feinting: how is it ever successful?

[classy one]

I feel like this action was just designed to fail. If the target has any ranks in sense motive the chances of it being flat footed are slim due to the target being able to add their BAB to the opposed check. So even a fighter of the same level would only have a -3 disadvantage (translates to 15%) making the skill check untrained.
If the target had 5 ranks in sense motive they almost don't have to worry about feints at all, just let the BAB pad the opposed check.

Is there really anyway to ensure an 80% chance of working?

[avr]

Essentially the only people who feint are those who optimise bluff anyway. Synergy bonuses, high CHA, maybe familiars or glibness or more feats.

OTOH very few monsters and not that many characters have any ranks of Sense Motive at all. So, usually it's skill + d20 vs. BAB + WIS bonus + d20.

[CRtwenty]

It's not that hard to pimp out a skill like Bluff. Anybody who's making a Feint build is going to be buffing their CHA into space anyway.

[TuggyNE]

Not that it really matters much, but glibness specifically doesn't work for feinting.

[Vaz]

Feinting on its own doesn't work.

Keying things to work of flat-footed do work much better though. For example, an Avenging Executioner gets the ability to Sudden Strike opponents, causing Area Fear effects, which then causes them to be flat footed while under the affects of fear, and you can then try and drop an opponent to make that same area Panic. With a single feint, you can cause a 30ft area of opponents run away.

Considering it's usually attacking Beatsticks who tend to lack decent Wisdom and Will Saves in general, you can quickly clear out rooms.

[classy one]

It's not that hard to pimp out a skill like Bluff. Anybody who's making a Feint build is going to be buffing their CHA into space anyway.

How would you optimize feint anyway? Other than a high CHR and max ranks? Any class with full BAB and a few cross class ranks in sense motive can keep from being flat footed about 50% of the time.

Let's say a rogue 5 attempts to feint a fighter 5.
Rogue: 8 ranks bluff
CHR mod of +4
Total of 12

Fighter: 0 ranks in sense motive
WIS mod of +1
BAB: 6
Total of 7

Only puts the fighter at a 25% disadvantage. With skill focus, this moves up to a 40% disadvantage. Said fighter could be completely negated if the target had sense motive ranks. In fact, it doesn't even have to be maxed to make feints a bad choice.

It just plain sucks. There is no way you could take ten to ensure a 100% fient. And taking ten is only 50%..... Add to the fact that you can't take ten on feints in combat (well not that I know of). This is just not worth it IMO unless I can see how it can be reliable.

[nedz]

If you're a damsel, ..., oh not that kind of fainting.

[Unusual Muse]

It's hard to optimize Feinting, just for reasons of action economy.

[Vaz]

Improved Feint Feat, Belt of Battle/Beguiler 6 to get the ability to Feint more efficiently.

Combine with Surprising Riposte for Iajutsu Focus, or Avenging Executioner for Area Fear causing.

[Carth]

Invisible blade can get you the ability to feint as a free action, and the surprising riposte feat makes any foe you've hit after feinting flat-footed. Can be comboed with sneak attack and/or iajutsu focus.

[classy one]

It's hard to optimize Feinting, just for reasons of action economy.

Feinting itself is underwhelming as it uses a standard action. But it's hard to even make it happen in the first place due to the target being able to add their BAB to the check. This special action just sucks all around. Improved fient only reduces the action to a move action.

[classy one]

Invisible blade can get you the ability to feint as a free action, and the surprising riposte feat makes any foe you've hit after feinting flat-footed. Can be comboed with sneak attack and/or iajutsu focus.

All of those are dependent on winning the opposed check. Which is hard to do when the you only hold a 15%-20% advantage. Sure you can do cool things once you make them flat footed but chance just isn't favorable to invest in it.

[cerin616]

Factotum/invisible blade
gnomish quick razors
surprising reposte
insightful feint spell

boosted cha and bluff (this goes way higher than character BAB and sense motive, and beats most monsters BAB since they dont have sense motive and you can have a +2 to feinting from quickrazors yea!)

now, with this you can feint as a free action and win, draw your quickrazors as a free action and attack with each, making the enemy flat footed, store your weapons as a free action, draw them again as a free action, use cuning surge for an extra standard action, strike with each weapon doing an iajutsu focus.

Granted the feinting is unnecessary if you can catch the opponent off guard in the first place, but it makes a decent contingency plan.

[WhatBigTeeth]

It's hard to optimize Feinting, just for reasons of action economy.
I don't think that's true. Assassin alone has 3-4 spells to make feinting work as a free or swift action (provided it has Improved Feint), and Beguiler, Scarlet Corsair, Invisible Blade and probably others can make it a swift/free action; add surprising riposte to make feint stick a flatfooted condition on the target for the round, and it's a pretty workable combat strategy.

EDIT: Or if this thread's about one of the charisma-based skills being too hard to optimize, LMFAO.

[Snowbluff]

Scarlet Corsairs are the kings captains of Feinting. They get the Improved feat, and the ability to use it as a free action.

Combine that with their intimidate abilities and Imperious Command, you make a rather effective skills based build

[Amphetryon]

How would you optimize feint anyway? Other than a high CHR and max ranks? Any class with full BAB and a few cross class ranks in sense motive can keep from being flat footed about 50% of the time.

Let's say a rogue 5 attempts to feint a fighter 5.
Rogue: 8 ranks bluff
CHR mod of +4
Total of 12

Fighter: 0 ranks in sense motive
WIS mod of +1
BAB: 6
Total of 7

Only puts the fighter at a 25% disadvantage. With skill focus, this moves up to a 40% disadvantage. Said fighter could be completely negated if the target had sense motive ranks. In fact, it doesn't even have to be maxed to make feints a bad choice.

It just plain sucks. There is no way you could take ten to ensure a 100% fient. And taking ten is only 50%..... Add to the fact that you can't take ten on feints in combat (well not that I know of). This is just not worth it IMO unless I can see how it can be reliable.My emphasis. I believe the highlighted word is the root of your difficulty; you're assuming that PCs are primarily using Feint against others with Character Class levels, which is not necessarily anything like the default assumption of the game. By appearances, the default design is that PCs go up against Monsters, not NPCs or others with Character Class levels. In such scenarios, it's fairly easy to use Feint at low-to-mid levels, provided you're not hunting Oozes, Undead, or others who don't care about Flat-Footed. . . and if the majority of your opponents fall into that category, your party Rogue/Rogue-analog is already howling about the nerf.

So, in the case you're describing, you're right that Feint isn't the best option. That case isn't the one the game appears to assume is true for the majority of encounters, though.

[dascarletm]

They should let you substitute your BaB for Sense motive instead of adding it.

[RandomLunatic]

My emphasis. I believe the highlighted word is the root of your difficulty; you're assuming that PCs are primarily using Feint against others with Character Class levels, which is not necessarily anything like the default assumption of the game. By appearances, the default design is that PCs go up against Monsters, not NPCs or others with Character Class levels. In such scenarios, it's fairly easy to use Feint at low-to-mid levels, provided you're not hunting Oozes, Undead, or others who don't care about Flat-Footed. . . and if the majority of your opponents fall into that category, your party Rogue/Rogue-analog is already howling about the nerf.

So, in the case you're describing, you're right that Feint isn't the best option. That case isn't the one the game appears to assume is true for the majority of encounters, though.
Throwing monsters into the consideration only makes things worse. Feinting takes a flat -4 when you do it against non-humanoids. Or -8 if you do it to something with a INT of 1 or 2. Which is weird-I certainly know it was not that hard to fool my neighbor's dog. And it flat-out does not work against mindless opponents.

And monsters tend to have a lot more HD for their CR than classed opponents, which in turn ramps up their BaB and makes feinting them harder still.

Feinting is kind of like Disarm, Sunder, and Grapple-it only works against humanoid opponents with class levels, and not very well.

[dascarletm]

Throwing monsters into the consideration only makes things worse. Feinting takes a flat -4 when you do it against non-humanoids. Or -8 if you do it to something with a INT of 1 or 2. Which is weird-I certainly know it was not that hard to fool my neighbor's dog. And it flat-out does not work against mindless opponents.

And monsters tend to have a lot more HD for their CR than classed opponents, which in turn ramps up their BaB and makes feinting them harder still.

Feinting is kind of like Disarm, Sunder, and Grapple-it only works against humanoid opponents with class levels, and not very well.

Yeah, I can't justify the -8 for the dog, because mine always runs when i feint throwing the toy....

(I don't think my bluff is very high as well.):smalltongue:

[OzymandiasX]

Feinting itself is underwhelming as it uses a standard action. But it's hard to even make it happen in the first place due to the target being able to add their BAB to the check. This special action just sucks all around. Improved fient only reduces the action to a move action.
Here is the thing: You're not SUPPOSED to be able to consistently fake out highly experienced fighters at the thing they do best... (ie. fight) Feinting isn't supposed to allow a rogue to stand toe-to-toe with a fighter of equivalent level.

It is something that can be very strong in the hands of a player that uses it wisely. Do the math on Feinting against a wizard at level 10. Even if they've been cross-classing ranks into Sense Motive (I don't think I've seen a wizard do this ever), the rogue will usually succeed.

Alone the cases where it will be useful will be low, but combined with additional feats and especially prestige classes, it can be pretty darn useful.

[BWR]

On a related note, would feinting be overpowered if reduced to a move action, and Improved Feint making it a swift action?

[cerin616]

Your example math is also off by a point. A 5th level fighter doesnt have a bab of 6.

he also doesnt have many skill points, so he would need to sacrifice the pretty much necessary 5 ranks of balance (or else who needs feint? i have marbles), any ranks he wanted in tumble....

lets just say there are a number of much more necessary skills he would want over sense motive.

[cerin616]

On a related note, would feinting be overpowered if reduced to a move action, and Improved Feint making it a swift action?

Seeing as there are numerouse ways to do so and people still play other clases, i would say no.

[lsfreak]

On a related note, would feinting be overpowered if reduced to a move action, and Improved Feint making it a swift action?

I'd go a step further, with the feat you can feint both as a swift action, and in place of one of your attacks. I.e. a TWF'ing rogue with a total attack routine of 15/15/15/10/10, you could actually do F+15/F/15/F/10, making three feints and three attacks (instead of five attacks). Compared to other ways of triggering sneak attack (which is the primary reason you're going to be feinting, more than likely), it takes a feat and roughly halves your damage output but is more reliable than setting up flanking, always having invisibility, dropping the gold for a ring of blinking, etc.

[Amphetryon]

Throwing monsters into the consideration only makes things worse. Feinting takes a flat -4 when you do it against non-humanoids. Or -8 if you do it to something with a INT of 1 or 2. Which is weird-I certainly know it was not that hard to fool my neighbor's dog. And it flat-out does not work against mindless opponents.

And monsters tend to have a lot more HD for their CR than classed opponents, which in turn ramps up their BaB and makes feinting them harder still.

Feinting is kind of like Disarm, Sunder, and Grapple-it only works against humanoid opponents with class levels, and not very well.

There are plenty of monstrous humanoids at low-to-mid levels, where I indicated this tactic seems to have its sweet spot. I even indicated that there are monsters against which Feinting is a poor choice. So. . . .

[TuggyNE]

My emphasis. I believe the highlighted word is the root of your difficulty; you're assuming that PCs are primarily using Feint against others with Character Class levels, which is not necessarily anything like the default assumption of the game. By appearances, the default design is that PCs go up against Monsters, not NPCs or others with Character Class levels. In such scenarios, it's fairly easy to use Feint at low-to-mid levels, provided you're not hunting Oozes, Undead, or others who don't care about Flat-Footed. . . and if the majority of your opponents fall into that category, your party Rogue/Rogue-analog is already howling about the nerf.

All right, MonHu, CR 7, against Rogue 7 with Improved Feint, 14 Cha, and max ranks in Bluff (also let's throw on a masterwork tool of bluffing, say a nice custom-tweaked rapier). There's only one in Core (medusa), so shoving it out to CR 6 as well gives us the annis hag. -4 for nonhumanoid means the Rogue is rocking +10 against the medusa's +7 effective Sense Motive gives us a halfway decent 66% chance of success for a move action. Against the hag, though, +9 (level 6 Rogue) against +8 is only a 57% chance of success.

Hmm, that's not so awesome, how about Humanoids? Highest-CR Core humanoid seems to be the Werebear, at CR 5 and +5 effective Sense Motive; +12 Bluff is quite effective against that, with an 80.5% chance of success.

So, at low levels, against humanoid opponents, serious investment can be pretty effective. Otherwise, it's iffy or outright useless.

[Phaederkiel]

let us not forget that there is the skill trick group fake out, which possibly can work real wonders (I have to admit that I do not know the range of the ability, thus do not know how many opponents will be affected).

Let us say it has a range of 10 ft. I can still feint against 3 and then do my chucking daggers for sneak attack routine against the guy who got faked out.


since I am not familiar with the classes involved:
is there a way to get feint below a move action without heavily sacrificing sneak attack?

[StreamOfTheSky]

Feinting sucks. It's mathematically impossible (don't forget; tons of monsters with huge BAB : Cr ratios, too!), and you can't even use it more than 1/round as far as I know, even if you blow feats, spells, and/or class features to get it down to a free action (the already godawful invisible blade PrC had its free action feint nerfed to 1/round). The solution is to just tumble into flanking and SA with that.

Pathfinder actually somewhat fixed feint by making it sense motive ranks OR BAB (but not both), but it still has the other problems. Of course, PF also made tumble suicidal and worthless...

[Amphetryon]

So, at low levels, against humanoid opponents, serious investment can be pretty effective. Otherwise, it's iffy or outright useless.This description applies to Grapple as well as Disarm (which I'd rate marginally worse than Feint, TBH), in my experience; is yours significantly different in this regard?

[TuggyNE]

This description applies to Grapple as well as Disarm (which I'd rate marginally worse than Feint, TBH), in my experience; is yours significantly different in this regard?

I haven't directly tried a combat maneuver specialist, so my personal experience is limited, but that seems reasonable based on the numbers. Grapple, Disarm, Sunder, Feint, Overrun, Bull Rush are all either nigh-useless, difficult to manage without really substantial investment, or both. (Grappling is probably the closest to usable in the list, given how good a general debuff it can be.)

[Pickford]

I'd go a step further, with the feat you can feint both as a swift action, and in place of one of your attacks. I.e. a TWF'ing rogue with a total attack routine of 15/15/15/10/10, you could actually do F+15/F/15/F/10, making three feints and three attacks (instead of five attacks). Compared to other ways of triggering sneak attack (which is the primary reason you're going to be feinting, more than likely), it takes a feat and roughly halves your damage output but is more reliable than setting up flanking, always having invisibility, dropping the gold for a ring of blinking, etc.

How, if you're using a full attack action, are you able to feint at all? (assuming it's not a swift action) and if it is, how are you able to do it more than once?

[TuggyNE]

How, if you're using a full attack action, are you able to feint at all? (assuming it's not a swift action) and if it is, how are you able to do it more than once?

You can't without changing into a swift action, and you can't feint multiple times per round at all.

[A_S]

I made a homebrew (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226345) because of this!

[nedz]

I haven't directly tried a combat maneuver specialist, so my personal experience is limited, but that seems reasonable based on the numbers. Grapple, Disarm, Sunder, Feint, Overrun, Bull Rush are all either nigh-useless, difficult to manage without really substantial investment, or both. (Grappling is probably the closest to usable in the list, given how good a general debuff it can be.)

Just my experience :-

Grapple > Disarm > Bull Rush > Feint > Sunder > Overrun

The main problem with Feint is action economy, specifically the lack of full attacks. If you are doing it to get sneak then why not flank for full attack or use something like Flick of the Wrist instead ?
You could even just buy two skill tricks: Hidden Blade and Sudden Draw and achieve the same result for even less investment. Sure these are situational, but so is Feinting since you would prefer to just flank.

[Elric VIII]

I don't think that's true. Assassin alone has 3-4 spells to make feinting work as a free or swift action (provided it has Improved Feint), and Beguiler, Scarlet Corsair, Invisible Blade and probably others can make it a swift/free action; add surprising riposte to make feint stick a flatfooted condition on the target for the round, and it's a pretty workable combat strategy.

EDIT: Or if this thread's about one of the charisma-based skills being too hard to optimize, LMFAO.


Just wondering, what spells? I'm not very familiar with the Assassin's list, but these could be great on a Chameleon.

[Phaederkiel]

Just my experience :-

Grapple > Disarm > Bull Rush > Feint > Sunder > Overrun



Why is bullrush so low? BR is one of the really strong strategies. Dungeoncrusher for example lets you deal really big damage, while the lack of an attack throw lets you tank your BAB completely. You can autohit invisible enemies and you can combat expertise for full.
Shocktroopers Domino Rush is very good as well, making you a decent tripper.

Hitting without attack roll? Yes please.

[nedz]

Why is bullrush so low? BR is one of the really strong strategies. Dungeoncrusher for example lets you deal really big damage, while the lack of an attack throw lets you tank your BAB completely. You can autohit invisible enemies and you can combat expertise for full.
Shocktroopers Domino Rush is very good as well, making you a decent tripper.

Hitting without attack roll? Yes please.

Those are both strong, but Grapple is strong also and Disarm can seriously embarrass opponents who are not prepared for it. YMMV.

[Phaederkiel]

yes, and bullrush (at the lvl where it shines, about 6-8) can kill most things, wether they are prepared or not. 8d6+3xstrenght are not that bad.

Grappling is gimped by size even worse than bullrush, and disarm does often not work on monsters.

But lets talk about feinting, yes?

unfortunately, no-one has answered my question about wether one can get feint to below move without gimping sneak progression.

[cerin616]

Feinting sucks. It's mathematically impossible (don't forget; tons of monsters with huge BAB : Cr ratios, too!), and you can't even use it more than 1/round as far as I know, even if you blow feats, spells, and/or class features to get it down to a free action (the already godawful invisible blade PrC had its free action feint nerfed to 1/round). The solution is to just tumble into flanking and SA with that.

Pathfinder actually somewhat fixed feint by making it sense motive ranks OR BAB (but not both), but it still has the other problems. Of course, PF also made tumble suicidal and worthless...

Well, with invisible blade you can do it as much as you want in a round, including doing it over and over until you are pretty sure one suceeded (until your dm tells you you need to just stop)

as for monsters with huge bab, lets not forget that against a nonhuman you get a -4.

[Pickford]

yes, and bullrush (at the lvl where it shines, about 6-8) can kill most things, wether they are prepared or not. 8d6+3xstrenght are not that bad.

Grappling is gimped by size even worse than bullrush, and disarm does often not work on monsters.

But lets talk about feinting, yes?

unfortunately, no-one has answered my question about wether one can get feint to below move without gimping sneak progression.

Well...you can only sneak attack if your opponent is denied their dex bonus (so...feint) or you're flanking them (a 2 on 1 fight).

Feinting lets a rogue sneak attack when they might otherwise be incapable of doing so (say if your DM has a habit of having 'exactly' the same number of enemies as protagonists in any one fight)

[Urpriest]

Well...you can only sneak attack if your opponent is denied their dex bonus (so...feint) or you're flanking them (a 2 on 1 fight).

Feinting lets a rogue sneak attack when they might otherwise be incapable of doing so (say if your DM has a habit of having 'exactly' the same number of enemies as protagonists in any one fight)

Numbers are irrelevant though. The PCs are probably ganging up on one guy if at all possible, and so are the NPCs unless the DM is being nice.

[cerin616]

yes, and bullrush (at the lvl where it shines, about 6-8) can kill most things, wether they are prepared or not. 8d6+3xstrenght are not that bad.

Grappling is gimped by size even worse than bullrush, and disarm does often not work on monsters.

But lets talk about feinting, yes?

unfortunately, no-one has answered my question about wether one can get feint to below move without gimping sneak progression.

5 levels of invisible blade. Feint as a free action, also gives +3d6 of sneak attack dice. optimize sneak attack from there.

[Urpriest]

5 levels of invisible blade. Feint as a free action, also gives +3d6 of sneak attack dice. optimize sneak attack from there.

Note that errata makes this only usable once per round, so you want to pair it with Surprising Riposte (Drow of the Underdark) or similar.

Incidentally, the poster that was talking about Feint replacing an attack is probably thinking of Pathfinder, where Two-Weapon Feint lets you lose your highest BAB TWF attack in exchange for a feint.

[cerin616]

Note that errata makes this only usable once per round, so you want to pair it with Surprising Riposte (Drow of the Underdark) or similar.

Incidentally, the poster that was talking about Feint replacing an attack is probably thinking of Pathfinder, where Two-Weapon Feint lets you lose your highest BAB TWF attack in exchange for a feint.

unless your dm doesnt know about errata...
:smallamused:

[lsfreak]

How, if you're using a full attack action, are you able to feint at all? (assuming it's not a swift action) and if it is, how are you able to do it more than once?

I was talking about improving feinting, not as it is. Allowing feint to replace an attack, in line with how trips/disarms are attacks.

[mangosta71]

One fairly obvious tweak - add the BAB of the character making the feint attempt to his total. If you justify a fighter adding his BAB to his roll to resist it based on his combat training (which is represented by his BAB), the rogue's combat training should also apply.

[Man on Fire]

I feel like this action was just designed to fail. If the target has any ranks in sense motive the chances of it being flat footed are slim due to the target being able to add their BAB to the opposed check. So even a fighter of the same level would only have a -3 disadvantage (translates to 15%) making the skill check untrained.
If the target had 5 ranks in sense motive they almost don't have to worry about feints at all, just let the BAB pad the opposed check.

Is there really anyway to ensure an 80% chance of working?

Well, Rogue in my party does it anyway. Pretty problematic with Gunslinger in the same party, hard to build challenges for both of them - Gunslinger murders everybody in high armor and rogue feints and sneak attacks peoples with high
DEX way above his CR to death.

[Pickford]

Numbers are irrelevant though. The PCs are probably ganging up on one guy if at all possible, and so are the NPCs unless the DM is being nice.

The question was what is the utility of improved feint, the utility is for when you're fighting 1 on 1 and there's no ganging up.

edit: And when your opponent has very high dexterity but low actual AC.

[137beth]

I made a homebrew (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226345) because of this!



That's actually nice, now I want to play it.

I think a lot of the "broken stuff" in the 3.X system isn't really anything wrong with the system, it's just that we need better class design. This is an example--you can make feinting good with well-designed martial classes. WotC failed in that regard, so you have to resort to homebrew if you want to make feinting good.

[Otomodachi]

Has anyone mentioned that an item of +bluff is super, super cheap? Bonus squared times 100 gp. If your build is feint based, you have no excuse not to get one of these and they sure will help with your success rate.

[nedz]

Has anyone mentioned that an item of +bluff is super, super cheap? Bonus squared times 100 gp. If your build is feint based, you have no excuse not to get one of these and they sure will help with your success rate.

Limited to +10 for 10,000gp IIRC

[Phaederkiel]

yes, but this +10 helps a rather big lot. Additionally, there are at least 3 or 4 more ways to increase a skill. Item familiars. Being a factotum (which only helps once per day, though). I would assume you can get this high enough quite easily.

There are probably some Items increasing bluff in some way right within the mic.

[137beth]

Limited to +10 for 10,000gp IIRC

No, for skills, the limit is +30 (until epic levels).
Also, you can get +10 for cheaper:
a competence bonus in a skill is 100*bonus^2, any other type of bonus is 200*bonus^2, so an item which gives a +8 competence bonus and a +2 other kind of bonus costs 100*64+200*4*1.5 (for the second ability)=7600.

[ericgrau]

If the target has any ranks in sense motive
Few monsters have any ranks in sense motive. I counted 25 out of 419 in MM1, many of which were good aligned or such. Feinting is almost always successful.

Feinting + masterwork buckler is a good way to get a reliable sneak attack trigger at low levels when other triggers are harder to get and you don't have many attacks. On the fragile rogue, low level TWF yields fewer weapon hits before unconsciousness. The problem comes around level 9-13 or so when heavy magic or magic items provides other triggers. Feinting is an excellent option if your DM allows retraining but otherwise it's iffy.

[A_S]

That's actually nice, now I want to play it.

I think a lot of the "broken stuff" in the 3.X system isn't really anything wrong with the system, it's just that we need better class design. This is an example--you can make feinting good with well-designed martial classes. WotC failed in that regard, so you have to resort to homebrew if you want to make feinting good.

Thanks!

I think your analysis of "broken stuff" mostly holds true things that are "broken" (as in, ineffective). Off the top of my head:

Grappling and the other under-used combat maneuvers would be good if they had good classes dedicated to them (grapple in particular really needs some class that lets it overcome getting hosed by Freedom of Movement).
Enchantment would be good if there were some way of getting around immunity to [mind-affecting], or if that immunity weren't so easy to come by.
Precision damage would be good if it were easier to get a good version of Penetrating Strike (like the one in my linked class), rather than the crappy ones that have been published.

In general, WotC is just too fond of publishing spells and abilities that shut down entire play styles, and then failing to publish anything that allows those who specialize in those play styles to overcome the immunities. Dread Witch's ability to overcome fear immunity is a rare and welcome exception.

When it comes to things that are "broken" (as in, overpowered), I think it's obviously more a case of systemic flaws in 3.5 as a whole, like the failure to account for the fact that being able to do 50 things (sorcerer) or 1000 things (wizard) is better than being able to do three things (barbarian).

[Chris in Duluth]

I made a homebrew because of this!


I love it! I want to play it, too! Have you playtested this?