Perfect Strike - Weapon limits?

[Stephen Ede]

Not sure if this is the right place, but here goes.

Is there a crunch/mechanical reason for the weapon limits given for the Perfect Strike? Namely - "You must use one of the following weapons to make the attack: kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, and siangham."
I'm making a Monk/Duelist to challenge one of my players in a duel and was looking at using the Monk archtype - Weapon Master. But those weapons don't fit (Looking at Bich'wa for style or Cestus for feat economy). Before I use GM fiat I want to check if anyone knew why the limit was put in?

Thanks

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Perfect Strike (Combat)
When wielding a monk weapon, your attacks can be extremely precise.

Prerequisites: Dex 13, Wis 13, Improved Unarmed Strike, base attack bonus +8.

Benefit: You must declare that you are using this feat before you make your attack roll (thus a failed attack roll ruins the attempt). You must use one of the following weapons to make the attack: kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, and siangham. You can roll your attack roll twice and take the higher result. If one of these rolls is a critical threat, the other roll is used as your confirmation roll (your choice if they are both critical threats). You may attempt a perfect attack once per day for every four levels you have attained (but see Special), and no more than once per round.

Special: A weapon master monk or zen archer monk receives Perfect Strike as a bonus feat at 1st level, even if he does not meet the prerequisites. A monk may attempt an perfect strike attack a number of times per day equal to his monk level, plus one more time per day for every four levels he has in classes other than monk.

[SlimGauge]

Not a rules question. The rule as written (RAW) is clear. A question of the rule as intended (RAI) is impossible to answer unless the author of that rule happens to read this thread. Even then, rules get changed between submission and publication.

Why was the limit put in ? I suspect because this feat is intended for a particular "style" (not a reference to combat style feats) that your multi-classed monk/duelist doesn't fit. Not only is it limited to monk weapons, it's limited to 5 specific monk weapons.

FIAT away.

EDIT: LoneKnave has a point, this feat may be too powerful with high crit range weapons.

[LoneKnave]

Well, with a Keen high threat (rapier for example) weapon, it'd improve your crit chance by quite a bit, on top of improving your chance to hit.

[Xaratherus]

It would be nice to have the feat reviewed, actually. The fact that Zen Archer gets this feat and can't use it with his primary mode of attack is a little odd to me.

That said, I don't think there's any gray area regarding RAW here. For whatever reason, the feat is limited to those 5 weapons (even though it's described as affecting "monk weapons" earlier on, which tends to imply any weapon with the [Monk] quality).

[Stephen Ede]

LoneKnave wrote:

Well, with a Keen high threat (rapier for example) weapon, it'd improve your crit chance by quite a bit, on top of improving your chance to hit.

Well I was still limiting it to a Monk Weapon but basically was looking for a 19-20 crit range.

Unless you have feats to increase the chance of confirming critical's it doesn't actually increase the chance of getting a confirmed critical. It merely increases the chance of getting a basic hit.

[LoneKnave]

Let's say you hit on a 10 and crit on a 15-20 (keen rapier).

You roll 2 dice, you get 12 and 16. You can use 16 for crit and 12 for confirm. If you only rolled 1 dice you only had 1 shot at it (which in this case would have been the 12).

You get 2 chances to get a crit hit, and if you do have something to improve your critcal confirmation roll (and you should, honestly), you can confirm it with the lower hit that may not have even landed.

[Stephen Ede]

LoneKnave wrote:

Let's say you hit on a 10 and crit on a 15-20 (keen rapier).

You roll 2 dice, you get 12 and 16. You can use 16 for crit and 12 for confirm. If you only rolled 1 dice you only had 1 shot at it (which in this case would have been the 12).

You get 2 chances to get a crit hit, and if you do have something to improve your critcal confirmation roll (and you should, honestly), you can confirm it with the lower hit that may not have even landed.

Yes, just saw my error. :-)

Came here to post a correction and saw your correction. Thanks. :-)
I've been dealing with high ACs so much recently that I mentally blocked out that crit threat and conform numbers can be quite different.

[Jeremias]

Xaratherus wrote:

It would be nice to have the feat reviewed, actually. The fact that Zen Archer gets this feat and can't use it with his primary mode of attack is a little odd to me.

That said, I don't think there's any gray area regarding RAW here. For whatever reason, the feat is limited to those 5 weapons (even though it's described as affecting "monk weapons" earlier on, which tends to imply any weapon with the [Monk] quality).

The "Zen Archer" Archetype explicitly states that for them, "Perfect Strike" works with bows.

[Xaratherus]

Jeremias wrote:

Xaratherus wrote:

It would be nice to have the feat reviewed, actually. The fact that Zen Archer gets this feat and can't use it with his primary mode of attack is a little odd to me.

That said, I don't think there's any gray area regarding RAW here. For whatever reason, the feat is limited to those 5 weapons (even though it's described as affecting "monk weapons" earlier on, which tends to imply any weapon with the [Monk] quality).

The "Zen Archer" Archetype explicitly states that for them, "Perfect Strike" works with bows.

Never mind then. Perfect Strike on. :P

[ArmouredMonk13]

Its a flavor choice and is more powerful with 18-20 weapons. You could easily just make it apply to cestuses (Cesti? Cestapods? Anyone know the plural of cestus?) if you are the GM. Players ask, just say he has a special ability.

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

They mentinoed that the new rulebook coming out for new classes will contain the idea's and thoughts that they had while creating new classes. That kinda makes me think that they are planning that GM's will "customize" classes to fir thier needs for thier games.

Giving the duelist a special ability works, but if you want to make it legit, take away an ability as well. That way your character is balanced. It's not that big of an improvement, so don't take away too big of a benefit :).

Hope that helps!

[Diego Rossi]

ArmouredMonk13 wrote:

Its a flavor choice and is more powerful with 18-20 weapons. You could easily just make it apply to cestuses (Cesti? Cestapods? Anyone know the plural of cestus?) if you are the GM. Players ask, just say he has a special ability.

Declinazione di cestus

cestus
(cestus, cesti)

sost. masch. II decl.

Vedi la traduzione di questo lemma

MASCHILE
SINGOLARE PLURALE
Nominativo cestus cesti
Genitivo cesti cestōrum
Dativo cesto cestis
Accusativo cestum cestos
Ablativo cesto cestis
Vocativo ceste cesti

So the plural of cestus is cesti in Latin.

[Diego Rossi]

FrodoOf9Fingers wrote:

They mentinoed that the new rulebook coming out for new classes will contain the idea's and thoughts that they had while creating new classes. That kinda makes me think that they are planning that GM's will "customize" classes to fir thier needs for thier games.

Giving the duelist a special ability works, but if you want to make it legit, take away an ability as well. That way your character is balanced. It's not that big of an improvement, so don't take away too big of a benefit :).

Hope that helps!

Going from 30% to 51% of scoring a threat is a big improvement, especially if you combine it with the traits or feats that increase your to hit for the purpose of confirming a critical.

[Stephen Ede]

The calculation needs to include going x3 to 19-20 x2. From the perspective of NPCs vs PCs the 19-20 x2 is the safer approach. x3, and even worse, x4 crit multipliers have the risk of blow out damage that goes from wounded to throughly dead with no chance of the PC withdrawing from combat. I don't mind killing PCs, but I prefer it's because they screwed up, not because of a lucky roll on my part.

Thanks