Thought for NPC classes

[Silva Stormrage]

Just rereading the ridiculous rules for non associated class levels when it occurred to me. Would this be fair for a player to have? What I mean is that for NPC classes would it be fair to allow them to level up twice every time they would normally gain 1 level? Their cr effectively becomes their level. Obviously no prestige classes would be allowed or this goes waay out of balance. Not quite sure if anyone would ever play the class whose class feature is have a bunch of passive abilities (HP, BAB, Saves more stats due to more HD etc). Then again people play fighter :smallbiggrin:. I was just curious if this would be balanced at all. Even the adept wouldn't be too rigged. He would get spells 1 level earlier than a wizard but have much less of them and of less variety.

Main problems I can see.
Epic Feats: Epic spellcasting is out of reach since it requires 9th lvl casting but epic leadership would need to be banned hard same with regular leadership really.

Feats that are based of HD: Can't think of any but I know that there are some out there.

HP: These guys would have ALOT of hp due to inflated HD, not op or anything but from experience having 3 times the HP of the other party members tends to annoy the DM.

[Godskook]

Epic Feats: Epic spellcasting is out of reach since it requires 9th lvl casting but epic leadership would need to be banned hard same with regular leadership really.

Improved spell capacity has always meant that epic spellcasting is on the table for anyone with enough feats to get to it. For a CR 20 adept, this is trivial.


HP: These guys would have ALOT of hp due to inflated HD, not op or anything but from experience having 3 times the HP of the other party members tends to annoy the DM.

Not only that, but compare Warrior to Fighter by CR:

Warrior Per CR stats:
+2 HD (For HD purposes, such as enervation)
+2d8 + 2*con (for HP)
+2 BAB pre-epic
+1 EAB post-epic
~good reflex/will
SUPERIOR Fort
4 feat per 6 CR
Access to epic level feats by CR 10

Fighter Per CR stats:
+1 HD
+1d10 + Con
+1 BAB pre-epic
+.5 EAB post-epic
bad reflex/will
Good fort
5 feat per 6 CR
Access to fighter-only feats

The warrior gets better stats in every way, except for 1 lost feat per 6 CR, and lack of access to fighter-only feats(I don't think there are that many worth mentioning). The former is mostly made up for by any one of the other stat benefits such as better saves(totally worth 1 feat per 6 CR), higher attack roll, or better HP. The latter is made up for by access to epic feats, including *POUNCE*.

[Silva Stormrage]

Improved spell capacity has always meant that epic spellcasting is on the table for anyone with enough feats to get to it. For a CR 20 adept, this is trivial.



Not only that, but compare Warrior to Fighter by CR:

Warrior Per CR stats:
+2 HD (For HD purposes, such as enervation)
+2d8 + 2*con (for HP)
+2 BAB pre-epic
+1 EAB post-epic
~good reflex/will
SUPERIOR Fort
4 feat per 6 CR
Access to epic level feats by CR 10

Fighter Per CR stats:
+1 HD
+1d10 + Con
+1 BAB pre-epic
+.5 EAB post-epic
bad reflex/will
Good fort
5 feat per 6 CR
Access to fighter-only feats

The warrior gets better stats in every way, except for 1 lost feat per 6 CR, and lack of access to fighter-only feats(I don't think there are that many worth mentioning). The former is mostly made up for by any one of the other stat benefits such as better saves(totally worth 1 feat per 6 CR), higher attack roll, or better HP. The latter is made up for by access to epic feats, including *POUNCE*.

I should have clerified what I meant sorry. I meant would it be balanced for a tier 3 group competing with Warblades and Crusaders. Yes with this warrior would be stronger than fighter but to be honest fighter isn't that good in the first place.

Also for epic spellcasting your right I forgot about improved spell capacity. Well I will assume any sane DM would ban epic spell casting in their games anyway so that is a moot point anyway. Even if the DM doesn't ban it though it would be a good idea to just ban Epic Spellcasting for this anyway

[Falin]

Well, that depends on how well thought out the idea was and how hard you worked at balancing it. But honestly? This is one of those, “you CAN but why would you want to?” situations. NPC classes aren’t supposed to be balanced. They’re meant to be third string, the kind of people that PCs can spend all day crushing and not even break a sweat. The above example is… surprising, but the fighter has been a joke since before they put an A in front of D&D (though I use the tome fighter, because it’s just better)

[Godskook]

The above example is… surprising,

Not really. That's part of the reason that the fighter is called a linear fighter, cause given arbitrary class 'x', you only need y levels in it to be equivalently challenging to a particular fighter, and the proportion will hold true add infinitum.