Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Bringing a knife to a swordfight.
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="comrade raoul" data-source="post: 3129336" data-attributes="member: 554"><p>So thanks for the really quick and helpful feedback!I think the comparison is apt, but I'd say Bear Fang is a slightly stronger feat: it offers a chance to grapple without provoking attacks of oppportunity without having to take Improved Grab (and thus the mostly-useless Improved Unarmed Strike), and it lets you use it with a somewhat stronger set of equipment (an axe and a dagger, instead of a dagger by itself). In both cases, you're basically wasting a feat (Weapon Focus (dagger) for Bear Fang, Improved Unarmed Strike for Vicious Knifefighter), and while you can get VK a little earlier, I don't think that's much of a problem.</p><p></p><p>A bunch of you have also been suggesting that you should get a free dagger attack after the successful grab, rather than the other way around, so that the feat is parallel to Improved Trip. I think this makes sense, but I'm more interested in it the other way around: initiating a grapple is a big risk (you can easily fail to grab on to your opponent, which means you waste a valuable melee attack), and I wanted to try to let dagger wielders go for the grapple for free: so that once you hit with the dagger, you can try to grapple at no opportunity cost. The other version increases the payoff of grappling (you also get a dagger attack), but doesn't reduce the risk, and it's not immediately clear whether that advantage justifies sinking two feats (VK and Weapon Focus) into what was initially a very suboptimal combat style (again, a lone dagger).</p><p></p><p>So this version might be overpowered, but I'm hoping--again, because the dagger is weak by itself, you can get away with a lot!-- it's not that bad. If it works, it gives the player a big incentive to grapple a lot, which I think can could yield a very interesting change from the normal pace of D&D combat.</p><p>I like Razor Fiend, too; I think it's cool and flavorful, and my first thought was actually indeed to try to adapt a version of it. But then I thought that there were basically two things a feat like Razor Fiend might be good for: it might help rogues get more sneak attack damage in, and it might help fighters increase their overall damage output. But most of the time I'm not too fond of specialized feats to help fighters increase their damage output: there are already a number of things that do that, and I think adding additional such feats just makes choosing combat feats more complicated. (If you're interested in damage output, the question of whether you should focus on, say, daggers or paired shortswords requires you to do some mildly involved math over the projected life of your character, but it typically has one right answer.) So I thought: if you just want to make daggers appealing for sneak-attacking rogues, why not just design a feat that does it directly? Hence, Deceptive Strike instead of Razor Fiend.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="comrade raoul, post: 3129336, member: 554"] So thanks for the really quick and helpful feedback!I think the comparison is apt, but I'd say Bear Fang is a slightly stronger feat: it offers a chance to grapple without provoking attacks of oppportunity without having to take Improved Grab (and thus the mostly-useless Improved Unarmed Strike), and it lets you use it with a somewhat stronger set of equipment (an axe and a dagger, instead of a dagger by itself). In both cases, you're basically wasting a feat (Weapon Focus (dagger) for Bear Fang, Improved Unarmed Strike for Vicious Knifefighter), and while you can get VK a little earlier, I don't think that's much of a problem. A bunch of you have also been suggesting that you should get a free dagger attack after the successful grab, rather than the other way around, so that the feat is parallel to Improved Trip. I think this makes sense, but I'm more interested in it the other way around: initiating a grapple is a big risk (you can easily fail to grab on to your opponent, which means you waste a valuable melee attack), and I wanted to try to let dagger wielders go for the grapple for free: so that once you hit with the dagger, you can try to grapple at no opportunity cost. The other version increases the payoff of grappling (you also get a dagger attack), but doesn't reduce the risk, and it's not immediately clear whether that advantage justifies sinking two feats (VK and Weapon Focus) into what was initially a very suboptimal combat style (again, a lone dagger). So this version might be overpowered, but I'm hoping--again, because the dagger is weak by itself, you can get away with a lot!-- it's not that bad. If it works, it gives the player a big incentive to grapple a lot, which I think can could yield a very interesting change from the normal pace of D&D combat. I like Razor Fiend, too; I think it's cool and flavorful, and my first thought was actually indeed to try to adapt a version of it. But then I thought that there were basically two things a feat like Razor Fiend might be good for: it might help rogues get more sneak attack damage in, and it might help fighters increase their overall damage output. But most of the time I'm not too fond of specialized feats to help fighters increase their damage output: there are already a number of things that do that, and I think adding additional such feats just makes choosing combat feats more complicated. (If you're interested in damage output, the question of whether you should focus on, say, daggers or paired shortswords requires you to do some mildly involved math over the projected life of your character, but it typically has one right answer.) So I thought: if you just want to make daggers appealing for sneak-attacking rogues, why not just design a feat that does it directly? Hence, Deceptive Strike instead of Razor Fiend. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Bringing a knife to a swordfight.
Top