Heroic Tier Feat: Elemental Control
Prerequisite: You must know at least one power with the damage type as a keyword for the type you choose.
Special: You may select this feat multiple times, but each time it applies to a different damage type.
Benefit: Chose a damage type from Acid, Cold, Fire, Force, Lightning, Necrotic, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, or Thunder. You gain the following At-Will power, which gains the keyword of the damage type chosen.
2. The power won't hit very well. Right now your math base is:
Ability+2 vs. Will+Resistance Value (RV) which is the same as:
Ability-(RV-2) vs. Will
So your attacks look like this:
RV=5
Ability-3 vs. Will
RV=10
Ability-8 vs. Will
etc.
3. If you are going to go with a feat system, you might be better off following the existing model of another feat, You ignore the first 5 points of . Increase to 10 at 11th and 15 at 21st.
Overpowering Energy
Benefit; Upon choosing this feat, select one of the following damage types; acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, thunder. Your powers that inflict damage of the chosen type ignore the first 5 points of a target's resistance to that damage type.
At 11th level, you ignore 10 points of resistance.
At 21st level, you ignore 15 points of resistance.
Special; You can select this feat more than once. Each time you do, select a different damage type.
First, yes, I likely will have a player interested in running a fire-based character. I created some level 10 characters for a one-off another friend was running and one of those was a fireborn Genasi Warlock-dipping-into-Wizard and almost exclusively fire powers. The player really liked the concept and may look at recreating the character from lower levels in Legacy of Fire, but we came across one encounter in the one-shot game where almost every powers effect was reduced by fire resistance and cut down significantly on the effectiveness of the character. I really hope to avoid recreating that situation in my game: sure, not every tactic should be equally valid in every encounter, but neither should the player be penalised for having a consistent theme of a pyromancer.
The problem for me with the "ignore first 5 points of resistance" feat is that it doesn't really overcome the problem when you meet anything that has higher resistance that the amount you ignore. Coming across a Resist 10 Fire monster when you only ignore 5 points of said resistance is just as sucky for the pyromancer as coming across one with Resist 5 Fire when you have no ability to overcome it, except in the former case, you've "down" a feat.
The idea behind the feat I proposed was to give a benefit to those caster focusing on a theme by making the power more accurate the more powers you have along that theme (+2 per power with the keyword). By adding the Resistance to the defence, the aim was to make those creatures with "more control" over that element harder to inflict the damage upon, but more "worthwhile" with the ongoing damage should you manage it.
The aim with the feat was to really try to convey the idea that a character can put so much study into controlling fire that they can turn the fire within the salamanders blood against it, or extinguish the flame within the dragon, and reduce the need to "dilute" their character concept with non-thematic appropriate powers to avoid becoming completely irrelevant in certain combats.
Thanks for you input guys.
First, yes, I likely will have a player interested in running a fire-based character. I created some level 10 characters for a one-off another friend was running and one of those was a fireborn Genasi Warlock-dipping-into-Wizard and almost exclusively fire powers. The player really liked the concept and may look at recreating the character from lower levels in Legacy of Fire, but we came across one encounter in the one-shot game where almost every powers effect was reduced by fire resistance and cut down significantly on the effectiveness of the character. I really hope to avoid recreating that situation in my game: sure, not every tactic should be equally valid in every encounter, but neither should the player be penalised for having a consistent theme of a pyromancer.
The problem for me with the "ignore first 5 points of resistance" feat is that it doesn't really overcome the problem when you meet anything that has higher resistance that the amount you ignore. Coming across a Resist 10 Fire monster when you only ignore 5 points of said resistance is just as sucky for the pyromancer as coming across one with Resist 5 Fire when you have no ability to overcome it, except in the former case, you've "down" a feat.
The idea behind the feat I proposed was to give a benefit to those caster focusing on a theme by making the power more accurate the more powers you have along that theme (+2 per power with the keyword). By adding the Resistance to the defence, the aim was to make those creatures with "more control" over that element harder to inflict the damage upon, but more "worthwhile" with the ongoing damage should you manage it.
The aim with the feat was to really try to convey the idea that a character can put so much study into controlling fire that they can turn the fire within the salamanders blood against it, or extinguish the flame within the dragon, and reduce the need to "dilute" their character concept with non-thematic appropriate powers to avoid becoming completely irrelevant in certain combats.
Aside from being unwieldy, the feat is really really overpowered. It negates resistance and does ongoing damage, all for a heroic tier at-will power? The solution you propose is simply well above the power level of even epic level feats.
There are paragon paths which can bypass fire resistance - he's a warlock, let him take the Hellbringer PP from Arcane Power (p. 91) and the problem goes away. Letting him ignore resistance from level 1 and doing potentialy devastating ongoing damage on top of that (something no at-will attack allows) is a bad thing. (Actualy a Hellbringer warlock with the surging flame feat from PH2 does a lot of what you're trying to do - ignores resistance and does extra damage to fire resistant creatures).
I can sympathize with wanting to play a thematic character in a less than optimal setting, but I don't think you need to break the game system to validate the choice. Work within the guidelines already established in the system and you should be fine.
Yes, it does do ongoing damage as an At-Will, but only if you come across something that actually has a resistance to the energy type you chose. It also does no immediate damage on a hit unlike other At-Wills, and I don't believe there are any other At-Will powers that risk you being "locked out" of some powers on a miss.
I did give the character I built for my friend the surging flame feat, and it does work reasonably well as long as you only come across things with a maximum of Resist 5. In fact, in such cases, it looks rather similar in end result to my proposed feat: surging flame allows for an extra 5 fire damage from any fire power until the end of the players next turn, if the player with the feat hits with fire based power. If the creature has Resist 5 Fire then those 5 extra points are essentially the same effect as ignoring it's resistance. It does get ongoing damage, but as said before, the original attack deals no immediate damage, whereas there will likely be some from the hit that triggers surging flame. Perhaps it would be more balanced to change my proposed feat to the end of the next turn, rather than "save ends"?
Unfortunately, surging flame suffers from the same problem as "ignore X points of resistance" feats once you start meeting opponents with X+5. Surging flames deals with Resist 5 Fire monsters well enough, but when you meet a Resist 10 Fire enemy, those extra 5 points of damage on each attack still leave the monster with an effective Resist 5, meaning it's still better in most cases to give up on the fire-based powers all together.
The Hellbringer is a pretty good PP for alleviating some of these issues, but only for pyromancers, and then only for those that start or dip into Warlock; less useful for the "pure" Wizards, or Sorcerors. And while this has mostly been about fire in a desert setting, the PP would do nothing for the ice wizards in the frozen tundra, the poison focused magic users in a jungle setting, the necrotic energy wielding warlock descending into undead crypts, or even the faithful paladin fighting his way through the ranks of heaven to save his god. None of those are currently an issue, but if possible to come up with a more all encompasing solution (beyond chucking out most of the resistances, as I have considered doing) that can be re-used in the future, than that would be a preferable option.
Furthermore it ignores resistances of a damage type. This is an ability that cannot be found before paragon tier, and is then only found in paragon paths that severly specialize in the elemental type in question. Paragon paths reflect a character's specialization and the ability you're suggesting is highly specialized by your own description. It shouldn't be avaialble to any causal elemental spellcaster. Since paragon path features are normally roughly equivalent to epic tier feats, that's where we should expect to see a feat that bypasses resistance - and it's already in the game - irresistable flame in the players handbook.
Lets look at the damage. There are currently no at-will attack powers that do ongoing damage. Ongoing damage is normally reserved for daily attack powers and is generally capped at 5 at heroic tier, 10 at paragon tier and 15 at epic tier. Given the spread of fire resistant creatures in the MM, your power does 5-10 at heroic tier and jumps to 30 in paragon. So essentially, you have a damage effect on an at-will attack that is better than an epic level daily by paragon tier. That is unbalanced. (Also it's save ends - another feature mostly reserved for daily powers. At-wills and encounters normally only last until the next turn if they have a duration at all).
That it can only be used against creatures with a specific resistance, doesn't change the fact that it's vastly overpowered against those creatures. The very odd attack roll may be intended as some kind of balancing factor - but ultimately it makes the power too hard to use. The huge bonus to attack means the power will pretty much auto-hit anything with a low fire resistance, but the countering high bonus to Will defense means the ability isn't likely to have any chance at all of hitting a creature with high fire resistance (and therefore isn't likely to do anything to alleviate the frustration the player is supposedly going to have about being less effective against the opponents you're most concerned with).
This is a bad strategy. It pays no attention to the basic structures or conventions of the game and it will be unbalanced in play. Ultimately, as the GM, it's your responsibility to make sure that the encounters are balanced for the characters playing in the adventure. It is a lot simpler and a lot less unbalancing to adjust the resistances and immunities of the encounters in the game to provide a mix of challenges. That said, if a player is set and determined to 'put all his eggs in one basket' and specialize in one damage type, then there will be times when his character will be less effective. That's part of the game and the acceptable solution is to diversify. There are plenty of options to do so, even while remaining true to a theme character.
I was reminded the other day that in order for a resistance to apply to damage with dual damage types, the foe needs resistance to both types or else takes full damage. There are some feats that allow some modification of At-Will powers, and so what I may look at offering instead is something similar as feats for characters with "desert born" backgrounds. That seems more appropriate to another thread, however, but I felt it appropriate to tie up this thread.
I know there are magic items you can use to add keywords to attacks, but I don't really see why it would be a bad idea to have a feat that did the same kind of thing. Adding say Radiant to your fire attacks and resistance problems are gone.
Not sure exactly what would be balanced though, and it does seem to me that the way 4e works that themes like that are most appropriate to paragon and above.
Yeah, I was thinking that what would REALLY be nice would be a way to add a second keyword to damage. That would alleviate a lot of the problems for the player. It would also be a pretty interesting way to BUILD a theme.
It's Arcane characters only at the moment, but it exists. It's in Arcane Power, and it's called Arcane Admixture - you pick a single arcane power you know, and one of acid, cold, fire, lightning or thunder, and you add that keyword and damage type to the power. You can take it multiple times as well, if you've got a lot of powers you want to change.
kuonji's idea is more clean-cut and player-friendly, rather than causing some sort of muddle with an extra power, attack rolls with various modifiers, etc.
Overpowering Energy
Benefit; Upon choosing this feat, select one of the following damage types; acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, thunder. Your powers that inflict damage of the chosen type ignore the first 5 points of a target's resistance to that damage type.
At 11th level, you ignore 10 points of resistance.
At 21st level, you ignore 15 points of resistance.
Special; You can select this feat more than once. Each time you do, select a different damage type.
I would go with this. It's essentially a modified version of the feat Irresistable Flame, and seems balanced to it. I would change the wording to match that feat exactly - "treat Resist as X fewer", instead of "ignores X points of Resist".