Crane Wing Errata in latest printing


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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RJGrady wrote:
Coriat wrote:
Netopalis wrote:
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:

Quote:


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?

And yet Mirror Image is a thing that is actually in Pathfinder. So it remains an actually better comparison.

But yes, it is the problem. There ought to be more [combat] feats that do the same kind of thing Crane Style used to do - compete meaningfully with a spell on the spell's own ground. Even if they didn't strike the balance of competition exactly right with Crane Wing, if more like this existed, we could not only have more fun with martial guys, but judge the balance of such feats better too! ;)

As for the epic book, that's not the only time you can find an epic feat from that book that is comparable in balance to a normal feat in Pathfinder. Compare 3.0 epic Armor Skin to Pathfinder nonepic Improved Natural Armor. Exactly the same benefit.

So no, it doesn't inherently ring an alarm. Different game, different balance.


My grandmother had been cooking cookies for about 60 years now and she's freaking terrible at it, despite having two cooks in the family.

Just saying.


To be fair, 3.5 Core was worse than Pathfinder core on simple balance evaluation, and some if not all of the Pathfinder martial classes (the more magical ones, admittedly) are a lot closer to the spellcasters than their 3.5 counterparts, at least on combat power grounds.

Some martial classes benefited a lot from later book creep.

Kind of the same thing that has been happening with, say, barbarians and the APG in Pathfinder. One may still hope the day for fighters, monks and rogues will come.


Coriat wrote:

To be fair, 3.5 Core was worse than Pathfinder core on simple balance evaluation, and some if not all of the Pathfinder martial classes (the more magical ones, admittedly) are a lot closer to the spellcasters than their 3.5 counterparts, at least on combat power grounds.

Some martial classes benefited a lot from later book creep...

Sure, but even by the end of 3.5 there was literally nothing that martial characters could do that casters couldn't be proven to do better, in pretty much every metric. That just isn't true anymore to the same degree. I suppose Book of Nine Swords made a big difference, but that came right at the end and you could still make casters that were better than adepts.


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Erick, even considering that, it dont justify making the feats noobtraps.

It wasnt just a nerf to Crane Wing... it was a nerf to 3 feats, since the tree is linked.

I agree it was powerful and i dont like thinks that make other things obsolete (not entering the spell discussion here).

But Crane Riposte is unusable right now. Total defense is an emergency button, not a fighting tactic. Riposte need to me reworded to be more worth the IMMENSE investment and prerequisites.

If you can proc it on a melee miss on you, something like Snake Fang, than ok, we reached something reasonable.

As it is, it fixed nothing, it changed a problem into another, as bad if not worse.

Its not fun to overpower a PFS scenario, ok, but is even less fun to have your character made unusable and the entire party will also suffer to have to "carry" a weak character.


RafaelBraga wrote:

Erick, even considering that, it dont justify making the feats noobtraps.

It wasnt just a nerf to Crane Wing... it was a nerf to 3 feats, since the tree is linked.

I agree it was powerful and i dont like thinks that make other things obsolete (not entering the spell discussion here).

But Crane Riposte is unusable right now. Total defense is an emergency button, not a fighting tactic. Riposte need to me reworded to be more worth the IMMENSE investment and prerequisites.

If you can proc it on a melee miss on you, something like Snake Fang, than ok, we reached something reasonable.

As it is, it fixed nothing, it changed a problem into another, as bad if not worse.

Its not fun to overpower a PFS scenario, ok, but is even less fun to have your character made unusable and the entire party will also suffer to have to "carry" a weak character.

Not arguing with you. Although Crane Wing was OP (or at least highly problematic due to the way it broke with existing resolution conventions), the errata leaves a lot to be desired.

My Monk that had Crane Style (along with Snake and Panther) was essentially invulnerable in PFS play. That's a problem, and I started making my PFS characters much less powerful after retiring her. On the other hand, had I still been playing her when this change came along, I would have been...annoyed, to say the least.

In my opinion, whenever they make an errata like this, PFS players should be able to do a rebuild on any character that was affected. Personally, I think they ought to be able to rebuild from the ground up, but at the very least they ought to be able to replace the errated feats, if they so choose. It's the fair thing to do.


I look at Crane Wing and I think about the design concept beyond magic casting.

Bad early, amazingly powerful later on.

Crane Wing is the reverse since it's essentially a martial tool so it should function at it's best the earliest you get it.


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LoneKnave wrote:

My grandmother had been cooking cookies for about 60 years now and she's freaking terrible at it, despite having two cooks in the family.

Just saying.

Tell her to bake the cookies instead. That'll probably help.


Scavion wrote:


To me this ultimately comes down to, as a Martial, and part of what being Martial means at low levels, do we all need to be pigeonholed into huge offensive builds that kill everything in one hit like they do at low levels?

Or can we take pride in being unhittable instead at low levels?

Since we know there are two parts to playing a Martial. Hitting and not getting hit. Does one need to be emphasized over the other? If we choose to build around the second notion should we be punished for it through errata? Because that's what it feels like. A nice defensive option that in the grand scheme of things is fairly balanced was nerfed to beyond usefulness.

I completely agree with your sentiment, in theory. What I have observed recently though is that defensive builds have actually become just as problematic as offensive builds, if not moreso (at least in PFS play). And they're often more frustrating to GMs. At least with offensive builds, you can occasionally get in a few licks on them and feel like you accomplished something. But a strong defensive build will dance around you all day, and it honestly feels like being taunted.

The trouble is it's so easy to break AC beyond the point of being hittable. My monk and my friend's bard/paladin were great examples. We'd play in a game together and absolutely infuriate GMs. Our ACs (including touch) were unhittable, our saves were sky-high, we both had evasion and we were highly mobile. Oh, and of course we both had Crane Wing. Our damage output wasn't astronomical (relatively speaking), but it was still very solid. And honestly when nothing can hurt you, you don't need to do insane amounts of damage. You can take your time.

It's truly very hard to deal with builds like this without dramatically exceeding CR or else using highly specific and targeted tactics, and to many people's way of thinking the game is broken at the point where this is the case. Certainly it's impossible in PFS. So I fully understand the frustration that Crane feats specifically, and defensive builds generally, create.


Erick Wilson wrote:


Not arguing with you. Although Crane Wing was OP (or at least highly problematic due to the way it broke with existing resolution conventions), the errata leaves a lot to be desired.

My Monk that had Crane Style (along with Snake and Panther) was essentially invulnerable in PFS play. That's a problem, and I started making my PFS characters much less powerful after retiring her. On the other hand, had I still been playing her when this change came along, I would have been...annoyed, to say the least.

In my opinion, whenever they make an errata like this, PFS players should be able to do a rebuild on any character that was affected. Personally, I think they ought to be able to rebuild from the ground up, but at the very least they ought to be able to replace the errated feats, if they so choose. It's the fair thing to do.

And thats exactly the problem... if an errata made the feat useless it is as toxic as the original. I dont want, or need, to have an invulnerable character, but have a good option to make an cool martial artists, with counterattacks and all, is one of the very few things a monk or one handed fighter(magus) get to be interested in envolving the martial part of the character... the riposte of crane riposte was awesome to my magus and made the Myrmach archetype focusing more on the "martial" part of the magus than on the "wizard" part interesting.

(note that except staff magus, no one ever pick an magus archetype because all of them trade the most OP ability of the class(arcane recall) but i always wanted to build a viable warrior-mage and Myrmach offered exactly that)

They really need to rethink this errata to not make another Prone Shooter Fiasco.


Cairen Weiss wrote:
LoneKnave wrote:

My grandmother had been cooking cookies for about 60 years now and she's freaking terrible at it, despite having two cooks in the family.

Just saying.

Tell her to bake the cookies instead. That'll probably help.

Maybe she couldn't deal with the transition from 2nd Ed. cookies to 3rd. Ed. cookies?


Lemmy wrote:
Cairen Weiss wrote:
LoneKnave wrote:

My grandmother had been cooking cookies for about 60 years now and she's freaking terrible at it, despite having two cooks in the family.

Just saying.

Tell her to bake the cookies instead. That'll probably help.
Maybe she couldn't deal with the transition from 2nd Ed. cookies to 3rd. Ed. cookies?

Maybe you all are just picky about cookies? (no metaphor here, I just want you to lay off some nice old woman's cookies)


LoneKnave wrote:


So it's crazy imbalanced, except if you consider about 90% of the content?

I think it's closer to 40% or 50%, but yeah, that's about the size of it. Casters are just better and they're going to go on being better. But aside from this, check out the thread marthkus started. It gives a pretty lucid explanation of some of the other factors making Crane Wing problematic.

Shadow Lodge

Erick Wilson wrote:

My Monk that had Crane Style (along with Snake and Panther) was essentially invulnerable in PFS play. That's a problem, and I started making my PFS characters much less powerful after retiring her. On the other hand, had I still been playing her when this change came along, I would have been...annoyed, to say the least.

In my opinion, whenever they make an errata like this, PFS players should be able to do a rebuild on any character that was affected. Personally, I think they ought to be able to rebuild from the ground up, but at the very least they ought to be able to replace the errated feats, if they so choose. It's the fair thing to do.

First off (and I can't say this enough) PFS is very easy, it's made for the average player and it's quite easy to accidentally break it with a moderately powerful character. Using it as a test-bed is a bad idea, although I know why they do it, structure and all that. Alas it seems that the way PFS goes so does the rest of Paizo, for better or worse. :-/

That being said I've GM'd and played enough PFS to say that while CW was good, it's by no means all-powerful. Leave it to Monk's and it's fine, it's when people do a 2 level MMoS dip to get it that it can become an issue. And again that appears to be only with PFS, and even then it's workable. I've both played with it in home games, and GM'd people who had it, and it was by no means all-powerful.

Oh yeah you can retrain it in PFS, so I wouldn't worry about that. Although it's just the feats you can retrain, not everything, which can suck if you based an entire character off the feat chain. :-/


RJGrady wrote:
Coriat wrote:
Netopalis wrote:
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:

Quote:


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?

The people who wrote that book thought that +1 Natural Armor was worth an Epic feat.


Athaleon wrote:
RJGrady wrote:
Coriat wrote:
Netopalis wrote:
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:

Quote:


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?
The people who wrote that book thought that +1 Natural Armor was worth an Epic feat.

But it could stack...


Felix Gaunt wrote:


That being said I've GM'd and played enough PFS to say that while CW was good, it's by no means all-powerful. Leave it to Monk's and it's fine, it's when people do a 2 level MMoS dip to get it that it can become an issue. And again that appears to be only with PFS (and even then it's workable), I've both played with it in home games, and GM'd people who had it, and it was by no means all-powerful.

Oh yeah you can retrain it in PFS, so I wouldn't worry about that. Although it's just the feats you can retrain, not everything, which can suck if you based an entire character off the feat chain. :-/

Neither of the two problematic characters I mentioned just dipped MoMS to get Crane Wing. My character ended as a Monk 8/Duelist 3, and my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 4/Rogue 2.

And yes you can pay a massive 15 prestige to retrain the 3 feats affected by this errata, but I for one would not be too excited about having to do that, especially at a relatively low level. But the second part of your statement was more important- typically your entire build is going to be based on a feat chain like this one, so retraining, cool as it is, may not help you much.


Erick Wilson wrote:
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.

My God. Why would he do that?

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Covent wrote:

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.

** spoiler omitted **

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...

#2 Note that IUS is required for Crane Wing, so yes, you have it. It's probably not going to be as high as your primary weapon, however.

Epic Dodge also required a 27th level character and you had to designate the target of your Dodge. If someone came up behind you and ganked you for 100 hp, too bad, so sad.

A 27th level power? Probably not. But, you'll notice it was not as good as Crane Wing.
------
I enjoy seeing the other side of the Spring Attack argument. Let's be clear here.

If you want to do great damage as a fighter or whatnot using Crane Wing, you can. Sure, it might take 5 feats. That's a 2-3 level delay on the To Hit and damage bandwagon. You can still take Weapon Focus/spec and all those other feats, if you're a fighter you're still going to get your Weapon Mastery, etc etc etc.

the disparity in martial power is not hugely significant, unless you automatically take an inferior fighting style which is going to suck with or without Crane Wing.

At later levels you will still have the stats and AC to be a tank and do battlefield control with AoO's...if that's what you want to do. At the same time, you'll be taking considerably less damage then the 2HW fighter next to you that is rocking out the damage, especially if the DM plays the monsters intelligently. Sure, he might be able to kill a monster faster...but odds are, you can TANK it better, if you need to.

==Aelryinth


Marthkus wrote:
Erick Wilson wrote:
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.
My God. Why would he do that?

It was a she, and she did it because it made that character diesel.

EDIT: Btw, I mistyped earlier. It was a Bard 5/Paladin 4/Rogue 2


Marthkus wrote:
Erick Wilson wrote:
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.
My God. Why would he do that?

I'm guessing party buffing archer paladin who needed an extra feat to make the build work. I can think of a few ways to make it viable. Not great, but interesting. Mostly a support character.


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If you aren't doing enough damage to keep an enemy focused on you, such as what offensive martials do, then any enemy with an intelligence score should be going after other characters instead.

What I keep seeing in the anecdotal evidence of people saying Crane Wing was too powerful in home games, is the GMs playing their characters like idiots.

If an NPC has survived long enough to reach ~7th level, then he's learned a thing or two about tactics and strategy, high intelligence score or not. If that character keeps attacking a wall he can't hurt, then he's an idiot. Especially if he's letting hat frail looking guy in robes sit over there casting spells at him.

In PFS, we see people dipping MoMS for early access to Crane Wing so they can use the feat against the mostly humanoid enemies that are being run by GMs who only have the option of "I attack" since that is how the characters are designed.

I'm not a super experienced GM, the first time I ran a game was ~4 years ago. I quickly learned that only using melee characters is a very poor design as it makes combat easy and predictable. At first, I started throwing in things like archers on rooftops or in trees, this made the combat more dynamic. Then I started having a mix of casters, melee and archers. This greatly improved the fight as the combats were now being used on three separate levels.

I never saw this much in PFS. The best scenario I ever saw involved an adept that had a couple of spells and some goblins as meat shields. The rest were simply a bunch of melee characters all charging the party, for the most part. Easy encounters that are easy to plan for and counter.

PFS strongly reminds me of video games. Once you learned the counter to an enemy in a game, it becomes very easy to reliably beat them.

Even non-RPG games have this issue. I recall the original Halo: Combat Evolved game and the hunters. At first, Hunters were a B*tch! to fight. Then I learned you could kill them with a single shot from a pistol. They became extremely easy to fight and almost a non-threat.

In the Halo Game, the Hunters couldn't change their weakness, the game couldn't change the way pistols and Hunters functioned. It was all locked in. Just like PFS.

In PFS, if the module calls for a Spring-Attacking Rogue as a BBEG (not that I ever saw one) then what you get is a Spring-Attacking Rogue as a BBEG. While it is, visually, a cool idea, the fact is neither Spring-Attack nor Rogues are very good combat options, and even worse together. But the PFS GM can't change this.

If Crane Wing is allowing players to curb-stomp encounters, it's not the fault of the feat, it's the fault of the GM for not changing things. You are running the game like a video game, where everything is locked in afterward and doesn't change.

Modern video games handle this through patches. Some games even have dynamic combat systems that adapt the combats based off the previous fights and encounters.

As a GM, do you really want to be known for running games that are less adaptable than a computer program?


Doomed Hero wrote:
Marthkus wrote:
Erick Wilson wrote:
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.
My God. Why would he do that?
I'm guessing party buffing archer paladin who needed an extra feat to make the build work. I can think of a few ways to make it viable. Not great, but interesting. Mostly a support character.

Not at all. She was a front-line melee build.


Erick Wilson wrote:
Marthkus wrote:
Erick Wilson wrote:
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.
My God. Why would he do that?

It was a she, and she did it because it made that character diesel.

EDIT: Btw, I mistyped earlier. It was a Bard 5/Paladin 4/Rogue 2

What does that even mean? diesel. Being female is no excuse for making sub-optimal characters.


Marthkus wrote:
Erick Wilson wrote:
Marthkus wrote:
Erick Wilson wrote:
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.
My God. Why would he do that?

It was a she, and she did it because it made that character diesel.

EDIT: Btw, I mistyped earlier. It was a Bard 5/Paladin 4/Rogue 2

What does that even mean? diesel. Being female is no excuse for making sub-optimal characters.

Diesel means she kicked ass. She was consistently one of the most powerful characters at the table. Frequently the most powerful. As for the rest of your post I'm not sure what you're implying...


Erick Wilson wrote:
As for the rest of your post I'm not sure what you're implying...

depended on what diesel meant. I was thinking engines.

Shadow Lodge

Erick Wilson wrote:

Neither of the two problematic characters I mentioned just dipped MoMS to get Crane Wing. My character ended as a Monk 8/Duelist 3, and my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 4/Rogue 2.

And yes you can pay a massive 15 prestige to retrain the 3 feats affected by this errata, but I for one would not be too excited about having to do that, especially at a relatively low level. But the second part of your statement was more important- typically your entire build is going to be based on a feat chain like this one, so retraining, cool as it is, may not help you much.

I personally think the Monk is fine, a simple fix is to make CW only available to Monk's and only at say 4th or 5th level. That prevents dips and gives Monk's good feats, I'm all for more not less. This is done plenty of times for Fighters and various other Classes, I see no issue with doing the same for Monk's.

As for PFS and retraining, this is from the PFS Guide:
If a feat or trait changes or is removed from the Additional Resources list: You have two options. First, you may either switch the old feat for an updated feat of the same name in another legal source (if available), ignoring any prerequisites of the new feat you do not meet. Alternatively, you may replace the feat entirely with another feat for which you meet all the prerequisites.


Felix Gaunt wrote:


As for PFS and retraining, this is from the PFS Guide:
If a feat or trait changes or is removed from the Additional Resources list: You have two options. First, you may either switch the old feat for an updated feat of the same name in another legal source (if available), ignoring any prerequisites of the new feat you do not meet. Alternatively, you may replace the feat entirely with another feat for which you meet all the prerequisites.

That's good, but I still sympathize with people here who are frustrated with the change and feel like their character doesn't work anymore. And that could still be the case even if they're allowed to swap out the feats, since as discussed character builds are often a house of cards that tumbles when you remove something.

Shadow Lodge

Erick Wilson wrote:
That's good, but I still sympathize with people here who are frustrated with the change and feel like their character doesn't work anymore. And that could still be the case even if they're allowed to swap out the feats, since as discussed character builds are often a house of cards that tumbles when you remove something.

Yes you are completely right, I have a Crane Wing character that's 11th level and has never killed anything (at least of note) in PFS. He was pure defense and support, losing this feat chain has a pretty profound effect on him. :-/


Mind posting the full build and pointbuy on that bard/paladin/rogue?


Erick Wilson wrote:
Marthkus wrote:
Erick Wilson wrote:
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.
My God. Why would he do that?

It was a she, and she did it because it made that character diesel.

EDIT: Btw, I mistyped earlier. It was a Bard 5/Paladin 4/Rogue 2

So the 11th level character spent all of it's feats on a single style of combat?

Crane Style is a 5 feat chaing, Imp. Unarmed Strike, Dodge, Crane Style, Crane Wing, Crane Riposte.

None of the above, as far as I am aware, grant either Dodge or Imp. Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat. At 11th level, a character has 5 feats, and this character had to spend all of them to finish Crane Style, or 4 of them to get Crane Wing.

What did this character fight with? Definitely not an archer... the only thing I can think of is Dervish Dancer Bard for free Dervish Dance.

I'm guessing Dex/Cha prime so that she gets good use out of the 2 smite evils the Paladin has...

I'm going to say something like... 26 Dex, 20 Cha, and a +2 Keen Scimitar.

BAB 8 + 8 (Dex) + 2 (Enhancement) + 4 (Inspire Courage) - 1 (Crane Riposte) for a regular attack bonus of +22/+17 or +23/+23/+18 with Haste. Smite would bump this to +27/+22 or +28/+28/+23 wit Haste.

Damage is going to be 1d6 + 14 or 1d6 + 18 smiting. with a 15-20x2 crit range.

Am I close?

Shadow Lodge

Because of this feat loss i had a monk that was. Decent, and well now he's okay up until im like wow man i want to play this guy in a scenario/module past level 10 then that bonus it gives doesn't mean a thing because that monster has a +20 to hit me and i cant deflect its one attack, and now I'm praying to my deity that it doesn't hit me!


Kudaku wrote:
Mind posting the full build and pointbuy on that bard/paladin/rogue?

As for point buy it was a PFS character, so 20. At 11th level she had approximately the following stats-

AC: 32 or 35 when smiting
Attack: +20/+15 (1d4+15+1d6 sonic+1d6 acid) or +24/+19 (1d4+19+1d6 sonic+1d6 acid) when smiting
Saves: Fort +17, Ref +22, Will +14
Speed: 30 feet (usually ignoring difficult terrain via feather step)
Skills: +18-23 in Acrobatics, Diplomacy, Disable Device, Escape Artist, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand and Stealth. +14 Perception

All of the above stats assume that she was using Arcane Strike and battle dance, which she usually was. They do not, however, factor in her boots of speed, which of course she was also frequently using. Those numbers could be off by a little, but they aren't off by much.


Cairen Weiss wrote:


Am I close?

You are, as you can see, quite close. She did not have Crane Riposte though, just Wing. And she could smite more than twice per day due to Oath of Vengeance.


The attack roll smite modifier and the AC modifier don't match up. That said, I was mostly interested in ability score spread and feats, not the numbers. Like Cairen pointed out, none of those classes offer any bonus feats, so her crane wing would have come online at level 9 at the earliest.


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Aelryinth wrote:

If you want to do great damage as a fighter or whatnot using Crane Wing, you can. Sure, it might take 5 feats. That's a 2-3 level delay on the To Hit and damage bandwagon. You can still take Weapon Focus/spec and all those other feats, if you're a fighter you're still going to get your Weapon Mastery, etc etc etc.

the disparity in martial power is not hugely significant, unless you automatically take an inferior fighting style which is going to suck with or without Crane Wing.

At later levels you will still have the stats and AC to be a tank and do battlefield control with AoO's...if that's what you want to do. At the same time, you'll be taking considerably less damage then the 2HW fighter next to you that is rocking out the damage, especially if the DM plays the monsters intelligently. Sure, he might be able to kill a monster faster...but odds are, you can TANK it better, if you need to.

==Aelryinth

I am not entirely convinced that the DPR of a Crane Wing User will stack up to the requested 75-80% line of a standard Martial.

I mean if you are a fighter you have two options:

1.) Vanilla Fighter and pay the feats to get Crane Wing (IUS, Dodge, Crane Style, Crane Wing)

2.) Unarmed Fighter which gives you early access at a high cost. (Loss of Medium armor, heavy armor, and shields. Limited Weapon training so you cannot apply it to any weapons except temple sword to use the 1 hand/2 hand idea. It also only lets you get the Crane style feat and not the Crane wing feat early or the Crane Riposte feat.)

Both of these cannot get Crane Wing until 5th. In fact I cannot see a way to get Crane Wing until 5th except MoMS.

I do not see how a two level dip in a class that costs you a BaB and delay in your class features cannot substantially hurt your DPR.

Other Martials are Hurt worse with the exception of Monk.

Paladin: Delays Smites, Spells, Mercies, Lay on Hands, weapon/companion bond and shared smite.

Ranger: Delays Spells (especially Instant Enemy), Makes companion worthless unless you pay another feat, delays favored enemy, delays favored terrain.

Barbarian: Delay in Rage powers, loss of ability to take extra rage power, delay in greater rage, delay in rage cycling.

Rogue: Delays Sneak attack, rogue talents and advanced Rogue talents. This however may potentially be worthwhile for some Rogues but I think that speaks to the weakness of Rogue class features over the strength of Crane Wing.

All of the 6th level casters such as inquistor, magus, summoner, and alchemist are crazy to take a two level dip from a pure optimization standpoint.

Basically this is a Feat chain that requires a significant investment (Either MoMS 2 levels and all of that cost or 4 feats, 13 dex rather than 12 which can hurt you in point buy, along with only coming on line at 5th level and delaying DPR feats such as Weapon Focus/specialization, power attack, furious focus, and the Tiger line of feats.)

In short the only class that gets a significant boost from this is a pure MoMS monk, and I do not see that as a problem due to that particular archetypes lower DPR.

Also Tanking is usually a Misnomer as there is no way short of some spells, Fiat, or Lots of DPR to force an enemy to focus you, unless the rest of your party is totally unreachable or the enemy is stupid.

The times where 5 or 10 foot wide corridors of attack appear are small compared to the amount of times where there is at least some time to maneuver.

If you really feel that this feat chain offers such a large defensive boost without hurting DPR significantly that it needs to be nerfed please present me with some numbers.

I do appreciate the discussion so please everyone do not take this as any kind of attack it is simply my view and I hope we can all be civil and friendly as you have demonstrated you are Aelryinth.

My thanks to everyone who has chosen to share their viewpoint.


Kudaku wrote:
The attack roll smite modifier and the AC modifier don't match up. That said, I was mostly interested in ability score spread and feats, not the numbers.

That's because she had an existing +1 deflection bonus to AC that didn't stack with the bonus from smite. As for the rest, it was something like-

Str: 10
Dex: 26
Con: 14
Int: 10
Wis: 7
Cha: 18

Arcane Strike, Cautious Fighter, Crane Style, Crane Wing, Dervish Dance, Discordant Voice, Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike and...whatever. That may have been all of them.


Hey uh... how did she get 8 feats at lvl 12 while also being a halfling, apparently? That's 2 more than she should have, I think.
EDIT: 7 with a combat feat from the rogue, but why would you use the rogue?
EDIT II: And the archetype. Right.


LoneKnave wrote:
Hey uh... how did she get 8 feats at lvl 12 while also being a halfling, apparently? That's 2 more than she should have, I think.

Dervish Dance was bonus from her archetype and she took combat trick.


Erick Wilson wrote:
Kudaku wrote:
The attack roll smite modifier and the AC modifier don't match up. That said, I was mostly interested in ability score spread and feats, not the numbers.

That's because she had an existing +1 deflection bonus to AC that didn't stack with the bonus from smite. As for the rest, it was something like-

Str: 10
Dex: 26
Con: 14
Int: 10
Wis: 7
Cha: 18

Arcane Strike, Cautious Fighter, Crane Style, Crane Wing, Dervish Dance, Discordant Voice, Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike and...whatever. That may have been all of them.

You have an extra feat in there. An 11th level Halfing only has 6 feats (plus the bonus from DD Bard).

[Edit] Ah right, combat feat from rogue, forgot about that. Ninja'd


LoneKnave wrote:

Hey uh... how did she get 8 feats at lvl 12 while also being a halfling, apparently? That's 2 more than she should have, I think.

EDIT: 7 with a combat feat from the rogue, but why would you use the rogue then...

Because Rogue is perfectly good as a dip option. It shored up her skill suite, gave her a bonus feat and gave her evasion (which is very strong when your Ref save and all-around defenses are that good), not to mention you can add +1d6 to all the damage totals above whenever she was flanking.

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