Fighting Styles in Dungeons & Dragons: Part 2
Fighting Styles Part II TWO HANDED WEAPONS THW for short.
For the second installment of my fighting styles article I’m going to look at Two Handed Weapons. The key to the THW style is doing as much damage per strike as possible. The bread and butter to this style being the Power Attack feat and big weapons.
CHARACTERISTICS:
#1 Primary characteristic for this style is strength. Every bonus point you get from strength is one more point of attack power and two more points of damage when you’re using Power Attack. Pump your strength up as much a possible. No other stats really matter. Except maybe CON. You’re very well suited for beating up on large monsters. Large monsters hit hard so having more HP’s is always great.
SKILLS:
Bluff: Bluff is good to get your humanoid foes off balance. Because you will be dropping your to hit bonus to get more damage you want to lower their defense by using the feint maneuver when you can.
Jump: Jump skill will allow you to use some of the more specialized feats like Leap Attack to get even more damage out of your attacks. This skill doesn’t need to be incredibly high. Just high enough to offset whatever armor you happen to be wearing and let you do a running long jump of at least 10 feet reliably. The feat itself requires 8 ranks.
Sense Motive:Counters Bluff
Tumble: Counters Tumble
FEATS:
Power Attack:Power Attack is the key to this entire fighting style. Without it you may as well do something else. With power attack you may lower your chance to hit by 1 point per base attack point you have. For every point you lower your chance to hit by you get an extra point of damage. The key though is that if you’re wielding a two handed weapon you do 2 points of damage for every point you lower your chance to hit by. Your strength damage is also doubled.
So let’s say you are a 4th level warrior (+4 base attack) with a 14 strength (+2 str) attack/damage bonus. You’re wielding a Great Axe (1d12dmg) Without Power Attack your normal damage and to hit with this weapon is +6Attack 1d12+3*.
With Power attack you may take up to a -4 penalty (= to your base attack) to add up to +8 damage. So you are now doing +2 Attack 1d12+12. The trick to using power attack is figuring out how much of a penalty to hit you can afford to take. That’s where our next couple of feats fall in.
Weapon Focus/Greater Weapon Focus: Weapon Focus adds a +1 attack bonus to your chosen weapon. This gives you one more attack point to offset whatever you take off for Power Attack. Greater Weapon Focus Adds another +1 to attack. Focus is also the Prerequisite for Weapon Specialization.
Weapon Specialization/Greater Weapon Spec: I’m not really a huge fan of Weapon Specialization in most cases. This style is one of the few where I can agree to go for it. Weapon Spec gives you a +2 bonus to damage with your chosen weapon. Greater Weapon Spec gives you an additional +2.
Cleave:/Great Cleave:
If you hit your target with enough force that it drops, (Usually due to being dropped below 0 hit points or being dead) you get a free attack against another target in your melee range. Great Feat. Because of the amount of damage you can do you’re more likely than everyone else to get that final hit on your target. You can only use this feat once per round. Great cleave works just like Cleave except there is no limit to the number of times you may use it per round. If a whole bunch of peons are dumb enough to surround you HAVE AT THEM!
Improved Critical: If you’re going to be based around hitting hard you may as well up your chances to hit REALLY HARD!! Use this feat and concentrate on using the Great Axe or Great Sword which already have better than normal chances to crit.
Improved Bull Rush/Improved Overrun/Improved Sunder: These feats are not necessarily part of the HIT EM HARD style but it does take advantage of your already high strength. Both feats also require you to already have Power Attack. They also give you other options to use on the charge attacks which are about to become your staple.
Power Critical:You get a +4 bonus to your roll to confirm a critical hit. HIT EM HARD!!
Leap Attack:
If you make a jump of at least 10 feet as part of a charge attack and land in a square that threatens your target you may double the bonus damage from power attack. So instead of getting 2 points for every one point you take off your base attack you’re getting 3 points for every 1.
Combat Brute:
Combat Brute has three decent uses. All of which take advantage of your strength and ability to use the Bull Rush ability.
Advancing Blows: After successfully bull rushing your opponent you receive a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls for each square you bull rushed him through.
You receive an immediate attack against an opponent who’s weapon you just destroyed with a Sunder Attempt.
Momentum Swing: You must perform a successful charge and then a power attack maneuver of at least -5 for this benefit. Your power attack bonus is x3 instead of the normal x2.
Shock Trooper:
Directed Bull Rush: For every square you push a foe back using bull rush you may also push them one square to the left or right.
Domino Rush: To use this feat you must make a successful bull rush that forces your opponent into the same square as another opponent. If you do you may make an immediate free trip attempt against both foes, and neither foe gets a trip attempt against you. (TO add extra punch to this feat picks up Combat Expertise and Improved Trip & Combat Reflexes. So that as well as knocking down both foes you get another free melee attack against BOTH. If you go after them in the round you’ll also gain extra mellee attacks against both when they either try to crawl away from you or try to get up. That’s 6 full power attacks against these two foes using what is effectively a single full round action.)
… hmm the third option is silly. Ignore it.
The last feat in the style requires specific weapons to use.
Three Mountains Style:
If you strike the same creature twice in the same round with either a Heavy Mace, Morning Star, or Great Club your opponent must make a FORT save vs (10+ Half your char lvl + your strength bonus.) or be nauseated by the pain for 1 round.
WEAPONS:
I also have a few suggestions on which weapons to use. Because of your high damage I recommend maximizing your ability to get in the big hit. That means going for big weapons with larger than normal crit chances.
Choice #1. Falchion. 2d4 (18-20 crit2) The Falchion is essentially a big scimitar. It has the best crit range for the big weapons. Although you may feel it’s doing less damage since it’s a max of 8 instead of 10-12 on the other big weapons, it’ll probably avg higher damage since it’s minimum damage is 2 instead of 1 like the other weapons. On a crit it’s minimum damage is 4. When you include the Improved Crit feat and ***** magic ability to increase it’s crit range again this weapon crits on a 14-20! At lvl 20 with all the feats above and a 22 strength with a plus 5 weapon we’re looking at a strike that does, 4d4+45 that hit’s on a +15.
Choice #2: Heavy Flail. 1d8 weapon, crits on a 19×2. Gets a +2 to disarm and can make trip attempts without a penalty.
Choice #3 Great Sword: Like the Falchion except it crits on a 19 but does 2d6 damage.
Choice #4 Most of the pole arm weapons. They have reach plus most have at least one extra ability, like disarm or trip bonuses.
Choice #5 Halberd. This weapon is the Swiss army knife of D&D weapons. It’s a big two handed weapon with reach so you can power attack and cleave to your hearts content. Plus it has a spiked tip so you can set it vs charge like a spear. On top of that it has a hook on the back end you can use to make trip attempts without taking a penalty or suffering attacks of oportunity. Great weapon. On top of all this it does 1d10 damage has a x3 crit bonus and does piercing or bludgeoning damage.
Secondary Weapons:
Unless you’re a monk, then no matter what style you use you want to carry a backup light weapon of some kind. Short sword or Hand Axe are good light backup weapons with some punch to them. Doing 1d6. A couple daggers or a Throwing Axe or two also work well in a pinch plus can be thrown.
For real ranged backup carry a composite great shortbow. It’s light and easy to carry. Plus you can add your impressive strength damage to it’s damage. Get one to match whatever strength bonus you have. A small quiver of 20 arrows is also easy to carry.
HOW TO COMBAT TWO HANDED WEAPON STYLE
There are a few decent ways to combat this style.
#1 Many players who specialize in this style are built to destroy monsters. Thus they’re usually wearing heavy Armor and have a movement restriction. If so then the Hit and Move style above is it’s arch enemy. Move in to hamstring them. Dropping their movement down to 10Feet a round. Then just kill them at your leisure.
#2 Elusive Target: The illusive target feat completely negates the extra damage from Power Attack. You can get in a good 2-3 rounds before the THW fighter will usually guess that he’s having some kind of problem hitting you.
#3 Sunder/Disarm. Put it plainly this is a weapon based style so if you can sunder or disarm him he doesn’t have much left. Both maneuvers though are difficult against a Large weapon wielder. They usually have a higher than avg strength score plus their large weapons give them bonuses to both disarm and sunder.
#4 Trip/Grapple: This is probably the most effective way to deal with them. Either trip or grapple them. Tripping will be easier to do, but won’t completely negate their attacks really. It’ll just knock them down and make them waste time getting back up. Grappling is more effective but harder to pull off. Once again their high strength score helps here. If they have the close combat fighter feat they will always get an attack of opportunity against you when you attempt to grapple, and all of that heavy damage they do goes right into their roll to resist. If you can grapple them though they are going to be pretty much helpless for a couple of rounds as they fumble to try and get a secondary light weapon.
#5 Range. Once again because this style “usually” wears heavy armor you can pepper them from range. Not very sporting but it’ll get the job done.
#6 Concealment: There are many minor magic’s that give small to med concealment bonuses. This will provide you anywhere from a 5%-50% miss chance when struck. If that super hard blow that just landed ends up missing due to concealment then woohoo for you.
Last word of warning. If you do not have many hit points DO NOT let this fighter get close to you. He can drop most opponents in 1-3 hits.
Well there we have it. My simple guide to Two Handed Weapons Style. Now go out there and Cleave Somebody!!!
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