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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 5158701" data-attributes="member: 53980">To me, it's a matter avoiding a situation where "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."  Sure, even with a percentage based mechanic a Barbarian can take more shots than a Wizard.  However, to use your example (let's assume a flat 5 damage instead of surge value), the Wizard who deals himself 5/20 is still going down in two hits, but the Barbarian who deals himself 5/60 is effectively at full hp, since it will still take eight hits to drop him.  The choice becomes trivial for the Barbarian, but remains quite non-trivial for the Wizard.  The only reason I could see for using a flat cost rather than a percentage cost would be if, for whatever reason, you felt it was appropriate for high hp characters to ignore status conditions more easily than low hp characters.  Since defenders are by default high hp, and also tend to suffer the lion's share of conditions, I'd say there's some argument to be made there.  That said, I still think percentage is the fairest approach, since defenders tend to already receive a lot of care from leaders (IME).By the way, I'm not saying that I dislike status conditions.  I'm a fan, and I think that without them combat in 4e would be boring.  I'm simply of the opinion (from personal experience) that there comes a point of overkill.  Conditions can spice up an encounter, or drown its flavor entirely depending on just how much they're used.As I mentioned before, last weekend my DM ran the party through a fight where most of us spent the first half of the fight with most of the following conditions:DazedProneUnable to use encounters/dailiesSpeed reduced to 0 (until you spend a move action)WeakenedSince most of the creatures won initiative, we spent a long time in that encounter neither feeling threatened (their damage was too low) nor like we had any meaningful options to alter the course of the fight.  We were mostly just waiting for the DM to roll poorly.  There wasn't any challenge and because of that the fight dragged.  It was quite probably the worst encounter I've ever seen from 4e and hence a prime example (IMO) of what not to do.(My critique of that encounter notwithstanding, he honestly is a good DM.)That's why, when I run, I like every encounter to have a healthy mix of heavy hitters and condition dealers.  When in doubt, I'll err on the side of extra damage because the worst that can happen is an easy, quick, yet exciting fight.</blockquote>

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