The Whole Implement - Wizard Powers for Arcanists

[Al'Kelhar]

Hi guys,

It always bothered me a bit that wizards were never really defined by their principal class feature, that is, their choice of implement. While everyone was familiar with the abuse of the Orb of Imposition class feature, the class features derived from implement specialisation didn't amount to a great deal of difference between wizards. In particular, a wizard's choice of implement never really had much effect on the powers he or she chose. Other classes, such as druids, fighters, rangers and rogues, had different builds and class features that really made a difference about what powers they took.

Since the release of the Essentials line of supplements, the wizard has gone down the path of specialisation by spell school, a tradition which goes back to 2E D&D.

However, I always thought Wizards of the Coast missed an opportunity to vary that model with the Players Handbool 4E wizard, and play up implement specialisation with a bunch of powers that had different effects depending on which implement you used.

So I thought I'd have go...

Attached is a bunch of existing wizard at-will and heroic encounter attack powers that I've tinkered with, so that arcanists with implement specialisation get a few bennies. I've largely focused on powers that are less-than-stellar in their unamended forms, in the hope that they can be pushed into the realms of "might be worth taking" for an arcanist with the right implement.

I've also tried to make the Wand of Accuracy a viable implement. Having Dexterity as your secondary stat after Intelligence is a pretty bad move from a mechanical perspective, so I've tried to compensate by giving the Wand of Accuracy arcanist some bonuses with the most damaging powers, giving it a reasonable secondary striker role.

The other two implements I've taken a particular interest in are the Tomes. The Tome of Binding arcanist now gets some benefits with encounter conjuring powers, including some synergies with daily summoning powers. And the Tome of Readiness arcanist is nothing if not flexible.

I hope you enjoy, or can find some use for the attached. Naturally, I'd be grateful for any feedback you have to offer.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Tallifer]

These look like very good ideas at first glance. I would have to crunch numbers and actually play them to know, but I really like the overall idea behind this project.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Nice ideas there. I suspect that your buff to MM is probably too good, but I like where you're heading with these. In particular, with Erupting Flare and Scorching Burst, both of which are in need of tweaking in their current Compendium form.

Erupting Flare does the best damage of any Wizard at-will, but is hard to use and generally not worth it, so your solution of making it ally-friendly certainly helps.

Scorching Burst is just so weak. I keep trying to find ways to buff it as well. Unless you're going for a pure fire build, there are few reasons to take it over other powers that have the similar damage and superior control (Freezing Burst) or better targetting (Winged Horde).

 

[Al'Kelhar]

Nice ideas there. I suspect that your buff to MM is probably too good, but I like where you're heading with these. In particular, with Erupting Flare and Scorching Burst, both of which are in need of tweaking in their current Compendium form.

Thanks for the feedback.

My thought behind magic missile was to take it back to its original concept even further, by allowing higher level casters to fire more than one. Although in the hands of a reasonably-optimised Wand arcanist it can do reasonable guaranteed damage, it can never do more than what's really a token amount against a single target. It can sweep a room of several minions, or can knock down several bad guys who are close to death, but otherwise it's still just a nuisance. For example, a 6th-level Wand arcanist with 20 Int, 18 Dex, Dual Implement Spellcasting, and +2 and +1 wands, does 14 points of force damage each to 2 targets.

I tinkered with arcane bolt on the same basis. Really, arcane bolt is a slightly souped up magic missile. So you get slightly more of them (from 9th level), and you can fire two at a single target, thus doing a bit more damage. As some added minor bonuses, arcane bolt also pushes 1 square (if you're a Wand arcanist) and does full damage to insubstantial creatures. But it still spreads the damage around, so it's not very powerful at all. And by the time you've got a lot of arcane bolts, you're likely to have swapped the power for a higher level one anyway.

Nevertheless, I was really trying to re-enliven the "machine gun wizard" from previous editions, and I reckon the Wand arcanist with magic missile, arcane bolt, and wizard's fury fits the bill nicely.

Erupting Flare does the best damage of any Wizard at-will, but is hard to use and generally not worth it, so your solution of making it ally-friendly certainly helps.

There's a typo in the document sorry - the "Orb of Readiness" should read "Tome of Readiness", of course.

I really like the idea of a wizard who can just touch someone and they burst into flames.

Scorching Burst is just so weak. I keep trying to find ways to buff it as well. Unless you're going for a pure fire build, there are few reasons to take it over other powers that have the similar damage and superior control (Freezing Burst) or better targetting (Winged Horde).

Thematically, fire powers often seem to do ongoing damage, so I thought I'd try to beef scorching burst up a bit by giving it this feature. However, I didn't think I could just add ongoing damage without making scorching burst too powerful, so I decided I'd give the Wand arcanist the option - do full damage immediately, or do less damage immediately, but do some ongoing damage as well. The ongoing (save ends) damage is based on Dex, so is usually going to be less than the up front Int-based damage, but since it will burn for more than one round in 45% of cases, it can be a damage buff. And that's really the attraction now.

Also, I like the idea of a wizard that sets things on fire. Did I mention that?

I thought I might do another version of the document that sets out my thoughts and reasoning behind my suggested changes, if that would help.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Balesir]

I'm with [MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION] on MM - extra missiles is too strong. I have issues with it being totally automatic hit anyway; I would prefer it with something like "Effect: a target that is not in Total or Superior cover takes ... damage", with the explanation that the "missile" is too big to fit through gaps and deflects off tight corners. Maybe you could allow higher level casters to split the total damage between multiple targets, though?

For Scorching Burst I think you could add the ongoing damage on top of the basic, to be honest. I'm not sure it sounds very "Wand of Accuracy"-ish, though; maybe give several different riders on this power for different implement features? Suggestions:

- Take ongoing fire damage equal to secondary ability mod (Tome of Binding or Staff of Defence, maybe?)
- Targets hit are Dazed until the start of their next turn (i.e. they can't take opportunity actions and grant CA until then) - for Wand of Accuracy, maybe?
- Targets hit are pushed 1 away from the burst origin (Tome of Readiness or Orb of Imposition, maybe?)

A combination of these would give SB a wider appeal and make the Implement based Arcanists a bit more interesting (which the whole article is good for), I think.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

I've now added some more at-will powers with implement specialisation-riders. Each kind of implement now has a "themed" at-will attack power.

I've also dropped the Wand of Accuracy Dual Implement Spellcaster bonus damage to magic missile and arcane bolts. I still reckon multiple attacks is the way to go with these powers, both for historical reasons and to bolster them. I think if you do the mathematical analysis, these powers don't become overpowered, even at high levels. Sure, the damage is guaranteed, but it's spread over multiple targets for whom it wil typically be not much more than a scratch. Further, the only wizards doing more than trivial damage with each missile or bolt are Wand of Accuracy arcanists with high Dexterity - and this is an intentional result of their design. Also, these powers only do damage; they provide no control (although I have given arcane bolts a 1 square push effect for Wand of Accuracy arcanists).

I've tinkered with a few other powers, too. For example, I've made the effect of a hit by worms of Minauros just an effect. The purpose of this power is to force movement, and it's otherwise a pretty ordinary power. I've also made the damage caused by the effect a damage roll, rather than a fixed amount of damage. I think the effect creates a good synergy with the Tome of Binding rider for the power; the decision for the bad guy is to stay where it is and take a reasonable amount of acid damage from the power, or move away and take an oportunity attack from the summoned creature. That is, it's a difficult choice, and they're the best sort!

Anyway, any feedback gladly werlcomed.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Octangula]

I've also dropped the Wand of Accuracy Dual Implement Spellcaster bonus damage to magic missile and arcane bolts. I still reckon multiple attacks is the way to go with these powers, both for historical reasons and to bolster them.

Well, RAW, Magic Missile doesn't benefit from DIS, Focus, or item bonuses (which all explicitly say "damage rolls"), and your wording supports this. That's part of what makes the power not be as broken. I do wonder if your rate of increment is too fast, though. Maybe 1 per tier instead of 1 per half-tier?

Two potential aspects for brokenness are Wizard's Fury, which has the potential to get slightly silly at late heroic or beyond, and the fact that it's the ultimate minion plinking power.

As for Arcane Bolt(s), I agree that this should have the potential of affecting multiple targets as well, but I don't feel comfortable with the way that it automatically increases in power. This is how I would word it:

Arcane Bolts * Wizard Attack 3+
Silver arrows of force appears next to you. You gesture toward your foes, sending the arrows on an unerring path toward them.
Encounter * Arcane, Evocation, Force, Implement
Standard Action * Ranged 10
Special: You may take this power as an encounter power of any level. The number of bolts that are created by this power are determined by the level that this power is taken at.
Level 3: One bolt.
Level 7: Two bolts. Each bolt must be assigned to a different target.
Level 13: Three bolts. Each bolt must be assigned to a different target.
Level 17: Four bolts. Upto two bolts may be assigned to a single target.
Level 23: Five bolts. Upto two bolts may be assigned to a single target.
Level 27: Six bolts. Upto two bolts may be assigned to a single target.
Target: One or more creatures. The number of creatures that may be targeted is limited by the number of bolts that the power will create.
Effect: Assign each bolt to a target. The target takes force damage equal to 5 + your Intelligence modifier + the enhancement bonus of your implement for each bolt assigned to it.
Wand of Accuracy (Effect): Add your Dexterity modifier to the force damage dealt by each bolt, and each bolt pushes the target 1 square.
Special: Insubstantial creatures take full damage from this power.

In theory, yes, you could make the power available from level 1, and adjust the levels accordingly, but I think that that would be too powerful. I also heavily adjusted the way that the bolts are assigned, as the ability to stack two bolts onto a single target makes the power quite frightening (doing roughly the same amount of single target damage that other classes can do with their encounter powers, but without the need for an attack roll), especially with the implement rider. You could reduce the damage to 2 + modifiers to account for this, but then the power doesn't do enough to justify it taking a slot at lower levels. Better might be to remove the damage from the implement rider (and also from Magic Missile), as the push is enough of a bonus, especially because the Wizard is supposed to be a controller.