Feat suggestion for light weapons (3.5e rules) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Feat suggestion for light weapons (3.5e rules) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
brassbaboon
08-29-07, 08:52 PM I certainly hope this is the right forum for a discussion of a potential new set of feats. If not, please feel free to move it to the right forum. (I had posted this to a different forum and think that this is the right forum for it.)

The basic idea here is to create a set of feats that are tailored for two-handed use of light weapons. The feats essentially combine the melee benefits of the 2WF feat with some of the ranged weapon feats, while restricting the weapon selection to a single weapon type (dagger, hand axe, etc.) The main question I have is if this is unbalanced because the additional effects for a single weapon are more beneficial than the restriction to a single weapon type is detrimental. The feats are restricted to light weapons in BOTH hands to keep the damage potential within reason.

The main "weakness" of these feats is that they more or less restrict a character to using one specific light weapon type as their only viable weapon.

Here are the feats, please let me know if you think they are reasonable:

Light Weapon Specialist: You can select one light weapon type with which you are proficient and use one light weapon each in hand, gaining an additional attack per round, as the TWF feat (basically with a -2, -2 attack penalty for each hand). You also extend the thrown range increment of that weapon type to twice the normal range increment, to a maximum of 20 ft. (This is simply to make a thrown weapon a viable ranged attack option.) (This also gives the same benefit to drawing weapons as the standard 2WF feat does, meaning that at BAB of +1, you can draw two weapons as a free action.)

Light Weapon Expert: (Preq: Light Weapon Specialist, Dex 13, BAB +6) You can select one light weapon type for which you have the Light Weapon Specialist feat. You gain a second attack per round (at a -4 to hit modifier, not the -5 of the 2WF feat) while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type in each hand. You can draw additional weapons of this same type as a free action. (Based on the rules, drawing additional weapons should already be allowed, but this is just to make sure in case I misread those rules).

Light Weapon Finesse: (Preq: Light Weapon Specialist, +1 BAB, Dex 15) You can substitute your dexterity bonus for your strength bonus for melee attack rolls and you reduce the melee penalty for ranged attack by 2 (ex. from -4 to -2) while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type.

Light Weapon Precision: (Preq: Light Weapon Finesse, Dex 17) You reduce your melee penalty for ranged attack by two (ex. from -2 to 0), and add a +1 to your attack roll for ranged attacks within 30 feet while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type.

Light Weapon Master: (Preq: Light Weapon Expert, Dex 19) You gain a third attack (at a -6 to hit modifier, not the -10 of the 2WF feat) with your off-hand weapon while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type in both hands.

Light Weapon Defender: (Preq: Light Weapon Specialist, Dex 15) While fighting with two light weapons of the chosen base type, you gain a +1 shield bonus. This increases to +2 if you are fighting defensively.

If you think these are fairly decent, but need to be tweaked, let me know what tweaking you would suggest.
jaelis
08-29-07, 09:35 PM Light Weapon Specialist: This restriction here isn't enough to justify adding the benefits of TWF and Far Shot. Plenty of people TWF with two identical light weapons anyway, so they can use Weapon Focus etc. Restrict it to light simple weapons and I'm with you. (BTW, the TWF feat doesn't allow you to draw two weapons as a free action unless you do it while you're moving.) Should have a Dex 15 prereq though.

Light Weapon Expert: I don't get it. You have the TWFing feat, why would you want to wield one weapon in two hands? And I just can't see two-handing a dagger effectively. Am I misreading it?

Light Weapon Finesse: What is the "melee penalty for ranged attacks"? You mean the penalty for throwing into melee? If so, this seems reasonably balanced.

Light Weapon Precision: OK, so you're giving 3 feats for two here (Weapon Finesse, Point Blank Shot, and Precise Shot), with the restriction that it's limited to one type of weapon. I'm not sure... being restricted to a single weapon type just doesn't seem that bad to me. Again, limit it to simple weapons and I'll buy it.

Light Weapon Master: See the Expert feat above. I don't like messing with the regular iterative attack rules either, it's just not very elegant.

Light Weapon Defender: This is just TWD, but restricted. Maybe it could get upgraded to an unnamed bonus?
StevenO
08-29-07, 10:15 PM First off I'm finding these very hard to read. Second, from what I do understand most of these feats are already covered by other feats which mean they are either redundant or too focused on something that can probably be done with just one other feat anyway.

Specialist: TWF and Far Shot for one specific light weapon.

Expert: I don't get this at all. Is it Improved TWF except you aren't charging full price for the extra iterative attacks (-4 instead of -5 BAB)?

Finesse: Weapon Finesse for your one weapon and half of Precise Shot.
Precision: The other half of Precise Shot and the attack bonus from Point Blank Shot.

Master: Greater TWF for one weapon but again at a big discout. Your Prereq' is missing 'Expert and a +11 BAB unless I'm supposed to be able to take this at 1st level for possible attacks of -2/-2/-8 with a +0 BAB.

Defender: Try Two-Weapon Defense instead.

So lets see these six feats equate to these feats except with a little more restriction: TWF, ITWF, GTWF, TWD, Far Shot, Precise Shot, Weapon Finesse, and I'll say Weapon Focus to cover the +1 in your Precision and TWF feats although Point Blank may be more appropriate to cover the 'Shot feats already gained. So basically your compacting eight feats down into six but restricting them to a single weapon. That maybe wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't quite so confusing. How about trying these house feats instead:

Dual Wielding Mastery:
Prereq: TWF, Weapon Focus
Benefit: When wielding a focus weapon in each hand you can make the same number of itterative attacks with both hands. You still take normal TWF penalties.

Melee Thrower:
Prereq: Point Blank Shot, DEX 15
Benefit: When using light thrown weapons you gain the benefit of far shot and precise shot.

Dual Wielding Mastery puts the advanced TWF feats into one focused group although I really think that ITWF and GTWF should already be combined to allow full itertive attacks with the off hand anyhow.

Melee Thrower is pretty good as far shot is a big benefit to thrown weapons. Precise shot isn't such a huge improvement as you'd normally be close enough to melee if needed anyway. Combining the two is big but if you leave out one handed weapons (short spears, javalins) and true ranged weapons like bows and x-bows you should get away with it.
brassbaboon
08-29-07, 10:57 PM I tried to clean up some of the confusion and edited the original post. Sorry. The "Light Weapon Expert" should have made it clear that the character has an identical weapon in "EACH" hand. I must have been more tired than I realized while posting it... sigh...

Yes, the basic idea here is to provide some combining of the melee and ranged feats into a single set of fewer feats, while "balancing" that by restricting the feat to light weapons. The suggestion to limit it to "light simple weapons" seems fine to me, so I'd be good with that. I didn't count things up, but the idea that this is combining 8 general feats into 6 "light simple weapon" specific feats is just about what I was trying to do. The idea of the "light simple weapon" is that they do a lot less damage than other weapons, so that tends to balance out the overall damage inflicted.

Steven-O, I like your suggestions, and think they sound like they are probably existing house rules somewhere. The problem I have with that approach is that the character will not be able to get both ranged and melee advantages until they are pretty well advanced in levels. One of the primary purposes of my approach was to have ranged and melee improvement more or less advance simultaneously. I don't want to separate them. I think it is unnatural to separate them. A true dagger expert is going to be throwing daggers. It's just too natural to do so. And a thrown dagger in the real world is easily "point blank" at 20 feet. Ten feet, in fact, may be too short to turn the dagger over in flight. At ten feet you might just as well step forward and stab someone. At least that way you keep the dagger.

So, to repeat, the main thing I am trying to do is to give a character who focuses on a single simple light weapon the ability to advance both range and 2 weapon melee simultaneously, but each at a slower pace than if they were advancing only one style of fighting.

Does this help? Or is it just asking too much to try to create feats that allow this sort of dual expertise?
StevenO
08-30-07, 12:09 AM If the character is interested in improving each at a "slower" pace they'd just stagger which they advance.

A problem I have with trying to condense eight feats into six and make them "less extreme" is that it makes them that much stronger to a character without that many feats to begin with. I'd assume these feats are directed at a dagger wielding rogue, normally they'd need a long time (18+ levels) to get all these feats which is important because of how deadly they are for them. By condensing them into six you've taken what a 18th level rogue could do and allowing a 12th level one to do the same things. A fighter may be able to gain these advantages much faster although a "true" fighter may not be using light weapons.
brassbaboon
08-30-07, 12:32 AM StevenO: That's fair. And actually I'm working on custom feats for a spellthief, not a rogue. But you're right about the advancing of levels getting out of whack...

I've been trying to create a dagger-specialist that only uses daggers. This is really more of a style thing than a skill thing. I just like the idea of a character who needs nothing but daggers to do all of his deadly work. From a game play perspective you get more or less what I'm looking for with 2WF for melee and using something like a crossbow for the ranged attack. But I don't like the image of some stealthy character lugging around a crossbow everywhere he goes. It just messes up the image in my mind. I see him with eight or so daggers strategically located on his body so that they could be completely concealed by normal clothes.

So what I'm trying to do is create a feat that allows the character to have roughly the same ability to be effective in melee and ranged attacks but using only daggers instead of a crossbow (or bow, or sling, etc.)

Perhaps I'm trying too hard to modify the existing feats. And yes, I could alternate feats, but this is a character I will be playing starting at level 1, not some higher level build (which seems to be the norm these days) that allows me to play around with several feats in various combinations before I ever go into battle. This guy is going into battle with one feat. He has to survive two more levels to get feat #2, and as rarely as I play, that may mean he never gets to feat #2.

I'm not trying to create a superhuman killing machine. I'm just trying to make a character who poses a credible melee and ranged threat for normal combat but uses only daggers. That's all. I simply have not found a way to do that with the single feat I have available to me. But if I choose 2WF and carry a crossbow, that pretty much gives me the melee and ranged threat I'm looking for. But I'm simply being a slave to style here in not wanting to carry the crossbow. I suppose you could say "then play for style and forget about playability" but then I am penalizing the rest of the group. And there's this feeling of certainty that I have after looking up throwing knives and axes on the web that the range increment for such things as described in the rules is simply too harsh.
StevenO
08-30-07, 01:21 AM I know too many "builds" enjoy skipping the lower levels. I also read about too many people who like playing "power" games but think that just mean bigger stats and better magic items instead of just having higher levels. Although spells can be a problem rapid level advancement is actually a good thing to me.

Feats, along with prestige classes, designed by players for there own use usually receive some of the harshest judgement. This also goes for DMs catering to specific characters. The player generally sees the upside but often doesn't look at or consider the wider applications; missing those early can lead to problems further along. A possible example is having a DM approve something innocent for a player only to realize later that it was a small but important part of some big thing later that completely messes things up.

It may be a problem of 3.5 which is why we're getting a new edition next year but a character can't be everything at once, especially at lower levels. If your character is focusing on daggers there are already several prestige classes you should be looking at. Besides the Daggerspell's in the CAd you may also want to look at the Invisible Blade and Master Thrower in the Complete Warrior.
brassbaboon
08-30-07, 01:50 AM StevenO:

I thought prestige classes required some prerequisites, which means that they are not available to a level 1 character. Is that not right?

It's really that range increment of 10' for a thrown dagger that is killing my character, and I can't believe that is remotely realistic. It's driving me nuts. But my DM and I both are trying to avoid any house rule that would not be recognized by another DM. As far as I'm concerned, when I DM, I am going to allow the range increment of thrown hand weapons to at least allow a 20 foot throw without a penalty. But I'm not the DM in this case.
StevenO
08-30-07, 02:37 AM Rember you get five range increments. The penalties may add up fast but I'm certain it is should be realistic enough. As you start getting furter away it becomes harder for the dagger to carry enough momentum to penetrate defenses. If you think the shortest range is too close and the DM will allow a small addition to each range that is fine.

Creating house rules that aren't recognized by other DMs is probably a lot less tramatic than creating homebrew feats that don't get recognized by other DMs.
ToastedAmphibian
08-30-07, 04:58 PM Well... I just made, last week, a build for my girlfriend. Its a specialized knife fighter, but it wasnt a spellthief. However, it could add int to dmg, had good sneak attack dmg, and could feint as a free action. And its completly WoTC material. The build i made was for a tiefling, but if you wanted to specialize in both throwing and melee at a really early level, then you probably should use the easiest, most obvious way to do so. Play a human. Anyways, you might try this:

1 Rogue; Point Blank shot
2 Swashbuckler: Finess
3 Rogue; Weapon Focus Dagger
4 Rogue;
5 Swashbuckler;
6 Swashbuckler; Farshot
7 Invisible Blade (Prestige class, complete warrior?
8 Invisible Blade
9 Invisible Blade; Percise Shot
10 Invisible Blade
11 Invisible Blade
12 Master Thrower (Complete warrior?) Daring Outlaw (Complete scoundrel) Palm Throw trick (Throw 2 daggers at once as an attack action)
13 Master Thrower
14 Master Thrower Trip Shot trick
15 Master Thrower Decietful
16 Master Thrower Dead Eye trick
17 Monte Bank (Prestige class, complete scoundrel? Add int to bluff checks instead of cha)
18-20 Rogue

Also, make sure you look at teh skill tricks in complete scoundrel, especially "Group Fake Out" When you feint in combat, it lets you feint aginst as many targets as you want, all with one action. (-2 to yoru check per target)
Timley Misderection is also good (Anyone you feint aginst can't make AoO aginst you till your next turn)

With some planning you can probably get what your looking for with existing material. Let me look at spellthief and see what is there, but it sounds like you might jsut be trying to excell at to many things at once. (Stealth, spell casting, melee combat, ranged combat, ect..) Youd probably have an easier time with it if you droped one of thoes things, or decided to use spells to help with the other three, and use your class lvls and feats mainly to augment your casting
brassbaboon
08-31-07, 12:07 AM ToastedAmphibian:

That's a wonderful build. It's probably not going to be accepted in the first level campaign that I'll be playing though.

I've thought about doing some "level dipping" if I ever make it to level 2 (and beyond). Your suggestions might make sense.

I'm committed to playing a gnome or gnome derivative by the campaign setting. I'm fine with that, I like gnomes. I have sort of concluded that I am trying to do too much at once and am just going to have to live with what I can do. I have sort of settled on using sling for ranged attacks since it is feasible to conceal a sling and sling bullets, and they won't get in the way as I tumble and squeeze around, over and through things.

So for now I'm thinking I may go with the Dodge stack of feats... But by tomorrow I'll change my mind again...

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
brassbaboon 08-29-07, 08:52 PM	I certainly hope this is the right forum for a discussion of a potential new set of feats. If not, please feel free to move it to the right forum. (I had posted this to a different forum and think that this is the right forum for it.) The basic idea here is to create a set of feats that are tailored for two-handed use of light weapons. The feats essentially combine the melee benefits of the 2WF feat with some of the ranged weapon feats, while restricting the weapon selection to a single weapon type (dagger, hand axe, etc.) The main question I have is if this is unbalanced because the additional effects for a single weapon are more beneficial than the restriction to a single weapon type is detrimental. The feats are restricted to light weapons in BOTH hands to keep the damage potential within reason. The main "weakness" of these feats is that they more or less restrict a character to using one specific light weapon type as their only viable weapon. Here are the feats, please let me know if you think they are reasonable: Light Weapon Specialist: You can select one light weapon type with which you are proficient and use one light weapon each in hand, gaining an additional attack per round, as the TWF feat (basically with a -2, -2 attack penalty for each hand). You also extend the thrown range increment of that weapon type to twice the normal range increment, to a maximum of 20 ft. (This is simply to make a thrown weapon a viable ranged attack option.) (This also gives the same benefit to drawing weapons as the standard 2WF feat does, meaning that at BAB of +1, you can draw two weapons as a free action.) Light Weapon Expert: (Preq: Light Weapon Specialist, Dex 13, BAB +6) You can select one light weapon type for which you have the Light Weapon Specialist feat. You gain a second attack per round (at a -4 to hit modifier, not the -5 of the 2WF feat) while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type in each hand. You can draw additional weapons of this same type as a free action. (Based on the rules, drawing additional weapons should already be allowed, but this is just to make sure in case I misread those rules). Light Weapon Finesse: (Preq: Light Weapon Specialist, +1 BAB, Dex 15) You can substitute your dexterity bonus for your strength bonus for melee attack rolls and you reduce the melee penalty for ranged attack by 2 (ex. from -4 to -2) while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type. Light Weapon Precision: (Preq: Light Weapon Finesse, Dex 17) You reduce your melee penalty for ranged attack by two (ex. from -2 to 0), and add a +1 to your attack roll for ranged attacks within 30 feet while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type. Light Weapon Master: (Preq: Light Weapon Expert, Dex 19) You gain a third attack (at a -6 to hit modifier, not the -10 of the 2WF feat) with your off-hand weapon while using a light weapon type of the chosen base type in both hands. Light Weapon Defender: (Preq: Light Weapon Specialist, Dex 15) While fighting with two light weapons of the chosen base type, you gain a +1 shield bonus. This increases to +2 if you are fighting defensively. If you think these are fairly decent, but need to be tweaked, let me know what tweaking you would suggest.
jaelis 08-29-07, 09:35 PM	Light Weapon Specialist: This restriction here isn't enough to justify adding the benefits of TWF and Far Shot. Plenty of people TWF with two identical light weapons anyway, so they can use Weapon Focus etc. Restrict it to light simple weapons and I'm with you. (BTW, the TWF feat doesn't allow you to draw two weapons as a free action unless you do it while you're moving.) Should have a Dex 15 prereq though. Light Weapon Expert: I don't get it. You have the TWFing feat, why would you want to wield one weapon in two hands? And I just can't see two-handing a dagger effectively. Am I misreading it? Light Weapon Finesse: What is the "melee penalty for ranged attacks"? You mean the penalty for throwing into melee? If so, this seems reasonably balanced. Light Weapon Precision: OK, so you're giving 3 feats for two here (Weapon Finesse, Point Blank Shot, and Precise Shot), with the restriction that it's limited to one type of weapon. I'm not sure... being restricted to a single weapon type just doesn't seem that bad to me. Again, limit it to simple weapons and I'll buy it. Light Weapon Master: See the Expert feat above. I don't like messing with the regular iterative attack rules either, it's just not very elegant. Light Weapon Defender: This is just TWD, but restricted. Maybe it could get upgraded to an unnamed bonus?
StevenO 08-29-07, 10:15 PM	First off I'm finding these very hard to read. Second, from what I do understand most of these feats are already covered by other feats which mean they are either redundant or too focused on something that can probably be done with just one other feat anyway. Specialist: TWF and Far Shot for one specific light weapon. Expert: I don't get this at all. Is it Improved TWF except you aren't charging full price for the extra iterative attacks (-4 instead of -5 BAB)? Finesse: Weapon Finesse for your one weapon and half of Precise Shot. Precision: The other half of Precise Shot and the attack bonus from Point Blank Shot. Master: Greater TWF for one weapon but again at a big discout. Your Prereq' is missing 'Expert and a +11 BAB unless I'm supposed to be able to take this at 1st level for possible attacks of -2/-2/-8 with a +0 BAB. Defender: Try Two-Weapon Defense instead. So lets see these six feats equate to these feats except with a little more restriction: TWF, ITWF, GTWF, TWD, Far Shot, Precise Shot, Weapon Finesse, and I'll say Weapon Focus to cover the +1 in your Precision and TWF feats although Point Blank may be more appropriate to cover the 'Shot feats already gained. So basically your compacting eight feats down into six but restricting them to a single weapon. That maybe wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't quite so confusing. How about trying these house feats instead: Dual Wielding Mastery: Prereq: TWF, Weapon Focus Benefit: When wielding a focus weapon in each hand you can make the same number of itterative attacks with both hands. You still take normal TWF penalties. Melee Thrower: Prereq: Point Blank Shot, DEX 15 Benefit: When using light thrown weapons you gain the benefit of far shot and precise shot. Dual Wielding Mastery puts the advanced TWF feats into one focused group although I really think that ITWF and GTWF should already be combined to allow full itertive attacks with the off hand anyhow. Melee Thrower is pretty good as far shot is a big benefit to thrown weapons. Precise shot isn't such a huge improvement as you'd normally be close enough to melee if needed anyway. Combining the two is big but if you leave out one handed weapons (short spears, javalins) and true ranged weapons like bows and x-bows you should get away with it.
brassbaboon 08-29-07, 10:57 PM	I tried to clean up some of the confusion and edited the original post. Sorry. The "Light Weapon Expert" should have made it clear that the character has an identical weapon in "EACH" hand. I must have been more tired than I realized while posting it... sigh... Yes, the basic idea here is to provide some combining of the melee and ranged feats into a single set of fewer feats, while "balancing" that by restricting the feat to light weapons. The suggestion to limit it to "light simple weapons" seems fine to me, so I'd be good with that. I didn't count things up, but the idea that this is combining 8 general feats into 6 "light simple weapon" specific feats is just about what I was trying to do. The idea of the "light simple weapon" is that they do a lot less damage than other weapons, so that tends to balance out the overall damage inflicted. Steven-O, I like your suggestions, and think they sound like they are probably existing house rules somewhere. The problem I have with that approach is that the character will not be able to get both ranged and melee advantages until they are pretty well advanced in levels. One of the primary purposes of my approach was to have ranged and melee improvement more or less advance simultaneously. I don't want to separate them. I think it is unnatural to separate them. A true dagger expert is going to be throwing daggers. It's just too natural to do so. And a thrown dagger in the real world is easily "point blank" at 20 feet. Ten feet, in fact, may be too short to turn the dagger over in flight. At ten feet you might just as well step forward and stab someone. At least that way you keep the dagger. So, to repeat, the main thing I am trying to do is to give a character who focuses on a single simple light weapon the ability to advance both range and 2 weapon melee simultaneously, but each at a slower pace than if they were advancing only one style of fighting. Does this help? Or is it just asking too much to try to create feats that allow this sort of dual expertise?
StevenO 08-30-07, 12:09 AM	If the character is interested in improving each at a "slower" pace they'd just stagger which they advance. A problem I have with trying to condense eight feats into six and make them "less extreme" is that it makes them that much stronger to a character without that many feats to begin with. I'd assume these feats are directed at a dagger wielding rogue, normally they'd need a long time (18+ levels) to get all these feats which is important because of how deadly they are for them. By condensing them into six you've taken what a 18th level rogue could do and allowing a 12th level one to do the same things. A fighter may be able to gain these advantages much faster although a "true" fighter may not be using light weapons.
brassbaboon 08-30-07, 12:32 AM	StevenO: That's fair. And actually I'm working on custom feats for a spellthief, not a rogue. But you're right about the advancing of levels getting out of whack... I've been trying to create a dagger-specialist that only uses daggers. This is really more of a style thing than a skill thing. I just like the idea of a character who needs nothing but daggers to do all of his deadly work. From a game play perspective you get more or less what I'm looking for with 2WF for melee and using something like a crossbow for the ranged attack. But I don't like the image of some stealthy character lugging around a crossbow everywhere he goes. It just messes up the image in my mind. I see him with eight or so daggers strategically located on his body so that they could be completely concealed by normal clothes. So what I'm trying to do is create a feat that allows the character to have roughly the same ability to be effective in melee and ranged attacks but using only daggers instead of a crossbow (or bow, or sling, etc.) Perhaps I'm trying too hard to modify the existing feats. And yes, I could alternate feats, but this is a character I will be playing starting at level 1, not some higher level build (which seems to be the norm these days) that allows me to play around with several feats in various combinations before I ever go into battle. This guy is going into battle with one feat. He has to survive two more levels to get feat #2, and as rarely as I play, that may mean he never gets to feat #2. I'm not trying to create a superhuman killing machine. I'm just trying to make a character who poses a credible melee and ranged threat for normal combat but uses only daggers. That's all. I simply have not found a way to do that with the single feat I have available to me. But if I choose 2WF and carry a crossbow, that pretty much gives me the melee and ranged threat I'm looking for. But I'm simply being a slave to style here in not wanting to carry the crossbow. I suppose you could say "then play for style and forget about playability" but then I am penalizing the rest of the group. And there's this feeling of certainty that I have after looking up throwing knives and axes on the web that the range increment for such things as described in the rules is simply too harsh.
StevenO 08-30-07, 01:21 AM	I know too many "builds" enjoy skipping the lower levels. I also read about too many people who like playing "power" games but think that just mean bigger stats and better magic items instead of just having higher levels. Although spells can be a problem rapid level advancement is actually a good thing to me. Feats, along with prestige classes, designed by players for there own use usually receive some of the harshest judgement. This also goes for DMs catering to specific characters. The player generally sees the upside but often doesn't look at or consider the wider applications; missing those early can lead to problems further along. A possible example is having a DM approve something innocent for a player only to realize later that it was a small but important part of some big thing later that completely messes things up. It may be a problem of 3.5 which is why we're getting a new edition next year but a character can't be everything at once, especially at lower levels. If your character is focusing on daggers there are already several prestige classes you should be looking at. Besides the Daggerspell's in the CAd you may also want to look at the Invisible Blade and Master Thrower in the Complete Warrior.
brassbaboon 08-30-07, 01:50 AM	StevenO: I thought prestige classes required some prerequisites, which means that they are not available to a level 1 character. Is that not right? It's really that range increment of 10' for a thrown dagger that is killing my character, and I can't believe that is remotely realistic. It's driving me nuts. But my DM and I both are trying to avoid any house rule that would not be recognized by another DM. As far as I'm concerned, when I DM, I am going to allow the range increment of thrown hand weapons to at least allow a 20 foot throw without a penalty. But I'm not the DM in this case.
StevenO 08-30-07, 02:37 AM	Rember you get five range increments. The penalties may add up fast but I'm certain it is should be realistic enough. As you start getting furter away it becomes harder for the dagger to carry enough momentum to penetrate defenses. If you think the shortest range is too close and the DM will allow a small addition to each range that is fine. Creating house rules that aren't recognized by other DMs is probably a lot less tramatic than creating homebrew feats that don't get recognized by other DMs.
ToastedAmphibian 08-30-07, 04:58 PM	Well... I just made, last week, a build for my girlfriend. Its a specialized knife fighter, but it wasnt a spellthief. However, it could add int to dmg, had good sneak attack dmg, and could feint as a free action. And its completly WoTC material. The build i made was for a tiefling, but if you wanted to specialize in both throwing and melee at a really early level, then you probably should use the easiest, most obvious way to do so. Play a human. Anyways, you might try this: 1 Rogue; Point Blank shot 2 Swashbuckler: Finess 3 Rogue; Weapon Focus Dagger 4 Rogue; 5 Swashbuckler; 6 Swashbuckler; Farshot 7 Invisible Blade (Prestige class, complete warrior? 8 Invisible Blade 9 Invisible Blade; Percise Shot 10 Invisible Blade 11 Invisible Blade 12 Master Thrower (Complete warrior?) Daring Outlaw (Complete scoundrel) Palm Throw trick (Throw 2 daggers at once as an attack action) 13 Master Thrower 14 Master Thrower Trip Shot trick 15 Master Thrower Decietful 16 Master Thrower Dead Eye trick 17 Monte Bank (Prestige class, complete scoundrel? Add int to bluff checks instead of cha) 18-20 Rogue Also, make sure you look at teh skill tricks in complete scoundrel, especially "Group Fake Out" When you feint in combat, it lets you feint aginst as many targets as you want, all with one action. (-2 to yoru check per target) Timley Misderection is also good (Anyone you feint aginst can't make AoO aginst you till your next turn) With some planning you can probably get what your looking for with existing material. Let me look at spellthief and see what is there, but it sounds like you might jsut be trying to excell at to many things at once. (Stealth, spell casting, melee combat, ranged combat, ect..) Youd probably have an easier time with it if you droped one of thoes things, or decided to use spells to help with the other three, and use your class lvls and feats mainly to augment your casting
brassbaboon 08-31-07, 12:07 AM	ToastedAmphibian: That's a wonderful build. It's probably not going to be accepted in the first level campaign that I'll be playing though. I've thought about doing some "level dipping" if I ever make it to level 2 (and beyond). Your suggestions might make sense. I'm committed to playing a gnome or gnome derivative by the campaign setting. I'm fine with that, I like gnomes. I have sort of concluded that I am trying to do too much at once and am just going to have to live with what I can do. I have sort of settled on using sling for ranged attacks since it is feasible to conceal a sling and sling bullets, and they won't get in the way as I tumble and squeeze around, over and through things. So for now I'm thinking I may go with the Dodge stack of feats... But by tomorrow I'll change my mind again...