New Feats

The Armiger series of feats are meant to be individually worthwhile as good (but not game-breaker) feats, but each is slightly less useful than the previous. Taking all three results in a very specialised character. Battle Rush is my take on the fighter who can carry on "forever" while in melee.

Armiger

You know how to use your armour to mitigate damage.

Prerequisite: Base attack bonus +4
Benefit: Your armour provides damage resistance against piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage, up to a limit of your BAB or half (your armour's armour bonus (plus enhancement bonus, if any)), whichever is lower.
Normal: Your armour provides it's armour bonus to AC as normal, but it does not provide any damage resistance.

Improved Armiger

You know how to use your armour to mitigate damage.

Prerequisite: Base attack bonus +9, Armiger
Benefit: Your armour provides damage resistance against piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage, up to a limit of your BAB or your armour's armour bonus (plus enhancement bonus, if any), whichever is lower.

Greater Armiger

You know how to use your armour to mitigate damage.

Prerequisite: Base attack bonus +16, Armiger, Improved Armiger
Benefit: Your armour provides damage resistance against piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage, up to a limit of your BAB or two times (your armour's armour bonus (plus enhancement bonus, if any)), whichever is lower.

Battle Rush

Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +3, Constitution 13
Benefit: A number of times per day equal to your Constitution bonus, you an enter a battle rush. This rush lasts for ten minutes. While in a battle rush, half of any damage you inflict on an enemy in melee gets returned to you as temporary hit points. These temporary hit points are lost first when you take damage, and automatically vanish at the end of the battle rush period.

Note: For the purposes of this feat, an enemy is only counted if they are aware of your presence, and have a chance of causing hit point damage to you in that round. It does not count if you hypothetically leave yourself open to attack (only your actual actions that round count), but it does count if they can do so in a way that puts them at greater risk than might otherwise be considered safe.

On review, Battle Rush is horribly overpowered.

The Armiger feats have been de-powered from x1/2/3 to x0.5/1/2 armour bonus, to prevent so much front-loading.

"Damage resistance" is my house rule term which takes the energy resistance and expands it to cover physical damage types in addition to energy damage types.

How much damage resistancec does armor provide? you dont seem to state that.

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Originally Posted by Razoroftruth

How much damage resistancec does armor provide? you dont seem to state that.

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Without these feats, armour provides no damage resistance. The armour's armour bonus always applies to Armour Class exactly as per RAW.

With the feats, the amount of damage resistance is as specified in each feat's description. For example, chainmail normally provides an armour bonus of +5. For a character with the Armiger feat and a BAB of +1 up to +4, the damage resistance provided is equal to his BAB (the lower of BAB or armour bonus). That same character with a BAB of +5 or more (presumably after gaining a few levels) would gain damage resistance 5 from his armour, but no higher (again, the lower of BAB or armour bonus).

Example two: 20th level fighter (BAB +20) with Greater Armiger (and prereqs) and chainmail +3 (armour bonus +5, enhancement bonus +3). He gets the lower of his BAB or three times (armour bonus plus enhancement bonus). In this case, the BAB is lower, so he gets damage resistance 20.

Nice...I'm thinking of a minor barbarian boost (to help put them ahead of the CoDzilla at melee; obviously some cleric/druid nerfing will be part of it as well) via special abilities (similar to a rogue's), and I think I'll include Battle Rush (automatic with rage) as one of the options. (Armiger also looks good, but I've got different, though similar, plans along those lines; that's more for the fighter's benefit.)

If we assume a medium- or heavy-armor character with these feats, BAB is nearly always going to be a smaller number than the result of your armor+enhancement formula, so there's little reason to provide the option. Why not just reduce the chain to a single feat, tie it to BAB, and add the requirement that the character must be wearing armor to benefit from the feat?

Doing this will have the side benefit of making high-dex fighters in light armor a non-suicidal option.

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Originally Posted by Alefiend

If we assume a medium- or heavy-armor character with these feats, BAB is nearly always going to be a smaller number than the result of your armor+enhancement formula, so there's little reason to provide the option. Why not just reduce the chain to a single feat, tie it to BAB, and add the requirement that the character must be wearing armor to benefit from the feat?

Doing this will have the side benefit of making high-dex fighters in light armor a non-suicidal option.

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The Armiger feats are specifically intended to reward characters who choose to go for the armoured knight archetype. Making armour irrelevant (beyond "must be wearing") defeats that goal utterly.

I am also aware that, by the time it becomes a option, the Greater Armiger feat is mostly useless for fully optimised characters. It is partly there because I also plan on allowing fighters to have retrainable feats, I don't allow magic marts, and there are campaign reasons why a cahracter might not want the heaviest armour around (eg, jungles, deserts, cities).

In general, I like my higher-level feats to do more for me than my lower-level feats, but I don't see any issues with these. The limitation on Battle Rush needs more explanation, as I'm not getting a clear picture of who is and is not your enemy for purposes of this feat.

Om Nom Nom Nom

What is Damage Resistance? There's Energy Resistance and Damage Reduction, but I know not of "Damage Resistance." Assuming you mean DR, it doesn't work that way. You don't specify what DR works against: it works against all physical attacks, except those specified. A natural lycanthrope has DR 10/silver, meaning it subtracts 10 from all weapon and natural weapon attacks that hit it, except those from silver weapons. A demon might have DR 10/cold iron and good, which is only penetrated by weapons that are both made of cold iron and are good aligned (a property gained from specific sources like the Bless Weapon spell or the Holy weapon property). A Treant has DR 10/slashing, meaning any weapon that deals slashing damage (including longswords, sickles, axes, claws, and bites) will ignore it.

The correct way to state what you're trying to do is, as far as I can tell, "You gain damage reduction equal to your base attack bonus or the armor bonus provided by your armor, whichever is lower. This damage reduction is not ignored by any type of weapon." Then you'd write it on your sheet as "DR X/-", where X is the lower of your BAB or armor bonus.

Edits:

Reduced the power of the Armiger feats, explained the damage resistance house rule term.

Oh, I got that your intent was to make heavy armor more worthwhile. I was pointing out what I perceived as an exploitable situation, and also a flaw that made the higher feats worthless. I could have been clearer about it, though.

The basic Armiger feat still provides a nice benefit to light armor fans, but the real meat is for steel suits. Your revised formula fixes that nicely. If you really want to cut the leather fetishists out, you could always put a situational requirement on the feats that the user must be wearing medium or heavy armor.

Why is Battle Rush so overpowered? It does allow you to last longer in combat, but the only characters it'll really help is those who do massive damage with a single hit (not multiple hits, as temporary hit points don't stack) as compared to the damage done by their enemies over the course of a round (at least comparable to twice as much) but have relatively few hit points compared to their enemies. In other words, a melee glass cannon. And how many of those do you find?

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Originally Posted by Yitzi

Why is Battle Rush so overpowered? It does allow you to last longer in combat, but the only characters it'll really help is those who do massive damage with a single hit (not multiple hits, as temporary hit points don't stack) as compared to the damage done by their enemies over the course of a round (at least comparable to twice as much) but have relatively few hit points compared to their enemies. In other words, a melee glass cannon. And how many of those do you find?

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The problem with battle rush is that on any round that you hit an opponent, you've effectively negated a single enemy's return attack sequence for two rounds (assuming typical hit probabilities and levels of damage optimisation).

Wait, what are these hit probabilities and damage optimization that means one hit of yours is worth 4 rounds' hits of theirs (since half of 1 hit apparently is enough for two rounds)?

And why do you even need the feat if you've got that much advantage over them in damage output?

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Originally Posted by Yitzi

Wait, what are these hit probabilities and damage optimization that means one hit of yours is worth 4 rounds' hits of theirs (since half of 1 hit apparently is enough for two rounds)?

And why do you even need the feat if you've got that much advantage over them in damage output?

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D&D is balanced on the assumption that a PC will go through four encounters without needing any significant rest between encounters. For those characters whose primary consumable resource is hit points, the feat would effectively double that resource.

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Originally Posted by Ashtagon

D&D is balanced on the assumption that a PC will go through four encounters without needing any significant rest between encounters. For those characters whose primary consumable resource is hit points, the feat would effectively double that resource.

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So giving Fighters and other melee in Tier 4-5 an ability that melee classes in Tier 3 (Crusader, Psychic Warrior) have is overpowering? I'm not really seeing it. Considering the Crusader specifically, their hit point recovery maneuvers are essentially available all day. Also consider Stone Power and Vital Recovery, which provide a good amount of temporary and real hit points that can essentially be used all day. Battle Rush doesn't seem any more powerful than any of that and, if it's so powerful to pull Fighter up to Tier 4, that isn't such a bad thing. If it's still something that bothers you so much, put a limit on how much temp hp can be provided, though I don't think you really need it, since you only have the highest total from a single source, they don't stack from multiple hits by default.

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Originally Posted by Cieyrin

So giving Fighters and other melee in Tier 4-5 an ability that melee classes in Tier 3 (Crusader, Psychic Warrior) have is overpowering? I'm not really seeing it. Considering the Crusader specifically, their hit point recovery maneuvers are essentially available all day. Also consider Stone Power and Vital Recovery, which provide a good amount of temporary and real hit points that can essentially be used all day. Battle Rush doesn't seem any more powerful than any of that and, if it's so powerful to pull Fighter up to Tier 4, that isn't such a bad thing. If it's still something that bothers you so much, put a limit on how much temp hp can be provided, though I don't think you really need it, since you only have the highest total from a single source, they don't stack from multiple hits by default.

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Yes, fighter with Battle Rush isn't a big deal. But any of the martial splatbook classes with it can pretty much ask the DM to stop rolling dice anymore for anything intended to be balanced without that feat.

Also, just because fighter doesn't suck with it doesn't mean a new feat is balanced. Other classes can pick the feat up too. Equally, just because it can't make wizard cry doesn't mean it's a good feat, since wizards are quadratic.

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Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Yes, fighter with Battle Rush isn't a big deal. But any of the martial splatbook classes with it can pretty much ask the DM to stop rolling dice anymore for anything intended to be balanced without that feat.

Also, just because fighter doesn't suck with it doesn't mean a new feat is balanced. Other classes can pick the feat up too. Equally, just because it can't make wizard cry doesn't mean it's a good feat, since wizards are quadratic.

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So...put a Fighter level requirement on it? :smallconfused:

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Originally Posted by Cieyrin

So...put a Fighter level requirement on it? :smallconfused:

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Better still, make it a Fighter ACF, unavailable as a Feat but a Fighter can trade one out for it. Like Dungeoncrasher or...whatsitcalled, Armor of God?

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Originally Posted by Adamantrue

Better still, make it a Fighter ACF, unavailable as a Feat but a Fighter can trade one out for it. Like Dungeoncrasher or...whatsitcalled, Armor of God?

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Armor of God is correct, though not terribly useful compared to the other reverse version, Armor to Will save. :smallcool:

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Originally Posted by Ashtagon

D&D is balanced on the assumption that a PC will go through four encounters without needing any significant rest between encounters. For those characters whose primary consumable resource is hit points, the feat would effectively double that resource.

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Point. Perhaps the best way to deal with that is to give a limited number of uses per day (each "use" would last for a certain number of rounds, similar to rage), and you can take the feat multiple times for extra uses.

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Originally Posted by Cieyrin

So...put a Fighter level requirement on it? :smallconfused:

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Might work, although it really seems more a barbarian ability. Maybe make it require Rage and work only while in a Rage...that'd help push the barbarian up a bit. (Fighter does need it even more, but probably calls for a different approach.)

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Originally Posted by Yitzi

Might work, although it really seems more a barbarian ability. Maybe make it require Rage and work only while in a Rage...that'd help push the barbarian up a bit. (Fighter does need it even more, but probably calls for a different approach.)

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At first glance? Base fort or rage/zerk ability.

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Originally Posted by Yitzi

Might work, although it really seems more a barbarian ability. Maybe make it require Rage and work only while in a Rage...that'd help push the barbarian up a bit. (Fighter does need it even more, but probably calls for a different approach.)

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Do Barbarians really need the push, though? There's feats and ACFs aplenty that push them from Tier 4 to 3.

Y'know...what could be done is to attach it to Combat Focus chain, extending an existing mechanic and giving it more versatility.

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Originally Posted by Cieyrin

Do Barbarians really need the push, though? There's feats and ACFs aplenty that push them from Tier 4 to 3.

Y'know...what could be done is to attach it to Combat Focus chain, extending an existing mechanic and giving it more versatility.

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Maybe...I'm planning to include it in my own barbarian fix (which assumes the lack of everything but Core and homebrew, as that creates the most level playing field*.)

*Technically, SRD+homebrew is even more so, but including a handful of MM creatures isn't that much of a difference, and some SRD non-core stuff does things to the game that I don't really like (in particular, flaws make feats too cheap.)