I like to tinker with the 4th Edition rules, which means I’m always in danger of breaking them. Luckily Rory has an infallible ability to discover broken abilities, which means that I can always pass an idea to him and he can instantly tell me the massively game-breaking implications of my proposed new mechanic.
When Rory’s not around, I use a rubric called the “Is it more powerful than Weapon Expertise, Staff of Ruin or Iron Armbands of Power?”
This feat and these two items are so good that they make it hard for competing feats/items, no matter how cool they are, to get chosen.
Weapon Expertise
It’s pretty well agreed that the Weapon Expertise and similar feats were introduced as a math fix for runaway monster defenses, and that D&D R&D intends that everyone take the feat. Luckily, except at very early levels, everyone has lots of feat slots, so you can take other, more flavorful feats in addition without feeling like you are shooting yourself in the feat. Still, under normal (non-math-fix) circumstances, I’d say that any feat that was a must-have for all characters was clearly overpowered.
Staff of Ruin
Staff of Ruin is a different matter. Every staff-using character should probably use this item. That means that every other staff is obsolete, and can only be taken by perverse players who like to play intentionally suboptimal characters – the half-orc bards among us. Most implements have daily powers, but Staff of Ruin reliably does lots of extra damage on every hit. A +1 staff of ruin that does an extra 1 item damage isn’t so unbalanced, but a +5 staff of ruin, doing 5 enhancement and 5 item damage on every hit, competes well even with many +6 magic staffs.
Not convinced? A staff of ruin is level 23. How much damage is a level 23 wizard with a +5 staff doing with encounter powers? 4d6+Int+5, or around 25 damage to each opponent, possibly with some status effect. Let’s be generous and say that with the other hit effects, a wizard encounter power is worth double its straight damage, or 50 damage. A wizard probably hits each opponent about 60% of the time, so that’s a damage expectation of 30 HP per opponent.
A +6 magic staff adds 1 to damage – let’s call it 51 damage now – and increases the chance to hit to 65%, which translates to an expectation of another 3 or so damage per opponent. So for encounter powers, with generously assessed damage, a staff +6 is worth 4 points of damage more than a staff +5. A staff of ruin +5 beats that by a point.
