What tier would this be?

[Mystify]

This is a hpothetical class that would fill a similar role to a factotum. 3/4 Bab, lots(all?) skills as class skills, including UMD, high number of skill points.

However, there is only 1 class feature of note:

Crazy Prepered(ex):
You are always prepared for whatever situation arises, much to the amazement of those around you. You are often heard saying "I have just thing thing for this".
Whenever you are in a place where you can buy goods, you can spend money on a "preparation fund". You note how much you spent, but do not select any items.
At any time, you can spend money from the preparation fund to remove any item you could have bought from your pack. Items purchased in this manner are normal items, and remain in existence as normal objects. Any item can be withdrawn from the preparation fund as long as they could have purchased the item normally.


Setting aside the complexity of how this would work with multiclassing, what tier would a character with this ability fall into?

[Z3ro]

I'd say a solid tier 1. If all skills are class skills, the class essentially has all spells on his spell list, via scrolls and UMD. It's basically Schrodinger's Wizard, but actually having all spells.

[INoKnowNames]

I don't know much about the game, but I do recognize Batman when I see it. And this is definitely Batman. And I'm pretty sure Batman can beat a Wizard, let alone a Rogue or a Fighter.

[nyarlathotep]

I'd say it's tier would depend on how fast treasure is acquired. Like an artificer firing on all cylinders with regular wealth it is unquestioningly tier 1, but if wealth is given out in burst then it is tier 2 after the first big fight, still really good but the versatility drops.

As for multiclassing, just put a cap on how expensive any single item coming out of the fund can be based on class level.

[Namfuak]

Definitely tier one. If you were playing with this character, why would the party even bother buying anything from shopkeepers? I would assume that anything he pulls out would be cheaper (since you rarely get the actual price from shopkeepers) and it could be anything they need. Depending on your definition of "item," this guy could pull a cohort out of his pack for the price of hiring him, or even a planar ally.

[FMArthur]

Between scrolls, power stones, martial scripts and every magic item ever created, this character would be very problematic in three ways: It is pretty close to being perfectly undefeatable because it has continuous access to every spell in the game from an unreasonably low level. When an emergency comes up and it's win or die and it's this person's turn, this guy wins straight-up if he knows his spells and sources well enough. That brings the second point: it is insanely dependent on system mastery. To know relevant information on what all your options are, you would need to be literally a wizard in real life. The bookkeeping nightmare of an Artificer/Archivist/Stp Erudite triple-gestalt would be a joke compared to this one class's limitless item access. It has a power ceiling of however much work the player feels like committing. If that's low, nothing too bad happens or nothing at all happens, and if that's high, unstoppability happens. But outside of an emergency, it wouldn't have the resources to actually do this as a regular contribution. This ability is simultaneously an overpowering win button when **** hits the fan and a nonentity when this is not the case. If you balanced the whole class around the ridiculously powerful potential of this ability, his participation throughout the day would be like a wizard with one or two spell slots.

[Slipperychicken]

I ask: why the hell is this guy adventuring? He would *annihilate* the markets as a merchant.

He would always have exactly the item you wanted.
He could ignore transportation costs entirely.
He would never have excess inventory. Ever.
No one could steal his goods, ever.
Even if he has to "buy" at "current" prices, he's making a killing as long as there's a poor country in existence anywhere.



EDIT: I would recommend putting a low cap on the gp value of individual items, capping the total, and/or excluding things like wands or scrolls.

[Mystify]

Some people are acting like he is producing items out of nowhere. The idea is that he already bought the items, but since the character is more insightful than the player, they purchased the right things. Having the party purchase items through him is not any different from them buying them in the first place.
It would also be possible for people to steal from his preparedness fund, since he has the items. Once people steal from it, they would get random items of the appropriate value, and their preparedness fund would decrease accordingly. There should be a weight to it, but I didn't bother specifying on the premise that they would have a handy haversack anyways. People are taking the rough outline of how the power functions that I presented for consideration, and poking holes in the nitty gritty details that weren't relevant.
People also seem to be assuming that every item is available for purchase easily. Even if they go to a main city and put 20k in their prepardness fund there, representing them going around and purchasing items, nothing says that any given item will be available there. there typically would not be shops with every single potential item in stock.

How would it change if there was a markup on the price? Say, anything purchased this way costs double, on the principle that they have things they won't actually need, and hence there is waste in the process of caring everything they need.

[Helldog]

People also seem to be assuming that every item is available for purchase easily. Even if they go to a main city and put 20k in their prepardness fund there, representing them going around and purchasing items, nothing says that any given item will be available there. there typically would not be shops with every single potential item in stock.
So simply put the player invests gold and then has to count on his GM to be generous enough for the PC to have the item that he needs?

[Mystify]

So simply put the player invests gold and then has to count on his GM to be generous enough for the PC to have the item that he needs?
There should be rules in place to determine A. what types of items are available in a given local and B. if a specific item is there.

[Helldog]

There should be rules in place to determine A. what types of items are available in a given local and B. if a specific item is there.
I don't see them. At this point it entirely depends on GM fiat.

[Mystify]

I don't see them. At this point it entirely depends on GM fiat.
I know there at least rules on the most expensive items available in a given city.

[FMArthur]

There should be rules in place to determine A. what types of items are available in a given local and B. if a specific item is there.

Actually, the default rules are that you can buy any item within a certain price range depending on the size of the city you shop at. Check out DMG p137 for what the game assumes about item availability and a couple pages back for what is assumed about PC wealth. Unless for some reason you scale the sizes of cities your players visit with their character level (which is all kinds of :smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:), this particular aspect is of no use as a limiting factor. Class features should not be making that kind of assumption about the type of campaign unless you are only making the class for one particular game that you are running.

[Mystify]

Alright, lets presume that all items are available to purchase.

What limits would you place on such an ability to hold it to tier 3?

[NNescio]

Alright, lets presume that all items are available to purchase.

What limits would you place on such an ability to hold it to tier 3?

No limits on mundane items, some limits on magical/psionic items (per encounter/per day/per X-GP invested)?

[FMArthur]

My recommendation is just to take the unlimitedness out of it. Make them choose items beforehand and then at the time of use, let them pick which one they actually bought from that set. The number of choices allowed for each purchase could go up as you increase class level.


Edit: As an example, you would have a chart like this set up on a piece of paper when you play the class. When you first get the ability and can only pick two options for each purchase, you'd fill it out like this:
{table=head]Money "Spent"|First selection|Second selection|Third selection|Fourth selection
2250gp/2315gp|Healing Belt x3|+1 longsword
1125gp/937gp|Wand of Stinking Cloud|Wand of Web, Wand of Prestidigitation
2000gp/2000gp|Amulet of Natural Armor|Ring of Protection|
|||
|||[/table]

So you could pick either the healing belts or the longsword at the moment that you need either of them, and you cross out the other one. Same for each row on the chart. You are considered to have "spent" the greater amount of gold in each case until you make your decision.

[NNescio]

My recommendation is just to take the unlimitedness out of it. Make them choose items beforehand and then at the time of use, let them pick which one they actually bought from that set. The number of choices allowed for each purchase could go up as you increase class level.

Schrödinger's Toolbox (Ex)

Waveform Collapse (Ex)

Entanglement (Ex)

Decoherence (Ex)

[deuxhero]

No one mentioned there is a Pathfinder prc that does this?

Granted, there is a very stiff (250 GP iirc), but worth noting.

[HunterOfJello]

The pathfinder PrC in Pathfinder has exactly this. Granted, the amount of gp worth of items they can hold is quite low. That is the limitation of the class.

[deuxhero]

Pathfinder Chronicler (core) I think.

edit: Ninja delete!

[dgnslyr]

Alright, lets presume that all items are available to purchase.

What limits would you place on such an ability to hold it to tier 3?

Allow mundane and cheap magical items only? Say, doodads of 3rd CL or lower. Limit its uses per day, or encounter, or something? Pulling the right tool for the job whenever you need to takes the punch out of it, while pulling out your Bat-Shark Repellent in the middle of a tense fight has more dramatic zing to it.

[Laniius]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/a-b/balanced-scale-of-abadar

This has some similar class options.

[Mystify]

So, unlimited it is extemely overpowered and game breaking(which is what I thought), but all the suggested fixes make it into a single class feature that is mildly useful. There has to be a balance in between somewhere. If this ability is ALL the character gets in the way of class features, what limits would you put on it to make it functional, but not game breaking?

[TuggyNE]

Well, for one thing, since this is the class's entire schtick, divide up this massive ability into chunks that they get at various levels. You probably want to have certain levels where (as another poster suggested) you increase uses/day or uses/encounter or whatever. Also, some levels could increase an initial limit in GP or types of items (can buy mundane only, can buy CL-limited magic items, can buy scrolls/wands/potions, can buy wondrous items, etc).

FMArthur's suggestion to actually make the player perform some of the preparation themselves is probably a good one, too. It might well serve as the core of the class, and then have some minor abilities that do not require pre-selected lists.

Conceivably, you could require the lists to be a random selection of items that were available during preparation, and then have the player pick from those. That's probably not a great idea as is, but perhaps something vaguely similar.

That's all I can think of right now.

[tyckspoon]

I'm not sure there is a difference between 'useful' and 'game-breaking', not if you're trying to build an entire class off just that and a mediocre chassis. If it's going to be useful, it has to be able to pull a wide variety of items out of its bag, including magical consumables (in fact, having the right potion/scroll/wand at hand is how D&D does the 'luckily I had my Bat Shark Repellant Spray!' thing.) But that's what makes it broken, as well; for every situation, there *is* a spell that solves it, and all you need to break the ability is for the player to know what that spell is.

Hard limits on the percentages of what can go into what kinds of items may help, although it's a rather heavy-handed and inelegant way to go about it; it's not quite so bad if, say, only 10% of your money can be undefined scrolls, although the relative cheapness of scrolls means that's still a lot of schrodinger-ness at higher levels.

[Mystify]

I think alot of the issue is that scrolls are the main thing that is needed. If you say "no scrolls", then their ability to adapt to situations ends up rather limited. you could get a wand or a staff with some spell, but then you have 50 charges of it, and hence it only works if you will need the spell repeatedly. wonderous items are too expensive to use on a regular basis. Sure, it would be useful to pull out a few bottles of air when the dungeon unexpectedly floods, but having it wealth limited makes that infeasible.

One option would be to let them return items into the prepardness fund, so it determines the total value they can extract. However, since it represents pre-purchasing precisely the right items, this only makes sense to do in a town where you can restock. This would make them function like a caster who recharged spells on a per-excursion basis instead of a per-day, which is not really balanced in the system.

How about this:
they invest money into the preparedness fund. They can use it to get items. Consumables are consumed, but they can return permanent items at cost. They have a limit on maximum item value based on level, since you can't be prepared for anything if you buy an item that takes up 90% of your wealth. Scrolls cost 3x as much as their list price, making it harder to get high level scrolls, and very resource intensive. You are probably better off actually buying scrolls than trying to pull out the right one with the preparedness fund.

[Firest Kathon]

There's also a PF feat for Halflings, Well Prepared (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/well-prepared). It requires you to make a Sleight of Hand check (or Survival) with a DC depending on the GP cost.

If you make it into a class feature, maybe you can set the DC at 1/100 gp cost, or base it on a logarithmic scale so that magic items are hard to get, but not impossible. Then give a bonus of +2/Class level or something.

Disclaimer: I didn't actually do any calculations, so I don't know if the values actually makes any sense.