Talk:Proposed Feats

The first two sprung forth from my twisted brain, the second two I found after a bit of searching on the D&D wiki. I tried to model the first two on the Cleave chain. Since Cleave only happens on the relatively constricted event of an opponent's death, the Great Trip is more useful, so I put in the -4 per extra opponent restriction to try to even it up. -Slitherrr

Of course, the continued -4 per opponent makes it start to be pretty useless after a couple of enemies. Perhaps Grand Trip should reduce it to -2. -Slitherrr

Hey Msallen, Matt said to point the combat intimidation feat to you. We're both of the opinion that it's overpowered as written, with a further addendum from him that a free action adds a whole lot of dice rolls. By itself, though, the Fighter class skill Intimidate could use a boost, like Improved Feint does with that. Perhaps cut it to making Intimidate checks as a move action, and ditch the demoralize all who are threatened capability? It's hard to weigh the effect of the saving throw and attack roll debuff against the DC loss and ability to perform sneak attacks, so such a feat might need a little more oomph to roll with that crowd. -Slitherrr

I think I'm with you guys. Actually looking at it briefly, the intimidate combat use might be better than bluff. I only have limited info here at work, but it looks like this is the breakdown:

demoralize: shaken (-2 attacks, saves, and ability checks) for 1 round

feint: flat-footed (no dex bonus, sneak attackable) for the feinting player's next attack

I'm not sure if I've got it wrong, but it looks like bluff only works for the player using the skill, whereas everyone gets the benefit of the intimidate use. In which case, I would think that making the demoralize a move action will bring it in line in terms of power with the feint feat. The AoE intimidate, and perhaps also a 'flat-footed for a round' bluff feat, would be good improved versions.

Good point, I didn't even see the player-only bit. It still means lots of rolls, but so does feint--gm will just have to hope nobody uses either of them! -Slitherrr

Me either :( I just took it off my 'feats for germain' list because it went from being a cool skill-based debuff to useless. I might have to work up my intimidate, on the other hand. On the subject of rolling, it would be perfectly reasonable to house-rule opposed checks so that one side is just a target number. Ie. feinting could just be a bluff check against a target number 10 + opponents sense motive. I never much liked opposed checks in 3.5 for statistical reasons.

Changed into new proposed feats. Combat Intimidation is now two feats, with the second giving the option of debuffing all threatened opponents as a standard action. I made an improved Improved Feint in the same vein. Making it a standard action is provisional, because that would tend to mean that your best fighter (the guy with all those ranks in Intimidate) has to spend his action debuffing. It may be better suited as a move action. And yeah, opposed checks are annoying both statistically and dice-wise, but they also allow those clutch "I succeeded by rolling a 20 when he rolled a 1!" moments-Slitherrr