RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Swordsmanship (Combat)
You are trained in the way of the sword. When you take this feat, you must select a swordlike slashing weapon (for which you must have already selected Weapon Focus) for this feat to apply to.
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus in a swordlike slashing weapon, fighter level 2nd
Benefit: Damage rolls with your selected weapon ignore an amount of damage reduction equal to half your fighter level. This ability only applies to DR based on damage type (such as DR/piercing). If your target is immune to slashing damage, they are instead treated as having DR 15/bludgeoning or piercing, and you then apply this feat's effects against that DR.
Improved Swordsmanship (Combat)
Prerequisites: Swordsmanship, fighter level 5th
Benefit: Your Swordsmanship feat also applies to DR/magic, DR/cold iron, and DR/silver.
Greater Swordsmanship (Combat)
Prerequisites: Swordsmanship, Improved Swordsmanship, fighter level 9th
Benefit: Your Swordsmanship feat also applies to all material-based DR as well as to hardness. Additionally, attacks with your selected weapon deal half damage to incorporeal creatures, or full damage if using a magic weapon.
Elder Swordsmanship (Combat)
Prerequisites: Swordsmanship, Improved Swordsmanship, Greater Swordsmanship, fighter level 15th
Benefit: Your Swordsmanship feat also applies to alignment-based DR if it matches your alignment. For instance, if you are lawful good, your Swordsmanship applies to DR/lawful, DR/good, and DR/lawful and good. Additionally, when you reach fighter level 20th, you Swordsmanship also applies to DR/— and DR/epic.
Swordsman's Defense (Combat)
Prerequisites: Swordsmanship, fighter level 5th
Benefit: You may use your selected blade to deflect ranged weapons. This functions like the Deflect Arrows feat, except that you do not need a free hand but do need to be wielding your selected blade. Beginning at fighter level 8th, you may deflect additional attacks each round by spending an attack of opportunity for each deflection after the first.
Improved Swordsman's Defense (Combat)
Prerequisites: Swordsmanship, Swordsman's Defense, fighter level 10th
Benefit: Your Swordsman's Defense feat no longer suffers restrictions against magical or natural attacks. At fighter level 14th, it also no longer suffers the restrictions against unusually massive weapons.
Greater Swordsman's Defense (Combat)
Your skill with the sword is so great that you can even cut energy.
Prerequisites: Swordsmanship, Swordsman's Defense, Improved Swordsman's Defense, fighter level 14th
Benefit: Whenever you are within the area of a spell or effect that deals hit point damage (such as a breath weapon, channeled energy, a fireball spell, etc), you may spend an immediate action to cut through the effect. Your space is treated as a solid obstacle for determining the area of the spell or effect. If the spell or effect is a spread or would otherwise be able to fill the space behind an obstacle, it is instead treated as a burst for the purposes of determining the result of this feat. You must be wielding your selected blade to use this feat.
Mystic Blade (Combat)
Your swordsmanship is so keen that you can cut magic.
Prerequisites: Swordsmanship, Greater Swordsman's Defense, fighter level 15th
Benefit: You can attempt to dispel an ongoing spell effect with a swing of your blade. As a standard action, make a melee touch attack with your selected blade against a creature, object or space where a magical effect (whether spell, spell-like or supernatural) is active. If successful, make a dispel check (per dispel magic) using your fighter level as your caster level. Alternatively, any time you score a critical hit with your selected blade against a creature under an active magical effect, you can make the dispel check without spending an action.
This is an extraordinary ability.
These feats seem to be oriented towards characters in a no-magic game that still intend to face enemies with normal DR. I don't think they're worthwhile in a standard game.
If the point of the feats is to be ready even if you don't have your magic sword (which I don't think it worth all these feats tbh), then it shouldn't be specific to a type of sword you have WF for. In fact, there's nothing especially...swordish about beating DR. You could make this apply to all weapons just fine.
The Defense feats are more fun, to let you be a Jedi. I like those better.
With your permission, I would like to put these feats in a word doc and print them off for immediate use in my games :)
Since I an planning on running a low magic game with full magic enemies I think these are great!
I think I'll allow them with weapons besides swords within reason. Maybe only axes because dwarves are great.
Thanks!
I always like to see new fighter material. However, I'd personality like to see options that introduce new gameplay opportunities rather than options that simply increase a fighter's effectiveness. Here, it's just the fighter being able to bypass DR. While these seem like fine feats for the most part, I'm not really feeling the vibe of expert swordsmanship.
Swordsman's Defense and Greater Swordsman Defense are interesting ideas, but I've never been a big fan of abilities that automatically negate attacks. I always felt like some investment and/or a roll should be required. I can't say it's too overpowered as it requires 4 feats, but it's just a personal taste of mine.
As a GM, I would totally not allow Greater Swordsmanship to bypass hardness. I really don't want my players to be able to cut through stone walls like paper. I'd personally make it so that it bypasses hardness equal to or less than half the fighter's level.
Also, why can't you use a piercing sword like a rapier?
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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These feats seem to be oriented towards characters in a no-magic game that still intend to face enemies with normal DR. I don't think they're worthwhile in a standard game.
One issue I find with fighters is not being able to afford "cool things" because you have to invest in your weapon.
Now you don't have to, and that cash can go to Cool Things. :)
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I really don't want my players to be able to cut through stone walls like paper.
At the level you get this, your wizard buddy can just DDoor past that same wall, and doesn't even have to use his highest-level spell slots to do it. For that matter, a CRB conjurer can do it six times per day off a class feature, no spells required.
That's assuming that stone walls are an obstacle you would even expect to use to challenge a 9th-level party in the first place.
Also, why can't you use a piercing sword like a rapier?
That's a different set of feats, that will likely come after the Hammer Mastery line I'm working on at the moment. ;)
These feats seem to be oriented towards characters in a no-magic game that still intend to face enemies with normal DR. I don't think they're worthwhile in a standard game.One issue I find with fighters is not being able to afford "cool things" because you have to invest in your weapon.
Now you don't have to, and that cash can go to Cool Things. :)
Realistically the Fighter will still want the shiny plusses for having more hit and damage even if he takes all the feats in question concerning DR.
That said I like what you are going for with the Defense line and Mystic Blade, but I think it may be a bit much to have them each as a separate feat; it seems like they are that way simply because Fighters could theoretically afford it, but it still seems a bit much as we're talking about a substantial investment in their only real class feature here. I would consider collapsing the Swordsman feats into two scaling feats instead of four and make Defense and Improved one scaling.
Precisely as Chaos says, Fighters will not stop buying magic weapons. I think a more elegant solution would be killing Weapon Focus/Weapon Specialization, and revamping them to adding +enh to any weapon you wield (gearing it up to bypass DR in that manner).
Bypassing DR lacks slashing flavor (to me), I feel that's more in the realm of piercing.
Differentiating weapons from one another in the threats they pose is definitely an interest of mine, I enjoyed 4e's approach to it. In 3.x/PF, unless you have a specific DR (which most PCs don't), it makes no difference if your opponent is wielding a hammer, sword, or spear (well, besides spears with reach).
Would you mind if I post my own ideas for weapon differentiation feats, or should I make a new topic?
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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That would probably be best as its own thread. :)
EDIT: Also, flavor-wise, I feel like slashing as anti-DR fits perfectly, with piercing being more about [redacted] or [redacted]. But hey, personal preferences are personal. :D
As for magic weapon enhancement, perhaps you're right, but in any case my idea about not needing to invest so much was more of an agreeable side-effect, with the reason for the feat line being thematic/flavor-based: a skilled blade shouldn't be stopped so easily, and a fantasy-level master shouldn't need his gear to do that job for him. At least, IMO. :)
Don't forget, these feats make good choices for NPC characters too as they might not be able to afford a weapon capable of piercing DR. For example, an enemy fighter might have the swordsmanship feats and able to blow through the party's Communal Stoneskn.
I feel it suffers from the same problems as many feat chains. It requires the fighter to invest too many resources to do something that they ought to be able to do anyway. I'd suggest reducing it to Swordsmanship, Swordsman's Defense, and Mystic Blade, with scaling versions of the first two.
I'm guessing the next one's Axes Jiggy?
Ah, already seen hammer time, piercers is new though
Precisely as Chaos says, Fighters will not stop buying magic weapons. I think a more elegant solution would be killing Weapon Focus/Weapon Specialization, and revamping them to adding +enh to any weapon you wield (gearing it up to bypass DR in that manner).
Bypassing DR lacks slashing flavor (to me), I feel that's more in the realm of piercing.
Differentiating weapons from one another in the threats they pose is definitely an interest of mine, I enjoyed 4e's approach to it. In 3.x/PF, unless you have a specific DR (which most PCs don't), it makes no difference if your opponent is wielding a hammer, sword, or spear (well, besides spears with reach).
Would you mind if I post my own ideas for weapon differentiation feats, or should I make a new topic?
This.
My fighter redesign has the Fighter's Weapon Training adding to the existing enhancement bonus for purposes of bypassing DR. Thus, it does have to be at least a masterwork weapon, but a F/16 can totally cleave dr/adamantine, DR /align with a +1 sword, and DR /epic with a +2.
As to the DR feats above, don't the two damage reduction feats basically take care of all forms of DR except x/- ? And the second one maxes out at 10 pts.
I feel like penetrating DR is more in tune with the pure power of axes, rather than the finesse of swords.
I admit that I am at a loss for what -would- display for the finesse of swords, and for that, I apologize. I like the options you have made for these three styles a lot, but the other two are for heavy bludgeoning and piercing weapons on a general basis, where this one is for swords (or axes) specifically. Though I do feel that swords and axes are sufficiently different in style and theme to warren their own distinct entries.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Yeah, I'm not sure what to do with axes, either. :/
Part of the reason I went with anti-DR for swords was that when you think of legendary swordsmanship (or a legendary sword, for that matter), you think of being able to cut through anything. Bypassing DR and hardness seemed the natural way to communicate "I can cut through anything".
Let axes cut bits off of creatures?
When axes deal critical damage, half the damage dealt is also dealt to any source of armor/shield bonus?
Axes = bigger power attack bonuses?
Criticals = status effects?
I think these could reflect the big hitting capacity of axes compared to the "finesse" of beating DR by swords.
Dot
I don't know about ignoring nat armor, but how about reducing it by 1 for each successful strike until an appropriate heal check or healing magic is used? Hacking your way through that dragon hide.
Jiggly, it seems like you have some pretty well written feats. My suggestion is that you go back to the beginning and make a fundamental change. Instead of basing the abilities on "swordlike slashing weapons", base it on a choosen weapon group. Many of the other feats could stay the same. Some obviously wouldn't thematically work with every weapon group, such as deflecting fireballs with a crossbow.