PDA

View Full Version : Making a Tier 2 Martial Class?



gallagher
2010-04-10, 11:36 PM
would giving a psychic warrior or a swordsage full BAB, would they qualify as a tier 2 class? i notice that for fighting classes, that having 3/4ths BAB makes them stick out strangely.

with their powers and stances, they already are capable of holding their own in battle. was giving them a 3/4ths BAB a way of justifying giving them more power than other martial classes?

GoodbyeSoberDay
2010-04-10, 11:39 PM
They'd be on the more powerful end of Tier 3 for sure, but they still wouldn't have the high level spells/powers/etc. that the Tier 2 classes have.

gallagher
2010-04-10, 11:42 PM
They'd be on the more powerful end of Tier 3 for sure, but they still wouldn't have the high level spells/powers/etc. that the Tier 2 classes have.
well i can certainly deal with powerful tier 3, as i find that they are mroe fun to play than the super-optimized wizard or CoDzilla

Tinydwarfman
2010-04-10, 11:42 PM
would giving a psychic warrior or a swordsage full BAB, would they qualify as a tier 2 class? i notice that for fighting classes, that having 3/4ths BAB makes them stick out strangely.

with their powers and stances, they already are capable of holding their own in battle. was giving them a 3/4ths BAB a way of justifying giving them more power than other martial classes?

They would not qualify as tier 2, they would just be high tier 3, probably top of the heap. Tier 2 is the realm of sorcerers, and they would definitely not be that powerful. And yes, giving them 3/4 BAB was the drawback for having such good maneuver/power progression. (among others)

Lycanthromancer
2010-04-10, 11:48 PM
In order to make swordsages and psychic warriors tier 2, you'd have to make an arcane swordsage with a very limited spell list (more limited than even a sorcerer, since they can constantly spam their spells); psywars you'd have to give access to pretty much the entire general psion powers list, grant them a few more pp per level, and give them just a few more powers known. But just a few.

Full casters are just that powerful.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2010-04-10, 11:49 PM
Arcane Swordsage is Tier 2, possibly even Tier 1 if they can Heroics up a Martial Study for any spell in the game.

Milskidasith
2010-04-10, 11:50 PM
The higher you get in tiers, the less numbers matter. Going from Tier 6 (warrior) to tier 5 (fighter) is mostly because the fighter has numbers that, if they get to do their schtick, they can do it competently (if not as well as a specialized T1 class), but T3 to T2 is mostly about whether or not you can use your tricks to break the game.

A T3 class, like the warblade, may even have more variety than a specialized T2 sorcerer, but the sorcerer can use his tricks to beat enemies who are vulnerable to them instantly, while the warblade is just really good at getting to use his tricks to fight better, rather than able to instantly destroy something. In the long and short of it, T3 is being good at a variety of things and being able to use them, while T2 is being able to be gamebreakingly good in a few ways, and (in general) straight numeric boosts won't change the tier. T1 is being able to be gamebreakingly good in almost all ways so, like going from T2 to T3, giving the T2 class bigger numbers won't bump them up to T1 (unless the numbers are spells known, in the case of sorcerers).

Godskook
2010-04-10, 11:53 PM
Simple answer: No.

Swordsage isn't the most powerful of the ToB classes, and BAB is far less important to ToB classes in general than it is to other classes since often times, they're using standard action maneuvers to deal their damage.

To get a ToB class into Tier 2, you'd need to add a large amount of the homebrew disciplines, increase the maneuvers known and readied and stances known, make Dual-Boost and Dual-Stance into earlier use class features available to more than one class. That should get you close, if not most of the way.

They'd also need:
-A way to fight without putting themselves into harm's way.
-A Miracle or Wish analog.

Sinfire Titan
2010-04-11, 01:05 AM
Simple answer: No.

Swordsage isn't the most powerful of the ToB classes, and BAB is far less important to ToB classes in general than it is to other classes since often times, they're using standard action maneuvers to deal their damage.

To get a ToB class into Tier 2, you'd need to add a large amount of the homebrew disciplines, increase the maneuvers known and readied and stances known, make Dual-Boost and Dual-Stance into earlier use class features available to more than one class. That should get you close, if not most of the way.

They'd also need:
-A way to fight without putting themselves into harm's way.
-A Miracle or Wish analog.

Or just use the Arcane Swordsage variant, as stated above.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2010-04-11, 01:19 AM
An Arcane Swordsage who gets the spell Heroics as a maneuver is already Tier 1, and it's built right into the class description. Use Heroics to grant yourself Martial Study to gain any arcane spell up to the highest level maneuvers you can use, Adaptive Style it to a readied maneuver, and then initiate it. It takes a bit of time, less if you can learn Quickened Heroics as a 6th level maneuver, but in just a few rounds it can cast almost any spell in the game. You can then dismiss Heroics if necessary, initiate it again to get Martial Study for a different spell, Adaptive Style, initiate the new spell, repeat. You can eventually do it every other round once you get Time Stop.

JaronK
2010-04-11, 06:43 AM
would giving a psychic warrior or a swordsage full BAB, would they qualify as a tier 2 class? i notice that for fighting classes, that having 3/4ths BAB makes them stick out strangely.

T2 basically means if you follow the rules as written, they have game breaking power. Why would you want that, and why would you think more BAB would make them like that? More BAB would not give them the ability to Planar Bind Effreetis or create legions of the dead or make clones of themselves that fight effectively.

JaronK