When you think of exciting, powerful Fighter mechanics, the reliable keyword is unlikely to jump to your mind. It's certainly solid, and it does its work, but its effect isn't what you would call flashy. To make things worse, it usually ends up in simple, mediocre powers like Brute Strike. While I don't doubt that this will eventually get solved, even if it means printing strictly superior stuff like Lasting Threat, I'd like reliable powers to be somewhat useful in the meantime. This is what I'll try to address today.
My approach is simple: take advantage of the fact that Reliable is a keyword, and design a few feats that reward you for using such powers. Hopefully, this will make Fighters feel a little less ashamed of using a non-stance daily.
My approach is simple: take advantage of the fact that Reliable is a keyword, and design a few feats that reward you for using such powers. Hopefully, this will make Fighters feel a little less ashamed of using a non-stance daily.
Unerring Tactics
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Fighter
Benefit: Once per round, when you hit with a Fighter or Paragon Path daily power with the Reliable keyword, choose an Encounter power you know. That power gains the Reliable keyword until the end of the encounter.
Certain Recovery
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Fighter
Benefit: Once per round, when you hit with a Fighter or Paragon Path daily power with the Reliable keyword, you can spend a healing surge.
Infallible Shield
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Fighter
Benefit: Once per round, when you hit with a Fighter or Paragon Path daily power with the Reliable keyword, you gain a +1 bonus to AC until the end of the encounter.
Special: You must carry a shield to benefit from this feat.
Inescapable Assault
Epic Tier
Prerequisite: Fighter, 21st level.
Benefit: Once per round, when you hit with a Fighter or Paragon Path daily power with the Reliable keyword, you can reroll any number of dice in the damage roll. Until the end of the encounter, whenever you make a damage roll, you can reroll one die.
Posts
All of these feats give Reliable powers additional punch when they finally connect, but until then the Fighter is left with nothing on a miss. What about feats that give the PC a bonus when a Reliable power misses and which expire when the power finally hits?
ReplyDeleteThat said, I like the feats you designed here. There's probably room for both kinds of feat.
Well, there is a clear advantage of designing effects that trigger on a hit: with Reliable, you know that they are always going to work, and they are always going to work exactly once. This makes the new feats very easy to evaluate and balance.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, a bonus on a miss could trigger any number of times, or never at all. On average, the number of triggers will be slightly lower than the effect on a hit (assuming a hit chance better than 50%, as is often the case). And here comes the real problem: in order for the feat to be as good as one who worked on a hit, you need to give a stronger bonus!
There is a good reason why Reliable powers tend to do nothing on a miss: if missing is worth it, any character who wants can screw his hit chance to miss an arbitrarily high number of times. Just close your eyes (blinded, -5), drop to the ground (prone, -2), and use an improvised weapon (no proficiency bonus), and you are hitting at -10 without much effort.
Consider one bonus I give in the feats above, like spending a healing surge. If you could spend a HS whenever you missed with Brute Strike, you'd often prefer to miss! This is a dangerous dynamic, that you definitely don't want to encourage.
Not that I'm saying it's impossible to come up with appropiate effects, but they would be a lot harder to design - needing to be both stronger and harder to exploit.
When it comes to reliable powers, in my opinion, nothing works better than the Academy Master's encounter attack power. Stack with the Deva's -2 to hit for + Damage feat and Trusted Spellcasting, and BOOM! If you happen to be a Warlock (wait, didn't we just say you were a Deva? Oh well, maybe you're a Revenant), you can deal 4d10+Etc damage on a hit, but usually miss, and deal 2d10+Etc/2 damage despite it being a miss. Reliable powers dealing half damage on a miss just makes me smile is all.
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