www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-h...
1) Asclepius Blood is an auto-minion-killer. IMO it is over-powered in that respect, but otherwise is a relatively minor effect. If you could find a way to work it so that minions are not auto-killed, it would be fine.
2) Petrifying Gaze is over-powered for a racial attack Encounter power. You can easily tell that by looking at the Dragonborn racial power which it closely resembles. The medusa has been granted significant additional effects. I suggest you lower the damage (to a fixed 1d6 without a stat bonus, scaling to 2d6, 3d6 at Paragon, Epic), and drop the failed save efefcts. Instead add a first failed save addition as a Heroic feat, and second failed save addition as a Paragon feat that builds on that. You could also add a Heroic feat that improves on the damage. In addition, the gaze attack bonus needs a boost at each tier to stop the attack bonus dropping behind what magical gear will do for the character's class attack powers.
3) For a race balanced to multiple classes, you should avoid assuming attack and damage on racial attack powers is based on single ability score (even if it is the bonus score) and instead give a choice at character generation, similar to Dragonborn.
"Once per turn, when you take damage from a melee attack, you may deal 2 poison damage to an adjacent nonminion enemy."
11th Level: 4 poison damage
21st level: 6 poison damage
With regards to Asclepius Blood and minions, I agree that it could be a minion killer, but you have to already be bloodied for that to be a factor. I rarely see many minions left on the field by the time a player is bloodied, but it is definately something to keep an eye on. I do need to ammend it to "damage from a melee attack".
For Petrifying gaze, perhaps I can add an extra step between immobilized and petrified, maybe tacking dazed onto immobilized before petrification. However this doesn't track with the MM1 Medusa. Additionally, expecting 3 rounds of failed saves in a row to take something out of combat feels like a bit much. The enemy is likely already dead by that point if it even gets that far if they haven't already saved.
However, I do like the concept of tying additional failed saving throw entries past Slow (immobilize and petrify) to feats. I may explore this. I personally feel the balance is that without a feat, allies can be targeted, and would require another seperate feat (Medusa's Kiss) to unpetrify said ally if they failed both saves.
For character design choice, they do have that via determining gender. Females use cha for petr gaze, males use con for venom gaze. While maybe not ideal, it does support many classes, just not perhaps as optimized as some player might wish.
For Petrifying gaze, perhaps I can add an extra step between immobilized and petrified, maybe tacking dazed onto immobilized before petrification. However this doesn't track with the MM1 Medusa.
For balance concerns, the ability needs to track with equivalent PC-playable races, and you should take great care when importing power ideas from the MM.
Additionally, expecting 3 rounds of failed saves in a row to take something out of combat feels like a bit much. The enemy is likely already dead by that point if it even gets that far if they haven't already saved.
Melee-based opponents could be worked around once immobilised, effectively taking them out after one round of useful action.
As far as I am aware, no existing unaugmented racial power has the potential of taking non-minion opponents out of combat from a single attack, after any number of rounds, after the expenditure of one Minor action.
Looks slightly better now you have reduced the save penalties (which could easily have got the petrified rate up to 49% of struck targets at first level). I still think the racial attack power is too much, due to the amount of conditions it applies, and how it is still effectively the Dragonborn poweer with those added conditions.
For balance concerns, the ability needs to track with equivalent PC-playable races, and you should take great care when importing power ideas from the MM.
After the revised penalty math, and if my probability is right (it's been forever), you have a 25% chance of petrifying a given enemy in the burst provided you hit. At epic level, with the feat to bump up the penalty to -3 in that tier, you have a 36% chance of petrifying provided you actually hit.
As far as I am aware, no existing unaugmented racial power has the potential of taking non-minion opponents out of combat from a single attack, after any number of rounds, after the expenditure of one Minor action.
Thinking, I agree it is a bit much for a minor action. A standard action is much better for the amount of stuff. I'll change that.
For the Asclepius Blood vs Minions, Phase of the Sun is an adjacent minion killer at the start of your turn when you are bloodied, it doesn't even require taking damage as a trigger.
You might want to take a look at the guide to race mechanic creation that is stickied on this forum.
I may have jumped the gun when boosting the gaze to a standard. I did some math, and the chances of actually hitting, and the target failing it's way to petrification dimish VERY quickly, even with the feat to increase save penalty by 1 at 11th and 21st to the point of becoming a Hail Mary play if it actually works. Surely not something i'd waste a standard action on past Heroic Tier. Perhaps a feat to reduce action cost to a move at 11th and a minor at 21 to keep the power enticing thoughout the game.
Which is why you should keep the action as Minor and boost the to-hit. The racial power is something you should see being played throughout the career of the character.
I did not suggest that you change the action type. I mentioned the action type to set context of power level in general, not as something that I was recommending you modify.
. . . also you can use MM monster powers and Class powers for inspiration, but you should not use them for determining what makes a balanced race power. Instead for balance you should be looking for how the racial power would:
a) Work for as many classes as possible. Where it doesn't you could patch it with feats (e.g. turning Gaze optionally into an Area attack to support non-melee classes, same as Dragonborn feat)
b) At a similar power level as effects granted to other races. Here Dragonborn is your yardstick. If, after tweaking you end up with a power that any Dragonborn character could swap in place of the dragon breath power and would simply gain power, then the power is not balanced for general play.
--
My suggestions for the gaze power remain:
1) Increase to hit +2 Paragon, +4 Epic
2) Keep the base effect as slow, but remove the first and second failed save. Add them back in with a heroic and paragon feat for first and second fails respectively
3) Reduce damage to 1d6 straight, no stat bonus (because the attack can dish out area-effect slow, which is a very useful addition). Reducing the die type to d4 is not enough in my opinion, that's just -1 damage on average. However, you may then want to scale the damage as 2d6 Paragon, 3d6 Epic (??? maybe), else the overall power level could fall too far behind at those tiers, where stat bonuses are larger.
(link)
I based my calcs with the gaze's driving stat being a secondary stat of 16 at creation and saved a gif image of the chart (see above link)
Which is why you should keep the action as Minor and boost the to-hit. The racial power is something you should see being played throughout the career of the character.
*snip*
a) Work for as many classes as possible. Where it doesn't you could patch it with feats (e.g. turning Gaze optionally into an Area attack to support non-melee classes, same as Dragonborn feat)
Having a Burst X within Y just doesn't make any sense for a gaze. For dragron breath, I could see hocking an energy filled loogie that explodes when it lands (or in mid air), but I can't really describe to my players how a medusa stare like that would work. *shrug*
I feel that part of the balancing is that the gaze is simply not as optimized with all classed. If the player wants to use a burst with a greater choice of driving stats, then Dragonborn is more of what they want. If they want a neat controller trick with a long tail to keep in their back pocket, Medusa fits that role.
My suggestions for the gaze power remain:
1) Increase to hit +2 Paragon, +4 Epic
I added a feat for this, and while +2/+4 does a very good job of keeping the power within a stable probability band, I felt +1/+2 to be more of my liking at the moment with a slight downward trend in overall probability. I'll see how it play tests.
2) Keep the base effect as slow, but remove the first and second failed save. Add them back in with a heroic and paragon feat for first and second fails respectively
I'm not really seeing the need for this given the low probailities of reaching Petrification w/o feat investment, and even then still low chances of success. Over half of targets are going to make thier first save, and 9/10 should make their 2nd save.
3) Reduce damage to 1d6 straight, no stat bonus (because the attack can dish out area-effect slow, which is a very useful addition). Reducing the die type to d4 is not enough in my opinion, that's just -1 damage on average. However, you may then want to scale the damage as 2d6 Paragon, 3d6 Epic (??? maybe), else the overall power level could fall too far behind at those tiers, where stat bonuses are larger.
I agree with removing the stat mod on the damage, however, the primary use of this power would be for it's controller-ish conditions as opposed to damage, so I think a flat 1d6 is acceptable.
I will be adding a feat to decrease the action cost to move/minor at tier to make up for the slight downward trend in probability.
Having a Burst X within Y just doesn't make any sense for a gaze. For dragron breath, I could see hocking an energy filled loogie that explodes when it lands (or in mid air), but I can't really describe to my players how a medusa stare like that would work. *shrug*
I don't personally have a problem with the concept of a gaze power that's Area, range 10, burst 1. "I direct my gaze at those ones over there" . . . but I guess that is more about how you think the power works - either as an active gaze out, or more passively from opponents looking at you. Yes it is important that you and the player like the race mechanics conceptually, otherwise no point in homebrewing it.
It's your campaign, your design for the race, your players. No-one ever need try to create a ranged-attack Medusa, no point creating the feat if so. Also it would be trivial for any DM thinking of taking your design so far to add the feat.
I hope you all have fun with the character.
Petrified, no save, is RIDICULOUSLY overpowered for any power, I don't care how many times you have to fail the save for it to happen.
If by riduclously overpowered, you mean:
* being able to have 2 full turns before petrification if you fail your saves,
* generally having a chance of petrification less than 14% chance in Heroric, less than 11% chance in Paragon, and less than 7% chance in Epic without investment in at least two feats to improve odds,
* power targets creatures, lending to friendly fire,
then yes, it is RIDICULOUSLY overpowered.
If you look into the design notes and math sections of the post, you can see a lot of thought is going into this race from a DM perspective, not a player trying to break the system.
Also, Asclepius Blood should scale to 2/3/5 based on your tier. As it stands, it's pretty worthless.
By design, Asclepius Blood is a very minor feature.
In case you didn't glance towards the bottom of the main post, there the Improved Asclepius Blood feat that increases from a flat 1 to 1/2/3 tier + 1. Through additional feats, this can be improved even farther to yeild actual HP.
You may want to make sure you read the whole thread before dismissing.
And I only read the first post because I was unimpressed by what I saw.
Nothing in 4e is "save or die." I don't know why you feel this race is so special it needs to violate this design decision.
And I only read the first post because I was unimpressed by what I saw.
It's not save or die. It's nearly identical to the same power as the Medusa has as a monster in that you have to fail your saving throw twice to become petrified, with saving throws occuring at the end of your turn, so you'd have 2 full turns.
Obviously the designers had no problem with that concept, as even certain 4e diseases follow a similar path, fail your saves, slide down 2-3 steps on a condition track and it can kill you outright.
You are welcome to persist in your dismissiveness, however, constructive criticism of ways to improve the race while maintaining the flavor with some sound logic behind it would be much more useful than your drive-by "it sucks" posts.
The difference is that those diseases (slimy doom ie) is that your character has at least 3 DAYS to do something about it. And yes, the designers have no problem with it because it is a monster power, not a player character power. Monsters and PCs have different standards and ways of being built.
Which is why I did lots of happy math to see just how broken it might be, which it appears not to be in it's current form. It has lots of balance to keep it in check.
Without being a minor action, it has very little appeal.
Even something like "Minor Action; Ranged 10; Effect: Target is slowed until the end of your next turn" would be more appealing.
Results track fine with my probability chart. PC petrification is definately not broken. Source code included.
Standard action attack powers are great and to be expected for PCs to have, for example, but they're just bad design when granted by a PC race. An attack that dazes a target until the end of your next turn is great but definitely not overpowered by itself when you get it from your class, but a racial power that dazes a target until the end of your next turn is far more powerful than any other existing racial power. A minor action power that can allow you and your allies to spend a healing surge twice per encounter is completely mechanically expected and highly desirable when considering a party's composition, but if that power were a racial power, it would be absolutely ridiculous.
EDIT:
There are multiple design problems with Petrifying Gaze in its current form.The first of which is that it's a standard action. Standard action racial powers are bad because the standard action is the action that the game expects you to use in order to fulfill your class and party role. If your proposed racial power is so powerful that it needs to be a standard action power in order to be balanced, then it's too powerful to be a racial power. This is one of those areas where it can be balanced but still be badly designed because balance is not the only concern that comes with creating a well-designed race.
The second problem is the restrictiveness of the stats. Having a racial power only have a singular option for its attack stat is horribly restrictive and significantly gets in the way of the design principle that 4E races should all be able to function competently as members of any class or role.
The attack roll bonus should also be scaling at the new +3 at heroic / +6 at paragon / +9 at epic rate in order to compete properly. Again, if the power is so powerful that it needs attack roll penalties in order to be balanced, then it's not a well designed power despite being balanced.
And this is all even before getting into the details about the overpoweredness of the effects of the power itself, which I will again remind you needs to be compared with other racial power and not just with what can be reasonably expected of PCs in general.
Venomous Gaze is going to be a fantastic way for me to illustrate this point. It's a close blast 3 that targets all creatures, and weakens and dazes (save ends). Let's look at the laundry list of effects that you've just accomplished with a mere encounter racial power, shall we?
A) The multiple targets deal half damage until they save.
B) The multiple targets are going to grant combat advantage to you and all of your allies until they save (go ahead and start comparing this power to the Shard-Mind's Shard Swarm or the Drow's Darkfire).
C) The multiple targest are going to be unable to take opportunity actions until they save, meaning that you and all of your allies will be immune to opportunity attacks from those targets until they save.
D) The multiple targets are going to be unable to take any immediate actions until they save, which coupled with point C is actually rather fantastic.
E) The multiple targets are each only going to be able to take a singular action on each other their rounds until they save.
F) On top of all of this, the multiple targets are going to take a small amount of damage.
And that's not even all that these powers do. I will now remind you that balancing by requiring a more expensive action type (standard vs minor), restricting character access (only allowing CON to attack), and nerfing the probability to hit (non-scaling attack) are all unacceptable balancing methods if you want to keep your power well designed and not just balanced.
Now, I cannot look at either of these powers and see how you could possibly believe that they are in any way close to being balanced.
With that, reduced to minor action, and added alternate stats to attack with.
Venomous Gaze got a reworking. You now inflicted ongoing poison, fail that save, you inflict weakened, with the Tainted Infusion feat, fail weakend save, you inflict daze. Essentially, the poison is spreading through your body and you are forced to deal with the shakes and pain of it if it progresses far enough.
I am currently satisfied with attack roll scaling via a feat and via it's current amount. As a player of a Dargonborn Paladin, i'm used to my breath not hitting very much since I hit paragon, but I use it with feats to bolster and challange for it's status effects. Actually hitting is just a nice bonus.
Second, I'm not convinced that racial abilities must be minor actions. Several races work differently (immediate reactions are common). However, I'm sympathetic to the idea that using the power shouldn't displace the character's role in the party. Perhaps the petrification can be tied to a successful attack (a free action trigger, for instance).
So why not skip the pretense and key it directly to the Primary (highest) ability score of the PC? This is what Dark Sun themes do and they aren't broken in the slightest.
Agreed. This is what I rule in my games for all racial powers and what I generally try to remember to suggest to homebrewers.
Second, I'm not convinced that racial abilities must be minor actions.
They don't. They can be anything but standard actions really, for the reasons I've already mentioned. I just suggested minor because most racial attack powers are minor actions.
Sample Essentials Hunter that my wife is using:
Female Medusa**, Ranger
Build: Hunter
FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 11, Dex 18, Int 11, Wis 16, Cha 14.
STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 11, Dex 16, Int 11, Wis 16, Cha 12.
AC: 16 Fort: 11 Reflex: 15 Will: 13
HP: 23 Surges: 6 Surge Value: 5
TRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +9, Dungeoneering +8, Nature +10, Perception +10, Stealth +9
UNTRAINED SKILLS
Arcana, Athletics -1, Bluff +2, Diplomacy +2, Endurance, Heal +3, History, Insight +3, Intimidate +2, Religion, Streetwise +2, Thievery +4
FEATS
Ranger: Bow Expertise (hotfk p311)
Level 1: Blind Fighting Sentinnel (hotfk p310)
POWERS
MBA Dagger +3 vs AC; 1d4-1
RBA Dagger +8 vs AC; 1d4+4
RBA Longbow +8 vs AC; 1d10+4*
Aimed Shot (hotfk p156)
Clever Shot (hotfk p156)
Rapid Shot (hotfk p156)
Disruptive Shot (hotfk p157): Longbow +8 vs AC; 1d10+4
Petrifying Gaze**: +5 vs Fort
WEAPON TALENT (hotfk p157)
ASPECTS OF THE WILD
Aspect of the Dancing Serpent (hotfk p158)
Aspect of the Lurking Spider (hotfk p159)
WILDERNESS KNACKS
Ambush Expertise (hotfk p160)
Watchful Rest (hotfk p161)
ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Arrows (150), Dagger, Leather Armor, Longbow, 24gp
LANGUAGES
Common, Goblin
RACIAL TRAITS
Asclepius Blood**, Serpentine Tresses**, Petrifying Gaze**
* see Bow Expertise (hotfk p311)
** see EN World www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-h...