Tiny People Civilization in RPGs

[Fuchs]

My party is attending a wedding of a Fairie Lord and met the Tiny Titans, biggest heros of the Kingdom of the we folks, ther - a group of mouse adventurers. This thread gave me the idea.

Pretty fun scene too, since the )Cs travel with a winged cat...

[erik]

There are things you can do other than pure damage which means you can hurt enemies.

Hell, there are chokepoints.

Sure, there's tripping and grappling each of which that character was utterly abysmal at. Just standing in the way is not a worthwhile contribution. A mook with a tower shield for full cover can do that crap. Perversely, a tiny character does nothing at a choke point. Everyone can just walk right over him and they do.

I have no love for turtles. Even for animal int creatures, DMs often wind up assigning aggro based upon who hit the critter hardest last round (if it can tell who hit it, like another meleer for example).

Goad does help somewhat for a turtle, but in the case of that Char Op example his defense isn't even exceptional unless he pours heavy into combat expertise and fighting defensively so that he truly isn't hitting jack squat. A pure goad character... is not really something to be proud of.

Other than 'omgwtfbbq it doesn't do as much damage as a supercharger!', you have offered no points that actually support this assertion.

Actually, what I said was that a level 6 vanilla barbarian is comparable to the level 10 version of that char op example. Hell, in a 1v1 duel, a plain level 6 barbarian has pretty damned good odds of owning the pants off of that level 10 version of the char op build (by virtue of being immune to the sneak attack damage and thus having bigger numbers). But I was just aiming at their contribution to the party so the tiny Char Op build was getting a free pass from me there.

A spirited charge character would obviously blow it out of the water, and wouldn't even be a fair comparison. That's why I never made the comparison that you imagined.

I'm just saying that the Char Op example was pretty shitty execution. Early on it is like a rogue with sneak attack delayed 1 level and nothing to show for it. Later on it graduates to true suckitude and never really recovers until very late levels when casters have level 9 spells and honestly nobody cares that you can provide much less tactical support than the squad of huge elementals that get summoned by any caster who just feels like mailing it in for that fight.

As for strength penalties, sure, tiny characters don't have to be -20 str or whatever, however they do tend to be at least -4 from normal (small for -2, reduce person for another -2) as opposed to being +2 or +4 to normal (half-orc, enlarged). That's a hefty setback coupled with lesser weapon damage and penalties to every worthwhile combat maneuver. Basically, being small has the opposite of synergy everywhere it counts for a melee combatant.

Considering that melee is already a weak niche to begin with it should come as no surprise that sub-small characters really won't be bringing the noise without using some fringe tactics with high returns (spirited charging or a flying mounted archer).

If you choose to go the duelist route for Weapon Finesse and Precise Strike, then you suffer from additional MAD with Int to damage and Dex to attack. It's just more handicaps that a melee character really didn't need to be saddled with in the first place.

From what I could tell, almost everyone on that Char Op thread was a moron except for the guy at the end who was ignored when he mentioned that a level 10 rogue would be better entry. He's absolutely flippin right. A level 10 rogue is leagues better than that Char Op build. Hence, my bitching.

Anyone could make an awesome non-caster sub-small character, but he would be a sneak attack machine who is always hidden, not some failed melee turtle that can be stepped over and avoided as the garbage that he is.

[Rejakor]

Okay, I don't know if you just didn't read my post or something, but you've apparently assumed that every time I said 'tiny person' I was referring to a 'Permanently Reduced Gnome Blade Bravo' when in fact I was just referring to a person that is tiny.


Still, brave charitable soul that I am, i'll answer your points, or explain what I was actually going for, whichever is most applicable. Onward, british soldiers!

Sure, there's tripping and grappling each of which that character was utterly abysmal at. Just standing in the way is not a worthwhile contribution. A mook with a tower shield for full cover can do that crap. Perversely, a tiny character does nothing at a choke point. Everyone can just walk right over him and they do.

There's a couple ways to get around the size modifier to trip and grapple attempts. And yes. Not being able to trip the big folk? Goes against the fluff of tiny characters. There's a couple ways around it, but yes, smaller characters are less optimal, out of the box, at tripping, disarming, and whatever-the-fuck-else gets bullshit size modifiers.

However, with something like confound the big folk, it's actually to that tiny character's advantage if people try to step on/over him. What you're saying here is part of a larger cultural disconnect. Bear with me. I'll explain it in a bit.

I have no love for turtles. Even for animal int creatures, DMs often wind up assigning aggro based upon who hit the critter hardest last round (if it can tell who hit it, like another meleer for example).

Yes. And a lot of DM's run animal int creatures at the exact same tactical level they run their int 44 solars - which varies wildly from DM to DM. This can be a problem for many reasons. However, the fact that you see this as a deal-breaker for sub-small melee characters is part of a larger cultural disconnect(see below).

Goad does help somewhat for a turtle, but in the case of that Char Op example his defense isn't even exceptional unless he pours heavy into combat expertise and fighting defensively so that he truly isn't hitting jack squat. A pure goad character... is not really something to be proud of.

Again, larger cultural disconnect. I'll explain it after I talk about what you're talking about here. Why isn't goad something to be proud of? If your defense is high enough, it's basically a save-or-suck for melee only monsters (and many monsters have ranged options that are far inferior to their melee/take AoO's (that can do tasty things like trip, with the right feats) for using them) and helps what roy calls 'turtle fail' characters immensely.

So.. why is a pure goad character worse than say, a pure save-or-suck caster? Or a pure damage dealer? They, all three of them, take enemies out of the fight, just in different ways.

The cultural disconnect? You seem, at least in part, to subscribe to what I like to refer to as 'Roy's Absolutist Bullshit'. Every melee character must be the best melee character the rules will allow to be created. Anything other than that is 'fail'. Every party must be composed in an 'optimal' configuration. Anything other than that is 'fail'. -That's minor hyperbole, but you get my point.

Now, I can hear the outrage engines gearing up, so i'll quickly add: I am not saying that optimizing is bad, or should be only kept in it's 'place' (the CharOp boards) or that 'roleplaying' is somehow the only thing people should care about. I am not saying that.

But what I am saying is that optimizing is not inherently good. Yes, it seems obvious. But stop. Think about those connotations. If optimizing isn't inherently good or inherently evil, then what is it? It's a power level. Some people play on the high end (roy), some people play on the low end (roleplayers). Neither is right, neither is wrong. Some people have more fun at one end than the other. Roleplaying is exactly the same. Stormwind fallacy that shit. Neither is good or bad. Both can be used for good and evil.

Now, in an optimal optimized party that isn't just four fucking druids, there are casters who stand in the back, and melee characters, and maybe an archer or something crazy. That's stereotypical, cause optimized bards are fucking scary as hell. But let's run with it. In this situation, the buffed melee characters' goals are to a)stop the monsters killing the casters b)stop /anything/ killing the casters and c) not die. And roy is right (shock. horror. awe). In that kind of situation, the best way to stop DM-run monsters from killing the casters is to become a target that is both more threatening and easier to hit - a secondary way is to lock down monsters so they physically can't kill the casters, but roy rightly mocks this because in this (his) example, that method requires more resources to pull off and is less effective, mechanically, in most cases, so therefore it is clearly inferior.

Now, I don't believe that optimizing is inherently any better than not optimizing. I think it makes some games more fun, and some games less fun. I think it depends on a myriad of other factors. That is the cultural disconnect here.

It doesn't help that the vast majority of players confirm both your and roy's hypothesis - those who argue that roleplaying is all and must be prayed to like some kind of tiny god miss the point that DnD is a combat game, and often create characters at a power (optimizing) level far lower than the rest of the party, thus making it harder for the DM to create encounters for the entire party, resulting in death or 'personal scene' moments(otherwise known as 'hey look, an underwater basket-weaving contest! And the first prize is an audience with the king we're trying to contact!') which is often what that type of attention-whoring person really wants in the first place.

However, correlation does not equal causation, and the entire 'optimizing is inherently good' thing falls apart when you examine it with anything approaching closeness, at least in my estimation.

And yeah. I agree that the blade bravo tiny gnome concept could have been created mechanically a lot better, especially to play from 1-20, hell, at level 20 it's not even super well made for the concept the guy said he was going for. You're claiming that this means that all sub-small melee characters can't do well, at least indirectly. I refute that. One guy's sub-standard build does not indict all tiny melee characters.

Also? It's not as bad as you're saying it is. It's sub-optimized for what it's trying to do, and it's at a slight disadvantage compared to something like an orc barbarian which is pretty damn easy to optimize the fuck out of, but you're saying it's impossible. It's not. Just because on the continuum of optimization something doesn't reach the very far reaches of the fucking roy end, or it's very hard to make it do so, does not mean that it's, as roy so delicately puts it, 'fail'.

'Not as optimized as the most optimized concept' != 'Impossible to optimize.' Because they are two different things.

Yes, i'm using a lot of the same arguments a lot of 'ROLEplaying not ROLLplaying' proponents use. So? At least the arguments aren't being raped gently in the ass and having their fucking proposition and conclusion switched like it's hide the salami night at the compulsive rapists centre for growth and well-fucking-being. Also, 'associated with' does not equal 'the same as'. Absolutism. I swear one of these days I will FIND that fucker and fucking STAB HIM IN THE HEAD. And then the world will be filled with peace and love and hugs and logic and rationality.

My general point in the last post was that you can with a decent level of skill optimise a tiny melee (not Gnome Blade Bravo, just /any tiny fucking person/) character to a standard that it could quite easily find play in 95% of games. If Thog the Tiny Human Barbarian leaps up and smashes his tiny greataxe into the face of the dragon for 1d1+467 damage, how is that any fucking different than if Thog the Medium Size Human Barbarian smashes his normal sized greataxe into the dragon's face for 1d12+467? Does power attack damage scale with size, now? Does sneak attack? If Lidda the halfling thief does 1d4-3+24d6 points of damage to the dragon's shin, why can't Lidda the Tiny Person thief stab the dragon's toe for 1d1-3+24d6 points of damage? I know of no fucking melee build that relies on weapon damage as it's main source of damage other than some wacky dacky spinning retard (read: Dervish) builds with assloads of extra attacks and some kind of crazy scimitars that count as four scimitars each or something, as well as critting each hit for 12 scimitar frenzy. And then there are monk kama flurry builds, but those all rely on con or wis damage anyway. The point i'm making is: Lots of people have been saying that tiny melee or archery characters don't work in DnD 3.5. People ask if it can work, lots of people say 'no, it doesn't, harrumph'. So i'm saying no, actually, it can work.

And so far people have said: 'Oh, it can't work, you're wrong.' Without ever explaining exactly why that is so. Is it because they homebrewed a tiny humanoid and gave it -12 str and +2 int, because they didn't realize that the carrying capacity rules mean that a tiny humanoid with str 12 can lift proportionately exactly as much as a medium humanoid with str 12? NOTE: 'Proportionately'. Please, please note it. Is it because they think that melee characters with 1d2+strength weapons instead of 1d12+strength weapons are seriously penalized by that? Maybe at first level. Is it because they compared a build based around Blade Bravo, possibly the most gender confused class since swashbuckler, that actually advocates taking levels in swashbuckler, to a record-breaker spirited charge cavalier, and decided that was indicative?

Why? I can't find the reason that is apparently so apparent.


As for the rest of the anti-bravo stuff, i'll post some responses/discussion/agreement:

Actually, what I said was that a level 6 vanilla barbarian is comparable to the level 10 version of that char op example. Hell, in a 1v1 duel, a plain level 6 barbarian has pretty damned good odds of owning the pants off of that level 10 version of the char op build (by virtue of being immune to the sneak attack damage and thus having bigger numbers). But I was just aiming at their contribution to the party so the tiny Char Op build was getting a free pass from me there.

Barbarians are immune to sneak attack? But yeah, sure, why not. A properly built barbarian I can totally see owning that blade bravo. Hell, depending on part composition it could quite easily be more 'useful' than the blade bravo.

And yet. The blade bravo isn't, as you seem to be suggesting a lot, 'fail'. It isn't a spoony bard. It's a pretty shitty build, it could use improving in a lot of areas, but it's not as unoptimized as you seem to believe it is, and being unoptimized can be a sign of shitness but it isn't the surety that you believe it to be.

A spirited charge character would obviously blow it out of the water, and wouldn't even be a fair comparison. That's why I never made the comparison that you imagined.

Cavaliers, like hulking hurlers, can break the game. The charop boards have proven that. But, y'know, so can Major Creation and fucking Locate City, so take it with a grain of salt.

Again, you're leaning towards the royism that all that matters is a) combat potential and b) threat-meter(damage, debuffs, obvious mechanical threat potential). I'm not saying that those don't matter, cause they do, a lot, but they're not the only thing that matters. Also, those two things don't have to be all-the-fucking-way to the top of the bar before a build becomes 'viable'. An optimized hulking hurler is actually pretty much universally seen as an unplayable character, if only because it could crack open the planet on a whim.

I'm just saying that the Char Op example was pretty shitty execution. Early on it is like a rogue with sneak attack delayed 1 level and nothing to show for it. Later on it graduates to true suckitude and never really recovers until very late levels when casters have level 9 spells and honestly nobody cares that you can provide much less tactical support than the squad of huge elementals that get summoned by any caster who just feels like mailing it in for that fight.

Oh yeah, I agree with this. There are multiple ways to do it a lot better. That said, again, the 'Gnome Blade Bravo' != 'All sub-small melee characters ever'. Again. Just in case you missed it the first time. Not saying you're saying that, but just in case.

As for strength penalties, sure, tiny characters don't have to be -20 str or whatever, however they do tend to be at least -4 from normal (small for -2, reduce person for another -2) as opposed to being +2 or +4 to normal (half-orc, enlarged). That's a hefty setback coupled with lesser weapon damage and penalties to every worthwhile combat maneuver. Basically, being small has the opposite of synergy everywhere it counts for a melee combatant.

Okay, that's a valid point. But we're talking about tiny people civilizations here, not Shrunk gnomes or halflings or kobolds or what-fucking-have-you. And personally, the idea of a tiny person giving birth to a size-category-larger baby before it's led off to have it's ritual Permanencied Reduction cast on it by the local wizards... is slightly obscene. I could see that as a society, but are all tiny person societies like that? I was personally thinking of, y'know, 'races of tiny people' who are 'naturally tiny' not relying on magical spells shortly after birth to tiny-ify them. And why I keep referring to the strength thing? If you look at the fluff of halflings and gnomes, due to the natural inherent disadvantage of ogres giving them a hug, they've focused instead on being fast, smart, and sneaky - this has cost them in strength. If you scale up a halfling, it is still weaker than a human of the same size (not counting Enlarge's bullshit 'lol comedy +plus str cause they're getting larger, amirite?' - No, you're not, they can already lift more and therefore throw more because they're bigger - your +str bonus is as stupid mechanically as it is fluffwise), your average human still has +2 str more than your average halfling, regardless of size. Size is absolutely no reason ever to give -2 str - what was originally the designers point (I think) was that small critters gave up str in favour of speed and hiding cause that's what their size made them good at - and then all the 'lol, i'm a designer!' designers decided that they had that -2 str cause they were small, and so then every fucking race smaller than medium was tarred with the same brush. It's bullshit, it seems to make sense except that the rules don't support it in any way.

So yeah, a lot of published sub-small races have -str but they really shouldn't. And the fact that they do != 'sub-small melee characters don't work in dnd'.

Considering that melee is already a weak niche to begin with it should come as no surprise that sub-small characters really won't be bringing the noise without using some fringe tactics with high returns (spirited charging or a flying mounted archer).

Yes, melee is substandard, as in it takes more effort to optimize melee than it does to optimize, say, casting. Yes, optimizing a sub-small character is harder than optimizing a large character. It's not... that much harder, though. Yeah, you can be a tiny sneak attacker archer/caster on a bird or something, flight at level 1 (omgz), sure, that's a lot easier to optimize for. But uh. Why because something is harder does it make it impossible? And it's not even that much harder, than normal, anyway.

If you choose to go the duelist route for Weapon Finesse and Precise Strike, then you suffer from additional MAD with Int to damage and Dex to attack. It's just more handicaps that a melee character really didn't need to be saddled with in the first place.

The duelist class has cool, cool, cool fluff. But the actual class sucks enough balls that it makes me physically ill. They need to like.. triple all those numbers. To start with. And then we need to sub in every ability from every dex-based fighting class or prestige class (except the dervish. Fuck the dervish). And then it would be viable. If we gave it always on sneak attack. Triple normal progression. That would possibly be enough for people to give a fuck.

For some reason WotC hates dex-based fighters. Yes, Small characters (like halflings and whisper gnomes) get a +2 to dex and a -2 to str. That is not indicative of every race smaller than Medium. That doesn't make sense under the rules. Therefore, the assumption that every sub-small melee class has to be a dex based fighter? Uh. Why, again?

But yeah, duelist is a piece of shit. As is swashbuckler. As is blade bravo.

From what I could tell, almost everyone on that Char Op thread was a moron except for the guy at the end who was ignored when he mentioned that a level 10 rogue would be better entry. He's absolutely flippin right. A level 10 rogue is leagues better than that Char Op build. Hence, my bitching.

Anyone could make an awesome non-caster sub-small character, but he would be a sneak attack machine who is always hidden, not some failed melee turtle that can be stepped over and avoided as the garbage that he is.

Yes, funnily enough sneak attack synergizes a hell of a lot better with confound the big folk than... weapon specialization. Or whatever he was taking. Note I didn't make that build or post it here. I'm just trying to stop people using it as an excuse to say that small characters can't do melee. As for the typecasting of melee tiny people... i'm still lost as to why. You can still make all the usual CO melee builds as a tiny person. You lose very little, (except for reach, which apparently is there simply to fuck anyone playing a non-normal-sized character - that /is/ a deal-breaker), and gain some pretty nice to hit bonuses. Yeah, confound the big folk and the huge hide modifier do go pretty well with a rogue, but same with a a barbarian leap attacker. Attacking against flatfooted AC is pretty nice for someone who routinely lowers his to-hit chance to deal fucktons of damage. And having an AC that isn't autohit is kinda nice as well.

And, despite saying many times that it isn't the focus of my argument, and is merely tangential 1) the blade bravo build (especially the non-monk version) is actually a decent build for many games (not the type you and roy play). In many games, it would fit in just fine, and before roy starts hurling disparagement in my direction, no, it's not fucking self-nerfing, it's called different power levels, and if you say anything different you are being an absolutist cockchewer. 2) Yes, turtling is a tactic that is often inferior to 'doing lots of damage'. Some version of it can be very good. Trading attack power for defense, at a favourable ratio, can be a very good choice for long term survivability over having to get rezzed every fucking session because your AC is 6 and you're fighting things that power attack.

[hogarth]

Disarm: I bite his thumb.
Bullrush: I kick him in the face repeatedly until he tries to swat me away.

Etc.

I really wish there were a way for tiny characters to work.

If all of the PCs are tiny, it's trivial: just bump everything up one size category. I.e. the PCs are reskinned halflings or gnomes (with Small renamed "Tiny"), orcs are reskinned ogres (with Large renamed "Medium"), an ogre is a reskinned storm giant (with Huge renamed "Large").

What doesn't work is claiming that really big and really small PCs can contribute equally in melee. That's just dumb IMO; are there any fantasy stories that do this, other than having a huge mob of small creatures fight a large creature?

[Roy]

Again, larger cultural disconnect. I'll explain it after I talk about what you're talking about here. Why isn't goad something to be proud of? If your defense is high enough, it's basically a save-or-suck for melee only monsters (and many monsters have ranged options that are far inferior to their melee/take AoO's (that can do tasty things like trip, with the right feats) for using them) and helps what roy calls 'turtle fail' characters immensely.

Let me count the ways.

1: The DC is trivial, because it is based on a stat that is not your primary stat. Maybe if a fucking Sorcerer wanted to use it, it might work. But he has better things to do.
2: It costs a Move action. Therefore, no full attacks, and no relevance this round.
3: Alternately you have one of the rare abilities that lets you be relevant for a Standard action, in which case you have better things to do.
4: Your defense doesn't get high enough. It can't even.
5: It only works against melee attacks, and oh yeah you have to be close to them and still be close to them later.
6: It only works against creatures who meet a long list of other conditions.

So you're looking at an ability that flat out doesn't work 50-95% of the time even when the conditions are met which happens considerably less than 100% of the time but does make you useless for a turn 100% of the time. Remind me how this helps prevent turtle fail again?

So.. why is a pure goad character worse than say, a pure save-or-suck caster? Or a pure damage dealer? They, all three of them, take enemies out of the fight, just in different ways.

The cultural disconnect? You seem, at least in part, to subscribe to what I like to refer to as 'Roy's Absolutist Bullshit'. Every melee character must be the best melee character the rules will allow to be created. Anything other than that is 'fail'. Every party must be composed in an 'optimal' configuration. Anything other than that is 'fail'. -That's minor hyperbole, but you get my point.

Non casters don't have room to fuck around. So yes, you must optimize melee to be relevant. This is not new to me, it's not new to anyone else here, and it should not be new to you. As for this and the other 15 or so lines where you attack me along similar lines, you can fuck right off with your bullshit lies and die in a fire if you want to be like that.

So I'm going to skip the many instances where you whine and flail about me for bullshit fabricated reasons and just cut to what very few points exist here.

Now, in an optimal optimized party that isn't just four fucking druids, there are casters who stand in the back, and melee characters, and maybe an archer or something crazy. That's stereotypical, cause optimized bards are fucking scary as hell. But let's run with it. In this situation, the buffed melee characters' goals are to a)stop the monsters killing the casters b)stop /anything/ killing the casters and c) not die. And roy is right (shock. horror. awe). In that kind of situation, the best way to stop DM-run monsters from killing the casters is to become a target that is both more threatening and easier to hit - a secondary way is to lock down monsters so they physically can't kill the casters, but roy rightly mocks this because in this (his) example, that method requires more resources to pull off and is less effective, mechanically, in most cases, so therefore it is clearly inferior.

Not quite. Casters have the best defenses in the game. They also are the only ones who get decent lockdown abilities (spiked chains fall short). So optimal optimized parties are indeed filled with casters, not just because they are the best but because they can actually protect themselves and each other. But ignoring that, the best thing a non caster can do is fuckloads of damage, since that's the only way they can even attempt to establish themselves as dangerous opponents.

Cut past several pages.

Trading attack power for defense, at a favourable ratio, can be a very good choice for long term survivability over having to get rezzed every fucking session because your AC is 6 and you're fighting things that power attack.

Shame this is an empty statement, on the grounds you cannot actually do that. As for the rez thing, the same would happen with an AC of 49 or whatthefuckever. The AC 6 guy presumably has Displacement. Which is far cheaper, and far MORE effective. So no, not really.

One more thing. Why did you write a short chapter where the first third of it was mostly bitching about me? Where the fuck is all that nerd rage coming from?

[Crissa]

You know, I can totally grab a fly, and kill it, and that same amount of damage might kill a mouse.

But you know what? It's harder to grab that damn fly at all than someone who's the same size, especially if it knows I'm coming. D&D doesn't do that at all.

Also, go play 'Mister Mosquito'.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty2]

You know, I can totally grab a fly, and kill it, and that same amount of damage might kill a mouse.

But you know what? It's harder to grab that damn fly at all than someone who's the same size, especially if it knows I'm coming. D&D doesn't do that at all.

Yeah, the main problem is that bigger creatures (because of HD and BAB) are more accurate than smaller creatures, which is kinda stupid, because giants and ogres are generally supposed to be clumsy and inaccurate.

But D&D can't really adequately simulate that kind of monster.

[erik]

This is a reply to Rejakor's defense of a self-admittedly shitty build. It's kinda gone beyond the scope of a tiny character and society their larger counterparts interacting with em. Hence the spoiler tag.

Rejakor, your post is so long that I'm not gonna even try to address everything. I'll just touch the highlights...

Okay, I don't know if you just didn't read my post or something, but you've apparently assumed that every time I said 'tiny person' I was referring to a 'Permanently Reduced Gnome Blade Bravo' when in fact I was just referring to a person that is tiny.

If there was a tiny race that gave no strength penalty, then that would be a big boon in favor of tiny meleer (reach issues aside). Unfortunately I am unaware of any such race that people use. If you invented a tiny race with a strength bump and some sort of reach that'd be super, but then you're arguing some sort of niche case beyond where we're seeing eye-to-eye any longer.

However, with something like confound the big folk, it's actually to that tiny character's advantage if people try to step on/over him. What you're saying here is part of a larger cultural disconnect. Bear with me. I'll explain it in a bit.

It's a feat not attainable until level 7, and has a pre-req of another feat not attainable until level 7. Given how scarce feats are at that level region, you generally won't be getting it until level 9 or 10. That's a long time to not receive benefit for being tiny and not even prove an obstacle, Also note, EVERY single maneuver of Confound the Big Folk starts with "To use this maneuver you must move into a square occupied by a foe at least two size catagories larger than you." So it is not to that character's advantage if people try to step on/over him.

I would also note that it's a crappy feat in general. The trip ability is not a serious ability. It negates out the opponent's size bonus... so what? You still have your size penalty to trip and your dexterity or strength is going to be far, far less than most opponent's. It's a joke. Nearly as bad as the joke that Goad is. Another DC that enemies will laugh at.

Why isn't goad something to be proud of?

Like Roy noted after you brought him into this for reasons passing my understanding, it sucks. The DC doesn't succeed, and on the rare chance that it does succeed then your AC will not.

If Thog the Tiny Human Barbarian leaps up and smashes his tiny greataxe into the face of the dragon for 1d1+467 damage,

Show this build. I think it sounds like a winner. You're better off with it than continuing to stick up for the blade bravo while concurrently admitting it is "shitty."

Barbarians are immune to sneak attack?

From that blade bravo... yes. A level 6 barbarian is essentially immune to his sneak attack. And I didn't say anything about a "properly built" barbarian. I said a plain vanilla two-handed weapon using barbarian four levels lower than the blade bravo. When your level 10 character is not a match for a level 6 character, clearly you aren't a worthwhile contribution to the party.

The blade bravo isn't, as you seem to be suggesting a lot, 'fail'. It isn't a spoony bard.

I love bards. They're not awesome, but they can almost always provide some benefit to a party. I'd take a bard over that build every single encounter. Ever. Hell, my most successful tiny-meleer experiment was a gnome warchanter who could either be a high AC target, be a servicable melee damage dealer, or make someone else who was a better melee powerhouse into a pure damage machine... all while giving decent bonuses to allies in combat.

And, despite saying many times that it isn't the focus of my argument, and is merely tangential 1) the blade bravo build (especially the non-monk version) is actually a decent build for many games.

Then don't get yourself dragged down by that non-argument. Thanks to RPGA games I've played with likely hundreds of players and scores of DMs. That build wouldn't have been a boon in most any of those sessions. Even if it isn't as sucky as some of the other characters I had to carry through adventures, it still doesn't provide any useful role. But that aside my basis of comparison is with foes of an appropriate level. I can't think of many that would be troubled by that blade bravo build. It doesn't deal damage, doesn't successfully tank, doesn't successfully block... doesn't successfully do anything. It provides no benefit to a party. If the whole party is that weak, then you pretty much have to be a level 10 party doing CR 6 encounters. Sure, some people might like that, but c'mon.

I'd contest your build except I still haven't seen it, and you continue to say that other one "isn't that bad," so I am going with what I am given.

[Crissa]

I just killed a swarm of flies. Using a vacuum.

-Crissa

[hogarth]

I just killed a swarm of flies. Using a vacuum.

-Crissa

"A swarm of Fine creatures consists of 10,000 creatures, whether they are flying or not."

If you have 10,000 flies in your house, you might want to clean more often.

[erik]

Perhaps the swarm was already damaged... or does it become a non swarm when you knock it from 10,000 to 9,999?