Shields

[Sadrik]

The next progression for these feats would be improved power attack and improved combat expertise both increasing the BAB penalty to -8 but scaling appropriatly as they did before.

IPA
+6 BAB requirement
-8 BAB, +8 damage with light and one-handed weapons
-8 BAB, +12 damage with two-handed weapons
ICE
+6 BAB requirement
-8 BAB, +8 AC with no shield
-8 BAB, +12 AC with a shield

And if you really wanted to go nuts you could add a third in the chain where you can get -12 BAB with a +11 BAB requirement.
Talk about super defense though, with a tower shield (+4 AC) you would get +20 AC with -12 BAB. that may be a bit too much if you ask me. I think capping them at Improved and not adding in the third "greater" feats would be good - it simply is too crazy.

 

[Bladesinger_Boy]

Sadrick, I thought you wanted static numbers for ease of DMing with monsters and NPCs? This just feels like you used the idea of "-2 per tier" and doubled the bonuses.

Both those penalties and those bonuses seem too high. I like the idea of scaling things by tiers (1st, 11th, 21st), but it feels like you prefer BAB. So I'd suggest having a look at the Pathfinder way of doing Power Attack and Combat Expertise. It starts as a -1 penalty and goes down another -1 every 4BAB, capping at -6 penalty at +20 BAB. The ratio for bonus is better than 1-to-1, I think -1 to +2 (but check it out). This both provides a favorable ratio while also limiting the overall penalty & bonus that can be gained. I mean, power attack becomes broken with mid to high level PCs with two-handed weapons getting a critical hit OR big beefy brute monsters that have a -15 or -20 attack penalty to sacrifice and still hit and do crazy damage. The Pathfinder method stops that. That is why I'm design the "-2 per tier" method so close to that.

 

[Sadrik]

Well 3.5 PA is broken the way it is now and with what I have proposed I have made it less so. What you propose makes it even less than that. It becomes broken with things like touch attacks or lots of attack bonuses.

Normal: -1 BAB for +2 damage with a two handed weapon. Limit = BAB. So a +12 BAB character can drop to +0 BAB and do +24 damage. To even approach that amount of damage the same +12 BAB guy under my idea would have to take two feats and when improved power attacking would have +4 BAB and do +12 damage. Note that is 1/2 the damage (but also a better chance of hitting).

I think the PF method has value but it does scale with more granularity than I would prefer to deal with. With my variant, it is either on or off and their is no choice of how much penalty to get how much benefit. I like that a lot.

 

[Kerrick]

I rather like the idea of doubling the base shield bonus for fighting defensively. It's simple and it provides a good benefit for sword/boarders. For TWD, you could sacrifice additional attacks with the off-hand to gain a bonus to AC at the rate of +1 per attack.

Combat expertise is basically the Improved Defense Fighting feat: it's the same as fighting defensively, except that you the bonus is 1:1 instead of 2:1, and there's no cap. With this in mind, I see no real problem with it.

 

[Sadrik]

I hadn't considered the two weapon defense chain of feats accounting it with the CE bonus.

Perhaps the TWD feats simply add onto the "no shield" benefit or with the feat you can basically count as having a shield when fighting defensively or CE.

Fight defensively
-4 BAB, +2 AC with no shield
-4 BAB, +3 AC with a shield

CE
-4 BAB, +4 AC with no shield
-4 BAB, +6 AC with a shield

ICE
+6 BAB requirement
-8 BAB, +8 AC with no shield
-8 BAB, +12 AC with a shield

 

[Bladesinger_Boy]

Sadrick, your idea works fine if you just want a flat bonus. I like how my idea scales up with levels (I'm really big on the 4E idea of Level Tiers right now) and can better integrate different bonuses together into the same system, rather than all doing something different.

Yours is more straight forward and simplistic. Mine is more intricate and level-balanced.

 

[Sadrik]

I am coming at it from the DMs perspective, the 3e system needs to take a very hard look from this perspective too at many of its components. I think it is easy for the DM to turn static feats on or switch them off, not as realist or fine grain but none the less more practical in play.