Talk:Advanced Dagger Mastery (3.5e Feat)

Ratings

The bluez in the dungeon favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!

I like it: I prefer to give the maximum rating because I don't really understand enough balance to distinguish page's values, other than bad and good. Having said that: the feat is nice, it offers an handful of abilities that usually would require multiple feats to get and that is a good thing, many build would benefit from this (I will propose it to a friend for an arcane rogue character). Only complain is clarity in the Flurry of Stabs section: "and when you hit BAB +6 you may also use it if only making a single attack as a standard action" is not very clear to me. I'd say: "and when you hit BAB +6 you may also use it as a standard action while attacking"

Breakdown Analysis

Alright, I suppose since a rating has already been posted on it so quickly, I should chime in here with a few things to add. Let's break it down as we read it through. So, if you nab that weapon focus, you can take this one feat that's like... 5 feats? Something like that.

Flurry of Stabs: Alright, flurries are nice, especially for a sneak-attacker where the penalty to attack is mostly offset by things like flanking and getting opponents flat-footed and whatnot, making the extra damage worth while, because there are few other reasons someone is going to be focusing in daggers if they're not getting extra damage in to offset stuff (like smaller weapon size as well). Usable on a full attack at first, but later making an additional attack as a standard. Assuming its a full-base attack bonus full strength attack since it doesn't actually specify what the extra attack is. This is a very good benefit and worth a feat alone for it, with the potentiality of really boosting a character's damage per round by a substantial bit. If used with ranged attacks, that stacks with Rapid Shot (which means more when we get to the next one).

Knife Tosser: This is interesting since it is sort of "hey, instead of Quick Draw for all weapons, get it with only one, but also be able to throw daggers out to 150 feet", which counting for prerequisites is nice and bonus cake as well. This one is a feat that could also just stand alone. Your rogue can now sneak-attack at range without penalty out to that sweet thirty feet. Since its only Quick Draw for one weapon, that's fine, you're already probably only using daggers or whatever light melee slashing or piercing weapon you've got is (because of Weapon Focus). The trade off for single weapon is well worth the range increase.

Knight Slayer: Isn't 3.5e. Controlling a grapple might be a Pathfinder thing, would have to check. You can already grapple if your hands are full of daggers... like, not sure where that's coming from. This one would need some revision, but dang, no penalty to attack in a grapple (that's a +4 over your opponent right there) and denying Dex is even easier to hit plus sneak-attack and that extra attack you get for Flurry of Stabs... makes this way better at taking out squishier targets than it does knights, who likely don't have good Dexterity anyway. This is Mage Slayer. This is all assuming the "control of a grapple" thing of course. Knights already have the HP and Strength to deal with you in a grapple.

Throat Slitter: Is strange because it implies that without the feat, you can't silently bring someone down, which is really strange. A man covered in clanking pots and pans could fall off a bridge onto a giant gong and make little noise because you threw a dagger and that's... not the intent I think? Immersion breaking? Obviously extenuating circumstances here (and DMs always need to account for circumstances). This one needs a rework. Like, what about Diehard? Can that guy still shout? Does it not matter because it isn't a kill? Why use "kill" when they're probably not dead and only at like –4 or something anyway? Preventing vocalization for a round is a route you could go with instead (since anything longer than that and, well, you're already a Mage Slayer with this feat). Like, this really needs a rework because as is, it shouldn't exist since a character should already be able to work with their DM to do this.

I guess in the end, it is a lot of stuff in a single package. This though, needs some revision. Its scope is a bit much for a single feat and would likely work better split into two. --Ganteka Future (talk) 21:19, 3 April 2021 (UTC)