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5 years ago ::
Sep 15, 2008 - 12:11PM
#261
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Date Joined:
Jun 22, 2008
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I'm fairly certain that this is a case of totally awesome thread necromancy.
Why'd this get raised?
I did it via post #257. Some food for thought that's relevant to this thread.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2008 - 11:05AM
#262
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Date Joined:
Jan 17, 2005
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It is a useful thread anyway. Before seeing this thread, I've already gone the add 2d4 to the 1h weapons route. Works nicely, although rolling lots of D4s in the higher levels will no doubt get annoying, though that could be solved by just multiplying the results rolled. Means less consistency, but the same average. Not really worried about the vorpal aspect, as I doubt any campaign I run will hit the levels where that's likely and, if it is an issue, it is an issue regardless, as 2d4 weapons already exist. With their system, abilities that depend on dice rolls don't scale well, be it Vorpal or the Brutal ability. Should the time come, I'll house rule it. Real reason I'm posting though...axes vs hammers. Both weapons deal about the same damage, have the same mods, and get about the same benefits to powers for fighters. Hammers take a bit more con for their feats, but axes take enough that it doesn't really matter, you're into con by that point anyway, might as well go the extra bit. The problem though is the paragon feats. Hammer Rhythm is powerful. Say you've got a +4 mod and hit 60% of the time, you're looking at 1.6 bonus damage. +5 and it is 2.0. If you hit 50% of the time, that benefit climbs to 2.0 and 2.5. Bit higher than they really ought to be, compared to most +damage feats, which would offer +2 damage in the paragon tier which would mean a 1.2 to 1.0 for 60% and 50% hit chance. Hammer Rhythm also helps you most when you need it most, on hard to hit targets, while the normal feats help you less. Bring the hit chance down to 25%, for instance, and hammer rhythm with 18 con is worth +3, while your normal damage feat is worth 0.5. For the regular to hit bonuses to be better, you'd need to hit over 70% of the time. On the other side, there's the Axe feat, all axes get high crit. This offers no benefit to certain axes, like the Great Axe, a 0.0 increase in damage. For a battle axe, at D10, you're looking at a 5.5 damage increase 5% of the time, or a measily 0.275 increase in damage per attack, or less bonus damage than a +1 con mod with hammer rhythm while you've got a 70% hit rate. Epic tier will double that 0.275, but overall, still pretty pathetic. So, essentially, I'm looking at hammer rhythm being about 2x more powerful than it ought to be, while its axe counterpart should be about 4x more powerful than it is, not to mention it needs to provide a benefit to weapons that already have the high crit ability. Now, while I do think Hammer Rhythm is over the average power level for a feat, I'm not sure it is broken, don't have enough experience with it yet. But if I do find it so, I could adjust it easily enough by making it half con mod or half con mod +1. No, what I'm really interested in is a new feat for Axes, so that there's a reason to take axes even when you can take hammers, while still keeping a different flavor to axes than hammers. Wondering if others have addressed the situation,and if so, how? 2d6 Fullblade
+3, D12, high crit, if I remember the stats correctly. Which makes sense, like other superior weapons, tends to be 1 step up the damage chart.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2008 - 5:55PM
#263
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Date Joined:
Sep 15, 2008
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On the other side, there's the Axe feat, all axes get high crit. This offers no benefit to certain axes, like the Great Axe, a 0.0 increase in damage. For a battle axe, at D10, you're looking at a 5.5 damage increase 5% of the time, or a measily 0.275 increase in damage per attack, or less bonus damage than a +1 con mod with hammer rhythm while you've got a 70% hit rate. Epic tier will double that 0.275, but overall, still pretty pathetic.
*Man these boards are buggy*
It's +11 pts of damage 5% of the time, so +.55 at paragon and 2.475 at epic (assuming axe mastery gives a crit range of 18. I don't have my book with me.)
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5 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2008 - 6:04PM
#264
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Date Joined:
Sep 17, 2007
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Has anybody noticed that rogues have no reason not to pick the double sword now? Because of the existence of Bloodclaw, a two handed weapon is always the best choice if you can get it.
Mountain Cleave Rule: You can have any sort of fun, including broken, silly fun, so long as I get to have that fun too (e. g., if you can warp reality with your spells, I can cleave mountains with my blade).
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5 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2008 - 6:40PM
#265
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Date Joined:
Jan 17, 2005
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It's +11 pts of damage 5% of the time, so +.55 at paragon and 2.475 at epic (assuming axe mastery gives a crit range of 18. I don't have my book with me.)
No, it is 5.5 points, 5% of the time. Getting a crit gets you 5.5, but that's not part of the paragon Axe feat. With or without the feat, if you roll a crit, you get that damage. Same deal on the epic. The extra damage from the higher crit range is due to the epic extra crit range feat, not the paragon one. The paragon one just gets you an extra 5.5 when you do crit, which you'll do 2x as often, barring things with insanely high AC.
Axe Mastery is 19-20 crit range, fyi.
Edit: Actually, looked at high crit again, the damage increases with the tiers, going from 1W to 2W to 3W. So the numbers should be 0.55 for Paragon and 1.65 for Epic. The 1.65 in Epic is about right, fits in with Weapon Focus, although it probably should do a bit more since it relies upon another feat to do that. Still crappy in Paragon though. And a big fat 0 for axes with high crit on them already, which is something 2h Axes have. The feat is still a fail.
I'm not sure what the devs were thinking making High Crit increase in effectiveness over tiers, not a smart thing to put on a weapon. But maybe in there lies the answer.
Instead of Deadly Axe giving all axes High Crit, change it to give 2W extra damage in Paragon, 3W in Epic, on a roll of 19 or 20. In Paragon, for a Battle Axe, it'll amount to 1.1 extra damage, fitting in with other +damage feats, while in Epic, it'll increase to 1.65, still fitting in. And it'll benefit Axes that already have High Crit. The Great Axe will gain 1.3 and 2.05. Hand Axe doesn't benefit as much, being D6 base, so it'll go from 0.7 to 1.05, but that sort of thing is to be expected when the extra dice rolled vary from Axe to Axe.
Might tweak High Crit as well, to just be 1W no matter what the tier. Will have to give that some thought.
And that still leaves Hammer Rhythm, which is 4x as effective in Paragon and about 1.5x as effective in Epic, although that is mostly the fault of Hammer Rhythm being overpowered compared to other feats. That can be solved by having Hammer Rhythm provide Con_Mod/2 in Paragon, increasing to Con Mod in Epic. It'll still leave the average damage increase on a 1W attack higher, but that should work out okay, since it doesn't benefit attacks that do damage on misses.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2008 - 8:36PM
#266
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Date Joined:
Jun 22, 2008
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Has anybody noticed that rogues have no reason not to pick the double sword now? Because of the existence of Bloodclaw, a two handed weapon is always the best choice if you can get it.
I have noticed that. However, double weapons don't appear to qualify as two-handed weapons. They're a different weapon category.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2008 - 9:59PM
#267
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Date Joined:
May 21, 2008
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The real problem is Spiked Chain went from situationally useful to useless all the time due to Great Spear.
SC needs High Crit.
rapier is useless for rogues as Dual Sword is better.
Rapier needs like: Add cha when you have CA or something.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 17, 2008 - 10:04AM
#268
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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The lowly Halfling would still be stuck with Rapiers.
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