Discriminating against the TWF fighter with a light shield?
Who goes Dex and dumps Str on a shield bash build anyway?
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The absurd thing about slashing grace for me is that as far as I can tell, it does nothing to make a slashing weapon a finesse weapon for purposes of attack roll.
I would change it so...
Slashing Grace (Combat)
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus with chosen weapon.
Benefit: Choose one kind of one-handed slashing weapon (such as the longsword). When wielding your chosen weapon one-handed, you can treat it as a one-handed piercing finesse melee weapon for all feats and class abilities that require such a weapon (such as a swashbuckler’s or a duelist’s precise strike) and you can add your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier to that weapon’s damage. The weapon must be one appropriate for your size.
Otherwise the weapon finesse pre-req is just a wasted feat.
Discriminating against the TWF fighter with a light shield?Who goes Dex and dumps Str on a shield bash build anyway?No one. Because you can't get Dex to damage with one. If you could...
My question wasn't necessarily entirely mechanical. Is Dex-based shield basher a niche that needs to be supported?
My question wasn't necessarily entirely mechanical. Is Dex-based shield basher a niche that needs to be supported?
IMO, the more character variety the better... The only problem is that a Dex-focused character can hit really high AC with a shield.
Then again, Paizo doesn't seem too worried about it, since Slashing Grace works with shields.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of Dex-based shield-bashing, but someone else might enjoy that character concept, so, as long as it's balanced... Why not?
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Let's just face it: This Feat is a hot mess.
I'm very 'meh' of the entire situation. The whole Dex to damage thing is a hot button and with the release of Advanced Class Origins there will be 4 means of doing it (three feats and a weapon property) which seems like enough if the topic is as divided in house as it is on the forums. I have at least two third party products that have a dex to damage feat so at home I'm not worried and even within PFS I've never had too many problems WITHOUT dex to damage readily available so the debate has been a very non-problem with me.
Imho, it should be built into Weapon Finesse, with no other feat prereqs. You are already paying for EWP if you want the ECB or the Spiked Chain for some god forsaken reason.
I still need Paizo to tell me what's the point of the Spiked Chain to start with.
This is super disappointed and I will be changing this feat to not suck until it gets erratad out of uselessness.
It was explicitly stated that the potential feat wouldn't be for all weapons, if they ended up making it. (At the time of those posts, they were just considering it.)
Doesn't mean the feat was well designed.
Not entirely sure yet. Still hammering out the details. If I were a betting man I would say it it will be as open as Dervish Dance is...so other classes would be able to use it as well, but it will have more utility for the swashbuckler.Just to be sure we're not putting words in anyone's mouth or "remembering" something that wasn't said...
Okay...for all you Dex damage junkies, we are looking into options that allow you to do it, but they will probably be more like Dervish Dance -- that is options that you feat into.
(Emphasis added.)
It was explicitly stated that the potential feat wouldn't be for all weapons, if they ended up making it. (At the time of those posts, they were just considering it.)
Still doesn't change the fact that these are all poorly designed feats and need to be changed. Because as it stands now, this feat is useless for many of the weapons that would be used with Dex builds, like daggers.
Both feats are not good. At all.
Maybe they aren't good feats, but they're miles ahead better designed than giving all finessable weapons Dex to Damage. :)
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Sacred Geometry vs. Slashing Grace shows the world of difference between the mind sets used to design martial and casters.
They design feats for casters because they will be cool. They design feats for martials to appease them.
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Not entirely sure yet. Still hammering out the details. If I were a betting man I would say it it will be as open as Dervish Dance is...so other classes would be able to use it as well, but it will have more utility for the swashbuckler.Just to be sure we're not putting words in anyone's mouth or "remembering" something that wasn't said...
Okay...for all you Dex damage junkies, we are looking into options that allow you to do it, but they will probably be more like Dervish Dance -- that is options that you feat into.
(Emphasis added.)
It was explicitly stated that the potential feat wouldn't be for all weapons, if they ended up making it. (At the time of those posts, they were just considering it.)
Way I read it at the time was that it would be weapon-dependent like Weapon Focus is. Not that they would eventually make a feat for every single weapon out there
Maybe they aren't good feats, but they're miles ahead better designed than giving all finessable weapons Dex to Damage. :)
Not really. So long as the Dex doesn't get 1.5 times the damage, it's fine.
Maybe they aren't good feats, but they're miles ahead better designed than giving all finessable weapons Dex to Damage. :)
They really aren't. Being able to add Dex to damage with any finesse weapon wouldn't make characters significantly more powerful, just less dependent of a single type of weapon.
"That character can deal damage with a rapier... And with a dagger!? OMG! THAT'S BROKEN!"
"TWFing with Rapier and Dagger? No way! We all know TWF, especially TWF with 2 different weapons, is too powerful! So that requires feats (not counting TWF itself)!"
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Sacred Geometry vs. Slashing Grace shows the world of difference between the mind sets used to design martial and casters.
They design feats for casters because they will be cool. They design feats for martials to appease them.
That one hit me in the heart.
Maybe they aren't good feats, but they're miles ahead better designed than giving all finessable weapons Dex to Damage. :)
Yes, a balanced, elegant solution would be the least we want.
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Sacred Geometry vs. Slashing Grace shows the world of difference between the mind sets used to design martial and casters.
They design feats for casters because they will be cool. They design feats for martials to appease them.
I think the difference you mention hinges far more on one being in an obscure booklet and the other being in THE BIG BOOK OF RULES FOR 2014 ;-)
Glad the other stuff in this book is better. Although if this is what martials are expected to get, I have little hope for Pathfinder Unchained doing anything for the Rogue and Monk now. Which is a shame because I love what they did to the Swashbuckler and Slayer in this book, so I had high hopes that martials would get cool stuff.
I guess it was too much to ask for. Probably will skip out on Unchained since the Martial Maneuvers will probably be as bad as Slashing Grace.
I think the difference you mention hinges far more on one being in an obscure booklet and the other being in THE BIG BOOK OF RULES FOR 2014 ;-)Sacred Geometry vs. Slashing Grace shows the world of difference between the mind sets used to design martial and casters.
They design feats for casters because they will be cool. They design feats for martials to appease them.
Considering that the followup splatbook "fix" which is also a sad sad thing is also so incredibly below the power of Sacred Geometry, I think his point still stands.
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Maybe they aren't good feats, but they're miles ahead better designed than giving all finessable weapons Dex to Damage. :)Yes, a balanced, elegant solution would be the least we want.
As long as you are willing to admit that then we all have some common ground that we can build on to solve this issue. My suggestion would be to make a feat that allows you to use dexterity or strength for damage for any weapon... but you must use whichever is lower. Win win scenario because the people who want a universal dexterity to damage option technically get it, while the people who don't want those people to be happy also get their wish.
As a player I want a generic dex to damage with light/one-handed weapons feat, but I also know that there are a lot of players that would take up arms if that happened. I think Paizo is trying to satisfy both camps at the same time, which is simply impossible.
Those players can simply choose not to use it or, if running, allow it. There's absolutely no reason not to print a feat that does that.
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The issue with the Dex vs Str argument isnt damage output. Yeah STR builds always have better damage output by a slight margin, but the real issue is touch AC. A character who can dump STR in favor of DEX has significantly better touch ac than a STR character and arguably the same regular AC. The only thing they give up is flat footed AC which is honestly less important overall. Touch Ac is used vs spells (and gunslingers if your game has them) and both Wizards and Sorcerers have low BAB and dont really pour much into DEX beyond a decent minimum. If the option is to easy to get STR becomes a Sup par build. You sacrifice some damage for being able to deal with all sorts of spellcasters in combat (and gunslingers). Since you no longer need STR you can distribute what you would have put into that stat into dex, con and wis. Also since you arent gonna need armor as much due to pesky max dex bonuses, you can save money for Wondrous Items instead. Look I love martials and hate casters as much as the next guy but DEX to dmg shouldnt be an early game option without restrictions.
It's true there should be a feat heavy way to get DEX to damage for TWFs, especially rouges and such, but honestly I feel Agile is actually balanced enough as is when it comes to those classes.
Agile is well-balanced, which is exactly why we're looking for an elegant option to take it as a feat. That way it becomes a property of the character, not his equipment.
Dexterity builds spend two feats and sacrifice some damage, in return for better Touch AC (roughly equivalent regular AC), Reflex, and Initiative. That's a worthwhile trade for some people, but not for all - For example, Dervish Dance gives Dex to Damage with the Scimitar, and even for the Magus (whose class features steer you towards the Scimitar anyways) it's not the clear-cut best option.
Dervish Dance (and Agile) are inelegant for a few reasons. They're in more obscure splatbooks rather than the "core" line, which may be a problem for some tables. Dervish Dance is usable only with the Scimitar, when logically there's no reason it shouldn't work with (say) a Rapier. This leads to some raised eyebrows when Dex characters, who have spent their first two levels dealing low damage with a Rapier and would never touch a Scimitar, discover that the Scimitar is awesome (all of a sudden) and they'll never use another weapon again.
The big problem I have is that aside from to hit and damage bonus strength doesn't do anything much. Sure, dumping it can make you watch your gear weight and fear strength damage, but your lower CMD is the only real problem. Dumping dexterity is universally considered insane. Only paladins accept a negative, and not most of them. Dexterity controls your ranged to hit, your initiative, your reflex save, more skills, touch AC, and CMD. So, dumping either hurts CMD, and dumping dex is much harder to recover from. Unless you are an Oracle, Paladin or both you can't really afford to dump dex. And they only get away with it by using charisma (another common dump stat) to compensate. 13 strength, maximum dexterity would be optimal for all melee types if Weapon Finesse (Mythic) was just a regular non-mythic feat, and I like more variety than that.
It's true there should be a feat heavy way to get DEX to damage for TWFs, especially rouges and such, but honestly I feel Agile is actually balanced enough as is when it comes to those classes.
I wasn't aware that being incapable of doing the thing you want to do before level 7 was considered a balanced and fair way to introduce a play style. I don't want to wait through what could be several months of real life time to do the thing I designed my character to do.
The big problem I have is that aside from to hit and damage bonus strength doesn't do anything much. Sure, dumping it can make you watch your gear weight and fear strength damage, but your lower CMD is the only real problem. Dumping dexterity is universally considered insane. Only paladins accept a negative, and not most of them. Dexterity controls your ranged to hit, your initiative, your reflex save, more skills, touch AC, and CMD. So, dumping either hurts CMD, and dumping dex is much harder to recover from. Unless you are an Oracle, Paladin or both you can't really afford to dump dex. And they only get away with it by using charisma (another common dump stat) to compensate. 13 strength, maximum dexterity would be optimal for all melee types if Weapon Finesse (Mythic) was just a regular non-mythic feat, and I like more variety than that.
You're spending a lot of feats and accepting less damage to do dex-to-damage. It's an opportunity cost to become less MAD. Casters already get to dump strength to the pits, I don't see why martials can't get that option.
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The big problem I have is that aside from to hit and damage bonus strength doesn't do anything much. Sure, dumping it can make you watch your gear weight and fear strength damage, but your lower CMD is the only real problem.
True, that's why adding Dex to attack and damage rolls should take 2 feats.
The Strength guy is still ahead in damage and feats, and he has much easier access to Power Attack, but the Dex guy can at least be effective without being overtaxed and forced to ignore loot just because the enemy was wielding a dagger, whip or cestus instead of a rapier.
Honestly, dueling is weak enough that adding Dex-to-damage still doesn't make it compete with 2-handed or archery builds. Dervish Dance is only so common to Magus players because Magi are already shoehorned into dueling anyway. If they could use Spell Combat with a 2-handed weapon, they would.
The big problem I have is that aside from to hit and damage bonus strength doesn't do anything much. Sure, dumping it can make you watch your gear weight and fear strength damage, but your lower CMD is the only real problem. Dumping dexterity is universally considered insane. Only paladins accept a negative, and not most of them. Dexterity controls your ranged to hit, your initiative, your reflex save, more skills, touch AC, and CMD. So, dumping either hurts CMD, and dumping dex is much harder to recover from. Unless you are an Oracle, Paladin or both you can't really afford to dump dex. And they only get away with it by using charisma (another common dump stat) to compensate. 13 strength, maximum dexterity would be optimal for all melee types if Weapon Finesse (Mythic) was just a regular non-mythic feat, and I like more variety than that.
Dexterity controls Ranged To-Hit, but you still need Strength to deal damage. Unless you're a Gunslinger, which brings me to another part of the argument: Gunslingers get Dex to Damage with a ranged weapon that targets Touch AC. How is it a big problem to add it to melee weapons?
A character with high Dex and low Strength may have a high chance to hit at range, but he'll be doing 1d8+Squat for damage. Unless he takes Deadly Aim, in which case he's in the same boat as the high Str low Dex characters with their Adaptive bows. And he's out a third feat.
Initiative is important, but on the other hand, melee characters often delay their turns anyways. Either to let the casters do their thing, or to let the monsters charge in with their single attack, and then get full-attacked by the PC's rather than vice versa.
Dex-to-Damage has been around for a long time, and Barbarians haven't all moved to the city and started Raging for Dex.
Before anyone thinks I'm arguing against getting dex to damage, I'm not. I would like a feat that was able to be taken multiple times, required weapon finesse and another feat (weapon focus, combat expertise, something...), and could only be applied to manufactured weapons. I have issues with monks and druids and natural attackers getting this power. It makes no sense to me balance wise or flavor wise.
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...Why do you have issues with the Monk getting access to dex-to-damage? It's flavorful for a class that deals damage with quick, precise strikes to vulnerable areas of the body and would help make one of the most MAD classes in the game less so.
Natural attackers already have easy access to dex-to-damage, an Agile Amulet is one of the easiest ways to do it at 4000 GP. And yet you don't see a bunch of dexterous druids running around...
It's a whole lot of noise considering all of this can be fixed simply by reading slightly differently the feat. (see my previous post which was completely ignored)
The problem with this is that Slashing Grace uses clear rules language, and you can't read rules language 'differently' to get the interpretation that you desire. One handed is a clear weapon category and the rules always differentiates between 'one handed' weapons, 'light' weapons, and 'two handed' weapons.
For example, Unarmed Strike is explicitly exempted from being a natural attack, and whenever weapons are mentioned in the book, they are always separated into 'manufactured weapons, natural attacks, and unarmed strikes'.
So when you see a rule in the game that says, "XXX benefits natural attacks," you know that it doesn't benefit longswords, nor does it benefit unarmed strikes, with the sole exception being the Monk who can override that clause. The reason being is that natural attacks are a clear category or weapons, just the same as 'one handed' weapons is.
Not entirely sure yet. Still hammering out the details. If I were a betting man I would say it it will be as open as Dervish Dance is...so other classes would be able to use it as well, but it will have more utility for the swashbuckler.Just to be sure we're not putting words in anyone's mouth or "remembering" something that wasn't said...
Okay...for all you Dex damage junkies, we are looking into options that allow you to do it, but they will probably be more like Dervish Dance -- that is options that you feat into.
(Emphasis added.)
It was explicitly stated that the potential feat wouldn't be for all weapons, if they ended up making it. (At the time of those posts, they were just considering it.)
I would accept one feat = one weapon.
Problem actually is, they didn't give us what they promised us.A) this feat is NOT as open as DD. It is a closed feat.
B) this is not one feat = one weapon. Even if you picked it ten times you still wouldn't be able to use a Rapier or a light weapon.
We already have a weapon property that deals dex to damage, does it make that much of a difference if there's a dex to damage feat? You're either going to eat money or eat a feat either way.
I don't want my character entirely limited to a magical sword just to make a concept work. I mean, if my character can't function as a dextrous and agile warrior without a specific magical item... then I'm not really a dextrous and agile warrior.
If something were to ever happen to that sword, suddenly I lose a huge part of my combat effectiveness.
Take an archer, sunder his bow, and he can pick up a non-magical one and still function as an archer. Take a Str-Martial, put them in an anti-magic field, and they still function as a martial character.
The same is not necessarily true for the agile weapon martial. Sure, he could pick up another finesseable weapon and get a similar attack bonus, but he's not going to have the damage to back him up anymore as a large percentage of a characters static damage is usually drawn from their ability score. I mean, a guy with 26 strength (possible with 18 and bull's strength) needs to be at least 8th level before Power Attack matches him. A guy with 30 strength needs to be 16th level before Power Attack matches his strength.
So you're looking at, often, something like 30% to 40$ of all your damage coming from an ability score.
So for the dex based martial, that means 30% - 40% of all his damage shuts off without his agile weapon.
On top of all of that, it also forces me to wait until 6th level or later (when I can afford a +2 weapon) just to finally take on the role of dex based martial. Part of the Advanced Class Guides hype was making it easier to play classic characters from level 1 instead of having to wait until 6th level before a character actually comes into play.
I mean, previous, if you wanted to play a fencer, you were kind of locked into waiting until 6th level to play either a Duelist or a Sword Lord prestige classes. So your character doesn't really even start coming into focus until then.
It's true there should be a feat heavy way to get DEX to damage for TWFs, especially rouges and such, but honestly I feel Agile is actually balanced enough as is when it comes to those classes.I wasn't aware that being incapable of doing the thing you want to do before level 7 was considered a balanced and fair way to introduce a play style. I don't want to wait through what could be several months of real life time to do the thing I designed my character to do.Oh hey sup.
Hmmm I guess I can see your point, but I personally dont think the damage output difference is that important during the early game.
How about this I saw earlier the "greater weapon finesse feat" and I was thinking:
Greater weapon finesse - requires 17 dex, weapon finesse, slashing grace. You may use dex instead of str for any single finessable weapon, or use dex for attack rolls on any slashing weapon affected by slashing grace. This feat can be selected multiple times. Each time it does it applies to a different weapon.
Ok, so in order for my character to play even a Swashbuckler with this fix and a Rapier, I would need Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus, Slashing Grace, and Greater Weapon Finesse.
So I'll be waiting until 7th or 9th level before this comes together? I might as well just buy an agile weapon then, because I won't have the feats to do anything other than 'full attack' with that lineup.