What's the most useless abilities in the game?

[KarinsDad]

I was looking at some creatures and I noticed the Dwarven Warriors and Silvergrall Guards. Both dwarven minions with the Steady Footed ability. It occurred to me that these dwarves would never get to use this ability since nearly every attack that knocks a foe prone would also kill the dwarf.

What other abilities in the game have you found (PC or NPC) that just won't really see the light of day and you wonder what the designer was smoking when he wrote it?

 

[Zaphling]

Well, you're probably right, but there are also some powers that knocks the target prone without damaging them.

 

[On Puget Sound]

I think they have a dwarf (and a goblin, an orc, etc.) template of powers and they just print them on every creature of that race, even if it makes no sense for a minion.

 

[Chris Knapp]

I'm actually glad they included template-type powers on minions. Especially that one since my party has a psion that moves people around like chess pieces.

It's those little corner cases that we all seem to fall into that make us come back here to EnWorld and bitch that X is broken because it didn't account for rare case Y.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Also: Bull Rush.

I think the designers intended it to see a lot more common usage than it does. There isn't much incentive for anyone good at Bull Rushing (read: high Str) to waste a Standard on it when they could be doing damage instead (or in addition to).

 

[MrMyth]

Hidden Stab, an at-will power that Executioner Assasssin's get at level 7. It basically lets you hop out and grab someone, intended to represt putting your knife at their throat and threatening to end them if they don't cooperate.

The original version of the power (in playtesting) was way overpowered - it represented this by making them helpless, or letting you maximize assassin's strike damage, and stuff like that, which was a bit too much.

So the final version instead gives you the option that, once you have them grabbed, if you attack them again and miss, you can use Assassin's Strike against them on a miss.

Which ignores the fact that you could, instead, simply use Assassin's strike when you hit with the power in the first place.

The only time that would actually be of use is for the 'cinematic' idea it represents (where the purpose of the power is to cow them into surrendering or you cut their throat.) Except that it doesn't give any sort of intimidate bonus or anything that would persuade them to surrender, nor does it give you a free attack or the like if they try to break free.

The power itself isn't terrible - an at-will grab is always nice - but the special ability of the grab is pretty much as useless as it gets.

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

How about the Avengers Punishing Blow? All enemies adjacent to the target are then considered your Oath Of Enmity target as well. Except OOE doesn't work when you've got more than one foe adjacent to you at a time.

I suppose if all of them were -behind- the target you just hit, you could use some AOE power, but still...

 

[KarinsDad]

How about the Avengers Punishing Blow? All enemies adjacent to the target are then considered your Oath Of Enmity target as well. Except OOE doesn't work when you've got more than one foe adjacent to you at a time.

I suppose if all of them were -behind- the target you just hit, you could use some AOE power, but still...

I think the intent here is that you can use the effect, even though you normally couldn't.

Granted, a very strict literal read is that they are Oath of Enmity targets, but the effect of Oath of Enmity wouldn't work on them because more than one target is adjacent to the Avenger.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

How about the Avengers Punishing Blow? All enemies adjacent to the target are then considered your Oath Of Enmity target as well. Except OOE doesn't work when you've got more than one foe adjacent to you at a time.

I suppose if all of them were -behind- the target you just hit, you could use some AOE power, but still...

I think the *intent* is to let you get your Oath double roll even while those are adjacent.

Target: One enemy you can see in the burst

Effect: When you make a melee attack against the target and the target is the only enemy adjacent to you, you make two attack rolls and use either result. This effect lasts until the end of the encounter or until the target drops to 0 hit points, at which point you regain the use of this power.

The problem is the wording of "only enemy." Obviously, target can be multiples, but it's hard to get around "only enemy."

Brad

 

[MarkB]

Well, you're probably right, but there are also some powers that knocks the target prone without damaging them.

And there are probably a few which do so on a miss.