Proposal: Clarification on Howl of Fury and it's effect

[Mezegis]

I think this is the correct format, if not, I'm sorry.

I am requesting official clarification on Howl of Fury and it's resulting blast effect.

Howl of Fury:
At Will- Primal, Thunder, Fury
Standard action
Melee, Weapon based
Target: 1 creature
Attack: Strength vs AC
Hit: 1[w] + Str modifier damage. You then howl in a blast 3 that includes the target. Each enemy in the blast, other than the target, takes thunder damage equal to your Con modifier. If you are raging, the thunder damage equals 3+ your Con Modifier.

Now, I asked for clarification the second effect because we are fighting swarms, and triggering a vulnerability would have been nice. My DM's response:

[sblock=OOC/Judge]Yeah, I knew that was going to come up.

There was a discussion about it recently on wizards rules forum. (The discussion continues a bit past that first post, interleaved with other stuff.)

I think I agree with the position that the follow on effect is not an attack, and since the vulnerability is to "close or area attacks" (and the resistance is to "melee or ranged attacks"), it doesn't come in to play no matter what the keyword is, that damage doesn't trigger either the resistance or the vulnerability.

The same thing would be true with, for example, Cleave - the main damage would be halved, but the follow-on would just be straight damage.

(If it were treated as an attack, then I think the strict raw would be that the power has the melee keyword, the follow on effect is not saying to make a second attack, and the close blast just specifies a range; so the damage would trigger the resistance and be halved... which seems kind of dumb and not well in keeping with the fluff, but that's what it would be.)

I also agree that the power is poorly written. PP seems to have a lot of those (e.g, Fire Hawk).

But what say you, Sir Judge?

PS - Don't worry, you do have a controller with you! I believe a couple of you also have dailies that do close bursts or blasts. I'm not going to tell you that you should use your dailies. I will tell you that, at least at this point in the adventure, you shouldn't worry about saving every single last one of your dailies for some uber-difficult final encounter. (Don't just squander them, of course. )
[/sblock]

To which our judge replied:

[sblock=Howl]
I'd count the initial as halved, but allow the full amount on the blast, as it's a blast.[/sblock]

There was never any clarification on whether or not vulnerabilities were triggered. To avoid any issues, I completely avoided the swarms and went after something else.

Now, I see the issue has come up again, with a different ruling and thought process.

[sblock=rules question]Yep. It's a close blast, so it triggers the vulnerability in my book. My only question is the HOF power itself. And oddly, I only bring this up because in HMG's game Land Ho, we have a barbarian who just used this power so I looked it up on his sheet.

Please take a look at his sheet. In his description of the On Hit effect, he writes, "You then howl in a blast 3 that includes the target. Each enemy in the blast, other than the target, takes 3 thunder damage." I don't have access to the source right now, so I don't know who has the right power description on their character sheet.

If you are right, then you get the 5 vuln. If BigBen is right, then since the target of the HOF isn't targeted by the blast, it would not get the 5 vuln. But, if you managed to get the other rat in the blast, it would get the 5 vuln, I think.

Also, if you're right, let's tell ben to update his sheet. I don't want my character getting gyp'd out of damage. [/sblock]

Now at the risk of hurting Kane's damage potential (and I love watching at least 1 barbarian go crazy on damage ) I feel that this power needs a final ruling hammered out so that we don't get tons of different policies/practices popping up, especially since there are at least 3 if not more characters with this power.

My personal thoughts after doing a bit of research on it. There are 4 attack methods; Melee, Ranged, Close, and Area. Melee and Ranged are halved on swarms, Close and Area trigger the vulnerability. Howl of Fury is labelled a Melee attack so there is no question the initial attack would be halved. However, the secondary effect does not state a close blast, or any other attack method, just a blast, so unfortunately for us barbarian types, I'm thinking we will not trigger vulnerability, but have the damage caused by the blast 3 be treated as a untyped damage effect and not be halved either. As ryryguy and renau1g said: full damage. No more or less.

Thoughts?

 

[covaithe]

My initial thoughts, without reading any of the supporting thread links, is that this is parsing the text a little too closely. WotC writers and editors just aren't consistent and careful enough to support this kind of reading.

Swarms are vulnerable to area effects. This is clearly an area effect. Vulnerability applies, IMO.

Having this power do extra damage to a swarm strains my suspension-of-disbelief far less than, say, a rogue's Blinding Barrage against a swarm. If we can believe that a swarm is blinded because a rogue threw a dagger at it a bunch of times, I don't see the problem here.

 

[renau1g]

My thoughts were that the initial attack wouldn't trigger the vulnerability as its a melee attack. The secondary attack/effect is a blast, thereby triggering the vulnerability. As cov mentioned it makes sense as the barbarian unleashes a primal roar (or something like that) and the wave hits enemies.

 

[Ozymandias79]

I agree with the two previous judges

 

[ryryguy]

I agree, as a matter of flavor it would make sense for Howl of Fury's extra damage to trigger the vulnerability.

I don't think it's a matter of "close parsing" that it shouldn't. It's pretty simple: only attacks trigger the swarm's vulnerability (or resistance). Follow on effects from any power, no matter what their type, do not trigger either. No parsing, it's a general rule of thumb.

If you don't follow that rule of thumb, there's a pretty big set of powers that will now trigger the vulnerability. If a swarm takes damage from Divine Challenge (an actual close burst power), does it trigger the vulnerability? If it starts its turn or is pushed in to the zone of a Cloud of Daggers, does it trigger the vulnerability? If so, you've downgraded swarms pretty significantly. (Granted, it could be argued that they could use a downgrade. )

As a secondary matter, I think swarms provide a good opportunity for controllers to shine, and whirling barbarians hardly need additional opportunities to shine! Howl of Fury is already a great power, a great minion killer and potentially one of the more damaging at-wills in the game, given the right circumstances. (I wouldn't really let that decide how to rule, but it helps me feel that ruling against Howl of Fury here is not screwing anybody over.)

I guess I can see which way the wind is howling here though. I don't think it'd be terrible to rule in favor of Howl of Fury, I just think it's wrong.

 

[elecgraystone]

I'd say it should trigger vulnerabilities.

ryryguy, it seems to me that true area attacks trigger the vulnerability. So it's pretty easy to look at your examples and say yes or no. Just look at the targets. If it's all targets in an area then yes. If it's select targets in an area then no.

Divine Challenge: only targets one creature, no
Cloud of Daggers: an area attack and targets everything in it (only 1 square but still an area), yes

 

[ryryguy]

What's a "true" area attack?

So it's only a "true" attack if it targets all creatures in burst, or what? I guess Earthshock, which targets "Enemies in burst that are touching the ground", it doesn't trigger the vulnerabilty? War Proxy, which targets "One creature in burst", or Call Forth the Spirit Pack, which targets "One or two creatures in burst", these actual close burst attack powers do not trigger the vulnerability to "close attacks"?

re: Cloud of Daggers, definitely the initial attack, where you roll to hit, is an area attack and triggers the vulnerability. I'm talking about the damaging zone it leaves behind. Does that trigger the vulnerability?

 

[ryryguy]

By the way, just looking through powers for weird ones that are are "semi-bursts", I see the warden power Thunder Ram Assault. This one is very similar to Howl of Fury in that it does damage to other targets in a blast triggered by the primary hit. However, the blast is explicitly called out as a secondary attack:

Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier thunder damage. Make a secondary attack that is a close blast 3.
Secondary Target: Each creature in blast
Secondary Attack: Strength vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1d6 thunder damage, and you push the secondary target 1 square.

If Howl of Fury were written like this, I'd have no doubt that the secondary attack does trigger the vulnerability. And I think it's definitely possible that this is what the designer had in mind. Too bad it's not more clearly written.

 

[covaithe]

Divine Challenge: only targets one creature, no
Cloud of Daggers: an area attack and targets everything in it (only 1 square but still an area), yes

What he said. I think the same idea applies to the other powers you mentioned. If it targets every creature in the area, it has additional effect against a swarm. If it only targets one or two or up to seventeen creatures in the area, then no, it's not particularly effective against a swarm.

Furthermore, I'd go so far as to interpret this the other way, too: additional damage that is a side effect of a single-target attack, such as Cleave, should only do half damage to swarms IMO.

 

[ryryguy]

What he said. I think the same idea applies to the other powers you mentioned. If it targets every creature in the area, it has additional effect against a swarm. If it only targets one or two or up to seventeen creatures in the area, then no, it's not particularly effective against a swarm.

Furthermore, I'd go so far as to interpret this the other way, too: additional damage that is a side effect of a single-target attack, such as Cleave, should only do half damage to swarms IMO.

Wow, okay.

While I can see there's some ambiguity to HOF, what you're saying here really amounts to a house rule... there's nothing in the definition of "close attack" that says "it has to target every creature in the area". If this is going to be how we play, it ought to be noted as a house rule in the charter.