Pounce is Overrated

[GilesTheCleric]

I've been thinking about this recently. Is pounce actually worthwhile in real games? Where you're playing up until level 10-15, and you're not using an incredible build with braidblades or polymorphing into a Hydra?

Each iterative is an extra -5. Yes, AC doesn't scale all that quickly, but -5 isn't an insignificant decrease to your to-hit. Even if you're Shock Troopering away your attack penalties, trying to hit AC 20+ with only a +10 to-hit on your third iterative isn't exactly reliable. It seems to me that eschewing pounce and instead going more all-in on the ubercharger approach of a one-hit kill is the better choice (possibly with Cleave and a large reach area in addition).

Instead, I'm leaning toward thinking that pounce is best when using it in a similar fashion to its original use -- in conjunction with multiattack.

What do you all think?

[Venger]

I've been thinking about this recently. Is pounce actually worthwhile in real games? Where you're playing up until level 10-15, and you're not using an incredible build with braidblades or polymorphing into a Hydra?

Each iterative is an extra -5. Yes, AC doesn't scale all that quickly, but -5 isn't an insignificant decrease to your to-hit. Even if you're Shock Troopering away your attack penalties, trying to hit AC 20+ with only a +10 to-hit on your third iterative isn't exactly reliable. It seems to me that eschewing pounce and instead going more all-in on the ubercharger approach of a one-hit kill is the better choice (possibly with Cleave and a large reach area in addition).

Instead, I'm leaning toward thinking that pounce is best when using it in a similar fashion to its original use -- in conjunction with multiattack.

What do you all think?

Pounce is not only necessary, it, like darkstalker or weapon finesse, is a tax mundanes must pay to reach the bare minimum of competency.

When all you can do is beat enemies with a stick, things that curtail your ability to do that, like the system not allowing you by default to move and attack at the same time, really hamper your effectiveness in combat.

uberchargers are able to kill in one turn because they all have pounce. granted, many of them deal such large amounts of damage it might not be needed against henchmen characters, but to dispatch an equally CR-ed opponent, your iteratives are an important part of your basic combat strategy.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Your third iterative might miss, but your second is likely to hit, as are any natural weapons or extra attacks from things like Snap Kick or Whirling Frenzy. And don't forget, the charge itself is getting you a +2 bonus. If two attacks hit instead of one, you've doubled your damage for the round.

[noob]

Well with a single attack build what do you get over a pounce build?
The thing you gained is that you saved a 1 level dip in totem barbarian.
However that 1 level dip in totem barbarian did give other stuff.
The option for moving and attacking in the same round who allows the longest travel is charge.
Now let us say that you focused on getting a single strong attack.
At the end of the charge you kill your target but if you had pounce you could kill some bonus targets(not 100% sure but quite close)

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

You're essentially saying that full attacks aren't worthwhile, which is strange to me. It's quite common to get an extra manufactured weapon attack at full BaB; for instance, the most common way to get pounce is to dip Barbarian, and Spiritual Lion Totem works with Whirling Frenzy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/classFeatureVariants.htm). In that case, you're at least doubling your attacks when granting yourself the opportunity to full attack.

Of course, even if I disagree with that line of argument, I wouldn't want to play a meleer who relied on the charge action to full attack. The real drawback of charging is how restrictive it is in terms of movement and necessary conditions. Swift/free movement + full attack is far more flexible, even if it loses out in damage.

[lord_khaine]

I actually agree on this. Pounce is really overrated.
Now mark me, im not saying its not good. Just that its not as extremely good as people make it out to be. Especially not in the brachet of 4-13 where i believe most people play. And especially not in a world where other things also want to melee you.

I mean i can see its a lot more useful in some high OP hell where you only face spellcasters, and everyone attempts to kite you.
But at the same time its a lot less useful if your instead facing large hordes of weaker combatants. There Cleave might actually give you more attack over the duration of the combat.

[noob]

Pounce allows high speed but if you find a way to make a single movement action move you faster than a pouncing character and can still one shot stuff then you should probably use the movement action.
But if you invest more in speed you probably have an harder time doing good damage with a single attack.(unless using shenanigans with live spiders from a component pouch and the ability to move and get another attack when killing something but then at this time you can probably move at an infinite speed and have an infinity of attacks)
Well you can pounce without having a build centred on having a better power attack when charging: if you could murder stuff with a regular full round attack without pouncing then get pouncing you do not stop being able to murder stuff with a full round attack.
Also if you have a build that can pounce it do not magically stops you from getting out of your pocket a great hammer who gives cleave for killing hordes of creep.(cleave on a weapon is not much expensive)

[OldTrees1]

Standard Attack vs Full Attack (only attacks from BAB)
At BAB +6, a Full Attack nets you 16.7% to 100.% more expected hits depending on your Attack vs their AC. On average across the full Attack vs AC it is a 71.9% increase in hits. IF your first attack is within the RNG(you don't need the auto hit or bemoan the auto miss) then it is 52.4% more hits.



BAB
Range
Full Range Average
On the RNG Average


BAB +6
16.7%-100%
71.9%
52.4%


BAB +11
33.3%-200%
126%
82.6%


BAB +16
50.0%-300%
165%
103%



Remember this is before counting extra attacks at Full BAB and is measuring by number of hits so it should be accurate for both quantitative and qualitative aspects of attacks.

My conclusions from this data is that at BAB +6, being able to do 50% more stuff is really nice.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Depends. Mostly it depends on if you're using ToB. Because martial adepts do fine without pounce.

You can also build a Spring Attack/Bounding Assault/Rapid Blitz built, but that's a little feat intensive for most people.
Not only do you need Dodge and Mobility - two notorious trash feats - you also need three further feats just to get iteratives.
It doesn't stack with Haste/Whirling Frenzy, it doesn't work with TWF, it's lame and inferior all around.
It can still work fine if you go book diving to optimize the hell out of your damage, but that's just because statted enemies assume pretty low optimization. It's not actually equal to pouncing.

Note that you can build a single-attack build that will do fine at most tables, but you're doing it by cheesing the hell out of your damage and then just... neglecting to take pounce.
It's not actually a trade-off, because pouncers can do all that too. Pounce just comes in that cheap, useful combo package with Spirit Lion Barbarian, so there's really no reason not to.


Your third iterative might miss, but your second is likely to hit, as are any natural weapons or extra attacks from things like Snap Kick or Whirling Frenzy. And don't forget, the charge itself is getting you a +2 bonus. If two attacks hit instead of one, you've doubled your damage for the round.
Not only Whirling Frenzy - which you get pretty much free with the most common way to get pounce - Haste is also a pretty common buff.
I'd say nearly every group that includes a bard/wizard and at least one non-caster will use it. Because it's just that good.


I actually agree on this. Pounce is really overrated.
Now mark me, im not saying its not good. Just that its not as extremely good as people make it out to be. Especially not in the brachet of 4-13 where i believe most people play. And especially not in a world where other things also want to melee you.

I mean i can see its a lot more useful in some high OP hell where you only face spellcasters, and everyone attempts to kite you.
But at the same time its a lot less useful if your instead facing large hordes of weaker combatants. There Cleave might actually give you more attack over the duration of the combat.

A single-attack build with Cleave doesn't actually do anything that a pouncer wouldn't also do.
If you drop your target with your first attack you can make your other attacks against other targets in reach with no issue, without Cleave.
But you can also make your other attacks against your first target if it doesn't drop, where Cleave would be useless.

You also still end up standing in full-attack range. The only thing you're not up against compared to a pouncer is things that work specifically against charge. Those exist, but they're not exactly common.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

[...]things that work specifically against charge [... are] not exactly common.I agree that pounce is cheap, easy, and generally effective, but impediments to charging are annoyingly common. In other words, a GM can and will screw over a charger repeatedly, on accident; I know I have. Note:
You must have a clear path toward the opponent, and nothing can hinder your movement (such as difficult terrain or obstacles). Here’s what it means to have a clear path. First, you must move to the closest space from which you can attack the opponent. (If this space is occupied or otherwise blocked, you can’t charge.) Second, if any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement, or contains a creature (even an ally), you can’t charge. (Helpless creatures don’t stop a charge.)That's a lot that can go wrong, especially if you're ground-bound and not fighting on a featureless plane. The effective chargers I've seen relied on other forms of free/special movement for mobility and charging/pounce just as a damage multiplier.

[noob]

There is a lot less things that go wrong if you are flying and incorporeal(just remember to use ghost touch weapons).
Those two buffs are common place and quite good.
Also do not forget pounce have a low cost and it is one of the rare ways to get twice your movement speed and attack at the same time(and if you have swift action movement then it adds up) basically any time where you can charge you will be sad if you did not take pounce which needed only one barbarian level.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I agree that pounce is cheap, easy, and generally effective, but impediments to charging are annoyingly common

In other words, a GM can and will screw over a charger repeatedly, on accident; I know I have. Note:That's a lot that can go wrong, especially if you're ground-bound and not fighting on a featureless plane. The effective chargers I've seen relied on other forms of free/special movement for mobility and charging/pounce just as a damage multiplier.
Your chargers should maybe start building to charge then. Because getting around most of these is easy or even near-automatic for a charger.

Leap Attack already lets you largely ignore difficult terrain, and any charger will take it anyway.
There's also the Nimble Charge and Twisted Charge skill tricks that eliminate most of the rest of that list.
Not to mention that most people pick up flying as SOP anyway, which also eliminates most the problems.

Then there's Battle Jump (UE) which lets you treat any jump as a charge as long as you can jump high enough. It also doubles your damage again, just in case you needed more incentive to take it.

There's also tons of maneuvers for chargers, most of them low enough level that you can easily take them with Martial Study/Stance.
If you're not splashing some Warblade or Crusader anyway for whatever reason.

And all that is disregarding that you'll still do fine even when you can't charge, because pounce doesn't really cost you anything. That level of Barbarian is good on a melee build anyway.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Pounce is not overrated. It's a (boring?) ol' mainstay of optimized melee combat. Maybe Pounce does get recommended too easily, on only a cursory glance at the build under review. That's not because Pounce is overrated. That's because it's the most reliable recommendation to any melee build. Only after discarding Pounce do you look at alternatives.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Is it worthwhile? Yeah, probably.

Is it necessary? No, not really. It's a bit overrated actually.

Reaching adequate damage figures isn't difficult for a charger without pounce. A lot of the nuance and entertainment you'd otherwise see in combat kind of falls apart when the charger is basically a fireball that's a guaranteed kill to everything inside his, usually considerable, reach that's vulnerable to weapon damage.

To curb its over-prevalence, I nerfed the spirit lion totem by adding the requirement that the subject of the charge be flat-footed.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Is it necessary? No, not really. It's a bit overrated actually.
If it was really that overrated, you wouldn't have to nerf it to make it less prevalent: explaining alternatives would be enough :smallwink:.

[noob]

If you think it is overrated and not necessary why do you nerf it instead of removing all classes above T4.
If you want to nerf things you should nerf first things that are better than others like classes above T4 which are better than T4 classes.
Anyway nerfing spirit lion totem barbarian just means that people will try more to access polymorph and other broken stuff(like that magic item who gives you for free extra attacks at the end of a charge) to get the cool pounce or something equivalent.

[ngilop]

I am not going to speak on whether or no pounce is overrated ( it was a kinda thing pre 3rd ed for fighters anyways i.e. full attack after a move)

but I am probably the single worse optimizer on this entire website and the one time I got to play a level 20 fighter my Attack Bonus was +42, that's without short buff spells, but including all day buff spells.

so, even if you take the -15 penalty on your Fourth attack that still netting a +27 to attacks which mean you are probably going to auto hit. AC scales so terribly worse than attack bonus it is not funny.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Is it worthwhile? Yeah, probably.

Is it necessary? No, not really. It's a bit overrated actually.

Reaching adequate damage figures isn't difficult for a charger without pounce. A lot of the nuance and entertainment you'd otherwise see in combat kind of falls apart when the charger is basically a fireball that's a guaranteed kill to everything inside his, usually considerable, reach that's vulnerable to weapon damage.

To curb its over-prevalence, I nerfed the spirit lion totem by adding the requirement that the subject of the charge be flat-footed.

I think if anything i'd rather nerf the damage multiplicators that make charging so effective and keep pounce in.
You're just replacing the guaranteed kill fireball with a guaranteed kill orb of fire otherwise.

Which is why i'm generally not allowing my players to stack them all together, if they try.
Not quite a ban on anything, just on a case-by-case basis when i see a build that goes for all of them.

[Rerednaw]

Depends.

Which rules, supplements, environment, and most importantly, type of campaign?

If it is melee combat heavy and you can consistently get that charge...then it is worth it mathematically. If it's a ranged and caster heavy environment with difficult terrain and no clear lanes....then not so much.

Also natural attackers LOVE pounce since most or all of their attacks are at full BAB. Ask that Fleshraker Druid what he thinks about pounce. Or the warshaper octakong with 8 claw / slam attacks for 12d6 each.

Of course with Tome of Battle...you may be better off during that first round doing a move and attack to get into position...AND then using White Raven Tactics on yourself to get that full attack right after. Not Pounce...but arguably better if you are using manufactured and not natural attacks.

That said I can say that rarely get to use Pounce in my current high lethality non-stop endless combat game. The DM makes liberal use of difficult, blocking, or obscured terrain that doesn't impair his mobs but does limit the PCs.

[GilesTheCleric]

Standard Attack vs Full Attack (only attacks from BAB)
At BAB +6, a Full Attack nets you 16.7% to 100.% more expected hits depending on your Attack vs their AC. On average across the full Attack vs AC it is a 71.9% increase in hits. IF your first attack is within the RNG(you don't need the auto hit or bemoan the auto miss) then it is 52.4% more hits.



BAB
Range
Full Range Average
On the RNG Average


BAB +6
16.7%-100%
71.9%
52.4%


BAB +11
33.3%-200%
126%
82.6%


BAB +16
50.0%-300%
165%
103%



Remember this is before counting extra attacks at Full BAB and is measuring by number of hits so it should be accurate for both quantitative and qualitative aspects of attacks.

My conclusions from this data is that at BAB +6, being able to do 50% more stuff is really nice.

This is a great point -- as long as to-hit is high enough, pounce does guarantee more damage over the long run.

But, it does assume two things -- that you're getting enough to-hit in order to generate the chart, and that those resources spent on getting the to-hit aren't greater than what you could have otherwise spent on building more into damage and focusing on just the first (and maybe second) iterative. [Edit: And, it is a long-term approach. I personally prefer short-term consistency when I'm playing, though I do still value the long-term average]

ngilop, you mention your low-op to-hit; popping open my monster touch AC vs normal AC graph shows me that at CR18+, regular AC gets up to about 33 at maximum, and averages around 30. So your third iterative is coming around 35% accuracy. That's not bad. Do you mind sharing your relevant build/ items if you have them handy? I'd like to see how much more effort it would take to get the third iterative up to the first standard deviation (70% -- a +34 on the final iterative).

[Gruftzwerg]

I can get why you might think that "pounce is overrated".

I had a similar opinion over a long time. Cause imho in most fights you don't get more than 1-2 opportunities to charge. And if you get ambushed, maybe even none.

On the other hand, charge (and Power Attack Charge) multiplier are the biggest dmg boost melees can get. And having more of those high damaging attacks can be appealing.

That's why I added a Drunken Master 2 dip into my last build and made it an unarmed charger. The Stagger ability lets you freely change directions while charging (run back & forth or make a flying looping).
This turns Pounce into a reliable "every turn" damage source and you get the multipliers on all attacks.

But without that (Stagger), I can definitively feel what you mean. Unless you have a really big PC party (8+) most encounters won't have more 2-3 camps (1 melee + 1-2 ranged).
Which end in 0-3 charges which can be sometimes really annoying. You wait for the opportunity to pull out your "pewpew"-dmg and wait and wait and.. oh fights over.

[OldTrees1]

This is a great point -- as long as to-hit is high enough, pounce does guarantee more damage over the long run.

But, it does assume two things -- that you're getting enough to-hit in order to generate the chart, and that those resources spent on getting the to-hit aren't greater than what you could have otherwise spent on building more into damage and focusing on just the first (and maybe second) iterative. [Edit: And, it is a long-term approach. I personally prefer short-term consistency when I'm playing, though I do still value the long-term average]

1) What do you mean by "that you are getting enough to-hit in order to generate the chart"? I ran from your 1st attack only hitting on a 20 thru your last attack hitting on anything but a 1. There is no to-hit value that was missing.

If you are concerned about your to-hit, the "on the RNG average" was only considering the subset from only hitting on a 20 with your 1st attack thru only missing on a 1 with your 1st attack.

2) Since I am not presuming to-hit value, I cannot be forgetting to consider trades between hit chance and effect(damage or otherwise).

Regardless of your to-hit or how much to-hit you trade for something else, a full attack gives you more expected hits than a single attack (and my table tells you how much).

3) Could you explain what you mean by short term and long term in this context?

[Vaz]

Level 12 is my favourite level for playing. It's not too high level, allows 7th level spells for Sorcerers, and allows players to pull some unique tricks, as well having +3 to a stat from leveling. many games I run use this as the sweet spot. It seems to fit the OP's post, so I'll make some comments about that. The one thing that annoys me about that is Duskblades only come online at 13th level, potentially which brings in 8th level spells, which is annoying to deal with.

Now, lets look at what you can have at that stage as a melee character.

The Fighter is the most simple one. It has a +12 BAB. As a Fighter, and as someone who is charging, you're going to want a strength of 18, and likely added to strength. This gives you a Strength of 21. A +4 Item is possible, as is a +1 magic weapon. As many feat chains require Weapon Focus, let's say you get a +1 from that. This means you have a grand total to hit of 23 to hit. CR12 opponents from the Monster Manual include Frost Worm (AC18), Leonal (AC27), Kolyarut (AC27), Kraken (AC20), Purple Worm (AC19), Roper (AC24), for an average AC of 23 (rounding up) for CR12 opponents. On a charge, unless you roll a natural 1, you automatically hit with your first; your next attacks are at +20 and +15, if you had pounce. It could be even higher if you have a Wizard Greater Magic Weapon'ing you, if you're Enlarged, or any other pretty standard optimization targets.

You have a 5% Chance of missing the first attack, 10% Chance of Missing the second, and a 35% Chance of Missing the Third. With just one attack, you have a 95% Chance of hitting once. With Pounce, you have a 99.99825% Chance of hitting at least once. To hit with all three, you have a ~56% chance. Better than a coin toss to triple your damage for no penalty.

As for your damage with that, you're a Greatsword Fighter, likely with a +3 possible equivalent weapon for a 25% WBL equivalent item; so let's call it a Flaming Keen Weapon because that's not optimized - it's now a 17-20 +1 weapon, doing 2d6 damage, for an average of 19.5 damage on each hit. You've gone from dealing 19.5 damage to 58.5 damage on a coin toss, or a 90% chance to double your damage to 39.

That's not even optimizing anything; it's the worst class in the game, using a Magic Weapon that only uses a quarter of their Wealth By Level, with a single specific feat to increase their to-hit, which is kind of what you expect from anyone brand new to the game.

When people become more adept at optimizing, they can obviously make that one attack do more damage than what that Big Stupid "Baby's First Character" Fighter can do (60 damage from a charge in a round is pretty poor, even if in the given circumstances of the listed monsters (average HP 155 rounding up) has done ~40% of the target's HP, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't benefit from having additional attacks against it; although that does lead to circumstances of 1-shotting the opposing creature. But then that's a difference between one-shotting said creature, and possibly taking attacks from it.

[Telok]

I am not going to speak on whether or no pounce is overrated ( it was a kinda thing pre 3rd ed for fighters anyways i.e. full attack after a move)

but I am probably the single worse optimizer on this entire website and the one time I got to play a level 20 fighter my Attack Bonus was +42, that's without short buff spells, but including all day buff spells.

so, even if you take the -15 penalty on your Fourth attack that still netting a +27 to attacks which mean you are probably going to auto hit. AC scales so terribly worse than attack bonus it is not funny.
+42 may be a bit low.

Last game I was in the party was levels 13 and 14. As the wizard and spending lots of money on non-gear stuff my character was the lowest AC at ~30 +Displacement & immediate counters. The primary melee guys were running mid 30s and the cleric was mid 30s to mid 40s depending on buffs. The weakest mooks were were fighting were AC 27, average AC was usually low 30s, and the highest we fought was a 39 AC at that point. Given another five levels I'm pretty sure we would have had another 7 or 8 AC on everything at the minimum.

But we also make pretty heavy use of ToB so characters don't need to sink five feats and three levels of dips in order to have competent melee combatants.

[GilesTheCleric]

1) What do you mean by "that you are getting enough to-hit in order to generate the chart"? I ran from your 1st attack only hitting on a 20 thru your last attack hitting on anything but a 1. There is no to-hit value that was missing.

If you are concerned about your to-hit, the "on the RNG average" was only considering the subset from only hitting on a 20 with your 1st attack thru only missing on a 1 with your 1st attack.

2) Since I am not presuming to-hit value, I cannot be forgetting to consider trades between hit chance and effect(damage or otherwise).

Regardless of your to-hit or how much to-hit you trade for something else, a full attack gives you more expected hits than a single attack (and my table tells you how much).

3) Could you explain what you mean by short term and long term in this context?

My apologies for misinterpreting the chart. I took "RNG range" to mean "only values for which your attack can hit".

By short term, I mean for small sample sizes. Eg. in the short term, lower to-hit will produce wild spikes of damage (eg. 35% to-hit on the final iterative) when those lucky blows land. I often prefer to have more consistent damage (eg. 70%+ to-hit on final iterative), even if that ends up being less damage over the longer term (eg. 35% to land 100 damage vs 70% to land 40 damage).

[Eldariel]

Remember magical bonus attacks too: be it Haste, Boots of Speed, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful or whatever, extra attacks make Pounce incredibly powerful.

[gooddragon1]

All this is precisely why several of my recent homebrew classes have had a way to concentrate more punch into a single attack. It's also why maneuvers like diamond nightmare blade and strike of perfect clarity are a good thing. Move and make a single attack.

[Florian]

Is pounce actually worthwhile in real games?

Define "real game". I´m a lazy gm and run modules straight from the book with practically no changes.
That means that most (battle-)maps are rather on the small side, very cluttered, a lot of cover and difficult terrain. So a lot of builds or options that´re rated as being superior in theory are not as powerful, like a charger standing in the way of BFC/AoE, archers standing too close to melee and so on.

[Vaz]

+42 may be a bit low.

Last game I was in the party was levels 13 and 14. As the wizard and spending lots of money on non-gear stuff my character was the lowest AC at ~30 +Displacement & immediate counters. The primary melee guys were running mid 30s and the cleric was mid 30s to mid 40s depending on buffs. The weakest mooks were were fighting were AC 27, average AC was usually low 30s, and the highest we fought was a 39 AC at that point. Given another five levels I'm pretty sure we would have had another 7 or 8 AC on everything at the minimum.

But we also make pretty heavy use of ToB so characters don't need to sink five feats and three levels of dips in order to have competent melee combatants.

*Golf Clap*

Relevant how? I can create an Ardent with a +NI Cha bonus to hit with Whirling Blade as my Go-To attack, but as long as my DM is throwing monsters at me with AC(NI+10), everything's pretty balanced (in regards to AC). It literally makes no difference what YOUR to hit bonus is, provided that the rest of the party can keep up, and that depends on how good at optimizing your characters you are. I DM for a wide range of player abilities, and have a group with a rather good grasp of optimization, and another group who basically still think being a Wizard is about throwing Fireballs and that the Cleric is there to heal. *Shock horror* It's not optimized, but I'm not throwing tinkered monsters at them either because I can throw mostly level appropriate challenges at the players without being too unduly worried about wiping them out.

I'm the DM, spelt G-O-D. I can decide exactly how difficult the monsters are that you face, and the higher you optimize, the higher I can optimize the monsters, without needing to follow the same rules you do. It's not penalizing you, it's literally giving you something you can fight against. If it means that your character outclasses the party, rest assured that I'll be having a word with you about how you should probably either tone it down, or have a word with the party about scaling up in fight difficulty without forcing them to go through some Dark Souls-esque bull**** just because you wanted to stroke yourself against someone who really doesn't give a damn about how good your attack bonus or DC is. There's got to be some time when you get bored of Circle Magic'ing CL40 Blasphemy's at anything you face, for example.

[OldTrees1]

My apologies for misinterpreting the chart. I took "RNG range" to mean "only values for which your attack can hit".

The first 2 columns cover the range of "attack bonus + 20 = AC" (aka 1st attack needs a 20) thru "attack bonus - 15 + 2 = AC" (aka the 4th attack only misses on a 1).

The final column covers the smaller, but often more realistic range of "attack bonus + 20 = AC" (aka 1st attack needs a 20) thru "attack bonus + 2 = AC" (aka the 1st attack only misses on a 1).

I averaged the added hits across those 2 ranges so that I would have some idea of knowing the expected value of Pounce before knowing the AC of my foe.


By short term, I mean for small sample sizes. Eg. in the short term, lower to-hit will produce wild spikes of damage (eg. 35% to-hit on the final iterative) when those lucky blows land. I often prefer to have more consistent damage (eg. 70%+ to-hit on final iterative), even if that ends up being less damage over the longer term (eg. 35% to land 100 damage vs 70% to land 40 damage).

Pounce does not affect your to-hit. Pounce merely grants you free iterative attacks in comparison to Charge. Think of it as move + Standard Attack vs move + Full Attack. Full Attack is strictly better than Standard Attack ignoring the action cost.

Let's say you have +6 BAB, your 1st attack has 70% chance of landing, and your attack generally does 40 damage.
Charge: 70% chance of 40 damage
Pounce: 70% chance of 40 damage + 45% of an additional 40 damage.

If you had +16 BAB:
Pounce: 70% chance of 40 damage + 45% of an additional 40 damage + 20% chance of an additional 40 damage + 5% of an additional 40 damage.

[Fizban]

I've been thinking about this recently. Is pounce actually worthwhile in real games? Where you're playing up until level 10-15, and you're not using an incredible build with braidblades or polymorphing into a Hydra?

Each iterative is an extra -5. Yes, AC doesn't scale all that quickly, but -5 isn't an insignificant decrease to your to-hit. Even if you're Shock Troopering away your attack penalties, trying to hit AC 20+ with only a +10 to-hit on your third iterative isn't exactly reliable. It seems to me that eschewing pounce and instead going more all-in on the ubercharger approach of a one-hit kill is the better choice (possibly with Cleave and a large reach area in addition).
Obviously it's more worthwhile to have it than not, the question is how much you're paying for it. When omgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce is allowed, the cost is so low there's no reason not to have it. When you actually have to pay for it via power points, spell slots, shapeshifting, feat trees and restrictions, a prestige class, or a 5th level maneuver, you need to compare to how much you're getting out of it.

With just iterative attacks, you don't get much, but once again the "assumed optimization" is that anyone who's anyone has a haste item and/or flurry ability, giving them 2+ attacks before the iterative penalty even without natural weapons. If you don't have those things, then paying for pounce probably isn't worth it unless you fight on flat fields every single fight, but if bbq pounce is available then there remains little reason not to have it.

Instead, I'm leaning toward thinking that pounce is best when using it in a similar fashion to its original use -- in conjunction with multiattack.
Pounce never should have been applied the way people want it to be to begin with. It's an animal/monster ability meant to simulate jumping into the air and landing with all natural weapons on the target (the 3.0 version specifically said "if it leaps upon a foe" even). Poucing with multiple wielded weapons as done with with Two-Weapon Pounce makes perfect sense, and some allowances can be made for magically assisted versions (Lion's Charge/Psionic Lion's Charge), or other limitations (Snow-Tiger Berserker does allow iterative attacks, but only with a light weapon), but let's be honest.

The only reason Pounce is "required" is because of two things: the idea that you can make an item granting permanent Lion's Charge by shouting about the magic item formulas which popularized the idea, and the fact that some utter moron put Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian in Complete Champion (along with Travel Devotion), most likely to appease said people convinced that this obvious physiology based monster ability was required to meet mechanical optimization standards, which aren't actually standards.

There is a reason you have to stand in place to full attack. There is supposed to be a tradeoff between getting the first attack, and being able to respond with a full attack after letting your foe strike first. There's a whole interplay of reach weapons, readying against a charge, and just plain full defense options. Pounce is a special animal/monster ability that makes those monsters different to fight than a normal person. It is not, and never was supposed to be something PCs just had all the time, and the idea that it's "required" in any way is so laughable I don't even, but here we are. Only in char-op world where any character that doesn't solo-1-round things equal to or stronger than themselves is a failure, is pounce required.

As for my response, I just straight ban omgSLTBbbq pounce (and nerf Travel Devotion to a single move instead of a full freaking minute of them). I have no problem with a character that actually invests in any of the myriad other sources of moving full attacks, just this one insanely stupid ACF (and mildly crazed feat). As noted, there are plenty of ways to make single attacks useful: Shock Trooper (heedless charge) isn't even all that crazy when it's actually restricted to a single attack, same with Valorous weapons, ToB is a thing, and so on.

[noob]

No you do not need to use the custom magic items formula:in the adventurous codex there is leopard claws(spiked gauntlets) which gives a full round attack with them at the end of a charge(and it is not said that it replace the attack so you make an attack with your normal weapon then do a full round attack with the leopard claws)
So now can you tell my why would you not buy a 40000 gp item who gives a full round attack at the end of a charge if you have the budget after getting the needed stuff(protection against death, freedom of movement, flight, and a dozen of mandatory stuff to get)
Basically if the totem barbarian with pounce is removed this item becomes much more interesting: it gives a power that would cost you multiple class levels otherwise.

[Dagroth]

Obviously it's more worthwhile to have it than not, the question is how much you're paying for it. When omgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce is allowed, the cost is so low there's no reason not to have it. When you actually have to pay for it via power points, spell slots, shapeshifting, feat trees and restrictions, a prestige class, or a 5th level maneuver, you need to compare to how much you're getting out of it.

With just iterative attacks, you don't get much, but once again the "assumed optimization" is that anyone who's anyone has a haste item and/or flurry ability, giving them 2+ attacks before the iterative penalty even without natural weapons. If you don't have those things, then paying for pounce probably isn't worth it unless you fight on flat fields every single fight, but if bbq pounce is available then there remains little reason not to have it.

Pounce never should have been applied the way people want it to be to begin with. It's an animal/monster ability meant to simulate jumping into the air and landing with all natural weapons on the target (the 3.0 version specifically said "if it leaps upon a foe" even). Poucing with multiple wielded weapons as done with with Two-Weapon Pounce makes perfect sense, and some allowances can be made for magically assisted versions (Lion's Charge/Psionic Lion's Charge), or other limitations (Snow-Tiger Berserker does allow iterative attacks, but only with a light weapon), but let's be honest.

The only reason Pounce is "required" is because of two things: the idea that you can make an item granting permanent Lion's Charge by shouting about the magic item formulas which popularized the idea, and the fact that some utter moron put Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian in Complete Champion (along with Travel Devotion), most likely to appease said people convinced that this obvious physiology based monster ability was required to meet mechanical optimization standards, which aren't actually standards.

There is a reason you have to stand in place to full attack. There is supposed to be a tradeoff between getting the first attack, and being able to respond with a full attack after letting your foe strike first. There's a whole interplay of reach weapons, readying against a charge, and just plain full defense options. Pounce is a special animal/monster ability that makes those monsters different to fight than a normal person. It is not, and never was supposed to be something PCs just had all the time, and the idea that it's "required" in any way is so laughable I don't even, but here we are. Only in char-op world where any character that doesn't solo-1-round things equal to or stronger than themselves is a failure, is pounce required.

As for my response, I just straight ban omgSLTBbbq pounce (and nerf Travel Devotion to a single move instead of a full freaking minute of them). I have no problem with a character that actually invests in any of the myriad other sources of moving full attacks, just this one insanely stupid ACF (and mildly crazed feat). As noted, there are plenty of ways to make single attacks useful: Shock Trooper (heedless charge) isn't even all that crazy when it's actually restricted to a single attack, same with Valorous weapons, ToB is a thing, and so on.

I agree completely with this. Especially the section I bolded.

[Manyasone]

I agree completely with this. Especially the section I bolded.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who agrees with this... everything, really.
Plenty of interesting warriors can do without this. The single charging, shock trooping leap attacker will suffice in most printed adventures. The inevitable nightmare is a single attack monster, as well as the dream blade. None of the above two use pounce and are brutally efficient

[noob]

Well they could get pounce just by buying an item from the adventurous codex.
So while it is not in the build they can get it with ease.

[Eldariel]

The only reason Pounce is "required" is because of two things: the idea that you can make an item granting permanent Lion's Charge by shouting about the magic item formulas which popularized the idea, and the fact that some utter moron put Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian in Complete Champion (along with Travel Devotion), most likely to appease said people convinced that this obvious physiology based monster ability was required to meet mechanical optimization standards, which aren't actually standards.

There is a reason you have to stand in place to full attack. There is supposed to be a tradeoff between getting the first attack, and being able to respond with a full attack after letting your foe strike first. There's a whole interplay of reach weapons, readying against a charge, and just plain full defense options. Pounce is a special animal/monster ability that makes those monsters different to fight than a normal person. It is not, and never was supposed to be something PCs just had all the time, and the idea that it's "required" in any way is so laughable I don't even, but here we are. Only in char-op world where any character that doesn't solo-1-round things equal to or stronger than themselves is a failure, is pounce required.

This is absolutely retarded though. The fact that single attack does not improve with levels or spells while full attack does, to the point that full attack is always superior on high levels. Ironically for the first 5 levels there's no tradeoff whatsoever. Take two flat Warrior 20s, the one who attacks first basically always loses. -this is because the whole concept of "single attack" is absurd and should burn horribly in a fire. Full attack and single attack should scale evenly, or even better, there should only be full attack if the system were to make sense. As it stands, two Warrior 20s are best off in a stand-off using bows since attacking the other in melee is basically a death sentence unless you have mounted charge multipliers. Walking up to someone and hitting them with a sword works splendidly early on and autoloses the fight between experienced warriors - where's the logic?

It doesn't even stand up in the melee vs. range/magic comparison; melee has to be faster than the two since it's inherently gimped in terms of reach and scope, but full attack makes efficient melee as slow as ranged combat and slower than casting for no reason. If one were to penalize someone for movement, logically it would first be the casters, then the ranged types and last the melee types. And if you had to penalize melee types for moving, it should be a logical, systematic penalty like a flat penalty to hit, not some arbitrary "No penalty levels 1-5, huge penalty levels 16-20"-kinda deal.

Pounce is a bandaid fix but at least it somewhat addresses this stupidity instead of letting idiotic failures of rules run amok freely in an otherwise decently designed game. Honestly, one of the greatest contributions of ToB is to at least somewhat free the game up from the stranglehold of full attack. There's a reason other D&D editions and basically all other games lack the concept: it adds little to the game and causes a lot of issues. 3.5 is a much better game with the rule fully removed.

Reach weapons are godlike in the current guise of the game because of how buggy the AoO system is (turns are frozen so you can just walk around someone without reach even though in game time they'd have no trouble blocking you and getting past someone should logically be a complex endeavour) - there's literally no reason to use anything else. +2 damage from Greatsword vs. Guisarme isn't nearly worth the movement restrictions/extra attacks even a naked Guisarme with no feats or anything gives you, let alone if you build for AoOs.

Melee combat is quite possibly one of the worst designed aspects of 3.5; everything from random 2x Lance bonus on Mounted Charge to random instagib 4x crits to single attack/full attack/readied attack discrepancy, dedicated melee classes getting no meaningful bonuses over everyone else - while everything else in the game is reasonably laid out, the melee combat system is just horrid and could afford to burn horribly in a fire.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The point isn't that it's required. It's not, though the (non-ToB) melee builds it doesn't improve are vanishingly small.

It's just so cheap and easy to get that there's really no reason not to. There's very little reason for (non-ToB) melee characters to stay single-classed, and a lot of reasons to multiclass.
You'd benefit from taking that level of Barbarian anyway just for Whirling Frenzy. Or the extra hp and extra saves. Trading 10ft of movement speed for pounce is a no-brainer.

The main problem isn't that pounce is too good, it's that there's no alternative that provides even near-equal value for the investment required.
It synergizes with the things any THFer takes anyway, it comes in a package with more things you want and all it costs you is a 1 level dip.


If you want to provide alternatives to get more varied melee builds in your game (aside from allowing ToB) you should remove the Dodge & Mobility prereq from Spring Attack and lower the BAB requirements for Bounding Assault and Rapid Blitz. Or condense them into Spring Attack entirely.

[Fizban]

This is absolutely retarded though. The fact that single attack does not improve with levels or spells while full attack does, to the point that full attack is always superior on high levels.
That's the point?

Ironically for the first 5 levels there's no tradeoff whatsoever.
Unless you have TWF, or Rapid Shot, or flurry, or natural weapons, and then the reach weapons that change the dynamic available at 1st level.

Take two flat Warrior 20s, the one who attacks first basically always loses. -this is because the whole concept of "single attack" is absurd and should burn horribly in a fire.
Or is it because the whole concept of "guy who attacks first wins" is absurd and should die in a fire? I can't think of a single example in media of two skilled guys who squared off and didn't try to get the other guy to attack first. Because getting the other guy to attack first and leave himself open to your counter is play #1. Especially for adventurers who fight as a group with an assortment of ranged attacks and healing so they can force the enemy to come to them and heal off the damage from that first attack. Which is why some monsters have pounce. None of which suggests PCs should have it.

Move+attacking first is for when you have the drop on someone and/or they're no good at fighting compared to you, not for when they know what they're doing and know you're there.

Walking up to someone and hitting them with a sword works splendidly early on and autoloses the fight between experienced warriors - where's the logic?
The logic is that noobs don't have the skill to take advantage of that initial opening (because they gain no advantage from full attack), so they are governed entirely by luck, while a skilled warrior is more complicated than w+m1.

Reach weapons are godlike in the current guise of the game because of how buggy the AoO system is (turns are frozen so you can just walk around someone without reach even though in game time they'd have no trouble blocking you and getting past someone should logically be a complex endeavour) - there's literally no reason to use anything else. +2 damage from Greatsword vs. Guisarme isn't nearly worth the movement restrictions/extra attacks even a naked Guisarme with no feats or anything gives you, let alone if you build for AoOs.
And yet damage obsessed people keep using non-reach weapons. The problem with the AoO system isn't that you can walk around people too easy, it's that so much AoO stuff has been printed stacking it makes you more powerful outside your turn than in it.

Melee combat is quite possibly one of the worst designed aspects of 3.5; everything from random 2x Lance bonus on Mounted Charge to random instagib 4x crits to single attack/full attack/readied attack discrepancy, dedicated melee classes getting no meaningful bonuses over everyone else - while everything else in the game is reasonably laid out, the melee combat system is just horrid and could afford to burn horribly in a fire.
I believe the opposite is true: Melee combat is quite possibly the only aspect of 3.0 that had any intentional design effort put into it. Weapons have meaningful differences, there are tactical tradeoffs between acting immediately and waiting for the opportune moment, dedicated melee classes get meaningful bonuses over everyone else (yo, the enitre BAB/HD/rage/bonus feat system called)- while everything else in the game is arbitrary and just happens with little or no interaction.

3.5 obviously had significantly more evolution towards the state that allowed pounce on PCs in the first place, and it's no surprise that people who demand a higher power game state with all that later content will find the original combat rules written for 3.0 underpowered compared to rules that stopped caring about that balance. Though I will point out that the combat rules never stopped caring, as even Tome of Battle places pounce as a 5th level maneuver, with all the restrictions of being a maneuver. It is only spells (which have essentially always been written in their own little vacuums, yet still have actual limits) and those two Complete Champion elements (from one of the two late 3.5 Complete books that just said "lol screw balance" on half their stuff), which thought move+full attack should be easy.

[Aotrs Commander]

Pounce is extremely good when combined with TWF (or anything that allows you multiple attacks) and Shock Trooper (especially if your house rules always give TWF full Str bonus); which is monster aside, where I have exclusively seen in on PCs (barbarians, often with a fighter dip for feat - though now I've switched us over to a PF feat progression, you might be able to do it with straight barb).

Otherwise, it's nice, but not stellar.

[Eldariel]

That's the point?

That initiating melee is a bad idea? It should be net neutral at worst; winning initiative and moving in being punished is asinine.


Unless you have TWF, or Rapid Shot, or flurry, or natural weapons, and then the reach weapons that change the dynamic available at 1st level.

THF is the best melee option. And that's even more dumb: why is a THF level 1 not punished but a TWF level 1 is? Or natural weapon users.


Or is it because the whole concept of "guy who attacks first wins" is absurd and should die in a fire? I can't think of a single example in media of two skilled guys who squared off and didn't try to get the other guy to attack first. Because getting the other guy to attack first and leave himself open to your counter is play #1. Especially for adventurers who fight as a group with an assortment of ranged attacks and healing so they can force the enemy to come to them and heal off the damage from that first attack. Which is why some monsters have pounce. None of which suggests PCs should have it.

Some monsters have Pounce because they're felines and that's how felines fight. PCs have pounce for playability/balance reasons, so as to not punish the weakest role in the game further. It's bad enough that Clerics fight way better than Barbarians if they want to, at least let the Barbarians move and fight.


Move+attacking first is for when you have the drop on someone and/or they're no good at fighting compared to you, not for when they know what they're doing and know you're there.

That's called "engaging the enemy". Incidentally, readied actions suck because you only get one attack as does starting a fight leading to stupid standoffs instead of a neutral engagement.


The logic is that noobs don't have the skill to take advantage of that initial opening (because they gain no advantage from full attack), so they are governed entirely by luck, while a skilled warrior is more complicated than w+m1.

There's nothing complicated to it, noob THFers win while starting, rest lose. The fact that you get 1-4 attacks without moving as well as all extras, while exactly 1 without moving has no logic.


And yet damage obsessed people keep using non-reach weapons. The problem with the AoO system isn't that you can walk around people too easy, it's that so much AoO stuff has been printed stacking it makes you more powerful outside your turn than in it.

Fools are fools. That does not pertain to the balance of the system.


I believe the opposite is true: Melee combat is quite possibly the only aspect of 3.0 that had any intentional design effort put into it. Weapons have meaningful differences, there are tactical tradeoffs between acting immediately and waiting for the opportune moment, dedicated melee classes get meaningful bonuses over everyone else (yo, the enitre BAB/HD/rage/bonus feat system called)- while everything else in the game is arbitrary and just happens with little or no interaction.

Melee combat balance was attempted but they completely ****ed it up. They also forgot to add interaction to the other combat styles.


3.5 obviously had significantly more evolution towards the state that allowed pounce on PCs in the first place, and it's no surprise that people who demand a higher power game state with all that later content will find the original combat rules written for 3.0 underpowered compared to rules that stopped caring about that balance. Though I will point out that the combat rules never stopped caring, as even Tome of Battle places pounce as a 5th level maneuver, with all the restrictions of being a maneuver. It is only spells (which have essentially always been written in their own little vacuums, yet still have actual limits) and those two Complete Champion elements (from one of the two late 3.5 Complete books that just said "lol screw balance" on half their stuff), which thought move+full attack should be easy.

Frankly, you can just allow full attack as a standard action without breaking anything. And latter Completes did have a lot of OP stuff but they also tried to mostly just bring non-casters a bit more up to par so they could at least pretend to have a purpose.

[Gruftzwerg]

Pounce is a special animal/monster ability that makes those monsters different to fight than a normal person. It is not, and never was supposed to be something PCs just had all the time, and the idea that it's "required" in any way is so laughable I don't even, but here we are. Only in char-op world where any character that doesn't solo-1-round things equal to or stronger than themselves is a failure, is pounce required.

As for my response, I just straight ban omgSLTBbbq pounce (and nerf Travel Devotion to a single move instead of a full freaking minute of them). I have no problem with a character that actually invests in any of the myriad other sources of moving full attacks, just this one insanely stupid ACF (and mildly crazed feat). As noted, there are plenty of ways to make single attacks useful: Shock Trooper (heedless charge) isn't even all that crazy when it's actually restricted to a single attack, same with Valorous weapons, ToB is a thing, and so on.

can't really share your opinion. I can see what you mean, but.. :

- we are talking about lvls where the caster can cast "SaveOrSuck/Die"-Spells since... um.. I guess 2-4 lvls.
- and that mundane melees lack any other decent options. Mundane melee chars can solve a combat encounter just only with pure damage and don't have any other mechanics at hand (with a few laughable exceptions compared to full casters).

I hope you are restricting magic power as hard as possible, to justify that you banned the only way where melee may get the chance of killing 1+ enemy/action.

I get your argumentation that is wasn't really meant for PCs. But it's the sole goodie for most Barbs/melee can get. So unless you cut spellpower at least in half, it's a terrible houserule IMHO -.-

[Deeds]

Pounce is overrated in our circle. We rarely make it to level 6 let alone level 11 where the 3rd attack comes online.

[Pex]

Pounce is overrated because moving is overrated. Yes, it is an unfortunate thing that if you have multiple attacks and move more than a 5 ft step you don't get all your attacks. Pounce is certainly a nice thing to have. However, you're not always moving. It is not unheard of for your character to remain where he is for several rounds of combat or just taking 5 ft steps. You're getting your full attacks.

[Psyren]

I've been thinking about this recently. Is pounce actually worthwhile in real games? Where you're playing up until level 10-15, and you're not using an incredible build with braidblades or polymorphing into a Hydra?

Each iterative is an extra -5. Yes, AC doesn't scale all that quickly, but -5 isn't an insignificant decrease to your to-hit. Even if you're Shock Troopering away your attack penalties, trying to hit AC 20+ with only a +10 to-hit on your third iterative isn't exactly reliable. It seems to me that eschewing pounce and instead going more all-in on the ubercharger approach of a one-hit kill is the better choice (possibly with Cleave and a large reach area in addition).

Instead, I'm leaning toward thinking that pounce is best when using it in a similar fashion to its original use -- in conjunction with multiattack.

What do you all think?

I think you are completely forgetting bonus attacks. Haste/Speed, TWF, Multiattack, Flurry, Spell Combat etc - none of these work unless you can full attack, and pounce allows you to move and do that. Some of these have a small (-2) penalty, but as Grod correctly noted, pounce means you're charging which offsets that penalty (+2).

The iterative is actually irrelevant. A nice bonus if it lands, but it's the multiple attacks at your highest BAB/primary attacks that seal the deal.

So to answer your question - no, I disagree completely, being able to move and full attack is not overrated at all. Melee classes and archetypes that can't do it truly are weaker than the ones that can.

[Soranar]

well it strongly depends on your fighting style

there are only so many combat tactics you can take beyond spellcasting

-ranged (pounce is irrelevant)
-attacks of opportunity build with reach (you are likely to be able to reach something to hit with just a 5 foot step if your reach is already 20ft or more and even if you just stand still you're doing something AKA blocking the way to your squishy companions)
-mounted charger (the damage from a lance build is usually enough to kill anything with one shot anyway so extra attacks tend to be redundant)
-ubercharger without pounce (an orc using reckless charge is essentially just as powerful as a mounted charger)
-an initiator

but

-if you're a precision damage dealer using multiple attacks (say a kobold using his natural weapons, a TWF, etc)

For these builds, pounce isn't just necessary it's the only way they can contribute. If you build yourself to deliver lots of tiny attacks (instead of a 2 handed swing while raging) then you absolutely need pounce to function.

-if your damage isn't quite up to par due to a less than ideal build the potential damage from that extra attack is also just as important

-finally if what you're attacking is especially hard to hit (it's rare but sometimes only a natural 20 will actually land a blow) than throwing as many attacks as you can is the only way to go

-pouncing means you need to invest a lot less feats and class features into your fighting style while remaining relevant in combat, pounce is very much relevant in classes not well built for damage

[Bucky]

What are the alternatives that can hang with Pounce without using it? Here are the strong ones I can think of, all of which require significant investment.

Ranged Combat - Full attack enemies anywhere on the battlefield without moving.
Maneuvers - Move action to approach, Standard action to perform a maneuver. A level-appropriate maneuver can compete with a full attack.
Spell Pounce - Standard action to store a Touch spell, Move action to move adjacent, Free action to deliver the Touch spell. The spell's effect can be comparable in impact to a full attack.
Bonus Actions - Move adjacent to an enemy and full attack in the same turn. Alternatively, charge the enemy and, separately, take more attacks afterwards.
Combat Reflexes - Sufficient use of abilities that force the opponent to provoke AoOs can have an impact comparable to a Pounce without any extra investment.
Crowd Control - Move adjacent to the enemy, or 5' out of reach, while doing something that prevents them from moving. Unload the full attack next turn.

And there are some weaker ones that require less investment. Even though they're lower-investment, I don't see them often in actual games.
Mounted Charging - Use the Lance damage multiplier and the mount's attack to make up for only getting a single attack after a charge.
Mounted Insertion - Use your mount's move action to get adjacent to an opponent and fast dismount. You're now no longer mounted and can full attack.
Ready Action Judo - Ready an action to charge an enemy that goes off on their turn after they've used all their movement options. Assuming the readied action is timed correctly, you get your full attack before their next turn.

It might also be possible to optimize for a single big hit without using maneuvers, but I don't know how to get those to match Pounce's impact.


(E) Partly ninja'd. oh well.

[GilesTheCleric]

Charge: 70% chance of 40 damage
Pounce: 70% chance of 40 damage + 45% of an additional 40 damage.

Hmn, you're right. I need to change my thinking from "45% is inconsistent" to "45% is a free bonus that I sometimes also get".


Obviously it's more worthwhile to have it than not, the question is how much you're paying for it.

I think this is getting to the crux of how I feel. Is a one-level dip worth it? I think if we look at it from a Tier approach (sorry, Fizban, I know you don't like that), then it's probably worthwhile for anything that's a lower tier than Barbarian.

But, is it worthwhile for something that's otherwise stronger? Does a Duskblade benefit more from giving up a level for pounce? Does the Druid? I think the answer is probably no, but I'd like to hear what y'all think. In that case, is it worthwhile to take another approach to get pounce by purchasing an item, taking a feat, or going into a PrC?

----

Some folks are raising the point of the combat system design. Pounce is clearly the best method of dealing damage. Should it be banned for PCs, or at least cost more in order to get? Or, should everyone get pounce? Or, are things fine the way they are?

[Pleh]

I think what Giles is struggling with is the difference between how "real games" tend to go versus how the online community would tend to predict they should go.

It's the difference between the game and the meta-game.

In the meta-game, where the entire table possesses the average mastery of the game mechanics as the average member of this forum, it's fairly trivial to assume the bulk of martial characters are going to opt for the very agreeable investment of Pounce and/or Travel Devotion. It lets them do what they want their character to be able to do.

In the game at large, one that doesn't quite manipulate the meta game as strongly, Tiers become less noticeable. Note that this requires the DM to be playing the monsters just about as ineptly as the PCs play their own characters. At this level of meta, the Fighter and Wizard are pretty equal, because the standard shortcuts and workarounds haven't even been thought of and the DM is using powerful monsters to their weaknesses without realizing their RAW potential.

In a "real game"? I've never seen a build absolutely need Pounce. Most of my martials who work that hard to optimize their characters end up forcing me to play the game more competitively than I usually intend. I put the monster there to be killed by a vanilla fighter. They bring in the op-fu fighter? I have to start using the monsters more intelligently. That's when I have to start littering the dungeon with Difficult Terrain to limit the usefulness of Pounce so they can't just one-shot every monster. The game is supposed to involve attrition of party resources, which almost none is lost when the fighter charges and one-shots the monster.

So, yeah. In "real games" that use more game than meta game, it's a statistical anomaly that sometimes monsters and wizards accidentally step into their more powerful strategies, unless the players are intending to up the ante. At that point, the balancing issue is more of a problem of a breakdown in communication and expectation of the gameplay between players and/or DM.

[Psyren]

Rather than hand out more martial nerfs I prefer to raise the weaker option. Pathfinder's Vital Strike was a step in the right direction - a way to do more damage even when you only have a standard action to spend (due to moving, stagger etc.) But it didn't go far enough; one fix our group uses is to roll all the Vital Strike chain into a single feat that upgrades as your number of attacks increases (from BAB, Haste etc.) We also allow the Stamina rules from Unchained that let you reroll Vital Strike dice. We also trimmed the fat from the Combat Maneuver feats (using this set of fixes (http://theworldissquare.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/#dw_accordions-3-nav_menu-dw-widget-1)), which again made standard actions more valuable for martial classes, and thus the lack of pounce is not as keenly felt.

The other option you can consider is a full-blown maneuver system like Path of War, where standard actions become worthwhile for martials because you can use them to activate strikes.

[Flickerdart]

If you're missing on your iteratives, it's not that hard to boost to-hit. At level 11, a basic competent front-liner might expect to have 11 BAB, a +3 weapon, around 26 Strength, and that +2 from charging. That's +24/+19/+14 to-hit, average 33/29/24. Looking at the AC of CR11 foes in the MM:

Air elemental: 27
Black dragon: 27
Blue dragon: 26
Copper dragon: 25
Cryo/pyrohydra: 20
Hezrou: 23
Retriever: 21
Barbed devil: 29
Devourer: 24
Earth elemental: 22
Fire elemental: 25
Cloud giant: 25
Gold dragon: 25
Stone golem: 26
Green dragon: 25
Harpy archer: 23
Regular hydra: 21
Hill giant dire wereboar: 16-22
Monstrous spider: 22
Cauchemar: 26
Troll hunter: 21
Water elemental: 23
Dread wraith: 25

So our bog standard dude is hitting bog-standard enemies about 50% of the time with his worst iterative. His first attack is all but guaranteed to hit against most foes. Many of these foes are highly mobile and/or have potent ranged attacks and/or massive reach, so "5ft step at them until you can fight" is a terrible tactic that will get you dead.

[DEMON]

I think this is getting to the crux of how I feel. Is a one-level dip worth it? I think if we look at it from a Tier approach (sorry, Fizban, I know you don't like that), then it's probably worthwhile for anything that's a lower tier than Barbarian.

Or the same tier or even slightly higher tier classes actually as long as they're benefiting from charging and/or full attacks.

It' just as GoodbyeSoberDay said:


You're essentially saying that full attacks aren't worthwhile



But, is it worthwhile for something that's otherwise stronger? Does a Duskblade benefit more from giving up a level for pounce? Does the Druid? I think the answer is probably no, but I'd like to hear what y'all think. In that case, is it worthwhile to take another approach to get pounce by purchasing an item, taking a feat, or going into a PrC?

A Dusklabe, just as the initiators, don't actually need pounce, because their combat style doesn't revolve around full attacks. Same goes for archers and what have you. But that's like saying DMM is overrated because it's not relevant for a Wizard.

And Druids have their own pounce if they so desire.

Obviously, pounce is not important if you're not relying on the relevant play style, or if you're actually one-shoting your charge target with a singe attack and have no one else in range for your remaining attacks. But it's still an immense power multiplier in many cases, so it's hard to consider it overrated then.

[sleepyphoenixx]

So our bog standard dude is hitting bog-standard enemies about 50% of the time with his worst iterative. His first attack is all but guaranteed to hit against most foes. Many of these foes are highly mobile and/or have potent ranged attacks and/or massive reach, so "5ft step at them until you can fight" is a terrible tactic that will get you dead.

You forgot "when completely unbuffed".:smalltongue:
Though i think 26 Strength is a little high for most tables. 24 or even 22 sounds more realistic to me.

[Dagroth]

Make Pounce a Feat that requires BAB +8. Make sure it's a Fighter Bonus Feat.

Or, if you like Feat Chains (and thus are cruel)... Make "Quick Pounce" a Feat that requires BAB +4 and only works if the opponent is Flat-footed. Then make "Pounce" a Feat that requires BAB +8 and requires "Quick Pounce", but now it works even if the opponent is not Flat-footed.

Add a 3rd level ToB maneuver that mirrors "Quick Pounce".

Now Pounce has meaning and you don't have to jump through hoops if you want your Monk or Paladin to get it.

[Vaz]

Level 12 is my favourite level for playing. It's not too high level, allows 7th level spells for Sorcerers, and allows players to pull some unique tricks, as well having +3 to a stat from leveling. many games I run use this as the sweet spot. It seems to fit the OP's post, so I'll make some comments about that. The one thing that annoys me about that is Duskblades only come online at 13th level, potentially which brings in 8th level spells, which is annoying to deal with.

Now, lets look at what you can have at that stage as a melee character.

The Fighter is the most simple one. It has a +12 BAB. As a Fighter, and as someone who is charging, you're going to want a strength of 18, and likely added to strength. This gives you a Strength of 21. A +4 Item is possible, as is a +1 magic weapon. As many feat chains require Weapon Focus, let's say you get a +1 from that. This means you have a grand total to hit of 23 to hit. CR12 opponents from the Monster Manual include Frost Worm (AC18), Leonal (AC27), Kolyarut (AC27), Kraken (AC20), Purple Worm (AC19), Roper (AC24), for an average AC of 23 (rounding up) for CR12 opponents. On a charge, unless you roll a natural 1, you automatically hit with your first; your next attacks are at +20 and +15, if you had pounce. It could be even higher if you have a Wizard Greater Magic Weapon'ing you, if you're Enlarged, or any other pretty standard optimization targets.

You have a 5% Chance of missing the first attack, 10% Chance of Missing the second, and a 35% Chance of Missing the Third. With just one attack, you have a 95% Chance of hitting once. With Pounce, you have a 99.99825% Chance of hitting at least once. To hit with all three, you have a ~56% chance. Better than a coin toss to triple your damage for no penalty.

As for your damage with that, you're a Greatsword Fighter, likely with a +3 possible equivalent weapon for a 25% WBL equivalent item; so let's call it a Flaming Keen Weapon because that's not optimized - it's now a 17-20 +1 weapon, doing 2d6 damage, for an average of 19.5 damage on each hit. You've gone from dealing 19.5 damage to 58.5 damage on a coin toss, or a 90% chance to double your damage to 39.

That's not even optimizing anything; it's the worst class in the game, using a Magic Weapon that only uses a quarter of their Wealth By Level, with a single specific feat to increase their to-hit, which is kind of what you expect from anyone brand new to the game.

When people become more adept at optimizing, they can obviously make that one attack do more damage than what that Big Stupid "Baby's First Character" Fighter can do (60 damage from a charge in a round is pretty poor, even if in the given circumstances of the listed monsters (average HP 155 rounding up) has done ~40% of the target's HP, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't benefit from having additional attacks against it; although that does lead to circumstances of 1-shotting the opposing creature. But then that's a difference between one-shotting said creature, and possibly taking attacks from it.

*Cough*

I got you fam

[lord_khaine]

Level 12 is my favourite level for playing. It's not too high level, allows 7th level spells for Sorcerers, and allows players to pull some unique tricks, as well having +3 to a stat from leveling. many games I run use this as the sweet spot. It seems to fit the OP's post, so I'll make some comments about that. The one thing that annoys me about that is Duskblades only come online at 13th level, potentially which brings in 8th level spells, which is annoying to deal with.

Now, lets look at what you can have at that stage as a melee character.

The Fighter is the most simple one. It has a +12 BAB. As a Fighter, and as someone who is charging, you're going to want a strength of 18, and likely added to strength. This gives you a Strength of 21. A +4 Item is possible, as is a +1 magic weapon. As many feat chains require Weapon Focus, let's say you get a +1 from that. This means you have a grand total to hit of 23 to hit. CR12 opponents from the Monster Manual include Frost Worm (AC18), Leonal (AC27), Kolyarut (AC27), Kraken (AC20), Purple Worm (AC19), Roper (AC24), for an average AC of 23 (rounding up) for CR12 opponents. On a charge, unless you roll a natural 1, you automatically hit with your first; your next attacks are at +20 and +15, if you had pounce. It could be even higher if you have a Wizard Greater Magic Weapon'ing you, if you're Enlarged, or any other pretty standard optimization targets.

You have a 5% Chance of missing the first attack, 10% Chance of Missing the second, and a 35% Chance of Missing the Third. With just one attack, you have a 95% Chance of hitting once. With Pounce, you have a 99.99825% Chance of hitting at least once. To hit with all three, you have a ~56% chance. Better than a coin toss to triple your damage for no penalty.

As for your damage with that, you're a Greatsword Fighter, likely with a +3 possible equivalent weapon for a 25% WBL equivalent item; so let's call it a Flaming Keen Weapon because that's not optimized - it's now a 17-20 +1 weapon, doing 2d6 damage, for an average of 19.5 damage on each hit. You've gone from dealing 19.5 damage to 58.5 damage on a coin toss, or a 90% chance to double your damage to 39.

That's not even optimizing anything; it's the worst class in the game, using a Magic Weapon that only uses a quarter of their Wealth By Level, with a single specific feat to increase their to-hit, which is kind of what you expect from anyone brand new to the game.

When people become more adept at optimizing, they can obviously make that one attack do more damage than what that Big Stupid "Baby's First Character" Fighter can do (60 damage from a charge in a round is pretty poor, even if in the given circumstances of the listed monsters (average HP 155 rounding up) has done ~40% of the target's HP, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't benefit from having additional attacks against it; although that does lead to circumstances of 1-shotting the opposing creature. But then that's a difference between one-shotting said creature, and possibly taking attacks from it.

It is a very good calculation, so cant really disagree with the math besides the point that your not guaranteed a 18 in str. Some tables roll stats.
But mainly this doubling of damage only happens if you win initiative and actually can charge. And its also most likely going to happen in the first round of combat. Or at least mainly going to happen there.

[OldTrees1]

Hmn, you're right. I need to change my thinking from "45% is inconsistent" to "45% is a free bonus that I sometimes also get".

Now it gets messier considering which extra attacks are better on a full attack. Is one extra attack at Full BAB better on average than 3 extras at a -10 penalty? (Yes, by a slim margin). So I would pick +16/+16 over +16/+6/+6/+6.


I think this is getting to the crux of how I feel. Is a one-level dip worth it? I think if we look at it from a Tier approach (sorry, Fizban, I know you don't like that), then it's probably worthwhile for anything that's a lower tier than Barbarian..

But, is it worthwhile for something that's otherwise stronger? Does a Duskblade benefit more from giving up a level for pounce? Does the Druid? I think the answer is probably no, but I'd like to hear what y'all think. In that case, is it worthwhile to take another approach to get pounce by purchasing an item, taking a feat, or going into a PrC?

I would not use tiers here. The value of Pounce is more closely related at Standard Attack vs Full Attack. That comparison has more to do with BAB, extra attack options, and opportunity costs.

Fighters generally have 3 combat styles. Combat Reflexes, Full Attack or Charge. Pounce merges the 2nd and 3rd but does nothing for the 1st. Unlike Duskblade below, the Fighter's 1st combat style is synergistic with either the 2nd or 3rd. However the stronger the Combat Reflexes, the less valuable Pounce becomes.

Let's say that a Fighter 16+ would double their expected hits on a charge if they had pounce. If they have combat reflexes and 14 dexterity, then doubling the hits on a charge would only increase their hits per round by 25% (because they already get 4 attacks per round without pounce).

Duskblades are a bit weird in that for levels 6-12 levels they have 2 antisynergistic combat styles. They could either Full Attack OR channel a spell. The first style encourages a dip for Pounce and the second discourages Pounce entirely. At level 13 these combat styles merge and both encourage having Pounce to enable always having a Full Attack option. So acquiring Pounce after Duskblade 13 makes some sense (although consider the next point).

However another thing to consider is that Pounce is a Full Attack enabler. There will be rounds where you did not need to move before you could Full Attack


Some folks are raising the point of the combat system design. Pounce is clearly the best method of dealing damage. Should it be banned for PCs, or at least cost more in order to get? Or, should everyone get pounce? Or, are things fine the way they are?

Currently BAB is poorly designed such that it unevenly improves combat options. I would redesign it:
At BAB +0, a Standard Action (or a charge) is 1 attack and a Full Attack is 2 attacks (perhaps at -1 to-hit?).
As BAB increases both actions would accumulate more attacks (maybe eventually 3 and 5 with appropriate to-hits?).
Obviously attack-like Standard Actions not covered by the above (Maneuvers, Eldritch Blast, ...) would be adjusted to be in line with, albeit qualitatively different from, the above
This would negate the need for Pounce by patching the cause of the problem that Pounce was being used as a workaround.

Of course there are other problems in D&D martial combat that would need other patches and adjustments to other workarounds(Ubercharger).

[Flickerdart]

You forgot "when completely unbuffed".:smalltongue:
Though i think 26 Strength is a little high for most tables. 24 or even 22 sounds more realistic to me.

For level 11, 26 STR is hardly unexpected:
18 base
+2 race
+2 levels
+4 item

[sleepyphoenixx]

For level 11, 26 STR is hardly unexpected:
18 base
+2 race
+2 levels
+4 item
I'm not saying it's impossible or even rare, just that i wouldn't assume it as a baseline.

It's not like everyone chooses a +Str race. There are plenty of people who want to play human fighters. Or even elves or whatever other race, be it for flavor or to enter a race-restricted PrC.
And a lot of tables roll stats or use lower PB, so it's not uncommon to only have a 16 even in your primary stat.

That's why i think that expecting a 16 base strength before levels & gear is more realistic than expecting a 20.

[Bucky]

THF is the best melee option. And that's even more dumb: why is a THF level 1 not punished but a TWF level 1 is? Or natural weapon users.

THF is the combat style they forgot to put a feat tax on. It's that simple.

[SangoProduction]

I played a shapeshifter with about 7 natural attacks. Charge in to attack. Right. Forgot I didn't have pounce. OK, just attack with the bite. OK, that missed. And now I'm paralyzed. Well, damn. Pounce is overrated.

[Aotrs Commander]

THF is the combat style they forgot to put a feat tax on. It's that simple.

One of the reasons I felt no concern about giving TWF the full Str bonus oin the offhand. If TWF is going to require a major investment of THF, it might as well get a little extra benefit...!

[Rerednaw]

Well the campaign I'm in EL+5 is the standard encounter. So yes, if I am building a melee, he'd better drop that foe in one round....because 6 other OP beasties are right behind him.

Right now our group (level 9, way below WBL, group unoptimized and little or no group tactics because most players are re-rolling to replace dead PCs every other session) is fighting an active hostile artifact, 2 double advanced custom (e.g. pounce) iron golems with extra templates, 2 double advanced custom (like 4d6 cone is 10d6 cone) destrachans with extra templates, in an obstructed enclosed area, heavily trapped, and oh forgot another active artifact that SORT of helped a PC (monk-allowed one abundant step) for the mere cost of wisdom drain, and an unknown invisible evoker that doesn't appear with detect magic, see invis, scent, or blindsight that is firing stilled, silent, undetectable lightning blasts. And oh yeah, knowing our DM, this will be the first of 4-5 waves.

So I have no qualms in minmaxing just to survive. And pounce is part of that if I'm going melee. Or pseudo pounce (archer).
Now in a straight out of the module style campaign...it is not needed. It's nice and situationally cool....but not needed.

But overrated? Really, really, depends on the campaign and DM.

[Fizban]

Some folks are raising the point of the combat system design. Pounce is clearly the best method of dealing damage. Should it be banned for PCs, or at least cost more in order to get? Or, should everyone get pounce? Or, are things fine the way they are?
There's a simple test given in the DMG for these things: if something is so good every character of that type should always take it, that something is too good. The investment required for most forms of pounce is significant enough that not all melee builds benefit from trying to cram them in, but omgSLTBbbq pounce is better than all of those and almost as cheap as you can possibly get, so there's essentially no reason not to. It is by definition too good. So ban the one disruptive element and leave the rest.

[Pleh]

There's a simple test given in the DMG for these things: if something is so good every character of that type should always take it, that something is too good. The investment required for most forms of pounce is significant enough that not all melee builds benefit from trying to cram them in, but omgSLTBbbq pounce is better than all of those and almost as cheap as you can possibly get, so there's essentially no reason not to. It is by definition too good. So ban the one disruptive element and leave the rest.

Does this same logic suggest that the caster/noncaster disparity tells us we should ban the magic system, since it's so good that most every character should find some way to get into it?

What about magic items?

[sleepyphoenixx]

There's a simple test given in the DMG for these things: if something is so good every character of that type should always take it, that something is too good. The investment required for most forms of pounce is significant enough that not all melee builds benefit from trying to cram them in, but omgSLTBbbq pounce is better than all of those and almost as cheap as you can possibly get, so there's essentially no reason not to. It is by definition too good. So ban the one disruptive element and leave the rest.

There's a fallacy here. You should also look at how that something functions in a game.
If it works fine it's not too good, all the other options are too bad and you should buff them instead of banning the one thing that's actually good.

YMMV, but in my experience every melee tries to get something to get off reliable full attacks, and they're not overpowered. So for my table banning pounce is exactly the wrong option.
If your rogues and rangers and every other non-ToB melee either dip Barbarian for pounce or Cleric for Travel Devotion pretty much no matter what that should tell you that it's considered a requirement for melee to function, not that you should ban it.

[Elderand]

Given that 5th edition basicaly gave pounce to everyone for free and diminished the power of spellcasting rather fiercely, I think it's safe to say that giving pounce to martial characters isn't going to break the game in 3.5.

[Sayt]

It depends on your level of optimisation, really. If you've cheesed your ubercharger up to 4 digit damage per attack (which, IIRC, is not too difficult), yes, pounce is completely superfluous.

If you haven't, pounce becomes dramatically more valuable.

[Fizban]

Does this same logic suggest that the caster/noncaster disparity tells us we should ban the magic system, since it's so good that most every character should find some way to get into it?
Does being deliberately obtuse ever produce a useful response?

There's a fallacy here. You should also look at how that something functions in a game.
And the way omgSLTBbbq pounce functions is that it allows ridiculous builds that 1 round things which are supposed to involve the whole party, or at best invalidates half a dozen or more other sources of move+full attack simply by existing.

If your rogues and rangers and every other non-ToB melee either dip Barbarian for pounce or Cleric for Travel Devotion pretty much no matter what that should tell you that it's considered a requirement for melee to function, not that you should ban it.
So, are they taking it because it's cheap and convenient, or because it's required? If it's required, that's on you for jacking up the power level to the point where it's required, have fun inventing your own game balance. If it's because this one version is too cheap and characters that choose to take it are obviously worlds better than they should be, then yeah you should ban it.

[BobsYourUncle!]

Is Pounce Over-rated?

Well its a useful mechanic and does help melee combat. It is a strong tool that if used right can and will help a melee fighter move and attack on its first round and maybe other rounds depending on the fight.

I am not sure its over rated but I believe it is over hyped. So many people when optimizing go to that first and forget there are other ways to do things.

Charging can be done in lots of ways. Horse with a lance is a single huge hit when done right. Cleave is great against large crowds. Pounce is a great against a single target. They all have a place and a point where they shine. Pounce can be over powered if DM allows you to take your attacks one at a time instead of declaring the target of all your attacks at once. If you declare all against a single target and it dies then you are wasting potential where a single attack would have been better.

It all depends on the rules you are playing under. 3.5 is vastly different with different DM's.

In conclusion:

Is Pounce Over rated? Not really but is way over hyped. But, you shouldn't worry about it and play what you wanna play to have fun because that is the point!

[sleepyphoenixx]

And the way omgSLTBbbq pounce functions is that it allows ridiculous builds that 1 round things which are supposed to involve the whole party, or at best invalidates half a dozen or more other sources of move+full attack simply by existing.
Those builds exist because of the numerous damage multipliers that can be stacked on a charge, not because of pounce. Ban those instead.


So, are they taking it because it's cheap and convenient, or because it's required? If it's required, that's on you for jacking up the power level to the point where it's required, have fun inventing your own game balance. If it's because this one version is too cheap and characters that choose to take it are obviously worlds better than they should be, then yeah you should ban it.

Every table invents their own game balance. Or are you claiming you're the only one playing D&D "the right way"?

It's really quite simple. Melee should meaningfully contribute. I think we can agree on that at least.
Single attack melee does not meaningfully contribute in a group with even completely non-optimized casters.
Needing 3-4 rounds to kill a single enemy is not feasible in a world with casters. They're already limited to damage dealing, let them at least be good at that.
Unless you ban casters too? I'd bring up the question of who, exactly, is inventing their own game balance here, but i don't actually care. Do what works for your table.

So no, melee characters who take pounce are not "obviously worlds better than they should be", they're right in the sweet spot (as long as they don't stack multipliers, see above).

[Cosi]

There's a simple test given in the DMG for these things: if something is so good every character of that type should always take it, that something is too good.

That's just not true. Everyone in the game uses trail rations. Every Wizard uses a spellbook. Every martial character gets a magic weapon. Every Druid takes Natural Spell. Every character gets stat boost items. Something showing up in a lot of builds may just mean its necessary, or that it's simply a good, but not broken, choice.

Also, in some cases, the appropriate response to over-representation of a given item or feat may be to buff things. Martial characters all get magic swords and stat boosters, not because those items are "OP" but because they need them to function. So if you want to make martial item selection more diverse you either need to buff the classes so they work without those items, or make the items cheaper so they can afford other stuff.

I strongly suspect that this is probably the case for Pounce. Martials with pounce are still pretty bad, so if all martials are taking pounce, that probably means their other options aren't good enough.

[Gellhorn]

Pretty much every melee champion takes power attack. Is power attack too strong and needing to be nerfed?

[Rerednaw]

Every monster our unoptimized below WBL party faces in our campaign has double advanced templates, we should ban that. Oh and no treasure, that should be banned to. :)

[lord_khaine]

Pretty much every melee champion takes power attack. Is power attack too strong and needing to be nerfed?

Thats an interesting question, could very well be that it is. As it is then its more or less a feat tax in a lot of cases. Or well, depending on the AC of the opponents the party normally fights.

But in the end, i think that how good and needed pounce is depends on how melee opponents your fighting. I cant recall if it was mentioned before. But against 10 orks then cleave is most likely going to be more useful.

And in other situations, then the problem is partly going to be that one meele char taking pounce more or less forces everyone else to get something simular or risk getting shown up.

[GilesTheCleric]

Thats an interesting question, could very well be that it is. As it is then its more or less a feat tax in a lot of cases. Or well, depending on the AC of the opponents the party normally fights.

But in the end, i think that how good and needed pounce is depends on how melee opponents your fighting. I cant recall if it was mentioned before. But against 10 orks then cleave is most likely going to be more useful.

And in other situations, then the problem is partly going to be that one meele char taking pounce more or less forces everyone else to get something simular or risk getting shown up.

It's a good point. Without PA or other optimisation, dealing 2d6+6 damage to monsters means it's going to take a lot of rounds to kill anything. Is the game balanced for combat to last more than 2-5 rounds? Maybe, if everyone is actually giving up 1/4 of their resources for a level-appropriate encounter (so HP for the fighter). I personally don't feel that's very fun, but I also prefer a more heroic and political game to a gritty hack'n'slash, so it could just be me.

[Aotrs Commander]

Thats an interesting question, could very well be that it is. As it is then its more or less a feat tax in a lot of cases. Or well, depending on the AC of the opponents the party normally fights.

Pathfinder DID nerf it, and was one of the reasons we never adopted it; instead I only pilfer its better ideas (and to be fair its better ideas are awesome) from the PFSRD.



(But I don't feel too bad about it, since I buy quite a few adventure paths and the Golarion campaign stuff, the latter just because it's an excellent read!)

[Cosi]

Pretty much every melee champion takes power attack. Is power attack too strong and needing to be nerfed?

Power Attack should probably just be a thing you can do for free. It moves numbers around. In a world where you get one feat every three levels, that has no business being a feat. Honestly, it probably has no business being a feat at all.

[Pleh]

Power Attack should probably just be a thing you can do for free. It moves numbers around. In a world where you get one feat every three levels, that has no business being a feat. Honestly, it probably has no business being a feat at all.

I always felt the same way about Dodge and Mobility.

Maybe we could preserve the idea that people not focused on martial might have to take a feat to get it. Maybe classes that gain martial weapon proficiency gets those kinds of feats for free?

[Cosi]

I always felt the same way about Dodge and Mobility.

I think Dodge just needs to be better than it is. The difference between having and not having a +1 bonus to AC is not worth the effort of tracking Dodge targets. Plus, the primary effect isn't as interesting or generally useful as Power Attack -- it just makes encounters with a single bruiser monster slightly easier.

Mobility also seems distinct enough to deserve to be a feat, or maybe a Scout/Ranger class feature.


Maybe we could preserve the idea that people not focused on martial might have to take a feat to get it. Maybe classes that gain martial weapon proficiency gets those kinds of feats for free?

I mean I don't really see the point? Any Wizard who is in a position to be likely to use Power Attack effectively probably just has martial weapon proficiency anyway because he's a Gish. Also, this means that Fighters get free Dodge but Rogues don't, which seems incongruous.

[Dagroth]

Power Attack should probably just be a thing you can do for free. It moves numbers around. In a world where you get one feat every three levels, that has no business being a feat. Honestly, it probably has no business being a feat at all.


I always felt the same way about Dodge and Mobility.

Maybe we could preserve the idea that people not focused on martial might have to take a feat to get it. Maybe classes that gain martial weapon proficiency gets those kinds of feats for free?

Power Attack should function much like Combat Expertise does currently.

Without the Feat, you can convert +4 BAB to +2 damage for all weapons (+3 with 2H weapons). With the Feat you convert 1-to-1.

Dodge should just be a flat +1 to AC with Mobility folded in.

[Cosi]

Power Attack should function much like Combat Expertise does currently.

Without the Feat, you can convert +4 BAB to +2 damage for all weapons (+3 with 2H weapons). With the Feat you convert 1-to-1.

Dodge should just be a flat +1 to AC with Mobility folded in.

I don't think a one-every-three-levels bonus should be "you are twice as good at shuffling numbers around" or "you get +1 to AC and are resistant to attacks of opportunity". You get seven feats, they should be things like Lord of the Uttercold, Natural Spell, Perfect Two Weapon Fighting, or Divine Metamagic.

I think the paradigm where feats are small bonuses is workable, but if you're going to go that way, you need to make feats way more common. Also, you need to nerf the feats that are appropriate to the one-every-three-levels model.

[Coretron03]

Power Attack should function much like Combat Expertise does currently.

Without the Feat, you can convert +4 BAB to +2 damage for all weapons (+3 with 2H weapons). With the Feat you convert 1-to-1.

Dodge should just be a flat +1 to AC with Mobility folded in.

Problem is, taking a -4 to hit for a +2 damage isn't worth it in a majority of scenarios. Say your a level 1 fighter with 16 str and weapon focus (which isn't to far from the truth in 3.5 games i've played) and attack at +5 for 2d6+4 and are attacking a orc. You have a 65% chance to hit him. Using the power attack lite you go down to a 45% chance to hit him for no benefit (as a hit would have killed him anyway). Let go up a level so fighter mcfighterson bought a masterwork sword and is attacking a ogre. At a +7 to hit and has a 60% chance to hit and still deals 2d6+4. Power attack lite tm cuts away a 3rd of your to hit chance for +3 damage which is just a slight bit more then 1/4 more damage. Your cutting a ortion of your damage to reduce your damage.

Point is, its kinda a useless option. It works for combat expertise litetm (not saying its good, just that it works) because your converting offense into defense instead of offense into less offense. I prefer something like this feat tax article (while its for pathfinder the same logic applies) as it gives people stuff like power attack, combat expertise and weapon finesse for free so it removes feat taxes and makes some stuff just better (and does what you say about merging dodge and mobility)

http://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/

[Gruftzwerg]

Pounce can be over powered if DM allows you to take your attacks one at a time instead of declaring the target of all your attacks at once. If you declare all against a single target and it dies then you are wasting potential where a single attack would have been better.

It all depends on the rules you are playing under. 3.5 is vastly different with different DM's.


Actions in Combat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm)

Full Attack

If you get more than one attack per round because your base attack bonus is high enough, because you fight with two weapons or a double weapon or for some special reason you must use a full-round action to get your additional attacks. You do not need to specify the targets of your attacks ahead of time. You can see how the earlier attacks turn out before assigning the later ones.
As you can see in the bold part, you don't need to declare your attacks ahead. You can declare em one by one after each roll resolves. That's the regular rule.
Anything else is DM homebrew and just unnecessarily handicaps the mundanes against the casters. You should really point it out to your DM and talk about it IMHO.

___________________

back on topic. Imho Pounce is almost a must have for most melee builds past lvl 11 (when you get your 3rd attack). Your 2nd attack is likely to hit at this moment. Further there aren't any other many other options for high melee dmg other than charge multipliers and maybe 2wft sneack attack (if you want to go that route/classes..).
A caster can at this point throw 3 maximized sudden fireballs to solve most part of the regular 3/4 encounter/encounter-day.
Melees need a way to keep up the pressure that casters are capable of. And if that wouldn't have been worse enough, they are in melee range and higher risk at taking damage (who would have thought that^^).

Being cut in 50-75% of your damage potential just because you have no target in melee range is a bad mechanic. And thus most melees rely on pounce to overcome the situation. It's a design issue as has been pointed out that has been addressed in 5.0.

[Deophaun]

There's a simple test given in the DMG for these things: if something is so good every character of that type should always take it, that something is too good.
Waterskins are now banned in my game.

[Gruftzwerg]

Waterskins are now banned in my game.

and while we are at it, lets ban wizard spellbooks too xD

[Dagroth]

Waterskins are now banned in my game.


and while we are at it, lets ban wizard spellbooks too xD

Maybe you should read the relevant section of the DMG before you start expounding your hyperbole.

[Gruftzwerg]

Maybe you should read the relevant section of the DMG before you start expounding your hyperbole.

maybe just sense the humor in it and have fun/laugh?^^

[Dagroth]

maybe just sense the humor in it and have fun/laugh?^^

The problem is that Pounce is highly valuable/important... but it shouldn't be just a 1 level Barbarian dip to get since that leaves out Paladins, Monks and other Lawful-aligned characters/concepts.

I think Lion Totem Barbarian shouldn't give Pounce... I think the Feat version(s) I suggested make the most sense when put alongside the Maneuver version in ToB.

[Florian]

There's a fallacy here. You should also look at how that something functions in a game.
If it works fine it's not too good, all the other options are too bad and you should buff them instead of banning the one thing that's actually good.

Actually, it´s the other way around: You should look at how the basic framework of a game works and then, based on that, evaluate how additional components fit into it (or, more likely, break the basic concept).
We can see a certain evolution on the matter what a feat or class feature is actually "worth" when comparing early options like Weapon Focus or Skill Focus and them adding +5% to succeed on a roll to, say, Reserve Feats, that alter how resource management works.

[Eldariel]

The problem is that Pounce is highly valuable/important... but it shouldn't be just a 1 level Barbarian dip to get since that leaves out Paladins, Monks and other Lawful-aligned characters/concepts.

I think Lion Totem Barbarian shouldn't give Pounce... I think the Feat version(s) I suggested make the most sense when put alongside the Maneuver version in ToB.

I still think Pounce is a solution to a problem that should not exist. On felines it triggers Rake giving it a point anyways - full attack on movement isn't needed there.

The system is pretty well-designed for functioning without it as it stands, if you rein in the multipliers sources. And allow full attack on move/ready action. Rather give for free than add further pointless feat/dip tax.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Actually, it´s the other way around: You should look at how the basic framework of a game works and then, based on that, evaluate how additional components fit into it (or, more likely, break the basic concept).
We can see a certain evolution on the matter what a feat or class feature is actually "worth" when comparing early options like Weapon Focus or Skill Focus and them adding +5% to succeed on a roll to, say, Reserve Feats, that alter how resource management works.

The problem is that martials that can't move & full attack suck. It just increases the martial-caster disparity even further because it means martials can't even do damage, the one thing they should excel at.
If the basic framework of the game has such a glaring mismatch and then later adds options to correct that issue that's not breaking the basic concept, it's fixing it.

And Weapon Focus is a terrible feat. Not just from lack of impact, but also because it's boring. It doesn't give you new options at all.
Later supplements moved away from that kind of thing for a reason (well, mostly), and i think that's one of the things 3.5 did right. Feats should expand your options and alter your playstyle, not just add flat numbers.

[lord_khaine]

The problem is that martials that can't move & full attack suck. It just increases the martial-caster disparity even further because it means martials can't even do damage, the one thing they should excel at.
If the basic framework of the game has such a glaring mismatch and then later adds options to correct that issue that's not breaking the basic concept, it's fixing it.


Its only about ½ of the melee chars i have played that had something like pounce, and none of those sucked. As repeated a few times move&full attack is nice, but there are lots of cases where you dont need it, or get to use it more than once in a combat. Like when there are several melee bruisers engaging you.

[Fizban]

The obtuseness is real.


Those builds exist because of the numerous damage multipliers that can be stacked on a charge, not because of pounce. Ban those instead.
Which damage multipliers? When you remove the pounce from the ubercharger build, it instantly becomes 2, 3, 4 or more times as manageable, as the largest damage multiplier disappears. In order to get the same effect by banning other effects (which have greater costs and lower individual impact), you'd have to ban multiple items, picking and choosing which to allow. Or you could just ban the one obvious problem, and then re-evaluate which if any others actually need it.

Every table invents their own game balance. Or are you claiming you're the only one playing D&D "the right way"?
I have essentially written several progessive versions of the essay that matches the intent of your claim, though it's not my preferred style either, but yes: one of the main features of 3.5 is that it actually does have a grading system, and it turns out that what most char-oppers think of as the "minimum required" is in fact shooting right past the maximum tolerance of the system. Which is intentional, since the char-oppers goal is to crush the system defaults with 100% certainty.

Seriously, just look at all these arguments demanding that each character be able to personally 1 round any foe of an appropriate level, when they are part of a 4 person team.

Single attack melee does not meaningfully contribute in a group with even completely non-optimized casters.
As another poster already addressed, that's why you don't make single attacks.. You make full attacks by setting yourself up to get them the old fashioned way rather than demanding it be handed to you on a silver platter.

Pretty much every melee champion takes power attack. Is power attack too strong and needing to be nerfed?
As pointed out above, THF is the only weapon style that doesn't get a feat tax-but Power Attack is the closest thing they have. Who doesn't take power attack? TWF/sneak attackers and unarmed monks to start. Sword 'n board is the standard actually (refusing to use a shield because AC is worthless is a perfect self-fulfilling prophecy), and they don't have much use for PA either. The great pariah Weapon Specialization is the standard feat tax for fighters, though it needed Weapon Mastery from PHB2 to bring the numbers up a bit (barbarians have rage, rangers have favored enemy, paladins have smite, rogues have sneak attack, fighters have weapon spec!). Power attack is no more necessary than any other game element and is also overrated.

The problem is that martials that can't move & full attack suck. It just increases the martial-caster disparity even further because it means martials can't even do damage, the one thing they should excel at.
Someone wanna draw the line from "not having absolute maximum damage after moving" to "can't even do damage?" Isn't there a whole saying about never standing next to a dragon because of their fearsome full attack routine? Which is coincidentally the exact same thing that happens if you stand next to a melee PC.

Just get over yourselves. The only reason you need to move and full attack and kill everything on round one is because you jacked up the power level to the point where it became necessary. Maybe you had a killer DM and needed to do it to survive, or maybe you did it first and they pumped the encounters in response, or maybe you all just agreed you wanted bigger numbers sooner, but you did it. There is no inherent quality of DnD 3.5 that demands melee characters have pounce in order to function. All you have to do is not play that way.



It's a good point. Without PA or other optimisation, dealing 2d6+6 damage to monsters means it's going to take a lot of rounds to kill anything.
Even the most garbage of example fighters (and boy are they garbage) has a magic weapon, str boosters, weapon spec, and makes standing full attacks once the enemy is in range (which could even be on their first round if they lose initiative!), so that's kindof a straw man there.

Is the game balanced for combat to last more than 2-5 rounds? Maybe, if everyone is actually giving up 1/4 of their resources for a level-appropriate encounter (so HP for the fighter).
It doesn't take more than 5 rounds to burn those resources, but yes, yes it is. If your combat only takes 2 rounds it means either you lowballed the encounter or the PCs got extremely lucky/prepared.

I personally don't feel that's very fun, but I also prefer a more heroic and political game to a gritty hack'n'slash, so it could just be me.
Now that I think about it, I can't stand the idea that 2-round combat=heroic. High powered maybe, but that's pretty much the opposite of heroic: it's either a one-sided slaughter or just plain russian roulette. A gritty (as in people die fast) setup makes sudden assassinations easier, and the more likely you are to get wrecked in a fight the more tension there is in trying to avoid one, and both of those are needed for a political game- but those are much more easily accomplished by sticking to low level where people already die in a couple hits, rather than forcing melee to add even more rockets to the rocket tag.

[noob]

In my group we are playing blast wizards(level 17 for wizards level 20 for non wizards because the wizards do +5 for the others) and 100% manual of players barbarians and yet it is 2 rounds fights through intense blast spell spam.
Our barbarian for participating would need to kill someone in less than two rounds so he should at least inflict half of the life of the opponent in one turn.
While all we do is casting metamagicless blast spells from the manual of players.
Seriously barbarians needs to instagib in the manual of players balance(but it is never going to be rebalanced) because our stupid blast wizards do that 2 round murder of everything with AOE unlike the barbarian who hits one target.
So you say that fights with dumb blast wizards from manuals of players without metamagic is not heroic so you agree that we should remove blaster wizards(and all the other magic blasting classes like warmage and sorcerer) from the game before tuning down the damage of barbarians for making battles last more than two rounds.

[Fizban]

Oh, no! People on the internet have differing opions from yours AND a sense of humor?! Obtusnessiscosity?! MOST unorthodox.
You do understand what the phrase means, right? Must I laboriously detail the obvious in how equating an incredibly specific ACF from a book published several years after the original combat rules is not the same thing as yanking the entire magic system which was written at the same time or declaring "waterskins OP"? Either people actually can't tell the difference, or they're being deliberately obtuse, and the latter example makes it pretty clear which one that is. You're not refuting the basic balancing principle in any way.

I find it amusing all the people demanding everything be buffed up to wizard tier because it's better design, and then wondering why their games are all russian rocket tag. When you keep buffing stuff endlessly, you wreck the game with power creep. Actual game designers avoid this. Magic: The Gathering being a well known example, while it undeniably continues to creep ahead in power, still takes certain mechanics and deliberately nerfs them back a notch or two every cycle (or at least it was the last time I played). Lightning Bolt (the ur-example basic damage spell at 3 damage for 1 cost) resurfaces in the tournament blocks, then fades and is replaced by weaker 2 for 1 versions, and then resurfaces again. They don't just take all the most powerful damage spells ever written and use them all at once (not in balance controlled standard anyway), or give every color 3 damage/1 cost ping spells because red has more damage, or give everyone counterspells because blue always wins. They do in fact ban overpowered cards, though it usually takes them so long to do so the season's pretty much wrecked and they're as likely to target an enabler than the actual problem card (see: Jace, the Mind Sculptor, banned just at the end of a season, and the Caw-Blade deck, which was nerfed by banning the card that searched for the swords rather than the swords themselves, since they can't really errata cards and the swords are a bigger seller).


This assumes the monster isn't smart enough to realize that kiting the fighter effectively prevents them from ever getting to do this. A monster that stands still, going toe to toe with the fighter, either can't effectively move or relies on doing better damage per round than the fighter to begin with.
This assumes that the majority of monsters are capable of kiting the party more effectively than the party is of kiting them. I haven't run the numbers but I'd be surprised if more than half of monsters weren't melee focused. What was that other axiom, that fighters are useless because monsters will just run past them to hit the wizards? But now the monsters are all kite gods who don't care about spellcasting. The majority of monsters below 10th want to run up to you and give you the full attack, because they're screwed if they don't. Monsters above 10th might have more magic or defenses against magic, and the rest of the party has more magic/lockdown/ability to put the fighter in position.

The role of the fighter is not and has never been "run forward and 1-round that guy." It's being tough enough to eat the move+attack from the enemy, then retaliate with their own full attack, and overall contribute 1/4 of the effort needed to win the encounter.

And this isn't anything like the pot calling the kettle black?
Compared to those who claim the game is inherently broken because they refuse to consider any play style other than their own valid? I do think my pot's a little lighter.

But mechanically, there is an imbalance that pounce marginally repairs.
Ah, but you just agreed yourself that balance is a myth. "Power level is whatever the table plays it to be." Balance is only what you make it. The only imbalance is that which you create yourself. A fighter can contribute just fine without pounce, there is no inherent imbalance to be repaired. The imbalance comes from a DM who is making encounters that the fighter cannot contribute to, or a party that has pushed their power level far enough to force the DM into doing that.


In my group we are playing blast wizards(level 17 for wizards level 20 for non wizards because the wizards do +5 for the others). . .
So you say that fights with dumb blast wizards from manuals of players without metamagic is not heroic so you agree that we should remove blaster wizards(and all the other magic blasting classes like warmage and sorcerer) from the game before tuning down the damage of barbarians for making battles last more than two rounds.
You have how many wizards? The standard party is fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard. That's one blaster. If your entire party is blasters, it's not the system's fault things aren't working right. There are ways the DM could build encounters to make the barbarian more relevant, but since most of the party has decided to play all the same thing, that means most of the group won't have fun that fight. The same problem happens with parties that are mostly martial adepts (marathons where spellcasters run out of spells and have to beg for a rest), or sneaks (loud guy stays home), etc.

[Dagroth]

But don't you understand, Fizban?

All enemies are supposed to be built with the most optimal feats to counter the PCs. Every enemy with an Int of 3+ has max ranks in UMD and a competence item giving them an extra +10 to UMD. All enemy spellcasters are supposed to have already cast their buff spells & otherwise prepared perfectly with the most efficient spells in the game just before the PCs show up. Every Wizard has dozens of spells per spell level and fully stocked Magic Marts are open in any place that has more than 4 buildings! And of course there are 2000 Hank's Energy Bows for sale!





Sarcasm so thick it's black instead of blue.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Which damage multipliers? When you remove the pounce from the ubercharger build, it instantly becomes 2, 3, 4 or more times as manageable, as the largest damage multiplier disappears. In order to get the same effect by banning other effects (which have greater costs and lower individual impact), you'd have to ban multiple items, picking and choosing which to allow. Or you could just ban the one obvious problem, and then re-evaluate which if any others actually need it.
Lances, Leap Attack, Spirited Charge, Valorous weapons. You know, actual multipliers that multiply damage on a charge? Because a pouncer without those is quite managable.

I have essentially written several progessive versions of the essay that matches the intent of your claim, though it's not my preferred style either, but yes: one of the main features of 3.5 is that it actually does have a grading system, and it turns out that what most char-oppers think of as the "minimum required" is in fact shooting right past the maximum tolerance of the system. Which is intentional, since the char-oppers goal is to crush the system defaults with 100% certainty.
A Wizard 20 without feats shoots right past the maximum tolerance of the system, using core spells only. By your standards anyway.
What you're suggesting is that non-casters have to be perpetually behind even in the one role they can compete in at all.

You can't seriously argue that balance is supposed to not use half of the PHB.

Seriously, just look at all these arguments demanding that each character be able to personally 1 round any foe of an appropriate level, when they are part of a 4 person team.
That's what it works out to, because casters already do that with no optimization at all, just smart spell selection. It's also what monsters do. It's the basic nature of D&D combat.
If you want to play mundane without being third wheel that's your basic level of competency.

As another poster already addressed, that's why you don't make single attacks.. You make full attacks by setting yourself up to get them the old fashioned way rather than demanding it be handed to you on a silver platter.
You mean in round 2, when combat is already half over? Assuming the DM obliges you by moving the monsters into your full attacks?
And i'd like to know what's so overpowered about pounce if all it does is allow you to make full attacks, which you apparently do anyway, just on round 1?

As pointed out above, THF is the only weapon style that doesn't get a feat tax-but Power Attack is the closest thing they have. Who doesn't take power attack? TWF/sneak attackers and unarmed monks to start. Sword 'n board is the standard actually (refusing to use a shield because AC is worthless is a perfect self-fulfilling prophecy), and they don't have much use for PA either. The great pariah Weapon Specialization is the standard feat tax for fighters, though it needed Weapon Mastery from PHB2 to bring the numbers up a bit (barbarians have rage, rangers have favored enemy, paladins have smite, rogues have sneak attack, fighters have weapon spec!). Power attack is no more necessary than any other game element and is also overrated.
What, so Rangers have to suck against all but 2-3 types of enemy for most of the game?
Paladins have to suck against anything not evil? Not to mention that the number of smite uses you get is barely enough for 1 encounter, let alone 4.

And Weapon Spec is terrible. It's so terrible not even fighters take it.
Putting it as the baseline standard for melee combat means effectively telling melee to shut up and play comedic relief.

Someone wanna draw the line from "not having absolute maximum damage after moving" to "can't even do damage?" Isn't there a whole saying about never standing next to a dragon because of their fearsome full attack routine? Which is coincidentally the exact same thing that happens if you stand next to a melee PC.
If you need 3 or more rounds to kill an enemy of your CR you're not doing enough damage.
If you could be replaced by a summoned monster, animal companion or basic zombie you're not doing enough damage.
If a swing of your sword effectively inflicts a papercut on a monster of your CR you're not doing enough damage.

And yes, you're not supposed to stand in full attack range of dragons because full attacks are deadly while single attacks are weak and easily survivable.
Except a dragon gets natural reach, spells, a breath weapon and so on. That fighters do not get. Why do i have to explain this?:smallconfused:

Just get over yourselves. The only reason you need to move and full attack and kill everything on round one is because you jacked up the power level to the point where it became necessary. Maybe you had a killer DM and needed to do it to survive, or maybe you did it first and they pumped the encounters in response, or maybe you all just agreed you wanted bigger numbers sooner, but you did it. There is no inherent quality of DnD 3.5 that demands melee characters have pounce in order to function. All you have to do is not play that way.
No.
The reason you need to move and full attack is because that's what's required to keep up with non-melee. It's that simple.
It's the basic standard of competency to not be a liability to your party, no matter your optimization level.

Even the most garbage of example fighters (and boy are they garbage) has a magic weapon, str boosters, weapon spec, and makes standing full attacks once the enemy is in range (which could even be on their first round if they lose initiative!), so that's kindof a straw man there.
Except that most melee monsters have more reach than the fighter, do more damage, have more hp and are generally capable of killing or disabling you in one round.
There's a reason initiative is considered one of the most important stats in the game. Banking on losing initiative to get off your full attack is a terrible plan.

Your DM is also not obligated at all to move them into your full attack range. Or stay in it if you move yourself.

It doesn't take more than 5 rounds to burn those resources, but yes, yes it is. If your combat only takes 2 rounds it means either you lowballed the encounter or the PCs got extremely lucky/prepared.
There's no luck about something that half the base classes in the PHB and most monsters do by default. It's just melee catching up with everyone else.

Now that I think about it, I can't stand the idea that 2-round combat=heroic. High powered maybe, but that's pretty much the opposite of heroic: it's either a one-sided slaughter or just plain russian roulette. A gritty (as in people die fast) setup makes sudden assassinations easier, and the more likely you are to get wrecked in a fight the more tension there is in trying to avoid one, and both of those are needed for a political game- but those are much more easily accomplished by sticking to low level where people already die in a couple hits, rather than forcing melee to add even more rockets to the rocket tag.
Except that monsters are already doing it.
A specialized melee monster will generally have a solid chance to kill an unbuffed PC with a full attack. Those that don't inflict status conditions or have other nasty tricks.
This is the basic paradigm of the game.

A basic CR 1/2 Orc Warrior straight from the MM does an average of 9 damage per hit. That's enough to send most level 1 characters into negatives with one hit.
A CR 5 Dire Lion does an average of 32 damage with a pounce. That's also nearly the full health of a 5th level fighter with 14 Con.
A CR 11 Cloud Giant does ~96 damage if all his attacks hit. An 11th level fighter has ~80-90hp depending on Con.

That's your basic, no frills beatstick monsters, and that's what you should compare your fighters to.
Being at least roughly equal to a melee monster of your CR straight from the MM is what i consider the minimum level of optimization.

I could go on, but it should be readily apparent that "rocket tag" is inherent in the system.
The only thing you're doing by denying your melee full attacks in round 1 is cripple them compared to everyone else.

[Deophaun]

You do understand what the phrase means, right? Must I laboriously detail the obvious in how equating an incredibly specific ACF from a book published several years after the original combat rules is not the same thing as yanking the entire magic system which was written at the same time or declaring "waterskins OP"? Either people actually can't tell the difference, or they're being deliberately obtuse, and the latter example makes it pretty clear which one that is.
How are waterskins not OP? For 1 gp, you become totally immune to one of the worst ways to die. One. GP. And it functions in an AMF!

Bull#@$% is what that is. You want to drink from your waterskin? ORCUS!

[Pleh]

You do understand what the phrase means, right? Must I laboriously detail the obvious in how equating an incredibly specific ACF from a book published several years after the original combat rules is not the same thing as yanking the entire magic system which was written at the same time or declaring "waterskins OP"? Either people actually can't tell the difference, or they're being deliberately obtuse, and the latter example makes it pretty clear which one that is. You're not refuting the basic balancing principle in any way.

There's not necessarily any reason to refute anything. We're in the realm of opinions, not so much facts. Do we have facts? Yes, but nothing conclusive. The game is, as you say, very subjective.

I was criticizing your criteria: if it's so good everyone needs it, it is OP.

That is either stupid, or very poorly written. Everyone needs water to live, so waterskins are good enough that everyone ought to take one. It's a low investment, could save your life, and won't be much of a waste if you happen to never need it. By this criteria, it sounds a lot like pounce.

Must you laboriously detail your criteria? You aren't compelled to do anything at all on the forum. But if you want the people who have different opinions to express more respect for the criteria you've proposed, it might help to reiterate and refine the criteria to help clarify your position rather than just bemoaning how stupid we all are in comparison to you.


This assumes that the majority of monsters are capable of kiting the party more effectively than the party is of kiting them.

Not necessarily. They don't need to kite the whole party, just the melee-ers.


Compared to those who claim the game is inherently broken because they refuse to consider any play style other than their own valid? I do think my pot's a little lighter.

You don't seem to be recognizing their play style as valid either. I'm not seeing too much difference from here.


Ah, but you just agreed yourself that balance is a myth. "Power level is whatever the table plays it to be." Balance is only what you make it. The only imbalance is that which you create yourself.

Ah, no. While the players have all the tools they need to overcome any imbalance that comes up, that doesn't mean there aren't any imbalances in the design.

Pounce is a tool that help players create a balance that a ton of players are reaching for. Is it the only balance possible? No. Is it the balance originally intended by the designers? Clearly not.

It is, however, a widespread and effective balance that helps advanced players compensate for caster/noncaster disparity.

[Cosi]

You do understand what the phrase means, right? Must I laboriously detail the obvious in how equating an incredibly specific ACF from a book published several years after the original combat rules is not the same thing as yanking the entire magic system which was written at the same time or declaring "waterskins OP"?

If you claim a general principle, and then a bunch of people give explanations about how that general principle leads to bad results, you do need to address those issues. If frequent use is an indicator that things are overpowered, why aren't waterskins overpowered? It sounds like your sole criteria is "time of publication", but that seems obviously flawed as a guideline. Is the exact same thing "balanced" if published in the PHB and "unbalanced" if published in Complete Champion?


I find it amusing all the people demanding everything be buffed up to wizard tier because it's better design, and then wondering why their games are all russian rocket tag.

As I find myself pointing out all too often, many high level monsters simply are casters. If the game is broken when people are allowed to be as powerful as 14th level Clerics, it is a priori broken by the existence of the Trumpet Archon.

What's more, "Wizard Tier" is neither exclusively "Rocket Launcher Tag", not is "Rocket Launcher Tag" exclusively "Wizard Tier". Barbarians are able to charge any particular enemy hard enough to kill it instantly, and Wizards have important characteristics (utility powers, power diversity) that are independent of their combat ability.


Compared to those who claim the game is inherently broken because they refuse to consider any play style other than their own valid? I do think my pot's a little lighter.

The game is inherently broken. The game has in it abilities that allow you to achieve limitless power. That's broken. You don't have to use them, but there presence is in fact "broken", just as a car that explodes if you put it into reverse is "broken" even if you never do that.


Ah, but you just agreed yourself that balance is a myth. "Power level is whatever the table plays it to be." Balance is only what you make it. The only imbalance is that which you create yourself.

Bull. If you are using published content, the onus for it to be balanced is on the publisher.


You have how many wizards? The standard party is fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard. That's one blaster. If your entire party is blasters, it's not the system's fault things aren't working right.

If the only balanced party is Wizard/Rogue/Cleric/Fighter, why do Monks, Barbarians, Paladins, and Sorcerers exist? If the party is only supposed to have one blaster, why is flamestrike on the Cleric list?

[Dagroth]

How are waterskins not OP? For 1 gp, you become totally immune to one of the worst ways to die. One. GP. And it functions in an AMF!

Bull#@$% is what that is. You want to drink from your waterskin? ORCUS!

Actually, as was pointed out in another thread, by RAW you can't die of thirst.

[Deophaun]

Actually, as was pointed out in another thread, by RAW you can't die of thirst.
...

...

...

RAW is OP.

Everyone chooses to play by those rules because they're all munchkins.

[Vaz]

Except that most melee monsters have more reach than the fighter, do more damage, have more hp and are generally capable of killing or disabling you in one round.

There's a reason initiative is considered one of the most important stats in the game. Banking on losing initiative to get off your full attack is a terrible plan.

I used the example of a CR12 monster beforehand to suggest that Fighters aren't as bad as you're making them out to be. Sure, they're still the worst class in the game, but let's use the CR12 Monsters;

Fighter 12; Assuming +3 Equivalent Greatsword (+1 Flaming Keen for this example; 2d6+1+d6, 17-20/x2), 24 Str, 20 Con (17-18 Str after race, +4 Item, 16 Con after race, +4 Item); Average 135HP. +1 Breastplate, Dex 16 (Base 14 after race, +2 item); AC19. Let's say for purposes, it has 10 in Intelligence, and 8's in Wisdom and Charisma.

Frost Worm; 147HP, AC18; DC17 Will Save Trill, DC22 Reflex Save Breath; Given that it only has a +13 to Hide Checks, a Party Radar Rogue likely has a Spot Check, even without boosting Wisdom, of +15, and without Move Silently, it's slow 10ft Burrow Speed isn't really going to do too much to it. Still, let's stack it against the Party; perhaps the party are stalled; guiding a Caravan through the Frostfell, let's say, and it gets the drop on them as they're distracted, and they're not "readied", but neither does the Frost Worm get a Surprise round against them.

Fighter 12 rolls for Initiative; +3, unless it has Improved Initiative, vs +4, means that the Frost Worm is going first 11 times out of 20. It proceeds to trigger its Trill as a Standard Action - the Fighter has a Will Save of +3; that means that the Trill is going to likely go through, Stunning the Fighter, and leaving it susceptible to the Breath Attack in the next turn as it is no save against Trilled Opponents in the next turn. The Fighter is now down 52.5 HP on average; the Fighter now gets a second Save; while it hasn't improved the Save any, it's still a 7/20 chance to pass for the Fighter, it has a just less than 60% chance to pass either one of the saves it has made so far. Let's say for brevity's sake that it fails the first save, but passes the second one, and so is no longer stunned, and it gets to attack.

Given that the Breath was only a 30ft, it's within reach for the fighter to charge, but not near enough to 5ft Step into it, unless the Fighter was the Frost Worms chosen prey. Without Pounce, the Fighter has a +23 chance to hit an AC18 opponent. Even with a -5 on a Power Attack (something I typically do on many characters to get a grasp for how low AC's are), the attack is pretty much a guaranteed auto-hit aside from that natural 1. With Pounce, that +18 to hit transforms the rest of the attacks into a +13, +8, and results in the Fighter having a 37.5% chance of scoring 3 hits, and an 87.5% chance of scoring 2 hits, transforming what would have been around 30 damage to at least 60 or even 90 damage at a push. Where the Fighter had gone from doing 30pts of damage in a charge (1/5th target HP), it was now doing 2 or even 3 times that.

In return, the next round, the Frost Worm makes a Bite Attack; with an AC of only 19, the Fighter gets pretty much auto hit, and takes 2d8+12+1d8 - 24.5 points of damage; leaving the Fighter at less than 50%. In return, the Fighter Attacks. With the charge, if all 3 hit, the Fighter would likely be tempted at keeping it -5. If only 2 hit, dependent on the result of the dice, the Fighter might be tempted to reduce the Power Attack. Let's say that that only 2 hit with Pounce, and that the 3rd attack missed, because it rolled an 8-9, so he drops the Power Attack to -3. With 3 attacks, it's still the same rate of success; 87.5% to get at least 2, 37.5% to get all 3. This is the same for all characters. Given that the non-Pounce Fighter succeeded on all but a natural 1 (and even if it was a natural 1, it's likely the player put it down to a "fumble" from the natural 1), it might be tempted to keep it at -5, or maybe even increase it; I'm not going to bother doing the maths on it, but keeping it at -5 or increasing the penalty means that the Fighter is making it harder to deal additional damage, and is now an attack behind. So it's either at sub 50% HP now, after that

Then throw in a more simulationist approach, where unless the Frost Worm was protecting its eggs (are they particularly maternal?) taking 60% damage in a single round after using its Trill AND its Breath Attack is going to make it wary of either attacking, or even outright flee - it's an ambush predator, and rather than instantly succumbing to its otherwise 1-2-3 combo that has taken down things like Polar Bears (68HP), or Mammoths (104HP), it's unlikely to continue the fight, will attempt to Withdraw, and start a 60ft/turn race through its tunnels that you either have to follow through - taking possible falling damage, and having to make your way through difficult terrain - 5ft tunnel, and unless you're small, you're having to duck - it has essentially got away.

Now that completely ignored the rest of the parties contributions, in their role in fighting off the Frost Worm (and I completely understand that there are other CR12 fights around), But if protecting the Caravan was the objective, then you've done that, fought off the Frost Worm, and despite needing healing for the ~80pts of damage you took in that fight, you've successfully protected the caravan from being attacked for a good long while; say it's at 50% HP, and it heals 28HP/day (Full "bed" rest healing), you shouldn't be attacked for a further week; 2-3 days of healing, plus the time it takes for it to catch up with your party if that's what it takes.

If you hadn't managed to deal that amount of damage in such a short time, however, it may not have fled, and the Fighter would have taken a lot more damage, not to mention the ability for the Frost Worm to simply withdraw, and use its Reach, and readied attacks (yes, Int 2 can use Readied attacks; r.e. Stegosaur/Ankylodon types) to deal some damage to it, before withdrawing once more to deal more damage. Without Pounce, the Frost Worm can simply just do more damage to the fighter. It has the big Breath attack, but given that the Fighter has to sacrifice accuracy to hit with his attacks to exceed that damage, when it doesn't have that, turns Pounce into being something that the Fighter needs to be able to fight effectively.

I'm not talking high grade optimization here, where Wizards and Sorcerers are throwing out Elder Evil killing attacks in a single round. This is a fighter, as is, versus an unmodified CR12 opponent. It's not about requiring losing initiative to function well, it's about how integral that ability of the Fighter to be able to pounce is.

The best way to put it in without simply giving all players access to it (because as with all things, casters do it better) is to have it as a single feat, accessible at BAB+10 on the Fighter Bonus Feat list. This allows a Full BAB character to pick it up at 12th level even with a couple on non full BAB dips, a Fighter to get it at 10th (or force a fighter dip) in the same way a Barbarian is without the alignment or RP tax), and 3/4 to only get it at 15th. It does leave a 7 level gap between the second attack and getting Pounce, however.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I'm not talking high grade optimization here, where Wizards and Sorcerers are throwing out Elder Evil killing attacks in a single round. This is a fighter, as is, versus an unmodified CR12 opponent. It's not about requiring losing initiative to function well, it's about how integral that ability of the Fighter to be able to pounce is.


Yes, that was the point i was making. What you're quoting was in response to Fizban's example of a fighter with weapon spec and no Power Attack waiting until round 2 to full attack unless he lost initiative to "not waste" his turn.
Pounce/move + full attack is required for melee to keep up with monsters. Letting the enemy attack first to avoid a move + single attack in your first turn is a losing game.
It has absolutely nothing to do with excessive optimization or "Killer DMs" as Fizban was claiming, it's an inherent quality of the game.

1-2 full attacks from a melee monster will generally kill a character, depending on class and Con. To keep up with CR a melee class has to accomplish the same or be a liability to the party.
Also keep in mind that this is an equal-CR monster. A party of four is supposed to be able to put up a fight against CR +4.
What's a fighter without pounce accomplishing against that Frost Worm at level 8?

[Flickerdart]

*fighter scares off frost worm by being bad at fighting*

DM pity is not a class feature.

[Vaz]

Edit; sorry, sleepingphoenix, was kind of agreeing, and was putting some numbers to it.


DM pity is not a class feature.

I credited you as being more intelligent. Int 2 is a feature of the creature they are fighting, and it also went hand in hand with the idea of doing lots of damage quickly is more likely to trigger that response - it's also more likely to kill someone, funnily enough, so I'm not what point you're trying to make.

[Dagroth]

Wait... wait.

You're saying that because a poorly built Fighter couldn't kill an equal CR monster (that, need I remind you, is supposed to take a 4-man party to defeat without significant danger in 2 rounds... Pounce should be freely (as in, no Feat or GP cost) available?

Yes, it all hinges on the Fighter not staying Stunned which is clearly part of the monster's CR... but still.

Let's note that the party Rogue can't come close to defeating such a monster alone unless he's got an invisibility item or some other guaranteed way to sneak attack. Does that mean that Invisibility should also be freely (as in, no Feat or GP cost) available?

And let's not forget just how much of an advantage Pounce gives to melee Scouts.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Let's note that the party Rogue can't come close to defeating such a monster alone unless he's got an invisibility item or some other guaranteed way to sneak attack. Does that mean that Invisibility should also be freely (as in, no Feat or GP cost) available?
Yes. That's not just my opinion, that's more or less the case for the rogue's ToB counterpart. The Cloak of Deception maneuver allows you to become invisible for one round (as greater invisibility, so it works on all attacks). There is also the Invisible Fist ACF for monks.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Wait... wait.

You're saying that because a poorly built Fighter couldn't kill an equal CR monster (that, need I remind you, is supposed to take a 4-man party to defeat without significant danger in 2 rounds... Pounce should be freely (as in, no Feat or GP cost) available?

Yes, it all hinges on the Fighter not staying Stunned which is clearly part of the monster's CR... but still.

Let's note that the party Rogue can't come close to defeating such a monster alone unless he's got an invisibility item or some other guaranteed way to sneak attack. Does that mean that Invisibility should also be freely (as in, no Feat or GP cost) available?

And let's not forget just how much of an advantage Pounce gives to melee Scouts.

A normal pc-race fighter has a CR equal to his level. He's supposed to be equal to a monster of his CR.
It makes sense to look at a melee monster for a rough baseline of where a fighter should be. A baseline that a poorly build fighter very obviously does not reach.

It doesn't need to be pounce (there are other ways to get the requisite numbers), but if you're not roughly equal to a melee monster of your CR you're objectively too weak.
Because you're supposed to be a melee monster of your CR.

And a solo rogue can get sneak attack damage pretty easily in the first round, even naked.
He's going to have high dex, meaning he'll likely win initiative, meaning his opponents will all be flat-footed until their first action. He doesn't need to do anything to get sneak attack.

It gets trickier after that, but a well-built rogue is hardly without options. You can either get a way to move & full attack (Travel Devotion, pounce, various items), pump up your SA until one hit is enough (possible with optimization), use feats like Staggering Strike to deny the enemy their full attack, use various options to get an enemy flat footed (there's a guide for that (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=12405)) and so on.

Keep in mind that WBL is part of your expected strength, so it's not like you're not supposed to use items.

And i don't see the big advantage for scouts. Skirmish damage is lower than sneak attack damage, so it's no better for him than a rogue. And scouts kinda rely on full-attack skirmish to get the requisite numbers to compete.

[Elderand]

A CR12 encounter is a challenging encounter for a party of four level 12 characters. They should expend roughly 20% of their ressources dealing with it.

So very roughly, one level 12 character should expend almost all his ressources to deal with that encounter. He shouldn't have quite a 50/50 percent chance of wining or dying, the odds should be slightly in his favor. Say 55/45.

Of course...heh...that assumes....hahah....that the game is.....ohoho....balanced.

https://tvatemywardrobe.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/img_8663.jpg

[Dagroth]

Yes. That's not just my opinion, that's more or less the case for the rogue's ToB counterpart. The Cloak of Deception maneuver allows you to become invisible for one round (as greater invisibility, so it works on all attacks). There is also the Invisible Fist ACF for monks.

Those two classes don't get Sneak Attack. Warblades & Swordsages can get a Pounce Maneuver.

I'm saying that Pounce shouldn't be an "everyone gets it, all the time, period" ability any more than Invisibility should be an "everyone gets it, all the time, period" ability.


A normal pc-race fighter has a CR equal to his level. He's supposed to be equal to a monster of his CR.
It makes sense to look at a melee monster for a rough baseline of where a fighter should be. A baseline that a poorly build fighter very obviously does not reach.

It doesn't need to be pounce (there are other ways to get the requisite numbers), but if you're not roughly equal to a melee monster of your CR you're objectively too weak.
Because you're supposed to be a melee monster of your CR.

And a solo rogue can get sneak attack damage pretty easily in the first round, even naked.
He's going to have high dex, meaning he'll likely win initiative, meaning his opponents will all be flat-footed until their first action. He doesn't need to do anything to get sneak attack.

It gets trickier after that, but a well-built rogue is hardly without options. You can either get a way to move & full attack (Travel Devotion, pounce, various items), pump up your SA until one hit is enough (possible with optimization), use feats like Staggering Strike to deny the enemy their full attack, use various options to get an enemy flat footed (there's a guide for that (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=12405)) and so on.

Keep in mind that WBL is part of your expected strength, so it's not like you're not supposed to use items.

And i don't see the big advantage for scouts. Skirmish damage is lower than sneak attack damage, so it's no better for him than a rogue. And scouts kinda rely on full-attack skirmish to get the requisite numbers to compete.

Uh... without Travel Devotion, Pounce or some other unusual swift-action movement 10' or greater (like a Training Dummy of the Master), you can't get skirmish damage on a full attack... and clearly, that was by design.


A CR12 encounter is a challenging encounter for a party of four level 12 characters. They should expend roughly 20% of their ressources dealing with it.

So very roughly, one level 12 character should expend almost all his ressources to deal with that encounter. He shouldn't have quite a 50/50 percent chance of wining or dying, the odds should be slightly in his favor. Say 55/45.

Of course...heh...that assumes....hahah....that the game is.....ohoho....balanced.

https://tvatemywardrobe.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/img_8663.jpg

Your math ignores party synergy.

A party of 4 normally has the kind of synergy that means each member makes the other member at least slightly more effective than they would be alone.

A Rogue + a Fighter is not twice as combat effective as a Rogue or Fighter alone. Having both increases the combat effectiveness of both. Even if the Rogue deliberately did no damage... just flanking or using Aid Another increases the Fighter's effectiveness.

So a Fight that causes the Rogue + Fighter pair to use 40% of their resources should likely kill a Fighter on his own.

[Cosi]

Your math ignores party synergy.

A party of 4 normally has the kind of synergy that means each member makes the other member at least slightly more effective than they would be alone.

A Rogue + a Fighter is not twice as combat effective as a Rogue or Fighter alone. Having both increases the combat effectiveness of both. Even if the Rogue deliberately did no damage... just flanking or using Aid Another increases the Fighter's effectiveness.

So a Fight that causes the Rogue + Fighter pair to use 40% of their resources should likely kill a Fighter on his own.

His math is just the rules of the game.

A 10th level Fighter is CR 10.

A 10th level Fighter and a 10th level Rogue are CR (EL) 12. There's no synergy bonus.

Your theory is plausible, but contradicts the rules.

This is not a complicated argument. It's basically just the reflexive property.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Those two classes don't get Sneak Attack. Warblades & Swordsages can get a Pounce Maneuver.
I'm saying that Pounce shouldn't be an "everyone gets it, all the time, period" ability any more than Invisibility should be an "everyone gets it, all the time, period" ability.
I'm not saying everyone should get it free. It's fine where it is imo. Other classes have other options.
But it shouldn't be banned, and it's definitely not overrated.

Uh... without Travel Devotion, Pounce or some other unusual swift-action movement 10' or greater (like a Training Dummy of the Master), you can't get skirmish damage on a full attack... and clearly, that was by design.
I've never seen a scout build without at least one of those options in an actual game. They weren't broken overpowered (in fact they were kinda on the weak side).
Scouts get move + full attack options like fighters and barbarians get Power Attack. It's basically a tax that's required for the class to function properly.



Your math ignores party synergy.

A party of 4 normally has the kind of synergy that means each member makes the other member at least slightly more effective than they would be alone.

A Rogue + a Fighter is not twice as combat effective as a Rogue or Fighter alone. Having both increases the combat effectiveness of both. Even if the Rogue deliberately did no damage... just flanking or using Aid Another increases the Fighter's effectiveness.

So a Fight that causes the Rogue + Fighter pair to use 40% of their resources should likely kill a Fighter on his own.
There's no math about it. A level 12 Fighter is CR 12. He's supposed to be roughly equal to other CR 12 opponents.
And going by that a fight between a level 12 Fighter and a CR 12 monster is likely to kill a Fighter on his own. About 50% in fact, ideally.

[Dagroth]

I'm not saying everyone should get it free. It's fine where it is imo. Other classes have other options.
But it shouldn't be banned, and it's definitely not overrated.

I've never seen a scout build without at least one of those options in an actual game. They weren't broken overpowered (in fact they were kinda on the weak side).
Scouts get move + full attack options like fighters and barbarians get Power Attack. It's basically a tax that's required for the class to function properly.

1) I've never said it should be banned. I've said it should be removed from Lion Totem Barbarian and turned into a Feat or Feat Chain. It should be available to all classes on an equal or near equal basis (Requiring BAB +4 or +8, for example). It shouldn't be out of reach of Paladins & Monks because of alignment and multiclassing restrictions.

2) Function properly according to what? According to the way the class was written before any of those options existed? Or according to the way your group plays?


There's no math about it. A level 12 Fighter is CR 12. He's supposed to be roughly equal to other CR 12 opponents.
And going by that a fight between a level 12 Fighter and a CR 12 monster is likely to kill a Fighter on his own. About 50% in fact, ideally.

Read the actual game-designer explanations about CR and why (for example) an Ogre Mage is a CR 8 encounter but would be a CR 12 Player Character. Or why a Fire Giant is a CR 10 encounter but would be a CR 19 Player Character.

[Cosi]

2) Function properly according to what? According to the way the class was written before any of those options existed? Or according to the way your group plays?

What is the position you're arguing for here? If a Scout with an ability printed after the class is merely "okay", shouldn't that indicate that it was terrible when originally printed?


Read the actual game-designer explanations about CR and why (for example) an Ogre Mage is a CR 8 encounter but would be a CR 12 Player Character. Or why a Fire Giant is a CR 10 encounter but would be a CR 19 Player Character.

First, red herring. The rules are very explicit about the CR of a 10th level Fighter: it's 10.

Second, pretty much all the rules that pertain to "monsters as PCs" are terrible, and you would be better off with literal nothing in their place, because they break the game and produce horrifically underpowered characters.

[Beheld]

Read the actual game-designer explanations about CR and why (for example) an Ogre Mage is a CR 8 encounter but would be a CR 12 Player Character. Or why a Fire Giant is a CR 10 encounter but would be a CR 19 Player Character.

1) It's not a CR 19 anything, it's ECL 19.

2) I've read what they said, the rules give no justification, outside the rules, they admit the justification is because they don't want you to be monsters, so they make it unplayable.

[Dagroth]

What is the position you're arguing for here? If a Scout with an ability printed after the class is merely "okay", shouldn't that indicate that it was terrible when originally printed?

What I'm really saying is that things like Pounce and Travel Devotion should be more universally available and similar in power. Travel Devotion should be, at a minimum, once per encounter instead of once per day. All of the Devotion Feats should be balanced around that idea, but that's a different debate.


First, red herring. The rules are very explicit about the CR of a 10th level Fighter: it's 10.

Second, pretty much all the rules that pertain to "monsters as PCs" are terrible, and you would be better off with literal nothing in their place, because they break the game and produce horrifically underpowered characters.

First, you say "the rules are very explicit and say this". Then you say "the rules are terrible and should be thrown out or completely rewritten".

Is a Fire Giant an equal match for a 10th level Fighter, or is a Fire Giant Player Character (who would, admittedly, have better gear) an equal match for a Prismatic Golem?

[Cosi]

First, you say "the rules are very explicit and say this". Then you say "the rules are terrible and should be thrown out or completely rewritten".

The rules can be explicit and also terrible. Take a look at the changes to wish between 3.0 and 3.5 sometimes.


Is a Fire Giant an equal match for a 10th level Fighter, or is a Fire Giant Player Character (who would, admittedly, have better gear) an equal match for a Prismatic Golem?

Technically, there's no contradiction there. The rules say a Fire Giant is CR 10, making it an appropriate challenge for a 10th level Fighter. They also say it's an ECL 19 character, making a Prismatic Golem an appropriate challenge for it. Is that obviously wrong on one end or the other? Sure. But there's no "gotcha" there, not really. CR != ECL.

Even if we grant your position (that there is an irreconcilable mechanical contradiction), it seems to me the only reasonable solution is to ignore the LA rules, as they are far worse (in the sense of producing less reasonable outcomes) than the CR rules.

[sleepyphoenixx]

First, you say "the rules are very explicit and say this". Then you say "the rules are terrible and should be thrown out or completely rewritten".

Is a Fire Giant an equal match for a 10th level Fighter, or is a Fire Giant Player Character (who would, admittedly, have better gear) an equal match for a Prismatic Golem?

You're confusing CR and ECL.
A Fire Giant is CR 10. He's a tough challenge for a decently optimized human fighter 10 (who is also CR 10) 1 on 1. Ideally it's 50/50, but depending on optimization it's either more or less in the fighters favor.

A Fire Giant has 15 racial HD and +4 LA. He's ECL 19. He's a terrible level 19 character. His hp, attack, damage and saves are way too low to compete as a primary melee fighter at that level.
Giant HD aren't the most terrible, but they still only grant 3/4 BAB, good fort saves and 2+int skill points. That's it. No class features at all.
Not to mention he'll die like a mook against any effect that depends on level (like Blasphemy).

That's because the original designers didn't want players to play monster races, not because they're actually on par with a humanoid with class levels of their ECL.

[Venger]

The rules can be explicit and also terrible. Take a look at the changes to wish between 3.0 and 3.5 sometimes.

I glanced at 3.0 wish and 3.5 wish. they look identical to me. what am I missing?

[Cosi]

I glanced at 3.0 wish and 3.5 wish. they look identical to me. what am I missing?

In either edition, wish produces a number of effects. Of particular interest is its ability to create magic items. In 3.0 the ability is worded thus:


Create a valuable item, even a magic item, of up to 15,000 gp in value.
3.0 SRD (http://www.dragon.ee/30srd/) (doesn't have individual entries).

In 3.5, the GP limit on magic items is removed:


Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item.
Source (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm).

This change mans that, using 3.5 wish, you can create magic items of arbitrary power provided you are somehow exempt from paying the XP cost (for example, by being or binding an Efreet). On the other hand, with 3.0 wish you are limited to items worth 15,000 GP or less, which while not strictly balanced is at least "not infinite power".

The change from capped to uncapped magic item creation lead to the creation of The Wish, a famous optimized build that uses a Ring of Infinite Wishes to trivialize most printed encounters. Incidentally, The Word (a companion build to The Wish) also exploits a change from 3.0 to 3.5 -- specifically, the changes to the holy word series of spells.

[Beheld]

I glanced at 3.0 wish and 3.5 wish. they look identical to me. what am I missing?

The ability to create items worth more than 15kgp for one.

[Fizban]

I was criticizing your criteria: if it's so good everyone needs it, it is OP.

That is either stupid, or very poorly written. Everyone needs water to live, so waterskins are good enough that everyone ought to take one. It's a low investment, could save your life, and won't be much of a waste if you happen to never need it. By this criteria, it sounds a lot like pounce.
The most specific version of the line is on p35, handling new spells: "If a spell is so good you can't imagine a caster not wanting it all the time, it's either too powerful or too low in level." The class building suggestions are more broad since they're more about remixing existing class abilities rather than actually inventing new features, but the line from spell handling is applicable to any game element. "If a 1st level class ability is so good you can't imagine a melee character not wanting it all the time, it's either too powerful or shouldn't be a 1st level ability."

I remain at a loss for words to describe how irrelevant trying to use waterskins to refute a basic principle of game design is.

Not necessarily. They don't need to kite the whole party, just the melee-ers.
While the rest of the party kills them at range. Fighter takes some damage, enemy dies, encounter won, fighter contributed. The DM would be well advised to make the next enemy stand still for a bit so the fighter is allowed to contribute more than tanking, maybe a something resistant to magic if necessary. If they're not targeting the fighter he can pull out a bow and contribute that way, as even the worst example builds manage to do.

You don't seem to be recognizing their play style as valid either. I'm not seeing too much difference from here.
The difference is that I am recognizing their play style as valid. The only thing that changes is they have to admit the game was not designed to work the way they want it to. Claiming the system doesn't work means that all the people for whom it does work are mysteriously wrong.

It is, however, a widespread and effective balance that helps advanced players compensate for caster/noncaster disparity.
Which they created. Which is fine, as long as they don't try to claim it's actually required by the system.


As for the rest, I'm not arguing in circles with people that refuse to follow basic logic, nor am I repeating arguments I've already had with certain people over entire other threads.


A CR12 encounter is a challenging encounter for a party of four level 12 characters. They should expend roughly 20% of their ressources dealing with it.

So very roughly, one level 12 character should expend almost all his ressources to deal with that encounter. He shouldn't have quite a 50/50 percent chance of wining or dying, the odds should be slightly in his favor. Say 55/45.

Of course...heh...that assumes....hahah....that the game is.....ohoho....balanced.

Your math ignores party synergy.

A party of 4 normally has the kind of synergy that means each member makes the other member at least slightly more effective than they would be alone.

A Rogue + a Fighter is not twice as combat effective as a Rogue or Fighter alone. Having both increases the combat effectiveness of both. Even if the Rogue deliberately did no damage... just flanking or using Aid Another increases the Fighter's effectiveness.

So a Fight that causes the Rogue + Fighter pair to use 40% of their resources should likely kill a Fighter on his own.

Both are correct. If the rest of the party sends the fighter off to brawl against another fighter of equal level, he should end up either dead or with a sliver of health remaining. Against a monster of equal level, he should lose because classed NPCs and 1v1 fights are not the root of the CR system. Monsters are built to threaten at least one party member even when they're working together, and the party when working together is far stronger than they are alone. But arguing about this with Cosi and friends is pointless, so if the thread's hit this point I think it's pretty well done.


OmgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce (often referred to simply as "pounce" by people that expect it to be available), is one of the most obviously broken discreet mechanics in the game by several measures. The only reason to keep it around is if your table likes what it does to the game, and if the DM does not like what it does to the game, they do not and never have had to allow it. If you're not sure, the best option is to ban it so you don't get stuck having to retcon someone's character, and if your game actually reaches a point where you've made it so you need moving full attacks then screw it and just rewrite the base combat rules to suit your needs instead of adhering to some idiot's broken idea of where it should go.

[Vaz]

Wait... wait.

You're saying that because a poorly built Fighter couldn't kill an equal CR monster (that, need I remind you, is supposed to take a 4-man party to defeat without significant danger in 2 rounds... Pounce should be freely (as in, no Feat or GP cost) available?

Yes, it all hinges on the Fighter not staying Stunned which is clearly part of the monster's CR... but still.

Let's note that the party Rogue can't come close to defeating such a monster alone unless he's got an invisibility item or some other guaranteed way to sneak attack. Does that mean that Invisibility should also be freely (as in, no Feat or GP cost) available?

And let's not forget just how much of an advantage Pounce gives to melee Scouts.

No, lol. Reading comprehensions gone down the swanny in recent times since I last spent time on this forum. It's not that Pounce allowed a poorly built Fighter missing all of its feats with only 4 +Stat Magic Items to kill a CR12 appropriate challenge within 2 rounds, but that that is what a fighter should be able to do, or else it's limited to doing 30-40 damage/round at its highest level.


This shows the average level of a party of adventurers for which one creature would make an encounter of moderate difficulty. Assume a party of four fresh characters (full hit points, full spells, and equipment appropriate to their levels). Given reasonable luck, the party should be able to win the encounter with some damage but no casualties.

Neither did I say that it should be free - Casters do it better, and a Caster who can all of a sudden get 4 Attacks for free (Druid, Cleric, Wizard etc) on a charge would get more benefit from the free boost than a Fighter who has to wait until 16th level to get those additional attacks. However, as a Feat for a melee character with a BAB requirement of +10 would mean that a Fighter can get it at Level 10 through bonus feats, and other full BAB at 12th level, as a 12th level feat.

As for the Rogue who "can't come close", the Rogue has a Hide modifier of what, 20+ by 20th level, even using a pretty badly set of stats (maxed Hide, +3 level up in Dex, 17-18 base in Dex after race) and let's keep it low OP a +1 Returning Keen Dagger so that they can throw it - the Rogue gets the flank on courtesy of the Fighter, so has a +6d6, and let's call it weapon Finesse (again, this is one of those things - why does it require a Feat to do? If you're proficient in it's use you should be able to to Finesse something - inb4 Proficiency; women) - is a thing. So it's hitting with it's +12 to hit, and because it's trying to get the flank on, it's actually charging. Because it's only +9 we won't include a theoretical pounce, but it deals 23 damage with every attack that hits. The Rogue is keeping up with a Fighter that doesn't have access to Pounce, and actually out-damages said Fighter when you don't factor in 2H Power Attacking (given that said Monster has an AC 4 below that of the already determined MM1 CR12 Average AC.

A Rogue. With no strength bonus, using only a dagger and it's flanking Sneak Attack bonus, is matching a fighter's ability to attack. Given that a Rogue might have a better Wisdom courtesy of it's need to Spot things, the Trill has less chance of success, but I've assumed here that they both shake it off at the same time, and uses his Higher Initiative to move into a better position to ready to prepare for a flanking charge and then try and get hidden. There are no optimization tricks here. This is simply a Rogue played pretty much to it's entire conceptual ability, being able to match a fighter for damage, given that the Fighter lacks Pounce.

I don't know if you were trying to use the Rogue to prove a point, but thank you for justifying the case for fighters and other low tier martial types to encourage the use of Pounce at some point in there progression.


Those two classes don't get Sneak Attack. Warblades & Swordsages can get a Pounce Maneuver.
TIL That Assassin's Stance isn't Sneak Attack. But I get your point.


I'm saying that Pounce shouldn't be an "everyone gets it, all the time, period" ability any more than Invisibility should be an "everyone gets it, all the time, period" ability.
Few people are arguing that, and even if they are, given that it either requires an Arbitrary Dip, or a Feat Tax like Combat Expertise, Power Attack, or Weapon Finesse as some (including myself are suggesting), are you worried that a GM might struggle to balance encounters for Duskblades who can suddenly make Charge Attack Channels?

Because dude, we've gotta show you the Druid, or the Cleric some time.


Uh... without Travel Devotion, Pounce or some other unusual swift-action movement 10' or greater (like a Training Dummy of the Master), you can't get skirmish damage on a full attack... and clearly, that was by design.
Given that Training Dummy of the Master requires you to be a Monk and you can't UMD being a Monk, you'd need either a dip in one of the above options. But yes, you're correct. Scouts, and all other mundane, none casters, without access to Polymorphing into Lions or having Lion's Charge, or Psionic Lion's Charge, cannot make a Full Attack. You see the link here? It's Mundane. It follows the rules set for mundanes, which without cross-class UMD ranks it cannot get a Full Attack on the Charge. Does that make it balanced? No.

But hey, "Let's continue to penalize mundanes because that's what the rules say to do". Amirite?


Your math ignores party synergy.
Your post ignores the part where that was stated. Why should anyone continue to give you the time of day when you completely miss what's already written in front of you?

[Cosi]

I remain at a loss for words to describe how irrelevant trying to use waterskins to refute a basic principle of game design is.

Actually, it seems pretty relevant. The position of the people pointing to Waterskins or Magic Items as refutations of your position are pointing out that "everyone wants it" is not a sufficient condition for "broken".


The difference is that I am recognizing their play style as valid. The only thing that changes is they have to admit the game was not designed to work the way they want it to. Claiming the system doesn't work means that all the people for whom it does work are mysteriously wrong.

The people who claim the system is "broken" are quite happy with the games they play in it. Why is it they, rather than you, who are warping it?


Which they created. Which is fine, as long as they don't try to claim it's actually required by the system.

Which players created planar binding? Which player removed the GP cap on wish? The game contains broken things by RAW. You can't just bury your head and claim that anyone who notices them is causing the problem.


As for the rest, I'm not arguing in circles with people that refuse to follow basic logic, nor am I repeating arguments I've already had with certain people over entire other threads.

I like how the guy who doesn't believe in the reflexive property is complaining about other people refusing to follow basic logic.


Both are correct. If the rest of the party sends the fighter off to brawl against another fighter of equal level, he should end up either dead or with a sliver of health remaining. Against a monster of equal level, he should lose because classed NPCs and 1v1 fights are not the root of the CR system.

The system makes explicitly derivable statements about the appropriate win rates for 1v1 fights. Fighters do not reach those rates (at reasonable levels of relative optimization).


OmgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce (often referred to simply as "pounce" by people that expect it to be available), is one of the most obviously broken discreet mechanics in the game by several measures.

You heard it here first folks, getting pounce at first level is more broken than SLA wish, planar binding, shapechange, or ice assassin. All those things pale in comparison to the notion that Fighters might get nice things.


The only reason to keep it around is if your table likes what it does to the game, and if the DM does not like what it does to the game, they do not and never have had to allow it.

Oh god, we also get "the DM should unilaterally ban things because he matters more". I wondered when that would show up.

[Fizban]

I like how the guy who doesn't believe in the reflexive property is complaining about other people refusing to follow basic logic.
I have already demonstrated in detail why they reflexive property does not apply to what you think it does, you simply refuse to accept it.

You heard it here first folks, getting pounce at first level is more broken than SLA wish, planar binding, shapechange, or ice assassin. All those things pale in comparison to the notion that Fighters might get nice things.
There's more than one meaning of the term "broken," as usual your comparisons make it obvious you only care about how you think the game should be played.

Oh god, we also get "the DM should unilaterally ban things because he matters more". I wondered when that would show up.
While conveniently ignoring how I also said the DM should unilaterally fix things if it's required. But hey, latch on to whatever you think will sway popular opinion in place of actual evidence.

Are we done yet?

[Cosi]

I have already demonstrated in detail why they reflexive property does not apply to what you think it does, you simply refuse to accept it.

Hahahaha.

Dude, you can't win this one, because your position is incoherent.

10th level PCs are CR 10 monsters.

If a set of monsters is mutually balanced, the aggregate average win rate in fights between them will be equal.

The only case where that can be true is a 50% winrate.

Therefore, balanced PC classes are those which best approximate a 50% winrate against equal level opposition.

There's no part of which is even a little big ambiguous, and the only part that is dependent on the rules is the first thing, which we all know to be true because the rules say it explictly.

You can claim game balance isn't important to you. But your position that the Fighter is "totally balanced" and it under-performing is just the fault of "powergamers doing it wrong" is absurd.


There's more than one meaning of the term "broken," as usual your comparisons make it obvious you only care about how you think the game should be played.

I would love to hear a definition of "broken" that applies more to "you can move and full attack" than "you can make copies of yourself".

Honestly, your position just sounds like the standard "Fighters can't have nice things", and I don't care because that position has been wrong for long enough to drive.

[Dagroth]

Okay, let's break this down.

There appear to be three positions in this debate.

1) Pounce is broken/overrated/shouldn't be so easily available.

These people want to remove Lion Totem Barbarian 1. There are other ways to move & full attack or get Pounce, but they believe this shouldn't be one of them.

2) Pounce is too hard to get for characters who don't want to/can't dip a level of Barbarian.

These people want to remove Lion Totem Barbarian 1 and replace it with a Feat and/or a relatively inexpensive magic item. I personally believe there should be a couple of different ways to achieve the Move + Full Attack besides just Pounce... for example, make Travel Devotion 1/encounter or (Character Level)/ 3 times per day.

3) Pounce is too important and all characters should always get all their attacks every time the make an attack action, unless they are using a specific attack (like a ToB maneuver, etc.) that specifies only being a single attack.


Does anyone have a stance that is significantly different from one of these three?

[Fizban]

Dude, you can't win this one, because your position is incoherent.
Dude, I already won this one, when I quoted for you line by line all the relevant lines in the DMG and how they do not support your claims.

You can claim game balance isn't important to you. But your position that the Fighter is "totally balanced" and it under-performing is just the fault of "powergamers doing it wrong" is absurd.
Hai hai, and your claim that everything is broken because RAW doesn't include a DM is more absurd. And why would I be arguing about balance if I didn't care about it?

I would love to hear a definition of "broken" that applies more to "you can move and full attack" than "you can make copies of yourself".
Broken: something that is too strong, too weak, or simply does not function as intended or possibly at all. OmgSLTBbbq pounce is broken by being too powerful for its cost and going against the fluff of the actual ability. Simulacrum is not broken because it is an extremely high level ability with significant costs and produces a copy significantly weaker than yourself. Shapechange s not broken because it's a 9th level spell, and as the pinnacle of already powerful polymorph effects it's fully intended to be ridiculous. Wish is not broken as it carries high additional costs and includes a reminder of DM adjudication in the text. Planar Binding is not broken because it is even more dependent on DM adjudication.

Ice Assassin and no-xp Wish are in fact broken, good job identifying them! Now tell me how this has any bearing on the fact that omgSLTBbbq pounce is also broken? What's that, it has no bearing? Discreet game elements can all be broken in different ways without impacting each other? Gosh, I never new.

Honestly, your position just sounds like the standard "Fighters can't have nice things", and I don't care because that position has been wrong for long enough to drive.
And your position is "lol RAW is broken," which has been irrelevant for long enough to pay off a mortgage.


There appear to be three positions in this debate.
You're forgetting position four:

4. RAW is god and DMs don't exist, so Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian pounce is the official and neccesary fix for a system that's always been broken.

[OldTrees1]

Okay, let's break this down.

There appear to be three positions in this debate.

Does anyone have a stance that is significantly different from one of these three?

Yes. Everyone that shut up when this thread went loco.

For example:
Pounce is not overrated, but is not fundamentally important. It is instrumentally important, although still not vital. The instrumental importance comes about due to disparity in the scaling of the different combat actions characters gain. However noting the disparity in the scaling is not the same as wanting the Standard and Full Round combat options to be identical. Rather one would want comparable scaling for both options while keeping both options as distinct incomparables. Once the root cause of an issue is addressed, then most of the resulting patchwork can be refactored into the improved design.

Of course, a nuanced position is not worth pushing when threads go loco.

[Cosi]

Dude, I already won this one, when I quoted for you line by line all the relevant lines in the DMG and how they do not support your claims.

You can't "win this one". Your position is that "math don't real". You ranted a bunch about how you are totally convinced that the DMG has an esoteric meaning that contradicts the exoteric statements it makes about how 10th level Fighters are CR 10, but ultimately that doesn't mean anything.

The fundamental reality is that characters that can't pass the SGT aren't performing appropriately isn't a property of your increasingly tortured readings of the DMG, it's a property of math. A 10th level Fighter is an EL 10 challenge. If it is appropriately balanced, it is approximately equal to any other EL 10 challenge. But it isn't equal (for reasonable levels of relatively optimization), so it's not balanced.

You don't have a leg to stand on here, and you never have.


Hai hai, and your claim that everything is broken because RAW doesn't include a DM is more absurd. And why would I be arguing about balance if I didn't care about it?

Oh hey, it's the Oberoni Fallacy. Does someone have a bingo card for me? I have "Fighters can't have nice things", "things are only broken if you ignore the DM", and "it's not broken, you're doing it wrong".


OmgSLTBbbq pounce is broken by being too powerful for its cost and going against the fluff of the actual ability.

It's called "pounce". Stop being childish. Or I guess prove that it's overpowered by a standard that doesn't make pants overpowered.


Simulacrum is not broken because it is an extremely high level ability with significant costs and produces a copy significantly weaker than yourself.

simulacrum allows you to create an arbitrarily large army of mid level Wizards. That's broken. Also, nothing stops you from creating a half strength copy of something twice as strong as you.


Shapechange s not broken because it's a 9th level spell, and as the pinnacle of already powerful polymorph effects it's fully intended to be ridiculous.

So to be clear "all the Ex abilities of valid shapechange targets" is totally fine (because casters can have nice things), but "move and full attack" is super broken (because martials can't have nice things). Glad we cleared that up.


Wish is not broken as it carries high additional costs and includes a reminder of DM adjudication in the text.

The DM can adjudicate "greater effects". The +999999 Belt of Magnificence and Ring of Infinite Wishes are "create a magic item", which is an enumerated, rather than greater, effect. The DM has no more right to stop them than he has any other ability.


Planar Binding is not broken because it is even more dependent on DM adjudication.

Oh, do we get to play another round of "fixing it that way breaks the rest of the game"? That's always fun. What do you want to do? "planar binding doesn't work because you can't pick specific categories of creatures"? "planar binding doesn't work because using it automatically qualifies as an unreasonable demand"?


Ice Assassin and no-xp Wish are in fact broken, good job identifying them! Now tell me how this has any bearing on the fact that omgSLTBbbq pounce is also broken? What's, that, it has no bearing? Discreet game elements can all be broken in different ways without impacting each other? Gosh, I never new.

First, you did not say "broken". You said "most obviously broken". "As much power as you ask for" is clearly more broken and more obviously so than "move and full attack".

Second, you are correct that ice assassin being broken doesn't make pounce not broken. Pounce not being broken makes pounce not broken.


And your position is "lol RAW is broken," which has been irrelevant for long enough to pay off a mortgage.

If it doesn't matter than RAW is broken, why do you care about game balance?


4. RAW is god and DMs don't exist, so Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian pounce is the official and neccesary fix for a system that's always been broken.

In that case, you also forgot:

5. Nothing can ever be underpowered, the only way for things to be broken is being overpowered, the fact that pounce makes my sword and board Fighter who took only +2 to skills feats sad means it's an aberration against game balance.

[Vaz]

Just to be clear, Cosi, you're using as an example in your balance a 9th level spell to be broken in comparison to the idea of people getting to Full Attack for Free from 1st level. Yes, you can make the argument that with sufficient optimization, you can possibly get 9th level spellcasting on a 1st level character. If you were using as the argument that a Fighter at 5th level gets to make a Full Attack with its two levels at the same time that an Ardent gets to punt individuals through time, then sure, you might have a more solid base for an argument and you come across as less of a knob.

[Deophaun]

Does anyone have a stance that is significantly different from one of these three?
Yeah: it doesn't matter if you ban SLTB or not. By the time pounce becomes useful you have plenty of opportunities to gain the ability to move and attack. Getting pounce right out of the gate does little in the damage equation at level 1 when a THF with one attack can still outclass a TWF or Natural Attacker or Monk with a full.

I honestly have no idea why you're on about Travel Devotion: you need only burn two turn attempts to get another go for the day.

Dip 1 level of cleric.

Or dip 1 level of PsyWar to use a dorje of hustle.

Or dip 1 level of Warblade for sudden leap.

But dip 1 level of Barbarian? Now you broke the game somehow.

[Vaz]

Yeah: it doesn't matter if you ban SLTB or not. By the time pounce becomes useful you have plenty of opportunities to gain the ability to move and attack. Getting pounce right out of the gate does little in the damage equation at level 1 when a THF with one attack can still outclass a TWF or Natural Attacker or Monk with a full.

I honestly have no idea why you're on about Travel Devotion: you need only burn two turn attempts to get another go for the day.

Dip 1 level of cleric.

Or dip 1 level of PsyWar to use a dorje of hustle.

Or dip 1 level of Warblade for sudden leap.

But dip 1 level of Barbarian? Now you broke the game somehow.

I think one of us missed the point, either you or me, but I thought the point being made was that Pounce in general was overated and thus irrelevant; but you've made your point here that essentially it is, because it's all about getting the Full Attack off. I can see the point that arguing that having Pounce is irrelevant and doesn't need to be have Dipped SLTB to get that ability, but instead of dipping one class you're dipping another to get a rough pseudo-equivalency, ergo, Pounce isn't overrated, it's still essentially required, regardless of how you fluff it.

[Fizban]

You can't "win this one".
Nor can you "win this one." Your position is "words don't mean what they say they mean," because (for the benefit of the viewers at home I guess I will repeat some arguments) none of the language in that section ever says the system works with 1v1 fights, that player characters have CR, that CR vs CR or EL vs EL are valid uses of the given math, or any of it. You can't treat individual PCs as variables that can be moved around or ignored, because there is only the party variable P, and the encounter variable E. There is a rough formula for stuffing things into E, and a standard party P, and these two things cannot be transformed between each other or reflexively shuffled around.

Oh hey, it's the Oberoni Fallacy. Does someone have a bingo card for me? I have "Fighters can't have nice things", "things are only broken if you ignore the DM", and "it's not broken, you're doing it wrong".
I mean, I could quote the part of the DMG that everyone's forgotten that says it is in fact the DM's job to manage the game, but you don't care about what the DMG says so why bother?


By all means, show me proof that the DM is not allowed (nay, required) to maintain the balance of the game, that they are required to allow and run all RAW as if they were a robot, and I will accept your proof that the game is broken. The Oberoni Fallacy is predicated on the assumption that the rules are supposed to work on their own, and the DMG already directly contradicts this by being upfront about the fact that the DM may need to fix things. The Oberoni Fallacy relies on the fallacious assumption that a simple set of rules can truly govern a social activity. Pointing out that you're the one who broke the game may invoke the "Oberoni Fallacy," but it doesn't change the fact that you broke the game when you could have chosen not to. It is, in short, a shield to hide behind when you want to pretend your rules knowledge is more important than your ability to participate in a social activity.

Sure, the fact that DM can respond to their players using the rules to break the game doesn't mean the rules aren't broken. And the fact remains that you're chosen to use the rules to break the game, which makes you the problem. Not actually suggesting a fix, just arguing that one broken rule justifies another.

Yeah, that sounds good. I'll add calling out the Oberoni Fallacy Fallacy to my list of things to do. Not very punchy though, maybe the "RAW is God" fallacy, or the "Always Optmized" fallacy.

Edit: just to clarify, you do realize you are using the "flawed rules are flawed" argument in order to defend a rule that some people think is flawed, right? I could just as easily throw the Oberoni Fallacy back at you by taking the (entirely common and DMG supported) position that any rule from outside of core is in fact DM intervention, and trying to use omgSLTBbbq pounce to "fix" melee is itself an instance of the DM fixing things that are broken, that you are comitting the Oberoni Fallacy by saying the DM can fix the core combat problem by allowing this optional book.

It's called "pounce". Stop being childish.
No, it's called omgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce, because that's how important you seem to think it is. Or just the official name: Barbarian-Spiritual Totem-1st level-Lion Totem. Or Lion Totem Barbarian, but that conflicts with the other Lion Totem Barbarian, so it's rather confusing.

No, I will not refer to this specific thing you like as "pounce," just to make you feel better, because pounce is a monster ability in the DMG which has nothing to do with PCs unless you write extra words around it to make it happen.

simulacrum allows you to create an arbitrarily large army of mid level Wizards. That's broken. Also, nothing stops you from creating a half strength copy of something twice as strong as you.
If you play games where the PC have arbitrarily large amounts of gp, xp, and access to things more powerful than themselves, sure. Have fun inventing your own balance under those conditions.

So to be clear "all the Ex abilities of valid shapechange targets" is totally fine (because casters can have nice things), but "move and full attack" is super broken (because martials can't have nice things). Glad we cleared that up.
Yup, that's worked exactly as designed. You get to 17th level at the end of the campaign, and your reward for surviving with a squishy character that long is to go banannas. Pretty well known actually, not as compatible with modern sensibilities but working as intended.

The DM has no more right to stop them than he has any other ability.
So, all of it? Oh, sorry, you're clearly skeptical of DMs working without explicit direction. "All of it, when it becomes clear that ability is harming someone's fun, which includes the DM who is also a part of the group."

Oh, do we get to play another round of "fixing it that way breaks the rest of the game"? That's always fun. What do you want to do? "planar binding doesn't work because you can't pick specific categories of creatures"? "planar binding doesn't work because using it automatically qualifies as an unreasonable demand"?
I like how your definition of "using it" assumes that creatures will work for free. It makes it really easy to deem things unreasonable. Though I don't know what your game is here since you haven't actually proposed any fixes, just complained about things you think are broken because you don't acknowledge the DM.

First, you did not say "broken". You said "most obviously broken". "As much power as you ask for" is clearly more broken and more obviously so than "move and full attack".
More pedantry conveniently ignoring the words you don't like, as I said "one of" the most obviously broken, which does not preclude others, and no ability gives "as much power as you can ask for," unless you assume the DM is a robot. Which you do.

Pounce not being broken makes pounce not broken.
Pounce isn't broken. OmgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce breaks a number of things that you don't value, which doesn't mean it's not broken.

If it doesn't matter than RAW is broken, why do you care about game balance?
You seem to have lost the point again. There is no such thing as RAW balance. The rules clearly state that the DM must keep the balance when the players go too far, and common courtesy suggests that the players shouldn't push the DM more than they're comfortable with. I care very much about actual balance.

In that case, you also forgot:

5. Nothing can ever be underpowered, the only way for things to be broken is being overpowered, the fact that pounce makes my sword and board Fighter who took only +2 to skills feats sad means it's an aberration against game balance.
A fighter who's taken only skill feats actually does approach underpowered, yes. Being able to recognize that your level of optimization is aberrant doesn't mean I don't also recognize there is a low bar under which things aren't good enough. It's not my fault you can't stomach the idea of playing at a power level which is balanced against the default.


Dip 1 level of cleric.

Or dip 1 level of PsyWar to use a dorje of hustle.

Or dip 1 level of Warblade for sudden leap.

But dip 1 level of Barbarian? Now you broke the game somehow.
2: Costs you a point of BAB, requires you to have access to dorje's of hustle for purchase (not guaranteed), cuts into your consumable budget.

3: Sudden leap is a maneuver, with all the restrictions that entails including a limit of no more than every other round, and has a much shorter range than a double move or even most single moves.

1: Is generally the worst offender since Cleric dips give a ridiculous amount, but it still costs you a point of BAB at least (note that I've said Travel Devotion is just as bad).

No other source of move+full attack can compete with omgSLTBbbq (or travel devotion), because they have all been engineered to have actual costs and restrictions. Tome of Battle has it as a 5th level maneuver. Would a class that gives zero-prep Death Attack with a 1st level dip be okay because other people eventually get 3 round Death Attack, Deathsight, or Slay Living or ? No, it would not, and every sneak character would be pressured into taking it by the char-op community's declaration of the new minimum required to not suck.

[Dagroth]

Yes. Everyone that shut up when this thread went loco.

For example:
Pounce is not overrated, but is not fundamentally important. It is instrumentally important, although still not vital. The instrumental importance comes about due to disparity in the scaling of the different combat actions characters gain. However noting the disparity in the scaling is not the same as wanting the Standard and Full Round combat options to be identical. Rather one would want comparable scaling for both options while keeping both options as distinct incomparables. Once the root cause of an issue is addressed, then most of the resulting patchwork can be refactored into the improved design.

Of course, a nuanced position is not worth pushing when threads go loco.

If you have a solution, you should present it. I have offered a couple of solutions, and they are generally ignored or I am told "you can just dip Cleric/PsyWar/Whatever"... when I am trying to avoid having to dip a class especially since Paladins & Monks cannot freely do that. Duskblades lose a level of progression. There are a myriad of reasons why people don't like the "just dip a level of X" solutions.


4. RAW is god and DMs don't exist, so Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian pounce is the official and neccesary fix for a system that's always been broken.

That's more of a rude way to state a lesser stance of point #3... and I've already stated over and over again why having it be a class feature for one class (or even 3 classes... whatever) isn't reasonable or fair.


The DM can adjudicate "greater effects". The +999999 Belt of Magnificence and Ring of Infinite Wishes are "create a magic item", which is an enumerated, rather than greater, effect. The DM has no more right to stop them than he has any other ability.

Getting away from my main point, and I really don't want to, but...

Ever heard of this little thing called "Rule 0"? You know, the thing in the DMG that essentially says the DM can do anything he wants because he's the DM?


5. Nothing can ever be underpowered, the only way for things to be broken is being overpowered, the fact that pounce makes my sword and board Fighter who took only +2 to skills feats sad means it's an aberration against game balance.

I hope you're not aiming that at me... but you are just restating my first point in a over-the-top rude manner.


Yeah: it doesn't matter if you ban SLTB or not. By the time pounce becomes useful you have plenty of opportunities to gain the ability to move and attack. Getting pounce right out of the gate does little in the damage equation at level 1 when a THF with one attack can still outclass a TWF or Natural Attacker or Monk with a full.

I honestly have no idea why you're on about Travel Devotion: you need only burn two turn attempts to get another go for the day.

Dip 1 level of cleric.

Or dip 1 level of PsyWar to use a dorje of hustle.

Or dip 1 level of Warblade for sudden leap.

But dip 1 level of Barbarian? Now you broke the game somehow.

Why should Pounce be a feature of Barbarian and not a Feat that anyone can get? Why should I have to dip any class? Why should I have to change my character and, if I'm not playing a Human or Half Elf, probably suffer an XP penalty (or play Franken-Class) to have an ability that you agree is of extreme usefulness?

Why should Travel Devotion (or any other Devotion feat) work inherently better for Clerics (& Paladins & Death Delvers & Ur Priests & Sacred Exorcists & Dread Necromancers, for some reason! (Note: I am not saying Dread Necromancers should not be able to Rebuke Undead... I'm just boggled by the fact that Dread Necromancers have the innate ability to power Divine Feats)) than it does for any other class that qualifies for it?

And don't be obtuse and bring up the fact that "Sudden Maximize" works better for Sorcerers than it does for Rogues... because "Sudden Maximize" doesn't do anything for a Rogue, but Travel Devotion does. If Travel Devotion specifically required the ability to Turn Undead, you would have a semblance of a case... but it does not.

Knowledge Devotion works reasonably well for any class that takes it. Yes, some classes can take better advantage of it because they have access to more Knowledge Skills as Class Skills... and some classes can take better advantage of it because they have more Skill Points per Level.

But both of those things can be made up for without having to "dip a level" in another class. There's a Feat which adds skills to your Class Skill list. You could start with a higher Int score.

[Cosi]

You know I never thought I'd see someone who doesn't believe in the Oberoni Fallacy. It's like I'm somehow having an argument from the 2000-era Wizards Official Forums.


Nor can you "win this one." Your position is "words don't mean what they say they mean," because (for the benefit of the viewers at home I guess I will repeat some arguments) none of the language in that section ever says the system works with 1v1 fights, that player characters have CR, that CR vs CR or EL vs EL are valid uses of the given math, or any of it.

The game says a 10th level Fighter is CR 10. Even if you believe removing the "N" from the phrase "NPC" that describes it magically removes any possibility of assigning it a CR, you can still run the tests with explicitly NPC Fighters.


The Oberoni Fallacy is predicated on the assumption that the rules are supposed to work on their own, and the DMG already directly contradicts this by being upfront about the fact that the DM may need to fix things. The Oberoni Fallacy relies on the fallacious assumption that a simple set of rules can truly govern a social activity.

The Oberoni Fallacy is predicated on the assumption that the game has rules, and you can be reasonably expected to follow them. If you don't believe that the rules of the game represent an objective touchstone for discussion, you have abandoned the possibility of meaningful debate about them.


Sure, the fact that DM can respond to their players using the rules to break the game doesn't mean the rules aren't broken. And the fact remains that you're chosen to use the rules to break the game, which makes you the problem. Not actually suggesting a fix, just arguing that one broken rule justifies another.

No. I used the rules to do things the rules say I can do. If that breaks the game, it is the fault of the designers for writing a game that wasn't balanced.


No, it's called omgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce, because that's how important you seem to think it is. Or just the official name: Barbarian-Spiritual Totem-1st level-Lion Totem. Or Lion Totem Barbarian, but that conflicts with the other Lion Totem Barbarian, so it's rather confusing.

For someone insisting RAW is on his side, you don't seem to have read the book, which describes the ability in question as "pounce", without any hyperbole.


Pounce isn't broken. OmgSLTBbbq 1st level pounce breaks a number of things that you don't value, which doesn't mean it's not broken.

You have yet to explain what is broken about pounce.


There is no such thing as RAW balance.

Yes there is. RAW says "balance" is going 50/50 with equal CR monsters.


Ever heard of this little thing called "Rule 0"? You know, the thing in the DMG that essentially says the DM can do anything he wants because he's the DM?

That's just the Oberoni Fallacy. Even if the DM can intervene, the game is still broken until he does intervene.

[Fizban]

I could keep going line by line, or not.

So, Cosi. You seem to have originally stopped by to claim that one of the most obvious rules of balancing different options against each other (making sure no option is a must-have) is false, and then proceeded to do so by making examples of things that you recognize are bad because of that very rule (complaining about magic being overpowered). Is the rule true or not? That's a rhetorical question.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the only thing you've said regarding pounce is arguing with me. You claimed basic design theory was wrong in direct response to my presenting pounce as textbook OP, mentioned a couple of feats you'd remove, complained about the game being imbalanced (at me, after I'd specifically said that argument wasn't worth having again), presented your false equivalencies, complained about wish, then responded directly at me again while dropping all pretense of leaving other threads at the door, and so on.

So why are you here again? I said we've had this argument before, that there's no point in re-hashing it in yet another thread, and yet you persist until I give in and re-hash it again, because, why? We are done here.

[Cosi]

So, Cosi. You seem to have originally stopped by to claim that one of the most obvious rules of balancing different options against each other (making sure no option is a must-have) is false, and then proceeded to do so by making examples of things that you recognize are bad because of that very rule (complaining about magic being overpowered). Is the rule true or not? That's a rhetorical question.

Clearly, your position (if everyone wants it, it's overpowered), is incomplete. If "everyone wants it" is a sufficient condition for "overpowered", waterskins are overpowered. Perhaps it is a necessary condition, but you need to clarify your claim to include an actual reason why waterskins are not overpowered, not just "that's obviously dumb".

I mean, you obviously won't, because then you'd have to admit that Pounce is not broken, but that's what you actually need to do. Not rant about how I'm being super mean by forcing you to defend the things you believe.

So lets have it, what additional conditions does something need to be beyond "ubiquitously desired" to be overpowered? Does it need to warp the game around it? Does it need to make characters unfairly effective?

Then, having done that, explain why Pounce meets whatever criteria you think is important.


You claimed basic design theory was wrong in direct response to my presenting pounce as textbook OP

It's not "basic design theory" that "something everyone wants is overpowered". Every deck in MTG wants lands (with a very few exceptions in Legacy/Vintage). Do lands need to be nerfed? Sometimes the things everyone wants are things they need to function.

[Deophaun]

I think one of us missed the point
The problem is the use of the word "the." Looking over this thread, there isn't a singular point everyone is arguing.

2: Costs you a point of BAB, requires you to have access to dorje's of hustle for purchase (not guaranteed), cuts into your consumable budget.
Oh no! A whole point of BAB! If I lose three more I'll start to care.

Dorje's are cheap enough at the point where it matters, and it's as guaranteed for purchase as anything else.

Plus, I now have a reason to take three more PsyWar levels. Win!

3: Sudden leap is a maneuver, with all the restrictions that entails including a limit of no more than every other round, and has a much shorter range than a double move or even most single moves.
The restrictions aren't all that much (in practice, I've found pouncing is also largely every other round), and while it's short in comparison to a single move, it just has to be long enough to get you to your target, not to win a marathon.

1: Is generally the worst offender since Cleric dips give a ridiculous amount, but it still costs you a point of BAB at least (note that I've said Travel Devotion is just as bad).
Travel Devotion should be even worse, as it's actually useful levels 1-5. Unlike first level pounce.

Would a class that gives zero-prep Death Attack with a 1st level dip be okay
Yes. Because Death Attack sucks. It would be nice to have an actual competitor to SA.

Why should Pounce be a feature of Barbarian and not a Feat that anyone can get?
Shape Soulmeld: Sphinx Claws
Open Lesser Chakra: Hands

You now have pounce through feats. Enjoy.

[Dagroth]

That's just the Oberoni Fallacy. Even if the DM can intervene, the game is still broken until he does intervene.

1) So what's your "fix" to the "Pounce" issue? Are you part of the group that says melee should be able to full-attack after a move without having to take a class feature or feat?

2) I wasn't pointing out "Rule 0" in response to the game having broken rules. I was pointing out "Rule 0" in response to this particular statement that you keep making: "The DM has no more right to stop them than he has any other ability." You have, in this thread and others, constantly stated that the DM has no more right to control the game than any other player at the table.

If you bring a Cancer Mage (for example) to my table, I can just say "no". If you have a Cleric/Dewomerkeeper and get high enough level and then say "I Supernatural Cast Miracle and get a +40 Sword of Dragonslaying", I can just say "No. Rule 0."

If you say "I'm taking a level of Lion Totem Barbarian this level", I can just say "No, at this table we have a Feat that gives Pounce. It requires BAB +6. Lion Totem Barbarian isn't allowed."

Rule 0 says you are wrong. In fact, it essentially says the DM can fix things (or not fix things) or outright change things in whatever way they desire. Rule 0 essentially says "Game Designers are human, too... we make mistakes, have biases and can miss unintended rules hacks. If you run into something like that, go ahead and use your own judgement."

Rule 0 says you don't have to follow RAW (or even RAI, for that matter).

3) The point of rules discussions like the one this thread mainly sticks to is to come up with either middle-ground solutions or offer a couple of different solutions to broken/unbalanced/confusing problems so the DMs who pose these problems can say "that makes sense to me, I'll use it."

The rules exist as a framework. All rules are optional. Most people play by the rules simply because most of the rules are decent and work just fine.

[Deeds]

Does anyone have a stance that is significantly different from one of these three?

Yes. Everyone that shut up when this thread went loco.

For example:
Pounce is not overrated, but is not fundamentally important.
Yeah, to me that's '/thread.'

[Elderand]

1) So what's your "fix" to the "Pounce" issue? Are you part of the group that says melee should be able to full-attack after a move without having to take a class feature or feat?

Why not? Not only is that how it works in 5th edition but caster have been significantly weakened and pure martial STILL aren't as competitive as casters.

Giving everyone the pounce equivalent for free isn't going to break the game, at all. What it will do is make non spellcaster marginally more effective. And yes, just marginally, shaving maybe 1 round of of combat is only a marginal benefit. A properly optimized caster can end encounters is 1 or 2 rounds maximum. Giving other people the ability to kill 1 enemy in the same amount of time is not broken. And I suspect anyone who argues otherwise is doing so simply out of tradition, treating the need to either move OR full attack as a sacred cow.

[Cosi]

1) So what's your "fix" to the "Pounce" issue? Are you part of the group that says melee should be able to full-attack after a move without having to take a class feature or feat?

I don't see any balance problem with Pounce as it is. You get to move and also make a full attack. Congratulations, a Wizard can move and also cast a spell for free from first level, and spells are generally better than full attacks.

There's a game design problem where it makes Chargers good, but doesn't fix Trippers, but that's not really something you solve by changing Pounce so much as something you solve by writing abilities that make a Tripstar or Grapplemancer good at mid and high levels.


If you bring a Cancer Mage (for example) to my table, I can just say "no". If you have a Cleric/Dewomerkeeper and get high enough level and then say "I Supernatural Cast Miracle and get a +40 Sword of Dragonslaying", I can just say "No. Rule 0."

Yes, you can refuse to DM a game where Cancer Mages are allowed. But you can equally refuse to play a game where they are allowed. All you're really saying is that in addition to being party to discussion of what the game should be like, the DM should be allowed to unilaterally alter the rules of how the game functions after the fact. And that's terrible. Like, maximally terrible. It destroys the very possibility of roleplaying. If the parameters of what can happen can be altered at any point for any or no reason by the DM's whim, I can't know what the effects of my characters actions will be. And if I can't know what my character can do, I can't answer the fundamental question of roleplaying -- what would my character do?


The rules exist as a framework. All rules are optional. Most people play by the rules simply because most of the rules are decent and work just fine.

No. The rules are a contract between the people playing the game. A contract that allows one party to unilaterally amend it without cause, warning, or justification, is bad contract. Rule zero is a bad rule.

[Beheld]

1) So what's your "fix" to the "Pounce" issue? Are you part of the group that says melee should be able to full-attack after a move without having to take a class feature or feat?

I mean, for the most part yes?

I would expect Two Weapon Fighting to let you make two attacks as a standard action (and have in man games houseruled it to do so.) I would expect level 6+ stabbers with iterative attacks to be using them after moving most of the time in one way or another.

On the other hand, I think it's probably for the best that many monsters that were designed under the assumption of not doing that continue to not do that. (The ones designed to do that are just given this ability I can't remember what it's called, but they just literally slap it on every monsters except the Hydra designed to do a full attack after moving).

Would I want to just write into the rules that iterative attacks and haste granted attacks trigger on standard actions? Maybe, depends on a lot of things including how much work you are doing to rewrite other aspects of the game you need to rewrite, like all the ****ty classes that use those mechanics.

You could give them all piles of bonus damage like the Tome Knight that are balanced to make single attacks viable, and leave the rules as is, or you could give them all single standard action abilities that trigger on their attacks like ToB (but better and/or with actual noncombat stuff) and leave the rules as is.

Or you could redesign the classes with the idea that they can make a full set of attacks as a standard action, and just put that in the rules.

Personally, I like the idea of doing some combination of things that don't change the rules, so that monsters and players still have pretty much the same rules (You could mostly get around it by not having it apply to natural attacks, but it would still effect say, giants) and if some classes are using the single action abilities, they are more mobile, and some classes like the knight have triggered bonus damage, they want to be standing still, but to make sure they get their damage they are willing to move, and the one class that is incentivized to stand still for a full attack is the Rogue, which is consistent with how I see Rogues fighting.

[OldTrees1]

No. The rules are a contract between the people playing the game. A contract that allows one party to unilaterally amend it without cause, warning, or justification, is bad contract. Rule zero is a bad rule.

1) Rule 0 is the explicit statement that your group does not need to play by strict RAW and a recognition that a campaign would have difficult if it was subjected to a superposition of multiple mutually exclusive rulesets.

2) The rules of the game, with respect to the campaign, are not the contract between the people playing the game. THAT "contract" happens before that through the mixture of social contracts, overall structure decisions, and gentleman's agreements. In the case of a Players & DM setup (in contrast to other setups), part of the contract was the division of powers and responsibilities with regard to the creation and promotion of the group's enjoyment.

3) As a result of the difference between the rules and the contract, different groups will have different agreements/positions on the use of Rule 0. You and your group have your position. My group has a less strict position. Some groups even enjoy when rule 0 can be used without cause.


If you have a solution, you should present it. I have offered a couple of solutions, and they are generally ignored or I am told "you can just dip Cleric/PsyWar/Whatever"... when I am trying to avoid having to dip a class especially since Paladins & Monks cannot freely do that.

I gave a specific concrete solution earlier and gave a general theory answer in the post of mine you quoted. Neither is relevant once this thread has gone loco.

[Cosi]

1) Rule 0 is the explicit statement that your group does not need to play by strict RAW and a recognition that a campaign would have difficult if it was subjected to a superposition of multiple mutually exclusive rulesets.

2) The rules of the game, with respect to the campaign, are not the contract between the people playing the game. THAT "contract" happens before that through the mixture of social contracts, overall structure decisions, and gentleman's agreements. In the case of a Players & DM setup (in contrast to other setups), part of the contract was the division of powers and responsibilities with regard to the creation and promotion of the group's enjoyment.

I think you're agreeing with me?

I don't think that every group has to play by exactly RAW. You can, and should, modify the game to suit your needs. What you should not do is afford people the power to unilaterally modify the rules after they have been made.

That said, while it is true that people can and should play by things other than RAW, any discussion between people about "the game" should assume RAW unless stated otherwise, because there isn't some other place for discussion to start. If I'm talking about a game where everyone plays full casters, and you're talking about E6, and he's talking about a game where underpowered characters get pity artifacts, we can't have a meaningful discussion of game balance.

Essentially, the Oberoni Fallacy is assuming that changes made to your game apply to the game.

[OldTrees1]

I think you're agreeing with me?

I don't think that every group has to play by exactly RAW. You can, and should, modify the game to suit your needs. What you should not do is afford people the power to unilaterally modify the rules after they have been made.

That said, while it is true that people can and should play by things other than RAW, any discussion between people about "the game" should assume RAW unless stated otherwise, because there isn't some other place for discussion to start. If I'm talking about a game where everyone plays full casters, and you're talking about E6, and he's talking about a game where underpowered characters get pity artifacts, we can't have a meaningful discussion of game balance.

Essentially, the Oberoni Fallacy is assuming that changes made to your game apply to the game.

There are places I agree with you, places where I don't, and places where I agree with you but not with what you write.

We agree that groups should not be forced to play exactly RAW.

We disagree on whether there is a right way to alter the rules one the campaign has started. You don't want the rules unilaterally modified on you mid game, and are proposing that as a universal theory. I think that different groups will have different agreements on this issue. My own group is fine with unilateral mid game rule alterations without warning or justification (we do want there to be a reason, but we do not need to know it). I predict some groups exist that would even be fine with mid game rule alterations without reason.


We also disagree on the fundamental premises that best promote useful discussion about the game. However I will and have gone with the local custom on that regard.


Finally the Oberoni Fallacy, which is unrelated to the rest of this quote of yours, is something that we agree about. Fixes to the game as it is played is not equivalent to fixes to the product's design.

[Psyren]

I for one agree that Oberoni exists. I don't agree that its existence serves a practical purpose. Yes, the game is flawed, and yes, the existence of the rule that empowers the GM to patch it ("rule zero") does not remove that flaw, but that's not the same as the flaw ultimately mattering. I would rather have flawed rules that the GM has to patch, than such excessive time engineering and re-engineering said rules that we end up with something like Legend (which itself still had flaws), everyone being T1, or no rules at all.

[Dagroth]

1) Actually Cosi, the "Cast Miracle" example was a red herring. By the description of the spell Miracle, the DM can deny any request made using it.

Edit: Further, you can't honestly expect a DM to know every situation that he thinks might break his game and rule about it before the game starts. A player only has to worry about their own character (and how it can/will break the game, if that's what they want to do). A DM has to worry about everyone's characters and all the NPCs, settings, etc.

2) Cosi... you're saying you like Pounce being a Class Feature only available to certain classes and other classes being forced to "dip" one of those classes in order to have that ability? After all, you say you don't see any problem with it being left as it is.


While I am not completely opposed to the idea of "every player character gets all their attacks on an attack action, unless they're using an attack that specifically says they only get to make 1 attack (or set number of attacks, like a martial maneuver)... it does feel overpowered. Maybe that's just because I've been playing for so long, and remember when the "(x) Handbook"s came out and first introduced multiple attacks based on character level.

1) It makes options like "Swift Hunter" a significantly more powerful build than a regular Ranger.

2) Does it only count for melee attacks, or does it also count for ranged attacks?

3) If it counts for Ranged attacks, should classes like Order of the Bow Initiate be revamped?

4) Does it mean that Spring Attack would automatically be a full attack?

There are a fair number of situations that would have to be looked at.

[Aotrs Commander]

While I am not completely opposed to the idea of "every player character gets all their attacks on an attack action, unless they're using an attack that specifically says they only get to make 1 attack (or set number of attacks, like a martial maneuver)... it does feel overpowered. Maybe that's just because I've been playing for so long, and remember when the "(x) Handbook"s came out and first introduced multiple attacks based on character level.

1) It makes options like "Swift Hunter" a significantly more powerful build than a regular Ranger.

2) Does it only count for melee attacks, or does it also count for ranged attacks?

3) If it counts for Ranged attacks, should classes like Order of the Bow Initiate be revamped?

4) Does it mean that Spring Attack would automatically be a full attack?

There are a fair number of situations that would have to be looked at.

I feel if you gave pounce automatically, you would probably have to disallow Shock Trooper, as it would become such a no-brainer that almost everyone would take it. (Doubly so if you made power attack something anyone could do). As it is, pounce as the lion totem power I am happy with (barbarians usually have to take some fighter in there to get it early if that's what they want to do). A TWF pouncing shock trooper barbarian is nasty (whether or not your houserules give it x0.5 or x1 on the off-hand), but as that's sort of the barbarian's schtick, I'm quite happy for them to have it. There are other ways of doing move and full attack, of course, and I'm prepared to confine that one to a barbarian dip.

[Cosi]

1) Actually Cosi, the "Cast Miracle" example was a red herring. By the description of the spell Miracle, the DM can deny any request made using it.

If you read carefully, you'll notice I talk about Cancer Mages rather than miracle in my reply to your post.


Edit: Further, you can't honestly expect a DM to know every situation that he thinks might break his game and rule about it before the game starts. A player only has to worry about their own character (and how it can/will break the game, if that's what they want to do). A DM has to worry about everyone's characters and all the NPCs, settings, etc.

It's really hard to break the game accidentally. You can play planar binding in a totally balanced way without changing it mechanically -- just bind one (or even "any specific number") of things at once. If the game does get broken in play, the best resolution is to ignore the ability for the rest of the session, then have a discussion afterwards, exactly as if it had come up in character creation.


2) Cosi... you're saying you like Pounce being a Class Feature only available to certain classes and other classes being forced to "dip" one of those classes in order to have that ability? After all, you say you don't see any problem with it being left as it is.

I don't see a balance problem with it. There's a game design problem where it makes "chargers" good without making "trippers" or "grapplers" good, but I'm fine with "chargers" all having a level in Barbarian, just as I'm fine with any other specific archetype using specific classes or feats. "Charger" isn't like "minionmancer" or "battlefield controller" where there are a bunch of reasonable ways to do it. It's a fairly specific, fairly narrow thing, and I'm fine with it being something you have to build for specifically. Just like I'm fine with all Uttercold Assault Necromancers taking Lord of the Uttercold. The narrower you cast the net for a given character concept, the more similar characters with that concept will be, and "charge people" is pretty narrow.

[Dagroth]

I don't see a balance problem with it. There's a game design problem where it makes "chargers" good without making "trippers" or "grapplers" good, but I'm fine with "chargers" all having a level in Barbarian, just as I'm fine with any other specific archetype using specific classes or feats. "Charger" isn't like "minionmancer" or "battlefield controller" where there are a bunch of reasonable ways to do it. It's a fairly specific, fairly narrow thing, and I'm fine with it being something you have to build for specifically. Just like I'm fine with all Uttercold Assault Necromancers taking Lord of the Uttercold. The narrower you cast the net for a given character concept, the more similar characters with that concept will be, and "charge people" is pretty narrow.

So, in your opinion, it's perfectly balanced that a Fighter can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger". A Barbarian doesn't have to do anything except give up their +10' move to be a "Charger". A Ranger can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger".

A Paladin can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful Good. A Monk can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful. So those two classes can't become "Chargers".

A Player who wants to play a character who is a refined gentleman of noble birth has to take a level of Barbarian to be able to do a full attack on a charge "because the idea is the guy is fast and skilled."

That's "balanced", to you.

[Cosi]

So, in your opinion, it's perfectly balanced that a Fighter can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger". A Barbarian doesn't have to do anything except give up their +10' move to be a "Charger". A Ranger can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger".

A Paladin can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful Good. A Monk can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful. So those two classes can't become "Chargers".

A Player who wants to play a character who is a refined gentleman of noble birth has to take a level of Barbarian to be able to do a full attack on a charge "because the idea is the guy is fast and skilled."

That's "balanced", to you.

It depends what you mean by "balanced". Is that better than not having Lion Totem? Yes, now there's some number of additional viable martial builds. Is that the best possible case? No. But I don't think the broader problem is necessarily that some people can be chargers and some people can't. If "Monk" was just a viable life choice on its own, that would also solve the problem. The issue isn't that Monks can't be chargers, it's that Monks are bad. You could solve that by letting Monks be chargers, but you could also solve it by making them less bad.

[sleepyphoenixx]

So, in your opinion, it's perfectly balanced that a Fighter can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger". A Barbarian doesn't have to do anything except give up their +10' move to be a "Charger". A Ranger can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger".

A Paladin can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful Good. A Monk can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful. So those two classes can't become "Chargers".

A Player who wants to play a character who is a refined gentleman of noble birth has to take a level of Barbarian to be able to do a full attack on a charge "because the idea is the guy is fast and skilled."

That's "balanced", to you.

No offense, but if you're going to argue about balance you should maybe learn what you're talking about.
Like the Ways to get Pounce or Free Movement (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?103358-3-X-Ways-to-get-Pounce-or-Free-Movement), because there's a lot more ways to get full attack after movement than just Lion Spirit Totem Barbarian 1.

[Venger]

So, in your opinion, it's perfectly balanced that a Fighter can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger". A Barbarian doesn't have to do anything except give up their +10' move to be a "Charger". A Ranger can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger".

A Paladin can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful Good. A Monk can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful. So those two classes can't become "Chargers".

A Player who wants to play a character who is a refined gentleman of noble birth has to take a level of Barbarian to be able to do a full attack on a charge "because the idea is the guy is fast and skilled."

That's "balanced", to you.

Fighter is at a maximum 6 levels long. dipping barb1 isn't crushing the fighter's dreams of playing fighter straight through to 20.

even assuming your gm cares about alignment nonsense, paladin of freedom exists.

monks don't lose anything by becoming nonlawful. no dysfunction.

that'd be a gm problem of being prescriptive with fluff. barbarian doesn't mean you have to be a stereotypical wild man. there's no reason you can't have any given character concept with any class level. like miko is a samurai while only having levels in paladin, you can be a guy who wears shoes if you want levels in barbarian, no one cares, and more importantly, that has nothing to do with any actual game rules.

[Dagroth]

No offense, but if you're going to argue about balance you should maybe learn what you're talking about.
Like the Ways to get Pounce or Free Movement (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?103358-3-X-Ways-to-get-Pounce-or-Free-Movement), because there's a lot more ways to get full attack after movement than just Lion Spirit Totem Barbarian 1.

Let's see...

1) Falling... Let's not be pedantic.
2) Wagon or Chariot... Not useful in most areas. Not useful with some weapons. May require skills that are not class skills.
3) Lion Totem Barbarian... what we're talking about.
4) Snow Tiger Berserker Feat... Requires Rage.
5) Lion Tribe Warrior Feat... Human Only, Regional Only, Light Weapons Only.
6) Travel Devotion... 1/day without Turn Undead. I discussed this (and all Devotion Feats) in a previous post.
7) Benign Transposition Spell... Requires being a spellcaster. Isn't actually a move. Doesn't let you attack after casting it.
8-9) Step Up & Following Step feats... Pathfinder. Doesn't address charging. One is only 5' step. Very situational usage.
10) Sudden Leap... Requires dip into Swordsage or Warblade, or getting it as two Feats (since it requires one Tiger Claw Maneuver). Limited accessibility (essentially only once per encounter unless you're a Warblade).

Need I keep going? A good portion of that list doesn't give you movement that you can full attack after.

Why not simply have a "Pounce" Feat that gives you Pounce and requires BAB +4?

[sleepyphoenixx]

Need I keep going? A good portion of that list doesn't give you movement that you can full attack after.
And a good portion does.
I'm not saying the list is perfect or that some classes don't have problems, just that there are options beyond a barbarian dip.

And the way to solve the problem isn't to ban the option that actually works just because not all classes can use it.


Why not simply have a "Pounce" Feat that gives you Pounce and requires BAB +4?
Ask the designers? You can homebrew whatever you like. For the record, i'd have no problem with that in my games.
But since this is not the homebrew forum and lots of DMs don't allow homebrew i'm talking about options that already exist.

[Pleh]

No. The rules are a contract between the people playing the game. A contract that allows one party to unilaterally amend it without cause, warning, or justification, is bad contract. Rule zero is a bad rule.

No, Rule 0 can be used for good or for evil. When abused, it destroys roleplaying.

But when used correctly, it allows a table to cooperatively amend the contract mid game for unforseen consequences of the contract that produced unintended and undesired game effects.

No table should be left powerless at the hands of the dice or RAW. Because neither are perfect and shouldn't be held to at the expense of fun.

The key is for the DM to garner approval from his players to use Rule 0. If nothing else, it can be used to end disputes where the table otherwise couldn't reach resolution. It goes wrong when the DM acts unilaterally against the player's wishes.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, in your opinion, it's perfectly balanced that a Fighter can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger". A Barbarian doesn't have to do anything except give up their +10' move to be a "Charger". A Ranger can take a level of Barbarian and become a "Charger".

A Paladin can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful Good. A Monk can't take a level of Barbarian because he's Lawful. So those two classes can't become "Chargers".

A Player who wants to play a character who is a refined gentleman of noble birth has to take a level of Barbarian to be able to do a full attack on a charge "because the idea is the guy is fast and skilled."

That's "balanced", to you.

I know you weren't addressing me, but for my money? Sure. If the player really wants his character to have pounce, then yeah, he can take a level of barbarian. Heck, he can re-flavour the rage if he likes (or replace it with the ACF); if it is that important to his desired build, then there is no problem.

(In my own games, I do not find that melee characters loose out during the charge round or regularly be in a position where they can't make full attacks, and the same thing applies to the monsters and to the characters, so it all evens out; so I don't feel pounce is REQUIRED, just a nice bonus.)

On top of that, one of the very first houserules I made with 3.0 was to summarily toss out the multiclassing penalties and most of the class alignment restrictions as being A Load Of Old Bollocks. (I tossed them our summarily in AD&D and allowed everyone to dual or multiclass and achieve whatever level they liked, so there was no chance 3.0 was going to get any lesser treatement.) I do still make Paladins be LG - but they're the only ones - but I allow them to take whatever classes they like if they want to multiclass. (And I encourage reflavouring class features. I myself have a Naruto-style ninja which is mechanically a straight Monk/Cleric with all the spells renamed to jutsus. The combination of which I choose not because it might have been the best fit for that, but because I COULD.) So a paladin in my games would be quite welcome to take a level of barb to get Righteous Fervor (*cough*rage/frenzy*cough*) and pounce if that's what he wanted to do.

...

Actually, that's a thought worth bearing in mind, I am idly considering what character I might play next, especially as I'm about to implement PF rage powers to our barbarians; so thanks for that thought!



The thing about allowing everyone to pounce is that the charge action applies not just to the PCs, but all the monsters as well, something that doesn't seem to get brought up much. Dragons are the obvious one, but it also particulary affects giants of all stripes. Making a feat would work better, I think, if you think it should be more accessible to everyone; though only the generic you would know what paradigm your game plays at best to know where to peg the prerequisires.

(As I say, I'm fine with it being a nice thing for barbarian, yes even as a dip; lots of noncasters can be nice dips and I'm happy with that.)

[darkdragoon]

It is overrated in that the game tends to favor one big hit over multiple smaller blows. Or at least, your iterative, TWF, flurry etc. are less accurate while Haste is fine. (Because it's magic, sigh)





Pounce never should have been applied the way people want it to be to begin with. It's an animal/monster ability meant to simulate jumping into the air and landing with all natural weapons on the target (the 3.0 version specifically said "if it leaps upon a foe" even).

Animal themed abilities are part of the Barbarian shtick. I also find it questionable to shriek at that when stuff like Surge of Fortune is only a few pages away.





There is a reason you have to stand in place to full attack.


Because it says so. But there doesn't seem to be any special reasoning behind that. And obviously all this other stuff has been made to try and get around that, because they either never thought about it, or assumed everybody and their mother has an infinite supply of Haste in their pants.

[Flickerdart]

It is overrated in that the game tends to favor one big hit over multiple smaller blows. Or at least, your iterative, TWF, flurry etc. are less accurate while Haste is fine. (Because it's magic, sigh)



Except many big hits is even better, and the math has been done multiple times in this thread to prove that iteratives aren't worthless.

[Deeds]

everybody and their mother has an infinite supply of Haste in their pants.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

[Psyren]

Rule Zero isn't perfect, but for a game this complex it is a necessary evil. A team of a dozen or so designers can't be expected to find every single rules interaction, vagary, uncertainty or loophole that thousands of players over a period of years can, nor can they be expected to continually reprint their books every time such a flaw is discovered. Empowering the GM to fill in the gaps between FAQ and errata cycles is a far better solution than letting tables fight it out in the trenches with no ammunition at all. The alternative is taking a 4e approach where the balance bumps are sanded off entirely, or a 5e approach where a large number of interactions are resolved with Mother-May-I, and neither is particularly appealing to me.

Concerning pounce: My take is that every martial class should have access, but it should be something they spend resources to get. So Barbarians can get it, but it might cost a couple of rage powers; uMonk can get it in exchange for a Style Strike; Fighter can get it at the end of a short feat chain, or as an archetype, and so on. Then it becomes a meaningful choice for that character - do I burn those resources to get it, or do I try to make do with a reach weapon and 5-foot steps, or do I actually go for both and sacrifice something else? And to make the choice even more appealing, I would again want ways to make a single, standard-action attack a bit stronger. The entire Vital Strike chain should be one feat, and there should also be ways to make most combat maneuvers a swift or move action so that you can combine them with that single attack more easily.