At this point, I may just do a whole post about the topic!

1 Warlock
1 Rogue
1 Wizard

We kicked ass The shaman is an incredibly effective (and fun) healer to play. All the temp health points, AE heals, etc – was cool.

With the epic level axe feat, the barbarian can get a 19-20 crit range and using howling strike as the at-will he gets at LEAST 2W+3d6+Str, if you factor in power attack (w/2h weapon = +9 dmg), dwarven weapon training, devastating crit, weapon focus and expertise, and assume he’s using a Rage that increases his damage. It looks to me like his normal hit damage will be higher than the Av/Daggermaster, but his crit % will be lower.

I should have some more solid numbers sometime soon, but suffice to say I don’t think this is SUPER broken especially considering how limited it is and the amount of feats and specific power needed for it. Besides, if there’s another enemy adjacent to you the whole thing is bust anyway!

Some things to consider:
- The +6 daggers used are in the high 20′s levels, so this really needs to be compared to other class capabilities in the Epic Levels
- While the daggermaster might do extra crit damage on 18-20, a result of 18 or 19 does not automatically hit like a natural 20 does.
- These calcs are factoring in power attack bonus dmg, which on top of the previous point I’m not entirely confident in the 69% hit percentage.

It’s extremely impressive, but I’ll have to look into some more epic level things to really determine how broken it is.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1164849

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1161670

106 – 300 damage per round (on average) for an At-Will attack is just stupid

*EDIT*
By the way, I absolutely sucked at Stats, but…

1st Roll
Chance to Crit = 3/20 = 0.15
Chance to NoCrit: = 1 – Chance to Crit = 0.85

2nd Roll
Chance to Crit = .15 * NoCrit from 1st roll = .1275

Total Chance to Crit for 1 Attack | 1 Weapon | 2 Rolls = .2775

Twin Strike gets a 2nd attack with a 2nd weapon and 2 more rolls for it.

The chance to crit is pretty high, over 40% I’m sure.

*EDIT*
The guy in the post has calculated it to be:
Chance of at least one critical hit 0.47799375

Seems right to me.

What I’ve found that gets a bit ridiculous is when you have a barbarian with Howling Strike geared up with a Vanguard Execution Axe, Horned Helm, and several other charge boosting items. The charge ends up doing 1d12+d8+d6+Str damage, if you combine that with weapon focus and something like dwarven weapon training, you can really start to get a Barbarian who rocks things pretty quickly. Combine all of that with a Cape of the Montebank: charge, take damage – teleport away, charge again!

I have yet to find any one particular build or power that I would consider broken or absurd, just a lot of interesting options and opportunities!

1) While this is, indeed, awesome, the Avenger is built around a big two-handed weapon. So while the 3x chance for a crit is nice, it only gives 4 damage from the weapon. Greatsword average damage is 4.5, so doing this is actually a net loss in damage output. Except for with crit bonus damage. Ah well, it’s probably still not much better on average, and is costs a feat to do. That feat could be better spent on fullblade proficiency.

2) See above, for the most part. The most broken half-elf grab is probably a barbarian attack. These just do more damage, period.

3) I haven’t read that Paragon Path much, so no opinion yet.

Graham´s last post: 32 hours of D&D gaming party!

I actually think the Shaman is cool. I didn’t get hung up too much on what animal is what (I mean, just change them if you want), but I love the mechanics.

My favorite classes? Avenger, Barbarian, Druid, and Warden.

However, being the min/max’er that I am, I can already a couple of huge balance loopholes that DMs should probably be aware of.

1) Avengers multi-classing into Daggermasters. 18-20 Crits and getting to roll twice? I haven’t done the math, but this is pretty absurd.

2) Half-Elf getting an At-Will from another class… especially if you use this with #1. Again, I haven’t done the math, but the first thing that sticks out to me is a Half-Elf Avenger multi’d into a Dagger Master and going with Twin Strike from the Ranger class and getting several Two-Weapon feats, AP feats, etc. I would wager a build like this makes absolutely no sense at all from a RP sense, but from a pure damage sense, it might be the best/most unbalanced build ever.

3) Or, you could go the other way and do a Rogue multi’d into the Zealous Assassin Avenger. Artful Dodger (with their ridiculous OA defense) and being able to essentially have combat challenge every time you charge… and untouchable in the process? Ugh.

Barbarian:
Despite my previous sentiments for the class, after looking at all of their options, this class is amazing. The preview definitely didn’t have enough choices for rages. The PHB2 has TONS of rage choices. This is a class that seems to really be a semi-late bloomer, but when they do… they look to be pretty devastating. Match this up with their relatively good durability compared to other strikers, and this looks to be a winner.

All in all – I like it. I’ve never been much into magic users so I haven’t spent too much time Min/Max’ing the Bard, Sorc, or Invoker.

From a RP view, I really enjoy the Druid. The Elf makes a perfect Druid, and I really like the idea of being a familiar for a party member…. hardly ever being caught in humanoid form… maybe trying to RP it as never changing to humanoid form unless alone – perhaps some sort of psychic connection to owner and just speaking through them all the time. Being this stalking cat-like beast, high perception and insight (sniffing out liars and ambushes), being shunned from entering establishments, etc – I like it!

Combat-wise, they are really appealing to me. Very versatile strikers with quite a few controller abilities and a couple of leader abilities thrown in for good measure. I love charging in combat and having At-Wills designed specifically for this pretty much sealed the deal for me I think. I’ll let everyone know how it goes. To be honest, I just love the idea of having 2 minis for my character – a badass cat beast being one of them! Raaawwwrrr!

I agree completely on the classes. I just wasn’t sure what you meant by the races being a stretch. Now I know.

Graham´s last post: The PHB2 Druid – Nature’s Schizophrenic

Firstly, I was unaware that Deva and Half-Orcs had been around for multiple editions of the game. So I stand corrected if that is the case. But aside from the gnome, I don’t think any of the others could be described as ‘core’ races, which is kind of what I was referring to.

Some of the classes, on the other hand, were either ‘core’ classes that were omitted in PHB 1 or were logical extensions of existing core classes.

I should have qualified my statement of the races with a: “except for the gnome”. (I just don’t buy the half-orc as a core race, despite its popularity amongst many other D&Ders).

They are traditionally the human link between the material world and the spirit world, and have almost always been associated with curing disease, sickness, and other forms of healing. Shaman were typically looked at as the real leaders of tribes, and as such I didn’t even blink at them being put into the leader role. I think the hang-up on “Bears don’t heal, they hurt things!” is really a disservice to the concept and the class in this roundtable considering all of the other non-sensical things that happen in D&D which we love and accept.

Besides it’s a SPIRIT animal, it does whatever the hell it wants. Now, if the bear is wielding nunchakus…then you know it’s not there to heal but to rain down the PAIN!

All of that said, I take the results of this roundtable with the Shaman as a Miss really to mean that in any collection of classes you’ve got to have some good ones and some that aren’t so good, so I’m confident the Shaman will end up being a cool class but it does appear to be the most ‘out-of-sorts’ class in the PHB2.

re: races

What do you mean? Gnome, Half-Orc, and Deva (Aasimar) have all been around for multiple editions of the game.

Shifter and Goliath are both from 3.5e, but I suppose had a suitably Primal flavour for the book.

There were actually no real new races in the book.

Graham´s last post: The PHB2 Druid – Nature’s Schizophrenic