
Darth Grall |

It is for this reason that I completely support the Crane Wing errata, despite being a player who overwhelmingly favors playing martial classes. The feats in question were definitely imbalanced when compared to similar feats and abilities that do similar things, and when you ignore the existence of casters entirely. That's the only way that balance can and should be measured in this game, if any of us are going to keep our sanity.
Caster martial disparity aside, this is now a bad feat chain.
Let's compare a Fighting Defensively with Crane vs Combat Expertise. Assuming level 5, since that's when most will get Crane Wing.
Monk 1 has Wing, and is Fighting Defensively. She is taking:
-2 AB for, +4 AC(w/ 3 Ranks) and potentiall +8 if she picks the right attack. She paid 3 Feats to do so(Dodge, Crane, Wing) and 3 skill Ranks.
Monk 2 has Combat Expertise instead. She takes:
-2 AB for, +2 AC. Only cost her a single feat. She now has 2 free feats to spend, and 3 additional skill ranks to spend.
Yeah she doesn't have the potential +8 to AC, but honestly? The monk doesn't know which attack they need that extra +4 on in a round anyways and she's only really losing 2 Extra AC on most attacks. And that's only temporary, the AC bonus scales and gets better over time. The extra feats will allow the monk to boost AB and other nice things like AC if desired.
AS for Crane Wing's auto deflection, it means you have to give up your whole attack sequence, Riposte only goes off if you get attacked. Not worth the action economy in the slightest, especially since an enemy can just not attack you. Or feint you, since that would also make you lose your AC bonus and prevent you from using Riposte.

Erick Wilson |
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Your comment just highlights how silly it is to be nerfing martials
Yes and no. What I'm saying is that martial-stuff is, generally speaking (and unlike spell-stuff), reasonable enough to be compared against itself in order to determine some rational meaning of balance. But you simply cannot even begin to do this with spells without the whole house of cards coming down.
In other words, playing the balance game with magic is very dangerous. If the devs were actually going to balance the spellcasting and martial classes, it would involve so much errata that they'd essentially have to write a new edition. Given the parameters of OGL, I'm not even sure this is possible. But even if it is, until the new edition arrives it's pointless to discuss balance issues in relation to casters. Because they just aren't balanced and they never were.
What we can do is discuss balance issues as though spells did not exist. When we do that, things fall into place and the world (and errata like this one) makes sense again.

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But no one will remember this the next time they feel like saying the design team doesn't listen, just like the don't remember the last time, or the time before that. :/
Not so, sir! I remember the free action issue retraction some months ago. Hearing us on that was much appreciated, as is hearing us on Crane Wing.

MrSin |

Marthkus wrote:Your comment just highlights how silly it is to be nerfing martialsSpeaking as a GM, this buffs my martial monsters. I've taken to throwing more and more casters at the party because of the Crane Style feat chain, just to keep combat interesting.
If I remember correctly, its the GMs job to keep the game balanced, not the game.

Jon Otaguro 428 |
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Sometimes I get the feeling the developers are out of touch with the way the game is played by a lot of people.
Sure it sounds cool to base crane wing and riposte on total defense, but the reality is that the part of those feats that depends on total defense will be ignored the vast majority of the time. I can't remember the last time anyone in our group other than my cohort went into total defense - and really she does nothing most of the time so that just means doing nothing with some AC boost.

Erick Wilson |

Sometimes I get the feeling the developers are out of touch with the way the game is played by a lot of people.
Sure it sounds cool to base crane wing and riposte on total defense, but the reality is that the part of those feats that depends on total defense will be ignored the vast majority of the time. I can't remember the last time anyone in our group other than my cohort went into total defense - and really she does nothing most of the time so that just means doing nothing with some AC boost.
I find total defense extremely useful. I use it at least once in almost every game. It really depends on your tactics.

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Folks, if this is going to devolve into a martial vs caster debate this thread will be locked in the very near future. This errata was for Ultimate Combat... which is mostly about martial characters. Thats all there is to it. Anyone looking for some sort of grand conspiracy can look elsewhere.
(removed a few posts on this matter)
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

MrSin |

I find total defense extremely useful. I use it at least once in almost every game. It really depends on your tactics.
How so? How is extremely useful and why? Usually killing people keeps you from being hit more than not hitting them at all, and you are easy to ignore and its easier to attack everyone else when you can take AoOs.

MrSin |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Folks, if this is going to devolve into a martial vs caster debate this thread will be locked in the very near future. This errata was for Ultimate Combat... which is mostly about martial characters. Thats all there is to it. Anyone looking for some sort of grand conspiracy can look elsewhere.
If it matters, a lot of the martial vs. caster's talk isn't really looking for some grand conspiracy.
My two cents anyway.

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Samuel Stone wrote:If I remember correctly, its the GMs job to keep the game balanced, not the game.Marthkus wrote:Your comment just highlights how silly it is to be nerfing martialsSpeaking as a GM, this buffs my martial monsters. I've taken to throwing more and more casters at the party because of the Crane Style feat chain, just to keep combat interesting.
Point is, as someone who runs a non-PFS game, I need to either let my party get away with using Crane Style to out-defend monsters, or step up the monsters to the point where I'm doing one of three things:
1. Add in more caster enemies
2. Give monsters more iterative attacks/add in more monsters
3. Give monsters Crane Style (which feels goofy and nerfs the party martials)
I'm not a fan of any of those three options, as they mean that if I drop the monk, the rest of the party is easy prey. Honestly, the easiest way I see to keep the game balanced is to eliminate (or alter) the Crane Style feat chain.
EDIT: Also, when there's a public play version such as PFS, it IS the game's job to keep the game balanced. At the very least, I feel like Old Crane Wing should have been banned from PFS.

Erick Wilson |

Erick Wilson wrote:I find total defense extremely useful. I use it at least once in almost every game. It really depends on your tactics.How so? How is extremely useful and why? Usually killing people keeps you from being hit more than not hitting them at all, and you are easy to ignore and its easier to attack everyone else when you can take AoOs.
It is useful on rounds where you are setting up for some other tactic but conserving your resources, or at times when you want to absorb attacks and draw attention from your allies. Let's not make this the Total Defense thread though.

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Jon Otaguro 428 wrote:I find total defense extremely useful. I use it at least once in almost every game. It really depends on your tactics.Sometimes I get the feeling the developers are out of touch with the way the game is played by a lot of people.
Sure it sounds cool to base crane wing and riposte on total defense, but the reality is that the part of those feats that depends on total defense will be ignored the vast majority of the time. I can't remember the last time anyone in our group other than my cohort went into total defense - and really she does nothing most of the time so that just means doing nothing with some AC boost.
I've used it before with my monk, mainly to hold a bottlenecked corridor or advance on the monsters when a standard move action won't reach them. Most of the time, though, I am ignored in the latter case.

MrSin |

MrSin wrote:Point is, as someone who runs a non-PFS game, I need to either let my party get away with using Crane Style to out-defend monsters, or step up the monsters to the point where I'm doing one of three things:Samuel Stone wrote:If I remember correctly, its the GMs job to keep the game balanced, not the game.Marthkus wrote:Your comment just highlights how silly it is to be nerfing martialsSpeaking as a GM, this buffs my martial monsters. I've taken to throwing more and more casters at the party because of the Crane Style feat chain, just to keep combat interesting.
Actually, as a GM you have a lot of options. You can also use houserules! Le gasp~. You can talk with your players about things too. Communication goes a long way. You might convince them of a change, you might come to an agreement of how often it should be used, come up with a good houserule. You have a lot of options beyond doing behind the screen buffing or just stripping someone of what they have.
Probably a bit off topic at this point though.

Darth Grall |

It's different. I'm not sure that you can make the case that it is definitely, mathematically inferior.
Let's compare a Fighting Defensively with Crane vs Combat Expertise. Assuming level 5, since that's when most will get Crane Wing.
Monk 1 has Wing, and is Fighting Defensively. She is taking:
-2 AB for, +4 AC(w/ 3 Ranks) and potentiall +8 if she picks the right attack. She paid 3 Feats to do so(Dodge, Crane, Wing) and 3 skill Ranks.
Monk 2 has Combat Expertise instead. She takes:
-2 AB for, +2 AC. Only cost her a single feat. She now has 2 free feats to spend, and 3 additional skill ranks to spend.
With those additional resources you can up your AB with a weapon focus(meaning you're -1 for +2 AC for cost). Take another AC boosting feat. Take any number of the feats that you'd use Combat Expertise as a stepping stone for. Apply those precious skill ranks somewhere else, since Monks don't really need it due to the ability to pump Ki into an acrobatics check. Keep in mind the AC bonus will just get higher as your AB does, might as well just concentrate on boosting that.
You might not agree with me, but for cost, it's definitely weaker now.
Edit: Just saw your reply. Consider though Snake style. It's not unreasonable that you might have a Sense motive of +13 at level 5. That will be rolled against both ranged or melee attacks. That will only get better as you put more ranks into it.

gnomersy |
Folks, if this is going to devolve into a martial vs caster debate this thread will be locked in the very near future. This errata was for Ultimate Combat... which is mostly about martial characters. Thats all there is to it. Anyone looking for some sort of grand conspiracy can look elsewhere.
(removed a few posts on this matter)
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
If you want we can compare this to another 3 feat value chain on another martial character like saaaaay iunno Greater beast totem which is already at least as good as the crane style chain if not better and you let me take that line as a monk and you can have Crane style.

Sub_Zero |

MrSin wrote:Samuel Stone wrote:If I remember correctly, its the GMs job to keep the game balanced, not the game.Marthkus wrote:Your comment just highlights how silly it is to be nerfing martialsSpeaking as a GM, this buffs my martial monsters. I've taken to throwing more and more casters at the party because of the Crane Style feat chain, just to keep combat interesting.Point is, as someone who runs a non-PFS game, I need to either let my party get away with using Crane Style to out-defend monsters, or step up the monsters to the point where I'm doing one of three things:
1. Add in more caster enemies
2. Give monsters more iterative attacks/add in more monsters
3. Give monsters Crane Style (which feels goofy and nerfs the party martials)I'm not a fan of any of those three options, as they mean that if I drop the monk, the rest of the party is easy prey. Honestly, the easiest way I see to keep the game balanced is to eliminate (or alter) the Crane Style feat chain.
except there are way more then 3 ways to deal with the old crane wing. They've been mentioned many times on the here already. So I'm not sure how constructive your point is when you've arbitrarily picked 3 ways to deal with the problem that you don't like.

MrSin |
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MrSin wrote:It is useful on rounds where you are setting up for some other tactic but conserving your resources, or at times when you want to absorb attacks and draw attention from your allies. Let's not make this the Total Defense thread though.Erick Wilson wrote:I find total defense extremely useful. I use it at least once in almost every game. It really depends on your tactics.How so? How is extremely useful and why? Usually killing people keeps you from being hit more than not hitting them at all, and you are easy to ignore and its easier to attack everyone else when you can take AoOs.
Umm... martials don't have many, if any, resources. That's part of why you play a martial. When was the last time you ran out of full attacks? You tend to use more because everyone else has to use more. And you don't absorb many unless you can force foes to attack you.
Total defense is very much a part of crane wing now. Its now the only way you get a deflection. Talking about when to use it sounds pretty on topic to me. Or not... Guess it depends on who responds sometimes.

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Heathansson wrote:Kudo's for this realistic rules change.Probably best not to bring up the realism argument. It really doesn't make much sense in a game with dragons and other things that make the square-cube law cry.
Yeah, but MMA fighters in a fantasy universe would make diamonds out of coal shoved up their butts and be able to falcon punch fireballs.
Ergo, the comparison has swag.
And much so, I might add.

Petrus222 |

To the dev's:
If you're going to revisit the errata may I suggest taking into account the number of pre-req's you need to get to crane wing (old or new) and compare the current version to the spells shield and mirror image.
You might also consider baselining the feat's power ability versus a magus who can cast those spells with a similar penalty to attack every round.

Jon Otaguro 428 |
MrSin wrote:It is useful on rounds where you are setting up for some other tactic but conserving your resources, or at times when you want to absorb attacks and draw attention from your allies. Let's not make this the Total Defense thread though.Erick Wilson wrote:I find total defense extremely useful. I use it at least once in almost every game. It really depends on your tactics.How so? How is extremely useful and why? Usually killing people keeps you from being hit more than not hitting them at all, and you are easy to ignore and its easier to attack everyone else when you can take AoOs.
Crane riposte can only be used when in total defense as the feats stand now. I believe this needs to change to make riposte a viable feat. Otherwise it goes into the trash can along with crane wing.

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Samuel Stone wrote:Point is, as someone who runs a non-PFS game, I need to either let my party get away with using Crane Style to out-defend monsters, or step up the monsters to the point where I'm doing one of three things:
1. Add in more caster enemies
2. Give monsters more iterative attacks/add in more monsters
3. Give monsters Crane Style (which feels goofy and nerfs the party martials)I'm not a fan of any of those three options, as they mean that if I drop the monk, the rest of the party is easy prey. Honestly, the easiest way I see to keep the game balanced is to eliminate (or alter) the Crane Style feat chain.
except there are way more then 3 ways to deal with the old crane wing. They've been mentioned many times on the here already. So I'm not sure how constructive your point is when you've arbitrarily picked 3 ways to deal with the problem that you don't like.
Could you point me to them (or list them)? It'd be a lot more helpful than telling me my issues with the feat are invalid.

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I have a flowing monk that relies on Crane Riposte to get AOO's. He is otherwise very weak offensively. He is very sad because of this errata.
From his perspective the -only- problem with this errata is that it kills his AOO output.
1. Because of the wording on the +4 bonus on the attack when fighting defensively, a miss obtained this way does not trigger crane riposte, which is the single most inconvenient thing about this errata. If the fighting defensively dodge bonus from crane wing was wodered to deflect the attackers strike, that would solve a ton of problems, I think.
I however know why you had to do this. Because you worded crane wing in such a way that you couldn't use it retroactively (as you could do previously), you can't treat the crane wing application as a deflection when fighting defensively, because then anytime someone attacks a monk and they miss on a crane wing, the monk would get an AOO even if the attack would have missed without the crane wing. The monk would basically spend a crane wing on any one attack to get free AOOs. I agree that would be kind of broken, so to get 1 to be reasonable you would have look at changing 2.
2. Not being able to retroactively apply the bonus is somewhat of a problem, mostly because it is annoying and doesn't really add any balancing factor to the ability.
Consider: If you have a super awesome monster that has one attack, well, it's a no brainer that you're going to use Crane Wing on its attack every time. In that situation, there's no difference between applying it before or after the attack.
Alternatively, if you have a creature with iterative attacks, well, the highest iterative is generally going to be at the start (with the possibile exception of natural attacks(?)). So most people will crane wing at the start where the target has the highest chance to hit. So basically on the attacks where they would have a lower chance to hit, they're going to often need a natural 20 to hit characters with high AC anyway. So I don't see much harm in allowing the crane wing to be applied retroactively.
The way it's worded solves the problem of deflecting natural 20's way too easily. I think it's pretty fair to reserve that benefit for a full defense.
But I, and I suspect others, would very much appreciate it if you would consider changing crane wing to do the following:
1. Allow a +4 dodge bonus to be applied once a round retroactively to an attack that would normally hit when fighting defensively.
2. If the use of crane wing while fighting defensively results in a miss against an attack that would have otherwise hit, please treat that as a deflection so Crane Riposte generates an AOO.
As it stands now, there is 0 reason to get Crane Riposte because people aren't going to attack you when you're in full defense and in crane stance because they'll know whats up.
Thanks, Jason!

Erick Wilson |
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As it stands now, there is 0 reason to get Crane Riposte because people aren't going to attack you when you're in full defense and in crane stance because they'll know whats up.
I don't think this should be the case. Not every monster is a super genius, and they shouldn't all be played as master tacticians. If you leap into the middle of a group of bandits and go into total defense while your friends are all hanging back, the bandits should attack you, because they totally would do that. I understand this is a tricky subject, but GMs shouldn't be wrecking the effectiveness of feats by giving their monsters meta-knowledge of the way those feats work. The Panther Style tree is similarly wrecked by GMs that operate this way.

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Cameron Ackerman wrote:I don't think this should be the case. Not every monster is a super genius, and they shouldn't all be played as master tacticians. If you leap into the middle of a group of bandits and go into total defense while your friends are all hanging back, the bandits should attack you, because they totally would do that. I understand this is a tricky subject, but GMs shouldn't be wrecking the effectiveness of feats by giving their monsters meta-knowledge of the way those feats work. The Panther Style tree is similarly wrecked by GMs that operate this way.As it stands now, there is 0 reason to get Crane Riposte because people aren't going to attack you when you're in full defense and in crane stance because they'll know whats up.
A reasonable counterpoint! But I think if it's only effective against stupid monsters, that's a touch too situational to be cost effective.

Darth Grall |

Could you point me to them (or list them)? It'd be a lot more helpful than telling me my issues with the feat are invalid.
Let one count the ways:
-Ranged Attacks(which everyone notes is vastly superior to melee anyways)
-Fienting(Shuts down their AC bonus & Deflection entirely)
-Spells
-Multiple Attacks/Attackers
-Combat Manuevers
-Ignore them(With reduced AB & High AC, attacking anyone else just makes sense with limited resources)
Pretty much the only thing this was good against was single melee guys at low level. Which I get is in a lot of APs, but still isn't that amazing.

K177Y C47 |

Cameron Ackerman wrote:I don't think this should be the case. Not every monster is a super genius, and they shouldn't all be played as master tacticians. If you leap into the middle of a group of bandits and go into total defense while your friends are all hanging back, the bandits should attack you, because they totally would do that. I understand this is a tricky subject, but GMs shouldn't be wrecking the effectiveness of feats by giving their monsters meta-knowledge of the way those feats work. The Panther Style tree is similarly wrecked by GMs that operate this way.As it stands now, there is 0 reason to get Crane Riposte because people aren't going to attack you when you're in full defense and in crane stance because they'll know whats up.
Except do you know what total defense is?
Total defense is putting yourself in a OBVIOUSLY protective/defensive stance... You are not threating in the least... So therefore, unless they had animalistic intelligence, they would probably ignore him...

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Crane Wing wrote:
-Benefit: Once per round, when fighting defensively or using total defense with at least one hand free, you can attempt to deflect one melee attack that would otherwise hit you. The attacker suffers a -4 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack misses as a result of the penalty, it is deflected, dealing no damage and having no other effect (instead treat it as a miss). You do not expend an action when using this feat, but you must be aware of the attack and not flat-footed.
I think this is a fantastic idea!

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Quoted from another thread:
Jason Bulmahn wrote:Like the crane style feat is very personal, easily foiled by spells and lots of other tactics and mostly used by a class known to pose little threat in combat.
No specifically, but mirror image is a known quantity for us. It is range personal, easily foiled by some relatively common spells, brought down on a miss, and generally limited to a pair of character classes that are not exactly known for rushing into combat.
The spell also has a daily limit, high opportunity costs competing for those slots, verbal/somatic components, provokes AoO etc. Comparing caster tools to mundane tools directly like this is not helpful.

Aelryinth RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 |
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Sub_Zero wrote:Could you point me to them (or list them)? It'd be a lot more helpful than telling me my issues with the feat are invalid.Samuel Stone wrote:Point is, as someone who runs a non-PFS game, I need to either let my party get away with using Crane Style to out-defend monsters, or step up the monsters to the point where I'm doing one of three things:
1. Add in more caster enemies
2. Give monsters more iterative attacks/add in more monsters
3. Give monsters Crane Style (which feels goofy and nerfs the party martials)I'm not a fan of any of those three options, as they mean that if I drop the monk, the rest of the party is easy prey. Honestly, the easiest way I see to keep the game balanced is to eliminate (or alter) the Crane Style feat chain.
except there are way more then 3 ways to deal with the old crane wing. They've been mentioned many times on the here already. So I'm not sure how constructive your point is when you've arbitrarily picked 3 ways to deal with the problem that you don't like.
He's ignoring the fact that all of those ways work against EVERYONE.
It's the fact that single attacks don't work against the Crane Chain, and the player can basically devolve fights down to single attacks.
They are: Spells. Gee, spells don't work against other melee? (Answer: Of Course they do.)
Ranged Attacks. Gee, ranged attacks don't work against other Melee? (Answer: Of course they do.)
Grapple. Gee, everyone has improved Grab/grapple? (Answer: Of course they don't. One AoO later, they take damage AND no grapple against my high CMD.)
Mooks. Gee, Mooks can hit my high AC? They are MOOKS. (Answer: Of course they can't hit me.)
Multiple Attacks. Gee, I can't use positioning, tactics to control how many attacks my enemies get? (Answer: Of course I can, and do.)
In short, the arguments come down to: Yes, you can use attacks that are effective against all melee characters (ranged and spells) OR use things that are ineffective (mooks, grapple, and melee) against a Crane Chain user.
Crane Style is not used mostly by monks. It's used mostly by one weapon fighters, possibly with a monk dip.
Crane style is not a finesse style. You have to have the hand free on your OFF TURN to use it. It is the PERFECT style for a 2hF using a scimitar, long sword or bastard sword...he simply lets go at the end of the turn.
Crane is not a one handed weapon fighter style. It's a style that benefits those who get a free hand. That's open hand, one hand, and using one handed weapons 2handed.
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The Monk with Expertise also has to spend point buy on a 13 Int. That right there will swear most off of using Expertise vs Crane Wing. Having to drop your wis or dex bonus a point to afford that 13 Int is going to crush the example.
==Aelryinth