The GM of my campaign has been building some custom races and feats for his next campaign, and asked me to stress test them. The one I'm currently wrestling with is a Str/Int Oni-style race with telekinetic abiilities. They have a racial feat that allows them to gain a telekinetic "arm" that functions much like the vestigial limb of the alchemist. It can't wield weapons, but it does gain a slam attack that automatically hits, and deals force damage equal to your Int modifier. The arms have "-" for Strength and can only lift 5 lbs. (similar to mage hand). The feat can be taken multiple times to get more arms.
This seems ok, but I've been wrestling with how it could be abused. I know that using the slam to make combat maneuvers is something that will immediately need to be patched, so now I'm trying to figure out what kind of build could really monopolize on this ability. Using the limbs to deliver touch spells seems like a decent option, so I thought maybe a Magus build would be good.
The idea of spending a few feats to add more slams to add your Int in damage multiple times to a full attack might be reasonable, but I'm not certain how much Int you'd need to have to make this worth a feat.
So right now, the only other uses are the normal ones you'd like an extra hand for, such as wielding an especially light shield, reloading firearms, or just holding a wand/potion/divine focus while your hands are already occupied.
If anyone can think of a truly inspired use of this feat, I'd appreciate it.
Int in force damage hitting automatically; maximising Int, perhaps with an alchemist using a cognatogen seems the first thing you might do with it.
Alternately a crane style or other defensive build that sits next to the enemy chipping away while taking little damage in return could work. Other aura-style spells could help.
If you assume that weapon spec is worth a feat (2 damage per hit, only on a successful hit) then yeah, this is entirely worth a feat for any character that uses Int otherwise at all.
Be a rogue, keep adding arms (also at level 10, thanks to advanced talent), enjoy quadratically scaling damage with sneak attack. At level 19 you are at 11 slam attacks, with 10d6 each (ignoring Int), resulting in 385 damage in average - more than the reference HP of a CR 20 creature (370). That's before using your normal weapons. Since rogues usually have an accuracy problem, they profit a lot from an automatic hit.
Now a GM is in the position to negate you sneak attack or full-attacks, but it's better for both sides if the player never corners themselves into a single tactic in the first place.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A defensive fighting/combat expertise build might be interesting; somehow in my head I disregarded Sneak Attack damage, that is pretty nasty, but as you pointed out, it's an all-or-nothing strategy. I suppose an amulet of mighty blows loaded up with bonus damage dice (vicious, shocking, frost, flaming, etc.) would be fairly awesome as well.
Thanks for the advice!
Hm, so Arcane Trickster would be out too, then. I'd need some other source of bonus damage, such as Smite or Challenge to make that work.
Actually, RAW, I don't think this works - IIRC, if there's no to hit roll, you can't apply sneak attack damage (eg. Magic Missile).
Well, sneak attack's description doesn't mention a roll, but this argument is fragile at best. I agree it doesn't work.
It is more complex than this.
Does the attack hit the intended target if said target has mirror images or concealment?
Magic Missile isn't an attack. This slam is.
I think something that hits automatically should be avoided and if not avoided, gaining more of such attacks should be hampered and with a hard cap on how many one can get. All in all, auto-hit without any possible defense against it, besides a bigger H.P. pool, is broken.
Agénor, that's a point I think I'm going to bring up to my GM, a slam that hits automatically for force damage is neat and all, but it does present a few issues, even if the damage it deals is fairly weak without serious investment.