Robillar's Gambit

[TarionzCousin]

Just think of some of the nasty tricks a wizard could have done in such a situation, and it most likely wouldn't have involved a save.

Do you have an example or three?

I am currently DM'ing a high-level gestalt campaign and would love to know some more nasty tricks.

 

[useridunavailable]

The problem is that Deathless Frenzy, besides being broken by itself, breaks Robilar's Gambit by removing the downside of the feat. The penalties from the feat (taking more damage in melee via reduced AC and giving your foes bonus damage) are of no consequence when you basically immune to damage.


I place most of the blame on the Frenzy part though. If you can't actually be killed by attacks, then enemies who attack you in melee are pretty much screwed anyway. Enemies that can't go around Deathless Frenzy's defense will lose to you regardless. The only issue might be what happens to the rest of the party - if the foes spend time attacking you before everyone else is dead, then they'll come out okay. So the ability to kill them faster via a Robilar's exchange is not so significant. You're not going to lose anyway, so winning a little faster isn't that big of a deal.

Yeah--that's pretty well put. I had thought of it that way, and I really tend to agree, but Robilar's Gambit is good enough and easy enough to qualify for that it's become pretty ubiquitous in our group, and it kind of annoys me that it's basically a given. The example is a pretty extreme case, and it was just kind of disenchanting that the combat turned out the way it did when I didn't really intend to make an semi-invincible character. The plotline was really good and both the characters and badguys were deep and interesting, and it would have been more fun to see it go out in more heroic fashion than it did. Nobody in our party even got a turn at all...

I don't know--I guess I just think that beyond a certain point, it's kind of ridiculous for a character to get extra attacks just for being attacked. Say a 16th-level fighter uses his 4 attacks, hits 3 times, and doesn't kill a dragon. The dragon decides to attack him at +4 to hit and damage, and for his trouble, he gets his head cut the rest of the way off because the fighter gets an equal number of attacks (up to his dex modifier +1, so probably at least 5 with a pair of gloves by that level). The fighter actually has more attacks on the dragon's turn than he does on his own, and the damage isn't going to kill him. He slays the dragon in one round instead of two by virtue of the fact that the dragon decided to attack... I don't know--it just seems similar to stacking haste bonus attacks. If most monsters decide to do anything at all to you, it's basically a given that you get a bunch of extra attacks, which generally far outweighs the drawback IME.

I'm not saying that the Frenzied Berserker class isn't broken, I'm just saying that Robilar's Gambit is also perhaps a bit overpowered. I've seen it be ridiculously effective when used by characters across a wide array of levels and tank builds, not just this one.

*BTW--of course I know that AoOs receive the Power Attack penalty from the previous round. Because it's such a basic rule, I omitted its mention in the post above. I merely meant that the fact that easily causing foes to provoke AoOs (always at your highest AB) is a pretty good way of mitigating the drawback of using Power Attack, at least to some extent. IME, Power Attack is most detrimental when you factor in iterative attacks and their likeliness to miss because of the attack penalty.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Do you have an example or three?

I am currently DM'ing a high-level gestalt campaign and would love to know some more nasty tricks.

Immunity to Metal + Flameblade

DS

 

[Olaf the Stout]

What difference would it make if Improved Combat Reflexes wasn't available? I'm thinking that this might limit the amount of AoO you could make to a manageable level.

On the other hand, 5 (Dex 20) is still a lot. It is more attacks than you are getting in your turn with a full attack, and they are all at +4 thanks to Deft Opportunist.

Maybe if you houseruled that Deft Opportunist didn't count when used for AoO caused by Robilar's Gambit?

Olaf the Stout

 

[Stalker0]

Its nasty, but I don't think its that bad.

First of all, those AOO's occur after the attack, so you can't just destroy the person before they hit you.

Second, +4 to attack and damage is a big penalty against you. If the monster is power attacking itself, that can be as much as +12 damage against you (with 2-1 PA).

Third, all penalties to hit apply to Aoos. If you are full power attacking, those AOOs you have still take the full penalty to attack. If you are wiffing on your attacks, your likely going to be whiffing on those AOO's while the enemy gets more damage against you.

I think its a useful feat, but not broken. Frenzied Berseker is what's broken. The ability to not die is what magnifies the power of this feat.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Its nasty, but I don't think its that bad.

First of all, those AOO's occur after the attack, so you can't just destroy the person before they hit you.

Second, +4 to attack and damage is a big penalty against you. If the monster is power attacking itself, that can be as much as +12 damage against you (with 2-1 PA).

Third, all penalties to hit apply to Aoos. If you are full power attacking, those AOOs you have still take the full penalty to attack. If you are wiffing on your attacks, your likely going to be whiffing on those AOO's while the enemy gets more damage against you.

I think its a useful feat, but not broken. Frenzied Berseker is what's broken. The ability to not die is what magnifies the power of this feat.

I think you are missing the fact that all his AoO come at his highest BAB +4 (due to Deft Opportunist). Yes, he still cops the PA penalty on those attacks but he now has a +4 to hit. In his normal full attack, some of his iterative attacks would usually miss but his first attack (at his highest attack bonus) would still hit fairly regularly. Add a +4 to this and it wouldn't surprise me if his AoO attacks hit most of the time. And when they do hit, they would be doing a fair amount of damage per hit.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Do you have an example or three?

I am currently DM'ing a high-level gestalt campaign and would love to know some more nasty tricks.

The big one that I know of, is maximized time stop, Cloud Kill, force cage (windowless), dimensional lock.

That one works against anything not immune to poison. While it does technically have a save, their are lots of them. (every round of cloud kill). Most likely their will be enough saves to kill just about anything.

Most wizard combos use timestop as you can set up events to transpire so when the time stop ends, death is imminent.

*edit*

Reverse Gravity and Prismatic sphere is a good one. I don't know how many times the given creature would hit the sphere though. It could be up to 4.

They would be hitting the sphere, passing through its other side, and then falling back down after you dispel reverse gravity. Thats 4 by my count, but again i could be wrong on this. If you make the prismatic sphere high enough in the sky, you could keep casting reverse gravity and dispelling without letting them hit the ground, stopping only until they are dead. You would of course quicken the first reverse gravity so you could cast the sphere then reverse gravity all on 1 turn.

 

[Darklone]

No matter in what game, abilities that do damage when you get hit are always pretty scary for game balance. Especially if the reactive damage scales.

Dragon shaman auras and fireshield do have a pretty fixed amount of damage for that reason... FBs (thanks to it's ridiculous str and additional attack) damage is usually higher than the dude who hit you.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Do you have an example or three?

I am currently DM'ing a high-level gestalt campaign and would love to know some more nasty tricks.

Moon-Lancer's is a classic. Basically most of them involve using Time-Stop somewhere in the cascade.

Here's one it requires Improved Spell Capacity. Maximized time stop, followed by dimension lock, then boiling mud. (At this point the enemy is dimension-locked and submerged under boiling mud and will begin taking 10d6 per round as soon as TS runs out and can't t-port or d-door out.) Then you conjure a wall of iron and push it to fall over the boiling mud trapping the suffocating enemy under the barrier

EDIT: I see she covered reverse gravity and prismatic sphere too so I'll just cut that out.

 

[Particle_Man]

I'm surprised the BBEG didn't use Improved Invisibility (or something similar to stay out of combat for a little while) and watch you one shot your friends, waiting until the frenzy wore off.