Open Palm [fighter feat chain]

[qwertyu63]

These feats are crap, ignore them.

This is a set of feats for what I call the Open Palm combat style, where you fight with a one-handed weapon and an empty hand.

These feats are a bit on the strong side, but really fighters need nice things.

Open Palm:
Benefit: When you attack with a one-handed weapon while your other hand is empty, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus on the attack roll and a +1 circumstance bonus on your Armor Class against attacks from the opponent you attacked. The AC bonus lasts until you attack someone else. Both bonuses increase by one for every full 3 points of base attack bonus you have.

Special: A fighter may select Open Palm as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Open Palm Guard:
Prerequisite: Open Palm, Base attack bonus +4
Benefit: When you are wielding a one-handed weapon while your other hand is empty, you gain a dodge bonus to your AC equal to half your base attack bonus (round down).

Special: A fighter may select Open Palm Guard as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Open Palm Strike:
Prerequisite: Open Palm, Base attack bonus +4
Benefit: When you attack with a one-handed weapon while your other hand is empty, the attack deals an extra 1d6 damage for every full 4 points of base attack bonus you have. Should you score a critical hit with such an attack, this extra damage is not multiplied.

Special: A fighter may select Open Palm Strike as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Open Palm Blitz:
Prerequisite: Open Palm, Open Palm Strike, Base attack bonus +6
Benefit: When you attack with a one-handed weapon while your other hand is empty, you may make an extra attack at your full base attack bonus.

Special: A fighter may select Open Palm Strike as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Open Palm Deflect:
Prerequisite: Open Palm, Open Palm Guard, Base attack bonus +6
Benefit: When you are wielding a one-handed weapon while your other hand is empty, you have DR/- equal to one-fourth of your base attack bonus (round down). Any condition that makes you lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class (if any) also makes you lose this DR.

Special: A fighter may select Open Palm Strike as one of his fighter bonus feats.

[Realms of Chaos]

I feel that there is probably a bit of a gulf between fighters needing nice things and two bonus feats giving a +17 AC bonus, especially as AC isn't the biggest of the fighter's problems. Maybe use a parrying mechanic instead?

[qwertyu63]

I feel that there is probably a bit of a gulf between fighters needing nice things and two bonus feats giving a +17 AC bonus, especially as AC isn't the biggest of the fighter's problems. Maybe use a parrying mechanic instead?

...those AC bonuses are supposed to represent parrying... I should have done the math to realize they would get that big. I'll work on it later.

[Chaos_Laicosin]

I like the idea, yet I have a couple issues with the execution.

Open Palm Guard: You grant a dodge bonus. I don't see how having one hand free would improve your ability to dodge and roll with enemy blows. I think a deflection bonus would make more sense (i.e. you use the free hand to actively redirect attacks away from you).
Though a dodge bonus would be negated when Dex is negated and might help to even out the somewhat substantial AC bonus granted by the feat..

Open Palm Deflect: It is my understanding that DR/- is applied to exceptionally tough materials, so if you free hand has particularly thick skin from training, then OK.
But maybe add some fluff in the description...

Otherwise, I'll probably add this to my personal list of Fighter trees.

[qwertyu63]

I like the idea, yet I have a couple issues with the execution.

Open Palm Guard: You grant a dodge bonus. I don't see how having one hand free would improve your ability to dodge and roll with enemy blows. I think a deflection bonus would make more sense (i.e. you use the free hand to actively redirect attacks away from you).
Though a dodge bonus would be negated when Dex is negated and might help to even out the somewhat substantial AC bonus granted by the feat..

The fact that dodge bonuses leave when your Dex bonus does is why I chose that bonus type. It actually represents actively deflecting attacks. If deflection bonus left with your AC, I would just used them.

Open Palm Deflect: It is my understanding that DR/- is applied to exceptionally tough materials, so if you free hand has particularly thick skin from training, then OK.
But maybe add some fluff in the description...

Otherwise, I'll probably add this to my personal list of Fighter trees.

That is not the fluff I intended at all. The fluff is more in the neighborhood of "rolling with the attack to reduce damage". Really, the game should use DR more often (I actually like the armor as DR variant for exactly this reason).

[Yakk]

Why stop at BaB +6?

Why split benefits over 5+ feats? That seems to replicate the "two weapon fighting" mistake, where you have to sink increasing amounts of feats to stay relevant in a style, instead of spending a feat to get good at a style, and it auto-scaling.

[qwertyu63]

Why stop at BaB +6?

Because I ran out of ideas.

Why split benefits over 5+ feats? That seems to replicate the "two weapon fighting" mistake, where you have to sink increasing amounts of feats to stay relevant in a style, instead of spending a feat to get good at a style, and it auto-scaling.

Because I thought what I'd made was too good for 1 feat slot. In this case, you spend feats to get good, and then those feats scale.

[OzymandiasX]

These feats give fighters a large boost in melee damage output (adding 25d6 damage to a full attack at L20) and a huge boost in melee survivability (as others have pointed out per the AC and DR bonuses).

Essentially this just improves the areas where the fighter is already very good to the point of being obscenely good. What you're proposing are feats that (at level 20) add up to 150 damage/round output, +17 AC, and 5 DR. These are not balanced at all compared to any other existing feat chain.

Anyways, the attack capabilities of fighting with a 1H weapon + an empty hand are already available by the Two-Weapon Fighting rules and making an unarmed strike with your off-hand. So if a fighter wants to play this style, there are already rules for it... if that player insists on massive bonuses, well, that comes down to whether you enjoy munchkin campaigns. (I'm not bashing... they're just not for me)

If you wanted to make something that is somewhat balanced you could work off the existing rules. Perhaps adding a feat that allows you to gain a Shield bonus to AC from having an empty hand (this shouldn't be more than the monk AC bonus), or a feat that allowed you to replace the off-hand unarmed attack with a primary weapon attack...

[Yakk]

Thoughts:
Active Parries and Dodge rolls against attacks (makes touch and ranged touch spells less dangerous).

Being able to use said Parry/Dodges against vs Reflex effects.

Armor-piercing lunges that are touch attacks that deal different damage. As an example, you take a -X penalty to your accuracy (capped by BaB), make a touch attack, and deal k*X precision damage (where k is some constant determined to be balanced) instead of your normal attack damage.

Aim for Weak Spot -- power attack for light weapons. Baseline like power attack, with some ways to cheese it up like 2 handed leap attack shock trooper. Naturally deals precision damage.

Ripostes -- extra attacks when someone attacks you (instead of the above parry/dodge, or only on success?)

Flurries of attacks -- iterative attacks don't get penalized if your previous attack hits?

Holds -- putting your hand on a foe, and not grappling them, but preventing them from getting away (either by coming along with them for larger foes, or preventing their movement).

Tumbles, Swings and Slides -- using your extra hand to increase your ability to move.