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So, after reading a few threads discussing whether or not Crane Wing is balanced, I decided to try my hand at remedying the chief complaints, namely that it's vague, it doesn't make any sense from a realistic perspective, and it doesn't scale to player level properly at all. Because my version is so different from the original, I decided to replace Crane Riposte entirely with something that I felt fits the updated version of Crane Wing better. I'm not the most experienced with Pathfinder or d20 in general, so constructive criticism is welcome, but if you're going to rip apart my suggestions, please at least be polite about it. :)
Quote: Crane Wing (Combat)
You move with the speed and finesse of an avian hunter, your sweeping blocks and graceful motions allowing you to deflect melee attacks with ease.
Prerequisites: Crane Style, Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike, base attack bonus +5 or monk level 5th.
Benefit: When you are attacked with a melee weapon (including unarmed strikes, natural attacks, touch attacks, and melee combat maneuver attempts) while using Crane Style, if you have at least one hand free and are either fighting defensively or using the total defense action, you may use an attack of opportunity to attempt to deflect that attack. You must declare that you are attempting to deflect the attack before the attack roll is made. If you do, the opponent must make an attack roll as if it were performing a combat maneuver against you. If the roll fails, the attack is deflected and is considered to have missed you. If it succeeds, the opponent must make another attack roll as normal in order to hit you. You may not use this feat when you could not normally make an attack of opportunity against the opponent, such as when you are flat-footed or when the opponent is not within your threatened area.
Quote: Crane Tip
You are so adept at parrying attacks that you can knock your opponents off-guard.
Prerequisites: Crane Style, Crane Wing, Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike, base attack bonus +8 or monk level 7th.
Benefit: You take only a –1 penalty on attack rolls for fighting defensively. Whenever you successfully deflect an opponent's attack using Crane Wing, the opponent provokes an attack of opportunity. If the opponent's attack failed by 10 or more when determining whether it was deflected, the opponent is knocked off balance and is considered to be flat-footed until its next turn.
I know the wording is incredibly awkward, and much of that is due to my lack of experience, but at the same time I wanted to explicitly clarify as much of the confusion about the official feat as I could. There are a few reasons that I use a combat maneuver to determine the success of the parry:
- Special size modifiers are applied. A Small monk can no longer (feasibly) parry the claw attack of a Colossal Dragon.
- The parry is no longer automatic, which was silly, but the one parrying has plenty of opportunity to improve their ability to do so by improving their Str or Dex bonuses, increasing their size, or increasing their CMD in any number of other ways. This way the ability to parry cleanly scales with the character's power level, and while the attacker is at a disadvantage, with enough of a gap in power level the parryer can still be hit.
In addition, as many of you probably noticed, a character can choose Combat Expertise to greatly expand their parrying/riposting opportunities. This attempts to solve the problem of Crane Wing being unscaleable in terms of number of attacks, which in the early game was too powerful and in the late game was almost useless. With Crane Tip, a character without Combat Reflexes still benefits from the feat if an ally can get an AoO on the opponent, or if the opponent fails by 10 or more, but with Combat Reflexes, the parryer can riposte the opponent themselves. This whole system makes a lot more sense to me than "lol instant hand wave."
So, again, I'm sure these could use improvement and they may be completely off the mark, but please give me your feedback if you have any.
If I were to try to fix the unfixable....
No BAB prerequisite; must have all those monk levels. This means that the style feats (intended to give monks a much needed boost) actually make monks more balanced with the other classes. So, you'd need five levels of monk in a similar way that you need four levels of fighter to get Weapon Specialisation. I'd do this with all the style feats.
I'd use the mechanics from the duelist PrC; give up an attack, roll to parry.
Adapting Parry wrote: Parry (Ex): Whenever the monk uses Flurry Of Blows, she can elect not to take one of her attacks. At any time before her next turn, she can attempt to parry an attack against her or an adjacent ally as an immediate action. To parry the attack, the monk makes an attack roll, using the same bonuses as the attack she chose to forego during her previous action. If her attack roll is greater than the roll of the attacking creature, the attack automatically misses. For each size category that the attacking creature is larger than the monk, the monk takes a –4 penalty on her attack roll. The monk also takes a –4 penalty when attempting to parry an attack made against an adjacent ally. The monk must declare the use of this ability after the attack is announced, but before the roll is made. Similarly, Crane Riposte would use the mechanics of the duelist's Riposte.
Well, what do you think? Would these two fixes work?
I was aware of the Duelist before I was aware of Crane Wing, and really it's just not that good. You need to make a full attack, you need to seriously cut your damage output, and you need to make an attack roll, which monks are typically bad at especially if they're tricking out their AC.
Changing what I have for Crane Tip to the Duelist's Riposte would essentially be a huge nerf, since a character with Combat Expertise can already riposte.
As far as restricting the style to monks only, I feel that's unrelated and also an artificial attempt at buffing monks by taking the feats away from everyone else. (You can also just multi-class Monk, and as it is, that's the most effective way of getting the feats anyway.)
Put me down for "not broken, don't fix it." YMMV.
I've simply removed Crane style, Crane Wing and Crane Riposte from my games. It doesn't really compare to anything besides deflect arrows, which is generally much less powerful. All the other abilities that negate damage that I can think of right now require an opposed check of sorts (mounted combat requires a ride check opposed to the attack roll and only negates an attack on your mount) and are generally much less powerful (parry requires you to NOT take an attack during a full attack and only gives you a chance to deflect an attack, which in my experience is fairly low, especially when dealing with a large or larger creature.)
If I were going to try to make the feat balanced, i would put either an opposed roll, or limitations to the size of the creature's attack that you can deflect - probably both. IMO a feat available at 6th level (or before for monks) should not be able to deflect a greater vital strike from a CR 15 + Huge or larger Red Dragon thus negating somewhere in the range of 50 to 100 damage. That's the scenario that resulted in me flat out removing the feat from my next game.
I have a ninja/monk (master of many styles) player in my Jade regent Campaign with this line of feats. He also has the snake style feat that allows him to use sense motive to counter an attack once per round. Add in the fact that he has near Godlike AC in melee when fighting defensively and receiving a mage armor spell from the party's sorc', he is almost impossible to hurt in melee, and this is at level 7.
We have been running with a house rule that attacks from creatures two or more size categories larger than you can't be deflected (I cleared this up with my player before the game started), but I'm considering a house rule that natural 20's can't be deflected as long as my players agree. There will be foes using the same feat later on so this will go in the players favor as well.
Using Crane Style significantly lowers your offensive ability, though.
You can Flurry/TWF if you are unarmed, but you're not using Dragon Style, and if you wield a weapon, you need one free hand. It's a feat that makes you great at defense, but it's hardly broken, because that is all you're good at.
I get that Crane Wing tends to provoke knee-jerk reactions, but I kind of feel like this thread has basically become "here are my preconceived notions of Crane Wing and how it should be changed" rather than a specific critique of my replacement. All of the replies could have been made without even reading the OP. I know it's kind of long and all, but I did write it for a reason.
I don't believe your change it at all necessary. It's a knee-jerk nerf to an ability that doesn't need it.
It is very good when combined with snake style, crane riposte, snake fang and master of many styles (2 level dip) combat reflexes but that is a lot of effort to go for to make a countering tank.
Seranov wrote: I don't believe your change it at all necessary. It's a knee-jerk nerf to an ability that doesn't need it. My position isn't that it's overpowered, it's that it's poorly written. It scales poorly and doesn't clarify what is meant by a "melee weapon attack." I feel that my version is more appropriate to the character's level. Not only does what you can parry scale with your stats (as well as with the size of you and your attacker, while still allowing you to parry Large or Huge monsters, but at a penalty), but with Combat Expertise you are able to parry a number of attacks equal to 1 + your Dex modifier per round when normally, realistically, you will not be able to utilize the full number of attacks granted by Combat Expertise. The original Crane Wing is far inferior in this respect, as you only ever get one parry per round, so when things start to have 6+ BAB, you are quickly outclassed by other abilities.
I put quite a bit of time into reading others' opinions and formulating what I feel is a cohesive fix to common complaints (claiming both that it's underpowered and overpowered).
Can you elaborate on what parts you consider to be a "knee-jerk nerf"?
My main problem with crane wing is that it really sucks for horse chargers who put all there eggs in one attack.
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Many things bother me about the Crane style feats! The ability to deflect/parry a melee attack, as a concept that we can create game mechanics to reproduce, is all fine and dandy. In d20, the duelist PrC was the first attempt (of which I am aware) to do this. When judging a new mechanic to do this (or anything else!) it should be compared to other attempts to create mechanics which do the same thing, as part of the design process. So, when I look at Crane Wing it is appropriate to compare it with a duelist's Parry:-
Pre-requisites:
Parry= BAB +8 (minimum 8th level character, two levels of which must be in this prestige class), Acrobatics 2 ranks, Perform 2 ranks, Dodge, Mobility, Weapon Finesse, and taking a specific and character-defining prestige class!
Crane Wing= Crane Style, Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike, base attack bonus +5 or monk level 5th. No monk levels required! A one-level dip makes it even more efficient.
Use:-
Parry= must first full attack with a light or one handed piercing weapon, choose not to take one of those attacks in the hope of being attacked in the next round, choose to use the parry before knowing whether or not the incoming attack will hit, use your one-and-only immediate action to make the attempt, then make an attack roll to succeed (at significant penalties versus a larger creature.
Crane Wing= must be using Crane style (easy), have one hand free (you build your fighting style around this, so no problem), and be fighting defensively (at worst -2 to attack for +4 AC, so this 'limitation' has tangible benefits). You sacrifice no attacks, you don't need to have full attacked, you don't need to guess in advance if you'll be attacked, you don't use up your immediate action, and you auto succeed without a roll, even against a collossal creature! You don't even have to waste it on an attack which might miss!
It's broken. It needs fixing, or removing.
Any fix should include:-
• A roll that reflects the abilities of the attacker and the defender. The duelist's Parry does this by an opposed attack roll, with penalties based on size. I don't have my heart set on this exact mechanic, but it should be not un-adjacent!
• Both Crane Wing and Parry should either require you to sacrifice an attack, or neither should. Either both or neither should require an immediate action. Both or neither should require you to use it before or after the opponent's attack roll.
• If Weapon Specialisation is restricted to fighters on the grounds that +2 damage is so much a defining feature if fighters that a simple +4 BAB is not enough, then surely such monk-defining feats as the style feats should require actual levels of monk to do the amazing things granted by those feats! Amazing compared to +2 damage with a single weapon type, anyway! Greater Weapon Focus/Specialisation require 8/12 actual fighter levels, just for numerical bonuses. There have been literally thousands of posts on this forum telling us that monks are too underpowered. The style feats were intended to go some way to making monks competitive, and it would have gone a long way, IF they had required actual monk levels instead of BAB or skill ranks, which meant that monk levels weren't required at all!
Nearly all the duelist builds I've seen on these threads include Crane Wing! Why are The Three Musketeers now out swash-buckled by Hong Kong Phooey? Why do members of the duelist prestige class use Crane Wing to block attacks rather than their class-defining Parry ability? Why should duelists work so hard to get their unique Parry ability by 8th level, and work so hard to use it, when any random fighter can out-block him three levels earlier?
I suggested a couple of fixes in my previous post. I'm not saying that these are the only fixes, but fixes are needed.
In my previous post I said "Combat Expertise" but obviously I meant Combat Reflexes. Oops.
@Malachi: I agree with most of your points, and my idea for Crane Wing does address the mechanical issues you mentioned. Please reread my proposed changes.
I also agree that the feat shouldn't overshadow class abilities that are designed to parry, but as a player I wanted to modify as little as I could to get a parry mechanic I was happy with (my version of the feat hasn't been run by the DM yet; I was hoping to work out any glaring flaws in this topic first).
If I were the DM, I would do something like make the Duelist Parry ability reflect my changes to Wing and Tip, but without the bonus to AC. That way a Fighter interested in parrying would have to take Duelist levels, but a Monk could just use the Style. *shrug*
I'm much more interested in having workable mechanics than progression logistics at the moment, though.
Bad abilities being bad doesn't make good abilities over powered.
If you were to change it I would make it not apply to combat maneuvers, since you have a boost for fighting defensively. Then giant creatures could just grapple and swallow them.
We are looking for slightly different things. While I support your attempts to modify Crane Wing, and your proposals move towards your goal in a direction which coincides with mine, they do not go far enough to redress the imbalances that I highlighted in my post.
It's not 'my way or the highway' though! I approve of your changes, so far as they go! I understand that you're not trying to do what I'm trying to do, so it's not a fault in your design that they don't satisfy my design goals; they have to satisfy your needs!
I think you're trying to address the needs of a campaign, and I'm fine with that! I'm trying to address the larger picture, and that's okay, too. This means our design needs are slightly different, so result in slightly different solutions.
Malachi Silverclaw wrote: We are looking for slightly different things. While I support your attempts to modify Crane Wing, and your proposals move towards your goal in a direction which coincides with mine, they do not go far enough to redress the imbalances that I highlighted in my post.
It's not 'my way or the highway' though! I approve of your changes, so far as they go! I understand that you're not trying to do what I'm trying to do, so it's not a fault in your design that they don't satisfy my design goals; they have to satisfy your needs!
I think you're trying to address the needs of a campaign, and I'm fine with that! I'm trying to address the larger picture, and that's okay, too. This means our design needs are slightly different, so result in slightly different solutions.
What bigger picture are you trying to address? Have players in your groups universally taken Crane Wing since it was published? It's an awesome feat, but most fighters do not want to build around fighting one-handed. Despite your claims to the contrary, that most certainly is a rather large drawback. The feats and/or level dips to acquire it are not an insignificant cost, either.
That duelist is a terrible prc with a horrible shtick mechanic is not an indication that Crane wing is broken. Crane finally made Deulist playable (for some people), but it's still bad. Fixing parry would be a better option than nerfing crane.
To help streamline what you're trying to do, just-a-bird, I would suggest having the "parry check" occur after a hit is rolled. As you have Crane Wing written, you have a lot of extra rolling, which would really slow down the game. Consider trimming the extra rolling down to the minimum amount needed.
-Matt
I'm in the camp of just removing it from the game. It's too powerful and doesn't fit.
That said, your fix a bit overly wordy but is a decent middle ground.
Mortagon wrote: I have a ninja/monk (master of many styles) player in my Jade regent Campaign with this line of feats. He also has the snake style feat that allows him to use sense motive to counter an attack once per round. Add in the fact that he has near Godlike AC in melee when fighting defensively and receiving a mage armor spell from the party's sorc', he is almost impossible to hurt in melee, and this is at level 7. I have one of these in a game I'm in as well. I'm just counting the rounds until the DM realizes how broken the character is and house-rules it into oblivion.
Mattastrophic wrote: To help streamline what you're trying to do, just-a-bird, I would suggest having the "parry check" occur after a hit is rolled. As you have Crane Wing written, you have a lot of extra rolling, which would really slow down the game. Consider trimming the extra rolling down to the minimum amount needed.
-Matt
Thanks for the suggestion. I ordered it that way since it made the most "sense," that is, you parry a hit before it would actually hit you, but you're right in that comparing to the higher stat first (AC or CMD―it would vary per character, but generally CMD would actually be higher on this kind of build) would streamline gameplay a bit.
I have also considered reducing the checks to only one roll, but I feel that nerfs the ability too much and would also detract from the flavor.
The notion of a monk prerequisite is very misguided. Combat styles are not for monks.
Remember, monk is a regional class. There is, to date, only one monk archetype that does away with eastern weapon proficiencies: the empty hand monk, which has no weapon proficiencies except improvised. There is no occidental monk or quasi-middle eastern monk or even quasi-indian monk archetype.
Boar Style was developed by tribal orcs and has spread to goblinoids and giants. Not monks.
Janni style "represents several similar unarmed fighting arts practiced around the world." All of those outside the setting's China/Japan analogue are not monks.
Kirin style "is sometimes practiced by wizards." It is completely useless to monks at less than 50 point buy, with all the prerequisites being skill points and being based on a monk's dump stat.
I admit that one way to address the Parry/Crane Wing imbalance is simply to make Parry work just like Crane Wing:-
Parry (Ex): Once per round when fighting defensively with a one-handed piercing weapon, you can parry one melee weapon attack that would normally hit you. You expend no action to parry the attack, but you must be aware of it and not flat-footed. An attack so parried deals no damage to you.
To the OP; as a fencer myself I know that you don't waste effort parrying attacks which won't hit you. Let the opponent roll to hit; if he misses, no problem. If he hits, then roll to deflect. Instead of using your CMD to reflect size differences, modify your deflect roll by -4 per size category that the attacker is larger than you.
What are you rolling? An opposed attack roll?
I don't like that idea considering that defensive builds (especially when fighting defensively) often sacrifice a lot of to-hit points. That's why I chose to use CMD, mostly. I do tend to agree with the scaling penalty, or maybe I could just put in a similar restriction to Trip, depending on how the opposed roll works.
I agree with making Parry (Ex) exactly like Crane Wing mechanically, but I of course disagree that the current Crane Wing should be used as a model.
I will concede (as I sort of did in my previous post) that rolling only if they hit makes sense and saves time.
MechE_ wrote: I've simply removed Crane style, Crane Wing and Crane Riposte from my games. It doesn't really compare to anything besides deflect arrows, which is generally much less powerful. All the other abilities that negate damage that I can think of right now require an opposed check of sorts (mounted combat requires a ride check opposed to the attack roll and only negates an attack on your mount) and are generally much less powerful (parry requires you to NOT take an attack during a full attack and only gives you a chance to deflect an attack, which in my experience is fairly low, especially when dealing with a large or larger creature.) Currently playing an Unarmed Fighter 1/ Quingong Hungry Ghost Master of Many Styles 1 in the Serpents Skull AP.
I have just hit 2nd level and finally qualified* for Crane Wing.
I can assure you in no way is it 'broken'. I take a -2 to hit when using it and am very limited in what I can do with my Standard and Full round actions in a round (i.e. it only works when I am not Flat Footed and I fight defensively).
Even with a Strength of 18 (brutal for a MAD Monk), it leaves me with a single attack at +3 (or two attacks at +1 with 2WF). Flurry of misses anyone?
Yeah, its a nice defensive Buff against a single foe with just the single attack, but I am yet to be in a position whereby I am being attacked by a single foe with a single attack (and this is extremely rare - go through the Bestiary if you dont beleive me, and any classed NPC with a BAB of 6 or better has me covered, along with Supernatural and Spell like abilities and Ranged attacks).
Plus, even should I encounter a single enemy with a single attack, I would assume my enemy would figure out I have the feat after I first used it, and would resort to TWF (at the relevant penalties) themselves.
I think the hype over this feat is unfounded.
Did I mention I had to burn two feats, and give up Flurry of Blows to get access to it at 2nd level?
A steep price to pay.
* Contrary to popular belief, Crane Wing can not be taken any earlier than 2nd level. Even as a Human. You apply class abilities before level feats (so in this case, you must select your bonus feats from your class first i.e. your bonus style feat comes first) so its impossible (even for a Human) to take Crane Wing at 1st level.
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