Paladin Divine Challenge Fixed

[Shroomy]

Found this little tidbit on James Wyatt's blog:

I was also pretty astounded by how quickly players caught on to the cheaty way to play the paladin's Divine Challenge as it was written on the character sheet. Just so you know, we fixed that about a month ago—too late to change the character sheets, but in the final game the fighter and paladin won't be a killer combo. They still work well together, but the optimal strategy is no longer to have the paladin "challenge" a monster and then run like the Nine Hells

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=996257

 

[Nikosandros]

Nice to know.

Common sense is good, a well written rule is even better.

 

[Stalker0]

Yep, that power stuck out at me right away.

The other one is the careful shot. I understand the concept of strikers, but man the ranger has a killer attack bonus compared to the fighter, and bows do a ton of damage. But hey, I have 3e glasses on afterall, have to wait until more 4e rules come to light.

 

[Voss]

Hmm. I wonder then if they similarly changed the requirement for implements, since wotc_miko said that they weren't required, even though the character sheet clearly states they must be in hand for warlocks, wizards and clerics to cast their 'implement' spells.

 

[themilkman]

The other one is the careful shot. I understand the concept of strikers, but man the ranger has a killer attack bonus compared to the fighter, and bows do a ton of damage. But hey, I have 3e glasses on afterall, have to wait until more 4e rules come to light.

Careful shot helps them to hit a higher percentage of the targets that they attack, and they usually did more damage than other characters in my games, but it wasn't much more. Not enough to be overpowering, certainly. In terms of usefulness, they usually fell behind other characters because they had no battlefield control (like the Fighter had) or status effects (like the Cleric, Warlock, and Wizard had), and they could only deal damage to one target at a time. In other words, they seemed to fit the striker role nicely.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Yep, that power stuck out at me right away.

The other one is the careful shot. I understand the concept of strikers, but man the ranger has a killer attack bonus compared to the fighter, and bows do a ton of damage. But hey, I have 3e glasses on afterall, have to wait until more 4e rules come to light.

If I'm not mistaken, and I may be, they look to have calculated the damage on Careful Shot wrong. I'm not at work so I can't say for sure, but there is actually a tradeoff there.

 

[Sitara]

What exactly was the exploit? The paladin challenges adn then the fighter challenges so the enemy can only attack the fighter or somehting?

 

[breschau]

Originally Posted by James Wyatt
I was also pretty astounded by how quickly players caught on to the cheaty way to play the paladin's Divine Challenge as it was written on the character sheet. Just so you know, we fixed that about a month ago—too late to change the character sheets, but in the final game the fighter and paladin won't be a killer combo. They still work well together, but the optimal strategy is no longer to have the paladin "challenge" a monster and then run like the Nine Hells

What? The game designers are amazed that the players will find a rules exploit. That's weird. I thought game designers would be (at least in part, or some of them would be) mad rules-lawyering, power-gaming, crazy people sent out to track down and eliminate loopholes like this. It's D&D people. If there's a glitch like this the players are all over it. What else can you expect from years of play where tracking these things down and using them is part and parcel with the game. TSR/WotC has essentially trained it's fanbase to hunt for these, and now they're surprised at how good people are at it? That's what's amazing.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Told you so.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

What? The game designers are amazed that the players will find a rules exploit.

No, he's amazed by how quickly they found it. I think that in general, the folks at WotC are kind of blown away by the amount of time and effort teh intarweb spends deconstructing the information they release. Mearls (I believe) has commented on this in the past.