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How are Deadly Stroke and Devastating Blow balanced against each other? Both take standard actions to use, but the requirements of Deadly Stroke make it usable only every two or three rounds and has more prerequesits than Devastating Blow. Devastating Blow has also a much higher damage potential (x5 for a level 20 fighter with a scythe) against the x2 of Deadly Stroke. Even if the Deadly Stroke scores a critical it's not that impressive, the multiplier is only increased by one and the constitution damage is multiplied.
There are several options to fix this. One would be scaling down Devastating Blow like making it a full round action. The other would be raising the constitution damage of Deadly Stroke to a d4 or d6.
There are several things going on here. But the fact that Devastating Blow is much much better than Deadly Stroke is a mere symptom of a number of ailments. As it happens, both of these maneuvers are craptacular. The fact is that spending a standard action to do "kind of a lot of damage" on the third round of combat is a ridiculous insult on the third round of combat when you're an 11th level character.
You're an 11th level character. An 11th level Wizard has a Green Slaad on a chain at this level. An 11th level Rogue is throwing down over twenty dice of damage every round at this point. Enemies don't last until the third round of combat very often. And you're a Fighter, getting more attacks than other people is supposed to be the entire point of your existence at this point, so trading all of them in just to do double normal damage is pathetic. Rogues are doing an extra six dice of damage with every attack.
So yeah, these feats aren't balanced with each other. But they aren't balanced with the rest of the game to a much bigger and more important degree. You're an 11th level character, and getting a single automatic critical just isn't that exciting. Real damage builds are just using Spirited Charge with Lances. And they have been doing this for five levels or more.
The Combat Feats need to be scrapped. We're talking a total reconcept here, because they are way too fiddly and nowhere near good enough. Frankly giving an 11th level Fighter the option to automatically critical every turn as a standard action still isn't that great. 8d4 + 6*Strength + 4*Bonuses sounds bigish, and it kind of is. But it's not world shattering for 11th level. Frankly it's like 70-90 damage, and the Rogue still does more.
-Frank
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There are several things going on here. But the fact that Devastating Blow is much much better than Deadly Stroke is a mere symptom of a number of ailments. As it happens, both of these maneuvers are craptacular. The fact is that spending a standard action to do "kind of a lot of damage" on the third round of combat is a ridiculous insult on the third round of combat when you're an 11th level character.
You're an 11th level character. An 11th level Wizard has a Green Slaad on a chain at this level. An 11th level Rogue is throwing down over twenty dice of damage every round at this point. Enemies don't last until the third round of combat very often. And you're a Fighter, getting more attacks than other people is supposed to be the entire point of your existence at this point, so trading all of them in just to do double normal damage is pathetic. Rogues are doing an extra six dice of damage with every attack.
So yeah, these feats aren't balanced with each other. But they aren't balanced with the rest of the game to a much bigger and more important degree. You're an 11th level character, and getting a single automatic critical just isn't that exciting. Real damage builds are just using Spirited Charge with Lances. And they have been doing this for five levels or more.
The Combat Feats need to be scrapped. We're talking a total reconcept here, because they are way too fiddly and nowhere near good enough. Frankly giving an 11th level Fighter the option to automatically critical every turn as a standard action still isn't that great. 8d4 + 6*Strength + 4*Bonuses sounds bigish, and it kind of is. But it's not world shattering for 11th level. Frankly it's like 70-90 damage, and the Rogue still does more.
-Frank
The question wether fighters are weak or not or if combat feats are a bad thing is of no concern for this thread. There are a lot of threads about that already, but this thread isn't one of them.
I thought we were discussing what was wrong with those feats?
And I was pointing out that if you just made Devastating Blow into "You may make an attack as a standard action, if this attack hits is automatically a critical hit." that would be a balanced and interesting effect for 11th level. It would encourage a character to use it with Scythes or Lucern Hammers. And that would be fine.
And if Devastating Strike was just "If you strike with an attack as part of a full attack you inflict 1 point of Constitution Damage, and if you score a critical hit while doing this your target is stunned for one round." That would be fine too. It would encourage characters to fight with two weapons or scimitars, or play as dark elves. Whatever.
I encourage feats to direct characters into different and mutually exclusive directions. But if the directions don't lead to things that are "good" they just end up encouraging players to go into different directions like "playing a Wizard instead."
-Frank
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And I was pointing out that if you just made Devastating Blow into "You may make an attack as a standard action, if this attack hits is automatically a critical hit." that would be a balanced and interesting effect for 11th level. It would encourage a character to use it with Scythes or Lucern Hammers. And that would be fine.
Other than not triggering special abilities based on crits - and yes, I think that not having the option to hit someone and trigger a vorpal blade is a good thing - this is what it says. I'm curious as to what the problem is?
Other than not triggering special abilities based on crits - and yes, I think that not having the option to hit someone and trigger a vorpal blade is a good thing - this is what it says. I'm curious as to what the problem is?And I was pointing out that if you just made Devastating Blow into "You may make an attack as a standard action, if this attack hits is automatically a critical hit." that would be a balanced and interesting effect for 11th level. It would encourage a character to use it with Scythes or Lucern Hammers. And that would be fine.
The 3.5 Vorpal blade doesn't trigger on a critical hit, it triggers on a Natural 20. And I really don't see what the big deal would be with getting Flaming Burst weapons, it's not that exciting.
-Frank
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Um... Frank...
There is no chaining anymore. Devastating Blow does just what you said it should do. They took out chaining in 1.1. Look in the dev-notes.
Anyways... There is a imbalance between the two feats. Its not huge, but its noticeable. Against weapons with a 2x crit multiplier, Deadly Stroke has a small advantage against Devastating Blow. However, as the crit multiplier goes up, the advantage gos to Devastating Blow, with certain builds such as the level 20 fighter with a scythe.
My best guess would be to make the con bleed a 2 instead of a 1. That way the target will always will lose HP=HD per hit, -1 to fort saves, and can lead to a kill via con drain(knock it down to a 0).
Even with a weapon with a x2 multiplier, devestating blow has the advantage of being usable anytime with any weapon whereas deadly stroke is only usable against flatfooted or stunned foes while wielding a weapon focused weapon.
@Frank:
Sorry, it seems I had misunderstood your post.
Somehow I must have read this as constitution damage. What exactly *is* constitution bleed? I have found nothing on it (except deadly stroke) in the SRD or the alpha.
Does anyone know if bleed effects stack?
There is an effect called that in the DMG. But Jason said that Constitution Bleed was an effect from the Critical Hit Deck that he was going to put into Pathfinder. It's a point of Constitution Damage every turn until you get healed. So it's target's Level/2 damage per turn.
It's therefore about the same size as Bleeding Sneak Attack (which is your Level/2 in damage per turn).
-Frank
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Somehow I must have read this as constitution damage. What exactly *is* constitution bleed? I have found nothing on it (except deadly stroke) in the SRD or the alpha.
Does anyone know if bleed effects stack?There is an effect called that in the DMG. But Jason said that Constitution Bleed was an effect from the Critical Hit Deck that he was going to put into Pathfinder. It's a point of Constitution Damage every turn until you get healed. So it's target's Level/2 damage per turn.
It's therefore about the same size as Bleeding Sneak Attack (which is your Level/2 in damage per turn).
-Frank
That's an extremely interesting comparison, and suddenly I'm thinking that we could take it a little further. Is this feat basically a means to give other characters sneak attacks? It suits the targeting restriction, and the double damage can be compared somewhat reasonably to the sneak attack damage itself. The high prereqs could then be justified under a niche protection argument... but we're still left with the action it takes. Maybe if it triggered whenever the targeting restriction were met, rather than requiring a standard action on its own...?
Edit: But we really can't judge the value of the feat (or bleeding sneak attacks, for that matter) without knowing if they stack.
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Somehow I must have read this as constitution damage. What exactly *is* constitution bleed? I have found nothing on it (except deadly stroke) in the SRD or the alpha.
Does anyone know if bleed effects stack?There is an effect called that in the DMG. But Jason said that Constitution Bleed was an effect from the Critical Hit Deck that he was going to put into Pathfinder. It's a point of Constitution Damage every turn until you get healed. So it's target's Level/2 damage per turn.
It's therefore about the same size as Bleeding Sneak Attack (which is your Level/2 in damage per turn).
-Frank
Thanks. In this case it may not be so useless after all, especially if you can land a hit on the enemy in the first round while he is flatfooted.
Deadly Stroke vs Devastating Blow
*giggles uncontrollably*
I had this same argument with my girlfriend once.
hur, hur, hur.