Iterative Attacks

[ruemere]

How does the new system interact with 3.5 Power Attack and 3.5 Combat Expertise? Are the penalties sufficiently low not to invalidate both feats?

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I suppose that depends on what you're fighting. Against opponents with higher ACs, I can see how that would be less useful.

It can't be less useful than the prior version of Cleave/Great Cleave.

The old version of Cleave/GC require you to drop the opponent to trigger the bonus attack(s). Dropping the opponent, perforce, requires a successful hit.

The new C/GC give you a bonus attack on a successful, regardless of whether you drop the target or not.

(At least that's my understanding from context here-- I'm not looking at my PF doc at the moment.)

I suppose that should motivate me to pay a little more attention before posting.

NP! (And in retrospect my reply looks a lot more snarky this morning than I intended it last night. It was late, and I had turtles and cats on my mind.)

I guess my question then becomes, if I were to use your system, would VS and IVS still be attractive feats to take? Is your system maybe a little too good?

I think you have to evaluate what I have presented here in the context of standing alone as "the" fix for iterative attacks.

VS and IVS are very easy to evaluate-- use the "reverse" damage calculation I mentioned in that post. If their expectation is better, you'd use them.

The kinds of characters I build, I don't think they'd be used very often, but not everybody is a twink like me.

 

[Voadam]

There are other emergent benefits to this proposal (levelling the expected damage output non-fighter classes, reducing the necessity of AC-pumping for PCs, etc.) but I am primarily concerned with how this fix strikes the primary fighting classes.

How does this reduce the need for PCs to AC Pump?

Don't the two high attack rolls with no low ones mean that mid level AC is less useful than it would be compared with facing secondary iteratives with significantly lower attack rolls? Doesn't this lead to PCs pumping their ACs to their max since they only face those high attack rolls?

 

[Darrin Drader]

It can't be less useful than the prior version of Cleave/Great Cleave.

The old version of Cleave/GC require you to drop the opponent to trigger the bonus attack(s). Dropping the opponent, perforce, requires a successful hit.

The new C/GC give you a bonus attack on a successful, regardless of whether you drop the target or not.

(At least that's my understanding from context here-- I'm not looking at my PF doc at the moment.)

Yeah, that's absolutely correct, and I agree that the Pathfinder versions are a lot more useful than the 3.5 versions.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

How does this reduce the need for PCs to AC Pump?

Don't the two high attack rolls with no low ones mean that mid level AC is less useful than it would be compared with facing secondary iteratives with significantly lower attack rolls? Doesn't this lead to PCs pumping their ACs to their max since they only face those high attack rolls?

You basically can't pump your AC high enough to stop the first or second attack of most creatures in the BAB +11 range. So as someone else pointed out upthread, the point of AC at high levels is to deflect the 3rd (-10) and 4th (-15) attacks.

This is by design, by the way. At low levels, combat is supposed to be boolean-- hit or miss, because one or two hits can put you down. At high level, the game switches from a boolean model to an attrittive one.

Wellllll... heh. On the hit point scale, anyway. In fact it remains a boolean game with respect to Save or Die.

 

[Runestar]

You basically can't pump your AC high enough to stop the first or second attack of most creatures in the BAB +11 range. So as someone else pointed out upthread, the point of AC at high levels is to deflect the 3rd (-10) and 4th (-15) attacks.

As a PC or npc?

A lot of monsters tend to use natural attacks, and if you give them improved multiattack, this effectively means that all their attacks are made at the same bab. So if your AC can't stop the 1st one, it won't stop any of them.

The only consolation is with regards to whether it decides to power attack for 10 or 20.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You basically can't pump your AC high enough to stop the first or second attack of most creatures in the BAB +11 range. So as someone else pointed out upthread, the point of AC at high levels is to deflect the 3rd (-10) and 4th (-15) attacks.

This is by design, by the way.

You mean it was the intention of the 3E designers? Why did they never tell anyone? (Or did they, and I missed the memo?)


I like the change. I think the speed-up (both in number of rolls and ease of calculation) is totally worth the loss of damage in the few corner cases.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

As a PC or npc?

A lot of monsters tend to use natural attacks, and if you give them improved multiattack, this effectively means that all their attacks are made at the same bab. So if your AC can't stop the 1st one, it won't stop any of them.

More than "a lot" of creatures use natural attacks. The vast majority use natural attacks (not iterative attacks-- certainly true of the BAB 11 and higher crowd; see above). And most creatures with natural attacks don't have multi-attack. (But that's a pure wild guess at the moment!)

So for most, they'll be at +0 primary and -5 secondary. There are no "tertiary" natural attacks at -10. The only way to have a -10 penalty is to use iterative attacks, and there aren't that many creatures that have 3rd and 4th iterative attacks (see my post above).

Monsters' average attack roll (that's attack bonus +11) lags behind the tank PCs average AC up through 9th level (assuming a sword and board fighter who is diligent about upgrading his AC*).

Beyond 9th level, AC starts to lag the average attack roll, until the monsters have a 10 point advantage at 20th level.

So to put that (hopefully) more clearly: Starting at 9th level, monsters are designed to hit the "good AC" PCs on at least a 11+ (and it only gets better from there). That means the secondary attacks will land on a 16+. (If you are not a "good AC" PC then the outlook is even more grim for you.)

A creature with iterative attacks, on average, would be looking for natural 20s on the 3rd and 4th rolls.

(Obviously if your campaign uses lots of high level NPCs as BBEGs, you have a different situation.)



* This counts +9 AC for "armor + DEX" (in any configuration), +2 for large shield, and level-appropriate magic bonuses for armor, shield, deflection, and natural armor. You could gain another +1 for dodge; +2 for mithril armor; +2 for tower shield.

 

[Voadam]

You basically can't pump your AC high enough to stop the first or second attack of most creatures in the BAB +11 range. So as someone else pointed out upthread, the point of AC at high levels is to deflect the 3rd (-10) and 4th (-15) attacks.

This is by design, by the way. At low levels, combat is supposed to be boolean-- hit or miss, because one or two hits can put you down. At high level, the game switches from a boolean model to an attrittive one.

Wellllll... heh. On the hit point scale, anyway. In fact it remains a boolean game with respect to Save or Die.

So your saying since you take out those 3rd and 4th iteratives (and bumping up that second one) you take away the main point of AC, so there is less incentive to drive as hard as you can on AC at higher levels (especially for normally mid AC classes like rangers or rogues) because it will be increasingly marginally useful. Also the difference between mid AC and no AC bonus will diminish leading to unarmored D&D characters being more viable.

As noted though AC will still be useful to prevent massive power attack in addition to the increasingly little chance of stopping those full BAB strikes.

Will switching to your system mean that pumping AC by 2 for example lead to less damage blocked on average than under the iterative system for a sample BAB 11+ monster/NPC?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

So your saying since you take out those 3rd and 4th iteratives (and bumping up that second one) you take away the main point of AC, so there is less incentive to drive as hard as you can on AC at higher levels (especially for normally mid AC classes like rangers or rogues) because it will be increasingly marginally useful. Also the difference between mid AC and no AC bonus will diminish leading to unarmored D&D characters being more viable.

As noted though AC will still be useful to prevent massive power attack in addition to the increasingly little chance of stopping those full BAB strikes.

Will switching to your system mean that pumping AC by 2 for example lead to less damage blocked on average than under the iterative system for a sample BAB 11+ monster/NPC?

I couldn't figure out anything of what you said to snip. It's all good.

Now that I have actually looked at the data, I am not sure why anyone was incentivized to pursue AC as a strategy at high levels.

Remember that 9th level or so is the turning point. The farther away you are from 9th level the more (at low level) or less (at high level) AC will matter.