poor rational for "updating" Magic Missile?

[Aegeri]

Storm Pillar has to be on their turn, to conditional for infinity damage.

There are powers to use forced movement at the beginning of the creatures turn, such as by readying an action to use said power. With suitable triggers you can - before they can take an action on their turn - slide them through multiple storm pillars for a ginormous amount of damage quickly.

An example turn and powers:

Standard: Charm of Puppet Strings (Encounter power, or a daily or whatever)
Minor: Time Stop (Can be turned into an encounter power in various ways).
Move: Storm Pillar (Quickened Spell)
Extra Standard Actions: 3 Storm Pillars

With an "optimized" Storm pillar of around 2d6+40 using this, you can do 2000+ damage easily.

And you beat my edit time.

I told you I would get you next time.

 

[Aulirophile]

Yeah, but that requires team work, or an AP, etc., I'd rather just solo everything in a 5x5 area as a standard action (hoping I can make that bigger, but not At-Will... encounter would be doable). Now the trick is going twice in the first round in case things are spread out.

 

[KarinsDad]

You're welcome to your opinion. I would point out that the rule only applies to monsters isn't written anywhere, nothing in the MM says it only applies to monsters.

Exception based rules.

Rules for monster powers might be similar to rules for PC powers, but they aren't the same rules.

Pretending that monster attack rules apply to PC attacks is a logical fallacy.

Except one thing, in the MM3, which says "Monster powers that have attack rolls are attack powers." I wonder why they phrased it that way.... odd. So my "claim" is correct.

Monster powers that have attack rolls are attack powers says nothing about PC powers that have attack rolls. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

You cannot seriously believe that this sentence supports your supposition that PC rules can be derived from monster rules.

The noun phrase of this sentence is "monster powers", not "powers". It has nothing to do with any type of powers except monster powers.

This is your argument? Seriously?

Also in the PHB Melee, Ranged, Close, and Area individually specify that melee attacks, ranged attacks, close attacks, and area attacks all have an attack roll. So yes, if it is a close attack, and you reference close attack, and close attack says it has an attack roll.... mmmm.

Page numbers???

Pages 270 and 271 on the major sections of Melee Attacks, Ranged Attacks, Close Attacks, and Area attacks never discuss attack rolls at all with the exception of when attacks on multiple foes are done. Hmmmm.

Your claim here is suspect. You're grasping at straws.

You have yet to quote an explicit rule that applies to PC powers and states that powers with an Attack: line in them are attacks and Attack Powers without an Attack: line are not attacks.

Without an explicit rule, all you have is an interpretation and your claim that you are stating RAW is inaccurate.

There are rules that people can infer your interpretation. There are rules that people can infer my interpretation. But without explicit rules one way or the other, there is no explicit RAW on this.

"Blinders." How is this for blinders? Any zone that does auto-damage on entering it is now an auto-kill power with the selection of two feats and one item, since "all attack powers are attacks." There are several encounter powers like that. They last for one round, but that is all you need.

I think I'll stick with a rule that doesn't break the game.

Again, page numbers? Anyone can make a claim.


There are lots of rules that break the game. Cloak of Courage can hand out over a thousand free PC temporary hit points a day. That breaks the game, but it is still legal. This argument of yours is unsound.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I didn't like magic missile before, I don't like it now, so not much has changed as far as I'm concerned. What I would have preferred to see is the old magic missile become a class feature for the wizard, so every wizard got it, and it didn't count toward at-will powers.

I don't understand the concept of a character without a basic attack. All characters should have a free basic attack of some sort that uses their primary stat. It makes no sense to me that when the warlord says "hey you wizard, blast that guy," the wizard without magic missile has to say, "sorry boss, no can do." Same with a cleric, a bard, an invoker, etc. A charisma paladin trained in how to use his weapon, can't hit the broad side of a barn with a basic attack if he doesn't have a specific at-will power or feat. An avenger, swordmage, or battlemind has to have a feat. While they are supposedly trained on how to use a weapon, they can't exactly prove it when they are forced to use strength as an attack stat.

To get back on topic, magic missile becoming a class feature I think would have been received with more open arms, than the change to auto-hit.

I would have liked to give you some xp for this but i can´t...

My rationale would have been, that every class that uses a melee weapon should use strength... now, that time has passed i am more or ok with the way it is now...

And when you are at it, maybe each class should have a melee or ranged basic attack power as a class feature, like the warlocks eldritch blast, and 2 other at-wills.

 

[ExploderWizard]

If you prefer the old Magic Missile you can certainly still use it.

Sure you can. And just like all other changes that have been made the more you use "outdated" versions of things the less useful the CB is as a tool. This is one thing that really bugs me about the system overall.
The penalty for customization is spending an undue amount of time writing out character powers by hand.

I think it's a terrible decision. They caved into the people who said magic missiles should always hit. Yeah, but back in the day magic missile was essentially a DAILY power (ie a 1st level wizard had 1 magic missile per day). The new version was much more powerful as it was, in that it could be used over and over.

Keep in mind though that at low levels especially, that small amount of auto hit damage meant more. You didn't have swarms of kobolds with 25+ hit points running around and a magic missile would often take out a combatant. Even if it wasn't an instant kill, the amount of damage it inflicted in proportion to the HP totals of most creatures was much greater. 6-7 points of damage now isn't as kick ass as it used to be.

 

[Colmarr]

Re: the OP, and without reading anything between then and now, this is what I had to say on my blog when I heard about the reasoning:

Word is slowly spreading around the internet about one particular portion of the July 2010 update to the 4e rules; the fact that magic missile is once again an auto-hit spell.


As far as I was concerned, one of the most pleasing things about 4e was that WotC was willing to kill some sacred cows; notably vancian spellcasting, uneven comparative power between classes as they levelled, and magic missile auto-hitting.

Allow me to admit up front that I actually haven't looked at the update yet, so I can't comment on whether the changes to the spell are "good" or not. In fact, I'm not even interested in exactly what the changes are. I'm more interested in the reason for the change. Apparently it's:

"This update reflects an effort to restore the power to its classical form."
​

That is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard WotC say.

If your intention is to create the best possible game, you don't change (or even retain) game mechanics simply because they're "classic". You change them because you want to make them better or to achieve some game-design goal. WotC hasn't said why the new version is better, so presumably that wasn't the reason for the change. They haven't been shy about explaining design goals with previous updates, so presumably there was no specific design goal being pursued here.

We're left with no option other than to believe they really did make this change just for nostalgia value.


And if that's the case, I can't really see what they hope to achieve. The players who remember (and care) what magic missile once was and who don't play 4e almost certainly know enough about the system that a change to magic missile isn't going to change their opinions. WotC can't seriously hope to get any mileage with those players out of the change. Of the players who remember magic missile pre-4e and play 4e, the change is unlikely to make them play 4e more.


So what's the deal? What does or did WotC hope to achieve? I honestly don't know.


Addendum (9 July 2010): One poster on the Giant in the Playground forums has suggested that the change was intended to stop magic missile acting as a striker power on a controller (which it certainly can if supplemented with enough feats, equipment and class features). If so, I'm fully behind the change, but still puzzled about why on earth they simply didn't say so.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

MM has aways been mainly for minion killing, disrupting spellcasters and attacking incorporal foes, and attacking at long range.

3 of those 4 are better with the new, updated MM. The old one was rather boring. MM now has a real role in a mages arsenal, unlike its former version. I like it.

 

[ExploderWizard]

MM has aways been mainly for minion killing, disrupting spellcasters and attacking incorporal foes, and attacking at long range.

Disrupting spellcasters and attacking incorporeal foes? Magic missile does nothing particular special in these areas. Long range auto damage and minion killing are nice though.

 

[Aegeri]

Disrupting spellcasters and attacking incorporeal foes? Magic missile does nothing particular special in these areas. Long range auto damage and minion killing are nice though.

The original MM had inescapable force, which does normal damage to insubstantial enemies and an additional 1d10 damage. One of my PCs had it and the feat, until he realized I rarely used insubstantial enemies and didn't bother with it anymore.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I was going to retrain my bard out of magic missle(as the dillatante power) but using one of the later feats you can use your dillatante power as a basic attack with a power.

always hit ranged daily power anyone?

I was thinking a wand with an encounter MM just got a whole lot nicer for a whole bunch of classes. Yeah, it is not much damage, but sometimes one point is all you need.