I am not so sure that you can two-hand while using Crane Wing. You have to have one hand free, and while RAW would agree you can let go one hand at the end of your attack, I am not so sure RAI will agree with this under every DM.
I've actually never seen a GM who won't let you do one shifted hand on and one shift off per round (for instance, that same GM would also disallow a cleric of Urgathoa or Gorum to ever cast spells while wielding her deity's favored weapon). I think the issue is if someone tries to keep moving hands on and off the weapon many many times in a round for some reason, as with double gunslinger reloading hijinks.
Either way, you are giving up the shield and losing out on AC. Also recall that you are either dipping levels of monk (lower BAB) or else having to take some feats you have few uses for.
The general idea is a two level dip in monk. You do lose out on 1 BAB (and if you're a fighter you are occasionally behind on Weapon Training compared to a pure Fighter), but that's a difference of 1 or 2.
Having played some higher-level games, this is not an issue. Attack bonuses of CR equivelant foes grow faster than your AC can. You will get hit, and that's when lower hit points start to hurt.
Indeed, the big solo enemies will hit you consistently--the math is completely in agreement, and I agreed with you. But your hit points are going to be about 4 less than a straight Fighter, from the two monk levels which are also not your favored class.
A monk pulling this stunt is unlikely to hit much with his 3/4 BAB. Your Aldori swordmaster will probably do more damage, but loses out in the AC stakes and so gets hit more often.
In 20 point buy, the Aldori Swordlord is probably going to have noticably higher AC than the monk, actually. You get more AC from fighting defensively and then free additional AC for full attacking, plus you wear armor. This will beat a Mage Armored monk unless the monk has exceptional Wisdom.
Looking at your ghoul example, I think you underestimate the tank by a long way. At 4th level (you don't mention level you are setting this at, BTW) a fighter could be using a Power Attack and Great Cleave with a greatsword to deliver 2d6+14 damage per hit (18 str, +6 PA, +2 Weapon Specialisation). I make it 2.7 hits per round, so I'd give the ghouls three rounds, tops.
It was level 2, not level 4, which changes things quite a bit. I was being nice to the Fighter and not breaking out the math, but if you'd like, here goes. Notwithstanding that Cleave as a feat is not too useful most of the time, let's say the Fighter took Weapon Focus, Power Attack, and Cleave, plus something with his human bonus feat to help his AC (we'll get to why in a second), maybe Dodge. I'm going to assume 18 Strength and a Greatsword. If you use Cleave, you can't forget that it provides a -2 to AC. This means that the Fighter is going to need to produce a 27 base AC to be able to force the ghouls to hit him on a 20 (since that goes down to 25 after using Cleave). Let's say the Fighter can afford +1 Fullplate and a MW Greatsword. That gives him 21 AC with 12 Dex, 22 AC with Dodge. Let's even say the Fighter has a friendly Cleric cast Prot Evil on him at all times for a +2 deflection bonus. That'll make it so the ghouls need to roll a 17 on the dice to hit him. The Fighter is dead just from that. As to dropping two per round--the Fighter is hitting for 2d6+9, which is over 90% likely to do 13 damage so we'll assume that it always drops the ghoul to be nice to the fighter. Honestly if the Crane Style guy uses a Morningstar or something, he even has a 25% chance to take a ghoul in one blow (rolling a 7 or an 8 on the d8) which I forgot to account last time and ups his speed considerably. Anyway, you only get the second attack with Cleave if you hit the first time around. That means the Fighter has a 18.75% chance to hit once and a 56.25% chance to hit twice. The remaining 25% chance is 0 hits. This means you can drop 1.3 ghouls per round, but due to the AC penalty from Cleave, you get hit 4x as often as before and die on round 2 (in fact you're better off not declaring Cleave in this case, even if you have it).
The Crane Styler will avoid a lot of damage, I agree, but will take a lot longer to down the ghouls. Plus, the ghouls are likely to gang up on him! If they can't hit him, they will grapple - and they will likely use flanking and Aid Another to boost their chances. Once he's pinned, the Crane Styler is dead meat. They could try this on the tank, but I suspect by the time they realise it's the best tactic half of them are dead.
The grapple is much more likely to hit the tank than the Crane Styler. The tank I described above will have a CMD 20 with Prot Evil up, where a Crane Styler is likely to have CMD 24 with Prot Evil up (because fighting defensively applies to CMD). The ghouls are pretty lousy grapplers. Every attempted grapple provokes an AoO, meaning that either character has a high chance to kill the grappling ghoul before the pin is established. If the ghouls all grapple individually, they are toast against the Crane Styler (it's even worse than just attacking due to 1/3 as many attacks), but you're right that a total pack aid to one ghoul has a better chance--it's about 50/50 to establish grapple assuming they use it before too many ghouls go down, but then the response is to kill the grappler before a pin can be established, which is pretty likely for the Crane Styler (the two-hander is a bit screwed due to needing to use spiked gauntlets or something due to grapple). This also assumes that nobody brought Grease or anything else to prevent Grapple, which my guy usually does. With Grease, even if all the ghouls randomly started the fight knowing about Crane Style and used Aid Another on one big grapple, on average rolls for the aid, they'd need about a nat 20 to grapple (either a nat 18 or a nat 20 based on whether 5 or 6 ghouls aided, but closer to 5, so closer to needing a nat 20 on average).
I've actually never seen a GM who won't let you do one shifted hand on and one shift off per round (for instance, that same GM would also disallow a cleric of Urgathoa or Gorum to ever cast spells while wielding her deity's favored weapon). I think the issue is if someone tries to keep moving hands on and off the weapon many many times in a round for some reason, as with double gunslinger reloading hijinks.
I am not so sure that you can two-hand while using Crane Wing. You have to have one hand free, and while RAW would agree you can let go one hand at the end of your attack, I am not so sure RAI will agree with this under every DM.
That's fair comment. However see below for other reasons you cannot two-hand the sword.
Either way, you are giving up the shield and losing out on AC. Also recall that you are either dipping levels of monk (lower BAB) or else having to take some feats you have few uses for.The general idea is a two level dip in monk. You do lose out on 1 BAB (and if you're a fighter you are occasionally behind on Weapon Training compared to a pure Fighter), but that's a difference of 1 or 2.
Interesting, but ultimately your still dropping accuracy for defence. Even given your combination working, though, it looks like you've had to really engineer for cheese (if you will forgive the term) to make this work.
Having played some higher-level games, this is not an issue. Attack bonuses of CR equivelant foes grow faster than your AC can. You will get hit, and that's when lower hit points start to hurt.Indeed, the big solo enemies will hit you consistently--the math is completely in agreement, and I agreed with you. But your hit points are going to be about 4 less than a straight Fighter, from the two monk levels which are also not your favored class.
For your build, yes.
A monk pulling this stunt is unlikely to hit much with his 3/4 BAB. Your Aldori swordmaster will probably do more damage, but loses out in the AC stakes and so gets hit more often.In 20 point buy, the Aldori Swordlord is probably going to have noticably higher AC than the monk, actually. You get more AC from fighting defensively and then free additional AC for full attacking, plus you wear armor. This will beat a Mage Armored monk...
Actually looking at the Aldori Dueling Mastery feat, yes you do get more AC but you can't wield your weapon two-handed as you state above.
Your defensive parry is as good as the monk's defence bonus, true, but the monk is getting his wisdom bonus to AC while you have armour. However steel net reduces your chances to hit by more, not less, than Crane Wing does:
At 7th level, an Aldori swordlord can throw up a blazing wall of steel to defend himself. When fighting defensively as a full-round action with an Aldori dueling sword, the swordlord’s penalties on all attacks in a round are reduced by 2, and the dodge bonus to AC is increased by 2 for the same round.
So great AC, but poorer chances to hit (with Crane Wing, -3 to hit on all attacks, plus you lost one for the monk dip compared to a full BAB class).
Really, I'm still not sure if you could beat a monk of the same level in AC if they burn ki on it. AC is one of the few things that monks are really good for.
Regarding the ghouls, as near as I can figure it at 2nd level:
- The master of many styles monk can just manage an AC of 21 vs those ghouls at 2nd level (18 dex, 16 wis, +3 fighting defensively, +1 bracers of defence and that leaves him no points from a 20 point buy for strength or con). Attack-wise even with Weapon Finesse he's only hitting them at +4 for 1d6, only +3 with flurry of blows means an average on one hit per round, so 3-4 rounds to kill one ghoul. So he's going to take 8 x 3 x 25% = 6 hits per turn, less one from Crane Wing, for at least three rounds, and he's still dead with only 2d8 hit dice.
- The fighter will fare just as bad, but has more hit points and will kill more ghouls. (18 Strength, 14 dex, 14 con, full plate & masterwork greatsword for AC 20) With Cleave he'll hit at least once per round, and that's pretty much one kill.
So basically both of them die, but the fighter kills a ghoul first.
A much better comparison would be a fighter and a monk vs just two ghouls, a much more likely scenario. The monk would take 1.5 hits per turn, which cuts down to one hit per two turns from Crane Wing. However, he's not going to take down any ghouls fast, he's hitting once a turn for only 1d6, so on average four hits to take down one ghoul. So he gets hit twice by the time the first ghoul goes down. The second ghoul is then only hitting him 45% per round, but because of Cane Wing it has to hit him twice in a round, which is only going to happen 5% of the time. So after eight rounds the monk has been hit 2.2 times and killed two ghouls.
The fighter has finished both ghouls by the end of round three. In round one the ghouls hit him 2.4 times, but with cleave he's hit and killed at least one. In round two the remaining ghouls will get a hit only 60% of the time, because it no longer has flanking. As he can't use cleave any more the fighter may take two turns to finish the remaining ghoul, so he will accumulate 3.6 hits in total.
OK, good responses. I want to preface by mentioning that these point by point posts sometimes seem like refutations or arguments to me, but I feel like here we're having a conversation, and you're making strong points.
Actually looking at the Aldori Dueling Mastery feat, yes you do get more AC but you can't wield your weapon two-handed as you state above.
Ah, yes. The Aldori Dueling Mastery feat is pretty terrible. You don't need it to be an Aldori Swordlord and you shouldn't take it except for the +2 initiative if you desperately want more initiative.
Your defensive parry is as good as the monk's defence bonus, true, but the monk is getting his wisdom bonus to AC while you have armour. However steel net reduces your chances to hit by more, not less, than Crane Wing does:
It's worded weirdly, but it reduces the penalty by 2, not increases.
Regarding the ghouls, as near as I can figure it at 2nd level:
I was willing to give both of them a Protection from Evil for another +2 to both the Fighter and the Monk (it might not be Prot Evil, but you can usually get something from the party to raise your AC). Bracers of Armor +1 are an item that I've never seen purchased--give the Monk a Wand of Mage Armor instead for cheaper and better AC. My guy in particular is also Dangerously Curious and can use it himself (he actually has Shield and Grease and not Mage Armor because he wears armor), but generally there's at least someone who can wand you even if you don't. That puts the Fighter up to 22 and the Crane Styler up to 25 AC with only 16 Dex and 14 Wis (remember Crane feats require Dodge, which is another +1 AC). Because such a build would require a lot of dump stats to have good Strength and I wasn't interested in that, my actual character just wears armor and doesn't have a Wisdom bonus, so he had 23 AC at level 2 when fighting defensively before buffs, even though he only had 14 Dex.
A much better comparison would be a fighter and a monk vs just two ghouls, a much more likely scenario.
So, remember I'm having this guy "play up" in PFS, so right out the bat he's playing adventures written for level 4-5 (or sometimes 3-4) characters alongside 4-5 (or 3-4) characters. I have seen an encounter with 8+ ghouls, and I've been hit by an encounter with 5 ghouls that paralyzed the level 4 to 5 characters and I literally did have to solo at level 2, just like in the example (except I didn't have Crane Riposte yet since I was playing concept before optimization and I envisioned him in armor and with a sword, so I took Fighter at 2nd before finishing the style). I've never actually seen just two ghouls as the whole encounter though. One time there was two ghouls and a ghast I think.
The fighter has finished both ghouls by the end of round three. In round one the ghouls hit him 2.4 times, but with cleave he's hit and killed at least one. In round two the remaining ghouls will get a hit only 60% of the time, because it no longer has flanking. As he can't use cleave any more the fighter may take two turns to finish the remaining ghoul, so he will accumulate 3.6 hits in total.
OK, I see why you gave the Fighter Cleave. You're playing Cleave the way I played it at first until someone showed me the bolded part below, which is totally reasonable--I played for over a year this way:
Benefit: As a standard action, you can make a single attack at your full base attack bonus against a foe within reach. If you hit, you deal damage normally and can make an additional attack (using your full base attack bonus) against a foe that is adjacent to the first and also within reach. You can only make one additional attack per round with this feat. When you use this feat, you take a –2 penalty to your Armor Class until your next turn.
So yeah, I wish it didn't say that, but it turns out you cannot Cleave two dudes flanking you. It does still work fine against the 8 guys though, and the Fighter can totally still cream two ghouls without it, at least as long as he makes his saves against paralysis.
| 3 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
This is an example of a respectful debate, I agree.
You got me on cleave, but regarding Steel Net:
At 7th level, an Aldori swordlord can throw up a blazing wall of steel to defend himself. When fighting defensively as a full-round action with an Aldori dueling sword, the swordlord’s penalties on all attacks in a round are reduced by 2, and the dodge bonus to AC is increased by 2 for the same round.
Yes, I can see what you mean, when you 'reduce' a penalty does it get larger or smaller? Now let's look at possible interpretations:
1) You change your base loss/gain for fighting defensively from -4/+2 to -2/+4. That's a better penalty/bonus ratio than you get out of Combat Expertise, which seems a bit odd.
2) It could mean that you go from -4/+2 to -6/+4 which actually makes a lot more sense to me.
However, I'd FAQ this, because it's a pretty important distinction, especially combined with Crane Style.
Regarding the ghoul case:
I said two each because if a party gets attacked by 8 ghouls, two apiece is pulling your weight. Also it allows you to ignore terrain to a greater extent. I know if I had a 2nd level anything attacked by ghouls I'd vanish off to a position where they could only come at me one or two at a time.
I generally don't account for buffs in comparisons because they are undependable; you may not have them up at the time, or the party spellcaster may have better things to do. The wand trick is one a monk can pull, but in all honesty it's one Dispel away from leaving you nerfed if you over-use it.
I can see that you are going for one seriously tricked out build with your monk/swordlord - I'm not surprised it looks broken, do that much tricking out and anything looks broken.
You got me on cleave, but regarding Steel Net:
At 7th level, an Aldori swordlord can throw up a blazing wall of steel to defend himself. When fighting defensively as a full-round action with an Aldori dueling sword, the swordlord’s penalties on all attacks in a round are reduced by 2, and the dodge bonus to AC is increased by 2 for the same round.Yes, I can see what you mean, when you 'reduce' a penalty does it get larger or smaller? Now let's look at possible interpretations:
1) You change your base loss/gain for fighting defensively from -4/+2 to -2/+4. That's a better penalty/bonus ratio than you get out of Combat Expertise, which seems a bit odd.
Reducing penalties always means that the penalty gets smaller. There are other abilities that reduce penalties as well, like the Two Weapon Fighting feat, and the TWF feat doesn't make you worse at hitting than not taking the feat. No reason to FAQ.
Benefit: Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6.
Regarding the ghoul case:
I said two each because if a party gets attacked by 8 ghouls, two apiece is pulling your weight. Also it allows you to ignore terrain to a greater extent. I know if I had a 2nd level anything attacked by ghouls I'd vanish off to a position where they could only come at me one or two at a time.
I'm not talking about pulling an average weight, though, but rather about soloing the entire encounter. It's a very real possibility that you might have to given bad saves against paralysis (it actually happened to me, for instance). You're absolutely right about positioning--I usually make good use of positioning too, to keep the bad guys away from my friends and to limit how many enemies can attack me when they have a better attack bonus and can hit without needing a 20, otherwise I would have been in trouble a few times. In the particular case, though, retreating wasn't an option, as I had to keep the five ghouls away from the two unconscious PCs while the impotent-against-ghouls hidden-from-undead character got them to safety.
I generally don't account for buffs in comparisons because they are undependable; you may not have them up at the time, or the party spellcaster may have better things to do. The wand trick is one a monk can pull, but in all honesty it's one Dispel away from leaving you nerfed if you over-use it.
I'm certainly willing to be vulnerable to a targeted dispel whenever the scenario calls for that. So far in PFS, that has never happened. If I get more data, I'll certainly report any instances of targeted dispel causing suckage. I do expect it to be a problem eventually, but PFS enemies don't tend to carry too many Dispels that I've seen so far (though I hear at least one scenario has a bad guy with a Wand of Dispel).
I can see that you are going for one seriously tricked out build with your monk/swordlord - I'm not surprised it looks broken, do that much tricking out and anything looks broken.
I didn't make a Swordlord, actually. A Swordlord is very tricked out indeed for Crane Style. I used the Lore Warden archetype instead, which fit my character concept better but is not great for the build (though Lore Warden does at least give some good CMD increases, just not enough to make up for losing Steel Net, which also raises CMD), and I made a lot of other flavor choices too. In my previous posts, I listed the Swordlord as an example for one of the actual optimal builds with Crane, not my playtest character, though it most likely became blurred with all the discussion.
Whether the character is a tricked out Swordlord or just my guy, the Crane Style feats are the lynchpin. Everything in the whole build falls apart without them. I've shown in my first math analysis that even if you make a character who is even more optimized than the Crane Styler and has arbitrarily high AC, arbitrarily high to-hit and a single attack that auto-drops 1 ghoul per round, the Crane Style character will still outlast. Even the no-buffs, no no-frills Crane Styler with a +1 Heavy Shield (other hand empty), a Breastplate, 10 Wis, and 14 Dex will have the requisite 25 AC, and that's hardly super-optimized as far as I can tell, is it?
Compared to the straight Fighter, with Swordlord or Lore Warden or just plain Fighter, you give up 2 or 3 to hit (you give up 2 to hit 2 levels out of every 5 and 1 to hit on other levels, since you lose 1 BAB and sometimes lose 1 Weapon Training, and then you fight defensively for -1 to hit unless you are a Swordlord) in exchange for +3 to all saves, Evasion, +4 to AC from fighting defensively (or +6 if you are a Swordlord), and the auto-deflection (you probably also got the inability to be surprised and +1 initiative by going Sohei too, but maybe not if you prefer Stunning Fist). You're also down 2 feats from the normal Fighter (the style takes 3, but you also get 2 of them for free, and two more Fighter levels would have only given 1 bonus feat, so that nets you 1 back). Your damage is slightly less than the two-hander Fighter, psrticularly at levels where the two-hander Fighter just got an iterative, but you can mitigate the penalty at all other levels by using a falcata if you so choose (since falcata is one-handed but does more damage than all other weapons, even two-handed weapons, before long). Other than archers, which are their own whole bag of discussions, this is simultaneously the best defense and nearly the best offense for a melee Fighter (though your AoOs do less damage than a non Crane Styler, but then you get the Crane Riposte too, so that probably balances).
You can also go Master of Many Styles/Sacred Mountain Monk for two levels with the above suggestion. You lose out on evasion, but gain toughness, which can offset the HD loss, and +1 to Natural AC which syngerizes well with the AC build of the Swordlord.
You can also go Master of Many Styles/Sacred Mountain Monk for two levels with the above suggestion. You lose out on evasion, but gain toughness, which can offset the HD loss, and +1 to Natural AC which syngerizes well with the AC build of the Swordlord.
For sure you can. I personally prefer Sohei so you don't get surprised. You have to take a turn before you can fight defensively.
The Aldori Swordlord ability to take defensive fighting to -2/+4 is indeed as written. Yes, it's stronger then Expertise...class abilities are usually twice as strong as feats, so that should come as no suprise (it's really a +2 Dodge bonus in disguise on top of a 'free' -2/+2 Expertise bonus.).
The benefit of Crane Style isn't the AC. The AC bonus is basically trying to make up for no shield in the off hand.
The benefit of Crane Style is damage mitigation, i.e. eliminating one attack that hits per round. Tactically, if you can limit a foe to one attack per round, you are effectively invulnerable, so it caters to a spring attack build.
When the attack you deflect generates an attack of your own, you have now just turned defense into offensive power, and Crane Style is mature...less damage, and more attacks.
The only thing you truly have to worry about is getting the defensive fighting penalty as small as possible so it doesn't hurt your offense. With traits and classes, that's actually not that hard to do.
Crane Style works perfectly well against multiple attackers and multiple attacks. You aren't invulnerable...but the +30 attack that crashes into the tank you can swat aside, and the +25 one that might hit either of you has a better chance to miss...so you take less damage. You also get one more attack then the tank does, so you have constantly generated offense as long as something attacks you first.
==Aelryinth
Only if the monsters are mindless. You can't change what enemies the group faces to metagame against the Crane Style user (which, as a few posters pointed out earlier, is unfortunately the best way around Crane Style), but you are well within your rights to change up the tactics. These were clever GMs who tried a variety of different things, and they didn't feel a need to stick to the tactics mindlessly as canon. The reason PFS is a good playtest is because it gives a good cross-section of what sorts of things you might fight if the GM isn't specifically choosing...My only issue here is that it was PFS, which removes a GM's brain to a certain extent. If the text says to do _____, then you have to do _____ even if a better strategy is available. If I can find a cranewing based build on the boards I will have to run it through a few battles as if it had party members to see if it is an issue at 7, and to see how long it stays an issue.Well, my playtest indicates that it at least continues to cause lots of degeneracy up to level 7 adventures at least (by degeneracy I mean that my underleveled PC was trivializing encounters), and that's not because it failed to do so at higher level adventures yet--I simply haven't gotten a chance to play him in such adventures yet.
Your other thread is meant to assess the monk, yes? I only wish to assess the Crane feats and not get that analysis conflated with an assessment of the monk. For that reason, the no-multiclassing rule seems frivolous in this case. My playtest character is a Monk/Fighter(Lore Warden), which I know is less optimized for Crane Style than other Fighter archetypes, but I chose it for flavor at the time I made the character.That works for me, but if an ability is only useful at low levels I would not call it OP, but I would admit that it can be better than I thought it was, if used with a better build.
I am pretty fair. In the monk thread, I rolled the dice for the encounters. Myself and others even picked various creatures, so as to avoid any perception of cherry picking. Now my build might suck so before I even run the challenge I will have you or someone else look it over to make sure it is presentable.
edit:It was explained to me that a PFS GM can't change the tactics. I am not in PFS, but I remember seeing a PFS GM complain, and I said, just do X instead of Y, and that is when I was informed that altering the encounter tactically was not allowed. I guess everyone is supposed to have the exact same experience if possible.
PS2: I guess it does not matter though since our thought experiment won't be restricting me to such tactics. :)
Before I try to write this build up, if I can't find one, what are the must-have feats? That might help the editing process once I get done.
I am pretty fair
I don't doubt it. But none of us can be unbiased in coming up with the encounters because we already know the premise is Crane Style. It could yield a result biased in either direction, really, since you will probably know when you design the encounter whether the Crane Style character can trivialize it or not, so it just comes down to what percentage of encounters like that you choose to include. Published adventures are the only way to get an unbiased test sample because they didn't publish them with a preconceived notion of whether Crane Style would work.
Let me put it another way--it's very hard to say whether an ability will cause disruptions in a particular home game. Clustered Shots, for instance, is a feat that draws flak as being very powerful for archers, but if the GM constantly uses humanoids with class levels and no monsters with weird DR, it's barely useful. Similarly, Crane Style isn't helpful at all if you always play against enemies who spam Will saves. You and I could sit and discuss what ratio of what types of encounters we want to include, but then when we do that we are preselecting our result, for whichever direction we choose. If we preselect for mostly encounters that Crane Style will trivialize, Crane Style will look better. If we preselect for all the encounters to be against Seugathi, Crane Style won't help (though Monk levels still give an edge vis-a-vis the Fighter I guess). And no matter what we pick, in the end our analysis isn't telling us a truth about the way the game is played anywhere in the world except for in our laboratory settings that we chose for the analysis.
By choosing PFS (or any other set of published adventures), we can make a bigger claim. We still can't reach out and tell GMs that something is overpowered in their home games because every game is different, but we can at least say, with real-world data, that the thing is overpowered in PFS. And what I'm saying is that Crane Style is, so far. My sample size will eventually increase, but I'm not running any of these as solo playtests, so it takes time--each one is with a GM and a set of other players. The 10 I have so far still do have some samples of getting beat up (that rockfall 2nd level spell that does 2d6 in an area with no save did a number on me!), but far more where Crane Style stuff was just a hard counter.
edit:It was explained to me that a PFS GM can't change the tactics. I am not in PFS, but I remember seeing a PFS GM complain, and I said, just do X instead of Y, and that is when I was informed that altering the encounter tactically was not allowed. I guess everyone is supposed to have the exact same experience if possible.
What they meant is that you can't change the tactics in absence of information. You're always allowed to change the tactics in the face of new evidence. Frex, if tactics say the BBEG uses fire spells above all else, you can feel free to switch to something else after finding out the party has Communal Resist Energy Fire up, but you can't be like "Evocation sucks, I'm just going to never have her use fire spells at all."
PS2: I guess it does not matter though since our thought experiment won't be restricting me to such tactics. :)
I've read your thought experiments before and they are interesting--I agree with your posts in most threads when I see them. I hope you don't take what I said above as dismissive towards your posts and contributions. It's just, as a scientist myself, I want my own experiment to be one that has predictive and analytic power beyond the scope of just my experiment.
Before I try to write this build up, if I can't find one, what are the must-have feats? That might help the editing process once I get done.
Despite my caveats above, I'll help you out--
You have to get Crane Style, obviously. Go human and start with Sohei of Many Styles (take both archetypes, they stack) and your feats can be Dodge, Crane Style, and Crane Wing at 1st level. At 2nd level you get Riposte. After that, choose your Fighter type. Aldori Swordlords have the better AC (but for heaven's sake, don't finesse or use Aldori Dueling Mastery feat if you take the archetype, just two-hand it) but the damage is higher if you just take a falcata. At that point, just mostly pretend you're a two-hander but concentrate your money on getting an AC that is hard to hit for CR-appropriate enemies to maximize the power of Crane Wing. Using this chart, try to keep your AC when fighting defensively at least 20 higher than the column "High Attack" for a CR equal to your level. You should be able to keep it even higher than that without issue, and if the enemy's to-hit is too high, you can also choose to switch out your weapon for a spiked shield and two-hand that. If you don't go a Fighter archetype, you can take heavier armor if you like, though it screws up Evasion. Both Lore Warden and Aldori Swordlord help your CMD dramatically, so if you avoid an archetype, find something else to boost it. Putting your insight to AC ioun stone in a wayfinder for the resonance is not a bad start, but you'll want to carry around anti-grapple stuff until you can afford Ring of Freedom of Movement.
You'll probably also want Snake Style as your second style, since you can have two of them anyway, so why not. You're not going to use your immediate action on anything else, so you'll mainly use it to block ranged touch attacks (that's what I do) since your regular AC will be so high that you probably can't beat it with a Sense Motive roll. If you can't think of anything else, you could even eat the useless middle feat to get Snake Fang, which gives you an punch AoO every time they miss, which will be a lot of times, but your punches won't be great. If you really want Snake Fang, the best way to do it is to actually take Fighter at 2nd level and your 2nd Monk level at 3rd, taking Snake Style as your 3rd level feat and Snake Fang as the bonus feat, avoiding the useless Snake Sidewind. This does, however, delay Crane Riposte to 9th level, so consider it carefully.
Oh, I'd also recommend Deflect Arrows in case of archers or just dudes who see you Craning and take out a backup ranged weapon.
But again, base it around a two-handed damage build and make sure to buy your AC up as money-efficiently as you can.
I am pretty fairI don't doubt it. But none of us can be unbiased in coming up with the encounters because we already know the premise is Crane Style.
This is the thing, we weren't testing Crane Style. We had three builds, two monks and a barbarian, to try and decide which would be the preferred 'fifth member' for a party. Barbarian was defensively built, with very good all round saves. There was a dwarf monk build optimised for dishing out damage, and a human monk that was optimised for defence and skills - this one had Crane Style.
What we found was that the defensive optimised monk was very good at avoiding damage, but appalling at dishing it out. Of the various challenges we faced them against, we varied from CR-4 to CR+4 and included as wide a variety as we could.
The Crane Style monk could survive many of the encounters, far better than the other characters could. However, he also had the least hit points, and couldn't dish out damage well. The vast majority of the foes we tested of CR up to CR+4 had no problem hitting the monks, and most had enough attacks that Crane Wing was advantageous but not a game-breaker. Far more relevant was Crane Riposte, because it gave the monk an extra attack per round.
There was only one target that the monk could solo by using Spring Attack and Crane Wing, and it had the ability to end the encounter by escaping. Against the lower CR foes Crane Wing made a difference by removing one hit per round when that was about all that the attackers could manage. However, the low damage output meant that the monk actually took far longer to fell his enemies. The barbarian took proportionally less damage just charging in and splattering the foes in a few brief and bloody rounds.
Looking at your build design, Crane Style does not look overpowered, the Master of Many Styles ability to overlook level restrictions on Style feats does.
This is the thing, we weren't testing Crane Style.
I realized I wasn't explaining it as well as I should be. The main point is that laboratory conditions can only prove their point for the selected conditions.
Looking at your build design, Crane Style does not look overpowered, the Master of Many Styles ability to overlook level restrictions on Style feats does.
Crane Wing is perfectly effective at level 6 as well. Now, the MoMS lets you get an overpowered ability earlier, true. And as long as Crane Style is around, that will make the dip in MoMS pretty darn powerful too. But if you got rid of the Crane feats, it's really not so strong an ability. You can get cool stuff from the early-access feats, but nothing other than Crane Style causes quite the potential issues that Crane Style does.
Although it's only a laboratory example so it has a restricted predictive significance, I decided to revisit our earlier discussion about higher levels and check out some of the monsters. You were saying that a solo dragon would probably hit the Crane guy about 50% of the time. At the time I thought that was reasonable, but in the interest of testing out the theory that only the MoMS is making it strong, let's say we have a 10th level Aldori Swordlord who straight-out bought the feats, getting Wing at level 5 and Riposte at level 8. This Swordlord is going to have an AC of 41 when fighting defensively (purchasing a +4 Armor, RoP +2, AoNA +2, and insight ioun stone), and in a pinch if she takes Combat Expertise she can raise it to 44 in exchange for a heavy accuracy hit. She's level 10. To use a dragon example like you suggested, a CR 13 blue dragon has a 3% chance per round to hit her using melee attacks if she uses Combat Expertise. Without Crane Style, a Fighter with the same AC will be hit an expected 10x as often. Even without Combat Expertise, the dragon will hit on only about 1 in 20 rounds for the Crane Styler with expected 7/20 hits per round for a Fighter with the same AC.
Now, as I said before when we discussed the dragon, the dragon's going to win anyway with breath attacks from range or just flying away. But Crane Style well and truly does trivialize melee combat even up to higher levels, and I realize I didn't give it enough credit in that regard before.
The only problem I see is not with the feat, but with the approaches people use to get the feat. Taking dips of monk or unarmed fighter just for this feat line means it is worth too much for its level, and MoMS and Unarmed fighter should have the free style feats pushed slightly higher into the build so that dips become multiclassing and all the powergamers stop abusing it.
Monks that use this feat line, carry on. You already have enough problems without people trying to steal your only good points.
As an addendum for Wraithstrike--I recently heard of the Archon Diversion feat from the Archon style line of feats. That may be worth replacing Snake (you can take -1 to AC in order to give all adjacent allies +2 AC and once per round you redirect an attack targeted at an adjacent ally and they get an AoO on the attacker--since it says you can defend yourself normally against the redirected attack, it could be pretty powerful with another melee friend, though it does mean you and that friend can't be flanking).
Quick note your looking at the wrong kind of dragons, as a level 10 PC in PFS playing in a 10-11 subtier you will fight creatures like the spoilered one remember though if you play up you could be as low as level 7 when you fight this.
That's going to vivisect the fighter without crane style, but with Combat Expertise, the Crane Styler is able to hold off for quite a while against the full attack, particularly since the dragon is going to probably start with Power Attack to get the massive damage increase (nearly a +2/3 increase per hit) until it misses with everything on round 1. Not forever, granted. But you're looking at less than an 18% chance to land a hit each round against the Crane Styler, and the dragon has to not use Power Attack. Averaging the damage between the attacks we get around 20 damage per hit. So probably 6 hits to take out a level 10 Fighter with 14 Con (but maybe 5). The dragon takes around 33 rounds to kill the Crane Styler, even if it doesn't ever try to use Power Attack.
For the Fighter without Crane Style but the same AC, things are a lot less rosy. The dragon expects about 16/20 of a hit per round, so the Fighter is gone in 7 rounds.
Now, all that said, I bet the dragon could beat both of them with breath attacks and kiting alone. As for Crush? Not going to help unless your guy is size Small (you have to be three or more categories smaller to be crushed and the dragon given is Huge).
1-5 scenarios dont count as appart from the boss (who is leveled up for the t4-5) the 1-2 and 4-5 encounters use exactly the same monsters the higher levels just fight more of them
Depends on the scenario really. In many of the 4-5 playtest scenarios that I wound up playing, this was not the case. I think in Mists of Mwangi, for instance, literally nothing was just increased numbers except for one encounter, and in that encounter doubling the number of enemies truly did make it way scarier (since they all lead with a save or disable, so you could potentially lose the whole team, and we actually did lose everyone to that except my guy). There were also a good number of 6-7s.
Addendum: I think you may be confused by earlier where I'm talking about playing up all the time. At low levels, a Crane Styler can play up and solo many many encounters despite playing up. At high levels, I already mentioned that I think the variety of special attacks will be a dealbreaker for my playtest character. But in any case, I would expect to have to play closer to subtier at higher levels. So far that hasn't been necessary, but we shall see when I get there. The point isn't that the Crane Styler can beat everything in PFS alone, just a disturbingly high number of encounters.
Here is what I have. I don't have the Aldori archeype on my herolab so I will have to convert that manually to get the final results.
Male Human Fighter 5 Monk (Master of Many Styles, Sohei) 2
NN Medium Humanoid (Human)
Init +3; Senses Perception +12
--------------------
DEFENSE
--------------------
AC 23, touch 14, flat-footed 20. . (+8 armor, +2 Dex, +1 natural, +1 deflection, +1 dodge)
hp 62 (5d10+2d8+14)
Fort +10, Ref +7, Will +9
Defensive Abilities Bravery +1
--------------------
OFFENSE
--------------------
Spd 30 ft.
Melee +2 Sword, Aldori Dueling +12/+7 (1d8+7/19-20/x2) and
. . Unarmed Strike +9/+4 (1d6+3/20/x2)
Special Attacks Weapon Training: Blades, Heavy
--------------------
STATISTICS
--------------------
Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 12/14, Cha 10
Base Atk +6; CMB +9; CMD 23
Feats Combat Expertise +/-2, Combat Reflexes (3 AoO/round), Crane Style, Crane Wing, Dodge, Furious Focus, Improved Unarmed Strike, Iron Will, Monk Weapon Proficiencies, Power Attack -2/+4, Snake Fang, Snake Style
Skills Acrobatics +4, Climb +5, Escape Artist +0, Fly +0, Handle Animal +4, Intimidate +9, Perception +12, Ride +0, Sense Motive +14, Stealth +10, Survival +6, Swim +5
Languages Auran, Common
SQ Armor Training 1 (Ex), Devoted Guardian +1 (Ex), Fuse Style (2 styles) (Ex), Unarmed Strike (1d6)
Combat Gear +2 Breastplate, +2 Sword, Aldori Dueling; Other Gear Amulet of Natural Armor +1, Cloak of Resistance, +1, Headband of Inspired Wisdom, +2, Ring of Protection, +1
--------------------
SPECIAL ABILITIES
--------------------
Armor Training 1 (Ex) Worn armor -1 check penalty, +1 max DEX.
Bravery +1 (Ex) +1 Will save vs. Fear
Combat Expertise +/-2 Bonus to AC in exchange for an equal penalty to attack.
Combat Reflexes (3 AoO/round) You may make up to 3 attacks of opportunity per round, and may make them while flat-footed.
Crane Style Take -2 penalty when fighting defensively
Crane Wing May deflect one attack per round while fighting defensively or using total defense
Devoted Guardian +1 (Ex) At 1st level, a sohei can always act in a surprise round even if he does not notice his enemies, though he remains flat-footed until he acts. In addition, a sohei gains a bonus on initiative rolls equal to 1/2 his monk level. At 20th level, a sohei's
Furious Focus If you are wielding a weapon in two hands, ignore the penalty for your first attack of each turn.
Fuse Style (2 styles) (Ex) At 1st level, a master of many styles can fuse two of the styles he knows into a more perfect style. The master of many styles can have two style feat stances active at once. Starting a stance provided by a style feat is still a swift action, but whe
Improved Unarmed Strike Unarmed strikes don't cause attacks of opportunity, and can be lethal.
Power Attack -2/+4 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Snake Fang If opponent misses you, make an attack of opportunity as an immediate action
Snake Style Gain +2 on Sense Motive checks, and deal piercing damage with unarmed attacks
Unarmed Strike (1d6) The Monk does lethal damage with his unarmed strikes.
Weapon Training: Blades, Heavy +1 (Ex) +1 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Heavy Blades
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edit 1: I will post the build after I have changed out what needs to be changed out.
Right now AC is 25, and 26 after a full round attack. I have yet to add in combat expertise or fighting defensively yet.
That should be in "edit 2"
edit 2: Combat expertise pushes the AC to 28, but the attack bonus is pushed back to 10/5
Most CR 7 monsters have a 13 to hit so the class is doing well defensively.
Their AC is around a 20 so the class still has a decent chance to hit them.
If the class chooses to fight defensively the AC goes up to 30, and the attack modifier goes down to +7/+2.
At that point the Fighter/monk still seems to have the advantage.
Feel free to correct any errors.
UNNAMED HERO CR 6
Male Human Fighter 5 Monk (Master of Many Styles, Sohei) 2
NN Medium Humanoid (Human)
Init +3; Senses Perception +12
--------------------
DEFENSE
--------------------
AC 25, touch 16, flat-footed 22. . (+8 armor, +2 Dex, +1 natural, +1 deflection, +3 dodge,)
hp 62 (5d10+2d8+14)
Fort +10, Ref +7, Will +9
Defensive Abilities Bravery +1
--------------------
OFFENSE
--------------------
Spd 30 ft.
Melee +2 Sword, Aldori Dueling +11/+6 (1d8+6/19-20/x2) and
. . Unarmed Strike +9/+4 (1d6+3/20/x2)
Special Attacks Weapon Training: Blades, Heavy
--------------------
STATISTICS
--------------------
Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 12/14, Cha 10
Base Atk +6; CMB +9; CMD 23
Feats Combat Expertise +/-2, Combat Reflexes (3 AoO/round), Crane Style, Crane Wing, Dodge, Furious Focus, Improved Unarmed Strike, Iron Will, Monk Weapon Proficiencies, Power Attack -2/+4, Snake Fang, Snake Style
Skills Acrobatics +3, Climb +4, Escape Artist +0, Fly +0, Handle Animal +4, Intimidate +9, Perception +12, Ride -1, Sense Motive +14, Stealth +9, Survival +6, Swim +4
Languages Auran, Common
SQ Armor Training 1 (Ex), Devoted Guardian +1 (Ex), Fuse Style (2 styles) (Ex), Unarmed Strike (1d6)
Combat Gear +2 Breastplate, +2 Sword, Aldori Dueling; Other Gear Amulet of Natural Armor +1, Cloak of Resistance, +1, Headband of Inspired Wisdom, +2, Ring of Protection, +1
--------------------
SPECIAL ABILITIES
--------------------
Bravery +1 (Ex) +1 Will save vs. Fear
Combat Expertise +/-2 Bonus to AC in exchange for an equal penalty to attack.
Combat Reflexes (3 AoO/round) You may make up to 3 attacks of opportunity per round, and may make them while flat-footed.
Crane Style Take -2 penalty when fighting defensively
Crane Wing May deflect one attack per round while fighting defensively or using total defense
Devoted Guardian +1 (Ex) At 1st level, a sohei can always act in a surprise round even if he does not notice his enemies, though he remains flat-footed until he acts. In addition, a sohei gains a bonus on initiative rolls equal to 1/2 his monk level. At 20th level, a sohei's
Disarming Strike (Ex) At 5th level, when an Aldori swordlord successfully disarms an opponent using an Aldori dueling sword, the swordlord also deals normal damage to the target, but without the normal Strength bonus to damage
Defensive Parry (Ex) +1 to AC when using a full round attack
Furious Focus If you are wielding a weapon in two hands, ignore the penalty for your first attack of each turn.
Fuse Style (2 styles) (Ex) At 1st level, a master of many styles can fuse two of the styles he knows into a more perfect style. The master of many styles can have two style feat stances active at once. Starting a stance provided by a style feat is still a swift action, but whe
Improved Unarmed Strike Unarmed strikes don't cause attacks of opportunity, and can be lethal.
Power Attack -2/+4 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Snake Fang If opponent misses you, make an attack of opportunity as an immediate action
Snake Style Gain +2 on Sense Motive checks, and deal piercing damage with unarmed attacks
Unarmed Strike (1d6) The Monk does lethal damage with his unarmed strikes.
Hero Lab® and the Hero Lab logo are Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at http://www.wolflair.com
Pathfinder® and associated marks and logos are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC®, and are used under license.
Here is what I have. I don't have the Aldori archeype on my herolab so I will have to convert that manually to get the final results.
** spoiler omitted **...
I'm not sure why you put so much effort into Wisdom, but I'm guessing it's mainly for Will saves. Honestly if you want to tank, you're going to want to drop the Wisdom band and maybe lower the sword by 1 and garner an additional +2 AC. I'd also either invest in UMD via Dangerously Curious or else dump Charisma and take 11 Wisdom for a +2 to either Strength or Dex (I personally went 18 Strength (+2 damage over 16 Strength is just too shiny) and kept the 10 Charisma but had 10 Wis and 10 Int because I went Lore Warden, which gets Combat Expertise a a bonus feat, but I paid for that by being unable to take maneuvers later, despite getting CMB bonuses from the archetype). If you do that, you should be looking at around 30 AC while fighting defensively with the ability to raise it to around 32 with Combat Expertise if necessary, all without using UMD for any kind of buffs. In gameplay that I have seen, people don't begrudge the tank buffs, and something long lasting like a Barkskin can stay up for much of a scenario and goes a long way (2 extra AC from a friendly caster of level 6+).
Keep in mind that the Aldori blend build truly comes into its own at level 9 when you pick up Steel Net and increase the initial AC bonus by 1 as well (I actually recommended Aldori to you because you had been talking about level 13 before), since that gives you 3 more AC before you even start buying new items (if you were like "hey, that AC listed for the level 10 is way higher than the level 7" that and gear upgrades are the answers). It's probably worse than just picking straight Fighter and using a falcata up to that level. Now, you also took Snake Fang instead of Crane Riposte. That's going to pay off big time in the long term and probably provides more offense on a typical round of being attacked several times, but it does lead to accuracy issues until you pick up either Steel Net or Crane Riposte. If accuracy or damage is an issue, you could also grab Weapon Focus or Spec or something instead of Iron Will (and rely on the base Will save boost from Monk to still be around where the Fighter is who took Iron Will).
I realized I wasn't explaining it as well as I should be. The main point is that laboratory conditions can only prove their point for the selected conditions.
This is the thing, we weren't testing Crane Style.
That's just the thing, we weren't looking at lab conditions but at what each class could contribute in a party dynamic.
Looking at your build design, Crane Style does not look overpowered, the Master of Many Styles ability to overlook level restrictions on Style feats does.Crane Wing is perfectly effective at level 6 as well.
Yes, but at level 6 CR-equivelant foes are hitting more than once a round, so it is no longer total immunity.
Now, the MoMS lets you get an overpowered ability earlier, true.
You have yet to demonstrate that it's the ability that's overpowered, rather than the fact you can get it at a much earlier point.
Vital Strike is not overpowered at level 6, but at level 1 it is. If a class gave you the ability to take Vital Strike at first level, it's not Vital Strike that's broken, it's the class ability.
And as long as Crane Style is around, that will make the dip in MoMS pretty darn powerful too.
And this is the feat chain, not the archetype because? We have demonstrated that the feat chain is NOT over powered at higher levels.
But if you got rid of the Crane feats, it's really not so strong an ability. You can get cool stuff from the early-access feats, but nothing other than Crane Style causes quite the potential issues that Crane Style does.
Actually I would disagree with this. Snake Style is also very powerful taken early, in fact in your 'attacked by eight ghouls' example Snake Style is incredibly powerful if you also have Combat Reflexes. Instead of two attacks a round, you could get in seven at second level against the ghouls.
Although it's only a laboratory example so it has a restricted predictive significance, I decided to revisit our earlier discussion about higher levels and check out some of the monsters. You were saying that a solo dragon would probably hit the Crane guy about 50% of the time. At the time I thought that was reasonable, but in the interest of testing out the theory that only the MoMS is making it strong, let's say we have a 10th level Aldori Swordlord who straight-out bought the feats, getting Wing at level 5 and Riposte at level 8. This Swordlord is going to have an AC of 41 when fighting defensively (purchasing a +4 Armor, RoP +2, AoNA +2, and insight ioun stone), and in a pinch if she takes Combat Expertise she can raise it to 44 in exchange for a heavy accuracy hit. She's level 10. To use a dragon example like you suggested, a CR 13 blue dragon has a 3% chance per round to hit her using melee attacks if she uses Combat Expertise. Without Crane Style, a Fighter with the same AC will be hit an expected 10x as often. Even without Combat Expertise, the dragon will hit on only about 1 in 20 rounds for the Crane Styler with expected 7/20 hits per round for a...
OK, and what is your swordlord attacking with and how often is he hitting? In fact you aren't showing all your working of how you get AC41, but I'll trust you. You are not giving details of ability scores or other equipment, but at level 10 hitting the dragon's AC of 36 (he has mage armour and shield remember) isn't going to be easy, especially as the dragon is probably not daft enough to keep flailing futilely at the swordlord. I would guess that an attack bonus of +18 is the ball-park figure for the swordlord's attacks (+5 stat, +3 weapon, +2 Greater Weapon Focus, +2 Weapon Training). He's not going to hit much, if at all - especially if he uses Combat Expertise.
So the dragon treats him as he treats the monk...as a nuisance to be dealt with later. Unlike the monk, the pure swordlord doesn't have evasion, so the dragon's breath weapon will kill him if it's claws and teeth do not.
The dragon can de-buff the swordlord with Dazzling Display, making him even less likely to hit, and really messing with his AC if the dragon does manage to connect. He can use Dazzling Display to shake you up (+20 intimidate skill makes it almost automatic), after which you are only hitting the dragon on a 20, then he breaths, causing you to be flat-footed (he can't miss with breath), then he attacks with claws and teeth while you are flat-footed (I'm guessing some AC comes from dexterity).
The dragon can also wipe out the Crane Style with True Strike, although he doesn't have infinite uses of it and is more likely to save his spells for self-buffs.
All this assumes the dragon doesn't have any equipment, like an amulet of natural armour...
In short, your swordlord is not invulnerable, he's just difficult to kill, and he's not that able to dish out hits and damage.
I only used level 7 because your build was said to be at level 7. I do believe that at level 13 you could get an AC between 37 and 41, but if you go for more defense as suggested by your last post the bad guys won't be worried about the you, just like they were not worried about the monk. I do agree I could have went for a higher AC, but the fighter is already at about 50% to hit for his first attack.
I would guess that an attack bonus of +18 is the ball-park figure for the swordlord's attacks (+5 stat, +3 weapon, +2 Greater Weapon Focus, +2 Weapon Training). He's not going to hit much, if at all - especially if he uses Combat Expertise.
Dabbler the Aldori archetype gives up weapon training so he will be missing more often. I don't see much difference between the Aldori build and the monk build we had in the other thread. He can block one attack, but both builds basically, just take a long time to kill without being a threat.
I think it is more useful if the AC is dropped in exhange for more offense. Blocking the first attack is a good way to reduce the opponent's DPR, and if you can bring enough offense to be a threat that is make the build more useful, even if the AC is lower.
edit:The swordlord only loses weapon training 1.
Actually I would disagree with this. Snake Style is also very powerful taken early, in fact in your 'attacked by eight ghouls' example Snake Style is incredibly powerful if you also have Combat Reflexes. Instead of two attacks a round, you could get in seven at second level against the ghouls....
7? Only if you have what, 20 Dexterity? But Snake Style won't help at all against Natural 20s, so you still get hit as often as the 25+ AC Fighter.
He's not going to hit much, if at all - especially if he uses Combat Expertise.
So let's say he avoids Expertise because 5% chance to be hit per round rather than 3% is not really too bad a deal for the +2 to hit. Then we're looking at probably around +21 to hit (an optimized for attack bonus fighter is going to have 1 more to-hit than that no matter what, possibly more if they dumped AC gear in favor of more to-hit gear). You do keep mentioning a party situation with ignoring the Crane Styler being an option and not a solo fight, which would likely yield a greater to-hit under most circumstances and also possibly more attack (from things like Haste, Good Hope, or a Bard). Each hit probably does a little under 20 damage, and so you're looking at 9/20 of a hit per round solo. This means it takes 21 rounds to solo the dragon if you're completely alone (the dragon would need over 100 rounds of melee to return the favor). The optimized for attack bonus two-handed Fighter can do it a little bit faster, but not much without sacrificing AC for attack bonus by choosing different gear than I did. If the Greatsword Fighter decides to go minimalist on AC and spend 49,000 of his 66,000 on attack, we're looking at +10 to hit base, +2 from training, +5 from 20 Strength without buying a Strength belt (which I include later), +2 from Greater Focus and Focus, +2 from Gloves of Dueling, +3 from a +3 sword, +2 to hit from getting a +4 Str belt (upgrading any of these further goes over the 'more than half of your money on one item' rule). This gives you +26 to hit unbuffed, and I'm not really seeing how to go higher off-hand. This Fighter also does a good amount more damage too (24 per hit). This gives the two-hander the ability to solo the dragon in 10 rounds instead of 21. That's more than twice as fast, which is good. Problem is, with only 17k to spend on defense, I'm not seeing this guy with more than like AC 28 (+3 fullplate, +1 Amulet and +1 Ring, +3 from Dex, and +1 Dodge), which the dragon hits easily enough to nearly kill the poor Fighter in one round. The AC 28 Fighter is gone after the second round nearly for sure. Even if the AC 28 Fighter has a wand of Shield and spams it or something, AC 32 is still going to die pretty fast.
So I'll take 100 rounds of survivability and a 21 round kill time over 2 rounds of survivability and a 10 round kill time. Yes this is less of a contribution to the party in a non-solo situation, but 1/2 the contribution isn't "nothing", and the buffs are going to make the ratio of effectiveness go way better in the defensive guy's favor.
Now, as I keep granting, the dragon truly kills both of these guys due to kiting.
I only used level 7 because your build was said to be at level 7. I do believe that at level 13 you could get an AC between 37 and 41, but if you go for more defense as suggested by your last post the bad guys won't be worried about the you, just like they were not worried about the monk. I do agree I could have went for a higher AC, but the fighter is already at about 50% to hit for his first attack.
Sorry. Actually my guy is level 5, playing in level 7 adventures. For what it's worth he is a Lore Warden and not Aldori.
I would guess that an attack bonus of +18 is the ball-park figure for the swordlord's attacks (+5 stat, +3 weapon, +2 Greater Weapon Focus, +2 Weapon Training)
These numbers add up to +22, actually (as you have 12 there, +10 BAB). If you subtract 1 for not having Weapon Training 1, you get +21, and I figured probably around +21 to hit. I actually considered a +6 stat and +2 weapon for mine, but either way is exactly the same (the weapon gives better DR penetration though).
I think it is more useful if the AC is dropped in exhange for more offense. Blocking the first attack is a good way to reduce the opponent's DPR, and if you can bring enough offense to be a threat that is make the build more useful, even if the AC is lower.
Offense and defense is an interesting trade-off. As it turns out, the last few points of AC can often give you the greatest effect. Bbut in any case, the +2 Wisdom item should probably be swapped out, as it adds to neither offense nor AC.
Take a look at the Dabbler and me melee fight against the blue dragon. Even in the extreme situation with the 36 AC dragon (12 above the average AC of a CR 13 monster!) the Aldori10 is doing about half the damage of the Greatsword Fighter10. Against AC 28 instead (the average for CR 13, or a boss monster), the Aldori can get much much much closer (30 for the Aldori, 45.4 for the Aldori on a round of riposting, and 49.5 for the Greatsword guy).
That's just the thing, we weren't looking at lab conditions but at what each class could contribute in a party dynamic.
By lab conditions, I mean that everything was created by intelligent design to do the test. Labs can have crash tests in them and experiments. PFS scenarios, on the other hand, are being "out in the field", so to speak. We can generalize from tests in PFS scenarios to say something about what we would expect in other PFS scenarios across the globe. We can't really generalize anything from the math or tests on this thread other than to future experiments by me, you, and wraithstrike.
Offense and defense is an interesting trade-off. As it turns out, the last few points of AC can often give you the greatest effect. Bbut in any case, the +2 Wisdom item should probably be swapped out, as it adds to neither offense nor AC.
Take a look at the Dabbler and me melee fight against the blue dragon. Even in the extreme situation with the 36 AC dragon (12 above the average AC of a CR 13 monster!) the Aldori10 is doing about half the damage of the Greatsword Fighter10. Against AC 28 instead (the average for CR 13, or a boss monster), the Aldori can get much much much closer (30 for the Aldori, 45.4 for the Aldori on a round of riposting, and 49.5 for the...
If you have an AC of 100, but a will save of +2 then it will come into play. I am not saying getting rid of the headband will drop wisdom to +2, but having a high AC alone does not matter all that much.
I doubt the Aldori is competing with the greatsword fighter while having a really high AC also.
I would have to see both builds posted to believe that.
If you have an AC of 100, but a will save of +2 then it will come into play. I am not saying getting rid of the headband will drop wisdom to +2, but having a high AC alone does not matter all that much.
True, but you can't really get your Will saves to impregnable levels no matter how you try, whereas you can do it with AC if you get it high enough
I doubt the Aldori is competing with the greatsword fighter while having a really high AC also.
Hmm?
You're paying 8k for a +2 sword and 4k for a Str belt and that's it for money on offense to get a +21 with the straight-out Swordlord (which I chose because Dabbler asked to remove the Master of Many Styles from the equation). That leaves you over 50k for defense, and you're going to have a natural +8 AC for Fighting Defensively and Defensive Parry that the other Fighter's Armor Training only makes up by 2 or 3. So basically the free AC for no cash money cost makes it very hard for the two-hander to compete on AC, even if the Aldori spends more money on offense than just the 12k. I'm not seeing how the Greatsworder can get more than about +26 to hit (and then only by sacrificing defense to the point where the dragon shreds through the Fighter in a couple of rounds) without like pointbuying an 18 before racial mods or something that extreme. +24 is more likely for the Greatsworder, I'd wager (1 more from training and then 2 more from gloves of dueling). The Aldori could also have +23 with Gloves of Dueling, but that's 15k less money for AC stuff, which will lead to commensurately worse AC. Still may be worth it against high AC enemies like the dragon, I suppose. I'd have to do the math.
The Crane Aldori, even without a monk dip, can afford to buy the whole style and still have feats for Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Focus, Weapon Spec, Power Attack, and Furious Focus with two to spare for Combat Expertise and Combat Reflexes and the like. This yields the +21 to hit stated above.
Obviously the pure Greatsword Fighter will have even more leftover feats to get a few useful tricks, but there's not much more you can take at that point for pure damage, unless I'm missing something from the newer books that is--let me know if so!
If you need to see the builds, here's some basic builds. Clearly there are changes that we could make to them, but in almost all cases we could make those changes to both of them, so they should mainly cancel out. The problem is, though, that theorycrafting these builds is not going to help much compared to playtesting in neutral prewritten scenarios. As a good example, you might question how many times these guys can even use their wands before an encounter, but it turns out from my playtesting that if you're willing to waste charges, the answer is a lot of the time, at least in PFS (not that either of these two needs the wand desperately or anything).
This paragraph probably should be in a separate post, but while saves definitely do matter, the reason why I'm not focusing on them more in these particular builds is that you're screwed no matter what if you have to make 10 consecutive Will saves or be taken out of the fight. There's no Crane Style for saves, at least not yet.
Greatsword Gus Level 10 Fighter
Str 22 (16 + 2 racial + 2 stat raises + 2 item)
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 10
Cha 10
Gear:
+2 Greatsword, Gloves of Dueling, +2 Str belt, +3 Fullplate, +2 Ring of Protection, +2 Amulet of Natural Armor, +3 Cloak of Resistance, Wand of Shield, about 2000 spare gold for other stuff like a backup bow.
Feats: Power Attack, Focus GS, Greater Focus GS, Spec GS, Furious Focus, Dodge, you choice of several fun feats (maybe Cornugon Smash with the Shatter Defenses line? It wouldn't be as good against the dragon, but it can be a very effective set overall). Definitely grab some Iron Will and such also. Maybe there's something even better to get, but if so, I reserve the right to add it to the Aldori if applicable.
To-hit:
+24/+19 with +2 Greatsword for 2d6+17 damage OR
+24/+16 with +2 Greatsword for 2d6+26 damage
AC: 30 (34 when he casts shield on himself)
Aldori Alice is more feat-starved than usual because she represents the build I made for Dabbler, who didn't want to see MoMS involved. Probably a better neutral ground would have been to still allow a Monk dip, but just not use the early access power of MoMS. Too late now though:
Aldori Alice Level 10 Aldori Swordlord
Str 22 (same as Gus)
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 10 (sadly can't take Combat Expertise)
Wis 10
Cha 10
Gear:
+2 Aldori Dueling Sword, +2 Str belt, +4 Fullplate, +2 Ring of Protection, +2 Amulet of Natural Armor, +3 Cloak of Resistance, Dusty Rose Prism Ioun Stone, Wand of Shield, about 5000 gold for other stuff like a backup bow.
Feats: IUS, Dodge, Crane Style Wing and Riposte, Focus ADS, Greater Focus ADS, Spec ADS, Power Attack, Furious Focus, 2 other feats including maybe Combat Reflexes or something--can't take Combat Expertise because I didn't want to dump stats with either of these builds. Obviously a dumped Charisma makes Combat Expertise possible.
To-hit:
+21/+16 with +2 Aldori Dueling Sword for 1d8+14 OR
+21/+13 with +2 Aldori Dueling Sword for 1d8+23
(Also if there is a parry, one more attack at +21 for 1d8+14 or at +18 for 1d8+23 depending on whether Power Attack is on or not)
AC 37 (41 when she casts shield on herself). Also 1 Crane Wing deflection per round.
So how do these two guys do damagewise in a melee fight?
Against AC 28 (the average AC of a CR 13 critter according to the chart) they both Power Attack. Gus has 42.9 DPR and Alice has 27.5 on rounds with no riposte and 39.325 on rounds with a riposte.
So Alice is pretty close to Gus at damage against easy-to-hit foes when she gets a riposte. And if she doesn't get a riposte, that means the enemy isn't even coming close to hitting her.
A slightly riskier AC but higher DPS version of Alice can trade out 2 AC for +2 to hit and damage by essentially using the same items as Gus (that is, Gloves of Dueling instead of the better armor and the ioun stone). This would lead to Alice having +23/+15 for 1d8+25 when Power Attacking, which means she does 35.4 DPR on a non-riposte round and 50.675 DPR on a riposte round, which beats out Gus on the latter. Her AC even in the riskier version is still 5 higher than Gus's.
True, but you can't really get your Will saves to impregnable levels no matter how you try, whereas you can do it with AC if you get it high enough
If you have an AC of 100, but a will save of +2 then it will come into play. I am not saying getting rid of the headband will drop wisdom to +2, but having a high AC alone does not matter all that much.
You don't have to get them to impregnable levels. You just have to make the odds good that you will make the save. I rather have good AC and good saves than godly AC and weak saves. That makes it harder to take a character down.
Hmm?
You're paying 8k for a +2 sword and 4k for a Str belt and that's it for money on offense to get a +21 with the straight-out Swordlord (which I chose because Dabbler asked to remove the Master of Many Styles from the equation). That leaves you over 50k for defense, and you're going to have a natural +8 AC for Fighting Defensively and Defensive Parry that the other Fighter's Armor Training only makes up by 2 or 3. So basically the free AC for no cash money cost makes it very hard for the two-hander to compete on AC, even if the Aldori spends more money on offense than just the 12k. I'm not seeing how the Greatsworder can get more than about +26 to hit (and then only by sacrificing defense to the point where the dragon shreds through the Fighter in a couple of rounds) without like pointbuying an 18 before racial mods or something that extreme. +24 is more likely for the Greatsworder, I'd wager (1 more from training and then 2 more from gloves of dueling). The Aldori could also have +23 with Gloves of Dueling, but that's 15k less money for AC stuff, which will lead to commensurately worse AC. Still may be worth it against high AC enemies like the dragon, I suppose. I'd have to do the math.
Two-handers are generally chosen despite lower AC over S&B types because it has been shown in gameplay and mathmatically to be more efficient. If you kill the bad guy they can no longer hurt you.
I am pretty sure the spread in DPR will be very noticable. Even a simple +2 to hit can bump DPR by double digits depending on the enemy's AC. Without doing any math I am gauging that the 2-hander with the greatsword or falchion is at least 15 ahead for damage, and if the party haste both of them the spread is even bigger.
If you have an AC of 100, but a will save of +2 then it will come into play. I am not saying getting rid of the headband will drop wisdom to +2, but having a high AC alone does not matter all that much.True, but you can't really get your Will saves to impregnable levels no matter how you try, whereas you can do it with AC if you get it high enough
You don't have to get them to impregnable levels. You just have to make the odds good that you will make the save. I rather have good AC and good saves than godly AC and weak saves. That makes it harder to take a character down.
True, but the Monk/Aldori you're building doesn't need to have the highest Will saves it can--it just needs to have comparable Will saves to the pure Fighter while winning at defenses against physical attacks vastly and still keeping up at least reasonably on damage.
Two-handers are generally chosen despite lower AC over S&B types because it has been shown in gameplay and mathmatically to be more efficient. If you kill the badHmm?
You're paying 8k for a +2 sword and 4k for a Str belt and that's it for money on offense to get a +21 with the straight-out Swordlord (which I chose because Dabbler asked to remove the Master of Many Styles from the equation). That leaves you over 50k for defense, and you're going to have a natural +8 AC for Fighting Defensively and Defensive Parry that the other Fighter's Armor Training only makes up by 2 or 3. So basically the free AC for no cash money cost makes it very hard for the two-hander to compete on AC, even if the Aldori spends more money on offense than just the 12k. I'm not seeing how the Greatsworder can get more than about +26 to hit (and then only by sacrificing defense to the point where the dragon shreds through the Fighter in a couple of rounds) without like pointbuying an 18 before racial mods or something that extreme. +24 is more likely for the Greatsworder, I'd wager (1 more from training and then 2 more from gloves of dueling). The Aldori could also have +23 with Gloves of Dueling, but that's 15k less money for AC stuff, which will lead to commensurately worse AC. Still may be worth it against high AC enemies like the dragon, I suppose. I'd have to do the math.
I have done the math in the second post. Sorry for double posting.
You're right that haste will break in favor of the two-hander, but let's keep party buffs out of it as Dabbler requested earlier. Especially since things like Inspire Courage are strongly in the Aldori's favor.
Even without haste I am seeing the non-defensive build as having a significant margin. I found a 12th level fighter build that I did a while back. It was pushing. The fighter should be pushing 85ish DPR against CR 12 monsters, and that is without the gloves of dueling. If he has those I am expecting the build to hit 100 DPR.
It was 25 point-buy but I could drop it to 20, and still keep the DPR.
As for the will save it needs to compare to be good enough to stay on around long enough to do damage. The other fighter had a +14. Most monster primary ability that forces a save is around a 21. That is about 66% chance to succeed. In other words it will take 3 attempts to make the fighter fail. Ignoring wisdom puts you down to about a 50% chance. That means if the enemy is not dead in two rounds, the High AC fighter might be in trouble. With a 50% miss chance he actually has an equal chance of failing the save in the first round.
The fight I built had a +27.
24(16 from point buy, +2 race, +2 from levels, +4 from the belt)
That is a +7 to hit
The weapon master grants weapon training early so that is +3
We are now at +10 to hit.
The weapon was a +3
Weapon focus and greater weapon focus are a +2
Now we are at +15. The fighter has a BAB of 12, so that is a +27.
Even without haste I am seeing the non-defensive build as having a significant margin. I found a 12th level fighter build that I did a while back. It was pushing. The fighter should be pushing 85ish DPR against CR 12 monsters, and that is without the gloves of dueling. If he has those I am expecting the build to hit 100 DPR.
Well yes--the reason the DPR for Greatsword guy here is 42.9 isn't because he's a chump. It's because he's only level 10 rather than 12 (and 12 has another iterative) and he's fighting a CR 13 rather than 12. Want to see the two 10s against a CR 10's AC of 24? Gus now does 52.8 damage per round and Risky Alice does 45.725 without riposte and 65.7 with riposte. This actually means that if doing damage to weenies is all you care about, Risky Alice is better off lowering her AC even more to get more deflections, as she can beat Gus if she gets ripostes consistently.
The point of this exercise for me isn't whether the Aldori can mow through on-CR enemies faster than the Greatsword wielder (though it actually can keep up if you get enough ripostes and take the higher DPR version of Alice). To be overpowered, a new ability doesn't have to make a character that is better in all categories. It just needs to create degeneracies in enough encounters in actual gameplay to mess with the game in those situations. My playtests have proven this whereas a hypothetical DPR doesn't help in this regard.
It was 25 point-buy but I could drop it to 20, and still keep the DPR.
As for the will save it needs to compare to be good enough to stay on around long enough to do damage. The other fighter had a +14. Most monster primary ability that forces a save is around a 21. That is about 66% chance to succeed. In other words it will take 3 attempts to make the fighter fail. Ignoring wisdom puts you down to about a 50% chance. That means if the enemy is not dead in two rounds, the High AC fighter might be in trouble. With a 50% miss chance he actually has an equal chance of failing the save in the first round.
Yeah, I do agree, so you raise Wisdom when you have the luxury. I can see how that would be easier for 25 PB. A 25 PB MoMS2/Aldori10 will have at least that much by level 12 even without Iron Will. When I say the focus on Wisdom was too much, I just meant that the +2 Wisdom item was a very odd choice for the level 7 character compared to, say, upping the Cloak of Resistance even (or raising AC or to-hit). Raising Wisdom is more expensive for the Will save gain than raising your Cloak of Resistance until the Cloak is +3 (I know upgrading +2 to +3 costs a bit more, but it does give to all saves, and Fort is a doozy too, and even Ref with some of the new spells).
The fight I built had a +27.
24(16 from point buy, +2 race, +2 from levels, +4 from the belt)
That is a +7 to hit
The weapon master grants weapon training early so that is +3
We are now at +10 to hit.
The weapon was a +3
Weapon focus and greater weapon focus are a +2
Now we are at +15. The fighter has a BAB of 12, so that is a +27.
Yep, that's a solid build. Deleveling your guy to 10th and lowering equipment commensurately will give him less to-hit and AC than Gus (Weapon Master has a Weapon Training edge at 50% of all levels. 12th level is one of those levels, while 10th isn't). You can switch out some items for those gloves to go back to Gus's level of to-hit, though still with 2 less AC due to losing Armor Training.
So I think Gus and your guy are close enough in build to indicate that Gus is a good baseline against which to compare Alice.
Even without haste I am seeing the non-defensive build as having a significant margin. I found a 12th level fighter build that I did a while back. It was pushing. The fighter should be pushing 85ish DPR against CR 12 monsters, and that is without the gloves of dueling. If he has those I am expecting the build to hit 100 DPR.Well yes--the reason the DPR for Greatsword guy here is 42.9 isn't because he's a chump. It's because he's only level 10 rather than 12 (and 12 has another iterative) and he's fighting a CR 13 rather than 12. Want to see the two 10s against a CR 10's AC of 24? Gus now does 52.8 damage per round and Risky Alice does 45.725 without riposte and 65.7 with riposte. This actually means that if doing damage to weenies is all you care about, Risky Alice is better off lowering her AC even more to get more deflections, as she can beat Gus if she gets ripostes consistently.
I am sure DPR is not jumping up by 40 to 60 points across two levels.
Even at level 10 I can at least get 60 DPR.The point of this exercise for me isn't whether the Aldori can mow through on-CR enemies faster than the Greatsword wielder (though it actually can keep up if you get enough ripostes and take the higher DPR version of Alice). To be overpowered, a new ability doesn't have to make a character that is better in all categories. It just needs to create degeneracies in enough encounters in actual gameplay to mess with the game in those situations. My playtests have proven this whereas a hypothetical DPR doesn't help in this regard.
I have not seen this proof. The fact that your level 10 guy is only going for a DPR of about 40ish makes me wonder about how you ran things. Even a rogue can hit 40.
Yeah, I do agree, so you raise Wisdom when you have the luxury. I can see how that would be easier for 25 PB. A 25 PB MoMS2/Aldori10 will have at least that much by level 12 even without Iron Will. When I say the focus on Wisdom was too much, I just meant that the +2 Wisdom item was a very odd choice for the level 7 character compared to, say, upping the Cloak of Resistance even (or raising AC or to-hit). Raising Wisdom is more expensive for the Will save gain than raising your Cloak of Resistance until the Cloak is +3 (I know upgrading +2 to +3 costs a bit more, but it does give to all saves, and Fort is a doozy too, and even Ref with some of the new spells).
I have seen enough fighters own by poor will saves, that I know it should not be ignored. Your AC does not really matter if you are running away or fighting for the wrong side. Well actually your AC does matter when you fight for the wrong side, but not it is not a good thing at that point.
The fight I built had a +27.
24(16 from point buy, +2 race, +2 from levels, +4 from the belt)
That is a +7 to hit
The weapon master grants weapon training early so that is +3
We are now at +10 to hit.
The weapon was a +3
Weapon focus and greater weapon focus are a +2
Now we are at +15. The fighter has a BAB of 12, so that is a +27.Yep, that's a solid build. Deleveling your guy to 10th and lowering equipment commensurately will give him less to-hit and AC than Gus (Weapon Master has a Weapon Training edge at 50% of all levels. 12th level is one of those levels, while 10th isn't). You can switch out some items for those gloves to go back to Gus's level of to-hit, though still with 2 less AC due to losing Armor Training.
So I think Gus and your guy are close enough in build to indicate that Gus is a good baseline against which to compare Alice.
Dropping his to level 10 means the enemies AC is lower. For my other post I was assuming your fighter was level 12 also*. I was not comparing a level 10 to a level 12.
*I did not do any real stats, but with a -2 being a good amount of DPR to lose I know that the difference in damage is not small. Crane Riposte would be a factor. I had not though of that. I wonder how much though. I think it would be better on a dex build with the Agile enhancement. Even then though I don't think CW is broken. It is the compilation of everything that is the difference, not CW alone.
Actually I would disagree with this. Snake Style is also very powerful taken early, in fact in your 'attacked by eight ghouls' example Snake Style is incredibly powerful if you also have Combat Reflexes. Instead of two attacks a round, you could get in seven at second level against the ghouls....7? Only if you have what, 20 Dexterity? But Snake Style won't help at all against Natural 20s, so you still get hit as often as the 25+ AC Fighter.
Er, Combat Reflexes adds a number of attacks of opportunity equal to your dexterity modifier, so you get 5 AoO's with 18 dex.
What Snake Style does is ramp up your number of attacks by a huge amount, allowing you to dish damage back at the target, which is equally broken at low level because dead enemies can't hit you.
He's not going to hit much, if at all - especially if he uses Combat Expertise.{stuff}
The problem here is you are not posting up a complete build, just bits of one, so it's nearly impossible for me to check your working.
What I can say is that your build won't last 100 rounds. The dragon will breath on him every 1d4 rounds, and he will die eventually even if he makes his save every time. The dragon need not even engage him in melee, it can just fly strafing runs once the rest of the party are dead.
I would guess that an attack bonus of +18 is the ball-park figure for the swordlord's attacks (+5 stat, +3 weapon, +2 Greater Weapon Focus, +2 Weapon Training)These numbers add up to +22, actually (as you have 12 there, +10 BAB). If you subtract 1 for not having Weapon Training 1, you get +21, and I figured probably around +21 to hit. I actually considered a +6 stat and +2 weapon for mine, but either way is exactly the same (the weapon gives better DR penetration though).
Gah! Posting at 2 am!
Still, that leaves your Aldori master with +20, not +21, because he missed out on two levels of weapon training.
Take a look at the Dabbler and me melee fight against the blue dragon. Even in the extreme situation with the 36 AC dragon (12 above the average AC of a CR 13 monster!)
You seem surprised that the dragon would fight sensibly and use it's advantages...and remember, this dragon is not using gear. A +2 amulet of mighty fists would be a great investment for this dragon, after all.
the Aldori10 is doing about half the damage of the Greatsword Fighter10. Against AC 28 instead (the average for CR 13, or a boss monster), the Aldori can get much much much closer (30 for the Aldori, 45.4 for the Aldori on a round of riposting, and 49.5 for the...
...and he's run into the problem of barely being able to get the target's attention when it has larger fish to fry, like the party casters or the fighter with the greatsword.
Looking at the way you made your greatsword fighter, I have to say...meh. That's not how I'd do it, mine would not have so high an AC, but would be dishing out +25 to hit with a falchion and have much higher damage output. Vs AC 28 DPR would be around 54, which is significantly ahead of Alice.
FRED 10 CR 9
Male Human (Kellid) Fighter 10
NN Medium Humanoid (Human)
Init +6; Senses Perception +10
--------------------
DEFENSE
--------------------
AC 27, touch 14, flat-footed 24. . (+12 armor, +2 Dex, +1 natural, +1 deflection, +1 dodge)
hp 94 (10d10+20)
Fort +11, Ref +7, Will +8
Defensive Abilities Bravery +3
--------------------
OFFENSE
--------------------
Spd 30 ft.
Melee +3 Adamantine Falchion +25/+20 (2d4+18/15-20/x2) and
. . Gauntlet (from Armor) +16/+11 (1d3+6/20/x2) and
. . Unarmed Strike +16/+11 (1d3+6/20/x2)
Special Attacks Weapon Training: Blades, Heavy, Weapon Training: Bows
--------------------
STATISTICS
--------------------
Str 20/22, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +10; CMB +16; CMD 30 (34 vs. Disarm, 34 vs. Sunder)
Feats Cleave, Combat Reflexes (3 AoO/round), Dodge, Furious Focus, Greater Weapon Focus: Falchion, Improved Critical: Falchion, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack -3/+6, Shield of Swings, Weapon Focus: Falchion, Weapon Specialization: Falchion
Traits Dangerously Curious, Indomitable Faith
Skills Acrobatics -1, Climb +8, Escape Artist -1, Fly -1, Handle Animal +4, Intimidate +13, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +4, Knowledge (Engineering) +4, Perception +10, Ride +3, Stealth -1, Survival +4, Swim +7, Use Magic Device +6
Languages Common, Hallit
SQ Armor Training 2 (Ex), Gloves of Dueling
Combat Gear +3 Adamantine Falchion, +3 Full Plate; Other Gear Amulet of Natural Armor +1, Belt of Giant Strength, +2, Cloak of Resistance, +2, Gloves of Dueling, Ring of Protection, +1
--------------------
SPECIAL ABILITIES
--------------------
Armor Training 2 (Ex) Worn armor -2 check penalty, +2 max DEX.
Bravery +3 (Ex) +3 Will save vs. Fear
Cleave If you hit a foe, attack an adjacent target at the same attack bonus but take -2 AC.
Combat Reflexes (3 AoO/round) You may make up to 3 attacks of opportunity per round, and may make them while flat-footed.
Furious Focus If you are wielding a weapon in two hands, ignore the penalty for your first attack of each turn.
Gloves of Dueling These supple leather gloves grant the wearer gains a +4 bonus to his CMD against disarm attacks, attempts to sunder his wielded weapons, and effects that cause him to lose his grip on his weapons (such as grease). The wearer doesn’t drop held weapons when panicked or stunned. If the wearer has the weapon training class feature and is using an appropriate weapon, his weapon training bonus increases by +2.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, greater magic weapon; Cost 7,500 gp
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Shield of Swings During a full-round attack with a 2-handed weapon, you may halve your damage to gain +4 AC and CMD until the beginning of your next turn.
Weapon Training: Blades, Heavy +4 (Ex) +4 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Heavy Blades
Weapon Training: Bows +3 (Ex) +3 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Bows
Now if we go against the dragon's actual AC 36, the difference really tells.
+21/+13 with +2 Aldori Dueling Sword for 1d8+23 hits the dragon for 30% + 5% for 27.5 for: (.3x27.5x1.3) + (.05x27.5x1.05) = 12.16875DPR (assuming you took Improved Critical)
+25/+17 with +3 Flachion for 2d4+27 hits the dragon for 50% + 10% for 32 for: (.5x32x1.3) + (.1x32x1.1) = 24.32DPR
Basically, twice the damage output.
Would an Aldori/Master of Many Styles with Crane and Snake not be a nightmare of destruction in mid levels assuming a 25 point-buy? You would only need 1 level of Monk for this or did I miss something?
Would an Aldori/Master of Many Styles with Crane and Snake not be a nightmare of destruction in mid levels assuming a 25 point-buy? You would only need 1 level of Monk for this or did I miss something?
Possibly, but the Master of Many Styles is being used to get the free feats that allow you to take style feats with no pre-requisites but the other feats as required in that style. To be honest it doesn't have to be an aldori swordlord either, that one just allows the option of fighting defensively to combine with Crane Style in order to apply no penalty for a larger bonus (somebody at Paizo should have thought about that).
Thing is you have blown a lot of feats (six) to make this work, and that really limits what you can do offensively. The sheer number of attacks is a bonus, but your attack bonus won't be awe-inspiring and your damage won't be staggering.
Essentially Rogue Eidolon's build suffers the 'monk problem' where having a great AC makes you very strong one way, but limited offensive options mean you can't actually contribute that much in a party dynamic. It's a very good build, but really heavily tricked out for AC and very vulnerable to attacks that don't target AC.
Essentially Rogue Eidolon's build suffers the 'monk problem' where having a great AC makes you very strong one way, but limited offensive options mean you can't actually contribute that much in a party dynamic.
Your post confuses me somewhat. It may be my fault for posting some long posts and getting my point lost in them. If so, I apologized. Assuming not--I posted a pair of builds which demonstrate that even the full Aldori (which is not the best build for this) is going to be putting out comparable DPR to the two-hander solo. Even if Alice never gets a riposte, I think 52 DPR vs 45 DPR against same-CR or 42 vs 35 against boss-CR, is hardly "can't actually contribute". I put a significant amount of time into working out all the math to show it to you. If the levels of DPR of risky Alice are unacceptable in a party, then you're more-or-less also saying that a regular two-hander who point-buys 14 + 2 = 16 in Strength (which is what wraithstrike did for his sample Herloab character above) is also automatically unacceptable, whether it has Crane Style or not because risky Alice literally only has a -1 to attack rolls compared to Gus (and less damage per hit due to using a weapon with a smaller dice). It's a dangerous game, as calling out risky Alice means that pretty much any less-than-completely-optimized Fighter is trash. If risky Alice doesn't count as contributing, even though she does more damage than Gus when she is riposting and barely less when not, then I guess I won't be able to convince you on this point, so I'd like to respectfully bow out from our discussion, if you don't mind (if you prefer, I will continue, and in any case I think wraithstrike and I have a few more exchanges in us). Still, I at least am glad that both of us got out our points here. Outsiders reading the thread can decide on their own if risky Alice is contributing or not.
Still, that leaves your Aldori master with +20, not +21, because he missed out on two levels of weapon training.
No, Aldori only miss Weapon Training 1.
I am sure DPR is not jumping up by 40 to 60 points across two levels.
Even at level 10 I can at least get 60 DPR.
OK, so DPR actually does jump by the huge amount that seems impossible, pretty much all on its own. I swear. I've done the math. Let me show you how. Your dude, in leveling from 10 to 12, is going to be receiving a +3 to hit and +3 to damage courtesy of BAB, a new training and Greater Specialization. He also runs out and buys a better + for his sword and str belt. Then the iterative happens, and Power Attack increases to add 3 more damage. So a lot of things change between those two levels! I'll just go ahead and apply those to Gus, and I'll show you that I'm getting the huge jump to the numbers you were getting: Bang--86.1 DPR.
The level boost does account for the huge gap. But something is still missing because I should be significantly higher than 86.1. Oh dang, I missed adding in crits for everyone. Just give both of our friends Improved Critical and that gives level 12 Gus the Weapon Master 102.5 DPR against CR 12. Alright, that looks like you expected, no? It also gives level 10 Gus 63.36 DPR vs CR 10s and risky Alice 44.545 without riposte and 78.84 with riposte. Okay, I bet those numbers look better to you. Can't believe I was too tired to add in the crits last night! This time I know I included everything.
I have not seen this proof. The fact that your level 10 guy is only going for a DPR of about 40ish makes me wonder about how you ran things. Even a rogue can hit 40.
A level 10 Rogue can hit 40 alone, unbuffed, no flank against a CR 13? I'm interested if so. As you may know, I wrote both the Guide to Rogues and the Guide to Fighters, and while I normally don't update them, if you have a trick to yield this that I don't know about, it may be worth adding.
I have seen enough fighters own by poor will saves, that I know it should not be ignored. Your AC does not really matter if you are running away or fighting for the wrong side. Well actually your AC does matter when you fight for the wrong side, but not it is not a good thing at that point.
I agree. People have critiqued my Guide to Fighters by saying that I have "too much of a hard-on for Will saves". I guess I didn't explain myself well--I have no problem with the amount of effort you put into Wisdom in that build, not one iota, as long as any comparison build was going for the same Will save bonus (without having the Monk levels). Does that make more sense? So like, you've agreed that even a +1 or +2 to hit can mean a lot, but your Aldori build started with only a 16 Strength. If you compared to your other Fighter build which started with 18 Strength, that's already going to make a big difference. There, I think I said it more clearly now that I'm more awake. I'm very sorry for stating it poorly before. I absolutely love Will saves, but I thought it wasn't fair to raise them through the roof on the Aldori at the expense of attack and not the other guy. In fairness, I hadn't seen the other guy yet, and you may have been planning to give him 16 Strength too.
Dropping his to level 10 means the enemies AC is lower. For my other post I was assuming your fighter was level 12 also*. I was not comparing a level 10 to a level 12.
I didn't think you were. I'm just saying that you happened to pick an archetype (Weapon Master) where the levels of comparison will skew the data. If you pick any level that 3 or 0 modulo 4 (like 3, 4, 7, 8, etc) it's biased towards the Weapon Master and if you pick any other level it is biased away from the Weapon Master. So level 10 and level 13 are both levels that are good for non-Weapon Masters and level 12 happens to be good for Weapon Masters. I don't think you did this on purpose.
*I did not do any real stats, but with a -2 being a good amount of DPR to lose I know that the difference in damage is not small. Crane Riposte would be a factor. I had not though of that. I wonder how much though. I think it would be better on a dex build with the Agile enhancement.
Dex build with Agile will get even more AC eventually (particularly since you can get more points by buying a low Str), but losing the ability to two-hand and taking the lower damage from Piranha Strike combined with 1 less to hit and damage on the weapon for Agile will significantly lower the DPS (Agile Risky Alice has a bigger drop in DPR from regular Risky Alice than Risky Alice does from Gus).
Even then though I don't think CW is broken. It is the compilation of everything that is the difference, not CW alone.
Look back to my very first posts in this thread--I said it was a common misconception among the Crane Style is broken crowd to think that Crane Wing in a vacuum is the one problem. I've agreed with you all along that it's actually the whole style. Aldori Alice is not even the optimal build for this since she loses out on the goodies from MoMS dip, but I've shown that she stays competitive in every dimension even at higher levels while having her insane defense against melee. Can she outdamage the regular Greatsword Fighter? Actually sometimes yes, but in a regular party situation probably not. But she doesn't have to in order to prove my point.
Just from a general observation, I'm wondering if the Monk class doesn't just need it's own forum at this point.
I'm not making light or making fun of all the discussion, in fact, I think all this discussion is great! It's just that Monk threads seem to dominate this forum, and my finger is sore from clicking "hide thread" so much. :) *joking exaggeration*
Essentially Rogue Eidolon's build suffers the 'monk problem' where having a great AC makes you very strong one way, but limited offensive options mean you can't actually contribute that much in a party dynamic.Your post confuses me somewhat.
Probably I didn't explain myself. You made certain assumptions that aren't necessarily true:
1) Gus is not a good build. He sucks. A real tricked-out to damage fighter is more like Fred, using a Falchion and Improved Critical and most importantly a higher to-hit chance. You care comparing a mediocre-optimised build to a hyper-optimised build, and that never works.
2) You are assuming that you will get a riposte, but this only happens if the target attacks you in melee. If the dragon attacks the party, it goes for the squishy spell-casters first because they are the greater threat. To divert attention off them you have to prove you are a greater one. Fred can do this, Alice will have trouble because the riposte is half of her damage potential.
3) Fred is a better damage build, and Fred can out-damage Alice quite comfortably. Wraithstrike could probably make a better DPR fighter than me, but if you are going to compare a tricked-out build, you need to compare it to another tricked out build.
4) The biggest factor in DPR is to hit probability. Weapon Focus beats Power Attack in the DPR stakes every time. Once you are targeting higher ACs, that difference really tells.
5) Fred, Gus and Alice all die vs the dragon. The only difference is that the dragon uses his breath weapon to kill Alice, and either breath or attacks to kill the other two. But Fred and Gus will do more damage to the dragon than Alice.
Dabbler--my post to you several back is in error. Please read this before replying. I was editing it and it must have hit the edit time limit mid-edit because the edit didn't take!
Basically, I missed the bottom of your first post because I was too focused on the second post. In my edit, I basically deleted the entire first paragraph for that reason and replaced it by math that shows that riposting risky Alice is still ahead of Fred for AC 28 when I remember to count crits like a non-idiot. Then I pointed out that against AC 36, the average AC of a CR 20 enemy, it doesn't matter if you're doing 24 or 12 DPR, and actually risky Alice, who still can last ~20 rounds against the dragon's full attack, does 22.98 damage per round when I include crits and ripostes. That's basically the same as Fred.
But even if she can beat Fred, both characters are impotent there, and honestly both wouldn't even get a full attack because the dragon would just kite them. If the dragon somehow had laryngitis or everyone had Resist Electricity 30 up or something and the dragon had to constantly melee, it would rip Fred to shreds in two rounds while Alice could tank it for long enough to kill it. Honestly maybe a big bruiser monster that would actually be meleeing any of our guys is a better choice for this analysis? Because the dragon's best move is just to fly around out of range.
Again, apologies for not noticing what I missed sooner, and I really wish my edit had not been too slow (I probably should have hit delete to be honest if I had known that might happen)--my confusion stemmed solely from my own lack of reading skills, not from you saying that 35 isn't enough vs 42 as I had thought! I owe you a beer or something if you're at Gencon for me having poor reading comprehension.
Rogue Eidolon, is your Aldori build DPR for 1-handed or 2-handed damage (not including the Riposte/AoO extra attacks, cuz that's obviously 1-handed)?
I'm looking into making a regular fighter (no archetype) picking up Crane Style feats, possibly using a katana for the threat range to enjoy the Imp Crit + Crit Focus feats. Is there any reason why I wouldn't just two-hand attacks during my turn and free-action have a free hand for end of my turn? Besides debateable RAI?
Rogue Eidolon, is your Aldori build DPR for 1-handed or 2-handed damage (not including the Riposte/AoO extra attacks, cuz that's obviously 1-handed)?
I'm looking into making a regular fighter (no archetype) picking up Crane Style feats, possibly using a katana for the threat range to enjoy the Imp Crit + Crit Focus feats. Is there any reason why I wouldn't just two-hand attacks during my turn and free-action have a free hand for end of my turn? Besides debateable RAI?
My build is 2-handed for non ripostes. You would definitely want to two-hand. If you're taking a regular fighter with an exotic, you could also try the falcata in addition to the katana. It works very well.
His Aldori build is two handing the aldori sword and free handing at the end of the round. The additional benefits of the Aldori sword aren't worth a feat if you're not going to use them just to one hand the weapon.
The combination of damage mitigation + extra attack is what makes Crane Style excellent. If you can get around the -2 to hit for defensive fighting, like with the Aldori, you're doing quite well. If you take the trait that reduces defensive fighting by +1, you can even net a positive number!
==Aelryinth
His Aldori build is two handing the aldori sword and free handing at the end of the round. The additional benefits of the Aldori sword aren't worth a feat if you're not going to use them just to one hand the weapon.
The combination of damage mitigation + extra attack is what makes Crane Style excellent. If you can get around the -2 to hit for defensive fighting, like with the Aldori, you're doing quite well. If you take the trait that reduces defensive fighting by +1, you can even net a positive number!
==Aelryinth
What trait is that? I don't think that you can ever reduce a penalty until it becomes a bonus. That trait combined with Crane Wing, however, will net you a 0 penalty without using an Aldori Swordlord, which is nice if you care about the to-hit more than the AC. Also holy crap, the Torag trait defensive strategist is amazing. My guy would have been way better off in several fights if I had taken that!
I know these thought experiments don't prove anything, but I'll put out one more. To give an example where something has to fight in melee, consider a froghemoth in a one-on-one against Fred and Alice. Both Fred and Alice aren't fools, so they use a 50 GP Oil of Grease on themselves as the thing lopes up to them. Fred now has 40 CMD vs Grapple and Alice has 49.
The Froghemoth quickly discovers that Fred does 54 DPR and Alice does 33 when she doesn't riposte, and she is allowed a riposte about .7 times per round doing 47 on a riposte, for a total of about 42.8 DPR factoring in the chance of even getting to make a riposte.
The Froghemoth roars in anger and attacks.
Against Fred:
The Froghemoth expects to hit Fred 2.5 times while Power Attacking. Since the Power Attack penalty applies to CMB, it would take about two rounds of fighting this way in order to actually grapple him. However, Froggy would dish out 38.7 damage per round, so even if he failed to Grapple completely, Fred is gone in three rounds, though he did deal over half Froggy's hit points with his two full attacks before the expected grapple.
As it turns out, not Power Attacking is better for Froggy though (because most of Froggy's attacks are secondary attacks, so Power Attack gives bad ratios). This is actually true against almost every AC of foe, so Froggy presumably doesn't Power Attack. If it doesn't Power Attack, Froggy does 39.2 damage to Fred per round and hits an average of 3.5 times. Of those, most of the expected value lies in the tentacles. When not Power Attacking, Froggy needs to roll a 12 on the d20 to Grapple Fred, so he is only 4% likely to fail to establish a Grapple on a given round. If it grapples him, he takes another ~20 damage from just that. Fred can't make a falchion attack at all, so he more or less has to try to escape (and being pinned is very bad). If Fred chooses to escape, he probably dies on the second round of the Froghemoth's attacks. If not, he lives longer but spends that extra time in a pin. Fred has done a single full attack against Froggy in this case before going down.
Against Alice:
Froggy's chances are dampened pretty considerably against Alice. It has about a 15% chance to hit her with its full attack if it doesn't Power Attack. With Power Attack this drops to 3%. Whatever it does, Alice is going to kill it in about 5 rounds if it full attacks her. If it chooses to go for just grappling and not making 6 attacks, it has about the same success chance, but in this case Alice loses damage due to no ripostes, so it takes 6 rounds for her to drop Froggy. Froggy does not expect a single hit in that time.
So Alice can solo the Froghemoth encounter as a level 10 character.
What trait is that? I don't think that you can ever reduce a penalty until it becomes a bonus. That trait combined with Crane Wing, however, will net you a 0 penalty without using an Aldori Swordlord, which is nice if you care about the to-hit more than the AC. Also holy crap, the Torag trait defensive strategist is amazing. My guy would have been way better off in several fights if I had taken that!His Aldori build is two handing the aldori sword and free handing at the end of the round. The additional benefits of the Aldori sword aren't worth a feat if you're not going to use them just to one hand the weapon.
The combination of damage mitigation + extra attack is what makes Crane Style excellent. If you can get around the -2 to hit for defensive fighting, like with the Aldori, you're doing quite well. If you take the trait that reduces defensive fighting by +1, you can even net a positive number!
==Aelryinth
I don't know of any fighting defensively trait. There is the Threatening Defender trait, though, but that's for Combat Expertise.
I don't know of any fighting defensively trait. There is the Threatening Defender trait, though, but that's for Combat Expertise.What trait is that? I don't think that you can ever reduce a penalty until it becomes a bonus. That trait combined with Crane Wing, however, will net you a 0 penalty without using an Aldori Swordlord, which is nice if you care about the to-hit more than the AC. Also holy crap, the Torag trait defensive strategist is amazing. My guy would have been way better off in several fights if I had taken that!His Aldori build is two handing the aldori sword and free handing at the end of the round. The additional benefits of the Aldori sword aren't worth a feat if you're not going to use them just to one hand the weapon.
The combination of damage mitigation + extra attack is what makes Crane Style excellent. If you can get around the -2 to hit for defensive fighting, like with the Aldori, you're doing quite well. If you take the trait that reduces defensive fighting by +1, you can even net a positive number!
==Aelryinth
I know their is Sword Scion, a trait from King Maker that grants +1 to attack rolls and CMB rolls made with a Longsword or an Aldori Sword.
Dabbler--my post to you several back is in error. Please read this before replying. I was editing it and it must have hit the edit time limit mid-edit because the edit didn't take!
That's OK, I did actually make a reply, but the boards ate it as well!
What I was going to say was that you are making a number of assumptions that may not be very true in your examples:
1) That Alice gets a riposte - that only happens if Alice gets attacked. If the dragon goes for the spell-casters first, it will ignore the melee fighters as long as it has a sky-high AC unless they prove they can hurt it. Fred is more likely to achieve this than Gus, and Gus more likely to do it than Alice, because both of them are more likely to hit and will deliver significant damage if they do. It really does not matter that Alice can match their damage output if she gets ripostes if she doesn't get ripostes. Alice is great design, but relies on drawing foes into extended fights.
2) The biggest, most reliable factor in DPR is hitting the target: +1 to hit is worth +2 to damage, and means you are more likely to hit high-AC targets, more likely to confirm critical hits, etc. Alice sacrifices this to get a sky-high AC. What's why Fred sacrifices AC for higher chances to hit, because taking down the bad guys before they can hurt the rest of the party is his objective.
3) The dragon has the ability to self-buff, it SHOULD be a tough foe. AC for a given CR is where they start, not where they finish. If the party are optimised - and Alice is a very optimised build - then the challenges should also optimise. It's something we ran into in the monk-thread, where what you are in effect trying to prove is that Crane Style is broken when an optimised build using crane style can cake-walk against a less optimised fighter (Gus) and a non-optimised threat.
There's nothing wrong with the Crane Style feat-tree. It gives a good defensive boost in melee at the cost of offensive potential. Alice is an excellent build that works well, she rules a melee fight, but she's not much cop outside of that. Problem is that offensive potential is what it's all about, and defences are not all about AC in melee alone.