Trying to work around a DM's restriction

[Aulirophile]

That is our DM's stated reason. He has gotten enamored of the Dragon Magazine's assassin/VHM combo, so we might be able to talk him around. I do worry about cascading consequences from that, cause most everyone has seen something or other that they want from the magazine...

I did have one clarification question: if I get, say, a frost weapon and am playing around with Coiled Serpent, 2 of it's class features add on chunks of poison damage to your other attacks, for instance, spending an action point to attack means anything I hit takes 10 ongoing poison. Is that damage type changed by my frost weapon as well?

Thanks for all y'all's responses.

Yes, it is.

Extra damage is damage added to a power. Which is why extra damage adds keywords. So all damage is being done by the power. Keyword rules say elemental weapons replace all keywords and add their own. Ongoing Damage is Damage done by the power in the RC. Done.

 

[Nytmare]

That's heroic tier, isn't it? And what's wrong with it?

As it was explained to me, a handful of paragon and epic tier familiars were made for Dragon, and at the last second, they decided to remove tier restrictions from familiars without adjusting the power levels.

So, as an example, I'll grab the first three mundane familiars I recognize off the the list and compare what you gain with them vs the Coure:

Bat: +2 to perception and stealth, enemies near the bat lose their concealment bonus against you

Book Imp: +2 to arcana and history, read and speak Supernal, gain fire resistance

Cat: +2 to acrobatics, and you're considered trained in acrobatics while falling

Coure Attendant: +2 to arcana, at will Mage Hand, all squares adjacent to you are difficult terrain for bad guys, and once per encounter, for as long as you want it to be turned on, gain CA against any enemy that started their turn within 2 squares of the familiar.
​

Granted this might be a case of them realizing that the initial familiars were just severely underpowered, but it could probably be just as easily considered a power creep, or plain old fashioned bad design/editing.

 

[Nork]

4E is rather balanced, both in the books and in the DDI stuff. Especially for an RPG system.

4E has been putting out content for quite some time now. If they haven't made piles of horribly unbalanced material so far, is it even remotely reasonable for people to act like it could be just around the corner?

The only real legitimate objection to the material is that it doesn't fit the campaign setting as written. However that is not a legitimate reason to ban the rules mechanics. It is a legitimate reason for the player and the DM to talk about who exactly in the world would have abilities like those, and to re-skin the mechanics to fit the world.

If the DM doesn't like that people are picking PPs for mechanics instead of taking a PP that exists in the game world, well, that is pretty much the DMs fault for not selling the PPs in their world to the player.

 

[eamon]

As it was explained to me, a handful of paragon and epic tier familiars were made for Dragon, and at the last second, they decided to remove tier restrictions from familiars without adjusting the power levels.

So, as an example, I'll grab the first three mundane familiars I recognize off the the list and compare what you gain with them vs the Coure:

Bat: +2 to perception and stealth, enemies near the bat lose their concealment bonus against you

Book Imp: +2 to arcana and history, read and speak Supernal, gain fire resistance

Cat: +2 to acrobatics, and you're considered trained in acrobatics while falling

Coure Attendant: +2 to arcana, at will Mage Hand, all squares adjacent to you are difficult terrain for bad guys, and once per encounter, for as long as you want it to be turned on, gain CA against any enemy that started their turn within 2 squares of the familiar.
​

Granted this might be a case of them realizing that the initial familiars were just severely underpowered, but it could probably be just as easily considered a power creep, or plain old fashioned bad design/editing.

Hmm, I think the ability to read+speak supernal; bonuses to relevant skills and resistance to a common damage type are rather nice, actually ;-). And you're missing key features of the cat+bat in your description; the bat has blindsense - which is available to the PC via Sight of the Familiar - a rather unique benefit! The cat's never been a particularly obvious choice, but even that has a meaningful ability; namely to roam much further than most other familiars - i.e., you get it to scout safely, not for it's in-combat abilities.

The coure attendent doesn't grant mage hand; it grants 1/round free stow/retrieve. It also doesn't make any terrain difficult, and although the CA trick is neat, it needs to be active on the battlefield for that, and that means it'll typically get destroyed easily, unless you heavily invest in other things to protect it... So it's a great basic familiar, but that's not because it's abilities are so powerful, but rather because they're slightly useful to almost everyone in almost every fight.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

The coure attendent doesn't... ....make any terrain difficult...

It used to but that got errata'ed away. (Although I can't find it mentioned in the errata archives, it has been changed in the Compendium and Dragon article.)

 

[eamon]

It used to but that got errata'ed away. (Although I can't find it mentioned in the errata archives, it has been changed in the Compendium and Dragon article.)

I'm positive it never made terrain difficult in the original magazine; edit: It's likely that was in the pre-release indvidual article as MrMyth says below.

 

[MrMyth]

It used to but that got errata'ed away. (Although I can't find it mentioned in the errata archives, it has been changed in the Compendium and Dragon article.)

The final version that actually went into the magazine fixed the major offense on behalf of the Coure attendant (and other similarly overpowered familiars in the same article).

It wasn't really an issue of heroic vs epic familiars, it was an issue of... familiars that could have been better designed in the first place. The final results seem fine.

 

[DracoSuave]

1- I disagree with using a weapon to convert to poison and acid damage. While good advice for a striker, for a controller it will make your powers have the poison keyword. That makes immunity to poison stop them, making your control nonfunctional.

2- Ongoing damage is damage. It is also an effect. Damage is an effect. There is no such rules concept stating damage is not an effect.

3- Talk with your dm. Either he'll accomodate you or you need to learn not to make chars that fail to match campaign.

 

[Arlough]

1- I disagree with using a weapon to convert to poison and acid damage. While good advice for a striker, for a controller it will make your powers have the poison keyword. That makes immunity to poison stop them, making your control nonfunctional.

2- Ongoing damage is damage. It is also an effect. Damage is an effect. There is no such rules concept stating damage is not an effect.

3- Talk with your dm. Either he'll accomodate you or you need to learn not to make chars that fail to match campaign.

If I recall the errata correctly, wouldn't you would need both acid and poison to have immunity? Or does the weapon in question remove the poison keyword and replace it with the acid keyword?

 

[jbear]

1- I disagree with using a weapon to convert to poison and acid damage. While good advice for a striker, for a controller it will make your powers have the poison keyword. That makes immunity to poison stop them, making your control nonfunctional.

2- Ongoing damage is damage. It is also an effect. Damage is an effect. There is no such rules concept stating damage is not an effect.

3- Talk with your dm. Either he'll accomodate you or you need to learn not to make chars that fail to match campaign.

I don't understand your reasoning here. I think you have misunderstood the situation. He doesn't want to use a poison weapon. The powers of the paragon path deal poison damge. The proposal is to use a frost or lightning weapon to change the damage type to avoid the undead's poison immunity. Which I think is a valid option.

I had understood that:

a) A lightning Weapon CHANGES the damge type to Lightning, which means the power gains the Lightning Key Word.

Question: If the power is originally Poison, doesn't it lose the Poison Key Word as it no longer deals poison damage?
Question: If the damage type is changed to Lightning, even if the power retains the poison keyword, does that mean a creature immune to poison is unaffected by it.

Personally I don't think so. Take for example Blazing Starfall. It has two damage types in its Key Words: Fire and Radiant. The attack deals Radiant dmg. If creatures in the zone created leave it they take Fire dmg. So if a creature that is immune to fire is hit by the initial attack (Radiant), it's unaffected because the power has the fire keyword? I don't think so.

So I don't think whether the power retains the Poison key word is even relevant. The damage type is changed to Lightning, so it gets around the Poison Immunity that the creature has. So I think that using a weapon of this kind would work.

So the problem is that Druids use Totems and Staffs, which don't get access to any of these weapons. If you multiclass into Monk you can sidestep this issue as you gain Monks Implements. Monks implements: Weapons they are proficient with. So now you can use a dagger or whatever weapon you are proficient with as your implement. And so you can get a lightning or frost weapon and change your power's damage type.

Edit: To multiclass into monk (PHB3) you'll need DEX 13.