Post/Author/DateTime	Post
xver 03-07-07, 10:23 AM	Ok, I was over at the GitP forums and someone brought up the ol' issue of how underpowered Monkey Grip is compared to Power Attack. Now, I like Monkey Grip astheticly, but when optimizing a character, it's not really a worthwile option. So I put in my two cents as to what I thing would make it worth taking. Once I got the whole thing written up, I decided that I should post it over here, so y'all could check it out also. Because Monkey Grip isn't OGL, I decided to write my replacements from scratch, rather than modify Monkey Grip. So they may not be worded quite the same way. (In fact, that's the point.) I also changed the name to avoid any copyright issues. (You can't copyright a phrase, so I could most likely have kept the name, but I want to do this in good faith. Besides, the creative writer who came up with such a nice sounding name as "Monkey Grip" deserves better than that, copyright laws notwithstanding.) Dire Weapon [General, Fighter] You wield a larger weapon than others your size. Prerequisites: Str 13 Benefit: You may wield a weapon intended for a creature one size category larger than yourself without the -2 penalty to attack rolls and the amount of effort required to wield it does not increase. You may not apply the benefit of this feat to a weapon wielded in your off-hand. If you wield a larger than normal double weapon, you may only apply the benefit of this feat to the primary head. (You are considered to be wielding a one-handed weapon in your off-hand and take an additional -2 penalty beyond the usual two-weapon fighting penalties to attack rolls made with that hand.) Normal: If you wield a weapon intended for a creature one size category larger than yourself, you take -2 penalty to attack rolls and the amount of effort required to wield it increases by one category. Dire Off-Hand Weapon [General, Fighter] You wield a larger off-hand weapon than others your size. Prerequisites: Dire Weapon, Two-Weapon Fighting Benefit: You may wield a weapon intended for a creature one size category larger than yourself in your off-hand without the -2 penalty to attack rolls and the amount of effort required to wield it does not increase. You may also apply the benefit of this feat to the secondary head of a larger than normal double weapon. Normal: If you wield a weapon intended for a creature one size category larger than yourself, you take -2 penalty to attack rolls and the amount of effort required to wield it increases by one category. Share and Enjoy!
Dragonteuthis 03-07-07, 10:32 AM	Medium Greatsword = 2d6 damage. Large Greatsword = 3d6 damage. Net average damage increase: +3.5 damage. Weapon Specialization damage increase: +2 damage. Congratulations, you have made a feat that is superior to a feat with much, much stricter requirements. As per chapter 12 of the PHB, I am now legally allowed to refer to you as a munchkin. Munchkin.
tarkin 03-07-07, 11:24 AM	You fail to understand several things. 1. Monkey Grip is already a hugely powerfull feat, if your size starts out as Huge or bigger. When a Giant takes your feat, it pretty much becomes super-powerfull, effectively better than someone with a CR higher than it. 2. Monkey Grip is a ridiculous. In real life, you get NO damage benefit for using a heavier, bigger weapon (instead you get a reach type benefit, and a weapon that is harder to sunder. Those benefits have rather strict limits from leverage.) 3. There already exists a Racial ability that is basically Monkey Grip without the -2 to hit. It is called Powerfull Build. To get it, you must be a specific race, all of whom are described as being bigger than the average size. As in you are a largish Medium, almost a large sized race. Your feat is better than this racial ability, which it should not be. ----------------- Your idea is not appropriate in any realistic game at all. If playing a cartoonish/anime inspired game where you don't care at all about real world physics, your feat might be appropriate , if your DM was playing a Power Game, where low level characters routinely fought creatures with a CR 5 or more higher than there own. If your game was not cartoonish/anime inspired, then the feat would only be appropriate in an 'Anything Goes' type game.
xver 03-07-07, 11:36 AM	Well, ok, it might be a munchkin feat, but that's what I posted it here for. To get some feedback. The problem with the original Monkey Grip is that it's -2 to attack wasn't as good as Power Attacking for 2. I even made a nice little chart that shows how MG compares to PA: Weapon..............Med.....Av.......Lrg .....Av.........1H.......2H ...........................Dmg.....Dmg.. .Dmg...Dmg......PA.......PA Dagger...............1d4......2.5.....1d 6.....3.5.......4.5......n/a Short Sword......1d6......3.5.....1d8.....4.5. .......5.5.....n/a Long Sword.......1d8......4.5.....2d6.....7.0 ........6.5......8.5 Bastard Sword...1d10....5.5....2d8......9.0..... ..7.5......9.5 Great Sword.......2d6.....7.0.....3d6...10.5.. ......n/a....11.0 Full Blade...........2d8......9.0.....3d8...1 3.5........n/a...13.0 Unfortunatly these boards don't support the nice [table] VBcode, so I had to make due with a bunch of periods instead. So, in retrospect, I guess I should have known that the results would be overpowered. Anyway, the average damage gains for going up a size are as follows: Dagger...............1.0 Short Sword......1.0 Long Sword.......2.5 Bastard Sword...3.5 Great Sword.......3.5 Full Blade...........4.5 So what would balance out such an increase in damage? A -2 to attack won't cut it because it ends up being inferior to Power Attack. There are also a few downsides to Monkey Grip vs Power Attack besides the inferior damage. You can't opt not to take the -2 against high ACs unless you keep a backup weapon. You can't take a bigger penalty for more damage unless you also take Power Attack. (And if you do, why take Monkey Grip at all?) Finally, you have a harder time finding weapons, especially magical ones. In the end, it's only more powerful than Weapon Specialization at the high end of the weapon size spectrum. But I suppose that's where it really matters. On the other tentacle, don't some people consider WS to be pretty weak in the grand scheme of things? (I seem to recall at least one post to that effect.) If anyone has a suggestion on how to balance Monkey Grip vs Power Attack, I'd like to hear it. Thanks in advance.
xver 03-07-07, 12:06 PM	There already exists a Racial ability that is basically Monkey Grip without the -2 to hit. It is called Powerfull Build. To get it, you must be a specific race, all of whom are described as being bigger than the average size. As in you are a largish Medium, almost a large sized race. Your feat is better than this racial ability, which it should not be. That's simply not true. Powerful Build gives bonuses on pretty much everything size related, not just weapons. You gain bonuses to Bull Rush, Grapple, Trip, etc. Furthermore, on just the weapon weilding front, you'd need both Dire Weapon and Dire Off-Hand Weapon to equal Powerful Build. As for your other remarks about how unrealistic it is, how it's only suited for anime style games, etc. DnD is not realistic! It's power level is way beyond a lot of (perhaps even most) anime. In DnD, larger weapons do do more damage. If you want to change these things, you'll have to basically rebuild the game from the ground up. I'll accept criticism based on balance issues. (In fact, I was hoping to get some.) But if you try to tell me how unrealistic an idea proposed for a fantasy role playing game is, I'm just gonna get annoyed. You, sir, are missing the point. As for Monkey Grip being broken for giants. I don't really care. The way I see it, the feat is pointless for player characters. So I want to fix it for PCs. If it leads to brokeness for a few large monsters, well, this is all Rule Zero stuff anyway, so one can just not give it to them.
RobbyPants 03-07-07, 12:39 PM	That's simply not true. Powerful Build gives bonuses on pretty much everything size related, not just weapons. You gain bonuses to Bull Rush, Grapple, Trip, etc. Furthermore, on just the weapon weilding front, you'd need both Dire Weapon and Dire Off-Hand Weapon to equal Powerful Build. While this is technically true, the biggest reason people seek races with powerful build is to increase their damage. The other abilities come in a distant second when compared to upping the base damage dice of a weapon. As tarkin already mentioned, the real problem with Monkey Grip isn't that it's weak, but that its power is based on the size of the creature taking it. It is weak (compared to Power Attack) for small and medium creature, but it is quite powerful for huge and larger creatures. Removing the -2 penalty from Monkey Grip will only worsen this effect for the larger creatures. Also, as Dragonteuthis pointed out, even when looking at medium creatures with a greatsword, the feat exceeds the power of Weapon Specialization; a feat with both higher level and class-dependant requirements. I'd say in the long run, it's probably best to leave Monkey Grip as-is.
ScipioX 03-07-07, 02:08 PM	the biggest reason people seek races with powerful build is to increase their damage. That's pretty debatable. Bonuses to trip are a pretty big deal if making a tripping build. Same with a dedicated grappler. Monkey grip should get some loving, since only really big critters get much benefit from it. Part of the problem is that specialization is a weak feat to begin with, so comparing it to that isn't all that helpful. I'd suggest going with -1 instead of no penalty to attacks. That should make it a bit better than power attack in its specific area, and also make it a bit closer to weapon specialization.
Silversheen197 03-07-07, 02:26 PM	To fix Monkey Grip, I usually just modify it a little bit: "...a character can wield a weapon sized for a larger creature as a normal weapon of its size as being one weapon size greater than normal at no penalty, or can wield it as a weapon of its normal weapon size (light, one-handed, or two-handed) at a -2 penalty." Normally, wielding a Large longsword in two hands still has a -2 penalty, and wielding it in one hand has a -4. However, with this version of monkey grip, both are lowered by 2 (unlike normal, where the feat only lowers the "Large longsword in one hand" by 2). I realize it's not quite what you were going for, but it allows PCs to use the weapons of those large baddies they felled without penalty, which can be useful (I remember when the party I was in killed some giants, only to find that there weapons were really magical, but we couldn't wield them because they were Large, and we didn't want to take a penalty to attacks), and in some instances, it gives you a boost to damage.
xver 03-07-07, 07:45 PM	Ok, as straight dropping the -2 pentalty to hit has been pointed out to be pretty broken, here's a rebuilding of my chart with the results of Monkey Grip at a -1 penalty vs Power Attacking for -1. Weapon..............Med.....Av.......Lrg ......Av..........1H......2H ...........................Dmg.....Dmg.. .Dmg...Dmg.......PA......PA Dagger...............1d4......2.5.....1d 6.....3.5........3.5......n/a Short Sword......1d6......3.5.....1d8......4.5 .........4.5.....n/a Long Sword.......1d8......4.5.....2d6......7. 0 ........5.5......6.5 Bastard Sword...1d10....5.5.....2d8......9.0.... ....6.5.......7.5 Great Sword.......2d6.....7.0.....3d6.....10.5 ........n/a......9.0 Full Blade...........2d8......9.0.....3d8.... .13.5........n/a...11.0 Well, now Monkey Grip (at a -1) comes out substantially in the lead. Perhaps that's why it was set at a -2 in the first place. So, what do you think? Is monkey grip balanced (for small or medium characters) at a -1 penalty to hit? Sure, the above table shows the improved MG to be better than PA, damage wise, but there are other mitigating factors I mentioned above. So do the other drawbacks serve to balance it out or is it still overpowered at a -1 penalty to hit? On a realated note, what do you think of the other changes I made besides the removal of the penalty. With a balanced penalty is the way I set it up to allow for TWF with oversized weapons ok? In other words, is the feat that allows you to use oversized weapons in your off-hand O.K. other than the no penalty munchkin-ness or does it have some other fundamental issue? I.E. imagine the above feats specify whatever penanlty to hit you think is balanced for MG for a small or medium creature (-0,-1,-2,-3, etc.). Does the dual weilding aspect have other issues?
Goreg Skullcrusher 03-07-07, 10:50 PM	There's another build type where Monkey Grip really shines: Sword and Board. Try starting off with an exotic one-hander that deals 1d10 damage (Dwarven Waraxe or Bastard Sword). A large version of such a weapon does 2d8 damage. This is an increase of +3.5 average damage, which is just under 2-for-1, but much more than the 1-for-1 that PA confers for one-handed weapon users. As such, the feat is a pretty good tradeoff (especially if you're a Dwarf and are automatically proficient with the Dwarven Waraxe) And you have to admit it's one of the cooler feats, thematically. (You can always carry a regular sized weapon too for those times when to-hit is crucial)