Help Needed!

[Meta]

I'm going to be joining (albeit a little late because of an extended trip) a Dark Sun 3.5 campaign in a few months. The groups main goal seems to be hunting the Sorcerer Kings (is there a queen?)

I'm going to be playing a character based roughly on Magina, The Anti-Mage from the Warcraft III custom game, Defense of the Ancients, or DotA.

http://www.playdota.com/heroes/anti-mage

Here's what I've homebrewed, so far:

1d6 hit die
Full BAB
Rogue saves

1: Mana Break (Homebrew)
2: Spell Resistance (Mage Slayer feature)
3: Fast Movement (Monk feature)
4: Anti-magic Aura (Mage slayer feature (3), make DC lower (by 5?) and wis mod))
5:
6: Evasion (Rogue/Monk Feature (2))
7: Anti-magic Aura – Dimensional Anchor (Mage Slayer feature (6))
8: Blink: wis mod/day (Homebrew)
9: Improved Spell Resistance (Homebrew, add 3 to mage slayer’s)
10: Mana Void (Homebrew)
11: Greater Mana Break
12: Blink: wis X 2/day
13: Improved Evasion (Monk Feature (9))
14: Truesight (clr 5, sorc/wis 6. Reduce range to 60)
15: Greater Spell Resistance (Homebrew, add 6 to mage slayer’s)
16: Blink: wis X 3/day
17:
18: Mindblank (sorc, wis 8)
19: Greater Truesight (same as above but with full range)
20: Greater Mana Void, Blink: wis X 4/day
The numbers in parentheses is when that class normally gets that ability

Mana Break is a passive (Su or Ex. not sure yet) that drains a spell slot for the day with every attack Magina lands. Every two levels he can drain an additional level slot. So at level 3 he can drain 2nd level slots and and level 9 enables the Anti-Mage to take out up to 5th level slots. At level 11, he takes two per strike.

Blink will be a shorter range Dimension Door type spell. Details aren't solidified yet. It's been awhile since I've played 3.5, but a move equivalent action would be appropriate.

Mana Void will do 1d6 damage per spell slot used for the day. It will also stun the target. Standard action. Greater Mana Void will do 1d10 and either stun for 2 rounds or stun the daze.

Mindblank and Truesight will be passives.

I think that covers everything. Now for the help!

Balance wise, I'll be playing with a variety of tiers and can expect a lot of Sorcerer opponents. I'd like to play this guy as a TWF and will probably spend the three feats to get Shadow Blade (I'll pick two flaws too). A Feycraft weapon for the 'free finesse' most likely. Maybe a metalline weapon to help against DR? Wild Elf as race seems best fit, at the moment, but I'm not very knowledgeable of 3.5 optimization.

So is this workable? What would you change about the class? How would you build a character of this class? What can I do to optimize? Any thoughts and ideas are appreciated!

[Meta]

Hopeful bump? :smallredface:

[Greenish]

Mana Void's stun needs save DC, the class needs actual class features and you need to try the homebrew forum.

[Kenneth]

I am only going to say one thing.


you not going to fight any dragon kings untill epic levels right?

idk if teh 3rd ed Darksun nerfed the dragon kings at all, but in 2nd, going up against one was guranteed suicide.

also.. a full BAB is not needed as WOTC put too high a emphasis on it.

so bascially what i am getting about your class is. its a rouge without sneak attack, with a fighters BAB, and the abilities of the mage slayer PrC (at much earlier and greatly improved) and some passive that allows him to drain 22 spell levels worht fo spell slot.

well If your game is going to be crazily broken ( both in the sense of the ACTUAL definiton fo the word and the 'gamer' definition) I guess it is allright. but as it stands

why don't you just have your character go into teh mgae slayer prstige class instead and make mana break more like smite with uses per day instead of making it work off of every attack, (imagine if smite worked off every attack , that still would nowhere near as powerful as the mana break is)

again just my two cents.

also the dragon kings are more than just magic users.. in fact from what I remember of the lore and stories of them ( 2nd ed that is) they didn't do their magic (which was uqinuely powerful) as much as theri spionic abilites and the fact they are dragons.

[Meta]

Okay, Stun DC can be worked out. And, I'm looking less (but not none) for advice on what change homebrew wise, then what would you do to make this class most effective with these given.

I could rephrase the question to: How would you optimize a TWF to compete with the upper tier classes.

The sorcerer kings will all be between levels 15 and 22. They're not all dragons nor even all sorcerers and there are psionic abilities present.

Magina has a very high attack speed, so full BAB is needed, and I don't think a non caster class will become broken because of it.

As far as broken goes: I think you're overreacting a bit. He's designed to fight casters. Considering that an opponent of high enough level to actually take 9th or epic level slots has a lot of resources. It doesn't read: Be hit by his melee attack and die, and there are many more spells capable of much more brokeness.

Although this is a base class and not a PRC, no feature pinched from another class appears earlier than that class gets it.

The mage slayer PrC isn't quite right for Magina or frankly that interesting.


To summarize a bit: If you were going to play this class, how would you go about building it?

[Greenish]

I could rephrase the question to: How would you optimize a TWF to compete with the upper tier classes.How "upper tier" are we talking about? We can get to tier 3 with enough stuff, but the whole "hitting people with sharp pointy things" doesn't really go higher.

[Meta]

Sky's the Limit. There's a cleric and druid in the party. Neither will break the game world, and neither is playing a super optimized character, but as a much lower tier, anything but the stinkiest of cheese would be fine for me. Thrown rocks for hundreds of thousands of damage is pretty much the line, I'd say.

I appreciate any ideas you have. Is three feats (with two flaws) worth shadow blade?

[Meta]

In order to help get the character a little more in character, I think I'm going to take the blindness flaw and then grab a headband of true darkness, I think it's called. Question though: Does passive truesight (as the spell) negate being blind?

[Tvtyrant]

For TWF there are two real ways to get damage that I know of; riders like Sneak Attack or Dragonfire Inspiration, or critting/rending builds that use the number of attacks to fuel percentile successes. Crit fishing never seems to be worth it to me, and the only rend based builds seem to be Swordsages. DFI is a bardic ability that gives you up to 5d6 fire damage a hit (so TWF is perfect for it) and SA is found in a variety of classes (Swordsage, Rogue, Ninja, Binder, etc). The three SA builds that are Tier 3 that I know of are Binder (using the spider bind to get pounce and automatic SA on a charge), Swordsage focused on Shadowhand, and Rogue 10/Chameleon 10.

Really TWF is good at applying other abilities, but of itself its not that strong. The class you have here doesn't seem to have any riders to apply to it, and is a survival type class rather then a damage dealer or controller.

[Meta]

For TWF there are two real ways to get damage that I know of; riders like Sneak Attack or Dragonfire Inspiration, or critting/rending builds that use the number of attacks to fuel percentile successes. Crit fishing never seems to be worth it to me, and the only rend based builds seem to be Swordsages. DFI is a bardic ability that gives you up to 5d6 fire damage a hit (so TWF is perfect for it) and SA is found in a variety of classes (Swordsage, Rogue, Ninja, Binder, etc). The three SA builds that are Tier 3 that I know of are Binder (using the spider bind to get pounce and automatic SA on a charge), Swordsage focused on Shadowhand, and Rogue 10/Chameleon 10.

Really TWF is good at applying other abilities, but of itself its not that strong. The class you have here doesn't seem to have any riders to apply to it, and is a survival type class rather then a damage dealer or controller.

This makes sense. I believe my original post is missing this, but mana break does extra damage equal to slot it takes too. So if at higher levels I get 5 attacks, or more, and take some high level slots, that could add up no? Not as much as sneak attack, but that and shadow blade may help. Still not worth considering?

[Tvtyrant]

This makes sense. I believe my original post is missing this, but mana break does extra damage equal to slot it takes too. So if at higher levels I get 5 attacks, or more, and take some high level slots, that could add up no? Not as much as sneak attack, but that and shadow blade may help. Still not worth considering?

Its an interesting mechanic to be sure; a similar one that I know works is the Spellthief that trades SA for spell slots stolen. Lets say you do damage equal to the spellslot stolen, and you hit them 5 times. This gives you 45 extra damage , as opposed to 75 extra damage average with 5 hits using DFI or 135 damage average on 5 hits with 9 SA dice per hit. If I might make the alternate suggestion that the mana break stun/daze the opponent with a DC equal to class level + slot level stolen you have a high chance of putting the caster out of commission every round if you get a hit off.

[Diarmuid]

This definitely belongs in the homebrew section.