Whirlwind Attack Viability?

[Afgncaap5]

Hey there,

I was just looking over a few build things that I've worked with over time and I was wondering, how viable do you consider Whirlwind Attack to be? I love the look of it and the description, but for some reason the combination of feats and effort required to get it sort of leaves me feeling underwhelmed as a combat feat.

[Karl Aegis]

Which edition are you playing in? 3.0 Bag o' Rats trick made Whirlwind Attack and Great Cleave deal inordinate amounts of damage for little effort.

[Afgncaap5]

3.5 or Pathfinder, really. See, every time I want to use Whirlwind Attack, I see the notes on not being able to gain extra attacks from other spells, feats, or items. Sounds like the 3e version might be a little better.

[DeltaEmil]

If you want Whirlwind Attack without investing into the horrible Spring Attack-feat chain (a very sensible thing to do, as it is utterly garbage unless you can achieve a movement speed that is extremely larger than the enemy's charge or run range), then look no further than to the whirling special ability on page 46 of the Magic Item Compendium.

[Afgncaap5]

If you want Whirlwind Attack without investing into the horrible Spring Attack-feat chain (a very sensible thing to do, as it is utterly garbage unless you can achieve a movement speed that is extremely larger than the enemy's charge or run range), then look no further than to the whirling special ability on page 46 of the Magic Item Compendium.

Thanks, that's really handy in some ways (especially for a certain villain I've got in an Adventure! game, I wanted Ocelotl to feature this). The one downside is that it says it acts like the feat. I actually don't have problems with investing in Spring Attack (I usually give that to pretty fast characters anyway), my biggest problem with it is that it's pretty much limited to eight attacks at the absolute "best" of circumstances, being surrounded by eight enemies (or theoretically smaller enemies.) You might be able to expand that a bit if you had a weapon that could hit more than standard melee range.

Realistically, I don't think I've ever had more than three enemies at a time on me. The fact that they're all full attacks isn't too bad, of course, but the fact that you can't then use Cleave or Great Cleave (or anything like it) against those three enemies just sorta makes it underwhelming.

[DeltaEmil]

Whirlwind is best when you still don't have multiple attacks from a high BAB or extra attacks from being a whirlwind frenzy barbarian, or being hasted, or something. After this, the feat becomes worthless, and should be retrained if that option is available (and if not, suicide the character and play something new).

The far superior versions of Whirlwind Attack are as always within the Tome of Battle as part of the Iron Heart school, allowing you to move normally and do the multi-attack thing. Steel Wind is a level 1 maneuver that allows you to attack two opponents at the same time, is replaced by the 4th-level Mithral Tornado maneuver which allows you to attack all adjacent foes and gives you a +2 bonus to the attack roll, and is finalized in the level 8 maneuver Adamantine Hurricane, which allows you to attack all adjacent creatures twice and gives you a +4 bonus to the attack roll to boot. The perhaps only downside to those maneuvers is that they have to explicitly be used against adjacent foes, but that's not that much of a problem.

There's probably also some kind of spell or psionic power that does something similar or even better.

[Blackhawk748]

Ive seen it used on an Arachnomancer (i think thats what its called) once. He became a Huge Spider and hit everything nearby, worked ok. So as usual the Druid (or Transmutation specialist) does it better.

[gorfnab]

Duskblade 13 (Arcane channeling - full attack) + Whip + Whirlwind Attack + Otto's Irresistible Dance =

Granted this means somehow taking a level of Bard and spending most of your skill points to meet the prereqs for Sublime Chord. Human Bard 1/ Duskblade 13/ Sublime Chord 2/ Abjurant Champion 4 could do it by taking the feat Able Learner.

[OldTrees1]

Hitting an area as an attack is nice. But Warhulk 4 and War Mind 5 are better examples of this effect.

[Chronos]

Quoth DeltaEmil:

Whirlwind is best when you still don't have multiple attacks from a high BAB or extra attacks from being a whirlwind frenzy barbarian, or being hasted, or something. After this, the feat becomes worthless, and should be retrained if that option is available (and if not, suicide the character and play something new).

And of course, the prerequisites mean that by the time you get it, you're already past that point.

[DeltaEmil]

And of course, the prerequisites mean that by the time you get it, you're already past that point.

Yes, that's the tragedy. The worst part of the entire feat chain is that it also requires the frigging Spring Attack feat chain, despite it having absolutely no synergy with Whirlwind Attack itself at all.

[Flickerdart]

Hey there,

I was just looking over a few build things that I've worked with over time and I was wondering, how viable do you consider Whirlwind Attack to be? I love the look of it and the description, but for some reason the combination of feats and effort required to get it sort of leaves me feeling underwhelmed as a combat feat.

The biggest problem with Whirlwind Attack is that even after you get it, it's super underwhelming because of the way combat works. Since there is no benefit to reducing HP to any point that isn't 0 or less, being able to deliver one hit to many opponents is much worse than being able to deliver many hits to one opponent. In cases where your one hit per guy kills them, the enemies were so weak that you could have dealt with them normally.

Investing into abilities that work off a hit will help you, but having to expend extra resources on top of the one billion feats (roughly) that you need for Whirlwind Attack is plain ol' disappointing. If you want to have the ability to hit many guys at once, check out Great Flyby Attack from Savage Species, which requires only two feats (Flyby Attack and itself) and allows you to move while attacking. You are capped at DEX number of targets, so it's not for every build, but how often are you going to have more than 3-4 enemies within Whirlwind Attack range anyway?

[Oddman80]

In a 3.5 game I played in, I had a Half Orc with Unnatural Reach that I had permanently enlarged. Normally he would Shock Trooper charge with a valorous heavy flail... But his back up weapon.... He called it the Life Giver. It was an Adamantine Holy Wrathful Healing Shadowstrike Spiked Chain. Having stormed into the middle of plenty of nasty battles, and taken a beating for it... Thunk would QuickDraw Life giver, and make a single full attack at every enemy within a 50' radius sphere. Oh... And I had Knockdown - so every enemy I hit not only healed me for half the damage I inflicted, but also, in all likelihood, found themselves to be prone at the start of their turn.

that combo, plus combat reflexes plus mage slayer was golden

The DM needed to utilize a pretty huge battle map to keep me from shutting down everything, and leeching the life out of all his minis

[Thurbane]

If you don't want to spend a lot of feats, and the magic item option isn't available, then bind Paimon (Binder 5, or Binder 3 with Improved Binding). You get a bunch of other nifty stuff too.

[Chronos]

Or, if you're fighting enemies that go down in one hit, but there are just so many that they're a challenge anyway, then you're better off with Great Cleave. It's still not usually worth it, but it only costs two feats (since you were going to take Power Attack anyway) and you can do more with it. Use your first attack of the round to cleave through all of the enemies next to you, then 5' step into range of potentially five more, and cleave through them, too. If there's one tough enemy in the midst of the mooks, just make sure to target him last with each cleave, and give him any further attacks you might have, and you might be able to take him out, too (or at least damage him as much as you would if you were focusing just on him).

[Telok]

There's a fairly cheap set of bracers in the MiC that adds +10' reach for a round three times a day.

[Zaq]

Whirlwind Attack would make a lot more sense if you houseruled it to require Cleave and Great Cleave instead of Spring Attack (and Combat Expertise). It still wouldn't be a great use of feats (if we really wanted to make it viable, I'd either roll it into Cleave or just make it a default combat action for anyone who can make two or more melee attacks on a full attack action, for whatever reason, either BAB +6 or TWF or whatever), but at least then the prereqs would sort of make sense.

But yeah. It's not a great use of your action unless you can kill everything you hit, at which point Great Cleave is more efficient with your feats. If you can't kill everything you hit, you're better off focusing fire. Plus, the number of times you'll be in a position to actually hit lots of people with it is vanishingly small for most groups. As has been mentioned, the Iron Heart maneuvers that let you hit multiple enemies do it much more efficiently.

[Metahuman1]

Pick up either Stand Still, Improved Trip, or both + the Knockdown feat. Also get proficient with a spiked chain.

Get a permanent enlarge person, put Sizing on the Spiked Chain, and wear Strongarm Bracers. There are a couple of feats like Unnatural reach and deformity tall that add flat +5ft to your reach, snag those. And get a high Dex and last but not least, a High Strength with a high to hit, power attack, and Whirlwind attack. If your smart about it you can get this going by sixth level.



You do standard lock down on your enemy's turns with crazy reach and lots of AoO's and your Tripping or Stand Stilling or Both, (And having both is great cause you can leave them prone, unable to move till later (Which provokes more AoO's so you can completely stop advancing.), an taking at least 1 hit per attempted move that does actual damage.

And on your turn? That 30ft+ reach your packing? Yeah, Whirlwind with that and a good to hit bonus with Power Attack, Knockdown, Improved Trip and Stand Still, and on your turn, if there movement wasn't hampered by stand still or having been tripped, or both, it will be now. And they'll have lost HP.


Sure, you personally won't be doing much damage to HP, but you'll be a much beloved party support member as you keep a hugh swath of battle field held down, whittle away at HP, and inflict rather unpleasant Debuffs to enemy's your party can capitalize on.

[Thurbane]

Can you use martial strikes/manoeuvres with WW?

[Zaq]

Can you use martial strikes/manoeuvres with WW?

Boosts work, but Strikes don't, because Whirlwind Attack is a full-round action.

[Morof Stonehands]

Dragon Mag #299 has a PrC call Orc Bladmaster, which over 5 levels gives you 1/day invisibility, 1/day mirror image, +1 stacking threat range with bastard sword, +5 to damage, Whirlwind Attack feat, and a capstone which allows you to make 2 full whirlwind attacks when ever you use a full round action to use Whirlwind Attack. Getting into it kinda sucks though. (BAB +6 orc or half-orc, Spring attack, Combat Expertise, EWP: Bastard Sword, and Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks.)