New Excerpts: FR: feats and AV: Holy Symbols and Wands

[AllisterH]

Actually, even if the DM uses RANDOM treasure allocation AND you never get the right Holy Sympbol, just from using the monetary rewards and selling the unwanted magic items, you will more or less keep pace with the expected progression.

Bluntly, a PC can get any item of their level-1 with relative ease.

 

[Keenath]

I don't think I get the Pelor holy symbol. I mean, convert any Implement power into Radiant damage? Most of those powers are ALREADY radiant for both the Paladin and Cleric.

I suppose you can use it to convert Flamestrike or Blade Barrier, but it seems to me that you have so many radiant powers to fall back on, what's the point? Do you really need to convert Fire to Radiant?

Does anyone see a particularly good reason to go for this symbol?

 

[Revinor]

I've a cleric of the Raven Queen in my campaign that would love to be able to convert all his spells to deal cold damage. I wonder if it would be unbalanced to change the sun disk of Pelor to the frozen feather of the Raven Queen

Feel free as long as you ban Lasting Frost feat.

When somebody asks you to convert damage to cold for 'fluff' reasons, agree to it as long as he will never take Lasting Frost. I bet that in 95% of the cases interest will wane, exposing the munchkin behind the fluff.

On top of that, cold has a easier damage feat to qualify for as compared to fire or radiant (especially for wizards). But this is already a small issue.

 

[Alraiis]

I don't think I get the Pelor holy symbol. I mean, convert any Implement power into Radiant damage? Most of those powers are ALREADY radiant for both the Paladin and Cleric.

I suppose you can use it to convert Flamestrike or Blade Barrier, but it seems to me that you have so many radiant powers to fall back on, what's the point? Do you really need to convert Fire to Radiant?

Does anyone see a particularly good reason to go for this symbol?

Radiant Servants could get 19-20 threat range with powers like Flame Strike, Mantle of Glory, Purifying Fire, Enthrall, Fire Storm, etc., etc. where before they would have to choose radiant alternatives.

 

[Syrsuro]

I don't think I get the Pelor holy symbol. I mean, convert any Implement power into Radiant damage? Most of those powers are ALREADY radiant for both the Paladin and Cleric.

I suppose you can use it to convert Flamestrike or Blade Barrier, but it seems to me that you have so many radiant powers to fall back on, what's the point? Do you really need to convert Fire to Radiant?

Does anyone see a particularly good reason to go for this symbol?

The reason is to serve its purpose: Fighting undead which are vulnerable to radiant damage.
Seems like a pretty good reason to me if (as one would expect for Pelor) you are dedicated to fighting them.
Carl

 

[Saeviomagy]

Well, combining everything together, you can now get to the stage where you succeed on saves on a 3+.

First aid (+2) human feat (+1), the new human feat (+2) and the background that gives you +2 to saves when you're more than 5 squares from allies, for a total of +7.

I don't like that the feat which makes hand crossbows the best ranged weapon in the entire game for a rogue (possibly excluding the dagger) is drow only. It's probably slightly too powerful for a single feat at all (although that might be dependant on if there are any rogue-useable superior crossbows: if so, this should be even in power to those).

When somebody asks you to convert damage to cold for 'fluff' reasons, agree to it as long as he will never take Lasting Frost. I bet that in 95% of the cases interest will wane, exposing the munchkin behind the fluff.

This is true for paragon tier, but not at epic (for holy damage at least). Holy damage actually has the superior feat at epic tier (as opposed to, say, fire).

Personally I think the real solution should be to implement elemental damage feats that are actually good and share some synergy, so that choosing wintertouched is actually a hard choice. I mean, was it not obvious that fire and acid should have feats that grant ongoing damage (say 2/5/9 at heroic/paragon/epic? I think lightning is good except for how rare crits are for a wizard (and the fact that you throw your crit away to gain the feat benefit: take that away for starters) and thunder is nice too (blast 4 thunderwave? Yes please).

The problem is that wintertouched/lasting frost are too good compared with the available alternatives.

You could also drop lasting frost down to 2 vulnerability and wintertouched to a +1 bonus to hit instead of granting CA.

 

[FireLance]

Feel free as long as you ban Lasting Frost feat.

Frankly, I'm not too concerned about Lasting Frost. Generally, it's only +5 to damage and +2 to hit if he also has Wintertouched. Even if the rest of the party takes Wintertouched and loads up on frost weapons and abilities, I've already established that there will be a rather large number of number of cold-resistant creatures in my games. It pays to plan ahead as a DM...

 

[FireLance]

Well, combining everything together, you can now get to the stage where you succeed on saves on a 3+.

First aid (+2) human feat (+1), the new human feat (+2) and the background that gives you +2 to saves when you're more than 5 squares from allies, for a total of +7.

I'm fairly sure that the saving throw bonus from first aid will not stack with the saving throw bonus from being more than 5 squares away from your allies...

 

[half-dragon dragon]

I think he may have been having the character apply first aid to themselves. I'm AFB so i don't know if you can.

One thing I've gotten out of this is that now I have precedence for allowing a generic feat along the lines of Intelligent Blademaster for other classes.

 

[FireLance]

I think he may have been having the character apply first aid to themselves. I'm AFB so i don't know if you can.

Well, the Rules Compendium says:

Grant a Saving Throw: Make a DC 15 Heal check. If you succeed, an adjacent ally can immediately make a saving throw, or the ally gets a +2 bonus to a saving throw at the end of his or her next turn.

So I don't think you can apply first aid to yourself.