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Message: <blockquote data-quote="brassbaboon" data-source="post: 4970175" data-attributes="member: 66114">You guys aren't understanding me. I'm the one saying that the IAoP and similar items AREN'T broken.Let's do a little ranger math. Most encounters are designed for appropriately built strikers to hit 60% of the time. That means the IAoP are adding 2.4 damage per round, max, unless you use an action point, or some minor attack power or something, when it can get as high as 6 damage per round, but that would be no more than once per encounter and use a bunch of encounter powers at least.Let's say you are fighting an elite solo with 400 hit points. Let's say three melee attackers have the IAoP, but that the other two aren't rangers, so are only getting 1.2 extra damage per round, meaning a total of 4.8 damage per round.Let's say the encounter would last 7 rounds without the IAoP. That would mean an average damage of just more than 57 per round. With the IAoP in seven rounds you would add 33.6 total damage, which, since it isn't a full rounds worth of damage, means that the fight would take EXACTLY THE SAME NUMBER OF ROUNDS. And that's with THREE of them on different party members. At best it will reduce the odd fight by a round.Based on my experience in combat in 4e, with the incredible overhead of tracking all the different save ends, ends on next turn effects (We've had seven or eight foam circles under one miniature to track all the effects on it), that means instead of a 45 minute fight, it's a 40 minute fight, giving five more minutes to actually role play.If I were to start a list of "problems with 4e" I would put "combat takes FOREVER" right near the top of that list. So anything that reduces the number of rounds I'm probably going to be OK with.But, the point is THEY AREN'T BROKEN. So those of you banning them are banning a PERFECTLY LEVEL APPROPRIATE ITEM, not because it damages game play, but because you don't like them. And you don't like them because you think they get picked too often by players.That strikes me as an odd reason to ban an item.I would argue that other items are only "broken" if you interpret them too broadly. The reckless gloves, for example. I would simply rule that you can't use them with another weapon. Period. I don't believe they were designed that way, and it doesn't make SENSE to me that you can gain the benefits of the glove in an attack unless YOU ATTACK WITH THE GLOVES. Problem solved.Bloodclaw is only "broken" when you allow double weapons to be treated as two handed weapons. This takes the x3 damage intended for TWO HANDED use and applies it to double weapon use, allowing rangers to get it TWICE in one round. That's just wrong. I wouldn't allow it. Double weapon use does not mean two handed weapon use. I would rule that you can't simultaneously gain the advantage of an off-hand weapon and the advantage of two handed attacks. If you have a spiked chain and you use it two handed, you aren't dual-wielding anymore. If you are dual-wielding, then you aren't using both hands in one attack. Duh.Anyway, this won't get resolved here. I do think Wizards made a terrible error in how they created magic items in 4e. Not just in their crazily wide range of powers for supposedly equally valuable items, but the whole encounter and daily power stuff just makes the game more complex and confusing and MAKES NO SENSE. Why in the name of all that is holy would one magic item's use suddenly make another magic item unusable? That's just plain nuts.I know WHY the game designers did what they did, but I think the whole magic item mechanic is totally, and probably unfixably, screwed.That doesn't mean I won't play the game. There were parts of the 3.5e game mechanic that were totally, unfixably, screwed (grapple, anyone?).But that doesn't mean I won't acknowledge that that part of the game is totally bolluxed up. It is.</blockquote>

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