Comments on: A Little Light Avenging

By: Granin

Granin — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:55:10 +0000

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.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:05:54 +0000

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.

By: Nick Wedig

Nick Wedig — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:28:26 +0000

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.

By: justin

justin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:52:22 +0000

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

By: rob

rob — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:19:21 +0000

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.

By: justin

justin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:50:15 +0000

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.

By: rob

rob — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:07:21 +0000

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.

By: Bryant

Bryant — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:10:11 +0000

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.

By: Lukas

Lukas — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:06:49 +0000

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?

By: fred

fred — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:36:35 +0000

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”.