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JRKlein
2010-10-20, 10:20 AM
This is a work in progress, but I figured I might as well share what I have so far.

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Gambler
"The odds are always on my side."

Role: Controller. The Gambler hinders his foes by turning the odds against them.
Power Source: Fortune. Gamblers rely on luck and their wits - and a knack for making money.
Key Abilities: Charisma, Intelligence, Dexterity

Armor Proficiencies: Cloth, leather, light shields
Weapon Proficiencies: Simple melee, simple ranged, short sword
Bonus to Defense: +1 Reflex, +1 Will

Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + Constitution score
Hit Points per Level Gained: 5
Healing Surges per Day: 6 + Constitution modifier

Trained Skills: Bluff. From the class skills list below, choose 4 more trained skills at 1st level.
Class Skills: Acrobatics, Diplomacy, History, Insight, Intimidate, Perception, Stealth, Streetwise, Thievery

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Class Features

Sly Avoidance: When wearing Light or no armor, you may add your Charisma modifier as a bonus to your AC.

Double Down: Once per encounter, you may reroll a missed attack and use the higher result. Until your next turn begins, you grant combat advantage to any creature that attacks you.

Coin Flip: If you fail a save, flip a coin and call it. If you're correct, you make the save.

Epic Failure: You may use "Epic Failure" as an encounter ability. (see below)

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As a Gambler, your primary objective is to weaken your foes - but no man is an island, and the Gambler can aid his allies as well; his secondary role is as a Leader.

Most Gamblers dislike combat, but they are always prepared for it. A variety of tools is at their disposal - most importantly, their implements: Cards and Dice. These are used in most of the Gambler's attacks.

When using the Card Deck implement, you (the player) must also have a card deck. A standard poker deck will suffice. Just be sure to remove the Jokers.

Gamblers generally come in two varieties, Card Sharks and Dice Jockeys. The difference between them is pretty obvious. However, your average Gambler will use both implements to great effect - he'll just be slightly more skilled with one of the two.

The Card Shark has abilities which can heal and buff his allies, while the Dice Jockey focuses more on damaging and disabling his enemies.

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Abilities will be covered in the next post.

JRKlein
2010-10-20, 10:31 AM
Abilities

Level 1: At Will

Kneecap (Melee weapon)
CHA vs. Fort
You've been there and done that enough times to break a few legs of your own.
Hit: 1[W] damage, and the target is knocked prone.

Distraction! (Melee Weapon)
CHA vs. Will
What's that over there? ...Made you look.
Hit: 1[W]+CHA damage, and until the end of your next turn, one ally of your choice gets combat advantage against the target.

Card Toss (Ranged 5)
Requires Implement (Card Deck)
CHA vs. Reflex
Who knew playing cards could be a deadly weapon?
Hit: Draw a card. Damage equals the card's value plus your CHA modifier. Face cards (Jack, Queen, King) are worth 10, Aces are worth 11.

Dice Toss (Ranged 5)
Requires Implement (Dice)
CHA vs. Reflex
Anything can be a weapon if you throw it hard enough.
Hit: 1d4+CHA damage, then roll another 1d4. The target takes a penalty of that value on its attack and damage rolls until the end of its next turn.

Level 1: Encounter

Epic Failure
I totally meant to do that.
Trigger: You miss an attack or fail a saving throw, a skill check, or an ability check
Effect: Flip a coin and call it. If you are correct, the triggering roll counts as a success. If you are wrong, your turn immediately ends and you grant combat advantage until the start of your next turn.

Deadly Roulette (Melee weapon)
CHA vs. AC
Round and round it goes...
Hit: 1[W]+CHA damage. Roll 1d4.
*1: Target is dazed until the end of your next turn.
*2: Target is weakened until the end of your next turn.
*3: Target is slowed until the end of your next turn.
*4: Target is immobilized until the end of your next turn.

Two-Card Draw (Ranged 5)
Requires Implement (Card Deck)
CHA vs. Reflex
Heh, 21. And we weren't even playing Blackjack.
Hit: Draw two cards. Damage equals the cards' value plus your CHA modifier. If you drew a pair or at least once Ace, one ally you can see may use a healing surge as a free action.

Roll the Bones (Area burst 1 within 10)
Requires Implement (Dice)
I've seen your future. It doesn't look good.
Hit: 1d4+CHA psychic and necrotic damage, and the targets gain Vulnerable 5 (all) until the end of your next turn.

Level 1: Daily

Misfortune Strike (Melee weapon)
CHA vs. Fort
Lady Luck doesn't like you.
Hit: 2[W]+CHA damage, and whenever the target hits or misses the Gambler or one of the Gambler's allies with an attack, the target of the attack gains temporary hit points equal to the Gambler's Charisma modifier (save ends).

Dealer's Malice (Ranged 5)
Requires Implement (Card Deck)
CHA vs. Reflex
The dealer always stacks the deck.
Effect: Target three enemies and attack each one with Card Toss.
Hit: For each hit, draw a card. Damage equals its value plus your CHA modifier. Allies adjacent to each enemy you hit gain temporary hit points equal to your CHA modifier.

Loaded Dice (Ranged 5)
Requires Implement (Dice)
CHA vs. Reflex
Those dice are weighted... that musta hurt.
Hit: 1d12+CHA damage, and the target is dazed until the end of your next turn.

Level 2: Utility

Against All Odds (Encounter Ability)
Underdogs always win.
Target: One ally you can see
Effect: That ally gains a bonus to all defenses equal to the number of enemies adjacent to them. Lasts until the end of your next turn.

Dice Caltrops (Encounter Ability)
Requires Implement (Dice)
Those four-sided dice sure are sharp...
Effect: Close Blast 2. The target area becomes difficult terrain until the end of the encounter.
Special: You may use this ability twice per encounter.

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That's all I have so far. Like I said, still a work in progress. Let me know what y'all think.

The J Pizzel
2010-10-20, 10:38 AM
While I'm an avid 4E player, I still suck at anything to do with homebrew. So all I can contribute is this..

Awesome idea. Awesome fluff. Awesome everything.

JRKlein
2010-10-20, 10:44 AM
Thanks. :3 If you have any ideas for more abilities, please do let me know.

Sipex
2010-10-20, 10:56 AM
Some input.

Card Toss and Dice Toss are pretty unbalanced.

Card Toss starts out decent but will quickly lose power as time goes on. I'd maybe suggest throwing an effect in there or possibly +CHA mod damage.

Dice Toss can impose anywhere from a normal at-will penalty (-1) to a hefty penalty and currently overpowers Card Toss.

They both out power your melee attacks although your melees do offer interesting ideas.

Slot Machine is pretty powerful and does striker level daily power damage at worst.

Loaded Dice is the same, it has striker level daily power damage and an effect.

Mando Knight
2010-10-20, 11:02 AM
Effects trigger regardless of hit. You need the "Hit:" phrase to indicate that things trigger on a hit.

Kneecap is a Defender power, and horrible for a Controller: Slowed and Can't Shift on a melee attack means that you're the next target unless the monster is already next to a Defender. If you use it and the Defender doesn't distract the guy for you, your feeble Controller HP and AC is going to get you eaten alive. This is one reason why melee Druids focus so much on mobility or bulk: you can't kill what you can't catch, and the ones you can catch make themselves as tough to chew on as the Defender. On the other hand, it steals the effect from a Defender (the class-type it's clearly intended for) Encounter power (Steel Serpent Strike), and puts it on a NAD Weapon attack to boot. It's too powerful and terrible at the same time.

Distraction! is also too powerful. Weapon vs Will (generally the lowest defense) for at-will Daze. Daze is the third-strongest status affliction (after Stunned and Unconscious), and no At-Will induces that state except for some augmented psionic powers, which via augmentation aren't really "at-will" anymore. Again, this is essentially an At-Will version of a Fighter Encounter power (this time Bell Ringer), eliminating the conditional statement for the damage and against a weaker defense (Fort and Ref are occasionally near AC, but Will never is except for some of the strongest monsters or spellcaster-types), with its only relative drawback being the lack of the Invigorating keyword.

Epic Failure is both too strong and too weak: you likely won't roll a 1 in every encounter, making the power worthless most of the time, but it activates an auto-crit the first time you do. This is technically about as strong as the capstone ability for Eternal Defender, which auto-crits a normal hit or auto-hits a miss once per day. This is a good feature for an Epic Destiny, but not something for a level 1 to be pulling off.

JRKlein
2010-10-20, 12:03 PM
Hm. Thanks for the feedback. I guess this is still just a concept-character, but it seemed like a cool idea. The abilities definitely need some tweaking. I'll try to make it less unbalanced.

Talyn
2010-10-20, 03:18 PM
Interesting class, and I love the "Fortune" power source, but it is currently extremely overpowered. That being said, I really like the idea, and I'd love to see you finish it.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions:

Sly Avoidance should read: While wearing Light or no armor, Gamblers can use their Charisma in place of their Intelligence or Dexterity for the purposes of improving their Armor Class.

Double Down is too powerful. In effect, you are giving them, at will, the Elven racial power, with additional powerful defensive benefits. That power is more in line with a Daily level 6 utility power.

Coin Flip, on the other hand, is strictly worse than rolling a save - you have only a 50% chance of succeeding, instead of 55% chance with a 10+ on a D20. The only time this might come in handy is against powers where you have penalties to saves - which is so situational that it is probably better as an at-will Utility power.

Epic Failure is overpowered as an Encounter power, but would probably be okay as a Daily.

Powers:
Kneecap is fine, though it seems a little off-theme.
Card Toss is interesting, though striker-ish instead of controller-ish. Also, it won't scale well as you level - it's damage output is fine (if a little high for a controller) at first level, but with no +stat it will start to lag around level 8.
Dice Toss I like. You should drop the damage to 1d4+CHA, however, until Epic when it becomes 2d4+CHA.
Distraction, on the other hand, is ludicrously good. Daze at-wills are always overpowered. You wouldn't think they would be, but trust me, I gave a visiting player a Daze at-will once during a session and it completely changed the dynamic of the game. Instead of daze, have it slide the target 2 squares, or 1+DEXif you took the Dice Jockey path.

All of the encounters and dailies read more like Striker Powers than Controller powers (and might be a little high-damage even for that, though not too badly), and Stunning is too good for level 1, unless the power did not damage.

Also, it seems like Gamblers are required to have two implements - Cards and Dice. At first level, when taking the minor to switch them out isn't a problem, that won't seem like a real inconvenience, but once players start having to enchant two different sets of Implements as they level, that will get annoying really quickly.

Also, having Weapon Powers, Implements, and having them use Shields can be a problem because you can only have two hands - Gamblers will need to sheathe their weapons to draw their implements, and vice versa. This compounds the problem of having two implements.

Sipex
2010-10-20, 03:41 PM
I'd also advocate changing Distraction to 'grants combat advantage to an ally of your choice'.

Camelot
2010-10-23, 03:52 PM
Maybe you could change them too:

Coin Flip: Once per turn, when you fail a saving throw, you can flip a coin and call it. If you are correct, you succeed on the saving throw.

This makes it actually useful, but not so powerful that it affects every saving throw you make each turn. Now it's closer to the Warden's Font of Life class feature (in fact, you could even have it activate at the start of your turn to be more on par with Font of Life).

Epic Failure: In contrast to Coin Flip, as has been said, this is really powerful. Instead, I'd suggest:

Epic Failure - Gambler Feature
I meant to do that.
Encounter * Fortune
Free Action - Personal
Trigger: You miss an attack or fail a saving throw, a skill check, or an ability check
Effect: Flip a coin and call it. If you are correct, the triggering roll counts as a success. If you are wrong, your turn immediately ends and you grant combat advantage until the start of your next turn.

Also, I think instead of making a new power source, you could make this martial.

JRKlein
2010-10-23, 04:08 PM
Good idea for Coin Flip. As for Epic Fail... I still like the idea of it, and I'm pretty sure there are some other skills that allow a crit on 19 as well as 20. But I think most of those are "until the end of your next turn", not "any time you roll a 19", so I dunno.

If I had to file this under an already-existing power source, it would probably be Divine. (With some fluff about the Goddess of Luck.)

Adjusted the at-will powers as suggested. How can I make the Encounters and Dailies less overpowered and... Striker-ish?

Mando Knight
2010-10-23, 07:51 PM
Good idea for Coin Flip. As for Epic Fail... I still like the idea of it, and I'm pretty sure there are some other skills that allow a crit on 19 as well as 20. But I think most of those are "until the end of your next turn", not "any time you roll a 19", so I dunno.

They're mostly Paragon and up. Also, they usually trigger on a 19, which is a hit, not a 1, which would turn an auto-miss into a crit. See the difference?

JRKlein
2010-10-23, 08:21 PM
Ok. Thank you for clarifying that.

Talyn
2010-10-24, 10:37 AM
Encounter Powers

For Deadly Roulette, make the attack vs. AC, since its a weapon attack. 1[W]+CHA damage is fine, the effects are fine, but make the secondary effects "until end of Gambler's next turn," instead of "save ends."

For Two-Card Draw, CHA vs. Reflex is fine. In it's current incarnation, damage from the 2 cards is, on average, 7.31+CHA, which is roughly equivalent to a 2d6+CHA.

Instead, how about having it target two different opponents in a close burst 5, deals damage equal to just the card value (no CHA), and inflicts a -2 penalty to the target based on the suit of the damage card. Clubs: AC, Diamonds: Reflex, Spades: Fortitude, and Hearts: Will. This penalty lasts until the end of the Gambler's next turn.

For the dice ability, I suggest:
Roll the Bones, Fortune, Implement (Dice), Pyschic, Necrotic
You show your foes that their deaths have been fated by the roll of the dice.
Area burst 1 within 10 squares. CHA vs. Fortitude.
Hit: 1d4+CHA psychic and necrotic damage, and the targets gain Vulnerable 5 (all) until the end of your next turn.

Daily Powers

I love Slot Machine thematically, but it's too high-damaging for a level 1 power. Save it for level 9, then make it a burst 1 attack within 10.

Instead, for the "Weapon" power for the level 1 daily:
Misfortune's Blow, Fortune, Weapon
You call upon Fortune herself to turn her face away from your target.
CHA vs. AC
Melee weapon
Hit: 2[W]+CHA damage, and the whenever the target hits or misses the Gambler or one of the Gambler's allies with an attack, the target of the attack gains temporary hit points equal to the Gambler's Charisma modifier (save ends).
Miss: Half damage, and no secondary effect.

As for Three-Card Monte, I think you should treat it as an upgraded version of the new Two Card Draw, except: Targets 3 enemies, and the debuff is equal to your CHA, and the debuff is (save ends) instead of end of next turn.

For Loaded Dice, stunning is amazingly good. Either turn it into 1d12+CHA damage, and target is Dazed (save ends) OR call it Fortune's Fool, make it deal damage equal to your CHA and have the effect: the next time the target misses with an attack, it is stunned until the end of its next turn.

Level 2 Utility Powers

Against All Odds is fine, though is definitely "leader"-ish.

Dice Caltrops is fine.

Talyn
2010-10-24, 10:45 AM
Oh, one more thing: Distraction is now underpowered! I recommend either: having it do 1[W]+CHA damage, or making it ranged 5 and requiring no attack roll.

drawingfreak
2010-10-25, 06:36 PM
Why is this a separate class? I for one would love to have a Cleric that has a gambling problem. I say make it a Theme.