Why can't the dumb melee fighter fly and teleport?

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon May 28, 2012 7:06 pm

The function of the melee fighter is defined as hitting things in melee (and I'm pretty sure that's tautological). A vital component of hitting things in melee is getting to melee range. In fact, getting into melee range is a more important part of the melee minigame than actually swinging a weapon is. Because if you aren't in melee range swinging a weapon is worse than useless.

Hitting things hard powers, and hitting lots of things powers are important to a melee fighter. But they're not necessary. A melee fighter who doesn't have Weapon Proficiency or no Great Cleave or even a Strength Bonus can still hit things with a sword. Movement powers are necessary for the melee fighter. If he can't close in on his enemy then he can't hit his enemy.

The logical implication of this is that the melee fighter should be able to climb, fly, swim, swing on a rope, leap great distances, and even teleport at high levels. He should be able to run faster than everyone else. He should be less impeded by difficult terrain. When it comes right down to it, moving is 90% of his game and he automatically loses once he meets someone with a superior movement mode (or an archer who is just too far away). So he should always have the best movement options for his level.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon May 28, 2012 7:13 pm

They can, just not in D&D.

I mean, we've had 65535 of these threads. How much more can be said about this subject? Play a non-D&D game and have fun.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Mon May 28, 2012 8:03 pm

Because if the fighter wants to be in melee and the archer does not, you can't have the fighter always in melee range and you can't have the archer never in melee range.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon May 28, 2012 8:22 pm

Because it makes mages less awesome.

Because in theory the mage is supposed to cast fly on the fighter and let him get all anime and shit. Or he drinks the fly potion the mage gave him. Teamwork, synergy, the whole being more than the individuals, etc etc...

In reality the mage casts fly on himself because it furthers self preservation and reminds everyone he's badass, and then he zips around the battlefield casting eleven more buffs and then either dropping a fireball "regretfully" on the fighter because the fighter didn't wait 4 turns for the buff cycle to finish, or they shrug and cast magic missile.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon May 28, 2012 8:30 pm

Why can't the dumb melee fighter fly and teleport?

Because then he wouldn't be a dumb (i.e. nonmagical) fighter.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Mon May 28, 2012 8:32 pm

Surgo wrote:They can, just not in D&D.

I mean, we've had 65535 of these threads. How much more can be said about this subject? Play a non-D&D game and have fun.

Well, there are options available in the Tomes, but they're best implemented as a Planetouched (or take Product of Infernal Dalliance feat).

Wings of Good/Wings of Evil Celestial/Fiendish feat. Character level 5, Aasimar or Tiefling. Grants fly speed.

Swim Like a Fish Skill feat, get Swim speed.

Greater Teleport Monstrous/Celestial feat. Character Level 5, Greater Teleport at will.

Ghost Hunter Combat feat, hit and see ethereal/invisible/incorporeal targets.

Mage Slayer Combat feat, +16 BAB. Teleport with the enemy. Comes in late, as normal teleport's a 5th-level spell.

Yeah, a Tome melee guy's viable, but a lot of the best options pretty much shoehorn you into being an Aasimar/Tiefling Fighter (for Problem Solver and Foil Action).

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon May 28, 2012 8:59 pm

Personally, I'm really glad that DMFs can't fly or teleport except in really intrusive and flavor-breaking ways.

The less time people spend in denial about the fundamental uselessness of the archetype past a certain point in the game the better. If they DID fly or teleport people could hold onto their grognard delusions that much longer.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon May 28, 2012 9:50 pm

Well, partially, DMF actually means a melee fighter who cannot fly or teleport. If he could, his insistence on always using melee would not make him a dumbass.

The stylistic reason is essentially that flying or teleporting is magic, and melee fighters do not have magic because HEY LOOK OVER THERE! The same goes for why they can't dispel or counter things. Of course, since the things one can do with magic eventually exceed things that could possibly be done by humanoids regardless of how much physical enhancement you're willing to accept, if the setting is sufficiently open-ended in terms of magic power mundanes eventually lose out. People like to overstate their case and claim that this is always true whenever you have magic, but there's plenty of settings where combat casting barely extends to lighting a man on fire or simply doesn't exist.

Ironically, for all the hating on melee fighting, in a number of fantasy/SF settings (notably including Star Wars and Codex Alera) the mages who can turn people inside out usually sword each other in the face because they can counter magical attacks more easily than sword-in-the-face.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon May 28, 2012 10:20 pm

Worst of these might actually be shadowrun, where you can have several of your cakes and eat them all . .

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Tue May 29, 2012 11:29 pm

Surgo wrote:They can, just not in D&D.

I mean, we've had 65535 of these threads. How much more can be said about this subject? Play a non-D&D game and have fun.

Well, I don't mind those "65535" threads, they're all fun reads that usually throw out comic book character examples and so on. I find it a fun exercise myself, one helps fuel the imagination along, and posits interesting party teamups (like Teen Titan Robin + Harry Potter + Captain N & Sailor Moon? vs. Volemort, or whatever), it's awesome.

Anyway, would you so kindly give a few examples of these "non-D&D" games for others to play/look for that supposedly has the fighter with super awesome things?

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Wed May 30, 2012 12:13 am

Aryxbez wrote:
Well, I don't mind those "65535" threads, they're all fun reads that usually throw out comic book character examples and so on. I find it a fun exercise myself, one helps fuel the imagination along, and posits interesting party teamups (like Teen Titan Robin + Harry Potter + Captain N & Sailor Moon? vs. Volemort, or whatever), it's awesome.

Anyway, would you so kindly give a few examples of these "non-D&D" games for others to play/look for that supposedly has the fighter with super awesome things?

Well, there's Mutants & Masterminds, although ranged is still superior option. But you can design a melee character and not suck ass/feel useless. The easy access to teleportation, super-speed, flight, and other movement powers helps immensely.

unnamednpc · Post by **unnamednpc** » Wed May 30, 2012 10:54 pm

YMMV, but I think you can totally give your swordguy meaningful abilites without any wizardy flavour at all. Or, at least, reskin some spells without it feeling like a spell. Like, I just made up these Fighter... Class Feature... things. None of them require innate "magic" abilities to work, they just run off the assumption that at a certain degree of badassitude, you transcend normal human boundaries (so it's the John McLain -> Cpt. America -> Thor model). They're not explicitly movement abilities for the most part, but you get the idea...

Warrior Training
You are not just a grizzled peasant with a board and a sword - you are a highly trained, finely tuned killing machine. As such, you can easily murder your way through large groups of foes without breaking a sweat.
Effect: When fighting enemies of your level or lower, you can attack an additional number of opponents equal to your level.
Resolve the attack with a single Attack Roll and only compare ACs of individual opponents.

Swift Strike
You won't spend all your time plowing through minions. Sometimes, you'll come face to face with a big, ugly Ogre or a raging mad dragon and you know that in order to save your (and your fragile, helpless party members') skin, you'll have to end that beast, right there and then. But you didn't spend all these years training at St. Murderous School for the Violently Gifted to just wail away at the monster for minutes until it stops eating your friends. You trained to murder the bastard's face off. And so, you simply kill it.
Effect: The Fighter singles out and attacks a single opponent of roughly her or his (level, CR, Hit Dice or whatever system you're using to gauge an enemy's relative power) and kills it dead. Player and DM can work together on the narration – cut off a Medusa's head, climb on a dragon's back and stab it through the neck, or punch straight through the Lich King's face, but, inevitably, it will end in the opponent's grisly demise. On a successful Saving Throw (Con or Dex, whichever is higher), the damage is reduced to half the creature's Hit Points, but that's all they'll get.

Fierce Presence
Spending your whole life driving blades through the guts of dangerous beasts does something to you. It changes you. Namely, it makes you scarier. This can make it very easy to get people to agree with you – even the lord of the land will think twice before he disagrees with someone who singlehandedly razed an entire orc tribe or just murdered a besieging dragon for sport. Even a sworn enemy might try to get on your good side, if that is the side that won't punch a sword through his jugulum.
Effect: Yeah, just take the “Charm Person” description and replace any mention of “charm” or “enchant” with “intimidate” or “scare into submission”.

Level the Playing Field
It's inevitable: At some point, you'll face a big, ugly dragon that needs murdering. But just as you ready your axe, the bastard rises into the air and smugly begins raining fire from above, safely outside the reach of your blade. Or you find yourself at the bottom of a mage's tower, with an evil sorceress in dire need of some face-stabbing on top, and no time to wait for a wizard to hike a ride.
In that case, you can either sulk and walk home, or you say, no, that won't do, and simply go where the action is.
Effect: Whether you simply scale a wall in a grim display of fortitude and defiance, throw a grappling hook really well, chokehold a wyrmling and force it to carry you up to its master, or hurl your mighty warhammer into the air and threaten gravity itself to strangle it if won't let you travel with it, this ability enables you to overcome an obstacle that would otherwise require the use of some form of self propelled flight. Work with your DM to come up with an appropriate narration, but remember, this is not a question of “if”, but merely one of “how”.

Planar Travel
The world is ripe with worthy foes, and in your travels, you have wrought death and destruction upon many of them. But sometimes, your quest will literally involve persuing your enemies beyond the ninth gate of hell in order to murder them dead. So you do that. You brandish your trusted sword Frøstmoürne, declare that you, Grimdark Murderson, demand entry to the Plane of Terror, and the guardians of reality will comply.
Effect: At this point, the Fighter will have become a legendary warrior of such renown and might that she or he effectively leaves the restraints of mere mortals behind. The gods themselves begin to eye them cautiously, lest they attract their ire.
This ability enables the Fighter to travel to a Plane of his or her choosing.

No Teleport, but teleportation is kinda dumb, anyway.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed May 30, 2012 11:03 pm

unnamednpc, your list is a step in the right direction of moving away from the fighter suckage. But only a tiny step. Most of the things on your list are still 'close-range melee fighting' crap.

Personally, I think that the best thing we can do to help DMFs is to get rid of the Fighter class entirely. Or at least the name and concept. Seriously, it's shit and encourages people to do shitty things like spend months figuring out how to get this worthless goatfelcher to the front lines. Call them Hero or Warlord or even Soldier. But names like Fighter and Swordmaster and Warblade only encourage shitty non-solutions.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu May 31, 2012 6:43 am

Dumb Melee Fighters need to ride a dragon and use a lance. I'm pretty sure someone came up with that solution a long time ago now, had a name and everything.

Also, I'm pretty sure a high level Wizard still killed them all and took their stuff.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:31 am

There is something vaguely irreconcilable with lago's get rid of the fighter mindset (No offense). I've heard him say it before... the thing is "I think" is that it makes really shitty stories. Rpg's are in some way about making stories in which:
1. Humble nobody
2. Loses Someone/things important.
3. Hides from Vastly More powerful regime.
4. Trains in secret.
5. Kicks much ass
6. Gets the girl.
----------------------------------------

2. Is sometimes "finds out he is "Chosen/Special"" and really finding out you're a princess has a whole lot of traction with just over half of the human populace, honestly...

However... a good and important portion of us EXPECT a hero to do it "The MAN WAY" and what that means varies from person to person, but it involves "Iconically" swording motherfuckers to death ( and sometimes shooting bitches stone cold dead) but ultimately, killing magical, inhuman muthafuckers, with human determination, spite, luck and colos....
Therefore fighter, or warblade or MasterSwordsman, or Ronin, keeps its Iconic traction. You'll never get rid of it its too ingrained, and that why we have stories where the underdog wins.
People WANT that.

From what I've learned here you get a few choices that would compromise quite well, and this is a spot memory from another thread:
The Fighter:
(at high levels where lago wants it to not exist)

The Protagonist: aka (The Tome Fighter)
Fighter is a class that you take at low levels specializes in face stabbing things supergood, but because he's the protagonist, he gets awesome endless powers that fuck up peoples shit forever, and allows him to keep swording and/OR occupy you long enough to figure out: Wow, this guy is totally using his will power to fuck shit up with that magic ring he's got. Let me see if I can't distract him and (Take it/cut off his hand)
The Tome Fighter is the protagonist in all those fucking novels we read because of things like Active Assault and "Foil".

The Gadgeteer: aka.. I AM IRON MAN
This guy, you know who the fuck he is. . . sometimes he's Doc Savage, sometimes... well apparently, a Time-Traveling Thomas Edison, but in RPG's you don't fuck with this guy. He has an artifact sword... he has an artifact level tech suit/armor set... that he SHAT out with his own brilliance.
That or he killed the guy what shat it out... killed him with kung fu...
Seriously though, his power is that he has the best toys, and he "CHOOSES" swording/punching you do death because it looks cool ...(it is an artifact sword you know...)

The Transcendant:
"You know when I first started adventuring, I could barely clear out rats in basements, with this sword, course that was before I was inducted as a Black Cloud-Jumper."
This fighter can literally, be the son of the dirtfarmer with a wooden sword. All that matters is that at some point in his travels he starts getting superpowers.
Under this model the guys a fighter but in our terms he trades out his "Protagonist Powers" for Organizational, Ritual, or inherited: "Super Powers" in strict D&D sense he "prestiges out" or takes an "epic Destiny"
in the end though he eats a piece of a leviathans heart (or whatever) and is now funtionally immortal... But more importantly he's still swording things except now he's resistant or immune to most forms of damage (except from silver which damages him normally), and moves faster than a speeding bullet.... Yay.

All of these things allow what are you ask about libertad, but keep in mind that the whole of all these problems that exists is because peoples online are
1. Slavish Followers (who don't want to think for themselves, hello pathfinders out there)
or
2. Asshole know-it-alls (who've convinced themselves "My way is the only way and shit on your contrary opinions; Oh and welcome do the gaming den, btw.")

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 7:04 pm

This thread is actually funny, because fiction is full of heroes who are "mere" fighting man. It should be simple to fix the fighter if the designers simply asked themselves: "On this situation, What Would Samurai Jack do?" (WWSJD).

One thing that fighting man in fiction ALWAYS do is to use the environment against their foes. So, Samurai Jack vs. Flying Spellcaster means Samurai Jack slashing a wall and making pieces of the ceiling fall on the Spellcaster's head.

Other thing is luck. Absurd luck, that would never grace other characters. So you can have John McLane running from thugs spraying him with bullets and escape unharmed, or Sokka taking out Combustion Man with a one-in-a-million boomerang shot. That kind of bullshit is expected from "mundane heroes".

sake · Post by **sake** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 3:41 am

nockermensch wrote:
Other thing is luck. Absurd luck, that would never grace other characters. So you can have John McLane running from thugs spraying him with bullets and escape unharmed, or Sokka taking out Combustion Man with a one-in-a-million boomerang shot. That kind of bullshit is expected from "mundane heroes".

I would totally dig a game that gave the DumbassMeleeFighter dude a Plot Armor ability. Something like "once a day/scene/encounter/battle/etc you choose to either add a +5 bonus to a roll or completely reroll. You can decide to use this ability even after you have made the roll. Special: If used on an attack, any and all damage dice for the attack are considered maximized" If nothing else at least it might give the poor slob a Big Damn Hero moment every once in a while.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 3:46 am

sake wrote:I would totally dig a game that gave the DumbassMeleeFighter dude a Plot Armor ability.

I have the opposite reaction. Batman surviving a body slam from Mogul and Sokka taking out Combustion Man were some of the most facepalmingly awful scenes of their series. VAHs staying relevant among their buddies through plot armor are always the most terrible moments in action-adventure fiction.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 3:58 am

nockermensch wrote:One thing that fighting man in fiction ALWAYS do is to use the environment against their foes. So, Samurai Jack vs. Flying Spellcaster means Samurai Jack slashing a wall and making pieces of the ceiling fall on the Spellcaster's head.

FrankTrollman wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote: Okay... so how does the fighter take on the Solid Iron Demon?
He runs the fuck away and lures the solid iron demon into a trap, where he kicks it into the volcano/blast furnace/sphere of annihilation.

Seriously, the way you think this through is to take a WW2 tank, plop it down in the middle of the 12 century, and task a single man to destroy it. I *guess* you might be able to crush it with huge boulders, but that wouldn't work for a solid iron demon. He's solid, there's nothing to *crush*.

But he isn't going to pick up a wooden maul or an 8 pound mace and beat the thing to death.

That's exactly right. That is how an unenhanced mortal human warrior protagonist would defeat a solid iron demon boss. But that also clearly shows why such a character is wholly inappropriate for a high level D&D game.

You aren't the fucking protagonist. You are a character. One. The game doesn't fucking revolve around you, and you don't get any fucking plot armor. You can't use up that much screen time on a rube goldberg trap. And it probably wouldn't work anyway, because you have to roll the actual chances rather than having it automatically work because it's the last desperate attempt at the en of the story.

That's not even the boss. Seriously, that's not even the final monster, that's Iron Demon #7. And when you kill him the credits don't roll. Hell, you might not even move on to the big boss, because there could easily be six more in this encounter. They aren't using conservation of ninjitsu even, each one is just as powerful as when you did encounter one as the boss - five levels ago.

You are fighting in a goat pasture. Since this isn't a piece of single author fiction with an ending written ahead of time, you won't get a set of terrain features geared towards providing a set of Chekhov Guns for you to use at a dramatic moment. It's just you and maybe your power ring. Anything you can't do with the shit on your character sheet is something you very likely cannot do.
-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 4:21 am

unnamednpc wrote:YMMV, but I think you can totally give your swordguy meaningful abilites without any wizardy flavour at all. Or, at least, reskin some spells without it feeling like a spell. Like, I just made up these Fighter... Class Feature... things. None of them require innate "magic" abilities to work, they just run off the assumption that at a certain degree of badassitude, you transcend normal human boundaries (so it's the John McLain -> Cpt. America -> Thor model).

I really like your example, because it shows exactly what has to happen to a dumb melee fighter to make them competitive. First, their primary weapon becomes ranged. Second, they gain the ability to fly at supersonic speed, shoot energy blasts, control weather, and travel between dimensions.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 5:32 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: [*] You are fighting in a goat pasture. Since this isn't a piece of single author fiction with an ending written ahead of time, you won't get a set of terrain features geared towards providing a set of Chekhov Guns for you to use at a dramatic moment. It's just you and maybe your power ring. Anything you can't do with the shit on your character sheet is something you very likely cannot do.[/list]

-Username17

That seems like a flaw in the game. Sure, many DMs (including myself) often fall victim to the idea that designing or selecting the monsters is more important than designing or selecting the map, but that doesn't mean that replacing the iron demons with skilled swordsmen would alter the encounter more than replacing the goat pasture with an absurd fantasy volcanic cave.

D&D really needs a cool random map generator.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 5:52 pm

The point is that even if you're not fighting in Final Destination, you probably STILL won't be fighting in an arena specifically contrived to give you opportunities for environmental kills.

If you are, that rubs me the wrong way. It violates encapsulation. At least in D&D, things are generally encapsulated so that class features are things your actual character does. It's very weird to have a class feature that's "Because your class is playing, the entire battlefield warps to accommodate your need to drop stalactites on enemies".

It also raises the possibility of what happens once two players have classes that have similar dependencies on environmental kills.

Environmental kills are cool, and it's nice to encourage map designers to allow for them to be generically available to everyone. But writing a whole class whose schtick is "does cool environmental kills" is a minefield.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:22 pm

It's very weird to have a class feature that's "Because your class is playing, the entire battlefield warps to accommodate your need to drop stalactites on enemies".

actually that sounds like a great class feature for like a Geomancer/Elementalist. Warping the battlefield to create hazards that destroy your enemies.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:45 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
nockermensch wrote:One thing that fighting man in fiction ALWAYS do is to use the environment against their foes. So, Samurai Jack vs. Flying Spellcaster means Samurai Jack slashing a wall and making pieces of the ceiling fall on the Spellcaster's head.

FrankTrollman wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:
He runs the fuck away and lures the solid iron demon into a trap, where he kicks it into the volcano/blast furnace/sphere of annihilation.

Seriously, the way you think this through is to take a WW2 tank, plop it down in the middle of the 12 century, and task a single man to destroy it. I *guess* you might be able to crush it with huge boulders, but that wouldn't work for a solid iron demon. He's solid, there's nothing to *crush*.

But he isn't going to pick up a wooden maul or an 8 pound mace and beat the thing to death.

That's exactly right. That is how an unenhanced mortal human warrior protagonist would defeat a solid iron demon boss. But that also clearly shows why such a character is wholly inappropriate for a high level D&D game.

You aren't the fucking protagonist. You are a character. One. The game doesn't fucking revolve around you, and you don't get any fucking plot armor. You can't use up that much screen time on a rube goldberg trap. And it probably wouldn't work anyway, because you have to roll the actual chances rather than having it automatically work because it's the last desperate attempt at the en of the story.

That's not even the boss. Seriously, that's not even the final monster, that's Iron Demon #7. And when you kill him the credits don't roll. Hell, you might not even move on to the big boss, because there could easily be six more in this encounter. They aren't using conservation of ninjitsu even, each one is just as powerful as when you did encounter one as the boss - five levels ago.

You are fighting in a goat pasture. Since this isn't a piece of single author fiction with an ending written ahead of time, you won't get a set of terrain features geared towards providing a set of Chekhov Guns for you to use at a dramatic moment. It's just you and maybe your power ring. Anything you can't do with the shit on your character sheet is something you very likely cannot do.
-Username17

Eh, if it's a goat pasture, then the mundane action hero makes the iron demon #7 slip in goat shit (that wasn't there a second ago) and fall down, probably taking iron demon #6 and and #5 with a falling domino effect.

A "fighter class" that's based on being a mundane badass needs stuff like this written as actual class features.

Seriously, the bullshit part would be Roy's player imploring the DM to put some scenery he could use on that fight. The fighting man class needs actual maneuvers or whatever written on their class description that allows them to get away with the kind of shit people expect John McLane to do. Like:

Hoisted by their own Petard(Ex):
You wait for the critical moment to throw your foe slightly off-balance, shove some object in the line of effect or somewhat use misdirection and guile to make their attack explode on their face.
As an immediate action, make a ranged touch attack against a foe that has just declared an attack (this can be a normal or special attack, or a spell, power, whatever). If your touch attack hits, you take full control of their attack as it goes off: You chose the target(s), place the area of effect, etc. As an added benefit, if the attack deals damage, you can chose to make that damage untyped for the original foe only (so you can make a red dragon take damage from their own fire breath, for example).

Domino Effect(Ex):
In the chaos of battle, you weave among the enemies, prompting them to attack your seemingly exposed flanks. Seemingly being the keyword here.
As part of this attack, move up to your full movement speed. When you first cross an enemy threatened area, that enemy must succeed on a will saving throw (DC 14 + your fighting ability modifier, mindless enemies automatically fall their saves) or he will make an attack of opportunity. You chose the weapon used and targets for these AoOs. The new target must be in the threatened area of each foe (this always includes the own foe). The new target is considered flat-footed against the attack. As an additional effect, after making the AoO, each enemy falls Prone.

Deadly Domino Effect(Ex):
As Domino Effect, but the DC is 17 + your fighting ability modifier and attacks of opportunity are all confirmed critical hits.

Friendly Fire Shield(Ex):
Smart people don't bring guns to your swordfights. In fact, smart people don't fight you, at all.
As an immediate action, an enemy you threatens in melee must succeed on a reflex saving throw (DC 13 + your fighting ability modifier) or become the target of any ranged attack just declared against you. The enemy is considered flat-footed against that attack.

Troll Slaying Strike(Ex):
A sufficiently skilled fighter can one shot trolls. This is how they do it.
Attack an enemy. If the attack hits, it deals bonus damage equal to a Troll's average hit points (consult the Monster Manual appropriate to your edition). If your attack brings your foe to negative hit points, it acts as a Death Effect (or the reverse for undeads, whatever), stopping Regeneration.

Titan Slaying Strike(Ex):
You get the idea.

And so on. Actual level appropriate powers, much like the Tome Fighter, but styled as guile, luck or opportunism. (again, much like the Tome Fighter). These need to be actual class powers, otherwise you get the very reasonable argument that the wizard could make the iron demons trip just as well (he actually has Grease on his spell list) and cause a domino effect of destruction.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 8:06 pm

I'm pretty sure that the "bullshit" power is what "foil" is supposed to be et al.