A close look at Arcane Power (I) - Bard class builds

Overview

The Prescient Bard is a new class build, focusing on ranged weapon powers. It uses Wis as secondary score, and the main theme is modification of die rolls, both of allies and enemies. It's linked to a new class feature, the Virtue of Prescience, which prevents attacks against your allies once per encounter.

How good/interesting is Virtue of Prescience?

Although its power level is adequate, it's hardly a compelling class feature, particularly when compared to the alternatives. Previous Virtues were usable once per turn, when specific but frequent conditions were fulfilled. In contrast, Virtue of Prescience activates once per encounter, and has a stronger effect to compensate. You do have greater control over when and how you use it, but overall it feels more like a (very strong) utility power than a class feature.

I may be judging this virtue too harshly - after all, there is enough precedent in perfectly valid class features that are encounter powers, such as Channel Divinity or Wizard Implement Mastery. In fact, this could be considered an improved version of the Wizard Staff Mastery encounter power (though that came bundled with a very nice static bonus to AC). On the other hand, this has to compete with other bardic virtues, and they look far more appealing to me due to their frequency of use.

Who should use this build?

Players who want an archer bard have a strong incentive to go Prescient, as it is the only build whose secondary ability enhances encounter powers with ranged weapons. That said, Arcane Power has an awful lot of bard powers for bows and crossbows, so it shouldn't be difficult to make a character without virtue-specific powers. Conversely, no melee powers are supported by Virtue of Prescience, so this isn't the best of options for front line bards.

Races with high wisdom may feel attracted to Prescience, but note that dwarves and devas (two very popular Wisdom races, in my experience) are also good Valerous and Cunning bards, erspectively. I'm afraid that, all other things equal, the other virtues make better choices than Prescience.

How good/interesting are the feature-specific feats?

Extended Prescience (Heroic feat)
Power: **
Fun: **

Your staple prescient feat, this isn't that interesting when you are just saving a random ally from an attack, but will excel for protecting defenders. Use this at the right time when the party defender is engaging several enemies, and you can prevent a good amount of damage.

Prescient Fortification (Heroic feat)
Power: * (** with other feats)
Fun: * (** with other feats)

This is a curious case, in that I wouln't ever take it by itself, but it does have a nice synergy with other Prescience-enhancing feats. With Extended Prescience you can have an almost invincible character for a turn, and in combination with Prescient Aid you can but guarantee a hit, if you really need to.

Prescient Aid (Paragon feat)
Power: **
Fun: *

The option to use your Prescience for offense rather than defense is undoubtedtly powerful, and likely to become the default choice when you reach paragon. However, I really dislike the philosophy behind this, as the new functionality usually obsoletes the previous one, and it has has zero synergy with Extended Prescience. Not that I'd like the attack bonus to last for a full turn - now, that WOULD be annoyingly powerful.

Prescient Resurgence (Epic feat)
Power: **
Fun: ***

What took them so long? Additional uses of VoP are definitely welcome, and I think any Prescient Bard worth his salt will eventually take this. It's also an appropiate effect for epic tier, as I think this might be a bit too good at lower levels.

Is there anything that should be fixed or houseruled?

When I look at Virtue of Prescience, I really, really feel like it's asking for some additional effect. Not power-wise, as much as in terms of fun gameplay - other bards get to do cool stuff every turn! How could we solve this? I'd like this Virtue to be relevant more than once per encounter, but I'm not really comfortable with granting extra uses of the encounter power - it's a pretty potent one, after all. So we should look at other kinds of effects. I propose the following feat:

Prescient Advice
Tier: Heroic
Prerequisites: Bard, Virtue of Prescience class feature

Benefit: When you roll initiative, as a free action, you may grant an ally a power bonus to initiative equal to your Wisdom modifier. This doesn't spend your Virtue of Prescience, but it counts as a use of the feature for the purposes of other feats and features.
(This would work with Prescient Fortification, as well as the Karmic Shaper paragon path)

I think initiative-related effects fit perfectly with the flavor of the Virtue, and this is a great way to make the whole party excited about your prescience. Generous DMs might consider giving this for free to their prescient bard, though I see it fine as a feat.

As I commented on the feat section, I'm not satisfied with the implementation of Prescient Aid. I'd consider a revision of the feat that, while not as strong for purely offensive purposes, integrated the regular feature and related feats, rather than ignoring them. It also adds a really epic dimension to your VoP activations:

Prescient Aid (revised)
Tier: Paragon
Prerequisites: 11th level, bard, Virtue of Prescience class feature

Benefit: When you use your Virtue of Prescience to grant a power bonus to an ally's defense, that ally gains that bonus to the next attack roll it makes before the end of his next turn.

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A close look at Arcane Power - Introduction

Today, I start a new article series featuring an idea that I've wanted to try for a while: A book review. I know it's hardly a groundbreaking concept, but I'm going to add a little twist. Rather than doing the sensible thing and provide a general overview of the book, pointing out its highlights and any broken stuff that has slipped through, I'll just go over every single thing in the book.

Ok, I'm exaggerating, but not that much. I'll probably leave some stuff behind, as I don't care much for epic destinies or paragon paths. But I do intend to look at class features, powers and feats, providing as much insight as I can, and giving some rough ratings. I won't put too much emphasis on those, and I won't just value strength from a character optimization standpoint. If you're looking for that kind of things, I'd recommend one of the many Class Handbooks in Wizards CharOp boards, as well as Keterys' excellent power grading threads at EnWorld. Instead, I'll rate both strength and (subjective) gameplay interest, using up to three stars - one star meaning weak or boring stuff, and three pointing something particularly strong or cool. Of course, there will be some correlation between both parameters, as it's rarely fun to play with crappy powers or feats. But sometimes it happens. In addition, I will mark in red any power I see as broken, indicating the reason.

As an example, this is what it would look like:

Jinx Shot (Bard at-will)
Power: **
Fun: ***

For each power or feat, there will be a paragraph or two of commentary. Since I can't copy the rules text, and adding short descriptions of each item would be far too much work, I'll be making extensive use of my new Compendium tooltip tech. I don't know if this will make the long lists of powers unreadable for those without a DDI subscription or an open copy of Arcane Power, so I'm open to suggestions.

Of course, as the readers of this blog (the two of you!) will already know, I just love fixing rules and coming up with new stuff, so at the end of each post there will be a short section with houserules related to the commented material.

Enough explanations, we can begin with the articles. The first one will be, by strict page order, about bard class builds. I hope you enjoy it!

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Divine Power preview: feats!

Lots of info today! Today's excerpt of Divine Power has a bunch of divine feats - probably most, if not all, of the non-race-specific heroic ones. Also not included are Domain Feats, or any other deity-specific feat. Here's a quick review on them.

(EDIT: I have later realized that these are Paragon Tier feats. This review looked at them as options for Heroic PCs, so some comments could be a bit off)


Generic feats. There are three types of effects.

• Channel divinity feats: Armored by faith and Darkfoe. They seem to provide a bonus when you spend CD, in addition to the chosen CD power. Still, no sign of any ability to recharge CD - maybe at Paragon?
• Radiant damage mastery: Clinging Radiance allows you to ignore concealment when you use a radiant attack, and Pervasive Light makes all your powers count as radiant to the purposes of enemy vulnerabilities.
• Divine healing: Invigorating Critical gets you free healing for your allies when you make a critical hit, and Saving Grace allows you to give up a succesful saving throw to allow an ally to make a saving throw.

Avenger. A few interesting, censure-specific options. I really like Censure's Grip, which prevents your OoE target from shifting when you hit with combat advantage. Avenging Surge, for the new build, grants temp. HP when an ally hits your OoE, which is pretty cool.

Cleric. Some boosts to Turn Undead, like Swift Turning, which turns it into a minor action. Narrow, but very strong. There are also ways to enhance Healing Word, such as Extended Healing (which increases its range, in case you ever missed that) and the very intriguing Radiant Vessel, which lets you "Use radiant power to enhance your healing word". We will see how that one turns out, but the idea looks cool.

Invoker. Several minor bonuses triggering on your Divine Covenant effects. Of those, I like Forceful Covenant, which adds 1 to the push effect of Covenant of Malediction, and Warding Covenant, which somehow protects the ally you slide with Covenant of Preservation against Combat Advantage. A feat that all invokers will want to take is Invoker's Blaze, as it increases fire and radiant damage and gets a boost when you're bloodied.

Paladins get my favourite feat so far: Honored Foe turns you into a sort of (pre-errata) mini-Battlerager, as you get temporary hit points when marked enemies attack you. We'll see what kind of power level they have given this, but since it has no other requirements, it looks like a well needed general boost to paladins. I'm concerned that other defenders might get it too easily via multiclassing, though. Resurgent Attack is another very nice feat, providing a decent bonus to attack rolls whenever you spend a healing surge (which Paladins do a lot). No racial requirements here (just a lot of Str.), but dwarven paladins will kill for this.

There's a feat called Untiring Virtue that grants you extra Lay on Hands uses (at last!), with a mechanic I really like - rather than getting extra uses up front, you recover them when you reach a milestone. Though the previewed tooltip doesn't specify, it would be cool if this worked on each milestone, and not just the first. In addition, this feat also recharges other class features (presumably replacing Lay on Hands).

I finish my commentary on paladin feats (paladins really got a lot of stuff, here) with an irritating one: Persistent Challenge removes the much maligned engagement clause from Divine Challenge. DMs, give your players this for free, please!

I like what I'm seeing. They'll still make good classes out of Cleric and Paladins

Bonus section - Random stuff revealed:

• New Avenger build is called Censure of Unity. I'd say it's themed around your allies attacking your OoE target.
• Class feature of new Cleric build, called Healer's Mercy. It seems to be an area effect affecting your allies.
• New Invoker covenant is Covenant of Malediction (already previewed)
• New Paladin class features: Ardent vow and Call of virtue. These seem to belong to different builds. Also, they appear to replace Lay on Hands and, like it, have a limited number of uses per day, probably linked to a secondary ability modifier.
• Replacement for Divine Challenge? This is ambiguous, as the feat entry looks bugged, but there is a mention of a Divine Sanction challenge.

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Errata FAIL

One little thing I missed on my previous post: The text versions of the new errata include for the first time an explanation from the designers. I'll comment on these tomorrow, but I felt I HAD to show you this:

Obviously, this errata needs its own errata. I shudder at the thought of a Dual Strike that included a Strength modifier to damage... Read More......

One errata to fix them all!

The rule updates for july have just come out, and I'm really, really impressed. Although the number of changes isn't huge, the accuracy and quality of the fixes is unprecedented. Seven changes affecting five of the most problematic rules elements in the game. You will no longer have to worry about banning/houseruling any of the following:

• Rain of Blows (broken Fighter encounter power)
• Righteous Rage of Tempus (obscene Channel Divinity feat)
• Battlerager Vigor (broken Fighter class feature)
• Dual Strike (broken Fighter at-will... do I see a pattern, here?)
• Guileful Switch (time warping Warlord utility)

So, what did they change?

Rain of Blows

Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC, two attacks
Hit: 1[W] damage.
Weapon: If you’re wielding a flail, a light blade, or a spear and have Dexterity 15 or higher, make the attack a third time against either the target or a different creature.

This power suffered from terrible, ambiguous templating, but under the most popular (and optimistic) interpretation of its text, it allowed for up to 4 attacks. That is, a 3rd level encounter power outdamaged most dailies, even at epic tier. The update tones it down significantly, clearly limiting the number of attacks to 3 and removing the strength bonus to damage.

I like this change, as the new text is elegant and clean, but don't be fooled into thinking that the power is no longer worth taking. Even for those without the required dexterity, the double attack without strength should overtake single attack encounter powers at mid-heroic levels, and improve from then on. As for making full use of it, it probably isn't worth it anymore to build characters specifically to use this power, but any fighter interested in polearms or with a racial bonus to dexterity will find enough reward if he invests to fill the requirements. It also makes a great multiclass power for Brutal Scoundrel rogues.

Channel Divinity: Righteous Rage of Tempus

Effect: If you hit with the next weapon attack that you make before the end of your next turn and it isn’t a critical hit, you roll the extra damage dice that you would roll if you scored a critical hit and deal the result as extra damage. If the attack is a critical hit, its extra damage is maximized.

No longer gives you an automatic critical hit, but the extra damage is nothing to sneeze at. It's clear that Tempus' favoured weapons are Vicious Executioner's axes or Fullblades, so you can expect to add 2d12 damage even at lower levels, and a rather impressive +9d12 at epic!

After losing half of its damage contribution and the combos with critical hit triggers (like Rending Weapons or Two-Weapon Opening) RRoT is still a fantastic feat, and flat out better than most Channel Divinity ones, at least until the coming of Divine Power. Tempus' legion of followers probably won't be diminished by this change, but their power has been brought down to almost reasonable levels.

Battlerager Vigor

Whenever you hit an enemy with a melee or a close attack, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Constitution modifier, plus any temporary hit points normally granted by the power.
If you use an invigorating fighter attack power and miss every target with it, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Constitution modifier.
(the extra damage using light armor and certain weapons is unchanged)

This is a bit stronger than what I would have liked, but I can live with that. They made the extra THP to trigger on your attacks instead of your enemies', taking away the immunity to melee minions and making Battleragers vulnerable to multiple enemies ganging up on them. THP gained against single enemies have been roughly halved, but they make up for it with a very cool bonus to invigorating powers: making them work on a miss. This is a nice twist, and introduces a synergy between Battlerager and Invigorating powers that the original rules failed to get.

Related to this fix are the changes to two feats:

Dwarf Stoneblood

Benefit: You gain a +2 feat bonus to the number of temporary hit points you gain from using an invigorating power. (+4/+6 at higher levels)

Improved Vigor

Benefit: You gain a +1 feat bonus to the number of temporary hit points you gain from using an invigorating power. (+2/+3 at higher levels)

Improved Vigor no longer provides additional benefits to Battleragers, and Dwarf Stoneblood has been overhauled - previously it gave a bonus to Battlerager Vigor equal to half your Constitution, and now it's just a better version of Improved Vigor. Also, the bonuses of both feats are now typed so that they no longer stack.

Overall, I like this new version of Battlerager Vigor, and the idea of respeccing my Fighter to be a Battlerager no longer ashames me. As for the feats, Improved Vigor will remain a good option for (non-dwarf) battleragers and a poor one for other fighter, whereas Dwarf Stoneblood is now open to dwarf fighters of any build (EDIT: it isn't - oddly, Battlerager Vigor is still a requirement), being a very strong incentive to pick Crushing Surge as an at-will.

Dual Strike

Primary Attack: Strength vs. AC (main weapon)
Hit: 1[W] damage.
Effect: Make a secondary attack.
Secondary Target: One creature other than the primary target
Secondary Attack: Strength vs. AC (off-hand weapon)
Hit: 1[W] damage.

Format aside, this is a functional equivalent of the fix I asked for, so I'm completely satisfied - fighters will no longer outdamage all but the best of strikers, and Tempest gameplay will be the group marking, minion slaying experience it should have been from the beginning. I can imagine some dual wielders actually not taking this power now, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Guileful Switch

Requirement: You must use this power during your turn before you take any other actions.
Effect: (switch initiative with an ally) You then act when your ally would have acted.

This gave you extra turns every encounter, which was obviously broken, as well as unintended. Another very well chosen fix.

To sum up, I love this update! I'd say about half of the things fixed here are still slightly overpowered, but in a tolerable way. Some players will be forced to retrain their characters, though: Battleragers, in particular, should no longer be able to ignore Crushing Surge, and dual wielding fighters built to be single-target damage machines will no longer work. Can't say I'll miss them.
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Testing: DnD Compendium Tooltips

I'm trying some new functionality for the site. If it works properly, whenever your mouse hovers over a link to D&D compendium (like this one), you will see a box with the item, power, monster or whatever the link pointed to. It's not the most original of ideas (as some of you may suspect, I blatantly stole it from a popular site about another game), but I think it can be pretty useful.

Below, there are a bunch of compendium links to test the system with a variety of different items. Feel free to report any bugs or issues you find, and I'll try to find a solution within my (still limited) Javascript skills. If it works out well, and my blog doesn't implode or anything, you can expect a future post about how to replicate it on your site.

As a nice bonus, this will retroactively enhance compendium links in previous posts on this blog! So you can also browse the archive, and look for broken stuff (and I don't mean Twin Strike this time). Enjoy!


Some known issues:
- Yes, this sucks if you lack a DDI subscription. You'll see the login window over and over - I'd like to detect and hide this window, but I haven't found a solution yet.
- The tooltips are too large. This is because of the way the Compendium formats its stuff (and it seems I can't override it).

Some random powers:
Power 1
Power 2
Power 3
And a wandering monster: Monster 3
Power 1
Power 2
Power 3

A few races, which sadly are too large to fit.
Race 1
Race 2
Race 3

Did you know that the compendium now includes a rules glossary?
Glossary 1 Glossary 2 Glossary 3

Roll initiative, here are more monsters!
Monster 1
Monster 2
Monster 3

...and after killing them, you get some nice loot.
Item 1
Item 2 , Item 3

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Reliably good

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.

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.
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