The Dragoon (Heroic Tier)

[El Coro]

Well when I started making this class, there were 0 Dragoon threads on enworld. Now there are 2, not including mine! Regardless, here's another version. I'd really like some feedback and to hear your thoughts, especially since everyone has Dragoon on the brain lately. I've been lurking here for months and months, but wanted to wait to post until I had something worthwhile.

You can download the full PDF right here.

Below is a summary of the class and its abilities, but you really need to check out the PDF to see it all!

I’ve been working on a Dragoon class for quite a while and the heroic tier powers and abilities are finally complete and available for download. Ever since I started playing D&D, I wanted to play this class, so I’ve spent the past year or so tossing around ideas and finally got around to creating it, play-testing it, and writing everything out.

The class is based on the old Final Fantasy-style dragoons of spears, jumps, and lesser dragon pets. I know there have been previous dragoon classes released by fans before, and I just want to make it clear that I didn’t copy or build on any of their work. That being said, the class and many of its powers draw heavily from the Final Fantasy dragoon, enough that you should recognize several classic attacks and abilities.

The dragoon is a striker with high mobility and a drake companion to assist in battle. With the right powers and feats it could be lean toward controller as a secondary role. Most of the attacks require spears or polearms for maximum efficacy. Jumping is, of course, the standard movement, and as such there are three class features to make jumping part of your attack and battle routine.

Movement

Leap (Move Action): You perform a successful long jump without making an Athletics check, provoking opportunity attacks as normal. The distance can exceed your speed, and is based on your current level. If you use this ability when taking a double move action, you are considered jumping for the entire distance.
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Boost (Move Action): You perform a successful high jump without making an Athletics check, and shift one square. The height you can jump is based on your current level.
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Dive (Immediate Interrupt): You land successfully without making an Acrobatics check for the fall, ignoring fall damage based on your current level. You are not knocked prone unless the fall damage exceeds half of your total hit points.
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Using any of these abilities allows you to make small jumps and simple landings without needing to roll checks for success. As the dragoon is a class famous for jumping, it seemed in the spirit of the class to forgo checks for what should be an almost effortless movement. Having the possibility to fail jumps all of the time would discourage people from using the abilities around which the class is based, and, ultimately, is not fun at all to deal with.

This mobility might seem overpowered at first, but I assure you the dragoon’s damage has been adjusted accordingly. In addition, these jumps still provoke opportunity attacks as normal, so placement and position is just as important as ever.

Combat

Momentum
This class introduces a mechanic called Momentum. Momentum is gained when using Leap, Boost, or Dive, and represents the massive force of energy gained by your jumps. This momentum lasts until the end of the turn or until you make an attack. Many of the dragoon’s attacks will be improved by momentum, gaining additional damage and effects. Most of the daily powers require that the dragoon have momentum to use them. Each power affected by momentum will list the bonus at the end of the ability. A power requiring momentum before it can be used will have “momentum” under the Requirement heading.

In addition, once per round you can apply additional damage from momentum to an enemy damaged by an attack made while you had momentum. This damage is based on your level (1d6 damage per tier).

Spear Mastery
You gain the Polearm Flanker feat automatically (flank from 1 square away) and gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls made with attacks including the weapon keyword. You are free to leave out this bonus if you think it’s overpowered, but missing with attacks is lame and not fun, especially when you’re a striker, and it’s not game-changing.

Drake Companion

Like the beast master hunter, you gain a companion. Because of your draconic essence and training, you are able to train and domesticate lesser species of draconic beings (yes I know drakes are not dragons, but a dragon pet would be too much considering how powerful they are and they have their own strong personalities). You can pick from one of four types of drakes (spiretop, guard, pseudodragon, and spitting drake), each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Also like the beast master hunter, you must spend actions to order your drake to attack, move, or perform minor actions. You can’t both attack in the same turn unless a power specifically allows it (or if you spend an action point), although the drake can take a free move action when you move. Most of the mechanics are based off the beast master hunter’s beast companion abilities, so check out the PDF for all of the crunch and details).

You can bring your drake back to life, but you incur a penalty when it it dies: your stats and healing surges are temporarily reduced for a few days or until you revive it. This is to keep you from throwing your drake out in combat to take care of business just because you know you can revive it later and don’t want to worry about dying.

Some of your attacks will have the drake keyword, most of which mean the drake makes the attack. Others will require the drake be within a specific range of you. All of these details are included within each power.

Paragon Paths

Although I have much of the higher tiers laid out, nothing is finished enough to be presentable (and I haven’t play-tested many of the abilities yet), so for now you’re stuck with the heroic levels. However, here are the planned paragon path specialties:

Lancer
Your skill with a spear is unparalleled. Those who engage you in close combat are shown what your years of training can do. Here are some examples of your powers and abilities:

Pikeman’s Stance: Gain a bonus to defense and automatic counterattack damage while in this stance, though your movement is limited.
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Extended Reach: Some of your attacks can be made as Reach 2 attacks.
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Cloudwalker
Your jumps are legendary. The resulting attacks carry so much force that the ground below each tremendous strike falls apart. Here are some examples of your powers and abilities:

Super Jump: Spend both a move and standard action to disappear for an entire round, dealing catastrophic damage to your target at the start of your next turn (using up your turn).
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Skyrunning: Some of your jumps are so high and long that you are considered to be flying for the duration, often lasting more than one turn.
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Rage Knight
You have tamed the formidable and powerful rage drake as your companion, which now doubles as a mount. Your drake’s attacks and abilities deal more damage and its stats are changed to the rage drake’s template (not in the PDF). Here are some examples of your powers and abilities:

Raging Whirlwind: Atop your mount, both you and the rage drake spin in circles across the battlefield, slashing, attacking, and knocking down any enemies unfortunate enough to be in your way.
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Into the Maw: Your rage drake bites an enemy, holding them in place and dealing ongoing damage based on its level. If the enemy is tiny, small, or medium, the rage drake throws it a number of squares after the attack.
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Dragon’s Fury
You have embraced your draconic essence, letting it take over your actions and unleashing its unbridled wrath upon enemies with supernatural abilities. Here are some examples of your powers and abilities:

Nova: Your essence erupts in an enormous fiery burst, knocking back nearby enemies and setting them ablaze. Until the end of the encounter, an enemy attacking you takes fire damage.
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Enfuse Spirit: Your draconic essence takes shape as the enormous, insubstantial spirit of your dragon, which you control and use to attack. You are considered in a trance during this effect and cannot move or use other attacks while in this trance.
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Play-Testing

My group has been play-testing this class for a while now and the damage and mobility levels have been balanced within a group of 5 players of various classes. You won’t deal quite as much damage as other striker classes, but it’s close, and you have superior mobility. The instant-success jumps almost never came up (how often do you really have to jump in an adventure, really), but when it did it was just enough to feel cool that your class is good at one thing.

So far it’s been something that my group has been interested in trying out for the mechanic and flavor, but it’s not a clear choice for crunch or damage. It seems to be a good balance of utility, movement, and combat, and that’s what I was going for. I was very worried that the Final Fantasy dragoon fanboy inside of me would take over and overpower many of the abilities, but thankfully I had some other people willing to shoot me down.
Ultimately, I wanted to make a class that played very differently from other classes in combat and never had that feeling of “um well I suppose I’ll just use this same At-Will attack again…” You should be concerned about moving to get momentum, or you’ll never do comparable damage to the other strikers, and while moving you need to consider where and what your drake is doing, while staying close enough to allies to assist them with your many ally-friendly utility powers.

All in all, so far I’m happy with how it turned out. I hope everyone can understand the mechanics of how it works (and should work), and finds it as enjoyable to play as I do. I’ll have the Paragon level powers up within the next month or so, so stay tuned!

Contact

If you find anything about the class you think is overpowered, underpowered, a typo, or just doesn’t make sense, please send me an email at corwin AT readyanaction.com . I’d love to hear your thoughts!

 

[Kildran]

Great class IMO, I like the whole idea of momentum enhancing your attacks and the damage seemed to be balanced, although a tilting towards the week side in some powers. There are a few minor problems in the moves but definetly avoidable. All-in-all I think its a great class, and if you had it all mapped out lvl 1-30 I would definately play-test it. Having played FF tactics advanced, I see the resemblance and am glad to see it being represented in D&D.

 

[knightofround]

I think you did an awesome job with the Dragoon. Did you use a template to make that pdf or was it cooked up from scratch?

There's a couple things I'd like to provide feedback on.

You might want to drop the number of skills down from 5 to 4. Not sure why flavor wise dragoons should get an extra skill.

I'd suggest giving them all military proficiency as well. I'm assuming the "spear" listed in weapon proficiency was meant to be "all military Spears" rather than the simple spear. Restricting Dragoons to spears is kinda lame imo; flavor-wise, they are known to use other reach weapons just as much as spears.

The drake companion...seems to break the class a bit. Keep in mind that a ranger has to give up pretty much everything to obtain a beast companion except hunter's quarry. Your Dragoon gets to keep a ton of other goodies...I see that you tried to balance this by making drakes only provide flanking bonuses to the Dragoon and not other allies...but honestly that isn't much of a restriction; for a plate-based striker with a beast companion its likely they would prefer to 1v1 opponents much like Avengers. I'm also a bit concerned about the spiretop and pseudodragon drakes...those companions have very solid stats compared to other companions, but the ability to fly+stealth is *huge*, especially at lower levels.

I think if you simply got rid of the drake companion while boosting up other features, it would resolve many of your balancing issues. As a fellow final fantasy dragoon fanboy, the drake beast companion flavor seems very "off" to me. You could keep the drake-based powers around, just convert them into implement attacks instead.

I think your main problem with power balance are all the weapon-based attacks vs NADs. Any weapon based attack vs a NAD is roughly equivilant to giving the power a +2 bonus to the attack roll. You might want to consider making all these vs NAD attacks implement based ala swordmage....otherwise you have to tone down the strength of each and every one of those powers individually.

The only powers that really "pop out" to me as possibly being overpowered are Arching Strike (AtWill 1), Spinning Strike (AtWill 1), Draconic Loyalty (Encounter3), Draconic Roar(Daily 5).

For Arcing Strike I think its a typo, and that you meant to make it "one attack per creature" rather than giving them Twin Strike, the most OP at-will power in the game.

Spinning Strike is a problem because being able to shift both before and after on an attack power gives an *insane* amount of mobility....especially because combined with a regular shift. It gets even more insane at higher levels as it becomes easier to obtain feats/abilities that increase the number of squares you can shift....these be multiplied x3 via this power because you'll be able to shift 3 times per round. You can get into the scenario where, ironically, you can shift further than your base movement spend. This power is weapon based vs an NAD too which makes it even more crazy, but I already mentioned that above.

Draconic Loyalty is a problem because its an 2[W]+2xability mod+big shift encounter based immediate reaction attack at level 3. Its a great power and I like it, but it should be much higher level considering that the trigger "a creature hits or misses you with an attack" is going to trigger all the time. If you want to keep the beast companion, I'd recommend bumping it up to paragon if you want to keep it encounter. Or you could drop it down to a level 5 daily.

Draconic Roar is a problem for the same reason as the weapon attacks vs NADs; the beast companion's attack value assumes vs. AC and not vs. NAD. So you might want to tack on a -2 penalty to attack if you want to keep it vs. Will, that would make it fine.

The stuff that I found underpowered were Boost(Feature), Dive(Feature), and pretty much all the utilities. I think you were way too cautious when making the utility powers, they are all pretty crappy except for Focus Energy (Utility 6) which should either be made a daily or be bumped up to an epic-level utility. Don't be afraid to buff up the utilities! Keep in mind that utilities, unlike attack powers, are excepted to remain useful from level 1-30. Several of the powers you wrote up are made trivial by a single heroic or paragon magic item. I'd like to see some stances, especially because this is a martial class.

I think Boost and Dive should be free actions. And I'm curious as to why you felt Boost needed to be restricted to 2x per encounter, I think it should be at-will much like Leap. And Dive requiring an immediate reaction is rather harsh on action economy...you can't use immediate reactions on your turn so its pointless using it to gain momentum, and even if you could, auto-reducing fall damage when you already have Acrobatics is a pretty bad way to spend your 1 immediate reaction per round. I'd recommend making it a free action as well, just toss in a Special: you can use this power as a free action during any creature's turn.

 

[El Coro]

Thanks for the feedback! Let me address the comments and questions below:

1) Format: The PDF is an InDesign doc I made from scratch. It was a pain but I can use it as a template for future classes at least.

2) Skill #: Good point, it should be at 4.

3) Military Proficiency: The "spear" category is meant to cover what you suggested, all reach weapons and polearms. I can change it if it's not clear, but I'd like to keep it limited to those kinds of weapons. I don't want a dragoon wielding a giant mace just because it had a good property or better damage than their current weapon.

4) Drakes: Hoo-boy, here are the complicated parts.

• To gain a beast companion, hunters only give up prime shot and a fighting style, so basically +1 attack and a decent bonus depending on their specialty. For the dragoon, the specialties are, pretty much, lame anyway so keeping them doesn't seem like too much.

• The drakes themselves are based them off the current hunter beast companions, reducing the stats and defenses. So if anything they're less powerful. The flying (hover) abilities are also something I swiped from those companions, so I don't think it's too much of a game-breaker considering the movement is all hover (or is meant to be).

• I agree that the powers might seem a little too much, but I want there to be something special about each individual one - what do you think about the following changes:

• The +1 bonus from spear mastery is gone, added to Skyward Focus.

• The drakes lose their special powers and have reduced stats and damage. Tactical Focus becomes something like Draconic Focus, and in addition to the ally-flanking (which I think is actually its biggest benefit, after playing with it), each drake gains a tiny stat and damage boost and can use the power it currently has.

• The invisibility doesn't strike me as much of a problem since the pseudodragon can't move or attack while invisible, and doesn't gain any sneak attack or bonus from it. It's essentially just hiding, leaving the others to take most of the damage (not a bonus that helps it in combat, just a way to keep it alive since it's so fragile).

• I agree that it would be easier to just remove the drake all together, but I think it's an essential part of the class and, so far at least, it hasn't proved a problem when testing.

5) NADs: I see what you mean, though some seem to make sense as they are push/pulls (Fortitude) or quick attacks (Reflex). Possible solutions might be to change most of the attacks to target AC, reduce the damage of those attacks (which is probably what I'll choose), or have the attack bonus based off Dex or Wis instead of Str (possibly with a +X bonus if they're too low). I don't think that targeting NADs is always an automatic +2 bonus, especially at higher levels (unless it's Will, of course ), but I'll start looking more closely at monsters to see if you're right.

6) OP-power time! Let's do this:

• Arcing Strike: Yep, typo. It's supposed to be one attack per creature.

• Spinning Strike: Agreed. What are your thoughts about having it slide the creature 1 square and you automatically shift into the square it was in, before the attack. This would work with the spirit of the ability, perhaps using it to gain flanking for the attack. The requirement of moving into that square would also negate the later feats of extra squares when shifting. As it targets NDA the damage could possibly be lowered and have the + Str removed as well. Thoughts?

• Draconic Loyalty: Also Agreed. I'll either lower the damage and remove the pre-attack shift, or move it up the tree to paragon (more likely).

• Draconic Roar: I do want it to target Will for flavor and consistency with other "rawr I scream at you" powers. Maybe instead it could perform one vs. AC attack and gain a temporary damage aura to represent the roar.

7) Boost: This is actually the most OP of the features, because players can use it to gain momentum while being within 1 square of the enemy they want to attack. Although the intent is to jump up to higher elevation, they can use it to simply jump straight up, move 1 square, then land and voila, they have momentum, which they use for their attack against the guy they started next to. I tried it briefly as an At-Will movement, and all anyone ever did was stand still and use this ability - it was ridiculously boring and lame and destroyed the entire concept of the class (jumping in to attack enemies from a distance, moving back, and jumping again).

That's why it's restricted to twice an encounter (once before level 15). It should be the "I found myself in a horrible position and can't use Leap, but really need momentum for this attack" last resort, if you're not using it to jump up to a higher position.

8) Dive: You're right, this should be a free action and not an immediate interrupt. I was looking for a way to restrict it to one use per fall (which is common sense, but people still tried to use it 3 and 4 times during one fall). I forgot that immediate interrupts can't happen on your turn. I'll change it to a free action with the caveat that it can only be used once per fall. Good call with the Special for using it during other turns.

9) Weak Utility Powers: You're probably right about many of them being weak. Not having to balance attacks or damage, I wanted to err on the side of being a little less than amazing. I think most of the utilities still carry use through the higher levels, and I think it's strange to balance powers you will have for 20+ levels based on an item you might get at level 24 that could render them obsolete.

Regardless, you're right that I need some more stances, and here are my thoughts on some specific utility power changes:

• Defensive Call: Perhaps change it to a stance where if you and your drake are adjacent, you both get a defense bonus.

• Soaring Circle: Maybe increase the bonus or make it a one round thing that lets your allies use Leap as if it were their own ability.

• Lending a Foot: Maybe reduce damage from the attack as well as the movement (glancing blow as you move away).

• Focused Energy: Keep as a low utility but remove the re-roll, to be put in a paragon tier utility with another effect or damage bonus.

• Toss Friend: Possibly allow the ally to make a melee basic attack when landing.

• Spirit Surge: Stance, when you or your drake land an attack, the other gains temp hit points.

• Skyward Resolve: In addition, lets you use Boost again this encounter.

• Spirit Link: Stance, when you or your drake take damage, the damage is divided equally between both of you.

• Ancient Circle: This one is little situational, but I wanted capture the essence of the dragoon's ability to cope with giant monsters, and at later levels you encounter a lot of big guys.

Later utility stances would be:

• Resist damage while X.

• Deal a small amount of additional damage when attacking with momentum.

Anyways, I have more work to do and there's a lot of tweaking left, especially at the higher levels, but I think I have a solid grasp on the mechanics and play-style it offers.

I would beg you to give my poor little drake friends another chance, though I will be taking a much closer look at them and how they affect combat.

Regardless, thanks a lot for your feedback (knightofround, of course), I'm glad you took the time to critique and give me your thoughts. I'd like to hear any suggestions or comments you had about specific utility powers if you get bored, mostly on what you feel the appropriate power level of utilities should be and some applicable stances.

Thanks again! I'll post more soon as I finish up the paragon levels.

 

[Kupo24z]

This is amazing! cant wait to get stats/abilities for levels 10+! Will you be designing feats for this as well? Possibly increasing the momentum damage?

 

[knightofround]

To gain a beast companion, hunters only give up prime shot and a fighting style, so basically +1 attack and a decent bonus depending on their specialty. For the dragoon, the specialties are, pretty much, lame anyway so keeping them doesn't seem like too much.

The drakes themselves are based them off the current hunter beast companions, reducing the stats and defenses. So if anything they're less powerful. The flying (hover) abilities are also something I swiped from those companions, so I don't think it's too much of a game-breaker considering the movement is all hover (or is meant to be).

I agree that the powers might seem a little too much, but I want there to be something special about each individual one - what do you think about the following changes:

Actually, I didn't have any problems with the Drake stats, I thought they were very well balanced compared to the Ranger beast companions. I was just pointing out that rangers only get three class features; their fighting style, prime shot, and quarry, and they give up everything except the quarry to get the companion. I think the changes you made are just fine...I still don't like the flavor of Dragoons being a pet class (that would be more of a paragon option, imo) but hey, if you really want it I think you made a good effort to keep it balanced. Perhaps if you had one build totally focused on the beast companion, and the other build totally void of the companion with other goodies to balance it out?

5) NADs: I see what you mean, though some seem to make sense as they are push/pulls (Fortitude) or quick attacks (Reflex). Possible solutions might be to change most of the attacks to target AC, reduce the damage of those attacks (which is probably what I'll choose), or have the attack bonus based off Dex or Wis instead of Str (possibly with a +X bonus if they're too low). I don't think that targeting NADs is always an automatic +2 bonus, especially at higher levels (unless it's Will, of course ), but I'll start looking more closely at monsters to see if you're right.

Well its not like you *can't* have [Weapon] attacks vs NADs, in fact all martial classes do, it just means that you need to adjust the damage & effects downwards appropiately if you really want the power to keep the [Weapon] keyword.

The attack differential with NADs is not so much about the attack differential between a monster's AC and NADs, because some monsters can still have a high Reflex, its the fact that when you use the [Weapon] keyword you get to add your weapon proficiency bonus to the attack, which is either +2 or +3. This is why most monsters have their AC higher than their NADs...so in the scenario where you have a [Weapon] attack vs a monster NAD, even if the monster NAD=their AC, its like giving the power a +2 or 3 attack bonus compared to an implement attack vs the NAD.

Spinning Strike: Agreed. What are your thoughts about having it slide the creature 1 square and you automatically shift into the square it was in, before the attack. This would work with the spirit of the ability, perhaps using it to gain flanking for the attack. The requirement of moving into that square would also negate the later feats of extra squares when shifting. As it targets NDA the damage could possibly be lowered and have the + Str removed as well. Thoughts?

Hmm I think it's still a bit overpowered, but it's much closer. Slide+Shift+NDA is a pretty strong combination, even without the mod. For comparison, Rogue Piercing Strike(AtWill 1) is 1[W]+Dex mod, vs Reflex, requires light blade (which is going to be much lower damage than the weapons Dragoons will be using). Dragoons would get a Slide, Shift, and the ability to use a stronger weapon at the expense of just the STR mod. Slides are *very* powerful for anybody. How about making it just 1[W]+Strength vs AC and a Slide 1? With this attack plus a regular shift you can easily set up your own flank, you don't even need the "swap places" or an extra shift feature. And if you're keeping the beast companion, you don't even need the slide. But I do like the idea of Dragoons keeping a slide at will to make polearm momentum viable.

Boost: This is actually the most OP of the features, because players can use it to gain momentum while being within 1 square of the enemy they want to attack. Although the intent is to jump up to higher elevation, they can use it to simply jump straight up, move 1 square, then land and voila, they have momentum, which they use for their attack against the guy they started next to. I tried it briefly as an At-Will movement, and all anyone ever did was stand still and use this ability - it was ridiculously boring and lame and destroyed the entire concept of the class (jumping in to attack enemies from a distance, moving back, and jumping again).

That's why it's restricted to twice an encounter (once before level 15). It should be the "I found myself in a horrible position and can't use Leap, but really need momentum for this attack" last resort, if you're not using it to jump up to a higher position.

Interesting. But I would also point out that a striker can't do its job if it can't apply its bonus damage feature. Your dragoon is especially vulnerable to movement-reduction effects...most striker features are designed so that you can fulfill the requirements fairly easily unless you are stunned. Rogues are really the only exception so they get extra striker damage to compensate for it. Your Dragoon loses its striker damage vs stun, restrained, immobilized, and dazed. (and most likely slowed as well in many combat situations) It also forces them to draw OAs in order to apply their striker damage vs. Solos (or any encounter when you're down to one mob), which is particularly lame imo. You might be okay if you have a reach weapon and the opponent doesn't have threatening reach, but the former pigeonholes class options and the latter becomes more of a problem at higher tiers.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if the Dragoon Boosts, they are required to spend their shift *before* their standard action to gain their momentum, so they can't move away afterwards...it seems a pretty fair tradeoff to me, to sacrifice your mobility to gain momentum. I'm not really going to press the issue though, if you want to keep it as-is thats fine because most encounters you won't need to use it more than 2x anyway.

 

[El Coro]

Thanks again for the replies, this is very helpful to me. Addressed your comments below.

Also, quick @ Kupo - Thanks! One of the paragon paths will increase the base momentum damage and make it a little easier to move around. As for feats, I'm not sure yet - I think the 4e feats have gotten a little ridiculous and out of hand (so specific, like "must be a druid, X level, be using a staff, have X power, and be X race). But I'll revisit it at some point when I have more done.

Now @ knightofround.

1) Drake: Yeah I see what you're saying about having multiple builds, so that a player isn't forced into taking the drake. I am trying to reconcile that (and the fact that the beast master hunter does it) with my desire to force the pet on everyone because of how I wanted the class to play. At some point I will revisit the builds and look at offering a non-drake option.

2) NADs: Again, you're right about the weapon bonus and the silent bonus. I've started going back through and reducing the damage of abilities that use the weapon keyword and target NADs, or changing the defense to AC if the flavor justifies it. Thanks for pointing this out to me - it's been the biggest design flaw so far that I was absolutely blind to.

3) Spinning Strike: I changed the attack type to Martial and reduced the damage to 1[W] + Dex. The slightly lower damage and the lower attack (without the weapon bonus, about 2-3 lower) makes it more situational and on par against a NAD. I'd like to keep the slide and shift, but I'm going to keep an eye on it this weekend while we play a few games and see how it turns out.

4) Boost: I'm currently reworking many of the utility powers, and one of the lower level ones will let you jump farther/higher AND give you one additional use of Boost per encounter. Since most encounters don't seem to last more than 8 rounds or so (on average), that will give you at least 2 (3 at 15th level) boost attacks.

I like what you said about them trading mobility for momentum with Boost, but for now at least I'm going to try and force them to move around a little more by limiting it.

5) Momentum: You're right that it could be annoying and difficult to apply the bonus momentum damage when slowed, stunned, dazed, immobilized, etc. I can see your point in it being a pain against solo encounters, though.

Some possible solutions below. Curious to see your thoughts.

• Up the Momentum damage to 1d8, 2d4, or 1d10 per tier, assuming they won't be able to use it every single round.

• Letting Boost remove movement impairing effects.

• Stances/Saves/Bonuses against being immobilized. This is mostly what I have now.

I'm reworking some of the powers right now and moving things up and down tiers to balance things out a little more. Let me know if you have any more thoughts or comments! Thanks again.

 

[Kupo24z]

Thanks for your work, I plan on trying this out in a dark sun 4e campaign in ~1-2 months from now. I'll be sure to report my findings. Given the reach weapon, are most of these abilities able to be done from reach range? Also could you leap, dive, attack using an at-will, and land one square distance away from the target effectively keeping them one square from melee range? It seems there is quite a few level1 at-wills, do you plan on keeping all of these?

Feat Ideas:
Increase Jump height/distance
Decrease fall damage further
Increase momentum damage, or give effects to the momentum damage (chance to stun/snare/silence, elemental damage, etc)
+AC to OoA when jumping
More mobility with heavy armor, possibly increasing run speed

 

[knightofround]

• Up the Momentum damage to 1d8, 2d4, or 1d10 per tier, assuming they won't be able to use it every single round.

• Letting Boost remove movement impairing effects.

• Stances/Saves/Bonuses against being immobilized. This is mostly what I have now.

Yeah, I think the third option is the best. I'd hesitate to go with upping momentum damage in all encounters, because the weakness is really only to a couple status effects; you won't necessarily run into them every round. Also, they're those conditions very common in heroic, but they become more common as you level...depending upon how often your DM uses that stuff anyway. I know when I DM I try to use daze/stun as little as possible because they tend to make fights longer and more boring. Boost stripping status effects would be too powerful vs slowed/immobilized/restrained imo, and it would be worthless vs dazed/stunned.

 

[El Coro]

@ Kupo:

Most of the abilities are intended to work from reach to keep a small distance and stay mobile, but it would be too overpowered to never have to come in for a close attack, so most of the more powerful attacks require you to be adjacent to the enemy.

The Leap then Dive combination is unnecessary, since you'll get momentum with Leap. Unless you're using Leap to jump off a cliff, then using Dive on the way down, I suppose. Either way, you need to land before you use your attack - so it's split up into those actions:

Leap (move action). Land.
Movement action is done.
At-Will attack. Roll attack.

Unless an attack specifically states that you can move after the attack, you can't. The movement from Leap, Boost, and Dive is resolved before the attack even takes place. Though you could use Leap, then land 1 square away and use a reach attack, still adding momentum damage to it. If that's what you were getting at.

As for the number of At-Wills, yes I'll keep them all. Most classes end up with around 7 or 8 At-Wills from all the various books and updates, and personally I think the greater selection (as long as they're unique) lets the player choose more of their playstyle.

Thanks for the feat suggestions! I've considered some of those already, though they are currently worked into paragon paths.

Thanks for the feedback!