Broken Bits: Binder (IV)

Broken Bits: Binder
1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

For the last article in this series, we have the Star Pact Binder. This one is actually the “strong” binder build, with enough area attacks to make a decent blasting controller impression, and an spectacular, though extremely hard to trigger, pact boon. However, this pact still shows the weaknesses of the class design: even at its best, the binder fails to beat a regular warlock playing its own game. Virtually every star pact binder can be made stronger by rebuilding it as a warlock that picks binder powers – though admittedly, some of these powers are good enough for warlocks to bother taking, which is more than could be said about most of the gloom pact encounters.

Again, I suggest a whole lot of power updates, boosting the binder versions and weakening what normal warlocks get. The Mind Shadows at-will has been changed so that it’s still situational, but it grants a great effect when you manage to trigger it – as written before, an enemy could turn off the effect by walking toward your allies. As for the Hidden Lore boon, I found out I couldn’t loosen the triggering condition as much as I’d like, because the effect is so damn good. As a compromise, I decided that a binder would need to stay dangerously close (within 2 squares) to an enemy to activate the boon, without actively forcing a purely ranged character to move adjacent to enemies.

Mind Shadows - At-Will Warlock Attack 1
Replace Hit line with: (…) damage. Choose any number of allies who are 3 or more squares away from the target. Until the end of your next turn, the chosen allies are invisible to the target.

Hidden Lore - At-Will Warlock Utility
Replace trigger with: You reduce a creature to 0 hit points, or an enemy within 2 squares of you drops to 0 hit points

Shadow Tentacles - Encounter Warlock Attack 1
Replace Hit line with: (…)damage.
Replace Hit(Binder) line with: The target is slowed until the end of your next turn.
Add Effect: The burst creates a zone that lasts until the end of your next turn. The zone is difficult terrain for your enemies.

Cyst of Darkness - Encounter Warlock Attack 7
Remove Hit(Binder) line.
Add Effect (Binder):  At the start of your next turn, you slide the target 3 squares. The target and each creature adjacent to it at the end of the slide take cold and necrotic damage equal to 5+ your Intelligence modifier.

Soul Eater – Binder’s Ally 9
Replace Standard Action line with: (…) you gain 5 temporary hit point and gain a +5 power bonus to your next damage roll.
Add Opportunity Action: At-Will; Trigger: An enemy adjacent to the soul eater takes an action that provokes opportunity attacks. Effect: The soul eater makes its standard action attack against the triggering enemy.

Banish to Darkness - Encounter Master Binder Attack 11
Remove Hit(Binder) line.
Add Effect (Binder): Until the end of the target's next turn, when it makes an attack, choose one creature within range at random, other than itself. The attack must include that creature.

Devouring Dark - Encounter Warlock Attack 13
Replace Effect(Binder) line with: The targets are slowed until the end of your next turn. Any enemy that ends its turn in the zone takes 5 cold and necrotic damage.

Greater Void Burst - Encounter Warlock Attack 17
Replace Effect line with: The burst creates a zone that lasts until the end of your next turn. The zone is heavily obscured and blocks line of sight. Any creature other than you that ends its turn in the zone takes psychic damage equal to 3 + your Intelligence modifier.
Remove Effect (Binder) line.

Inner Void - Encounter Warlock Attack 23
Remove Hit(Binder) line.
Add Effect (Binder):  When you hit or miss the target, and at the start of your next turn, you slide the target 3 squares. The target and each enemy within 2 squares of it at the end of the slide take necrotic damage equal to your Intelligence modifier.

Doom Hulk – Binder’s Ally 25
Replace Standard Action line with: (…) you gain 10 temporary hit point and gain a +5 power bonus to your next damage roll.
Add Opportunity Action: At-Will; Trigger: An enemy adjacent to the doom hulk takes an action that provokes opportunity attacks. Effect: The doom hulk makes its standard action attack against the triggering enemy.

Hungry Void - Encounter Warlock Attack 27
Replace Hit(Binder) line with Effect (Binder): You pull each target 1 square toward the center of the burst. The burst creates a zone that lasts until the end of your next turn. Any enemy that ends its turn in the zone takes 10 cold and necrotic damage, or 20 cold and necrotic damage if it ends its turn in the square at the center of the zone.

1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

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Broken Bits: Binder (III)

Broken Bits: Binder
1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

In today’s installment, we tackle the pact powers for the Gloom Pact. Gloom Pact Binders have a great at-will attack in Echoing Dirge, but that’s about it - the encounter power selection is mostly underwhelming, with plenty of mediocre single-target attacks that most warlocks wouldn’t bother to take, even with the Binder bonuses. Making competitive single-target attacks for a controller is always a challenging proposition, but I have tried to solve it by combining decent control and reliable effects. Note that the final versions of these attacks aren’t truly single, target, since they feature single-target damage and multi-target control. Compared with the more area-happy star pact binder, the gloom pact should provide more focused damage, as well as very reliable area control that doesn’t hinder your allies.

Shadow Warp - At-Will Warlock Utility
Replace Trigger line with:  You reduce a creature to 0 hit points, or an enemy in the burst drops to 0 hit points.

Hound of Dark Omen - Encounter Warlock Attack 1
Remove Hit(Gloom Pact Binder) line.
Add Effect (Gloom Pact Binder): You conjure a shadow hound in an unoccupied square adjacent to the target. The hound remains until the end of your next turn and occupies its space. The target is weakened while adjacent to the hound, and if it ends its turn adjacent to the hound, it takes psychic damage equal to 2+ your Dexterity modifier

Ebon Claws - Encounter Warlock Attack 3
Remove Hit(Gloom Pact Binder) line.
Add Effect (Gloom Pact Binder): Enemies adjacent to the target take necrotic damage equal to your Dexterity modifier and are knocked prone.

Pall of Darkness - Encounter Warlock Attack 7
Remove Hit(Gloom Pact Binder) line.
Add Effect (Gloom Pact Binder): Until the end of your next turn, your enemies are blinded while adjacent to the target.

Shadow Lurk – Binder’s Ally 9
Add Opportunity Action - At-Will; Trigger: An enemy adjacent to the shadow lurk takes an action that provokes opportunity attacks. Effect: The shadow lurk makes its standard action attack against the triggering enemy.

Binder’s Action - Paragon Path Feature 11
Add: …and one enemy hit by the attack gains vulnerable all until the end of your next turn. The vulnerability is equal to your Dexterity modifier.

Haunting Shadow- Encounter Warlock Attack 13
Remove Effect line.
Add Effect (Gloom Pact Binder): You conjure a shadow in in an unoccupied square adjacent to the target. The shadow remains until the end of your next turn and occupies its space. Your enemies are weakened while adjacent to the shadow. In addition, the target takes cold damage equal to your Dexterity modifier for each square it willingly moves on its next turn.

Devouring Tide - Encounter Warlock Attack 17
Remove Hit(Gloom Pact Binder) line.
Add Effect (Gloom Pact Binder): You slide each target 3 squares and knock it prone.

Umbral Radiance - Encounter Warlock Attack 23
Remove Hit(Gloom Pact Binder) line.
Add Effect (Gloom Pact Binder): Until the start of your next turn, you and your allies are invisible while within 3 squares of the target.

Umbral Swap- Encounter Warlock Attack 27
Replace Hit line with: 2d10 + Charisma modifier cold and necrotic damage .
Replace Hit(Gloom Pact Binder) line with: The target is removed from play until the end of your next turn.
Add Effect: Choose a square in the target’s space. Until the start of your next turn, any enemy that ends its turn in that square or adjacent to it takes cold and necrotic damage equal to 10 + your Dexterity modifier.

1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

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Broken Bits: Binder (II)

Broken Bits: Binder
1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

In this article, I revise the powers that are available to all binders: the fixed at-will, and the daily attacks from Heroes of Shadow. Note that, by moving much of the strength of some dailies to Binder-specific effects, this hurts regular warlocks who chose to pick shadow-themed options. I feel this is a necessary compromise to create a niche for the Binder, since the best dailies from HoS were already as good as what a real controller should get, despite being available to both controllers and strikers.

I applied the following design principles for the Binder version of all powers: when compared to a Wizard (the baseline controller), a Binder should have better single-target damage, roughly equivalent single-target control, and slightly worse multi-target attacks. In practice, though, most single-target controller powers in the game (i.e. the ones that don’t stun) are pretty bad compared to area ones, and I didn’t try to balance against those - so expect unusually good single-target stuff.

In addition, I took care to have versions of the powers for non-Binder warlocks that were noticeably weaker, but could still realistically have uses in a game. I followed these guidelines:

• Control effects limited to single-target attacks. Warlock area attacks should have little or no control. Close burst or blast attacks can be slightly better, in this regard.
• No big areas: Warlocks shouldn’t have attacks larger than area 1. Close bursts 2 and blasts 5 can exist, but should remain relatively rare.
• No repeatable control in dailies: Warlocks shouldn’t have access to control effects that can last the whole encounter, unless they are relatively weak.

Finally, some daily powers like Malicious Shadow or Well of Shadows had the potential to lock down an enemy (usually through immobilizing) for many turns, maybe even a whole encounter. As much as I enjoy strong controllers, I find this kind of effect excessive, so I tried to avoid it.

Shadow Claws - At-Will Warlock Attack 1
Add Hit (Binder): If the target moves during its next turn, it takes cold damage equal to your Dex or Int modifier for every 2 squares it moves.
Change Efect line to: If the target moves during its next turn, it takes cold damage equal to your Dexterity or Intelligence modifier.

Hateful Shade - Daily Warlock Attack 1
Change Hit line to: 3d8+Charisma modifier force damage, and the target is grabbed by shadows. Until the grab ends, the target takes ongoing 5 force damage.
Add Effect (Binder): Until the end of the encounter, while no enemy is grabbed by this power, you can use the secondary attack.

Secondary Attack
Minor Action (1/turn), Ranged 10.
Attack: Charisma vs Will.
Hit: The target is grabbed by shadows. Until the grab ends, the target takes ongoing 5 force damage.

Web of Shadows - Daily Warlock Attack 1
Change Hit line to: (...) damage, and the target is slowed (save ends).
Add Hit (Binder): The target is immobilized (save ends) instead of slowed.
Add to the Effect line: Creatures in the zone take a -2 penalty to saving throws.

Malicious Shadow - Daily Warlock Attack 1
Add Sustain (Binder): When you sustain this power, you can move the shadow half your speed.
Change secondary Trigger line to: An enemy willingly leaves a square adjacent to the shadow without shifting.

Shard of Darkness - Daily Warlock Attack 5
Add Hit(Binder): Instead of slowed (save ends), the target is immobilized and takes ongoing 5 cold damage (save ends both). Until the end of the encounter, when you hit an enemy with a ranged attack, it is slowed, cannot shift, and takes ongoing 5 cold damage (save ends all).

Well of Shadows - Daily Warlock Attack 5
Change Effect line to: The burst creates a zone that lasts until the end of your next turn. Exiting the zone costs an additional square of movement for your enemies. Until the zone ends, you can use the secondary power at will.
Add Effect (Binder) line: The zone lasts until the end of the encounter.
In secondary power, change Hit line to: (...) if the target is already slowed, it is instead knocked prone and takes ongoing 10 necrotic damage (save ends).

Deathly Conduit - Daily Warlock Attack 5
Add Special line: This power does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
Change Hit line to: (...) damage.
Add Hit (Binder): 2d6 + Charisma modifier necrotic damage, and the target is blinded (save ends).
Change Effect line to: Each enemy adjacent to you (...)

Menacing Shadow - Daily Warlock Attack 15
Change secondary Hit line to: 2d6+ Charisma modifier necrotic damage.
Add secondary Hit (Binder) line: The target is dazed until the end of your next turn.

 Oubliette of the Void - Daily Warlock Attack 15
Replace Range line with: Area burst 1 within 10 squares.
Add Range (Binder): Area burst 2 within 10 squares.

Shadow Mire - Daily Warlock Attack 19
Replace Range line with: Area burst 1 within 10 squares.
Add Range (Binder): Area burst 2 within 10 squares.

Star of Death’s Omen - Daily Warlock Attack 19
Add Hit (Binder): The target is stunned (save ends) instead of dazed. Aftereffect: The target is dazed (save ends).

Offering of Magic - Daily Master Binder Attack 20
Move Effect line before Attack line, and replace it with Effect: Until the end of the encounter, you can use your Pact Boon when you hit the target. When the target is reduced to 0 hit points, you gain an additional standard action on your next turn.

Draining Void - Daily Warlock Attack 29
Replace Range line with: Area burst 1 within 10 squares.
Add Range (Binder): Area burst 2 within 10 squares.

Shadow Legion - Daily Warlock Attack 29
Replace Range line with: Area burst 1 within 10 squares.
Add Range (Binder): Area burst 3 within 10 squares.

1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

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Class Acts: Assassin–Secrets of the Ninja

We don’t get a lot of exciting player content in Dragon magazine these days, but today’s article made me extremely happy. Written by Dave Chalker, of Critical Hits fame, the article offers an awesome new Executioner build: the Ninja. There are just 2 pages of mechanical content, including six powers, two magic items, and a new superior weapon, but they really get the job done. Ninjas get a Shuriken Barrage attack (which reminds me of a fixed Hand of Radiance), a Smoke Bomb, an short sword attack that rewards them for jumping around randomly, and a vicious double attack with their Kusari-gama – which is a weird, but effective weapon, by the way. On top of that, one of the magic items is a rare Ki Focus with an impressive set of abilities, easily among the best rare items I have seen to date.

I need to play this build. So far, the Executioner had been a class that I admired for its original design, but which didn’t quite convince me to try it out. These new options, along with the ability to use assassin’s shroud (from the Hybrid and Multiclass article), have finally tempted me.

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Broken Bits: Binder (I)

Broken Bits: Binder
1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

I have recently had the opportunity to make an in-depth reading of Heroes of Shadow and, for the most part, I like what I have found. I’m not even a fan of the anti-hero archetype, but I nevertheless enjoyed the flavor of the book, as well as many of the new builds and powers. The fact that it reprints a whole subclass that had been released months ago was annoying, but forgivable. That said, there is one thing in the book that can only be classified as a failure: the Binder subclass.

The binder is a cool concept spoiled by a flawed execution - even more than other kinds of warlocks, which is saying something. It’s not that they are useless characters (thankfully, that is quite difficult to achieve in D&D 4E), but they certainly feel underwhelming. In terms of power, they compare poorly to regular Warlocks, and those had traditionally been among the weakest classes, to begin with. More specifically, a Binder character does very little that a Warlock can’t do, whereas a Warlock can be build so as to replicate most of a Binder’s abilities - only better. The problems with the subclass could be summarized in that you could give Binders the Warlock’s Curse feature, and they would still be on par with conventional Warlocks. In the following articles, I will suggest an extensive series of revisions aimed at making the Binder competitive as a controller (its intended role). However, you should be aware that it is also perfectly possible to fix them by giving up and turning them into strikers - to do that, just give them Curse, and change their Pact Boons to trigger as those of a normal warlock.

These are the most important problems I found when reading the Binder class:

- Pact Boon reward triggers. The pact boon rewards (those little bonuses you gain when someone dies) are actually pretty decent for Binders, but the triggering condition is a joke. It makes absolutely no sense to have an effect that triggers off the death of enemies adjacent to the Binder, when the class has no melee capabilities whatsoever. These features become all but useless outside of fights with lots of minions.

- Lackluster powers. While not downright bad, the Binder power list is not good enough for its role. Controllers usually have above-average powers to make up for their relative lack of class features, but what the Binder gets is not substantially better than what you’d expect for a typical ranged striker.

- Warlocks steal their tricks. Related to the above point is the fact that regular warlocks can take most of a Binder’s attacks... and actually make better use of them than a real Binder. As an example, a Binder encounter power in the hands of a Warlock loses the pact benefit, but gets to deal curse damage, so to be remotely competitive, pact benefits for these powers should be stronger than 1d6 damage/tier. In most cases, they aren’t. To make things worse, Binders suffer from a fixed selection of encounter powers, whereas Warlocks can pick from a wide variety (including both Binder pacts). And then there are Daily attacks (usually the strongest point of a controller), where Binders don’t gain any benefit whatsoever over a regular warlock.

- Summons are terrible. As a rule of thumb, in order to be playable, a Summoning daily attack has to create a creature that can either make instinctive attacks, opportunity attacks, or have one hell of a standard action attack - and even that doesn’t guarantee a strong daily, just a passable one. Since a Binder’s Ally has neither, it’s impact on the battlefield will usually be negligible.

In order to address these issues, my fix for the class includes the following changes:

- New triggers for Pact Boon rewards. Pretty straightforward. The features are nice, but you need to actually be able to use them.

- Power Upgrades. This involved changing a LOT of powers, including nearly every Binder-specific attack, but also many generic dailies from Heroes of Shadow that were given special bonuses for binders. In general, the revisions made the powers better in the hands of a binder, but also worse for non-binder warlock.

1-Introduction - 2-General Powers - 3-Gloom Pact - 4-Star Pact

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