Please rate Extra Smiting

[Apok]

Personally, I think that the feat is excellent, especially for higher level Clerics & Pally's. Even just taken once, the Extra Smite feat can easily turn the tide of battle in an important fight.

My cleric in a RttToEE campaign used both of his Smite attempts against a Red Dragon. Brought him down big-time, but of course I still died for my troubles.

 

[smetzger]

The Paladin's and Ranger's spell progression is really whacked. It makes no sense that at 4th level, they get BOTH 0 and 1st level spells all of a sudden, AND that the 0 level spells are not separated from the 1st level spells.

Uhm.... Core Paladin's and Ranger's do _not_ get any 0 lvl spells.

 

[Archer]

I believe Monte Cook granted the paladin extra smiting every 5 levels. The other boost was a holy sword in addition to the mount at higher levels.

 

[Stalker0]

Stalker0: I beg to differ. By the time you reach 15th level, an extra 15 or 30 damage per day is hardly abusive. Many of your foes will have 200 or more hit points. Hardly any will have much below 100, and if they do, they probably are one of many 'thugs'. Is the extra damage highly useful for taking down that uber-villian at the end of the day? Sure. But it is hardly game breaking. If the uber villian has so few h.p. that 15 or 30 damage is a significant percentage of thier health, then the uber-villian has probably lost the battle if the PC's engage them in toe to toe combat to begin with.

Which is why this feat only got a 2 from me. On a day to day basis, we are talking like getting the equivalent of one extra attack or less - and then only if an appropriate evil foe presents itself. At best you are turning your one shot smackdown wonder into a two shot smackdown wonder.

Your right, an extra 15 or so isn't that much. That's why most people say that extra smite isn't so great. But when you allow it 2 times extra, that's 3 smites a day. Or 45 potential points of damage. For that 200 hp beasty, that's an extra 22.5% of his life your taking away. Take extra smiting again, and that's the potential of 5 smites, or 75 points of damage- 37.5% of the creatures life. That starts adding up, and I think that's why WOTC chose to give the extra smiting 1/day instead of 2.

 

[reapersaurus]

Uhm.... Core Paladin's and Ranger's do _not_ get any 0 lvl spells.

I know - that's the point.
They aren't seperated as such, but look at their "1st level" spell list:
it includes 0 level spells.

So there are 2 problems generated as a result:
1) It's silly that someone would all of a sudden (level 4) learn the power to both cast 0 level spells and 1st level spells (should be logical progression from orisons to 1st level) and
2) Who would prepare or cast a 0 level spell when you could cast/prepare 1st level spells in the same slot?

It's just a silly situation, and it didn't need to be.
It's a non-standard progression anyway, so I'd rather it make sense and be fun and internally consistent. (grant orisons earlier, and provide a ramp-up learning time to get used to casting - not just "wham! here's 0 and 1st at same time, mr. paladin.")

 

[reapersaurus]

I think it's critical to make a comparison to the Smite spell in R&R...

That is a 1st level spell that grants the same thing as Extra Smite.
Further, I don't remember EVER seeing anyone critical of it, or being concerned with it.

How does it make sense that apparently in the minds of the creators of the game (and almost all players, by their silence), a Smite is only a 1st level spell, yet if it's a feat, it should be only 1 time per day?

Read this post again and it should be clear that there's a serious discrepancy in the perceived power level of a Paladin's Smite.
(R&R Smite spell is even much more flexible - allows you to use it against either of your opposed alignments: Law OR Chaos, effectively doubling the foes you can use it on.
It also can be stored in ioun stones and spell-storing weapons for even MORE flexibility.)

Comments?

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I rated it a 1.

Like Ridley's Cohort, Reapersaurus and others I firmly believe that the extra smites should be a class feature rather than a feat.

My paladin will not waste a precious feat on this nonsense because having smites improve is a right imo.

For the record I have alternate powers, as good as 1/2 a feat and building on existing paladin strengths, that can be taken instead of remove disease at the same levels/3.

BTW, I have difficulty reconciling the cleric with the war domain receiving weapon focus while the paladin doesn't, especially when at level 1 the cleric doesn't have the BAB prerequisite. I don't like handing out fighter feats to fix things particularly if it messes with the fighter.

PS BTW Reapersaurus, how does one get bonus 0 level spells? For our house rules we apply the number of bonus 1st to the number of 0 level.

 

[Epametheus]

Note that Smites get a lot more impressive the instant a paladin reaches Epic and takes Great Smiting a time or two.

Though the Paladin will still suck when fighting a non-evil opponent.

Without gaining additional smite attacks through leveling up, Holy Sword pretty much becomes the entire offensive power of the high level paladin.

Considering that it can easily be disposed of through Greater Dispelling, that's not a good thing by a long shot. Holy Sword is strong, but it's really easy to counter by the time you can get it...

 

[Celebrim]

Well, I concur with shilson. To make the feat moderately useful, it needs to allow two extra smites per day. At that point, it becomes a balanced feat. A fifteenth level Paladin only has 6 feats (seven if human). There are any number of general purpose combat feats that will end up being more useful (Improved Critical, Combat Reflexes, Improved Initiative, Close Quarters Combat, etc.) and that isn't even getting into the fact that many Paladins are going to want to take mounted combat feats for flavor and to make the most of thier mount. The chance to spend a feat to get one extra attack doing 15 or so damage just doesn't seem worth it.

Suppose a 15th level Paladin gave up all his feats to Smite 15 times per day; it would not bother me in the slightest as a DM. OK, he is a potent one trick wonder, but I tend to throw a mix of creatures against my players - and he has nothing up his sleave vs. oozes, constructs, gargantuan vermin, dire animals, plants, many if not most beasts and magical beasts, a good percentage of the humanoids and elementals, and a fair percentage of giants and aberrations. OK, so he can do +15 damage for 5 solid rounds, but those 2nd and 3rd attacks may miss and he has few effective defenses (no expertise, no close quarters combat, no combat reflexes, no improved initiative) if he finds himself disadvantaged. He's also given up on his mount or a cohort. It would be an interesting often powerful character, but it wouldn't break my game any. What's he going to do if the final monster proves to be 30HD grey render?

Why does 'Extra Rage' give two extra rages and 'Extra Smite' give only one smite? 'Rage' is a far more effective and general purpose damage dealer than 'Smite', plus aids the Barbarians critically weak Will saves. Perhaps because the designers knew that the Barbarian would seldom need extra rages, so what the heck.

 

[Ravellion]

The thing I haven't heard yet is the way it can be absolutely devastating with criticals, especially with the power critical feat and a weapon with a X3 modifier. At 15-20th level thats one hell of a lot of damage, Quite possibly dealing more than 100 damage in one blow: Warhammer 1d8+5, Strength 2 handed +9 (very conservative), Smite +20, +2 from other stuff (Bard song prayer luck stone whatever). Average 40.5. Thats' a 95% sure way of doing ~121.5 damage on your power critical attempt.

And yes, you should take into account the worst case scenario when designing feats - which I haven't even done really; a character properly minmaxed can do more than 150 whit a nice smite easily.

The spell... what's the duration? If it is 1 round per level, or works as true strike, of course it isn't broken, you are doing nothing for one turn to smite the next! Duh!

Still, I rated the feat a 4. One smite is a bit weak and it's use doesn't really come until really high levels. Two smites however... Perhaps a feat that said "+1 smite and +2 damage on all smites" would been better.