Thrair's page

RAW, I don't think you can.

Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action

You can choose to fight defensively when attacking. If you do so, you take a –4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 to AC until the start of your next turn.

RAW, this seems to suggest that fighting defensively is it's own Standard action. Which would mean, like Vital Strike, it couldn't be combined with a charge/Spring Attack; or with things like Magus Spellstrike. It would also mean it wouldn't take effect until you took the Standard action to make the Fighting Defensively attack.

RAI, I think it's pretty obvious it's intended to be a mode of fighting you can toggle on at will, and almost every game I've played in has run it that way.

But the RAW view has some credence, because if it was intended to be a mode of fighting you could activate at will, it would more accurately belong in the list of free actions. And if it was intended to be something you could just "turn on" at will, they wouldn't need Total Defense as a standard action for those situations where you're unable to make an attack.

I think there's some written text here that's leftover from the conversion from 3rd edition, and they never bothered to update it. It might also be intentional to prevent "I'm defensively fighting while casting x spell" (attack roll or not).

People post to complain, not to support. It's a truism across the entire internet.

There's an irony there. Seems intentional, though. I get the sense you're making a bitter joke.

Look. I stand corrected on your use of favouriting posts to track them. So I apologize for that.

However, you have been nothing but rude and condescending in every post you've made in this thread. Many of the people attacking you are guilty of the same, but I've noticed it as a general trend in your posts.

I do not know if it started because you made a few enemies and got defensive when they began personal attacks, and it's now become habit, or if you're just prone to it. I, frankly, do not much care.

I actually agree with many of your points. You're articulate and well reasoned. However, almost every single post I see from you involves logical fallacies (mostly informal). You have to be aware of them. You have called others out on the same fallacies, yourself. So you are using them intentionally, I feel. Because you know they work against many people. I cannot express to you how frustrating that is to see.

Again, many of your core arguments are sound. But you reinforce these arguments by belittling your opponents. You mock their views. You make grand statements that imply the majority of the playerbase sees things your way and agrees with you, without providing evidence to support that view. Hell, even that joke I quoted was calculated in such a way.

I despise condescension. It's exceptionally infuriating to me to see a person who's clearly very educated using that knowledge to belittle others. Regardless of whether other posters are attacking you, you have no justification for acting the way you are. You ought to know better. You DO know better, dammit!

For as much as you are admonishing Kudaku for being self-righteous and condescending, you seem quite willing to engage in that behavior yourself. And he seems to be directing it at just one person (you), while you are directing it at virtually everyone who disagrees with you. Neither of you is in the right. I probably no longer am, either. This whole debate has been driven into the mud, and you seem to be taking a perverse pleasure in that.

I'm going to bed. I'll make another post tomorrow, when I've had time to calm down. As I'm currently so pissed off, I'm having trouble thinking clearly.

Ryinth, If you were to apply more common sense to your arguments, people might treat them with more respect - at the moment I personally have a hard time taking them seriously. More troublingly, these assumptions you're making hurts your overall credibility since you're essentially debating an entirely different feat from the rest of the thread.

To be honest, I'm more turned off by his condescending attitude than the actual arguments he's making, some of which are quite valid.

P.S. You Favorited your own post? Really?

*checks* ... *sighs* Wow.

Ah, good eye.

A grappled creature takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls and combat maneuver checks, except those made to grapple or escape a grapple.

So, if I'm understanding this right, it would be a grapple check:

-So the grapplee could apply CMB bonuses to grapple on the check to escape or take control...

-...But the grappler could also apply grapple-specific bonuses to his CMD, as well.

oh, my, such a cogitent argument.

A sarcastic, and unnecessarily rude, ad hominem. Made worse by the fact that you're clearly educated enough to know better.

People have argued repeatedly about how powerful the feat is. GM's have chimed in about it. It's bad enough that Paizo had to come forward and change it to bring it in line with the rest of the game...NOT bring the rest of the game in line with it. Not change Riposte, not change Crane Style. Not change early entry reqs.

Crane Wing.

A valid point. The feat was strong, and certainly could use some retuning. But they crippled it severely in a knee-jerk response, and broke the followup feat. Paizo now has to fix it. If for no other reason than un-breaking the followup feat.

And a handful of people are going to argue the same points which have been repeatedly shot down, and expect the broad mass that knows better to return it to the way it was?

It's not going to happen, folks.

Don't much care for the implication that everyone who disagrees with you is in the minority and simply rehashing a weak argument. This feat errata would not have amassed so many views and responses so quickly if it wasn't a contentious issue.

Oh, one last thing:

Wow. I was hoping for a few replies but I didn't expect three pages worth over night.

Honestly, what did you except with that thread title? I was browsing through and saw lots of basic thread titles like "Magus build". "Grapple rule", etc.

Then I saw "Alignment Shift due to Pastry."

/double take
"What."

Not to be rude, Gellos, but you seem to be getting a little defensive. Just making you aware that, unintentionally or not, you're coming across that way.

You did ask for people's opinions. You don't have to accept them, but I wouldn't argue with them. At that point it's more like you have an opinion on the matter and are just fishing for validation.

Again, I do apologize if I'm jumping the gun on this. Tone and inflection are hard to discern over text.

I will point out that at no time have I deprived anyone of their freedom (or free will as I did specifically say I didn't want them to be an addiction) nor have I damaged their dignity in any way. Also it says life not well being. A minor distinction but in any case I have not caused any deaths or even bodily harm.

I dunno. A lot of people think of their free will as an integral part of their digity, and your charms are (relatively benignly, I'll admit) affecting that.

You don't have to kill to be evil. In a related note, you can evil be evil without evil motives. Look at the Operative in Serenity. Road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Sir Reginald would find, much to his sorrow, that I wield a considerable amount of influence in Magnimar and the city guards would be happy to escort him right out of town for those kinds of antics.

And this a worrying attitude. Someone with noble goals feels you're doing something wrong, and you use your influence to have him removed from the city. Although this seems to have been a hypothetical response, if your character has the general attitude, that smacks of abuse of authority to avoid prosecution.

I stand by my view that it's a very mundane evil, but evil nonetheless. Philanthropy doesn't excuse it, especially when that philanthropy isn't entirely altruistic, but just another tool for control (You mention that between your reputation for charity, and the charmed food, people reveal lots of details they might not otherwise).

That said, sounds like your Paladin's player is meta-gaming, and being a bit of an ass by trying to go over your head to solve an issue he has in-game. I'd try to talk to him about it.

Now, I'm going to stop posting now. Not because I feel the discussion is over. I'll read any replies. Possibly even reply via PM.

But this debate is hitting a little to close to home, for me. And I don't think I can maintain a neutral attitude, and might get a little too forceful. Ethical debates can get sticky, and I don't want to get riled up and say something offensive.

And finally, hat's off to creating an amazing character. The concept is incredible, and as others have said, it's totally worth using as inspiration for other games. I imagine this campaign has been really fun for most of your group.

I pretty much am going to side with Tels. A Crane Wing fighter is only "invincible", as you say, if he's stacking AC and focusing his build and equipment on it.

A) That's his focus, he ought to be good at it.

B) Monsters can go "screw this, I'ma go eat the archer".

C) You can abuse combinations of game mechanics to make anything overpowered. Pun-pun, anyone? DM Fiat exists for a reason. You could easily rule "Sorry, the 3'6 inch hobbit who dumped strength cannot deflect a blow from the 18-foot Iron Golem."

And, as I said earlier: Not every type of encounter will be a threat to a given type of party.
-You don't send the non-superstition Barbarians to fight the charm specialist party.
-You don't send mindless undead to guard the Lich's phylactery against a party with a few Medallions of Hide From Undead.
-Etc.

If the party has a uber-defending Crane Wing specialist, switch up tactics. Have the uber-grapple huge-size monster go for the archer or wizard, while the bad guy's spellcaster flies up and starts blasting the Crane Wing sob. He can't "deflect" a spell with no attack roll, can he? And most martial builds have crap Will saves.

I'm sorry, but Crane Wing is only a problem if you're not capable of adapting your tactics.

Is Crane Wing more powerful than Vital Strike? Yes. Are there some issues with it? Yes. Is it guilty of powercreep? Maybe.

But breaking it is not the solution. And I would argue martials could use the legup. Make more feats like it, not less.

If you set the metric for feat balance at Vital Strike, then we need to revert Dodge to it's 3rd edition form: MUST DECLARE DODGE!

Thanks for the information. But I still really need to know if the combat maneuver to break a grapple is a grapple check.

If it is, I can use the human favoured class bonus to ratchet up my CMD on grapples, to make it very hard to break.

Also would like more opinions on the Cestus. I asked about it on the Giant in the Playground forum, and people there agreeded that RAW seems to allow you to make unarmed strikes with it. But I figured it'd be good to get a second opinion on that.

Oof. I hope you guys were running a campaign with the understanding that people could play evil PCs.

Speaking from personal experience, a LOT of people have trouble separating PC motives from character motives.

There was a campaign where I played an Evil Cleric of Asmodeus, but was hiding the fact with a Ring of Mind Shielding. I was explicitly following orders the DM was giving me (PC was under Infernal contract), making my goals line up very closely with the other players. I was just more ruthless than the rest of the party would like and did some palm-greasing behind the scenes. Was actually a lot of fun, and a big change of pace.

Unfortunately, one of the players really didn't like that when she found out OOC. And the following encounter had her PC hit me with "accidental" Holy Smite collateral damage (also hitting a Neutral party member), outing me.

And her PC, who she'd previously established as sweet and innocent (crying when attacked, even), was suddenly out for blood and accusing me of being a traitor. I was basically about to retire the character to avoid further drama, but got killed anyways, so it became a moot point.

/personal rant off

Anyways, long and short of it is: Evil PCs, or even evil actions, can cause some OOC friction. I'd talk to your DM and your Paladin's player. See if you can talk your way through this and make sure it's just conflicting character motives, not RL in-fighting.

Ok, I've thought of a version that's less utter s$#$, but still nerfed from the original.

"Crane Wing:
Once per round, when fighting defensively with at least one hand free, you can make an Acrobatics check to attempt to deflect a melee attack that would otherwise hit you. You receive a bonus on this check equal to your dodge bonus from fighting defensively. If the check exceeds the attack roll, it deals no damage and has no other effect (instead treat it as a miss). If using the total-defense action, treat the Acrobatics check as if the roll resulted in a natural 20. You do not expend an action when using this feat, but you must be aware of the attack and not flat-footed."

With this version:
-It's not an auto-success, providing an opposed roll.
-It has a higher investment cost (needing to max acrobatics).
-It's tied more closely to having good dexterity, which fits with the intended type of character to use it.
-It's less effective against those single big hits from large monsters (that typically have high attack bonuses and good strength modifiers).
-It scales better than a flat +4 AC, remaining more relevant at higher levels.
-It also feels more controllable than "toss a +4 dodge bonus to a random attack and hope it doesn't get wasted on a low attack roll".

So what some people are effectively saying is that the CEO of the company responsible for Pringles should take an alignment hit because their product always draws people in for more.

Pretty sure Pringles aren't spiked with truth serum and nicotine.

Although part of me is afraid of eating pringles now. So, you know, thanks. For that.

Ass.

Ok, is the combat maneuver to break a grapple considered a grapple maneuver itself?

If you are grappled, you can attempt to break the grapple as a standard action by making a combat maneuver check (DC equal to your opponent's CMD; this does not provoke an attack of opportunity) or Escape Artist check (with a DC equal to your opponent's CMD). If you succeed, you break the grapple and can act normally. Alternatively, if you succeed, you can become the grappler, grappling the other creature (meaning that the other creature cannot freely release the grapple without making a combat maneuver check, while you can)...

Since success allows you to become the controlling grappler, I *think* it's a grapple check. But it's type isn't explicitly listed.

Marthkus, that bit you bolded is true, but only so far as it goes. A player might claim to be Chaotic Neutral all he wants, but if he pulls puppy-kicking evil left right and center, the DMs got perfect justification to veto that and tell him he's being evil, and has shifted accordingly.

Anywho, offtopic. Back to the OP: I'd say what you're doing is evil. Not monstrously so, but mundane and methodical. The roofie analogy is a good one.

A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order, but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve.

You're not being chaotic. You're carefully operating well within the law. However, you're trampling on free will and not giving informed consent. So you do not give a rat's ass about other being's dignity or well-being.

This is about the perfect textbook example of an evil character that would cause a Paladin to fall if they smote them for merely for detecting as evil.

You're evil, but in such a mundane and low-level way that killing you for it, or even harming you, would be a greater evil.

If he wants to really be a paladin in this matter, he should be trying to make people aware of what you're doing and/or trying to convince you it's wrong.

A paladin has more options than a binary "Evil Yes/No --> Smite Yes/No".

Ok, I'm making a lockdown build Fighter with the Brawler archetype as a backup PC. Specialty is in grappling. I know it's sub-optimal, but the party's pretty diverse in skillsets, so I can afford to be a specialist limited in scope. And I think it'll be fun.

Anywho, there's a number of abilities/equipment to ratchet up CMB for grapple attempts:
Vambracers of the Brawler (+1 Competence)
Adhesive Armor Enchant (+2 Enhance)
Improved and Greater Grapple (+4 Untyped)
Gauntlets of the Skilled Maneuver (+2 Untyped)
Bred for War (+1 Trait)
Etc.

Question 1: Do these bonuses apply to CMD when the Grapplee attempts to break the grapple?

Question 2: And does the Human Fighter favoured class bonus (+1 to CMD vs two maneuvers of choice) apply to resisting attempts to break a grapple?

Question 3: Escape Artist attempts to escape a grapple? Are they off flat CMD, or Grapple CMD?

I ask because I'm reasonably confident I can get my CMB up on grapples high enough to establish and maintain a hold on most targets, but if those bonuses only apply on the offensive, then many things can simply break it on their turn.

Oh, and off-topic, but relevant to the build:
Does a Cestus or Gauntlet count as an Unarmed Strike? The wording's very confusing on both. I'm wondering if Dragon Style/Jawbreaker etc can be used with either, or if I'll have to fork out for an Amulet of Mighty Fists/Bodywrap to use either.

Copied this over from my post in the Giant in the Playground forum.

Ugh. This is.... just frustrating. It was an amazingly flavourful feat that was the capstone of a rare and generally uncommon fighting style. And they not only killed it, they broke the followup feat without even noticing.

Defensive builds are exceptionally rare in PF, as you're generally better off killing or disabling enemies rather than being harder to attack. It's the same reason in-combat healing is considered sub-optimal unless it's an emergency and needed to prevent a death. Or using a very specialized Oradin-style build.

Things like this just cement the supremacy of Rocket-tag. A high-level caster has spells that are far more disruptive. And offensive builds like uber-chargers are far more capable of wrecking encounters. More defensive playstyles aren't necessarily better, but they certainly shouldn't be actively discouraged. Especially with official errata.

Even if what people are saying is true: That it was nerfed because it was powerful at low levels, and some PFS DMs were complaining...

Then you know what? It's on those DMs for not adapting. Players can break encounter design in a lot of ways. And the type of encounters Crane Wing builds "broke" are the simplest types of encounters in the game: Big Stupid Fighter walks up and makes a single big hit.

If a DM is incapable of designing an encounter that has more tactical depth, the feat chain/style is not the source of the problem. You cannot except to be able throw the same type of encounter at every type of party and build and except to be able to challenge them. One-trick pony DMing shouldn't be something Paizo balances around.

Ugh. Just.... ugh.

The types of characters this feat chain was most powerful on (high AC defensive martials) have already invested much of their WBL and feats on defensive power. They should be fairly hard to hit.

Now, I've had time to calm down a bit and think about it, and I can agree that it was a powerful feat. Perhaps even warranting a nerf due to it's power at lower levels. But this was overkill. It could stand to be brought back up a little. It at least needs to function with Crane Riposte, and ideally not be a trap, like it's current version is.

At this point, I'd be happy with it being reworked to allow you to add the +4 AC after the roll's revealed, and to work with Crane Riposte. So it's no longer an auto-deflect, but you can use it reactively to try and squeeze a little more AC to avoid that blow that's about to hit, as opposed to just tossing out a +4 to AC on a random hit per round.

My DM has a houserule that the Cleric's Deity's Favoured Weapon counts as a secondary holy symbol, so you can use it to Channel Energy or cast spells not requiring a somatic component without needing to drop your weapon (if your offhand is not available because it's being used, for example, to wield a shield).