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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Riposte: The art of fencing



Ashtagon
2018-02-06, 03:24 PM
As an add-on set of rules for D&D 3.5e, I came up with the following. This is not tested for balance AT ALL. Suggestions?

Weapon Property

Fencing: This is a weapon property that applies to short swords and rapiers only (from the SRD list). Any time an opponent in your threatened area misses you with a melee attack and rolled an odd number on their attack roll, you may make an attack of opportunity against that opponent.

Feats

Riposte

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13.

Benefit: You gain the benefit of the Fencing weapon property when using any one-handed sword, dagger, club, or a quarterstaff.

If you are using a weapon that actually has the Fencing property, you make make the attack of opportunity on any miss roll, not just on a miss roll that was an odd number.

In addition, you gain one additional attack of opportunity per round.

Counter-Attack

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13, base attack bonus +8, Riposte.

Benefit: If you are wielding a weapon which benefits from either the Fencing weapon property or the Riposte feat and an opponent in your threatened area hits you with a melee weapon, you make make an attack of opportunity against them.

Lunge

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13, base attack bonus +1, Riposte.

Benefit: If you are wielding a weapon (that is not Light) which benefits from either the Fencing weapon property or the Riposte feat and you are able to move into the intervening five-foot square, your reach increases by 5 feet. You do not actually move when you make use of this feat.

Double Riposte

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13, Intelligence 13, base attack bonus +8, Riposte.

Benefit: Any time you may make an attack of opportunity against an opponent because they missed you, you may make two attacks of opportunity. This will use up two AoO opportunities, not one.

In addition, you gain a number of attacks of opportunity equal to your Intelligence bonus or your Dexterity bonus, whichever is greater. This stacks with Combat Reflexes.

Evasion Step

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13, base attack bonus +1, Riposte.

Benefit: As an immediate action when an opponent hits you with a melee attack, you may make a five-foot step. You gain a Reflex save to avoid the damage entirely (DC = damage dealt), taking half damage on a failed save. You suffer a -4 penalty to AC until the start of your next round, as making this step leaves your guard more open.

In addition, you gain one additional attack of opportunity per round.

Ashtagon
2018-02-08, 02:44 AM
bump. Any opinions on this?

Lalliman
2018-02-08, 04:55 AM
Looks good, I like the 'odd number' mechanic. Keeps it from being overpowering without additional investment.

This could allow you to make a frankly absurd amount of additional attacks though. A fighter can get Combat Reflexes, Riposte, Counter-Attack and Double Riposte by level 9, at the cost of less than half his total feats. This will grant him something like 14 opportunity attacks per round, with the ability to make two whenever someone misses him, and one whenever someone hits him. Against a group of enemies, or an enemy with many natural attacks, it doesn't seem unlikely that you're gonna get to make most of your available AoOs.

Then again, Dex fighters are pretty crappy to begin with, so maybe it's fine. My 3.5 is too rusty to judge it definitively.

The only thing that stands out to me is that Double Riposte grants two major benefits in one. It seems like it should be two feats, with the second being named Fencer's Reflexes, or something.

Zombimode
2018-02-08, 04:59 AM
bump. Any opinions on this?

In general I think the idea is fine. There are already similar concepts in 3.5 (Karmic Strike, Robilars Gambit from the top of my head).

Issues:

- I don't like that a numerical property of the actual number of the roll determines if a counterattack is happening. It creates the really weird effect that having an odd armor class decreases your chance of getting a counterattack - which is something that should not be. A property of the numerical representation of how hard you are to hit should have zero effect on your combat effectivenes. Instead the Chance should be either fixed (like "missed the AC by 10 or more" or so) or dependent on the defenders skill in some way.

- Compared to already existing abilities (Karmic Strike, Robilars Gambit) it is to easy to achieve and has no downsides. This would not be a Problem if Karmic Strike/Robilars Gambit were bad feats. But they are not. In fact those feats are some of the best feats available for melee fighters.

I mean, sure, it is limited to specific weapons. But I'm not sure if this is all that relevant, since you can always use non-light weapons two-handed, so you would only lose some points of base damage compared to greatsword/greataxe.


All in all, I'm on the fence on this one. I like the idea and think it is quite in line with how 3.5 melee combat works, but I feel that it steps on the toes of Karmic Strike/Robilars Gambit a bit too much - feats, that are already pretty strong.

Knaight
2018-02-08, 05:09 AM
It seems a little excessive - as pointed out above the sheer number of attacks is impressive, and this gets potentially ridiculous with rogues.

The weapon selection is also a bit weird. Short swords aren't particularly impressive as fencing weapons compared to other blades, and the extension with the Riposte feat just gets weirder. Clubs are included, but not other top heavy short weapons just as good. Quarterstaffs are included, but not two handed swords or short spears, both of which are just as good as candidates. Etc.

Ashtagon
2018-02-10, 07:11 PM
About the weapon choice for the Fencing weapon property: I picked shortsword to represent the 18th century smallsword (and definitely not the Roman gladius, bronze age swords, or medieval swords), Looking at the weapons from the PRD (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/), I'd include the swordcane, rapier, and spiral rapier. It probably makes more sense to drop shortsword from the list, and homebrew a smallsword as a new weapon (1d6, piercing, Light, Finesse, Fencing seems about right)

About the weapon choice for the Riposte feat: Again, the list needs some work. The overall intent for this set of feats is to give something (aoos ahoy) to the "single stick" fighter. I think I should drop the club and quarterstaff (which were intended to be representative of the bo stick and jo stick), and rephrase it so it only applies to swords that are wielded in one hand. That also avoid the power attacking fencer, which doesn't really make sense from a visualisation aspect.

Absurd number of AoOs: That's kind of the point :smallbiggrin: This complete set of feats would grant (assuming 20 Dex), you get 5 (Combat Reflexes) +1 (Evasion Step) +1 (Riposte) +5 (Double Riposte) = 12 AoOs. However, you only get to make 12 AoOs if 12 opportunities present themselves, which is somewhat improbable. The overall intent is "you're not really going to run out of AoOs", without just saying that outright (because I expect someone will find an infinite loophole abuse if I did).

Double Riposte granting two major benefits: Yes and no. It allows you to make twice as many aoos when an enemy misses, but doing so costs twice as many aoos to make. The extra supply of aoos it also grants simply balances that out to an overall no real change in the number of aoos per turn. That said, it could be made simpler:


Double Riposte

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13, Intelligence 13, base attack bonus +8, Riposte.

Benefit: Any time you may make an attack of opportunity against an opponent because they missed you, you may make two attacks of opportunity. Making these two attacks only costs you one attack of opportunity.

About the odd number activation for the Fencing weapon property: I had intended it to read that what matters in determining whether or not this activates is the unmodified die roll, not the final total including modifiers. As such, increasing your AC never makes it less likely that Fencing will activate.

Hugh Mann
2018-02-10, 11:53 PM
It might get a bit hard to follow if 2 characters with Counter Attack and Double Riposte attack each other.

For example, if player A misses against player B, player B gets 2 AoO. From there on, regardless of a hit or miss, more AoO will be made until one player runs out. But you would have to keep track of how many AoO were real AoOs and which were virtual ones given by Double Riposte. This can get even more complicated if the characters also attempt special attacks like trip or disarm.

One solution is to have the 2 attacks from Double Riposte happen simultaneously and be considered a single attack.

Ashtagon
2018-02-11, 06:08 AM
Having just read up on Karmic Strike and Robilar's Gambit...

1) They have different prerequisites (2 feats and 13 Dex vs 1 feat and +12 BAB). Both impose a -4 AC penalty. One grants an aoo vs. a successful melee attack; the other grants an aoo vs. every melee attack. Since you can't make more than one aoo for any given opportunity, there is some overlap; Karmic Strike becomes irrelevant if you have Robilar's Gambit.

2) One weakness of the above two feats is that they make no attempt to differentiate between different weapons. Within the 3.x combat framework, aoo seems to be the obvious choice of how to make fencing weapons have a niche, but the two feats grant that potential to pickaxes (which ought to be slow and unwieldy) as much as rapiers.

3) Granting you an aoo when you opponent succeeds (and not when they fail) seems counter-intuitive. They are in effect being punished for success. That makes Karmic Strike bad design in my opinion (note that my Counter-Strike feat has as a prerequisite a feat that grants an aoo on a failed attack).

Zombimode
2018-02-12, 07:24 AM
About the odd number activation for the Fencing weapon property: I had intended it to read that what matters in determining whether or not this activates is the unmodified die roll, not the final total including modifiers. As such, increasing your AC never makes it less likely that Fencing will activate.

Ah, got it.



Having just read up on Karmic Strike and Robilar's Gambit...

1) They have different prerequisites (2 feats and 13 Dex vs 1 feat and +12 BAB). Both impose a -4 AC penalty. One grants an aoo vs. a successful melee attack; the other grants an aoo vs. every melee attack. Since you can't make more than one aoo for any given opportunity, there is some overlap; Karmic Strike becomes irrelevant if you have Robilar's Gambit.

2) One weakness of the above two feats is that they make no attempt to differentiate between different weapons. Within the 3.x combat framework, aoo seems to be the obvious choice of how to make fencing weapons have a niche, but the two feats grant that potential to pickaxes (which ought to be slow and unwieldy) as much as rapiers.

3) Granting you an aoo when you opponent succeeds (and not when they fail) seems counter-intuitive. They are in effect being punished for success. That makes Karmic Strike bad design in my opinion (note that my Counter-Strike feat has as a prerequisite a feat that grants an aoo on a failed attack).


1) They are not meant to stack. The different requirements tailor them to different types of characters.

2) True

3) Counter-intuitive? How so? In both cases this is perfectly in line with what the feat represents.
Oh, maybe you misunderstood me that I was saying that Karmic Strike/Robilars Gambit represent "Riposte" style abilities? That was not my Intention.
I also have to strongly disagree that Karmic Strike / Robilars Gambit are bad desing. I think they are great desing: they give the Player an actual meaningful option during gameplay (a successful implementation of high-risk/high-reward) and are insteresting mechanically and that they foster creatativity how to migitate the drawbacks or, even better, how to turn the "drawback" into an advantage. Karmic Strike and Robilars Gambit are prime examples of strong, well designed feats in my view :smallsmile:

Ashtagon
2018-02-12, 03:04 PM
1) They are not meant to stack. The different requirements tailor them to different types of characters.

#1 I said they overlap (to an extent; one covers more ground than the other). You say they are not meant to stack. I can't quite tell if you intended to agree or disagree with me; a literal reading seems to indicate agreement, but the tone suggests otherwise.

#3 I say it is counter-intuitive because the feat punishes someone for succeeding. If I have the feat, it is to my enemy's advantage to miss me in combat, not to hit. That "punishing success" is why I call it bad design.