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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4953322" data-attributes="member: 5143">The problem is that the amount of damage you do to yourself is insignificant compared to the damage dealt to the enemy.  My fighter regularly attacks 8 times with a +3 Bloodclaw weapon in a combat.  He does 24 damage to himself.  This does 72 damage to the enemy.  Considering I do 1d10+12 damage with my attacks, this is the equivalent of hitting an extra 4 times for free.  For the most part, this equals 4 rounds of attacking in exchange for one healing surge.  A tradeoff that is more than worth it.In some battles when I use Rain of Blows twice in the same combat, I've used it up to 15 times in one encounter.  45 damage to me is still one healing surge plus cleric healing after the combat.  In exchange for enough free damage to easily kill a monster of my level for free.If I get some way to get temporary hitpoints(which I don't really have), then it is even better.For the most part, 24 damage is about 10 damage less than I would take in the 4 rounds of an enemy attacking me.  So, basically the weapon can be read as:Prevent the next 10 damage you would take in order to kill a bloodied enemy.Yeah, this is partially why it is so powerful.  Trading AC for damage is not really a valid tradeoff.  But also, the amount of bonus they give is too high.This is my solution as well.  I think people would still use them but they would actually consider other items instead if they were half the bonus.And this build is even a byproduct of combining yet another item together with the class feature.  It doesn't get broken until all 3 are brought together.That's pretty much the issue with this power.  It doesn't require an attack roll or anything to pretty much paralyze a group of enemies for at least a round.  But it IS a daily and the enemies can just spend their action walking out.  I think this is one good power.  But I don't think it's broken.  It's just that a lot of the other Wizard dailes at level 5 are so bad that it sticks out.Yeah, I'm beginning to see it this way as well.  Backgrounds give too much benefit.  A +2 to a skill is appropriate.  10 hitpoints is not.  It's double the effect of a feat at level 1.A number of the items above suffer from the same problem as all other static damage modifiers:  The more attacks you get the better they are AND the static damage modifiers can add up to more than your actual attacks.Damage is more valuable the LESS damage you do.  This is because it increases your effectiveness as a percentage.  If you do 1d4 damage then a +1 damage increases your effectiveness by almost 50%.  Damage is actually pretty low in 4e.  Which means that small modifiers have a large effect.  Which means you have to carefully control the total number of static bonuses available.  Ideally the static modifiers will never be more than 50% of the total average damage you are doing.  So if you do 1d12 damage, getting static modifiers bigger than +6 is a problem.  By the time you are paragon tier, you are normally doing 2d10 on a regular basis, so +13 is about right.  By epic tier you are doing 3d10 on a regular basis and +19 is appropriate, and about 4d10 by the end of epic tier, so closer to +26 by the end.By 30th level, that's about the bonus you get from Stat Mod(8)+Enhancement Bonus(6)+12 from other places.  Bloodclaw breaks this by adding +18 by itself at 30th level.  Which stacks with the +6 from Iron Armbands and the +3 from Weapon Focus, and a couple other small bonuses you can get from feats.On the other hand, if you make Reckless give you only +Enhancement bonus in damage(instead of double enhancement), Bloodclaw give 1 for 1 regardless of the weapon you use, and make Iron Armbands half their bonus....then you run into a situation where Weapon Focus+Bloodclaw+Iron Armbands total 12.  Which is about right.</blockquote>

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