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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Perun" data-source="post: 3115337" data-attributes="member: 6037">I haven't seen the duskblade in game yet, but a fellow gamer of mine gets to play (or was it DM?) with another group, who are more focused on powerful characters and combat (they routinely create characters with a 40-point-buy method). One of the characters in that game is a duskblade (there's also a dread necromancer, and I forgot what the other characters are).The duskblade (6th level now) uses that very option: shocking grasp plus blade of blood. He also combines it with true strike and Power Attack.So it's something like this: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> 1st Round: cast true strike</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> 2nd Round: cast blade of blood (swift action, with a 5 hp sacrifice), cast channeled shocking grasp, and attack with Power Attack (max. amount, for a +12 damage bonus in this case, for using a two-handed weapon) as part of the spell.</li> </ul>The character uses a glaive (1d10/×3) and has Str 18 (+6 two-handed damage bonus). That's 1d10 +6 (Str) +12 (Power Attack) +5d6 (shocking grasp) +3d6 (blade of blood), for an average of 51.5 points of damage. In case of a critical (and, apparently, they're really lucky with criticals) thats triple damage for the glaive and double damage from the shocking grasp (blade of blood damage does not get multiplied, since it's defined as extra damage), or (1d10+18)×3 + (5d6)×2, or 116 points of damage. The attack bonus for such attacks is +24 (+4 Str +20 true strike, no BAB -- it all went to Power Attack). [I'm not certain whether the character has a magic weapon, this is all based on a telephone discussion we had two days ago.]A 6th-level duskblade has 6 1st-level and 2 2nd-level spells per day, plus any Int modifiers. Which means he can only use this trick two or three times per day (and can only do it every other round, because of true strike). But my friend (who is actually following these boards; hi Altalus! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) is convinced the class is overpowered exactly because of such tricks, because they can, generally, drop the BBEG with a single shot.Even when he's out of spells, he can still attack at +10/+5 and deal 1d10+6 points of damage with each successful hit (the numbers are comparable to any other melee-warrior-type class; 18 Str and full BAB will do that <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)Now, I'm convinced that the part of this perceived problem lies in the powerful characters that tend to be created with a 40 point-buy. They do scale the ELs to match the PC power-level, but that still doesn't make the characters any less powerful.Regards.</blockquote>

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