Typo or deliberate?

[was]

I'd guess its a typo..when you're under pressure to get a book out and have to edit like 300 spell descriptions you're bound to miss a few things.

 

[Incenjucar]

Reflex is anything that is "hurled," such as lasers or fireballs, where you have time to react to it.

Fortitude is stuff that basically always hits (Clouds, etc), but which you can resist physically.

Will is stuff that basically always hits, but can be resisted mentally.

A power can easily affect all three of these with different effects, but it's avoided because it gets obnoxious and requires a lot to be going on.

You could, say, hurl a burning soul (Ref), which produces a cloud of necrotic smoke (Fort) and tries to dominate those within the cloud (Will).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Reflex is anything that is "hurled," such as lasers or fireballs, where you have time to react to it.

Then the problem is that:

1) Dread Star- with fluff that reads essentially the same*- doesn't fit this interpretation, and

2) the secondary attacks of Crown of Stars which feature the same kind of attack (there are no changes mentioned in the fluff), ALSO don't fit the rule.





* "You create a fist-sized orb of painful blue-white radiance that whirls around your enemy, searing him. Fierce rays shot from it like jabbing daggers of light, fencing him in where he stands."

 

[Incenjucar]

I can only assume that the idea is that it's too close to dodge, so you have to use your mind to push away the bolt.

Honestly it sounds kind of silly outside of the mechanics. Like a psychotic version of that fencing robot Luke Skywalker was practicing with that shot lasers at him.

Or maybe it's based on a multi-stage firework or something.

 

[Infiniti2000]

The first attack is specifically trying to blind someone physically. That's not a will attack, that's clearly reflex. The subsequent attacks could be either, but since it doesn't seem to attack an organ (like blinding), I'm okay with it being will. However, I see no valid argument that the primary attack should be vs. will.

Dread star isn't a good comparison either. It has neither the same fluff text nor same mechanics at all. The light hitting the target is fencing him in, but not physically. He just has to overcome the pain with his Will defense to ignore the immobilization. Also, there's no sustain on dread star. It's not the same at all, except for radiant ranged 10.

 

[Ferghis]

Besides it not making sense?

It makes the same amount of sense a lot of other 4e powers, and I don't mean that as a put down. Take the Fighter's iconic Come and Get It: in its most updated form, a fighter somehow makes a Will attack with a weapon to make enemies come to him or her, and then smacks them in the face with the weapon.

So, yeah. I think RAW zaps them and then chokes someone else. Obviously, you do whatever you want in your game. As to your original question, it could well be a typo, but I'm not sure it's the kind of thing that screams for correction.

 

[bganon]

Most of the bizarre "sustain minor, but sustain what exactly?" powers received errata with the recent Warlock update. But Crown of Stars was in Dragon and may have been missed.

The power sucks as written, if I were you I'd feel free to fix it up a bit. I'd make the extra stars part of a save ends effect like Curse of the Dark Dream, and probably make all the attacks vs. Reflex (there are plenty of warlock dailies that attack Will). Then the power still isn't great, but at least might be useful against a zombie horde or something.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Here's how I would envision it:

When you cast the spell, light flares around your head, and beams at a particular enemy, blinding them with searing light.

After you cast the spell, motes of light remain encircling your head like a crown, and you are masked with the alien psyche of the distant stars. You continue to lash out with this psyche, and, where it caresses the minds of the weak-willed, it burns them from within with dire radiance.

Admittedly, the mechanics are a little borked (I'm surprised they make you roll an attack roll for that piddly damage!), and the flavor text is, as always, basically meaningless. This is me imposing flavor from the outside.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The power sucks as written,

It does more base damage than almost any other 1st level Warlock Daily, and getting to attack with a minor action doesn't suck.

...if I were you I'd feel free to fix it up a bit.

I'm not the DM, I'm a player.

 

[bganon]

It does more base damage than almost any other 1st level Warlock Daily, and getting to attack with a minor action doesn't suck.

Well, maybe I'm reading it differently. I figured you don't get the minor action attacks if you miss with the initial hit. And in that case, even if you get to sustain for four rounds, because of the lack of miss damage it doesn't really outdamage Flames of Phlegethos, Armor of Agathys is better if you move adjacent to three or more enemies over the encounter, Your Glorious Sacrifice deals about equal damage, and a Hellfire Blast with even two targets outdamages pretty much all of these.

Looking at the numbers it's not as bad as I figured, but it definitely is not the most damaging Level 1 Warlock Daily. And though I take their ratings with a grain of salt, CharOps seems to rate it as solidly mid-tier.