Changes to Dragoon

[Shirokiba]

Okay, so I noticed all the Dragoon Changes, and I have to question why we even still have Sweeping Fend, Mighty Charge pretty much invalidates that ever getting used. Why take a -4 when you'll be charging all over the place for a free chance at Sunder, Disarm, Bull Rush, or Trip.

Also, why send Leaping Charge all the way to 20th level, with the damage nerf Dragoon just got, I think that ability would better replace Sweeping Fend, double damage will pretty much be needed to keep a fighter from invalidating a Dragoon in combat. A Fighter of lv 12, mounted, can deal double damage with an Advanced Fighter Talent, in addition to the plethora of damage bonuses they get. A Greatsword does 2d6 damage, plus their likely high strength, weapon spec, and the damage bonuses from fighter.

Dragoon was already worse off than fighter, but the gap just got so much wider.

[Viladin]

Okay, so I noticed all the Dragoon Changes, and I have to question why we even still have Sweeping Fend, Mighty Charge pretty much invalidates that ever getting used. Why take a -4 when you'll be charging all over the place for a free chance at Sunder, Disarm, Bull Rush, or Trip.

Also, why send Leaping Charge all the way to 20th level, with the damage nerf Dragoon just got, I think that ability would better replace Sweeping Fend, double damage will pretty much be needed to keep a fighter from invalidating a Dragoon in combat. A Fighter of lv 12, mounted, can deal double damage with an Advanced Fighter Talent, in addition to the plethora of damage bonuses they get. A Greatsword does 2d6 damage, plus their likely high strength, weapon spec, and the damage bonuses from fighter.

Dragoon was already worse off than fighter, but the gap just got so much wider.

I pretty much knew this was coming, Shiro. :p

You are right about one thing. I had forgotten about Sweeping Fend. I will have to replace it with another ability.

Leaping Charge moved to 20th level was a much needed change. A playtester dragoon at 11th level was doing over 70-80 damage a hit, non-crit.

Comparing Dragoon to Fighter is like apples to oranges. And the mounted combat is so much situational. Dragoons get plenty of damage bonuses as well. Now that they can qualify for a variety of fighter feats, it should even out. And again, its just your preference on how you want a melee DPS class to play out. A rough and tough fighter or a jumping psycho dragoon.

[Shirokiba]

Maybe with the old Lancer damage, yeah, but I don't see 70-80 damage happening now. Assuming a weapon that does at least 2d4 damage, power attack, and a 24 str (possible if you get a str boost materia) you'd deal 2d4+20 assuming you roll 2 on both dice, for 4 damage that is 24, doubled to 48 +4d6, average is 12 extra damage, 60. I don't see the 70-80 damage, am I missing something? Unless they were using Materia to add more damage, but that's not the Dragoon class alone doing that, it's stacking on damage Materia, so I doubt that was a factor in this, as other classes can deal insane damage with Materia bonus damage. I mean, it's your game, I just kinda felt putting that to lv 20 was a bit much, level 11 may be too early for dealing double damage, but level 20 is a little too late, too. Mounted Combat has the same limitations as charging, room to move. If we're in a wide open space, people mounted, charging, will do the same damage, if we're in a clustered area with little room to do fancy maneuvering, it'd be hard to find room to charge. Not everyone is out to be super optimized psycho dragoon of doom. After you clarifying how charge interacted with jump, I understood why you reduced the lancer damage down, it makes sense, that would be too much, so I get that one, Leaping Charge just throws me off at being so late.

the above damage accounts for weapon spec + power attack I'd need a 19-20 to crit, if using Mighty Charge, but this assumes Mighty charge is not an 11th lv ability, and Leaping Charge is, so I'd need a nat 20 to crit.

Besides, there is one feat that kinda breaks all of Dragoon, Vital Strike and it's whole feat chain, by the last one, you deal weapon damage x4, so a 2d4 weapon becomes 8d4, cannot be used on charge attacks, though. That's something that can really make things imbalanced. You are making a homebrew system, so there are feats from the core system that can cause serious issues. This is why Frankto reworked some of the core D20 Modern feats to have different effects. What all feats was this Dragoon playtester using? Was it anything like what I did when playtesting monk, where I dealt 45 damage twice on a charge attack?

[Viladin]

We will have to agree to disagree about dragoon damage potential. I personally think Dragoons can deal as much as a fighter can and bring a different flavor to the board.

Leaping Charge itself is an edit of another ability I saw, which was a lvl 20 ability from Pathfinder. Double damage and stun every time the dragoon jumps is pretty powerful stuff.

I do believe the dragoon player did use Vital Strike until we found out he could not use it with Jump though.