Iterative Attacks

Set said:

Seems like a nice workable system.

My own tweak was to allow anyone able to make an iterative attack to instead make a Mighty Blow as a full attack action.

For each iterative attack lost, the single attack gets bonus damage equal to the base damage of the attack.

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There's nothing wrong with that approach per se, but as I mentioned upthread (a few times) it will dramatically undercut the amount of damage your melee classes can dish out.

If your 2nd, 3rd, 4th iterative attacks previously included power attack, or flaming, aligned, holy, or sneak attack dice, you're losing all that damage. Adding in any amount equal to "the base weapon" means that anybody with more than +2d6 in bonus damage loses out in the bargain.

This is important because high-level monsters are designed to get hit. They don't survive contact with the PCs by making the PCs miss; they survive contact with the PCs by having an assload of hit points. If you curtail the damage of the fighting classes, combat will last longer. See various 4e "grind" threads for evidence of the unpleasant side effects. And 4e at least has the advantage of not having a lot of save or die effects; increasing the duration of combat by "just a couple of rounds" in 3e might mean "just a couple of rounds" of extra save-or-die effects coming at you.

I really like this. Came here from a link so I missed the meat of the discussion.

Another place this is interesting is places where cumulative attacks have special meaning, like grapple. If makes changing from grappled to pinned and vice versa a bigger state change since you only have two attacks to do so instead of more.

I've got a couple of corner cases that I wonder if someone familiar with the math can look at. The system looks to work from my side, these are occasional things.

1. Value of "other" attack types. For example, tripping an opponent gives a bonus to hit for later attacks, but if you only have one other attack max that seems to devalue this.

2. Mixed normal and touch attacks. I've seen players do normal attacks for 1st and 2nd iterative attacks and then things like trips for the low end because it's touch attacks so still has a reasonable chance to hit.

3. Power attack, combat expertise and others that "spend" attack bonus. It seems like CE becomes more powerful (since you have a better overall chance to hit over your attacks), but it's not underpowered. PA has it's balance changed. Higher AB for some but lower for that first strike, and less attacks to add to. Don't know if it's weaker, stronger, or just has different balance points.

I am really impressed with the solution and am excited to implement it in my games. I do however have one player who will howl with frustration at the proposed change and wonder if someone could explain how the proposed change impacts the improved critical rapier fighter.

Just on the surface it seems that his damage will mirror the curve described by Wulf earlier across the center of the bell, but that the damage will be much lower against the high ac opponents.

Is this accurate? Does his damage output in the corner cases drop more than the "average" fighter

Secondly how does this impact character classes like the duskblade who get to cast a rider spell into each strike?

My understanding is that most characters will see an increase in hits per round across the majority of cases and so such a character will be better off (even though they are giving up an extra two swings which might be carrying phantasmal killer or disintegrate)

I appreciate any answers to these questions which will help me start using this idea much sooner. That and my Probability-fu is very weak.

Forgefly said:

I am really impressed with the solution and am excited to implement it in my games. I do however have one player who will howl with frustration at the proposed change and wonder if someone could explain how the proposed change impacts the improved critical rapier fighter.

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Critical damage is accounted for in the DPS calculations.

Yes, your player will 'lose' more damage strictly in numbers, but he loses the same percentage of damage as everyone else. He also gains more damage than everyone else against "the field" of average monsters (about 15%).

Is this accurate? Does his damage output in the corner cases drop more than the "average" fighter?

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So, again, yes it drops "more." If he loses 10% of 30 damage, he's lost 3 points; and the fighter loses 10% of 20 damage, he's only lost 2 points.

3 is certainly more than 2.

I suppose how he feels about that will depend on how he feels about, say, progressive taxation rates.

Secondly how does this impact character classes like the duskblade who get to cast a rider spell into each strike? My understanding is that most characters will see an increase in hits per round across the majority of cases and so such a character will be better off (even though they are giving up an extra two swings which might be carrying phantasmal killer or disintegrate).

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Your understanding is spot on. Damage that goes "asymmetrical" like that is certainly going to take a bigger hit against the edge cases, because you haven't just lost a chance to do X damage, you've lost a chance to do "infinite" damage (ie, save or die).

Those are the absolute worst cases of the edge cases-- when you really just want more actions, period. No way around that-- but one could argue that such builds are pretty broken to begin with.

(Of course my understanding of the duskblade was that he could cast spells as a swift action, and you only get one swift action per round, so he would not be affected at all.)

Many thanks.

I love the idea and I was hoping your explanation would provide me an easy way to sell it to him, but the simple elegance of the solution may sway him over to it even so.

(Vis a vis the Duskblade it is the Arcane channeling full attack which allows him to cast a spell into his weapon and have the spell effect everyone hit that round, thus iterative disintegration at high levels)

Minor quibble, but Arcane Channelling only works on touch spells. Under the spell description, Range will say Touch.

Don't let the inmates run the asylum up there at your home game, bub. Crack down.