PDA

View Full Version : I need your opinion.



TechnOkami
2011-01-30, 01:56 AM
As per this homebrew.

http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Samurai,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29

Is it broken?

blackmage
2011-01-30, 08:50 AM
I only made it to level 12 of the writeup, but I think its pretty broken. The bonus feats, Horde Breaker and Subtle Cut are wacked out. Horde Breaker is actually Combat Reflexes, Cleave, and several other abilities besides. Subtle Cut is pseudo-weapon-specialization, and a snare effect, and some ability damage. Both of these are really worth 4-5 feats.

The auto-crit whenever you want could maybe, possibly be balanced somehow, but it's something I would be nervous about. Plus, they can channel all their attack of opprotunity into plain old normal attacks against anybody, whenever they want, which probably means they'll get 8+ attacks a round at level 11, that seems off. And, he can counterspell/dispel magic by...hitting it with an attack of opprotunity.

Oh, and he ignores all DR, always.

I think there's the skeleton of a nice class in here, with all the Attack of Opprotunity focus, but it really looks like someone tried to turn the Samurai into a Sorcerer or something.

Frog Dragon
2011-01-30, 09:00 AM
It's a Tome class, which comes with a few assumptions. The whole system works on different assumptions than "normal" D&D. For starters, Frank & K considered that the typical D&D feats do way too little, especially considering you only get like 7 during your whole career. When viewed in the context of the Frank & K tome series, it works pretty well.

The Tome Series has pretty consistently been aiming to make classes high tier 3 or tier 2 as far as I can see, and for that goal, it has succeeded. I agree that Kiai can be a little weird, since it actually makes the scythe the best weapon choice. I wouldn't say it's broken though. It just works off different standards than D&D, whose designers thought the druid and the CW samurai can function well in a party together.

Cidolfas
2011-01-30, 10:46 AM
I think people who say this is overpowered are looking at it the wrong way. This class is supposed to match up with the wizard. And before anyone says the Wizard is overpowered, too, that's not a factor in determining the power of this class unless you are completely excluding wizards as a viable option.

Yes, it's strong. Probably in the Tier 2 range. That's the point. As the original poster said, it assumes you're going to be running around in a party consisting of a wizard throwing around save-or-dies and save-or-sucks, a druid with Natural Spell and full casting as well as high Strength from wild shape, and a cleric using Divine Metamagic to persist Divine Power. It basically assumes the highest common denominator instead of the median.

Was it trying to turn a samurai into a sorcerer? Power-wise, yes. Ability-wise, no. The Samurai doesn't gain the ability to fly and rain disintegrate spells from distance.

The Combat feats are blends of feats that, taken individually, aren't actually all that great. Most feat trees require gross overspecialization to complete, and in the end aren't worth the investment. What the Combat feats do is shrink the trees into one or two feats, which is a really good idea in my opinion.

If you're playing an SRD monk or CW Samurai, yes, this class is going to **** on you. But by the standards of Tome classes, it's powerful and it kills things, but it's nowhere near as flat-out versatile as the wizard. Assuming that the samurai was to specialize in melee by making his ancestral weapon a melee weapon so that he could capitalize on Kiai! with the scythe or whatever. Then, he's totally vulnerable to any kind of kiting or distance attacks, because as soon as he draws his bow all of his cool abilities go out the window because most of them only apply to the ancestral weapon. This is quite a severe limitation that cannot be ignored. So it's not even the most powerful of Tome classes, but when it's in its element is really awesome.

TechnOkami
2011-02-03, 07:47 PM
Ok, I see what all of you are saying, but my DM isn't seeing the light. As per his rant, I'd like to hear your opinion on his stance please.

"What I've looked over so far for the class itself seems okay, but it's for a different combat system than v3.5 d&d. I won't allow someone else's houserules for a major part of the game until and unless I am sure that they're decent, and judging from what I've read from the person who designed the system, I doubt that they put anywhere near the necessary amount of thought into the project. Not to mention the fact that I can't radically change the structure of the game system in the middle of a campaign in order to satisfy one of the many players."

"As an alternative, you might want to look at the Warblade, from the Tome of Battle."

"Also, whoever wrote this didn't actually know what a samurai was. For example, Iaijutsu is the art of properly drawing a sword, not a way to make targets magically paralyzed every time you hit them. And giving a mechanical advantage to deliberately disobeying your lord? WTF?"

"Okay, yeah, this class is broken.
Every attack they make (of which there are potentially hundreds in a round) is an auto-hit, auto-crit, that dazes the opponent for a round (incidentally, that alone is equivalent to a 7th level spell), ignores damage reduction and hardness, and deals a base damage well into the hundreds. And then eats your soul.
Meanwhile, any spell or supernatural effect that they can reach is automatically turned back on it's caster. Even if it's unblockable. Even if it's not targeting them. Even if it's a purely mental effect, or, say, a breath weapon.
And then they're immortal, for no f*king reason.
It is not allowed."

...yeah. Comments?

Siosilvar
2011-02-03, 08:31 PM
Ok, I see what all of you are saying, but my DM isn't seeing the light. As per his rant, I'd like to hear your opinion on his stance please.

...yeah. Comments?

He's right. It is balanced for, essentially, a completely different game from the way most plenty of people play D&D.

In many games, it will be overpowered.

There's no "light" to see.

Heck, be glad you have a DM who's allowing ToB. That right there typically gets a knee-jerk ban from some DMs. This guy sounds like he's perfectly capable of making reasonable balance decisions, and he has set a balance level lower than what Frank and K assumed.

Mulletmanalive
2011-02-03, 08:54 PM
"Okay, yeah, this class is broken.
Every attack they make (of which there are potentially hundreds in a round) is an auto-hit, auto-crit, that dazes the opponent for a round (incidentally, that alone is equivalent to a 7th level spell), ignores damage reduction and hardness, and deals a base damage well into the hundreds. And then eats your soul.
Meanwhile, any spell or supernatural effect that they can reach is automatically turned back on it's caster. Even if it's unblockable. Even if it's not targeting them. Even if it's a purely mental effect, or, say, a breath weapon.
And then they're immortal, for no f*king reason.
It is not allowed."

...yeah. Comments?

That doesn't sound broken so much as "this is not really a game anymore;" automatically hitting, autocritting and automatically stunning sounds really, really dull. Where's the rolling, the strategy, the challenge?

If that is a fair assessment of the class [and having encountered the Tome stuff, I have no reason to doubt it], I personally can't see why YOU would want to play this. What's the fun in automatically winning?

lesser_minion
2011-02-03, 08:56 PM
Ok, I see what all of you are saying, but my DM isn't seeing the light. As per his rant, I'd like to hear your opinion on his stance please.

There's some hyperbole and misunderstanding in your DM's assessment of the class, but I think she's still justified in banning it.


"What I've looked over so far for the class itself seems okay, but it's for a different combat system than v3.5 d&d. I won't allow someone else's houserules for a major part of the game until and unless I am sure that they're decent, and judging from what I've read from the person who designed the system, I doubt that they put anywhere near the necessary amount of thought into the project. Not to mention the fact that I can't radically change the structure of the game system in the middle of a campaign in order to satisfy one of the many players."

This, in particular, is kind of big. The tome series has a couple of good ideas, but it is not even close to a "one true way" to play D&D, nor is it for everyone. Moreover, switching to Tome series is a lot to ask, even more so given that this is apparently an ongoing game.

Cidolfas
2011-02-04, 12:06 AM
It's only automatically winning if you're fighting monsters like hill giants and behemoth gorillas who are pathetically not a challenge at their give CR except for maybe a party of monks. If you're fighting an allip or a choker , eother of which are listed as CR 3 encounters, it basically comes down to who goes first. It assumes that you are going to be playing with wizards, and like wizards you are going to need to kill things quickly because the kinds of opponents they face are similarly powerful. Because as not-fun as automatically winning is, automatically losing is less so.

I agree that it's powerful if your DM is setting the bar below the full potential of wizards. But most of the DM's complaints about them not knowing what a samurai is aren't really grounded in any mechanical, game-related basis. I'm pretty sure Frank & K knew what Iaijutsu was; they were pretty smart guys, by most accounts. It's just that "the proper motion of drawing your sword" doesn't really compare to "I rain death from my hands" unless you justify as something like "I'm so good at drawing my sword that I draw it so fast the opponent has so way to react and gets totally boned."

And as much as I disagree over your DM's interpretation of a 7th-level spell (finger of death is my benchmark), I won't press that too much. I honestly think it could still work, given that it's one of the more concisely worded Tome classes without the troubles of ambiguity possessed by stuff like the Tome Fighter's foil action class feature. But to each his own.

lesser_minion
2011-02-04, 09:09 AM
But most of the DM's complaints about them not knowing what a samurai is aren't really grounded in any mechanical, game-related basis.

The purpose of a character class is to provide a quick and easy way to build a particular character concept. If there's no class that fits your character concept, you then either look for another class that provides a decent fit, or a combination of different classes using D&D's multiclassing rules.

Does this class portray its concept well? If it doesn't, then it's a bad class, because no matter how balanced or powerful or versatile it may be, it simply does not do what it was written to do.

You can be a samurai without having a class with the word 'Samurai' in the title (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0209.html). So if a Samurai class doesn't portray samurai any more faithfully than levels in Paladin or Warblade might, why does it need to exist?

Cidolfas
2011-02-04, 10:19 AM
I don't really see how it doesn't portray it more accurately. The thing, for me, is that flavor is easily the most mutable aspect of the game (as you pointed out, you can flavor most martial classes to be a samurai). That's because, as the comic you linked so helpfully pointed out, the only thing you really need to be a samurai in terms of flavor is to be an Oriental-themed warrior who swings your sword really well and does cool tricks with it. You can just as easily get that from fighter as the core samurai, which is only one of the reasons everyone that I know hates that class (the other being that it's weak).

Now that I actually look at it again, Iaijutsu fits perfectly with the theme. It allows you to make an attack of opportunity as an immediate action (don't see any mention of paralysis in there, so I don't know where that came from), which can go perfectly flavor-wise with the concept of battojutsu and drawing your sword very quickly. Almost everything else does exactly what I described above: It makes you swing your sword better, which sounds exactly like what a samurai should be to me. The Ancestral Weapon and the class's dependency on it also brings nearly as much emphasis on the weapon as the person wielding it, which seems to me like it was a big deal in Japanese culture where the make of the blade of a katana meant a lot.

Lastly, just for clarification, the level 20 ability Scrolls of Wisdom doesn't grant immortality as it was purported to above; it only prevents aging penalties, which allows your samurai to grow old and become the Grandmaster while still being able to kick everyone else's butt. All in all, I see a solid class that can go head-to-head with Tier 2 and Tier 1 competition while keeping the essential flavor of "I am Oriental-themed warrior; I am awesome."

erikun
2011-02-04, 12:37 PM
Well, you could tell your DM that Iaijutsu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaijutsu) "the art of mental presence and immediate response", and the term can be used towards any quick and practiced maneuvers rather than just drawing the weapon.

Beyond that, though, I think you'll have to concede the point. Tome-series classes really are playing a different game than standard D&D. It's a game that assumes the Trippyverse is possible and active throughout the campaign, that assumes Batman Wizards and CoDZillas are the most common character archtypes, and that assumes White Dragonspawn Dragonwrought Loredrake Tucker Kobolds are the most common type of enemy. Under these circumstances, being able to auto-hit, auto-crit for hundreds of damage and near immunity to the effects of magic is rather reasonable for a melee character.

Most campaigns I've been in don't feature Trippyverse improvements. Most don't have Batman Wizard or CoDZillas - the closest I've seen was a Cleric preparing a single Greater Magical Weapon with persisted DMM. Most of the encounters I've seen come straight from the MM, with the exception of prepared "boss" fights. In these cases, the Warblade from Tome of Battle should work just fine. Heck, in most of these cases, the Samurai from Complete Warrior will work just fine as well, although that may not be what you want in a character.


tl;dr
It doesn't look like your campaign will have need of such as absurdly powerful class, and you'll likely have fun with another choice.

Cidolfas
2011-02-04, 03:49 PM
I agree that Tome is different from most kinds of games; I'm not trying to dispute that. But the Monster Manual is crazily inconsistent in the power level of the monsters. Some at every CR (Allip at level 3, beholders at 12/13, nightshades, bodaks, mind flayers, and dragons at almost any CR) are just just flat out stronger than others. And these are in many cases some of the most iconic enemies in D&D). This problem can't be assuaged by reducing the power levels of classes, which is why Tome brings all classes up to the highest common denominator: the wizard/cleric/druid range.

I just think that in many cases DM's have to intentionally lower the combat potential of the creatures they set as encounters. Not only is this to avoid alienating a substantial number of creatures from the monster manuals,It also prevents them from blasting the PC's into smithereens, which doesn't really need to happen in a Tome game. So it really seems to me to come down to revamping some classes or revamping some monsters, since the only thing about the SRD that resembles continuity is their consistent inconsistency in terms of power level.

Tvtyrant
2011-02-04, 07:31 PM
If there is even one mundane person who isn't an optimized ubercharger/Horizontripper in your group the ToB will show them up in exactly the way that they play. Look at the distribution amongst the tiers of the mundanes and you find them all fairly close to each other, while ToB is pretty far up there. Casters are more powerful, but they also don't fill the same niches (unless you have a CoDzilla or Malconvoker).

Knaight
2011-02-05, 01:52 PM
We aren't talking about Tome of Battle, but about Frank and K's Tome Series. A Tome Series character is way stronger than a ToB character, and actually somewhat close to high end casters, if not quite at that level.