More homebrew feats

[AlphaNerd]

As I've said before, I'm bad at these, so I entreat all manner of comments.


Shield Expert [Combat]
Benefit: You are proficient with Shields and Great Shields
+1: You may make a shield bash as an attack action (with no penalty) and retain your shield bonus to AC. Shield bashes deal damage as a slam attack and require a Fort DC of (10+1/2 HD+Str Mod) or be dazed for one round.
+6: The shield bonus of any shield you wield is increased by +2.
+11: Your shield bonus applies against touch attacks.
+15: You may make a shield bash as a swift action.


Armor Expert [Combat]
Benefit: You become proficient with Light, Medium, and Heavy armor. For each of these armor proficiencies you already have (or gain), increase the armor bonus of the armor you are wearing by +1.
+1: Worn armor does not count toward your encumbrance.
+6: Armor check penalties for armors are decreased by 3 points.
+11: Any abilities that normally only work in light armor or no armor now function with no armor, light armor, and medium armor.
+16: You can wear two armors. Although the armor bonuses do not stack, you can use the special abilities of both armors.

I don't even know what real skill feats are supposed to look like, so this is a stab in the dark.


Stealthy [Skill]
Benefit: Gain a +3 bonus to Move Silently and Hide Checks.
Hide or Move Silently Ranks:
4: You may move silently and/or hide while moving your full speed without taking a penalty. If you run you get a -10 penalty.
9: You may attempt to hide even after being spotted, though your check suffers a -10 penalty. You are no longer detected by tremorsense or blindsight.
14: You may cast ghost sound, darkness, and obscuring mist as spell-like abilities at will.
19: Blindsense does not detect you, and you are under the effects of nondetection (caster level = ranks - 3) at all times.

[Iaimeki]

My best guess at reading Frank and K's intentions is that there's no need to have scaling armor and shield proficiency feats: the shields and armors themselves grant scaling abilities, specifically to allow the standard armor/shield proficiency feats to work. That said, there's probably room for a shield specialist feat along the lines of yours:

Shield Expert [Combat]

Benefit: The shield bonus of any shield you wield increases by 2.

+1: You can use a two-handed reach weapon and a shield at the same time, but you still only add your Str bonus to damage with your primary weapon. You may shield bash, or attack with an off-hand weapon if you're using a buckler, and still retain your shield's bonus to AC.

+6: Any opponent you hit with a shield bash must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + ½ your level + your Strength bonus) or become dazed for one round.

+11: Your shield's bonus to AC applies to your touch AC.

+16: You can wield a shield and a two-handed weapon at the same time, and you add 1½ times your Strength bonus to the damage it does. You may instead wield two weapons and any kind of shield at the same time without losing your shield's bonus to AC or taking any penalty on your attacks.

[Arturian]

"+16: You can wield a shield and a two-handed weapon at the same time, and you add 1½ times your Strength bonus to the damage it does. You may instead wield two weapons and any kind of shield at the same time without losing your shield's bonus to AC or taking any penalty on your attacks."

I agree with the 2 handed weapon part because a shield could be strapped to the forearm...but 2 weapon fighting...maybe keep the ac...but you need to take a penalty especially if it isn't a buckler...I mean, I know the game is all about Mighty Fighters and all...but lets be at least a little realistic...

[User3]

Realistic? At level 16? This is why fighters can't have nice things.

[Brobdingnagian]

Remember, in one more level, fighters have to compete with people gating solars or whatever, and they have to do it without magic. Kinda tricky.

[MrWaeseL]

1175752196[/unixtime]]"+16: You can wield a shield and a two-handed weapon at the same time, and you add 1½ times your Strength bonus to the damage it does. You may instead wield two weapons and any kind of shield at the same time without losing your shield's bonus to AC or taking any penalty on your attacks."

I agree with the 2 handed weapon part because a shield could be strapped to the forearm...but 2 weapon fighting...maybe keep the ac...but you need to take a penalty especially if it isn't a buckler...I mean, I know the game is all about Mighty Fighters and all...but lets be at least a little realistic...

Hell yeah man let's hold fighters to a different standard than magic users and be really surprised when the end result isn't even remotely balanced. It worked for WotC

[AlphaNerd]

My best guess at reading Frank and K's intentions is that there's no need to have scaling armor and shield proficiency feats: the shields and armors themselves grant scaling abilities, specifically to allow the standard armor/shield proficiency feats to work. That said, there's probably room for a shield specialist feat along the lines of yours:

So are each of Light, Medium, and Heavy armor proficiencies worth a whole feat? Even if the feat isn't a scaling BAB feat, I expect a feat that grants some of the things I suggested would make a reasonable feat.

Frankly, the specials on the armors are not as good as a feat IMO, though they do give you some versatility in choosing among different armors, though keeping a couple of level-appropriate armor suits around does cost a fair bit of money. And I don't think that the specials on heavy armor are that much better than those on lighter armors, so I don't think you'll be that much better.

Also, you can wield armors if you are not proficient (though the ACP is 4 points higher), so grating the ability to wear a new type of armor is a feat strictly worse than a feat that gives a -4 to ACP, which seems weak to me in the new paradigm of feats.

[Judging__Eagle]

1175752196[/unixtime]]"+16: You can wield a shield and a two-handed weapon at the same time, and you add 1½ times your Strength bonus to the damage it does. You may instead wield two weapons and any kind of shield at the same time without losing your shield's bonus to AC or taking any penalty on your attacks."

I agree with the 2 handed weapon part because a shield could be strapped to the forearm...but 2 weapon fighting...maybe keep the ac...but you need to take a penalty especially if it isn't a buckler...I mean, I know the game is all about Mighty Fighters and all...but lets be at least a little realistic...

Plus, there seriously weapons so wierd that no one today knows if they were even weapons or simply there for intimidation value; like Lantern Shields.

It's a 'sheild', but it's also got a 5 foot long metal bar that runs alongside your wielding arm (sharpened along the portion that extends past the edge of the sheild; it had metal blades extending along the sides and it's surface and in the middle it had an opening that was where a lantern's light could come out from (the lantern was suspended from a hook on the inside).

People seriously dont' know if this was used as an actual weapon, or as a symbol of "don't fvcking mess with me" in the renesaissance.

In any case, the TWF character using a sheild is not gonna do that much more damage (and sometimes, not even as much damage) as the guy with a 2H weapon. Since the 2H weapons gives you 1.5x your str, and the TWF gives you 1x str on one hand, and x0.5 str on your off hand.

Also, the guy with one weapon wil have it with lots of +'s; the two-weapon fighter will have one high + weapon and one +2 weapon; at lvl 16.

Of course, Blitz, Whirlwind and TWF are good for attacking many enemies decently.


As for the fighter, I mean, he's lvl 16. He's able to potentially know if someone could try to ambush him (Danger Sense), even if he can't see them, or shoot them in the eyes if he can only hear them (Zen Archery).

Plus, he can at 10th lvl Punch and break Adamantine with his bare hands at this level with just Power Attack and 12 str (power attack deals +2 damage per BaB traded out). At level 16, the same fighter is able to wind up and punch holes into solid adamantine and completely break down such a wall that's 10 feet thick in one minutes*, less if he's got Two Weapon Fighting + Combat School and two adamantine daggers) and/or Blitz.

That's assuming the fighter has, you know. 10 str. At level 16; 17 is the lowest is would be (10 + 5 inherent + 2 item) though.

*:Power attack at lvl 16 is +32 damage versus the Hardness 20 and 120 HP per 10'x10' section, so, 12 damge always gets through; in 10 rounds that's 120 damage. That was unexpected actually.

**:to use two adamantine daggers we can't Power attack for 16, and instead only 6, since we need to always hit an AC of 10. Iwht combat school we can 'take 10' with attack rolls. 8 Attacks in 1 round that deal +32 damage (plus 1d4) so, 13 damage * 8 is 104; two rounds.

***: Bltiz; adds BaB in bonus damage. So, 32 + 16 = 48; so 28 damage will always go through [again, this is assuming only your bare hands and 10 str]; that's about 5 rounds.

If you've got Blitz, Combat School and Two Weapon fighting (and two adamantine weapons) you could seriously burrow thrugh solid adamantine.

Unworked (solid) stone has 900 hp per 10 feet however; butadamantine daggers ignore it's 8 Hardness and being able to deal.... 8* 48+1d4 damage means you'll take 3 rounds to burrow through even the toughest material around (about 384 + (8 to 32) damage per round).

That's a heck of a tangent. Good lesson learned though:
Lesson/Problem:
"At high levels, there is no need to teleport in the dungeoun. The fighter can seriously burrow up, down or to the sides in a dungeoun at a decent speed (burrow 10 feet; anything)"

Solution:
"Place the dungeoun corridors in a lake of something dangerous (acid, fire, magma, flux slime); or have the dungeon take place across multiple planes or with seperate room complexes several hundred feet apart from each other within a mountain"

Frank had the right idea when he placed the one dungeoun as a series of pipes that go into a lake of mercury.

In any case, back on track; at the same point, the wizard is one level away from telling Solars, Balors an Pit Fiends to essentially wipe his ass or kill all of his enemies for the payment of, essentially free gold.

High lvl play is really, really hard to understand. I'm probably not even scratching the surface of how wierd it is. At best I can imagine what higher level play looks like and I'm probably forgetting better stuff that could be done at that lvl to boot.


Imagine, you were fighting that hill giant by 'hiding' in the stone again; but it's a cloud giant now and you're level 12.

Instead of hiding in the rock, you cast Animte Objects to animate a couple of nearby tree or boulders (lets assume you animate one Huge oject and one Large object, since you can aniamte a total of 12 small, which end up being 1 large and 1 huge) and let them beats up the cloud giant for you. Having your cleric actually participating in melee is at this point completely up to your whim (you should probably do it though, the Objects are weaker than I assumed). You could also summon in monsters off of the Summon Monster 6 Table at this point as well or abuse Planar Ally looping in order to have large elementals who serve you for 12 days for 12,000 gp.

You can seriously choose between your minions win or go back to getting ripped off at cards with Zero and WD-40. Actually participating or not won't matter if you just choose to let your minions fight for you instead of getting super-genius giant blood on your Battleaxe of Awesome (TM).

As for Zero and WD; Zero can't fight and we all know it and he's saving up his five "avoid combats" a day for something important and Stax had to go to work early so no one's playing his character. Rolf pretends to be all anime and tries to abuse his 30+ jump check in some manner (jump up and drop heavy, previously Shrunk items on the giant? I dunno); when he should be flying. Fernara sleeps since we're not fighting undead, constructs or aberrations for her to use her arrows of slaying on. Kiae has probably killed the Cloud Giant's 2 other Cloud Giant buddies with his eight poisoned crossbow sneak attacks (if he's got about 7 at lvl 7, he could get an 8th by lvl 12) that deal 3d6 con damage and +6d6 sneak attack damage each.

Yeah, seriously, you can summon stuff that will win you fights, while you rest for the five minutes and play cards instead. Higher lvl play is even more nuts.

[Brobdingnagian]

You know that part in the armour where you granted a bonus for each one that the person is already proficient with? You should do that for the shields too.

[AlphaNerd]

Ok, after spending some time looking at armors (well, typesetting them), I think the Armor Expert feat might be a little too good as written. A wizard could take the feat and pick up masterwork Silk Steel armor (+7 armor bonus) and have no ACP (and therefor no ASF chance). Of course, that's only a +3 compared to mage armor, which isn't much better than, say, Elusive Target.

Regarding giving bonuses to shields, the +2 is supposed to take its place. If you wanted, I think Iaimeki's version of the shield feat could be used, but instead of granting a +2 bonus, it could grant both proficiencies, and +1 for each proficiency you have (or gain). That would probably work pretty well, IMO.

[Catharz]

Flavor-wise I'd just as soon that it was not possible to use THF with shields, excepting the shields which already let you do that. That is, the Kappa shield. It's not that parrying with an ice aegis while you're using the same hand to swing a greatsword is necessarily overpowered. It's just dumb.

On the other hand, I think that dwarves that hold a tower shield in one hand and a longspear in the other are cool. But you've got to write it like that.

Similarly, TWFing with a shield bash and a one-handed weapon is cool, but TWFing with two weapons while holding a shield is dumb unless the shield is a buckler.

The end result decomposes warriors into two types: THFers and TWFers. TWFers either benefit from a shield bonus from TWFing and a cool weapon in the offhand, or a shield bonus from the shield and a cool shield in the offhand. THFers benefit from (usually) better damage and better weapons. All permutations are realistic, for those who care about such unspeakable things.

Oh, and lastly there are the weird guys who use bone shields (the ones that animate and float around you) or kappa shields along with 2WFing or 2HFing. Basically, the guys who use shields which are really armor that wanted to be used with other armor.