Rain of Blows

[jadrax]

Well, at least you're consistent! But I disagree with you.

Having looked at all the Flail/Polearm powers I must admit that I am less than convinced myself. That said, I still cannot find anywhere in the rules that it says, oh btw the Indenting is really important.

Without resorting to going through line by line, most of the weapon entries, if not longer Importaed, would make no difference. As you point out, they can *Only* apply on a hit, as its specifically stated they modify something that only happens on a hit.

To add to my confusion, the Rogue Power "Hounding Strike" (Where the "Artful Dodger" modifier is formatted similarly to Fighter Weapons) specifically replaced the 1 with the Rogues Cha bonus, rather than just saying do X equal to the Stat Modifier, and suddenly I am thinking everything should stack.

As for Weapon Formatting, it looks like it is always Indented, even for "Paralyzing Strike" where it modified the "To Hit" roll.

 

[Hypersmurf]

As for Weapon Formatting, it looks like it is always Indented, even for "Paralyzing Strike" where it modified the "To Hit" roll.

Well, yeah - for Paralyzing Strike, the Weapon entry is indented beneath the Attack entry, because it modifies how the Attack works - if your attack roll is 18-20 and you're using the right weapon, critical.

For Rain of Blows, it's indented beneath the Hit entry, because it modifies how the Hit works - if you hit and you're using the right weapon, make a secondary attack.

Without resorting to going through line by line, most of the weapon entries, if not longer Importaed, would make no difference. As you point out, they can *Only* apply on a hit, as its specifically stated they modify something that only happens on a hit.

Dance of Steel, Rain of Blows, Chains of Sorrow and Cage of Chains all behave differently if you ignore the indentation.

Skullcrusher is an interesting one, where half of the Weapon entry would apply on a miss and half would not, if you ignore the indentation.

-Hyp.

 

[KarinsDad]

So I take it many of you are playing in campaigns where minions aren't a joke?

As Nail said: "Yup".

Minions are only a joke when one has the proper anti-minion powers and they actually work.

If the party does not have a Wizard or other PC with At Will or Encounter multiple foe powers, minions can be deadly due to sheer force of numbers.

And, even having a Wizard can result in a bad situation.

When Minions fall quickly, they are a joke. When bad dice rolls or other situations occur, they can be deadly (like being resistant to an area affect attack). XP-wise, four minions take the place of a single opponent and if they are not stopped early, that changes the entire action economy equation of an encounter. 8 attacks per round instead of 5 attacks per round increases the offensive capability of the opposition by about 50% (minions tend to do lower amounts of damage per hit, but they also tend to flank a lot too giving bonuses to both themselves and non-minions).

 

[jadrax]

For Rain of Blows, it's indented beneath the Hit entry, because it modifies how the Hit works - if you hit and you're using the right weapon, make a secondary attack.

But then I wounder why the special portion of the "Fox's Cunning" Ranger Exploit similarly indented?

There just seems to be a lack of consistency with wording and formatting between the powers.

Skullcrusher is an interesting one, where half of the Weapon entry would apply on a miss and half would not, if you ignore the indentation.

It certainly was the power that rang alarm bells and made me stop and think.

 

[KarinsDad]

Rain of Blows can only ever affect two minions, maximum.

...

So it's only ever possible to attack two minions with Rain of Blows, never three or four.

Opps. Missed the one creature section.


Course, your statements here are not 100% accurate. This is the typical case, but the first attacked minion could have a resistance that protects it from the damage of the first hit. So, it does not necessarily die from a first successful attack.

One could actually target a maximum of 3 minions in this case.

Granted, there are no minions in the current MM that have resistance against standard melee weapons like this, but there are ones with resistance to other attack forms such as if a melee PC was using a Flaming Weapon (in fire damage mode) against an Angel of Valor.

So it could happen, it's just not likely that it will often happen. And I suspect that there will be minions with normal weapon resistances in future MMs.

 

[Hypersmurf]

There just seems to be a lack of consistency with wording and formatting between the powers.

One theory I've seen floated is that different authors worked on different classes, so there are formatting disparities between classes... but within a class formatting should be reasonably consistent.

-Hyp.

 

[Hypersmurf]

This is the typical case, but the first attacked minion could have a resistance that protects it from the damage of the first hit.

Yeah, and CustServ has suggested that a minion can benefit from temporary hit points provided by a leader, for example, and not die if the THP are not depleted.

So yeah, circumstances can intervene, but the general rule is you hit, they die When comparing the efficacy of two powers in minion-clearing, the flaming-weapon-vs-Angel-of-Valor corner cases don't really impact your results

-Hyp.

 

[KarinsDad]

But you neglected to mention the fact that for sweeping blow, the multiple attacks are spread out evenly amongst many enemies, while for rain of blows, they can be concentrated on a single enemy.

Under most normal circumstances, I would prefer to quickly focus fire on a single enemy and take each down ASAP, rather than slowly chip away at a horde of foes. In the former, an enemy that is killed that much more quickly cannot retaliate, and I have thus benefited by taking less damage in return.

I do not disagree with this as a general rule of thumb, but just because you get multiple attacks against a single foe does not mean that you will kill it (Rangers often fail to kill foes, even bloodied ones). Nor does it mean that a single attack against multiple foes cannot kill one or more of them either.

Wizards do this "chipping at multiple foes" all of the time and the damage seriously adds up.

Basically, if you compare all the 3rd lv encounter powers a fighter gets, rain of blow's damage output vastly outstrips what the rest are capable of. Maybe not broken, but it still comes across as still being extremely strong.

As has already been illustrated in this thread, Rain of Blows does not necessarily vastly outstrip the damage that Sweeping Blow does.

It only does so with the proper (typically somewhat inferior) type of weapon and only for Fighters with a Dex of 15 and only in situations where the Fighter has 1 foe on him.

Once he gets to 2 foes (and the rest of these conditions apply), Rain of Blows only does a small amount of damage more on average then Sweeping Blow (~17 points of average damage per round does not vastly outstrip ~14 points of average damage per round as per the example above).


For many Fighter designs, Sweeping Blow averages more damage. The player really has to design his Fighter with the proper Dex and the proper type of weapon for Rain of Blows to gain the slight edge.


At least in our games, melee types tend to try to hold a corridor or hold a doorway or even hold a corner of a room, both tactically and with Marks. In those cases, it's real easy to have 2 (or more) adjacent foes because more monsters in 4E are melee foes.

Solo opponents are the exception, not the rule.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, and CustServ has suggested that a minion can benefit from temporary hit points provided by a leader, for example, and not die if the THP are not depleted.

So yeah, circumstances can intervene, but the general rule is you hit, they die

I was just refering to your "only ever" and "never" statements. Never say never unless it really is never or you'll get called on it in a rules forum.

Besides, you are almost never wrong and I really enjoy calling you to the carpet when you make a mistake. I only get to do that once or twice a year.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Besides, you are almost never wrong and I really enjoy calling you to the carpet when you make a mistake. I only get to do that once or twice a year.

To make it worse, I nearly put the disclaimer about the THP CustServ ruling in the original post (damage resistance hadn't occurred to me), and then figured it was a minor enough consideration to leave out

-Hyp.