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Creative Corner => Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) => Topic started by: Stratovarius on October 23, 2017, 12:13:08 PM

Title: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on October 23, 2017, 12:13:08 PM
This is me trying to make the Combat Focus set of feats (PHBII) not suck.

Combat Focus [Focus]
Prerequisites: BAB +1, Wis 13
Benefit: In battle, you push aside the chaos of the fight and attain a focused state that grants you a keen, clear picture of the battle. Fear and pain ebb away as you focus solely on defeating your enemy. The first time you make a successful attack during an encounter, you gain your combat focus. In this state, your mind and body become one, allowing you to overcome mundane physical limits. You can maintain your combat focus for 10 rounds after entering it, +1 additional round per four character levels. You can only gain your combat focus once per encounter. While you are maintaining your combat focus, you gain a bonus on Will saves equal to the number of Focus feats you possess. If you have BAB of +8 or higher, you gain Mettle (as per Hexblade). If you have BAB of +16 or higher, you gain Slippery Mind (as per Rogue).

Combat Awareness [Focus]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus
Benefit: While maintaining your combat focus, you learn the current hit point total of each adjacent opponent and ally. If you have BAB of +8 or higher, you gain Blightsight out to 10 feet. If you have BAB of +16 or higher, once per round you can make an attack of opportunity against an opponent who has just been struck for damage by another character. This attack counts as your attack of opportunity for that round.

Combat Defense [Focus]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus
Benefit: While you are maintaining your combat focus, you gain a bonus on Armour Class equal to the number of Focus feats you possess. If you have BAB of +8 or higher, you gain Uncanny Dodge (as per Rogue). If you have BAB of +16 or higher, you gain the ability to roll with an attack. On the first successful attack against you in each round, you can attempt a reflex save (DC = damage dealt). Success cuts the damage in half, after any damage reduction is taken into account.

Combat Stability [Focus]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus
Benefit: While you are maintaining your combat focus, you gain a bonus on checks or rolls to engage in or resist bull rush, disarm, grapple, overrun, and trip attempts equal to twice the number of Focus feats you possess. If you have BAB of +8 or higher, once per round when you hit with a melee attack, you can attempt to trip the opponent as a free action without making a touch attack or provoking an attack of opportunity. If the attempt fails, the opponent cannot react to trip you. If you have BAB of +16 or higher, you gain the ability move and attack normally, even under the influence of magic that usually impedes movement, such as paralysis, solid fog, slow, and web.

Combat Strike [Focus]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus
Benefit: If you choose to end your combat focus as a swift action, you can make a number of extra attacks against adjacent enemies equal to the number of Focus feats you possess. You immediately lose all benefits from Focus feats that affect you only while you are maintaining your combat focus. If you have BAB of +8 or higher, the additional attacks deal extra damage equal to the number of focus feats you possess. If you have BAB of +16 or higher, these attacks ignore any concealment or damage reduction.

Combat Vigor [Focus]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus
Benefit: While you maintain your combat focus, you gain fast healing equal to the number of Focus feats you possess. If you have BAB of +8 or higher, you gain bonus to movement speed equal to 5' ft for each Focus feats you possess. If you have BAB of +16 or higher, you gain Steely Resolve and Furious Counterstrike (as per Crusader, treating your character level as your Crusader level).
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Maat Mons on October 23, 2017, 07:48:20 PM
Well, I guess the problem with expending your combat focus to fuel an effect is, you can only gain combat focus once per encounter.  That makes Combat Strike a 1/encounter ability and, if someone homebrews more feats that expend combat focus, they'll all share a 1/encounter limit. 

Maybe something a little more like psionic focus?  Something you can gain and expend multiple times in an encounter? 

I feel like making expending combat focus a more tempting option will help differentiate the "while you have combat focus" effects from always-on effects. 
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on October 24, 2017, 08:45:17 AM
The triggering abilities I just copied from WotC, but I think it works okay - there's a big pile of bonuses for expending, which should be enough to make it a viable option at times, especially when facing a single target that needs a real thrashing. It's not quite a 1/encounter death spell, but it's getting there, given it's up to 6 bonus attacks at your highest BAB. A player should be able to manage something useful with that.

Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Nanshork on October 24, 2017, 10:21:40 AM
I see Combat Strike as either an "oh shit" button or something you use when you're about to run out of duration or there's only 1/2 opponents left to end the encounter more quickly.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on October 24, 2017, 10:29:51 AM
It's definitely a little bit of a win now roll of the dice, but it's also a fair bit stronger in the presence of the Convergence PrC (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=13315.msg330137#msg330137), since that guarantees you all six feats early on, which makes a fair difference in terms of efficacy vs having to take them yourself (in which case Combat Strike might be the odd one out).
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: RobbyPants on October 26, 2017, 09:46:21 AM
I think the DC for the level 16 ability of Combat Defense is likely going to be too high by the time you can use it. You're probably going to be capping out at DCs somewhere in the 30s (so rolling an average in the 20s), which means the ability lets you halve the damage of an attack that does 20-something damage, and does nothing when you get clocked for 40 (or 100!) damage. I'd set the DC to something like 10 + 1/2 the HD of the attacker + the ability mod used to make the attack (typically Str). I've never been a fan of any save DCs that don't follow the standard formula.

The fact that it's already limited to once per round makes me fine with setting the DC much lower.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on October 26, 2017, 09:56:20 AM
The problem with the formula suggested is it will vary wildly based on the enemy, as at higher levels, CR and HD only have a vaguely passing relationship. HugBot 6000 (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=14085.msg248096#msg248096) is a good example. Because of that, I just stuck with the original ability DC (from Defensive Roll).

Updated the feats so they don't trigger on character level, but on BAB.

Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: RobbyPants on October 26, 2017, 10:21:12 AM
The problem with the formula suggested is it will vary wildly based on the enemy, as at higher levels, CR and HD only have a vaguely passing relationship.

You could always use CR. I mean, yes, HD can be all over the place, but less so than damage, and it's the metric for DCs for pretty much everything else.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on October 26, 2017, 12:29:16 PM
Convergence

"A short step, and I shall be far and away."
– Kilgrae the Disappearing, Convergence


Text

Becoming a Convergence
Text

Table 1: The Convergence
Hit Die: d12

Code: [Select]
Level  BAB    Ref   Fort  Will   Special Abilities                               
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
  1    +1     +2    +2    +2     Focus Feats                           
  2    +2     +3    +3    +3     Focus Feats                           
  3    +3     +3    +3    +3     Focus Feats, Convergence               

Class skills (4 + Int modifier per level): Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (all but Arcana, Religion, The Planes) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Search (Int), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex), and Use Rope (Dex), Warcraft (Int).

Requirements:
Skills: Balance 16, Listen 16, Spot 16
Feats: Combat Focus
BAB: +13
             
Class Features
All of the following are class features of the Convergence.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Jackinthegreen on October 26, 2017, 05:07:25 PM
Adjacent enemies and allies?  Perhaps a melee weapon enhancement can increase that range since the weapon is acting as an extension of you?  So while holding the enhanced weapon (or probably better yet, this weapon must be the one you make your attack with to gain Combat Focus) you get +5 foot range on the Combat Awareness abilities to discern enemy and ally HP, then at +16 BAB that effect goes to +10 feet range and the Blindsight increases by +5 feet.

Unless doing something with the weapon's reach would be better?
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on October 26, 2017, 05:29:16 PM
Adjacent enemies and allies?  Perhaps a melee weapon enhancement can increase that range since the weapon is acting as an extension of you?  So while holding the enhanced weapon (or probably better yet, this weapon must be the one you make your attack with to gain Combat Focus) you get +5 foot range on the Combat Awareness abilities to discern enemy and ally HP, then at +16 BAB that effect goes to +10 feet range and the Blindsight increases by +5 feet.

Unless doing something with the weapon's reach would be better?

Would that be a +1 ability of some sort?

And the slightly odd phrasing is direct from PHBII. So blame WotC for that one.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Jackinthegreen on October 26, 2017, 05:38:28 PM
Adjacent enemies and allies?  Perhaps a melee weapon enhancement can increase that range since the weapon is acting as an extension of you?  So while holding the enhanced weapon (or probably better yet, this weapon must be the one you make your attack with to gain Combat Focus) you get +5 foot range on the Combat Awareness abilities to discern enemy and ally HP, then at +16 BAB that effect goes to +10 feet range and the Blindsight increases by +5 feet.

Unless doing something with the weapon's reach would be better?

Would that be a +1 ability of some sort?

And the slightly odd phrasing is direct from PHBII. So blame WotC for that one.

I was thinking +1 for the extra range.  An augmented version that gives the character attack or damage bonuses while they're focused would also work.  Maybe the bonus is based on the number of Focus feats or are tiered based on BAB, something like that.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on October 31, 2017, 11:31:35 AM
Combat Focus
The magic weapon serves as a channel for the wielder’s combat focus. If this weapon was the one whose strike granted its wielder his combat focus, he treats the number of combat focus feats he possesses as one higher than it actually is. If his BAB is +8 or greater, he increases the range of his Combat Awareness abilities by five feet. This makes the range on his ability to discern current hit point total of allies and enemies ten feet. If his BAB is +16 or greater, when he activates Combat Strike, he loses the benefits of his combat focus feats at the end of that round, rathern than immediately. Only melee weapons can have the Combat focus ability.
Moderate transmutation; CL 8th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor; Price +1 bonus.

Maybe should be a +2 price?
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Archon on December 13, 2017, 12:12:06 AM
What would happen if you entered convergence (and wanted the third level ability), but had all of the focus feats already? (or enough that you can't take five more).

The combat focus weapon is roughly equivalent to a bonus feat (which seem to be priced at 2-10k), so it probably shouldn't be more than +1.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Jackinthegreen on December 13, 2017, 12:58:58 AM
Quickest thought on having all the focus feats is let the player decide whether to take a feat the character qualifies for in place of a combat focus feat, or to be treated simply as having +1 combat focus feat despite having all of them already.
Title: Re: Combat Focus
Post by: Stratovarius on December 13, 2017, 08:05:04 AM
Whoops. I usually have something like this for any feats - "If you already have this feat or feats, choose others for which you meet the prerequisites."

And I'll slot the combat focus ability down at +1.