The Ranger power Careful Attack is often given short thrift as far as at-will powers go. It gives a +2 attack bonus over your regular ranged weapon attacks, at the expense of doing your Dex bonus damage.

At first blush, that seems to be a fair trade. At second blush, you notice Twin Strike, which offers two attacks per round doing the same damage.

“One power gives me a +2, and one doubles my chance that one attack will hit.”

Second blush usually wins out.

However, there are both practical and character-driven reasons why being able to miss less often can be more desirable than missing faster, and the mathematical edge of Twin Strike shrinks the harder a given shot gets.

For a character who has more rounded attributes instead of narrowly focused ones, these corner cases and edge scenarios will come up more often, meaning Careful Attack is most worthwhile mathematically for a character with lower Dexterity… which makes sense because a character with Dexterity of 16 would logically have to take their time and exercise great care to equal a character with a Dexterity of 20.

At the same time, it can be immensely satisfying for a character with high Dexterity and Weapon Expertise and who seeks out every situational advantage to slap a +2 onto attacks turn-by-turn… it doesn’t take much to imagine a level one Human archer with Dexterity 20, Weapon Expertise, Distant Advantage, and Careful Attack taking shots at an enemy being flanked by two allies for a +12 to hit and hitting an AC 17 foe 80% of the time.

Sure, everything else being equal, Twin Strike will result in the Ranger hitting that same foe on more rounds… while missing more often. Whether that has a game mechanical effect depends on whether the DM’s making Rangers track ammo. This can be alleviated at higher levels by purchasing a magic quiver that self-replenishes, but by the time that becomes available you also have the option of using magic arrows that making missing faster an expensive proposition.

And for a character who has trained that much in being able to hit opponents precisely, maybe missing 10% more often just isn’t acceptable.

All of this being said, even for the character with modest attributes, on an average turn under average circumstances, Twin Strike gives you a better chance of doing more damage faster, which is generally a good thing. But the question needs to be asked, is Careful Attack meant to be used every round? If we put ourselves into the scene, we might imagine it like this: you have a relatively easy shot, you don’t have to take your time to aim, so you let two arrows fly as fast as you can. Somebody drops a mystically concealing cloud between you and your well-armored foe, some kind of magical effect makes the target grow instinct, they move behind some foliage, etc… all of a sudden, letting arrows fly as fast as you can doesn’t make as much sense. You carefully take aim, and then you let go.

That being said, I wouldn’t mind extending the usefulness of Careful Attack… not to the point that it’s the clearly superior move to make every single round, because I think that’s counter to its purposes. Its competition are things like Nimble Strike, which lets you dance around the field a bit more, and Twin Strike, which lets you attack twice. Under average conditions, those things ought to be more useful.

Simply increasing the modifier would increase its “sweet spot”. I know some of the playtest games includes a Careful Attack with +4, which would mean the mathematical advantage evens out when you’ve got a 20% hit chance (need a 17 or higher to hit).

At the same time, though, I’d like to call attention to its usefulness in compensating for poor conditions. So instead of making it +4, I’d keep it as +2 but add the lines “You can ignore any penalty for cover or concealment, but not superior cover or total concealment.” That’s a -2 penalty that Careful Attack can ignore.

That’s a good start, but I think most people would still discount it. I don’t really want to increase its base advantage any further, though… again, my purpose is not to make it a round-by-round equal of Twin Strike but to make it situationally useful.

So here’s the second wrinkle: expand on the idea of what Careful Attack is, which is taking your time to aim. For each minor action you spend aiming on your turn, you can add a +1 to your Careful Attack made before the end of your turn, to a maximum of +2.

Thus, you can get the base bonus up to +4 if you do nothing else with your turn but aim, aim, and attack… and that effect stacks with ignoring cover or concealment.

Twin Strike remains the most useful when you’ve got your leisure to just snap off shots. Nimble Strike retains its edge if you’re being forced to keep on your toes or you’re moving around to take advantage of cover and concealment yourself. But if you’ve got a difficult shot to make… have to hit an archer hiding behind an arrowslit (superior cover, -5), have to hit a really well-armored soldier, if you’re in a situation where taking your time to aim really would be more fruitful than snapping off two arrows as fast as you can, Careful Attack wins out.

We do have one Ranger with Careful Attack in the Wednesday group, and I think… so long as the player understands that these rules may be removed or amended if they prove cumbersome or unbalanced… that I’ll be taking the opportunity to test this out.

So, to sum up for our Ranger:

1. Careful Attack ignores the -2 penalty for (regular) cover or concealment.

2. You can aim on the same turn you use Careful Attack as a minor action to gain a further +1 for each time you do it.

Hope that’s clear.

Below the cut is a rather long document that’s the rough draft of my first substantial 4E homebrew projects: Maneuvers. It’s very much a work in progress. I’m toying with the idea of letting people use them in the upcoming online sessions. On the one hand, groups of nine people I barely know would be far from an ideal test laboratory. On the other hand, groups of nine people I barely know would make the perfect test laboratory. I’m willing to listen to the groups’ thoughts on this before I make up my mind.

But I am putting the entire document as it currently exists up so that anybody who’s interested can see, comment, and/or crib from it.

Enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Divine Powers, it seems the developers have decided to embrace the idea of mass-minion killing as part of the Controller’s role after all, as they’ve added an at-will power selection for Invokers, Hand of Radiance, that targets up to three creatures for a 1d4 + Wis attack. At Epic Level, instead of doubling base damage like many at-wills, Hand of Radiance gains another potential target, for a maximum of four attacks off a single standard action.

I was glad to see this, because there had been some waffling after the initial release of the Wizard about whether or not attacking multiple enemies is a suitable expression of “Control”. I hold that it is, because when dealing with minions, taking them out of the fight is pretty much the definition of the role. If you have an area attack that does minor damage and stuns or dazes on a hit, that’s a controller power… but if it hits any minions, those minions are out of commission before the status effect applies.

A Wizard who’s getting overrun by enemies can use Thunderwave to force them back. That’s a “crowd control” power, in the common parlance… if the crowd is made up of minions, they’re controlled right out of the fight, but are they any less controlled for that?

It’s easy enough to imagine that the same effect that briefly impairs the minions’ tougher compatriots is either fatal to the minions or lasts long enough to be equivalent to a kill, for purposes of the fight. The big battle chief is hit with the ray of freezing magical energy and is slowed up a bit by it, but the little lieutenants are frozen solid.

So this brings me to Magic Missile.

Despite not being very “controlly”, they kept this spell in as being the signature arcane spell of editions past, and even made its signature status official by allowing it to be used as a basic ranged attack. It underwent some notable changes, however. For one thing, its force-type damage is no longer a silver bullet for incorporeal creatures… insubstantial creatures in 4E simply take half damage from everything, they don’t ignore non-force non-ethereal damage. For another, it now requires an attack roll… that’s kind of mitigated by the lack of Vancian restrictions on its repeated use.

And finally, even though multiple targets would make it a better fit for the archetypal controller, the ability to conjure multiple missiles at higher levels is gone.

The first two changes aren’t that big a deal, more a matter of fitting the spell into the new edition. The last one, though, kind of serves to weaken the appeal of Magic Missile for a primary Controller, and in my opinion contributes to the dilution of the Controller role, as their signature spell lacks a control component.

Ever since the PHB came out, I’ve been playing with ideas on how to rectify this.

I think the developers have, too. There’s an item in the Adventurer’s Vault called the Staff of Missile Mastery that as its Daily power allows you to target a second creature within five squares of the first using a Magic Missile spell. There’s Wizard’s Fury, a level one daily spell that appeared in a Dragon article… it allows the Wizard to cast Magic Missile as a minor action once per round for the rest of the encounter. While this allows Magic Missile to be combined with other attacks, it would also effectively let the Wizard throw two Magic Missiles at a time (one standard action, one minor action).

Both of those are fairly limited, though they show that others have been thinking about this. Here are the solutions I’ve come up with:

1. Allow Wizards who know Magic Missile to “split” it into two 1d4 attacks against different targets. It’s a DM decision whether or not to include the Int bonus to damage on the split attack. I would be inclined to not include it, personally… including it would mean that the split attack does more net damage than the regular version. I’d rather have the whole advantage be in the ability to have multiple targets.

The second DM decision point on this would be what happens at Epic Level, when damage increases to 4d4 plus Int. In keeping with the idea of Wizards as the “flexible” class, I would suggest that the Wizard be allowed to do one attack of 4d4 + Int, two attacks of 2d4 against two targets, or four attacks of 1d4 against four targets.

The net result would be that the split attack would be weaker than the Invoker’s Hand of Radiance, but the Wizard has the option of leaving the attack combined for more damage against a single target… and the split attacks would be equally good at killing the minions they target.

So that the Wizard doesn’t get a bunch of extra free attacks, the use of Magic Missile as a basic attack would require the use of the default “combined” attack against a single target. I can’t think of any balance problems that would be presented by using it as a melee attack with two or four targets using Reaper’s Touch. That might be disproportionately badass, but the results would be the same, mathematically.

2. Create a homebrew power called Magic Missiles, that functions much as described under #1… the difference being that there are now two separate powers, one that’s Magic Missile as written and one that’s the multi-warhead version if it. Magic Missiles would be identical to Magic Missile except that it would target one or two creatures for 1d4 + Int damage… in this case, keeping the attribute modifier is not a balance issue because the spell only has one attack mode. It would still be weaker than Hand of Radiance, but at 21st level, when damage doubles, it could include the option of doing two 2d4 + Int damage attacks or four 1d4 + Int damage ones.

3. As number two, but drop the Int modifier and go crazier with the number of missiles to make it more like the Magic Missile spell of yore, that did 1d4+1 damage and could eventually include as many as five bolts. At level one, you would have two attacks, targeting different creatures within range for 1d4 damage each. At level eleven, you would gain the ability to include a third. At level sixteen, you would gain a fourth, and at level twenty-one, you would gain a fifth. This could involve a “cluster” rule, similar to the 3rd edition version, that required the targets to be within a certain distance of each other.

Each approach has its pros and cons. The first one doesn’t require a new power to be defined, but in extending the usefulness of an existing power, it shifts the balance a bit. Not in a terrible game-breaking way, but in an “Oh, all of a sudden this power is more flexible than others.” kind of way. It also requires exceptions to be created for basic missile attacks and effects that already allow you to target additional foes or cast magic missiles extra times… combining a multiple Magic Missile with Wizard’s Fury, for instance, could result in a lot of die rolling, especially if you kept it through the epic levels.

The second and third version avoid that by making multiple missiles its own power… no Reaper’s Touch, no Wizard’s Fury or Staff of Missile Mastery spam. They also force the Wizard to use up both at-will slots to have absolute flexibility in missile casting.

For my campaigns, I think I’m going to incorporate option number one as a house rule. This will be subject to modifications in play, but if you can cast Magic Missile, and you’re not using Wizard’s Fury to cast it as a minor action and you’re not using a Staff of Missile Mastery to target a second opponent and you’re not using it in place of a basic attack, you will be able to split it into two separate attacks (or four) at Epic Level, doing 1d4 (or 2d4, if you’re doing two Epic Missiles) damage.

It’s just… more controllery that way, and being the Wizard’s signature attack spell, I think that’s a good thing.

I talked about Intimidate earlier and its use in combat. Our group has seen some Diplomacy in combat, too. Not a lot of it… the enemies are mostly religious zealots or don’t share a common tongue. But it occurred to me that the most effective use, which ended a boss fight that would otherwise have had a long and drawn out endgame, would have worked pretty well if instead of straight DM fiat it had followed the same basic model.

The subject of the roll had a Will defense of 23. I believe the DM was using “That’s a hell of a roll and a hell of a speech!” criteria to resolve it, but I’m pretty sure the roll would have been judged a success if she’d been using the same Will +10 if hostile DC as the Intimidate roll had.

Unlike Intimidate, I definitely wouldn’t let someone just straight up say that they were using these skills, though. Intimidating someone you’ve beaten half to death into surrendering is a pretty straightforward deal. To use another skill, there would have to be some kind of context in play, some kind of “roleplay rider” to attach the roll to. It would require some creativity on the part of the player, but if they felt like being creative, I’d be inclined to reward them.

I definitely wouldn’t advocate anybody putting this into their game as a hard and fast mechanic, simply because it would lead to “diplomancy” winning every fight. I consider it a virtue of the system rather than a flaw that they omit “rules” for using Diplomacy to end fights.

But I also think the Intimidate rules make a good benchmark for the appropriate difficulty of using Diplomacy or Bluff to talk someone out of a fight. The skills are there. There’s no reason for PCs and DMs not to put them to use.

While there’s much to admire about the simplicity of the skill system in 4E, it’s hard to deny that it does give Fighters the short end of the stick in terms of their choices. The background rules allow them a little more diversity without using a feat, and that’s a good thing, but Fighters don’t tend to be heavy on the attributes that many skills use.

And one of the skills they can choose… Intimidate, which would seem to be a natural fit for lots of Fighters… just plain doesn’t seem to be very good in the hands of a low Charisma character.

The stated DC for a combat Intimidation check is pretty high… if you succeed, you can force a bloodied enemy to surrender, but you’re essentially making an attack targeted on an enemy’s Will +10, with no bonuses for magical weapons or implements or proficiencies. Even if you’re trained in Intimidate and have your Charisma pushed up to +5, it’s still going to be a long shot compared to an attack, and if you fail, you can’t try again.

It seems harsh, but it is, I think, a consequence of them having rules for it at all. Even restricting its use to bloodied opponents would still let players short-circuit a lot of fights if they played as someone like a Dragonborn (+2 Charisma, +2 to Intimidate skill) with high Charisma, training, and the Skill Focus feat.

Now, I think it must be understood by players that when they’re using a mundane skill to interact with other characters, that a line of text saying that they can force someone to do something is going to be subject to reasonable common sense conditions and DM fiat… the text goes on to say that the DM can set the DC to something else, as always.

Me, I’d be nice… I’d keep the DC the same for a “boss” NPC, but if they are successfully Intimidated they might be effectively dazed or incur a penalty to attack. Unless it makes narrative sense for them to surrender (they are really truly in bad shape compared to the PCs), though, a single skill use should not be able to end the epic boss fight at 49% HP.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with how Intimidation is written… but 4E is an Exception Based Design system, and bosses/”story” characters who aren’t meant to surrender can very easily be an exception.

Though that can work the other way… some characters can be more inclined to surrendering if given a chance than they would be to fight to the death.

Normally I prefer the effects of social interaction skills to take place in the social/roleplaying sphere… the domain of the Magical Tea Party… because that way a DM can prevent someone with a high Charisma/maxed out social skills from rule-lawyering their way to a meaningless victory on the basis that the book says they can convince the Evilthulhu to go back to sleep for another hundred thousand years.

Do a search for “Diplomancer” if you think that nobody tried doing this in 3rd Edition. There’s a reason that 4E doesn’t have any combat charm effects that are more than a status effect, forced move, or a disinclination towards attacking. Fear effects are mostly likewise, but you can make a standardized Intimidate check to try to force surrender during combat. They made it the equivalent of a hit roll with a -10 penalty, so it’s not easy, but you can do it.

But I think this is a good thing, in general, that they have a combat-ready Intimidate mechanic. There is dramatic potential. It encourages players to think of alternate win conditions (by giving a fairly standard one). If successful, it can cut short a combat that is a foregone conclusion. If it fails, there goes your standard attack for the turn.

The problem is, who’s going to take it? Rogues might, depending on their build… the “Rattling” powers require training in it. Warlords might. It can fit a Warlord, and they’ll have Charisma. A Bard might, but the Bard’s player might have other uses for their skill slots.

Fighters on the other hand, have very few skill slots and very little to put in them… and yet, with little reason to prize Charisma and many reasons to reserve their feat slots for combat stuff, they have very little incentive to take Intimidate, even though it can fit them perfectly. They’ll probably take it, but will they use it?

One thing to consider is that Aid Another is a legal action in combat. Probably the best in-character way to get someone to surrender is to have the charismatic leader pat the muscles of the glowering Fighter (or Barbarian, though there are charismatic Barbarians) and gently encourage the enemy to surrender. How do you represent this in game? Aid Another. The Fighter, by virtue of standing there and looking scary, is aiding the leader’s attempt to get the enemies to surrender. The standard action of Aid Another is used up giving enemies the death stare, flexing, brandishing a weapon, etc., so that the Fighter is looking particularly dangerous when the leader gives the spiel. The Fighter makes an easy check against DC 10 to give the leader a +2 on the more difficult actual check.

The mechanists out there will no doubt feel that I wasted a lot of space there to say “A Fighter with Intimidate can still use Aid Another to help someone with more optimal Charisma make an Intimidate check”, but because I believe in immersive roleplay, I think it’s important to suss out exactly what could be happening within the gameworld. And of course, players who are thinking of things in these terms are more likely to consider the option than someone who just knows that even trained, their level 1 Intimidate bonus is still just +5.

Of course, a +2 will only go so far to overcome the +10 to Will that the targets receive for being hostile. How can we kick this up?

We could house rule that Aiding Another in a social or knowledge skill only requires line of sight and the ability to hear each other instead of adjacent positions. So instead of just the Fighter stepping up and flexing, you’ve got the Warlock pointing a finger menacingly and invoking dark names, the Rogue flipping a dagger… admittedly this takes the focus off the Fighter and why the Fighter would take Intimidate, but it makes for a cool scene. Imagine the whole party steps up and makes their own threat, quiet or obvious as they like. Imagine that scene in your head… all the more obviously menacing, obviously deadly characters glaring at the enemies and promising them painful death, and then gruff Warlord or the cheeky Bard or the stoic Cleric steps up and says, “Have you ever considered surrendering?”

That’s the kind of moment this system is ripe for, but which rarely happens in some peoples’ games. Even a couple of +2s added to a charismatic leader’s Intimidate check could very easily be the difference between success and failure, with that +10… and then there’s the line that says the DM can set the DC of the Intimidate check. Sometimes the party just steps up and does something awesome and you let it happen because it’s awesome. Whole team of adventurers threatening the battered survivor(s) of a bloody battle?

Situational modifier FTW.

Of course, then you’d get the sort of player who’d want to do it all the time and accuse you of jerking them around if you gave them the modifier once but not every time. Fortunately, this particular example is an easy fix: you just let them roll against the standard DC. If they pull that stunt too often, it’s going to blow up in their face… and besides, setting it up requires that everybody uses their standard action towards the attempt within one turn. This isn’t the sort of thing that you don’t try if you haven’t already almost won the fight, so even if it works over and over again, it’s not going to devastate anything.

But as much as that makes for a nice finishing move, “Have the entire party Intimidate together” isn’t really much of a fix for the question of Fighters themselves getting use out of Intimidate, is it?

So here’s a very simple house rule. It’s based on a mechanic in GURPS, where each skill is based on an attribute… mostly Intelligence for mental and Dexterity for physical, though there are some exceptions. Training in some skills, though, will let you attempt feats using another attribute as the base… a person with high skill in piloting automobiles (a physical skill) might make an Intelligence roll plus their car skill modifier to remember an applicable traffic law that a licensed driver would be familiar with. Not a terrifically exciting example, but that’s GURPS’s motto: “We said you could simulate anything. We never asked you why you’d want to.”

So, without “breaking” Intimidate for all the Charisma-high characters who would want to use it by switching it to a Strength skill, why not say that it is based on the higher attribute of your Charisma or Strength? It’s a small adjustment and doesn’t require much in the way of ongoing bookkeeping. A variation would be to say that Intimidate is Charisma in social situations and Strength in combat, but the goal here is to get wider use out of the skill, not switch around who’s restricted.

Because I enjoy situational modifiers, I’d probably run it so that some people would respond better or worse to physical intimidation than they would to social, but there’s no need to get that complicated.

On the subject of situational modifiers, of course, one could come up with some standard ones for combat:

If more than half of the target’s side (by experience value) has been wiped out: +5 to the attempt.
If the target took damage equal to its surge value in a single hit in the last round: +2 to the attempt.
If the target took damage equal to its blooded value in a single hit in the last round: +5, including the plus 2 for inflicting surge value.
If the PC used a daily attack power since the beginning of their last turn: +1 for for level 1, +2 for level 5, +3 for level 9, and so on.

And of course, if you can count the number of HPs that a non-minion has on one hand, then unless it’s a mindless creature or an animal or a zealot or a berserker or similar, it’s probably going to stand down.

On the subject of minions… the rules as written (at least in the PHB) don’t really address intimidating minions in combat, as they can’t be bloodied. The easiest way to handle it? They’re minions. If the others surrender, they surrender, but while anyone’s still up and fighting and could punish them, they’ll keep fighting.

If that rule doesn’t fit a situation, then you could always say that minions are treated as bloodied for purposes of Intimidate checks when half of them have been defeated. Even then, a bonus for intimidating minions would not be amiss… especially since they can’t trigger some of the situational modifiers I listed above.

Probably the best way to handle minion surrendering is DM fiat… figure out what their actual relationship to the non-minions is (loyal servants, slaves, zealots, weaker cousins?) and decide how committed they are to the cause. If they’re the last things left on the enemy side at the end of the battle, they’re probably either going to run away or make a suicidal charge anyway.

Outside of combat, players can probably come up with uses for Intimidate… as long as they’re given a reason to take it, and to remember they have it. It’s a good idea to give them situations where it can actually accomplish something. The temptation is always there to make NPCs respond angrily to Intimidation or treat it as an automatic failure in a Skill Challenge, since it’s consistent with the way most people act when threatened by someone, but remember that a PC with training in Intimidate is not just someone. The fact that Intimidate, as written, makes people “hostile” when you use it is going to discourage its use enough already.

And that’s definitely something to use your judgment on… if a player decides the character’s going to use Intimidate to try to avoid a fight, success shouldn’t make the target attack unless they’ve badly misjudged the situation… like an Abyss’s Archons convention is in town and you just called the leader a wuss.