Question re: Monster Slayer Feat

[Giavonn]

Sorry if this has been covered before (and if so, please point me to it and I'll delete this post)... I'm looking at the 2nd ed book, at the "Monster Slayer" feat on p. 133, and wonder if there is an error.

This feat lets you get double the damage bonus for each point you take as a penalty to your attack, which certainly helps in slaying Monsters, but you cannot exceed your BAB in damage bonus. Shouldn't this read, "the total attack penalty cannot exceed your BAB"?

If not, what's the point of this feat? Is it to let me fight defensively while Power Attacking, so as to not get gacked by the monster I'm fighting? Or is it to increase my odds of hitting while Power Attacking?

Please to elucidate, thanks!

 

[Clovenhoof]

The Feat has been the same in 1E, so it's probably not a typo. Apparently, the designers felt that "the total attack penalty cannot exceed your BAB" would result in _too_ much damage per hit.

If you consider that Two-handed Power Attacks also increase the damage multiplier by one (at least in 1E, not sure about 2E), the "penalty=BAB" rule would allow for triple damage bonus on a TH-PA. So a BAB+10 Fighter could get 30 bonus damage points (added to a base damage of maybe 2d8+9+x). Boo-ya! IF your blow connects, of course. But then the monster will be forced to MDS, which at ~50 points of damage will be hell of a difficult save to make.

So in short, yes, with the RAW this feat's effective use is to increase your hit chance while keeping the damage total on the same maximum as per normal PA.

Since the feat is limited to fighting big monsters, house-ruling it to cap the attack penalty to the BAB, rather than damage, would just make the feat more worthwhile and (probably) not break the game. Haven't tried it, though.

Suffice it to say that I had originally planned for my own Barbarian to take Monster Slayer, but eventually decided against it because it doesn't seem so incredibly useful as it is written.

 

[Spectator]

Great analysis Clovenhoof, in the 3years playing this game, no-one has effectively told me how to use that feat before until now. Good job, because the rules are very convoluted to follow.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Glad if I could be of help. ^^
Convoluted rules? Well, I haven't elaborated fully above, because I was focussing on the Monster Slayer feat as such. Here is more:

Apparently, judging from what the Power Attack feat description implies, the damage cap does not apply to the extra damage for TH-weapons. So a BAB +10 THW-fighter can take a -10 penalty and get a +20 damage bonus with his TH-weapon. Well that's pretty straightforward, but it's going to get us into hell's kitchen further down.

A Monster Slayer with OH-weapon is also pretty straightforward: with BAB +10, you can take up to -5 penalty to receive the +10 damage bonus.

But now a Monster Slayer with TH-weapon is getting damn close to Rules Limbo. He can't take a -10 attack penalty (still talking about BAB +10), because that would violate the restriction of the MS feat. If, however, he only took -5 penalty, he would get a total damage bonus of +15: +5 for Power Attack as such, +5 for Two-Handed fighting, and +5 for Monster Slayer.
So as you see, a fighter with Monster Slayer is, strictly speaking, crippling his own damage output against big foes, because his maximum damage bonus is +15, rather than +20 for plain THPA. This means that a player might tell his GM that he does _not_ want to use his MS feat but rather make a plain THPA for maximum damage.

This hadn't occured to me before, I got aware of this just now as I was laying it out in this posting. A feat that effectively cripples a character has to be considered broken. So as I'm about it, I'll try to present possible fixes:

A.) Don't give TH weapons double damage bonus. As simple as that. There's no good reason why THF has got be so much more effective than any other combat style.

B.) Subject THPA damage to the same restriction as the MS feat. Effectively this means better To Hit chance for THW at the same damage output.

C.) Change the Monster Slayer feat to the mode discussed, that the BAB is the cap for the attack penalty, not the damage bonus. This appears to be the best solution if you don't want to tamper with Two-handed weapons. You can always pretend it was only a typo to begin with.

 

[Trodax]

In this thread is the official answer I got when I asked about the Monster Slayer feat back in the day. I've also always thought the feat is confusing and strange, and would actually have prefered if they'd just left it out of 2nd edition.

 

[Ichabod]

Wow. I thought Monster Slayer clarified the limitations of Power Attack and that you never could exceed your BAB with the bonus damage using these various feats.

And, I thought 2H fighting was broken before ...

 

[Giavonn]

The Feat has been the same in 1E, so it's probably not a typo. Apparently, the designers felt that "the total attack penalty cannot exceed your BAB" would result in _too_ much damage per hit.

Wow, that's a real shame. I'll be house ruling that one at home most rikky tik. The feat is called "Monster Slayer" after all, rather than "Monster Survivor"-- so presumably at some point, actually doing massive amounts of damage (to monsters only) was exactly what the feat was supposed to do.

Yes, you get a lot of benefit out of it. On the other hand, you take a chance of not hitting the monster at all. And if you opt for the mightiness of the 2HF, you miss out on the DR of the shield-- so you'd better kill the monster with massive damage, hadn't you?

That Rhino with his 84 hp only has a Dodge Defense of 12. Setting a spear or lance against him, I'd better kill him. Because he'll be doing 2d6+12 to me every single round, after the double damage on the charge. A 5th level soldier with a lance, by RAW, could only use MS to PA for a single point! (2 points, after all would exceed his damage cap with +6 bonus damage!) By house rule, a 5th level soldier could use MS to PA for 5, do 15 bonus damage in addition to his lance's dice (and Strength & a half) which he'd be quite inclined to do, needing only a 10 after all to hit a charging rhino. That way, there's a chance for the beast to impale himself through the heart and grind to a halt, rather than simply snapping the spear like a twig and turning the soldier into a thin red smear.

Thanks for the quick response, too! Was out today playing an Apocalypse game to cap off a 40K campaign we've been running and didn't get back till this evening.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Wow, that's a real shame. I'll be house ruling that one at home most rikky tik. The feat is called "Monster Slayer" after all, rather than "Monster Survivor"

Yeah I kinda feel the same way. Plus, to me, a feat slot is the most valuable thing. You only get so many feat slots during your career and each choice is irrevocable. So the feat had better be worth it.

A 5th level soldier with a lance, by RAW, could only use MS to PA for a single point! (2 points, after all would exceed his damage cap with +6 bonus damage!)

Just for the records: that soldier could still take a -2 penalty, but his damage bonus would be capped at 5 rather than 6 points.

And, I thought 2H fighting was broken before ...

I feel the same way. So for our game, we have a set of house rules that are supposed to approximate the combat styles:

1.) reworked TH weapon damage (Axerules and I worked out new values a few months back), e.g. Bardiche 2d8.
2.) spiced up TWF: Two Weapon Strike available as basic combat manoeuvre to any TWFer, i.e. add up primary and offhand damage for purposes of overcoming DR.

3.) not yet implemented, but thinking about cancelling the bonus for THPA.

Note that as of yet, there's no player in our group actually using a Two-handed martial weapon. There's the odd staff or spear, but otherwise everyone prefers one-handed weapons, even though they know THW are more powerful. I think that's pretty cool.

 

[Ichabod]

Only one player uses 2H fighting in our group and it's rather tedious watching him kill everything while other non-thief characters just take up space.

We had a D&D game for a while where the GM eliminated the 2HPA bonus and replaced the 1.5x STR bonus with a flat +2 damage. At a minimum, I'd be in favor of the former as it's just so absurd that the only character trying in combat will ignore any weapon he can't use two-handed and for good reason.

The problem with tinkering with things to rein in the character who does three times as much damage per hit, though, is that it can result in only that character forcing MDSs, making everyone else truly useless. That's why I'm kind of iffy on the 2E change to sneak attack damage. There should be at least a second style of combat in the game.

Not that there's any hope left for our current crew, but it would be nice if the game weren't so insanely biased.