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Ok, another question. Are these powers balanced?

Racial Power 1
Encounter ✦ Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Poison
Requirements: You must be bloodied.
Minor Action Personal
Effect: You gain temporary hit points equal to your Strength, Constitution or Charisma modifier. Until the end of your next turn you gain the following benefits: double the resistance granted by your Dragon Skin feature; when you deal damage with a melee attack, you deal an additional Strength, Constitution or Charisma modifier damage; and creatures that begin their turns adjacent to you take Strength, Constitution or Charisma modifier damage.
Special: When you create your character, choose Strength, Constitution, or Charisma to use with this power. You also choose the power’s damage type: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. These two choices remain throughout your character’s life and do not change the power’s other effects.

Racial Power 2
Encounter
Minor Action Close burst 5
Effect: Allies within burst gain +2 bonus to their next damage roll, and gain temporary hit points equal to your Constitution or Charisma modifier. Increase the bonus to +4 at level 11st and to +6 at level 21st.
Special: When you create your character, choose Constitution, or Charisma as the ability score you use for granting temporary hit points. This choice remains throughout your character’s life and does not change the power’s other effects.


So, what about them?

Magus_Stragus]So, let's say I want to mix the two different types of shifters. Would it be balanced to give them upon shifting +2 to damage rolls and +1 to AC and Reflex? ('ll leave the regeneartion as a feat)

I don't see any balance issues with combining the bonus damage with the defence boosts. The regen, however, I think feel is too for a feat as it would basically allow a player to get the best of both racial powers at the same time.

So, let's say I want to mix the two different types of shifters. Would it be balanced to give them upon shifting +2 to damage rolls and +1 to AC and Reflex? ('ll leave the regeneartion as a feat)[/quote]
I don't see any balance issues with combining the bonus damage with the defence boosts. The regen, however, I think feel is too for a feat as it would basically allow a player to get the best of both racial powers at the same time.

Magus_Stragus]Ok, another question. Are these powers balanced?

Racial Power 1
Encounter ✦ wrote:

Ok, another question. Are these powers balanced?

Racial Power 1
Encounter ✦ Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Poison
Requirements: You must be bloodied.
Minor Action Personal
Effect: You gain temporary hit points equal to your Strength, Constitution or Charisma modifier. Until the end of your next turn you gain the following benefits: double the resistance granted by your Dragon Skin feature; when you deal damage with a melee attack, you deal an additional Strength, Constitution or Charisma modifier damage; and creatures that begin their turns adjacent to you take Strength, Constitution or Charisma modifier damage.
Special: When you create your character, choose Strength, Constitution, or Charisma to use with this power. You also choose the power’s damage type: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. These two choices remain throughout your character’s life and do not change the power’s other effects.

This is a very loaded power. Breaking it down, it gives you:
Temp HP
x2 an unspecified amount of energy resistance (Dragon Skin works how?), but I assume it's not neglibile.
Bonus damage to next attack
Auto-hit AoE and minion clearance.

All in all, I think this is too strong for a standard racial power. The bonus damage by itself makes it almost equal to Infernal Wraith, and would be make it a decent power by itself if it wasn't for the melee only restriction. Everything else just cranks it to 11. And AoE automatic minion destruction just feels cheesy to me.

I say pick one, maybe two, of those effects and tweak from there.

Magus_Stragus]Racial Power 2
Encounter
Minor Action Close burst 5
Effect: Allies within burst gain +2 bonus to their next damage roll, and gain temporary hit points equal to your Constitution or Charisma modifier. Increase the bonus to +4 at level 11st and to +6 at level 21st.
Special: When you create your character, choose Constitution, or Charisma as the ability score you use for granting temporary hit points. This choice remains throughout your character’ wrote:

Racial Power 2
Encounter
Minor Action Close burst 5
Effect: Allies within burst gain +2 bonus to their next damage roll, and gain temporary hit points equal to your Constitution or Charisma modifier. Increase the bonus to +4 at level 11st and to +6 at level 21st.
Special: When you create your character, choose Constitution, or Charisma as the ability score you use for granting temporary hit points. This choice remains throughout your character’s life and does not change the power’s other effects.

This is an potentially cheesy effect as well. In fact, I did a bit a math to help illustrate.

Warning: Math isn't my strongest skill, but I believe I calculated these numbers accurately enough to make my point.

Let's compare Racial Power's 2 bonus damage to that of the Dragonborn's dragon breath. We'll assume a starting con of 16 and assume that con is increased at every opportunity.

Further, we will also assume that every recipient of Racial Power 2 makes one attack against a single target.

4e assumes a average party size of 5. Under such a party size, assuming that all relevant attacks hit, Racial Power 2 consistently holds an advantage over the average damage of a moderately optimized Dragonbreath, is roughly on par with a party size of four, and grossly overtakes it with larger sized parties.

But again, that assumes that the party is only benefiting from attacking a single target. Area effects are wide open for abuse with the ability since you only make a single damage roll with AoE's. Imagine how high the gross damage could jump in a party of controllers and striker-controllers.

And as for the bonus temp HP, while the temp hp value per ally might seem token, it does add up.


To summarize the above, in a five-man party, Racial Power 2 grants a bit under a wizard's healing surge party-wide total damage mitigation per use, per encounter. While not huge consider other temp HP abilities, it is nothing to sneeze at either.


Overall, Racial Power 2 feels overpowered to me as written. It's effectively Dragonbreath+1 in terms of overall effects, and abusable with large parties. Adding some tighter controls over how the bonus damage is spread out would really help (a max number of recipients, for example).

ShadowGuard]I have a question about changeable ability scores. How balanced are they compared to normal races, and does the extra choice give too much?

Honestly, I don't think changeable stats affect racial balance much from a purely mechanical standpoint. I've only have access to the PH1, PH2, EPG, and the free editions of Dragon. That had, I have yet come across any race that I would consider overpowered, let alone broken, should their stats be changed to any other combination.

However, changeable stats do have two potentially negative consequences. First, shifting stats can dilute or undermine some of the races implied flavor, especially in relationship to other races. For example, it would be hard to justify Dragonborn being a strong race if they weren't actually stronger than other races. Likewise, it would be hard to justify them as a strong race if other races known better for their lack of strength, such as halflings or elves, are stronger than them.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, shifting stats undermine the human in their core role as being the adaptable everyman race. Humans are the ones that are supposed to be the ones who adapt easily to any class. Giving that capability to other races, even if you mechanically compensate humans for their lost niche shtick, still takes part of that flavor aspect away from humans.

That said, the only ability shifting race I'm familiar with is the changling/doppleganger from the EPG. And I feel it important to note that they only one of their stats vary, and only between two choices wrote:

@Fireclave: Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.:D

megamatoran wrote:

@Crimson: In the CB (I assume that it was also changed in part of the errata somewhere) WoTC has actually changed the Half-orc racial power to

Furious Assault
yadda yadda flavor text
Encounter - Free action - Personal
Trigger: You hit an enemy
Effect: The attack deals 1 x extra damage if it's a weapon and 1d8 extra damage if it isn't

No. That's the way it is in the PHB2. It's fine.
The racial power is not the object of my hate. Swift Charge is.

megamatoran wrote:

@Magus: did you read Fireclave's previous response? "Invigorating Howl" seems to keep most of the things that made power 2 overkill in the first place.

Battle scales seems okay compared to other racial powers.

The ongoing damage might be slightly over what it needs to be for Tail Sting. The damage is always at least 1d6+str+5 which seems a little higher than the usual ability. That's just my thoughts.

I read it, and if you read well, I changed it a bit. I reduced it's area of effect, and as Fireclave suggested, I limited the number of allies, and excluded the user as well as a target.

And yes, the damage of Tail Sting is higher than a Dragon Breath, but this power only targets one enemy.

I wonder why Crimson hasn't said anything lately... Maybe he's bored of so many questions... Shame, his opinion is quite good.