| 13 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Is the mixing of BAB and levels in the halfling Risky Striker feat RAI?
You can choose to take a –1 penalty to AC to gain a +2 bonus on melee damage rolls against creatures two or more size categories larger than you. When your base attack bonus reaches +4 and every four levels thereafter, the damage increases by 2. The bonus damage is multiplied in the case of a critical hit. You can only choose to use this feat when you declare that you are making an attack action or a full-attack action with a melee weapon. The effects last until your next turn.
So, a full BAB class advances this at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20. A 3/4 BAB advances this at 6, 10, 14, and 18. A 1/2 BAB at 8, 12, 16, and 20.
Or a 1/2 or 3/4 BAB character who starts off with four levels in a full BAB class, who advances it at the same rate as a full BAB character. Seems potentially highly useful for a character focusing on miss chance rather than AC.
Looks like an error to me, comparing to similar scaling feats that are based off BAB.
That might actually make a halfling rogue (knifemaster) kukri fanatic scary! Could be good to keep a few potions of reduce person around, though.
I find it odd that the damage scales but not the AC penalty, by the way. I would have expected it to echo the numbers on power attack.
I was thinking two levels of Barbarian and two levels of either Fighter or Ranger w/ Power Attack, Risky Striker, and Reckless Abandon before switching to a two weapon fighting Knife Master. Maybe throw in the Big Game Hunter feat and/or trait too.
Can I get some FAQ clicks on this? I'm actually playing a character who will be taking Risky Striker in a level or two, and I really believe that what they wrote is not what they intended.
I am not sure that it is an error at all.
Risky striker has scaling damage but not a scaling negative.
Reasoning:
1) Damage - damage does not inherently scale. While 2 damage is a big chunk at low levels, it is not as much at higher levels. Thus for the feat to stay relevant damage must scale.
2) AC penalty - AC penalties inherently scale. This is because a -2 to AC is the same as saying you are 10% easier to hit. 10% easier to hit means you will take 10% more damage. 10% more damage will scale as you level because the monsters will deal more damage. So....a -2 AC penalty scales in how much additional damage you take.
I will click you faq because risky striker does not follow similar feats in progression, but I think that it is written as intended.
It's not that I think they meant for the penalty to scale, it's that I think they meant for it to scale by BAB, rather than by level. As it's written, I can take my first four class levels as fighter and then switch to a 3/4 or even 1/2 BAB class and have the feat increasing my damage at the same rate as a full BAB character. And I've seen elsewhere that they don't want there ever to be a case where a DM has to figure out what order a character was built in - with Risky Striker it does matter what order classes where taken in - a Ftr 4 / Rog 4 has different bonus damage than a Rog 4 / Ftr 4.
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I feel like this must be an error for a few reasons, and I'm interested in seeing clarification.
Lab_Rat, there are indeed several AC penalty abilities that scale as the benefits advance; two examples that come to mind are Reckless Abandon and Tiger Pounce (although that just changes the penalty on Power Attack from -attack to -AC).
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That might actually make a halfling rogue (knifemaster) kukri fanatic scary! Could be good to keep a few potions of reduce person around, though.
Reduce Person works for Medium and Small shapes only, so it doesn't provide any utility for an already Small creature like a Halfling, with regards to Reckless Abandon. If you were thinking to reduce yourself to Tiny, remember that your reach would drop to zero so you would have to enter the creature's square to attack.
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Not necessarily a problem since you're likely to have a high AC and Acrobatics anyway. Did they ever settle whether a tiny creature with a reach weapon threatened 5 feet?
Also, I really do think that this feat would be overpowered to only give a -1 AC penalty for a constantly increasing damage portion.
Reduce Person works for Medium and Small shapes only, so it doesn't provide any utility for an already Small creature like a Halfling, with regards to Reckless Abandon.
I'm not sure what exactly you're saying here. Are you meaning that a Small Halfling wouldn't become a Tiny Halfling? Because there's nothing in the text of the spell that suggests that; in fact it specifically calls out that a Small creature becomes Tiny. Or are you suggesting that a Tiny Halfling isn't two sizes smaller than a Medium enemy? Because he absolutely is.
Good job Paizo. You changed the feat in the errata. But you forgot to fix what was broken. It's still advancing based on level instead of BAB.