Feat: Stay away! (Pole arms)

[Neithan]

Figuring out how to make reach weapons more fun, I came up with the following feat:

Stay away!
If you wield any pole arm type weapon (with reach or not), you may chose one creature. When this creature moves from a square 10 feet away from you into a square 5 feet away from you, you can make an attack of opportunity, even if the creature made a 5-foot-step (which normaly doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity).

So you can stab at your oponent as a full attack and then make a step backward. He may still try to come after you and attack you with a regular melee attack, but he has to face an attack of opportunity every time. Sounds not too powerful to me and it also works as long as you have space to move, which may get restricted in a dungeon very quickly. And it is a feat you have to spent.
With greatswords and greataxes doing more damage, I don't think it's unbalanced.

You could also add a folow-up feat that enables you to get this benefit against any creatures and not requires you to chose a target to concentrate on.

[Rezdave]

Pole arms really got short-changed in 3.0 and never updated in 3.5.

I'd love to see a Feat Group for them like there is for Mobility, Missile Weapons, Power Attack, Two-Weapon Fighting and so forth.

I'm trying to put something together myself (slowly, for years) and will update here if I get it worked out.

Rez

P.S. If I'm reading this correctly, all you're doing is allowing the pole arm wielder a bonus 5' step as part of his AoO. Note that unless he has Combat Reflexes, then he can still be engaged after taking the first AoO if the attacker is still able to close with him.

[Curious]

Neithan wrote:

Figuring out how to make reach weapons more fun, I came up with the following feat:

Stay away!
If you wield any pole arm type weapon (with reach or not), you may chose one creature. When this creature moves from a square 10 feet away from you into a square 5 feet away from you, you can make an attack of opportunity, even if the creature made a 5-foot-step (which normaly doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity).

With reach weapons I like the stand still feat from the XPH. Relex save or the person cannot close to within 5.