We don't need STWF

[Angelus_dead]

BAB increases aren't giving extra attacks per round to... ANYONE. TWF feats are merely keeping DPS in line with what they should be and preventing you from losing DPS.

The most blatant problem is a supposedly-beneficial quantity having a negative effect: increased BAB reducing your DPS. For 1wf and thf combat there is only a minor negative, where longer attack animations might have a few percentage less attacks per second. (In that case, the reduced rate is almost compensated for by the increased chance to hit AC)

It only becomes a major problem when TWF is involved, because it's TWF characters who can lose real DPS when their BAB increases to a new animation. That's because they need higher TWF feats just to stay in place, instead of to improve. Currently that only happens when a TWF guy goes from BAB 9 to 10, but if it also happens at 19 to 20 then that's a major new failure.

Is it really so out of line to give a TWF that actually DOES give an extra attack? Especially to a prestige class that is centered around being a whirling tempest of steel?

Uh, they already DO have an equivalent to that. +10% melee speed means they get extra attacks. If the tier1 Tempest bonus had been less than 10%, then it might be OK to give them a big bonus at tier 3.

[krud]

I've been looking at a chart of bab, # of attacks/rnd, and attack rate and it becomes obvious that part of the trouble is trying to shoehorn the PnP # of attacks/round into the MMO paced world where they have decided to maintain a constant number of attacks per minute throughout the entire bab progression. Everytime they add a new attack to the TWF attack chain, they run into trouble if they continue trying to maintain that constant attack rate. In order to maintain the proportionate number of attacks/min between 1HF and TWF they have had to make it so you needed the highest available TWF feat to avoid loosing attacks. The only possible result is a loss of dps for some people as bab goes up, either that or the creation of some ungodly fast attack animations.

[bobbryan2]

Uh, they already DO have an equivalent to that. +10% melee speed means they get extra attacks. If the tier1 Tempest bonus had been less than 10%, then it might be OK to give them a big bonus at tier 3.

They do have a 10% attack increase. But monks have 7.5 and paladins are at 10%, and fighters will most likely be at 10% or more after their capstone.

I only said I don't think it's completely unreasonable to give rangers an extra hook... especially if it requires the ranger to stay in place and use the slower attack animations. (that doesn't fit well with the flavor of requiring a tempest to stay still, when the major requirements all revolve around spring attack... but meh)

[Emili]

please explain how their dps would get hurt? If they do something like slow down the attack rate, as was the case at bab15, then it might.

That is exactly what they're doing... they're adding an attack at 20... thus slowing down the ROA ... thus Full BaB 20 is slower then BaB 19. So then the 19/1 ranger/monk tempest outputs more dps then the 20 ranger tempest.

[krud]

That is exactly what they're doing... they're adding an attack at 20... thus slowing down the ROA ... thus Full BaB 20 is slower then BaB 19. So then the 19/1 ranger/monk tempest outputs more dps then the 20 ranger tempest.

After looking at the attack rates it is apparent that with every new attack animation at 5/10/15 bab they have slowed down the attack rate. it is an idiotic thing to do, and is a consequence of trying to adhere to a constant attack rate throughout the bab progression. That constant rate may appease the MMO shoot em up crowd, but doesn't work very well with the PnP bab/attacks per round progression.

It's probably way too late now, but they should have instituted a gradual increase in attack rate with each new animation for 1HF, and balanced TWF feats with it. A compromise between PnP and MMO could have been achieved if they started with a 1HF attack rate of 60 (or 72) and progressed to a cap of 96. For the most part the attack rates in the chart are close to what they are now, except for bab0-4, where it would be slightly slower. You don't get the same proportional increase in attacks compared to PnP, but at least it is a continual increase with increasing BAB. Also, the TWF feats don't go up proportionally as they should if you don't happen to have the highest feat available, but at least they won't decrease as they do now. Again, all styles see a gradual increase with BAB. Also in this chart I took out the extra TWF offhand attack at bab15, to make the progression coincide with PnP, and gave it as an extra attack for STWF.

Bab	0-4	5	6-9	10	11-14	15-17	18-20
Attx/rnd
1HF	2	3	3	4	4	5	5
TWF	3	4	4	5	5	6	6
ITWF			5	6	6	7	7
GTWF					8	9	9
STWF							10

Attx/min
1HF	60	72	72	84	84	96	96
TWF	90	96	96	105	105	115	115
ITWF			120	126	126	134	134
GTWF					168	173	173
STWF							192

60 attx/min for bab0-4 is probably a bit slow. It could always be higher, or gradually increase to 72 by bab4, but if TWF is to also proportionally increase, it would end up at 108 attx/min at bab4, and then see a decrease to 96 at bab5. They could always make it increase slower than 1HF so the hit isn't as steep from bab4 to bab5.

Anyway this is just dreaming. They probably couldn't fine tune the attack rates like this anyway.

[bobbryan2]

Bab	0-4	5	6-9	10	11-14	15-17	18-20
Attx/rnd
1HF	2	3	3	4	4	5	5
TWF	3	4	4	5	5	6	6
ITWF			5	6	6	7	7
GTWF					8	9	9
STWF							10

Attx/min
1HF	60	72	72	84	84	96	96
TWF	90	96	96	105	105	115	115
ITWF			120	126	126	134	134
GTWF					168	173	173
STWF							192

60 attx/min for bab0-4 is probably a bit slow. It could always be higher, or gradually increase to 72 by bab4, but if TWF is to also proportionally increase, it would end up at 108 attx/min at bab4, and then see a decrease to 96 at bab5. They could always make it increase slower than 1HF so the hit isn't as steep from bab4 to bab5.

Anyway this is just dreaming. They probably couldn't fine tune the attack rates like this anyway.

You realize your proposal has STWF as even more of a bonus than the current implementation would be, right?

[Fallout]

So for non-rangers, 17 dex would be the most needed for TWF?

[krud]

So for non-rangers, 17 dex would be the most needed for TWF?

unless they implement stwf as a feat, then it could also be available to others. Anyway i'd leave that argument on how to implement it up to you guys. However the main idea of the chart is not about STWF. It was just a side thought on the bab/ attack rate progression.

[krud]

You realize your proposal has STWF as even more of a bonus than the current implementation would be, right?

It seems I hijacked my own thread. This was done in response to Emili.

Don't get hung up on the specific numbers. I did this mainly to show how you could have an increase in attack rates with bab, and keep some kind of proportion with the actual attacks/round we are supposed to get. Nobody sees a decrease in their attack rate as they level up, it always increases. If the maximums for the TWF feats are too high they can always be lowered to appropriate levels. Just use these as a starting point for discussion.

edit - for example, you could set the attack rates at cap to 96 (1HF), 110 (TWF), 125 (ITWF), 150 (GTWF), 160 (STWF) and adjust the rates at lower bab accordingly. It might be a departure from the actual number of attacks ratios we're supposed to get, but would be better balanced