TOPIC: Elemental Eldritch Set with Lenses of Divine Sight

kurtreznor wrote: it isn't game breaking if everyone has it, but at some point will TD need a disclaimer on certain levels of play saying 'if you don't have the eldritch set, don't play this level, you cant survive'? ive also come to the opinion that the supreme ring of elemental command is too powerful. not that it is really too powerful, but the fact that it exists changes dungeon design. any elemental damage of 10 or less and the designer has to acknowledge that anyone with the supreme ring is immune. do they bump it up higher? which severely punishes anyone who doesn't have the ring? that just seems crappy all around. especially on a difficulty where you 'know' that damage of 15 is just to make sure to hit all of us with the supreme ring, and that one guy without one is taking the full damage every round.

maybe we could errata the supreme ring of elemental command to only be 5 damage prevention, but increase the retribution damage to 20? (it should at least be 10...for 3 retribution I don't even bother to remind the DMs when I get hit).

You are right that it distorts the environment and makes it hard to make a dungeon that is challenging yet fair to both the Eldritch players and the non-Eldritch players.

When designing True Grind adventures, the existence of such tokens are something I am aware of. And something that I need to take into account for the higher difficulty levels (e.g. Nightmare & Epic with this year's Grind difficulty levels).

There are certainly workarounds, some of which are more elegant than others:

- Using different energy types (some might recall acid from the 2014 Purple Worm and sometimes the 2014 WYC Ember dragon). Force, sacred, and eldritch damage work well too.

- Finding ways to consolidate monster attacks into fewer attacks that deal more damage (which makes damage reduction slightly less helpful). This approach is also effective when there is lots of healing around.

- Removing access to the token. (Shatter spells, getting your arm lopped off).

And although this WYC, players got a lot of mileage out of the Supreme Ring of Elemental Command, there were other non-SREC players who got just as much benefit (if not more) from their Evasion rings, which were equally competitive.

the current ruling seems to be saying that neither of the two is too powerful, but using them together IS too powerful. ...I don't like that. if something needs to change for the balance/future of the game, fine, make that call and change it. but make the change across the board rather than cherry-pick a single interaction. if neither of those two is too powerful on their own, then just let it be too powerful if you go the extra step and use both.

I would say the problem is mainly with the Lenses.

The "healing/damage pool" concept was created a few years ago because it was perceived to be a problem. The Lenses specifically provide an exemption from the healing pool rules.

Even without the Eldritch set, you can get +8 healing by wearing the Relic and Legendary Foci Rings. And right now, this +8 healing gets doubled by the Lens.

Which leads to the question: Why restrict healing for the SREC and RoSP players but NOT restrict healing for the Relic & Legendary Foci Ring players?

I would prefer not to see the lenses change, especially since they effectively take up two slots to get the duplication ability.

Well, the Charm of Enlightenment isn't all that bad. Even without the Lenses, it grants you +4 to Will saves. Last I checked, some players still devote a ring slot for that effect (Ring of Iron Will).

Incognito wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: it isn't game breaking if everyone has it, but at some point will TD need a disclaimer on certain levels of play saying 'if you don't have the eldritch set, don't play this level, you cant survive'? ive also come to the opinion that the supreme ring of elemental command is too powerful. not that it is really too powerful, but the fact that it exists changes dungeon design. any elemental damage of 10 or less and the designer has to acknowledge that anyone with the supreme ring is immune. do they bump it up higher? which severely punishes anyone who doesn't have the ring? that just seems crappy all around. especially on a difficulty where you 'know' that damage of 15 is just to make sure to hit all of us with the supreme ring, and that one guy without one is taking the full damage every round.

maybe we could errata the supreme ring of elemental command to only be 5 damage prevention, but increase the retribution damage to 20? (it should at least be 10...for 3 retribution I don't even bother to remind the DMs when I get hit).

You are right that it distorts the environment and makes it hard to make a dungeon that is challenging yet fair to both the Eldritch players and the non-Eldritch players.

When designing True Grind adventures, the existence of such tokens are something I am aware of. And something that I need to take into account for the higher difficulty levels (e.g. Nightmare & Epic with this year's Grind difficulty levels).

There are certainly workarounds, some of which are more elegant than others:

- Using different energy types (some might recall acid from the 2014 Purple Worm and sometimes the 2014 WYC Ember dragon). Force, sacred, and eldritch damage work well too.

- Finding ways to consolidate monster attacks into fewer attacks that deal more damage (which makes damage reduction slightly less helpful). This approach is also effective when there is lots of healing around.

- Removing access to the token. (Shatter spells, getting your arm lopped off).

And although this WYC, players got a lot of mileage out of the Supreme Ring of Elemental Command, there were other non-SREC players who got just as much benefit (if not more) from their Evasion rings, which were equally competitive.

the current ruling seems to be saying that neither of the two is too powerful, but using them together IS too powerful. ...I don't like that. if something needs to change for the balance/future of the game, fine, make that call and change it. but make the change across the board rather than cherry-pick a single interaction. if neither of those two is too powerful on their own, then just let it be too powerful if you go the extra step and use both.

I would say the problem is mainly with the Lenses.

The "healing/damage pool" concept was created a few years ago because it was perceived to be a problem. The Lenses specifically provide an exemption from the healing pool rules.

Even without the Eldritch set, you can get +8 healing by wearing the Relic and Legendary Foci Rings. And right now, this +8 healing gets doubled by the Lens.

Which leads to the question: Why restrict healing for the SREC and RoSP players but NOT restrict healing for the Relic & Legendary Foci Ring players?

I would prefer not to see the lenses change, especially since they effectively take up two slots to get the duplication ability.

Well, the Charm of Enlightenment isn't all that bad. Even without the Lenses, it grants you +4 to Will saves. Last I checked, some players still devote a ring slot for that effect (Ring of Iron Will).

My $0.02 on the subject is fairly straightforward.

Relsa's Ring is not seen as overpowered when used with the Lenses. There's been no questioning on that. The 2 piece Eldritch bonus HAS. The only difference is the amount of healing provided.

ANY ruling in the game that says tokens work together in one specific way EXCEPT for this VERY SPECIFIC scenerio related to 1 game effect where it works completely opposite is a bad ruling. Dropping the Eldritch set to 5 healing (or maybe 7 to keep it a better bonus than the Relsa's) fixes the perceived problem without the need for a one off errata.

Drop the 2 piece bonus to +7 healing and leave the Lenses working as designed.

This comes back to my constant complaint about inconsistency of rulings in the game. Adding yet another inconsistent ruling causes a lack of confidence in the game rules.

Mike Steele wrote: 11 minutes later, Druegar posted the new ruling - just over two hours after George asked the question.

Small point of clarification Mike. I was the one that spoke to George at WYC and informed him it was a "pool of 10 HPs" that got shared instead of +10 HPs per target. I got the information from tokendb. So somewhere along the line the set bonus got changed but no formal communication. I only noticed it because I was looking at the Rod one day.

I believe Druegar then made a clarification change after the conversation.

Ed

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Incognito wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: it isn't game breaking if everyone has it, but at some point will TD need a disclaimer on certain levels of play saying 'if you don't have the eldritch set, don't play this level, you cant survive'? ive also come to the opinion that the supreme ring of elemental command is too powerful. not that it is really too powerful, but the fact that it exists changes dungeon design. any elemental damage of 10 or less and the designer has to acknowledge that anyone with the supreme ring is immune. do they bump it up higher? which severely punishes anyone who doesn't have the ring? that just seems crappy all around. especially on a difficulty where you 'know' that damage of 15 is just to make sure to hit all of us with the supreme ring, and that one guy without one is taking the full damage every round.

maybe we could errata the supreme ring of elemental command to only be 5 damage prevention, but increase the retribution damage to 20? (it should at least be 10...for 3 retribution I don't even bother to remind the DMs when I get hit).

You are right that it distorts the environment and makes it hard to make a dungeon that is challenging yet fair to both the Eldritch players and the non-Eldritch players.

When designing True Grind adventures, the existence of such tokens are something I am aware of. And something that I need to take into account for the higher difficulty levels (e.g. Nightmare & Epic with this year's Grind difficulty levels).

There are certainly workarounds, some of which are more elegant than others:

- Using different energy types (some might recall acid from the 2014 Purple Worm and sometimes the 2014 WYC Ember dragon). Force, sacred, and eldritch damage work well too.

- Finding ways to consolidate monster attacks into fewer attacks that deal more damage (which makes damage reduction slightly less helpful). This approach is also effective when there is lots of healing around.

- Removing access to the token. (Shatter spells, getting your arm lopped off).

And although this WYC, players got a lot of mileage out of the Supreme Ring of Elemental Command, there were other non-SREC players who got just as much benefit (if not more) from their Evasion rings, which were equally competitive.

the current ruling seems to be saying that neither of the two is too powerful, but using them together IS too powerful. ...I don't like that. if something needs to change for the balance/future of the game, fine, make that call and change it. but make the change across the board rather than cherry-pick a single interaction. if neither of those two is too powerful on their own, then just let it be too powerful if you go the extra step and use both.

I would say the problem is mainly with the Lenses.

The "healing/damage pool" concept was created a few years ago because it was perceived to be a problem. The Lenses specifically provide an exemption from the healing pool rules.

Even without the Eldritch set, you can get +8 healing by wearing the Relic and Legendary Foci Rings. And right now, this +8 healing gets doubled by the Lens.

Which leads to the question: Why restrict healing for the SREC and RoSP players but NOT restrict healing for the Relic & Legendary Foci Ring players?

I would prefer not to see the lenses change, especially since they effectively take up two slots to get the duplication ability.

Well, the Charm of Enlightenment isn't all that bad. Even without the Lenses, it grants you +4 to Will saves. Last I checked, some players still devote a ring slot for that effect (Ring of Iron Will).

My $0.02 on the subject is fairly straightforward.

Relsa's Ring is not seen as overpowered when used with the Lenses. There's been no questioning on that. The 2 piece Eldritch bonus HAS. The only difference is the amount of healing provided.

ANY ruling in the game that says tokens work together in one specific way EXCEPT for this VERY SPECIFIC scenerio related to 1 game effect where it works completely opposite is a bad ruling. Dropping the Eldritch set to 5 healing (or maybe 7 to keep it a better bonus than the Relsa's) fixes the perceived problem without the need for a one off errata.

Drop the 2 piece bonus to +7 healing and leave the Lenses working as designed.

This comes back to my constant complaint about inconsistency of rulings in the game. Adding yet another inconsistent ruling causes a lack of confidence in the game rules.

Excellent point. I'd add that someone could wear the Relic and Legendary Rings of Focus for a much lower investment than two Eldritch items for +8 healing and nobody has had an issue with that interacting with the Lenses. There isn't much difference between +8 and +10 healing, so I'd recommend leaving it as it was instead of making a rules change just for this item or modifying a set bonus that has been established for years.

Took a bit to get caught up after getting back from WYC but I'd come down against after the fact item change unless things are REALLY REALLY broken.

End of the day Jeff needs to do what he thinks is right for the long term health of the game. That said the fear of after the fact changes to items that represent a significant investment to people could also undermine their buying confidence. Which isn't good for the game either, so that's something he needs to consider too.

Been offline and missed replying to the last couple pages here. (Finally got a good night's sleep post-WYC!) But when I read through, I completely agreed with all of Mike Steele's comments from the last 12 hours. So yeah, what he said!

I can't check the TokenDB at work - for some unknown reason the application is blocked. Does the change to the eldritch set bonus to a "pool" also apply to damage spells? I assume it does.

Still don't see this as a big deal, but there are definitely valid points made both sides.

bpsymington wrote: I can't check the TokenDB at work - for some unknown reason the application is blocked. Does the change to the eldritch set bonus to a "pool" also apply to damage spells? I assume it does.

Still don't see this as a big deal, but there are definitely valid points made both sides.

Hi Brian,

It only affects healing bonuses, and only the bonus from the 2 item Eldritch Set, no other healing bonuses. And it doesn't affect damage spells. Here is the wording from the token database:

"Multi-Target Note: Healing spells that affect more than one target get a pool of 10 bonus healing points which may be allocated among the eligible recipients at the caster sees fit. It does not grant +10 healing to every target. This restriction applies even if the spell was originally single-target but at some point becomes multi-target. E.g., if a healing spell is duplicated by Lenses of Divine Sight, the two targets share the pool of +10 healing."

I'd recommend the following wording change to the Eldritch Items, in order to make them consistent with every other healing bonus (including the nearly equivalent bonus of +8 from the Relic and Legendary Focus Rings), consistent with all previous rulings on the Eldritch Set Bonus, and to be consistent with the wording on the actual Lenses of Divine Sight token:

"Multi-Target Note: Healing spells that affect more than one target get a pool of 10 bonus healing points which may be allocated among the eligible recipients at the caster sees fit. It does not grant +10 healing to every target. This restriction does not apply if the spell was originally single-target but at some point becomes multi-target. E.g., if a healing spell is duplicated by Lenses of Divine Sight, the two targets will each get +10 healing."

Adeya wrote: Been offline and missed replying to the last couple pages here. (Finally got a good night's sleep post-WYC!) But when I read through, I completely agreed with all of Mike Steele's comments from the last 12 hours. So yeah, what he said!

Just remove everything after this restriction applies....
The original spell was single target and the lenses duplicating it doesn't change that so all the bonuses added to the original should double.

Yes this prevents the bard from soothing wounds everyone for 13 each but thats ok. The cleric could still hit two players for 11(or more).

valetutto wrote: Just remove everything after this restriction applies....
The original spell was single target and the lenses duplicating it doesn't change that so all the bonuses added to the original should double.

Yes this prevents the bard from soothing wounds everyone for 13 each but thats ok. The cleric could still hit two players for 11(or more).

That would work also.

I will echo what others have said. I spent $4.5k last year to acquire these tokens primarily (for now, at least) for the healing bonus. Having the effectiveness halved in such a casual manner really smarts. It seems arbitrary and out of hand. At the very least there should have been a formal announcement from Jeff himself. This was handled really poorly.