Races of War

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Judging, we played it as 'first square only', because otherwise it is an active punishment for not using reach weapons. We decided a Samurai (has Whirlwind as bonus) using a katana should get the same number of AoOs as a Kasurigama Samurai, and that choice of weapon should not be dictated by game mechanics.

Feel free to interpret how you like, but we chose the interpretation that seemed most fair.

[Judging__Eagle]

I think that not using a reach weapon is active punishment for not using a reach weapon, but then that's me, and I usually pick reach weapons, or reach weapon combos that don't leave my character with any 'gaps' in their threatend squares. Often I add in armour spikes to help with that, the character in question had armour spikes, in addition to the Kusari-Gamas.

[Korwin]

Fighter Bonus Feats: If all feats are legal, it should read somewhere all feats are legal.

[Maxus]

We've always assumed the Combat Feats were the legal stuff, and F or K (whichever wrote the class) had a moment of mental abstraction when filling in class features.

[Judging__Eagle]

Here's a thought:

Elusive Target [Combat]
You are very hard to hit when you want to be.
Benefits: You gain a +2 Dodge bonus to AC.
+1: Your opponents do not gain flanking or higher ground bonuses against you.
+6: Your opponents do not inflict extra damage from the Power Attack option.
+11: Diverting Defense - As an immediate action, you may redirect an attack against you to any creature in your threatened range, friend or foe. You may not redirect an attack to the creature making the attack.
+16: As an immediate action, you may make an attack that would normally hit you miss instead.

Does the +11 ability mean that if you were a fighter that could get 3 Immediate actions per round; would that mean that you could use the Divierting Defense option as a "mirror" ability against multiple attacks per round, including spell attack rolls, which Foil does not work against.

This would also let you divert attacks from ranges greater than Foil Action can strike from. Allowing the character to divert attacks from bows, or magic users that use attack roll spells.

I think that ultimately, deflecting a shot against an other enemy is much better than simply cancelling the shot in the first place, especially if you can do it three times per round.

Suddenly the character becomes pretty much immune to the very attacks that could mean him the worst problem, ranged touch attacks. You could have a touch AC in the negatives, and not care, b/c you could divert attacks against you.

Monsters with melee touch attacks would be a problem, since you would have a good chance to facing more than 3 such attacks per round. Layers of defense like displacement, and concealment would be handy for that.

Just a thought that I had when looking at the Combat Feats, and having to make a lvl 20 character that has 17 levels in fighter (Feat Rogue, Bard, and Monk all are dipped for some 1st level features that they add to the character).

[virgil]

Easier to make the question here. What kind of abilities do you (you being the person who's reading this post) think were intended to go into Wicker Armor? The fact it's keyed off of the Jump skill is perplexing.

[koz]

Easier to make the question here. What kind of abilities do you (you being the person who's reading this post) think were intended to go into Wicker Armor? The fact it's keyed off of the Jump skill is perplexing.

I wrote something up here which may help.

[virgil]

Each unit also has a Leader with normal racial CR as a base, the advanced by CR equal to the normal damage of the unit.

Does this mean that a unit of Fire Giant Bashers is going to have a giant leader that's got enough levels to be CR 18?

[ibanez]

Seems to me that bows, unless you are a barbarian, are for the most part superior to using melee weapons. Point blank shot stack with blitz and you can power attack on top of it without even having to take the AOO from blitz.

A weapon using monk might as well use a bow so he can force saves for stuff at distance. A knight can use a bow and call people out and then kite them around until they die. Samurais can do x3 crits at a distance and eventually fire off all of his AOOs at whoever he wants in range.

Is melee only expected to be used by people who are also using whirlwind or hoard breaker to try and take a bunch of mooks down at once?

[Kaelik]

Seems to me that bows, unless you are a barbarian, are for the most part superior to using melee weapons. Point blank shot stack with blitz and you can power attack on top of it without even having to take the AOO from blitz.

A weapon using monk might as well use a bow so he can force saves for stuff at distance. A knight can use a bow and call people out and then kite them around until they die. Samurais can do x3 crits at a distance and eventually fire off all of his AOOs at whoever he wants in range.

Is melee only expected to be used by people who are also using whirlwind or hoard breaker to try and take a bunch of mooks down at once?

Well if you are playing with Book of Gears magic item rules, Breaking shit it a legitimate strategy, so if you can roll up and break the bow in half, you totally get to take away their actions next turn, and then you can break another bow, ect.

But actually, TWFing is the reason Bows suck, because TWFing is just flat more damage than any other strategy, including bows.

Monks and Paladins using Bows though is totally the shit, and has been suggested before fore precisely that reason.

[ibanez]

If you were a tiefling or asimar you could take the fiend extra arms feat and still TWF with bows right?

[Kaelik]

If you were a tiefling or asimar you could take the fiend extra arms feat and still TWF with bows right?

No, you couldn't:

"Benefits: You suffer no penalty for doing things with your off-hand. When you make an attack or full-attack action, you may make a number of attacks with your off-hand weapon equal to the number of attacks you are afforded with your primary weapon."

Since your off hand is the one drawing the strings, this has no bearing whatsoever on your ability to use two bows at once, and you would be able to fight with two bows as well as any 4 armed creature, which is to say, not better than one bow, because your BAB only gives you X attacks.

[ubernoob]

If you were a tiefling or asimar you could take the fiend extra arms feat and still TWF with bows right?

No, you couldn't:

"Benefits: You suffer no penalty for doing things with your off-hand. When you make an attack or full-attack action, you may make a number of attacks with your off-hand weapon equal to the number of attacks you are afforded with your primary weapon."

Since your off hand is the one drawing the strings, this has no bearing whatsoever on your ability to use two bows at once, and you would be able to fight with two bows as well as any 4 armed creature, which is to say, not better than one bow, because your BAB only gives you X attacks.

But you could totally just polymorph into an arrow demon and save yourself a feat. For some reason, they have a racial ability to ignore how bows actually work.

[ibanez]

Yeah the arrow demon is what made one of my friends think of doing it in the first place, which is how the conversation came up.

[ubernoob]

Yeah the arrow demon is what made one of my friends think of doing it in the first place, which is how the conversation came up.

Yeah, look at the art. It *doesn't work*. Not to say that it isn't a cool creature, but just that the guy that wrote it up was smoking some good crack.

[Prak]

Yeah the arrow demon is what made one of my friends think of doing it in the first place, which is how the conversation came up.

Yeah, look at the art. It *doesn't work*. Not to say that it isn't a cool creature, but just that the guy that wrote it up was smoking some good crack.

Wow, I'd never looked at the picture that closely... it looks like the artist probably tried long and hard in the sketch part to try and make it work but finally had to say "fuck it, no one's going to notice"

[Kaelik]

Yeah, I generally assume in Tomes we are talking about the Tome Polymorph fixes too, in which case you don't want to polymorph into an Arrow Demon.

[virgil]

Would a Pounce feat be a bad idea to incorporate into the Races of War (and other Tome) material?

[Kaelik]

Would a Pounce feat be a bad idea to incorporate into the Races of War (and other Tome) material?

Already have Blitz, what do you need pounce for?

That said, if you want to make an arbitrary pounce feat:

Pounce Motherfucker:
You take no penalties for charging, maybe something else here as well.
1: something.
6: You get some rakes you can use on a pounce that do something sort of level appropriate.
11: You Pounce.
16: Something else.

[IGTN]

Why is Pounce the 11th level ability? It's not like it's level-inappropriate for a low-level character.

Probably something like:

Pounce:
You take no AC penalty from charging
1 You Pounce
6 When you use the Power Attack option after a charge, you can divide the penalty between AC and attack however you please.
11 You inflict three times the penalty you take in bonus damage when you use Power Attack after a charge.
16 Something awesome.

[Kaelik]

Why is Pounce the 11th level ability? It's not like it's level-inappropriate for a low-level character.

Probably something like:

Pounce:
You take no AC penalty from charging
1 You Pounce
6 When you use the Power Attack option after a charge, you can divide the penalty between AC and attack however you please.
11 You inflict three times the penalty you take in bonus damage when you use Power Attack after a charge.
16 Something awesome.

Um, because yes it is a level inappropriate ability.

Blitz gives full attacks on standard actions at level 16. And that's not even better than pounce, just about equal to worse. Why people feel the relentless need to power creep Tome feats is beyond me.

[IGTN]

Pounce scales with your full attack. At 1st level, it's not good at all unless you have two weapons.

There's a WotC book that gave Barbarians pounce at low levels.

Just because one feat grants something as a high-level ability doesn't mean another feat can't grant the same thing at a lower level, or a better ability at the same level; the ability might be at the high end of its level-appropriateness on the first feat, or the ability might be level-appropriate at all levels because of how it scales.

Compare Combat School 0 and Subtle Cut 0, or Blitz 1 to Point Blank Shot 1. Combat School gives +2 to hit (+4 to damage if you Power Attack it away). Subtle Cut gives +1 to damage. Compare Sniper 16 to Zen Archery 16. Compare Subtle Cut 16 to Combat School 6; Combat School 6 is actually better. Compare TWF 11 to Expert Tactician 1; once again the latter is better. Compare Lightning Reflexes 11 to Danger Sense 0.

Blitz 16 gives you the ability to move and make a full attack, but not on a charge. Pounce gives the ability to charge and full attack. Both of these abilities scale with your number of attacks (hence level); at 1st level they're useless unless you're a two-weapon fighter or have natural weapons, and they get better as you level. Making a full attack with three iterative attacks and a magical bonus attack in each hand is overpowered at any level lower than 16. Hitting with each of your daggers once on a charge is fine at 1st level.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Actually, IGTN, which of those feat abilities are better is often situational. If you use an immediate action to feint and you have the edge, you can't make an attack as an immediate action unless you have multiple swift/immediate actions per round. If you feint with a swift action, you still have an immediate to attack with. Similarly, Subtle Cut 16 can be used with a ranged weapon (unlike Combat School).

That said, I think my point only supports yours.

[Kaelik]

Well then it that case since it totally just scales and is totally fine:

PouncePouncePouncePouncePounce:
You can Pounce.
1: You can make two full attacks on a Pounce
6: You can make four full attacks on a Pounce
11: You can make eight full attacks on a Pounce
16: You can make 16 full attacks on a Pounce

Seriously, the reason blitz doesn't give standard action full attacks at level 1 is because it's not a level one ability. Attacking twice with your longswords and once with your bite:

Or claw claw bite, or any of the eight thousand other three attack full attack routines that level 1 Tome characters have is in fact totally out of line.

Yes, you have to wait all the way to level 11 for Pounce in my example feat, because unlike everyone else ever, my goal is not to make a community feat that is twice as good as the comparable Tome Combat feat until no one ever wastes their time on the good Tome Combat feats, because community feats are always that + stuff.

Like the bullshit Rapier power. Or Mental Weaponry, or Int Fighter.

But now people want to make fucking blitz obsolete, so let's do that. And then we can make TWFing obsolete by making a feat that let's you attack twice with one weapon for each attack, but gives the same benefits as TWFing, just compressed into 0/1/6, and then add in two more abilities on top of that.

[IGTN]

Actually, IGTN, which of those feat abilities are better is often situational. If you use an immediate action to feint and you have the edge, you can't make an attack as an immediate action unless you have multiple swift/immediate actions per round. If you feint with a swift action, you still have an immediate to attack with.

Using an immediate action on your turn eats your swift action; using an immediate action any other time eats your next swift action. Being able to do something as an immediate action includes being able to do it as a swift action and more, and so is strictly better.

Kaelik: Blitz isn't going obsolete just because you can get Pounce. Maybe hybridizing in both Leap Attack and Shock Trooper into it goes overboard, but putting Pounce as a BAB 0, 1, or 6 combat feat ability is perfectly fine. Pounce is underpowered as a level 11 ability, so a feat dedicated to it should give it much earlier.

Seriously, at level 11 a Samurai can make three + dexterity modifier attacks as an immediate action, with no iterative attack penalties, plus three more if two-weapon fighting, so you're looking at something like fourteen attacks easily (two swords, plus DEX 26), and that's not even well-optimized. Pounce is trivial next to that.