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I have a PC who wants to play a polearm ranger. Being the old softie I am, I came up with this progression of feats, mechanically balanced against the damage output for a 2WF Ranger. Seems to me I heard about Grip Up (or something) somewhere else. As far as I know the others are my creations.
What do people think?
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Available at 2nd - Polearm Mastery, Polearm Slam, Combat Reflexes, Grip Up
Available at 6th - Improved Polearm Mastery*, Polearm Defence*
Available at 10th - Greater Polearm Mastery*, Polearm Rend*
Polearm Mastery (Combat)
Many Polearms are equipped with multiple attack modes (back spikes, hammers, hooks, pikes etc., staff heads for bludgeoning), you are fully trained in these attack modes.
Prerequisites: Str: 13, Dex: 13
Benefit: When making a full-attack action with a Glaive, Guisarme, Halberd, Ranseur, Spear, Shortspear, Trident or Longspear, you can make a secondary Bludgeoning attack for 1d6 (x2) damage with no strength modifier** to damage rolls. All of your attack rolls take a -2 penalty when using polearm mastery.
Polearm Slam (Combat)
Your secondary polearm attack strikes with greater power
Prerequisites: Str: 13, Dex: 13, Polearm Mastery
Benefit: Add half of your Strength bonus to damage rolls made with your secondary attack.***
Normal: You normally don’t add your Strength modifier to secondary polearm attacks
Grip Up (Combat)
You can change your grip on plearms with reach to threaten an adjacent foe
Prerequisites: BAB +1
Benefit: At the beginning of your turn, you can change your polearm grip to threaten adjacent squares instead of those at reach. This is awkward so you take a -2 to attacks until the beginning of your next turn.****
Normal: You normally can’t threaten adjacent foes with a reach polearm.
* Improved and Greater Mastery are as Improved Two Weapon Fighting (2WF) and Greater 2WF respectively; Polearm Defence is as Two Weapon Defence; Polearm Rend is as Two Weapon Rend
** This is meant to be balanced with the 2WF feats. Normal 2WF strength bonuses are full bonus for the Primary attack and half for Off-Hand. If this secondary attack had a strength modifier (even ½), you would be getting 2x your strength modifier, an advantage over the 2WF damage potential. The reason that the critical threat is x2 and not x3 or 19-20x2 is because the primary weapon for the big polearms average +0.5 or +1 damage (2d4 or 1d10) when compared to a normal martial weapon (1d8). I am balancing that extra damage against the critical damage potential.
*** Two Weapon Slam increases the off-hand damage from ½ to full strength bonus, an increase of ½, so does this feat.
**** I’m waffling on this one. I balanced it against the Lunge feat, which is kinda the same thing in reverse that incurs a -2 AC penalty rather than an attack penalty. It makes sense as written but I’m not sure it’s a good feat.
I let anyone with Two-Weapon Fighting who'd proficient with polearms to perform your "Polearm Mastery" and "Polearm Slam" feats. Certainly that's not something I'd be willing to spend 2 feats on, even if they were bonus feats.
I also seem to recall there's already a "Shorten Grip" feat somewhere (3.5e?) which does the same thing as your "Grip Up."
Greetings, fellow travellers.
The same idea is stuck in my head for quite some time now. I won't get the nice combat style you developed, Master Bowness, and it's true, that a straight fighter progression is more powerful, Lazar, but with the character in my mind, it's a complete flavor-driven decision (poor boy is the son of a druid, while travelling, gets injured and is picked up and nursed back to health by an elderly travelling mage who takes him to a city, where he joins the watch).
Maybe, I can convince the GM of the campaign to have a look into the polearm feats *crosses finger*
Ruyan.
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Why isn't this person playing a fighter?
The answer is he wanted to play a ranger and early on was given a boar-spear, which he thought was cool, and then found a ranseur and thought it was cool too and decided to try to make an archytipical lone spearman beast-hunter type of ranger.
But, one could invert your question and ask why anyone would play an archer-ranger when an archer-fighter is so much better in combat (weapon specialization + weapon training = better to hit and more to damage than the archer in the vast majority of situations). For that matter, I bet I could build a more damaging dual-wielding fighter than the best dual-wielding ranger out there by focusing on a single double weapon (which I hate) or even using twin short swords/twin axes.
The ranger's favoured enemy bonus taps out at a possible +10/+2/+2/+2/+2 but it's all the +0's when the fighter is +6 to hit/+8 to damage against everything plus the crushing damage potential in penetrating strike that really does the ranger in. I would argue that the fighter is offensively better off right away for either build, and defensively he can wear decent armour. The fact that the Ranger doesn't need to have the dex to meet the prerequisites of his feats is a false bonus because a low-dex ranger is in trouble as an archer and against type at least as a dual-weilding swordsman.
I recently rebuilt Shalelu Andesona from RotR as a stealthy fighter to prove this point. By spending surplus feats on a skill buffer, she ended up being +1 to hit, +2 to damage (except against one favoured enemy), +3 AC in exchange for minimal reductions in her skills and reflex saves. Sure she won't be able to keep up in the long run skill-wise but she'd be much more effective in a normal campaign where the enemy type changes all the time and it's impossible to guess at 5th level what is going to be faced at 15th.
Why does it have to be a forest area the ranger is from. I could see a desert ranger or artic ranger using reach weapons. I am building a duel talented ranger that is going to use the double spear. It will be an artic campaign so I don't want her to get to close to the 500 lb polar bear or any thing else we may come across.
Grip Up is terrible. It actually manages to be even worse than the atrocious 3E feat Short Haft. Just make a feat to threaten natural reach with reach weapons. It won't break anything. Or at the very least, make a feat to counter Step Up, which currently just screws over a reach weapon user, hard core.
I also don't think it'd be overpowered to give the polearm mastery half str to damage on the off-hand part. TWF is a weak fighting style, having something that's slightly better than it isn't a bad thing. TWF is feat-heavy enough, adding a polearm slam feat to get the str bonus to damage is just crazy.
Also, have you looked at the Dragoon Fighter, specifically the Spinning Lance ability? The archetype is focused first on mounted combat and 2nd on spear use, so it doesn't come until level 7. But it works sort of like what you're going for.