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Eldan
2010-07-14, 05:37 PM
Urban Soul

Fluff forthcoming

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Feats: Urban Tracking
Skills: Knowledge: local 4 ranks, Knowledge: architecture 4 ranks, Gather Information 4 ranks
Special: Must speak at least three different languages
Maneuvers: Must know at least one second level strike of the shadow hand or oncoming storm schools.

Class Skills
The Urban Soul's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Dex), Gather Information (Cha), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowledge (Architecture, History, Local) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Speak Language (None), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

Hit Dice: d6


NAME OF CLASS
{table=head]Level|Base Attack<br>Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st|
+0|
+0|
+0|
+2|City Adaption, Crowdrunner

2nd|
+1|
+0|
+0|
+3| Face in the Crowd

3rd|
+2|
+1|
+1|
+3| Rooftopper

4th|
+3|
+1|
+1|
+4| Mean Street's Stance

5th|
+3|
+1|
+1|
+4|Wall-walker

6th|
+4|
+2|
+2|
+5|Mob Violence

7th|
+5|
+2|
+2|
+5|Building Glide

8th|
+6|
+2|
+3|
+6|Genius Loci

9th|
+6|
+3|
+3|
+6|Never Seen again

10th|
+7|
+3|
+3|
+7|Soul of the City[/table]

{table="head"]Level|Man. Known|Man. Readied|Stances Known
1st|0|1|1
2nd|1|0|0
3rd|1|0|0
4th|0|1|0
5th|1|0|0
6th|1|0|1
7th|0|1|0
8th|1|0|0
9th|1|0|0
10th|0|1|0
[/table]

Maneuvers: At each level except 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th, an Urban Soul gains new maneuvers known from the Oncoming Storm, Shadow Hand or Stone Dragon disciplines. You must meet a maneuver's prerequisite to learn it. You add your full Urban Soul levels to your initiator level to determine your total initiator level and your highest-level maneuvers known.
At levels 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th, you gain additional maneuvers readied per day.

Stances: At 1st, and 6th level, you learn a new martial stance from the Oncoming Storm, Shadow Hand or Stone Dragon Disciplines. You must meet the stances prerequisites to learn it.

City Adaption (su): By walking it's streets for ten or more minutes and taking in the sights, you can connect yourself to the soul and flow of an unfamiliar city. From then on, you are considered to be familiar with the city for purposes of teleport and similar spells. You gain a +4 bonus on all knowledge: local and gather information checks made in the city, and automatically know the location of all major public buildings, monuments and main streets.

Crowd Runner: (ex): While in any city he is adapted to, you Soul can move and even run at full speed through even a dense crowd. Furthermore, your base land speed, and your climb and burrow speed, if you have either, increases by 5 feet, plus another 5 feet per two class levels beyond the first.

Face in the Crowd (ex): You become part of the faceless crowd moving through each city, anonymous and difficult to remember. In any situation where there are ten or more people within 30 feet of you who are inddifferent or unfriendly towards you, people ignore you, no matter how unusual you look or how famous you are, unless you take a hostile action or want to get their attention in some other fashion. People specifically looking for you are allowed a will save DC 10+your urban soul level+your intelligence modifier to ignore this effect.

Rooftopper: (ex): At level three, you become adept at jumping to the highest heights of a city and moving across it's roofs as easily as on the ground. While in a city, you ignore the effects of difficult terrain, and can move across sloped or slippery terrain normally without having to make any checks. Furthermore, you are always considered to have taken a running start when jumping and gain a competence bonus equal to your class level to all jump checks. Finally, you can jump to a height equal to your jump check result with your jump check, instead of one quarter your jump check.

Mean Street's Stance (su): From fourth level on, the spirit of the city itself protects you. As a swift action, you can drop the benefits of any other stance to enter Mean Street's Stance. While in this stance, all enemies treat all terrain within 30 feet of you as difficult terrain. At sixth level, when moving through this terrain, they have to take a balance check DC 15 or fall prone. At eight level, all enemies within 30 feet from you take 1d6 damage per turn and their vision is obscured beyond five feet, as if by an obscuring mist spell, as clouds of dust, debris, roof tiles and cobble stones fall down on them. This damage is treated as if from a magical, bludgeoning weapon for purposes of damage reduction.

Wall Walker (sp): At fifth level, you can walk up walls and even overhangs, as if affected by a spider climb spell. However, your climb speed when using this ability is always equal to 1/2 your land speed.

Mob Violence (ex): At sixth level, you can infuse your melee attacks with the wrath of an angry mob as a swift action. The next melee attack you make deals an additional 1d6 damage, plus one additional damage for every intelligent creature within 500 feet that is hostile towards the target.

Building Glide (sp): At seventh level, you can meld yourself into a building or street, as with a Meld into Stone spell. However, unlike the spell, you can move at one-half your base land speed, or your full burrow speed (whichever is faster) while in the stone. You are aware of all creatures within 100 feet touching the building or street, as with Tremorsense. Finally, you can partially exit the building or street with just some of your body parts, to attack creatures standing adjacent to or on the structure you are in.

Genius Loci: (su): At eight level, while melded into a building with your Building glide ability, you can ask the building questions, as with a stone glide spell. Additionally, while inside a city, you can concentrate for one minute to use the equivalent of a Clairaudience, Locate Creature or Locate Object spell, with their range extended to the boundaries of the city.

Never Seen Again (su): At ninth level, you can awaken the spirit of the city to swallow one of your enemies. Once per encounter, as a standard action, choose one target within 30 feet. The next time the target is alone on a city street, with no one else in sight, they are transported to an extraplanar maze. The maze seems similar to the city, but the buildings are unfamiliar, the windows and the sky above dark, and while whispers and shouts can sometimes be heard from behind the next corner, there is never anyone else around. The target can immediately attempt an intelligence check DC 10+1/2 urban soul level + your intelligence bonus. If they succeed, they can leave the labyrinth, appearing at another street corner a minute later. If they lose the check, they can try again every hour for the first twenty four hours, and once per day after that.

Soul of the City (su): At level ten, you become one with the city. Your type changes to living construct, and you gain damage reduction 5/adamantine, which increases to 10/adamantine while inside a city. As long as your feet touch a street or building, you can not be moved against your will by any effect or spell. While inside a city you are adapted to, you do not need to eat, drink or sleep.

Milskidasith
2010-07-14, 05:41 PM
This is incredibly weak. It has no offensive potential, practically no defensive potential, loses a ton of caster levels, gets SLAs it could probably use anyway due to being a caster PrC, and has a worse chassis than most divine casting classes.

Is it flavorful? Sure. Is it worth taking? Even if you're going to be in the same city the entire campaign, the abilities it gives are simply not worth it considering you can just cast the spells you would normally emulate.

Eldan
2010-07-14, 05:46 PM
Hmm. I see.

Well... I took the Urban Soul from Races of Destiny, basically, and made it a half-caster. Is it really that weak? What if I gave it City Rampart (a rage-like power for +4 constitution and damage-reduction) back?

Milskidasith
2010-07-14, 05:50 PM
Hmm. I see.

Well... I took the Urban Soul from Races of Destiny, basically, and made it a half-caster. Is it really that weak? What if I gave it City Rampart (a rage-like power for +4 constitution and damage-reduction) back?

This loses three caster levels and has a worse chassis than divine caster classes.

Getting the equivalent of rage (which is a spell you can already cast) is not worth three lost caster levels.

This doesn't even seem like a caster PrC, seeing as it does absolutely nothing with its casting. Then again, it doesn't really fit anywhere because this is a PrC for a concept (urban navigator) that D&D doesn't do well. D&D stats model fighting, so practically every class needs to be competent at fighting; losing caster levels for SLAs you can already use is not worth it.

If this were full BAB, wasn't a caster PrC, had better hit dice, had better in-combat movement abilities, and got some offensive potential, it *might* be worth it for a martial class (by which I mean their power would stay effectively the same); as of now, this is a class so weak I probably wouldn't burn the feat to enter even if it had full casting.

Eldan
2010-07-14, 05:55 PM
I see.

The original flavour in Races of Destiny suggests this as a cleric class, but doesn't give it any casting at all.

Well, then I really don't know how to make it worthwhile. Too bad, it was really nice class...

Eldan
2010-07-14, 06:00 PM
Changed it to full casting for now. Further suggestions are welcome.

Edit: gave a boost to Meld into Building and Mean Streets. How does that look?

Djinn_in_Tonic
2010-07-14, 06:09 PM
I'm afraid I can't accept any class that uses a quote from Sir Samuel Vimes (His Grace the Duke of Ankh-Morpork, Commander of the City Watch, and Blackboard Monitor ), and the proceeds to offer full casting (or any casting).

Really. I can't actually read further, because my love of Vimes is telling me it's not possible. 2+2 =/= 5. Vimes =/= Magic.

/rant


Also, I really do think this would benefit from no casting and more class features, as it doesn't seem like a caster-specific class concept. The lack of fluff does really hurt you here though...I'm not 100% sure what you want to make.

Eldan
2010-07-14, 06:11 PM
Yeah, sorry about the quote. It's just the first one that came to my mind while thinking about "familiar with a city".

Anyway, the fluff is not mine, really. I'll try and write more about it, but basically, it's a class from Races of Destiny I wanted to take because it looked cool, but was pretty weak.

Races of Destiny offers a full 5 lines of fluff, suggesting that this is a class for the chosen of the god of cities.

How about if I either changed it to Rogue, with sneak attack progression, or to a martial initiator? Both would require new abilities, certainly.

Oslecamo
2010-07-14, 06:22 PM
Races of Destiny offers a full 5 lines of fluff, suggesting that this is a class for the chosen of the god of cities.

How about if I either changed it to Rogue, with sneak attack progression, or to a martial initiator? Both would require new abilities, certainly.

The class mentions it's aimed mainly at rogues and bards, and it does have 6 skill points per level, so it seems more geared towards a skillmonky type of character.

After all, "chosen" doesn't necessarily means cleric.:smalltongue:

Isn't there some city-related ToB school?

Eldan
2010-07-15, 03:49 AM
I don't know any, but there are enough rogue schools. Giving it Oncoming Storm (Feint and bonus damage), Stone Dragon and Shadow Hand should be okay, in that case.

I'll think about what I can do with that.

Mulletmanalive
2010-07-15, 07:32 AM
I find this more than a little awkward because a) i've never, ever liked full casting prestige classes enterable before 9th level and b) because the original attempt was a pants attempt to give a D&D character the abilities of Jack Hawksmoor, something it singularly failed to do.

Without using the silly Hawksmoor of later books, the original would have:
Massive speed boosts in cities,
Jumping to the point of almost flying within cities,
The ability to look back into the past using windows,
A Rage based ability that gets more powerful the bigger the city you are in
Transmute Rock to Mud and Stone Shape for cities, at will as a Full action
That ability that allows him to channel the oppinions of the city's populous into blows
The spell that allows him to have the city attack his enemies
A Climb speed in a city
Sustenance in a city
The ability to move through walls and such as if they were water

Outside cities, he was mostly useless, though there is good argument to consider large dungeons to be "cities" after a fashion. That said, even if he just maintainted his movement powers and a full BAB, it would be a passable class out of a city [not good, just not appauling].

Please make a class that can do all that. Then i'll use it. Preferably not a spellcaster, though it's not as if you don't have a lot of stuff on the list there plus other ideas of your own to play with...

Eldan
2010-07-15, 07:40 AM
Let's see.

The first one is simple: scaling speed boost in cities. At later levels, the Building Stride I included should do fine for really fast speed.

The second one should include: always running start, a massive bonus on the jump skill. And I mean massive: high jump DC is four times the height, so for a roof even only 15 feet high, it would have to be a +50 or so.

Rage... I'm not sure if I should include that. I mean, I don't know Jack Hawksmoor, I must admit, but this seems more like a roguish class.

Rock to mud/stone shape is okay, that can be done. Perhaps just a general Stone-reshaping ability.

For the city attacking enemies: I'll start with mean streets above, and have it scale with level. Starting with difficult terrain, then making enemies stumble, getting them lost in maze-like conditions, direct damage and so on.

Climb speed is simple enough as well. A kind of spider climb, I'd think, or Wall runner.

Finally, a kind of building glide, like a white dragon's ice glide. Move at half-speed through buildings.

Yeah, I'll see what i can do.

Eldan
2010-07-15, 08:29 AM
Massively changed, though not quite done yet. What do people think now? The more mystical abilities are coming in at higher levels, obviously.

Kiren
2010-07-15, 08:36 AM
Heres a few suggestions.

Why not add some abilities to make it a battlefield controller, the cities a complicated place, it can be easy to get lost in some corridors and get hurt.

Persuasion based abilities, perhaps the class should instantly know of very common trends or gossip. Know where good deals are in stores perhaps, if they advertise well, (or annoying enough).

Give a bardic knowledge-esqe ability for finding information that is less common, when bound to the city.

When all else fails, rally up the city gangs for support. And by that I mean frame the enemy and spread lies about enroaching on their territory.

Eldan
2010-07-15, 09:03 AM
Well, there's Mean Street Stance, which is a controller ability to some extent. Never Seen Again will be similar to a maze spell. Finally, City Adaption already gives it a bonus to the skills which would cover gossip and special deals, IMO.

And the last one... that's something I would cover by RP, not a class ability.


Though perhaps:
Plant Rumour (su): You infuse the city's spirit with a specific rumour you have yourself invented. Once per week, you can plant a short anecdote of not more than 100 words in the heads of the city's population. Random people will tell the story to each other, and in short time, all generally well-informed people will hear it. You can not influence how the story will be changed by retelling: a very unlikely story might be told as an amusing joke, or toned down, while a monster attack might become more dangerous and detailed with every retelling.

Darkxarth
2010-07-15, 09:32 AM
Plant Rumour (su): You infuse the city's spirit with a specific rumour, even one you have yourself invented. Once per week, you can plant a short anecdote of not more than 10 words/urban soul level in the heads of the city's population. Random people will tell the story to each other, and in short time (1d6+1 days or 1d4+3 days, whichever seems more appropriate.), all generally well-informed people will hear it. You can not influence how the story will be changed by retelling: a very unlikely story might be told as an amusing joke or toned down, while a monster attack might become more dangerous and detailed with every retelling. This may grant circumstance bonuses to skill checks, open new doors, or be the beginning of a city-wide change. While the player may state a desired goal with the rumour, its effects are entirely up to the DM.

I don't know much about Tome of Battle, so I cannot comment on that (other than to say that it is probably better this way than as a Cleric PrC) but I do love this ability. Despite its powerful role-playing potential, I would avoid making it a capstone. Perhaps make the above changes and start it at level 5 or 6.

Eldan
2010-07-15, 10:16 AM
It's very useful, yes.

By the way, did you know that King Calandor is actually a doppelganger and killed his father?

Darkxarth
2010-07-15, 10:51 AM
It's very useful, yes.

By the way, did you know that King Calandor is actually a doppelganger and killed his father?

The way I heard it was that the ol' King is an immortal an' he kilt his son an; took his place.

[/foolishness]

Point taken, perhaps it should remain a high-level ability, or you should introduce some scale similar to Bluff. It might even be feasible to make the entire ability reliant on a Bluff check with flat DCs and circumstance modifiers.

The target wants to believe you. = DC 15
The rumo(u)r is believable and doesn’t affect the general populace much. = DC 20
The rumo(u)r is a little hard to believe or puts many people at some risk. = DC 25
The rumo(u)r is hard to believe or puts the entire city at significant risk. = DC 30
The rumo(u)r is way out there, almost too incredible to consider. = DC 40

Just a few ideas. Your original version is perfectly usable, it simply leaves all of the details up to the DM.

Eldan
2010-07-15, 10:54 AM
There we go. Better now?

Mulletmanalive
2010-07-15, 11:28 AM
I think the stance progression steals the scene a little, perhaps the one lower than the current one [the "ever second level" one].

Because I prefer such things, how about expending a Stone Dragon manoeuvre to use Mob Violence and adding in an ability earlier on called "Voice of the Gutters" that means that allows you to activate it as an Immediate action to Telepathically make everyone within 500ft of damage to the city caused by your enemy aware who did the damage [thus becoming hostile about 90% of the time]?

I similarly suggest that Never Seen Again be powered by a Manoeuvre of at least 7th level [assuming that's possible at entry, 6th if not]. One of my pet hates is when a martial progression has nothing to do with the class features [i.e. most of the time].

My current thoughts are that it should perhaps have access to it's finding people spell like abilities earlier, with the requirement that they must have touched the target. This would make Face in the Crowd useful when facing lesser foes rather than ones to powerful that they might as well obliterate the crowd to find you...