Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Fair Warning
Prerequisites: Bab 1+, Cha 13, Fighter 1
Benefit: You may issue a warning towards an opponent before striking him. This helps him prepare for the strike, but at the same time ensures you'll be better set to hit harder. Whenever you make a melee attack or a ranged attack at 30 feet or less against an opponent that is denied his dexterity modifier to AC for any reason but is NOT unconscious, he instantly regains it, but you deal 2d6 more damage if you hit. This damage is not multiplied on a critical hit.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Every time you do, increase the damage by 3d6.
Look Behind You
Prerequisites: Cha 15, Fair Warning
Benefit: You may issue a warning towards an opponent before one of your allies attacks him as an immediate action. Whenever am ally makes a melee attack or a ranged attack at 30 feet or less against an opponent that is denied his dexterity modifier to AC for any reason but is NOT unconscious, he instantly regains it, but the ally deals 2d6 more damage if he hits. This damage is not multiplied on a critical hit.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Every time you do, increase the damage by 3d6.
Deceitful Warning
Prerequisites: Cha 17, Fair Warning, Look Behind You
Benefit: Make a bluff check as a swift action against an opponent's Sense Motive. The opponent must be denied his Dex to AC. If you win, everyone who strikes the target in melee or ranged within 30 feet until his round begins deals 4d6 more damage, and the target regains his dex bonus right before the first attack made against him. Until the target is hit and dealt damage, however, he is treated as being flat-footed.
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Leaving aside various rules issues (for example, the third one apparently allows you to make someone who's merely denied DEX bonus to AC now be considered flat-footed, which has a few extra complications as well), I don't really see the point. Yes, it allows a fighter to get extra damage against a flat-footed opponent, but I'd think that allowing Sneak Attack to be taken as a bonus fighter feat (and only a bonus fighter feat) would be an easier way to do that.
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Prerequisite of BAB +1 or more is not needed since you already require Fighter 1.
Regaining dexterity modifier to AC for "any reason" is kinda strange if the reason is something like Hold Person.
Increase of 3d6 per times the feat taken is stronger than the Rogue's Sneak attack if you take it as fighter bonus feat. Especially since it is untyped damage, so works against enemies immune to sneak attacks or critical hits.
All in all it would be incredibly overpowered coupled with Tripping build.
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SinsI
Increase of 3d6 per times the feat taken is stronger than the Rogue's Sneak attack if you take it as fighter bonus feat. Especially since it is untyped damage, so works against enemies immune to sneak attacks or critical hits.
This isn't really a problem, as fighters should be better at combat than rogues (and than wizards and sorcerers and clerics and druids too, but that's a different discussion.) Also, note that this is weaker than sneak attack in one notable way, namely that the enemy does get to add their DEX bonus to AC against it.
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
The difference in BAB between Fighter and Rogue is more than enough to compensate for the lack of DEX bonus to AC(and they usually have more Strength attack bonus too), so sneak-attack oriented rogues become obsolete.
By 10th level, a fighter that only spent his bonus feats on Fair Warning will be doing 17d6 of that untyped damage, or 29d6 if he spent his normal feats on that too. That's 101.5 extra damage on average. He'd have to have a Con bonus of at least +4 to even have a chance to survive one such attack himself.
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SinsI
The difference in BAB between Fighter and Rogue is more than enough to compensate for the lack of DEX bonus to AC(and they usually have more Strength attack bonus too), so sneak-attack oriented rogues become obsolete.
No, sneak-attack oriented rogues will still not be obsolete, as even with the sneak attack focus they're still better at noncombat than most other classes (certainly better than a fighter), so they have an important role there. Now, in a combat-only game this would make rogues obsolete, but I don't see why that's a bad thing.
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He'd have to have a Con bonus of at least +4 to even have a chance to survive one such attack himself.
Actually, he could survive the attack simply by the attacker failing the attack roll...it's surviving a hit that would be a problem. And yes, I suppose this does increase the rocket tag phenomenon and is problematic for that reason (unless paired with corresponding defensive advantages), but the difficult setup makes it far less relevant to that problem than many other features.
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
What difficult setup? Invisibility makes you ignore opponent's dexterity bonus to AC, so one casting of it is enough to force a dodge-or-die roll on any opponent of your level. Perhaps the "save AC" for it might be quite high, but do you really want a chance of such an instant conclusion in a duel of equal level warriors?
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SinsI
What difficult setup? Invisibility makes you ignore opponent's dexterity bonus to AC, so one casting of it is enough to force a dodge-or-die roll on any opponent of your level.
Unless he can negate invisibility (or that aspect of it) via the Blind-Fight feat or an item of See Invisibility or an ally with Invisibility Purge any of the other means of dealing with that.
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Perhaps the "save AC" for it might be quite high, but do you really want a chance of such an instant conclusion in a duel of equal level warriors?
Not a chance that substantial...by that argument, though, a substantial portion of the spell list needs to be changed too, and more than this does. (It actually does need to be changed, largely for exactly that reason.)
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Wait... so you can hit an enemy harder when he knows that you're swinging at him? Run that one by me again? :smallconfused:
I'm not sure about the balance, although I don't think it's all that bad, I'm just wondering why? What kind of character would use feats like this?
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yitzi
Unless he can negate invisibility (or that aspect of it) via the Blind-Fight feat or an item of See Invisibility or an ally with Invisibility Purge any of the other means of dealing with that.
Ring of blinking it is, then. Only See Invisibility is a threat to it.
Re: Anti-sneak attack? [Feats]
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SinsI
Ring of blinking it is, then. Only See Invisibility is a threat to it.
That does raise the minimum level substantially, but yes it does mean a significant potential problem.
So so far, the general consensus on the matter seems to be: It serves no purpose, makes combat too deadly, if not as badly as save-or-die-spells, and doesn't even make sense.
