Slow Fall and other Horrible Class Features

[Mr.Bookworm]

Slow Fall almost reduces me to angrish every single time I look at it.

I mean seriously, it being there requires someone, somewhere, somehow on the development team to go "Getting a crappier version of 1st level spell as a capstone for a class sounds like a great idea!"

It's just that every time I open up the Monk class table and see "slow fall 90 ft." at the level where Sorcerers are getting 9th level spells I want to chuck a PHB at a WotC developer.

It's just, why? Even the Wizards of the Coast 3E staff, they of fighter bonus feats are awesome and nobody will ever use utility spells should have been able to figure that one out!

It's completely upstaged by an item that costs .289473684% of a 20th level character's WBL. A Fighter can one-up a Monk's capstone 34,545 times and still have enough money left over for a stiff drink!

...

So, uh. Anyone else have any particular class features that are just horrible in every conceivable way?

[Hirax]

In the Epic Level Handbook monks are the only class that gets an epic feat every 5 levels. Fighters get them every 2 levels, and every other class gets them every 3 or 4 levels. Utterly brainless.

Also, reaping mauler, truenamer, and CW samurai.

[Eldan]

The Green Star Adept tends to come up a lot. It seems that it was intended as a kind of mage-gish, focused on resistance and tanking. Then its capstone turns you into a construct, removing your constitution.

[Ravens_cry]

Slow fall is a nice class feature. It is thematic for the character they were trying to represent. Is it the most powerful? No. But not all class features have to be world beaters. Personally, I think a different class would have been better then putting the Monk, even a well designed Monk, in the PHB.

[Lilithgow]

Sometimes classes have really nice class features, hampered by terrible design. There's a prestige class in 'Dragonmarked' for the Ebberon campaign setting called the Blade of Orion - it's a primary melee class that can teleport around the battlefield, positioning itself where it needs to be and exploiting weaknesses of enemy formations or foiling pesky fast classes.

Later in it's career it can even teleport foes, and so makes it a master of tactical placement. Or at least, it would do if it didn't have an absolute maximum of 11 uses of this ability a day. And that's with going into a not-that complimentary prestige class. That's just mean to hold such cool features in front of someone and then take them away for fear of using them more than a few times a fight.

I suppose you could hold up either the 'Risen Martyr' or Dragon Compendium's 'Montebank' capstones as well, being that the first 'kill' your character permenantly, and the second instantly turns you into an npc, but personally, I like the flavour of them. But I'm sure some people wouldn't like that as much!

[Runestar]

Well, depending on how you wing it, timeless body also has no practical in-game applications unless your campaign lasts long enough and your DM lets you get the mental aging stat bonuses without applying the physical stat penalties.

[Sith_Happens]

In the Epic Level Handbook monks are the only class that gets an epic feat every 5 levels. Fighters get them every 2 levels, and every other class gets them every 3 or 4 levels. Utterly brainless.

On the bright side, guess what some of those epic Monk feats are? Why, the ability to have a small enhancement bonus and/or a very limited selection of special abilities on your unarmed strikes, of course! After all, you made it to epic levels, you've earned it!

/sarcasm

[Zagaroth]

Also, reaping mauler, truenamer, and CW samurai.

You might want to check out the original Reaping Mauler, before WotC mauled it.

http://www.wakinglands.com/htm_files/prestige_classes_reaping_mauler.htm