Thoughts on HAM? My Opinion is its best used on a variant human fighter picking it up at level one to counter the extras in boss fights and ambushes on the road or when your camping at night, to negate some of that damage from the goblins, skeletons, etc.
(HAM gives +1 strength and -3 damage from non-magical weapons that do bludge, pierce or slash.)
It's more useful the earlier on you get it so in your example yes it's pretty solid. It tends to not scale well at higher levels though. Depending on how long your campaign goes it could be pretty useful.
It's disproportionately effective early on, but shaving off 3 damage per hit is still a really good deal at higher levels. The +1 Strength also means you're at least getting half of an ASI if it doesn't turn out as useful as you thought.
It's super effective if you pick it up as a Variant Human in a tier 1 (level 1-5) campaign, but that can be said for a lot of feats in a tier 1 campaign. If your campaign is going to last beyond level 6-8, it becomes far less useful... to the point that it might have been better to pick something else. Non-magicalbludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage becomes a rarity on the types of creatures that are really capable of being a threat in the first place.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Non-magicalbludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage becomes a rarity on the types of creatures that are really capable of being a threat in the first place.
Magical weapon attacks are a rarity for monsters even at high levels. It's mainly golems and higher-ranking fiends/ celestials/undead you have to worry about. Even huge threats like ancient dragons and krakens have nonmagical weapon attacks.
It's always going to be solid, butater on it can be a bit lore situational. The BBEG might hit for 35 a punch, but his army of angry smurfs will not 😀. Just saying that it's an easy pick for lvl 1 vary humans, it's still very decent later on and +1 str gives it more longlasting worth.
I house rule that the damage reduction is equal to your proficiency bonus, so there is at least a modicum of scaling, as well as allowing the damage reduction to apply to magical attacks.
Hmm yeah i can see how that could help with scaling it for later in a campaign, I guess with the magical attack reduction I saw some one say that if you have magical armour that it would also have a reduction from magical attacks, but i like the proficiency scaling.
It is very viable in tier 1 (level 1-5), and probably one of the best feats at the earliest levels.
It starts getting less useful in tier 2 and 3, and is pretty much useless in tier 4. It isn't because of magical weapons (well in tier 4 it is), but more so because monsters do most of their damage with other damage types past CR6.
It starts getting less useful in tier 2 and 3, and is pretty much useless in tier 4. It isn't because of magical weapons (well in tier 4 it is), but more so because monsters do most of their damage with other damage types past CR6.
I don't think that's true at all. Looking at CR 10-15 (i.e. well above CR 6) in the monster manual, there's still plenty of monsters that deal non-magical bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage as part of their multi-attacks. Sure, there's some monsters with breath weapons like adult dragons and behirs but those have a 1/3 chance of recharging. Even things like mummy lords and vampires and yochlols deal some b/p/s damage in addition to whatever nasty thing their touch does to you. And yeah, there's some fiends in there with magic weapons, but they're still the minority and they're conveniently taken care of with Protection From Evil And Good. Some monsters like dao have innate spellcasting but they're often not damage-oriented.
Also, you can still have lower CR monsters mixed in with higher CR monsters.
Basically it's like many of the feats: absolutley stunningly effective in the right situations (which includes campaign and DM style) and useless in others. If your DM metagames each encounter to take away all usefulness or has designed a campaign that essentially does the same, you'll get more run from another feat. However, if the campaign or DM feature many creatures that use the correct damage types, shaving off 3 pts of damage is quite useful, particularly if you have something like Armor of Agathys and the hits are damage type appropriate and the damage is 3 or less.
Thus, I'd talk to your DM or get a feel for their style to find out whether it'll be useful or not.
Thoughts on HAM? My Opinion is its best used on a variant human fighter picking it up at level one to counter the extras in boss fights and ambushes on the road or when your camping at night, to negate some of that damage from the goblins, skeletons, etc.
(HAM gives +1 strength and -3 damage from non-magical weapons that do bludge, pierce or slash.)
Tank is the only class.
It's more useful the earlier on you get it so in your example yes it's pretty solid. It tends to not scale well at higher levels though. Depending on how long your campaign goes it could be pretty useful.
It's disproportionately effective early on, but shaving off 3 damage per hit is still a really good deal at higher levels. The +1 Strength also means you're at least getting half of an ASI if it doesn't turn out as useful as you thought.
It's super effective if you pick it up as a Variant Human in a tier 1 (level 1-5) campaign, but that can be said for a lot of feats in a tier 1 campaign. If your campaign is going to last beyond level 6-8, it becomes far less useful... to the point that it might have been better to pick something else. Non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage becomes a rarity on the types of creatures that are really capable of being a threat in the first place.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Magical weapon attacks are a rarity for monsters even at high levels. It's mainly golems and higher-ranking fiends/ celestials/undead you have to worry about. Even huge threats like ancient dragons and krakens have nonmagical weapon attacks.
It's always going to be solid, butater on it can be a bit lore situational. The BBEG might hit for 35 a punch, but his army of angry smurfs will not 😀. Just saying that it's an easy pick for lvl 1 vary humans, it's still very decent later on and +1 str gives it more longlasting worth.
I house rule that the damage reduction is equal to your proficiency bonus, so there is at least a modicum of scaling, as well as allowing the damage reduction to apply to magical attacks.
Hmm yeah i can see how that could help with scaling it for later in a campaign, I guess with the magical attack reduction I saw some one say that if you have magical armour that it would also have a reduction from magical attacks, but i like the proficiency scaling.
Tank is the only class.
It is very viable in tier 1 (level 1-5), and probably one of the best feats at the earliest levels.
It starts getting less useful in tier 2 and 3, and is pretty much useless in tier 4. It isn't because of magical weapons (well in tier 4 it is), but more so because monsters do most of their damage with other damage types past CR6.
I don't think that's true at all. Looking at CR 10-15 (i.e. well above CR 6) in the monster manual, there's still plenty of monsters that deal non-magical bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage as part of their multi-attacks. Sure, there's some monsters with breath weapons like adult dragons and behirs but those have a 1/3 chance of recharging. Even things like mummy lords and vampires and yochlols deal some b/p/s damage in addition to whatever nasty thing their touch does to you. And yeah, there's some fiends in there with magic weapons, but they're still the minority and they're conveniently taken care of with Protection From Evil And Good. Some monsters like dao have innate spellcasting but they're often not damage-oriented.
Also, you can still have lower CR monsters mixed in with higher CR monsters.
Basically it's like many of the feats: absolutley stunningly effective in the right situations (which includes campaign and DM style) and useless in others. If your DM metagames each encounter to take away all usefulness or has designed a campaign that essentially does the same, you'll get more run from another feat. However, if the campaign or DM feature many creatures that use the correct damage types, shaving off 3 pts of damage is quite useful, particularly if you have something like Armor of Agathys and the hits are damage type appropriate and the damage is 3 or less.
Thus, I'd talk to your DM or get a feel for their style to find out whether it'll be useful or not.
3 less damage means a 1 or 2 smaller target number for concentration. That's useful.