Word of Wizards - Excerpts: The Polearm Master

Martial Power Excerpts: The Paragon Fighter

There is nothing much in today's excerpt which is just a general rundown of what will be installed in the Fighter chapters but they did include a paragon path; Polearm Master.

So here's what to expect for Fighters from Martial Power,

• New Fighter Builds: The battlerager and the tempest present different styles of combat that protect your allies while laying your enemies low.


• New Class Features: Two alternative choices give you the opportunity to focus your fighter even more sharply on one of the new builds.


• New Fighter Powers: Bring fear of your weapon prowess to your foes in new ways, including exploits that make your basic attacks and charges more dangerous.


• New Paragon Paths: Your particular road to glory can be represented by one of a dozen new paragon paths, each with its own flair.
  

Now, let's look at the Polearm Master. I have to say that it is probably one of the most debated builds for the Fighter since the current rules and options seem to be going against them at the moment.



The Paragon Path is much like any other Fighter paragon path, only requiring the character to be a Fighter.

Basically, the class features adds more function to the reach weapon and I think it will solve some of the problems that the current Polearm fighter are facing.

Lunging Action (11th level) allows the Polearm Master to spend an action point to extend the reach of his weapon by 1 square.

Forceful Reach (11th level) increases the forced movement of any Fighter power by one square. While, Longarm Grasp (16th level) allows the Polearm Master to make an attack to Marked targets who shifts or attack another target even if they are 2 squares away.

For exploits, I think they are very suiting for a Polearm Master and they seemed quite balance.

The Polearm Master has Leveraging Strike (11th level) as an encounter power which deals damage and pushes the slides the target equal to the Master's Wis mod (not forgetting an additional square from his class feature).

Polearm Sweep (20th level) is a sweet daily expoilt that deals damage (half on a miss) to enemies with a Burst 2.

While in Reaching Stance (12th level), the Polearm Master can make OAs against enemies within the weapon's reach.

Overall, I think it's a pretty average paragon path but I haven't build a Fighter yet to test out it's fullest potential. This should make Polearm Fighters really happy now.