What to do about racial powers?

[Turtlejay]

These six races have racial powers that present some balance problems:

Bladeling, Dragonborn, Duergar, Genasi, Drow, and Minotaur.

Each of them can use a power one time per encounter that has an attack bonus of only Stat + *something*. For all but the Drow and Minotaur, that something is +2 per tier, or 2/4/6. For the Drow and Minotaur it is +4/+6/+8, which is odd in the Drow's case since the attack is still vs reflex, but understandable in the Minotaur's case since it is vs AC.

The main problem with these powers is that the attack bonus does not scale enough. This is not in reference to any perceived math error, but in relation to the other attacks that the PC will have at those levels.

While there are plenty of feats that increase your to hit with your main powers, none of them apply to racial powers. In fact, the keywords of racial powers exclude them from pretty much all of the feats you might take to increase your power in other ways. This excludes a minority of feats like Student of Moil that add +1 damage per tier to powers with certain keywords.

This long winded, mostly useless post is almost entirely here to complain that a 26th level Warlock will not really be well served by going out of his way to use Dragon Breath, since it will probably be -2/4 to hit and won't have any of the fun rider effects that he has worked on getting on his other powers. It does not use his implement, so any fun things there aren't triggered, so it is useful only as straight damage. It's lack of the 'Arcane' keyword excludes it from class features or powers that might redeem it, so all it does is waste as much time as any other area attack power, whilst doing much less to change the face of the battle.

The reason this is in the House Rule forum, is because I am totally in favor of assigning your racial power keywords pertaining to your primary class(es), and eliminating the static bonus in exchange for allowing you to use your implement bonus/weapon bonus with it. Yes, this makes little sense in the case of a Dragonborn warrior with his Martial dragon breath channeled through his flail, but he is less likely to care than the Dragonborn wizard is.

I'd like this to apply to as many racial powers as makes sense. Gnome Swordmage uses Fade Away? It is an Arcane power. Halfling Cleric uses Second Chance? Divine power.

I don't think this will have a huge effect on balance (less so than 95% of houserules suggested here), but it makes racial powers a bit more attractive, and I like that. One of the design goals of 4e was to make an Elven Fighter fundamentally different from a Dwarven fighter, and the various feats and class abilities really make this goal accomplished in my eyes. Anything that makes your class abilites *pop* even more is a good thing.

Thoughts?

tl;dr: Racial abilities should benefit from feats/powers/class abilities and the inherent bonuses eliminated.

Jay

 

[chronoplasm]

This looks like a job for math-fix feats!

Racial Power
Prerequisite: none
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls for racial powers. Increase to +2 at level 11 and +3 at level 21.

Hey, does primal power already have a feat like...

Inherent Power
Prerequisite: Druid, Wild Shape class feature
Benefit: You can use racial powers while in your beast form. If these racial powers require an attack roll or a damage roll, they gain a +1 bonus.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This looks like a job for math-fix feats!

Racial Power
Prerequisite: none
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls for racial powers. Increase to +2 at level 11 and +3 at level 21.

Hey, does primal power already have a feat like...

Inherent Power
Prerequisite: Druid, Wild Shape class feature
Benefit: You can use racial powers while in your beast form. If these racial powers require an attack roll or a damage roll, they gain a +1 bonus.

Of course, the feat would be hardly worth it - one could allow Implement/Weapon/Focused Expertise to also apply to racial powers. And Paragon Path powers that don't have the Implement/Weapon Keyword (and still advance +2/+4/+6 per tier instead of +3/+6/+9 per tier, as some in fact do these days)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well... There ARE feats that enhance racial powers. They are specific racial feats (not surprisingly). Its open to debate whether or not its worth spending a feat to gain some kind of advantage with a power that you're going to use once per encounter, but they do exist. There are also certainly other feats which will work with some powers, like Frost Cheese.

 

[Turtlejay]

Well... There ARE feats that enhance racial powers. They are specific racial feats (not surprisingly). Its open to debate whether or not its worth spending a feat to gain some kind of advantage with a power that you're going to use once per encounter, but they do exist. There are also certainly other feats which will work with some powers, like Frost Cheese.

Right, and this is kind of my dilemma. Does a Dragonborn take a Paragon Tier feat to increase the damage of his breath, when it is not all that useful to him? The utility a melee type gets out of it, as a minion clearer, is not effected. The arcane types already have much better attacks, should they take a feat to boost an okay attack? It they were *normalized* I'd think such feats would be much improved in the eyes of players.

I first ran into this issue (kind of a strong word, since this is all much ado about very little) when my Gnomish Wizard was looking at the Unseen Mage Paragon Path. They have an ability that allows them to roll a save-type-roll when Arcane invisibility expires to see if it sticks around for another round. I noted that this did not apply to Fade Away, and it just felt silly to me. He (at that level) would have been able to go invisble a handful of times a round, why was that one time so different? I see the implications to game balance as being small. Again, while I was refining a Dragonborn build, I noticed the disconnect.

This is not a life changing thing. I readily admit this is small potatoes. And a feat patch is not exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for pointing that out though, I had not seen it.

Jay

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right, and this is kind of my dilemma. Does a Dragonborn take a Paragon Tier feat to increase the damage of his breath, when it is not all that useful to him? The utility a melee type gets out of it, as a minion clearer, is not effected. The arcane types already have much better attacks, should they take a feat to boost an okay attack? It they were *normalized* I'd think such feats would be much improved in the eyes of players.

I first ran into this issue (kind of a strong word, since this is all much ado about very little) when my Gnomish Wizard was looking at the Unseen Mage Paragon Path. They have an ability that allows them to roll a save-type-roll when Arcane invisibility expires to see if it sticks around for another round. I noted that this did not apply to Fade Away, and it just felt silly to me. He (at that level) would have been able to go invisble a handful of times a round, why was that one time so different? I see the implications to game balance as being small. Again, while I was refining a Dragonborn build, I noticed the disconnect.

This is not a life changing thing. I readily admit this is small potatoes. And a feat patch is not exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for pointing that out though, I had not seen it.

Jay

I guess the question is, is Dragon Breath (as an example) really inferior? The +2/+4/+6 bonus puts its to-hit on a par with implement attacks and it is vs Reflex. Its a minor action, so almost a "freebie" to use. The damage isn't awesome, but it isn't BAD either, and like I say it could be enhanced with say Frost Cheese or any of several other feats. For example a DB with a lightning based breath weapon can take advantage of Raging Storm. With Cold he could take advantage of Burning Blizzard (plus frost cheese), or with a fire breath Astral Fire. These are ALL feats that are useful for other things as well, its just up to you to create some synergy.

I think the main point though is that racial powers in general are supposed to be relatively minor in effect. Admittedly Elvish Accuracy and one or two others tend to be a bit more useful than the rest. Overall though I think you can buff your racial powers a fair amount, just not as much as class powers. I doubt adding keywords is going to create any serious problems, it just emphasizes race a bit more than the core rules do.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I guess the question is, is Dragon Breath (as an example) really inferior? The +2/+4/+6 bonus puts its to-hit on a par with implement attacks and it is vs Reflex. Its a minor action, so almost a "freebie" to use. The damage isn't awesome, but it isn't BAD either, and like I say it could be enhanced with say Frost Cheese or any of several other feats. For example a DB with a lightning based breath weapon can take advantage of Raging Storm. With Cold he could take advantage of Burning Blizzard (plus frost cheese), or with a fire breath Astral Fire. These are ALL feats that are useful for other things as well, its just up to you to create some synergy.

I think the main point though is that racial powers in general are supposed to be relatively minor in effect. Admittedly Elvish Accuracy and one or two others tend to be a bit more useful than the rest. Overall though I think you can buff your racial powers a fair amount, just not as much as class powers. I doubt adding keywords is going to create any serious problems, it just emphasizes race a bit more than the core rules do.

I think the big point for Dragon Breath will always be that it is one of the few minor actioin attacks in the game. The only thing it is lacking in is that there are no Expertise feats for it. Of course, that's only up to 3 points of attack bonus difference over 30 levels once per encounter, so it might really not be that critical as it seems to be.

I think the racial powers are not all balanced against each other. They are part of the whole package deal of each race, and they are balanced in this package deal alone.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, I agree, the races are pretty well balanced. Of course DB can have ancillary benefits, like multi-marking, for some classes/builds. Ideally a racial power will be useful to any character of any class or build, but it rarely works out that way. DB is far from the worst offender in that sense though. Half-orcs and Shifters have the short end of the stick in that department.