Rod of Reaving Broken?

[shadowoflameth]

Here is a question that has come up in our game. A warlock with relentless curse can curse a new foe as a free action when he drops a cursed foe. Our warlock also has twofold curse allowing the curse of two foes with a single use. I have ruled tentatively that per the PHB entry uder warlock's curse, a warlock can curse once in a round, and that these feats don't give change that, so even though relentless curse makes it possible to curse as a free action instead of a minor after dropping a cursed foe, it is still only available once in a turn. This means that against minions particularly, our warlock could potentially drop two minions a turn without needing a to-hit roll, but no 'chain reaction' from the rod of reaving damage, other-wise a warlock with a +1 or +2 rod of reaving could route armies.

Has there been any official errata on this? Does anyone else here rule it differently?

 

[DracoSuave]

Seems slower than Rod of Corruption/Rod of Reaving.

Also sounds like you need more minion-bombs. Some minions actually have a big effect when they die, dealing damage/reducing surges in a radius, that sort of thing. Don't make it -every- encounter.

But really, the warlock shouldn't be spending his turns killing minions anyways. That's better work for a controller. The warlock should be scourging/beguiling onto things with hps so they don't hurt the team so much.

 

[Flipguarder]

Sometimes I hate minions. You basically just said, its a waste of time for a character to kill several enemies in one turn.

I hate that you are right, its idiotic imo.

 

[keterys]

Rod of Reaving is one of many, though probably the easiest, ways to somewhat invalidate the minion system.

And yeah, combined with corruption is a lot worse than just 2/round, but either way it's a little cheap.

 

[windman68]

Haven't heard anything else on it, sounds fine to me - in fact, this could come in handy. For instance, I threw 100 minions at a party of 4 who were able to take them out, it gave them 1 encounter to gain the XP needed to level as opposed to 4 individual encounters needed. It may seem pointless or unnecessary, but it made sense within the game and they had a great time doing it. Rod of Reaving wouldv'e worked well in that scenario.

 

[Nifft]

IMHO the best fix for this situation would be to allow the Rod of Reaving to only deal damage when the player uses his basic class feature Bestow Curse to place a curse on one (or two) foes.

He's still killing two minions per round, AND he's still placing two curses per round (by transferring the curses after killing the minions), so he's getting benefit from all his choices, but he's not invalidating your encounters.

Cheers, -- N

 

[eriktheguy]

IMHO the best fix for this situation would be to allow the Rod of Reaving to only deal damage when the player uses his basic class feature Bestow Curse to place a curse on one (or two) foes.

He's still killing two minions per round, AND he's still placing two curses per round (by transferring the curses after killing the minions), so he's getting benefit from all his choices, but he's not invalidating your encounters.

Cheers, -- N

Good solution

 

[DracoSuave]

Sometimes I hate minions. You basically just said, its a waste of time for a character to kill several enemies in one turn.

I hate that you are right, its idiotic imo.

Pray you never play Feng Shui or 7th Sea!

 

[Iron Sky]

Haven't heard anything else on it, sounds fine to me - in fact, this could come in handy. For instance, I threw 100 minions at a party of 4 who were able to take them out, it gave them 1 encounter to gain the XP needed to level as opposed to 4 individual encounters needed. It may seem pointless or unnecessary, but it made sense within the game and they had a great time doing it. Rod of Reaving wouldv'e worked well in that scenario.

Our paragon level warlock killed 55 level 15 minions in 3 rounds(two-fold curse + rod of corruption + slashing wake + Fey pact teleport-on-kill) and it only took 3 rounds because they came in waves. If it had been say, 100 minions at once, he could fairly easily have killed all of them in a round.

He had fun doing it, but the DM decided to stop using minions for the rest of the campaign now since they were pretty much no threat to us at all.

 

[Nifft]

Our paragon level warlock killed 55 level 15 minions in 3 rounds(two-fold curse + rod of corruption + slashing wake + Fey pact teleport-on-kill) and it only took 3 rounds because they came in waves. If it had been say, 100 minions at once, he could fairly easily have killed all of them in a round.

He had fun doing it, but the DM decided to stop using minions for the rest of the campaign now since they were pretty much no threat to us at all.

That's not true at all.

As the dude who postulated Infinite Minion Bamfing, let me assure you that it's only possible to kill minions like that if they bunch up.

Cheers, -- N