Some feat ideas and enhancements to Feats

[Aesop]

In the hope of breathing some life into some of these feats and combat styles... I haven't hit on all things but on a few... I something will be done to make all combat styles valuable and valid in as much content as possible.




Exotic Weapon Master Enhancements

A rough idea of having an Enhancement line for each exotic weapon

Bastard Sword I: Increase Glancing Blow Damage by 10% and chance to apply weapon effects by 3%.
Bastard Sword II: Increase Glancing Blow Damage by 10% and chance to apply weapon effects by 3%.
Bastard Sword III: Increase Glancing Blow Damage by 10% and chance to apply weapon effects by 3%.

Dwarven Waraxe I: Increase Glancing Blow Damage by 10% and chance to apply weapon effects by 3%.
Dwarven Waraxe II: Increase Glancing Blow Damage by 10% and chance to apply weapon effects by 3%.
Dwarven Waraxe III: Increase Glancing Blow Damage by 10% and chance to apply weapon effects by 3%.

Great Crossbow I: Has a 3% chance to knock target down.
Great Crossbow II: Has a 6% chance to knock target down.
Great Crossbow III: Has a 9% chance to knock target down.

Kama I: Upon successful critical hit applies a -2 penalty to attack rolls, skills and saves for 20sec to the target
Kama II: Upon successful critical hit applies a -3 penalty to attack rolls, skills and saves for 20sec to the target
Kama III: Upon successful critical hit applies a -4 penalty to attack rolls, armor class, skills and saves for 20sec to the target

Khopesh I: Has a 3% chance to sunder the target as per the Sunder feat
Khopesh II: Has a 6% chance to sunder the target as per the Sunder feat
Khopesh III: Has a 9% chance to sunder the target as per the Sunder feat

Repeating Crossbow (Light or Heavy) I: Has a 10% chance to fire an additional Bolt before reloading
Repeating Crossbow (Light or Heavy) II: Has a 20% chance to fire an additional Bolt before reloading
Repeating Crossbow (Light or Heavy) III: Has a 30% chance to fire an additional Bolt before reloading

Shuriken I: Has a 10% chance to throw a second Shuriken (stacks with Shuriken Expertise)
Shuriken II: Has a 20% chance to throw a second Shuriken (stacks with Shuriken Expertise)
Shuriken III: Has a 30% chance to throw a second Shuriken (stacks with Shuriken Expertise)


Weapon Finesse
Change Feat name to Fighting Finesse or other suitable name.

Fighting Finesse Feat
Prerequisites: Dexterity 15
Benefit: As long as the characters Dexterity score exceeds the characters Strength score and the character wears light or no armor, the character gains the following benefits. Dexterity Modifier is used to determine attack bonus and Tactical DCs when using light or special Finesse weapons. The character uses speed and accuracy to attack more rapidly while remaining outside the reach of his opponents and gains a 5% bonus to Double Strike and a 5% bonus to damage mitigation.

Two Weapon Defense
Remove the Two Weapon Blocking Feat and roll benefits into the Two Weapon Defense Feat.

Two Weapon Defense
Prerequisite: Two Weapon Fighting
Benefits: Gain the following benefits while fighting with two weapons or a double weapon. Gain a +1 bonus to armor class which increases to +2 while blocking, a +2 to Blocking Damage Reduction, and a 5% bonus to damage mitigation.


Shield Proficiency
Different types of shields gain slightly different bonuses.

Buckler: 0% damage mitigation and 10% chance to Shield Bash
Light: 5% damage mitigation and 10% chance to Shield Bash
Heavy: 10% damage mitigation and 10% chance to Shield Bash
Tower: 15% damage mitigation and 10% chance to Shield Bash

Shield Mastery: Increase Blocking Damage Reduction by 3 and damage mitigation by 10%

Improved Shield Mastery: Increase Blocking Damage Reduction by 3 and damage mitigation by 10%

Improved Shield Bash: Improve chance to Shield Bash by 20% and keep Shield Bonus to AC while actively Shield Bashing.

Dodge
Prerequisite: Dexterity 13
Benefit: gain a +1 bonus to armor class and a 1% bonus to damage mitigation.

Mobility
Prerequisite: Dodge
Benefit: Improve armor class while moving by +2 and while tumbling by +4.

Spring Attack
Prerequisite: Dodge, Mobility
Benefit: The character no longer suffers a penalty to attacks while moving. Additionally instead of having an attack chain of +0/+0 the character instead has an attack chain of +0/+5 and if applicable gains a Glancing Blow on the second attack of the chain.

Slicing Blow
Benefit: Using this attack, you deal 1 point of Constitution damage to your target and deal 1 to 4 additional damage 2 seconds later as the target bleeds. The target suffers an additional round of bleeding for every 3 character levels, up to a max of 6 at level 15. The target suffers an additional point of Constitution damage for every 6 character levels, up to a max of 4 at level 18. Some creatures may be immune to the bleeding or wounding effect.

Hamstring
Benefit: Using this attack, you deal 1 point of Dexterity damage to your target. The target’s movement rate is also reduced by 50% and they take a -4 penalty to Reflex saves and to resist trip and knockdown effects for the duration of the effect. The target suffers an additional point of Dexterity damage for every 6 character levels, up to a max of 4 at level 18. Some creatures may be immune to the ability damage effect.


Improved Sunder
Prerequisite: Power Attack
Benefit: Using this attack, you may reduce the target's Armor Class by 5 for a longer time. Additionally creatures with Fortification have it reduced by 25% for the duration of the effect. Some creatures may be immune to the sunder effect. A successful Fortitude save negates this effect. (DC 14 + Str mod)


Power Critical
Prerequisite: BAB 4, Weapon Focus
Benefit: +2 seeker bonus (stacking)

Whirlwind Attack
Prerequisite: Dodge,Mobility, Spring Attack and Combat Expertise
Benefit: Activate this ability to attack all enemies in a 360 degree arc around you and apply a trip effect to all targets hits. The trip DC is calculated as normal.



Aesop

[bigolbear]

balanced, nice but fair.

I like.

[Aesop]

Whirlwind Attack
Prerequisite: Dodge,Mobility, Spring Attack and Combat Expertise
Benefit: Activate this ability to attack all enemies in a 360 degree arc around you and apply a trip effect to all targets hits. The trip DC is calculated as normal.


Aesop

[Aesop]

I was also in another thread where they were talking about reworking Armor to have more of an impact. I thought of a few things for it as well.

1. Expand the AC and Max Dex range from 8 to 10. So Padded Armor would have a Max Dex bonus of 10 and and AC of 1 while Full Plate would have a Max Dex of 1 and an AC of 10. Effectively all armor should have a basic maximum AC benefit of 11 with Nimbleness, Greater Nimbleness and Mithril increasing Max Dex modifiers and Enhancement bonuses adding to the AC.

2. Have the three tiers of armor provide increasing damage mitigation:
Light: 1%
Medium: 3%
Heavy: 5%

Mithril versions of these armors would count as there basic type for this purpose. So Mithril Full Plate would count as Heavy Armor for mitigation purposes.

The benefit of this is that people would use a wider range of armors instead of so many going unused. It would also expand the AC range slightly and loosen up some of the feel of clone characters (though admittedly this would be minimal).


As far as mitigation goes in general I'm trying to keep the maximum total under 50%. Though at 1 point I'd thought of making all Dodge bonuses not count towards AC and instead add to mitigation on a 1 for 1 basis.


Aesop

[Aesop]

1. Rate of Attack: Ranged rate of Attack (RoA) is far too slow. However, the majority of that is due to the reloading animation. As things stand those effects that increase the RoA are only partially effective because of that. The Ranger Capstone is a perfect example in that it states that it increases the RoA by 25%, but only increases the number of attacks in a given time by about 10-14%.

I’ve only seen a few numbers recently on RoA for the different weapon styles.
Archery seems to float in about 61 attacks per minute.
One handed melee seems to float in about 107 attacks per minute
And the others float in a little less (with twf getting off hand procs)

I would be happier with a RoA closer to 87-93. Before this can really happen though some other issues need to be addressed.

Now there are a few ways that have been suggested to fix this but I think that if they would just increase the rate of the Reload Sequence to a more reasonable level that would likely solve the RoA issue.

2. Mob Interaction with Ranged Combat is difficult. We have a number of issues that accompany Ranged that is tied specifically to the way it interacts with the Mob AI.

Kiting is slow, frustrating to many groups and not good game play in general. There are a couple of ways that I think that kiting could be limited; a slight penalty to movement rate for 2 sec after firing, a RoA penalty while moving, and Mob AI interaction.

Mob AI interaction currently doesn’t deal with ranged combatants in logical manner. They keep approaching once agro is gotten regardless of the extraneous circumstance of whether or not they can actually reach the target. Instead, the AI could start off by using ranged attacks on the intended target until the mob is within the melee arc. Additionally, if the ranged attacks are not registering on the target and the AI cannot determine a path to the target (as in the case of a perched archer) the mob could switch agro to a secondary target, if there is no viable secondary target the AI could then initiate a retreat and cover protocol.

On the flip side is the Ranged Mobs interaction. Most Ranged Mobs just sit there shooting away while being clubbed to death. Then there are others that just keep shooting away despite the player being so far away as to be in another zip code. Once a character leaves the reasonable range they should not still be being pelted by arrows from something in another time zone.

However to work on the Ranged Mob issue would be to make the mobs that are ranged primary move to avoid or at least not sit there and take it so much. Some mobs already do this and that’s great but more mobs should take defensive measures. If they are being pelted with arrows and are not registering their own attack rolls they should take cover to avoid. Maybe even add in a defensive stance for Mobs to set a shield and hide behind it in the case of ineffective return fire.

3. In PnP Many Shot allows movement while maintaining damage output that while less than standing damage is greater than it would be without Many Shot. DDO has turned Many Shot into its short duration DPS mode for Archers and this cheapens them to 20sec on 2min off combatants. There are a number of thoughts on how to adjust Many Shot to make it a more Archer Friendly Feat.

One of the more common options is to make Many Shot into a Stance. The way it would be made into a Stance has been debated to death… but we continue the dead horse beating. If it was made into a stance, however it would not stack with Improved Precise and would instead be a single target DPS stance while IPS was an AoE. Many Shot as a stance would need to be a very different thing or it would become far too overpowered.

Another option however is to reduce the length of Many Shot to somewhere around 10-12 seconds and have more than one use. My thought on this is to have 1 use at BAB 6 a second use at BAB 11 and a third use at BAB 11. These uses would have individual 2 minute recharge timers similar to the way Paladin Smites recharge. Additionally there could be a cooldown timer between uses of between 30 seconds and 1 minute.

4. If Many Shot isn’t made into a stance then Ranged Combat could use a single target DPS stance to improve effectiveness against boss monsters. Something akin to Power Attack. Something like this:

Over Draw
Prerequisite: Bow Strength, BAB 4
Benefit: While this stance is active the user takes a -3 to attack rolls while gaining a +5 bonus to damage rolls with Bows.

5. Another aspect of ranged combat that is lacking is in the form of Tactical ability. Melee attacks gain sunder and trip as basic abilities while ranged gain nothing but the ability to run away… which is long tedious and boring to more than just the archer. I’d like to see at least one Tactical Feat available to Archers. Something like this:


Ranged Pin
Benefit: Target is pinned to the ground by an arrow/bolt. A successful Reflex save negates this effect. Pinned creatures may attempt to make a Strength Check every 2 seconds to escape. (DC 10 + Dex mod)


6. One last thing I’d really like to see. Ranged Ki Weapons should do more than just allow the monk to remain in stance. Ranged Ki Weapons should be able to produce Ki and use certain Ki Attacks like the Elemental Strikes. Shuriken and Zen Archery could even have a different set of strikes or even different Finishing Moves if desired.


Aesop

[Aesop]

Hamstring
Benefit: Using this attack, you deal 1 point of Dexterity damage to your target. The target’s movement rate is also reduced by 50% and they take a -4 penalty to Reflex saves and to resist trip and knockdown effects for the duration of the effect. The target suffers an additional point of Dexterity damage for every 6 character levels, up to a max of 4 at level 18. Some creatures may be immune to the ability damage effect.


Aesop

[stille_nacht]

For weapon finesse- i think you should probably change it to 1% doublestrike chance for every 2 dex mod the character has (e.g. 5% would come at 30 dex), this would make it still useful for DEX based chars, but not as useful for, say, every fighter and barbarian in existence.

also, idea about ranged weapons:
Ranged weapon fighting- while standing within 25 game m, you gain a 25% doublestrike chance.

improved ranged weapon fighting- while standing within 25 game m, you gain 50% doublestrike chance, while standing within 50m, 25% doublestrike chance

greater ranged weapon fighting- within 25 game me, 75% doublestrike chance, 50m is 50% doublestrike, 75m is 25% doublestrike.

these de-activate during manyshot.

since the main argument against ranged combat seems to be it is safer, i made a "if i am closer (less safe), i can fire better (because its easy to aim), made it doublestrike because tahts easy to code.

[Aesop]

For weapon finesse- i think you should probably change it to 1% doublestrike chance for every 2 dex mod the character has (e.g. 5% would come at 30 dex), this would make it still useful for DEX based chars, but not as useful for, say, every fighter and barbarian in existence.

also, idea about ranged weapons:
Ranged weapon fighting- while standing within 25 game m, you gain a 25% doublestrike chance.

improved ranged weapon fighting- while standing within 25 game m, you gain 50% doublestrike chance, while standing within 50m, 25% doublestrike chance

greater ranged weapon fighting- within 25 game me, 75% doublestrike chance, 50m is 50% doublestrike, 75m is 25% doublestrike.

these de-activate during manyshot.

since the main argument against ranged combat seems to be it is safer, i made a "if i am closer (less safe), i can fire better (because its easy to aim), made it doublestrike because tahts easy to code.

Actually for the finesse fighting note that barbs are very unlikely to use this feat because its effects (ALL of them) deactivate if your Strength exceeds your Dexterity. The reason behind this is that if you are using Strength to attack you are not using precise rapid strikes and are much more likely to be overbalancing yourself with the force of your blows. The techniques are just that different.

The problem I have with the Ranged Weapon Fighting Feats is that Ranged Combat already has more associated Feats than ANY other combat style and to be effective at it you need all of them. Adding three more would kill ranged weapon combat for all but a very few builds mostly Fighter and possibly Ranger.


Note however I do think that placing Many Shot into a limited range might prove useful to balanced ranged combat. A thought is to make it Point Blank Shot range. This would allow for a little more buffing of the rest of ranged combat.

Aesop

[Aesop]

Somewhere between Book of Nine Swords and Monk Elemental Abilities is a happy spot that give Melee (and Ranged hopefully) a little more flexibility and power. I’ve always been of the opinion that fantasy games should give all avenues of progression the ability to compete with each other and that while each is different and lends themselves to different strengths no one should eclipse the other so fully as to render them impotent. Everyone wants to feel useful in all situations. While letting some stand out and shine in one situation or another is great the ability to feel useful in any situation is also important. It is to that end that I thought that perhaps different combat styles or techniques could be implemented to give martial combat a needed edge.

The Book of Nine Swords list of course nine schools of combat including:

Desert Wind
Devoted Spirit
Diamond Mind
Iron Heart
Setting Sun
Shadow Hand
Stone Dragon
Tiger Claw
And White Raven

These schools are strictly limited to Melee attacks and further limited by specific weapons and key skills. To a degree this makes perfect sense. You wouldn’t go to a classic French Fencing School to learn the Katana any more than you would go to a world renowned cellist to learn to play the drums. However, here we may wish to limit this a little bit and instead of require certain ranks or keying specific abilities off of skill we could instead have each school grant a bonus to that skill and weapon combination.

For example, The Devoted Spirit’s key skill is Intimidate and weapons include falchion, great club, long sword and maul. A character who was a devotee of the Devoted Spirit would gain a +2 bonus to the Intimidate skill and a +1 bonus to hit with any of these weapons. This is a decent bonus but doesn’t preclude the idea of using a different weapon as the characters chosen “blade”.

The other aspect that I wasn’t thrilled with in the Book of Nine Swords is the complete disregard for ranged weapons. I am obviously a fan of the Archer Archetype and would greatly appreciate some ranged combat inspired combat styles and techniques. For this we will have to create a few schools to cater to Ranged and Thrown combat styles. To that end I will endeavor to come up with something interesting for styles.

There are a few ways in which this could be implemented. The first is as a series of feats, however this would severely limit which characters would be able to use them. Alternately, it could be granted feats, but that may exceed the cost to benefit ratio in the other direction. The choice I would be most like to employ is a single feat to open the single style with the option of taking multiple feats to open up multiple styles. Once taken a character could use Action Points to purchase abilities within the school.

After the method of acquisition is determined the manner of implementation is next desired. Should we follow the monk roll and have a Ki bar or should we place simple cool down limitations on effects. Either would be interesting, but a Ki bar could cause complications in conjunction with Monk Ki and the Concentration requirements. The cool downs could be adjusted to make the desired benefit to cost ratio what the Developers want. At this time I am leaning more towards the cool downs but could be convinced of the Ki superiority of flexibility.

An additional concern is Saving Throw DCs for the abilities that require them. Book of Nine Swords would have it based on Wisdom, but I think leaving it at the “to hit” stat would be better in this case. So for melee weapons the stat would be Strength (unless Finesse) and ranged/thrown weapons would be Dexterity. I think the DCs could equal 10 + ½ BAB+ Attack Modifier.


Aesop

[Aesop]

Desert Wind
Key Skill: Tumble
Key Weapons: Scimitar, Light Mace, Light Pick, Falchion and Spear (someday, I hope)
Starting Stance: Flame’s Blessing

Flame’s Blessing: (Stance) While in this stance the character gains Fire Resistance 5. This resistance improves by 5 every 4 character levels. At level 20 the character becomes immune to fire damage, as though having 100% fire absorption while in this stance.

Enhancements

Blistering Flourish
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: With a quick flourish you weapon bursts into flame dazzling your enemies.

Burning Blade
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: A successful strike with this ability does an additional 1d6+1 per BAB to the target.


Wind Stride
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: Improves the characters movement by 25% for 1 minute per BAB.

Holocaust Cloak
Cost: 2 AP
Effect: (Stance) While in this stance creatures attacking the character in melee take 1d6+1 per 3 character levels fire damage.

Lingering Inferno
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: This strike does an additional 2d6 Fire damage plus another 2d6 Fire damage every 2 seconds for 6 seconds plus an additional 2 seconds for every 5 BAB.

Fan the Flames
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: The target of this effect becomes 20% more susceptible to Fire damage. The target gets a Fortitude save to negate the effect.

Zephyr Dance
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: Character becomes more agile and graceful taking on the essence of the Desert Wind. The character gets a +4 Bonus to Dexterity as well as a +4 Dodge Bonus to Armor Class and Reflex Saves. This effect lasts for 20 seconds.


Fiery Assault
Cost: 2 AP
Effect: (Stance) While in this stance the characters melee attacks do an additional 1d6 Fire damage. At level 20 the character does an additional 1d10 on critical hits for weapons with a x2 multiplier 2d10 for weapons with a x3 multiplier and 3d10 for weapons with a x4 multiplier.

Fire Snake
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: A twisting winding snake of flame strikes a primary target for 4 to 6 fire damage per BAB and then arcs to other nearby targets hitting each of them with a similar blast of flame. A successful Reflex save reduces the damage by half.


Inferno Blast
Cost: 1AP
Effect: A large blast of searing flames explodes from inside the character causing 100 points of fire damage to all targets within the AoE. Victims can attempt a Reflex save for half damage.

Rising Phoenix
Cost: 1 AP
Effect: You are able to leap through the air to bring the fight to your enemies or traverse chasms that make normal adventurers balk.

[Yokido]

I liked the changes you added for shield mastery, how proficiency grants some absorption.. I liked the most of all.

I do see a steep change in the effectiveness of shield mastery and I-shield mastery, this needs to be addressed, and I don't think a nerf would fix it.

Combining shield bash with damage absorption is preferable, I also did miss the 3 damage reduction points from blocking as... Many small attacks weren't heavily effected by 25% absorption with 32 dr.

I also liked the damage absorption from having different types of armor, though I do think the amount should be reconciled. . . I say, increase the amount, but also increase the amount of damage that armor receives by doing so.


Also; Damage absorptions should simply be combined and total'd at once.
Avoid the difficult numbers, just make it so they stack and calculate simultaneously.
Including for energy absorptions, there ARE other ways to limit effectiveness.

[Aesop]

Additional thought on Armor Mitigation instead of by light medium and heavy maybe make it a direct relationship between physical Armor Bonus and Mitigation.

So full Plate would have 8% mitigation (currently) while Padded would have 1%

Padded would still have the evasion advantage (ie being able to evade in it)

Under the modified idea I mention earlier Full Plate would have a 10% damage mitigation


Padded Armor
AC: 1
Max Dex: 10
Mitigation: 1%
ACP: 0
ASF: 5%
Spec: Able to Evade while wearing


Chain Shirt
AC: 4
Max Dex: 7
Mitigation: 4%
ACP: -1
ASF: 10%
Spec: Able to Evade while wearing


Hide
AC: 4
Max Dex: 7
Mitigation: 5%
ACP: -2
ASF: 15%
Spec: Druid Friendly


Breastplate
AC: 7
Max Dex: 4
Mitigation: 7%
ACP: -3
ASF: 20%
Spec: Mithril makes Evasion possible

Splint Mail
AC: 7
Max Dex: 4
Mitigation: 8%
ACP: -4
ASF: 25%

Full Plate
AC: 10
Max Dex: 1
Mitigation: 10%
ACP: -5
ASF: 30%


This gives an advantage to the heavier armors in terms of mitigation but leaves the lighter armors the possibility of evasion. This means that even if a meaningful AC can't be reached there is still a benefit to the armor.


Note I did give an additional point of mitigation to the heavier weight armor with the same AC number. This seems fair to me as the lighter armors of the same AC have other benefits though I'm open to other thoughts.

Aesop

[Requiro]

Slicing Blow
Benefit: Using this attack, you deal 1 point of Constitution damage to your target and deal 1 to 4 additional damage 2 seconds later as the target bleeds. The target suffers an additional round of bleeding for every 3 character levels, up to a max of 6 at level 15. The target suffers an additional point of Constitution damage for every 6 character levels, up to a max of 4 at level 18. Some creatures may be immune to the bleeding or wounding effect.

Still useless. Damage reduction will reduce 1d4 damage. Add note that this attack bypass any damage reduction.

[Grenada]

I thought I'd add my two bits in.

This is a feat from the Dungeon Masters Guide, v3.5 (was an epic feat)
I haven't modified the feat from the source, but thought that maybe someone with better knowledge of the game mechanics could get some ideas from it
Overwhelming Critical
requires: Str 23, cleave, great cleave, Improved critical (weapon to be chosen), Power attack, weapon focus (weapon to be chosen)
Benefit: When using the weapon you have selected, you deal an extra 1d6 points of damage on a successful critical hit. If the weapons critical multiplier is X3, add an extra 2d6 points of damage instead, and if the multiplier is 4, add an extra 3d6 points of damage instead. (Creatures immune to critical hits can't be affected by this feat.)
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new type of weapon.