[3.5] Tier of Hypthetical Class

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

How would you rate the Tier of the following theoretical class: let's call it the Journeyman (the working title for Factotum). It gets full BAB, all good saves, d12 hit dice, 8 skills/level, all skills as class skills, proficiency with light, medium & heavy armor (and shields - including tower shields), and proficiency with all simple & martial weapons.

But the kicker is, it gets no actual class abilities. No spells, no sneak attack, no rage, not even the bonus feats of the fighter.

Where would you place it on the Tier system?

Cheers - T

[NNescio]

Hey all,

How would you rate the Tier of the following theoretical class: let's call it the Journeyman (the working title for Factotum). It gets full BAB, all good saves, d12 hit dice, 8 skills/level, all skills as class skills, proficiency with light, medium & heavy armor (and shields - including tower shields), and proficiency with all simple & martial weapons.

But the kicker is, it gets no actual class abilities. No spells, no sneak attack, no rage, not even the bonus feats of the fighter.

Where would you place it on the Tier system?

Cheers - T

Tier... 4? It's like a souped version of a gestalted Expert/Warrior, and a less useful version of the Factotum.

[Human Paragon 3]

Tier 4, I would say.

By dint of its BAB and proficiencies, it will be able to contribute in combat situations. Just be careful with your feat selection. The great skills will make sure he can contribute out of combat, too. He just won't do anything especially well.

He would be one of the best classes ever for meeting prereqs for non-magical prestige classes, however. The saves don't really come into it.

EDIT:

I would focus on UMD and Ride, then take mounted combat feats. Spirited charge and good ride bonuses means you will be able to fight pretty well. UMD up a scroll of Phantom Steed (Phantom Stag is even better) and you'll be good to go. I actually had a character very similar to this in the Test of Spite and it worked well.

[Hiro Protagonest]

It can fight a lot of threats, has skills for lots of situations, and raptoran, dragonborn, and UMD are options to deal with flight. I'd say tier 3, since most tier 3s cant fly without those options either.

[Circle of Life]

Iaijutsu Focus basically means he can have Sneak Attack as a class feature anyway. Tier 4 seems appropriate.

[SowZ]

Tier 4, yeah, and not a very strong or weak one, at that. He is a skillmonkey who can more or less match a fighter in pure melee without some of the obvious weaknesses of a fighter. He is rounded in some ways. But he is of the, 'can do a number of things proficiently, (or at least nothing terribly,) but nothing particularly well.' He won't even have one trick souped up as well as a one-trick pony fighter.

[DeAnno]

It has UMD and Iaijutsu Focus, which gives it fairly Rogue-like qualities. It lacks Rogue class features, but the good chassis is worth something even if its not much. If nothing else, it's quite good at qualifying for PRCs.

I'd say low (red) Tier 4.

[SowZ]

It can fight a lot of threats, has skills for lots of situations, and raptoran, dragonborn, and UMD are options to deal with flight. I'd say tier 3, since most tier 3s cant fly without those options either.

Take this class and take the Bard. Okay. The 'journeyman' gets better HP and has a better Fort save and a few more BAB. Other than that, the journeyman gets 2 extra Skill Points a level above the Bard and has a couple skills as class skills the Bard doesn't have but that is fairly insignificant since the Bard has more class skills then he knows what to do with, anyway.

Still, the Bard is well above this guy. Bardic Music, Bardic Lore, and spellcasting are just more powerful than HP and BAB. The Journeyman is nice as a defensive character. d12 HD and all good saves is nice. But being able to avoid damage entirely or have at least some sort of class based offense that removes the damaging threat altogether is far better.

I think this thread is really interesting, by the way.

[Curious]

Add 4 levels of Arcane spellcasting progression (CL at Char lvl - 3) and I would be willing to call this a mid-to-low tier 3. As it is, mid-to-high tier 4.

[Devmaar]

Tier 4

capable of doing many things to a reasonable degree of competance without truly shining

seems right to me

[paddyfool]

Yep, Tier 4.

As the passive half to a gestalt with an arcane caster, however, it creates an instant Lightning Warrior.