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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Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index

I have been working for months in an article series updating the monsters in adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens to modern (i.e. post-MM3 standards). Here is a list of the articles released so far.

Introduction

1. Trolls
2. Encounter 1
3. Encounter T2
4. Encounter W1
5. Encounter W4
6. Encounters W2, W3
7. Encounters W5, W6
8. Encounters I1, W7

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Broken Bits: Messenger of Peace

Broken Paragon Paths, Part Eleven
Previous - Index - Next

As too many paragon paths in my list, Messenger of Peace is a fairly impressive option when used as intended, but can become crazy in less conventional builds. In this case, ‘as intended’ implies being a pacifist cleric, one of the most extreme types of character in the game, as it sacrifices most of its damaging capabilities in order to become the ultimate healer. The powers and features in this path share this pacifist theme, in that they deal no damage on their own, and often ask the character to refrain from otherwise hurting his enemies. However, they impose a lot of negative conditions and penalties on foes, making for a pretty strong package.

While all elements of the path are quite potent, it is the 16th feature which justified its inclusion in the ranks of the broken. Called Aura of Peace, it imposes a continuous -2 penalty to attack rolls on all enemies within 2 squares. This is amazingly strong, yet somewhat balanced by the fact that the pacifist cleric himself is a relatively fragile character focused on ranged attacks, making it hard to really exploit such a short range aura. But put it on the hands of any capable melee combatant, and you have the ultimate defender feature!

To put the effect of Aura of Peace in perspective, we can split it in two separate abilities: one to defend oneself against attacks from nearby enemies (-2 penalty to attack rolls against you), and one that protects your allies (-2 penalty to attack rolls against your allies). The first one, by itself, would be one of the best defensive boosts available for a melee character in the game - almost equivalent to a +2 bonus to all defenses, with the right positioning. As for the second part, it is a defender’s mark/aura on steroids (sans punishment), with the added benefit of actually stacking with marks/auras - both yours, and your allies’. Having both effects is way too effective, as well as out of place for a leader option.

A fix

As written, Aura of Peace greatly rewards characters who can hold large groups of enemies around them, making it a great fit for defender archetypes, but not so much for its alleged target, the pacifist healer. In addition to lowering the power level of the feature, my proposal also tries to add some pacifist flavor:

Aura of Peace (16th level): Enemies within 2 squares of you take a -2 penalty to attack rolls against bloodied allies.

A penalty that only works against bloodied creatures will be less than half as effective as a constant modifier, particularly given how great healers pacifist clerics are. But it’s still nothing to sneeze at, and can realistically be used without staying at the front line at all times - rather, you can stay on the back until a comrade gets low on health. At that point, either you close in to succor him, or he falls back under your protection. You still have the option of getting into melee with this aura, keeping it mind that it won’t help your own chances of surviving - for that, you’ll have to rely on your Vow of Nonviolence.

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Monsters of the Trollhaung VIII: Encounters I1, W7

Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index – Previous - Next

** SPOILER ALERT**
These articles update monsters in adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens – reading them may spoil encounters in the module!

A couple of big, bad trolls…

Skalmad the Troll King (Level 13 Elite Soldier)

The players at last get to meet the King, and it should be a scary fight. The original stat block for Skalmad is surprisingly decent, though it suffers from outdated stats (i.e. poor damage) and a real, Elite-like double attack. With a few updates, it should prove a worthy foe

1. Changes introduced

• Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race. Since Skalmad is an elite, I gave it twice the usual amount of regeneration and had Troll Healing bring it back with more HP.
• Modern Elite: Elite monsters should have roughly as many attacks as two standard monsters, so I gave Skalmad an at-will double attack in Dual Axe, and boosted the encounter and recharging powers to a more impressive level. I also added a bit of damage to Baleful Eye.
• Modern Soldier: Aside from lowering attack bonuses, I changed the basic attack to mark as an effect. Toppling Swing became a downright scary attack with the addition of a daze (on top of the existing prone effect), but I made it target only marked enemies. This prevents Skalmad from using all its most powerful attacks in the first round, and adds quite a bit of strategy to the monster.
• Removed redundancy: The claw attack was pointless, so I deleted it.

 

Warren Troll (Level 11 Brute)

See Encounter W1.

Nothic Gazer (Level 11 Artillery)

See Encounter W6.

Thurk, Troll Smith (Level 12 Soldier)

1. Changes introduced

• Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race. Since Skalmad is an elite, I gave it twice the usual amount of regeneration and had Troll Healing bring it back with more HP.
• Modern Soldier: Aside from lowering attack bonuses, I changed the basic attack to mark as an effect. Toppling Swing became a downright scary attack with the addition of a daze (on top of the existing prone effect), but I made it target only marked enemies. This prevents Skalmad from using all its most powerful attacks in the first round, and adds quite a bit of strategy to the monster.
• Removed redundancy: The claw attack was pointless, so I deleted it.

Redspawn Firebelcher (Level 12 Artillery)

1. Changes introduced

• Updated defenses, attack bonuses, and damage. This is a simple yet serviceable monster, so a couple of straightforward number tweaks should leave it ready for use. I upped the ranged attack accuracy, increased damage all around, and boosted some defenses which where excessively weak.

Grimlock Minion (Level 14 Minion)

1. Changes introduced

• Added Role (Brute). As an old minion, this one was missing a role. Brute was the most fitting, by far.
• Updated defenses, attack bonus, damage. This monster’s stats were unusually low, to the point that they wouldn’t have been out of place in a minion with several less levels. Now it’s up to par with modern minions.
• Added Trait (Grimlock Resilience). I stole this one from the Human Slaves in Dark Sun, and I think it’s an amazing design. This lets you have threatening minions even if you don’t use any special houserule for minions. With our house rules, they were pretty impressive, though not to the point of becoming unbalanced.

All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. These statistics blocks were generated using the D&D Adventure Tools, despite the tons of bugs. Except for the ones where I gave up, and used MS Word instead. Read More......

The Magic Item Reset (XIX): Character Wealth and Rarity

Magic Item Reset: Index

In testing the new set of magic items, one problem I have come across is that of equipping new characters of a level above the first. Not owning the Rules Compendium, I consulted the guidelines in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (p.143), finding them rather inadequate for my purposes. The DMG suggests that characters starting at higher level should get three items (of character level, level +1, and level -1) and gold equal to the value of an item of level -1. This wasn’t a bad approximation under the default treasure rules, but with the introduction of item rarity, it leads to inaccurate results.

With item rarity, as a character gains levels he not only acquires more and higher level items, but also more rare ones. Since uncommon and rare items cannot be bought with gold, a character starting with less such items than expected for his level will never recover from this disadvantage, unless the DM somehow compensates for it. The table in this article is intended to give DMs a more accurate guideline for handing out starting gear in campaigns using rarity, as well as for knowing when a party has too little (or too much) treasure for its level.

This table shows how many magic items a newly created character of a given level should have, along with their rarity: common (C), uncommon (U), or rare (R). Assign item levels in the following way: the highest level item can have up to the character’s level +1. The next item can have a level equal to the character’s. For each subsequent item, the maximum level is one less than the previous one. For example, a 15th level character could have items of levels 16,15,14,13,12,11,10,9. A player can assign item rarities to each item level as he prefers. For a given level slot, a player can choose to have a lower level item instead, though no compensation is given. Any item slot can be traded by the sell value of the item in gold pieces (usually 20% for common items), though selling uncommon or rare items is extremely discouraged, since there is no way to regain these slots.

Variant Rule: Catching Up

An interesting alternate rule I have been experimenting with consists in having high level characters start out with little or no gear (barring plain magic weapons/armor/amulets of the appropriate enhancement bonus), but hand out treasure at an accelerated rate until they catch up with the expected wealth. I like doing this because higher level PCs, particularly those at paragon tier or above, can be quite complex, requiring players several sessions in order to grow accustomed to their abilities. Since magic gear is yet another layer of complexity, I find that delaying the access to magic items for a while provides players with a smoother learning curve, rather than an overwhelming set of options right from the start.

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