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BDEYE
2007-07-21, 03:17 AM
These were made with an eye towards better-representing soft martial arts, and to make it possible to play a monk or unarmed fighter without a high strength who can still do cool stuff. It's always bothered me that I need to crank strength up to use trip attacks, grappling, and so forth effectively, when the whole point of many styles of martial arts is to be able to do all that stuff without just being bigger and stronger then your opponent. The +4 bonus granted by Improved Grapple and Improved Trip isn't enough when you have He-Man fighters taking those feats too. Some of these feats are inspired by or designed to supplement Defensive Throw from the Complete Warrior, which may be my favorite feat ever. I threw in Ascetic Monk at the end as a way of giving Monks a way to get the bonus feats they need to qualify for all this stuff.

So here we go. All these feats are written by me unless noted otherwise:

Defensive Sidestep [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Ws 13, Dx 15, Dodge, Mobility, Improved Unarmed Strike, Combat Reflexes
Benefit: You must be fighting unarmed and unarmored to use this feat. While taking the total defense action, when an adjacent opponent against whom you have designated your Dodge feat attacks and misses you with a melee weapon, you may choose to sidestep, moving 5 feet to either side and drawing your opponent into the square you formerly occupied. Sidestepping in this way uses up one of your attacks of opportunity for the round. Both you and the opponent provoke attacks of opportunity for this movement (if you have more than one attack of opportunity per round, you may make an attack of opportunity against the opponent).
(Contributed by Leicontis, edited by me)

Hip Throw [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Trip
Benefit: When unarmored and fighting unarmed, you may add your Wisdom modifier to opposed Strength checks to trip an opponent.

Momentum Throw [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, Combat Expertise
Benefit: When unarmed and fighting unarmored, you are better able to perform Bull Rushes. Your attempts to Bull Rush an opponent do not generate an attack of opportunity from that opponent, you may add your Wisdom modifier to Strength checks to Bull Rush an opponent, and when you successfully Bull Rush an opponent, you may first switch places with that opponent before moving them backward.

Joint Lock [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Grapple
Benefit: When unarmed and fighting unarmored, you gain benefits when grappling. You add your Wisdom modifier to attempts to instigate a grapple or pin an opponent, and when you successfully instigate a grapple with an opponent you can attempt to pin that opponent as a free action.

Reactive Joint Lock [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Joint Lock, Dodge, Combat Reflexes
Benefit: When you are unarmed and fighting unarmored, and when the opponent to which you have assigned your dodge bonus attacks you and misses you can instigate a grapple with that opponent. This grapple attempt counts against your attacks of opportunity for the round.

Skilled Disarm [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Disarm
Benefit: When you are unarmed and fighting unarmored, you gain benefits when attempting to Disarm an opponent. You may add your Wisdom bonus to opposed checks to disarm an opponent, and when you successfully disarm an opponent you can attack that opponent as a free action (either with the weapon you just took or with an unarmed strike).

Reactive Disarm [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Skilled Disarm, Dodge, Combat Reflexes
Benefit: When unarmed and fighting unarmored, and when the opponent to which you have assigned your Dodge bonus attacks you and misses, you can attempt to disarm that opponent. This disarm attempt counts against your attacks of opportunity for the round.

Ki Sense [General]
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, Dodge, Combat Reflexes, Wisdom-based bonus to AC, BAB +4
Benefit: When you are fighting unarmored you can immediately assign your dodge bonus to any opponent that attacks you, as a free action, at the cost of one of your attacks of opportunity. You cannot use this feat if you would be denied your Dexterity bonus to AC. In addition, you gain a number of additional attacks of opportunity every round equal to your Wisdom modifier.
Special: If you are a Monk, you can take this feat as your 6th-level bonus feat.

Ascetic Warrior [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Stunning Fist, Proficient with Martial Weapons, Wisdom 15, Intelligence 13.
Benefit: Your levels of Fighter stack with your levels of Monk for purposes of determining the number of extra attacks from Flurry of Blows, the penalty on those attacks, and qualification for fighter bonus feats such as Weapon Specialization. You can also choose one melee or thrown weapon and use it as though it were a special Monk weapon from now on. Finally, you may multiclass freely between Monk and Fighter.

EDIT: I just realized the Defensive Master has so many pre-reqs it is actually completely unattainable for non-epic single-class monks, which doesn't seem right to me so I've messed with it. Please let me know if the new version is too confusing, makes no sense within the rules, or could be rewritten to be simpler.

EDIT: I'm still not sure if Defensive Master is too strong or too weak, but I have decided that it's unnecessarily complicated, especially seeing as how you can already Trip+Grapple or Trip+Disarm with the extra attack from Improved Trip, so I've gotten rid of it and made Skilled Disarm a little better. So if you have Skilled Disarm and Improved Trip and Joint Lock, you can still Disarm, Trip, Grapple, and Pin on the same turn, or break the chain after the Disarm or Trip to get a free attack instead. Which is still tricky, but the complexity comes from the constituent parts rather then coming down from the top. I also changed the prereq ability scores so that they're odd rather then even.

EDIT: Ascetic Warrior no longer allows stacking for Stunning Blow attempts, it stacks with Flurry instead. It also allows whoever takes it to use a single melee weapon of their choice as though it were a special Monk weapon.

EDIT: Defensive Sidestep was added. I modified it slightly by adding Combat Reflexes to the prerequisites. I also modified Ki Sense so that changing the target of your dodge bonus costs an AOO, as per Leicontis' suggestion.

Thank you to Jackmage 666 and Leicontis for their comments. Thank you to Leicontis for contributing Defensive Sidestep.

JackMage666
2007-07-21, 04:34 AM
Most look decent enough. A bit strong, but all have pre-reqs, so they're OK, but remember that if you have an Ability Score pre-req, they're most often odd numbers, not even. Also...


Defensive Master [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Combat Expertise, Dodge, Combat Reflexes, Wisdom 18, BAB +12
Benefit: When you are unarmed and fighting unarmored, and when the opponent to which you assigned your Dodge bonus attacks you and misses, you may perform all of the free attacks or special actions you would be entitled to by this specific circumstance by other feats you possess as though they were only a single attack of opportunity. You can only perform the attack or special action entitled you by any particular feat once per round. (For example, if a foe to which you have assigned an dodge bonus attacks you and misses, and you have the feats Defensive Throw, Reactive Joint Lock, and Reactive Disarm, you could attempt to disarm that opponent, strike them with their own weapon if successful, attempt to trip them, get a free attack if the trip attempt is successful, attempt to instigate a grapple, and attempt to pin them if the grapple was successful.)

...Is really, really, really, really, really, strong. A good Dex and Combat Reflexes means you get about 6 attacks as an attack of opportunity, just because te opponent rolled too low ot break AC. I'd just say scrap this one, because it's far too powerful.
Actually, it was probably pretty good before hand, as an Epic feat, that is.
And...


Ascetic Warrior [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Stunning Fist, Proficient with Martial Weapons, Wisdom 14, Intelligence 14.
Benefit: Your levels of Fighter stack with your levels of Monk for purposes of determining number of Stunning Fist attempts per day and qualification for fighter bonus feats such as Weapon Specialization. In addition, you can multiclass freely between Monk and Fighter.
...Is too weak. Stunning Fist uses and Feat choice isn't enough of an incentive. Throw in AC bonus (since a Fighter'd more than likely have to give up armor), and Unarmed Damage (since a Fighter'd more than likely have to give up a weapon), and it'd be set.
Also, it should include...

Special: A fighter or monk may take this as a bonus feat.

BDEYE
2007-07-21, 01:39 PM
You've got a point with Defensive Master (and that was just too complicated anyway), but I don't know about Ascetic Warrior. If you look at other feats that allow Monks to multiclass (in the Complete Adventurer mostly), they usually allow Monks to multiclass, allow one kind of stacking, and allow one other special benefit of some kind. The other problem is that if unarmed damage is allowed to stack it throws the balance very heavily on the side of "Fighter with a little Monk" rather then "Monk with a little Fighter" or an even split. Fighters can already use their higher BAB with Power Attack and Combat Expertise to increase their punching power and AC. Of course a high BAB also makes Stunning Blow quite a bit better because the attempts are more likely to hit... I'm not sure. I still think it's important to give Monks access to bonus feats and a higher BAB if they want it.

Wait a minute, I think I got it. To the edit button...

Eighth_Seraph
2007-07-21, 02:13 PM
Hrm...I like the ideas for soft martial arts. Could I borrow a few of them and turn them into techniques for the vagrant? (check my sig).

BDEYE
2007-07-21, 05:45 PM
No problem, knock yourself out.

Leicontis
2007-07-22, 02:04 PM
How about these:

Defensive Sidestep [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Ws 13, Dx 15, Dodge, Mobility, Improved Unarmed Strike
Benefit: You must be fighting unarmed and unarmored to use this feat. Once per round while taking the total defense action, when an adjacent opponent against whom you have designated your Dodge feat attacks and misses you with a melee weapon, you may choose to sidestep, moving 5 feet to either side and drawing your opponent into the square you formerly occupied. Sidestepping in this way uses up one of your attacks of opportunity for the round. Both you and the opponent provoke attacks of opportunity for this movement (if you have more than one attack of opportunity per round, you may make an attack of opportunity against the opponent).

Pressure Points [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites: Ws 13, Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Grapple, Base attack bonus +4
Benefit: While grappling, you may add your Wisdom bonus to all unarmed damage rolls. If you are unarmored, you may also add your Wisdom bonus to all opposed grapple checks. This benefit does not stack with that granted by the Joint Lock feat.

Also, Ki Sense seems a little overpowered - perhaps if switching your Dodge feat used an attack of opportunity or an immediate action? If not, it might be better to reword it so that you don't have to designate a Dodge target, but just gain an overall +1 dodge bonus to AC (which is how I tend to run it anyway - one less thing to keep track of).

BDEYE
2007-07-22, 04:28 PM
Defensive Sidestep is very cool, I added it to the list. I added Combat Reflexes to the prerequisites to make a it a little more Monk-centric. Ki Sense was initially written the way it was to avoid copying Combat Dodge from PHBII and to allow Monks who specialize in these feats to flavorfully deal with many attackers at once. Using an AOO seems like a good way to hold onto the flavor and still limit things a bit- for high Dex+ high Wisdom characters it'll end up being the same thing most of the time anyway.

Pressure Points I'm a little hesitant about. The idea behind linking the Wisdom modifier to things is to simulate the ability of master martial artists to do things with very little effort. Grappling and pinning an opponent in one graceful motion seems in keeping with this, but I'm not sure that applying Wisdom to all grappling checks does. There are prestige classes for that anyway, Monks that do find themselves in a grapple they didn't start already have Escape Artist as a class skill, and fighters that want to have an in-depth knowledge can just take Weapon Focus/Weapon Specialization in grappling.