Meenlock's "Horrid Link" power

[Mister Gone]

Well, first post and I hope it's not a dumb one (could not find the search button).

Playing 4th ed D&D today and our group of lvl 8s ran into a group (9) of Meenlocks. The question I had is about the "Horrid Link". Just to save you the time of looking it up it is in MM3, range 10, recharge required, minor action, at-will, target takes 1D10+5 psychic if the Meenlock is damaged. Now that is a pain to say the least. The problem I have with it is my rogue got stuck with 4 of them and the party swordmage pops an AOE... you can see where this goes. I think this power is a bit broken and should be treated as a mark and thus can not stack. Has there ever been a rule on this?

 

[Aegeri]

Nothing broken about a party member doing something inherently stupid. When a creature uses a power in that manner, you change your tactics and not fall right into the trap that had been set for you. It is easily manageable if you don't AoE the whole lot of them on the same turn. Personally I wouldn't have used it with multiple meenlocks on the same PC - mostly for fluff reasons. I am not sure if there is any real restriction on a power being used by this (I would suspect it's going to be heavily under the DMs interpretation here). But in this case, given how the DM interpreted it your ally was just plain dumb (assuming he knew it would function like that).

 

[keterys]

Yeah... so... your swordmage really shouldn't have done that

 

[Mister Gone]

Well the problem was is that the swordmage didn't know about the power (and the fact that we avoid metagaming as much as we can). None of us did, we failed dugeoneering/arcana rolls. I'm just saying that it sounds an awful like what would be considered a mark in a PC.

 

[Aulirophile]

Whenever you are effected by a power you know all of its effects, instantaneously. So... yeah, you did know, by RAW, unless the Rogue didn't take his Free Action to Speak a Few Sentences. If you're saying you didn't ask what it did or your DM didn't tell you, that is a failure to follow the rules, not a problem with the power.

 

[Mister Gone]

Ah ha. well that would have helped. As far as talking as a free action we had been running into a lot of gibbering monsters so walking into this area we heard soft talking (which was the DMs indicator of a gibbering monster "You hear two separate voices speaking but you can't hear what they are saying. Do you want to roll perception to listen harder?" we only fell for that once) so we were all wearing ear plugs. The DM did not disclose the nature and effects of the power. Then again the swordmage still would not know. Guess i just have to chalk it up to bad luck.

 

[random]

I am curious as to where it says one knows everything about a power once one is affected by it.

 

[chitzk0i]

I am curious as to where it says one knows everything about a power once one is affected by it.

See PHB p. 57, bottom right corner. The DMG doesn't explicitly state it, but I think it would fall under '"Gotcha!" abilities' on page 26-27.

 

[random]

Yeah. I do suppose the rogue might have some idea, even if he might not gain intimate insight into the problem. Though communicating it in a timely fashion within the bounds of the combat might be a problem.

 

[Aulirophile]

I am curious as to where it says one knows everything about a power once one is affected by it.

Whenever you affect a creature with a power, that
creature knows exactly what you’ve done to it and
what conditions you’ve imposed. PHB 57.

A Concious creature affected by a power knows what that power has done to it. RC 90.

Pretty specific. Not "some insight" he knows exactly what the mechanical implications are.