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Knaight
2009-03-22, 10:44 PM
Shifts are a concept I've seen in a lot of systems, basically stating that when you do something over a difficulty a certain amount, extra stuff happens. I decided to try and apply that as a series of fighter feats. The concept could also feasibly work for other classes in different ways, most notably the Warlock.

Fighter Feats
Damage Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 2 or BAB 4
Benefit-Every 4 points a melee attack is over AC generates 1 shift, which can be spent on Damage Shift to deal one point of damage per Shift feat, including this one. This can be used with power attack. Shifts generated on one attack do not carry over. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.

Extend Rage
Prerequisite-Damage Shift, Rage class ability or Fighter 6
Benefit-Two shifts may be spent to extend a rage by one round. If not currently raging a rage can be started, even if the character does not possess the Rage class feature.
Normal-The duration of a rage is not affected by successful strikes, nor can rages be started because of a successful strike.

Violent Rage
Prerequisite-Damage Shift, Rage class ability or Fighter 6
Benefit-Damage Shift deals an extra damage per shift when in rage. This is in addition to the extra damage gained by possessing this feat.
Normal-Being in a rage does not increase the damage dealt by damage shift.

Trip Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 4 or BAB 8, Damage Shift
Benefit-When shifts are generated on an attack, 1 shift may be spent to trip a target the same size or smaller as the attacker. It costs 1 additional shift per size the target is above the attacker. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Improved trip reduces the shift cost by 1, to a minimum of 1.

Rush Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 4 or BAB 8, Damage Shift
Benefit-When shifts are generated on an attack, 1 shift may be spent to bull rush a target back 1 space. Every 4 points of strength bonus the target has over the attacker costs 1 additional point to shift. In addition any creature of a species with an advantage to resist bull rush of 4 or greater takes 1 additional shift. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat. It also costs 1 additional shift if the attacker does not follow the target.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Improved bull rush reduces the shift cost by 1, to a minimum of 1.

Disarm Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 4 or BAB 8, Damage Shift
Benefit-When shifts are generated on an attack, 1 shift may be spent to disarm a target. Every 4 points of strength or dexterity the target has over the better of the attacker's strength or dexterity costs 1 additional shift. Every 4 points the targets weapon has to disarm or resist disarming also costs 1 additional shift. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Improved disarm reduces the shift cost by 1, to a minimum of 1.

Sunder Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 4 or BAB 8, Damage Shift
Benefit-Damage Shifts may instead be applied to the targets weapon. Hardness affects this as usual. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Improved sunder reduces the shift cost by 1, to a minimum of 1.

Stun Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 4 or BAB 8, Damage Shift
Benefit-Three shifts may be spent to stun an opponent. Each size category they are above you incurs a fee of two additional shifts. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Bludgeoning weapons only need two shifts to stun, furthermore each size category an enemy has in advantage only needs one additional shift.

Wounding Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12, Damage Shift
Benefit-Two shifts can be spent to do one point of constitution damage. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Wounding Shift does not apply to undead and constructs.

Weakening Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12, Damage Shift
Benefit-Two shifts can be spent to do one point of strength damage. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Weakening Shift does not apply to undead and constructs.

Slowing Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12, Damage Shift
Benefit-Three shifts can be spent to reduce movement speed by five feet, and flight maneuverability by one, if applicable. This recovers at a rate of five feet per day, and one step of flight maneuverability per day. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.
Special-Slowing Shift does not apply to undead and constructs.

Spell Shift
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 4 or BAB 8, Damage Shift, Ability to Cast 2nd level Spells.
Benefit-When shifts are generated on an attack, the attacker may spend 1 Shift to cast a spell with a spell level 2 less than the maximum level spell they can cast on the target. Additional shifts can be spent to increase the spell level, at a 1 to 1 basis, to a maximum of 3 shifts. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.

Precision Duelist
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12
Benefit-When fighting an opponent with concealment every shift generated while attacking AC also causes their concealment to count as 10% less than it actually is.
Normal-Concealment applies regardless of the effectiveness of the attack otherwise.

Dynamic Warrior
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12, Damage Shift
Benefit-A shift is generated every 3 points a melee attack beats AC, not every 4. This counts as a shift feat to Damage Shift. This feat can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-There is no benefit to beating AC by a wide margin.

Defensive Shift
Prerequisite-Damage Shift, Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12
Benefit-Shifts are generated when opponents miss your AC by the amount necessary to generate a shift on an attack. These shifts can only be spent to attack that opponent.
Normal-There is no benefit to having opponents miss AC by a wide margin.

Counter Attack
Prerequisite-Damage Shift, Defensive Shift, Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12
Benefit-Shifts generated by defensive shift can be spent immediately, as if from an attack.
Normal-If Defensive Shift is taken as a feat, one must wait until their turn to attack.

Weapon Mastery
Prerequisite-Damage Shift, Dynamic Warrior, Weapon Focus
Benefit-Gain any two shift feats as bonus feats, provided prerequisites are met. These feats can only be used with weapons for which the user has Weapon Focus. This can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-Only one shift feat can be gained at a time.

Reactive Master
Prerequisite-Damage Shift, Combat Expertise, Fighter Level 4 or BAB 8
Benefit-If shifts are earned during an attack of opportunity, one may be spent to regain the opportunity attack spent. This can only regain the one opportunity attack used. This can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.
Normal-If an attack of opportunity is used, it cannot be regained in the same turn.

Swift Master
Prerequisite-Damage Shift, Weapon Finesse, Fighter level 6 or BAB 12
Benefit-When using any finesse weapon with dexterity as the attacking stat, four shifts may be spent to regain the attack spent that initiated swift master. This attack must be used immediately or never used
Normal-If an attack is used, it cannot be regained in the same turn.

Design Notes
Damage Shift may seem overpowered. However, it is unlikely that a fighter will have over 6 damage per shift, at 3 points to a shift, due to both the low number of shifts, and how feat intensive the feat tree is. This is the equivalent of power attacking with a two handed weapon, with no additional feats to boost the power attack ratio higher. This is counterbalanced by not decreasing the chance of a hit in the first place, but even with that doesn't have anywhere near the power of power attack with enough extra feats. It is theoretically possible to get 15 shift feats, or would be, however there are enough other prerequisites to make this impossible without feat granting items. Even if it is attained, it is 5 damage per point over AC, which is still easy enough to dwarf with power attack feat chains. If spell shift is added in, then it is possible to get 16 shift feats. The amount of feat giving items necessary for this is absurd.

The levels of all these feats are low, that is intended to allow them in almost any order, as well as in E6 D&D. However, they are kept high enough to prevent getting them extremely easily, as a level 2 fighter with Damage Shift, Dynamic Warrior, and any other shift could be overpowered. It is impossible to get all of them before level 10 in a normal game.

Weakening, Wounding, and Slowing Shifts may be seen as unbalanced, and lacking flavor. The flavor for each involves striking muscles that are used in an attack(so hitting arms for humanoids), causing big bleeding wounds, and striking wings and legs. Mechanically, its not a huge bonus, and they do take up a higher level slot, delaying tings like Dynamic warrior.

Reactive and Swift master may seem extremely broken. However, keep in mind that anybody using Swift master probably has a sup par strength, and it is far weaker than Avalanche of Blades from Tome of Battle. Beating AC by 12 or 16 routinely is not common, and giving up four shifts for a second attack is significant. Reactive Master is cheaper, but its easy to avoid attacks of opportunity.

Criticism is welcome.

Knaight
2009-03-23, 06:54 PM
Warlock Feats
Eldritch Shift
Prerequisites-Damage Shift, 2d6 eldritch blast.
Benefit-Eldritch Blast can benefit from shifts.
Normal-There is no bonus to exceeding AC by a wide margin.

Lingering Burn
Prerequisites-Damage Shift, Eldritch Shift, 2d6 eldritch blast.
Benefit-1 shift can be spent to deal half the damage normally done by a shift to an enemy every round, until they make a fortitude save.
Normal-There is no bonus to exceeding AC by a wide margin.

Eldritch Rush
Prerequisites-Damage Shift, Eldritch Shift, 2d6 eldritch blast.
Benefit-Eldritch blast can be used to bull rush, as with Rush Shift.
Normal-There is no bonus to exceeding AC by a wide margin.

Possibly More Later.

Draz74
2009-03-23, 11:27 PM
Those who have played in systems with rules similar to these: do they slow the game down? I.e. figuring out how well you succeeded on a roll, and calculating some other effect based on the quotient of the difference?

Because I've heard somewhere that they slow the game down, and they sure seem to me like they would. So I've been avoiding them like the plague in my homebrew. But if the common experience is that they don't slow things down at all, I'd like to know, so I can bear that in mind when trying to fix some problems in my homebrew.

Knaight
2009-03-24, 08:12 AM
Fudge, which uses a similar mechanic instead of a damage roll is a good example, as is Savage Worlds, which is closer to having Damage Shift for everybody. Both of these systems are way, way faster than D&D. In Fudge, you can handle six people fighting in melee in less than a minute, when you have players who aren't paying attention and have never read the rules. They are simpler than D&D overall, but calculating the difference never takes very long. Think of it this way. Someone says I rolled 25, the GM knows the monster has AC 12. The difference is 13, if thats a common step, the calculation isn't going to take a long time at all. Dividing into shifts is similarly easy(3 shifts at 4, 4 shifts at 3).

Knaight
2009-03-30, 10:08 PM
Added Stunning Shift, Slowing Shift, Weakening Shift, and Wounding Shift.

Lawst
2009-04-22, 09:53 PM
I really like this idea. So testing it on my group.

erikun
2009-04-22, 10:12 PM
If I am reading this right: the bonuses from trip/disarm/stun apply to the current attack, and have no save? Because I'm sure that auto-stunning if you beat their AC by 4 could end up overbalancing.

Feels quite broken if you allow Deep Impact (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#deepImpact) into the game, or a Brilliant Energy weapon against armored humanoids (which usually don't have Natural Armor).

Knaight
2009-04-23, 12:41 AM
Stunning takes 3 shifts, 2 with a bludgeoning weapon, more against larger targets. So that's 12, not 4, although it can be dropped to 9 with Dynamic warrior. At this point the fighter has probably taken a hit to damage, is losing out on weapon focus, expertise(not that its a great feat anyways) etc, and the wizard is throwing around 3rd level spells, and about to hit 4th level spells. Plus blowing AC to help attack bonus for shifts is going to utterly kill any ability to use Defensive shifts.

Once brilliant energy weapons come into the picture, the magic users are so far ahead that stunning shift is nothing, and its easier for the warblade to stun anyways. Taking deep impact is more worrying, but if taken then one of the three best shift feats(Counter Attack, Dynamic Warrior and Defensive Shift) are pushed back a level, plus it requires expenditure before hand. Plus gaining psionic focus takes time, meaning it could be dropped once per combat.

At level 6, a fighter has BAB 6, probably a strength bonus of 4-5, and if they have been spending feats on deep impact and stun shift, no weapon focus. Possibly a +1 weapon. So +11 or +12, for a single attack, against a touch AC that is probably going to be 12-13. Getting the 12 points necessary for stunning shift is only 30%-40% probable, and you lose power attack, which is probably better than damage shift at this point. Low dex monsters are going to be easy to hit, but that means that a caster can smack them around with touch attacks effortlessly, and those are often a lot more powerful than stunning. Plus there is stuff like grease, glitterdust, etc.

Lawst, thanks for the complement. Mind telling me how they play out, I'm unable to play test at the moment? I suppose I could, but right now I have a magic system I'm working the kinks out of in another system, and am looking at making some new combat rules for it as well, and don't play D&D.

Knaight
2009-04-23, 01:49 AM
Added weapon mastery, reactive master, and swift master.

Baron Corm
2009-04-24, 03:16 PM
How long does the stun last? 1 round? True strike becomes "automatically stun for 5 rounds". I think it's just too easy to abuse these feats, unless you add some saves in, or some other restrictions.

How long before you lose your pool of shifts? Can you go around hitting rats, then deal a million bonus damage to a dragon?

It's kind of ironic that in order to increase your damage, you have to take feats that allow you to do things other than damage. It would be nice to have some more general feats.

Other than some of the specifics of how you did it, I like the idea.

Godskook
2009-04-24, 03:47 PM
The first feat is accessible to non-fighters, yet none of the later feats are. Without access to later feats, giving access to non-fighters is confusing.

Knaight
2009-06-28, 06:50 PM
Sorry about the delayed response. Stun shift lasts for one round, and you don't have a shift pool, they are generated and then immediately spent. So if you go around hitting rats you could presumably attempt to trip them or stun them while doing so(although if you have either of these feats they should die instantly), but if you want to go do a million damage to a dragon then you can beat its AC by several hundred thousand. I'll edit to allow non-fighters to get the later feats.

Jane_Smith
2009-06-28, 07:09 PM
I hate to break this to you. But this entire shift idea is a bit moot for -1- tiny little reason.

How do you know what the enemy's ac is? The dm is not going to tell you, your not suppose to know.

tenshiakodo
2009-06-28, 09:11 PM
That's fine, the DM simply tells you how many shifts you earned. You still don't know the actual AC. Sure, you "the player" can say "well it's obviously within 3 points of what I rolled to hit", but most groups will figure out the AC oocishly after a single combat round.

I for one like the idea of rewarding a really strong "to-hit" roll. Damage Shift is an awesome alternative to Power Attack, where you're basically gambling away your attack bonus. Sure it doesn't do as much damage, but you feel less like an idiot if you miss because of a self-imposed penalty.

elliott20
2009-06-28, 09:46 PM
I actually REALLY like this idea.

Personally, I would have done this through damage but then that would just encourage the ubercharger build instead. Changing it to rely on the attack roll is actually a surprisingly elegant way to handle this.

However, like someone else said earlier, I would have liked it if some of this stuff can be done without investing a feat.

Weapon Mastery is an AWESOME feat, btw.

What I like about the shift idea the most though, is the fact that it actually gives you an alternative and viable option other than power attacking. With a bit more work this makes for more interesting tactical play for the fighter. Yes, I got to use the words "interesting", "tactical" and "fighter" in the same sentence. Amazing isn't it?

ooh, what about a shift feat that overcomes miss chance? i.e. a zen perception feat that allows you to ignore a small percentage of the missed chance from solid fog and such?

Knaight
2009-06-28, 11:55 PM
Maybe a defensive only one that would give them less concealment next round? I'm not sure how one would implement that, plus concealment tends to stop being an issue pretty quickly unless your playing E6, in which case it would be a bit cheap. Plus blind fight already has things covered. That said, I will be adding a feat for barbarians.

Knaight
2009-07-02, 02:57 AM
Actually, never mind my previous combat. I think I have figured out a way to use the miss chance feat. Also in the Opening Post

Precision Duelist
Prerequisite-Fighter Level 6 or BAB 12
Benefit-When fighting an opponent with concealment every shift generated while attacking AC also causes their concealment to count as 10% less than it actually is.
Normal-Concealment applies regardless of the effectiveness of the attack otherwise.

Knaight
2009-07-20, 08:45 PM
Bump.

Anyone have any requests? Or comments?

elliott20
2009-07-20, 09:36 PM
sweet... errr... no actual feedback yet. still recovering from weekend.

Knaight
2009-08-08, 10:25 AM
Bumping the thread mainly. Elliott if your still interested in this I'm still willing to take feedback. On the need to invest a feat, it helps it plug into the system without heavy modification.