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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5526468" data-attributes="member: 78116">Fighters can get easy ways around that, such as having a simple magic handaxe with the skyrender property or similar. I have had one hilariously bad encounter, it would be in the top 10 worst encounters I ever ran in 4E with a bramble witch (IIRC). The creature immobilized all the melee characters away from it and kept them there. While the Wizard/Sorcerer had a total off day. Due to everyone being resistant to necrotic by a power it meant the druid chipped away at them 3 points of damage a turn (this was pre-MM3 at paragon tier btw). It was in many ways kind of funny, but it didn't get anyone anywhere for a long time. It took nearly an hour to kill the thing and I was very tempted to just automatically explode the creature numerous times.Also in fairness to your point, the fighter is less worried about a flying creature because the wizard can knock it prone then he can attack it. The vampire is uniquely screwed by skill challenges and traps, because his entire class is built around getting back surges from encounters. Durable solves this because it's impossible to have a bad day matter anywhere near as much. You could lose 3 surges going into an encounter and still not be too bad. Lose 3 surges from 2 and go into an encounter, then have a couple of rounds of "off day" rolling and that's the end of you. That's why I commented that it is hilariously swingy, but that durable fixes the swingyness. Additionally the +2 surges are almost like increasing your striker mechanics - able to burn surges for damage/extra attacks really safely/reliably helping you keep up with other strikers. Vampires need all the help they can get there, so durable is almost the most important feat in the game for them.Personally I think if a vampire started on 4 surges that would have been a lot better than 2. I haven't seen the vampire romp all over any encounters with 4 surges (even 5 once you get the PP). They actually come up to "par" with extra surges to burn and have some interesting mechanics - but again you really need the surges to burn (and 2 is way too little). I guess it's just more bizarre design to me from Wizards (much like the shade) where I don't understand the logic behind the penalty. In play with 2 surges the swingyness is crippling - but you get durable or whatever they play really well. They're also not going to be uniquely screwed by skill challenges or traps anymore, which again makes me wonder what the point of the 2 surges was. They aren't exceptionally powerful in any way or manner, as with surges to burn they deal roughly decent level striker damage for more effort than a thief/slayer/scout/rogue/barbarian does. With extra surges they do become ridiculously resilient, but that's more than accounted for by having a huge and obvious achilles heel that any DM can take advantage of. Incidentally I'm not talking about the silly sunlight thing, which is itself is another example of wizards absolutely schizophrenic design with this class.</blockquote>

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