Pennant of Heaven's Armies - I Win Button?

[Blackbrrd]

Short Answer: Yes, its broken.

Long Answer: Those who stretch to find ways to get around the brokenness of this power are to be commended, because they're engaged in exactly the sort of thinking and reasoning a game like D&D requires. But ultimately the power is still broken because the potential countermeasures are too tenuous and strained. As a general rule, if a single power requires you to alter all combat encounters just in case the players use it, it's broken.

I agree with this statement.

In my current game, I just stopped using melee minions because they die much to quickly (There are too many AoE powers).

I have previously commented on Rain of Blood being overpowered, but I think it is ok-ish, because it targets Fort and doesn't hit that much. It will surely hit one mob, and that mob will hurt, but that isn't a big problem.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Hmmm... I would be more inclined to stop giving XP to melee minions, rather than stop using them.

After all, killing minions may well be fun for the party - if it is, why take away that fun from them? Sure, stop rewarding the party for their fun if such minions don't really add to the difficulty of the encounter, but personally I have a problem with removing fun from the party simply because said fun doesn't make the encounter more difficult.

My own DM has done the same thing as you have - stopped fielding melee minions. Instead, he uses about the same number of ranged minions, which is annoying because they never group together, which basically means all of our blast controllery powers are never useful for minion clearing. Personally, I find it a bit "gamey" (which is basically the one reservation I have about 4e as a whole) to only have minions that attack from range - I would rather have him plan encounters that work for his world, rather than that work from a metagaming standpoint. It leads to less imursion, which for me at least means less enjoyment.

 

[eamon]

[...] Instead, he uses about the same number of ranged minions, which is annoying because they never group together, which basically means all of our blast controllery powers are never useful for minion clearing. Personally, I find it a bit "gamey" (which is basically the one reservation I have about 4e as a whole) to only have minions that attack from range - I would rather have him plan encounters that work for his world, rather than that work from a metagaming standpoint. It leads to less imursion, which for me at least means less enjoyment.

I think this is an important general principle to D&D anyhow. If you find yourself needing to work around the rules or doing things that make no sense to satisfy them, something 's wrong...

 

[Eldorian]

I agree with this statement.

In my current game, I just stopped using melee minions because they die much to quickly (There are too many AoE powers).

I have previously commented on Rain of Blood being overpowered, but I think it is ok-ish, because it targets Fort and doesn't hit that much. It will surely hit one mob, and that mob will hurt, but that isn't a big problem.

I realized during keep on the shadowfel, with a party containing no controller but several dragonborn, that melee minions were all but useless, and ranged minions were a credible threat.

 

[Engilbrand]

I just do whatever I want and go from there. I also don't use XP. If you don't worry about XP, then you don't need to worry about whether or not a couple of enemies were worth their XP. You just level up when it's time. It's marvelous.