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An epic bailout from my players last week was not completely fruitless. Two players showed up, and we hung out, talked shop, and played some video games.
I got to talking with Matt, who plays our party’s paladin, and was talking about how much divine challenge is starting to, well, suck. It doesn’t do enough damage to deter, isn’t “sticky”, and forces the player to chase it’s challenged foe around or lose it.
Early in heroic, we didn’t notice it so much. The damage seemed about right, especially in a campaign filled with the undead, taking 5-15 extra radiant damage. I noticed though, now that the players are 6-7 level, that I was ignoring the paladin’s challenge more and more. Does the monster take 6 points of damage, or does he go after that annoying little rogue who is doing 30 points of damage a round? A monster might follow the compulsion of the challenge before getting smacked for more, but how I play it is that monsters chase the biggest threat. Compounding on all these problems is the fact that the paladin often has the highest AC by a large margin in the party. Even with a -2, almost everyone in the party is easier to hit.
After much back and forth, we came up with the following fixes. I’ll keep you up to date on how it plays out, but both the player and I are excited to see how it goes.
Minor Action
Personal
you use this power against another target. A creature can be subject
to only one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place.
The first time it makes an attack that doesn’t include you as a target before the start of your next turn, you can make a secondary attack if the target is within 5 squares of you.
You can use divine challenge once per turn.
Secondary Attack: Strength or Charisma (choose one at character creation) vs. Will
Similar Posts:
- Paladin Power Pack #2: Challenges
- Paladin Power Pack #1: Auras.
- Why WotC is laughing at me: Divine Challenge and the importance of feedback.
A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
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I’ve been playing a Paladin for 6 months now, from 1st to 8th level. I agree that the Paladin’s Challenge doesn’t seem to scale properly. I like your suggested revisions.
However, the Paladin has a lot of other cool powers and abilities and his challenge is just a small part of who he is. If I wanted a character with the kind of challenge you’re proposing I would have played a Fighter.
Keep in mind that some of the Paladin powers rely on the target being marked. So although the mark isn’t as powerful as the Fighter’s, it does provide some good bonuses for these specific powers (see Holy Strike for example).
True. Our Paladin is at the lower lip of 8th level at the moment.
What we wanted from the Divine Challenge is for it to be a suitable deterrent. Before our houserule, Divine Challenge was turning into a non-feature. The paladin remains with other great, attractive features, and this was an attempt to bring DC more into range with the paladin’s other abilities.
We’ve played with them in one session, and so far the results have been good. These houserules still don’t give strong stickiness like the fighter’s marking does, and not the versatility and/or damage reduction of the swordmage’s aegis. It’s just the ability to OA at range. It doesn’t seem at the moment to infringe on any other defender’s space, but heightens that feel of noble, divine challenge that should be part of the paladin.
But we’re still testing it out, so it may change.
I kind of enjoy our pally running all around the map chasing his mark, but this looks like a good solution if I ever get tired of that.
If you really want to heighten the paladin feel, I’d let them spend a healing surge to do a silly amount of damage to someone they’ve marked who attacks a bloodied ally. You’d have to fiddle around with it to make it balanced, but it strikes me as a good way to portray the selfless, righteously furious nature of the class.
That looks like too much damage. Getting essentially 4w and 5w attacks for free seems like too much to me even for higher levels. I’d say maybe up it do 1d8 and change it to 2d8 at 11 and 3d8 21?
One of the most annoying things about the challenge to me is the fact that it actually encourages the Paladin to use ranged attacks and hide out behind the lines forcing the enemy to take damage or not attack anyone (or take AoO if they use ranged attacks back).
thanks for the feedback! It’s really appreciated. I stirred your comments in the soup that is in my mind, and the following floated up to the surface:
-while we haven’t seen it yet, the power as currently worded does encourage the paladin to sit back and force the challenged enemy in, all the while getting nuked. Not what I had in mind.
-the damage hasn’t in one session seemed overbearing but, again, the paladin hasn’t gotten time to create it.
-so, what I’m thinking is: what about the paladin gets a bonus to melee attacks? This encourages the paladin to go at the foe, and thus encourage the challenged foe to look his way.
What do you think? Still playing around with the numbers, but right now that seems a better way to work it. Appreciate everyone’s feedback a lot.
Here’s an idea that might work well, though, I’ve only ran a couple of 4E one shots, so I don’t have a full idea if this would be too unbalanced:
Take the Paladin Divine Challenge as is – but, add the Paladin’s level to the damage it does. Granted, this means at 11th level, the damage is 6 + 11 (level) + Cha, which means it’s over 17 points a round, but it certainly means that most monsters will not want to ignore the Paladin for more than 1 or 2 rounds without getting hurt.
It keeps the power mostly the same, and simply ramps up the effect to do what it’s supposed to do.
The premise is rock solid – anything to make DC scale up smoothly is definitely an improvement. So I think this takes it in the right directions, but I have a few thoughts.
I think the damage is not unreasonable with the qualifier that this is an _attack_ rather than just automatic damage. It’s high – any higher would be too high certainly – but contrasted with effects like the Warden’s “Attack someone else and the rogue will now eat your spleen” effect it seems to fall in line.
But that said I think you’ve removed a really important check on the power by not requiring the paladin to continue to engage the enemy. This potentially creates a situation where the paladin could DC an enemy then disengage from the fight and continue to rack up damage.
-Rob D.
I haven’t encountered this yet, but the group I DM doesn’t have a Paladin and the one I play in is just lvl 2. That said, I think I’d prefer giving the Paladin a bonus to melee attacks against the target if they attack someone else. Something like: if a challenged enemy makes an attack that doesn’t include you as a target, then the next (melee?) attack you make against them gets a +1 attack bonus and does an extra 1d8 (2d8 at 11, 3d8 at 21) radiant damage.
Legal a variante, mas pra ela ser mais balançada o ataque deveria ser uma Immediate Reaction(ou interrupt, mas eu iria com reaction). E o range de 5 quadrados não vai durar muito. 5/10/15 dependendo do tier fica melhor eu acho. nos níveis mais altos, é muito fácil pros monstros teleportarem ou voarem, ou mesmo um velho shift+charge pode deixálo a mais de 5 squares.
ou deixa como está e adiciona 1/2 level no dano, e talvez a escolha de +Cha ou +Str. O dano se torna mais respeitável e é dano automático, o que ajuda a matar o monstro mais rápido.
talvez o problema seja que o paladino esteja com AC muito alta em relação ao grupo. É sempre bom o defender não ter uma AC tão alta(tipo, plate+heavy shield) pra se tornar um alvo atrativo pros meleers. um monstro marcado deveria ter a mesma chance de acertar um paladino(ou mais fácil) do que seus aliados.
Let’s see… something that remains true to the Paladin’s nature. A Defender with a minor in Leader, um…
What if it’s the damage + combat advantage given to the target of the attack? Or… a +2 to attacks made against the Challenged creature by the target(s) of its attack? Just a thought.
~DD