Talk:Fencing (3.5e Feat)

Ratings

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

It's an alright feat, but nothing special. The damage boost is likely to put you in line with a str based 2hander (before they get any other feats) and the opposed maneuver bonus is fine. The much discussed shield bonus allows you to still wield a buckler or a dancing shield and gain an enhancement bonus to your AC and whatever other properties the shield has, and it's probably the best thing about the feat. It's a solid bonus, but not a great one because of how poorly AC keeps up in general.

	Eiji-kun likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	A solid feat. Dex to damage, some fluff bonus, and a pretty good shield for the penalty of one-handing it.

	Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	Feat is badly done overall. It's clearly written to be another fighting style alongside TWF and two-handed weapons. And it fails to be that, except with a specific build that it does not appear to have been written for. So either it fails to hit its goal, or it's badly designed such that it does not hit its goal the way that it wanted to.

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

I do like it generally. It's interesting to see an attempt at Moderate material which has its strongest abilities in control and defense rather than damage, but I'm not convinced that this is isn't Low power. If someone can prove me wrong there, I'll bump this up to a Like. So it has been reasonably well demonstrated that, if used as intended, it's Low, and if used in a highly specific build that is contrary to its intent, it's High. Which makes it pretty badly designed. But that doesn't remove its merit in casual games that lack powerplayers. It is just interesting and useful enough to warrant a "meh" rating.

	Havvy likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	Another way of doing two-handed weapons without two-handed weapons.

	Undead_Knave is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.
	This seems like it could be done better. I don't mind it, but it doesn't seem particularly interesting in any way I'm seeing.

Why this is probably Moderate

Requiring "an empty offhand" does not preclude using a buckler. While you wouldn't get the +1 to AC from it, you would get any enhancement bonuses and magical effects from it in addition to your +1/4 BAB shield bonus to AC. So it's a cheapy AC boost with some additional 'meh' tossed on. It's probably as good as Weapon Focus, which is a reference Moderate feat. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:53, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I disagree--getting a scaling AC bonus that high usually doesn't show up in moderate games. I'd peg it at high. --Ghostwheel 06:11, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

You have to look at the opportunity cost, to borrow an economic term. Moderate presumes combat capabilities akin to a Power Attack build. This prevents any of the conventional ways to achieve that, and the offensive abilities do not come near making up for it. Yeah, you're a little better off defensively than most Moderate builds, but the cost is too high. And besides that, its defensive bonus is completely subsumed by the most basic equipment at every level. --DanielDraco 06:14, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Two things - first, there are ways to get decent power attack even using a one-hander. Second, imagine this on a twfer with 2 levels of swordsage; they not only get their wis to AC, but a high shift on the RNG at later levels on top of everything else due to this feat. Use the unarmed swordsage variant and you can use that with a short sword in your off-hand, and this replaces Shadow Blade (a very decent feat that most swordsages take), or even on top of it. Heck, a level of swordsage will not only get you that, but also the weapon focus for this feat making it a basically must-take feat for swordsages whenever it's allowed. --Ghostwheel 06:31, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Minor nitpick. I believe Shadow Blade specifies not stacking with other sources of Dex to damage. No comment on the rest, not really following this convo. That is all. -- Eiji-kun 07:02, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't :-( --Ghostwheel 07:04, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

@DD - The cost of not being able to get into a PA build is only an opportunity cost if you had feats to burn on it and were priortizing strength. This doesn't do that, and is aimed at characters who wouldn't be into that in the first place, so it's a stretch to say that this costs them better things.

@Ghost - Optimization potential with other homebrew is not a very good gauge of a feat's balance. We have reference feats for that, and this isn't close to any of them. On the second point, "Off hand empty" also precludes TWF unless you're making Buckler shield bashes, which requires other investment to be worth a damn. And even if you do get to make it work with an Unarmed Swordsage, which is unclear since you said "off hand shortsword", it's a smaller than expected boost (moderate BAB class) with 1 class under 1 variant that boosts a defense that is often decried as not keeping up with offense in the first place at H... and hardly a sufficient justification for a ranking on its own. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 07:21, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

We do have another feat that gives a static bonus to attack/defense - Weapon Focus, which is classified as M. This is far better than it, giving a scaling bonus to defense, and the ability to replicate a feat from the books (Shadow Blade, but without the prereqs or having to use a shadow blade weapon) that pushes it higher than Moderate. Perhaps lower on the range of high than many other feats and abilities, but high nonetheless.

EDIT: If it helps at all, you can't bash with a buckler, needs to be a light or heavy shield. --Ghostwheel 08:33, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I believe what GW meant was to use the shortsword in the main hand and use an unarmed strike as the offhand attack. --DanielDraco 08:55, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Better than weapon focus? Yes. Better than power attack? Probably not. It's a lot closer to other M feats than it is to any H feats on the list IMO. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 03:00, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Ugh... what? Remember that power attack gives a major penalty to attack for any sort of real damage, especially at higher levels when dealing with iterative attacks. --Ghostwheel 03:25, 7 August 2012 (UTC)