Calculating hit chances using attack and defense normalization.

D&D 4E' s combat rules are set up so that attack and defense values of both player characters and monsters increase at a regular rate of 1 point per level. As a consequence of this, a character's chances of hitting (and being hit by) an opponent of his level remains mostly constant throughout levels. In today's post, I'll define two character statistics, normalized attack bonus and normalized defenses, that express, respectively, how good the character's attacks and defenses are, compared to other characters of the same level. Then, I'll show how these magnitudes can be used to easily calculate hit chances.

Introduction

Although monster statistics are subject to variation from one creature to the other, their average values are usually close to those shown in Dungeon Master's Guide, p.184. According to the table in that page, attack and defense modifiers for monsters are the sum of a constant (that depends on the monster's role) and the creature's level. Player characters also follow this principle, but with less regularity: even though over the course of 30 levels a PC's attacks and defenses will have increased by roughly 29 points, this progression often has spikes, with one level granting two points and the following none. Nevertheless, translating PC statistics to a constant value plus the character's level would be a valid aproximation.

Following this principle, we define two magnitudes:

Normalized attack

Normalized attack bonus= attack bonus - character level

Normalized defense

Normalized defense (AC/For/Ref/Wil)= defense - character level

Notation: As an abbreviation, when referrring to a normalized stat, I'll use the notation nXX (the stat value preceded by 'n').

Example: A level 1 human paladin has an AC of 20, or n19 (his normal AC is 20, and the normalized value is 19). His bonus to hit with a longsword will be +7, or +n6 (his normal bonus to hit is 7, and the normalized value is 6).

Normalized attacks and defenses have the following properties:

- A character with a normalized attack bonus N always has the same base chance to hit a Skirmisher monster of his same level, regardless of the actual level. The same applies to other monster roles.

- A character with a normalized defense N always has the same base chance of being hit by a skirmisher of his same level on an attack against that defense, regardless of the actual level. The same applies to other monster roles.

Applications

Once we have these statistics, we can compare them to those in the monster statistics table to find the hit chances for each value. The results are shown in the following tables. The 'mid' column has average PC stats (i.e, those equivalent to a Skirmisher monster), the 'poor' column shows numbers for a PC with weak attacks or defenses, and the 'good' column has attack values that correspond to particularly accurate PCs, and defenses that are good enough for a Defender character. Probably the most important information that can be concluded from these tables is that an average character's chance to hit (or be hit) is usually 60%.

These values always consider that the opponent is a Skirmisher monster. Depending of monster role, they can be 10% better (when fighting Brutes) or 10% worse (when the opponent is a Soldier)

Table 1: Normalized attack bonus and chance to hit

Table 2: Normalized defense and chance to hit

This doesn't cover the full range of possible values, though lower stats should be rare. To calculate hit chances for these values, use an entry from the table: for defenses, the hit chance decreases by 5% per additional point of defense; for attacks, the chance increases by 5% per additional point. If the values are lower than those in the table, do the inverse operation.

Example: A Level 1 halfling rogue has an AC of 17, or n16. Looking at table 2, this translates to a 50% chance of being hit by a monster of his level. The party's level 1 Paladin has an AC of 20 (n19), which goes beyond the values in the table; since it's 3 point higher than the 'good' entry (n16), the chance to be hit will be 35%. Finally, a particularly clumsy level 1 sorcerer has an AC of 12 (n11), which is 1 point below 'poor', in the table. The chance to be hit for that character will be 5% higher than that of the table entry, for a total of 75%.

On rare ocassions, a character's attacks bonus will be high enough so as to have the maximum hit chance (95%, as a roll of '1' always misses) against monsters of his level. Likewise, it's possible, though unusual, to have defenses good enough to be hit only with rolls of 20, or bad enough to be hit 95% of the time. When that happens, we say the stat is capped. The tables below show stat caps for attacks and defenses. The low-caps will usually only appear on the worst non-AC defenses (For, Ref or Wil) of epic level characters, or the melee basic attacks of non-melee high level characters. High-caps aren't easy to reach, but some weapon users can reach them for certain attacks. A character reaching a high-cap for a defense, and particularly for AC, is usually a sign of some degenerate game mechanic, and has an adverse effect on the game, as he will be immune to a majority of monster attacks.

As a side note, increasing a stat above the natural cap is not completely worthless, as characters frequently face monsters of higher level, or soldiers. Nevertheless, attack bonuses beyond that point have a reduced value for a PC. On the other hand, reaching a defense cap is extremely strong, and adding a couple of points beyond that would serve to negate even enemies with Combat Advantage from hitting with anything other than a 20.

Table 3: Attack bonus cap

Table 4: Defense cap

Table generation

In order to generate the tables shown above, we took the Monster Statistics by Role table (DMG, p.184), and use level 0 monster stats as reference for normalized PC stats: Skirmishers for the 'medium' column, Soldiers for the 'good' column, and Brutes for the 'Poor' column. These are arbitrary numbers, but after some quick comparisons with actual character sheets, they seem to match pretty well. Finally, we calculate the hit chances of each value against a level 0 (normalized) Skirmisher monster, and add them to the table. We choose Skirmisher as reference because they are the 'average' monsters, statistics-wise.

Values for defenses other than AC use a slightly different method, as according to the DMG table these are the same for all monster roles. Instead, we have used monster defenses for the 'medium' column, increased them by 2 points for the 'good' column and decreased by 2 for the 'poor' column.

Hit formulas

If you are frequently calculating character hit chances (say, for optimization purposes), the tables above are a slightly cumbersome tool. In that case, you might be better off using the following formulas. 'Hac' and 'Hdef' are the attack bonuses to hit AC or other defense, respectively, and 'nHac' and 'nHdef' are their normalized values.

Chance to be hit
% to be Hit (AC) = (26-nAC)/20
% to be Hit (Def) = (24-nDef)/20

Chance to hit
% to hit (AC) = (7+nHac)/20
% to hit (Def) = (9 + nHdef)/20

Or, without the normalization:

Chance to be hit
% to be Hit (AC) = (26+lvl-AC)/20
% to be Hit (Def) = (24+lvl-Def)/20

Chance to hit
% to hit (AC) = (7+Hac-lvl)/20
% to hit (Def) = (9 +Hdef-lvl)/20

Note that the formulas break at the attack and defense caps - when capped, you should use 95% or 5% (depending on the case) instead of the values provided here. Read More......

Class Review: The Seeker

This month's debut content from Player's Handbook 3 on DDI consists, again, on a new class: the Seeker. These days, it looks like we are getting some new class almost every month, which would eventually become hard to justify, if not for the fact that the designs look better each time. If last month's Assassin quickly became one of my all-time favourites, today's Seeker doesn't let me down, either.

Rather than a completely novel idea, Seekers consist on an interesting variant for a relatively untapped archetype: the Archer. This class' twist comes in the form of primal spirits that imbue your missiles with energy, granting special effects. If Archer Rangers were like Robin Hood or Legolas, Seekers play more like a Green Arrow or Hawkeye, almost every arrow coming with some kind of trick or surprise. Though this niche had partialy been covered by Artificers, as well as Prescient Bards, the emphasis on archery is greater here - while these other classes had the ranged weapon as one of many options for channeling attacks, the Seeker is one with his bow (or crossbow, or whatever). When you think of it, not even Rangers can claim such a devotion to archery, as only one of that class' builds is really focused in ranged combat.

None of the powers shown so far feature this kind of arrow trick, but there's still hope.

Rules-wise, the Seeker is a controller of the Primal power source, though its secondary roles seem to be way more predominant than in most classes. The one build that has been released, the Bloodbond Seeker, is suppossed to dabble as a Striker, but that hardly makes him justice. The class features of that build give them a level of maneuverability that most pure Strikers only dream of, and only the lack of a single-damage boost keeps you from wondering if we should actually think of them as strikers with a touch of controllers, instead of the other way around. I'm really intrigued for the Spiritbond build, which we won't see until PHB3 is released, as it is said to have a Defender splash. Defender archetypes don't mixed well with ranged attacks, so that won't be easy to pull off.

The class features are few, but very relevant. If there is one that will make players of most other classes green with envy, it's the ability of the Bloodbond build to shift as a minor action, every turn. We finally get to play kobolds! I'm really, really excited by this, and it's an ideal fit for an archer, as your greater concern is usually to get surrounded by enemies, unable to attack without taking opportunity attacks. This will never, ever happen to Seekers, though. If that wasn't enough, the build comes with Encaging Spirits, an encounter power that pushes and slows all enemies around you -no roll to hit required- useful for not only running away, but locking down opponents as well. Finally, the class-defining feature that will be available regardless of the build is called Inevitable Shot, and it allows you redirect missing arrows to attack elsewhere, once per encounter.

Seeker powers are notaby short on bursts and blasts, for a controller class. Instead, the most common method for damaging groups of enemies is the single target attack with splash damage around it. There is also plenty of zones and hindering conditions, typically originated from the target of a ranged attack. As the attacks deal weapon damage and Seekers are proficient with bows and crossbows, they are all but guaranteed to have the highest single-target damage of all controllers, which along with their extraordinary mobility and moderate area damage makes for a distinct combat style. However, this damage won't grow at the same rate as other weapon users, as encounter and daily powers tend to roll a few weapon damage die plus some other fixed amount of dice. That is, where a Fighter or Ranger would get 3[W] damage, the Seeker rolls [W]+2d6, or something like that. This reduces both their overall damage and the degree to which they depend on superior weapons, but also allows for greater variety in attack powers' damage and effects.

Regarding the power selection, I think that the reduced power list released as Debut Content (3 at-wills and a mere 2 options per level for the rest of slots) isn't very tolerant to the presence of mediocre options. For some slots, it seems you'd do better taking a lower level power than one of the available options: Levels 9 and 29 in particular come to mind. Not that I will be playing epic level Seekers anytime soon, but it is a letdown looking at the supposedly most powerful attacks available to the class, and find them bland and unexciting. Fortunately, the at-will selection is solid, and provides enough variation on the theme of single attacks with a splash effect. The default attack of choice is likely to be the amazing Stinging Swarm (a ranged attack that inflicts an attack penalty on the target and close enemies), but the other ones will be good alternatives whenever you want to clear minions or just deal area damage.

To conclude, I'll comment on a few powers that called my attention:

- Hunter's Instinct (level 2 Utility) Is a Stance that increases your crit range, but only when you shoot from 2 squares from the enemy. It's a risky strategy, but the reward is great, the class has enough mobility to pull it off, and it should be a blast to play. I wouldn't mind seeing more effects of this kind for the class, on PHB3.

- Escaping Shot (level 3 Encounter) honors its name. A ranged attack that doesn't provoke, dazes the target, and lets you shift a billion squares, it is probably overkill for a class with such a great mobility, but it's nevertheless cool.

- Blurring Stride (Utility 6) grants you the Warlock's Shadow Walk ability for one encounter per day. I always loved that feature.

- Wave of Sleep (Daily 15) is the Wizard's Sleep spell on steroids. Increased accuracy, no friendly fire, and a guaranteed daze, this improves on a classic.

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Basic Ki Focus enchantments on DDI

EDIT: Though I missed it on the first read, this Character Builder update also includes the assassin multiclass feat. It's called Shadow Initiate.

One of the few flaws I found on the Assassin class (released exclusively for DDI last month, and commented here) was the lack of actual enchantments for the new type of magic item they presented for the class: the Ki Focus.

The problem was not unsurmountable, as it was easy to assume how a basic, 'Magic Ki Focus' would work. In addition, Mike Mearls (the designer of the class) made a post in a non-official forum suggesting to allow any enchant that was available to all weapons to be applied to Ki Focuses, as a temporary house rule. That was good enough for me, but many people was concerned by the lack of official rulings, and the question remained of how we would handle this on Character Builder, when the class was finally released there.

The class has been finally released on CB, and there's good news on the matter: 'Ki Focus' appears as a new magic item type, and the most basic enchantments (plain vanilla 'Magic Ki Focus' +N) are available to take. They also appear in the Compendium, as you can see here.

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Running out of surges

Edit: I almost missed it, but Dragon magazine has recently published a very similar ritual to what I propose in this post. It's in the third Playing Vistany article, and it's called Comrades' Succor (no Compendium link yet, though). So, if you liked my idea, you can use it officially now. The ritual in Dragon actually allows to transfer surges instead of spending them, so I prefer my rule, but it's close enough.

Very often, my group has been forced to take an early rest due to one member or the other getting beaten hard, and unable to return to full HP (or even to consciousness). This usually leads to some awkward situations, and more than once our DM has resorted to handwaving the recovery of some surges to keep the game going, when having a long rest wouln't be feasible. Even if our characters might be able to beat more encounters without a full group, we find unacceptable to have a player out of the game until we can find a place to camp. What could we do to prevent this?

It is certainly possible to mitigate the problem through better tactics and character customization (in fact, some of our characters have picked the Durable feat with this in mind). However, you can't help having some PC's that are less resilient than the rest, and sometimes the fight just goes wrong, and someone gets knocked down. So I have been thinking of possible house rules that specifically address the problem of a character running out of surges.

Now, when messing with this kind of things, you run the risk of obsoleting the use of healing surges as a resource in the game. I don't want to do anything like that, even if there are already some powers, like Unicorn's Touch (which I have strongly criticized) that break this model (EDIT: No more! Unicorn's Touch has been errata-ed into a daily). What I wanted was a solution where surges would still be relevant, but a character without them could remain in the game, even if at a disadvantage. An additional restriction was that it should be easily accessible to any party, regardless of composition.

The idea I came up with meets these requirements, and has the unusual advantage of being implementable in an official book, without any need for errata. It's a low level ritual, with a game-changing impact not unlike that of Raise Dead:

Shared Vitality
You temporarily link the life energies of your allies, so that they can share their strength with an exhausted comrade.

Level: 1 Component Cost: 50 gp
Category: Restoration Market Price: 50 gp
Time: 10 minutes Key Skill: Heal (no check)
Duration: Instantaneous

Perform this ritual during a short rest, and choose a target character with no remaining healing surges. At the end of the rest, you or any character assisting in the ritual can choose to spend any number of healing surges without gaining any hit points. The target regains hit points as if he had spent that many healing surges.

The raw lifeforce of paragon and epic characters is much harder to manipulate; increase the component cost to 1,000 gp for paragon tier characters, and 25,000 for epic tier characters.

The most important feature of this solution is that, by working only on surgeless characters, it prevents a character benefitting from it from using most common forms of in-combat healing until the group takes a long rest. This is a severe drawback, but a vulnerable character is a definite improvement over an unconscious one. This way, we not only ensure that surges remain relevant, but we also protect the Artificer's niche, as the healing mechanic of that class is very similar to this ritual's effect - with the crucial difference that the targets of an Artificer's infusion can still heal during encounters.

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Primal Power preview: The Swarm Druid

With the release of Primal Power not so far off, the first previews of the book are coming out, with some very promising material. Today I'll talk one of the most innovative concepts I've seen in a while - the Swarm Druid.

Swarm Druids are one of the two new builds for Druid PCs featured in Primal Power (the other being Summoner Druids, shown in a playtest article long ago), and they are based on a bizarre idea that, somehow, fits the flavor of the class perfectly. When most druids can shapeshift into a beast form, resembling some kind of ferocius animal, the Swarm guys turn into dozens, or hundreds, of tiny creatures. The picture below should give you an idea of what it looks like.

The swarm in action.

This, to me, is one of the most awesome character concepts I've ever seen. Perhaps the most obvious use is to become a bug swarm (flies, roaches, worms), but it's far from the only possibility. Upgrading to vertebrates, we can find several other horror classics: rats, snakes and even bats. But why stop there? Particularly cruel druids could explore the 'adorable' route - imagine their enemies being swallowed by a horde of kittens, puppies, and the like.

Regarding the mechanics, the swarmers come with an interesting twist, both in their defenses and offensively. These druids have Constitution as their secondary stat, but instead of adding this modifier to their AC (as their Guardian Druid counterparts), they use it to gain resistance to damage. This comes with several limitations (it doesn't work against area attacks, nor if you're wearing heavy armor, and you have to be in beast form), but it is undoubtedly a very strong mechanic. At lower levels, the Swarm will be able to almost ignore minions, and stand toe to toe with many types of monsters - as long as they keep away from brutes. The combination of abysmal Druid AC and huge brute damage means these monsters are a natural counter to the Swarm.

Though I haven't seen it in play yet, I'm liking this way of defending, at least at lower levels. However, I'm concerned that it won't work that well at Paragon Tier and beyond, when the loss of AC becomes more pronounced, and the damage resisted is a much lower percentage of what your enemies will be dealing. I expect some feat enhancing the feature for characters above 11th level will fix this problem. At any rate, it will be interesting to see a Druid type that is very resilient in beast form, but quite vulnerable as a humanoid.

The article shows four new attack powers associated with the new build. All of them are either close burst or blast, so we can expect close attacks to be a major theme for swarms, which isn't surprising. There also seems to be an emphasis in attacks that temporarily boost the Druid's defenses, also a natural fit from a flavor point of view. The new at-will is called Swarming Locusts, and will easily become a favourite among Druids of all kinds. It is a close blast attack that works in beast form and creates a zone of insects that distract your enemies for a turn, and it fills a very needed niche - beast form attacks with areas or controller effects. I always liked the original array of beast attacks, but all of them targeted a single melee enemy, feeling more like a defender's powers to me. With this new power, you can now build druids with both close and ranged area attacks, plus a strong melee basic attack, all of them at-will.

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Fixing the math: A case against Expertise feats

Unlike other overpowered feats, Implement Expertise (and its cousins Weapon and Focused) was never intended to be balanced. Although feats as absurdly strong as these are usually the consequence of hasty development or lack of playtesting, this time the reason was different: It's an attempt to fix a problem with the game's core mechanics. In today's article, I'll discuss what problem they were meant to solve, why I'm not completely satisfied with the result, and some alternate solutions that might work better.

The problem lies in the game's math. 4e has a remarkably straightforward model behind character progression, since both attack rolls and defenses increase at a constant rate of +1 per level. The idea is brilliant, and among other things it allows DMs to upgrade or downgrade monsters on the fly, as well as ensuring that the success rate of attacks remains the same (typically between 50% and 60%) across levels, both for monsters and PCs. At least, that's the theory, because there's a tiny problem with how it got implemented: they got it wrong.

To be fair, the error is small, though not insignificant. The attack bonus for a level 30 player character is actually 3 points (i.e. 15%) below what it should be. This gap has grown over the course of many levels, becoming noticeable at Paragon tier, and painful at Epic. Monster attacks and player defenses do increase as expected. This difference doesn't make the game unplayable by any means, but it does result in harder, longer encounters at higher levels. Also, the reduced chance to hit makes player actions slightly more frustrating. It is rumored that the game designers were perfectly aware of this from the beginning, and intended for paragon and epic tier encounters to be increasingly challenging. Also, this would be somewhat compensated by the increased access to attack boosting effects, particularly from Leader characters.

By the time Player's Handbook 2 was released, it's obvious that the official stance had changed, as the book featured Expertise feats for weapons and implements that provided an unprecedented, overpowered, and gradually increasing bonus to attack rolls that topped out at a very convenient +3. The attack progression issue would be corrected, as long as every player took the appropiate feat. And they inevitably would, since they would be the most powerful feats anyways. Case solved.

There is something I really dislike about this approach, though - the game now has a mandatory feat. Most other feats, no matter how good, can at least be sometimes ignored, even if only by specific character builds. There is the rare Dwarf out there not interested in Weapon Training (being an implement user, of course). Not everybody can afford the hideously broken avenger multiclass feats. The closest I can think of, in terms of being universally taken, are the Superior Weapon Proficiency feats, though those are also ignored by implement wielders, and they are somewhat interesting because you do have a choice of different weapons to take. The only choice related to Expertise feats is 'when'. You might as well grant everybody a +1/+2/+3 to hit and remove one feat slot, and the effect would almost be the same.

The increased chance to hit is good for the game, and I welcome it, but by removing choice from one precious feat slot, building characters becomes less fun and varied. The problem becomes even worse for classes that usually benefit from multiple weapons, implements, or combinations thereof, such as Paladins, Bards, or Wizards taking the Second Implement feat, since they need multiple expertise feats in order to remain competitive. At least, as a partial patch, the Focused Expertise feat allows PCs using a single item as weapon and implement (Swordmages and Monks) to benefit from Expertise goodness with a single feat. To me, even that is too much - in order to get this needed adjustment, players shouldn't have to sacrifice anything.

My suggestion, then, is to give the bonus for free, without any cost to the players. I will show two ways of achieving this - one is what I would have liked to see in PHB2, and the other is a more practical way to implement it for your campaign.

The ideal solution

The game already had a proven method for dealing with the kind of adjustments that were needed for attack modifiers: Masterwork Armors had successfully solved this same problem, for Armor Class, in the first Player's Handbook. Why didn't the designers choose the same path for attack bonuses? It wouldn't have been difficult to create a series of masterwork weapons and implements that granted an extra bonus to hit, something like:

Magic Weapon/Implement
Level - Masterwork type - Hit bonus - Enhancenment bonus
1-5 - * - +0 - +1
6-15 - Masterwork 1 - +1 - +2
16-25 - Masterwork 2 - +2 - + 4
26-30 - Masterwork 3 - +3 - +6

I think this would have been a good patch to include in PHB2, but it isn't very practical if you intend to use it as a house rule. What kills it, for me, is the fact that it's currently impossible to add this kind of bonuses to a weapon or to individual powers in the Character Builder. Since I'm a Character Builder junkie, and I've become almost physically unable to write character sheets by hand (which led to great suffering with the Assassin release last month), I had to discard this solution in favor of a simpler, if less elegant, one.

The solution that works

This houserule lacks the beauty of the previous idea, but it has the advantage of actually working. It can be explained in two short steps:

- Step 1: Ban all expertise feats.
- Step 2: At level 5, grant all PCs as many Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise feats as they need. Feel free to add more whenever they need it.

Adding extra feats on Character Builder is pretty easy to do. On the feats tab, above the list of chosen feats, there is a 'houserule' icon you can click to give the character additional feat slots. You can see it on the images below (click to enlarge).

Adding extra feat slots in Character Builder

Choosing feats for your additional slots

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Fighter Essentials: The Great Weapon

UPDATE: The article has finally been errataed in the Dragon magazine compilation. There are details below, but the most important error - the Warding Steel power - is fixed now.

The new Class Acts article devoted to Fighters (how many are there, already?) provides much needed reasons to make a Greatweapon Talent Fighter, by far the most overlooked of this class' builds. There's a lot to comment - to summarize, the article makes a great read, and is mostly safe to use in your campaign, with two notable exceptions I'll explain below.

New Feats

The new feats presented in the article are something the class has been missing greatly, ever since Martial Power was released: Fighter options that can't also be taken by Battleragers or Tempests. Most of them are decent and moderately interesting, but there's one that really sucks, a very strong one that will be very influential in future fighter builds, and one that is quite broken.

The crappiest new feat is, sadly, called Fighter Weapon Specialization. One would expect such a name to be used for something really cool, but this amounts to a mere +1 to damage with your chosen weapon type, which never increases. What a letdown.

The feat you will have to take into account whenever you make a Fighter PC from now on is Hewing Charge. It's the ultimate reward for going the 2H-weapon talent route, and grants a Con bonus to charge damage. This has the potential to embarrass Howling Strike Barbarians, and asks you to build the character around it. Nevertheless, I think it isn't really unbalanced, considering what you can get from other Fighter builds. I really, really like it.

The broken one is Pinning Challenge which, despite its name, doesn't have nothing to do with Combat Challenges or Opportunity attacks. It allows you to immobilize with basic attacks, and it's wrong at so many levels! Against melee enemies, this allows you to effectively stun them at-will, for the whole encounter. What's worse, nonbasic attack powers become really unappealing once you have this. A real blunder.

A version of Pinning Challenge that is both cool and balanced just requires you to add 'When making a Combat Challenge attack or an opportunity attack'. I strongly recommend you to use it, or something similar, at home.

By the way, the Mastered Technique feat, which is conceptually sound, won't work in practice because it grants a +1 feat bonus to AC, but every Fighter worth his salt won't be able to stack it with the +1 feat bonus granted by Armor Specialization. Since it absolutely needs to be a typed bonus, why not change it to +2?

New Powers

There is a neat selection of new powers, typicaly centered on 2-handed weapon wielders, but without actually requiring the Weapon Talent class feature. The core mechanic for attack powers seems to be granting -2 to hit for a bonus to damage (usually) Con. At first sight, this is terrible unless the bonus is huge (which it isn't), but some of the powers manage to be decent.

Brutal Advance (Daily 5)

A multiattack power, exclusive to 2-handed weapon wielders. Hit, push, then charge. This should amount to a great deal of damage.

Line in the Sand (Utility 6) (Update: changed to daily power in errata)

An amazing example of justifying Zone powers for martial characters.

Hurricane Strike (Daily 15)

This targets "any enemy in burst". This deviates from the usual "each enemy in burst", but judging from the powers, they mean the same. Weird. Maybe it's supposed to work like previous powers, but allowing you to skip enemies?

Warding Steel (Util 16) - Completely broken as an at-will. A permanent bonus to AC equal to Con, and you can activate more than once per turn (it stacks!). It really should be an encounter power. (Update: Finally changed to Encounter. The world is saved)

Toppling Finish (Daily 19)

This is a promising 2-hit power: the first attack knocks prone, and the second hurts a lot. The problem is, it has the reliable keyword, so you can 'spend' the reliability with a hit that deals no damage, then miss the important attack. Maybe they could add a line like "Hitting this attack doesn't count towards the Reliable keyword"?

Battle Furor (Utility 22)

Permanent Stance! It's an encounter power, so you can have it always up. It's effect is to turn excess healing into temp. HP, and then grant some extra damage. Very cool.

Paragon Paths

Two, exclusive to Great Weapon fighters. The Great Weapon Master specializes, oddly, in defensive maneuvers and counter attacks - the 16th level feature grants a Con bonus to damage against enemies that have missed you. It looks more fun to play than the average path, and isn't too bad at the power level department.

The Siegebreaker' Shtick is to weaken enemy defenses. It's damage enhancing feature is what the Pit Fighter's should have been all along: ability modifier damage (Con instead of Wis, here), limited to once per round, and only when you have combat advantage. This one also features a permanent (that is, once per encounter) Stance, called Brutal Momentum, which grants bonus to attack after hitting with at-wills.

Read More......