The Gaming Den

The feat is simple. When you use Combat Expertise, your adjacent allies also gain the AC bonus. Its from Shining South.

Now imagine three 5th level fighters(one with a reach weapon) full expertising.

Thats a +15 to AC. Even if you only hit on a 18 or higher with at -5, your enemies are only hitting on 20s. Even giants. Add a wizard to keep off the AoEs and target save or dies and you are invincible.

It gets even better with Improved Combat Expertise. It gets insane with a gang of Small creatures who have Swarmfighting.

Kobold Death Squad!!!

Make them a 3rd level Devoted defenders for 'Teh Win.'

It's a dodge bonus, however, which means that all of your efforts are thwarted by a blink spell, hide check (nerfed hideously in 3.5E, unfortunately), or the ever-popular grease spell. Cast from a scroll or wand, of course.

It makes it a killer tactic unless the enemy has taken incredibly simple precautions. Which makes it stupid and boring instead of game-breaking.

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the quality of 3.5E books have been going down down down the tubes since like, forever.

After bullcrap like Shining South and Players Guide to Faerun, I'll be goddamned if I can remember what was so bad about Oriental Adventures and Defenders of the Faith.

Lago_AM3P wrote:I'll be goddamned if I can remember what was so bad about Oriental Adventures and Defenders of the Faith.

The onfusing wordings, the way different print runs have different versions of the classes, poorly edited texts (brambles on the sacred fist spell list???) and how some classes mention their class features in the fine print are my first guesses.

Lago wrote:t's a dodge bonus, however, which means that all of your efforts are thwarted by a blink spell, hide check (nerfed hideously in 3.5E, unfortunately), or the ever-popular grease spell. Cast from a scroll or wand, of course.

It makes it a killer tactic unless the enemy has taken incredibly simple precautions. Which makes it stupid and boring instead of game-breaking

Are you high? I think that any tactic that means that you can only be beaten by spellcasters qualifies as "game-breaking." The vast majority of monsters are non-spellcasters.

If that were true, sure. But you can't just be beaten by Spellcasters. Let's consider a CR 6 encounter carefully. Either it's with a group of NPCs (who include spellcasters), or it's with a Trap/Environmental Hazard (which generally doesn't give a rat's about your AC one way or the other), or it's with a Monster.

If the Monster comes out of the MM, a CR 6 includes the following, just for fun the Monsters in bold can ignore your Dodge AC, and the starred monsters can do dick about you if you're flying:

[*] Annis
[*] Belker*
[*] Cachalot Whale
[*] Digester
[*] Hydra, 7 heads
[*] Pyro/Cryo Hydra
[*] Kyton
[*] Lamia (ignores dodge AC 1/day, so it doesn't really count)
[*] Megaraptor
[*] Centipede, Gargantuan
[*] Nymph *
[*] Osyluth *
[*] Shambling Mound
[*] Tendridiculous
[*] Will-o'-wisp *
[*] Wyvern *
[*] Xill (takes two rounds to set-up, so it usually doesn't count)
[*] Xorn
[*] Juvenile Black Dragon*

And here's the same list for the MM2:
[*] Abeil Soldier *
[*] Blood Ape
[*] Catoblepas *
[*] Hook Horror
[*] Kopru * (Once per day for either, but it's a Dominate)
[*] Legendary Eagle *
[*] Myconid Circle Leader
[*] Great Old Master
[*] Ormyrr

And here's the list from the Fiend Folio:
[*] Ahuizotl
[*] Reekmurk
[*] Caryatid Column
[*] Winged Warrior Formian *
[*] Bog Giant * (If you call a +6 ranged attack "something")
[*] Sillit
[*] Mud Slaad (Once per day, big whoop)
[*] Rapture Locust Swarm *
[*] Lesser Varagoin * (If you call 40 ft. of flight at average manuverability "something")

What have we learned? We learned that having an AC of 35 at 6th level is helpful against a lot of creatures. But flying is an even bigger deal. The entire party can be up in the air with the help of a 4th level Wizard if that's what's really important to you, I'm not terribly impressed by a combo that's nearly as good and requires 3 5th level Fighters to wander around inside a Burning Hands Template.

This tactic is profoundly less broken than Levitate.

-Username17

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1112153072[/unixtime]]It gets insane with a gang of Small creatures who have Swarmfighting.

What is Swarmfighting? Where is it from?

Game On,
fbmf

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1112207813[/unixtime]]

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1112153072[/unixtime]]It gets insane with a gang of Small creatures who have Swarmfighting.

What is Swarmfighting? Where is it from?

I can't remember where it is from, but if I recall correctly it allows multiple small (or smaller) creatures to bunch up in a single square.

Complete Warrior, page 105.

It requires that you be small. Not Tiny or Medium.
It requires that your allies also be small and also have Swarmfighting to actually do anything.

In that respect it is just like the oft maligned "Dual Strike" from Sword and Fist.

What it does is allow all the characters who are small sized and have swarmfighting to occupy a single space without penalty. Furthermore, it gives all of them a Morale bonus to attacks against creatures who are medium or larger eqaul to the number of characters with swarm fighting who threaten the target (provided that that number is at least 2). I think it's supposed to provide a bonus equal to the number of characters threatening minus one - but that's not what it actually says.

This feat can make for a world of hilarity if you happen to have Leadership, because an army of Kobolds can all Full Power Attack and totally Roxxor absolutely anything that doesn't have an area effect attack. Other than that, it's completely useless. Even if you convinced 2 of your compatriots to invest in Swarmfighting and Allied Defense and play the Hobbitla Pikemen it's just not a big deal. We're talking about a +3 to-hit bonus here, I'd rather have a diverse party with a grip of skillz.

-Username17

fbmf wrote:What is Swarmfighting? Where is it from?

Complete Warrior.

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Flying/Levitating has the disadvantages that it takes 1 round per character (minimum) to set up, you can't do it indoors, and you blow slots each time each day you do it. In a sense, it is balanced by these factors.

Allied Defense takes one round to set up(or less with AoOs), and negates the main schtick(and sometimes the only schtick) of a bunch of monsters and it works in almost every sitation.


I also have some issues with those examples:

I mean even the jeuvenile black dragon is stuck with a breath weapon every d4 rounds(at 8d4/fort 18) is looking at an average damage of 22 every breath attack(11 on a save), so he's got an average per round damage of 3-9 damage spread out over the whole combat. That's small. Add to it that PCs can make themselves immune to the breath attack by hiding behind a Tower shield(Animated in the case of the Reach guy)) and thus force the dragon to draw near if it wants any chance to hurt the PCs. Sounds like a fvcked dragon or a stalemate.

The Belker is doing around 7-8 points of damage to one guy with a DC 14 Fort save for no damage, so thats a per round average of 3-4 points of damage as we can assume that half the time your fighters are making that save. You'll murder this guy long before the 20 rounds he's got to bust out this power ends.

The Digester has the same problem as the Black Dragon, but he can't fly and doesn't have a dragon's other tricks. You could probably kill this guy without taking even a point of damage by waiting with total cover/Tower shield and then attacking on the 1 round delay after the breath. It takes time but its another stalemate or easy dead monster. Same for the Cryohydra/Pyrohdra, but with even less average damage per round. Count the Abell Solder in that group as well.

The Annis confuses me. Sure, its a grapple monster but it needs to make a claw attack to hit, which it makes on a natural 20. Even with a standard Grapple with a touch attack, it has to hit vs the big dodge bonus, and the attack with a sucessful grapple is still vs a massively bonused PC (as a grappled character retains his Dex bonus vs the creature grapplling him, but loses it to non-graplling things, and its Doge bonus is unaffected). Looks like a 0 damage encounter to me. Is the Fog Cloud 3/day supposed to help somehow?

The Xill also confuses me. Its a grapple monster, but it gets schooled like the Annis. Is Planewalking into the ethereal supposed to do something that I'm not aware of?

The Will O' Wisp has Invis. "as the spell", so thats generally means that its getting its attack every other round(and provoking AoOs) for a 2d8 and an average of 9 damage of one guy and a per round of 4 to one guy. Basically, you only take a small fraction of the normal damage. (some DMs might interprete that the Natural Invis. ability works as a supernatual ability as a free ction, and then that means you actually will have to fight this. The rules are very unclear.)

The kopru is getting a 50%-ish chance to get to kill one guy (less vs guys with Paladin 2) with his Dominate and a coup De Grace. If you have a spellcaser, you have one round to either dispel it or Protection from Evil it to disallow the full round CDG.

Mud slaad are doing 5d6 once a day, so we're looking at 9-18 damage to all PCs for the whole combat. Thats not even troubling.

I can't find the Reekmurk so thats out, as well as the Bog Giant. Once you enter melee(1 round) this guy is toast.

The Lamia, Nerra(sillit), Osyluth, and Nymph are spellcaster monsters, and those are the only ones that look legit to me.
I'll give you the Rapture Locust Swarm as well as it has an at-will magic ability and I can't figure out how the Swarm attack/full attack works.

I'll also add the Mycond Circle Leader since those spores are killers.

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So thats 6-7 out of 37 monsters who you honestly have to fight, and unlike flying it works everywhere with almost no set-up and no slot use.

Seems broken to me.