Comments and questions on 3.5 from a Newbie

[Flexor the Mighty!]

And Wizards are just too easy to hit with Power Attack.


And as for your 14 feats, I must echo the sentiments that some are too niche to get any significant use out of. After awhile you would realize that you haven't used a few of them in a long time and how much better Weapon Focus & Weapon Specialization would be.

 

[Dr Simon]

To be honest, I'm not sure about no AoO whilst grappling, at least against your grappled opponent. More sure (95%) that you can't AoO anyone nearby your little scrap though. I would have thought that you are supposed to have both (or at least one) hand free to grapple. Sure it's not in the rules? Seems a bit of an obvious omission.

When I say "won't hit", I mean in your earlier example with the various combat moves etc. Anything relying on touch attacks or opposed Strength won't be affected by armour, you're right, but a simple melee attack roll against AC 22 is going to be harder for a 1st Level char, even with good Strength and the Weapon Focus feat.

As for the stacking bonuses - although there are quite a few types, the largest number solely apply to Armour Class and it becomes quite easy to work out what they come from.

A pinned opponent is ... pinned. There should be a glossary at the back of the PHB (and repeated in the DMG) concerning different types of conditions that your character can be in. Useful for knowing the difference between Dazed and Dazzled, or Frightened, Panicked and Cowering! Again, like the bonus types it can be a little daunting at first glance but it's all pretty intuitive really.

As for the designers, I don't think they spoke to an Army specialist or psychologist - just played lots and lots of RPGs!

 

[kenobi65]

A pinned opponent is ... pinned. There should be a glossary at the back of the PHB (and repeated in the DMG) concerning different types of conditions that your character can be in.

From the condition summary in the SRD:

Pinned: Held immobile (but not helpless) in a grapple.

Prone: The character is on the ground. An attacker who is prone has a –4 penalty on melee attack rolls and cannot use a ranged weapon (except for a crossbow). A defender who is prone gains a +4 bonus to Armor Class against ranged attacks, but takes a –4 penalty to AC against melee attacks.
Standing up is a move-equivalent action that provokes an attack of opportunity.

So, all pinned means is you can't move....though the -4 penalty to your AC against anyone other than the person grappling you should probably have been mentioned in the condition summary (it's mentioned, instead, in the "When You're Pinned" section of the Grapple rules).

 

[painandgreed]

Rules: Wrong. When you are high level, if you do not face a foe of equal challenge, you will gain little or NO experience. Your orcs will grant NO experience, even if you kill them by the thousands.

IIRC, double the number of creatures and the CR of the encounter goes up by 2. So you could face an Epic number of orcs in and encounter. Or you could still face encounters several levels below you which would be less XP but much easier or even much easier than you and get no XP but you could get treasure in the form of magic or money to buy items that would make you better. The real trick would be getting the DM not to automatically balance everything equally against the PCs.

If anything, I'd say that the rules make characters less dependant on eachother. With any character able to multiclass a fighter could pick up levels of cleric and rogue and do away with the need of various other classes. In one game I'm in we are 12th level with no magic users and doing ok. Potions and Use Magic Device by multi-classing rogue have filled in the spot of the magic-user quite nicely as well as giving our fighters hide, move silently, sneak attack, and Uncanny Dodge. Just remember to pick up rogue as your first level because of the front loaded skill point because you lose nothing by picking up fighter later.

 

[sniffles]

I think you are looking at them the wrong way. It sounds like you are looking at them as enablers - something needed to even try some of those maneuvers. They are not (or at least not all are). Many (Improved Trip, Improved Disarm, Improved Bull Rush) reduce the penalties for specific attacks. Those attacks are often "niche" maneuvers.

Most people get more punch from Power Attack + Cleave + Great Cleave + Weapon Focus + Weapon Specialization + Greater Weapon Focus + Greater Weapon Specialization; if nothing else, the greater attack bonuses serve to make the penalties for the more esoteric attacks less painful, and the benefits are available to all attacks.

Really, for more specialized roles, a whole new class built around that concept makes more sense (see the Swashbuckler in Complete Warrior for a lightly-armored "stunt" combatant), or a Prestige class that specializes the character in one of those roles.

Silveras has a really good point here. Many of your "DDG" feats sound like wonderful things to do, but they are things Joe Fighter will seldom get an opportunity to do in a typical combat. As Silveras says, things like trips, disarms and even grapples are "niche" maneuvers.

Let me give my own current fighter character as an example. He's currently 10th level and has gone into a prestige class that required several feats as prerequisites, so that guided some of his progression. But at the time I created him I didn't plan to go into that prestige class, so a lot of what I've done with him has been by my personal preference. I wanted him to be a two-weapon fighter and also good on horseback. His feats are:

Weapon Focus (longsword)
Animal Affinity
Quick Draw - I love this feat; I have to restrain myself from taking it with every PC I play.
Mounted Combat
Two-Weapon Fighting
Dodge
Mobility
Spring Attack
Improved Two-Weapon Fighting

For his next feat I plan on taking Combat Expertise. It's a requirement for another prestige class, but it's also a useful feat. Naturally you can select whatever feats you want to produce the "flavor" of fighter you want to play. My fellow players refer to my character as "The Mixmaster" because he can move around in combat, darting between opponents and slashing away with his four attacks per round (two primary, two off-hand, with reduced penalties due to the Two-Weapon Fighting feats).

 

[MichaelH]

You actually do have a Dexterity of 0 when you are pinned. Check the Table: Armor Class Modifiers, footnote 4.

Wow, never noticed that before. I wish that was in the grapple section.

It seems that losing any dex bonus to AC plus the -4 penalty to AC is enough for pinned opponents, though. I wonder if the footnote here is a mistake?

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

I was thinking in terms of a human or humanoid fighting other humans or humanoids, with the DDG feats. Against monsters, they aren't going to be very useful.
Against the Three Musketeers, who are super-specialized with swords, disarm and sunder would be quite useful (the same applies to one Drizzt Do'Urden, also.)
If your trying to take a foe alive, grapple is useful. If that foe has some sort of killer attack (4 attacks per round, or some nasty spell) grappling takes him out of the combat briefly, while your friends deal with his underlings.
If you're near 0 hit points, Combat Expertise keeps you alive long enough to maybe retreat from the fight?
Dodge and Mobility help against all those AOO. In a combat like the Moria combat in Fellowship of the Ring, AOO would be going off by the baker's dozen every round.
Improved Unarmed Combat means you can brawl really well. I ask: what fighter wouldn't want that, other than the paladin or cavalier, who insist on formal dueling? (Woe to said paladin or cavalier, when their foes starts fighting dirty. They might call that dishonorable and foul, but that will be small consolation when they're dead!)
Power Attack was among my DDG Feats, and everyone seems to like that one, even thought it doesn't seem to be very useful at low levels.

(Gets this humorous image of someone trying to grapple a beholder. Result? CHOMP, crunch, munch.)
(Notes that grappling Dragonlance kender is a real bad idea. Not only do you fail to accomplish anything useful, but you lose most of your items. Probably for good, too, unless you are real good with the Search and Spot skills. )

I'll head on to the other special attacks. The remaining ones being: Feint, Mounted Combat, Overrun, Sunder, Throw Splash Weapon, and Turn Undead.
Then I can understand better how your mounted fighter works by the rules, sniffles (mounted combat, ah yes ... the realm of Tolkien's Rohirrim and French calvary and the Mongol horsemen, among other notables.)

 

[kenobi65]

If your trying to take a foe alive, grapple is useful.

I rarely see grapple used for that purpose. More often, if they want the bad guy alive, the PCs use nonlethal damage...and I know quite a few PCs who carry saps for that very reason.

IME, 90+% of the grapples I've seen have been monster-initiated, and usually are a prelude to "swallow whole."

Dodge and Mobility help against all those AOO. In a combat like the Moria combat in Fellowship of the Ring, AOO would be going off by the baker's dozen every round.

Not necessarily. Intelligent combatants will (or should) recognize if an action they're considering taken will lower their defenses (i.e., provoke an AoO), and can always choose to not do that.

In my games, AoOs occur occasionally (most frequently when trying to get closer to a monster with big reach), but, honestly, not all that often, especially now that the players understand what provokes and what doesn't. Usually, an AoO situation crops up in one of two cases:

1) The combatant knows that he'll be triggering one, but doesn't care. "Yeah, go ahead, take a swing at me, I'm still going past you to help my friend."

2) The combatant is fairly-to-extremely unintelligent, and thus shouldn't be capable of tactics that would avoid AoOs. For example, a charging dire wolf isn't going to be smart enough to realize he's going to trigger an AoO from a spiked-chain wielder.

Power Attack was among my DDG Feats, and everyone seems to like that one, even thought it doesn't seem to be very useful at low levels.

At very low levels, no, not so much. But, once your BAB gets up to +4 or so, it can make a difference (esp. if you're using a two-handed weapon, where Power Attack gives you the two-for-one bonus to damage). And, of course, it's the gateway to Cleave, which is a very useful feat, no matter the level.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Monboesen, the game you were in (which I assume was a successful, fun game) contradicts my guesswork concerning feats.
Which means, I could have it all wrong. (I probably do, but this would confirm it.)

You are saying that, in this campaign, the characters gained a feat every level, and this was in addition to the usual feats allowed at 3rd, 6th, 9th, etc. and the fighter feats granted fighters and metamagic feats granted mages, and otherwise?

So, in that campaign, a wizard got:

1st level: One feat, plus one feat for being a human.
2nd level: One feat.
3rd level: Two feats.
4th level: One feat.
5th level: One feat plus one metamagic feat.
6th level: Two feats.
7th level: One feat.

And this worked?

I would have thought that this would have caused the characters to be much stronger, relative to the DC encounters they had to face. That is, a 7th level character would be stronger relative to a DC 7 opponent, than a 7th level character under the normal feat rules.
Wouldn't that reduce the interdependence, the necessity of reliance on the other characters? And wouldn't that, in turn, lessen the compulsion to cooperate?

Ok, you say that this did not happen in that game.
How did the DM compensate for the higher power level?
How did you handle the Feats? Can you elaborate further? It sorta sounds like you took a kind of Gestalt approach to feats, as it were ... you allowed more, but required generalization and forbid specialization.
Can you elaborate further?

Has anyone else played in a feat rich game like this? If so, did it work? If so, how did your DM compensate for the higher power level? Or was there a higher power level?

I *considered* the idea of a House Rule that would allow 1 feat per level, but abandoned the idea when I guessed that the severe limits on feats were put there to force interdependency among the characters.
But if I was wrong, if my guess was wrong, please show me. Because obviously I would love a game where everyone got a feat at every level, plus their normal allowed feats! Who wouldn't, as long as it didn't wreck the game and ruin the fun?

I mean, they published 1,500 feats. That's a lot of feats!!!
But they haven't published one single rule for greatly expanding the number of feats you can take (much less, expanding it to one feat per level.) I think they are adamant about the feat attainment restrictions, and surely there must be a good reason for that? No?

 

[William Ronald]

Well, I think one of the reasons for limits on the number of feats and skill points is that characters tend to be specialists than generalists. It is very hard in the rules for a character to be an expert at everything. I think this is a somewhat realistic approach, as the characters are mortal and have particular interests. Indeed, I think that the rules are designed to have a certain amount of cooperation among characters. No one character can do it all, especially when there are challenges equal to the character's abilities.

So, a Down and Dirty Fighter maybe good in some situations but not all. In terms of casting spells or disarming traps, the character has severe problems. (Also, specialists might have ways to counter down and dirty fighters. For example, ranged attacks can really put a damper on a down and dirty fighter. Melee specialists might have a harder time of it, but they may decide to try their best tricks to harm their opponents.) Remember, a PCs best weapons are usually a player's wits.