TiaxTheMighty's page

I haven't read the whole thread, but to my way of thinking there's one big thing that the fighter needs to be "unchained" from that's more important than anything else:

Realism.

"You can't shoot a bow that many times in 6 seconds!"
"You can't jump that far!"
"You can't just cut through a door like it's butter!"
"You can't wrestle something that big!"
"You can't cut something incorporeal without magic!"
"You can't break that world record!"

You can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't... No, you can't. That's why I'm playing a fantasy game starring someone who isn't YOU.

Currently, the name of the game is "if real people can't do it, then fantasy people can't* do it either".

I want my fighter to stop the dragon's bite by grabbing him by the teeth. And then body slam him.

I want my fighter to swing his sword and bat your enervation right back at you.

I want my fighter to get save-or-die effects at the same level your wizard does. Maybe even earlier, since I'm supposed to be good at killing things.

I want my fighter to have things he can do that no magic spell can duplicate.

Unchain the fighter from "realism". Everything else will follow.

** spoiler omitted **

I wanna disagree - especially the part about grabbing the dragon by the teeth and body slamming him. I don't want that level of anime-ish power in my D&D. I wanna disagree... but I can't because you're 100% right. Leave realism for the NPC Warrior class.

So, how many of you have used dirty trick? I was looking into it because of the unarmed fighter archetype. He seems to gain a dirty trick as a bonus when performing other certain maneuvers. My problem is I'm running into creative barriers when it comes to some of the conditions.

Obvious examples
Sand in eyes - Blind
Knee to the junk - Sickened
Entangled = Removing someone's belt, pulling their pants down, or their shirt over their head
Clapping both ears (deafness)
Headbutt to the nose (blind - due to eyes watering)
Wrapping a cloak over someone's face (blind)

Where I'm having trouble is finding something would make somebody shaken.

I normally don't consider myself very creative so help me out here.

Have you used dirty trick before? What are some of the things you've done? If you haven't used it, what are some of the ideas off the top of your head?

Alright I have one. It's been about 10 years and no moment has ever lived up to this one. It's nothing heroic and probably more of a "You had to be there moment" but I will share nonetheless.

We were playing fantasy D&D in the Hero System. It was fantasy like most other campaigns but with a few changes. Namely, in this GM's world elves elves were about 2-4 feet tall. Anyway I made a 3 ft tall elven sorcerer named Tiax The Mighty (Kudos if you know where my inspiration came from)

He always talked in the third person, and thought he could do anything he wanted. He was delusional and believed that he was all powerful and that everything belonged to him. He had a pony named Tiax II. That pony died and the next one he named Tiax 2 the II etc...

He claimed to be all powerful but among the first things he did when a fight broke out was go invisible and and fly to a safe distance. After that he would throw fire etc... but safety first lol.

If he failed at anything, he claimed that if he *really* wanted to, he could deal with it with a snap of his finger but chose not to because "This amuses Tiax". The system didn't have alignments but I'd cement him at a comfortable Chaotic Neutral. His personality was easy for me. What would happen if someone with the mentality of a 3 or 4 year old had insanely powerful magic at his fingertips? He was never disciplined and learned to (almost always) get his way.

Whenever he entered a town, he would telekinetically roll out a red carpet, magically enhance his voice, and bellow "ALLLL HAILLLL TIAX!" He would use TK to make one person bow and others would bow because that's how people work lol. (In This system powers cost endurance which recovered over time. I didn't have to worry about "blowing" my powers for the day) He wasn't "violent" per se but he would use Telekinesis to make people bow to him, charm people, threaten, posture etc... but was mostly harmless unless his life was threatened. Haha I don't know how many times I introduced myself and then the group offhandedly as my escort, bodyguards, or servants. After a while, they quit objecting lol.

Now that there's some context, the actual story.......

Well one day we were traveling to another town (After being exiled from the town we just left). We actually had a map with marks on all of the places we weren't allowed back to lol (mostly because of Tiax's antics).

The group was traveling on horseback and we were pulling our cart full of treasure. I think there was a new party member because a character had recently died. Tiax was educating this person on the party dynamics AKA everyone there were servants of Tiax. This new party member had the ability to detect magic and that was when everyone realized Tiax had cast his own version of Arcane mark on their foreheads (Something I had told the DM about in secret when he first met them haha) His mark? TM :)

One of the players sarcastically asked Tiax if there was anything that *didn't* belong to Tiax. Somebody then noticed that Tiax the Mighty had plastered TM all over the cart. The party member that actually paid for the cart said

"No, I bought this cart and it is the group's cart."
"No, Tiax's cart"
"Group's cart"
"Tiax's cart"
Everyone in Unison: "GROUP'S CART!"
Everyone thought they finally won an argument with Tiax when I passed a note to the GM
Silence...
BOOM!
The cart explodes in fire as Tiax calmly says "No one's cart"

We had to take a break for about 15 minutes because we were laughing too hard.

Story #2

Same character - different reincarnation. I used to like playing Tiax for a new group to evaluate their level of RP and their comfort level in regard to characters with extreme personalities.

I believe Anzyr was actually the GM for this one. It was 3.5 I believe I was a Sorcerer/Incantrix.

We were attempting to infiltrate a party of some sort. One player turned to me and said (out of character) "Oh god... how are you going to have Tiax blend in/not blow our cover?" I said easy. I'm gonna to Rick James this s$%~. lol I still don't know if people just thought I was a bard telling tales of some badass named Tiax (because I referred to myself in the 3rd person) or if they were just picking up what I was puttin down.
Either way it would have worked out but our hot-headed monk got drawn into a fight lol.

Hi everyone.
Meet Johnny Bravo
Ladies man extraordinaire. In all likelihood, also a 7 Charisma.

Meet Hercule

He believes he is the strongest man in the world. He often fails to back this statement up.

We all know people who claim to be smarter, better looking, etc then they really are.

The problem is that not everything in d&d is reduced to a skill roll. Some groups assume certain things can be done by normal people. We will call these DC 10 ability checks and assume that everyone "takes 10". Maybe the door to the inn was built poorly and sticks a little bit. Maybe your Strength 6 wizard has trouble opening the door and is laughed at by any witnesses/potential romantic interests. (Open/Close is your friend). I think any time a character plays a stat below 10, they are going to notice some mundane things in normal life that most people don't have trouble with. Maybe maneuvering through a crowded bar is a DC 10 dexterity check. Nobody really has trouble because nobody needs roll as taking 10 is just what is natural. Not so when someone has, say, an 8 dexterity. Maybe he stumbles and bumps into a drunk and when he tries to make a diplomacy check with his 6 cha, he fails and starts a bar fight.

If you were playing such a character would you really be annoyed at the GM when he incorporated such things?

If you are going to play a character with a low stat, expect the GM to start being strict on what he enforces via ability and skill checks more often. Maybe telling a group of NPCs to "go here and flank here" etc... is no longer something you just "do" but instead a profession soldier check of DC10. Something nobody had a problem with in a normal game where everyone had an int of 10 or higher. In comes a 6 int fighter who wants to give tactics advice to NPCs, the GM calls for a roll, and is told that he is double punishing the 6 int character. Not so.

Power Word Unzip wrote:

Because an optimized monk build using this feat chain is a headache for a GM. I speak from experience here. I have one in my game right now.

I now have to generate encounters with creatures that have insanely high attack bonuses and multiple attacks per round just to challenge the monk in the group, at the expense of everyone else playing who can't--like in last night's session--deflect a 4d8+22 damage bite attack from a Gargantuan creature (and thus the subsequent grab/swallow checks).

I have to routinely break the thematic content of the campaign I am running to incorporate monsters that don't fit in just to give the monk a taste of fear for his life.

That's not fun. That's facerolling. It's playing on Easy mode. When there is no challenge, there is no reason to play.

I disagree vehemently.

I recall there being an old DMing axiom: "Don't punish your players for what their good at." Just because a party has terribly low Touch AC but really high AC, doesn't mean every NPC now has Advanced Firearms. Just cause on character has great Will saves doesn't mean you just throw Reflexes at them. And just because there's a paladin in the party, doesn't mean you stop throwing evil creatures at the party to deny him his bonus to hit.

People build their PCs to be good at something, invalidating it is not the right thing to do. If said monk was so durable, let him be durable. Those few moments he has to sweat will be all the more memorable, when he comes up against a well equipped Archer, or interesting monster. That monk's taken penalties to get there, including sacrificing AB and paid several feats Taxes to qualify.

Plus, all you have to do is ignore him for his choice of feats to become useless, you need not throw monstrosities just to counter a single monk. That's just excessive.

This. SO HARD.

So I understand a lot of people think Total Defense is not a viable option. A lot of people are under the impression that it is "selfish" and useless because they believe the user will just be ignored. If I tell you someone takes a defensive stance, you are really going to tell me your character blows past them to attack someone else? I think a lot of people are going against the spirit of the game when they do things like this. I don't consider myself strict or rigid but sometimes you can't look at things from a mechanics perspective. I've seen DMs that do this as well as players.

Now if you're in an encounter and an enemy is described as going total defense (in whatever way the dm chooses) and you attack him and your attacks get hopelessly deflected... you might hesitate after a round or two of doing this when there are other dangers. However, to automatically assume/know that when the gm describes a character being defensive that he can be ignored is, in my opinion, metagaming.

Thoughts?

I think the major issues with the feat were in regard to gaining access to the feat sans prerequisites ala Master of Many Styles and Unarmed fighter. You could technically get this feat before your enemies possessed iterative attacks. Yes combined with Spring Attack, you can lay a good old fashioned nickel and diming on someone and have a great defense. The problem is you are taking

Dodge
Mobility
Spring Attack
Crane Style
Crane Wing
Loss of Shield bonus
Loss of 1/2 str damage/power attack
Loss of TWF extra attacks
and this is all to negate one attack....

This feat is awesome before level 5 and pretty good after levels 6-8....
*Unless* the enemy took Expertise and Improved Feint. or a myriad of other feats that have a way of getting around this defense. You know what other feat is amazing before level 6? Furious Focus.

It's very disconcerting that an option like this, heavily restricted as it is, was deemed to be too powerful.

No offense to anyone...I mean this in the sincerest way possible...
but if you were having trouble with this feat as a GM it just might be time to hang up your hat. If it's too much of a stretch/pain to use Grappling, invisibility, concealment, darkness, multiple enemies, feinting, Spells with saves, etc(the list is actually fairly extensive)... then I don't think your players will continue to enjoy your combats to begin with. I've seen a lot of people say "Well this is ridiculous that you can deflect a colossal red dragon's tail attack" etc... You know what else is absurd? Being hit by a colossal red dragon's tail attack and not being turned into PASTE and yet that is more believable than an option to avoid said attack with the narrative of dodging the tail rather than necessitating the crane wing user physically deflect the tail. To me that is ludicrous.

A chain of feats with heavy restrictions that can be bypassed by numerous tactical options even below level 5 had no business being nerfed. Yes there are situations where the feat is strong. That's a good thing. That's like saying Favored enemy is too powerful because your GM throws a favored enemy in Every. Single. Fight. It's a GMs job to manipulate the situation their players are in. I think a lot of people who have this problem are GMs who are locked into a module. Of course they are going to have an issue with it! Who wouldn't? They can't adjust accordingly.

tl;dr - The real problem lies with obtaining the feat sans prereqs in games with GMs who are running a module and lack the ability to properly adapt.