Flail Expertise and Power Strike feat support in MME

[Neverfate]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (New Weapons)

Pick and Polearm Expertise feats as well. The Power Strike feats for Slayer, Knight, Scout and any other classes they end up with it are unique to a weapon category to can be applied to any of the classes that have this power.

Also a look at a Rare weapon. Haven't totally read it yet. Looks promising.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup, looks interesting. Great that they're finally filling in the gaps in the expertise feats. That will be nice for a bunch of builds.

Gotta think about the Strike feats... Nothing wrong with the concept. The example ones look pretty gnarly, but they should work OK. I guess we'll see what charops makes of them...

I like the flametongue. Seems quite... flaming!

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

If the example Flametongue is the new direction they're taking for magic items, it's certainly a step in the right direction, although I'm not sure it manages to go far enough to hit the flavour and power of old items - for better or worse.

About time for the "missing" expertise feats. I look forward to seeing just what they offer. Hopefully they'll be competitive and not crap.

As for Power Strike feats.... I'm not a fan. They're ok in terms of what they *do*, I suppose, but it really feels more like something that belonged baked into the classes that use Power Strike. These should optionally replace the Slayer and Knight weapon specialization stuff, basically. Grant the Slayer and Knight a bonus feat in lieu of their specialization that they can use to buy one of these (or one they already got). That gives them the freedom to *not* be locked into a very narrow weapon selection. Why not an axe-wielding Knight (that can take full advantage of its abilities)? Why not a polearm Slayer?

I know nothing stops one from using these concepts, I just would like to see the class more broadly supportive of it. I get Essentials; yes, present a few default, decent options, but For Great Justice, don't penalize people who want something different with a feat tax!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, it could be done as an optional 'take this feat instead of the usual specialization stuff' kind of thing. Or just offer some completely other choice instead of specialization and then you can still take the feat.

On the flametongue. The interesting thing is if you go back and read the old 1e AD&D items you find they actually aren't BETTER than the stuff in AV1 and AV2 really. The old flametongue for instance gave you some fairly vague bonuses against some presumably 'fire vulnerable' types of creatures, and that was basically it, aside from shedding light, which presumably even the original 4e flaming sword does (given that fire generally does shed light). The new one is actually pretty strong. I don't personally think they need to get more extreme than that. If you want a super duper uber flaming sword then you probably want "The Sword of Vulcanus" or something, and that baby would presumably be an artifact...

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I suppose that is true about the power of the items. I think my perceptions of such things may be coloured by the fact that I always just made up the items I was handing out in my games back then and they were probably broken as hell, sometimes intentionally.

 

[Neverfate]

Regarding the Power Strike feats as Feat Tax... yeah, they are. They're band-aid fixes like the Assassin article that came out last month. Though, unlike the assassin article, a slayer or a knight *usually* doesn't need to super optimize their feats to remain effective (at least at lower levels) and of all the classes are likely to end up with a free slot, so it's not as "taxing".

In a perfect world, they would have just been baked in, yeah but with the design of 4E player material I'll take anything that looks somewhat worthwhile. The player content from HoS the NWCG was really lackluster so I'll take band-aid fixes if it's that or nothing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I suppose that is true about the power of the items. I think my perceptions of such things may be coloured by the fact that I always just made up the items I was handing out in my games back then and they were probably broken as hell, sometimes intentionally.

Eh, I think it is one of those things where there are definitely different ideas about item power levels. I'm not shy about tossing an artifact or two around myself. Not all of them have to be super heavy weight either.

 

[MrBeens]

Regarding the Power Strike feats as Feat Tax... yeah, they are. They're band-aid fixes like the Assassin article that came out last month. Though, unlike the assassin article, a slayer or a knight *usually* doesn't need to super optimize their feats to remain effective (at least at lower levels) and of all the classes are likely to end up with a free slot, so it's not as "taxing".

In a perfect world, they would have just been baked in, yeah but with the design of 4E player material I'll take anything that looks somewhat worthwhile. The player content from HoS the NWCG was really lackluster so I'll take band-aid fixes if it's that or nothing.

They are not feat taxes, as they don't fix anything that is broken.
They are an optional feat to let the power strike be a little bit more flexible.

 

[Istar]

Any info on what the "Polearm Expertise" does ?

 

[garyh]

Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium looks interesting. If only I had somewhere to purchase it...