Bladed Gauntlet and Mercurial Greatsword shafted by senseless errata!?

[XCorvis]

Re: Re: Bladed Gauntlet and Mercurial Greatsword shafted by senseless errata!?

*grin* I will now offer PROOF that the errata was necessary. After S&F came out, I asked Bruce Cordell (who designed them) what he had been thinking. "That's a mistake," he responded, "and not at all what I designed. They got the weapon stats wrong. They'll fix them in the errata."

Take that for what it's worth.

HA! Piratecat steps up to the plate and hits a home run!

 

[Michael Tree]

On the Bladed Gauntlet vs. Shortsword topic: not being able to be disarmed is a huge advantage.

So use a locking gauntlet then.

The only advantage that the bladed gauntlet has is that it's not disarmable while leaving the hands free.

I don't think it would be broken to make its crit range 18-20. 17-20 is just silly though.

 

[The Furious Puffin]

It seems to me that the 18-20 x2 Crit range would make sense. Then the weapon is a step up from the rapier in that it is a size smalled, and can then be dual wielded with lesser penalties - while also being undisarmable and hands free. Those two advatages however don't seem to justify a lesser critical range and the feat.

 

[Anders]

The ONLY exception to the power rule appears to be the kukri. (Why ANYONE would use this weapon is beyond my understanding. It is worthless and inferior to ALL simple and martial weapons in every way!)

What about............

...a halfling Ranger with wet dreams of.........

..........two +1 sure striking keen vorpal kukris

....and Improved Critical?

Note that kukris are Slashing weapons, thus qualifying them for the nasty vorpal effect.

 

[Piratecat]

I believe furious puffin has called it. In the errata the mercurial weapons and fullblade got adjusted correctly, but if what Bruce told me is correct, he originally designed the gauntlet to be 18-20. I was really surprised when it ended up being 19-20 in the errata. Overreaction by the rules council? Could be; perhaps they wanted to head off any 2e-ish slide towards "greater power" in the supplement.

I think you could house rule it to 18-20 and not mess up most campaigns' game balance.

 

[hong]

I believe furious puffin has called it. In the errata the mercurial weapons and fullblade got adjusted correctly, but if what Bruce told me is correct, he originally designed the gauntlet to be 18-20. I was really surprised when it ended up being 19-20 in the errata. Overreaction by the rules council? Could be; perhaps they wanted to head off any 2e-ish slide towards "greater power" in the supplement.

Better too much reaction than too little, I say. As has been said, "They that can give up essential rigour to obtain a little temporary flavour deserve neither rigour nor flavour".

Or something along those lines, anyway.


Hong "Thommo Jeffo" Ooi

 

[DrSpunj]

Great!

I believe furious puffin has called it. In the errata the mercurial weapons and fullblade got adjusted correctly, but if what Bruce told me is correct, he originally designed the gauntlet to be 18-20. I was really surprised when it ended up being 19-20 in the errata. Overreaction by the rules council? Could be; perhaps they wanted to head off any 2e-ish slide towards "greater power" in the supplement.

I think you could house rule it to 18-20 and not mess up most campaigns' game balance.

I really appreciate you posting this information from Bruce, PirateCat. Even if I don't always agree with their opinions (this time I DO!) I like to know/understand where they were coming from whenever I can.

As I said above, we've house-ruled the crit to 18-20. One thing I'd like to point again, S&F doesn't explicitly state the Bladed Gauntlet can't be disarmed. We (and apparently everyone else) are inferring this from the PHB Gauntlet entry.

Thanks again.

DrSpunj

 

[Anubis]

Fullblade

I just read the errata again, and am amazed that I found something more senseless than the bladed gauntlet and mercurial greatsword errata . . .

What the hell is the reasoning behind the fullblade errata? IT MAKES NO SENSE! They basically made it unusable by most PCs in most campaigns, and made it senseless for any larger creature to use because a huge greatsword does the SAME thing while not requiring an exotic weapon proficiency!

Sheesh! Sure, the fullblade was useless anyway being an exotic greatsword clone, but this errata made things worse!

Here is the OFFICIAL Anubis errata for the fullblade that makes MUCH more sense than the official rules and errata. Here you go:

Fullblade
100 gp cost
1d12 damage/19-20/x2 crit
23 lb.
Slashing

Use all other rules as printed in the original printing of S&F, except this is the ogre's bastard sword, not greatsword.

I'm sure everybody can at least agree that THIS makes more sense than the book and the errata, whether you agree with me on the other two weapons or not.

 

[Anubis]

I'm still not seeing how making the bladed gauntlet 17-20/x2 crit breaks things. Only when combined with a specific set of skills and abilities does it become scary. You have to be a ranger or have Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting, you must have two gauntlets with keen, become a weapon master and a tempest, acquire Improved Critical and Ki Critical, then maybe put Vorpal on the gauntlets, and only then is this very nasty.

If the orc shotput can have 19-20/x3 crit, the bladed gauntlet should be allowed 17-20/x2 crit, which is the same.

 

[Caliban]

I'm still not seeing how making the bladed gauntlet 17-20/x2 crit breaks things. Only when combined with a specific set of skills and abilities does it become scary. You have to be a ranger or have Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting, you must have two gauntlets with keen, become a weapon master and a tempest, acquire Improved Critical and Ki Critical, then maybe put Vorpal on the gauntlets, and only then is this very nasty.

If the orc shotput can have 19-20/x3 crit, the bladed gauntlet should be allowed 17-20/x2 crit, which is the same.

Orc Shotput is a Large Ranged weapon. It's basically a thrown greatsword with a crit increase. It looks like they didn't consider giving it a 10' range increment enough of a bonus for the cost of a feat, so the increased the crit range one step.


A Bladed Guantlet is a Small Melee weapon. Giving it a two step increase in the crit range over a shortsword is to much.

They don't compare.