Silly rules question - any feat that just drives you batty?

[obiwanchunn]

I am shocked that no one has mentioned my most hated feat, Spring Attack.

If a PC's got it, it negates any reach benefits a large creature gets. It makes sense when a player attacks a target with just 5' reach as I can see the attack unbalancing the attackee. However, if they run at a target that has a reach of 10', I don't see how attacking them *after* they provoke the AOO keeps from having an AOO in the first place.

It makes no sense and drives me nuts. However at my table, just because I'm DM gives me no right to rebuke standard DnD feats. My players would riot.

 

[Chimera]

Mercurial weapons are super banned

Same here. Stupid idea.

The idea was to make a fighter who fenced while wielding a barn.

Ah, but can he hit anything with the broad side of it?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Oh, yeah, one more little rant. I realize it is again for "balance" issues, but who in the world came up with the idea that a size small archer will be more accurate (due to size adjustment) than a size large? How about a little research into physical reality, authors? A 3 foot tall guy (with average strength for such) and a 11 foot tall guy (with average strength for such) fire at the same target 100 yards away. The big guy's missile is larger (both in diameter and length) and shot with more force. Everything else equal, the big guy will be more likely to hit. Simply the way it works. Bigger projectiles shot harder are more accurate, studies have said. That's one reason why when they due ballistics testing they use mock-up extra, much, much larger projectiles. Is it due to wind resistance, changes in air pressure as the missile travels through it, or whatnot? I don't know, not a physicist. But it works that way.

Try it yourself. Get one of those children's 25 pound pull bows and fire it off at a target 50 yards (or, heck, 50 feet) away. Then try a 50 pound pull adult's bow (if you have enough strength to pull it without strain). Now try telling me the smaller, weaker fellow has an advantage. Bilge.

Plus, someone only 3 feet off the ground is quite more often going to have some obstruction (bush, rock, natural rise of the ground) blocking his view to the target than an 11 foot fellow. I think we tend to think of the Earth as a lot flatter (due to bull dozers, determined farmers, etc.) and smoother than it is in an unworked state. So a pox on the idea that smaller folks are better marksmen at a goodly distance, I say!

Remember that smaller bows have a lower range (unfortunately, the weapon size rules do not contain a formulae for determining range when chaning weapon size). Range is an important part in D&D to determine accuracy of ranged weapons.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Oh, yeah, one more little rant. I realize it is again for "balance" issues, but who in the world came up with the idea that a size small archer will be more accurate (due to size adjustment) than a size large?

It isn't for balance issues, it is for (very logical) melee combat issues. To a small fighter, Medium sized targets all look like bigger targets than they do to a medium fighter.

The archery problem is a separate artifact of the combat system as a whole which only uses range penalty to reflect falloff/ballistic trajectory (?) of projectiles and completely fails to recognise that targets further away are smaller and thus present a smaller target (this leads to the lunacy of spells like melfs acid arrow being a ranged touch attack with no penalty against a medium target 800ft away, but has a -4 penalty if attacking a diminutive target right next to you... despite the fact that their apparent size would be the same (maybe the thing at 800ft away would even appear fine, for a -8 to hit).

So one correction that the whole combat system could benefit from is to give a basic range penalty due to apparent size (it could be simplistic such as "every 30ft of range reduces targets apparent size by one level" or complex if someone cares to work out the maths.

A second correction is to ensure that missile weapons of different sizes have different range increments to cater for your valid point that smaller bows have difficulty firing accurately at range.

Cheers

 

[Elvinis75]

I'm definitely in agreement with the majority of people that Monkey Grip is a no go in my campaign but what is this major disagreement that people have with Cleave on an AOO? Maybe someone could start another thread if it can't be explained in short here?

 

[Darklone]

Simple. Did you never have an enlarged Barbarian level 3 or so with full Power Attack charge into the middle of bad guy group and cleave through 5 or 6 guys of his own level which you thought were going to whoop his butt ? Oops, that was Great Cleave.

Now take a giant with Combat Reflexes and Great Cleave. 6 guys ambush him. He waits till 5 tried to hit him and takes his AoO on the last one... and with one big can of whoopything, he kills all of them. Then it's his turn and he can throw a rock at a horse for lunch.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Oh, yeah, one more little rant. I realize it is again for "balance" issues, but who in the world came up with the idea that a size small archer will be more accurate (due to size adjustment) than a size large? How about a little research into physical reality, authors? A 3 foot tall guy (with average strength for such) and a 11 foot tall guy (with average strength for such) fire at the same target 100 yards away. The big guy's missile is larger (both in diameter and length) and shot with more force. Everything else equal, the big guy will be more likely to hit. Simply the way it works. Bigger projectiles shot harder are more accurate, studies have said. That's one reason why when they due ballistics testing they use mock-up extra, much, much larger projectiles. Is it due to wind resistance, changes in air pressure as the missile travels through it, or whatnot? I don't know, not a physicist. But it works that way.

Try it yourself. Get one of those children's 25 pound pull bows and fire it off at a target 50 yards (or, heck, 50 feet) away. Then try a 50 pound pull adult's bow (if you have enough strength to pull it without strain). Now try telling me the smaller, weaker fellow has an advantage. Bilge.

Plus, someone only 3 feet off the ground is quite more often going to have some obstruction (bush, rock, natural rise of the ground) blocking his view to the target than an 11 foot fellow. I think we tend to think of the Earth as a lot flatter (due to bull dozers, determined farmers, etc.) and smoother than it is in an unworked state. So a pox on the idea that smaller folks are better marksmen at a goodly distance, I say!

Take a human and 100-foot titan shooting at the same man-sized target at a range of 500 feet. Assume equal base attack, Dexterity, feats, etc. We'll give them both composite bows of their size (which both is proficient with). The human's range increment is 110 ft; scaling the titan's +50% or +100% per size category, he'll have a range of 560 ft or 1760 ft (which are the same for this example).

The human has +0 size, -8 range penalty. The titan has -8 size, -0 range penalty.

At closer distances, the human has the advantage -- it's not hard to hit a target as big as you are, which it's hard hitting one much smaller -- hitting the target for the titan is like a human trying to hit a 4" bullseye.

At longer distances the titan has the advantage, since his range is far superior. At 1000 feet the human is at -20 while the titan is at -8 or -10 (depending on how you choose to scale range increments).

 

[tarchon]

And I dislike Deflect Arrows too. I think it's rather a bit much to automatically negate an attack once per round. None of my characters have expressed interest in it, though, so I'm not worried about it.

Our monk character had it in 3.0 - it never really was a problem in that version, though it wasn't automatic back then.

 

[Testament]

Just about anything from BoED. Touch of Golden Ice, Vow of Peace, and Vow of Poverty especially.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm with the ones who cannot stand Deflect Arrows.

Probably it's not overpowered, but definitely it's lame to have something so automatic in a game of dice (even deities in D&Dg with their automatic 20 have to roll for natural 1s...).

It screams "house rule me!" at the first slightly disadvantageous circumstance for the character, if it still had a roll the DM would just apply a circumstance modifier as appropriate. I know that at the end it would be the same thing, only that it wouldn't leave the players with the feeling that the DM is houseruling against them. :\