Community

I was going through the various KotS pre-made characters and looking at their abilities and it brought up a couple of thoughts.

Paladin and Divine Challenge

If you are not using the At-Will ability Holy Strike but instead are trying to encourage an opponent to come and attack you then it is best to use your Divine Challenge after you have taken your move and standard action for the turn.

Divine Challenge is a minor action and there is no rule that says what order you must do your action in (though Charge does say that you may not do any other actions after you use it). Thus, it is best to do your move action and standard action first for the turn and do the minor action of Divine Challenge last.

The opponent will then need to come and face you which could pull them away from say the fighter resulting in the opponet getting hit by an attack of opportunity or the fighter or their ability to attack a target that is shifting away.


Holding your Action

Further to this is the question of initiative order and holding your action.

In the rules, an example is given of monsters that delay their action which results in their iniative being one less then ally that they delayed their action to help.

Many things in 4e are based upon the rule that they last until the end of your next turn.

If we put these two rules together then what do we get?

If a Cleric and Rogue were on the same team and the Cleric had an iniative of say 12 and the Rogue had an iniative of say 10.

The Cleric casts Daunting Light on a target which the Cleric designates the Rogue as receiving the Combat Advantage benefit. This is on iniative 12.

The Rogue acts on their iniative of 10 to get Sneak Attack damage.

Next turn the Cleric chooses to delay their iniative to after the rogue goes.

The Rogue goes on iniative 10 in the new turn and gets a second chance to use combat advantage to give additional Sneak Attack damage on the target.

The cleric now take their new turn in the iniative order at 9 which will end the combat advantage at the end of their turn.

By having the cleric delaying initiative, the rules as written would allow the rogue to benefit twice from the combat advantage.

Another trick in delaying iniative is that many things like ongoing damage occur at the start of your turn. If your iniative order would come before someone that might be able to use the heal skill to help you break the effect or offer another benefit then delaying your initiative order allows you to delay the damage.

This can avoid a loss of a turn or being knocked unconsious before you can have one of your party members step in to help you.


Fighters and Power Attack

Many of the powers that a Fighter gets like the Daily power of Brute Strike is a Reliable Power. This means that if you miss then the power is not wasted.

Power Attack feat works by giving you a set -2 to hit for a +3 damage (at least those are the numbers for the Dwarf).

There is little incentive to not Power Attack when using Brute Strike.

Sure it changes the odds to hit by 10% with the -2 to hit but the power is reliable which means that if you miss then you still have the power to use next round. It is better to swing hard and miss a bit more to make the swing that hits that more effective.

Smerg wrote:

By having the cleric delaying initiative, the rules as written would allow the rogue to benefit twice from the combat advantage.

Another trick in delaying iniative is that many things like ongoing damage occur at the start of your turn. If your iniative order would come before someone that might be able to use the heal skill to help you break the effect or offer another benefit then delaying your initiative order allows you to delay the damage.

This can avoid a loss of a turn or being knocked unconsious before you can have one of your party members step in to help you.

I'm having a hard time seeing this as anything but an exploit. It isn't cinematic, it isn't simulationist, and it doesn't benefit the game in a storytelling fashion. There isn't any reason to allow it.

I hope this only looks possible due to the fact that we have incomplete rules. If not, it is #1 on my house rule hit-list.

Smerg wrote:

Holding your Action

Further to this is the question of initiative order and holding your action.

In the rules, an example is given of monsters that delay their action which results in their iniative being one less then ally that they delayed their action to help.

Many things in 4e are based upon the rule that they last until the end of your next turn.

If we put these two rules together then what do we get?

If a Cleric and Rogue were on the same team and the Cleric had an iniative of say 12 and the Rogue had an iniative of say 10.

The Cleric casts Daunting Light on a target which the Cleric designates the Rogue as receiving the Combat Advantage benefit. This is on iniative 12.

The Rogue acts on their iniative of 10 to get Sneak Attack damage.

Next turn the Cleric chooses to delay their iniative to after the rogue goes.

The Rogue goes on iniative 10 in the new turn and gets a second chance to use combat advantage to give additional Sneak Attack damage on the target.

The cleric now take their new turn in the iniative order at 9 which will end the combat advantage at the end of their turn.

By having the cleric delaying initiative, the rules as written would allow the rogue to benefit twice from the combat advantage.

Somehow I don't think that delaying is something you can do on someone else's turn. In 3.5e, you choose to delay when it's your turn. This would still end any spell's effects on your old initiative, even if you're shifting your actions to later in that round.

Rasmfrackn wrote:

Somehow I don't think that delaying is something you can do on someone else's turn. In 3.5e, you choose to delay when it's your turn. This would still end any spell's effects on your old initiative, even if you're shifting your actions to later in that round.

The wording though is the end of your next turn. If you delay your turn to later then that delaying is part of the 'Start of turn' and not the 'End of turn'.

Yes, it is an exploit of rules as written.

This though is the Character Optimization board which pretty much is based on how the rules can be exploited by reading and combining them as written.

Cinematically, the decision to delay your iniative to allow a cleric or another player to reach you and prevent you from taking an extra round of ongoing damage or to give them a chance to rescue you from say being petrified is cinematic. It should not be the fault of an initiative order of;

Monster, iniative 18, hits you with an ongoing effect.
Your initiative is 15, you take the ongoing effect.
Person who could have saved you has initiative 13.

Here, the choice to delay your initiative to 12 allows that person to step in and save your character. To insist that you must take the effect whatever your previous iniative might be is to return to the concept of Save or Die instead of allowing other players to come to your player's rescue.

Further to this is the idea of setting up a combo, which again, 4e is to promote.

Say on a turn you have the cleric and rogue again.

This time the Rogue has the higher iniative then the Cleric. The Cleric though anounces their intention to use the ability, Daunting Light on their turn.

Here, the Rogue is better delaying their action to wait till the Cleric has used their ability, Daunting Light, as a set up to their Rogue attack.

Then the Cleric delays their own initiative, restoring the order, to allow the rogue to maximize the effect.

This is a combo set up and maximized effect which is what good team play should involve instead of each person willy nilly doing their thing without maximizing the synergy of each character.

And that is kinda