Sure Strike revisited

[Nifft]

I think the simplest solution might be just to up the bonus on the original Sure Strike from +2 to +3. It might see some use that way.

Not really. It's too low in damage to be competitive with a melee basic attack even at +6.

Any replacement power has to do something other than just more attack bonus or just more damage.

My personal fix is:
Effect: You get a +2 power bonus to attack rolls against this target until the end of your next turn.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Styracosaurus]

I'd make the extra Mark part of the Hit line (if it's not already), and throw away the Weapon part of it, because Sure Strike is less marginally attractive to wielders of +3 proficiency weapons (which are basically fails, spears, heavy blades and light blades).

Cheers, -- N

How about:


Marking Strike
At-Will ♦ Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee Weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength +2 vs AC
Hit: 1[W] damage and you mark an additional adjacent enemy until the end of your next turn.
____Weapon: If you are using a flail, spear or a pick you mark an additional number adjacent enemies equal to your Wisdom bonus until the end of your next turn.
Effect: If you are using a heavy blade or a light blade, you get a +2 to attack rolls against marked enemies until the end of your next turn.

 

[Garthanos]

I think the simplest solution might be just to up the bonus on the original Sure Strike from +2 to +3. It might see some use that way.

Smeelbo

I was thinking +4 at one point... or perhaps to double up the normal bonus.
I mean adding other things including marking or damage do not make the attack more
sure or careful ...which means they fail my flavor test... if one is being careful
about hitting perhaps one gains a +1 to your AC as well while doing it

It might be that most armor classes people are encountering arent
high enough to challenge the characters and so make the added accuracy less
valueable than more points of damage.

 

[Kzach]

How about making it an automatically successful attack that only marks the target and provides a +2 bonus to hit if they provoke an attack of opportunity or shift or make an attack not including the fighter?

That way it's a nice fighter ability because there's a strong incentive to stick to the fighter.

 

[Garthanos]

How about making it an automatically successful attack that only marks the target and provides a +2 bonus to hit if they provoke an attack of opportunity or shift or make an attack not including the fighter?

That way it's a nice fighter ability because there's a strong incentive to stick to the fighter.

doesnt a fighter normally mark whether they miss or not?

 

[Styracosaurus]

The name of the Power really isn't the issue. It could be called "Snowflake Rainbow Love Snuggle", just do something useful.

Sure Strike and Careful Attack have been scrutinized since they came out.
The Ranger at will "Careful Attack" is a poor choice for any build. Twin Strike far outclasses Careful Attack to the point that you'd have to add damage and attack bonus just to make the two powers equal. At that point, why have two powers that accomplish the same exact thing? Just come up with something else.

Sure Strike has to be compared to Cleave and Reaping Strike. If you average damage over several rounds, Reaping Strike wins. If you compare minion slaying capacity, Cleave wins. Bumping up the bonus to damage or to attack will only make an at-will useless, whether it is Sure Strike or Cleave, etc..... So Sure Strike needs something else.

 

[Garthanos]

The name of the Power really isn't the issue. It could be called "Snowflake Rainbow Love Snuggle", just do something useful.

Feh, presenting a new power is not fixing anything ...

The idea is sacreficing power to gain accuracy could/should give benefits under the right circumstance it does but here

The problem is the amount of benefits vary by how challenging the encounters are probabilistically ... if you currently hit only 10 percent of the time them 10 more percent is double that... and how many encounters are balanced that way? All would have to be in order for Sure Strike as written to pull its weight and that is in comparison to a pretty ordinary attack.

If encounters were usually balanced... 50 50 odds of an attack hitting then increasing the chances to 60 percent is damn near useless if you have stripped the damage to less than half

Now presume the player only uses the power where they start noticing they are missing pretty badly say 25 percent, if the power gave a bonus that was substantial under that circumstance like +5 not +2, then their attacks would be about equal to oops.. accepting the basic attack...

In other words the numbers kind of give an Arrgh

 

[Garthanos]

The Ranger at will "Careful Attack" is a poor choice for any build. Twin Strike far outclasses Careful Attack to the point that you'd have to add damage and attack bonus just to make the two powers equal. At that point, why have two powers that accomplish the same exact thing? Just come up with something else.

Well I think you are right on there.. but I had been thinking in terms of "sure strike" ... how about having Careful attack give the ranger / striker a little defender like armor class bonus instead of the exact same things a twin strike does?

My thinking is I like the flavor what mechanics can we use that will fit the flavor...

Actually I think you may have convinced me.. almost back to the original post about adding ability to mark an additional ajacent enemy when doing a sure strike... though I am still tempted to give it additional accuracy that plus 4 could be really impressive in encounters with turtle like adversaries.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My thought was always that Sure Strike was a way to get a crack at some really high AC soldier or something along those lines. There can be situations where it is almost impossible to hit (requiring a roll of 20), especially at low levels. In those cases Sure Strike is a pretty useful at-will to have available. The fighter can take one of the generally better at-wills like Cleave for ordinary situations and Sure Strike as a backup for that case where you just cannot seem to hit, or that situation where hitting AT ALL is really critical to the success of an encounter. It is especially useful for picking off fleeing adversaries. One improvement that would actually make it quite a bit more useful would be to extend its effect to ranged attacks. Fighters aren't designed to be range weapon users particularly, but at least in my campaign they are well advised to carry a backup missile weapon of some sort, and sure strike at least would give them some attack bonus with it, assuming its range was modified. It also shifts the fighter's missile weapon accuracy to a strength base, which is going to give most fighters another pretty good bonus as well.

 

[Garthanos]

My thought was always that Sure Strike was a way to get a crack at some really high AC soldier or something along those lines. There can be situations where it is almost impossible to hit (requiring a roll of 20), especially at low levels. In those cases Sure Strike is a pretty useful at-will to have available.

You get 2 of these silly things and you are going to optimize for the 2 percent situation?... the Sure Strike as it stands is a bad math tax on the player.
Yes a human with 3 at-wills might be more tempted to account for the extremely rare situationally useful power.. but unless we give folk a few more at-wills... they have to be fairly useful "most" of the time. Otherwise you have
a character who uses only one ability all the time till he hits that rare circumstance... the boredom sets in just thinking about it.

Now one could design your encounters to make it more useful.
For instance if the DM has a load more high armor class minions.. ;-).
or we add are more abilities that allow armor classes to become
unreachable (while depleting the characters offense perhaps)
... or the DM is trying to kill all the player characters with high
armor mismatch.