Unearth arcana: generic classes

[Quintessence]

how powerful are these?

[dsmiles]

They are the suck.

[Jack Zander]

They are the suck.

Really? I was under the impression that they are generally better than the classes they attempt to allow you to emulate. Fighter with actual class features? Yes please.

[dsmiles]

Really? I was under the impression that they are generally better than the classes they attempt to allow you to emulate. Fighter with actual class features? Yes please.
That's really not saying much. A common house cat is better than a fighter. :smallamused:

[Quintessence]

That's really not saying much. A common house cat is better than a fighter. :smallamused:

i was looking at the spellcaster, you are basically a sorcerer with custom class skills and free feats like a wizard.

[DeltaEmil]

Generic Warrior is better than Fighter, unless you consider Weapon Specialization and Greater Weapon Focus and so on to be totally the bestest thing ever. And wearing heavy armor or tower shields... So yeah, Generic Warrior is better than Fighter.

The rest isn't.

[NeoSeraphi]

i was looking at the spellcaster, you are basically a sorcerer with custom class skills and free feats like a wizard.

You also get to choose your mental ability score used for casting, which means you could have Int-based spontaneous casting. You choose whether you are arcane or divine for the purposes of feats and the like. You get to choose your spells known from the wizard, druid and cleric lists.

Suddenly, all sorts of potent combinations are available to you. Bite of the Were-X and Divine Power and Time Stop at the same time. Spellcasters are pretty strong.

[Quintessence]

You also get to choose your mental ability score used for casting, which means you could have Int-based spontaneous casting. You choose whether you are arcane or divine for the purposes of feats and the like. You get to choose your spells known from the wizard, druid and cleric lists.

Suddenly, all sorts of potent combinations are available to you. Bite of the Were-X and Divine Power and Time Stop at the same time. Spellcasters are pretty strong.

i don't think you can take the divine spells unless you are divine caster tho.

[Jeraa]

i don't think you can take the divine spells unless you are divine caster tho.

It doesn't matter if you are arcane or divine. You can pick whatever spells you want.


A spellcaster must choose at 1st level whether to be an arcane spellcaster or a divine spellcaster. This choice has no impact on the spells that she may learn, but affects what kinds of scrolls she can use and which ability score controls her spellcasting. An arcane spellcaster may designate either Intelligence or Charisma as the ability score that determines the highest-level spell she can learn or cast, and the Difficulty Class of her spell's-saving throws. A divine spellcaster must use Wisdom to determine the highest-level spell she can learn or cast, and the DC of her spell's saving throws.

[Jack Zander]

So it is decided then. Generic fighter and mage are awesome. Expert is teh suck.

[shortround]

Well that's not entirely true either. Expert has it's uses, too. I mean, custom picked 12 class skills with 6+int skill points a level isn't that bad. Generic Expert can even get into Thief of Life at ECL 2. I mean, the Factotum does his job better, but it's not like Expert is scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

[Jack Zander]

I dunno, lots of skill points never really seemed that powerful to me. Picking class skills is good, but all three of them already do that.

[NeoSeraphi]

Expert is certainly the least interesting of the three. However, with class skills/skill points, you have more "class feature" options available to you than the warrior. The warrior can grab Sneak Attack easily enough, but unless he's got some Int in his pocket he won't be grabbing Trapfinding or Wild Empathy along with it.

Now, whether this is a pro or not honestly depends on your view of the class features available. Most of them are decidedly meh. So, yeah, expert is pretty bad.

[Hiro Protagonest]

So it is decided then. Generic fighter and mage are awesome. Expert is teh suck.

No. Barbarian is at least as good as generic warrior. Spirit Lion Ferocity Wolf Totem barbarian outclasses it. Zhentarim Thug Dungeoncrasher (2/3 of that is available for free online legally) is at least on par with it in terms of general effectiveness. Warblade and crusader outclass it. Sure, generic warrior can get UMD, but UMD does not a good class make.

[NeoSeraphi]

No. Barbarian is at least as good as generic warrior. Spirit Lion Ferocity Wolf Totem barbarian outclasses it. Zhentarim Thug Dungeoncrasher (2/3 of that is available for free online legally) is at least on par with it in terms of general effectiveness. Warblade and crusader outclass it. Sure, generic warrior can get UMD, but UMD does not a good class make.

This greatly depends on your DM. If your DM lets you get Rage, Greater Rage, Ferocity, etc, as class features, as well as a maneuver progression with your feats as class features thing, you'd probably have a pretty decent class.

In fact, if the expert got an Inspiration Point pool like a factotum and a warrior got maneuvers, then the three classes would be a little closer to each other in effectiveness (a little).

[sonofzeal]

Spellcaster: Similar to Sorcerer, but with several significant advantages - namely bonus feats, a ridiculously huge spell list, a choice of class skills, a choice of good save, and a choice of casting stats. Easily Low-T1, but below the top classes. You're still a level behind and can't learn every spell.

Warrior: Similar to Fighter, but with several significant advantages - bonus feats are unrestricted, a choice of class skills, and a choice of good save. The choice of class skills may not sound significant, but keep in mind that Fighters rarely have anything at all to do with their skillpoints even when they have them. The possibility of doing UMD and Diplomancy on a Fighter chassis is certainly an improvement. Also, there are literally thousands of feats out there, and only a small fraction are Fighter Bonus feats. In short, the Warrior gains a huge amount of flexibility over the Fighter, and flexibility is one of the defining traits of the Tiers. High-T4.

Expert: Similar to Feat Rogue, with the same significant advantages Warrior enjoys, but now with the disadvantage that you lose general Rogueness, and Rogues already had a decent skill list. It's still not bad, much more flexible than Rogue, but you really have to be taking advantage of those unrestricted bonus feats to make much headway. Still, it's working off a higher-tier base than Warrior was. And unrestricted feats are still very nice for all characters. High-T4