The Gaming Den

Tiefling Cleric using Purifying Fire on himself is almost worthwhile.

Problem is the inability to keep it active for any length of time

Pity it seems that you are unable to choose not to make saves.

[edit] Heh. I just realised that by the wording of that definition of enemy, and warlock's curse, a warlock can only ever curse itself, short of twofold curse or similar. Similar for ranger's hunter's quarry.

Why is that? Does it state you have to target the nearest enemy or something?

And what would the Purifying Fiery Tiefling Cleric do?

I could read these, but it's not worth opening the pdf for, 4E is that bad.

Koumei wrote:Why is that? Does it state you have to target the nearest enemy or something?

And what would the Purifying Fiery Tiefling Cleric do?

I could read these, but it's not worth opening the pdf for, 4E is that bad.

Both curse and quarry specify 'a creature', which, according to 4E, is an ally and an enemy both. However, as you cannot target allies, you cannot target anything, except yourself, as you are a creature, but not an ally.

Yeah, it's fvcking stupid.

D&D 4e wrote:Once per turn as a minor action, you can designate the enemy nearest to you as your quarry.

Ha!

Edit: Oh snap. Infernal Warlocks are immortal.

Warlock Curse wrote:Once per turn as a minor action, you can place a Warlock’s Curse on the enemy nearest to you that you can see.

Infernal Pact wrote: When an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, you immediately gain temporary hit points equal to your level.

-Username17

Ha, awesome! Bullysaurus Inferlocks for the win!

"KNEEL BEFORE ME, MORTALS! I CANNOT BE KILLED, FOR I CURSE MYSELF!"

The description of warlock's curse says you can only target "the enemy nearest to you that you can see." I assume you could get by with saying that you never look down at yourself or hold your hands in front of your face while bestowing the curse.

That is, unless you're an infernal warlock and want to pull Frank's cheese.

Finally, a reason to play an infernal warlock 4e at all.

Okay, it's not much of a reason, but that...that is hilarious.

Someone needs to mention these findings at some serious 4e boards and report back with the responses. I am curious as to how the fools deal with this level of fail. Particularly with the 'you are your own enemy, by RAW'
I expect the immortal infernalock will be will waved off with the anti-Bag o' Rats rule, but the justifications, backpedalling and gnashing of teeth should be amusing in its own right.

I suggest the Wizards boards, ENworld and the Custserv people, just for starters. They all deserve it, on one level of other. I'd suggest someone without a history of active antagonism post it as a serious rules question, which it actually is, really.

I'm game.

I mean, I'll need the right things to post up and the right way to word it, because I have never even touched a 4e book, and have no intention of doing so, but I'll do it.

CustServ will likely have a chuckle before answering you, as they're the people to actually ask and presumably "This guy ran into some interesting fun while playing the game. Very attentive, but perhaps looking into it a bit too literally."

Which, IIRC, is basically how they replied to Schroedinger's Dragon Disciple and similar. You know, "Haha, that's funny, and well done for spotting it, but the intent is clearly ___"

ENWorld will rewrite their brains so they don't have to consider that it could not make sense or be stupid. After all, EXCEPTION-BASED DESIGN IS GOOD!

Here it is:

---

How resilient are Inferlocks when they curse themselves?

First of all, the relevant passages from the PHB:

p. 57, Definition of Enemy and Ally wrote: When a power’s target entry specifies that it affects you and one or more of your allies, then you can take advantage of the power’s effect along with your teammates. Otherwise, “ally” or “allies” does not include you, and both terms assume willing targets. “Enemy” or “enemies” means a creature or creatures that aren’t your allies (whether those creatures are hostile toward you or not). “Creature” or “creatures” means allies and enemies both, as well as you.

So by definition, you are your own enemy. That part is clear. Also I think it's reasonably clear that no one is closer to you than you are (although one could make a good case that anyone who is physically touching you in some on-going Stirge kind of way is "just as close"). Which brings us to the Warlock's Curse:

p. 131, Warlock's Curse wrote:Once per turn as a minor action, you can place a Warlock’s Curse on the enemy nearest to you that you can see. A cursed enemy is more vulnerable to your attacks. If you damage a cursed enemy, you deal extra damage. You decide whether to apply the extra damage after making the damage roll. You can deal this extra damage once per round.
A Warlock’s Curse remains in effect until the end of the encounter or until the cursed enemy drops to 0 hit points or fewer.
You can place a Warlock’s Curse on multiple targets over the course of an encounter; each curse requires the use of a minor action. You can’t place a Warlock’s Curse on a creature that is already affected by your or another character’s Warlock’s Curse.

And the Inferlock's pact ability:

p. 131, Infernal Pact wrote: When an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, you immediately gain temporary hit points equal to your level.

And then we get back to healing and the dying:

p. 295, Death and Dying wrote:Regain Hit Points: When you are dying and receive healing, you go to 0 hit points and then regain hit points from the healing effect.

p. 294, Temporary Hit Points. wrote:if your current hit points are 0, you still have 0 when you receive temporary hit points

So when our 5th level Warlock gets into battle, the first thing she has to do is Curse herself. This would allow her to do more damage to herself, but she's not going to do that. Later on in the fight, she gets smacked into negative hit points, triggering her Pact ability and giving her temporary hit points. Her real hit point reserve is set to 0 and then she gets 5 temporary hit points, so she's still conscious. But since her Curse triggered off of her, she is no longer cursed.

Now it's her turn, which brings us to the question: Can she curse herself again? Can she do anything else?

Here are the different opinions we have, and we can't seem to agree:

She Must Curse Herself, And It Will Work. Here's the deal: since she's not affected by the Curse anymore, she is not "already affected" so she is a viable target. Since she's the closest viable target, she has to target herself again. Since she's currently running on only 5 hit points, she'll drop as soon as a bugbear breathes on her, but she'll spring up again. To drop her in any real way requires that the enemies hit her twice: once to knock off the curse and once to knock her out so she can't curse herself again.

She Must Curse Herself, And It WON'T Work. Here's the idea: as above she isn't affected by the curse so she's the closest and therefore only valid target. Unfortunately, her "real" hit points are still zero, which causes the Pact to trigger and the Curse to end immediately. Since Temporary hit points don't stack, she's left with five temporary hit points no matter how many times she curses herself. In essence, she cannot use her curse power again on anything until she heals her base hit points to a positive number.

She Can't Curse Herself. And the final guy at our table says: Since she has been cursed this encounter she counts as someone who was "already cursed" even though she isn't cursed now, so she can't target herself. This means that she can curse a real opponent because she's not a viable target and therefore not the closest viable target.

Obviously the player in question wants the first option, but I think it might be too powerful, especially in Solo fights. What experience have other people had with the Infernal Pact Warlock? Is it balanced to allow and make them recurse themselves every time they get knocked out and spring back to life with infernal power?

---

Happy Hunting!

-Username17

Neat stuff there, folks. I'm interested to see what comes of that curse nonsense too.

Koumei wrote:Why is that? Does it state you have to target the nearest enemy or something?

And what would the Purifying Fiery Tiefling Cleric do?

I could read these, but it's not worth opening the pdf for, 4E is that bad.

Purifying Fire sets a bunch of couple extremely tightly clustered enemies on fire. If you or any of your allies start a turn next to an enemy who is still on fire you get healing. Tieflings come with fire resistance.

The problem is that the save ends duration and the general rules about durations in 4e don't let you set yourself on fire all day long - which is a shame because if that worked you could just forget about the whole healing surge rationing dealio.

Okay. It's up on ENWorld.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-ed ... -loop.html

Moving on to the other places, will put the links here...

WotC link

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1127984

I find it very telling that the first response in Enworld involved schadenfreude at my player.

I think Dracorat wins on ENworld for best twisting of logic so that he has come up with a way to say no that doesn't even involve the actual question. I can't even fathom how 'willing' comes into it.

I'm tempted to log on and argue with him (since you specifically aren't your own ally, so whether or not your willing isn't even vaguely relevant), but if I'm remembered at all over there, I'm an evil-4e hater because I criticized mearls.

Woohoo. Bag o rats, 2nd post on WotC boards. I should have put money on that.

Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow ow.

OK, you found a stupid mistake in the definitions for allies and enemies. And the definitions would probably be pretty lousy even without the mistake. And rules exist which interact with the mistake to generate unintended effects. That's bad, and it should be embarassing for the writers, but it's not absurdly bad.

But then you can't even write an example that demonstrates why this is bad without tripping over another pile of fail? WTH?

Once per turn as a minor action, you can place a Warlock’s Curse on the enemy nearest to you that you can see. A cursed enemy is more vulnerable to your attacks. If you damage a cursed enemy, you deal extra damage. You decide whether to apply the extra damage after making the damage roll. You can deal this extra damage once per round.
A Warlock’s Curse remains in effect until the end of the encounter or until the cursed enemy drops to 0 hit points or fewer.
You can place a Warlock’s Curse on multiple targets over the course of an encounter; each curse requires the use of a minor action. You can’t place a Warlock’s Curse on a creature that is already affected by your or another character’s Warlock’s Curse.

Forget for a moment that the definition of "enemy" is broken and assume that it was replaced with some ideal, perfect definition. This ability still has the following problems:

1) It's limited to the nearest enemy? The fact that there's an unconscious lemur that happens to hate you lying on the ground 2 feet to your left means that you can't curse the guy swinging an axe at your face from 5 feet away? Does this make narrative sense in some twisted, broken vision somewhere in the author's head? Is this expected to make things easier and more intuitive for the players? Does this somehow increase the tactical depth of the game by encouraging people to throw bags of rats at warlocks? What rational justification could possibly be given for this limitation?

2) Already-cursed enemies are ineligible to be cursed again, but the targeting isn't limited to the nearest eligible target, it's limited to the nearest enemy you can see. So that unconscious lemur stops you from cursing the axeman even if the lemur is already cursed!

3) When you're fighting someone, a mutual enemy can stop you from cursing your target by cursing them first. That's abusable and retarded even without counting as your own enemy.


Why on earth do game companies continue to hire rules-writers that can't write rules? Is basic competence at your assigned job not a prerequisite for being hired? It's not as if the task is impossible--the entire IT industry is built on computer instructions that are always interpreted absolutely literally and executed unquestioningly, so clearly people exist that are capable of writing correct, unambiguous instructions, and it's not as if there's no overlap between RPG fans and computer geeks.

Ah, well. The 4e writers fixed this with the bag of rats rule- irrelevant creatures don't count for use of powers and effects.

Really, its in the DMG (and I don't have the exact page or text), but they specifically wrote themselves a get-out-of-loophole-free card, by saying that any unintended consequences don't actually happen.

Basically, when they were doing the preview shit last year, people kept pointing out how awesome certain powers became in you brought the bag of rats back in. So one of the devs (or a PR minion) posted on ENworld, informed everyone of the Bag of Rats rule, and scarped.

So they knew how shitty they were at games development, specifically wrote an _actual rule_ to account for their shittiness, and followed up with the catch phrase of 4e: 'You Just Can't Do That'.

However, that 'also implies willing targets' bit also suggests that if your friends are not willing targets of your spells, sorry, powahz, they aren't your allies anymore- they are now enemies.

And, Ok, I have to post in the ENworld thread. They've established that temp HP isn't healing, so the trick doesn't work, but for some reason, that means that the real problem (you fall into the definition of your own enemy) doesn't exist.

Voss wrote:Ah, well. The 4e writers fixed this with the bag of rats rule- irrelevant creatures don't count for use of powers and effects.

I assume that I don't even need to point out that there exists no possible way of expressing that concept rigorously. If the creature changes the resolution of the situation, then it is definitionally not "irrelevant," so in order for this to work even colloquially it can only mean "creatures that shouldn't be relevant," and that basically boils down to "ignore the rules whenever appropriate."

So the official rules actually specifically say that you should not follow the rules?

This may be morbid, but I'd like to see the exact wording on that rule, if possible.

Closest I can come is this reference (no books):

It's in the DMG, page 40. Powers with hit or damage effects or such only have those effects if they come from a target that is a legitimate threat to you, and you are not a threat to you.

I did find the first time it came up on ENworld
http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-ed ... ost4082787

WotC_Miko wrote:*snerk* Here in the office we call it "a bag of kobold babies" and isn't it nice that there's a section in the DMG that discusses legitimate targets, to address exactly this kind of thing?

Ah, found it here in a related discussion
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=17414364

DMG p.40:
"When a power has an effect that occurs upon hitting a
target—or reducing a target to 0 hit points—the power
functions only when the target in question is a meaningful
threat. Characters can gain no benefit from
carrying a sack of rats in hopes of healing their allies
by hitting the rats."

'meaningful threat' is a lovely and ambiguous term, obviously.
I could very easily rule that minions of your level or lower are never meaningful threats, for example.

Yes, that has it's own problems, but it's different from what you previously said. That version doesn't address the thing I was complaining about, where you're unable to hit the target you care about because there's a bunch of "enemies" that are closer. This is a new bag-of-rats problem, where your enemy throws a bag of rats at you to interfere with your powers, rather than slaughtering a bag of rats to power his own effects.

Manxome wrote: Why on earth do game companies continue to hire rules-writers that can't write rules? Is basic competence at your assigned job not a prerequisite for being hired? It's not as if the task is impossible--the entire IT industry is built on computer instructions that are always interpreted absolutely literally and executed unquestioningly, so clearly people exist that are capable of writing correct, unambiguous instructions, and it's not as if there's no overlap between RPG fans and computer geeks.

The people who are competent at writing code to be interpreted literally generally want more compensation than it is realistically possible to earn writing tabletop RPG rules. Given the pay scales for RPG writing, it's a career that is almost competitive with low-end foodservice, provided that you can produce quickly and have an editor/line developer who likes your initial material enough that only minimal revisions are asked. Of course, you actually get to know when (and if) you get paid for flipping burgers, and you don't as an RPG freelancer.


Of course, that still doesn't make me any happier when trying to figure out how I can move my Cleric's Guardian of Faith in a 3d tree-fortress fight or if my Pit Fighter's weapon enhancement bonuses and Extra Damage Action apply to the secondary attack on All Bets Are Off.

I'm not sure I get your distinction. By that rule, if your enemy throws a bag of rats at you, you can safely ignore them, because they aren't 'meaningful threats' (assuming we don't feel like being obtuse about the threat level of a rat). Similarly, the ko'ed lemur you mentioned originally doesn't screw with the targeting either. Unless you're going to argue that it somehow nullifies the power, but the character still has to target it. (I'd argue that if it nullifies the power, it nullifies the targeting restrictions as well, as they are part of the power). Either way, its stupid and sad that they have to go to this length to try to cover their asses.

What it doesn't solve is not targeting yourself, as in this theoretical exercise with the warlock. Anyone can be a meaningful threat to themselves, whether its Death-Wish Judy, or Diving-Off of Cliffs Danny.