Exceptional Pull?


Rules Questions


I was looking through feats on d20pfsrd from the ranged tactics toolbox when I stumbled upon this:

Quote:

Exceptional Pull (Combat)

You have mastered techniques to get the most out of composite bows.

Prerequisite(s): Dex 13, Deadly Aim, base attack bonus +3.

Benefit(s): When you wield a ranged weapon that you are proficient with and that has a strength rating, add 2 to the weapon's strength rating. You don't take a penalty on attack rolls for having a Strength modifier lower than the strength rating of a weapon, provided you're proficient with that weapon.

So, what exactly is it doing?

Is it effectively giving you an extra 2 damage by allowing you to use a bow with a strength rating two higher than you normally could? That's kind of how it seems, but I'm honestly not sure.

The other interpretation is that you could wield a bow with a higher strength rating than your strength mod without penalty, but you wouldn't get any extra damage. In which case, wouldn't this be virtually worthless when you can pickup the adaptable quality on your composite longbow for 1000 gold?

I'm just trying to understand how this feat is supposed to work. Thoughts?


It does both. But only give you the extra damage if your strength is high enough.
So examples and let's say you have strength 16, it does:
1) treat the strength rating of the bow as 2 higher. you pick up a +1 strength bow, you can use your full +3 damage.

2) You have no penalty for using a bow with a too high strength modifier. So you carelessly lose your +1 bow and pick up a +4 strength bow. you can use it without penalty and add +3 to damage. It is treated as a +6, so if you get Bull Strengthed then with your new +5 strength you can use it, still with no penalty, adding +5 to damage.

Whether it is worth it, I'll leave that to the theorists.


It is a weak feat even without the existence of the adaptive quality.

My understanding is that it does two things.

One it makes any strength rating weapons 2 higher, allowing you to do extra damage (if you have high enough strength anyway)

Two you can use weapons with a higher strength modifier than you strength without taking a penalty.

The (limited) usefulness would be for someone who occasionally had a bonus to strength. For example, a Barbarian could get a bow that he could use to full effect whether he was raging or not. A bard with this feat and a 16 str could get a str(18) which becomes str(20) with the feat and he could use it without penalty (with the +3 damage for 15 str) when he wasn't raging and also use it when raging getting the +5 damage for having str 20.

With the existence of adaptive, it is very had to imagine anyone ever taking this feat. Without it, there would be a few times when it would be useful, but very few when another feat wouldn't be better anyway.


Yeah, I was trying to figure out if the higher strength rating is what granted the bonus damage and having the required strength just allowed you to fire it without penalty.

But I think that was probably just me being hopeful, because it would have basically meant +2 damage for the price of a feat. I thought it was like weapon specialization that anyone could use. But that was clearly overly optimistic.

So, yeah...basically a worthless feat unless you lose your bow a lot or don't have it customized to work for you for some reason.


As far as I can tell from the description of the feat this feat would indeed grant a player +2 on damage. The only restrictions being that you have
1.met the prerequisites listed for the feat.
2. You are using a bow as there aren't other weapons that require you to (pull).
3. The Bow in question would either have to be a composite bow with a strength rating 2 levels higher than the the player possesses or be anadaptive bow.
I have read what other players think this feat implies but if their ideas were true the feat would never have had any use and the games creators would have just been wasting their and our time which seems unlikely.
Two additional notes. The feat requires a weapon proficiency with composite bows which only 4 of the original 11 classes have. Finally the feat may have been designed to give archers a more even playing field as damage increasing feats are difficult to acquire and ones for ranged combat more so.

Scarab Sages

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Claxon wrote:

I was looking through feats on d20pfsrd from the ranged tactics toolbox when I stumbled upon this:

Quote:

Exceptional Pull (Combat)

You have mastered techniques to get the most out of composite bows.

Prerequisite(s): Dex 13, Deadly Aim, base attack bonus +3.

Benefit(s): When you wield a ranged weapon that you are proficient with and that has a strength rating, add 2 to the weapon's strength rating. You don't take a penalty on attack rolls for having a Strength modifier lower than the strength rating of a weapon, provided you're proficient with that weapon.

So, what exactly is it doing?

If you owned the book, you'd see it displayed next to a Bow-based Barbarian archetype, and it would make sense.

Basically, variable strength scores are a challenger for characters that use bows with a strength rating, since the composite bows penalize you for having too little strength, and don't improve if you strengh becomes larger than the strength rating.

So if your PC has a Strength of 12, and has an ability that adds +4 to Str in a temporary capacity, you can buy a Composite Longbow desighed for a +3 strength character and not have penalties when you are only a +1 strength character.


Dude, this is from nearly a year ago.

Also it's not really much of a challenge, you spend 1000g on the adaptable enchant on your +1 bow and your good to go. Total cost of 3000 gp. No reason to waste a feat slot on it, unless you really need to optimize damage at levels before you can afford +1 adaptable and want to take the feat and retrain it once you can afford the magic item.

That being said, mechanically actually taking Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, and Rapid Shot will be more important than those 2 or so points of damage per shot and getting all of those feats will take you until you've leveled enough to buy a +1 adaptable bow.

Scarab Sages

Claxon wrote:

Dude, this is from nearly a year ago.

Also it's not really much of a challenge, you spend 1000g on the adaptable enchant on your +1 bow and your good to go. Total cost of 3000 gp. No reason to waste a feat slot on it, unless you really need to optimize damage at levels before you can afford +1 adaptable and want to take the feat and retrain it once you can afford the magic item.

That being said, mechanically actually taking Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, and Rapid Shot will be more important than those 2 or so points of damage per shot and getting all of those feats will take you until you've leveled enough to buy a +1 adaptable bow.

Fail. The guy before me posted yesterday, and I didn't check the timestamp. Yeah, ancient.

Anyway, I agree that the feat isn't very good. The question in the OP was more "what is the point of the feat" which is what I was addressing, not "should I take this feat over others."


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Well, as it was my question originally the question was "Can the feat please work this way even though I know it's probably too good to be true". And then people confirmed for me that it was indeed wishful thinking. And then it kind of turned into "This feat sucks, whats the point of it?"

Silver Crusade

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Someone Necroed the thread because the topicwas on the subreddit yesterday.

In any case, Murdock is right, it's on the page before the Primal Hunter Barbarian Archetype in Ranged Tactics Toolbox. Though the picture is no Barbarian, she's Adowyn the Iconic Hunter.

Still a crap feat, mind. Don't take it

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