Did I miss a nerf the Banishing and Smiting?

[redraider]

From the release notes:
Disruption, Banishing, and Smiting weapons have had their hit die caps and saving throws removed. These weapons now do 4d6 damage on a hit, and kill an eligible target on a confirmed vorpal hit (natural 20) if the target is below 1,000 hit points. If the target has more than 1,000 hit points, they will take 100 damage.

Does this mean Banishing rapiers and such now only Banish on a Natural 20? And only add the 100 damage to a banishable foe over 1000 hps on a Natural 20?

So my dual Banishing rapier weilding Ftr with Crit:Pierce now Banishes only on a confirmed 20 instead of a confirmed 15-20????

Please tell me I am reading this wrong!

[voodoogroves]

Nope, that's correct.

[Cyr]

Yes, it means that the competitive advantage of using high crit range weapons with these effects is gone.

Doing the math demonstrates that a flat 4d6 per hit (or +14 average damage per hit) plus another 100 on a nat 20 ( ~ +5 more average damage a hit) yields ~ +19 average damage per swing.

As pure dps weapons these are much more respectable now, but they did lose their luster for finesse type builds relying on them while leveling (sadly all these types of effects have been going away).

[redraider]

\rant on

I wish I understood the master plan of the Devs. They are acting like idiots from where I sit with nearly 6 years invested in this game.

The change to how incapacitated creatures take damage.

The change to smiting/banishing range.

The totally worthless new crafting system (grind out a ton of low gear, filling bag after bag with essences to level up crafting to craft worthless items).

Echo's of Power??? Are you kidding me?

Ok, I actually like some of the new PRE's and the spell pass was needed.

I wonder if they realize Epic is only played by a small portion of the player base (you'd think they would have the statistics wouldn't you?). I can actually see the Echos of Power here as there are always new players coming in, but how un-DnD can you get.

\end rant

[jwdaniels]

I like this change. It makes for more variety in weapon usage, since it no longer matters how wide the crit profile is to get the insta-kill effect and brings them more in line with vorpal weapons. Also, disruption was so terrible because of the stupidly low saving throw that it's definitely a lot better now.