Moment of Glory

[Mapache]

Actually, they'd have DR in 4 encounters a day, but their damage output would be so low it'd almost balance out, and you'd just have 4 really long encounters per day, not 4 encounters per day where the party whupped butt.

How about four hybrid striker-clerics? With the right picks, hybrid striker-leaders can put out as much non-daily damage as a full striker while doing about 60% of the work of a leader, including big flashy save-the-party dailies. I've played an Avenger-Cleric and a Ranger-Cleric, both in part because Moment of Glory is so good. I maintain that an all hybrid striker-leader party is pretty much the nuclear option of 4E, with one controller-leader for vaporizing minions and maybe a defender thrown in you really want one.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, clerics don't have to do poor damage at all, especially not hybrid ones, but particularly not at that level.

Lessee, 1d10+1d6+stat at-will or 2d6+stat and give an ally a bonus of some sort? Before feats or other optimization. That's plenty of damage for level 1.

 

[S'mon]

I dunno about the guy you were directly responding to, but to me that's fine, because I build encounters with an eye to how the players are going to use their powers anyway. For me to build an encounter with that sort of thing in mind is not indicative to me that a single power is overpowered. And if the Cleric, for some reason, isn't there at that big encounter, I'll change it to make it not a deathtrap(which is a lot more than my old DM did for us when our MoG Cleric was gone, and we never TPK'd).

Doesn't work for me, I can never be sure in advance exactly which players & PCs will be at each session, and I'm not good at nerfing encounters on the fly. Most importantly perhaps, I tend to run fairly 'realistic' sandbox games where there is often only 1 fight in an adventuring day, with an occasional 3-fight delve. Unless there's an obvious time pressure I'm not sure why PCs with an 'I-win Daily' would even want to fight more than 1 encounter/day, though.

But it's interesting to see other DM's approaches; helps me see that if WoTC isn't designing for my game, then I need to adapt their stuff accordingly. This applies to various reliably encounter-ending Dailies. Whereas these Dailies are apparently much less harmful in other sorts of campaigns.

 

[jimmifett]

So, if I want to write an adventure in early heroic tier, do I go about making a BBEG encounter with MoG in mind so it isn't a push over for a party with a cleric? If I do, I now have an encounter that is exceptionally harder for any party that does not have MoG.

Sure, the encounter could be modified by DMs on the fly, but a lot of DMs run what is placed before them.

Really, there are only a few solutions:
1) Ban (worst solution)
2) Move to upper heroic tier
3) Reduce the resist to some sort of scale that increases over the heroic tier
4) Have exceptions for minions/ongoing damage (say, 1/2 dmg until 11th lvl)

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

Actually, they'd have DR in 4 encounters a day, but their damage output would be so low it'd almost balance out, and you'd just have 4 really long encounters per day, not 4 encounters per day where the party whupped butt.

Not if they were all BattleClerics.

 

[Mapache]

So, if I want to write an adventure in early heroic tier, do I go about making a BBEG encounter with MoG in mind so it isn't a push over for a party with a cleric? If I do, I now have an encounter that is exceptionally harder for any party that does not have MoG.

Sure, the encounter could be modified by DMs on the fly, but a lot of DMs run what is placed before them.

Really, there are only a few solutions:
1) Ban (worst solution)
2) Move to upper heroic tier
3) Reduce the resist to some sort of scale that increases over the heroic tier
4) Have exceptions for minions/ongoing damage (say, 1/2 dmg until 11th lvl)

It's not like Moment of Glory wrecks encounters in completely different ways from every other ability and has to be specifically planned for. Minions? Does the party have a decent Wizard? If so, assume every minion will be dead by the end of round two anyway. Ongoing damage? Is it one of the very common types like fire, poison, or necrotic? Are the PCs smart and all wearing Resist 5 gear for those types? Seriously, in LFR, half the time my Moment of Glory didn't do all that much because over half the party was already resisting 5 of the relevant damage. Damage in general? Do you have a well-built leader that can heal a ton of it and pass out temporary hit points left and right? More generally, is your party optimized or not? If they are, they will wreck encounters that would be difficult for a bunch of haphazardly-built characters that don't work together in combat. Just figure out how effective your characters are in general and aim for that. Sometimes some power you didn't remember will trivialize something. That's okay. It lets the players feel clever for having thought to bring the right answer in their toolbox. Have a good laugh and move on.

 

[corwyn77]

So, if I want to write an adventure in early heroic tier, do I go about making a BBEG encounter with MoG in mind so it isn't a push over for a party with a cleric? If I do, I now have an encounter that is exceptionally harder for any party that does not have MoG.

Sure, the encounter could be modified by DMs on the fly, but a lot of DMs run what is placed before them.

Really, there are only a few solutions:
1) Ban (worst solution)
2) Move to upper heroic tier
3) Reduce the resist to some sort of scale that increases over the heroic tier
4) Have exceptions for minions/ongoing damage (say, 1/2 dmg until 11th lvl)

Nah, there are other solutions outside the box.

One I'm considering is changing the effect into a debuff for the monsters instead of a buff for the heroes. So on a hit (or maybe an effect) monsters in the blast take -5 to damage (save ends). Not only does this reduce the length of the debuff it encourages the cleric to use the attack power as an actual attack and it won't affect every attack the monsters make.

Obviously, this may still take some tweaking if it ends up too weak.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

"Not worth nerfing" is kinda part of what I meant by "fine". It's not perfect...but not especially broken either.

Yeah, it's an "I win" button against level 1 encounters...as are many other dailies. And I've never seen it used against a level 1 encounter...it's always saved for the big fight of the day. (So that's the majority of encounters where minions are fine, ongoing damage is fine, etc.) The claim that MoG makes minions and ongoing damage irrelevant through much of the heroic tier is simply not true.

Against a level 3 encounter where you're fighting brutes with 15 damage average it's still very significant, but not broken, and by the time we reach level 4 or 5 encounters, I hardly need to pay it a second thought anymore, and still have no trouble challenging the party.

In my groups, MoG is demonstrably "fine."

This. It deals no damage and requires a sustain. My party has a cleric with this, and a shaman with protective roots (con damage resistance, no sustain required), and I still drop people all the time. MM3 and MV monsters deal a lot of damage, and can certainly grind down a cleric.

But oh no, it trivializes minions. Sort of like beguiling strands and other wizard at wills.

Minions are like candy sprinkles. They might go well with other things, but you arent going to sit down to a bowl of them. Its not a huge hassle for the DM to design encounters other than "you get nibbled to death by ducks that die in one hit".

 

[Kinneus]

[Mrs. Lovejoy] But the minions! Won't some one please think of the minions! [/Mrs. Lovejoy]

I might be a minority here, but I'm done worrying about my minions, as a DM. Minions are setting dressing. They exist solely to die and make the PCs feel awesome. They're the Storm Troopers Luke Skywalker mows down, the Persians that break on the Spartan's shields.

There's a few dangerous minions out there, and they have one of three things going for them:
1. They do something bad when the die.
2. They benefit the bigger monsters somehow when they manage to hit (I'm thinking specifically about Spiderlings, who give the PCs poison vulnerability).
3. They have a long-range attack, and the terrain always them to pepper the PCs for a good long while.

If you want your PCs to be a serious threat, use one of those minions. The fact that some of the most dangerous minions have effects that trigger when they die should be a hint that they're not intended to last long at all. Otherwise, remove them from XP budget, sprinkle them in, and stop worrying about how they're not "threatening." They have 1 dang HP. Of course they're going to go down quick.

 

[S'mon]

What I've done - no doubt to the horror of many here:

1. Nerf: When Moment of Glory popped up in my original 4e campaign, I nerfed it to a static zone, beneficiaries need to stay in the 5x5 blast area, the Cleric needs to stay adjacent to the area, but he does receive the DR5 too. Still powerful enough to see use.

2. Ban: In future campaigns, this and pre-errata Visions of Avarice soured me on unrestricted sources, in particular the 'Power' books. My initial confidence that all 4e stuff was well-balanced was shattered by these badly designed splatbooks. Starting in February I've been playing in a campaign that restricted sources to PHB 1+2 & Essentials, and that worked much better. For one thing it was much better for new players without DDI, who weren't vastly overshadowed by the powergamers. So both my new campaigns have taken the same approach.