I'd bet dollars to pesos that it was nerfed because it made the Swashbuckler Parry-Riposte look bad.I have to say i liked crane style as it was, before this errata, very much, since it offered a good and valid option to trade a heavy feat investment for a good AC. I mostly used it without the monk crossclass, but on light armored melee types.
In my eyes it expecially lent itself to halflings, totally fitting my concept of a halfling, swiftly avoiding blows somehow. Actually i planned to have a halfling swashbuckler using that feat line later.
Well i had quite the discussion about that mechanics with some other GM´s here. It´s kind of cumbersome, since you have to roll a lot of more dice out of your turn what slows down things.
There is another "popular" RPG in germany, which also exists out of germany, which has a general combat mechanic like this. It´s heavily unliked because of that combat mechanic.If you ask me, there should have been a faster and better solution, but i didnt have the time to comment on this a lot while the playtest was running because i was very busy in RL.
A slimmed down crane style could have done the trick.
Maybe something with a little math to it, like taking ten on the roll and adding your level and all combat boni. Or add your combat boni to your AC as long as you have a free AoO.
I had a conversation with my GM just last night about this feat (the old version) being slightly overpowered. Our conclusion was to expand the "not if flatfooted" caveat to "not if denied Dex", thus allowing it to be shut down by a host more conditions and maneuvers while still being effective against big dumb smashy monsters. Reducing it to an AC bonus, though? Half the point of the feat for me was that it could block the things that make AC irrelevant, like nat 20s and true strike. A defensive fighter can get their AC sky-high already, and an extra +4 isn't going to make any difference at all past a certain point.
Forgive me if this comes off as in any way snarky but, in a world with level 9 magic, how is this a bad thing? If Crane Wing is used by an enemy NPC, good, the PCs have to work a little harder to hurt them. If it's taken by a PC, good, the PC has dedicated at least 3 feats into getting a decent defensive posture going rather than going full offense. Either way, it encourages a degree of diversity in party thinking many people wouldn't normally have without it. Paizo didn't create balance with this change, they simply destroyed something creative and useful.
Its not necessarily a bad thing. Its just a poor mechanic in certain situations. At level 5 being able to be immune to 1 melee attack/round is incredibly powerful. I understand that in a group situation, it really isn't overpowered, but on 1 on 1 situations, it is.
If anyone has used the "arena" trope in their campaigns, where each PC enters as a single combatant and must defeat their opponent to advance (been used in many campaigns I've seen), it would be incredibly overpowered, especially at low levels.
Spring attack and vital strike aren't usable together. Apparently they thought it would be overpowered.
Oh, okay, thanks for correcting me.
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I had a conversation with my GM just last night about this feat (the old version) being slightly overpowered. Our conclusion was to expand the "not if flatfooted" caveat to "not if denied Dex", thus allowing it to be shut down by a host more conditions and maneuvers while still being effective against big dumb smashy monsters. Reducing it to an AC bonus, though? Half the point of the feat for me was that it could block the things that make AC irrelevant, like nat 20s and true strike. A defensive fighter can get their AC sky-high already, and an extra +4 isn't going to make any difference at all past a certain point.
Isn't the point of natural 20s and true strike to make AC irrelevant?
Unless I'm forgetting some feats or class features, very few things let you negate critical hits, and almost nothing lets you completely ignore them. The Greater Shield Specialization feat, for example, lets you negate (it still hits, just at normal damage) a single critical hit once per day, not once per round.
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I like the size restriction, but another alternative:
Not automatic unless using total defense, not totally divorced from AC (a high-AC character will be hit less on rerolls), but more potent and interesting than +4 to AC, and doesn't cause "misses."
Forcing opponents to reroll attacks exists with the Preacher and Divine Interference and I've used and enjoyed both.
One of the vrey few things being deflect arrows...?
Or you know, Blur, or any concealmentt all wth a pretty high% chance.
This!
Everyone, please cast your vote on this change here: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qlqy?Crane-Wing-errata-poll#1.
If Paizo notices this, it might help us get more done towards reversing at least some of the major downgrades for the feat.
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I've heard this a couple times now, but I can't find my playtest doc to see why. How does it look bad? What does the Swashbuckler thing do?I'd bet dollars to pesos that it was nerfed because it made the Swashbuckler Parry-Riposte look bad.I have to say i liked crane style as it was, before this errata, very much, since it offered a good and valid option to trade a heavy feat investment for a good AC. I mostly used it without the monk crossclass, but on light armored melee types.
In my eyes it expecially lent itself to halflings, totally fitting my concept of a halfling, swiftly avoiding blows somehow. Actually i planned to have a halfling swashbuckler using that feat line later.
Swashbuckler Parry is an opposed d20 roll, meaning that any slight edge you may have had in your attack bonus is overwhelmed by randomness. And there's a -2 penalty for each category of size difference. Beyond that, it costs a Panache and an Attack of Opportunity, and Swashbuckler Riposte uses an Immediate Action on a class with a lot of Swift and Immediate Action abilities (including the one that makes your saves not suck).
Beyond that, it has the problem that they've imported to the new Crane Wing: You have to declare that you're expending it before you know if the attack hit you. The ability will be very often wasted on an attack that would have missed anyway.
Crane Wing was reliable. It just worked. It didn't hog the action economy. You gave up five feats for the whole combo. Five! And if you weren't a dedicated Unarmed fighter it locked you into the single one-handed Weapon.
Wow, surely a feat that was just asking to be nerfed to the ground. And it was nerfed with such haste that they didn't even realize it made Crane Riposte non-functional.
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Eh, the issue was that the feat was a bit too powerful, at least in my experience.
It was powerful enough that even though I love defensive builds, I didn't want to take the feat.
Now I might actually take it.
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One of the vrey few things being deflect arrows...?
Or you know, Blur, or any concealmentt all wth a pretty high% chance.
Deflect Arrows gets mentioned a lot, so I'd like to address that first. Ranged attacks aren't melee attacks. Everything has a melee attack, fewer things have ranged attacks. Deflecting ranged attacks doesn't come up very often because, once the gap is closed, the ranged character must find a way to get back to range, else drop the weapon and engage in melee.
In short, Deflect Arrows is meant to balance the fact that characters who would likely take the feat tend to have few, or at least sub-optimal, options for attacking a ranged character other than closing the gap into melee. Deflect Arrows and Crane Wing are somewhat like opposites, and might be balanced if there were an even split between melee attacks and ranged attacks in the game, but there aren't.
Moreover, Deflect Arrows has the caveat, "Unusually massive ranged weapons (such as boulders or ballista bolts) and ranged attacks generated by natural attacks or spell effects can't be deflected." Crane Wing has no such issue with larger attacks.
On to concealment!
Concealment has multiple ways to counter it; Blind-Fight, blind sight/sense, true seeing, true strike, etc. Like you said, Crane Wing lets you ignore true strike. Concealment doesn't. Moreover, it is a miss chance, not an automatic miss. The concealed creature doesn't get to choose which attacks hit and which don't.
Yes, it's separate from AC, but there are still ways to lessen its impact, or even bypass it entirely.
Again, Crane Wing offers a major bonus with no real way to counter-act it, other than "make more attacks," which isn't always an option. I wouldn't mind seeing an errata that doesn't completely nerf Crane Style, but as I said before, there should be some sort of way to bypass the block, or make it so that the user can't simply point at the already rolled 20 and say, "I block that one."
EDIT: Talking about the old version of Crane Style, not the new errata version.
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Eh, the issue was that the feat was a bit too powerful, at least in my experience.It was powerful enough that even though I love defensive builds, I didn't want to take the feat.
Now I might actually take it.
I highly doubt it. You have to decide to use it before the roll, the deflection only comes if you total defense, and if an enemy is intelligent hes just going to walk past you and kill your team. So you're reduced to using the +4 on an attack that "looks" bad and have no guarantee it even works.
It is pretty worthless now imo.
Old Crane Wing was to defensive builds what Power Attack is to Offensive ones.
On to concealment!Concealment has multiple ways to counter it; Blind-Fight, blind sight/sense, true seeing, true strike, etc. Like you said, Crane Wing lets you ignore true strike. Concealment doesn't. Moreover, it is a miss chance, not an automatic miss. The concealed creature doesn't get to choose which attacks hit and which don't.
Yes, it's separate from AC, but there are still ways to lessen its impact, or even bypass it entirely.
Concealment also has a better effect. Theres a chance all 5 attacks miss as opposed to Crane Wing's guaranteed 1. It's funny since all the counters you posted are featured at higher levels whereas you can fight something with multiple attacks from level 1.
I think it was nerfed way too hard. Consider mirror image as a comparison.
It grants a very good chance of nullifying multiple ranged and melee attacks every round as opposed to guaranteeing one melee miss a round up. It also becomes available to characters at around the same level range (e.g. ninja shadow clones or arcane casters)
In short one's a 5 feat investment and the other is a class feature that's arguably equal to or better than the feat chain... and yet they nerfed the feats?
There must be another reason they just haven't told us, but I don't think that reason will really make sense in context of other spells or abilities to be honest.
I like Weirdo's suggestion. I thought the old version was very strong at low level, and remained extremely good after iterative atatcks (level 6) came into play. However, I did still feel that it was perhaps too good. I like the balance of no attacks, but autodeflect. And you still have the some benefit from Fighting Defensively. The +4 to AC though of the Errata'd version seems very underwhelming however, making it something that I think most people would never pick up.
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Concealment also has a better effect. Theres a chance all 5 attacks miss as opposed to Crane Wing's guaranteed 1. It's funny since all the counters you posted are featured at higher levels whereas you can fight something with multiple attacks from level 1.
On to concealment!Concealment has multiple ways to counter it; Blind-Fight, blind sight/sense, true seeing, true strike, etc. Like you said, Crane Wing lets you ignore true strike. Concealment doesn't. Moreover, it is a miss chance, not an automatic miss. The concealed creature doesn't get to choose which attacks hit and which don't.
Yes, it's separate from AC, but there are still ways to lessen its impact, or even bypass it entirely.
Blind-Fight can be taken at level 1. The spell true strike is a first level spell. Moreover, concealment comes up more often at higher levels.
My point again is that there's no "backdoor" to getting around Crane Wing. It simply blocks an attack, and it will always be chosen to block a successful attack, which is different from maybe causing an attack to miss. It doesn't just guarantee a miss, it guarantees that a success becomes a miss, and the user gets to pick which success.
Blind-Fight can be taken at level 1. The spell true strike is a first level spell. Moreover, concealment comes up more often at higher levels.
My point again is that there's no "backdoor" to getting around Crane Wing. It simply blocks an attack, and it will always be chosen to block a successful attack, which is different from maybe causing an attack to miss. It doesn't just guarantee a miss, it guarantees that a success becomes a miss, and the user gets to pick which success.
Please show me what CR 1 enemies have Blindfight. I'd be really interested in knowing. True Strike takes a round of set up.
Concealment puts another layer of defense making it far more effective. They have to hit you first to check for Concealment.
Blind-Fight can be taken at level 1. The spell true strike is a first level spell. Moreover, concealment comes up more often at higher levels.
My point again is that there's no "backdoor" to getting around Crane Wing. It simply blocks an attack, and it will always be chosen to block a successful attack, which is different from maybe causing an attack to miss. It doesn't just guarantee a miss, it guarantees that a success becomes a miss, and the user gets to pick which success.
Please show me what CR 1 enemies have Blindfight. I'd be really interested in knowing. True Strike takes a round of set up.
Concealment puts another layer of defense making it far more effective. They have to hit you first to check for Concealment.
Even better, good old Darkmantle has the more-powerful Blindsight 90 feet at CR 1 Darkmantle!. I was actually shocked it had 90 foot Blindsight, as I didn't remember it was so long.
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Blind-Fight can be taken at level 1. The spell true strike is a first level spell. Moreover, concealment comes up more often at higher levels.
My point again is that there's no "backdoor" to getting around Crane Wing. It simply blocks an attack, and it will always be chosen to block a successful attack, which is different from maybe causing an attack to miss. It doesn't just guarantee a miss, it guarantees that a success becomes a miss, and the user gets to pick which success.
Please show me what CR 1 enemies have Blindfight. I'd be really interested in knowing. True Strike takes a round of set up.
Concealment puts another layer of defense making it far more effective. They have to hit you first to check for Concealment.
PCs are a CR 1 enemy that can have Blind-Fight. What does that have to do with the price of fish?
I'm still not buying into the argument of "Crane Style was balanced because concealment is in the game." Eliminating a success - guaranteed - with no way to bypass it is much different from a miss chance with workarounds.
My original point about concealment was simply that Crane Wing can eliminate a critical hit entirely, every time provided it is up. Nothing else in the game, as far as I can tell can do that as a guarantee.
Even better, good old Darkmantle has the more-powerful Blindsight 90 feet at CR 1 Darkmantle!. I was actually shocked it had 90 foot Blindsight, as I didn't remember it was so long.
I'm actually well acquainted with these deadly fellers.
Still a far off exception to what is the norm of most low level creatures don't have the senses to ignore concealment or have blindfight.
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My point again is that there's no "backdoor" to getting around Crane Wing. It simply blocks an attack, and it will always be chosen to block a successful attack, which is different from maybe causing an attack to miss. It doesn't just guarantee a miss, it guarantees that a success becomes a miss, and the user gets to pick which success.
No backdoor was the whole point of using it. Your character is hard to hit in melee, just as he would be if he simply had a very high AC, or was a caster with Displacement / Mirror Image, and Mind Blank. There's no "trick" to hitting a high AC either, you just target his other defenses or else use a lot of attacks.
My original point about concealment was simply that Crane Wing can eliminate a critical hit entirely, every time provided it is up. Nothing else in the game, as far as I can tell can do that as a guarantee.
Mirror image comes close on potentially multiple melee and ranged attacks.
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I highly doubt it. You have to decide to use it before the roll, the deflection only comes if you total defense, and if an enemy is intelligent hes just going to walk past you and kill your team. So you're reduced to using the +4 on an attack that "looks" bad and have no guarantee it even works.Eh, the issue was that the feat was a bit too powerful, at least in my experience.It was powerful enough that even though I love defensive builds, I didn't want to take the feat.
Now I might actually take it.
Excuse me?... You doubt what I might do? A +4 against one attack per round is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to have. Either the first attack, or perhaps a poison stinger would be great to have a hefty bonus against.
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Excuse me?... You doubt what I might do? A +4 against one attack per round is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to have. Either the first attack, or perhaps a poison stinger would be great to have a hefty bonus against.
Yes I do. AC is only worthwhile till the point you only get hit on a 20. The +4 thereafter is essentially meaningless unless you deliberately keep your AC at a point where you can only be hit on a 16 or higher. The "Defense" builds already were at that point. Crane Wing just helped them avoid those natural 20s as well. So the +4 is superficial.
Of course this assumes folks don't make deliberately poorer decisions.
Actually, I have a question for people who used the old version of the feat as players:
When you used the feat, did the GM roll the attack dice individually, or one at a time? When did you declare which attack you were blocking?
Around here either you roll individually or, especially if you have many attacks, you have different colored dice - d20 and dX for damage in the same color, different colors for different attacks - which are clearly set to certain attacks. That normaly speeds up combat a lot too.
Even better, good old Darkmantle has the more-powerful Blindsight 90 feet at CR 1 Darkmantle!. I was actually shocked it had 90 foot Blindsight, as I didn't remember it was so long.
Please show me what CR 1 enemies have Blindfight. I'd be really interested in knowing. True Strike takes a round of set up.Concealment puts another layer of defense making it far more effective. They have to hit you first to check for Concealment.
I'm actually well acquainted with these deadly fellers.
Still a far off exception to what is the norm of most low level creatures don't have the senses to ignore concealment or have blindfight.
Totally agreed it's an exception. But you did only ask for 1.
Anyways, I think most people would agree that a 3 feat chain that eventually gave you a flat 50% miss chance at all times would be overpowered, right? And I showed some math in one of these threads that the Old school Crane trio (including the AC boost) reduces expected damage by much more than 50% in the one circumstance I brought up.
But let's look at some numbers that aren't just my one example.
Let's consider a character who starts out with a modest 18 AC (Breastplate and 14 Dex) and has UMD with a wand of shield that they try to use when possible, to often have 22 AC, wasting charges a reasonable amount. As they level up, they enchant the Breastplate, get a ring of protection, a jingasa, an ioun stone, an amulet of natural armor, and so on.
So they fight some enemies. We'll have them fight either 4 enemies that are at their CR or 1 enemy that is 4 CR higher. All of the enemies use the monster statistics by CR with the High attack bonus line. All of the weaker enemies have 3 natural attacks. All of the stronger enemies have 4.
No Crane. Just this, as a baseline. We can compare Crane to hypothetical 50% miss chance on all attacks feat chain.
So at level 1 (with that starter equipment and 18 base AC), based on the chart, those 4 CR 1 dudes have +2 to hit. They flank, making 12 attacks a round at +4 to hit. Without shield wand precast that'll be 4.2 hits per round. With the wand, it's 1.8 hits per round. Killing them will drop this as time goes by.
The boss monster has four attacks at a +10, no flanks. That's 2.6 hits per round. Shield makes that 1.8. This will not drop as time goes by.
OK, so Crane time.
Those 4 mooks will hit .8 times per round (so they aren't quite expected to get in even a single hit each round) without shield and expected value of 0 hits per round with shield (it's not that the probability is 0, but the expected value is less than 1 before deflection--It's actually not negligible that you will still be hit by a freak string of 2 nat 20s in the same round, about 12%).
For the boss, you expect .8 hits per round without shield, or expected value 0 hits per round with shield (the boss still hits on a 16 or higher, so has exactly expected 1 hit before deflection. The actual probability of the boss hitting you in a given round is about 26%).
So against the 12 attacks of the mooks, Crane chain is worth better than an 80% miss chance if you had 18 AC (no shield) or about a 91% miss chance if you had 22 AC (with shield).
Against the boss it's worth a 70% miss chance with 18 AC (no shield) and an 85% miss chance with 22 AC (with shield).
That's pretty hardcore. And note that the boss here does not need a nat 20 to hit you. They just probably won't hit more than once per round (about 1 in 4 chance of doing so).
I can work this out at many other levels if anyone is interested!
Well, that is the errata i would have favored.
A natural 20 should always be a hit and also not deflectable with crane X.
Same is true for true strike.
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Around here either you roll individually or, especially if you have many attacks, you have different colored dice - d20 and dX for damage in the same color, different colors for different attacks - which are clearly set to certain attacks. That normaly speeds up combat a lot too.Actually, I have a question for people who used the old version of the feat as players:
When you used the feat, did the GM roll the attack dice individually, or one at a time? When did you declare which attack you were blocking?
Part of the reason I ask is this:
If you roll individually, the Craner picks which attack to block as they are coming. If the Craner is fighting, say, a dragon and the dragon rolls to hit with bite, is blocked, and gets crit with a claw attack, that's a lot different from rolling all attacks at the same time and blocking the one that will obviously be the most damaging.
The first option allows for the possibility that the Craner will be hit by an unfavorable option because they burned their block on the first attack that hit. The second option means that the Craner always blocks the attack that is most favorable to him/her. That's a decent difference in balance.
Around here either you roll individually or, especially if you have many attacks, you have different colored dice - d20 and dX for damage in the same color, different colors for different attacks - which are clearly set to certain attacks. That normaly speeds up combat a lot too.Actually, I have a question for people who used the old version of the feat as players:
When you used the feat, did the GM roll the attack dice individually, or one at a time? When did you declare which attack you were blocking?
Part of the reason I ask is this:
If you roll individually, the Craner picks which attack to block as they are coming. If the Craner is fighting, say, a dragon and the dragon rolls to hit with bite, is blocked, and gets crit with a claw attack, that's a lot different from rolling all attacks at the same time and blocking the one that will obviously be the most damaging.
The first option allows for the possibility that the Craner will be hit by an unfavorable option because they burned their block on the first attack that hit. The second option means that the Craner always blocks the attack that is most favorable to him/her. That's a decent difference in balance.
Even when we rolled all at once, it was considered proper etiquette for the Craner to state whether they were going to block the first primary attack that hits or save for a crit only, or a hit on the final primary attack (the secondaries are usually so weak that a crit does about as much as a primary anyway).
Well individual wonky playstyles should not be a consideration.
You have to declare wether you use it or not once you know an attack hits, before knowing it is a crit or how much damage is done.
We always did this as just blocking the first hitting attack, which normaly has the highest chance to hit. This seems very natural to me too.
Everything else would be metagaming.
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My original point about concealment was simply that Crane Wing can eliminate a critical hit entirely, every time provided it is up. Nothing else in the game, as far as I can tell, can do that as a guarantee.Mirror image comes close on potentially multiple melee and ranged attacks.
I've always thought that mirror image should have a Will Save to perceive the images as illusions, tbh. I also don't know why the images can't be cleaved / whirlwinded either. But all my misgivings for the spell aside, it cannot pick-and-choose to block a critical hit.
We always did this as just blocking the first hitting attack, which normaly has the highest chance to hit. This seems very natural to me too.
Everything else would be metagaming.
Unfortunately, doing this without exception could invite GM metagaming (taking all the secondary attacks before the primary, etc.). That can be a legitimate strategy for an intelligent creature, but it should be counter-able with deciding to wait for the primary.
I have no clue how some people play this game, but there is always something like fair play and the "don´t be a jerk" rule.
If i would change the sequence of attacks i would inform the player in question and allow her to adjust. Everything else would just be, well, questionable.
Also such a discussion seems pretty much hyperbole to me.
Honestly, I'd have changed to do something where you make an attack roll against the enemies attack, once per round. Just like the new Swashbuckler deed that is there.
Actually, I have a question for people who used the old version of the feat as players:
When you used the feat, did the GM roll the attack dice individually, or one at a time? When did you declare which attack you were blocking?
He rolled them all behind his screen. Then he'd go down the list in the order that the attacks were made (no re-arranging them to bait the PC into deflecting a lesser attack). You'd interrupt him if you wanted to Crane Wing it.
Example:
GM: Ok, we've got bite is a miss, claw is a hit ...
PC: I'd like to use crane wing on the claw
GM: Ok, claw is defected, other claw is a critical threat ...
PC: Blast, I should have saved it.
GM: And the tail is a ... what's your AC again ?
My GMs tend to roll all the dice at once, not behind a screen. Without the feat I tended to get crit hits on me.. ALOT. One campaign I had, I lost two 100% health characters due to multiple crits in one go.
I might add in an exception for incorporeal creatures and touch spells since they do not require a physical hit, merely a touch. Crane Style was primarily created to deflect incoming physical melee attacks, not touches from incorporeal creatures and touch spells.
So I would use this:
Once per round while using Crane Style, when you have at least one hand free and are either fighting defensively or using the total defense action, you can deflect one melee attack made against you. You must declare the deflected attack before the roll is made, automatically deflecting the attack regardless of whether the attack would hit normally. You expend no action to deflect the attack, but you must be aware of it and not flat-footed. An attack so deflected deals no damage or effect to you. You cannot deflect attacks from incorporeal creatures using incorporeal touch attacks unless you have a weapon, armor, or an item that provides the property or melee touch attacks (not normal attack rolls delivering such effects through manufactured or natural weapons) from spells, spell-like, or supernatural abilities.
An attack roll resulting in a natural 20 cannot be deflected. Instead, the chance for a critical is negated. Negating a critical hit in this manner still counts against the once per round use of Crane Wing.
This modification is more reasonable and still allows Crane Riposte to function normally. It takes into account creatures like spectres or wraiths that attack only once per round and casters using touch attack spells that only get one attack per round. It does so in a manner that maintains the integrity and quality of the Crane Style chain of feats and works in limitations that maintain verisimilitude.
Antagonize needed an errata. Before the current version it was way to powerful and a guaranteed BBEG killer. The most powerful wizard on the planet, is still a s*** in melee compared to full BAB martials. You give something like a Barbarian the ability to force someone like Karzoug to drop whatever he's doing, fly into a rage and rush across the battlefield to smack that upstart Barbarian with a little stick, and the Barbarian is going to crush Karzoug's skull like sparrow's eggs between thighs.