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But why does the swing on a rope have to involve a boat to get the extra strike? Ropes can hang from anywhere.
This sounds like you are asking why pirates are better on boats. Ignore the rope, it is only incidental to the feat. Boarding Action is letting you charge if you get on or off a boat.
That's the one-line summary, not rope swinging.
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But why does the swing on a rope have to involve a boat to get the extra strike? Ropes can hang from anywhere.This sounds like you are asking why pirates are better on boats. Ignore the rope, it is only incidental to the feat. Boarding Action is letting you charge if you get on or off a boat.
That's the one-line summary, not rope swinging.
I think you are missing the entire point I'm trying to make.
Swinging on a rope is swinging on a rope. It doesn't matter if its on a boat, a plane or a train. It doesn't matter if its from the rafters, or across a gulch, or if it causes lots of pain. Swinging from a rope is always the same no matter where you do it, arguing differently will be quite in vain.
I'm saying that its such a specific and narrow ability to restrict it to only going to or from a boat, to be barely ever used. Unfortunately though, the design of things has removed all "flavor" from the description of the ability. While I want the mechanical part of abilities to be more technical writing and less creative writing... adding some sort of line to the description to add a 3rd line that says:
"This ability may be used while swinging on a rope in any terrain." or something like that. I wish that some flavor could be added that would explain that Pirates learning to swing on ropes on their boat during boarding actions can be applied in other places.
But why does the swing on a rope have to involve a boat to get the extra strike? Ropes can hang from anywhere.This sounds like you are asking why pirates are better on boats. Ignore the rope, it is only incidental to the feat. Boarding Action is letting you charge if you get on or off a boat.
That's the one-line summary, not rope swinging.I think you are missing the entire point I'm trying to make.
Swinging on a rope is swinging on a rope. It doesn't matter if its on a boat, a plane or a train. It doesn't matter if its from the rafters, or across a gulch, or if it causes lots of pain. Swinging from a rope is always the same no matter where you do it, arguing differently will be quite in vain.
I'm saying that its such a specific and narrow ability to restrict it to only going to or from a boat, to be barely ever used. Unfortunately though, the design of things has removed all "flavor" from the description of the ability. While I want the mechanical part of abilities to be more technical writing and less creative writing... adding some sort of line to the description to add a 3rd line that says:
"This ability may be used while swinging on a rope in any terrain." or something like that. I wish that some flavor could be added that would explain that Pirates learning to swing on ropes on their boat during boarding actions can be applied in other places.
Ok. Now explain why jumping on/off a ship and attacking at a higher damage die is easier than doing it on flat terrain. Why can't you use this ability on land and just skip the rope?
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But why does the swing on a rope have to involve a boat to get the extra strike? Ropes can hang from anywhere.This sounds like you are asking why pirates are better on boats. Ignore the rope, it is only incidental to the feat. Boarding Action is letting you charge if you get on or off a boat.
That's the one-line summary, not rope swinging.I think you are missing the entire point I'm trying to make.
Swinging on a rope is swinging on a rope. It doesn't matter if its on a boat, a plane or a train. It doesn't matter if its from the rafters, or across a gulch, or if it causes lots of pain. Swinging from a rope is always the same no matter where you do it, arguing differently will be quite in vain.
I'm saying that its such a specific and narrow ability to restrict it to only going to or from a boat, to be barely ever used. Unfortunately though, the design of things has removed all "flavor" from the description of the ability. While I want the mechanical part of abilities to be more technical writing and less creative writing... adding some sort of line to the description to add a 3rd line that says:
"This ability may be used while swinging on a rope in any terrain." or something like that. I wish that some flavor could be added that would explain that Pirates learning to swing on ropes on their boat during boarding actions can be applied in other places.
If you are hearing my point, stop describing the feat in terms of swinging from a rope. Make your points in terms of charging and see if they hold up.
"Stride up to twice your Speed. As long as you either boarded or disembarked a boat during this movement, make a Strike and deal an extra die of damage if you hit."
If you added "this ability can be used while not on a boat", it just becomes Sudden Charge with bonus damage, strictly better than the Fighter feat.
It makes perfect narrative sense that Pirates are better at charging onto or off of boats, but don't get that action economy advantage on land.
If you think the dedication and the couple follow-on feats they've posted is the 'Pirate archetype' in it's entirely, I think you miss the point of the feat based archetypes.
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But why does the swing on a rope have to involve a boat to get the extra strike? Ropes can hang from anywhere.This sounds like you are asking why pirates are better on boats. Ignore the rope, it is only incidental to the feat. Boarding Action is letting you charge if you get on or off a boat.
That's the one-line summary, not rope swinging.I think you are missing the entire point I'm trying to make.
Swinging on a rope is swinging on a rope. It doesn't matter if its on a boat, a plane or a train. It doesn't matter if its from the rafters, or across a gulch, or if it causes lots of pain. Swinging from a rope is always the same no matter where you do it, arguing differently will be quite in vain.
I'm saying that its such a specific and narrow ability to restrict it to only going to or from a boat, to be barely ever used. Unfortunately though, the design of things has removed all "flavor" from the description of the ability. While I want the mechanical part of abilities to be more technical writing and less creative writing... adding some sort of line to the description to add a 3rd line that says:
"This ability may be used while swinging on a rope in any terrain." or something like that. I wish that some flavor could be added that would explain that Pirates learning to swing on ropes on their boat during boarding actions can be applied in other places.
If you are hearing my point, stop describing the feat in terms of swinging from a rope. Make your points in terms of charging and see if they hold up.
"Stride up to twice your Speed. As long as you either boarded or disembarked a boat during this movement, make a Strike and deal an extra die of damage if you hit."
If you added "this ability can be used while not on a boat", it just becomes Sudden Charge with bonus damage, strictly better than the Fighter feat.
It makes perfect narrative sense that Pirates are better at charging onto or off of...
So apparently you keep glossing over the fact that I don't want this to be better than the fighter sudden charge feat. I want to separate the "stride" portion of this feat and the "swinging" portion of the feat. I'd even be ok if the "stride" portion was removed completely.
The point being, as written, the feat is way too narrow in scope to be a valid option, even in a ship based campaign. Even in book 2 of Skulls and Shackles, I can think of maybe 3 times I actually would have used the feat through 9 levels.
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I think you are missing the entire point I'm trying to make.
Swinging on a rope is swinging on a rope. It doesn't matter if its on a boat, a plane or a train. It doesn't matter if its from the rafters, or across a gulch, or if it causes lots of pain. Swinging from a rope is always the same no matter where you do it, arguing differently will be quite in vain.
You cannot swing it on a train, you cannot swing it on a plane. You cannot swing it here or there, [without a feat] you cannot swing it anywhere.
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You cannot swing it on a train, you cannot swing it on a plane. You cannot swing it here or there, [without a feat] you cannot swing it anywhere.I think you are missing the entire point I'm trying to make.
Swinging on a rope is swinging on a rope. It doesn't matter if its on a boat, a plane or a train. It doesn't matter if its from the rafters, or across a gulch, or if it causes lots of pain. Swinging from a rope is always the same no matter where you do it, arguing differently will be quite in vain.
Ah yes, you got where I was going!
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So apparently you keep glossing over the fact that I don't want this to be better than the fighter sudden charge feat. I want to separate the "stride" portion of this feat and the "swinging" portion of the feat. I'd even be ok if the "stride" portion was removed completely.
What do you think Rope Runner does exactly? How is it not the "swinging" portion without the charge benefit?
Because Boarding Action says "Hey, you! You who can swing on ropes all over the place! If you do it on a boat I'll give you a something special."
The point being, as written, the feat is way too narrow in scope to be a valid option, even in a ship based campaign. Even in book 2 of Skulls and Shackles, I can think of maybe 3 times I actually would have used the feat through 9 levels.
Maybe you would have gone pirating more if you had it.
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So apparently you keep glossing over the fact that I don't want this to be better than the fighter sudden charge feat. I want to separate the "stride" portion of this feat and the "swinging" portion of the feat. I'd even be ok if the "stride" portion was removed completely.What do you think Rope Runner does exactly? How is it not the "swinging" portion without the charge benefit?
Because Boarding Action says "Hey, you! You who can swing on ropes all over the place! If you do it on a boat I'll give you a something special."
You keep getting wrapped up in this. I don't understand why. I'm not conflating rope runner with boarding action. Great, Rope Runner lets me swing all over everything, everywhere. That's a useful feat whether you are Pirating or not.
But why does my insane skill to swing all over creation on a rope suddenly only apply to a very narrow application insomuch as granting extra damage? If rope runner applies everywhere, then getting extra damage for swinging on a rope should also apply everywhere.
The point being, as written, the feat is way too narrow in scope to be a valid option, even in a ship based campaign. Even in book 2 of Skulls and Shackles, I can think of maybe 3 times I actually would have used the feat through 9 levels.Maybe you would have gone pirating more if you had it.
What are you talking about? We pirated like 30 ships in book 2 alone. The number of times we didn't get them to surrender or destroy their ship before boarding was even necessary was in the single digits. And not every time we boarded did it make sense that my character would actually do the boarding.
Specific times I remember from Book 1 through 3 that my character specifically embarked or disembarked a ship:
Book 2: There may have been a creature that attacked our boat that I swing out from, but it was 2013 when we played Book 2. Otherwise, there was less than a handful of times where we actually boarded a ship we pirated during combat. Out of like 30 ships. I also think it was Book 2 where we fought the ghost ship, and I think there was boarding there.
Book 3: There were 3 or 4 actual encounters where we had to chase down another ship, or were attacked by a ship. By this point we'd built up our ship weapons so well (catapults and ballistae with our alchemist's poison on the bolts) that we often would take out both the captain and the pilot before getting to the other ship.
So saying we didn't "pirate" is not correct. We did that, a lot. It just didn't often include boarding actions.
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So apparently you keep glossing over the fact that I don't want this to be better than the fighter sudden charge feat. I want to separate the "stride" portion of this feat and the "swinging" portion of the feat. I'd even be ok if the "stride" portion was removed completely.What do you think Rope Runner does exactly? How is it not the "swinging" portion without the charge benefit?
Because Boarding Action says "Hey, you! You who can swing on ropes all over the place! If you do it on a boat I'll give you a something special."
You keep getting wrapped up in this. I don't understand why. I'm not conflating rope runner with boarding action. Great, Rope Runner lets me swing all over everything, everywhere. That's a useful feat whether you are Pirating or not.
But why does my insane skill to swing all over creation on a rope suddenly only apply to a very narrow application insomuch as granting extra damage? If rope runner applies everywhere, then getting extra damage for swinging on a rope should also apply everywhere.
Because you keep characterizing the benefits of Boarding Action as stemming from the rope use. They don't. The Benefits of Boarding Action are for being a Pirate and assaulting ships. Your crazy skill at jumping off of or onto boats give you the extra damage. That skill at jumping off boats does not translate to urban mansions or dense jungles.
Maybe you are looking for a Branch Pounce or Vine Charger feat, instead.
So saying we didn't "pirate" is not correct. We did that, a lot. It just didn't often include boarding actions.
If your party wasn't building for taking boarding actions, why would you take the Boarding Action feat? My point is that had you and your party built for boarding actions instead of ranged ship weapons, you would have seen a lot more use from it.
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So apparently you keep glossing over the fact that I don't want this to be better than the fighter sudden charge feat. I want to separate the "stride" portion of this feat and the "swinging" portion of the feat. I'd even be ok if the "stride" portion was removed completely.What do you think Rope Runner does exactly? How is it not the "swinging" portion without the charge benefit?
Because Boarding Action says "Hey, you! You who can swing on ropes all over the place! If you do it on a boat I'll give you a something special."
You keep getting wrapped up in this. I don't understand why. I'm not conflating rope runner with boarding action. Great, Rope Runner lets me swing all over everything, everywhere. That's a useful feat whether you are Pirating or not.
But why does my insane skill to swing all over creation on a rope suddenly only apply to a very narrow application insomuch as granting extra damage? If rope runner applies everywhere, then getting extra damage for swinging on a rope should also apply everywhere.
Because you keep characterizing the benefits of Boarding Action as stemming from the rope use. They don't. The Benefits of Boarding Action are for being a Pirate and assaulting ships. Your crazy skill at jumping off of or onto boats give you the extra damage. That skill at jumping off boats does not translate to urban mansions or dense jungles.
Maybe you are looking for a Branch Pounce or Vine Charger feat, instead.
So saying we didn't "pirate" is not correct. We did that, a lot. It just didn't often include boarding actions.If your party wasn't building for taking boarding actions, why would you take the Boarding Action feat? My point is that had you and your party built for boarding actions instead of ranged ship weapons, you would have seen a lot more use from it.
I think the point Tallow is trying to make here is that Boarding Action as a feat is ridiculously limited in its use; even in a campaign that features plenty of pirate-themed adventures, you don't embark or disembark ships routinely during combat. Given this is competing with other Class feats, it seems entirely reasonable to say that the skills you've learned whilst boarding enemy ships (for example, swinging on to the ship and using that momentum to deal extra damage) can be applied in a larger amount of situations - Branch Pounce or Vince Charger are equally situational feats, and it is exceptionally unlikely anyone would take them when they compete with the large amount of useful class feats that we have seen.
There's a logical narrative reason for why one could apply Boarding Action's bonuses in a slightly less niche set of situations, and a good mechanical reason for it. Why would you want to add Branch Pounce or Vine Charger in that case? The focus on the rope-part of it is simply because it makes a good example of the overly-niche narrative and mechanical nature of the feat.
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I think the point Tallow is trying to make here is that Boarding Action as a feat is ridiculously limited in its use; even in a campaign that features plenty of pirate-themed adventures, you don't embark or disembark ships routinely during combat.
Avoiding ship-to-ship melee is a choice you can make in those fights. Saying a feat is useless because you avoided the situations it was made for is ridiculous.
If Boarding Action were limited to swinging on ropes, I'd probably agree with Tallow. A feat requiring you to both 1. swing on a rope; and 2. move to or from a ship to get a benefit is way too niche. One or the other is just fine, though. From what I understand, Tallow would be fine with a feat that only had one of those requirements. He just prefers swing on a rope.
I find the "swing on a rope" requirement to be much more situational (and quite possibly obnoxious to deal with as a GM) than the "board a ship" requirement for a ship-based campaign.
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I think the point Tallow is trying to make here is that Boarding...So apparently you keep glossing over the fact that I don't want this to be better than the fighter sudden charge feat. I want to separate the "stride" portion of this feat and the "swinging" portion of the feat. I'd even be ok if the "stride" portion was removed completely.What do you think Rope Runner does exactly? How is it not the "swinging" portion without the charge benefit?
Because Boarding Action says "Hey, you! You who can swing on ropes all over the place! If you do it on a boat I'll give you a something special."
You keep getting wrapped up in this. I don't understand why. I'm not conflating rope runner with boarding action. Great, Rope Runner lets me swing all over everything, everywhere. That's a useful feat whether you are Pirating or not.
But why does my insane skill to swing all over creation on a rope suddenly only apply to a very narrow application insomuch as granting extra damage? If rope runner applies everywhere, then getting extra damage for swinging on a rope should also apply everywhere.
Because you keep characterizing the benefits of Boarding Action as stemming from the rope use. They don't. The Benefits of Boarding Action are for being a Pirate and assaulting ships. Your crazy skill at jumping off of or onto boats give you the extra damage. That skill at jumping off boats does not translate to urban mansions or dense jungles.
Maybe you are looking for a Branch Pounce or Vine Charger feat, instead.
So saying we didn't "pirate" is not correct. We did that, a lot. It just didn't often include boarding actions.If your party wasn't building for taking boarding actions, why would you take the Boarding Action feat? My point is that had you and your party built for boarding actions instead of ranged ship weapons, you would have seen a lot more use from it.
Exactly my point Arcaian.
Even if we'd built our party specifically to make boarding actions, the feat would have seen extremely limited use. I boarded the other ship 1/3rd of the time we actually were engaged with boarding actions. And that's when I was personally trying hard to find reasons to swing on a rope onto the other ship.
My contention is, it is bad feat design to make it so narrow in scope that even if you are participating in that niche its unlikely to happen even 50% of the time. Even in a pirate campaign where you are predominantly boarding other ships or fighting creatures on shore or running from shore to a ship, this feat is not worth it, because it will happen so few times.
The best way to make these feats worth taking, is to make sure that abilities gained with actions specific to a ship would also apply when doing similar actions elsewhere. Which means that maybe the Boarding Action feat needs to be rewritten to reduce what it can do, to make it broader in scope. I don't know the exact balance at the moment.
But I do know that it isn't applicable enough to be worth taking, even in a campaign that would be participating in that action in a predominant number of encounters.
So saying we didn't "pirate" is not correct. We did that, a lot. It just didn't often include boarding actions.If your party wasn't building for taking boarding actions, why would you take the Boarding Action feat? My point is that had you and your party built for boarding actions instead of ranged ship weapons, you would have seen a lot more use from it.
My first character in my group's SnS game, who lasted to about level 5 IIRC, actually had a rope-swing ability that serves as a good but not perfect PF1e-equivalent stand-in for this discussion. In the 5 levels he was part of the party we took a good number of ships in combat. In those several fights I used my swing... once. In the very first boarding we had, and then only because it would've taken two rounds to make it to the other ship by gangplank, and would've taken my Mermaid ally much longer than that, and I was impatient. A lot of the time we didn't even have to actually board, because initiative didn't even actually start until we were actually on the enemy's ship, because that's how the GM decided to run it.
Now granted in that game my swing was only a Trait rather than a Feat or Feature, and *maybe* if it had been an actual feat or feature the GM might have started us on our own ship. But then there becomes a turn tax for the rest of the party to make it onto the other ship before things can actually happen (as rope swinging didn't and wouldn't make nearly as much sense for the rest of the party as it did for my character) so... just how much is it right to inconvenience the rest of the party to make one person's ability actually relevant?
In most defensive boarding actions it should be feasible to ping pong back and forth every round between the enemy ship (presumably still minimally crewed/defended) and your own (invaders to target). For offensive boarding you can probably still use your third action to withdraw to your own ship and set up your next charge.