That is not what he was saying, not even close. Try reading it again.No that's an awful way to design things. Someone shouldn't need to spend all their feats and wait until the campaign is half over to make a combat style work just to make fighters feel better about themselves.So I suppose wizards should get meteor swarm at level 1 now too, eh? Cause why bother earning or waiting for anything?
It's not an awful way to design things. If that's the way the game worked, with all of the rewards up front and nothing to aspire to, no one would play the game for more than a few sessions before they got bored and moved on.
What am I missing? He clearly wants fighters and other martials to have their cake and to eat it too.
If someone wants to be really good at something, they should have to spend resources to get there, and they should have to earn it over several levels, just like everyone else. If you take away the sense of accomplishment by spoiling players early on in their characters' careers then the game just won't last long.
In short, I disagree with his assertion that it's bad design practice. Other martials really should not be able to stack up to the fighter at the fighter's main shtick (or rather, the fighter needs to be lifted above them at the one thing he does well).
but whirlwind attack ISN'T really good at something. It's a moderately nifty trick.
The idea is because the fighter exists and they don't want whirlwind out before level X, they make so many pre-reqs that the fighter, using all their feats, can get it by X. But now all the other classes that would maybe consider it can't really take it as it wont come online till high level, like 11 or something.
If whirlwind didn't care about the fighter, then it'd probably have less pre-reqs. Also if this was the case then the fighter goes from the only class that kinda can make this work to being the only class that can have multiple of these nifty combat tricks. cause to me, having something like 4 of your first 6 levels of class features be, you're waiting to take and finally can take whirlwind attack. Is a pretty lame thing and undeserving of being a class feature.
Whirlwind attack is fine as is except for the lack of synergy between itself and its prerequisite feats.
Fighter doesn't need anymore people poaching its abilities.
Swoosh wasn't talking at all about giving fighter features to other classes. He was talking about dumb feat chains like whirlwind.
Someone shouldn't need to spend all their feats and wait until the campaign is half over to make a combat style work just to make fighters feel better about themselves.
So if whirlwind had a line in prereq, character lv 5, instead of a billion feats then others could have fun with whirlwind.
And as I said, I disagree. If you made it easily accessible to non-fighters, fighters are going to feel even more worthless than they already do.
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Is whirlwind attack even that useful? Like, I could see it having some application for wiping out a big mob of trash mooks the GM is throwing out just to give you a lot of numbers, but the typically challenging encounter I've seen tends to be a medium number of strong enemies that aren't going to take a ton of damage from a single attack, which means you don't get a ton of milage out of the feat unless your GM is very fond of swarming you with kill-in-one-hit goblins and kobolds.
I've seen it critisized pretty heavily over the years since it basically requires you to put yourself in a risky situation (getting surrounded) in order to get full benefit. What's more, its requiring a full round action ensures that once you move into position, you're the one who is going to get ripped up first.
I did make an amazing trip/disarm flail fighter build with it once though. Really tore up the campaign by tripping several enemies at a time, then disarming them on the free attacks of opportunity from Greater Trip.
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And as I said, I disagree. If you made it easily accessible to non-fighters, fighters are going to feel even more worthless than they already do.
So you're saying that getting whirlwind attack at a reasonable level is a fighter class feature?
I'd think I fighter would feel good that it didn't have many prereqs, then he could get it AND another nifty trick or two rather than being the only option to have the nifty trick at a reasonable level.If it's supposed to be a fighter thing pull a monk feat on it. Requires character level 8 or fighter 6. now it's still a fighter thing, that anyone can get, like it currently is. But doesn't require all your feats for half your life to get to.
Isn't the real problem with Whirlwind attack is not that it requires five feats as prereqs, but because at least 2 (and possibly 3) of those prerequisites are really terrible feats?
I mean, even if you're a fighter and can get whirlwind attack online at low levels, you're still paying the opportunity cost of taking combat expertise and mobility instead of good feats. The fighter who doesn't take good feats instead of bad ones is in a world of hurt compared to basically every other class since "you get a lot of feats" (and things that are the equivalent of feats, like AWT) is most of what the fighter actually gets.
And as I said, I disagree. If you made it easily accessible to non-fighters, fighters are going to feel even more worthless than they already do.So you're saying that getting whirlwind attack at a reasonable level is a fighter class feature?
I'd think I fighter would feel good that it didn't have many prereqs, then he could get it AND another nifty trick or two rather than being the only option to have the nifty trick at a reasonable level.
If it's supposed to be a fighter thing pull a monk feat on it. Requires character level 8 or fighter 6. now it's still a fighter thing, that anyone can get, like it currently is. But doesn't require all your feats for half your life to get to.
I like that idea, but the fighter prerequisite should be lower than 6, since a fighter could get it by 4th-level as is.