A Little Light Avenging

Somewhat fannish post, but I’m really excited to try playing an avenger from the PHB2 sometime.   It’s a weird class, and maybe it’ll be less interesting in practice than it seems in theory, but I’m totally willing to find out.  For all that PHB2 introduced some welcome additions the the controller stable, I’m most intrigued by what they did with strikers. None of the strikers in the PHB2 have the same kind of brute-force damage adders that the PHB1 classes do, and that makes the comparison between them kind of interesting.   It makes the PHB2 strikers seem less potent at first glance,  but since the guys at WOTC are no dummies, that just suggests that there are a few more subtleties at work.

At first glance, my impression was that the avenger traded off damage for a little bit of controller-ness, and while there’s some element of that it doesn’t entirely hold up.  There are some controller elements, certainly, but what the avenger really excels at is getting to his target, wherever they are on the board. Now, this absolutely makes him the bane of a certain type of enemy. Artillery, lurkers, controllers and skirmishers are all begging for trouble facing this class,  and those enemies tend to be a little bit less tough so the reduction in damage might correlate to that.  But that seemed a little bit too narrow in scope, and at least partly ignores the fact that the avenger is also going to have an interesting role when he tag-teams with a fighter or other potent marker (the avenger/swordmage synergy is just wacky enough that it might be awesome).

It finally came to me when the character builder came online and I started using it to make avengers (Githzerai and Shadar Kai avengers are kind of delicious for both stats and theme). Before the character builder, I hadn’t thought much about equipment, but  since the software makes it pretty easy, I had a bit of a realization as I was choosing weapons.  First, the avenger does not need an accurate weapon – his class ability means he rolls twice on attacks, and that’s a big enough accuracy boost that he can afford to take a weapon with a lower proficiency bonus.   So given that I started just looking for the weapon with the most raw damage, and that’s when it struck me that the avenger is twice as likely to score a critical hit against his target.

It’s obvious in retrospect, and I can’t believe I didn’t grasp it immediately, but the avenger is going to crit more reliably than any other class, so high damage weapons with high crit, like the heavy war pick, are going to pay off very well for him.  This dovetails nicely with the fact that he’s set up to take a fair number of opportunity attacks  (and avoid them) and with his likelihood to crit, even his basic attacks carry a lot of damage potential.

All of this has also been assuming a melee build.  On some level, I’m very curious to see what a range-build avenger ends up looking like.   It may or may not be viable, but I totally intend to experiment.  Similarly, I’m curious to see how the avenger abilities interact with a reach weapon (it definitely muddles at least one of their at-wills).

Now, I’m not 100% smitten.   I’m not sure why they don’t start with proficiency in leather armor – it seems somewhat essential on the face of it. Even with their inherent AC bonus, an avenger is likely to be in an exposed position a lot, and the small bump in AC from leather is a big deal. It seems like the avenger is obliged to burn a feat on it, and I always look at obligatory feats and wonder why they’re not just class features.

The avenger also suffers from the fact that he’ll probably have a lame strength, so his basic melee attack will such, which is problematic given the importance of charging and opportunity attacks.  The new martial feat can address that, but that’s one more feat the class has to take.  This is pretty bad, though not as bad as it could be, since the class makes up for the accuracy loss with its core ability.

It is also a shame that avengers don’t start with at least one additional weapon proficiency. It would be great if they started with superior weapon, if only because I want avengers to be the guys using the really weird weapons.  I suspect that were I to use them in a game, I would probably offer religion-based feats that grant leather armor proficiency and proficiency in one wacky weapon (so Avengers of the Raven Queen might get Spiked Chain, to reflect the Shadar-Kai influence).

Maybe it’s just the striker curse that they’re hungry for feats. I certainly know that rogues are, and rangers can be.  It’s possible it’s more feature than bug, but I’m skeptical.

Anyway, I’m still kicking the class around and I’m absolutely jonesing to see it at the table (that and the Warden).  Until I get the chance to do so I’ll probably keep rolling them up in the interest of seeing what it produces.  Maybe my current assessment will prove entirely off base.

1. fred, March 25, 2009:

   I suspect the lack of leather thing (though probably balanced against some factor) is because somebody said “Let’s make a cloth-wearing melee striker”.

2. Lukas, March 25, 2009:

   Increased chance of critical hits is the bread and butter of Avengers. If you focus on that, you can start to do lots of wacky things. For instance, giving them a Jagged weapon takes their chance of critical hits from 10% to 19%. At upper levels, multiclassing into a paragon path like Student of Caiphon (critical hits on 18-20 with Radiant or Fear attacks), you suddenly jump to a 28% chance of a critical hit, as long as you consistently use radiant powers.

   Questions: Which Martial feat are you talking about above? Also, are your experiments built around pursuit or retribution Avengers?

3. Bryant, March 25, 2009:

   The really scary build I’m seeing in the RPGA is an elven avenger with Righteous Rage of Tempus (Effect: If the next attack you make with a weapon before the end of your next turn hits the target, it becomes an automatic critical hit.) They’re using Elven Accuracy not to correct a miss, but to fish for criticals. RRoT is a guaranteed crit once per encounter, of course.

4. rob, March 25, 2009:

   The feat I was thinking is Martial Training – lets you change the stat you use for your basic melee attack. It’s something the PHB2 added that the game really needed.

   But yeah, the more one thinks about the crit build, the scarier things get – in a really really good way.

   Holy crap, righteous Rage of Tempus is terrifying, even without an Avenger. That said, I’d be leery of elf fishing. My rogue is an elf, specifically because I’m in it for the rerolls, and I would need to already feel like I’m winning before I burned the reroll on a fishing expedition. It seems all the more useful since when an avenger misses, it’s usually because of flukey dice, so it’s a good hedge against that. That said, elf is still an awesome choice for an avenger for a lot of the same reasons I love it for rogues.

   -Rob D.

5. justin, March 26, 2009:

   Re: the armor issue. I think the lack of armor is easily mitigated by the power and sheer number of movement effects. An at-will that includes a shift, for example. Thus, the avenger might get hit slightly more often when he is attacked, he should be getting attacked slightly less often. It feels like an interesting design space; I’m glad they explored it. The only odd part about it, for me, is that it doesn’t scale at all. Not even a “increases to +5 at 16th level” or something like that. So, while I’m confident the avenger will hold up just fine in heroic and probably early paragon, I’m worried that the flat bonus just won’t cut the mustard at higher levels. That would essentially force the avenger to switch to heavier armor, which seems bad to me from a role-play standpoint. OTOH, I’m certain they’ve playtested that aspect thoroughly, so I’m hopeful there’s some design element I’m overlooking which obviates it.

   I’m with you though: The avenger is really tickling my brain. If I weren’t playing a witch doctor, I’d play that in a heartbeat.

6. rob, March 26, 2009:

   I think the flat bonus holds up better than you might expect, since even if they stay in cloth armor, they’re going to get the steady ramp up to ac of changing armor types. It’s not perfect, but it seems to fall within the general penumbra of AC weirdness.

   -Rob D.

7. justin, March 26, 2009:

   Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Plus, I just noticed the Improved Armor of Faith Feat, which does scale by tier.

8. Nick Wedig, March 26, 2009:

   Most of the Avenger’s increase in AC as he levels will be coming from boosting his Dex or Int (and the automatic half-level to AC, of course). Which he should be doing because it’s an important secondary stat.

   Just doing that consistently will keep his AC in line with standard AC guidelines. Even without Improved Armor of Faith or Leather Armor Proficiency an Avenger’s AC will be comparable to a Ranger in Hide. As he goes up in level, the Avenger should be boosting his Dex or Int (just as the Ranger boosts his Dex), and gets magic and masterwork armor at the same rate as the Ranger.

   Then the Avenger stacks the other feats on top and gets a better AC than any striker. Maybe better than anyone.

9. rob, March 26, 2009:

   Yeah, in the long run the math ends up a lot like the swordmage, who stays within a point of the paladin for AC all the way through – with leather armor and the improved feat, the avenger can even end up surpassing that.

   I think what jars me about it is that it takes several levels before that is really brought to bear. Yes, a 17 ac in cloth (assuming an 18 dex) is probably comparable to or better than a rogue at the same level, but for what the avenger needs to do it seems a little thin. The rogue is a positional fighter – he’s rarely got incentive to stray too far form the party since they are what set him up to do big damage. In contrast, the Avenger is going to be out there, dangling in the breeze and quite possibly engaging an elite or solo, so Defender-class AC seems entirely appropriate, even intentional, and that’s the rub. When it takes a few levels to get to where the class _should_ be, I see shades of the old wizard class, and while I think it’s nowhere near that extreme, I’m still not comfortable with it.

   -Rob D.

10. Granin, May 1, 2009:

    For the campaign I’m running, I’m pulling out an Impilturi Human Pursuit Avenger of Tempus, which allows me to get 18/16 on Wis/Dex. The human bonus feat is dumped into Leather, the other into Righteous Rage for the obvious damage benefit when paired with greataxe. Then I choose the Impiltur Regional background feat to trade my Con score for Wis when determining starting hitpoints, and end up with AC 18 and 32 Hitpoints at a growth of 6 per level.

    It will be lucky if anyone can catch up to my hitpoints or armor class at this rate, and as a pursuit ranger with human bonus skills I’ve got healing and a full suite of stealth skills to add in, high basic saves (13/15/16, human saves and avenger saves are the same) and the ability to do some serious spike damage and hold my own in combat. You don’t even need the Elven bonus with Oath so long as you view yourself as something other than a damage hose.

    I chose this path because my team is unlikely to have a single defender, controller, or leader, and in truth, the Avenger is less a striker than a very strange defender who can save their allies by continually punishing the enemy for attacking someone besides the Avenger, and for trying to break combat with the Avenger.