Expert Tactician

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Thoth_Amon
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Expert Tactician

Post by Thoth_Amon »

How many times can you use this feat's ability in one round?

Once or more than once?

Seperate Questions. It does *not* use your AoO for the round when it is triggered correct? (Despite having Combat Reflexes as a prerequisite.)

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Username17 »

Once. Before or after your regular action.

Note that you can use it after your action one round and then before your action the next in order to stab someone twice in between your moves - but it would still be separated by an action by everyone else.

It does not use your attack of opportunity.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Thoth_Amon »

That is what I thought, but I wanted a impartial opinion.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by User3 »

Song and Silence FAQ wrote:Suppose I'm a rogue with the Expert Tactician feat from Sword and Fist and the Quicker Than the Eye feat from Song and Silence. If I'm in melee with an opponent and use a move-equivalent action to Bluff my foe and get him to look away, can I do the extra attack from the Expert Tactician feat? If I do that, can I then use my remaining partial action to run away? What happens if I use my partial action to use Bluff again? Can I then make a second free attack?

An opponent who fails to detect your Bluff when you use Quicker Than the Eye does not see the partial action you take after the Bluff, so your opponent is denied his Dexterity bonus against your melee attacks. If you also have the Expert Tactician feat, you can make an immediate free attack against a foe who failed his Spot check against your Bluff. Once you do so, that opponent is observing you again, and that opponent will observe you if you try to run away after the free attack. Because the attack you make by virtue of your Expert Tactician feat is a free action, you could attempt to use Quicker Than the Eye again, but your opponent should get a bonus on the Spot check. The second Bluff check also is a move-equivalent action, so you would be done acting for the round. If the second Bluff check succeeded, however, your opponent would once again not see you, and you could make another free attack by virtue of your Expert Tactician feat.


If you really wanted to use the feat more than once in a round (and in the middle of your turn instead of before or after it), here is a ruling to support it. His crap rulings are official, right?
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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Thoth_Amon »

Great.

This does seem to fly in the face of the feat description which clearly states before or after your regular action.


ET Feat (Partial quote) wrote:You can make one extra melee attack (or anything that can be done as a melee attack or melee touch attack, including attempts to disarm, trip, or make a grab to start a grapple) against one foe who is within melee reach and denied a Dexterity bonus against your melee attacks for any reason. You take your extra attack when it's your turn, either before or after your regular action. If several foes are within melee reach and denied Dexterity bonuses against your attacks, you can use this feat against only one of them.


I cannot reconcile this with the FAQ answer and they were both 3.0 rulings. WTF!?

Grrr. I would not mind the second attack too much if it were not clearly prohibited. I hate inconcistency.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by fbmf »

Thoth Amon wrote:
I hate inconcistency.


Welcome to the game! :wink:

Game On,
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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Thoth_Amon »

It was not unexpected fbmf, but some examples are more eggregious than others. This one seems like it would have been easy to catch.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by fbmf »

I'm right there with you, my Slytherin brother.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Username17 »

The FAQ answer is on crack, and has nothing to do with anything. What they were trying to get at is that Quicker than the Eye does not actually give you extra actions to play with and that thus you can't QttE + Expert Tactician in order to expand your actions into an all encompassing fury (which some people have announced that you could - which I've never understood, because with even a cursory reading of the feats you realize this is impossible, and without reading the feats you couldn't have thought there was a combo - so I'm not sure where it comes from originally).

However, while telling people that infinite action combos don't work is a good thing, the author of that question/answer segment also failed to actually read either feat and simply did it by memory - which is bad. It also rants about people getting a bonus if you use QttE twice in a round which is inane - not only do the rules say nothing of the sort, but it's almost impossible to get enough actions to actually use QttE twice in a round - at which point you would be moving so fast that from a flavor standpoint you should probably be getting a bonus on your "quicker than the eye" tests.

QttE and ET can be combined, but not how it is worded in the FAQ. You do it like this:

1> Use Partial Action to attack.
2> Use Move Action to Bluff.
3> Opponent denied Dex Bonus, take Attack Action as a bonus action.

For those keeping score at home, that's 2 attacks at your highest Base Attack Bonus, one of which is a Sneak attack and one of which is a normal attack.

The FAQ answer is interesting because it is wrong on the following levels:

1> You can perform other actions between declaring your use of QttE and taking your attack action (such as quick dawing a dagger).
2> Expert Tactician can only be triggered after your regular actions or before your regular actions - never in the middle.
3> Expert Tactician grants an attack as a bonus action, not as a free action.
4> Expert Tactician cannot be used more than once per round, whether they are denied their dex bonus or not.

Ugh. Total garbage. There's no reason for someone to write an FAQ answer that horribly wrong. It's two extremely simple feats, and there are four glaring mistakes in a description of how to use them together. Someone should be fired for that shit.

Seriously.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Thoth_Amon »

What the hell is "regular action" anyway? It is not even plural in the description. I assumed it meant standard action. Notwithstanding that the move action can be before or after the standard.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Josh_Kablack »

I take bigger issue with the fact that there is even less reason to not correct a FAQ answer like that for a period of years.

I mean, Skip is only human and is bound to make a few mistakes now and then. And the same would hold for any potential replacement.

That such mistakes remain uncorrected for years and make it into canon ( :flames: Mike Nystul + Clay Golem :flames: ) irks me on a fundamental level.

Print a wombatting correction alright already...c'mon the New York Times will do it..why can't Sage Advice.
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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Thoth_Amon »

They did. 3.5. I think it is interesting that these feats did not make The Complete Warrior when so many feats from the splay books did. Undoubtedly saving them for Complete <insert stupid name for thieving here>.

Did I mention Complete Divine is a horrible name?

I agee Josh.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Username17 »

Quicker than the Eye made it into Core.

It's called "Improved Feint" now and Andy Nerfed Feint so hard that it's not worth anything, but there it is.

Expert Tactician will probably make it into "The Compete Expert". If Andy's past work is any indication, it will have its wording changed again - which since its most recent wording already gets the point across quite well can only mean disaster.

What the hell is "regular action" anyway?


It's standard 3rd edition nomenclature. Your "regular action" is either a Full Round Action or a Move Equivalent Action and a Partial Action. It happens during your initiative count. Certain bonus actions, such as the bonus attack action from ET, or the bonus Partial Action from Haste, can only happen just before or just after your regular action.

This is primarily done to make these actions take place on your initiative count, but it also somewhat limits what you can do with them. For example, you can't take a move action, use your ET attack, then take another move action. But you can take a move action, take your regular partial action, and then take your Haste action to move again.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Maj »

For reference, Thoth Amon, we all griped about this ruling on Nifty, long, long ago. You can read all the juicy comments here.

I'm not exactly quite sure why Combat Reflexes is a prereq for Expert Tactician, but it has nothing to do with AoO.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Thoth_Amon »

Thanks Maj.

I note Josh took issue with the statement that QttE is equivalent to Improved Feint.

Josh Kablack wrote:Minor technicality, Using QttE is not the same thing as "Feinting in Combat", as one is opposed by Spot and the other is Opposed by Sense Motive.


Other than that is is pretty much as I thought initially. That ruling is absurd and disregarded.

ET still is a major feat (in my mind) limited to only once per round. Having it be usable twice is abusive.

W/ regard to the prerequisites I see similarities between Combat Relfexes and Expert Tactician, but I would probalby have made it Lighting Reflexes instead if I were writing the feat myself.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Maj »

I have to admit that I use QttE to do things like cast spells or drink potions without taking an attack of opportunity. It doesn't explicitly say this works, but I assume that looking away means that they're not watching what you're doing and thus can't respond if you do something.

Does anyone know if there's a clarification on this?
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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Username17 »

People who have no dex mod against you usually do not threaten you.

If you for any reason could not attack someone, you don't threaten. If you are paralyzed, no threatening. If you are flat footed, no threatening.

QttE is very poorly worded, but seemingly the opponent is temporarily unaware of you, in which case they could not attack you, and thus don't threaten you.

Of course, "looking away" isn't soemthing which people can do in D&D, because there is no facing. So it's not like the condition it gives people actually exists. However, a reasonable interpretation is that they don't threaten you.

For big fun, QttE + Partial Charges. You can get overrun attacks which don't provoke attacks of opportunity and everyone is denied Dex Bonus. I mean, how awesome is that?

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Maj »

Add Lion's Charge to that and you're really skippy.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1077163180[/unixtime]]If you for any reason could not attack someone, you don't threaten. If you are paralyzed, no threatening. If you are flat footed, no threatening.


So, what you're saying is that If I have initative on someone and enough movement, I could rush up to someone, run a complete 360-degree circle through the five-foot squares around them, and continue on another ten feet to the person I *actually* wanna do stuff against and he can't do a thing?

That's interesting. Messed up too.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Username17 »

So, what you're saying is that If I have initative on someone and enough movement, I could rush up to someone, run a complete 360-degree circle through the five-foot squares around them, and continue on another ten feet to the person I *actually* wanna do stuff against and he can't do a thing?


Sure.

Combat hasn't started for that person, so they are like the guy in the Warner Bros. Cartoon who is just standing there and suddenly guys leap over the fence and start painting him while he just stands there with his mouth open. That's what being flat footed means, and that's why there is a feat (combat reflexes), which allows you to make attacks of opportunity any way.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by User3 »

Maj wrote:Add Lion's Charge to that and you're really skippy.


Can't. It's a 3.5 spell (minis book right?) and in 3.5 you can only partial charge when you're slowed or otherwise only allowed 1 action/round. Maybe if you had <Item> of Slow that you could turn on/off as a free action...
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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Username17 »

It's a 3.5 spell (minis book right?)


It's in SS as well. It's 3rd edition legal, by and large.

And the 3.5 prohbition on partial charging for people who aren't Zombies leads to some interesting problems. Most people I know who play 3.5 rules scrap that rule like they scrap the prohibition on overrunning during a charge.

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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1077209993[/unixtime]]
It's a 3.5 spell (minis book right?)

And the 3.5 prohbition on partial charging for people who aren't Zombies leads to some interesting problems. Most people I know who play 3.5 rules scrap that rule like they scrap the prohibition on overrunning during a charge.

-Username17


The Zombie-only partial charge does keep people from avoiding the "straight line" charge rule by readying an action to charge after they move, moving, and then doing a partial charge. Other than that, though, I can't think of a good reason partial charges aren't allowed.
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Re: Expert Tactician

Post by Maj »

Oops. yeah - it's a 3.0 thing, and I'm not sure if the spell was in MotW or Savage Species (or both). I don't play with many rule changes in 3.5, though. Too much of a power-down, which tends to make broken things more brokety-broke.

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