Talk:Bone-Crush (3.5e Feat)

Ratings

Aarnott is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.

Flavor: I'm not a huge fan of heal = know where to hurt people. Usually, I like to think the ability itself is knowing how to hurt people. Mechanics: Con penalty will affect ability checks, skill checks and fort saves, I think. Can't remember if there is anything else. So fort saves is the only really significant one. Either way, this feat is crazy. There are so many SoD effects related to fort saves that being able to give your opponent a -2 to -5 with one attack (and I have 4 more to follow up with) is really over the top. It just breaks the RNG. Maybe not enough to be totally broken (because it does require a tag-team with a caster), but certainly on the strong side.

	Eiji-kun likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	This seems like a valid alterative to trading out attack bonuses. Instead of extra damage or extra AC, you can debuff for your ally to cast a spell or apply poison. As a penalty, it doesn't actually take extra hp away from the Con loss so much as lower your max hp, which in some context may not even matter. Approve.

	Ghostwheel dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.
	While it's not as bad as ability damage, I still don't like effects that require you to often change up many of your stats.

Author's Note

I've changed the balance to moderate after reading through all of the feats on this site. It just doesn't seem to deserve a High balance rating. I wholeheartedly welcome disagreement. --Maninorange (talk) 06:12, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Strongly disagree, it rests right along the edge of H and VH IMO, which I usually default to VH for a variety of reasons.

How many Moderate characters can do 10 Con damage in a single round at level 20 with just a single attack? There's lots of ways to get melee attacks into touch attacks, especially if it's just for a single attack. Makes it too good to be Moderate. --Ghostwheel (talk) 09:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

This feat lets you (basically) trade 8 points of PA damage for 1 point of damage per target's hit die, a stacking -1 on Fort saves and some random ability DCs, and a second damage track that might kill them eventually. Except that you only do it to a target one time, because multiple strikes don't stack. At the level you can get it that's a great trade for a hit, and it just gets better as HD inflation happens.

It's a decent attack action and a lot better than the moderate PA, but I don't think it's VH. Ability damage on its own, even 10 on a hit that you won't miss with because Shock Trooper, isn't VH. It's broadly applicable, but it's not 1-rounding multiple enemies and might not even 1-round a single enemy outside of ubercharging that was already doing that and is a M build. And when you remove the ability damage stacking it's not even that good anymore. This doesn't seem like a poor fit for H as is (which is where it's still listed), but I could see M if it were available a bit later or had a '3 points of attack penalty to 1 point of Con damage' conversion mechanic instead of the current '4 PA damage to 1 Con damage' (to limit 2H Con bumps). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 15:29, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I wish I'd thought of putting this in terms of penalty sooner, even if I don't change it to a 3:1 rate, simply because I like keeping one-handedness somewhat relevant. I'll work on that later. Thank you for writing that remarkably helpful sentence. --Maninorange (talk) 09:40, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

UPDATE: I've kept it at a 2:1 rate for the attack roll penalty, the result being to only grant more utility with one-handed weapons. My hope is that the secondary option for removing the penalty will help maintain the balance. --Maninorange (talk) 21:50, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Nonstacking Ability Damage

Did you want an ability penalty instead? Which seems fitting to me, and makes it a bit weaker (because penalties naturally don't stack). -- Eiji-kun (talk) 09:43, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't see either satisfying Ghost, but the penalty is likely to recover more quickly (since you have to write that part yourself) and may be worth a lower balance. Which matters if you wanted to go with that sort of thing. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 16:39, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Something that's similar is to give penalties to specific things. Give a stacking penalty to attack rolls, or saves, or skills, or something. They can even be "All Con-based skills and fortitude and deals an extra X damage for every 2 levels..." whatever. The point is that these stop really weird cases where half the character sheet of the attacked creatures needs to be rewritten. And just like Tark said, the other part is that without someone who can cast Lesser Restoration on yo' ass, the adventure is simply halted for a few days. These are some of the reasons I believe ability damage to be bad for the game. After all, if the players have access to it, the DM should have access to it, is my philosophy. --Ghostwheel (talk) 16:51, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I've changed the nonstacking damage into a nonstacking penalty which follows similar rules for damage. I've also added an option for heal checks to remove the penalty, to fix the proposed issue with a party without Lesser Restoration. --Maninorange (talk) 21:49, 4 August 2013 (UTC)