Scythe Build - reach + crit

[Malapterus]

One of my NPCs is supposed to be using a scythe. I am trying to find a class or at least some Feats that will enable her to:

1) Get a better range on that scythe, 10 or 15 feet

2) Increase her critical threat range considerably

I've found a few things, but they're not great. "Long Strike' is okay, but only works on one attack per round and when using a full attack, which is pretty stupid since if you're going one-on-one the rest of your full attack can't reach the enemy.

I'm not afraid to tweak something - the Abberant feats might be worrth looking into for that.

I's pretty impossible to search for 'reach' among the classes, since the word is on pretty much every class "When a Hoozgort reaches 3rd level he can hozzle 3 times per day" etc.

Still looking into a class for crits, hope to have better luck.

If it helps, she is a vampire elf with +4 level adjustment.

[Zaq]

Easiest ways to increase reach (other than just making yourself bigger somehow) are Willing Deformity: Tall and Inhuman Reach, each of which requires a minimum of a two-feat investment. They do stack if you've got feats coming out of your ears already, though. Both work all day every day with no special activation or limitation once you've taken the necessary feats.

Inhuman Reach requires Aberration Blood which itself requires being humanoid, but if you feel like letting the Human Heritage genie out of the bottle, that might be an option. Just be aware that putting Human Heritage on an undead thing is very likely to break something down the line.

[Saintheart]

For critical range on a scythe, the default go-to is a Disciple of Dispater PrC, which doubles or even triples critical threat range ... although I suspect you're probably playing at levels too low to get the full whack out of it. It's 3.0 material and you might get tears before bedtime from the players as a result. Other advice, check out PhantasyPen's in-progress Critfishing Handbook and the suggestions thread it links to. There's a couple of interesting things ViperMagnum found while rummaging around in Ravenloft and other as-it-turns-out-totally-official sources.

[Malapterus]

When stacking threat range multipliers, what is your rule? Some people go RaW but I go by '100%' which is a mechanic from somewhere but i forget.

Basically RaW, iron Power woul triple your crit range and then by doubling it, you'd get 6x your crit range; so 15-20 on a scythe or 3-20 on a scimitar. Yikes!

I re-read it as "This effect increases the weapon's threat range by 100%."

A Scythe has a crit range of 1; Keen increases it by 1, level 8 Iron Power would increase it by 2. Another Keen or Improved Critical would still be based on the base, unmodified range, so Level 8 Iron Power would only give you x4 instead of x6. that's only 17-20 on a scythe, a 20% chance. It's still 9-20 on a scimitar, but that's better than letting someone have a 90% chance.

What if, since Depater is 3.0, we modified Iron Power into feats?

Iron Power kicks in at level 9 minimum, whereas Improved Critical kicks in a 8, so we can just forget Iron Power 1.

Iron Power 2 kicks in minim,um level 13, so let's call it 'BaB +12' following the lead of improved critical, and maybe toss in a prereq. We get:

----
Greater Critical: Fighter Bonus feat
Prerequisite: Proficient with selected weapon, Improved Critical with selected weapon, Weapon Focus with selected weapon, BaB +12

Benefit: When using the selected weapon, its threat range is increased by 200% of the base range. This replaces the effect of Improved Critical.
----

It kind of sucks because Dispater works with ANY weapon (made of iron or steel) whereas Improved Crit works with a specific weapon or a specific damage type depending how you prefer to read it.

[Saintheart]

When stacking threat range multipliers, what is your rule? Some people go RaW but I go by '100%' which is a mechanic from somewhere but i forget.

Basically RaW, iron Power woul triple your crit range and then by doubling it, you'd get 6x your crit range; so 15-20 on a scythe or 3-20 on a scimitar. Yikes!

I re-read it as "This effect increases the weapon's threat range by 100%."

A Scythe has a crit range of 1; Keen increases it by 1, level 8 Iron Power would increase it by 2. Another Keen or Improved Critical would still be based on the base, unmodified range, so Level 8 Iron Power would only give you x4 instead of x6. that's only 17-20 on a scythe, a 20% chance. It's still 9-20 on a scimitar, but that's better than letting someone have a 90% chance.

And in a nutshell, you have identified why the trick to optimising critical threat range is by picking a weapon which naturally has a base threat range of roughly 18-20 or better to start with. Bear in mind as well that, because 3.5 borked how critical hits work, Improved Critical and Keen do not stack unless you can find a specific exception in 3.0 material that wasn't updated to 3.5.

Also note that Iron Power doesn't modify the threat range of the weapon, it modifies "the Disciple's threat range" ... i.e. if you can jam increases to your weapon's threat range and keen, the threat range doubles that combination rather than just add a plus one. So our scythe, with a 20 threat range, is then treated as a keen weapon, which makes it a 19-20 threat range, which Iron Power then doubles to 17-20. Not great, sure ... unless you can jam more threat range increases in there before applying Iron Power.

Also note that, depending on how often you want to use this guy or how many fights he's likely to be in, the increase in terms of damage dealt actually can be achieved as much by increasing the critical multiplier as by raising the threat range by 1 or more. Arguably Kaorti Resin does this, amongst other things - in the suggestions thread around page 4 or so I did up a table which measures the percentages of extra damage by reference to increased threat range and increased critical multiplier.


What if, since Depater is 3.0, we modified Iron Power into feats?

Iron Power kicks in at level 9 minimum, whereas Improved Critical kicks in a 8, so we can just forget Iron Power 1.

Iron Power 2 kicks in minim,um level 13, so let's call it 'BaB +12' following the lead of improved critical, and maybe toss in a prereq. We get:

----
Greater Critical: Fighter Bonus feat
Prerequisite: Proficient with selected weapon, Improved Critical with selected weapon, Weapon Focus with selected weapon, BaB +12

Benefit: When using the selected weapon, its threat range is increased by 200% of the base range. This replaces the effect of Improved Critical.
----

It kind of sucks because Dispater works with ANY weapon (made of iron or steel) whereas Improved Crit works with a specific weapon or a specific damage type depending how you prefer to read it.

Personal preference, but if it came to building a melee critfisher by way of homebrew, I'd make a melee equivalent to the Targeteer Archer out of Dragon magazine. Its essential mechanic is "For each iterative attacks you give up on your full attack action, your threat range increases by 1. Keen or Improved Critical stack with this, but not both." At the most fundamental level, this gives the feel of someone winding up for a big haymaker: you lose a few chances to hit the guy, but your first shot has a better chance of doing some serious damage to the dude. It scales reasonably with level since BAB determines how many attacks you get (at base. Haste, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, and mild-cheese stuff like Girallon Arms Totemist 2 can add to this significantly.) And it only requires one feat.

[fallensavior]

One of my NPCs is supposed to be using a scythe. I am trying to find a class or at least some Feats that will enable her to:

1) Get a better range on that scythe, 10 or 15 feet

2) Increase her critical threat range considerably

I've found a few things, but they're not great. "Long Strike' is okay, but only works on one attack per round and when using a full attack, which is pretty stupid since if you're going one-on-one the rest of your full attack can't reach the enemy.

I'm not afraid to tweak something - the Abberant feats might be worrth looking into for that.

I's pretty impossible to search for 'reach' among the classes, since the word is on pretty much every class "When a Hoozgort reaches 3rd level he can hozzle 3 times per day" etc.

Still looking into a class for crits, hope to have better luck.

If it helps, she is a vampire elf with +4 level adjustment.

An un-errata'd Talenta Sharrash is basically a d10 scythe with reach and 19-20x4 base.