Non-supernatural combat styles that could use more support in D&D?

[Idhan]

What non-supernatural combat styles do you think are insufficiently aided by the D&D 3.5 system?

I suppose the first question is, what are some possible non-supernatural combat styles?

Heavy Infantry combat styles
"The Huscarl": Two handed close-combat weapon (e.g., greatsword, greataxe, etc). This one strikes me as being pretty well-supported.
"The Legionary": One-handed close-combat weapon (longsword, warhammer, etc), plus a shield. Once again, I think this is a reasonably well-supported combat style.
"The Phalangite": Two-handed reach weapon (e.g., glaive, ranseur). Decent, although a bludgeoning lucerne-hammer type polearm would be nice. Also, truly long-reach pikes of the types used by, say, Swiss pikers or Macedonian phalangites are absent -- which is fine for dungeon-crawlers, who would be unlikely to get much use out of them anyway, although it might be good to have some way of representing pikers in regular mookish military forces.

Light Infantry combat styles
"The Archer": Bow and arrows. Fairly well-supported combat style. Ranger is specialist class.
"The Arbalester": Crossbow and quarrels. Start off as being good for those lacking martial weapon proficiencies, like cleric, or local militia. PHB II gives some useful feats, although successful crossbow specialists become rather feat-intensive in that case.
"The Peltast": Thrown weapon specialist. Not very good, but, arguably, they shouldn't be, compared to users of more specialized or expensive ranged weapons like crossbows and bows. (Although arguably a javelin should, in spite of its slower speed, do more damage than an arrow with 1/20th its mass)
"The Slinger": Sling and bullet user. Quite unsupported. There isn't even a rapid reload (sling) feat, although I suspect many DMs would allow it. Lack of range is another concern.

Heavy Cavalry combat styles
"The Cuirassier”: close-combat cavalry with non-lance weapons such as sabres. As with lancers, all cavalry combat styles suffer from the fact that levelling mounts are restricted to paladins (restrictive concept) or animal companions which include horses, but not warhorses.
"The Lancer": lance-armed cavalier. Well-supported in the form of the paladin, but paladins are rather restricted in terms of alignment and theme, being being heavy cavalry lancers.

Light Cavalry combat styles
”The Jinete”: mounted javelineer, basically. Like thrown-weapon users on foot, not particularly powerful. Like other mounted characters who aren’t paladins and such, faces the problem of vulnerable 3-4 hit die mounts at higher levels without. Overall weak style. (Arguably should be?)
”The Sipahi”: horse archer. Slightly less well-supported than lancer or cuirassier: the paladin, the premier mounted combat class, smites only with mêlée attacks, not ranged. However, the ranger would have excellent horse-archery potential if the animal companion could be a warhorse rather than a “standard” horse.

I guess my conclusion is, there need to be better ways of keeping warhorses (or war-pegasuses, hippogriffs, or whatever) alive at high levels without paladin-hood, and slings need more support. However, I’m curious about your views. Which non-supernatural combat styles do you regard as adequately supported/undersupported/overpowered?

[Psyren]

Have you checked out the Path of War (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=296871) (ToB for Pathfinder) project currently being playtested? It's OGL and there are disciplines for almost all of these styles in it. Bringing it back to 3.5 if you don't want to make the jump to PF yet should be pretty easy.

[TuggyNE]

”The Sipahi”: horse archer. Slightly less well-supported than lancer or hussar: the paladin, the premier mounted combat class, smites only with mêlée attacks, not ranged. However, the ranger would have excellent horse-archery potential if the animal companion could be a warhorse rather than a “standard” horse.

Swapping Ranger and Druid AnC progressions would make this still more practical. (Also note that halfling rangers with riding dogs work just fine out of the box if you want this.)

[Idhan]

Have you checked out the Path of War (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=296871) (ToB for Pathfinder) project currently being playtested? It's OGL and there are disciplines for almost all of these styles in it. Bringing it back to 3.5 if you don't want to make the jump to PF yet should be pretty easy.

Thanks for the info! Checking it out.

[Gwendol]

I think that the tactical feats to some extent developed some of the listed techniques, but that they are not nearly complete.

[Larkas]

I guess my conclusion is, there need to be better ways of keeping warhorses (or war-pegasuses, hippogriffs, or whatever) alive at high levels without paladin-hood, and slings need more support. However, I’m curious about your views. Which non-supernatural combat styles do you regard as adequately supported/undersupported/overpowered?

Eh, this (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) might be helpful.

[Idhan]

Eh, this (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) might be helpful.

Well, wild cohorts include light and heavy horses, but not light or heavy warhorses. I guess regular light and heavy horses are okay if you don't mind having to do a DC 20 ride check every turn of combat to keep your mount from freaking out.

[Idhan]

I'm thinking that a "moving throw" ability might be good to boost the abilities of thrown weapons. (For the "jinete" and "peltast" styles.) Not sure whether it should be a feat or an immediate an automatic ability. The basic idea: javelins go much slower than arrows, but are much heavier, so small relative speed increases matter more.

My attempt at the rules:

"If you are using a thrown weapon weighing at least 1 lb, you may attempt to make a running throw. To make a running throw, you must make a move equal to your speed directly toward the target of your throw. At the end of your movement, you make your attack. For every 40 feet of run speed you have, you gain +1 to damage and +10 to range increment. Thus, a dwarf fighter in light or medium armor, with a base speed of 20 and a run speed of 80, may make a running throw by moving 20 feet toward the target and adding +2 to damage and +20 feet to range increment. A lightly armored orc barbarian with the run feat, on the other hand, with a speed of 40 and a run speed of 200, may make a running throw by moving 40 feet toward the target and adding +5 to damage and +50 feet to the range increment.

If you are mounted, these rules also apply if your mount moves and you make a thrown weapon attack. However, because being in the saddle intrinsically limits mobility and ability to make a throw, you take a -1 penalty to damage and -10 feet to range increment (to a minimum of 10 feet) when making mounted thrown weapon attacks. As such, if you are mounted on a light warhorse (speed 60, run speed 300), you may make a running throw by your mount moving 60 feet toward the target and adding +6 to damage and +60 feet to range increment (+7/+70 feet from 300/40, -1/-10 feet for being mounted)."

Hmm... I don't know. Thoughts? Anyone know good mechanics for this?

[Gwendol]

Well, wild cohorts include light and heavy horses, but not light or heavy warhorses. I guess regular light and heavy horses are okay if you don't mind having to do a DC 20 ride check every turn of combat to keep your mount from freaking out.

Or you can spend the time and money to train your light/heavy horse for war, and gain the Warbeast template. If you are already spending a feat on advancing the animal, it could be worthwhile to spend some cash/time too.

[Larkas]

Or you can spend the time and money to train your light/heavy horse for war, and gain the Warbeast template. If you are already spending a feat on advancing the animal, it could be worthwhile to spend some cash/time too.

Pretty much this.

[Morty]

The "Aragorn" or "Witcher" style in which one uses a smaller sword two-handed and wears light armour is dreadfully under-represented in D&D, despite being a fantasy tradition.

[Larkas]

The "Aragorn" or "Witcher" style in which one uses a smaller sword two-handed and wears light armour is dreadfully under-represented in D&D, despite being a fantasy tradition.

Ehhhh... Swordsage with a Longsword?

[Gwendol]

Well, the barbarian kind of does that, but not really.

[Morty]

Ehhhh... Swordsage with a Longsword?

It works in a pinch, yes, but mostly because Swordsages are good enough to make most fighting styles work. I guess you even have a reason to use a longsword, since I don't think Swordsages are proficient with greatswords.


Well, the barbarian kind of does that, but not really.

Indeed, because it's always better to use the biggest weapon you can find.

In general, I think finesse fighting is pretty under-represented in D&D, unless. In core, the only option we get besides Rogue is the Duelist, which is kind of adding an insult to injury. It gets better in later books, but not by that much.

[Slipperychicken]

”The Sipahi”: horse archer. Slightly less well-supported than lancer or cuirassier: the paladin, the premier mounted combat class, smites only with mêlée attacks, not ranged. However, the ranger would have excellent horse-archery potential if the animal companion could be a warhorse rather than a “standard” horse.[/LIST]


1. Have any ranged build. No mounted combat feats required.

2. Put max ranks in Ride.

3. Take Wild Cohort for your favorite flavor of mount. Preferably fast and flying.

4. Full attack while riding.

5. Laugh at melee.

OPTIONAL: Be Small-sized and ride a Medium mount so you can fit inside buildings and dungeons.

[johnbragg]

Indeed, because it's always better to use the biggest weapon you can find.

Since the mechanics don't create any meaningful tradeoffs, yes.


In general, I think finesse fighting is pretty under-represented in D&D, unless. In core, the only option we get besides Rogue is the Duelist, which is kind of adding an insult to injury. It gets better in later books, but not by that much.

Proposed Feats: (Works in Progress)

Finesse Weapon Damage: Add your Dexterity bonus to damage with a finesse weapon instead of your Strength bonus. DM is advised to freely swing the ban-hammer for stacking with other feats, beginning with Power Attack. (I'm sure this isn't new at all.)

Be Awesome With Two Weapon Fighting
Requires Two Weapon Fighting, Combat Expertise
Benefit: When fighting with two weapons, you can use one of your weapons for a non-standard attack, while attacking normally with the other. For example, a 3rd level fighter with BAW-TWF fighting with sword and dagger could use his dagger for a Combat Expertise maneuver, taking an additional -3 to hit with the dagger and gaining a +3 dodge bonus to AC. At 6th level, he would gain a +5 AC bonus from his off-hand weapon while still making his sword attacks at +5, -1.

This also allows you to use Combat Expertise-dependent feats (Improved Feint, Improved Disarm, Improved Trip I suppose) with one weapon, while attacking normally with the other.

Normally: As far as I can tell, you can only make standard attacks with TWF. BO-ring.

Be Awesome With Weapon & Shield
Requires Shield Proficiency, Combat Expertise, BAB +2
Benefit: When fighting with a shield, you can take a -2 penalty to all attack rolls, and add your BAB to your shield bonus, up to +5. (As if you were wielding the shield as an off-hand weapon, had TWF and Be Awesome With TWF, and were using the shield for Combat Expertise.)

Fluff: For a novice melee combatant, that shield basically sits there and passively stops some attacks. For the warrior skilled and trained in the proper use of the shield, he is actively using the shield to block and parry attacks.

[Morty]

Finesse Weapon Damage: Add your Dexterity bonus to damage with a finesse weapon instead of your Strength bonus. DM is advised to freely swing the ban-hammer for stacking with other feats, beginning with Power Attack. (I'm sure this isn't new at all.)

I don't think such a feat stacking with Power Attack would break much. You're already spending a feat to add your dexterity to damage, and feats are precious.


Be Awesome With Two Weapon Fighting
Requires Two Weapon Fighting, Combat Expertise
Benefit: When fighting with two weapons, you can use one of your weapons for a non-standard attack, while attacking normally with the other. For example, a 3rd level fighter with BAW-TWF fighting with sword and dagger could use his dagger for a Combat Expertise maneuver, taking an additional -3 to hit with the dagger and gaining a +3 dodge bonus to AC. At 6th level, he would gain a +5 AC bonus from his off-hand weapon while still making his sword attacks at +5, -1.

This also allows you to use Combat Expertise-dependent feats (Improved Feint, Improved Disarm, Improved Trip I suppose) with one weapon, while attacking normally with the other.

Normally: As far as I can tell, you can only make standard attacks with TWF. BO-ring.

I would make it a feature of TWF, personally. Dual wielders are feat-starved as-is.

[johnbragg]

I don't think such a feat stacking with Power Attack would break much.

Maybe not, but it seems against the spirit of the thing--weapon finesse is like a singles-doubles hitter in baseball "I am so precise and elegant with my weapon that I can choose the most damaging spot!" while Power Attack is a home run hitter who strikes out a lot.


You're already spending a feat to add your dexterity to damage, and feats are precious.

Feats are precious, but less so for fighters. We just have to convince the players running the Belkars to just be straight fighters and take the feats. Meanwhile the rangers get to wildshape.

And I don't think the rapier-wielders will mind spending the feat to be able to dump strength (more).


I would make it a feature of TWF, personally. Dual wielders are feat-starved as-is.

Not if they're TWF-specializing fighters....(or at least not as much)

Maybe it should be rolled into Combat Expertise, though.

[Morty]

Maybe not, but it seems against the spirit of the thing--weapon finesse is like a singles-doubles hitter in baseball "I am so precise and elegant with my weapon that I can choose the most damaging spot!" while Power Attack is a home run hitter who strikes out a lot.

Eh. Power Attack is about sacrificing accuracy for damage. How the player describes is really up to them. I wouldn't disallow combining Power Attack with Weapon Finesse based on something like that.


Feats are precious, but less so for fighters. We just have to convince the players running the Belkars to just be straight fighters and take the feats. Meanwhile the rangers get to wildshape.

And I don't think the rapier-wielders will mind spending the feat to be able to dump strength (more).

If you're playing a Fighter, you've got other problems. Let them have their feats without burdening them with feat taxes. And I don't think making Two-Weapon rangers even more useless is the answer.


Not if they're TWF-specializing fighters....(or at least not as much)

Maybe it should be rolled into Combat Expertise, though.

See above regarding TWF-specializing fighters. They can spend those feat slots on other things.

[Telonius]

Heavy Infantry combat styles
greatsword, greataxe, etc). This one strikes me as being pretty well-supported.
"The Legionary": One-handed close-combat weapon (longsword, warhammer, etc), plus a shield. Once again, I think this is a reasonably well-supported combat style.

Light Infantry combat styles[LIST]
"The Archer": Bow and arrows. Fairly well-supported combat style. Ranger is specialist class.
"The Slinger": Sling and bullet user. Quite unsupported. There isn't even a rapid reload (sling) feat, although I suspect many DMs would allow it. Lack of range is another concern.



I would disagree at least two of these.

Legionary - Sword-and-Board is a notoriously under-powered strategy. It gets very little support.

Archer - especially absent magical aid - is not well supported either. Ranger is a "specialist" class that doesn't do much better than Fighter (which is not saying much) in terms of feats. The goodies it does get are spell-based (Hunter's Eye, etc).

Slinger - don't have the book on me at the moment, but doesn't Bloodstorm Blade function with slings?

[Slipperychicken]

Legionary - Sword-and-Board is a notoriously under-powered strategy. It gets very little support.


I think sword-and-board's weakness is just a symptom of AC scaling poorly. Sword-n-board is a perfectly valid decision at level 1, when those points of AC often make the difference between hit and miss, significantly reducing incoming damage.

If armor class scaled as easily or automatically as attack bonus, and using a shield still provided a significant addition to AC, then sword-n-board might remain valid.

[johnbragg]

I think sword-and-board's weakness is just a symptom of AC scaling poorly. Sword-n-board is a perfectly valid decision at level 1, when those points of AC often make the difference between hit and miss, significantly reducing incoming damage.

If armor class scaled as easily or automatically as attack bonus, and using a shield still provided a significant addition to AC, then sword-n-board might remain valid.

So "Be Awesome With Weapon And Shield" (-2 to attacks, add BAB to shield bonus, up to +5)? With "Be More Awesome...." (up to +10) and "Be Totally Awesome..." (no limit) as followup feats?

[JaronK]

I definitely want spear and shield to get more love. It's currently only barely doable (Shield and Pike Style) but needs a lot more to be viable.

My solution was always to turn the Shield and Pike Style feat into something that gets better with more fighter levels, adding in abilities like "if you hit with a shield bash, you can bull rush your opponent back and then make an attack of opportunity with your spear instead of following your opponent" and things like that.

JaronK

[limejuicepowder]

I think sword-and-board's weakness is just a symptom of AC scaling poorly. Sword-n-board is a perfectly valid decision at level 1, when those points of AC often make the difference between hit and miss, significantly reducing incoming damage.

If armor class scaled as easily or automatically as attack bonus, and using a shield still provided a significant addition to AC, then sword-n-board might remain valid.

AC scaling poorly is only half the problem; the other half is terrible damage. Not getting 1.5 to str or favorable power attack ratings hurts, really bad.

At level one, an 18 str dwarf fighter grabs a waraxe. He does an average of 9.5 damage per swing. Pretty decent, actually, since monster HP are so low. But by level 4 his only source of increased damage is (maybe) a +2 str bonus and a +1 weapon. If he power attacks for 4 (taking a -4 penalty to his attack rating), he's only doing 15 damage, average. That is utterly horrible.

[Idhan]

I looked up the warbeast template. I suppose that wild cohort + warbeast training solves most mount problems.

[Slipperychicken]

AC scaling poorly is only half the problem; the other half is terrible damage. Not getting 1.5 to str or favorable power attack ratings hurts, really bad.

At level one, an 18 str dwarf fighter grabs a waraxe. He does an average of 9.5 damage per swing. Pretty decent, actually, since monster HP are so low. But by level 4 his only source of increased damage is (maybe) a +2 str bonus and a +1 weapon. If he power attacks for 4 (taking a -4 penalty to his attack rating), he's only doing 15 damage, average. That is utterly horrible.

Power Attack is one of the things Pathfinder did pretty well, in terms of speeding up calculations (i.e. you don't need to spend 3 minutes figuring out how much you want to PA for) and seeming to balance the different fighting styles a little better.

Speaking of which, Pathfinder's Deadly Aim feat was crucial to making ranged combat viable. I definitely recommend back-porting it if your archers have damage problems.

@Slinger: Weren't range problems with the sling historical? It blew as an individual weapon and didn't have the bow's range, but it was cheap and didn't require much training to use, making it attractive for early armies looking to equip their skirmishers.

[Larkas]

@Slinger: Weren't range problems with the sling historical? It blew as an individual weapon and didn't have the bow's range, but it was cheap and didn't require much training to use, making it attractive for early armies looking to equip their skirmishers.

You're right in that it didn't have the bow's range, it might have hit even farther away. A little intro here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_(weapon)#Combat), and a very interesting video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGSsbCPeocU).

[JaronK]

@Slinger: Weren't range problems with the sling historical? It blew as an individual weapon and didn't have the bow's range, but it was cheap and didn't require much training to use, making it attractive for early armies looking to equip their skirmishers.

That's backwards, IIRC. The sling was hard to use and required a lot of training, making it attractive only to armies where the population already used them normally.

JaronK

[limejuicepowder]

Power Attack is one of the things Pathfinder did pretty well, in terms of speeding up calculations (i.e. you don't need to spend 3 minutes figuring out how much you want to PA for) and seeming to balance the different fighting styles a little better.


Is this meant to refute what I said....? I'm honestly confused. And yes, maybe pathfinder's power attack "balanced" the styles, but it did it by nerfing the crap out of the one thing that melee did well: damage.

"Oh sword and board does poor damage compared to THF? We'll just make THF do less damage then."