Shattered Kingdoms

It is a great skill but nobody has made a case for why it should buff enemy melee opponents instead of reducing accuracy. It makes total sense IC and in terms of game balance for taunt to reduce an opponent's accuracy and dodge. People seem obsessed over the peak intelligence issue to the point they are blind to a holistic solution to make taunt more tactically interesting and more robust against a variety of foes. I agree the mechanics on how it affects casters should be revised (the concentration route is better and cleaner), but taunt should also be more effective against melee opponents; it should not buff them the way it does now.

It is amazing to me that people say defensive skills like enhanced parry are so easily overcome by accuracy buffs yet they don't seem to be able to carry that through to the logical game balance conclusion that an accuracy-reducing taunt would curb this instead of having it so that taunt actually buffs enemies and exacerbates this imbalance.

Finesse hand crossbows?

Um...are you dumb?

It's because that's not the logical game balance conclusion - I'm sorry if that fact amazes you.

You have two situations: it becomes a skill that reduces accuracy more than the buffs can grant, and thus it's more than any one skill should be able to do (you would then be able to technically reduce someone's accuracy lower than 0) - and swashbucklers become the flavor of the week/top melee dog - or it doesn't reduce it more than the buffs can grant, and it's a moot point to even have it affect accuracy as it still is buffed above baseline and gimps your defensive skills. To the same extent, no - but even a point or two matters enough when your offense is as weak as a swashbuckler's in comparison to its opponent. Last I recall, your own accuracy has no affect on how much you parry. This isn't really a change that has a middle ground, and it plays a game swashbucklers won't ever win.

Horrible analysis. Bottom line: a debuff to enemy accuracy instead of a buff to enemy accuracy from taunt of any magnitude is a boon to swashbucklers. It doesn't have to be very good at all to be effective at improving game balance. The way it works now and all arguments that focus on a one-dimensional taunt to just be effective against casters are silly.

You can call something horrible and it doesn't make it untrue. I'm sorry that we don't agree, but we just don't.

It's a very simple fact that you cannot buff your defensive skills' effectiveness through enchants/buffs (except from the armor spell and a bard's song of protection), yet you can buff your accuracy astronomically farther than what those two boons provide. Thus, any accuracy above baseline - any at all - gimps your defensive skills. There's only two ways it goes: the accuracy is still above baseline, and you're wasting everyone's time by even trying to implement the change as your defensive skills are still at a disadvantage - or you can take it below baseline, and you've obliterated the "balance" (ha) of skills/buffs like specialize, fury, and enchant/consecrate weapon. As Finney put it with calling it the "arms race," swashbucklers won't ever win. They'll either always be at the short end of the stick or completely overpowered.

You're either wasting everyone's time or buffing the class beyond balance. There's no realm in which the time spent on the addendum of accuracy to taunt is a good one. Swashbucklers need more than passives + taunt to have a role to fill in the current SK balance scheme.

You are making no sense. Reducing an opponent's accuracy means you will take less damage per round on average than if you buffed his accuracy because you will get hit less frequently. None of what you say is relevant. That aside, does it make the least bit of sense to you that taunt should serve as a buff to enemy melee classes? Even if you disagree that an accuracy penalty from taunt would be an improvement to game balance, can you at least agree that having it buff opponents is not good?

Seriously?

An angry person usually hits harder than a none angry person. I agree that there should be an negative acc/dodge affect, but I also agree with jen that is won't make a huge impact. However.. that does not mean it can't be implemented as part of an overall change, rather than the ONLY change.

why not add enhanced dodge, with the changes to taunt? That seems to boost defense, add a debuff to accuracy, and give swashies a counter to massive weapons. As long as its coded right, shouldnt make them broken. Plus its a dex perk so giant swashies wont get broken by it