Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Feint

This is an ability for fighter based classes and the rogue or assassin, well hell, just about anybody. The idea is that the attacker undertakes a fake series of blows or attacks to throw off an opponents defense by leading him to believe the attacks are of a certain type and then the attacker lands a real blow or series of blows. Basically, a feint or martial red herring.

The ability takes two rounds to undertake. In the first round, If a successful dexteiry check is made vs the opponents hd or level, the feint is successful. On the following round, the character attacks as normal but adds one half their BTH to the attack roll.

It would cost 500 points of xp added to advancement.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You give up a successful attack to improve the odds of another attack?

I don't know why anyone would do that, so it must be genius.


Davis Chenault said...

lol, pure genius, purely, corrected it was supposed to be a dexterity check vs their hd or level. i conflated several ideas.

davis

Anonymous said...

Well, that makes more sense-so less genius.

Although if you still give up an attack in the first round, its only a good idea if the 1/2 BTH bonus more than doubles your chances to hit.

So, really only helpful against high AC opponents.

e.g 6th level fighter(+6 BTH) vs. Young Adult Red Dragon (AC25)--Ftr. needs 19 or 20 to hit. 10% of hitting. (81% chance of whiffing on both attacks) Feinting improves the delayed attack to 16+ so 25% of hitting (75% of missing) But AC 22 or lower, it's better to take both attacks.

Davis Chenault said...

OK, lets see if i am doing my math correctly. lets take a 5th level fighter vs an 15 ac. he hits 55% of the time. so two swings at 55% or oneswing ( giving up the first round) at 80%.

If i am doing the math right that should be the odds ( minus the odds of making that dex check).

I had initially seen this as useful against high AC opponents but, after reading comment, fellt that it should be useful for any level to help insure a hit. Now maybe the 80% is not worth it ( don't know how to calvulate odds on those sets of numbers), maybe it is. I will assume iyts not for the sake of argument.

Perhaps throwing in a damage kicker would help make it more than worthwhile?

Anonymous said...

In that scenario-
two swings
30% two hits
50% one hit
20% zero hits

One swing (assuming the feint bonus is +3)
70% of one hit (hits on die roll of 7+)

Using 1d8 for damage
two swings = 4.95 points of damage
one swing = 3.15 points damage

two swings also creates 57% bonus for any damage bonuses due to strength bonuses.

So, clearly two swings is better than one. Adding the 1/2 BTH bonus as damage at well, will swing things back in the Feint direction (at least for this and probably most examples).

One other idea-have the Feint bonus reduce target's AC instead of being a bonus to Attack Roll. It doesn't change anything for the Feinting character, but if she has allies attacking it will improve their chances of hitting.

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