Are the epic-level options for non-casters terrible? [Archive]

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rigsmal

2017-09-05, 05:53 AM

I'm considering running a game, and am thinking about starting the game at high levels, since I've never played there before and it'd be a new experience. However, I'm looking through the epic feats and with a few exceptions they look like total trash. Multispell, Epic Spellcasting, Improved Metamagic is all I see that I'd actually grab. But these are for casters. The rest of the non-caster options seem worse than maneuvers and stances. Maybe Extra Item is worth grabbing on a non-caster and that's about it.

Anyone have suggestions? Maybe I should just scrap the epic system and import Pathfinder's mythic rules? Or maybe I should just not play at high levels?

Eldariel

2017-09-05, 06:20 AM

Yes, they largely are. Infinite and Exceptional Deflection are sorta good but purely defensive (makes you immune to all ranged touch attacks and such, not to mention ranged attacks), and the only really strong ones are Epic Leadership and Legendary Commander, which are purely about generating even more even more powerful underlings and has little to do with being a caster or a non-caster. Dire Charge is useful but Lion Totem 1 replaces it; most of the feats replicate some low level spells and are thus totally useless when spells are so easily accessible.

The epic system is really shallow and epic spellcasting, and epic caster feats are the only strong things there. Then again, long in pre-epic warriors already suck comparatively; they should be looking at things like near immortality, extra actions, immediate interruptions, etc. on level ~11 instead of getting +1 to hit. Epic martial should be more like being Herakles or Achilleus than Conan or Robin Hood - Hulk rather than Bane. Tome of Battle helps a bit but doesn't come anywhere close to bridging the gap. Epic maneuvers and a system for them would allow non-casters to at least keep getting stronger even if it's impossible to keep up since Epic Spellcasting is broken to the core; too weak unless you mitigate (it takes millions to create simple 3rd level Fireball spell) and broken to the extreme if you do (0 cost, 0 time, create any spell you can imagine).

rigsmal

2017-09-05, 06:39 AM

Fouredged Sword

2017-09-05, 07:18 AM

Honestly I would stop leveling at 20 and just hand out tons of epic loot and money to let your players go wild. Let your fighter have the Belt of Unlimited Battle with 100 charges, and your wizard to have a spellbook of every spell. Epic levels don't actually add much. Maybe give out a feat every time they hit their exp to level like E6 (in this case you are playing E20.). If you want to allow PRC advancement, just let them buy the class features (but not the BAB, saves, skill points, or spellcasting advancement) at a cost of 1 feat per class level (skipping dead levels).

Eldariel

2017-09-05, 07:19 AM

So it sounds like your suggestion is to either avoid epic levels or delete Epic Spellcasting? Do you have any links to epic games/builds so I can see what I should expect?

Extra actions and immediate interruptions I can get via items (e.g. belt of battle) or class features (e.g. eternal blade). Immortality I don't know how besides changing one's type to something with lots of immunities + no aging. What did you have in mind?

My suggestion is that you either homebrew a system of useful advancement for martials in epic or that everyone simply plays casters in epic. Or then you don't play epic. Even if you ban or fix (redesign with some limitations) Epic Spellcasting, just Multispell, Automatic Metamagic, Improved Spell Capacity, etc. are way better and actually scale unlike everything non-casters get. I sadly can't find links for anything but arenas right at this juncture; I haven't played epic in PbP and our tabletop campaigns were shortlived as pre-epic levels were much more interesting.

The extra actions are not exclusive to martials and come way too late; there should be more and they should be hard for others to acquire for martials to really have the "speed advantage" you'd expect out of someone who has trained their body their whole life to have better reflexes and more alacrity than someone who focuses on their mind or piety instead. Thus the classes should be granting stuff like momentary invulnerability, breaking magic effects, extra actions, etc. in the teens to remain interesting alternatives to casters, who mostly do everything the noncasters do but better. Like roll Barbarian and Frenzied Berserker together with no prerequisites and make that the core Barbarian and begin advancing that and you might be talking a bit; immortal rager who can inspire numerous followers to great ferocity is workable and at least does something spells don't easily do. Then just add things like wielding and threatening larger area with huge weapons and unbelievable leaps and make him start gaining power based on damage he takes higher up and there's a class that's unique, flavourful and not completely replaceable with a spell.

Mordaedil

2017-09-05, 07:44 AM

Calthropstu

2017-09-05, 08:01 AM

Eldariel

2017-09-05, 08:11 AM

I don't feel like epic levels are very good for casters either, their spell selection dies out, their spells hit awful ceilings that have to be raised by taking feats, though there are some martial feats I feel like could be a lot better with some tweaking.

For example epic prowess, if it raised BAB by one, would suddenly be a very valued feat, as some classes could take it to get extra attacks they'd want.

You just use the few surefire ways to deliver damage. Casters are still better warriors than noncasters, even moreso because epic spells don't care about antimagic fields, can grant nigh' infinite ability score bonuses of any type and then of course can do almost anything. Epic spells can remove any wards also enabling you to pierce immunities.

Also, Divine Power and Transformation can grant you over 20 BAB while warriors are stuck. And stuff like Shapechange is even more essential and completely irreplaceable. Any epic warrior should have 9th level spells and epic spellcasting. At that point, just how you deal damage is kinda academic. But if you don't have those, you'll never be able to play the same game as someone who does.

Note, this is with regards to casters being better warriors than Warrior classes. A lot needs to change before noncasters can trade attacks with casters in epic.

It's a completely different question, if a party wants a Warrior in epic in the first place even if Casters weren't already better at it while simultaneously doing everything else.

Grod_The_Giant

2017-09-05, 09:09 AM

Are the epic-level options for non-casters terrible?
Yes.

But then, so are most of the non-epic level options.

-----

I'd generally steer clear of epic-level rules, I think; they were written way before WotC really began to understand their game, and top-level/epic magic starts to warp everything into an unrecognizable mess even before you bring epic rules into play. If you want to run post-20th, I think Fouredged Sword's suggestion of "advancement by feats" is a good one. Or circle back around to 1 and start adding gestalt levels, one at a time. (So you go Wizard 19, Wizard 20, Wizard 20//Factotum 1, Wizard 20//Factotum 2...). That gets you advancement without blowing everything wide open.

Oh, and work hard on a ban list-- no Gate or Shapechange would be an excellent start.

RoboEmperor

2017-09-05, 09:37 AM

You're forgetting PrCs.

Cosmic Descryer boosts Greater Planar Binding hd limit by 4 every 4 levels, with no limit, allowing you to essentially turn Greater Planar Binding into a superior gate since it doesn't cost xp, and doesn't cost gp for lengthy service.

AvatarVecna

2017-09-05, 11:51 AM

Yes. The epic options for noncm-casters are comparatively terrible because the options for non-casters in general are comparatively rmterrible regardless of level. An epic game with no epic feats pertaining ti spellcasting ir utem creatiin is still a game where one side has Teleport, Plane Shift, Mind Blank, Control Weather, Time Stop, Shapechange, Gate, and Wish...and the other doesn't.

Cosi

2017-09-05, 12:32 PM

Honestly, most of the epic options for non-casters wouldn't even be amazing if they were non-epic options. haste for five rounds is "kind of okay" at 6th level. It's a freaking joke at 21st level.

rigsmal

2017-09-05, 02:32 PM

I sadly can't find links for anything but arenas right at this juncture; I haven't played epic in PbP and our tabletop campaigns were shortlived as pre-epic levels were much more interesting.

I'd actually also appreciate those arena links, I'm interested in seeing what combat consists of at high levels, like 15+ to epic.

But it seems that everyone is warning me away from epic, so I will take this advice and look into higher-powered variants of normal level games instead. Gestalt/extra feats or even just high point buy budgets. Mythic stuff from PF might work too.

I still feel like without epic spellcasting I'm missing out on the mechanics of Netherese wizards levitating entire mountains, since these things just aren't possible with 9th level spells or below (that I know of). Any suggestions for mechanical replacements?

Cosi

2017-09-05, 02:50 PM

You can do a lot by allowing higher levels of optimization. A 14th level character with Improved Familiar (Mirror Mephit) can create an unbounded army of simulacra of himself. An Artificer can make magical constructs to do any number of things by appropriately massaging the magic item creation rules.

You are correct that doing "epic" (in the non-rules) sense stuff is difficult, but honestly the ELH doesn't hep that too much. The best tactics are still best, you just now do them at the head and with the assistance of an infinite army of Solars conjured with Epic Spellcasting. If you want to give people crazy abilities, I suggest you write up spells using the ELH (and UA Ritual) rules as a reference, and add them as a combination of quest targets or a add-on ritual subsystem. Free-form spell creation is more trouble than it's worth.

Anthrowhale

2017-09-05, 04:18 PM

Some of the epic monsters are fun/freaky.

Epic Wealth-by-level is actually pretty good for noncasters since they need it more than casters.

Epic spell-casting is broken with unbounded sources of mitigation (as stated), but it's not useless without mitigation as there are a number of unique effects allowed.

Dire Charge and Exceptional/Infinite Deflection can be effective on an AMF-based fighter. Here AMF+Deflection makes the fighter a tough nut to crack by nonphysical means while Dire Charge makes it potent in combat as AMF nerfs various DRs.

The issues with spellcasters owning the action economy are not epic-relevant. Limiting means to subvert the action economy is pretty necessary regardless.

Calthropstu

2017-09-05, 05:02 PM

If you go mythic from pathfinder there is one mythic spell you should outright ban.
Mythic augmented time stop. It is pretty much an "I win" button. Unaugmented is fine. Augmented is insane.
Other than that, PF mythic rules is VASTLY superior to epic.

Soranar

2017-09-05, 10:01 PM

-extra chakra bind
-open heart souldmeld
-open soul soulmeld

all of these are decent

-instant reload lets you use the enormous crossbow from races of stone (2d8 damage) that normally takes a round to load with iteratives (becomes one of the better ranged options available)

some of the epic warlock feats are insanely good (unlimited access to every level 8 and lower conjuration spell for example), creates effects that can't be accessed through spells

great smiting isn't bad (doubles all your smite evil damage) nor is sneak attack of opportunity (literally does what it's called)

finally there's the defensive feats (X stat boosts Y save)

the most useful one is probably extra magic item slot though

Gruftzwerg

2017-09-05, 10:11 PM

It's the sad gap of 3.5 ...

While mundanes finally may behave like Conan or Indiana Jones at lvl 20, the pointy hat Merlin decided to go for eternal power that even the gods get jealous...

The epic feat stuff mundanes can get, they should have gotten at least 10 lvls earlier to balance them with casters on the pre epic lvls.

Metahuman1

2017-09-05, 11:22 PM

Some of the epic skill check ideas aren't too bad and can help versatility. Epic Balance checks on a cloud to fly on it or epic tumble or jump checks to do Wire Fu airborn melee combat or walk on water. That sort of thing.

But even then it wouldn't even be a balance point for martials if it went into effect for them to do that stuff BEFORE epic levels.

Eldariel

2017-09-06, 01:41 AM

I'd actually also appreciate those arena links, I'm interested in seeing what combat consists of at high levels, like 15+ to epic.

But it seems that everyone is warning me away from epic, so I will take this advice and look into higher-powered variants of normal level games instead. Gestalt/extra feats or even just high point buy budgets. Mythic stuff from PF might work too.

I still feel like without epic spellcasting I'm missing out on the mechanics of Netherese wizards levitating entire mountains, since these things just aren't possible with 9th level spells or below (that I know of). Any suggestions for mechanical replacements?

This (http://rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=64480) seems to have some of those links, though most of those fights ended up in noshows. An earlier arena by the same name exists but I can't find it right now; it features some actually reasonably built characters. A user by the name of 'douglas' played there - feel free to contact him if he could provide you with links. Those fights are actually worth seeing. And yeah, just homebrew what you don't have out of epic or modify things to make them work but as they stand, it's a casters' world.

EDIT: Sadly the arena played by douglas seems to be lost in time. Wayback machine doesn't work either. Fundamentally, it's just a set of sweet combinations, near immunity to everything and obscene damage capacity at range for every character. Mostly it came down to finding something the opponent is not immune to and killing them enough times that they stay down after all their revival setups are lost. Also, epic wards to remove enemy immunities: one death came by grapple instant death ability (from Shapechange) with an epic ward nullifying Freedom of Movement effects for instance. Of course, the character just autorevived afterwards and still won but that's pretty easy to build. This is a thread (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?55641-Help-building-an-arena-character) he posted about it here and you can search his posts for references to it.

Thurbane

2017-09-06, 02:33 AM

Just a question: are there any Epic feats other than the ones in the ELH (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/epicFeats.htm)?

Most of what I'm able to find have been 3.5 reprints of the ELH feats...

[edit]I have found the following so far:

Abilities Scores:

Feat name
Rulebook
Page
Description

Armed Deflection
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20030215a)
--
You can deflect arrows or other ranged weapons with your melee weapon.

Axiomatic Strike
Player's Guide to Faerun
135
Your attacks deal incredible damage to chaotic creatures.

Bind Additional Epic Vestige
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can bind an additional epic vestige.

Bind Additional Vestige
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can bind an additional nonepic vestige.

Bind Amun-her Khepeshef "Desecrated Scion"
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can bind Amun-her Khepeshef.

Bind Gaia "Soul of the Land"
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can bind Gaia.

Bind Tkhaluuljin "the Cephalopocalypse"
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can bind Tkhaluuljin.

Bind Zuriel "the Bronze God"
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can bind Zuriel.

Bonus Soulmeld
Magic of Incarnum
213
You gain newfound meldshaping ability.

Chosen Weapon Specialization
Player's Guide to Faerun
135
You deal more damage than normal when wielding your deity's chosen weapon.

Combat Insight
Complete Warrior
151
Your keen intellect allows you to place melee attacks where they will deal the most damage.

Dark Transient
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
Your powers of mobility are so potent that you can travel between dimensions with a thought.

Divine Spell Penetration
Player's Guide to Faerun
135
Choose one component of your alignment. Any divine spells of that alignment that you cast are more capable of defeating spell resistance than normal.

Eldritch Sculptor
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
You control and shape your eldritch blasts like a master sculptor.

Enhance Effect
Player's Guide to Faerun
135
You can change the characteristics of a persistent spell effect that is already in place.

Epic Combat Expertise
Complete Warrior
151
You have extraordinary talent at using your combat skill for defense.

Epic Counterspell
Player's Guide to Faerun
135
You can counterspell any number of spells each round.

Epic Destiny
Online (https://web.archive.org/web/20100916093852/http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drfe/20080428)
--
You have a destiny beyond that of other adventurers.

Epic Eldricth Blast
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
Your eldritch blasts are unstoppably powerful.

Epic Essentia
Magic of Incarnum
213
You unlock more of your inner soul energy.

Epic Expanded Knowledge
Expanded Psionics Handbook
34
You learn another power.

Epic Expel Vestige
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can expel vestiges whenever the need arises.

Epic Favored Vestige
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You are extremely adept at using the abilities of a particular vestige.

Epic Favored Vestige Focus
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
The abilities you manifest from a particular vestige are extremely potent against enemies.

Epic Fiendish Resilience
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
You can make your blood boil with the strength of the Nine Hells.

Epic Psionic Focus
Expanded Psionics Handbook
34
You can expend your psionic focus to greater effect.

Epic Rapid Pact Making
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can make pacts with powerful beings very quickly.

Epic Rapid Recovery
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You can use the abilities of your favored vestige even more frequently than before.

Epic Skilled Pact Making
Online (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a)
--
You are exceptionally skilled at making pacts with powerful entities.

Epic Spellfire Wielder
Player's Guide to Faerun
136
You can store more spellfire energy levels than normal.

Epic Sunder
Complete Warrior
151
You deal extra damage when attacking objects.

Extra Chakra Bind
Magic of Incarnum
213
You gain the ability to use more of your body’s centers of power in conjunction with your soulmelds.

Improved Cooperative Metamagic
Player's Guide to Faerun
136
Your ability to enhance an ally's spell during casting is expanded.

Improved Metapsionics
Expanded Psionics Handbook
34
You can manifest powers using metapsionic feats more often than normal.

Improved Skirmish
Complete Adventurer
192
Your combat mobility improves.

Improved Snatch Spell
Player's Guide to Faerun
136
When you take over a spell from another spellcaster, you gain more control over its effect.

Improved Spellpool Access
Player's Guide to Faerun
136
You can use your spellpool access to call spells of greater than normal power.

Improved Sudden Strike
Complete Adventurer
192
Your ability to strike unaware foes improves.

Inscribe Epic Runes
Player's Guide to Faerun
136
Your ability to strike unaware foes improves.

Legendary Acrobat
Complete Adventurer
192
You can balance and tumble much more easily than a normal person.

Lord of All Essences
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
You have mastered the art of enhancing your eldritch blast with multiple essences.

Master of the Elements
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
You have achieved mastery of the four elements -- air, earth, fire, and water.

Mighty Sunder
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20030215a)
--
You deal extra damage when attacking objects. [Note: appears to be the same as the Epic Sunder feat from CW]

Morpheme Savant
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
Your words are charged with supernatural power.

Open heart Chakra
Magic of Incarnum
213
You open up one of your body’s most potent centers of power, allowing you to bind a soulmeld or a magic item to your heart chakra.

Open Soul Chakra
Magic of Incarnum
213
You gain the ability to bind soulmelds to your body’s most potent center of power: your soul chakra.

Paragon Visionary
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
Your powers of perception are beyond mortal ken.

Power Knowledge
Expanded Psionics Handbook
34
You add two additional powers to your list of powers known.

Psicrystal Power
Expanded Psionics Handbook
34
Your psicrystal can manifest a power.

Rapid Meldshaping
Magic of Incarnum
213
You can shape a meld in seconds.

Rebind Chakra
Magic of Incarnum
214
You can change which bodily center of power your soulmeld draws upon.

Shadowmaster
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
You have walked the path of shadows, and now you have mastered its secrets.

Souleater Incarnate
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
You have mastered the fusion of invocation and incarnum.

Verminlord
Online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ei/20061027a)
--
You have unparalleled insight into the ways of vermin.

Wield Oversized Weapon
Complete Warrior
153
You can use larger than normal weapons with ease.

DEMON

2017-09-06, 03:05 AM

Troacctid

2017-09-06, 03:19 AM

Morpheme Savant and Shadowmaster are two of the most broken epic feats in the game, if you count Warlocks as non-casters.

Also, don't forget Epic Destinies (https://web.archive.org/web/20100916093852/http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drfe/20080428), which are pretty legit. One of them lets you cast miracle 1/day, except instead of asking your deity, you just choose what happens. Because the deity is you.

Eldariel

2017-09-06, 03:24 AM

Dragon Magazine #363 features some for Binder. Also the Epic Binder (http://web.archive.org/web/20090619191821/www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080407a) article on WotC site (deleted, only accessible through other alternatives). I suppose there are more in the WotC site.

Troacctid

2017-09-06, 03:26 AM

weckar

2017-09-06, 04:57 AM

Dire Charge is useful but Lion Totem 1 replaces it;

You mean Lion Totem 3, yes?

Eldariel

2017-09-06, 05:58 AM

Those are the same thing. Dragon #363 was a web issue. You can see the "Dragon 363" header at the top.

Indeed? Thanks for the correction!

Thurbane

2017-09-06, 03:58 PM

I have updated my table (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22357241&postcount=21) and made some corrections. If anyone knows of any other epic feats, I'd be happy to add them to the list! :smallsmile:
https://i.vimeocdn.com/portrait/10061653_300x300

Grod_The_Giant

2017-09-06, 04:05 PM

Cosi

2017-09-06, 06:24 PM

Shadowmaster is legit insane, but what part of Morpheme Savant is broken? The Power Word spells are good, but not that good.

Yeah, I don't see it at all. power word spells aren't even that good. At epic levels, almost everything is going to be immune by virtue of just having a huge pile of HP. Even a 25th level Wizard is pretty likely to be immune. Assuming all 2s for HP (slightly lower than is realistic, but it makes math easy), he needs a +7 CON modifier to be over 200 HP and be immune. Starting with a 13 that's achieveable with a +6 item and a +5 inherent bonus (total of 24), and none of that is remotely unreasonable for an epic character. You're slightly better off at 21st level, but even then you can't hit anyone living off of a HD bigger than d4.

I guess there are use-cases like "kill minions" and "kill weakened people", but those both seem super loose. Spending a standard action to take out an enemy who is not a whole encounter on his own seems ... implausible. Having a strategy that involves two party members use their actions to kill a target with damage also seems pretty bad -- you're presupposing that one of your allies is a DPS who can't DPS hard enough to kill people.

It is better than the garbage that Fighters get though, so maybe this is just a case of a really low bar? OTOH, I think Wild Shape Rangers can qualify for some of the Wild Shape Epic Feats, which are probably better and those guys are at least as non-caster as Warlocks.

Thurbane

2017-09-06, 07:32 PM

I don't play high level/high-op games, but Master of the Elements seems pretty cool at level 21.

Spamming Summons & Dominate seems like a good option (although a bit situation); elemental resistances and diplomacy bonuses with elementals are a little meh at this level though.

ericgrau

2017-09-06, 07:36 PM

Death of Enemies + high wis + range spamming + crit fishing. Obviously undead are a problem but they can be your main favored enemy for bonus damage.
Devestating critical is even better for the same but it has a lot of pre-reqs
Dexterous fortitude and dexterious will are nice for a rogue
Epic Dodge
Epic Leadership of course
Exceptional Deflection + Reflect Arrows + maybe Infinite Deflection. Unless your DM is being unfair and gives all enemies knowledge of this, the fact that this is a non-action makes it automatically useful. Because you can still do everything else your build does on top of it.
Lingering damage maybe
Ruinous Rage + pumped strength = dungeon shortcuts
Trap sense + high speed
Uncanny Accuracy is very nice for any ranged.

When you're deep enough into epic level though, just about everyone should go for high level spells though. At least caster level 12th for some of the feats. Heck spell stowaway on a spell the party's real caster uses. Note that it says as if it was cast by the caster, not by you.

Troacctid

2017-09-06, 07:40 PM

Shadowmaster is legit insane, but what part of Morpheme Savant is broken? The Power Word spells are good, but not that good.
Power word shmower word. Think of anyone you're familiar with. Anyone anywhere. And imagine being able to remotely send them a suggestion. From anywhere else in the multiverse. At will. Over and over and over again, until they fail their save. And you're hundreds of miles away—maybe even on another plane—so they can't do jack about it. Seems preeetty busted to me.

ericgrau

2017-09-06, 07:45 PM

Power word shmower word. Think of anyone you're familiar with. Anyone anywhere. And imagine being able to remotely send them a suggestion. From anywhere else in the multiverse. At will. Over and over and over again, until they fail their save. And you're hundreds of miles away—maybe even on another plane—so they can't do jack about it. Seems preeetty busted to me.

And even if they are immune to mind affecting, someone else near them might not be. Or heck, don't even go after immune people at all. Go after everyone else you've met until your power base is comfortable, then go after them however you like.

Cosi

2017-09-06, 07:53 PM

Immunity to mind effecting doesn't seem like a terribly big hurtle for epic-level people to have to clear. Wizards and Beguilers have already been able to make you their pet on a failed will save for half the game already. If you don't have something at this point, you deserve to lose, and anyone who doesn't have something is unlikely to be a meaningful threat. "Oh god, he made my chamber maid attack me! What will I do?"

ericgrau

2017-09-06, 08:22 PM

Just hit 1,000 others then.

Or chill on some random plane spamming it until one of his random foes dispels/disjunctions his mind blank. For that matter mind blank doesn't seem to provide any detection of mental attack, so he may not know until it is too late.

AvatarVecna

2017-09-07, 12:22 AM

Armor Skin: The good news: this will stack with items enhancing your natural armor bonus, since this actually changes your NA rather than just enhancing it. The bad news: this won't apply to Touch AC. The worse news: you could've spent this feat getting stacking 10% miss chance, or increasing Dexterity to get benefits to AC/Ref/ranged attacks/several skills/initiative. Most builds probably have something better to spend their epic feats on than something that slightly upgrades one of their many defenses (and the one they're likely to have pretty good already anyway, if they're considering taking this).

Automatic Quicken Spell (3.5): Take this three times, and you can Quicken any spell 0th to 3rd lvl for free. Woo! Take Improved Metamagic three times, Quicken any spell of any level for just +1, on top of it affecting every other metamagic feat you have, bringing it down 3 levels too. So...yeah, this is awful. I guess it might be worth taking if Improved Metamagic won't reduce any of your metamagic further, and you really want free Quicken, and you aren't allowed to take the 3.0 version, and you don't mind needing so many feats for this to cover all your spells...

Blinding Speed: Now, I'm not saying Haste is an awful spell, because it's not. Let's put it this way: an slotless item giving you a 1/day 5 round Haste effect would cost 12000 gp...but that would apply to five people, and you're applying this feat to one person, so this feat's equivalent value is right around 2400 gp. That's far cheaper than I'd sell a feat slot for, I'll tell you what. Heck, Bane Of Enemies at its cheapest makes an unenchanted item into the equivalent of a +5, that's 50000 gp of value right there. This is awful.

Bulwark Of Defense: Imagine this ability said "all your defensive stance bonuses increase by 2", instead of just setting them to a new flat number. That would potentially make this feat worth taking multiple times for a mid-to-high epic Dwarven Defender. Of course, you'd still be a DD, but at least you could gradually improve your ability to guard a corridor from people who can't teleport or move through walls. As it stands, this does not improve with multiple feats, and is just terrible. Sure, if you're an Epic Dwarven Defender, you should take this, but don't play Epic Dwarven Defender.

Dire Charge: Spend a feat to gain Pounce! In the first round of combat only. Seriously, either dip Barbarian already or spend 8000 gp on a continuous slotless item of Lion's Charge, don't waste your epic feats on this dumpster material.

Epic Endurance: If you're taking this, you're an epic character who both needs immunity to getting tired and is not already immune to getting tired. Don't waste your feats on this garbage.

Epic Prowess: If you're dependent on hitting things with a stick, and you're bad enough at hitting things with a stick that you need this feat, you have problems this feat can't solve, my dude.

Epic Reputation: Most anything you want this for, Great Charisma does more (albeit slower in this particular area). Your bonuses in these skills should be sky-high anyway, another +4 shouldn't make much difference.

Epic Skill Focus: Barring very particular examples, this is just more of the above: your bonuses here are already likely higher than you really need, another +10 is just 'bating.

Epic Toughness: Past level 30, worse than taking Improved Toughness. Past level 60, two of these is worse than two of Great Constitution. Even pre-30th, it's not that great except maybe for low-Con mages, but low-Con mages didn't get to epic level by tanking hits.

Extended Life Span

You are an epic character. The gradual passage of time is not a problem for you. Take the feat Wedded To History to become immortal. Cast "Steal Life" on a hobo once a year. Take 10 levels of Thief Of Life and gain a year of ageless living every time you kill somebody with a sneak attack. Pay a cabal of druids to chain-reincarnate you back to your current race every time you're about to die of old age. Living forever is not problematic. This feat is a permanent expenditure to temporarily solve a problem that has at least a dozen better, cheaper solutions.

Improved Arrow Of Death: You can only have one Arrow Of Death at a time, it takes a day to create it, and it only works for you. You have to both hit and deal damage to get its effect, and the effect is a DC 20 Fort save or die, which is a pathetic DC at epic level. If this feat let you make every arrow you fired an Arrow Of Death instead of just increasing the garbage DC, it might be actually worth taking, particularly for a ranger who could combine it with Death Of Enemies and Devastating Critical. As it stands, this is +2 DC to what is an awful 1/day ability. Skip it.

Improved Darkvision: Find a way to get Superior Darkvision cast on you when you need it, rather than wasting feats on this.

Improved Death Attack: Oh my god, just stab them a bunch of times. You could've killed 10 people in the time you spent waiting to try and fail to kill one dude in one hit. No, making it more likely to succeed doesn't make this better.

Improved Low-Light Vision: The same solution for Improved Darkvision works here.

Improved Stunning Fist: Barring Wisdom shenanigans or homebrew, even an epic Monk doesn't get enough uses of this for it to be worth the feat slot.

Improved Whirlwind Attack: Since you can't apply more than one attack to any individual in reach, and you can't trigger Cleave off of it, this seems like it's just a worse version of Whirlwind Attack up until you get more attacks with it than you could possibly apply within your reach, at which point it's just as good. It only takes a standard action, so I guess that's something?

Incite Rage: If you're an Epic Barbarian with Cha 25 and Leadership, your army of warriors is marginally less pointless when you do this. It's got a nice area, though.

Legendary Climber: Requires high Dex and decent Balance, weird. Oh, and it just takes away Climbing penalties, at a level where you should have a ridiculous Climb bonus, a climb speed, a fly speed, and possibly teleportation options.

Legendary Commander: For when you just want an army of weaklings at your beck and call. Not super-useful beyond fluff, for the most part.

Legendary Leaper: You should be able to fly at this level. For this feat to be worth it, it would need do things like halve your jumping DCs and give you a bonus equal to twice your character level or something. This is just pathetic.

Legendary Rider: This feat takes away the Ride penalty for riding bareback, and makes it so you always succeed at controlling your mount in battle. To take this feat, you need 24 ranks in Ride, which means your minimum Ride result is probably 25, meaning you already can successfully control your mount in battle even while riding bareback.

Legendary Wrestler: This feat could give you +1000000 and it'd still be awful because everybody and their mother in epic has Freedom Of Movement. This feat is awful because the grappling system is awful.

Multiweapon Rend: A tiny bit of damage on a build where damage shouldn't be a problem anyway. Lame.

Perfect Health: Immunity to non-magical diseases? The highest disease DC on the SRD is 20. Immunity to poisons less than DC 25? Real poison immunity is common and useful, you should have it already. But even if you don't, you have at least 6 base Fort from levels, 7 from Con, and 2 from Great Fortitude, so you've got a +15 at the least anyway, DC 20 isn't a big issue for you even if you don't take this feat.

Polyglot: Taking this feat requires you to have gained 12 languages from Int and skill points. How many more do you need? And why is just casting Tongues such a problem?

Ruinous Rage: How many times have you been an epic raging barbarian and still had difficulty damaging an object?

Shattering Strike: How many times have you been an epic monk and still had difficulty damaging an object?

Spectral Strike: If by some miracle you are an epic cleric who doesn't have a Ghost Touch weapon, you do not spend a feat to affect incorporeal things with your melee weapon, you cast a spell to do the job for you.

Terrifying Rage: Highly effective against people who don't need to be debuffed for you to kick their butts. Not effective against people who you'd want to debuff pre-buttkicking.

Two-Weapon Rend: A tiny bit of damage on a build where damage shouldn't be a problem anyway. Lame.

Additional Magic Item Slot: The usefulness of this feat is dependent on how you're handling combining items in the same slot, and how expensive the items you're trying to get are. At the absolute worst, you could buy the main item for full price and the cheaper item for double price (essentially slotless). This means that the extra magic item slot you're getting is worth, at most, the full price of the extra item you're adding to your ensemble. If you're throwing a feat slot at this to wear a Cloak Of Epic Resistance +10 and a Cloak Of Epic Charisma +12, you're saving quite a chunk of cash even if you're an artificer combining them for just 150% the price of the cheaper item. But if you're using this epic feat slot to wear Boots Of Elvenkind and Boots Of Agile Leaping, you're basically saying "this epic feat is worth 600 gp to me at most". Oh yeah, and don't take this to get an extra ring unless you're a martial really desperate for another one or a mage with a ring fetish: the Hand Of Glory is a cheap neck item that'll give you another ring slot, and a caster can spend a couple non-epic feats on Forge Ring and Extra Rings to get two additional ring slots.

Augmented Alchemy: This either doubles the damage, doubles the duration, or doubles the area, in exchange for making the check much harder and the result much more valuable. Barring an alchemical item with a particularly useful effect, though, or one that's easy to make and expensive to sell (and can thus be used to generate money), this isn't really worth your time at all. The only reason this is here instead of in "Hot Garbage" is because I haven't splat-dived for alchemical items, so it's possible there's a fantastic one out there that's super-abusable with this feat to the point that it's useful.

Automagic Quicken Spell (3.0): This has most of the same problems the 3.5 version has, but it applies to three spell levels at a time instead of one. This means that applying it to all your spells is a much smaller deal than in 3.5 - making this not so completely garbage as the newer version.

Automatic Silent Spell: This metamagic can't be reduced by Improved Metamagic, so lessening your dependency on verbal components will require this feat. Fortunately, neither the 3.0 nor 3.5 version is particularly punishing in that regard, so this will quickly cover most of your spells (although it's definitely a thing to take when you're getting tired of taking better spell feats). If getting rid of your verbals is that important to you, take this.

Automatic Still Spell: Exactly the same as above. Worth taking if you think your dependency on jazz hands leaves you too vulnerable too often, not really worth taking if you have other ways of making that not a problem. Also worth taking for the coolness of not having to do jazz hands to cast spells.

Bonus Domain: This gives you more options for your domain spell slots, which is nice, and it might even give you access to new spells. The big draw here for most builds, though, is likely to be the third domain power, since spell versatility is not something your epic cleric is going to be lacking. Probably not worth taking compared to some of the better options you have, but still worth considering depending on the domains you can choose from.

Anarchic Rage: This isn't available to non-Chaotic Barbarians, and gives you +2d6 damage against a third of the universe's denizens. This is probably not quite as good a choice for Chaotic Barbies as Bane Of Enemies is for Rangers, and it's not available to the neutrals, so it's here instead of over there with BoE.

Combat Archery: If you find yourself swarmed in melee as an archer too often for your liking, or your DM likes to throw Jack B Quick at your archer, or you just want to be able to shoot somebody right in the face without taking any sass from them, this might be good enough to be worth the two garbage feat taxes you have to spend to get it.

Damage Reduction: In a game where spells, energy attacks, and creatures that hit like trucks being thrown by bigger trucks, DR won't help you too much, even DR/-. In a game where enemies with lots of lower-damage attacks (or swarms of enemies much lower level than you) are more common, this will be fantastic, maybe even worth taking several times. Wish it gave you more, though.

Deafening Song: The initiative penalty is unlikely to come up, unless you manage to use this in the surprise round, and auto-failing Listen checks is extremely circumstantial in its usefulness. What you're hear for is the 20% spell failure chance on any spell with verbal components, extremely useful against all kinds of spellcasters who don't have some way around needing to chant out their spells. Still, 20% isn't much, the range on this is pretty meh for an epic ability, and it becomes a lot less useful when people pick up Automatic Silent Spell, but there's enough potential situations where it's useful against spellcasters that I'm not comfortable calling it complete garbage.

Death Of Enemies: Now, martial save-or-die effects are rare, I know, so this should be pretty cool, but let's be realistic for a second: you just got a crit against a creature who is triggering both your Favored Enemy and your Bane weapon. Particularly if you have an x3 or x4 weapon, they're probably on death's door anyway, is spending this feat really gonna make that big a difference? This becomes a lot more worthy of a feat slot if you have a weapon with a high-crit chance. Pretty standard rating for a crit-fishing feat. Of course, creatures immune to criticals aren't affected, but what can you do?

Distant Shot: Almost certainly a significant and useful range increase for a thrown weapon expert, probably not super-great for somebody whose weapon has actually decent range. Still, getting rid of range penalties can be situationally useful, and the ability to fire beyond your normal max range with a longbow has gotta be useful at some point, right? I dunno, if you want it take it, but otherwise there's probably better things to spend this on.

Efficient Item Creation: If your DM gives you plenty of downtime, don't worry about this feat. If your DM is a **** about downtime length and you still wanna craft things to be stupid powerful, this feat will vastly increase how much crafting you can get done before the railroad conductor tells you to get the lead out.

Energy Resistance: You could've spent 24000/56000/88000 gp to get ER 10/20/30 without spending an item slot, instead of spending feat slots on this. You also could've spent 240000 getting energy immunity instead of just resistance. If immunity is too expensive for you and you need more than ER 30, though, 4 or more iterations of this feat is potentially useful for you...but probably not by much. Almost certainly better things to spend your feats on.

Enhance Spell: Pick up immunity to daze and Reserves Of Strength, and you won't ever need to waste spell levels on this. If your DM doesn't like how Reserves Of Strength is written and insists on playing the way it - admittedly - was obviously intended to work, this might not be a complete waste of your time, particularly if you're combining it with Improved Metamagic. If you're using Improved Metamagic with stacked Enhances though, you'll wanna make sure it's clear between you and the DM whether a double Enhanced spell is two increases of 4 or one increase of 8, because the latter means Improved Metamagic is having less impact.

Epic Fortitude/Reflex/Will: Is your {insert save} saving throw awful for somebody of your level? Spend a feat on this, and it'll be less awful! If your saves are all acceptably bad, skip these.

Epic Speed: The feat tax sucks, and the ability is useful for going faster. It'd be much better if you could take it multiple times, though.

Epic Spell Penetration: Another +2 to CL for punching through SR shouldn't make much difference very often. Your targets are largely going to have either way less SR than needed against you, way more than necessary to ignore your spells, or will have SR Yes. Potentially useful long-term, but it's got a lot of stiff competition.

Epic Weapon Focus: Better than Epic Prowess if you were gonna be using just one weapon anyway. Even so, this is still bottom of the barrel for this category.

Epic Weapon Specialization: +4 damage isn't great, but it's not strictly awful either, and it'll multiply on crits. Again, bottom of the barrel for this category, but potentially worth taking.

Fast Healing: Start every fight with full health, if you're patient. Oh, and heal a piddly bit of damage during combat, I guess. That's cool too. Between the small amount gained and the large Con requirement, this won't ever be a significant aspect of combat for you unless your idea of epic combat is spending an hour moving through endless waves of standard kobolds as they slowly reduce your HP towards 0 through your DR and Fast Healing as you slaughter them by the hundreds.

Great {Attribute} (non-SAD classes): Good enough when you don't have something better, but generally you'll have something better.

Great Smiting: If you're smiting often enough to consider taking this feat, you're probably doing plenty of smite damage during the day anyway. Still, more damage is always nice, and this is a sizeable bonus to your smite damage.

Group Inspiration: If you couldn't already inspire everybody you wanted to, now you can inspire even more people!

Hindering Song: Good and bad for a lot of the same reasons Deafening Song was: it's nice to cause spellcasters problems, but it'd be better if it was a more significant problem, or could be combined with Deafening Song, or had better range, or could be used with other bardic music.

Improved Alignment-Based Casting: +2 CL for spells of a particular alignment is a nice bonus, albeit rather situational IMO.

Improved Aura Of Courage: Only take this for somebody who leads armies into battle and wants them to be fearless despite being low-level. Your epic allies should either have high Will saves, mind-affecting immunity, or fear immunity by this point, and you shouldn't waste a feat slot carrying them if they don't.

Improved Aura Of Despair: Increasing an AoE no-save penalty to saves is nice. Wish the area was better, but what can you do?

Improved Combat Reflexes: An insane must-have for an AoO build, a nice benefit that's probably worse than something else for most other people.

Improved Favored Enemy: A nice bonus to skills and damage across the board for somebody with enough FEs (or enough versatile FEs).

Improved Heighten Spell: Shadowcraft Mages and people with nothing better to spend their above 9th lvl slots on will appreciate this.

Improved Ki Strike: The good news: your fists can now bypass epic DR to deal even more damage than they already could (which should've already been enough, but whatever). The bad news: you spent at least 16 levels on Monk.

Epic Manifestation: I'm not as familiar with psionics as I should be, but I imagine that past a certain point, spending a couple feats on Great Intelligence would give you more PP than this does in the long run. I dunno, I'd have to check the math...

Improved Sneak Attack: Most things are probably immune at this point in most games, but if they aren't in your game, this can be worth the feat slot for an extra handful of d6s per round.

Epic Spell Resistance: As situational as Epic Spell Penetration, and for the same reasons. You can take it multiple times, though, so that's...something?

Inspire Excellence: There's probably ways to cheese this pretty hard, but the way I imagine this being used most often is granting the whole party +4 Con for HP. That it can be semi-combined with other bardic music abilities is nice too.

Instant Reload: Great if you needed it, useless if you didn't. Next time, just take a bow.

Keen Strike: The good news: your fists are now an 18-20/x2 weapon with fantastic damage, and deal slashing instead of bludgeoning (which allows for things like Slashing Flurry now and Vorpal later on). The bad news: you have at least 16 levels of Monk.

Legendary Tracker: This feat adds new capabilities to the Survival skill, which is likely ridiculous for anybody who'd consider taking it. Nice feat, although it's outdone by divinations.

Magical Beast Companion: Other than the fact that this ability doesn't require you to have an animal companion in the first place, it's not a bad list. Probably some interesting options and opportunities here.

Master Staff/Wand: Useful options for staff/wand wielding casters.

Overwhelming Critical: Another crit-fishing feat, and not a great one at that. Still, you need it for Devastating Critical, which is what you really want.

Penetrate Damage Reduction: You should be doing enough damage that DR doesn't really slow you down, but counting your weapons as multiple materials for DR purposes is nice.

Reactive Countersong: Situationally useful, but not so much so as to be worth taking on most any bard build, I imagine.

Axiomatic Strike: Less useful than Holy Strike, since Evil enemies are more common in most campaigns than Chaotic ones. A nice boost for monks, though.

Spellcasting Harrier: Sadly less than useful given the existence of Improved Combat Casting, but still useful in some situations.

Storm Of Throws: Useful for low-to-mid op throwers, but high-op throwers will find it to be a step down.

Superior Initiative: Spending a feat for +4 Initiative is what I did with a non-epic Feat, why is it also what I'm doing with an epic Feat? Eh, another +4 Init ain't bad regardless.

Swarm Of Arrows: Better for archers than Storm Of Throws is for Throwers, since hurlers tend to have more options for adding extra attacks. You will eventually reach a point where this is inferior to Improved Manyshot, though.

Tenacious Spell: Highly useful for some spells, but only marginally so for many. You should have ways to protect your spells from dispel/antimagic/disjunction though.

Thundering Rage: Some slight sonic damage on crits is nice enough. Sonic isn't commonly resisted.

Uncanny Accuracy: Pretty useful for archers who don't already have a way past concealment.

Vorpal Strike: The good news: you can behead people by punching them. The bad news: you have at least 16 monk levels.

Widen Aura Of Courage: Lead your army to fearless victory!

Bane Of Enemies: The good news: you just spent one feat adding the +5 worth of enchantment to every weapon you ever wield for free, and that number will go up every time you gain a new favored enemy. The bad news: you're playing a ranger instead of a full caster, so while this is pretty great for you, it's not exactly on par with some other things in this category.

All Wild Shape Feats: These feats can either be used to snipe particular forms you're interested in using via Wild Shape, or just giving up and wanting to be able to turn into anything via Wild Shape so you don't have to spend spell slots preparing Shapechange. Fortunately, these feats are broad enough and Wild Shape is awesome enough that these aren't a bad choice for Druids but for the fact that the generic spellcasting epic feats are bonkers and should probably be taken first. You could also choose to give up caster levels instead of epic feats for this by taking Master Of Many Forms.

Devastating Critical: The significant feat taxes make this painful to reach, but once you're there, anything not immune to crits will feat your Keen Falchion/Rapiers. Not so great for a Scythe or a Greataxe, though, like most crit-fishing feats. This should pair well with Death Of Enemies for melee rangers willing to spend the feats for it; just imagine dual-wielding Keen Rapiers and forcing two SoDs on every crit.

Dexterous Fortitude: A fantastic way for Rogues to make the most of their Reflex save. Only once per round, but that's still great.

Dexterous Will: It's in this category for the exact same reasons as the previous one.

Epic Dodge: Select the boss creature as your Dodge target and ignore one successful attack from them per round. Useful enough for melee rogues to be worth taking.

Epic Expanded Knowledge: More powers, more options. Can't go wrong with that.

Epic Inspiration: Inspire Courage improves with the Epic Bard Progression. Use this to make it even better, as well as all your other things.

Epic Psionic Focus: There's enough psionic focus feats that you no doubt have use for an ability to use more than one at a time.

Epic Spell Focus: Making your spells harder to save against is great.

Epic Trapfinding: This feat takes out a lot of the "I search the dungeon square by square for traps". Particularly useful for an Elf, who has this ability for secret doors instead of traps and can cut that time-wasting garbage out completely.

Exceptional Deflection: Completely shuts down ranged attacks, including touch spells. Now this is a worthy epic martial feat, a nice additional capability instead of just more numbers.

Familiar Spell: This can be ridiculous, depending on the spell taken.

Great {Attribute} (SAD builds): Pump your favorite attribute even higher!

Holy Strike: This damage applies even when you're not smiting, which is nice, and DR and Regen overcome by good weapons isn't uncommon.

Ignore Material Components: No more spending gp to cast spells for you! This is great for most any caster.

Improved Combat Casting: If you're the kinda silly spellcaster who casts while in reach of a BSF without a backup plan, here's a feat to make that plan even more idiot-proof than it already should've been.

Improved Manyshot: Eventually shoot more arrows as a standard action than a TWF can dual-attack with a full round action. You'll have a huge penalty, but that shouldn't be difficult to overcome.

Infinite Deflection: Shuts down even more ranged attacks (particularly if you combine it with Exceptional Deflection to deflect a variety of attacks). Fantastic.

Intensify Spell: This is essentially Maximize+Empower+Empower. Can be pretty nice when reduced via Improved Metamagic.

Lasting Inspiration: A fantastic duration boost for several bardic music effects.

Lingering Damage: Doubling your SA damage is nice, and means you can spread your attacks around multiple targets without having to worry too much.

Negative Energy Burst: An AoE no-save negative levels ability. Nice!

Perfect Multiweapon Fighting: Necessary and useful for some builds.

Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting: Necessary and useful for some builds.

Permanent Emanation: There's some nice options here through the various books, but probably the most BS option available is Consumptive Field, an emanation that forces a Fort save or die on creatures near death, and gives you +2 Str/+1 CL self-stacking for every kill. The CL bonus has a cap, but the Str bonus doesn't, so murder your way across a warzone and get +2 Str for every kill along the way.

Planar Turning: A nice upgrade to your turn/rebuke ability.

Positive Energy Aura: A nice way to turn undead in epic without wasting attempts on it. Now you can save them for DMM: Persist/Heighten/Enhance/Intensify!

Power Knowledge: Highly useful, presumably.

Psicrystal Power: Psionic version of Familiar Spell, and likely just as easy to abuse.

Ranged Inspiration: Affect people from larger away, or a bigger area! A nice boost to bardic music most bards will likely take.

Reflect Arrows: Send your enemies ranged attack back at him. Ridiculous when combined with the other epic deflection feats.

Self-Concealment: 10% miss chance that's similar to concealment, and can be taken multiple times to stack with itself (up to 50%). If your DM says it doesn't count as actual concealment, it gets around things that penetrate concealment miss chance; if you DM says it counts as actual concealment, 50% will require your enemies to guess at your location. Lovely!

Sneak Attack Of Opportunity: Combine with Improved Combat Reflexes and a nice AoO build for maximum cheese.

Spell Knowledge: Highly useful, much like Power Knowledge.

Spell Opportunity: This doesn't require the spell being used to be Quickened, which is nice. Best if used with Improved Combat Casting to avoid the AoO in return. I'm sure there's plenty of Bad Touch spells you could throw at people regardless of which list you're using.

Spell Stowaway: A nice way to get buffed without spending spell slots yourself. Particularly useful is Spell Stowaway (Time Stop).

Spontaneous Domain Access: Useful for any domain but Sun.

Spontaneous Spell: A fantastic versatility buff for prepared casters. Choose something extremely versatile and go to town.

Trap Sense: It's Epic Trapfinding again! Except you can probably take both for 2 free checks against every trap you get close to, making it more likely you'll find the trap.

Undead Mastery: For when you're an epic theurge with Undead Leadership and still don't have enough zombies to simulate The Walking Dead.

Unholy Strike: As useful for evil PCs as Holy Strike is for good PCs.

Widen Aura Of Despair: 100 ft radius is much better for the no-save -2/-4 to saves aura.

Zone Of Animation: Walk through a battlefield and animate the dead armies. Perfect for the zombie lord.

All [Item Creation] Feats: I don't need to tell you why crafting is awesome. I don't need to tell you why epic crafting is awesome. I don't need to tell you the downsides of crafting, and I don't need to tell you the ways you can get around it. I could go on about why these are awesome, but all I need to say is that they let you double your money in exchange for requiring you to pick more fights (a thing you were going to do anyway). Besides, you're an epic caster, it's not like more fights means you're more likely to lose.

Epic Leadership: If the DM says your Leadership cohort stopped leveling because of the chart, well now you have a new chart to bring your cohort into epic. Beyond that, this is just Leadership, but EPIC. You'll have armies of followers soon enough, and then you can wage proper war on your enemies.

Epic Spellcasting: Largely garbage if you can't mitigate, but can literally do anything for free if you can mitigate. Build yourself a literal win button you can press to instantly win.

Improved Metamagic: It's the Incantatrix capstone as a feat. A feat that stacks with itself. Take this feat three times, and the vast majority of metamagic feats now just cost a single level to apply. Twice more and you can Persist stuff for +1. This is absolutely bonkers for any mage that finds use for metamagic feats.

Improved Metapsionics: As good as the above, presumably.

Improved Spell Capacity: Now you can apply metamagic stuff to spells you couldn't. This opens up whole new worlds of possibilities, particularly when combined with Improved Metamagic.

Multispell: Break the action economy to get more spells per round. Particularly when combined with Improved Metamagic, this gets ridiculous.

Music Of The Gods: Use "fascinate" on undead, constructs, Mind Blank'd mages, and deities. Then use Suggestion.

Gruftzwerg

2017-09-07, 01:41 AM

rigsmal

2017-09-07, 10:34 AM

stuff

I have two questions: One, is there a good list of ways to get immunities? Two, do you know what kind of rulesets these arenas run under? I'd be very interested in seeing bans/houserules.

Thanks for the references, by the way.

Death of Enemies + high wis + range spamming + crit fishing. Obviously undead are a problem but they can be your main favored enemy for bonus damage.
Devestating critical is even better for the same but it has a lot of pre-reqs
Dexterous fortitude and dexterious will are nice for a rogue
Epic Dodge
Epic Leadership of course
Exceptional Deflection + Reflect Arrows + maybe Infinite Deflection. Unless your DM is being unfair and gives all enemies knowledge of this, the fact that this is a non-action makes it automatically useful. Because you can still do everything else your build does on top of it.
Lingering damage maybe
Ruinous Rage + pumped strength = dungeon shortcuts
Trap sense + high speed
Uncanny Accuracy is very nice for any ranged.

When you're deep enough into epic level though, just about everyone should go for high level spells though. At least caster level 12th for some of the feats. Heck spell stowaway on a spell the party's real caster uses. Note that it says as if it was cast by the caster, not by you.

Maybe I should houserule that epic feats can be accessed before 21st level, provided the player meets the prerequisites as usual? Besides ridiculous feats such as those in the Leadership line, a lot of this is stuff I'd like pre-epic characters (particularly non-casters) to have access to.

stuff

This is a great list, thanks. The Permanent Emanation -> Consumptive Field one seems to be literally broken, i.e. just get a lot of small critters under your command and have them drown themselves then willingly fail the SoD save. Other good suggestions that aren't as obscene?

Eldariel

2017-09-07, 10:44 AM

I have two questions: One, is there a good list of ways to get immunities? Two, do you know what kind of rulesets these arenas run under? I'd be very interested in seeing bans/houserules.

Lists of Stuff (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?454553-Lists-of-Stuff-(saved-from-Wizards-Community-Forums)) is a reasonable, if not comprehensive listing. Also peruse the List of Necessary Magic Items (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items) and Bunko's (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?445114-quot-Bunko-s-Bargain-Basement-Magic-Items-That-Are-a-Steal!-quot-(from-Wizards-forum)). Generally, persistent spells. As for the rules, check the arenas. They usually detail the rules in a thread or something.

AvatarVecna

2017-09-07, 11:12 AM

This is a great list, thanks. The Permanent Emanation -> Consumptive Field one seems to be literally broken, i.e. just get a lot of small critters under your command and have them drown themselves then willingly fail the SoD save. Other good suggestions that aren't as obscene?

Finding a warzone and walking through will result in your aura taking out the people on death's door, which is a great way to power it up quickly. But yet, it can get pretty broken; just in general, I would houserule to cap the Str bonus to the same number of kills that would get you to the CL cap to make it more feasible, but as it stands this is a good source of NI Strength. It's worth mentioning that somebody else turning off the emanation merely suppresses it for a few rounds, but you turning it off means restarting it, so if you ever decided you didn't want to force people in the negatives to SoD, you'd need to turn it off and you'd lose your Str/CL boosts, and would have to start over.

As for other things you can use it for, there's some nice options out there. Eye Of The Hurricane is a nice suitably epic effect to have on all day, particularly if your DM is willing to let you use a Widened version (should be fine, since you can cast 7th lvl spells, but DMs can be sticklers sometimes). You can turn off the hurricane when you don't want it, but when you want it, a 40ft/80ft radius wind storm centered on (but not affecting) you is just a free action away. Of course, the classic combo is a Selective Antimagic Field, so that your magic stuff works normal but anybody else's has problems near you. Crown Of Glory could be useful for enthralling the masses, if that's your thing, but it won't do anything to anybody who could actually bother an epic caster such as yourself. A nice Widened Desecrate could be fantastic for a necromancer. If you're willing to spend two feats on a really cool effect that's ultimately not gonna be useful against creatures close to your level, Aura Of Terror+Adoration Of The Frightful is a nice combo with this feat. Body Of The Sun, Cacophonic Shield, Maw Of Chaos, and other emanation damage effects (w/ Reserves Of Strength and your preferred metamagicks) could be pretty nice to turn on before wading into melee.

Endarire

2017-09-11, 12:56 AM

Epic levels get into a territory that has been generally uncomfortable for me. I've had GMs (or maybe just one GM) that pulled antimagic on our caster-heavy party. I've also felt marginalized regardless of class due to the campaign not being fit for a group who could have done anything, anywhere, anytime levels ago and instead played like the same game many levels ago but with higher stats.

But I have GMed a campaign that ran level 1-21 and would have gone higher had I tracked EXP for the final battle. We were content to end at 21.

ericgrau

2017-09-11, 10:52 PM

Maybe I should houserule that epic feats can be accessed before 21st level, provided the player meets the prerequisites as usual? Besides ridiculous feats such as those in the Leadership line, a lot of this is stuff I'd like pre-epic characters (particularly non-casters) to have access to.

Depends. A lot of these are twice as strong as core feats and it might be a better houserule to make them cost 2 feats each. But then a lot of splatbook feats are twice as strong as core feats. So if you're already playing with all the best splatbook feats allowed without nerfing/restricting then sure, open the door to all the epic feats and don't worry about it. At all. Makes for more fun either way.

Cosi

2017-09-12, 08:41 AM

Depends. A lot of these are twice as strong as core feats and it might be a better houserule to make them cost 2 feats each. But then a lot of splatbook feats are twice as strong as core feats. So if you're already playing with all the best splatbook feats allowed without nerfing/restricting then sure, open the door to all the epic feats and don't worry about it. At all. Makes for more fun either way.

Core feats are a terrible balance point. +2 to two skills is an actual joke. So is Weapon Focus. If that's the baseline, people should get at least one feat a level and maybe two.

Thurbane

2017-09-12, 04:12 PM

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Feats should be on a point buy system; Garbage feats cost 1 point, average feats 2-3, and OP feats 4-5 (just to pluck some numbers out of the air). You get a certain number of feat points per level to spend (unspent points can be banked to buy powerful feats). Feats with heavy reqs have their points reduced somewhat.

Assigning points to the myriad of feats in 3.5 would be a massive project, through. I think one of the 3.5 devs did this for core feats on his blog/website, but from memory his idea of what were strong feats and what were weak was all over the place.

ZamielVanWeber

2017-09-12, 04:17 PM

The problem with assigning point values to feats is some feats are not great, or even terrible, but do crazy stuff when combined with specific effects.

martixy

2017-09-12, 05:54 PM

a real cheesy epic feat for non-casters would be Distant Shot. Gets rid of range penalties and increases your ranged attack range to your spot distance.

Now combine this with a Bloodstorm Blade build with Whirlwind.

End result is great. You'll hit any enemy (! WW does distinguish between friend and foe^^!) you see.

Add standard ubercharger stuff to the build, and you can kill everything on sight!
See my ShurikenNado (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?526875)build. (which seems to got ignored by the board so far, it didn't get any feedback..-.-)(the epic feat part ain't mentioned in the build since it ends at 20 atm. But Distant Shot would fit on the epic lvls).
I feel for you, it's a neat idea. Which happens to reinforce Zamiel's point:

The problem with assigning point values to feats is some feats are not great, or even terrible, but do crazy stuff when combined with specific effects.

I think there are plenty of shenanigans like this one can do with epic feats, they're just less apparent than the obvious potential of epic spellcasting.

Many of the epic spellcasting options ride on the power of pre-epic spells. Stuff like meta-ing high-level spells, spell access and other quantitative improvements that turn in qualitative due to the effects to which they can now be applied.
Then there's the "you're now allowed to play game designer" aspect with epic spell development.

Allowing martials to design their own feats will go a long way towards levelling the playing field in terms of options and versatility(even if not necessarily power).

Thurbane

2017-09-12, 07:12 PM

The problem with assigning point values to feats is some feats are not great, or even terrible, but do crazy stuff when combined with specific effects.

Maybe some sort of community ranking system like The LA-assignment thread(s) ?

Gruftzwerg

2017-09-12, 09:41 PM

The problem with assigning point values to feats is some feats are not great, or even terrible, but do crazy stuff when combined with specific effects.

This. Especially for most of the +2 to skill feats. Alone they are worthless thrash. But in an optimized builds (e.g. Diplomacy, Bluff, ..) they can change the world ;).

Eldariel

2017-09-13, 01:22 AM

This. Especially for most of the +2 to skill feats. Alone they are worthless thrash. But in an optimized builds (e.g. Diplomacy, Bluff, ..) they can change the world ;).

Eh, you generally don't need those to hit the threshold numbers in skill focused builds. The thing that breaks skills aren't those minor mini-bonuses from irrelevant feats but the multipliers and the stat stacking and the massive bonuses. Take Diplomacy for example: when we're getting +120 to a skill, the relative value of the +5 from feats is significantly diminished. Though you'll probably get Skill Focus anyways to enter Exemplar which you'll probably do in such a case. Though the earlier the better and there are only so many important feats - no real reason not to pick it up.

Race: Venerable Magic-Blooded Half Elf Alignment: Chaotic Good
Flaws: Inattentive, Noncombatant
Traits: Polite, Honest

Level Class Feat(s)
1 Half Elf Bard Substitution Level 1 Sacred Vow, Negotiator, Extra Music
2 Marshal 1
3 Bard 2 Item Familiar
4 Warlock 1
5 Cleric(evangelist option) 1
6 Half Elf Paragon 1 Leadership, Complementary Insight(B)

Stats of Importance:

Charisma: 18
Intelligence: 16 or higher
Dexterity/Constitution: Generically good for any character.

Equipment:

Wendsday's Left Eye (6,000gp)
Ring of Diplomacy +8 (6,400gp)
Mwk Diplomacy Tool [makeup kit] (500gp)
Anything Else (100gp)

His cohort must have at least 9 Wisdom, 11 Intelligence, and 18 Charisma before age adjustments:

Race: Venerable Magic-Blooded Half Elf Alignment: Chaotic Good
Flaws: Inattentive, Noncombatant
Traits: Polite, Honest

Level Class Feat(s)
1 Cleric(evangelist option) 1 Sacred Vow, Negotiator, Skill Focus: Diplomacy
2 Cleric 2
3 Cleric 3 Complimentary Insight
4 Warlock 1

Cohorts check:
7 ranks
7 Charisma
9 Synergy
2 Evangelist cleric
2 Mind domain
2 Herald domain
7 Motivate Charisma (+2 with eagles splendor on main char)
6 Beguiling influence
2 racial
2 negotiator
2 sacred vow
2 Mwk tool
3 skill focus

+53 total (+55 with ES on)

He casts Eagle's Splendor on the main character, and uses the Aid Another rules from Complete Adventurer to roll a Diplomacy check to modify his master's check. He'll get a 65 on average, or +6. He can get between +5 and +7.

Mathematical Breakdown of Diplomacy Check:

9 ranks unnamed
9 Charisma unnamed
9 Synergy synergy
3 Skill Focus unnamed
9 Motivate Charisma unnamed
2 Racial racial
2 Sacred Vow perfection
2 Evangelist cleric unnamed
2 Mwk tool circumstance
6 Beguiling Influence enhancement?
5 Friendly Face circumstance
4 Wednesday's Left Eye unnamed
9 Item Familiar unnamed
4 Herald Domain unnamed
2 Mind Domain unnamed
2 Negotiator unnamed
8 Custom item competance
1 Polite trait unnamed
1 Honest trait unnamed
5 to 7 Cohorts aid another check

1d20+94 to 1d20+96 Total

Summary:

At a mere 6th level, Fred has a minimum of +94 on his diplomacy check. He has soothing voice, so he can stop fights as soon as they start, and he has tons of class goodies. Even with a -20 circumstance penalty on his check, he still automatically converts a creature from hostile to friendly. 7 times per day, Fred can stop fights that have already started just by talking with his Soothing Voice ability (Will DC 104 average negates). And best of all, Fred isn't specific to any campaign setting.

Edit: Bumped it up to +94.

The build for example contains Negotiator even though Nymph's Kiss would be strictly better, and it doesn't actually have the feats to pick both. Practiced Spellcaster would sorta also be better for Improvisation to gain higher Luck-bonuses.

Cosi

2017-09-13, 08:32 AM

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Feats should be on a point buy system; Garbage feats cost 1 point, average feats 2-3, and OP feats 4-5 (just to pluck some numbers out of the air). You get a certain number of feat points per level to spend (unspent points can be banked to buy powerful feats). Feats with heavy reqs have their points reduced somewhat.

If you can put in the effort to do that, you can probably also put in the effort to just re-write feats so that they're balanced from the word go. That seems like a better solution than feat points.

ericgrau

2017-09-13, 09:04 AM

Core feats are a terrible balance point. +2 to two skills is an actual joke. So is Weapon Focus. If that's the baseline, people should get at least one feat a level and maybe two.

Depends where your expectations lie. At the beginning core was the starting point for balance and for many groups still is. Actually most splatbook feats are around this level, we've just had years to sort out the top 2% that make the other 98% obsolete. Personally I'd rather play with the middle 90% than the top 2%, much more options that way and less of a learning curve for players who can't spend months devoted to studying D&D.

Also trying to pick the worst of core isn't really fair. Plus, it's actually more like excessively situational like many of the excessive 3.5 rules.

If you can put in the effort to do that, you can probably also put in the effort to just re-write feats so that they're balanced from the word go. That seems like a better solution than feat points.
Well both are excessive effort.

My solution for the skill feats was actually to boost them by a mere +1, allow retraining and continue to recommend that players not take them most of the time. For skills in general, just use common sense for the scope of what a skill can do, not an overly literal reading of the rules. So now players might take them to get past some low level skill checks under extremely specific campaign circumstances. And the extra +1 makes them a little more effective at this when it's actually useful. Then when they're auto-passing the checks or bypassing them with magic items, they retrain away the feat. In my short list of house rules I also shored up a couple others. Then used that as the baseline for case by case approval of builds. So I get 2 pages of houserules instead of 500 and no need for decades of rules testing.

There are lots of novel-sized documents full of untested house rules that are doomed to fail. But in the end we have a game that plenty of people play without the help of internet forums. You just need to cut off a few things here and there that are way over the top, and simply do it as they appear rather than ahead of time. The hardest parts are actually not the multiverse shattering tricks, but the borderline strong ones where you're not sure to allow it or not.

AvatarVecna

2017-09-13, 09:50 PM

Depends where your expectations lie. At the beginning core was the starting point for balance and for many groups still is. Actually most splatbook feats are around this level, we've just had years to sort out the top 2% that make the other 98% obsolete. Personally I'd rather play with the middle 90% than the top 2%, much more options that way and less of a learning curve for players who can't spend months devoted to studying D&D.

Also trying to pick the worst of core isn't really fair. Plus, it's actually more like excessively situational like many of the excessive 3.5 rules.

A typical core-only Fighter 12 is likely to have Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Focus, and Greater Weapon Specialization for their preferred weapon. That's four feats giving a total of +2 to attack, +4 to damage, of the total 12 feats they get, so it's very roughly one third of their chargen resources.

A typical core-only Cleric 12 doesn't have the bonus feats to have any of those, but can cast "Divine Power" (a 4th lvl spell) to give themselves +6 to attack, +3 (or +4/+5 w/ a two-handed weapon) to damage, and an additional attack on a full attack action. Presuming cleric has at least 18 Wisdom, they can cast this spell 4 times a day, which should be enough to cover the major fights that take place in a day (and thus warrant buffs like this). Assuming 18 Wisdom to minimize its impact, and using total spell points as a way to gauge the total percentage cost, this cleric would have spent 28 of their 120 spell points (assuming we didn't count domain spells for spell points, which we're not supposed to). That means the Cleric has spent 23% of their available resources to accomplish this for every fight. The wizard equivalent would be casting a CL 12 Polymorph on themselves every fight, which is likely to be even more of a boost for them than Divine Power was a boost for the Cleric, which is already more of a boost for the Cleric than the Fighter's four feats are for them.

I realize this isn't the fairest comparison (it doesn't take into account some significantly better feats, and it takes into account some good spells at a level where casting them every fight is vaguely reasonable), and the relative power change for beatstick abilities is less important than the final level they arrive at, but the point remains that claiming Core feats are more appropriate when non-Core isn't available just isn't true; the fact that the expectation for core non-casters is so awful (particularly in comparison to core casters) doesn't mean that non-caster feats superior to core feats are overpowered. The power disparity in 3.5 is, arguably, at its absolute worst in a Core-only game. The four feats I took on this fighter are god-awful feats, but they're also the Fighters best option for some of their feat slots in a Core-only game. A Core-only Fighter who doesn't take these four terrible feats is wasting his feat slots on non-combat crap he can never be good at anyway, and even in his specialty, he's getting less benefit from these feats than a cleric spamming a self-buff spell every fight.

Taking things out of Core ramps up the amount of power available to both casters and non-casters, but the upper limit for casters was already "infinite wishes" in Core, so while some things have gotten easier to abuse without resorting to wish-loops, most things now just have a less cheesy way of accomplishing what was already possible. Meanwhile, non-casters start getting access to pouncing, reach builds, AoO builds, thrown weapon builds, skirmishing, and maneuvers, you've gone from a game of T1s and T5s to a game of T1s and T3s, which is a good deal more manageable and balanced.

Can the game be played Core-only and balanced? Sure, the wizard might stick to just blasting away and occasionally busting out a useful buff or utility, while the cleric will be a heal-bot with a mediocre hammer, and the druid will just be a bear with a bear friend and will summon bears and bear bear bear. The Fighter will do an amount of damage that isn't going to one-shot anything in the monster manual of his level, but will do an appreciable amount of damage. The Monk and Ranger and Rogue will be competitive with other classes, and the dragons will use claws and teeth instead of strafing the group with breath weapons before sniping with spells from afar. A game where people play the Core-only meta (i.e. the way the classes are intended to be played) is a game that can relatively balanced. But even in that game, the differences in a group that does 6 encounters per day and one that does 5 will be present: the wizard will get more acid arrows and fireballs per fight, the cleric will spend less time healing and more time swinging, the druid can bring more bears, and the Fighter is still just swinging away as he was before. Even if these low-op players never accidentally stumble across a spell that's powerful for its level, just having less fighters per day makes things easier on the whole group while also giving the casters a significant increase in the amount of power they're bringing to every fight.

Lans

2017-09-14, 12:14 PM

A typical core-only Cleric 12 doesn't have the bonus feats to have any of those, but can cast "Divine Power" (a 4th lvl spell) to give themselves +6 to attack, +3 (or +4/+5 w/ a two-handed weapon) to damage, and an additional attack on a full attack action. Presuming cleric has at least 18 Wisdom, they can cast this spell 4 times a day, which should be enough to cover the major fights that take place in a day (and thus warrant buffs like this). Assuming 18 Wisdom to minimize its impact, and using total spell points as a way to gauge the total percentage cost, this cleric would have spent 28 of their 120 spell points (assuming we didn't count domain spells for spell points, which we're not supposed to). That means the Cleric has spent 23% of their available resources to accomplish this for every fight. The wizard equivalent would be casting a CL 12 Polymorph on themselves every fight, which is likely to be even more of a boost for them than Divine Power was a boost for the Cleric, which is already more of a boost for the Cleric than the Fighter's four feats are for them.

I realize this isn't the fairest comparison (it doesn't take into account some significantly better feats,
.
It really isn't, your giving divine power a +6 to hit, but not taking into account that clerics are at -3 to hit, and the opportunity cost of casting a buff spell instead of thwacking an opponent. Not saying its bad, or anything, but its little costs to those buffs that put them more in line. Granted things like persist exist and gets back the lost action, and thats all it takes, but then it a cleric can add in divine favor for another +3/+3

Eldariel

2017-09-14, 12:29 PM

Goaty14

2017-09-14, 03:53 PM

I realize this isn't the fairest comparison

A rogue of the same level (and roughly the same tier) deals +6d6 to his enemy if there's a commoner standing behind his enemy.
The opponent loses his Dex to AC (which, presuming the enemy is wearing medium armor) gives the rogue +3-4 to hit, and +6-36 damage. The rogue would only have to expend a couple of sp (to hire the commoner) to gain the marginally higher effect.

Sure, even then there are some things to take into account (such as if the enemy is immune to crits, or if the monster killed the commoner), but even then there are mere 1st level spells that produce the same effect. (Grease I'm looking at you.)

AvatarVecna

2017-09-14, 04:23 PM

It really isn't, your giving divine power a +6 to hit, but not taking into account that clerics are at -3 to hit, and the opportunity cost of casting a buff spell instead of thwacking an opponent. Not saying its bad, or anything, but its little costs to those buffs that put them more in line. Granted things like persist exist and gets back the lost action, and thats all it takes, but then it a cleric can add in divine favor for another +3/+3

As the other guys mentions, generally the first round will be spent just charging into melee for a single attack anyway, and the other guy in the fight will cover that, so it's not super-important that you get that first attack. However, you have a point about the Fighter starting out better at Fighting, making their ending stats not really as one-sided as I made it out to be, and that's even more true than you've mentioned. The cleric is starting with BAB +9 and probably Str 14 (giving them two attacks at +11/+6 and 1d12+3 damage) while the Fighter has BAB +12 and Str 18 (giving them three attacks at +16/+11/+6 dealing 1d12+6 damage). With weapons equalized, this puts the Fighter +5 attack, +1 attacks, and +3 damage ahead before we takes feats and spells into consideration. After the feats and spells previously mentioned, the cleric has BAB +12 and Str 20 (giving them three attacks at +17/+12/+7 and dealing 1d12+7), while the Fighters is at +2 attack and +4 damage from before (putting them at three attacks at +18/+13/+8 dealing 1d12+10). The fighter, at this point, is still clearly the superior combatant after the spell gets cast, but the point being made was that the spell gives more relative bonus to the Cleric than the feats do to that Fighter.

Sure, tossing a Quickened Divine Favor on every fight would make the cleric superior (+20/+15/+110 and dealing 1d12+10), but that'd be another 36 spell points (for a total of 64) out of your effective 120, taking up 53% of your daily resources (and ~20% more than the Fighter is spending). Sure, you're barely superior now, but when you're spending nearly twice the resources the Fighter is, why wouldn't you be?

Of course, if you wanted to outdo the Fighter without spending so many resources, you'd cast Greater Magic Weapon earlier in the day. That spell lasts 12 hours, which should be sufficient for a day spent mostly adventuring, for 9 additional spell points (total 37 out of 120, which makes 30% to the Fighter's 33%). This is a much fairer comparison, and now you're just straight-upOf course, this doesn't take into account the potential advantage of having a magic weapon beyond just attack and damage (especially since we were assuming neither had a magic weapon to begin with, which could change how much it improves things for the Cleric), but the point still stands that spells give a ridiculous benefit compared to this feat chain.

Of course, the second example in my post didn't get detailed out: the wizard Polymorphing at the beginning of every fight. The reason I didn't detail this example out was because honestly, I didn't have to, because everybody knows why this is a fantastic option compared to the feats. Let's say the wizard can only turn into a Hydra - not even pyro-/cyro-, just original flavor. That 12-headed hydra he turns into at the beginning of every fight is not a form tailored to defeat the encounter in question, so it's giving up a massive versatility advantage, but in terms of combat potential, 12 attacks +17 dealing 2d8+6, with built-in pounce and Fast Healing 22. This isn't a fair comparison to the Fighter at all, but I'm still spending 23% of daily resources to do this every fight to be an objectively supremely better combatant than the Fighter.

All of this is just part of countering the original point I was discussing, which was that Weapon Focus and its ilk aren't terrible in Core-only if you're not playing super-optimal. Divine Power is part of the cleric meta as a backup melee-brute, but not only does it give you more respective buff than the Fighter taking that feat chain, but throwing just one additional long-term buff on their will boost the cleric enough to be objectively better at fighting all other things being equal.

But even by the standards of Fighter feats vs Fighter feats, these feats don't give much effective bonus. Sure, a core fighter has enough feats to get those four feats and plenty of others, but we've shown that those four feats pale in comparison to buffs; are there feats that are harder to out-play with spells? Well, there's feats that are harder to out-perform in a direct competition like this, but then you can start getting into whether those feats are better than the tactical advantage of having access to Teleport and Scrying and whatnot, but that's beside the point I'm trying to make in this paragraph, which is that while that feat chain compares awfully to spells, Power Attack + Improved Critical fares much better in comparison, which is why even in games that aren't Core-only, those feats will still show up in most melee builds. It's possible to use spells to replicate the effects of Improved Critical (keen, just for a Core example), but casting that spell for every encounter would cost more resources than the Fighter spending one feat on it. Meanwhile, the Fighter can take up to 12 "Attack -1/Damage +2" tradeoffs, giving him a ridiculous level of versatility to his attack routine against things with AC lower than appropriate for this level of play. It's difficult for buff spells to match this level of versatility and power even outside of Core, short of just giving you Power Attack.

This is true, Divine Power is closer to +3 to hit, +4-5 to damage (if two-handing) and costs an action (and grants temp HP) and doesn't stack with strength boosting items so it doesn't completely negate Fighter's bonuses. But it's just a small part of the story though the point was of course the spell-feat comparison where the class features are concerned. Looking at the whole picture, in Core Cleric casting Divine Power (or Righteous Might) and quickening Divine Favor on level 9 is generally numerically more than a match for any Fighter of the level, particularly thanks to Greater Magic Weapon and Magic Vestment granting easy access to +2 armor, weapon and shield (+3 on 12, when Fighter finally gets Greater Weapon Specialization, after which Clerics advance towards 9th level spells while Fighter gains grand total of even inferior feats as none exist beyond 12!). Generally combat doesn't begin in melee range and the first charge in Core short of shapeshifting into Pounce form or mounted Spirited Charge is unlikely to accomplish much. And that's without even mentioning situations where you can prebuff due to intel/obvious location for an enemy/general lull in action between chains of encounters - I find most fights aside from times where we screw up and get ambushed (which get rare around 9-10 thanks to spell mobility and divinations), there's a chance for buffing close to the point of the combat.

It's as Vecna said, the Core feat power was way underplayed for how rare feats are aside from some caster feats, and few non-caster ones (Power Attack, Improved Trip, Spirited Charge, Combat Reflexes in applicable builds and perhaps EWP: Spiked Chain). If warrior characters gained multiple feats per level, getting minor bonuses from each would be fine but they're rare enough and the only advantage Fighters have over non-warriors in their specified niche. Which is just sad.

I mentioned this in a previous thread about why non-caster feats are just generally terrible; my answer at the time (well, it's still my answer, but anyway) is that the designers seem to have designed the Fighter's feat progression before they designed feats, and then when they saw how many feats a Fighter 20 can have, they panicked and made feats awful because they had a particular level of butt-kicking they wanted the Fighter to operate at; if they made too many pure combat feats the Fighter couldn't take with FBF, people would call BS, but if they made those feats too good, the Fighter would be kicking 100% (or higher! :smalleek:) more butt than the designers wanted them to. Thus, we have feat trees, where Fighters can get neat abilities at "reasonable" rates, and everybody else can just suck it. Oh, you want a Rogue to have Elusive Target because it's a really useful ability that fits your character? You'll have to suck up spending two feat slots on largely useless garbage, then! You want to be able to move make more than one attack without basically standing still? Whirlwind Attack has you covered in Core (requiring Dex 13/Int 13/four garbage feats), while Spring Attack/Bounding Assault/Rapid Blitz has you covered outside core (gradually more attacks with movement, but never as many as a full attack, which would be reasonable if meleeing wasn't so inferior to casting to begin with). Elusive Target is basically the designer's saying "we think this ability is so good, it should cost you three feats", and Whirlwind Attack is "we know you're gonna be surrounded by hordes of weaklings all the time, so this ability is clearly worth five feats". When the four feats leading up to it are essentially garbage, that's what they're saying they think it's worth. Shouldn't all feats be equal, since they all cost the same to get? Instead of making two feats worth nothing and one feat worth three feats, then stringing them into a feat chain, why not make three feats each worth one feat slot?

This is even more obvious when you see how rare feat trees are for caster feats: they didn't need to worry about the Fighter's feat advantage helping there, so it's okay for every caster feat to give a nice buff without requiring you to take something else first. People may make good points about how throwing a full-price metamagic X on spell Y might not be as effective as just casting a higher-level spell, but I'll tell you hwat (https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/27676964/ill-tell-ya-what.jpg), I'd rather have the versatility Maximize Spell gives me, even though it's so expensive, than waste my feat slot on something like Dodge or Toughness or Weapon Focus.

All of this is just a sub-set of the main topic, which is that epic feats for casters and non-casters take the Core assumption of "combat feats must suck, or the Fighter will be too good" and crank it up to 11. I made a post earlier in the thread showing what I thought of the various epic feats, and there were some nice epic continuations of non-epic non-caster stuff...but most of the stuff you could take as an Epic Fighter was just okay, whereas a number of Rogue and Monk and Ranger feats seemed pretty awesome.

Thurbane

2017-09-14, 04:23 PM

One boost I've seen house-ruled for the +2/+2 skill feats is that they also grant both skills as class skills for all future class levels.

Holy Diver [General]

Prerequisites
Must have been down too long in the midnight sea.

Benefit
You get a +2 bonus on all Knowledge (religion) checks and Swim checks.

Ride the Tiger [General]

Prerequisites
Holy Diver, Ride 5 ranks

Benefit
You gain a +5 competence bonus on all Handle Animal and Ride checks, and a +2 bonus on an all Wild Empathy checks, relating to animals or magical beasts of a feline nature (lion, tiger, manticore etc.).

Special
A fighter may select Ride the Tiger as one of his fighter bonus feats.

If the feline is an animal companion, familiar, special mount or wild cohort, you can always chose to take 10 on Handle Animal or Ride Checks with the creature, and the feline gets a +2 deflection bonus to armor class whenever you are using it as a mount.

ericgrau

2017-09-14, 08:32 PM

A typical core-only Fighter 12 is likely to have Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Focus, and Greater Weapon Specialization for their preferred weapon. That's four feats giving a total of +2 to attack, +4 to damage, of the total 12 feats they get, so it's very roughly one third of their chargen resources.

A typical core-only Cleric 12 doesn't have the bonus feats to have any of those, but can cast "Divine Power" (a 4th lvl spell) to give themselves +6 to attack, +3 (or +4/+5 w/ a two-handed weapon) to damage, and an additional attack on a full attack action.
He can't cast quickened divine power so he just nerfed himself by spending a round. If anything cast prayer, but it would be better to just attack if it's not a buff round.

Comments like this make me wonder how much time people play vs how much time they spend in forums. I mean, try it.

zergling.exe

2017-09-14, 10:16 PM

cut for length

Just want to point out that Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialization are both twice as effective as the regular versions, so the Fighter would get another +1 attack bonus and +2 damage, for +3 attack and +6 damage total.

Eldariel

2017-09-14, 11:33 PM

AvatarVecna

2017-09-14, 11:56 PM

He can't cast quickened divine power so he just nerfed himself by spending a round. If anything cast prayer, but it would be better to just attack if it's not a buff round.

Comments like this make me wonder how much time people play vs how much time they spend in forums. I mean, try it.

I'm playing in five long-running games right now - two IRL and three online. In those, I'm playing a Fighter, a Rogue, a Cleric, a Bard, and a Mystic Theurge. The games where I'm playing the Fighter and Rogue are games where I have to be careful about going in before I've been buffed, or I'll end up a lot less effective than normal. In the games where I'm playing a caster, buffing up the melee guys (Fighter, Rogue, and for the Cleric; Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger, and myself for the Theurge) is my first job in combat, and they all generally hang back rather than charging in un-buffed because they don't like getting their asses kicked any more than I do. Buffing just myself and wading in, particularly for the Theurge, would be much more fun for me, but would be taking away that fun from all my party members, and would be quite effective.

Charging in as an unbuffed cleric gets me one additional attack in exchange for making all my attacks in that combat worse. By spending my first turn casting a spell and moving up (instead of moving up and getting one attack), I'm losing one initial attack in exchange for gaining one attack every round (and all my attacks are better). There's no question which scenario is better for the Cleric's ability to contribute to the combat. The Fighter, who charged in, got an additional attack; assuming they both get as many full attacks from here on out, the Fighter will continue having one attack over the cleric, in exchange for the cleric's attacks getting better damage than those feats are giving him.

I guess if you always start your fights already in melee-range of your opponent, the Cleric might be better off taking two attacks than buffing themselves, sure. Generally speaking, most fights will start with a bit of distance between the party and the enemy/enemies, and the melee characters of one group or the other have to make that first push to close to the range at which they can make full attacks. As we're talking about a Core game here to do basic comparisons, Pounce isn't really going to be available to anybody except maybe the casters (via Wild Shape or Polymorph to an appropriate form).

This assume the alternative would be full attack, rare in the first round without Pouncr and that's not accounting for the timed the fight is predictable since you are about to initiate this.

These complaints give me the exact same feeling you described - do peole just never scout/teleport/divine/buff before busting the door/start outside melee range? It's often tactically unsound to rush in for the first single attack and eat a full attack in return even when you don't have prebattle buff time.

Mhm. This comparison becomes even more one-sided if the Cleric isn't even spending in-combat actions to buff themselves.

Just want to point out that Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialization are both twice as effective as the regular versions, so the Fighter would get another +1 attack bonus and +2 damage, for +3 attack and +6 damage total.

Just want to point out that you're probably thinking of Epic Weapon Focus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#epicWeaponFocus) and Epic Weapon Specialization (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#epicWeaponSpecialization), which give +2 attack and +4 damage respectively. Greater Weapon Focus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#greaterWeaponFocus) and Greater Weapon Specialization (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#greaterWeaponSpecialization) give +1 attack and +2 damage respectively, which adds to a total of +2 and +4 when combined with their prereqs.

Lans

2017-09-16, 01:02 AM

Eldariel

2017-09-16, 02:15 AM

Regarding getting 1 attack off vs buffing - Roughly the comparative value of getting 1 hit off would be the damage it deals, divided among the number rounds combat lasts, so if the fighter would deal 16 damage on round 1 and combat lasts 4 morerounds, then the value of that 16 damage is 4pts a round so so basically 1 point per attack at level 12

That's true, but there is still more to it. Attacking early also puts you potentially out of position, and unless you slay or disable your target that means:
- Enemy gets to full attack you back.
- If there are multiple enemies, you'll probably get flanked and full attacked (extra dangerous vs. Power Attackers and Sneak Attackers).

Trading single attack for a full attack is generally ill-advised higher up, which decreases the value of "Move and attack" further; Pouncing or Spirited Charge is an exception, however. In general, the first to engage in melee is at a disadvantage - optimally you let the enemy close in first and punish them with a full attack.

Though being able to get in supported, buffed or using magic to engage with the whole party changes the equation - early melee actions in combat with martial enemies leave something to be desired.

If you melee, you generally have a very high probability of getting free buff rounds in encounters and thus it pays to play a class capable of buffing.

Anthrowhale

2017-09-16, 03:15 PM

Adding slightly to what Eldariel says, I think it's common for PCs to have better ranged attacks than opponents (who often have none), so every additional round spent at range is good for the party to deal lopsided damage in the party's favor.