasons ... optimizing the sub-optimal choice is something people can do.

Personally, I have a player in my game who is a polearm fighter. It's come in handy for him a bit, as he's able to attack prone targets who can't get up and attack him [too close to charge, to far to attack from that spot]. Also, he was able to use some terrain features to take advantage of the fact he can attack a bit higher/lower than he could normally do.

Not everything has to be optimized ... if it was, we'd be getting people complaining about how Martial Power is power creep, etc. I'm seeing it as alternatives, as well as ways of implementing the exact character design you want.

They are giving us alternate options, and from the sounds of it, paragon paths for nearly every type of weapon. The PHB could only fit so much ... Martial Power gives them the ability to go into greater detail in respect to customizing characters.