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View Full Version : [4e]Any way to gain the brutal property?



Blas_de_Lezo
2009-12-23, 07:56 PM
Hi there, I'm planning a shadar-kai fighter with a falchion. Is there any way to gain the brutal property with a weapon? Using a Falchion (2d4) that could be extremely effective!

Anyone?:smallamused:

Inyssius Tor
2009-12-23, 08:09 PM
There is precisely one (1) way to grant a falchion the Brutal property:

Get an ally who is a warrior-forge or battlesmith artificer. Get them to choose Battle Engineer as their paragon path. Get them to grant you a lot of bonuses to weapon damage.

While your weapon is enhanced thus by a Battle Engineer, it will have the Brutal 1 property.

nekomata2
2009-12-23, 08:11 PM
I haven't looked at 4e in a while, but wasn't there some gloves or bracers or something in AV1 that granted effectively Brutal 1, though I don't think it was outright called Brutal...

Edit: Maybe I imagined it...

Inyssius Tor
2009-12-23, 08:22 PM
Oh, good catch! That would be a level 18 item. Gauntlets of Destruction.

I suppose you could also take the Exorcist of the Silver Flame paragon path, find a lot of radiant or fire powers, and confine yourself to attacking only abominations unto the Silver Flame (undead, lycanthropes, fiends). That would give you the equivalent of Brutal 2 as of 16th level.

Of course, even Brutal 2 on a falchion is basically just an average-damage-7 weapon. A mordenkrad or something would be easier to get, and not particularly worse.

CarpeGuitarrem
2009-12-23, 08:30 PM
Of course, even Brutal 2 on a falchion is basically just an average-damage-7 weapon. A mordenkrad or something would be easier to get, and not particularly worse.
Normally, yeah. But....

I know a guy who combined the gauntlets with a vorpal falchion. In other words, he had a 25% chance on each of the dice of getting max damage (and therefore rolling again), plus an additional 6% chance on each die (25% chance of rolling a 1, and 25% chance on the reroll of max damage), for a total of 31% chance that he would get at least 6 damage out of one die. Do the math, that equals a 62% chance that he does at least 8 damage with 1[W]. Pretty nice. Plus, you get to keep rolling and rolling dice, which is always fun.

I did some searching, turns out this has actually been researched:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19632030/Vorpal_Weapons_and_You

EDIT: Looking at your example, Brutal 2 on a vorpal falchion...wow. 25% chance that you hit max damage and roll again, plus an additional 11% chance (50% to reroll from Brutal, 25% for max damage), that comes to 46% chance of rolling vorpal damage. Per die. Which is a 92% chance that one of the dice will reroll for vorpal. Which means that 92% of the time, you'll be getting 10 damage MINIMUM for 1[W]. DANG.

Shadow_Elf
2009-12-23, 08:41 PM
Avengers can get Brutal 2 at-will against their Oath of Enmity target with a feat from Dragon Magazine. Obviously not what you're looking for, but in the interests of brutal vorpal optimization, that is an option.

Asbestos
2009-12-23, 09:32 PM
Avengers can get Brutal 2 at-will against their Oath of Enmity target with a feat from Dragon Magazine. Obviously not what you're looking for, but in the interests of brutal vorpal optimization, that is an option.

It isn't really getting Brutal 2, it's turning all those 1s and 2s into 3s. For a Falchion this is still pretty good, for a Mordenkand it's kinda dumb.