I’ve seen constant complaints about feat chains and how they are handled in Pathfinder and most 3.X games and I have to agree. Most of the time it makes things confusing for new players to navigate contributes to trap bad options and lackluster combatants. But because I value how the game functions I wanted to rethink feat chains for combat to make things easier to use and make characters that rely on martial prowess a bit better without having to completely rewrite the system. Since at heart I’m a lazy person I’m not rethinking all of the feats. I’m focusing on combat feats and not even all of them, just the bulk of the feats that make up entire fighting styles. Now this isn’t by any means an attempt to ‘fix’ martials as that isn’t going to happen unless they get the ability to punch their way into another dimension, instead my goal is to making fighting a bit easier and martial prowess more of a threat without having to work the system and optimize.
With that out of the way I want to give some insight into how I’m thinking about these. I’m mostly inspired by the scaling combat feats in Kobold Press’ New Paths Compendium and Drop Dead Studio’s Spheres of Power. Using logic from both of those I set up a few design paradigms. I wanted to keep the concept of feat trees in a sense. Each combat feat is a logical extension of another feat which became designated as an ‘origin feat’. Each origin feat scales with BAB but each feat beyond it does not as it modifies the related origin feat and thus benefits from it already. Also the origin feat and it’s prerequisites are the only prerequisites for the following feat. This was important to me for two reasons. I wanted each origin feat to represent an entire fighting method so that whoever takes the feat is free to take up the multitudes of flavorful feats without having to plan out their character in advance. This also makes organization of the feats a bit easier and gives me some leg room to come back and add more feats.
For now I wanted to show a bit of what I have so far to see if I'm on the right track and how far people are willing to go with combat feats. Some of them are under powered or over powered to try to feel where the line is so please comment and make suggestions.
Power Strike
Prerequisites: BAB +6, Str 15
Benefit: As an attack action you can make one melee attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon’s damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision-based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total. When your BAB reaches +11 and 16 you may add your weapon’s damage dice an additional time.
Special: You may spend 6 stamina to add your weapon’s damage dice an additional time.
Power Cleave
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Power Strike
Benefit: When you successfully damage a creature with Power Strike you may make another Power Strike against an adjacent creature that you still threaten in by adding your weapon damage dice one less time. You may repeat this process until you run out of weapon damage dice. Example: If your BAB is +6 and you are wielding a longsword you may make three attacks this way. Your first strike will use 3d8, your second 2d8 and last will be 1d8.
Devastating Push
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Power Strike
Benefit: When you use Power Strike you may attempt a Bull Rush as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. you count as one size category larger for the purposes of determining what creatures you can Bull Rush for each time you have added additional weapon damage dice to the Power Strike.
Special: If you have Improved Bull Rush you gain an additional +2 bonus to Bull Rush attempts made with Power Strikes.
Echoing Pain.
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Power Strike
Benefit: When you successfully damage a creature with a Power Strike that creature must make a fortitude save or take your weapon’s damage dice at the beginning of their next turn. This save is equal to your 10 plus ½ your BAB plus your strength modifier. This damage increases by adding your weapon’s damage dice again at BAB +11, and BAB +16. This bonus damage counts as continuous damage for the purpose of making concentration checks.
Quick Strike
Prerequisites: BAB +6, Dex 15
Benefit: As an attack action you may make two melee attacks instead of one. If you are attacking with a two handed weapon you suffer a -4 penalty to that attack. If you are attacking with a one-handed weapon the penalty is instead -2. If you are attacking with a light or natural weapon your attack suffers no penalty. When your BAB reaches +11 and 16 you gain an additional attack.
Special: You may spend 6 stamina to gain an additional attack.
Careful Aim
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Quick Strike
Benefit: When you use Quick Strike you may lose one of your attacks to allow your remaining attacks to use your dexterity modifier in place of your strength modifier for attack rolls. If you have the weapon finesse feat you may also use your dexterity modifier for damage rolls.
Graceful Stroke
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Quick Strike
Benefit: When you use Quick Strike you may lose one of your attacks to allow one of your remaining attacks to automatically threaten a critical. You must declare which attack is threatening a critical before you make your attack roll and instead roll your confirmation roll.
Precise Thrust
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Quick Strike
Benefit: When you use Quick Strike you may lose one of your attacks to make a target flat-footed against one of your attacks. The target may attempt a reflex save equal to 10 plus ½ your BAB plus your dexterity modifier to avoid becoming flat-footed.
Trickster
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Quick Strike
Benefit: When you use Quick Strike you may lose one of your attacks to make a dirty trick combat maneuver against a target creature without provoking an attack of opportunity. You must have a free hand to perform this dirty trick.
Special: if you have the Improved Dirty Trick feat you gain an additional +2 to Dirty Tricks made this way.
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Also if you have any suggestions on what kind of effects you'd like to see please let me know, I'm still in the middle of designing the rest.
Since I had decided to design origin feats based on basic fighting styles I had to think about what those were in the context of Pathfinder. In the end I thought about them as weapon wielding modes and translated them into what they do and ran with the theme. Each fighting style stems from a weapon wielding mode but I decidedly divorced them from whatever weapon wielding mode they extend from so that players could have more options.
Two Handed Fighting: This is all about power and strength and probably the most reliable and devastating method of fighting. Cleaving and Charging fell into this category as a result and turned into Power Strike.
Two Weapon Fighting: At it’s core TWF is a chain to gain multiple attacks. While at it’s base this is still what happens the general fighting style evolved into thinking about what to do when you have two hands that do different things whether that secondary hand is holding another weapon, a shield or performing a combat maneuver. This turned into Double Strike
One Handed Weapons: Despite extending from the concept of fighting with one handed weapons and using nothing in your other hand I went by the logic of precision and control. This became a feat chain all about parrying, dodging and attacks of opportunity and became Readied Stance.
Sword and Board: This obviously became the defense and tanking feat chain. Since one of the advantages I gave to Double Strike was parrying, effectively giving it a personal tanking method I decided to think about this a bit harder and made it capable of less personal defense method. Like the others this functions whether you are wielding a shield or not and became Defensive Stance.
Thrown Weapons: When I got into ranged combat things got a bit tricky in terms of divorcing abilities from their inspired fighting method. It didn’t help that thrown weapons don’t have an exact theme. So for this one, despite it’s name is all about getting rewards for being more accurate porting over a bit from called shots and Deadly Aim. Powerful Shot
Ranged Weapons: General ranged weapons benefiting from the abilities inspires by thrown weapons so what to come up with for feats inspired by general ranged weapon? For one thing I really needed to take this away from bows a bit. too many things that are bow exclusive and I want to stick with my goal of divorcing the origin feats from the weapon wielding method that they are inspired from so since Powerful Shot gets rewards by reducing their accuracy this fighting style would get benefits from getting weird and mimic Double Strike. This eventually became Trick Shot
From there I ran into a bit of a wall but dug myself out of it by realizing that I was generating a clear pattern. Shots and Strikes were definitely using up Standard actions, while Stances started taking up move actions. To take this concept further I eventually added Aggressive Step and Acrobatic Step as more move action origin feats. This left me with 4 move action feats and 4 standard action feats. Which felt fairly clean and even. It also allows you to mix and match them with 16 basic models of attacking, which isn’t too bad for a start.
Once I got the skeleton done I determined a few extra things. I wanted each strike and shot origin feat to scale based on BAB at the rate that you get iterative attacks. This is mostly because I wanted to compete with the iterative attacks that you lose since the Strikes and Shots are all standard actions. I also dedicated to making Strike, Shot, Step and Stance my main models for further design and naming conventions. Strikes are all standard action melee attacks. Shots are standard action ranged Attacks. Steps are move action abilities that involve movement, and Stances are move action abilities that don’t involve movement.
In the end I got;
Power Strike: Vital Strike in one feat where you can trade bonus weapon die for effects or have effects that scale with damage die.
Quick Strike: A standard action multi-attack where you can trade attacks for effects.
Trick Shot: Same as Quick Strike only with ranged weapons.
Focused Shot: Same as Power Strike with a different emphasis.
Aggressive Step: kind of a half charge. Move your base speed for a scaling +1 attack and damage. Can trade the bonuses for effects.
Acrobatic Step: move and gain a scaling AC and movement bonus against AoOs. Can trade bonuses to create openings and status effects.
Defending Stance: Basically Combat Expertise that extends to adjacent allies. can spend bonuses to move, take attacks and avoid attacks.
Readying Stance: Gain an extra AoO at Power Attack rate but missed attacks provoke AoOs. can spend AoOs to make the opportunity attacks more devastating.
As I further design these and make more my general paradigm is to make a feat that creates a resource that stamina can buy and each post feat spends the resource to do something new.
Looks like you've started a MASSIVE project.If you do it like this you'll end up having to re-write most of the system.
An easier fix would be to just give PCs more feats.
A lot of feats are inferior...so I made all the "tax" and circumstantial feats 2-for-1...meaning you can get two for the cost of a single feat slot.
I also allow PCs to train for a feat between levels...1/2 feats cost 500 xp per 5 character levels and 5 training days, full feats cost 1000 xp per 5 character levels and 10 training days.
This alleviates the feeling of being "Feat-starved" and actually allows characters to complete long feat chains before hell freezes over.
So he wants to rewrite a bunch of combat feats.
This is the Homebrew section Larkspire!
For sure rainzax! I won't begrudge anyone the right to rewrite the book...hell, my house rules document is 40 pages long lol.
I just want to make sure he knew the scope of the project he was biting off...
Quick Defense
Trick shot
Prerequisite: BAB+6, Dex 15
Benefit: As an attack action you may make two ranged attacks instead of one. These attacks suffer a -2 penalty. When your BAB reaches +11 and +16 you gain an additional ranged attack.
Special: You may spend 6 stamina to gain another attack when using Trick Shot.
Aggressive Step
Prerequisite: BAB +4
Benefit: As a move action you may move up to your speed in a straight line. If you do, until the end of your turn, you gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. When your BAB reaches +8, +12, +16 and +20 this bonus increases by +1.
Special: You may spend 4 stamina to increase the bonus by +1
Acrobatic Step
Prerequisite: BAB +4, Dex 13
Benefit: As a move action you may move up to your speed. If you do you gain a +1 dodge bonus to AC until the end of your turn. When your BAB reaches +8, +12, +16 and +20 this bonus increases by +1. Creatures that attack and miss you while using Acrobatic Step suffer a penalty to their AC equal to this bonus until the beginning of their next turn.
You may spend 4 stamina to increase this bonus by +1
Defending Stance
Prerequisite BAB +4
Benefit: as a move action you gain a +1 bonus to AC until the beginning of your next turn. When your BAB reaches +8, +12, +16 and +20 this bonus increases by +1. One ally that is adjacent to you gain this bonus as a shield bonus.
You may spend 4 Stamina to increase this bonus by +1
Readying Stance
Prerequisite: BAB +4, Dex 15
Benefit: As a move action you may gain an additional attack of opportunity until the beginning of your next turn. When your BAB reaches +8, +12, +16 and + 20 you gain an additional attack of opportunity. Whenever a melee attack misses you while using Readying Stance the attacker provokes an attack of opportunity from you.
Special: You may spend 4 stamina to increase the amount of bonus attack of opportunities by 1.
Can you use two stances at once?
Looks like you've started a MASSIVE project.If you do it like this you'll end up having to re-write most of the system.
An easier fix would be to just give PCs more feats.
A lot of feats are inferior...so I made all the "tax" and circumstantial feats 2-for-1...meaning you can get two for the cost of a single feat slot.
I also allow PCs to train for a feat between levels...1/2 feats cost 500 xp per 5 character levels and 5 training days, full feats cost 1000 xp per 5 character levels and 10 training days.
This alleviates the feeling of being "Feat-starved" and actually allows characters to complete long feat chains before hell freezes over.
Its huge. My end goal is to end up with about 80 feats.
I don't think this means I'll have to rewrite the system, just make a lot of feats obsolete. I've done something similar by using the scaling combat feats from Kobold Press' New Paths Compendium to great effect without having to rewrite the system. I just want to replace the feats that are generally responsible for specific fighting styles. This is one reason why they eat up move or standard actions, So that they don't mix too much. I'm hoping this leaves room for other kinds of feats.
One thing I did leave out that I am adding that avoids rewriting the whole system is noting what feats these feats replace for the purposes of things like the ranger's style feats and prerequisites.
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With that out of the way I want to give some insight into how I’m thinking about these. I’m mostly inspired by the scaling combat feats in Kobold Press’ New Paths Compendium ...
Interesting! As the person who wrote the Scaling Combat Feats in the New Paths Compendium.I'm curious to see what you come up with! :)
Can you use two stances at once?
No. I didn't want them getting out of hand so I made them eat move actions. I hoped to keep them making them more powerful by making them exclusive from each other. Also to avoid unforeseen combinations.
That is unless they turn out to be too weak.
@ Malwing- it was the pre-reqs and incidental term references that I was thinking of...but a conversion guide should do the trick.
With that out of the way I want to give some insight into how I’m thinking about these. I’m mostly inspired by the scaling combat feats in Kobold Press’ New Paths Compendium ...Interesting! As the person who wrote the Scaling Combat Feats in the New Paths Compendium.I'm curious to see what you come up with! :)
As you can see Power Strike is pretty much just the scaling Vital Strike with a stamina boost and some effect feats that come after it.
I'm also using the logic of listing feats they replace when I'm done. For the most part this is why when I use Scaling Combat Feats in my games the transition was smooth.
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For Acrobatic and Aggressive Step, may I suggest:
"As a move action, you may move up to your speed to gain a bonus [to X]. For each 5 feet you move, you gain a +1 [to X], up to a maximum bonus of +1 per 4 BAB you possess."
That way just moving 5 feet doesn't garner full bonus - actual mobility is mechanically incentivized.
While you are doing a rewrite, you may want to consider language that somehow incorporates the concept of "movement cost" into you equations. For example, the first diagonal movement through difficult terrain expends 15 feet to actually move 5 feet. Does this count as moving 15 feet or moving 5 feet for purposes of your feats?
@ Malwing- it was the pre-reqs and incidental term references that I was thinking of...but a conversion guide should do the trick.
In the end it would look something like;
Quick Strike (Combat)
Prerequisites: BAB +6, Dex 15
Can Replace: Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Greater Two-Weapon Fighting
Benefit: As an attack action you may make two melee attacks instead of one. If you are attacking with a two handed weapon you suffer a -4 penalty to that attack. If you are attacking with a one-handed weapon the penalty is instead -2. If you are attacking with a light or natural weapon your attack suffers no penalty. When your BAB reaches +11 and 16 you gain an additional attack.
Special: You may spend 6 stamina to gain an additional attack.
Replacement Feats: Some feats have a list of feats they can replace. This means that this feat counts as the feats it replaces for the purposes of prerequisites. This also means that this feat can be taken in place of one of those feats such as with bonus feats gained by a ranger's combat styles. The feat being replaced still exists and can be taken in addition to the feat that can replace it.
For Acrobatic and Aggressive Step, may I suggest:
"As a move action, you may move up to your speed to gain a bonus [to X]. For each 5 feet you move, you gain a +1 [to X], to a maximum bonus of +1 per 4 BAB you possess."
That way just moving 5 feet doesn't garner full bonus - actual mobility is mechanically incentivized.
While you are doing a rewrite, you may want to consider language that somehow incorporates the concept of "movement cost" into you equations. For example, the first diagonal movement through difficult terrain expends 15 feet to actually move 5 feet. Does this count as moving 15 feet or moving 5 feet for purposes of your feats?
I think Acrobatic Step already does this by just lasting as long as your turn and the extra effect happens when you provoke attacks.
With Aggressive Step I have to think about. I was previously unsure on how to not convolute the language and wanted to make a few more feats following it to make sure I could do that without having it do strange things.
I do have the question as to whether or not it would be seen as a steep restriction.
Aside from making feats that scale with base attack bonus, I feel this doesn't really reevaluate feats in any meaningful way. They don't address what I believe as the flaws with the feat system and how they relate to martials. I'm not certain of the math behind them. Though, I do like Readying Stance.
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I feel this doesn't really reevaluate feats in any meaningful way. They don't address what I believe as the flaws with the feat system and how they relate to martials.Can you elaborate?
Yes please, because I feel like I'm pushing this in some of them, and the chassis behind them, as demonstrated in a few of them, is to allow martials to exchange bonuses for effects or have effects that scale along with the bonus so I'm sure you can suggest some effects that can happen with that paradigm. I wanted to set things up like that to make combat a bit more fun by generating a resource that wasn't exactly a resource so you had some variable options for combat thus the baseline feats are simple scaling feats and each following feat is some kind of effect.
Also to be clear, my design goal is not to improve things beyond combat actions and movement because I'm working on something separate for general utility and physical prowess.
Can you use two stances at once?
No. I didn't want them getting out of hand so I made them eat move actions. I hoped to keep them making them more powerful by making them exclusive from each other. Also to avoid unforeseen combinations.
That is unless they turn out to be too weak.
You can use a standard as a move action....seems like you could do Defensive and Readying stance at the same time...unless you specifically dis-allow it.
You can use a standard as a move action....seems like you could do Defensive and Readying stance at the same time...unless you specifically dis-allow it.Can you use two stances at once?
No. I didn't want them getting out of hand so I made them eat move actions. I hoped to keep them making them more powerful by making them exclusive from each other. Also to avoid unforeseen combinations.
That is unless they turn out to be too weak.
You can take both if you do that. I don't find it that powerful and it can instigate some kind of tanking build so I think its legit. I mostly just don't want to have both running and you get an attack action.
Bonus: This makes the list of possible combinations bigger than I expected so I'm going to be a bit careful. I counted 16. This makes the list up to 22. Some of them terrible though.
just troubleshooting. Making sure it was intentional...doesn't seem OP.
One thing that may be though...graceful strike seems to allow automatic hits...since you are only rolling to confirm...if you fail to confirm do you still hit?
Power cleave seems to arbitrarily reward multi-dice weapons...like Scythe or Great sword..to the detriment of long swords and Great Axes.
devastating push seems like it should require the power strike to hit to activate.
Echoing pain seems more like echoing damage..is kinda brutal, it basically doubles vital strike damage and cripples spellcasters. I'd have it work like the Magus ability lingering pain...which is basically the same, except that the total damage is counted as continuous, but is only dealt once.
Lingering Pain (Su): The magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as an immediate action after hitting a target with a weapon attack. All damage from that attack (including damage from a spell cast using the spellstrike ability) is considered continuous damage for the purposes of any concentration checks made by the target prior to the beginning of the magus's next turn.
EDIT: I re-read power cleave...seems ok after all..as long as it means what I think it means :). Sets of dice rather than individual dice.
just troubleshooting. Making sure it was intentional...doesn't seem OP.
One thing that may be though...graceful strike seems to allow automatic hits...since you are only rolling to confirm...if you fail to confirm do you still hit?
Power cleave seems to arbitrarily reward multi-dice weapons...like Scythe or Great sword..to the detriment of long swords and Great Axes.
devastating push seems like it should require the power strike to hit to activate.
Echoing pain seems more like echoing damage..is kinda brutal, it basically doubles vital strike damage and cripples spellcasters. I'd have it work like the Magus ability lingering pain...which is basically the same, except that the total damage is counted as continuous, but is only dealt once.
Lingering Pain (Su): The magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as an immediate action after hitting a target with a weapon attack. All damage from that attack (including damage from a spell cast using the spellstrike ability) is considered continuous damage for the purposes of any concentration checks made by the target prior to the beginning of the magus's next turn.
For Graceful Strike you still hit. May be too powerful but I'm kind of throwing balance at the wall to see what sticks so that may change, but I will clarify in my document I'm keeping these in. Is it too powerful?
With Power Cleave it functions by how many times you add your weapon's damage die so a earthbreaker would be reduced in iterations of 2d6 not 1d6, assuming that's what you're asking.
With Echoing Pain, again throwing balance at the wall to see what people will tolerate. Keep in mind that you only roll your weapon's damage dice for the extra damage, meaning that a 4d6+4 earth breaker hit is going to deal 2d6 extra damage on a failed save. At BAB 11 the same weapon will deal 4d6. The point of not letting the whole damage count as continual damage was to give casters kind of a chance to cast a spell. Is it too powerful? Alternatively a lvl 11 strike with an earth breaker is going to average out to force the caster to make a concentration check of 24+ the level of the spell, is that too low or still basically impossible for a caster to cast after being hit with that?
Devastating Push does say that you use it when using Power Strike.
Quick Defense
Prerequisites:BAB +6, Quick Strike
Benefit: When you use Quick Strike you may lose any number of your bonus attacks. If you do , until the beginning of your next turn, you gain a +1 shield bonus against a number of attacks against you equal to the amount of bonus attacks you lost. If you are wielding an offhand weapon with an enhancement bonus this shield bonus is instead equal to that weapon’s enhancement bonus.
I have a google doc for these. Eventually I'll linkify it to the first post.
This is going very well... And I'm genuinely curious about what you'll do with the general utility for martials.
Mayby like hard coding awesome stuff to skill DCs, like "Running on clouds", DC 30 Acrobatics?
(don't believe I'm TOO lenient on this one)
Mighty Leap
Prerequisites: +6 BAB, Aggressive Step
Benefit: When using Aggressive Step you may move at full speed through difficult terrain. Also you may move up to your speed in any direction. If you do not end your movement on solid ground you fall and suffer falling damage as usual at the end of your turn. This movement still provokes attacks of opportunity.
Rush
Prerequisites: +6 BAB, Aggressive Step
Benefit: When using Aggressive Step you may lower your +1 bonuses to melee attack and damage rolls by 1. If you do increase your speed by 5 feet for each +1 bonus lost this way.
Passing Attack
Prerequisites: BAB+4, Aggressive Step
Benefit: When you using Aggressive Step you may make an attack action at any point during your movement.
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Although my end goal with these feats are not to fix martial utility I don't mind throwing a few bones and I'm open to suggestions on adding more feats that do such a thing. I think Mighty Leap, Rush, and Aggressive step make for powerful abilities that handle a lot of problems. Imagine getting to a flying enemy by paying stamina to get a higher bonus to Aggressive step and using it all to make a powerful leap. finish it off with a Power Strike potentially devastating the offending creature. Its not that much since creatures can fly pretty high and by lvl 20 a figther is likely to only jump 80 feet by spending his BAB worth of stamina but it's an option. plus if you don't have a massive acrobatics check that falling damage is not great. Individually I think they work out with Rush giving a lot of bonus movement and Mighty leap gives options when there are a good deal of obstacles.
In the future I do have plans to re-evaluate the Monk bonus feat least since Rush steals a bit of his schtick, but I'm re-evaluateing that class altogether so I have room to work with.
Again, if you have suggestions for new feats or the feats I've written so far let me know. Also let me know if any of these effects are too powerful or too weak for what they are.
Kudos to you, Malwing! An ambitious project.
I simply give my players Martial Flexibility. Boom! Now they have any Combat Feat they need provided they meet the reqs for it. Plus everyone gets Power Attack and Combat Expertise, so those 2 "gatekeeper" feats are taken care of.
It's the next best thing to doing away with Feats altogether and simply allowing tiers of abilities that unlock as one levels up. (Kind of like the way casters gain access to multiple spells on level up.)
It allows combat schools just like there are arcane schools.
Good luck to you!
Afterimage
Prerequisites: BAB +4, Acrobatic Step
Benefit: When using Acrobatic Step you may lower the bonus to AC by 1 to make a space that you have left count as an ally that can be used as a flanking partner. Treat this flanking partner as if it were a copy of yourself for the purposes of activating teamwork feats. This flanking partner cannot make attacks and does not otherwise exist. You may do this as many times as you can lower your bonus to AC.
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Afterimage is a risky design that I really would like feedback on. Its a weird feat that does a weird thing.
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Impossible Speed
Prerequisites: BAB+4, Acrobatic Step
Benefit: When using Acrobatic Step you may lower your bonus to AC by any amount(minimum 0). If you do you may ignore 5 feet of space of your movement for each bonus that you lose. This functions as if you were teleporting past each ignored space. You must end your movement on solid ground and you cannot ignore the space that you end your movement on.
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Impossible Speed is obviously ridiculous as you can effectively go through walls with it. I was thinking of wording it so that you dont' ignore the space but not provoke attacks of opportunity but teleporting martials sounded more exciting. Is this too powerful? Any other way anyone would do it?
To clarify, the six 'starting' feats all have means to spend stamina on them because I already allow stamina pools with fighters getting them for free. They still function without the stamina clause but can get extreme with a large stamina pool.
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Afterimage
Prerequisites: BAB +4, Acrobatic Step
Benefit: When using Acrobatic Step you may lower the bonus to AC by 1 to make a space that you have left count as an ally that can be used as a flanking partner. Treat this flanking partner as if it were a copy of yourself for the purposes of activating teamwork feats. This flanking partner cannot make attacks and does not otherwise exist. You may do this as many times as you can lower your bonus to AC.
During your turn? Until the end of the round? Until your next turn?
During your turn? Until the end of the round? Until your next turn?Afterimage
Prerequisites: BAB +4, Acrobatic Step
Benefit: When using Acrobatic Step you may lower the bonus to AC by 1 to make a space that you have left count as an ally that can be used as a flanking partner. Treat this flanking partner as if it were a copy of yourself for the purposes of activating teamwork feats. This flanking partner cannot make attacks and does not otherwise exist. You may do this as many times as you can lower your bonus to AC.
Good catch. It's until the beginning of your next turn.
Yes, Spheres of Power is a primary inspiration on how this works.
Only difference is that one is ranged and one is melee. Naming them like that just organized it in my head. I have not written Focus Shot because I'm stuck on what it should be. I don't think I want it to be ranged vital strike.
When I figure out this batch I'll move on to swift and immediate actions with a similar naming pattern.
I ask because, and maybe it's a bad suggestion, you might consider combining them.
Because what is the difference between Quick Strike and Trick Shot really?
Sorry I misunderstood the question. I was kind of mulling over it a bit when I started and went with separating Strikes and Shots for a few reasons.
Firstly to give melee and ranged attacks some abilities that were exclusive from each other. I didn't want to crowd ranged weapon exclusive feats into a category where you're most likely to use light weapons. Some of the ranged feats already get crowded with ones that only work well with thrown weapons and such. I didn't want to exacerbate the problem. In the end I divided them so that its easier to find what you want based on your playstyle in case I get to more than 80 of these.
Another reason was that I didn't want to equate ranged attacks and melee attacks because one has the distance advantage. I wanted to not have to take into account switch hitters when trying to balance these out. For example, automatically threatening a critical gets buggy when you're using weapons that crit for x3.
Also the issue of 'handedness' when it comes to bows and reloading weapons became hard to mix Quick Strike and Trick Shot. Being lazy I decided to not deal with it in the first place and put ranged weapons in an arena where handedness was not a real factor I consider.
By similar logic oughtn't you separate thrown weapons from projectile weapons?
I always thought it strange that the Rapid Shot feat (for example) applied equally to daggers and shortbows (and crossbows and guns, for that matter).
Short answer; Yes.
Long answer; I started not wanting to do that but I'm running into a lot of rules language snags and exception language. This project is still a work in progress so I expected to change my mind on things as I got feedback.
The big flaws I perceive with the feat system is that:
1. Most feats do not give you new things to do. They merely make you better at what you already do. As a result, a martial approaches combat in the same way throughout their career, making them feel boring and ill equipped in a game where threats constantly evolve.
2. Feats force you into crippling specialization. Versatility is king, and yet feats force you into fighting a specific way using a specific type of weapon. This creates the situation where the classes that should give you the most combat options instead force you to narrow your build to specific combat scenarios. This also contrasts with how most spellcasting works, where players get rewarded for versatility and can essentially rebuild their character on a daily basis simply by preparing different types of spells.
3. Bloat. The current system emphasizes quantity over quality. There's hundreds of feats and only a handful of them are worth anyone's time.
4. Most feats aren't fun. Slicing two baddies in a single swing is fun. Throwing cards as weapons is fun. Getting a +1 to a weapon isn't very fun. If a feat isn't fun, it doesn't need to exist.
I see the above as much more fundamental problems than merely feat tax and scaling. So when I see a thread about reworking feats, I expect it to address the above issues. I'm not seeing that here.
I feel this doesn't really reevaluate feats in any meaningful way. They don't address what I believe as the flaws with the feat system and how they relate to martials.Can you elaborate?Yes please, because I feel like I'm pushing this in some of them, and the chassis behind them, as demonstrated in a few of them, is to allow martials to exchange bonuses for effects or have effects that scale along with the bonus so I'm sure you can suggest some effects that can happen with that paradigm. I wanted to set things up like that to make combat a bit more fun by generating a resource that wasn't exactly a resource so you had some variable options for combat thus the baseline feats are simple scaling feats and each following feat is some kind of effect.
Also to be clear, my design goal is not to improve things beyond combat actions and movement because I'm working on something separate for general utility and physical prowess.
But that's the big problem I see with feats. Feats should let you do new interesting things, not merely make you better at what you already do. Existing feats mostly just give passive bonuses or negate penalties. Your feats are only a step above that. Most of them are just bonuses that only trigger under certain conditions. We need more Spring Attacks, Cleaves, and Lunges, not a Weapon Specialization that only works when you move a certain distance. Feats should be like a combat toolbox. I feel like that's not what your feats accomplish. I'd rather have 10 feats that let me do something new and interesting than 80 feats that all have some variation of "you gain X bonus to Y when you do Z."
Got any suggestions as to effects martials should be doing?
To clarify some things; by design the first feats in their respective lines do not offer unique effects but are meant to produce resources for unique effects. Aggressive Step does nothing new but with its following feats a martial can jump 80 ft in the air and with some of the others bull rush four gargantuan creatures that are in the air. Do those kinds of things not count for what you are talking about?
Assume that using resource generation feats are a given; What should follow up feats look like?
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This is good feedback.
I will respond to #2 by saying that the "versatility" of spells is for the most part divorced from the actual creation of spells. The difference here is between classes. Unlike a Wizard, a Sorcerer cannot "rebuild their character on a daily basis." While I said "for the most part," what this rewrite seems to be doing is to shorten feat chains by having a handful of primary feats and a lot more secondary feats whole only prerequisite is the primary feat. Bushes instead of trees, if you will. So, this partially mitigates the concern as well.
As to #1, while I agree with your analysis of feats in the pathfinder system, I do not think that what is being homebrewed here sidesteps that. Many of the feats here "give you new things to do." Especially the stances and the secondary feats. And, as these are being designed around staying competitive with iterative attacks, not only do many of them provide you with new things to do, but new combinations to make, each taking up only half the round (standard or move). Also what you are seeing is just the skeleton.
As to #3, do you think that Spheres of Power constitutes "bloat" as well? These are not new feats - these are replacement feats for the old feats. So, I don't see this bit of feedback as being relevant.
As to #4, we'll just have to wait and see...
I have a wedding today so I can't post til tomorrow. In the meantime I hope that my design pattern is clear and I come back to feedback and suggestions. Especially suggestions because I'm having trouble thinking of new effects that aren't just reiterated spells and effects that don't get out of hand due to it being done repeatedly or pumped with Stamina.
The real problem is that Combat Feats don't redress the problems with the classes most reliant on them, namely the fighter and the rogue, and to a lesser extent the monk and other martials.
They are neither strong enough to stand in for spells, or versatile enough to be used when not in combat for other purposes.
To truly 'fix' a fighter, for instance, you'd have to have all his combat feats scale by level, and be as strong as regular class features...which entails a complete combat feat rewrite.
THEN, you'd have to give him new feats or class features that give him some out of combat utility, reflecting his awesome ability at non-magical training. I.e. general feats for skills, utility, defense, movement, and the like.
THEN, you'd have to have anti-magic or null-magic alternatives that are powerful against casters, and give non-casters an actual edge in certain situations.
That's more then a just a combat feat rewrite which anyone can use and cherry-pick.
==Aelryinth
Prerequisites: +6 BAB, Trick Shot
Benefit: When you use trick shot you may make one attack to make one of your remaining attacks ricochet off a target if that attack is a thrown bludgeoning weapon. If the weapon thrown this way successfully damages a creature you may catch it as a free action action at the end of you turn. You must have a free hand to catch a weapon this way. You must be in the same space that you have thrown the weapon or in any space between that space and the damaged target to catch the weapon.
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This is one of those feats that made me think twice about making these feats weapon agnostic. I'm continuing the way I am doing things but this may change as I'm just developing how these will work in general.
I do wonder if everyone is reading my goals here. To reiterate, I'm not looking to 'fix' martials, these are for the most part groundwork for generating resources for martials to use for something else I'm working on. Each reasource is purposely made to be bought with stamina and scale with BAB. But I'm having trouble coming up with actual effects that is reasonable for martials to do and work out with how fast stamina can refill so if you have any suggestions on what martials should be doing with these resources please let me know.
In this case the resources are; stamina which restores at 1per minute, and bonuses created by feats on standard and/or move actions.