Should Implements have their own proficiency bonus?

[the Jester]

It doesn't seem to be a rule that a spell that targets AC gets a hefty boost.

The only one to come up imc so far has been spiritual weapon, which lets you get an extra attack each round with a minor action. Seems pretty cool, if you ask me.

 

[Ryujin]

The only one to come up imc so far has been spiritual weapon, which lets you get an extra attack each round with a minor action. Seems pretty cool, if you ask me.

I think the primary advantage of Spiritual Weapon is that it grants combat advantage when it occupies the same square as the opponent. It has to be sustained with a minor and moved with a move action IIRC, which ties up a significant number of the caster's actions. If the target moves, then the Cleric doesn't if he wants to maintain the Spiritual Weapon's attack.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Let's wait for Arcane Power. Maybe we get something that renders this discussion moot.

On the other hand, for people who don't necessarily want to pay out more money to resolve felt problems, this discussion is a fine thing to have.

If you don't think there is anything to discuss, by all means bow out of this thread until such time as Arcane Power appear

 

[DracoSuave]

I've always gathered that, like the ability and feel of classes, looking at non-magical stats for things never gives you an idea of the whole picture.

Comparing orbs, staffs, and wands is easy... until you look at the magical versions of them. Then you start to notice trends in what each can do. Orbs get the control effects, wands get extra powers, and staffs are somewhere in between. (admittedly the staffs are better than wands imho).

The differences are far more important than they get for things like hammers and swords, which tend to have very similiar magic weapons, with a few exceptions.

 

[Skallgrim]

The other thing that people haven't mentioned, surprisingly, is that implement powers (seem to) often hit multiple targets, or have an Effect, or Miss effect. I don't think that many of the non-implement powers that target non-armor defenses have either, or both.

It's fairly balanced vs. proficiency if implement power have a better chance to hit (as a result of targeting more people), or if they still do something on a miss.

I am perhaps too lazy to look up all of the non-implement powers that target non-armor defenses and check, but this seems to be the case to my own feeble recall at the moment.


As a related aside, I remember our group being unimpressed by Fireball, as it did (to them, "so little damage", until someone shouted "TO 49 SQUARES!" For whatever reason, whenever these attacks are compared, the Attack and Damage rolls seem to be exhaustively scrutinized, but the actual number of attacks (when it isn't specified, like Rain of Blows or something) is treated like an irrelevant number.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The other thing that people haven't mentioned, surprisingly, is that implement powers (seem to) often hit multiple targets, or have an Effect, or Miss effect. I don't think that many of the non-implement powers that target non-armor defenses have either, or both.

Lots of the martial dailies (in fact probably nearly all of the non-reliable martial dailies) have either a miss result (half damage) or an effect or both.

As a related aside, I remember our group being unimpressed by Fireball, as it did (to them, "so little damage", until someone shouted "TO 49 SQUARES!" For whatever reason, whenever these attacks are compared, the Attack and Damage rolls seem to be exhaustively scrutinized, but the actual number of attacks (when it isn't specified, like Rain of Blows or something) is treated like an irrelevant number.

Still seemed irrelevant to us - the size is more of a liability than an asset unless you are actually fighting a literal army of opponents. Even when the wizard got off his first strike against a party of 4 gnolls (typical encounter in thunderspire), his 3d6+6 damage to each of them was so trivial (he rolled badly and did 10 damage. If he had rolled average it would only have been 16 and they had about 60hp each...

Stinking cloud would have done more damage by the start of the gnolls turn AND would have autokilled minions, and would still be in action, controlling the battlefield.

I'm still convinced that fireball is Epic Fail.

Cheers

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Going through the PH (I don't have FR or PH2), the implement vs. AC powers I can find are:

Spiritual Weapon, Cleric Daily 5, PH 65
Holy Wrath, Cleric Daily 19, PH 69
Curse of the Bloody Fangs, Warlock Daily 5, PH 134


And that's it.

Spirtual Weapon is probably worth it, as it gives combat advantage and allows an attack for a minor, something cleric's can't often do.

Holy Wrath really isn't about hitting with the attack, as its damage is pretty minor, and the good stuff (regeneration & plus to hit until end of encounter, go off regardless)

Curse of the Bloody Fang, on the other hand, is probably crappier than Avernian Eruption & Hunger of Hadar (same level dailies) even without it hitting AC. Sure, it gives the Warlock some area effect, but so do the other 2 powers mentioned.

 

[ravenheart]

My immediate reaction (no pun intended) to this idea was that it would require an additional bonus to defenses (similar to armor) to compensate, no?

Would be kind of cool if you had a choice of belts, boots or headgear adding a bonus to your Fort, Ref or Will (respectively). Also "light" and "heavy" versions could exist, to parallel the armor types (where the light version add your relevant ability mod, of course).

Oh well. One can dream...
But then again, maybe it's a nightmare in disguise...

 

[Bladewing]

This discussion seems to be drifting away from the read title, imo. There so few implement vs ac powers, there's no reason for a proficiency bonus to implements because of them. Now if those few powers are underpowered or not is another point entirely.

Personally I find the cleric powers ok and the warlock power too weak, as a warlock I would take another power at that level. If I want the power anyway for rp reason I'd suck it up as is, because I find making weaker choices for rp reason perfectly valid. Perfect balance in all things would be better of course but that's utopia, and changing every weak rule/power/feat that's picked for rp reasons will quickly fill a book, so that's a slippery slope.

Back to the topic then I think implements in general do not need a proficiency bonus because I assume they are balanced around not having one. If some of them aren't balanced but underpowered that's flawed design, and with the amount of powers in the books something like that is of course bound to happen. If they had given an implement proficiency bonus they would have had monster nads 2 points higher across the board and we'd be back where we started. Now, if anyone is in favor of giving a proficiency bonus without changing monster nads they're effectively asking for +2 to hit with all their powers...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not necessarily - you should be able to get a variety of implements by different proficiency bonus and properties alone - no need to touch the damage dice. For example, in your list, the rod could have "high crit" as property, the orb could have "brutal 1" and so on (of course, you would need to take this into account for the power design, but that was done for the weapon powers already).

However, such a model has a "flaw" - implements are class-specific, weapons are freely accessible (with feats), which means that each class would need its own implement set to give choice.

Cheers, LT.

I was only concerned over the "fine-tuning" of individual powers at this point. You can finetune more if you can switch between 2d4 and 1d10 then if you can only switch between and 2.