Combining combat momentum and combat follow through

What are everyone’s thoughts about the use of both when an enemy is felled. RAW states one must immediately move via combat momentum or immediately make an attack per combat followthrough. Not extremely clear as to if it’s one or the other or if both could be done

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Hi there,
they are absolutely meant to be chained together to allow a move action and a subsequent attack action, so don’t get hung up too much on the word “immediatly”.

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That’s so OP though.

I’ve actually been meaning to ask about these 2 feats and how they work when together because surely you can’t chain them infinitely?
So it’s the opposite of what op is asking lol.

I actually really love and really hate this feat at the same time.
Combined you can become unstoppable! All for the price of 3 feat points. You can get this at level 1!

I have homebrewed that combat momentum and follow through can only grant their free actions a maximum of 3 times per round because it’s just that powerful!

Any time combat begins and the melee fighter gets their turn, the combat was basically over.

In one round, in the span of 6 seconds, that fighter can move 300 feet and defeat 10 enemies. That’s insane.
And it happens every combat without fail!

The only way to balance these 2 well synergized feats is to increase enemy HP beyond what is recommended for that NPC’s level by at least 30+ to 50+ the normal maximum allowed limit (40-52) instead of (10-22) for a level 1 npc for example.
That or make every enemy so far away (half a mile at minimum) that the fighter will need longshot + extreme range to even do anything.

In other words, make the game needlessly hard for everyone but that one guy with the combat momentum and combat follow-through feats. Oof.

It isn’t. Those two feat are strong, yes, but they are also very situational. They only trigger on a specific condition that can’t trigger too often during a combat and could be counteracted quite easily, for example by spreading out the opponents or by contorting the battlefield a bit, so that it isn’t a flat battlemap.

If those two feat truly pose a problem in your games, than it is more of an indicator that you have strayed too far from the core rules, either in terms of your characters or that you have ignored too many of the encounter guidelines. You’ve said previously that you run games for 1 player and maybe you have distorted your game to such degree that it has become a problem to accommodate that character but I can assure you that if you stick to the Core Rules then those feats won’t be any problem at all, unless the GM decides to pack the battlefield with weak minions (which I sometimes to let characters shine who take these feats).

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You are correct. In theory Combat Momentum/Follow-through combo allow you to mow down mooks who are all close to each other, and the other use is to use them to quickly deal with bloodied bad guys.

The feat IS very situational. But past me always ensured all my combats back then fit the situation those 2 feats most excelled in. Couple that with unnatural luck and BAM.
I had no one to blame but me lol.
Combat always took place in small enclosed areas crowded with enemies.

Present me is better now.
I run combat in theatre of the mind now rather than grid mostly because of my experience (I use that homebrew grid system thing someone posted in the community). Grid really hinders the way you can view combat, both as player and GM. From my experience at least. We use a cheap hand-drawn one that’s 15’‘x15’’ in size. It practically welcomed close ranged combat. Most encounters usually took place in a 4x-8x in size. Essenially allowing one to easily move across the battlefield in just one move action.

I still enforce the nerf with the feats since I don’t like the idea that there’s a chance for stuff like that to happen, even if only rarely especially for normal people with normal luck.
It can essentially rival other crowd control feats, namely Multi-target Attack and Multi Attack in just 3 feat points.
I’m no statistics expert though so I’m not really sure if Momentum and Follow-through can really rival them. But I think they might…

My previous post is over-exaggarated for comedic effect but the part that I said about needing to make things harder for everyone but the guy with the 2 feats is true, albeit, pointless in a 1 player game where you really only have to accommodate your difficulty for 1 player already.
I have no experience though so I might be wrong!

I have no counter for that.
My homebrews in the past definitely were kinda broken. Maybe some of them DID play a role in making the 2 overpowered.

Although, I personally believe RAW OL favors physical builds over extraordinary builds in combat (i still believe it to be so), and some of my homebrew were actually sort of designed to even out the playing field for both.
Again, I think this had more to do with my inexperience and incompetency rather than homebrew shenanigans…

Ever since then though, I have gotten better. Ever since I enforced the nerf, it’s been a while since I last saw those feats ever with my player now wanting to try branching out of his usual 5 agility 4 fortitude 5 might builds (finally!)

If he ever takes them again though, who knows if I’ll still find them a problem or not!
Hope not!


As an aside, I’ll talk about how my usual combat scenarios were in the past.
They definitely favored combat momentum and follow-through in hindsight.

[The battlefield]

  • enclosed spaces
  • crowded with foes less than 30ft away from each other

[Player build]

  • Agility or Might is usually maxed out for their current level (5 for levels 1 and 2, 6 for level 3 and 4, so on and so on)
  • Feats: Battle Trance, and/or Attack Specialization (Combat Momentum and Follow-through are there too of course.)
  • Items: Deadly

[Allies]

  • can usually cast Bolster and/or Haste

In early levels of 1-4, the allies would usually first invoke Bolster or Haste or both.
If he was lucky he’d have a consumable Bolster PL6 or Haste PL6 to use.
After getting buffed, he activates Battle Trance and a single Focus Action is all it takes to start the massacre.
At higher levels of 5+, even with a crowd of enemies with high end HP and Defense are no match for the Bolstered, Hastened, Battle Trance/Destructive Trance induced buff boy with Deadly 2/3 Two Handed weapons.
If an attack doesn’t kill, Haste still lets him attack 1 or 2 more times, the disadvantage is negligible since probability wise, Advantage 8 and Advantage 5 had almost no significant difference anyway. allowing him to continue his free action rampage.

In the Jojo’s bizarre adventure campaign I ran a while back which had no homebrew since it was our first time playing again in years.
The player used a build which mained Movement and Agility.
Along with the usual, he got himself Boon Focus to Haste and an ally npc JoBro to Boon Focus on Bolster.

Raw, without homebrew, my man, the absolute madlad could already destroy my encounters with these combat “free action” feats even without homebrew.

Unless I’m wrong and Hasted actions cannot grant you the free actions given by the feats…