[3.5] Falling Sun Attack - Distant Horizon

[maxion]

Are these two really that bad? I checked few swordsage, monk and stunning fist entries and it was mentioned nowhere. Is it possible to build a character worth anything with those two? How would you see that if you did? Or why you didn't?

[Eldariel]

Are these two really that bad? I checked few swordsage, monk and stunning fist entries and it was mentioned nowhere. Is it possible to build a character worth anything with those two? How would you see that if you did? Or why you didn't?

There isn't much to say. Stunning Fist is okay, but a bit mediocre in that it is expended even if you miss and it targets the best save overall and the DC is hard to pump without giving up your offense (Wis-based Swordsage is kind of a thing though thanks to Insightful Strikes). You also don't get many uses unless you're a Monk, and getting more uses of Stunning Fist isn't worth being a Monk (there's the Extra Stunning feat in Complete Warrior to get around this though but investing yet another feat in it is a bit meh). Other than that, it's a free carrier effect on your attack, which is nice, and the condition it imposes is brutal. Nice to have but probably not the strongest choice for any given feat.

Far as Distant Horizons goes, it's not very good. Lasting Weak Point is basically worthless; you need to hit an enemy twice, spend the whole next turn doing one poor attack and after that, three turns of successfully pounding an enemy, you get a whole extra 1 point per hit. Okay, Turn the Tables is...also pretty worthless, because you can control where you put an enemy with Counter Charge and you have stuff like Sudden Leap, Bounding Assault and Quicksilver Motion to close the gap if need be. So...you can already do this, you don't need a feat for it. The first ability is the only good one but if you already are successfully throwing your enemy, do you really need an extra buff to throwing them again? Not to mention, how often do you really need to throw an enemy multiple times? Just throw 'em once and pound them to dust while they're down. You definitely want all the bonuses you can get for the first trip/throw/grapple against any given opponent though, so spend your feats on those.


But yeah, Falling Sun Attack is decent but Stunning Fist is fairly a bit limited. Distant Horizons is largely not worth taking.