Revising Core Feats: Deflect Arrows and Snatch Arrows

[Mok]

I've finally decided to go in and houserule the heck out of Pathfinder to get the game to fit what I want out of it. One thing I'm not satisfied with are a lot of the core feats. So I'm going through to see what can be done to make every feat an exciting and tantalizing choice to made and feel like a real power upgrade for the character. Every time a feat is written down on that character sheet it should feel like the moment when an Immortal in Highlander cuts another Immortal's head off.

First, a look at the feats...

PRD wrote:

Deflect Arrows (Combat)

You can knock arrows and other projectiles off course, preventing them from hitting you.

Prerequisites: Dex 13, Improved Unarmed Strike.

Benefit: You must have at least one hand free (holding nothing) to use this feat. Once per round when you would normally be hit with an attack from a ranged weapon, you may deflect it so that you take no damage from it. You must be aware of the attack and not flat-footed. Attempting to deflect a ranged attack doesn't count as an action. Unusually massive ranged weapons (such as boulders or ballista bolts) and ranged attacks generated by natural attacks or spell effects can't be deflected.

PRD wrote:

Snatch Arrows (Combat)

Instead of knocking an arrow or ranged attack aside, you can catch it in mid-flight.

Prerequisites: Dex 15, Deflect Arrows, Improved Unarmed Strike.

Benefit: When using the Deflect Arrows feat you may choose to catch the weapon instead of just deflecting it. Thrown weapons can immediately be thrown back as an attack against the original attacker (even though it isn't your turn) or kept for later use.

You must have at least one hand free (holding nothing) to use this feat.

The problem with these feats are that they shouldn't be feats. They ought to simply be class features for the Monk, however, someone in 3.0 decided that a Fighter might want to go down this feat chain and have these features. That design choice has resulted in a decade of overlooked feats, save in the most obscure character builds, or a monk player who now and again would take it as a bonus feat, “just in case.”

The Pathfinder versions of these feats are just a copy and paste of the 3.5 feats. In 3.0 there was no Snatch Arrows, and if you had Deflect Arrows you had to DC 20 Reflex save to boot. Yuck!

So how to spruce these two feats up? It's kind of hard because of their weird nature as feats. They are very situational, but also very potent in their situations. The thing is, once a GM knows that a character has these feats and their auto-win ability, they likely toss the player a bone every once in awhile, shooting at the Monk so that the player can feel cool, but otherwise just aim at targets that will allow the enemy's attacks to actually cause some challenge.

One thing that can be done is to reduce the situational nature of the feats is to modify it so that this defense can be useful to the party and not just the player who has the feat. They could be modified so that when ranged attacks pass through a square that the player threatens, then they can use the feat to deflect the attack.

This way, the character can help out fellow party members by giving a 3 x 3 square “wall” against ranged attacks.

The other tweak to help boost the utility would be to allow Deflect Arrows to be used a number of times in a round equal to the character's Wisdom bonus.

In making these changes you'd be able to emulate some of the cooler moments in fantasy film, such as when Subotai leaps in the air to deflect Thulsa Doom's shot against the princess in Conan the Barbarian. Likewise, the number of shots AND the fact that a weapon can be used to deflect those shots, evokes not only lightsaber deflections, but also the moment when Master Li Mu Bai is deflecting away the host of poisoned darts from Jen Yu in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

What y'all think?

[Gorbacz]

Let's be honest for a moment here: these two feats are so full of crap that the only reason they exist in Pathfinder is backwards compatibility. Spending any energy on them is counter-productive, because any feats that depend on somebody else doing something (especially when they depend on the enemy doing something) are bad design.

[DarkMidget]

That's true. In a sense, it causes metagame. Instead of being based on a situation such as cleaving, caused by the player, it's caused by something an NPC does. But since the GM knows what the player has, they may be less inclined to even bother shooting them, even though that's metagaming on the GMs part.

[Mudscale]

I love these feats. I GM and my monk player always utilizes them. The monsters I run have strategies and intellegences and if they have a bow they are going to use it...then when they see the monk deflect an arrow they smarten up and realize that didn't work and attack someone else.

If the GM meta-games they are a bad GM, bypassing a feat just because you know about it is lame and turns tabletop RPGs into simple tabletop minis games.

If I made any changes I would up the Dex and drop the unarmed portion and only make that for snatch arrows, allowing other classes who want to deflect arrows use their shields and weapons to parry them away. I could see casters liking this feat a lot if it were changed into that.

[Mok]

Mudscale wrote:

If I made any changes I would up the Dex and drop the unarmed portion and only make that for snatch arrows, allowing other classes who want to deflect arrows use their shields and weapons to parry them away. I could see casters liking this feat a lot if it were changed into that.

That's an interesting idea. It would make the feat more expansive and useful.

[Madcap Storm King]

@ Mudscale Sorry, but I'm stealing your avatar for a while. Then moving on to the new lizardman one.

I am in the process of designing a class I will be selling that has sets of class abilities like the rogue talents, but with the level format of the fighter. Here's a sneak peak:

Quote:

A martialist with this technique can stop an arrow, then send it elsewhere as a ranged attack. The martialist gains the snatch arrows feat. The martialist may throw the caught missile from the snatch arrows feat at any target within range. In addition, the martialist may automatically stop one additional ranged missile per round for every four levels of martialist. She may still only catch and throw back one missile per round. The martialist must have the deflect arrows feat to select this technique.

The idea behind the class is to solve the monk problem while also allowing for a swashbuckler type to be played with the same class. Would taking this at say 4th level be a good investment, and why or why not?

[Mok]

Madcap Storm King wrote:

@ Mudscale Sorry, but I'm stealing your avatar for a while. Then moving on to the new lizardman one.

I am in the process of designing a class I will be selling that has sets of class abilities like the rogue talents, but with the level format of the fighter. Here's a sneak peak:

Quote:

A martialist with this technique can stop an arrow, then send it elsewhere as a ranged attack. The martialist gains the snatch arrows feat. The martialist may throw the caught missile from the snatch arrows feat at any target within range. In addition, the martialist may automatically stop one additional ranged missile per round for every four levels of martialist. She may still only catch and throw back one missile per round. The martialist must have the deflect arrows feat to select this technique.

The idea behind the class is to solve the monk problem while also allowing for a swashbuckler type to be played with the same class. Would taking this at say 4th level be a good investment, and why or why not?

Technically, a human fighter could use the normal snatch arrow feat at 1st level, so giving this as a class ability at 4th level shouldn't be a problem.

So the main change is that not only thrown weapons, but also arrows can be thrown back at an opponent. I think the only issue that would have to be ironed out is how the arrow is treated. I'd assume it would just be treated as an improvised weapon, which has very specific stats in terms of range increments, cits, etc. The text you wrote says "in range" which for an improvised weapon is 50 feet. It would also be necessary to clarify how much damage the arrow does, I'd probably make it 1d4.

To make the rules a bit more tidy, I'd say something like "You may use the deflect arrow feat an additional number of times per round for every four levels of martialist."