Characters with Pounce! ALSO: Fair price for Pounce?

[Freakohollik]

I think the ability to attack multiple times is worth something more than the numbers, though. If you only attack once and miss, and the combat only lasts ~3 rounds, as IME they tend to, then that REALLY sucks as a player.

This is why you make sure you don't miss. True Strike, Smite Evil, Deep Impact(XPH), Shock Trooper(CW), or Sure Strike(SC, total hax) and full power/leap attack. At low levels you can probably get by with just your strength bonus. At higher levels, make sure you carry around a Luck Blade in your pocket so you can reroll anything unlucky 1/day.

 

[Dandu]

I hope the OP gets this info. He hasn't shown up at all since his last post.

 

[Mistah J]

I'm here!

Thanks so much for all the replies everyone. At this point, after looking at all these options I've come to an uncertain conclusion:

The ability to Pounce is a mid to high level ability to be sure, but not so powerful as to be Epic.

So I think I might make my own feat. One that grants the full pounce ability but has enough requirements to keep it out of reach for low-level characters.
This, however, is a discussion for the House Rules board.

Ultimately I think it's neat how when 3.x started, Pounce was considered so strong, a limited version was an Epic feat. When it "ended" however, it was a 1st lvl alternate class feature.

Strange eh?

 

[Dandu]

You did get the part where it's also a 2nd level Ranger spell, right? Just checking.

 

[Corsair]

Ultimately I think it's neat how when 3.x started, Pounce was considered so strong, a limited version was an Epic feat. When it "ended" however, it was a 1st lvl alternate class feature.

Strange eh?

Not strange at all, since apparently the original designers had no idea about balance and playtests were of dubious help in that regard. All in all, warriors have had to be consistently powered up throughout the 3rd edition existence to come close to matching the capabilities of spellcasters, especially at higher levels.

 

[Herzog]

In all fairness, Pounce IS a very powerfull ability.

It allows you to bypass a basic restriction in the rules:
You cannot perform both a move and a full attack..

The origin of the 'problem' lies with that basic restriction. If movement and attacks had been on a more relative scale, the Pounce ability would be less powerfull.

example: if you have 4 attacks (regardless of source), you can perform 4 attacks, or three attacks and move 1/4 of your (double) move, or 2 attacks and 1/2 your (double) move, or 1 attack and 3/4 of your (double) move.

With this (house)rule in place, being able to both move and perform multiple attacks is already possible without pounce, so the impact of the pounce ability becomes less severe.

Now, I'm not saying this is a GOOD houserule. It would, however, remove some of the strange effects you get on higher levels, where fighters with multiple attacks either have to stand in place throughout the combat to benefit from their multiple attacks, or move and be reduced to the single attack they could already make at first level (but with a higher attack bonus, of course).

The RAW tend to reduce combat (using melee oriented characters) to a series of attack rolls without any combat dynamic.

That is, if you count without other options melee oriented characters have, of course. Such as Skirmish, power attack, Combat Expertise, etc.

 

[Shin Okada]

Ultimately I think it's neat how when 3.x started, Pounce was considered so strong, a limited version was an Epic feat. When it "ended" however, it was a 1st lvl alternate class feature.

Strange eh?

For those 10 years, many of my friends tried to make some nasty charge-based builds. Combining those multiply by X damage when charging, pounce, quickend true strike or wraithstrike, abilities to turn once while charging, flight, etc.

All failed. Due to the lack of versatility (or usability). Simply, they could not charge as often as they wanted (or expected) to. Also, charging is not the best movement when melee warriors are expected to hold the line.

I guess designers in WotC have experienced the same. On paper, damage output of those abilities and combos looked awesome. But on the gaming table, they did not work as expected.

 

[Runestar]

The origin of the 'problem' lies with that basic restriction. If movement and attacks had been on a more relative scale, the Pounce ability would be less powerfull.

Which was a problematic restriction to begin with.

When you consider that at higher lvs, a spellcaster can easily cast a high lv spell, follow up with a quickened spell and still move, being limited to just a single attack after moving is just too debilitating for a fighter.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

In all fairness, Pounce IS a very powerfull ability.

It allows you to bypass a basic restriction in the rules:
You cannot perform both a move and a full attack..

A restriction that, arguably, shouldn't have existed in the first place. In 1e and 2e, if and when you got multiple attacks, you could make them all and still move; there were no iterative attack penalties, no full attacks vs. standard attacks, or anything of the sort, just "you can move and attack." It worked out just fine then, and there was really no reason to change that.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

A restriction that, arguably, shouldn't have existed in the first place. In 1e and 2e, if and when you got multiple attacks, you could make them all and still move; there were no iterative attack penalties, no full attacks vs. standard attacks, or anything of the sort, just "you can move and attack." It worked out just fine then, and there was really no reason to change that.

But you also didn't get ALL of those attacks on your turn all at once. They had time delays, didn't they? So you'd get your full attack eventually if enemies were in reach, but over the course of the round. Surely you don't think the "nova" effect of making all of them at once is identical to that, right?