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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jasonbostwick" data-source="post: 5156859" data-attributes="member: 34924">I found this problem a while ago in a game when the players ran into a vampire. An at-will, minor action dominate isn't fun when you're a fighter with a low will defense.At the time I took the "don't whine about it, you could have done things to improve your defense or increase your resistance to mind-affecting attacks" approach, but I don't think I'd agree with that anymore. I don't think solutions that rely on pre-emptive planning through character creation make much sense.The vampire's dominate came up in another thread in the last few days, and a comparison was made to the 3.5e vampire. The severity of a vampire's domination in 3.5e is much worse - they're affected for 12 days rather than 1 round.The difference between the 3.5e and 4e effects is that the players can actually do something to actively prevent being dominated in 3.5e. In 4E, without any houseruling, the vampires attack is simple - Ranged 10, +X against Will, Target is Dominated until the end of their next turn. The only way to adequately defend against this is to make a choice during character creation to choose a feat or power that helps you resist attacks against Will or mental affects. This is inherently a passive choice, made outside the game.  In 3.5E, the dominating gaze is a gaze attack - if a player is worried about being affected, the rules spell out that they can shut their eyes and the Vampire can't control them. The player can make an active choice in the middle of combat, weighing the penalties of being blind to the risk of being dominated. I really appreciate the succinctness of the 4E conditions chart, and much prefer dealing with it to the 38 entry long list of conditions in 3E. That said, I think it removes a large amount of flexibility from the system without a considerable amount of ad-hoc rulings. For whatever reason, the conditions in 3E felt more closely associated with their in-world causes. When a character is entangled in 3E, they're caught in a web that they can burn or a net that they can cut. Conversely, when my character gets slowed in 4E all that means to me is "my speed is now 2, unless I use one of my movement powers which conveniently moves me a fixed distance unrelated to my current speed."A good DM and smart players can get around this by proposing creative ideas to escape conditions, but in the middle of a grindy combat creativity can fall by the wayside a bit and the odds of a player saying they simply don't look at the vampire diminish.</blockquote>

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