About Scimitar Dance, by the way... it's even more broken than Hammer Rhythm, because a ranger gets multiple attacks a round. Also, it's a mistake to think it's not as good if you hit more often. A hit will still do more damage; SD/HR only pads up the zeros you'd otherwise have in the mean data.
I fail to see how that constitutes "more broken," it's just the same broke-ness applied more times. And on the issue of Rangers, RaW is as broken as it's like to get. Switching the Feat would be to benefit the Greatsword Fighter, the Sword and Bored Bastard Fighter as well as allow more variation for Rangers without loosing a massive DPR bonus granted to only a single weapon.
After looking a bit at the At-Will powers, the most generally usefull ones to use in an OA would be Reaping Strike or Cleave (if applicable), or Twin Strike for Rangers. Twin Strike is, of course, trumped by the Epic Feat Two Weapon Flurry. Of course Rogues have some fun At-Wills that allow some neat movement on OA, but they can't use Heavy Blades so it doesn't matter. The Warlord At-Wills are just plain funky as well and not that much better than Basic Attacks.
After looking a bit at the At-Will powers, the most generally usefull ones to use in an OA would be Reaping Strike or Cleave (if applicable), or Twin Strike for Rangers. Twin Strike is, of course, trumped by the Epic Feat Two Weapon Flurry. Of course Rogues have some fun At-Wills that allow some neat movement on OA, but they can't use Heavy Blades so it doesn't matter. The Warlord At-Wills are just plain funky as well and not that much better than Basic Attacks.
Wow, we have totally different takes on what constitutes a good at-will for an OA. To me the whole point is to be able to do something other than just damage with that OA. To that end, I'd say some of the best selections are Enfeebling Strike, Tide of Iron, Priest's Shield or Righteous Brand for a bastard cleric, and any Warlord at-will except maybe Viper's Strike (depending on the enemy). Commander's Strike as my OA? Yes please!
Wow, we have totally different takes on what constitutes a good at-will for an OA. To me the whole point is to be able to do something other than just damage with that OA. To that end, I'd say some of the best selections are Enfeebling Strike, Tide of Iron, Priest's Shield or Righteous Brand for a bastard cleric, and any Warlord at-will except maybe Viper's Strike (depending on the enemy). Commander's Strike as my OA? Yes please!
Commander's Strike being useful not only depends on what type of Warlord you are (and therefore if you have high Int or not) but also if both you and a high-damage dealer are in position (you have to trigger the OA and the other bloke has to do the actual damage). Tide of Iron is nice and everything, but shoving them one square while they're already moving ... ehh. I guess it could put them in someone else's OA range, but marginally useful at best.
Sure, a lot of the Paladin powers would be right sweet, and i didn't really look at the Cleric's because they don't start with Martial Proficiency.
But any way you look at it, having an improved attack once every ... *thinks back* 10 encounters (depending on DM) is not realistically comparable to 3-4 extra damage every other time you attack (on average). I'd say High Crit falls somewhere in between. We had (i think) 3 player-crits last session, averaged one every other fight, and an extra 1[W] at Heroic Tier definitely sounds more useful than Wisdom Temp HP from an OA. And that's an effect that doesn't depend on the DM/monster tactics to be useful (like the OAs).
It could just be that Hammer Rhythm and Scimitar Dance are just overtly over-powered and should be excluded. But i don't really want to say that with this number of Feats available. Polearm Gamble also looks pretty amazing, though i'm not entirely sure how useful Spear Push would be. I haven't looked at the higher level powers, but the only Pushing i see in my game is Tide of Iron, which requires a shield, which makes it unusable with a Longspear.
Tide of Iron is nice and everything, but shoving them one square while they're already moving
You do it when they're trying to get past you to the squishies, not when they're running away.
...an extra 1[W] at Heroic Tier definitely sounds more useful than Wisdom Temp HP from an OA.
Tell me that when there are minions flooding past you to reach the wizard! (A situation in which Hammer Rhythm and Scimitar Dance are useless, I might add.)
...i'm not entirely sure how useful Spear Push would be. I haven't looked at the higher level powers, but the only Pushing i see in my game is Tide of Iron, which requires a shield, which makes it unusable with a Longspear.
Irrelevant to the 2H discussion, but you just gave me a reason to play a fighter with a simple weapon...
Anyway: my take on it is that Hammer Rhythm really is broken. But it's there, it's probably not going away, and so everything else needs as much of an advantage as possible without make something even MORE broken. Making sure all the axes can benefit from Deadly Axe is one measure. Modifying Sweeping Flail is another. And while you might not see a lot of utility in Heavy Blade Opportunity, I don't think I'm the only one with a completely different experience in that regard. (For that matter, as a player I provoke OA's regularly. Superior position can be worth a risk.)
Of course, your group is your group. In the final analysis, player perceptions of weapon balance are more important than the raw numbers. The real goal is for the players to see more than one no-brainer option; there just needs to be something attractive about each weapon. If HBO seems useless in your games and you want to introduce something more damage-oriented, go right ahead. I'm personally a fan of maximum diversity, so just copying Hammer Rhythm seems a bit dull to me, though it would serve... at least it can't be any MORE broken. Here's an idea, tho: Monkey Grip. Allow heavy blade wielders to go up a die class!
If you do that, rather than removing HBO entirely, I'd recommend making it universal; reduce the requirements to only Dex 15 (or perhaps "weapon focus"), and allow it to be used with any melee weapon. This makes it an interesting option that anyone could pick up; if it really is weak with your group's DM style, it should have a lower barrier to entry.
Who knows... maybe the Martial Power book will have a bevy of feats for every weapon class, making all of this irrelevant. That's how they balanced 3.5e psionics vs. spellcasting. Hmm. Maybe I don't want that.
You do it when they're trying to get past you to the squishies, not when they're running away.
Minions flooding past will die just as well with a Basic Attack as an At-Will power.
tejon wrote:
Who knows... maybe the Martial Power book will have a bevy of feats for every weapon class, making all of this irrelevant. That's how they balanced 3.5e psionics vs. spellcasting. Hmm. Maybe I don't want that.
I'm getting kinda concerned about balancing Weapon-users with Spellcasting. I guess a Wizard could go and get special Feats for using his Dagger, but chances are he won't have the abilities to back it up. Maybe the extra-whomping Feats are already factored into weapon/spell balance ... if so, well, that just sounds mildly odd.
Allowing SD to be a universal Heavy Blade thing still provides a degree of variability from Hammers. Just in that it uses Dex instead of Con, but that can still be a big flavor-choice for a character. I like the idea of keeping HBO wide-selection as well. Maybe putting it to Heavy and Light Blades, there's already an OA Feat specific to those.
Minions flooding past will die just as well with a Basic Attack as an At-Will power.
Mixing up my examples, dude. Temporary hit points were my example of "good with minions," Tide of Iron would be to push back a brute charging the back line, taking him out of shift range. The idea is to have options. *shrug*
I'm getting kinda concerned about balancing Weapon-users with Spellcasting. I guess a Wizard could go and get special Feats for using his Dagger, but chances are he won't have the abilities to back it up. Maybe the extra-whomping Feats are already factored into weapon/spell balance ... if so, well, that just sounds mildly odd.
Yeah, I'm curious how they worked all of that out myself. I mean, nothing we've done here has made anything do more damage than a RAW maul (or a pair of scimitars or war hammers), so the overall weapon-to-spell balance probably hasn't changed. Wizards are in a class by themselves with regards to range, versatility, and nuking of multiple targets; I'd be more concerned with making sure warlocks keep up with rangers and rogues, or at least have enough extra utility to make up for any deficiency. Pretty sure they do have more debuffs than either of the martial strikers, though I haven't scoured the lists of those classes to compare.
Mixing up my examples, dude. Temporary hit points were my example of "good with minions," Tide of Iron would be to push back a brute charging the back line, taking him out of shift range. The idea is to have options. *shrug*
Yeah sorry about that, got into the habit of posting late at night and that induces reference errors. I definitely think getting At-Will-Opportunities is neat and fun, it's just that i wouldn't put it as a major draw for Heavy Blades.
It might have something to do with the number of players i have, usually 2-3 (and twice 7) so there's not a whole lot of strategic movement going on, and the baddies who flit around the room a lot are the Skirmishers who have powers to do it without provoking OAs.
Personally, the draw for heavy blades is the proficiency bonus. I am far more concerned with landing encounter and daily powers than I am with DPR. The fact that their feats deal with OAs emphasizes the heavy blade focus on accuracy and control before damage, which is what I want.
Personally, the draw for heavy blades is the proficiency bonus. I am far more concerned with landing encounter and daily powers than I am with DPR. The fact that their feats deal with OAs emphasizes the heavy blade focus on accuracy and control before damage, which is what I want.
Well yeah, but ideally each weapon group should have a special Feat to give it that extra oomph rather than just it's base stats/flavor. So far, everything except Thrown Weapons, Picks, Staffs and Unarmed has something. Flails, Light Blades, Bows and Heavy Blades have uncontrolled limits on their application, such as the enemy carrying a shield, being Large, placement in the field or movement. They're all useful, but i just think it's more of a boon if you know it's going to come up (having High Crit), or if you can make it come up (using a power with Push).
Having Large Enemies, or enemies with shields is a bit more inevitable than some things (though keeping track of shields can be a bit of a pain) not to mention Monster monsters will never have them. It almost seams more fitting to have it apply to Heavy Armor or anything with natural coverings similar to it (like dragons and beetles). Just flipping through the MM, the impression is that maybe 1/4th of Humanoid enemies have shields. Not really that[i][/i] big a deal for a Feat, even though it does offer the elusive Acc bonus.
Okay! I just read through 8 pages so I could post my own view on the weapons and hopefully this will provide a worthwhile perspective on the design process of these weapons. My theory is this: the damage die advance table is meaningless. All the weapons were hand-balanced and tinkered with. In general, changes were made by actual damage steps rather than by die steps. So, by my estimation, most of the weapons most of the time work out to these values.
+3 Proficiency ~ +1 damage per die. High Crit ~ +.5 damage per die. Off-hand ~ +.5 damage per die. Heavy Thrown ~ +1 damage per die. (I have no idea how range is determined or valued. Seriously, it's wierd. And don't even ask me about the javelin.) Versatile ~ -.5 damage per die. Reach ~ +1.5 damage per die. Going up handedness nets you +1.5 and going up quality nets you +1.
I say this because Off-hand is a good property, but doesn't provide much damage while Versatile is a bad property. It's damage boosting option is simply a bad choice while it also means the weapon cannot be used one-handed by small characters. Accuracy adds damage per attack based on the rather variable amount of your damage per attack. Bonus damage works from the opposite direction and adds damage to each attack based on the rather variable chance to hit with each attack, as well as the number of dice rolled for each attack. Comparing the two, Accuracy favors multi-attacks, while bonus damage per die favors multi-dice per attack. In an absolute sense however, accuracy tends to favor attacks that deal a lot of damage per hit to see more impact. High Crit isn't variable like this. It adds [W] damage per tier, with a frequency determined by your crit chance. If you're dealing with 1[W] per tier attacks, then bonus damage dice equal high crit at a highly variable rate. From 65% chance to hit and .5 damage per die being equal for 1d12 weapons to 35% chance to hit and .5 damage per die being equal for 1d6 weapons(If high crit is worth 1 damage per die, then cut the needed accuracy in half. Also, these can be give or take 5%, depending on if you're going to or from a double die setup.). I notice that if you use lots of lower dice amount attacks, then high crit gains against both accuracy and damage per die as a property. I also notice that whole bonus damage dice, (Like 1d10 -> 1d12) can effectively crit (gaining double the +1 effect for that attack) while half damage dice (Like 1d8 -> 2d4) cannot. In general, this means that weapon mastery still effects them, though correct me if I'm wrong, just not as much as it affects high crit. Weapon mastery doesn't help high proficiency as a property at all. If there's a problem with this, it could be with effects that increase crit range instead of the weapons themselves.
If this is what was originally used to make the PHB weapons, then we see that what probably happened is the Greatsword was nerfed in playtesting (Probably because "Swords are cool") and all the other two-handed heavy blades were hit as a domino effect. In order to fix this, the Greatsword needs a property equivalent to half a damage per die, and the other weapons can be bumped back up to 1d10. I don't know what's wrong with the warpick, either.
Another, separate and less helpful, theory I pondered is the idea of compensating for feats. Not the feats that do exist or are in development, but the prerequisites for the feats that will ever be made for a specific weapon group based on the table on page 77. In other words, weapons that used two stats that are on the same defense would be allowed more power leeway than weapons which used stats from separate defenses. This would be to make up for the sub-optimal defense score array that would be used with axes, picks, and hammers. It doesn't appear to pan out as well as my other idea in practice, but the glaive would be explained as taking two dings, because heavy blades and polearms both use non-overlapping defense stats and non-overlapping feats while the longspear mostly uses the same feats for both spears and polearms. A fighter taking heavy blades has high stats in two defense scores rather than one, which would warrant the equivalent axe-user getting a bonus to something. As interesting as the theory appeared, it doesn't cover many of the weapons in the table at all, particularly outside of the two-handed category.
Zalabim
In shorter terms, the weapons that are weaker are so due to a reverse cleric-syndrome wherein a popular option was reduced in effectiveness to make other options be chosen more frequently.
Also, it's a mistake to think it's not as good if you hit more often. A hit will still do more damage; SD/HR only pads up the zeros you'd otherwise have in the mean data.
To me the whole point is to be able to do something other than just damage with that OA. To that end, I'd say some of the best selections are Enfeebling Strike, Tide of Iron, Priest's Shield or Righteous Brand for a bastard cleric, and any Warlord at-will except maybe Viper's Strike (depending on the enemy). Commander's Strike as my OA? Yes please!
