Vorpal Uber Weapons?!?

[Jabba Von Hutt]

How do you treat Gauntlets of Destruction when used with a Falchion?

"When rolling damage with a melee attack, reroll all 1s".

Can I roll any 1s with a Falchion? Or, since I'm rolling 2d4, is the lowest I can roll a 2, and thus unaffected by the Gauntlets even those both d4 are showing "1"?

-Hyp.

I'll be honest here and say I have no clue because of precedence. I can't remember anything that let you reroll damage. My gut says they probably meant min. damage (total) you get to reroll. But maybe not and if so it makes 2d4 weapons even more unbalancing as opposed anything else when combined with Vorpal.

I like to use the "Err.. What?!?" rule. Any rule or combination of rules that makes a DM go "Err... What?!?" I generally look beyond them and see what do I think the designers had in mind. Now sometimes as in 3e even doing that, you still ended up with broken rules or combos. But stuff like this is pretty easy to detect that it abuses the intent when compared to the rest. I thought 4e was about balance afterall. Seriously, if your interpretation is correct why wouldn't every fighter wield a vorpal falchion with those gauntlets?

 

[DLichen]

Because a vorpal axe or non-vorpal hammer can still do more damage and vorpal is only there at level 30?

Not to mention completely different feats and stat array to take advantage of heavyblades.

 

[IanB]

I'll be honest here and say I have no clue because of precedence. I can't remember anything that let you reroll damage. My gut says they probably meant min. damage (total) you get to reroll. But maybe not and if so it makes 2d4 weapons even more unbalancing as opposed anything else when combined with Vorpal.

I like to use the "Err.. What?!?" rule. Any rule or combination of rules that makes a DM go "Err... What?!?" I generally look beyond them and see what do I think the designers had in mind. Now sometimes as in 3e even doing that, you still ended up with broken rules or combos. But stuff like this is pretty easy to detect that it abuses the intent when compared to the rest. I thought 4e was about balance afterall. Seriously, if your interpretation is correct why wouldn't every fighter wield a vorpal falchion with those gauntlets?

I think you need to prove there's an actual mechanical imbalance here before your contention that the falchion is broken will get any traction.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Seriously, if your interpretation is correct why wouldn't every fighter wield a vorpal falchion with those gauntlets?

Maybe, if the player had a tetrahedron fetish. Conversely, if we go with your interpretation, Vorpal falchions will be shunned in favor of single-die weapons, and no one wearing those guantlets would ever touch a falchion, glaive, or Maul.

Re-rolls basically give you a per-die bonus. Per-die bonuses aren't anything new (1e had them, though they were rare), it's just a different way of assigning them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

BTW, my first set of numbers on the last page were a little simplistic, I only took into account one re-roll, not an open-ended one. I didn't actually do the calculus, but a little spreadsheet mojo and:

A d4 gains 0.833 points of averaged damage from being vorpal.
A d12 only gains 0.591 points of average damage from being vorpal.

If you roll more dice, you get more benefit. It's not just that a falchion benefits more than a greataxe, a dagger also benefits more than a greataxe.

But, once you consider the total, it's really not that scary:

d4: 3.33 average damage w/Vorpal
d6: 4.2
d8: 5.14
d10: 6.11
d12: 7.09
2d4: 6.66
2d6: 7.7


In contrast:

2d4 (max only): 5.33
2d6: 7.2

 

[Hypersmurf]

Seriously, if your interpretation is correct why wouldn't every fighter wield a vorpal falchion with those gauntlets?

I wasn't aware I'd laid claim to an interpretation.

I've said that when the Vorpal property triggers on a falchion depends on the definition of 'damage die'. I've asked how you'd treat Gauntlets of Destruction with a falchion.

-Hyp.

 

[dervish]

In addition, field plate armor has the ability to absorb damage. For every die of damage that would be inflicted upon the wearer, physical or magical, the armor will absorb 1 point of that damage. (On a damage die roll of 1, the wearer would take no damage.) For example, the armor would absorb 1 point of damage from the strike of a long sword, and the damage from an ice storm (3-30, or 3d10) would be reduced by 3 points...

That's from the 1st edition Unearthed Arcana. Weapons had individual dice back then at least.

An exploding 2d4 would end up at about 6.6 damage while an exploding 1d10 would be about 6.1. The damage increase is about 30% compared to about 10%. Quite a difference, actually. In a perfect world where all die rolling was automatic and instantaneous, I would recommend having only the first d4 explode, which would yield an increase of about 15% which is more in line with the 10% of the d10.

That said, I'm not sure that this is a problem. It's a bit of a kick in the groin for the greataxe and bastard sword, and as those weapons are the best around, I think they can take it.

Intrestingly, it seems that there is more to weapon selection than what you might first think.

 

[Hypersmurf]

That's from the 1st edition Unearthed Arcana. Weapons had individual dice back then at least.

Full Plate absorbed 2 per die, right? Does it say if there's a difference between 3d10 dealing 6 damage if it's (2,2,2) vs (1,1,4)?

In other words, do you subtract 6 damage from the total (yielding 0 in both cases), or do you subtract 2 from each die, minimum 0 (yielding 0 in the first case, but 2 points of damage in the second)?

-Hyp.

 

[Jabba Von Hutt]

All right here are some numbers that I worked out only taking the Vorpal rules into effect. I'm seeing if I can get a version with the the gauntlets factored in from a math friend of mine. Apparently not to easy to calculate but he agreed That the 2d4 and 2d6 weapons would get the most benefit for that as well.

                                                                          %
Damage                          Average Bonus       Average Roll     Increase in
Die/Dice      Average Roll      from Vorpal          with Vorpal        Damage
1D4            2.5                0.625                 3.125          25
1D6            3.5                0.583                 4.083          16.657
1D8            4.5                0.5625               5.0625         12.5
2D4            5                   0.3125               5.3125          6.25
1D10          5.5                 0.55                  6.05            10
1D12          6.5                 0.5417               7.0417          8.334
2D6            7                   0.1944               7.1944          2.777
Alternate Application of Vorpal effect
2D4            5                   1.25                  6.25            25
2D6            7                   1.069                 8.069          15.271

So applying Vorpal as RAW the 2d4 and 2d6 gets 2x the bonus in % that a 1D8 or 1d12 would get. But everywhere else the higher the average roll the lower % increase in damage you get from Vorpal. Again I haven't even factored in the gauntlets but again the 2d weapons would get a bigger % boost from them.

Now apply the Vorpal effect the way I believe they intended it and the 2d weapons are more in line with the rest. Yes sligthy subpar but don't forget you accepted the fact that by rolling 2d4 instead of a d8 your avg. damage is superior as well as more consistent but you will not hit the highs or lows as often.

Now I will concede the point that it would be a pain to roll damage in the X[W] era this way but it is more balanced. I'm gonna guess that designers will probably say that they didn't fully look at it in this context. Again I'm gonna guess they'll say it should be applied the way I suggest but for convenience sake (gameplay speed) go with RAW.

But it is unbalanced.

 

[DemonLord57]

A few points here:
1) Do you honestly believe that they examined the system well enough math-wise to warrant a claim of intention? The fact that Careful Attack and Twin Strike are both "options" for the Ranger destroys any credibility to that argument.

2) You claim to look into the rules and divine the "intent" of the designers, especially on "easy" issues like this. You cannot claim to be able to know what the designers intended. Especially in situations like this. Just because you think it is "broken" doesn't mean "the designers intent" was different from what the rules truly are. Don't claim you know what they intended based on your evaluation of how "broken" it is, do it by showing us textual evidence of intent. Designer intent is not retroactive based on how it happens to work within the game, nor how you think it will be "broken" in a game.

3) Beyond that, does this supposed "intent" of the designers you claim to know even matter? If you want to houserule it, that's perfectly fine. Just don't yell at the rest of us for talking about the RAW, what is actually written.