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sengmeng
2013-02-02, 10:24 AM
Well, it was as inevitable as a monk fix...

I had an idea, perhaps one that I did not fully think about, for perhaps a feat chain or a base class which gets said feat chain as class features, but I'm trying to fix the single weapon fighter with no shield, AKA, the Einhander.

The idea is based around an ability called Attackrifice, which lets the einhand fighter give up iterative and offhand attacks to gain 1 critical multiplier and add 1 to his weapon's threat range per sacrificed attack. They essentially are using TWF to fuel this, but they get an additional bonus if they have no off-hand weapon and a weapon that they can use weapon finesse with: the einhand strike, adding 1.5 their dex bonus to damage as precision damage (they're pretty much all about emulating Power Attack builds via precision damage). I have a base class partially statted out, but I'd like some feedback before I post it for PEACHing. What else does this class need, or are my deepest fears legit and it would be better as a series of feats?

EDIT: HERE IS DER EINHANDER!


Weapon and armor proficiencies: All simple weapons, light martial weapons, and martial ranged weapons, plus rapiers, sais, sianghams, and whips, and light armor, but not shields.

good fort and reflex saves, full bab, d8 hd
6 skill points (class skills not yet decided, probably similar to bard list, with all the stealth and mobility skills)


{table]level|class features
1 |Attackrifice, Einhand Strike
2 |Bonus feat
3 |
4 |Bonus feat
5 |
6 |Bonus feat (2x einhand strike)
7 |
8 |Bonuse Feat
9 |
10 | Bonuse Feat
11 | (2.5x einhand strike)
12 |Bonuse Feat
13|
14 |Bonuse Feat
15|
16 |Bonuse Feat (3x einhand strike)
17 |
18 |Bonuse Feat
19 |
20 |Bonuse Feat [/table]


Attackrifice: the Einhander may sacrifice up to all but one of his possible attacks WITH HIS HANDS in any given round in order to gain +1 to his weapon’s threat range and one additional critical multiplier per sacrificed attack. Additionally, they may sacrifice critical multipliers as d6’s of sneak attack to fuel ambush feats, and can take any ambush feat they qualify for as if they had sneak attack dice equal to their total possible number of attacks per round, minus any that come from a speed weapon or a haste spell, but adding any actual dice of sneak attack they have. For the purposes of attack penalties, sacrificing an attack counts as making it, i.e., if the Einhander sacrifices an off-hand attack and they don’t have two-weapon fighting, their attacks with their primary hands suffer -4 to hit, or -6 if they had a one-handed weapon or a large shield in that hand. They also take an additional -1 if they sacrifice an off-hand attack and have a buckler on that arm, and they suffer an additional -4 if they sacrifice an attack while holding a weapon they aren’t proficient with. If they have two weapon fighting and a light weapon or no weapon in their off-hand, they can sacrifice all off-hand attacks and take a -2 penalty on their primary hand’s attacks. Alternatively, if their base attack bonus is high enough, they can sacrifice their iterative attacks at no penalty to their highest base attack. The benefits of Attackrifice extend until their next action, so they affect their attacks of opportunity.

Einhand Strike: While attacking with a weapon that they can use weapon finesse with, the Einhander gains bonus damage equal to 1.5 times his dex bonus, if his off-hand is empty and he doesn’t make any unarmed attacks with it. The bonus increases to 2x his dex bonus at level 6, then 2.5 at level 11, then 3x his dex bonus at level 16. This extra damage is precision damage and cannot affect creatures immune to critical hits, and it is not multiplied on a critical hit.

Bonus Feat: Whenever it says ‘bonus feat’ on the Einhander’s progression chart, he may select any luck feat, fighter bonus feat, or ambush feat he meets the prerequisites for. Alternatively, the Einhander can choose instead to gain the ability to sneak attack for 1d6 damage, and increase it by 1d6 for every bonus feat they put into it, to a maximum of 9d6. They may not use their regular feats from level advancement to gain sneak attack.


These should be on the progression chart in some of the dead levels, but I haven't decided where:

Acrobatic Charge: The Einhander may charge through difficult terrain or combine a jump, balance, or tumble check with their charging movement.

Grace: While wearing light armor, the Einhander adds his charisma modifier, if positive, to his saves and armor class as a deflection bonus.

Master Fencer: The Einhander gains the ability to sacrifice attacks to gain effective size when using the improved trip, improved disarm, and improved bull-rush maneuvers. For the purposes of opposed rolls related to those three combat maneuvers, his weapon and himself are treated as one size category larger (max colossal) for each sacrificed attack. They may also choose to mix a combination of the benefits of master fencer and attackrifice, i.e., they can sacrifice two attacks to gain two effective size categories, and also sacrifice two more attacks to gain +2 multipliers and +2 to their weapon's threat range.

Skewer: When charging, the Einhander is treated as having sacrificed all their attacks per round except their highest attack with their primary hand, as if they had the ability to make a full-attack at the end of a charge but sacrificed their extra attacks. They make a single attack with whatever benefit or combination of benefits they chose to receive.

Fleche: As skewer, but instead of a charge, it's anytime the Einhander makes an attack as a standard action.

Punishing Strike: Whenever the Einhander makes only a single attack in a round, his attack overcomes all damage reduction and deals lethal damage to all creatures.

Baron Corm
2013-02-02, 10:48 AM
Attackrifice seems a bit unreliable, depending on the numbers you use. Giving up an attack should at least double your damage the first time, guaranteed, otherwise I wouldn't use it. Except maybe for the name.

For the Power Attack equivalent, 1.5x your Dexterity bonus doesn't come near the damage of a THF user with Shock Trooper. That's practically 40 damage for free. Other multipliers can be added which get into the realm of cheesiness, but this is the base most start at, while yours is more like 15. A few more supporting feats to help this out would surely close the gap. Just keep in mind that as written, a THF user could take your feat/ability too, just not get the 1.5x bonus, so any further multipliers should really focus on the einhander style. I say this because there is no drawback, like Power Attack has, that would deter them.

There is a prestige class already that grants Dexterity to damage as precision damage (champion of Corellon Larethian), so you have precedent as a class. Personally I think that at least the second part works better as a feat, but it could go either way.

sengmeng
2013-02-02, 11:03 AM
Well, the "this is a base class version" increased the 1.5 to 2, then 2.5, and 3 at the highest levels. I meant also for the attackrifice option to only work with weapons that you can apply weapon finesse to... sorry for my lack of specificity. And yes, until you have more than one attack to sacrifice, it doesn't help that much... but, at the highest levels, a rapier becomes 15-20/x5 without TWF, which could get... scary. You've helped me answer the question of whether it should be a base class though. I'm pretty sure it's "yes"

Baron Corm
2013-02-02, 11:17 AM
Assuming someone using a rapier with all TWF feats:

18-20, x2 - Base.
15-20, x2 - Improved Critical.
14-20, x3 - Two weapons.
13-20, x4 - Improved TWF.
12-20, x5 - Greater TWF.
11-20, x6 - Iterative attack 1.
10-20, x7 - Iterative 2.
9-20, x8 - Iterative 3.

So you have about a 50% chance to deal 8x damage, instead of a 100% chance to deal 7x damage, assuming you hit on your attack rolls. It might be more likely to only hit on 4 or 5 of them, but I'd take a 100% chance for 4 over a 50% chance for 8 any day. If you're using rapiers on those as well, you've got a 10% chance to deal double alongside that, since you can still crit.

Critical hits don't work with extra dice-based damage, so you're losing 35d6 or so damage, assuming about 5d6 energy damage on your weapon. There is a benefit of it, though. You're basically ignoring damage reduction, since your values will be so high.

Overall I don't think threat range increase is the way to go. It works in concept, but like I said, it just needs to be more reliable.

bobthe6th
2013-02-02, 11:20 AM
The razor was my attempt to fix einhander...

I went with a TWF clone given out free, then gave them DOT to each hit.

I could see using a feat that lets you sacrafice all attacks you would normaly make in a full attack to multiply the first strike by the number of attacks you would have made.

sengmeng
2013-02-02, 11:24 AM
There's also Perfect TWF, for 8-20/x9. So, 65% chance of crit, and you'd have to have a mental impairment to not have some sort of burst or other effect on crit... and you do this without charging, every turn, without sacrificing BAB. I think I'll post the base class now, so you can see some of the other things I'm thinking to mitigate the problems you've mentioned. Thanks for responding and crunching the numbers.

bobthe6th
2013-02-02, 11:33 AM
Heavy fortification, oozes, undead, golems... basically anything crit immune. Suddenly you get one whole attack a round! Yay!

Yora
2013-02-02, 11:36 AM
It's der Einhänder, it's gramatically masculine. (Though Hand is gramatically feminine. Yes, it is completely random.)

sengmeng
2013-02-02, 01:01 PM
Heavy fortification, oozes, undead, golems... basically anything crit immune. Suddenly you get one whole attack a round! Yay!

No, you always have the option to not do it. And this is homebrew... hitting things NORMALLY crit immune is just a class feature or feat away. Has any rogue fix not extended their ability to sneak attack to include things normally immune to it?

Baron Corm
2013-02-02, 01:24 PM
There's also Perfect TWF, for 8-20/x9. So, 65% chance of crit, and you'd have to have a mental impairment to not have some sort of burst or other effect on crit... and you do this without charging, every turn, without sacrificing BAB. I think I'll post the base class now, so you can see some of the other things I'm thinking to mitigate the problems you've mentioned. Thanks for responding and crunching the numbers.

I was going on the assumption that you need to full attack to do this, since you're "sacrificing" attacks. You mention "without charging, every turn", does that mean you're allowing it on standard action attacks too?

I forgot about Burst abilities. 3d10 averages out to the same damage as 5d6, plus the base 1d6. However, Flaming Burst costs twice as much as Flaming. So if you have a +10 weapon, you can get 2.5 Burst abilities, or 5 regular energy damage abilities, assuming +5 going to enhancement bonus. That would be, on 4 hits (attacking normally), 70 average, or 1 crit (Attrackrificing), 41.25 average. Using more or less of your weapon for abilities should move the numbers proportionately.

I don't usually optimize for crits, so if there are better modifiers than that, that could change things, but it's a decent standard to go by. I think in the end you're almost guaranteed to miss out on the most of many weapon effects due to the nature of only hitting once.

Perfect TWF is an epic feat so I wasn't taking it into consideration. I did mention only 4 of your hits hitting would still be worth it, and you should be able to do at least that in a TWF build, if not all 7.

sengmeng
2013-02-02, 01:46 PM
Well, if the class has the ability to get additional d10s out of your burst ability, then the math will significantly shift in the einhander's favor, and yes, eventually they can do it as a standard action (or maybe via feat). I'm actually quite happy with coming up somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 the THF fighter's damage; he can have the role of incredible heavy hitter. This guy should be able to partially emulate that, or pull out his second weapon if it makes more sense and attack with TWF, since he's fully capable of that as well.

Dsurion
2013-02-02, 05:42 PM
It's der Einhänder, it's gramatically masculine. (Though Hand is gramatically feminine. Yes, it is completely random.)I was actually going to point that out until I just saw your post :smallbiggrin:

Deepbluediver
2013-02-02, 09:06 PM
Personally, I'd rather see this as a set of feats, instead of an entire class.
(or a short 5-level PrC, maybe)

I don't really like classes that take a full 20 levels to learn a single style of fighting, when you have something like the wizard who can master every school of magic in the same amount of time. Now, I'm not saying that every class needs to be like the wizard. I think it's also poor design when a class get's too much, but there should be some middle ground that we can aim for.

What I see here in your class is basically a fighter+. It's mostly bonus feats, plus a few other class features to compensate for the lower hit dice and probably less armor.

If you make it a set of feats, then you don't need to build an entire class around it, but the fighter or any other melee character who wants to use this option for mechanical or roleplaying reasons can do so. I would also encourage you to think about what exactly you want out of this set-up. Is it just supposed to be about matching damage with a Two-Hander? There's not anything really wrong with that, but it kind of limits the appeal somewhat. If you can find something for this style to do that other melee options don't already cover, it would be more attractive, I think.

Cidolfas
2013-02-03, 02:16 AM
I feel like there are sufficient dead levels in this class that you could make the Attackrifice feature a feat and then call it a day. That's really the primary thing anyone would be looking for, in my opinion, and so the class is pretty much one level long. I also concur with the previous point that was made concerning its unreliability (not to mention the fact that boatloads of things can be immune to critical hits and shut its current incarnation down entirely), so adding something a little more constant than bonus crit threat range may be beneficial.

EDIT: I basically agreed with DeepBlueDiver, although I pretty much think this could still be one feat. I just didn't read far enough to see all the replies off the bat.

sengmeng
2013-02-03, 02:57 PM
Well, I like to think in terms of themes rather than pure number crunching and power gaming. This is the non-wilderness ranger type, the swashbuckling lightly-armored rapier-user. How would a rapier wielder attack oozes, constructs, and undead? It's not part of his archetype, really. Now, the Master Fencer option lets him do superhuman feats, like tripping a huge dragon or disarming the THF fighter before he can get close enough to deal his 650 points of damage. This dashing fencer is suited for fighting living humanoid foes, and I think that "fixing" this would be giving him abilities that don't match his idiom. Give me things that makes sense for him to have, and I'll add them.

Off my high horse, on to legitimate brainstorming.

Should this be a lightly armored fighter ACF? Trade out medium and heavy armor and shields, lose a few of the martial weapons, gain whip, sai, and siangham, 4 skill points, einhand strike, and attackrifice? Is that too much, or can the core fighter use all the help he can get?

Also, with the feat selection, he should also be a perfectly capable dual-wielder, but of course TWF is pretty weak. I did, however, give him the option of gaining and increasing sneak attack with his bonus feats, so the thing that TWF is good for is still on the table.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-02-03, 03:09 PM
Hopping on the "Make this a feat" bandwagon. I'd also accept either a one-level prestige class (which there is no precedent for, but I think should exist) or a three-level prestige class. The concept is to narrow for it to really work well as anything more complex.

sengmeng
2013-02-03, 03:17 PM
Hopping on the "Make this a feat" bandwagon. I'd also accept either a one-level prestige class (which there is no precedent for, but I think should exist) or a three-level prestige class. The concept is to narrow for it to really work well as anything more complex.

I guess that's enough people endorsing it as a feat to convince me.

A one level prestige class would seem to be just a feat with some very odd prerequisites. Could also be a very involved feat, like Vow of Poverty.

Tactical feat maybe? Einhand strike, attackrifice, and master fencer could be the maneuvers? What else from the class needs to be turned into a feat?

Edit: also, what prerequisites?