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4 years ago ::
Oct 12, 2009 - 10:03AM
#111
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Date Joined:
Feb 25, 2003
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Sooo.... 8th Level Vistani with the Vistani Healer feat can perform Raise Dead once per day for free. Anyone else a little suprised by this?
Planes Wanderer
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4 years ago ::
Oct 12, 2009 - 10:13AM
#112
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Date Joined:
Sep 12, 2007
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Does anyone else find this design style—all feats modifying the racial encounter power (which we see in both Playing Vistani and Playing Revenants) boring bordering on obnoxious?
i think your satisfacation with the feats in the second article is probably proportional to the degree to which you optimize. They're wonderfully fluffy, but i didn't see much (anything?) that i would take over something else. Which, for the record, is fine. Were it not for the fact that i play with a bunch of knuckledragging, minmaxing, 3rd ed refugees i would likely build characters for fluf as much as crunch, and in that case i'm sure i would end up using a few of these from time to time.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 12, 2009 - 5:18PM
#113
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Date Joined:
Sep 21, 2008
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Sooo....
8th Level Vistani with the Vistani Healer feat can perform Raise Dead once per day for free.
Anyone else a little suprised by this?
I was horrified by it, as well as other possibilities; I've tried making noise in the announcement thread and the errata thread, I hope other people do the same and maybe get those ridiculously overpowered feats somewhat nerfed... After all. Bard rituals were designed with the notion in mind "These can be cast for free once per day, that's a bard ability." Consult Mystic Oracle, Raise Dead, Planar Portal... these feats were NOT designed with 'free' in mind, and the nature of these feats horrifies me. Up until now, I could always comfort myself that any 'power creep' was merely Wizards trying to get the power balance CORRECT. But these feats are over the top, they are the stuff of minmaxing powergamers... and they annoy me. I probably will not allow them in their current state, or at least, heavily houserule/restrict them.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 12, 2009 - 6:21PM
#114
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Date Joined:
Apr 11, 2008
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Consult Mystic Oracle, Raise Dead, Planar Portal... these feats were NOT designed with 'free' in mind, and the nature of these feats horrifies me. Up until now, I could always comfort myself that any 'power creep' was merely Wizards trying to get the power balance CORRECT. But these feats are over the top, they are the stuff of minmaxing powergamers... and they annoy me. I probably will not allow them in their current state, or at least, heavily houserule/restrict them.
Which rituals, available through one of these feats, aid min-maxing powergamers? The advantage of the feats is that they give a free ritual per day. Otherwise, they're worse than Ritual Caster which gives access to all of the rituals. I think that Wizards has been fairly good about not providing rituals which break the game with repeated use, and the only thing that "cast for free" means is that the ritual can be done repeatedly. I think the greatest risk for game balance is the possibility of free divination rituals. Given their restrictions, however, I'm not sure that I think that it's broken to be able to use one for free each day.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 12, 2009 - 7:31PM
#115
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Consult Mystic Oracle, Raise Dead, Planar Portal... these feats were NOT designed with 'free' in mind, and the nature of these feats horrifies me. Up until now, I could always comfort myself that any 'power creep' was merely Wizards trying to get the power balance CORRECT. But these feats are over the top, they are the stuff of minmaxing powergamers... and they annoy me. I probably will not allow them in their current state, or at least, heavily houserule/restrict them.
Which rituals, available through one of these feats, aid min-maxing powergamers? The advantage of the feats is that they give a free ritual per day. Otherwise, they're worse than Ritual Caster which gives access to all of the rituals. I think that Wizards has been fairly good about not providing rituals which break the game with repeated use, and the only thing that "cast for free" means is that the ritual can be done repeatedly.
I think the greatest risk for game balance is the possibility of free divination rituals. Given their restrictions, however, I'm not sure that I think that it's broken to be able to use one for free each day.
Actually, I think R&D knew what the biggest broken use of such feats would be, and that is why we do not have one that applies to creation rituals
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4 years ago ::
Oct 12, 2009 - 8:14PM
#116
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Date Joined:
Jul 16, 2002
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But these feats are over the top, they are the stuff of minmaxing powergamers... and they annoy me.
Because minmaxing powergamers work really hard to be OP out of combat. 
Sorry WOTC, you lost me with Essentials. So where I used to buy every book that came out, now I will be very choosy about what I buy. Can we just get back to real 4e? Check out the 4e Conversion Wiki. 1. Wizards fight dirty. They hit their enemies in the NADs. -- Dragon9 2. A barbarian hits people with his axe. A warlord hits people with his barbarian. 3. Boo-freakin'-hoo, ya light-slingin' finger-wigglers. -- MrCelcius in response to the Cleric's Healer's Lore nerf
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4 years ago ::
Oct 13, 2009 - 4:26AM
#117
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Date Joined:
Apr 11, 2008
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Actually, I think R&D knew what the biggest broken use of such feats would be, and that is why we do not have one that applies to creation rituals.
Heh. That's why I made sure to say "available through one of these feats". The biggest advantage these feats provide is with rituals that increase in cost as you level. Since this is almost always a bald-faced way to make sure that a ritual available at a lower level isn't automatically performed at a higher level, I don't mind making it available 1/day. Creation rituals produce a lasting effect, so that's a little different.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 13, 2009 - 2:40PM
#118
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Date Joined:
May 21, 2008
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Consult Mystic Oracle, Raise Dead, Planar Portal... these feats were NOT designed with 'free' in mind, and the nature of these feats horrifies me. Up until now, I could always comfort myself that any 'power creep' was merely Wizards trying to get the power balance CORRECT. But these feats are over the top, they are the stuff of minmaxing powergamers... and they annoy me. I probably will not allow them in their current state, or at least, heavily houserule/restrict them.
CMO - You have to be able to answer the question with one word or a brief phrase, and it can't read the future. Ergo: Not so bad, really it just the easy button around puzzle traps. Raise Dead - Ha. Right. 'cause you know 500gold means something when you are finding thousands of gold on the ground. Planar Portal - Plot Device at best. Its not a magic escape button nor anything else. To me the only large area of concern would be if they had allowed item creation rituals to be cast for free (It will happen eventually, but pray it is a ways off). The rest of the rituals have only very little substantive impact if cast for free 1/day.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 13, 2009 - 6:20PM
#119
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Date Joined:
Aug 14, 2007
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Chris Sims explained on ENWorld why the article's been divided into 3 parts:
tinyurl.com/ylmsuwa
Well, that's good to know. Wish it could be told to us here, but that's an issue that's already been discussed elsewhere. Anyway, like I said before, they're just working the kinks out. Fair enough.
I apologize for not posting that here. There are reasons for that, but I don't think any of them are particularly good reasons. Here I am, though, hat in hand.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 14, 2009 - 4:52PM
#120
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Date Joined:
Jan 17, 2009
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Bah! the Vistani article is great. And, I prefer that they (the types of articles) are broken up into parts like this. I see no immediate issues with the 4e version that Chris wrote up. It is excellent and true to the race. As someone who very much enjoys the fantasy gypsy culture, the Vistani thus far get two-thumbs up 
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