SimianChaos's page

Lets say one makes a Gnome Barbarian, Fighter, or Rogue and takes Animal Accomplice. What does the familiar use for it's Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth? The familiar section only mentions spellcasting and the feat doesn't mention anything about substituting something for your spellcasting if you don't have it.

Piercing weapons can't be used to sunder (slashing or blunt, and only as appropriate) in normal situations.

Um... that is not true.

Sunder

You can attempt to sunder an item held or worn by your opponent as part of an attack action in place of a melee attack. If you do not have the Improved Sunder feat, or a similar ability, attempting to sunder an item provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver.

If your attack is successful, you deal damage to the item normally. Damage that exceeds the object's Hardness is subtracted from its hit points. If an object has equal to or less than half its total hit points remaining, it gains the broken condition. If the damage you deal would reduce the object to less than 0 hit points, you can choose to destroy it. If you do not choose to destroy it, the object is left with only 1 hit point and the broken condition.

In case of the no spring attack, he'd have to attack, retreat, use up the parry, get the AoO, and retreat to a distance that would force you to close. If you're using a Reach weapon, that's a 5' step from being able to Spring Attack (and you can move sideways and in as part of a Spring attack...

Note that using a Reach Weapon specifically ALLOWS Spring Attack...you aren't starting adjacent to me, so you aren't shutting me down. As long as I move 10', I can Spring Attack, avoid the AoO from Reach, and move out of range. I may not get an AoO when I parry your standard action, but that still leaves me 1:0 in a duel.

If you have a reach weapon, the AoO for leaving a threatened square happens before you leave the square, not after! :)

If you have to back up, after you stop moving, the ready action goes up, the monk closes 5', and your Reach weapon does nothing (no AoO for a 5' step). I can also have the Ready action be 'if they move away more then 5', move with them', which would keep me right next to a Reach weapon wielder, right?

A THW fighter can 'free hand' by letting go of his weapon at the end of his turn, no? IF it's a weapon capable of being wielded in one hand normally (i.e. a bastard sword). I'm not sure if the wording on the THW fighter applies only to weapons in two hands, or weapons that can ONLY be wielded with two hands...be kinda strange if he couldn't get his bonuses for using a longsword or battleaxe or morningstar in both hands...

Doing what your describing one, negates your ability to make AoOs with that 2h weapon, and also reeks of metagame thinking and intentional loophole finding and exploiting.

Regardless :) You get a high damage bozo not taking his enemy's best attack, +4 to AC, and an extra attack every round, for -1 damage. That's one HELL of a feat chain!

====Aelryinth

Alright fine, in your absolutely narrow situation this feat chain is nothing but pure unadulterated win.

Unfortunately 1:1 fights simply do not happen all that often in the game. And when they do your twinked out Crane duelist will slowly whittle away at his opponent until he wins the duel. Guess what, that is a valid tactic that one could do WITHOUT using this feat chain, the chain just makes it much easier.

Maybe but I can't ever remember using a siege engine in any game I've ever played.

Tunneling under the walls, flying over invisibly, teleporting in is more what pc's usually do.

Just seems like using a siege engine is a very rare thing.

You have never played a game where the DM is a logistics nerd who really likes his wargames.

That said being a 15th level characters assaulting a standard standing army was actually surprisingly difficult. Those little bastards hit sometimes and it starts to hurt :(

That said I was a transmuter and was busy buffing and using area control/denial spells left and right. The enemy guys in there countering and dispelling my magic weren't helping either

Additionally at the level at which your theory craft build is doable the humanoid BBEG melee monster would be 3-ish levels higher then the players, making him level 12-ish.

What does this mean? If your BBEG melee monster does not have a SINGLE magical trick up his sleeve and is level 12 you are doing something SERIOUSLY wrong there. Even the best most hardcore honorable warriors have some species of trick they can pull out to deal with something they cannot normally deal with, they are the BIG BAD EVIL GUY after all, those dudes make plans with plans within cookies. Tasty cookies made out the bones of the heroes who came before and FAILED.

Ever wanted to do this:

Hyper Combo Finish!

Well now you can.

Step 1: Titan Mauler Archetype
Step 2: Huge (Or larger) fire arm
Step 3: ?????
Step 4: Profit!

How does that happen? pg. 136 of Ultimate Combat specifically states that the size of a firearm does not affect how many hands you need to shoot it, therefore a Titan Mauler (who decreases the penalties for weilding larger weapons) would be able to fire off a Huge weapon with one hand. If they want, the could go all the way to Gargantuan or larger for a cumulative -2 penalty.

Everyone should rule as they see fit, but I'm actually wanting to see this happen at least once in a game I run.

For even More Better Ridiculousity (tm) use a Pepperbox of Speed and a wondrous item which gives one a permanent Reloading Hands spell effect.

Time to take Ol' Painless out of the bag

I have a great idea, take this Bear Trap Maul and give it to an giant, (sized up even more so it is still a 2handed reach weapon) then have this giant hit a dire bear with it. It then proceed to pick up the dire bear that is now firmly attached to this horrifically huge hammer. FINALLY he then attacks the players with it dealing bear damage and hammer damage at the same time!

Kaiyanwang wrote:

Aelrynth, there are more ways to overcome this feats than to overcome most spells.

If this FEAT CHAIN (dear god again) is overpowered, what about greater invisibility + mind blank+ overland flight?

Is really the case of complaining about Crane Style/Wing/Riposte? I'd bet not.

(I agree that duels happen. Is not only an honour thing - absolutely common in a game with kinights in shining armor - but is too the classical duel of the good guy vs the bad guy, or two future allies meeting in a tight road a là Robin Hood vs Little John).

Magic is magic, you overcome it with magic. we're talking a melee duel here.

In combination with Spring Attack, you literally Cannot Be Hit. Dragon lunges at you with Greater Vital Strike Power Attacking Jaw strike? Deflect. No 100 pts dmg for you.

Sure, it's of less use against mobs, I DID point that out. Unless you have a feat that grants you AoO's when attacked, or can do multiple strikes on a move, you literally cannot touch this guy in melee.

Pull out a bow. Yeah, right, that'll work. The round you pull it out, you get at most one shot, it's auto-deflected by a monk, then he springs up, cuts the cord on your bow, and you're back to being nickeled and dimed to death.

True seeing and See Invisibility both defeat mind blank, as neither targets the mind blank recipient. And a DC 20 spot check does the job as well, especially if you are moving. So does Glitterdust, or Faerie Fire, or whatever. Plus, you're talking a minimum of 13th level to make that happen. This is usable at low levels to gain absolute advantage in a duel.

I'm trying to think of a reasonable way to defeat it in a lower level duel. You take a TH penalty for an equal or better AC bonus (i.e. an Expertise sub), and you just whittle your opponent down because he can't hit you. Unless he's got an endless supply of throwing knives, and his penalty to hit you is greater then yours to hit him!

I'm definitely seeing problems with the feat chain.

==Aelryinth

Why are you talking about it being unbeatable at low levels and then claiming the person has Spring Attack and all of Crane Style? Even as a fighter thats minimum level 6 and there are ways to beat it at level 6 without magic, you've also kept saying Duelist and Monk, which is it? A Duelist or a Monk? If it's a Monk who has two levels of Duelist to get the Parry then that character is at least 10th level and by that point his ability to deflect single attacks is somewhat moot.

If I was forced to duel with the aformentioned Duelist using Crane Style I would, upon realizing that my attacks were not going to hit would begin trying to trip him, make use of Dirty Trick, or Bull Rushing him to get him on his backside.

I have no problem with first and thrid feats from the Crane but second one with its ability to outrightly negate one attack is leaving a bad aftertaste... It can be taken at 5th level which means that it can be used in one-on-one fight before mutiple attacks are even possible. Hello, unhittable duelist.Anything that negates hit just so should be more limited in its usage (like two or three times per day or at the expense of some resource, like Ki points).

I have a solution for this problem, it's called a bow.

I love the Crane Style and Flowing monk or Tetori Archtypes, they make my pacifistic monk much more viable (and really annoying to the baddies)

I just noticed something even nicer, Snapping Turtle Style used in conjunction with Crane Style (Via the Style Master AT)