PHB2 general feats review (heroic tier)

[blargney the second]

... in Karate...

 

[Garthanos]

I've been waiting for Melee training. You use your best natural abililty to increase o melee basic attack. I love it.

Str: Muscle power (I'm strong. I can swing hard and fast.)
Con: Stamina (I can attack with all my might ALL DAY and never tire. Hold back? Pbbt)
Dex: Muscle Control (I aim for your heart. If'n you don't parry my attack, I'm gonna hit your heart. I don't miss)
Int: Combat Wit (I see that when you attack, your recovery to a defensive position is slow. You leave yourself open)
Wis: Combat sight (The left side or your armor is open when you swing)
Cha: Unpredictablity/courage (ROAR!)
.

I didnt see this one before answering below, I like it too..

Intelligence also means mental speed and decisiveness combine as well as pattern recogntion and the ability to draw conclusions based on those fast.

Charisma, means gift from god and as the stat representing your relationship with the divine, you allow the divine to guide your hand. and yes courage or spirit/chi as the martial arts teach is a fundamental ingredient of making an attack which "counts" it lacks power without that emotiional surge.

Your explanation of CON is good. I had just come to the conclusion con=stamina - slow twitch muscles and strengh = fast twitch muscles
in otherwords ... Fortitude can make sense to be based on either even though most folks think its only con.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The temp hp only works against physical attacks, IIRC.

So if you want to gimp the rager, simply use bursts or blasts (neither of which trigger the temp hp) or tack on the status effects (which bypass hp altogether).

Physical attacks has nothing to do with it: it's just that the rager doesn't get his temp hp against anything other than melee attacks.

That said: the problem isn't how durable the rager is: it's how overall effective he is when compared with other characters. And there is no denying that the rager is much, much more durable vs melee attacks than any other character, while being simply more durable (thanks to the only source of stacking temporary hitpoints in the entire game) vs everything else. In exchange for this large advantage, he loses a +1 to hit.

As for my previous suggestion for combat medic? Ack! I did indeed mean to still restrict the proposed benefit of the feat to unconscious and dying characters, not hand out saves against ongoing effects willy-nilly.

 

[Garthanos]

Snicker, so how does fresh water eel relate ;-)

 

[Garthanos]

Physical attacks has nothing to do with it: it's just that the rager doesn't get his temp hp against anything other than melee attacks. /QUOTE]

right good old fashion bow work will lay them as low as everybody else.

 

[hvg3akaek]

Roughly the same thing, but not -exactly- the same thing. DWT and EWT give you access to a single weapon type in superior, and a static damage bonus to a non-strength giving class. Most melee weapon fighters are Strength based, so the bonus makes up for the lack of strength at heroic tier.

Nope. Dwarven gives you prof with hammers and axes. With AV1, it gives you four new, shiny superior weapon proficiencies. If Goliath gave you superior 2H weapons, it would also give 4.

 

[Nightson]

Bull rushing and grabbing become less and less viable options as you go up in level, because you don't add in any bonuses from weapons or implements. So a 1st level character's Str vs. Fortitude attack is maybe +3 or +4, not unlike a 1st level wizard targeting a NAD, but at 30th level there's a disparity of +5 or +6; the monster's Fort goes up higher than the PC's strength... Actually more than that what with the issues that Weapon Expertise is supposed to address.

I'd rewrite Improved Grab and Improved Bull Rush as granting a scaling bonus; +1 up to 5th level, +2 up to 10th level, +4 up to 15th level, +5 up to 20th level, +7 up to 25th level, and finally +8, so your demigod fighter (Strength bonus something like +25 without the feat) has a chance at shoving Graz'zt (Fort defense 45) without a natural 20.

You could try a base +4 bonus going up to +6 at 11th level, and +8 at 21st level.

This has the added benefit of being what the feat actually does.

 

[DracoSuave]

I see no problem with Charisma being used with weapon attacks in a game where, for bards and paladins, Charisma is often used with weapon attacks. Charisma hasn't been 'good-lookingness' in D&D since 2nd edition.

 

[deleteme123456]

The other player in my group who DMs and I are going over the entire list of feats from 4e together, looking for bizarre combos, feats we can give out freely as character development/roleplaying bonuses that won't unbalance combat/skill challenges, and anything that we both feel is just downright broken.

So far we haven't found much in that last category (we're banning Expertise, although more accurately we're giving it freely, and banning it was necessary pre-errata), and I bet if I looked, 75% of the stuff that's banned is crap from Dragon that was obviously not thought out.