Community

*Cleave. You only have to hit the primary target, and the cleave damage to the second target is automatic. In other words put a mook with AC 10 next to a dragon with Armour Class 57 and if you can hit the mook, the other guy takes cleave damage.

While this technically is an exploit, it's power is questionable, especially at higher levels. Since the extra damage is equal to your Str mod, it's going to cap at about 9 dmg by the high-20's. Those rounds you're spending slicing mooks and dealing low damage to your main target are rounds you aren't concentrating your damage or using your debuff/tactical powers on the real heavy hitter(Elites and Solos). Even assuming the boss doesnt simply keep the mooks away from him, your going to run out of Cleave targets long before you make a real dent in his HP.

*Mirror Image--gives you a +6 bonus to AC, which goes down 2 whenever you miss (since you hit an image). A fighter with Armour Piercing Thrust ignores mirror image, since they get to attack Reflex not AC. Same for most of the rogue powers.

True, but the attacks that hit Reflex are similar to powers that hit AC in flavor only. They work in similar fashion to Fireball and Flamestrike mechanically, both of which shouldnt have any impact on AC anyway.

*Rogues have better chance to-hit than Fighters, since their base attack is the same and most of their attacks go for the often-poorer Reflex (with weapon to-hit bonus to AC included for good measure).

Also true. All but a small handfull of mobs have a Ref def lower than their AC, though most of those have a difference of <4. The trade-off, however, is that the Fighter is going to hit for similar damage and effect, but often hits multiple enemies.
The rogue is meant to hit and hit hard, thats why he's a striker. The fighter is still a defender (even if the label is a bit ill-fitting); he's meant to control his area of the battlefield.

*Half-elves make GREAT hammer fighters, thanks to their +2 CON. We'd expect that from reading fantasy literature, right? We all know that a half-elf should have favourite weapon: hammer?? Not a bow or anything like that??
(They do at least get to be better with x-bows...see below)

Hammer or no, I'll agree with you regarding the Half-Elves recieving a +2 to Con. The truth of the matter though, is that they strived to have each of the phb races have a unique array of stat adjustments. Since the Halfling gained the +Dex and +Cha, the Half-elf was saddled with +Con.
Personally, I would have preferred they recieve the same +2 to any that humans recieved.

*Steady Shooter (feat, page 206)--get +3 to damage with an x-bow if you don't move for a round. Great except...the prerequisite is Con 15+. WTF??

Goofy as heck, I'd agree. This was done, I'd imagine, in the name of balance. It encourages characters to have decent secondary and tertiary statsand not just dump all your points into 1 stat. Some feats, such as Astral Fire (13 Dex, muh?) suffer from this. Overall, I agree with the philosophy, even if some of the particulars may make you scratch your head.

*Ettins ..these are speed 6 like most creatures but thanks to their second head giving them Dual Actions, get two move actions a round. A second head, apparently, lets you run twice as fast. Sigh.

Eh. Considering the bizarre and abstract way time works within a turn to begin with, this doesnt seem a huge a stretch. You can just chalk it up to a greater ability to coordinate twice as efficiently as another creature thanks to the second head. Afterall, each character in a turn has a full 6 seconds to respond to the actions of those who have acted already; even if said actions shouldnt have chronologically occured yet. :P Mechanics are mechanics.

*Being on fire: a number of powers (e.g. fire archons) deal continuing fire damage, save ends. The character keeps fighting while ON FIRE, and it either goes out or it doesn't. There's no combat option that lets you reroll a failed save -its up the GM to houserule if you can roll around on the ground. Probably not, since it takes a L16 ranger power to reroll a save.

Almost all status-effects work the same way, the flavor notwithstanding. Reasonably, unless you allow all other status-effects another free way to make an additional save (Inducing vomit to negate poisons, jogging in place to negate cold/slow effects, etc) there is no reason to nerf one element over the others. If the inability to stop-drop-and-roll threatens your game, you can change the flavor a bit: imagine the ongoing damage as blistering burns that just keep hurting rather than active flames.

*LG deities seem to be allowed to have LG and Unaligned clerics, but not Good clerics.

Page 62 of the PHB says that you may be of any alignment to be a cleric of an UnAligned deity. Also, if you yourself are unaligned, you may be a cleric of any deity. It's a special property of being unaligned, both as a deity and a cleric.

*Hurl Through Hell (Warlock 29).--a fiery pit appears under your foe, he falls in, goes to hell for a round, and gets 7d10 damage. The weird thing here is,if he doesn't go to hell, he still gets half damage!

Flavor it however you like for the half-damage. Perhaps the flames errupting from the fiery pit singe the victim even if they avoid falling in. Perhaps the tangible darkness and evil from merely being the target of such a spell taxes your mental and physical reserves. It's all in how you imagine it.

*I liked Eladrin, mostly, up until I got to the MM entry where there were "Ghaeles of Winter". **ouch pun damage**

Alas, there is no save vs pun damage.

Also, forget sneaky halfling rogues. Most of the rogue powers do various multipliers of weapon (W) damage, so ideally you want large-ness or Powerful Build to pump up the damage (bugbears or minotaurs with super-size rapiers are pretty much the way to go).

Since nearly all the rogue's abilities are Dex-based, the minotaur is not the most optimized choice. Bugbears do make excellent combat rogues however. The halfling's bonus to Thievery and Cha gives them a leg-up on trapsmithing and powers such as Sly Flourish, Positioning Strike, etc. I'd say that neither on is strictly betterthan the other, just different.


All in all not meant as a contradiction to you, just a different point of view.