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WinceRind
2010-10-31, 02:44 PM
Hallo there.

I'm extremely sorry if these questions have already been answered, I couldn't best the searching engine.

Here's the meat of the problem... I'm about to start building a character for a new campaign, and the prestige class "Lasher" from "Sword and Fist", seems very attractive to me.

Basically, it's a prestige class that turns whips (and whip daggers) into seemingly very attractive weapons - giving you improved Trip, improved Disarm, a 3d6 sneak attack with whips, and letting you use whips in melee as normal melee weapons - without provoking attacks of opportunity and all that.

There are other things to the class, but that's of little importance.

With this overly drawn-out introduction out of the way, I don't understand some things about whips.

Their description in PhB and Sword and Fist is a bit complicated. At some points, it uses rules for melee weapons, and at some points - for ranged.

It's explicitly stated that you can use whip to trip people - but at the same time, in rule books it says that you should treat it as a ranged weapon with 15 feet range. Does it mean you can't deliver the free attack you get when you successfully trip someone with Improved Trip feat? And if you can, do you use the +4 to hit bonus from attacking a tripped target with a melee weapon, or do you use the ranged weapon rules for it?

Furthermore, do prone targets still get Dexterity bonus to armor? Can you deliver sneak attacks to prone targets?

It's very important to me, my future character is going to depend on tripping and disarming multiple characters and finding ways to deliver sneak attacks granted by Lasher PrC which only work against targets denied their Dex Modifier to Armor - so combat tactician and improved feint are a priority for me. And if i get lucky with stat rolls, knockdown blow would be even better.

So I guess my main question is about whether prone denies the target dex bonus to armor or not - I couldn't find any mention of that in the PHB, although I might have missed something...

Thanks in advance.

WinWin
2010-10-31, 03:07 PM
They are wierd. Combination weapons like the whip can be tricky to adjudicate and the difference between 3.5 and 3.0 makes things even more confusing.

A whip is treated like a melee weapon when making attack rolls. It uses melee modifiers.

It is also treated like a ranged weapon. However, it has no range increments and a maximum range of 15 feet. In 3.5 it is just treated as a special reach weapon.

Use the melee attack modifiers for cover and concealment. Other situational modifiers may apply, such as Higher Ground or spells that benefit melee. It can also be used for melee maneuvers such as disarm or trip.

It still provokes AoO like a ranged weapon though. As it is effectively a melee and ranged weapon in 3.0, there is going to be some conflict in the rules.

The 3.5 description makes it a little easier to follow than the 3.0 Lasher description. SRD Weapons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm).

Urpriest
2010-10-31, 03:10 PM
The Lasher is really strongly designed around the 3.0 whip, and adapting it to 3.5 will take some careful work, since they're really very different weapons. It's not a doomed project by any means, but it may be more work than you want to get into. You may want to simply use Exotic Weapon Master or the like from 3.5 and skip the Lasher.

WinceRind
2010-10-31, 03:39 PM
They are wierd. Combination weapons like the whip can be tricky to adjudicate and the difference between 3.5 and 3.0 makes things even more confusing.

A whip is treated like a melee weapon when making attack rolls. It uses melee modifiers.

It is also treated like a ranged weapon. However, it has no range increments and a maximum range of 15 feet. In 3.5 it is just treated as a special reach weapon.

Use the melee attack modifiers for cover and concealment. Other situational modifiers may apply, such as Higher Ground or spells that benefit melee. It can also be used for melee maneuvers such as disarm or trip.

It still provokes AoO like a ranged weapon though. As it is effectively a melee and ranged weapon in 3.0, there is going to be some conflict in the rules.

The 3.5 description makes it a little easier to follow than the 3.0 Lasher description. SRD Weapons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm).

Yeah, I know about AoO, but the Lasher PrC lets you not provoke AoO with whips at all.

I don't really understand the difference between 3.0 whips and 3.5 whips, the descriptions seem to be fairly similar. It's just that PHB doesn't mention the whip dagger, but surely my DM will be willing to include it - it's a fairly reasonable weapon. (Same as whip, just does 1d6 lethal slashing damage)

It's just that I was hoping to get Knockdown Blow feat and be able to Improved Feint someone in melee range, then hit them for regular damage + sneak attack - which is highly likely to do more then 10 damage, and get a partial action from Combat Tactician feat (I think that's what it's called) and get another hit in, possibly doing sneak attack damage if prone targets are considered to be flatfooted - which would make sense to me.

I know this isn't a very powerful build, but it's sort of a flavour thing...

WinceRind
2010-10-31, 03:43 PM
The Lasher is really strongly designed around the 3.0 whip, and adapting it to 3.5 will take some careful work, since they're really very different weapons. It's not a doomed project by any means, but it may be more work than you want to get into. You may want to simply use Exotic Weapon Master or the like from 3.5 and skip the Lasher.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense - it's taking a lot of work.

It's just that Exotic Weapon Master doesn't have anything I want - the Exotic Weapon tricks seem a bit lackluster for my causes.

And the Lasher has some interesting class abilities and actually more or less makes whips useable as a melee weapon.

But I guess I might have to go with a more traditional weapon in order to use the tactics I want. Guess I'm gonna have to say good bye to 1hander with 15 feet semi-reach...

Still, my question about Prone condition remains.

Are you considered flat footed or otherwise denied Dexterity modifiers to armor when you're prone or not? I really couldn't find anything on it in the PHB, and it's pretty important to me =/

Urpriest
2010-10-31, 04:19 PM
Yeah, I guess that makes sense - it's taking a lot of work.

It's just that Exotic Weapon Master doesn't have anything I want - the Exotic Weapon tricks seem a bit lackluster for my causes.

And the Lasher has some interesting class abilities and actually more or less makes whips useable as a melee weapon.

But I guess I might have to go with a more traditional weapon in order to use the tactics I want. Guess I'm gonna have to say good bye to 1hander with 15 feet semi-reach...

Still, my question about Prone condition remains.

Are you considered flat footed or otherwise denied Dexterity modifiers to armor when you're prone or not? I really couldn't find anything on it in the PHB, and it's pretty important to me =/

You're not flat-footed when prone.

Whips in 3.5 are entirely melee weapons, they are in no way ranged weapons. You attack with them as if you were attacking with a weapon with 15 foot reach, though you can also attack closer foes. You can, by the way, two-hand them to use Power Attack. However, they still provoke attacks of opportunity when you use them, despite being melee weapons.

Your tactic isn't horrible, but you need to find a better way to get targets vulnerable to sneak attack. Feinting would work, though the inability to get a full attack in will hurt. Perhaps persuade one of your party members to use the grease spell or make a grappling build?

WinceRind
2010-10-31, 04:50 PM
You're not flat-footed when prone.

Whips in 3.5 are entirely melee weapons, they are in no way ranged weapons. You attack with them as if you were attacking with a weapon with 15 foot reach, though you can also attack closer foes. You can, by the way, two-hand them to use Power Attack. However, they still provoke attacks of opportunity when you use them, despite being melee weapons.

Your tactic isn't horrible, but you need to find a better way to get targets vulnerable to sneak attack. Feinting would work, though the inability to get a full attack in will hurt. Perhaps persuade one of your party members to use the grease spell or make a grappling build?

Oh, that's worse then...

It's just we've got a small group of friends for this campaign, so there will only be 3 players and the DM - and we're not really planning to use a lot of hirelings or NPCs in our group.

None of them are interested in being a grappler, and it's likely that only 2 of us will be very melee-centric. We might not even get an arcane caster.

And above all, I don't want to be a Power attack - Leap Attack - Shocktrooper melee guy, I've played it before, it's powerful, but it just feels dirty at times.

Still, if whips do count as melee all the time, I can probably still make it work...

So far, my options were either taking 5 levels of fighter and then taking Lasher, or taking at least 3 levels of Swashbuckler and possibly 2 levels of fighter to get the +5 BAB requirement for Lasher.

Swashbuckler seems like a much better option to me because of higher skill growth and number of class skills, and Int modifier on attacks with whip. On the other hand, I'd have to wear Light Armor to benefit from a lot of things, and that might not work well for the group tanker without Uncanny dodge ( I was considering 1 level of Survivor from Savage Species to get that).

With fighter, I'd have more feats and heavy armor - and reach on whips would somewhat help with slower move speed, but on the other hand I wouldn't be able to use most skills effectively - bluff is cross class, balance and tumble also cross class and heavily impeded by the heavy armor.

+2 damage with weapon specialization would certainly help, but since being prone doesn't make one vulnerable to sneak attacks, I can't just stack on the damage modifiers to profit from Knockdown Blow as much as I might have otherwise...

Although I suppose the grease thing would be great, thanks for the suggestion. Maybe this isn't such a bad project after all, now I just have to persuade the caster to use it =p

I just really like the lasher prc, the "third hand" ability really amuses me - you can press buttons, pick up items, disarm people and what not with your whip and snatch the items in your off hand. And it also lets you use whip to grab onto something or someone if you're falling and letting them pull you up if they do a DC 20 str check - or allowing you to pull an enemy into the abyss with you.

Thanks for all the help anyways, I'm going to go look up if there are any affordable magic items that let you use grease spells or some other items.