'wait, wait, attack' fighting style?

Hi all. I'm needing a fighting style for a villain. Basically, I need a feat (or combination of feats) that allows him to emulate a particularly historically inaccurate method of swordsmanship often seen in samurai movies or anime. Specifically, I want him to be the guy that keeps his sword in his sheath during the fight, defending himself but not attacking, until he finally draws the weapon and, in an eyeblink, strikes with a blow or series of blows of such force that the enemy is cleaved in twain, the ground buckles underneath his boots, etc etc.

I'm hoping someone can help me design it. As far as technical aspects go, it should look something like this:
-Benefit: for a large number of situations, this style should compare favorably to just swinging the damn sword all the time. I mean, that's what feats are for, right?
-Drawback: I want this feat to be geared toward the high-power end of a what a feat can do, so it needs to have a substantial drawback as well.
-Thematics: the theme could be either 'studying the opponent and finding his weakness', or 'gathering inner strength to strike'. Or even something different, if it fits the mechanics well enough.

As far as 'studying the opponent' goes, there's already Improved Feint and Chink in the Amor (although CitA is non-core). With those two, you can spend a full round to get one attack your next round which is very likely to hit against almost all opponents. Add a few points of Power Attack and it looks pretty good. However, it seems pretty clear that, once you have iterative attacks, this option starts looking pretty lousy. What do people think of 'Greater Feint' and 'Improved Chink in the Armor', each of which let you apply the effect for a full round of attacks? Should they require more rounds of investment for the payoff?

For 'gathering inner strength to strike', my idea was a feat that would let you spend a full-round action to give yourself a bonus to hit and/or damage on the next round. This would be a stackable bonus, so if you focus your strength multiple times, you will have a huge bonus to attack/damage when you finally strike. The main counterbalancing factors I can think of to prevent characters from 'ambushing' with several rounds already charged up would be a) the social reason (it's an overtly strenuous/aggressive act, interpreted as hostile by pretty much any form of life; no charging up during the parley) and b) fatigue, perhaps requiring Con checks (or Concentration?) while the character readies the attack, with increasing DC each round.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Places to start?

rkanodia said:

Hi all. I'm needing a fighting style for a villain. Basically, I need a feat (or combination of feats) that allows him to emulate a particularly historically inaccurate method of swordsmanship often seen in samurai movies or anime. Specifically, I want him to be the guy that keeps his sword in his sheath during the fight, defending himself but not attacking, until he finally draws the weapon and, in an eyeblink, strikes with a blow or series of blows of such force that the enemy is cleaved in twain, the ground buckles underneath his boots, etc etc.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Places to start?

Click to expand...

If you're the GM, an idea would be to simply have the NPC stand back for most of the fight, then attack with his coolness.
Otherwise, Give him the feat "Awesome evil guy"- All evasion rolls while the character is not involved in combat are reduced to DC 10, and his armour class is +20 while he is not involved in combat. In combat situations, the character can only attack once every three turns, but when he does, the enemy's armour class is reduced by half, and the character's damage is doubled. Also, the character always takes the highest initiative in a combat situation. He may hold his action as long as he wishes.

Something like that. It makes him suitably powerful for a cinematically important NPC.

-Derf

The Duelist comes quite close to this build. A Ftr 4, Rog 3, Due 7 with Dex 20, Int 16 and Combat Expertise using total defence has an AC of 34+magic items. And his Reflex save (with lightning reflexes) is 16+magic items. Once he starts fighting, his damage output is not bad, either.
If this would be too high level, just drop the requirement of BAB +6.

An option is to roll his attack and his damage each round as normal, but instead of telling the players they took 9 damage on round one, and 8 damage on round two... you wait for round three, and roll for 7 damage.. then add it up, and tell the poor player he just took 24 damage.

Now, this is a pretty nasty ability as it allows people for no reaction time with the "Argh I need healing!" and it doesn't make for players having a good sense of if they are winning or not- but that's pretty much what you're aiming for with the "defending for a while then whoa big smackdown!" fighting style.

If you want to try to make it a little more balanced, as invariably players like to emulate nifty things they see, you could perhaps have the opponent need to declare if he's using stored damage points with a specific attack roll.. and if he fails his attack roll, those points he used are lost.

I'm not great at writing out feats in a way that would look like a pro did it, but here's at least something to work off of if you like the idea:

"Nifty Feat Name"
Prerequisite: BAB +X
Benefit: When you make a successful attack roll against an opponent, you may opt to store the entirety of the damage dealt and add it to an attack later in the combat. Damage stored can only be used against the original target of the hit which dealt that damage. To use this stored damage, you must declare how much of it you are applying to your next attack, and must make this declaration prior to your attack roll. If your attack misses, the stored damage spent is lost.

For a killer strike could use the Iajitsu (sic?) skill from oriental adventures... or a variant. Was a class skill for samurai.

Basically in an iajitsu duel or on a draw/strike against a flat footed opponent, you check the skill and compare with a table - the result is how many dice of damage you add.

For example:
1-15 nothing
16-19 +1D6
20-24 +2D6
40+ +375,000 D6?

Don't have the book here and can't remember the exact numbers/details, but the mechanic works pretty well... has the right 'feel' to it.

Could change it so it doesn't have to be against flat footed opponents, just someone you've spent x-rounds studying? If that's the case then sense motive/spot could give synergy bonuses of some sort? Possibly uses a sense motive to underpin it? Etc.

Hope that helps.

My suggestion would be a series of feats culumulating in a very high power, high end feat.

Feat XXXX:
Prereq's: acrobatic, agile, alertness, combat expertise, dodge, improved initiative, int 15+, wis 15+

Benefit: As a full round action you may give up all of your attacks for this round. You gain a bonus to your ac equal to your BAB and your wis bonus (if you already have an ac bonus from wisdom use your charisma bonus as well). This bonus to ac is not used in crit confirmation against you. Each time you do this you store up an amount of points equal to your BAB which may be used within your intelligence bonus in rounds on your next strike or full round attack. These points are used all at once and add to attack and damage. The extra damage is not multiplied on a critical hit.

Special: While you are using this feat each round everyone within 30' or who are observing you specifically within 100' may make a sense motive check dc 25 - the amount of points you have stored up to tell what you are about to do. Anyone who makes this check is considered to have an AC 5 higher for the purpose of your release strike. This check takes no actions.

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I really wanted to include power attack, weapon specialization, improved critical, and quick draw to the list but that many feats would put it solely in the realm of high level fighters. That is ok sometimes, and not in others.

Pretty well necissary to take at least a couple levels of fighter or psychic warrior. A level 20 fighter with a 15 int could have up to a +40 attack and damage on one round of striking. Since this could be 4 attacks (or more if twf) it is hard to say if this is overpowered or not. Since he had to give up at least 8 attacks to gain it though it doesnt seem too bad. +22 to ac represents his mastery of the technique and ability to not be hit, but a lucky crit could still take you down.

Look up the OA (Oriental Adventures) and use Iajutsu - the art of striking. It is exactly what you are talking about and would make for a cool BBEG. There are some great feats in there as well in which you can take a round to do full defense then get a bonus the next round on your attack if they miss when attacking you. Cool stuff for a bad guy, and it messes with the players a bit when they do things like that.

There is spmething similar sounding for rogues:

Combat Expertise
Improved Feint
much Bluff skill
Sneak attack

and probably Quick Draw for show.

Basically, activate CmbtExpt to avoid attacks, and then bluff your way to get his dex based defenses down, and WOPAH! This can be done without Improved Feint, but it is better to have it. Sneak attack helps, but is also not necessary. I am not certain if Feint can be done against more than one oppponent at a time; but for RP sake I would allow it as part of the character.

Wow! So many great replies. Thanks much. Here are my thoughts on what's been said:

Awesome evil guy feats: I don't like these kinds of things. If the character were, say, the chosen one of an evil deity, maybe it could be explained away, but this guy is just a badass who carries a sword.

Iajutsu: I don't have OA, but I know that the basic mechanic of Iajutsu is more or less precisely the opposite of what I am looking for; it's an attack that does huge damage, instantly, if you can attack before the enemy is prepared to fight. The NPC I am creating is going to be a guy who probably won't make the first attack, even if he gets a surprise round and wins initiative. As far as iajutsu duels, yes, they might fit the character somewhat, but iajutsu duels are on a purely voluntary basis, right? It's not as though the NPC can force a player into an iajutsu duel in the middle of a melee. I guess I'll have to borrow the book to look for feats with 'dodge, then massive counter-attack' kind of thematics to see if they fit. InconsequentiAL, I like your idea to change it to require a certain amount of time investment, rather than being instant but versus flat-footed opponents only.

Duelist: This guy operates on a more micro timescale than what I'm looking for. He thematically fits - reserved, striking at critical times to great effect - but I think the effect will be more or less lost on the PCs if his actions are still 'full-round attack, full-round attack, full-round attack'.

Combat expertise/bluff/sneak attack combo: This isn't a bad idea. I may just run with this if I can't work out something more to my liking.

Storing up your damage: this might work out very well, especially with some good description illustrating, say, after the player misses an attack, the villain steps around him, lined up for a perfect counter-blow, but mysteriously chooses not to strike. Hopefully something like a Spot or Sense Motive check will allow them to realize that the villain is making more than a symbolic threat, and give them a chance to surrender once he has 'stored' enough damage to kill them, assuming he is kicking their asses.

Trading your attacks for +attack bonus and damage: This one could also work. I would want to add some kind of skill check or Con check to not exhaust yourself, given the potentially ridiculous buildup for moderate- to high-level characters.

I'll try to post again tonight with some solid ideas and concrete numbers for everyone to rip apart. Thanks much!

Arcana Unearthed has an 'Analyze Combat Style Feat' where you give up a round in studying an opponent, and get +2 to hit on all subsequent rounds (I think--maybe mistaken for duration). I think it's got a BAB requirement of +8 or thereabouts.

Song & Silence had 'Chink in the Armor'(?) that does kind of the same thing -- study for a round then halve their armor or natural
armor bonus for your next attack.

Then there's 'Quicker than the Eye'--requires fast draw and high dex, allows you to draw and attack with a small weapon and catch opponent flat-footed for first attack. You could create another feat with this as prereq that allows you to do it with any weapon, that would be perfectly balanced I think.

Between these three/four feats, and either Iajitsu or sneak attack damage from some other source, I think you could get the effect you're going for. Maybe make a feat allowing Iajitsu to be used in any situation that would normally allow sneak attacks if you want more of a fighter-type. But fighter/rogue multiclasses make for a superb mobile/tactical fighter (as opposed to a tank fighter).

--Ben