4e Power Spotlight: Torturous Strike
A 1st-Level Rogue Power With Amazing Damage Potential
This is a continuation from the previous post covering Come and Get It where the fighter moved an enemy into a flanking position with the rogue. Now the rogue is positioned to deal some serious damage.
Give this post a like if this is something you would like to see more like this. And drop some comments if there are ways you think this series could be better.
Strikers are the characters that come out of nowhere and deal a bunch of damage before the enemy even knew what was happening. When the party works strategically, it is possible to position your strikers to deal some crazy amounts of damage.
Rogue’s, along with their Sneak Attack ability, are particularly well-suited for dealing the killing blow. The Torturous Strike attack can be combined with other class features to leave the enemies wondering what just happened.
Let’s have a look.
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Why Choose This Power?
Your rogue stands silently in the shadows watching the battle unfolding before them. Patience is your mantra. Don’t force it. The fight will come to you soon enough. The opportunity arrives. Without a sound, or a hint of hesitation, the rogue draws their blade and unleashes an attack so complete, the foe falls to the ground without ever seeing their attacker.
Who doesn’t love bonuses that stack? With a proper build and the right circumstances, Torturous Strike can make your rogue absolutely lethal. Get your pencil ready because a hit with this power will require some serious math.
A few benefits to consider…
It does not require any special conditions like movement or marking. Just a straight-up attack.
It deals double your weapon dice in damage plus your DEX modifier.
If you are using the Brutal Scoundrel rogue tactics, you also get to add your STR modifier to the damage.
It is a 1st-level encounter power.
Rules Lawyer
Torturous Strike does not involve any movement or conditions. It is purely about dealing a lot of damage. There are a few things that you will want to be aware of.
It does not grant combat advantage. While Torturous Strike is especially powerful while you have combat advantage, it does not grant combat advantage. You must earn combat advantage on your own or through coordination with your allies.
Brutal Scoundrel bonuses stack. As a Brutal Scoundrel, you get to deal additional damage equal to your STR modifier when using this power. In addition, Brutal Scoundrels get to add their STR modifier to the damage when using sneak attack. These are two different bonuses that do stack.
Sneak Attack is once per round. While you might drool at the possibility of dealing so much damage to a single enemy, do not forget that sneak attack is limited to once per round. If you’ve already used it as part of an opportunity attack or some other action, you cannot use it again during the round.
Real-World Tactics
Note that I am using the average die roll results for the purposes of this example. Obviously, real world results may be higher or lower depending on how cooperative your dice are being.
Our heroic-tier rogue is wielding a short sword (a light blade) and has a STR modifier of +2 and a DEX modifier of +3.
During our look at Come and Get It, our fighter pulled the enemy Kappa into a flanked position with the rogue. It is now the rogue’s turn and they elect to use Torturous Strike to make a statement to the rest of the enemies.
Since the rogue is flanking Kappa with the fighter, the rogue has combat advantage and earns a +2 bonus on their attack. The attack itself is your basic jab, twist, and pull—with maybe a little screaming for effect mixed in.
The true beauty of Torturous Strike is in the damage inflicted.
Torturous Strike deals base damage consisting of 2[W] + DEX modifier. The short sword damage die is 1d6. Our rogue has a DEX modifier of +3. Therefore, the base damage is 2d6 + 3.
Our rogue is also a Brutal Scoundrel. As such, Torturous Strike allows you to deal additional damage equal to your STR modifier. In our case, this adds +2.
This is where things get really interesting. As a heroic-tier rogue, the sneak attack damage is 2d6. That is wonderful on its own, but our Brutal Scoundrel build allows us to add our STR modifier to our sneak attack damage. This gives us another +2 bonus.
For those keeping score, that is 19 points of damage for this one stab of the blade.
At this point, if Kappa is but a memory, the rogue could move into the shadows just out of sight of Epsilon. Otherwise they could stay put and be ready to sneak attack again on their next turn or collect an opportunity attack if Kappa does something silly.
For a 1st-level power, Torturous Strike is crazy powerful and can really be one of those that brings the encounter to an exciting conclusion.
What do you think?
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I liked the last comparison a lot better for severl reasons:
1. This power is just kinda boring. Sure it deals more damage than an average power but just a numerical bonus is kinda boring.
2. I think for strikers (especially) it makes more sense to look at (highly) optimized builds. And compare the attack to a baseline at will power. What I mean is the following:
A highly optimized Scoundrel Rogue will most likely have +4 to dex and +4 to Str (starting with 2 16s each and adding +2 to both from racial).
So a rogue would deal with this power 2d6 + strength = 11 from sneak attack.
And now the weapon attack would deal another 2d6 with a short sword + 4 dex + 4 Str = 15 damage
So in total 26 damage. This sounds like a lot, but a basic attack with advantage would only deal 7.5 damage less so still 18.5 damage.
However, and here comes the good part of this power: A level 1 artillery monsters (or lurker) only has in average 22 health. So the difference between 18.5 damage and 26 damage is the difference between needing 2 attacks, or only a single one.
If you would now upgrade the weapon to a Rapier (at the cost of a feat), the damage would even be 28 in average. This is enough to kill a level 1 controller normally.
I still think that other level 1 rogue encounter attacks like Dazing Strike or Positioning strike would be more interesting in general to highlight, but they only deal 1d + dex damage (which you could mention here), so they could not one hit kill such an enemy.
I just mention this here because often "just a bit more damage" might sound not exciting, however, this more damage can mean needing 1 attack less, which makes a huge difference in fights.
For the scenario for this power, as an example, you could have a rogue winning initiative and then go and kill an artillerie mob with a single attack, since the rogue would have combat advantage thanks to the "first strike" class feature.