That's not what it does anymore, though. The new Deflect Melee is far less effective: It only works if you pick the right one of the incoming attacks to deflect, the attack is not a natural 20, the attack would not have missed anyway, and his attack roll was not so high that +4 AC wouldn't have helped.
So it's not often going to stop an actual attack, and will more likely just be a fiddly way to retaliate against someone who misses you in melee.
And for that I could just take Snake Style, which has the added bonus of taking two fewer feats (No Dodge, use MoMS to skip Snake Sidewind) and the ability to retaliate against every missed attack until you run out of AoO's.
Snake Fang nerf incoming?
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I know which combo I would take.
I do too, if I were building for sheer power.
It would be c. "take a third option" and I'd build a focused archer and obliterate the creature before it even rolled an attack at all. You don't have to worry about having your attacks deflected when your monster is dead before its turn comes up.
Or I'd play a wizard and lock the creature in a corner behind a wall of force while we kill all its buddies. Wall of Force is a lot better at blocking melee attacks than Crane Wing ever was.
Or I'd play that magus and cast Mirror Image with spell combat. Which is actually probably a lot less OP than either of the above, albeit still I think it is likely more powerful than Crane Wing. Mirror Image runs out eventually, but it has a lot more defensive burst potential (the ability to block many attacks in a single round), it doesn't require awareness of the attack, can be prebuffed whereas Crane doesn't work until you've gotten into combat and gotten a chance to start fighting defensively...
and it costs a lot fewer feats.
asaaand with Mirror Image you actually have a chance at doing damage to the wizard with your one attack.
True. Albeit small. If you are a one big attack monster like Crane Wing causes problems for, you are probably taking two to three rounds to land an attack through Mirror Image. By which point you are not unlikely to be dead or close to it.
Yes, though, there are tradeoffs.
Mirror Image costs daily resources, eventually runs out but does not require awareness nor is particularly circumstance-dependent, and so may block fewer attacks over the course of an adventure but be much more effective during brief high intensity parts such as the final boss battle. At least at low levels. At higher levels, since it is only a second level spell and it has a pretty long duration, you may have it running for most of the adventuring day and just replace it when it runs out of images or duration.
Crane Wing costs build resources, never runs out but is circumstance and awareness-dependent, and is likely to be less impressive in high intensity situations since it can deflect only one attack at a time, but it may be more impressive in low intensity situations and easy fights or softening-up encounters.
Sometimes one will be better, another time the other will be.
Which is something getting completely overlooked in posts like this:
It is a fair comparison, the first I notice is that spell combat/Mirror Image requires you to expend a resource and incur numerous opportunity costs. You have to already have mirror image, and you have to have enough uses to last the entire combat. Also, mirror image has a chance of failure. So, in conclusion, pre-errata Crane Wing is so much better than spell combat/Mirror Image it's really hard to make a comparison in what ways specifically it's a problem.
by listing only the negative tradeoffs and listing none of the positive tradeoffs, and thus arriving at a biased conclusion.
I'm not entirely sure Crane Wing wasn't a bit too good - as I've said many a time. But you aren't going to arrive at an unbiased conclusion by literally listing only the things Crane Wing did better than Mirror Image, and none of the things it did worse, and then basing a conclusion on that.
In order to reach such a conclusion, you not only have to have a fair comparison to make, but you have to actually make it fairly.
Against a high intensity opponent, Mirror Image will last one round.
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Against a high intensity opponent, Mirror Image will last one round.
If it lasted only one round, then it blocked far more attacks in that one round than Crane Wing could have.
That's the other side of the coin.
true on the whole comparison point, but you are also ignoring the reality of playstyle and tactics.
A Crane Wing player is motivated to gain a high AC. That reduces the risk from all melee attacks, PARTICULARLY secondary attacks.
The primary attack, the most likely to hit him, is the enemy's best and most damage, and 100% ineffective.
Next, a player with cunning can keep an enemy down to 1 attack, except perhaps a hydra. He can be out of charge lanes (flying does this nicely), he can single attack and move to a corner, he can force the enemy to move, and with very few exceptions, they are limited to one attack when following.
This is again a win for Crane Wing, and it's a problem because of what Melee is, and how to take advantage of it. Crane Wing totally destroys a one attack fighting style, and a cunning player can virtually force that style, particularly if the rest of the group backs him up.
Addendum, swarming a high AC character with mooks is not going to be effective. He has a high AC. They aren't going to hit much, and he's going to neutralize one of them, and his own offense is unabated. They are going to die, and die easily. Melee toons LOVE mook encounters.
Third, Crane Wing does not do inferior damage. The character and his class features determine that. As I've pointed out numerous times, you can use a 2h style with Crane wing...just take your hand off the one-handed weapon you are 2h'ing at the end of your turn. You can wear heavy armor. You can use Power attack and have a high Str score. There's nothing stopping you from doing that.
Players complaining about lack of damage from their Crane Wing users do NOT have an argument. Using a finesse single weapon with Crane Wing sucks because using a finesse 1H weapon sucks, it has nothing to do with Crane Wing. Crane Wing works perfectly with 2H style. The dex-fighter class is not done well in PF, period, for damage output. Crane Wing has NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT.
Riposte just doubles your damage output. You limit the enemy to one attack, but you get two. And if you want to do great damage, you can do great damage, and 'going around you and ignoring you' are NOT something it wants to do.
This gets particularly bad if you have spring attack, and there's absolutely no way a non-pouncer will ever get more then one attack off you.
These are intelligent ways to play with the feat. Playing it as a pure tank at higher levels starts to get less and less effective, but using it to maximum tactical effect means that its power continues unabated into higher levels. Crane Wing becoming less effective is a function of the character's play style, not because of the feat. An intelligently played Crane Wing melee is a virtually unbeatable melee combatant all the way up the scale. Only when forced into an improper play style are they forced back to earth.
The other solutions: ranged, spells, etc, are not solutions. Those are generic ways to attack ANY melee. The problem with the Crane is they are now the ONLY EFFECTIVE way to address him, unlike other melee characters.
Building a melee who can walk into a melee encounter and ace it with no problem is a wonderful accomplishment for a PC. It is a hair-tearing, campaign-ending source of frustration for a GM who can no longer effectively challenge that PC without either obviating use of melee monsters, or completely catering to non-melee to attack that character...which now renders his accomplishments null and void.
It's not fun all the way around.
==Aelryinth
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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The comparison between mirror image and crane wing is silly.
Crane wing is reusable, and doesn't have to be cast.
Mirror Image takes up a 2nd level spell slot and becomes less effective as enemies hit, regardless of the number of attacks per turn.
Moreover, with Mirror Image, there's still a chance of hitting. Crane Wing was an automatic block.
Regardless of the merits of Crane Wing, Mirror Image is not a good comparison.
I understand how it could have been seen to be to powerful. The idea of some low level character defeating a T-rex single handedly was always weird. Yes I know GM's can avoid situations like that, but that does mean that the feat was fine as it was. I can avoid almost any situation and am more then capable of challenging any player I GM for. That doesn't mean everything in pathfinder is perfectly balanced does it?
Now having said that lets take a detailed look at crane wing.
Requirements:
- BAB +5 or monk level 5
- Dodge
- Improved unarmed strike
- Crane style
- Must have a hand free
- Must be fighting defensively or using total defense
Benefits if fighting defensively:
- gain a +4 AC bonus against a single attack that may or may not hit normally
or
Benefits if using total defense:
- block a single attack that would have hit
** "Hidden" cost - cannot attack that round or make any AoO
Out of curiosity, does anyone think that sounds worth taking? I have no problems with the idea that a change needed to be made but I respectfully disagree with the extent to which it was taken. Now I play a home game with house rules so I'll deal with it in my game however I see fit, but I thought I should express my opinion in the hopes that it will be changed to something that I will not feel the need to house rule.
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Well, i had been thinking about playing a duelist and/or free hand fighter recently as a defensive specialist. Guess its back to sword and board or two-hander only.
I guess they listened to some guys only playing casters and calling foul every time a martial does something useful.This type of comment annoys me because it so completely misses the point. Casters didn't care about Crane Wing. Why should they. The counter to Crane Wing is spells, so it makes Casters even more valuable as it was.
My point is that there is hardly alimit to what casters can do. But once matials have a strong option it becomes a problem. If there was a spell of 3rd+ level no one would really care because magic.
The ones complaining about the feat are GMs (mostly PFS).| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Regardless of the merits of Crane Wing, Mirror Image is not a good comparison.
Do you have a better one? I admit it is not perfect (and why should it be? Different characters get different abilities...). But I still feel like the way Crane Wing worked was closer to spell defenses than it was to anything else other than its ranged counterpart, Deflect Arrows.
If you end up making the large scale comparisons rather than the limited one, they you end up observing that most other classes can be made to blow the Crane Wing monk out of the water, they just do it with offense or spells rather than with defense.
These are intelligent ways to play with the feat. Playing it as a pure tank at higher levels starts to get less and less effective, but using it to maximum tactical effect means that its power continues unabated into higher levels. Crane Wing becoming less effective is a function of the character's play style, not because of the feat.
I feel like the playstyle you are proposing to break Crane Wing the most (Spring Attack and co.) is also the one that is least synergistic with being part of a party of four. It relies very much on considering only one character vs. one opponent... questionable in a four person party.
When you Spring Attack, you give up a lot of your ability to influence your foe's actions with AoOs, which is the basic building block of martial battlefield control. It's a similar though less drastic example of what happens when you spend your turns full defending as has been the new suggested course from a few of the PFS posters here.
Not saying it doesn't have its place... just saying it seems less crushing in a party setting than your one vs. one comparison would make it out, even in ideal circumstances. You give up more things to be a Spring Attacker at high levels than is listed in your analysis. Battlefield control influence is just one of them; there's speed, too, for example. Speed of damage dealing, which you are trading for your staying power, that is. Doing things in a reasonable number of rounds is a concern in a party game because if you don't, you'll probably end up, a few rounds in, ready to Spring Attack again at your great ratio of your attacks to theirs, until you realize the rest of your party has already wrapped things up because you aren't getting that many attacks per round in and the tide of the fight flowed on without you.
A Crane Wing player is motivated to gain a high AC. That reduces the risk from all melee attacks
[...]
It is a hair-tearing, campaign-ending source of frustration for a GM
This is part of where I feel like I have a different perspective than a lot of the guys discussing this feat, because it was actually my GM who first introduced it into our game and most strongly defended it in our group's internal discussions, rather than being a players vs. GM thing in the other direction.
He also commented (separately) that encouraging characters to invest in separate defenses that synergize well with one another (such as AC and a deflection) is something to be encouraged, not discouraged. This was while encouraging my 40 AC 15th level fighter to invest in a way to access mirror image. ;)
It does not seem to be a universal philosophy, however...
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you can 2h any weapon on your turn, releasing it at the end of the round; gain a +5 dodge bonus to ac with a -1 to hit; completely neutralize one attack that actually does manage to hit you; and gain an AoO against any melee attack you do neutralize, effectively doubling your damage output.==Aelryinth
How about closing that awful loophole that lets characters get all the benefits of fighting two handed and having a free hand at the same time. Is there even RAW support for such a glaring violation of the spirit of the rules?
How about closing that awful loophole that lets characters get all the benefits of fighting two handed and having a free hand at the same time. Is there even RAW support for such a glaring violation of the spirit of the rules?
you can 2h any weapon on your turn, releasing it at the end of the round; gain a +5 dodge bonus to ac with a -1 to hit; completely neutralize one attack that actually does manage to hit you; and gain an AoO against any melee attack you do neutralize, effectively doubling your damage output.==Aelryinth
There is, yes. It can be difficult to avoid some issues when you break theoretically contemporaneous actions up into turns and adjudicate them in strict order.
In real time, what would be happening of course is that player A and monster B are battling each other at the same time, trading blows.
In turn-based time, it's difficult to work in nods to simultaneity, so you do all six of your attacks two handed, then meet all six of his attacks with one hand off your weapon, as if they were happening at different times.
The same way that if two characters both run 120' in the same direction during the same round, they are really running side by side (or close on each others' heels at least), but the round system will measure the distance between them as 120' after the first has taken his action but the second hasn't yet.
Not much to be done about it, really, it would be much more complicated than it's worth to address these sorts of things on a system wide level.
[/digression]
How about closing that awful loophole that lets characters get all the benefits of fighting two handed and having a free hand at the same time. Is there even RAW support for such a glaring violation of the spirit of the rules?
you can 2h any weapon on your turn, releasing it at the end of the round; gain a +5 dodge bonus to ac with a -1 to hit; completely neutralize one attack that actually does manage to hit you; and gain an AoO against any melee attack you do neutralize, effectively doubling your damage output.==Aelryinth
There is, yes. It can be difficult to avoid some issues when you break theoretically contemporaneous actions up into turns and adjudicate them in strict order.
In real time, what would be happening of course is that player A and monster B are battling each other at the same time, trading blows.
In turn-based time, it's difficult to work in nods to simultaneity, so you do all six of your attacks two handed, then meet all six of his attacks with one hand off your weapon, as if they were happening at different times.
Not much to be done about it, really, it would be much more complicated than it's worth to address these sorts of things on a system wide level.
Hm. Would there be unintended consequences to saying that if you attack 2 handed at any point during your turn, you do not have a free hand until the start of your next turn?
Probably. It's a complicated game. What if you take one swing then drop your sword, can you not draw a potion with your remaining move action because your hands are still full? :p
How about closing that awful loophole that lets characters get all the benefits of fighting two handed and having a free hand at the same time. Is there even RAW support for such a glaring violation of the spirit of the rules?
you can 2h any weapon on your turn, releasing it at the end of the round; gain a +5 dodge bonus to ac with a -1 to hit; completely neutralize one attack that actually does manage to hit you; and gain an AoO against any melee attack you do neutralize, effectively doubling your damage output.==Aelryinth
That "loophole" is not a problem, really.
You can't take free actions when it's not your turn (other than speaking, which is specifically called out as an exception), so if the character is using a 2-handed weapon, he doesn't threaten and therefore, can't make AoO at all. If he's using a 1-handed weapon with 2 hands, he loses the extra damage for fighting 2-handed (and 1 handed weapons have lower base damage too).
It's a fair trade, IMO.
Probably. It's a complicated game. What if you take one swing then drop your sword, can you not draw a potion with your remaining move action because your hands are still full? :p
Good point. Last thing we need is more rule complexity. I think a specific line in Crane Wing (maybe other style feats too) denying use of the feat while using a weapon 2 handed would be the most elegant way to destroy the loophole.
Coriat, I believe your posts are quite elegant in their explanations.
Unfortunately I seemed to have taken Skill Focus(Perform: Impassioned Speaking)
Building a melee who can walk into a melee encounter and ace it with no problem is a wonderful accomplishment for a PC. It is a hair-tearing, campaign-ending source of frustration for a GM who can no longer effectively challenge that PC without either obviating use of melee monsters, or completely catering to non-melee to attack that character...which now renders his accomplishments null and void.
It's not fun all the way around.
It's not the way I play either but it seems a number of people on the boards get their fun doing exactly that.
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It's not the way I play either but it seems a number of people on the boards get their fun doing exactly that.Building a melee who can walk into a melee encounter and ace it with no problem is a wonderful accomplishment for a PC. It is a hair-tearing, campaign-ending source of frustration for a GM who can no longer effectively challenge that PC without either obviating use of melee monsters, or completely catering to non-melee to attack that character...which now renders his accomplishments null and void.
It's not fun all the way around.
Odd... I GMed for 3 different players with CW in 3 different campaigns and I was never frustrated because I "couldn't" hit the player, even in encounters where I used mostly melee enemies... Nor did they feel I was nullifying their feat investment. And those character had high attributes too, so they were even more powerful than your average character.
CW takes 5 freaking feats to work... Or if you take MoMS, you delay your BAB, caster levels and class features by 2 levels... And you have to be Lawful. If you go full Monk, then you're a Monk with not FoB... so you'll hit enemies about as often as they'll hit you.
It's really not that much of a problem.
It's not the way I play either but it seems a number of people on the boards get their fun doing exactly that.Building a melee who can walk into a melee encounter and ace it with no problem is a wonderful accomplishment for a PC. It is a hair-tearing, campaign-ending source of frustration for a GM who can no longer effectively challenge that PC without either obviating use of melee monsters, or completely catering to non-melee to attack that character...which now renders his accomplishments null and void.
It's not fun all the way around.
The part that was boring for me was using the melee character if you'd believe it. So long as we're talking core mind you. Edit: looks like Heyyon talked a bit about it before I did. Ninja'd.
Odd... I GMed for 3 different players with CW in 3 different campaigns and I was never frustrated because I "couldn't" hit the player, even in encounters where I used mostly melee enemies... Nor did they feel I was nullifying their feat investment. And those character had high attributes too, so they were even more powerful than your average character.
For what its worth, I'm always happy to see people accomplish things, especially if its what they're goal was.
The saddest part of this thread is the realization for myself that my hopes for Pathfinder have been crushed. Balance issues between casters and martials will remain. Old paradigms will remain throughout Pathfinder.
I stopped having hope for that a long time ago.
Yes, ogrebattle is being 100% facetious with his posts, but he does point out some pretty amusing things
That's a divine straight face though. I can't tell if its true or false!(okay, so I can't see his face or hear his tone, but I'm guessing!)
I assume play-testing will also involve the interactions of Mythic Vital Strike and the new style CraneWing on Martial survivability in Mythic adventures. Mooks with Mythic Vital Strike are a very real threat (character death) and Crane Wing was one of three? main ways to mitigate that risk
auto deflecting Thor hammer is .... Wrong.
Then the old Norse stories about Thor are... wrong.
(Tell that to Skrýmir).
"When he saw that this work might not avail, then he became angered, gripped the hammer Mjöllnir in both hands, and strode with great strides to that place where Skrýmir lay, and smote him in the head. Skrýmir awoke, and asked whether a leaf had fallen upon his head; or whether they had eaten and were ready for bed? Thor replied that they were just then about to go to sleep; then they went under another oak. It must be told thee, that there was then no fearless sleeping. At midnight Thor heard how Skrýmir snored and slept fast, so that it thundered in the woods; then he stood up and went to him, shook his hammer eagerly and hard, and smote down upon the middle of his crown: he saw that the face of the hammer sank deep into his head. And at that moment Skrýmir awoke arid said: 'What is it now? Did some acorn fall on my head? Or what is the news with thee, Thor?' But Thor went back speedily, and replied that he was then but new-wakened; said that it was then midnight, and there was yet time to sleep.
"Thor meditated that if he could get to strike him a third blow, never should the giant see himself again; he lay now and watched whether Skrýmir were sleeping soundly yet. A little before day, when he perceived that Skrýmir must have fallen asleep, he stood up at once and rushed over to him, brandished his hammer with all his strength, and smote upon that one of his temples which was turned up. But Skrýmir sat up and stroked his cheek, and said: 'Some birds must be sitting in the tree above me; I imagined, when I awoke, that some dirt from the twigs fell upon my head
[...]
"Then said Útgardi-Loki: 'Now I will tell thee the truth, now that thou art come out of the castle; and if I live and am able to prevail, then thou shalt never again come into it. And this I know, by my troth! that thou shouldst never have come into it, If I had known before that thou haddest so much strength in thee, and that thou shouldst so nearly have had us in great peril. But I made ready against thee eye-illusions; and I came upon you the first time in the wood, and when thou wouldst have unloosed the provision-bag, I had bound it with iron, and thou didst not find where to undo it. But next thou didst smite me three blows with the hammer; and the first was least, and was yet so great that it would have sufficed to slay me, if it had come upon me. Where thou sawest near my hall a saddle-backed mountain, cut at the top into threesquare dales, and one the deepest, those were the marks of thy hammer. I brought the saddle-back before the blow, but thou didst not see that."
Well Thor is a martial....
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Well Thor is a martial....
I wish my martial came heralded by lightning.
Well Thor is a martial....I wish my martial came heralded by lightning.
With the right gear selection, it wouldn't be hard.
With the right gear selection, it wouldn't be hard.Well Thor is a martial....I wish my martial came heralded by lightning.
Yeah! you just need to make up custom things the game doesn't support with core. Also it would have nothing to do with you being an awesome martial. You can make it up, which isn't a bad thing, but it really has nothing to do with being an awesome martial(and nothing for it in core).
Well Thor is a martial....
Please. Its quite obvious the amount of shocking grasp spell strike going on with Thor.
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Well Thor is a martial....
Thor is a cleric. Captain America is a martial. They are both the same level.
The saddest part of this thread is the realization for myself that my hopes for Pathfinder have been crushed. Balance issues between casters and martials will remain. Old paradigms will remain throughout Pathfinder.
Oh yeah. You need to kill that hope, pronto. Not sure if you played 3.5, but Pathfinder did A LOT to bridge the caster/martial power gap. But I don't think they ever planned to bridge it that much more than they already did in the Core. That disparity is part of the legacy of D&D that we are left with, and it is never going to go away entirely. You might honestly check out 4e if caster/martial balance is a central issue for you.
But seriously, this is just something we all have to face regarding this game. In my home games, I don't allow any of the classes with full 9 level spell progression. For a while, I tried allowing them in with fewer ability buy points, but they were still too strong. So now I just ban them unless I know the player very well and I'm pretty sure that they are experienced enough (or inexperienced enough) that I can trust them not to play the class optimally.
This is, in many ways, a matter of taste. I prefer to play martial characters and I prefer to GM for them. I find the tactics involved more interesting, and I find it's a lot easier to maintain balance among the PCs when full casters just are not in the mix. Now, that said, plenty of people (obviously) love them. And that's fine. It doesn't matter if the martial PCs in the party are less strong, as long as the players of those PCs don't mind. And many don't. Similarly, many GMs love rising to the challenge of immensely powerful PCs, and exploring just how far above normal CR the party can go. That's fine too.
But this is where PFS becomes central to this, and all such discussions. In PFS, the challenge level is fixed, and it's possible to create characters that exceed that challenge level without breaking a sweat. You can do this with both martial and caster characters. The thing about the casters is that they seem designed to do it, which strikes a lot of us as strange. You have to do some serious fiddling around with most martial builds to get them there, especially if you are like me and your favorite classes are Monk and Rogue. This is why the devs look at that fiddling, when it gets very strong, and go "whoa, this wasn't supposed to happen," whereas they don't have that reaction to casters because with them it was always thus.
We all have to accept that there is no way around this disparity. The nearest thing I can see to a solution is to provide scaling challenge ratings for PFS mods, which I have been pushing for. But I acknowledge that doing so will cause its own set of problems.
But yes, the problem is intractable. With the level of customization available to characters, home games only work properly when the GM has unlimited ability to adjust challenge rating. Organized play, however, only makes sense when GMs have no or very limited ability to do so. The big problem I see is that the devs seem to refuse to acknowledge the dimensions of this problem as I have just detailed them, probably because it's totally catastrophic. And I get that. But ignoring the problem or pretending it doesn't exist, or that it's not as big as it is, is never going to render a solution.
So what, you ask, is that solution? Well, I don't know. But I know it begins with acknowledging the vast power disparity that can exist between characters given optimization options, and that exists inherently between certain classes. Then we go from there. Maybe this means having different "modes" of play in PFS, such as (as mentioned) variable difficulty modes, or tables where casters are or are not allowed. Again, I don't know the answer. All I know is we have to start asking the question in a meaningful way, or else just accept the fleas with the dog and move on.
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Regardless of the merits of Crane Wing, Mirror Image is not a good comparison.Do you have a better one?
No. And that's the problem. The closest comparison I can think of is 3.5's Epic Dodge:
Epic Dodge [Epic]
Prerequisites
Dex 25, Dodge, Tumble 30 ranks, improved evasion, defensive roll class feature.Benefit
Once per round, when struck by an attack from an opponent you have designated as the object of your dodge, you may automatically avoid all damage from the attack.
Does that ring any alarm bells for you?
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Does that ring any alarm bells for you?
Epic rules weren't meant to be balanced last I checked. Its also still not as nice as quickened mirror image from an epic level mage imo, but that's another story altogether.
caster/martial power gap.
Lets not talk about this. Its not going to help talk about crane wing, there is a lot to talk about inside of it, and a lot of people are horrifically ill informed.
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Well, I guess I'm retiring my monk character now. Three feats have been rendered pointless thanks to this "improvement."
I threw my monk character sheet into the trash over this "improvement" as well. Crane wing in no way comes close to mirror image or even better fly. Both of which a wizard will have at 5th level.
caster/martial power gap.Lets not talk about this. Its not going to help talk about crane wing, there is a lot to talk about inside of it, and a lot of people are horrifically ill informed.
I get what you're saying. But the complaints about Crane Wing's errata are like 75% or more a result of the psychic dissonance that arises from the caster/martial disparity. It's just hard to discuss beyond a certain point without addressing that.
It they at least allow you to get Crane Riposte from any attack that misses you, once per round, i would think this change is ok.
If they leave at it is it will simple make most people playing it on PFS underpowered and feat taxed.
Unfortunally monks needs this tree to have viable AC, so over taxing the feat tree with unusable abilities isnt good.
+4 AC on one attack ok, but allow Riposte to be done once per round on ANY attack that misses you... since its an openning on you get on a failed attack.
Simple solution, Nerf Wings, but dont destroy Riposte and the entire feat tree.
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Ok, Finally Got through page 20.
First some info.
A.) I only GM.
B.) I only GM Non-AP stuff in a personally created world.
C.) I do homebrew, however I would say my games are about 95% RAW or as close as I can make them. An example of home brew I use is a Paladin Kit. My largest homebrew to date is a rewrite and stream lining of the Magic Item creation rules.
D.) I believe that a stable and fair ruleset is the key to giving players the confidence that even during the most difficult moments they can succeed.
E.) My player group has extremely different levels of optimization capability and system mastery, however all of the players work together and know that I am willing to help so as to make their concept live up to what they want.
With all of that said, I have a few things I would like to add.
1.) I think this Errata was completely unneeded. I have GM'ed for multiple Crane Wing PC's over several different games and have never found them more threatening than Say a Beast Totem Barbarian, A well built Fighter, or honestly any other non-Monk/rogue that has been optimized. This is obviously anecdotal evidence but I would love to have some links to the builds that allow for a crane wing character to deal damage equal to say 75-80% of a Offensive focused martial.
It is great if people post stories of "Well, gosh Crane wing let me survive and poke to death these guys after my whole party was dead/fled/useless", however I find it hard to believe that that ability is useful in more situations than the ability to do a larger and significantly more, i.e. ending fights a round or two earlier, amount of damage.
2.) I also am seeing a lot of "Well Crane Wing lets you have your cake and eat it to, as you can just take your hand off your Two-handed weapon at the end of your turn and gain its benefits."
This is true if you are wielding a one-handed weapon in two hands, however it is not true if you are wielding a two-handed weapon. You will lose your ability to AoO unless you have IUS. You will also even if able to AoO via IUS lose the benefits of your weapons properties and any weapon/group specific feats or abilities you possess.
In short I see crane wing as a boon to one-hand wielders or unarmed fighters and honestly just do not see this as a problem, as the only good one hander is really Falcata. Otherwise you are sacrificing either Nodachi or Greatsword damage. This means Crane wing on top of its prerequisites and costs ensures you are either paying another feat for Falacta or using a non-optimal weapon.
3.) The last thing about this that irks me is people saying that MoMS is no problem to dip into. If you are any kind of caster the loss of two caster levels is an extreme problem. If you are a fighter then you delay access to Fighter only feats and also to weapon training. The only ones who do not suffer that much are Monk and Rogue...
I personally think that this is not a problem due to the problematic nature of these classes as is.
Please understand that I am very math and rule oriented, so if you would like to directly refute what I am saying I would love some hard math and rules quotes, not to be a jerk but simply because that is how my mind works.
Tl;DR: I think Crane Wing was fine as it was due to its costs. I honestly don't even have a problem with MoMS + CW.
Thor is a cleric. Captain America is a martial. They are both the same level.Well Thor is a martial....
Bahahaha! This is the best caster/martial disparity metaphor I've ever seen.