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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Alternative Savage Attacker Feat



weaseldust
2015-12-09, 04:27 PM
Well, it's hardly the same feat, but the name suggests something to me that the existing feat doesn't capture, and this is an attempt to fix that.

Savage Attacker
You excel in instilling fear in your enemies through the demonstration of your prowess with weapons.


When you score a critical hit against a creature with a melee weapon attack and the result of the weapon damage dice plus your ability modifier is greater than the target's wisdom score, you may cause the target to become frightened of you until the end of its next turn.
When you hit with a melee weapon attack and roll the maximum amount possible with your weapon dice, you deal an equal additional amount of psychic damage to the target.
When you make an intimidation check while holding a melee weapon that is visible to the target, if your roll on the d20 is less than the maximum possible result of the weapon's damage dice, you may replace the roll with that value.



Yes, the feat is partly intended to reward hefting a massive greataxe over any other weapon. That said, the mean damage increase from the second bullet is equal to 1 for all weapons besides greatswords, for which it is 1/3. Normally +1 damage would be unremarkable, but it comes in very large, very infrequent chunks, and I'm not sure what the balance implications of that are.

The fear effect is probably only worth having if you wield a d10 weapon or better (since even common animals have 12 wisdom, so you can't scare them with a with a d6 weapon) but I wonder if it might come into play too often for them? E.g. with a greatsword and 20 strength, you have a better than evens chance of frightening a creature with 12 wisdom. But at levels when most characters can have 20 strength (8+), perhaps higher wisdom scores are sufficiently common that it isn't an issue?

EDIT: Perusing the basic rules tells me even dragons can have as little as 13 wisdom. However, on reflection, a wisdom save against something like 8+prof+str wouldn't produce significantly different probabilities for non-legendary creatures and would require more rolling, which is what I hoped to avoid, so the current approach seems OK to me for now.