PHB 2 power creep

[cdrcjsn]

I throw the BS card.

BattleRager Fighter is tougher than a basic Fighter any day of the week.

+1 to hit versus dozens of extra hit points per encounter?

No contest. Not even close.

The straight fighter will have higher AC (unless the battlerager decides to ignore half of its class feature) that is effective on melee and ranged attacks.

The +1 to hit is actually a pretty big deal. 5% more chance to hit with powers that affects your role as a defender.

Sticky is not just about absorbing damage. It means that you are enough of a threat that opponents will hesitate attacking others.

I saw a 22 Con 8th level battlerager in play (Dwarf). Opponents just chose to ignore him and went after squishier members of the party because his bonus to hit was pretty lousy.

Perhaps that has colored my view of Battleragers. Yes, I see the benefits. But I don't think that you can say that the benefits are overwhelmingly more useful than a simple +1 to hit and higher AC.

 

[keterys]

Battleragers have no need to be lower AC or lower attack other than the 1 from talent (though certainly they can specialize as to what the group needs or their own particular interests)... the +1 attack can instead just be compared to 3 or so temp on every hit.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Anyhow, I can totally believe any complaint that there is power creep in PHB2 - lord knows I've ranted and raved about expertise and such -

How would you feel if you found out that Expertise was actually in the design of the game from the very beginning?

you're going to say that. I find MP far more dashy than PHB2. Far more.

I totally agree here. It just felt that some aspects of MP was not playtested properly.

There's some powerful stuff. But there's also a lot of powerful stuff in the core PHB1.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Battleragers have no need to be lower AC or lower attack other than the 1 from talent (though certainly they can specialize as to what the group needs or their own particular interests)... the +1 attack can instead just be compared to 3 or so temp on every hit.

And the ability to stack temp HPs from invigorating powers.

Something to consider definitely, but it's not a clear cut case of "better" which someone claimed earlier.

 

[James McMurray]

I saw a 22 Con 8th level battlerager in play (Dwarf). Opponents just chose to ignore him and went after squishier members of the party because his bonus to hit was pretty lousy.

Perhaps that has colored my view of Battleragers. Yes, I see the benefits. But I don't think that you can say that the benefits are overwhelmingly more useful than a simple +1 to hit and higher AC.

Have you seen a fighter built to be a pure PHB fighter and then had its version changed from +1 to hit to battle rager? That to me is the major hole in Battlerager design. A BR built as a full-blooded BR is (in theory) balanced with a standard fighter. But a BR built as a standard fighter gains a lot of staying power at the expense of a single +1 to hit.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Have you seen a fighter built to be a pure PHB fighter and then had its version changed from +1 to hit to battle rager? That to me is the major hole in Battlerager design. A BR built as a full-blooded BR is (in theory) balanced with a standard fighter. But a BR built as a standard fighter gains a lot of staying power at the expense of a single +1 to hit.

Yeah, it really helps in increasing staying power. No arguments there.

But the question is though, does the fighter need it?

Is it worth lowering average damage per round by around 10% and reducing the chance to land with OAs, dailies and encounter powers by 5%?

There aren't that many ways to get +1 to hit. Lots of ways to gain/recover HPs.

Deterrence is one of the duties of a Defender, not just endurance, and lowering your chance to hit impacts that.

 

[James McMurray]

That's why I asked if you'd seen it. I haven't, so it's all guesswork on my part. Though my gut tells me that 5% less chance to hit isn't going to be noticable enough to stop the monsters from acting how they normally would unless the GM is doing some serious metagaming.

 

[keterys]

How would you feel if you found out that Expertise was actually in the design of the game from the very beginning?

The same? It's junk whether it's intentional junk or accidental junk. Festering, steaming, burbling junk.

But, yeah, I'm overall very happy with the PH2 so far. I think they really stretched their legs with the design of a lot of things and I think the system is in a much better place with the addition of the classes and design concepts.

 

[jasin]

Yeah, it really helps in increasing staying power. No arguments there.

But the question is though, does the fighter need it?

Is it worth lowering average damage per round by around 10% and reducing the chance to land with OAs, dailies and encounter powers by 5%?

Worth for whom?

It's more more power for the battle rager (which strongly correlates with more fun) and more danger for the rest of the group (which strongly correlates with less fun).

More fun for me at the expense of fun for others. That's pretty much the definition of unbalanced in a RPG.

 

[Victim]

Our battlerager stuck with mass marking powers (Come and Get It, Sweeping Blow even using a hammer, and Passing Attack plus dragon breath racial), so he was difficult to ignore. He needed far less healing in most fights than the previous weapon talent fighter, which meant that my warlord's scarce heals could go towards other people more often.

Per hit damage was higher than before because of a different weapon type (hammer versus sword) and the battlerager bonus damage.

Battleragers are also extremely effective against monsters that make multiple attacks, like Tomb Guardian skeletons (or many somewhat weaker enemies). Sure, they lose a point of AC in Chain as opposed to Scale, and thus suffer slightly more hits. But they also blunt the high end damage possible on multiple hits.