Talking the Monster to Death (new feat)

[Bozwevial]

Having checked, this is still better. Can be used round after round (not a maneuver), scales better, slightly harder saving throw, and (importantly for this debate) actually usable by a random expert at level 1.

The Scholar can recover it as a swift action, which renders the more important of those complaints moot.

Still afforable by anyone 1st level with decent skills.

Any expert willing to spend one of (maybe) two feats on this. Again, that's a very poor choice given that you could be spending that feat on something more likely to make you money and less likely to get you killed.

Why the objection to building cities, society and wanting to take prisioners alive?

What the hell are you talking about? This has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.

You've been arguing for several posts for shooting people more than 50 feet away. When my example was specifically in a town. That, once more, has buildings and stuff that block line of sight. Forests have trees. Mountains have rocks. Only in a featurless plain can you keep moving backward every single turn while keeping a clear line of fire.

But nice attempt at turning away the dicussion once more.

The feat requires that you be able to see your target too. Which, surprise surprise, requires line of sight. So those things benefit the ranged attacker as well.

The noteworthy result is that this bypasses basically all defenses and allows for large groups of mooks to easily take out much higher level enemies automatically whitout need of any roll.

Except that it doesn't? Because these "much higher level enemies" are making the save easily, taking trivial amounts of damage, and wiping out the mooks, who had to get within spitting distance to attack.

[Raineh Daze]

Anyway, moving away from commoners: let's take a 20th level fighter. Intimidate is a class skill, so no problems there. Assuming they've gotten up to 34 Cha, and have used this skill for TWF, they use Discourage as both of their weapons.

I have 7 attacks in a round.

A range of 23*5 feet--or 115 feet.
Damage of 16 or 32, will save 32.

I can automatically deal 112 to 224 damage to anything within 115 feet, with a possible stacking -7 to attack and damage rolls. If I've got CHA this high, there's no reason to not have a 17th level cohort with the same feat, which makes it entirely possible that there's -13 to attack and damage floating around, as well as about 200-300ish impossible to avoid damage.

[Threadnaught]

Osle, you may want to take a look at this.

Your target must be able to see and hear you.

Not that it helps all that much, considering the enemies would have to be in range anyway, when in a town.

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

The expert w/this feat vs warrior w/weapons discussion doesn't seem terribly relevant to me.

What is more interesting is this claim Oslecamo made in his first post:

There's also no quest for taking care of that wandering angry giant. His natural and manufactured armor was no match for the villager's boos and hisses.

How many Experts with this feat would you need to take down, say, an Ogre, reasonably consistently?

Ogres aren't smart enough to decide to use hit and run tactics on a bunch of villagers so this one is going to use its greatclub in melee range, meaning it'll face the full brunt of the villagers' discouraging.

On the other hand, the club does 2d8+7 with a +8 attack bonus so, even if they're turtling with the encouragement function, one expert is going to die most rounds. Let's not worry about whether the average villager would be willing to face those kind of odds and just see how effective they are assuming they do fight.

The ogre has 29 HP so 8 Experts can beat it if they win initiative, 9 can beat it if they lose.

How many Experts are there in the average village?

Also, what is the CR of a human with 1 level of Expert? An elf warrior 1 is 1/2 CR. If that carries over then these Experts are actually higher CR than the monster they're fighting (Ogre is CR 3.) CR isn't much of a measuring stick but still...

[Raineh Daze]

Depends how stringently you define what an 'expert' is. Is it someone that has more than one skill, and hasn't had to focus on preparing their body for combat, or someone who's a comparative master of their trade? I'd go for the first one, if only because the second makes no sense for having a wide range of skills.

Also on the population of villages. If the total population is about 20, you're not going to find enough people. How any village so small would survive in a world where everything wants to kill you is beyond me.

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

Most Villagers will be commoners so "anyone who hasn't focused on combat" (ignoring that if they've taken this feat they actually have focused on combat) is not good criteria for an expert.

[Raineh Daze]

Hence 'more than one skill'. Well, slightly more than that. Because... two skillpoints vs six.

This seems more relevant for towns, though. Philosophers as guards rather than, say, guards.

Also, I just noticed Experts have average BAB. What the hell? XD

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

I ignored that part because commoners have more than one skill. Human commoners have 3.

As to towns vs villages, Oslecamo's initial comment mentioned villages and I'd be surprised if a town could survive for very long if it was going to fold to the first Ogre that came along.

Also, I just noticed Experts have average BAB. What the hell? XD

Experts are the rogue analog NPC class. Hence average BAB.

[Raineh Daze]

I'd write off 99% of villages if an ogre came along anyway. Or if a few horses were having a bad day.

Blacksmiths are now rogues? O_O

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

The NPC classes besides the Commoner were designed as analogs to the PC classes, or rather to the classic D&D PC roles. Warrior is the Fighter, Expert is the Thief, and Adept is the caster (kind of an amalgam of the priest and mage roles.)

Also, a blacksmith could well be a commoner. They have craft as a class skill.

[Threadnaught]

You've been arguing for several posts for shooting people more than 50 feet away. When my example was specifically in a town. That, once more, has buildings and stuff that block line of sight. Forests have trees. Mountains have rocks. Only in a featurless plain can you keep moving backward every single turn while keeping a clear line of fire.

But nice attempt at turning away the dicussion once more.

The feat requires that you be able to see your target too. Which, surprise surprise, requires line of sight. So those things benefit the ranged attacker as well.

If you wanted to really argue against his point, which is that anyone with this Feat would do whatever they can to get their enemy within range, but still use longbows as your counter example. Well there's this other Feat called Point Blank Shot. Without it, the battle becomes a turtle-fest and either your archers run out of food first, the Experts run out of food first, someone goes to attack and is slaughtered, or your archers keep the Experts pinned for a few weeks while you get something to smoke out the Experts with.

The noteworthy result is that this bypasses basically all defenses and allows for large groups of mooks to easily take out much higher level enemies automatically whitout need of any roll.

Except that it doesn't? Because these "much higher level enemies" are making the save easily, taking trivial amounts of damage, and wiping out the mooks, who had to get within spitting distance to attack.

What are you talking about? As long as the guys using this to attack are within 15 feet + 5 feet per level of their targets, they can attack without rolling. The roll is their opponents' Will Save. Their opponent fails the save and they take damage.
Multiple Saving Throws means a higher chance of failing the roll and taking damage.

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

The noteworthy result is that this bypasses basically all defenses and allows for large groups of mooks to easily take out much higher level enemies automatically whitout need of any roll.

Except that it doesn't? Because these "much higher level enemies" are making the save easily, taking trivial amounts of damage, and wiping out the mooks, who had to get within spitting distance to attack.

What are you talking about? As long as the guys using this to attack are within 15 feet + 5 feet per level of their targets, they can attack without rolling. The roll is their opponents' Will Save. Their opponent fails the save and they take damage.
Multiple Saving Throws means a higher chance of failing the roll and taking damage.

He's not arguing the "attack without rolling" statement, he's arguing the "allows for groups of mooks to take on much higher level enemies" statement, on the basis that the much higher level enemies will quickly kill the mooks while passing the saves and thus taking little damage.

My Ogre example above seems to support this position. The Ogre can only be effectively killed by a group of experts large enough to merit a higher combined CR than that of the Ogre (and they take something like 80% casualties.)

[Raineh Daze]

How many level 1 warriors do you need to achieve the same effect, out of curiosity?

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

You can't do the same sort of absolute prediction with warriors because they actually roll dice, both for their attacks and for their damage.

[sirpercival]

This argument is completely bizarre. "Let's argue about how broken or not broken this piece of homebrew is, and not give any suggestions for how to tweak it! I'm sure the wording is set in stone, and I'm going to make exaggerated claims!"

I have a couple comments, Prime, hopefully you'll be able to find them in here.

~I don't think there's any problem with Encourage, though I wonder why it's necessary for that to be an attack action... or is that so you can Encourage and Discourage in the same round?  (Also, note that there's no such action type as an attack action.) The only problem is in builds which aim for maxed charisma, but I don't think this breaks appreciably in those cases, at least in a qualitative sense.
~I'm having a little difficulty reconciling the idea of talking nonlethal damage at someone unless you're really, REALLY boring.  There's a little bit of a fluff disconnect for me. However, if we're going to run with that mechanic, I also don't like the "if you're immune to nonlethal damage, you take lethal damage" bit. Makes this quite dangerous against undead and constructs; an advantage to moving away from nonlethal damage to some other sort of system is more options in terms of avoiding immunities.

[Raineh Daze]

You can't do the same sort of absolute prediction with warriors because they actually roll dice, both for their attacks and for their damage.

Just wondering about the rough area you need.

Still not sure what to suggest about a fighter who can knock anyone unconscious by mocking them from across the battlefield.

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

I would suggest making it mind affecting. It fits fluff wise and there should be some way to deal with it.

[oslecamo]

My Ogre example above seems to support this position. The Ogre can only be effectively killed by a group of experts large enough to merit a higher combined CR than that of the Ogre (and they take something like 80% casualties.)

Use kobolds. They're half regular CR with NPC classes. And/or have them TWF+Rapid shot for tripling your booing speed. No attack rolls involved means you don't care about penalties to attack rolls.

I would suggest making it mind affecting. It fits fluff wise and there should be some way to deal with it.

Or simply make it not inflict anything if the other guy makes the save. In that case making the Will save actually matters, but the whole feat isn't rendered useless in late game when everything and their mother is immune to mind-affecting.

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

My Ogre example above seems to support this position. The Ogre can only be effectively killed by a group of experts large enough to merit a higher combined CR than that of the Ogre (and they take something like 80% casualties.)

Use kobolds. They're half regular CR with NPC classes. And/or have them TWF+Rapid shot for tripling your booing speed. No attack rolls involved means you don't care about penalties to attack rolls.

TWF and Rapid Shot both have ability requirements so they aren't options for average townsfolk who are using the nonelite array.

The "average townsfolk" part kinda rules out Kobolds as well.

I would suggest making it mind affecting. It fits fluff wise and there should be some way to deal with it.

Or simply make it not inflict anything if the other guy makes the save. In that case making the Will save actually matters, but the whole feat isn't rendered useless in late game when everything and their mother is immune to mind-affecting.

Maybe both and give it immunity piercing at high levels.

[Tarkisflux]

I'm confused about what the actual concern for this feat is from a lot of people. Is it the unlimited damage? Is it the level of acquisition? Something else?

I personally don't really care about the unlimited damage part. It looks a lot like a reserve feat in terms of all day damage and debuffs that partially scale (with attacks if not with character level), and I don't have a problem with those in general. The acquisition level seems off though. I don't think it would be problematic on a level 6 or maybe even level 3 character, but level 1 strikes me as a bit too low for the benefit the feat is granting.