Book Club: Player's Handbook II

[pabelfly]

But yeah, the dragon shaman is at least significantly better than the marshal, since they at least get something other than their auras.

I don't know about significantly better, since when we tiered 3e classes, Marshal was ranked slightly higher than Dragon Shaman. Marshal has more aura options and they can affect a wider choice of stats, and keying Minor Auras off Charisma means you can get fairly decent bonuses, compared to the very slow scaling of Dragon Shaman.

Still, I'd prefer Marshal (and Dragon Shaman) on either an NPC or a character mount. As stated before with much more eloquence, it just isn't very exciting knowing you've boosted the bonuses of your allies and you're not really directly contributing to combat.

[AMFV]

I don't know about significantly better, since when we tiered 3e classes, Marshal was ranked slightly higher than Dragon Shaman. Marshal has more aura options and they can affect a wider choice of stats, and keying Minor Auras off Charisma means you can get fairly decent bonuses, compared to the very slow scaling of Dragon Shaman.

Still, I'd prefer Marshal (and Dragon Shaman) on either an NPC or a character mount. As stated before with much more eloquence, it just isn't very exciting knowing you've boosted the bonuses of your allies and you're not really directly contributing to combat.

The other big issue is that Dragon Shaman is competing with Dragonfire Inspiration Bard for "Dragony ally buffing" and DFI bard is just way better. It's going to feel much better as well.

[Chronos]

Both marshal and dragon shaman get most of their power from their auras, and marshal's auras are better overall. But both have auras that are good enough, and both have the problem of being boring other than their auras. The dragon shaman eventually gets something cool and splashy once per combat or so, which helps that fundamental problem.

[pabelfly]

I think what I like about this book so far is that there’s something here for you, whatever mood you’re in. If you were playing 3e back in the day, this would be a good, general pick to expand your build options if you didn’t have any specific interests, or were on a fairly tight budget. Moreover, from the options, there would be some really good new toys for you, while a good portion of it has hit the sweet spot for power – strong enough to be interesting without being too overpowered.

It's less relevant now with how cheap the official PDF sourcebook are, but I'm sure I would have really appreciated this sourcebook back during 3e's release period.

[AMFV]

I think what I like about this book so far is that there’s something here for you, whatever mood you’re in. If you were playing 3e back in the day, this would be a good, general pick to expand your build options if you didn’t have any specific interests, or were on a fairly tight budget. Moreover, from the options, there would be some really good new toys for you, while a good portion of it has hit the sweet spot for power – strong enough to be interesting without being too overpowered.

It's less relevant now with how cheap the official PDF sourcebook are, but I'm sure I would have really appreciated this sourcebook back during 3e's release period.

PHB II has also some pretty good non-game rules advice. DMG II is better for that, but there's still some there. While it's not all zingers (Dragon Shaman) it's got a lot of really fun stuff.

[pabelfly]

Chapter Three: New Feats

Chapter three gives us a whole bunch of feats to choose from to support a variety of builds, classes and playstyles. I've spent way too much time writing out my opinions over the last week, but before I post my opinions, I want to give other people a chance to discuss what they thought about the feats in this book.

[Wildstag]

STEADFAST DETERMINATION!!!!!

Yeah, that's literally my favorite feat for a martial, and it 100% justifies taking Endurance (also the Ring of Arming allows using medium armor as pajamas and real heavy armor in danger).

I like Melee Weapon Mastery as a feat, like, genuinely it's interesting even though it's bad math. And Versatile Unarmed Strike makes fists do fun things for DR bypassing (at lowish levels).

I wish Combat Form feats were actually just a feature of being Fighter, instead of eating feats. It feels like the sort of thing a 5e Barbarian or Fighter could have as an archetype.

[pabelfly]

General Feats

Active Shield Defense – I could see this working for an Attack of Opportunity build. Robilar’s Gambit works regardless of whether an opponent hits you or not, so boosting your AC but not worrying about attack roll penalties is helpful. You could still get the benefit of a two-handed weapon with an Animated Shield, although I’d want to hunt down some armor check reduction bonuses to hopefully carry a tower shield with minimal AC penalties.

Adaptable Flanker – this could help the sneak attacker of the party out, but it's a tough ask to ask someone else to take this to benefit you when not only could you be boosting yourself instead, but the character it's aiding could die without warning.

Arcane Accompaniment – I don’t play bards, but do they have enough problems with Bardic Music that you’d want this feat, and to lose spell slots to use it each time?

Arcane Consumption – flavourful and a nice boost to spell DC, if you don’t mind the penalties attached. It’s really hard to find this sort of boost with a single feat (Pious Spellsurge comes kinda close though).

Arcane Thesis – I think this feat is too powerful, even with a relatively strict interpretation that it only works on +1 or higher metamagics. Stacking metamagic is a huge boost of power for arcane blasters, and this is probably the most potent metamagic reducer. I’ll still put it on my blasters though. Legal cheese is still legal.

Arcane Toughness – this is not bad for a caster, I feel there’s a decent length of time when you play where you can conceivably expect to reach between 0 and -10 HP when getting downed by an enemy.

Armor Specialization – no-one cares about 2/ damage reduction at level 12, and there’s nothing about stacking it with other sources of damage reduction either. Pass.

Bonded Familiar – great feat, nice flavour, and makes a compelling argument keeping your familiar, or at least getting it back on after trading it away.

Bounding Assault – this takes you four feats deep into Spring Attack, but dipping Barbarian for overpowered charging is much cheaper. Getting to move before and after an attack is nice but a much weaker playstyle

Brutal Strike – this would be a nice secondary effect for a Power Attack build at low optimization levels, but I think most of us are just OHKOing our enemies with martial builds. If you aren’t though, this is not a bad secondary effect.

Combat Acrobat – if you need to stay on solid ground for a martial build, like, say, as a charger, this can help quite a bit with that. I’d take it alongside Nimble Chare and Skill Charge, since skill tricks only work once per combat and this works every round.

Combat Familiar – making your familiar something that can contribute in combat seems like a lot of work and a lot of feats that could just be using to make yourself a better fighter, never mind that you’re much weaker if your familiar dies and you’re suddenly fighting with all of these useless feats. Same comment for most of the other Familiar-boosting feats.

Combat Tactician – this is Weapon Specialization, but it works less consistently. Pass.

Cometary Collision – here’s how I would use this. First turn, you manoeuver in front of a squishier ally, or over difficult terrain, then ready Cometary Collision. When your opponent charges during their turn, you can charge them and get a full Pounce-boosted charge off on them, and do your damage while preventing them from doing what they intended to do.

There are a few obvious points where this might not work as intended, particularly if the enemy doesn’t charge you, but it seems like an interesting enough alternate strategy, with the upside of improving your positioning and protecting squishier allies, that I might try it with the next charging build I make.

Crossbow Sniper - half dex to damage for crossbows. The synergy with dex for attack and damage rolls is nice for a ranged character, and helps make a case for itself over a composite bow.

Crushing Strike – a cumulative +1 on attack rolls with bludgeoning weapons is nice. Obviously, the more attacks you get per round, the better this is, but even with a two-handed weapon build, this can be pretty solid.

Cunning Evasion – a chance at a free hide check outside your turn, which could set you up for a sneak attack next turn. Relies on enemies using AoE spells though, so wouldn’t be my first option.

Dampen spell – this lets you lower the save of an opponent’s spell and make it easier to pass the check, and all it costs you is a spell slot. I’ve never really bothered with Counterspelling or even Improved Counterspell, but this I can see myself using. I’ll give this a try on my next spellcaster.

Deadeye Shot – hit once on flatfooted. I mean, you’ll likely not miss, but you’d hit at least once anyway in a full volley, or even a manyshot standard attack.

Defensive Sweep it gives an attack of opportunity build the chance to get more attack of opportunity triggers, but you get this late and it’s not a very consistent trigger. I’m not impressed.

Driving Attack – you can use a spear attack to knock an enemy prone. Not a bad effect.

Elven Spell Lore – +2 on dispel checks is alright, but the real reason to take this feat would be to change a spell to do a single type of damage of your choice. Let’s assume that your DM won’t allow you to change a spell to stat damage (although there is no reason you couldn’t). However, with no limitations imposed, you can pick something resisted by few enemies, or something that works for whatever is giving you caster level or spell DC bonuses. Or you could finally have a spell that deals unresisted City Damage to your enemies.

Fade Into Violence – so you can sometimes have one enemy target an ally instead of you if you’re an unarmed fighter or a quickdraw thrower. Very underwhelming.

Fiery Fist – you can spend a bonus feat, or a regular feat, to get the most widely-resisted type of elemental damage on your unarmed strike. I wouldn’t bother.

Fiery Ki Defense – you can do bonus damage to enemies that attack you in melee. The damage is the most widely-resisted, only works on melee weapons without reach, and you only deal 1d6 per hit. Not impressed.

Flay – relying on fighting enemies without an armor bonus makes this too situational for my tastes.

Grenadier – splash weapons are either weak or ridiculously expensive for being a one-time use item (see Blast Disk and Blast Globe in MIC). This feat fixes neither of those issues.

Hindering Opportunist – you can pass up an attack of opportunity to instead aid an ally against an opponent. I’d rather the attack of opportunity.

Intimidating Strike – you can put the shaken condition on something you could kill in one round. Why bother?

Indomitable Soul – Getting a +4 on most will saves is nice, but why not have it simply work for all will saves? I think there are more consistent and better options than this.

Lunging Strike – spend another feat and get Willing Deformity (Tall) or Inhuman Reach and permanently have an extra 5ft reach. Or just find a way to get Large instead. Pass.

Melee Evasion – I’d question how well this feat will work. Heck, with a bad roll, your AC could be lower than before using the feat. Pass.

Melee Weapon Mastery – Requires +8 BAB and Weapon Specialization (so probably Fighter 4) but a +2 to attack and a +2 to damage is very nice, especially when you want a character with minimal bookwork. Obviously much better the more attacks you do per round, but even with something like a Power Attack build I still think it’s a solid pick.

Overwhelming Assault – it requires a very specific set of circumstances to work, and the benefit is pretty underwhelming. Oh, and you need to have 15 BAB. Pass.

Penetrating Shot – most archers have fairly weak attacks when considered individually, so you’re unlikely to make much use out of this feat, never mind that archers are feat-intensive you won’t have room for this feat anyway.

Ranged Weapon Mastery – this is generally better for archers than Melee Weapon Mastery is for martials because of how many attacks you’re doing a round. A fighter-based archer is a solid build and are definitely finding room for this feat.

Rapid Blitz –Just find the version of Pounce you want instead and save your feat slots for something useful. Pass.

Robilar’s Gambit – a good feat that helps with a Combat Reflexes build. Yes please.

Shield Sling – throwing your shield away when your character build relies on it seems foolhardy. The fact that you can wield your shield as a thrown weapon probably doesn’t mean you can put the Returning enchant on it, but if it did I’d totally take this feat chain.

Shield Specialization – there are more efficient AC-boosting feats (I like Demonic Skin, for example) but +1 to AC isn’t bad for a prereq feat.

Shield Ward – getting your shield bonus to touch AC and resist manoeuvres is pretty nice, especially if you had a tower shield. Defensive builds aren’t great but if I was doing one I’d take this feat particularly for the bonus to touch AC.

Short Haft – getting to threaten adjacent squares with your reach weapon is pretty nice. Spiked Chain does it for an Exotic Weapon Proficiency, but if you had a build that specifically wanted/ required a spear, I’d take this feat.

Slashing Flurry – an extra attack with your weapon is very nice, even if you take a -5 penalty.

Spectral Skirmisher – the benefits aren’t bad but if you’re invisible and your enemy can’t detect you, you have an overwhelming advantage already. Pass.

Spell-Linked Familiar – another familiar buff. This one lets the familiar cast some weak spells. It’s slightly better than the other familiar feats at least, but I don’t see myself trading away a ninth-level caster feat for this.

Stalwart Defense – you need to be threatening your opponent, and if you do, you can give an ally a +2 to AC. Underwhelming.

Steadfast Determination – two feats to dump Wis and use CON instead for your will saves. Endurance is a bit of a feat tax, but this is a great feat if you have Endurance through race or you get it for free, such as with Ranger.

Telling Blow – your crits do skirmish or sneak attack damage. The problem with a crit build is when crits don’t work, not when they do.

Trophy Collector – you can get a bit of extra wealth, but the items are very situational and taking up item slots for items that can actually do things for you.

Tumbling Feint – temporary +5 to bluff if you succeed in a roll. This is only slightly better than Skill Focus, and less consistent, and Skill Focus sucks. Pass.

Two-Weapon Pounce – a ****ty version of Pounce. Just get Pounce instead.

Two-Weapon Rend – you get an extra d6 + some extra damage based on your STR, which is going to be bad because you don’t really invest in your STR for two-weapon fighting builds. Pass

Vatic Gaze – Detect Magic at will, and find out the highest level of spells a spellcaster can use. I like this feat, especially since it can often be hard or even impossible to gauge how good your enemies are, and this can help with that.

Versatile Unarmed Strike – helps punchers deal with damage resistance to bludgeoning damage, or target enemies weak to one type of weapon damage. Very nice.

Vexing Flanker – Get another +2 to attack rolls when flanking. Not bad, but not consistent enough.

Weapon Supremacy – there’s a lot of bonuses here, but the most relevant ones are adding a +5 to an attack roll, and taking 10 on an attack roll. That’s not a bad bonus. And to be honest, if you had a build with 18 levels of Fighter, are you just not going to take this?

Ceremony Feats
Very flavourful but weak mechanically. You’ll likely forget them when they apply, and your allies nearly certainly will.

Combat Form Feats
Like Abyssal Heritor feats (Fiendish Codex I), these are better if you can fit a bunch of them on your build. If I were picking three (optimal number), I’d probably go Combat Focus, Combat Defense (for a build requiring Dodge), and Combat Stability – that’s +4 to Will Saves, +2 to AC against two opponents each turn, and +8 to resist manoeuvres like Bull Rush. Not bad for three feats.

There might be other Dodge-related strategies that are worthwhile, but I won a Junkyard comp partly due to combining Combat Defense with the Word Given Mastery Martial Art from Tome of Magic. 50% evasion against attack rolls for two enemies each turn is a pretty neat combo, even if it required like eight feats to pull off. I’ll create a martial character with that feat combo for a game I actually play one day.

Divine Feats
A character with Cleric caster levels (so, Cleric or a Paladin with Practiced Spellcaster) can trade away Turn Undead uses for various effects. The Devotion Feats in Complete Champion are better and don’t require caster levels. Divine Fortune is a +4 to your saves, which could be nice for a Cleric, but if I was really worried about Cleric saves I’d just spend the two feats and lose a caster level for a Prestige Paladin dip to get WIS to all my saves instead.

Heritage Feats
They’re not bad feats, but the main concern for my sorcerer builds are typically caster level, spell DC, metamagic and metamagic reducers. Maybe my spell list if I want off-list spells. Most of these feats either don’t help with things or don’t give me what I want. I’m not really going to have the spare feats for these.

Probably the strongest feat in here is Infernal Sorcerer Heritage, which gives you two caster levels for Conjuration spells that summon evil outsiders.

Metamagic Feats
Blistering Spell – slightly more damage, with a secondary benefit of adding some negatives on some attacks and checks. I’d just go with Maximize instead, even if I specifically wanted to run a fire-themed blaster.

Earthbound Spell – I really, really like this metamagic, it gives you a lot of options.

First, gives you a chance to put down offensive spells before combat, if you can prepare the ground beforehand and guide enemies into particular spots during combat. Maybe you put up walls, or put them in front of allies to catch charging enemies. This lets you improve your action economy and allows you to get the effect of multiple spells during combat without spending time casting in combat. Not always practical if you move around a lot, but great if you have the home ground advantage.

I’d also point out this could be used on temporary buff spells for ourselves. Let’s say we are a Cleric with a potent one round/level spell like Divine Power, but we don’t want to spend Turn Undead uses to Persist the spell. We can put this in the ground in front of us for up to an hour before combat, and when combat starts, we can take a step forward (or start charging), trigger Divine Power on ourselves, while we still have the rest of our movement and a standard action to use to do what we want. Or you could set up healing spells behind a character on the back line, like an archer or a spellcaster – they can take a five-foot step back and get your healing spell cast on them while you can spend your turn doing other things.

Incredible metamagic option with some thought and the right scenario.

Flash Frost – slightly more damage, but the secondary effect of making ground areas slippery could let you ruin the day of charging enemies. I could see myself taking this for an ice-themed mage.

Imbued Summoning – while you can normally summon a creature and then cast a touch-range spell, this improves your action economy in case you have to summon, say, after an ambush or your previous summon dies or whatever. If I were running a summoning build I’d take this feat.

Smiting Spell – you can put a touch spell in a weapon for up to one minute. There’s some utility for a gish, especially one with a reach weapon. However. I think there are better ways to deliver touch spells to an enemy than this.

Tactical Manoeuvres
These feats are all flavourful but fiddly and nearly always underwhelming in power, often taking two turns to get standard or underwhelming advantages on an opponent. Let’s go through them.

Blood-Spiked Charger – you need to take Weapon Focus twice (yuck), then you have some underwhelming manoeuvres. 2x damage to STR isn’t much better than 1.5x damage to STR, spending a turn in defense to get a +2 to attack rolls is too slow, or you can spend a turn to do a single attack with a whole extra 1d6 damage.

Nice flavour at least. Pass.

Combat Cloak Expert – you can have +1 to AC (there are better ways to get this), you can spend a turn to have your enemy flatfooted next turn (good for sneak attackers, I suppose), or you can stop one enemy doing attacks of opportunity against one ally. All pretty weak. Pass.

Combat Panache – there’s one pretty good option here. After damaging an opponent one turn, the next you can intimidate as a move action, and they take a penalty on attack rolls against you equal to your Charisma. You need Bluff, Intimidate and Perform and a decent Charisma to make this work though, which is a hard venn diagram to fill. There are options from various sources with varying levels of sketchiness - the Academy Graduate feat, Anarchic Mind and Skill Prodigy, depending on what source books are allowed. You could make it work if your DM is going to be making allowances on sourcebooks, is what I’m saying.

Einhander – you can get a +2 to AC if you have a one-handed weapon with no offhand weapon or a shield, if that’s a playstyle you want to go with. The other two options are rather underwhelming.

Mad Alchemist – I said earlier that playing with grenades was an expensive and underwhelming playstyle, and this still does nothing to change it. I also feel like the Fiery Blaze option is something you could just discuss with your DM: “hey, the opponent is coated in Alchemical Fire or oil, do you think my fire item would do more damage to my opponent?

Shadow Striker – more weak options for a Rogue. If you want to get sneak attack off more often, just spend a feat to get a Wild Cohort or something else instead. Unless you really want to play the “I strike from the shadows” rogue.

[Inevitability]

Something I like: the feats chapter starts off with a very small nod to the improved trip spiked chain fighter archetype. WotC doesn't acknowledge optimization often, but it's always fun when they do!

All in all, I think PHBII feats are slightly underpowered, but reasonably interesting in effect, and well-suited to build-arounds. The prerequisites are a bit harsh sometimes still, but miles better than the PHB with its 'four prereqs for whirlwind attack' nonsense. They're definitely great for fleshing out character concepts, but neither the concepts nor the feats themselves are guaranteed to be actually optimal. Still, I think they're definitely adding to the game, and I frequently reach for something from this book.

Some particular feats I liked:

Acrobatic Strike: Straight off the bat this is showing what I like about this book. +4 to hit is huge, though the triggering condition really drags it down... but a build specializing in swift action movement (Travel Devotion, Sudden Leap) would get a ton of payoff if they could actually slot this in. This is a good example of how a feat with a boring benefit need not be boring if it fosters interesting play.

Arcane Thesis: Probably one of the best feats in the book, and core to some very unbalanced builds, but I like it anyway because specializing in a single spell should come with a suitably large payoff.

Bounding Assault/Rapid Blitz: Actually used one of these in a build once, Spring Attack still isn't good but being able to make multiple attacks while your opponent is presumably reduced to one does fix one of the big issues with it.

Cometary Collision: Really cool visual, especially fun with those setting sun maneuvers that rely on you being charged.

Cunning Evasion: I really like this one, again it's one of those weird build-arounds where to optimally use it you either need your party to be tailored towards it or need some cheap source of AoEs on a rogue chassis. A real thinker!

Deadeye Shot: Huh, I should remember this for E6 rogues. Real fun feat, pity it just doesn't scale.

Fade Into Violence: Love this one, I love subtle support builds and this goes great with them.

Fiery Ki Feats/Ki Blast: These are really cool but really held back by stunning fist limits. Removing the Stunning Fist prerequisite and making the feats at-will would've done a lot to fix them, to be honest.

Hindering Opportunist: Just want to point out how wonkily written this is; by RAW you're forgoing attacks of opportunity to boost your opponent's attack roll.

Lunging Strike: Okay, when I praised these feats for being balanced and generally interesting, I didn't mean this. Like dang Lunging Strike is not it, I could probably figure out a way to optimize it but 'lunge to reach slightly further' isn't interesting is the problem. Short Haft is almost as bad but at least that one fixes a genuine flaw of reach weapons.

Penetrating Shot: Nevermind I like the feats again. Like what a visual this one has, just shoot straight through up to twelve guys, sure. How do you optimize it? No idea, but I'm sure there's a way!

Spectral Skirmisher: Really fun, the Evasive Reflexes combo is hilarious enough already but even as a standalone this allows for really interesting play and encourages building weird characters.

Tumbling Feint: I really don't get why a feat that encourages feinting would require an additional swift action to use, in the book that tried to make swift action feinting viable via beguiler. It still wouldn't be good (ideally this'd give some additional benefit rather than just a skill check boost) but at least it'd be less self-contradictory.

And as for the sub-category feats:

Ritual Blood Bonds: I don't have much to say about the mechanics here (it's alright, especially if you have a source of disposable minions), but did you know that in eberron, any Blood of Vol believer can take it?

Combat Form Feats: Kind of a fun concept, way too weak to be worth it. Also weird how one of those just straight up tells you people's HP totals, that's a really jarring rules/roles conflux.

Profane Aura: This actually seems kind of fun for a necromancer cleric, like sure it's not that useful directly but clogging up the battlefield while you sling spells from afar is a tried-and-true BBEG tactic.

Sorcerer Heritage Feats: I built with these once, remarkably fun and lots of flavor baked-in, I especially like Infernal Sorcerer eyes for how it encourages finding a way to get Darkness on the sorcerer list. My only complaint is that they're sorcerer-only instead of allowing other spontaneous casters access to some off-list spells.

Metamagic Feats: Quite like these, they're all very flavorful and evocative, Smiting Spell and Earthbound Spell allow for some interesting tactics, Flash Frost Spell is just stellar in terms of flavor, Imbued Summoning is amazingly versatile.

Combat Panache: Real fun, giving skills in-combat uses is something I'm always a fan of and all three effects are unique and memorable.

Mad Alchemist: My only complaint is that this isn't the start of a 5-feat chain that allows for ever greater attacks with alchemical items.

[Prime32]

Fiery Ki Defense is such a strange feat. It requires Fiery Fist, which was already kind of meh, and then gives you an effect which is the same as Fiery Fist but harder to trigger. It feels like they were trying to emulate Dragonball, but Dragonball characters don't use auras to burn people who attack them, they just know buffs that have the side effect of making the recipient glow.

If you wanted to emulate, say, Kaio Ken, then I'd call it something like "Moment of Perfection" and give it an effect like "Until the end of your turn you gain a calm emotions effect, and a +4 bonus to all stats. Then you become fatigued (or exhausted if already fatigued). Cannot be used while exhausted".

[Kurald Galain]

I've always wondered, who even is this Robilar?

Turns out he's an epic-level evil warrior from the Greyhawk setting, specifically a PC from the first-ever proto-D&D sessions run by Gygax himself. Huh, I wasn't expecting that. Here's an expansive Wiki article; I'm still wondering why he gets a feat named after him, when almost every other feat is simply named after its function. Well, at least Greyhawk is the default setting for 3E, although I don't recall it being mentioned much in the PHB line.

[pabelfly]

Fiery Ki Defense is such a strange feat. It requires Fiery Fist, which was already kind of meh, and then gives you an effect which is the same as Fiery Fist but harder to trigger. It feels like they were trying to emulate Dragonball, but Dragonball characters don't use auras to burn people who attack them, they just know buffs that have the side effect of making the recipient glow.

Fiery Ki Defense is weird. It says it works when you take a strike from melee, and I'm presuming that misses don't count, but you don't normally want to be taking hits in melee. We've optimized the game so we hit hard and do lots of damage. Giving an enemy 1d6 damage in return isn't a winning trade. And that's even presuming the enemy doesn't even have a slight resistance to Fire, because Fire is the most commonly-resisted element in the game (but I still wouldn't pick this if it did any other type of elemental damage).

Maybe if it scaled by 1d6 + 1d6 every fifth level it might be worth considering. It wouldn't be a great feat but at least it would support a particular type of character concept.

[Kurald Galain]

My only criticism with the Duskblade is that their spell list is packed full with rays, but relatively few melee touch spells

The two main things I wish had been done to duskblades though: their list needed actual touch spells at their higher spell levels. The surplus of rays in the list of 4th and 5th level spells always made me feel like an earlier version of the class had a "ray to touch spell" mechanic. It doesn't though, and that makes it less interesting to play post level 13.

What's hampering the Duskblade's high "floor" is that there are quite a lot of bad spells on their (already short) list. Like, at spell level 3 you get such "gems" as Crown of Protection, Doom Scarabs, Energy Surge, Dispelling Touch (four levels after many classes get Dispel Magic), Ray of Exhaustion... even Protect from Energy is doubtful since it got Resist Energy eight levels ago. This means that almost half of its spells are decidedly meh.

And, the list should really have more spells with an attack roll and fewer with a saving throw; because a duskblade will have a much better to-hit and substantially lower save DC than a regular caster. This and the lack of melee touch spells mean that the spell list doesn't play to the class's strength.

[Darg]

Shield Sling – throwing your shield away when your character build relies on it seems foolhardy. The fact that you can wield your shield as a thrown weapon probably doesn’t mean you can put the Returning enchant on it, but if it did I’d totally take this feat chain.

I'd say it can. Originally the only way to throw nonthrowing weapons was to make them improvised thrown weapons or attach the throwing enhancement. However, with the addition of feats that allow weapons to be thrown there's no longer such a thing as a weapon that can't be thrown. As the enhancement doesn't specify in a way that would forgo these additions, I'd say it works.

Now, to talk about the feat. I really wish it would allow you to loose the shield as a free action. As it is now you need to move to be able to get that free action. Another problem with the feat is that allowing bucklers to be thrown but literally do nothing is a little jank. Bucklers can already be thrown as improvised weapons. No reason it can't do damage at least.

Two-Weapon Pounce – a ****ty version of Pounce. Just get Pounce instead.

Two-Weapon Rend – you get an extra d6 + some extra damage based on your STR, which is going to be bad because you don’t really invest in your STR for two-weapon fighting builds. Pass[/B]

Yeah, pounce is OP. Everyone understands that. Comparing it to other forms of feat based pounce and it's at a similar power level though. Lion tribe warrior is only usable with light weapons, and blood spiked charger has a hefty feat tax.

The failing two weapon rend has is that it doesn't do weapon damage. If it were treated as an extra attack that doesn't apply precision damage it would be a two weapon staple. That said, rangers have the ability to forgo dex for a str focused TWF build, or people can just skip GTWF and only need 15 dex. Getting a +2 or +4 to dex is pretty easy to benefit from ITWF.

Vexing Flanker – Get another +2 to attack rolls when flanking. Not bad, but not consistent enough.

It's an excellent feat actually. Not for itself, but because it's the prerequisite for adaptable flanker. Adaptable flanker is good because it allows you to be your own flanker. Enlarge person makes this even better.

Blood-Spiked Charger – you need to take Weapon Focus twice (yuck), then you have some underwhelming manoeuvres. 2x damage to STR isn’t much better than 1.5x damage to STR, spending a turn in defense to get a +2 to attack rolls is too slow, or you can spend a turn to do a single attack with a whole extra 1d6 damage.

You're misreading the feat. It isn't changing your strength bonus to damage, it's adding extra damage equal to 2x your strength bonus. So in reality you're getting 3-3½ strength bonus from your shield and 2½ strength bonus for your armor spikes. If you get access to pounce such as from the lion's charge spell the bonus applies to all extra attacks. And with pounce you can get another -2 full BAB attack with TWF.

Spiked rebuke isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Fighting defensively can be extremely valuable when you need to charge into a group of enemies. It's basically a free bonus when you need it.

As for spiked slam, it works best as written rather than as the errata says it should. 2x your strength score is amazing and worth all the negatives. 2x your str bonus leaves the only real benefit as provoking an AoO to allow a flanker to move to flank without risking an AoO. Personally, if I could have been the designer for this feat, I would have instead multiplied the size bonus damage by your str bonus. It would make it competitive with other single action attacks.

[Wildstag]

I've always wondered, who even is this Robilar?

Turns out he's an epic-level evil warrior from the Greyhawk setting, specifically a PC from the first-ever proto-D&D sessions run by Gygax himself. Huh, I wasn't expecting that. Here's an expansive Wiki article; I'm still wondering why he gets a feat named after him, when almost every other feat is simply named after its function. Well, at least Greyhawk is the default setting for 3E, although I don't recall it being mentioned much in the PHB line.

Robilar shows up in a number of the Dragon Magazine "Up On A Soapbox" pieces written by Gary Gygax, and is one of Robert Kuntz' characters. My personal favorite is the following image. As for why he has a feat named after him, maybe the maneuvers were supposed to be akin to spells. Some of the Circle of Eight have spells named after them (Melf and his legendary Acid Arrow, Tenser and his floating disc, Bigsby and his many dexterous hands, etc.), so Robilar's Gambit might be like that. But also, since most of Gygax's table's legends were casters, Robilar stands out as a pure-martial character.

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What's hampering the Duskblade's high "floor" is that there are quite a lot of bad spells on their (already short) list. Like, at spell level 3 you get such "gems" as Crown of Protection, Doom Scarabs, Energy Surge, Dispelling Touch (four levels after many classes get Dispel Magic), Ray of Exhaustion... even Protect from Energy is doubtful since it got Resist Energy eight levels ago. This means that almost half of its spells are decidedly meh.

And, the list should really have more spells with an attack roll and fewer with a saving throw; because a duskblade will have a much better to-hit and substantially lower save DC than a regular caster. This and the lack of melee touch spells mean that the spell list doesn't play to the class's strength.

It honestly makes me wonder if at an earlier part of development they were supposed to be able to channel ray spells through their weapons, and then the devs realized they'd given the list spells such as Enervation and Polar Ray and felt like it'd be too much for a full-bab class, so they just made the channel ability melee touch spells only. Like, the few rays they have are appreciated but the list is far too narrow to be as useful as it should be.

P.S.

Steadfast Determination – two feats to dump Wis and use CON instead for your will saves. Endurance is a bit of a feat tax, but this is a great feat if you have Endurance through race or you get it for free, such as with Ranger.

The benefit that matters most isn't "dump Wis and use Con for will saves", it's that thereafter you don't automatically fail a Fortitude save on a roll of a 1. If you're already pumping con to enhance your Will save, it also makes it far less likely you'll fail certain Fortitude saves. It's not hard to end up with a high enough bonus by level 13 to automatically succeed on any Fortitude save with a DC under 25.

[pabelfly]

Yeah, pounce is OP. Everyone understands that. Comparing it to other forms of feat based pounce and it's at a similar power level though. Lion tribe warrior is only usable with light weapons, and blood spiked charger has a hefty feat tax.

The reason I specifically mention Pounce is because it's the simplest way to get full attacks while moving. There are other great ways to get full attacks, depending on your build - a Cleric dip with Travel Devotion is arguably as good as Pounce, Dimension Hop is available for psionic characters, and Sudden Leap is great if you want to dip Swordsage or Warblade. Two-Weapon Pounce is just not very good.

The failing two weapon rend has is that it doesn't do weapon damage. If it were treated as an extra attack that doesn't apply precision damage it would be a two weapon staple. That said, rangers have the ability to forgo dex for a str focused isbuild, or people can just skip GTWF and only need 15 dex. Getting a +2 or +4 to dex is pretty easy to benefit from ITWF.

I thought about it specifically for STR-based rangers but you still need a 15 DEX for two-weapon rend.

Related question - do items count towards meeting build prereqs, or do you specifically need to innately have that quality to get that feat? Let's say I'm playing an Orc Ranger with 10 DEX and a +6 DEX item, bringing me to a total of 16 DEX. Can I get Two-Weapon Rend?

It's an excellent feat actually. Not for itself, but because it's the prerequisite for adaptable flanker. Adaptable flanker is good because it allows you to be your own flanker. Enlarge person makes this even better.

Adaptable Flanker lets you count as being in another position when you and an ally are attacking the same enemy.

My experience is that two martial characters are rarely attacking an enemy together. Maybe encounters with one or two large monsters. Otherwise martials are typically fairly far away from eachother on a battlefield.

That's my experience, of course. Perhaps your experiences with DnD combat are different such that flanking is much more of a consideration in your combat encounters.

You're misreading the feat. It isn't changing your strength bonus to damage, it's adding extra damage equal to 2x your strength bonus. So in reality you're getting 3-3½ strength bonus from your shield and 2½ strength bonus for your armor spikes. If you get access to pounce such as from the lion's charge spell the bonus applies to all extra attacks. And with pounce you can get another -2 full BAB attack with TWF.

Spiked rebuke isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Fighting defensively can be extremely valuable when you need to charge into a group of enemies. It's basically a free bonus when you need it.

As for spiked slam, it works best as written rather than as the errata says it should. 2x your strength score is amazing and worth all the negatives. 2x your str bonus leaves the only real benefit as provoking an AoO to allow a flanker to move to flank without risking an AoO. Personally, if I could have been the designer for this feat, I would have instead multiplied the size bonus damage by your str bonus. It would make it competitive with other single action attacks.

Thanks for the correction here, looks like Blood-Spiked Charger is a lot better than I thought. I might have to look into this one further.

The benefit that matters most isn't "dump Wis and use Con for will saves", it's that thereafter you don't automatically fail a Fortitude save on a roll of a 1. If you're already pumping con to enhance your Will save, it also makes it far less likely you'll fail certain Fortitude saves. It's not hard to end up with a high enough bonus by level 13 to automatically succeed on any Fortitude save with a DC under 25.

Possibly not failing on a 1 is nice, but that's generally only relevant for fairly weak effects. Otherwise, rolling a 1 will likely still be a failure, unless you have a build with crazy saves, like a Paladin.

Changing WIS for CON on will saves can be a great benefit. I've seen multiple builds go from a -1 ability score to a +3, even at moderately low level. It only gets better at higher level when you can invest in a CON-boosting item, which boosts your HP, Fort and (with Steadfast Determination) Will saves.

The saves I also think most important are Will > Fort > Reflex. A bad Will save can completely **** you up. Stuff that makes that a lot less likely to happen, like Steadfast Determination, rate pretty high in my book.

[Troacctid]

In general, I like how this books gives a lot of interesting tools to fighters in particular, especially high-level fighters, who really got short shrift in the core feats list. A few personal favorites are Intimidating Strike, Fade into Violence, the Melee/Ranged Weapon Mastery line, the Combat Focus line, the Shield Specialization line, Robilar's Gambit, Vatic Gaze, Blistering Spell, Spell-Linked Familiar, Wanderer's Diplomacy, and Combat Panache.

The reason I specifically mention Pounce is because it's the simplest way to get full attacks while moving. There are other great ways to get full attacks, depending on your build - a Cleric dip with Travel Devotion is arguably as good as Pounce, Dimension Hop is available for psionic characters, and Sudden Leap is great if you want to dip Swordsage or Warblade. Two-Weapon Pounce is just not very good.

Travel Devotion is a lot worse than pounce, since it comes on a 1-round delay (a swift to activate it, and another swift to move).

It's an excellent feat actually. Not for itself, but because it's the prerequisite for adaptable flanker. Adaptable flanker is good because it allows you to be your own flanker. Enlarge person makes this even better.

Adaptable Flanker was pretty much obsoleted by Tome of Battle, IMO. For most builds it's just worse than Martial Stance (Island of Blades).

[Darg]

The reason I specifically mention Pounce is because it's the simplest way to get full attacks while moving. There are other great ways to get full attacks, depending on your build - a Cleric dip with Travel Devotion is arguably as good as Pounce, Dimension Hop is available for psionic characters, and Sudden Leap is great if you want to dip Swordsage or Warblade. Two-Weapon Pounce is just not very good.

I'm not dismissing the fact that pounce is just straight up better (we homebrew the lion spirit totem pounce being equivalent to lion tribe warrior, but with any weapon used one-handed.) However, charging has a lot of support that greatly increases its ability to do damage in its own right, which other full attack options cannot provide.

I thought about it specifically for STR-based rangers but you still need a 15 DEX for two-weapon rend.

Related question - do items count towards meeting build prereqs, or do you specifically need to innately have that quality to get that feat? Let's say I'm playing an Orc Ranger with 10 DEX and a +6 DEX item, bringing me to a total of 16 DEX. Can I get Two-Weapon Rend?

Up to your DM, but the rule is just that you qualify to select or use a feat. Personally, I allow temporary sources or permanent item bonuses to qualify. They lose access to the benefit of the feat and feats that require that feat if they no longer have the bonus anyways. It allows for more flavorful character building, especially when you roll for your ability scores and they come up short to qualify for feats when you want to take them to make the kind of character you want.

Adaptable Flanker lets you count as being in another position when you and an ally are attacking the same enemy.

My experience is that two martial characters are rarely attacking an enemy together. Maybe encounters with one or two large monsters. Otherwise martials are typically fairly far away from eachother on a battlefield.

That's my experience, of course. Perhaps your experiences with DnD combat are different such that flanking is much more of a consideration in your combat encounters.

Adaptable flanker doesn't require an ally. Teaming up isn't a defined term and could practically mean anything. That leaves the benefit text to explain what the plain text is saying and it doesn't say that your ally has to be able to benefit from the feat for the feat to work. Thus you can use it just for yourself as long as you are working together to take down enemies. Pretty loose mechanically.

Thanks for the correction here, looks like Blood-Spiked Charger is a lot better than I thought. I might have to look into this one further.

It's my favorite feat from the book. It's one of the most flavorful feats that exist in my opinion and it's not actually that bad from a power standpoint. Not to mention that it combos exceptionally well with driving attack (uses text that implies it could be any full-round action that you attack only once). I've gotten some ridiculous bullrush numbers before. There's also an argument to be made that the "special bull rush attempt" isn't hindered by the size limit. So imagine hitting a colossal dragon so hard as medium size to toss them into a wall.

[zlefin]

Steadfast determination really shines when you're adjusting the feats on monsters. There's quite a few monsters for which it can be a large boost to their will save; it also has the advantage of still being a simple numerical boost, so easy to apply. For those times when you adjust monster feats to somewhat better match higher optimization parties. Also just good because most of the monsters who benefit from it are the kind to be too vulnerable to will-based SoL.

[Cygnia]

Steadfast Determination is on most of my Barbarian builds these days...

[Zancloufer]

It honestly makes me wonder if at an earlier part of development they were supposed to be able to channel ray spells through their weapons, and then the devs realized they'd given the list spells such as Enervation and Polar Ray and felt like it'd be too much for a full-bab class, so they just made the channel ability melee touch spells only. Like, the few rays they have are appreciated but the list is far too narrow to be as useful as it should be.

Is there any reason a Duskblade cannot cast rays or other ranged touch attack spells via their arcane channeling? The actual ability in question says;

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. . . you can use a standard action to cast any touch spell you known . . .

The thing is, it doesn't specify if it means a spell with Touch Range, a spell that makes a Touch Attack or both. All ray spells are considered touch attacks, and much like Touch range spells require an attack roll vs the target's Touch AC and can crit on a 20 (or 19-20 with the Imp Crit Feat). The only difference is touch range spells are a melee touch attack and rays are a ranged touch attack.

Suppose there are a few weird cases like Chill Touch where they just say make a touch attack and aren't called out for being touch attacks, though I think that is because they buff your hand and you can discharge the attack as a separate action. I suppose if we wanted to be really petty about RAW if you say a Duskblade can channel Chill Touch they can't channel Touch of Idiocy, and vice versa.

[pabelfly]

I suppose while we're looking at Player's Handbook II we might as well look at the supplementary online materials

https://web.archive.org/web/20210218...d/we/20060526a
https://web.archive.org/web/20200105...d/we/20060614a
https://web.archive.org/web/20200105...d/we/20060825a

There's also the errata for Player's Handbook II Errata

I haven't looked at the supplementary materials yet but will dig into them later today to see what they've added and changed.

[Darg]

Is there any reason a Duskblade cannot cast rays or other ranged touch attack spells via their arcane channeling? The actual ability in question says;

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. . . you can use a standard action to cast any touch spell you known . . .

The thing is, it doesn't specify if it means a spell with Touch Range, a spell that makes a Touch Attack or both. All ray spells are considered touch attacks, and much like Touch range spells require an attack roll vs the target's Touch AC and can crit on a 20 (or 19-20 with the Imp Crit Feat). The only difference is touch range spells are a melee touch attack and rays are a ranged touch attack.

Suppose there are a few weird cases like Chill Touch where they just say make a touch attack and aren't called out for being touch attacks, though I think that is because they buff your hand and you can discharge the attack as a separate action. I suppose if we wanted to be really petty about RAW if you say a Duskblade can channel Chill Touch they can't channel Touch of Idiocy, and vice versa.

Touch spells are specifically spells with a range of touch. You can find the term in the glossary.

The only reason the duskblade's list is so small is because it's literally just core + PHBII. When you actually look at the list of available arcane spells between the two, there aren't a whole lot of touch spells. Off the top of my head corrosive grasp, parching touch, and storm touch could easily be added to the spell list to help fill out the multi-hit touch spells.

[Kurald Galain]

The only reason the duskblade's list is so small is because it's literally just core + PHBII.

Rather, I think they were just being too conservative. There's quite a lot of non-touch spells that would fit the db quite well. Some more self-buffs like Shield; defensive spells like Feather Fall; maybe some divine buffs like Longstrider; and definitely the classic Fireball. They could have easily given db more variety without broadening into BFC, summons, necromancy, or other more strictly-wizardly spells.

[pabelfly]

Online Materials notes:

The first web material page has various rules about transferring XP, a level 1 spell, a 200GP item, and a ceremony feat. If you really wanted to dig into item crafting, I believe they'd all have their uses, depending on the situation, but (for my table and gaming experiences) I find the Ceremony feat is most interesting. There are two reasons for this - you can take it at level 1, using skill ranks you already would take. The second one is that it lets you split XP equally across all members of the Ceremony. If you're playing in a game where you use milestone levelling, this might be a way to get some crafting in without having to worry about uneven XP

The second page is adding more effects to the Deck of Many Things. A lot of these things are specific to a class or have specific feat requirements, and if you don’t meet them, you’ll have you draw again. What I don’t like is that it thins the deck out so there’s less chance to draw dangerous, character-ending effects, making the deck less risky to draw from. If you added this to a Deck, it would go from 22 cards to (roughly) eighty cards, and most of these effects are situational to “meh” overall.

The third page introduces a short adventure module, The Unwavering Path. This allows multiclassing Monks and Paladins to return to the Monk or Paladin class. While I like the idea of the module, and having to fight demons and chaotic monsters to get the class change is cool, I feel like the way to solve the module to get your class change is not as clear as it could be.

Lastly, errata. Elven Spell Lore has been fixed up to only change energy descriptor. I presume this doesn't include Positive or Negative energy, but it does let you choose from Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid and Sonic energy. That's really narrowed the scope of the feat (and Energy Substitution exists for the first four types of spells) but you can turn a regular spell into a Sonic Energy spell, if that means something to you.

[Inevitability]

Some very very dumb argument to be made with those online rules:

Earthkin: Rebuild your character as a dwarf or gnome instead of your current race. You may choose a dwarven race with a level adjustment (such as duergar or svirfneblin), but you must lose class levels to compensate for it. If you are already a dwarf or gnome, do not rebuild your character; you must draw again. (See Savage Progressions, for information on taking only some of the template's abilities in exchange for a lower level adjustment.)

Because of some awkward phrasing this implies svirfneblin are dwarves (and presumably lesser svirfneblin are too). Therefore you can, and should, totally build the shadowcraft mage runesmith of your dreams and no DM will ever disagree with you.


...looking at that in more detail, what's up with those 'change your race' type cards? The elf and dwarf/gnome version both say you can change to a race with a LA. The orc version, on the other hand, doesn't specify you can return as an orc with a level adjustment (say, a gray orc, or a tanarukk). The human version likewise does not, despite the existence of sharakim and skulks.

"Oh, so they just looked up whether the race had a subrace with LA in the PHB? That's typical lazy WotC editing, don't worry about it."

And so it'd be, if not for the fact that halflings come with the LA clause. What's up with that? Are there even halfling subraces with LA?

[Tzardok]

None that I could find. Maybe someone half-remembered the jerren? Or maybe they didn't even look up which races have subraces with LA, just assumed that any race in the PHB would have such a subrace?

[Inevitability]

None that I could find. Maybe someone half-remembered the jerren? Or maybe they didn't even look up which races have subraces with LA, just assumed that any race in the PHB would have such a subrace?

Then they should've mentioned humans, right? And half-orcs (folded into orcs) maybe.

[Tzardok]

Then they should've mentioned humans, right? And half-orcs (folded into orcs) maybe.

No one would ever make a human subrace that is mechanically different! That would be racist!

And hybrid races of course have no subraces (ignore the half-drow and half-sea elf), and orcs are of course not in the PHB, so who cares about orcs?

[Wildstag]

I suppose while we're looking at Player's Handbook II we might as well look at the supplementary online materials

https://web.archive.org/web/20210218...d/we/20060526a
https://web.archive.org/web/20200105...d/we/20060614a
https://web.archive.org/web/20200105...d/we/20060825a

There's also the errata for Player's Handbook II Errata

I haven't looked at the supplementary materials yet but will dig into them later today to see what they've added and changed.

I'd like to add the Dead Levels Part 2 to the list of supplementary online materials.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161031.../cwc/20070227x

But um... for some reason this article doesn't include the Dragon Shaman, even if just to say (like it does for monk and barbarian in part 1) that it isn't designed with dead levels.