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Vaz
2013-01-24, 02:28 PM
I've made a homebrew class (called soldier from now on) whose signature ability is to copy other classes Extraordinary Abilities and can use them, called Extraordinary Learner.

The ability itself can only copy class based Ex abilities, not Racial, or any other manner of Ex abilities that are not gained through a class feature. To learn it, it must spend a few days learning the ability, and it must be taught by someone who the Soldier has visibly seen use the ability, so no 'kill the BBEG henchmen and copy his ability'.

They can get several abilities, provided that the class level of the soldier is four higher than the level at which the teacher gained the ability first. When the soldier learns the ability all references of the teaching class are replaced by Soldier. If he gains the same ability from taking levels in another class, and it advances in regards to class level, add your Soldier Level-4. They do not need to meet the classes prerequisites either. So, prestige classes can be learned.

You gain Extraordinary Learner at 5, 8, 12, 16, 20.

So, assuming all of the above, and full TO, how would you go around copying any abilities from any classes for a class?

Grod_The_Giant
2013-01-24, 02:37 PM
Barbarian for Pounce, Monk for Flurry of Blows, Scout for Skirmish damage to all hits? Add in Rogue to add more precision damage if the circumstances can be made to work?

Alternately, Rogue/Ninja/Monk could be pretty nasty if you can manage a full attack from surprise.

Vaz
2013-01-24, 02:54 PM
Looking at the sRD, sneak attack is not Ex.

I had considered Flurry and Pounce, but it is still limited to unarmed attacks and monk weapons, and even without that missing, to be without penalties, you' d need to be Soldier 13, all to get pounce and to get an additional attack.

Consider that to a duskblade 13.

Garryl
2013-01-24, 02:56 PM
Snatch the abilities of PrCs and Epic Classes that normally require a higher level character to enter. This can let you get abilities at a significantly lower level than they are designed for.

Doxkid
2013-01-24, 03:56 PM
*Animal Companion from a druid

*Sneak attack from any of the non SRD sources (in complete warrior, for example, Dark Hunter has it as an EX ability. Other books should be the same.)

*Skirmish and sudden strike-both listed as Ex in Complete Scoundrel.

*Blank thoughts (occult slayer)

*Evasion and Mettle; or they could just skip to Improved Evasion and Improved Mettle

*Diamond soul (monk)-SR that scales acceptably well
...
---
Almost everything you can pick up is defensive. This won't be overpowered, per-say, but it can lead to odd/annoying moments where the party has been TPK'd except for this one guy who can't actually harm any enemies or get away...but he also can't be slain/disabled.

Kazyan
2013-01-24, 04:02 PM
Illithid Savant's copying abiliites are (Ex). The Soldier could segway into one of those, into basically whatever he wants.

Vaz
2013-01-25, 07:19 AM
Snatch the abilities of PrCs and Epic Classes that normally require a higher level character to enter. This can let you get abilities at a significantly lower level than they are designed for.

Nope. Soldiers class level has to be +4 that of the level at which the teacher gained it.

For example, Dark Hunter gets Sneak Attack at DH3, with BAB5+ - it's at least ECL8, and it would require Soldier 12 to learn that ability. Plus, it would only be +1d6 SA damage; if you're going for SA damage, you might as well just take a level of rogue.

Hmmm. Illithid Savant; potentially a bit naughty, but 1; having one as a PC companion you'd have to wait until it had access to it - i,e ECL16 at the start, although its true level would only be, what... 10? 2; Having one pop up in a campaign who'd teach you, 3; eat a brain BEFORE learning the ability, 4; actually seeing how an Illithid eats a brain, would you IC seriously want to learn how to do that, especially as a good character? For TO, potentially broken, tablewise, not so much. Perfect, thanks for the suggestion, I'd have missed this one. I know I said TO, so please continue, but I'm confident in a campaign this occasion would not pop up.

Animal Companion; yup. It advances at full speed, but as Druid-4, on top of that of the other modifications for seperate AC's. Not overly powerful, and again, the difficulty of getting a teacher. It does scale well, though, unlike the Ranger's due to full class advancement.

Improved Mettle/Evasion - yup! Intended. Improved Evasion and Mettle are both allowed provided you have a teacher capable and willing of doing so, and that you have the level to do so. Sudden Strike and Skirmish though, those are decent choices, and would stack, as well as counting as SA for prerequisites. Good shout, as they're also reasonable common for a PC.

Monk abilities; you'd need to find a Monk 13 first of all! Joking aside, it's almost always going to be a NPC by this stage, even so, it's CL+6, rather than CL+10, so at the time it becomes available, on a Soldier 17, that's still going to be only SR23, the same as a CR11 Barbed Devil. However, a Dragon is typically CR17-18 by the time it has that sort of Spell Resistance, so either way. Admittedly, that was one of my first thoughts for Ex abilities.

Occult Slayer; although I've read CW only recently, I had to look up online to even find where it was from. I'd never even heard of it, effectively. Mind Blank IS a nice ability, thanks once again, this is the sort of thing I'd have missed. I like this a lot, but for the purposes of a typical campaign, it's rare that the class could be found. Happy with that.

I'm currently working my way through the books I have to locate any (Ex) abilities.

Network
2013-01-25, 09:42 AM
Monk abilities; you'd need to find a Monk 13 first of all! Joking aside, it's almost always going to be a NPC by this stage, even so, it's CL+6, rather than CL+10, so at the time it becomes available, on a Soldier 17, that's still going to be only SR23, the same as a CR11 Barbed Devil. However, a Dragon is typically CR17-18 by the time it has that sort of Spell Resistance, so either way. Admittedly, that was one of my first thoughts for Ex abilities.
You didn't tell the teacher had to be a PC yet. Anyway, lets look at what a Soldier 5 can easily get :
-Fast movement and Rage from the Barbarian.
-Animal Companion, Nature Sense and Wild Empathy from the Druid. Quite easy to find.
-Favored Enemy and Wild Empathy from the Ranger. Okay, Wild Empathy would be redundant, but why not find another 1st level ranger to gain another Favored Enemy?

I didn't took a look at all my books to find base classes with first-level extraordinary abilities, but most of the martial adepts abilities would qualify. If a soldier can find a Crusader, Warblade or Swordsage, he gets a lot of benefits. Some homebrews can be even worse, but being overpowered in themselves, it's not a real issue.

The problem is as simple as it look : whatever will be the stats of the soldier, if he can find a trainer of the appropriate level, he can gain whole levels worth of abilities. At will.

Hanuman
2013-01-25, 09:48 AM
Ozodrin's swallow whole for lols.

Vaz
2013-01-25, 11:07 AM
You didn't tell the teacher had to be a PC yet.


and it must be taught by someone who the Soldier has visibly seen use the ability
Yes I did.


Anyway, lets look at what a Soldier 5 can easily get :
-Fast movement and Rage from the Barbarian.
-Animal Companion, Nature Sense and Wild Empathy from the Druid. Quite easy to find.
-Favored Enemy and Wild Empathy from the Ranger. Okay, Wild Empathy would be redundant, but why not find another 1st level ranger to gain another Favored Enemy?

I didn't took a look at all my books to find base classes with first-level extraordinary abilities, but most of the martial adepts abilities would qualify. If a soldier can find a Crusader, Warblade or Swordsage, he gets a lot of benefits. Some homebrews can be even worse, but being overpowered in themselves, it's not a real issue.

The problem is as simple as it look : whatever will be the stats of the soldier, if he can find a trainer of the appropriate level, he can gain whole levels worth of abilities. At will.
Teaching takes quite a bit of time in a campaign - a few hours each day in which he must practise (dependent on the level of the teacher, the Soldier and the level at which the ability was learned), with an hour or so of input from his teacher on each of those days. For an early access ability; a none-multi/prestige class Barbarian learning rage would only take a few hours of one day, but learning an ECL 16 ability could take as long as 16 days tuition and practise. While I didn't give the full information, the class it's already written into as a WIP (Professional Soldier), is somewhere in page 4-5 of the Homebrew pages, and it's had no PEACH, when I felt I could really do with some TO guys coming in to break it the ability wide open.

His Soldier Class Level must be 4 levels higher than the Character Level (the sum of all his class levels) at which the ability was learned by the teacher; Fast Movement; is that REALLY worth the Ex Learner ability? It cannot learn the ACF's unless the teacher knows it.

He cannot gain the same class feature more than once unless it explicitly states in the class feature it is gained more than once; however, abilities do advance as if he was the class from which he got the ability from, albeit as if he was 4 levels lower.

Edit; Hanuman - what on earth is an Ozodrin?

Tiniere
2013-01-25, 11:17 AM
The Ozodrin is this magnificent abomination.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153536

Synovia
2013-01-25, 12:02 PM
The big problem I see here is that you've created a class whose job is to basically step on other party members toes. His abilities are going to be almost completely redundant to the party.


He's either going to feel useless, or be making someone else feel useless.

Cidolfas
2013-01-25, 01:46 PM
The big problem I see here is that you've created a class whose job is to basically step on other party members toes. His abilities are going to be almost completely redundant to the party.


He's either going to feel useless, or be making someone else feel useless.

This, seconded.

Your guy does what other people do, but at a level where they are already have four more levels worth of things and already do it way better than you could ever hope to.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-01-25, 02:28 PM
You didn't tell the teacher had to be a PC yet.


and it must be taught by someone who the Soldier has visibly seen use the ability

Yes I did.
That's... err... not the same thing. You mention that they have to spend a few days training, but not that there's a difference between PCs and NPCs in the process.

In any case, if that's the kind of restriction we're talking about, then yeah, I concur with Synovia and Cidolfas-- you're invented a class whose main schtick is "hey guys, I can do the same stuff you can, but worse!"

Network
2013-01-25, 09:23 PM
To learn it, it must spend a few days learning the ability, and it must be taught by someone who the Soldier has visibly seen use the ability, so no 'kill the BBEG henchmen and copy his ability'.
This is only two restrictions :
-You must have seen the ability in action. That's not a big deal. If the person is not willing to show it when asked (''hey guy, can you walk a few feet so I can see how a barbarian go faster?''), a few gp will do the job (''show me just how strong you can be... here's 5 gp.'').
-The person who demonstrated the ability is willing to teach you. Not just as easy, but money is still the best motivator.

The teacher must then teach the character for one or a few days. According to my DMG, this kind of teacher would ask for 50 gp a week, but it may be less, as the training won't take more than a day or two. Say 10 gp a day, ok? And the teacher isn't hard to find either : provided you can find a city of 901 citizens, you have access to characters from all base classes of the SRD.

This is the complicated way. The easiest one is to take the Leadership feat at level 6 and ask your followers to teach you. This make your job of finding martial adepts easier and reduce the spending to zero.

And yes, followers would be very fair teachers and no, they're still not PCs.

Hanuman
2013-01-26, 06:14 AM
Edit; Hanuman - what on earth is an Ozodrin?
A little girl. AND NOTHING ELSE. -:roach:

Vaz
2013-01-27, 09:04 AM
This is only two restrictions :
-You must have seen the ability in action. That's not a big deal. If the person is not willing to show it when asked (''hey guy, can you walk a few feet so I can see how a barbarian go faster?''), a few gp will do the job (''show me just how strong you can be... here's 5 gp.'').
-The person who demonstrated the ability is willing to teach you. Not just as easy, but money is still the best motivator.

The teacher must then teach the character for one or a few days. According to my DMG, this kind of teacher would ask for 50 gp a week, but it may be less, as the training won't take more than a day or two. Say 10 gp a day, ok? And the teacher isn't hard to find either : provided you can find a city of 901 citizens, you have access to characters from all base classes of the SRD.

This is the complicated way. The easiest one is to take the Leadership feat at level 6 and ask your followers to teach you. This make your job of finding martial adepts easier and reduce the spending to zero.

And yes, followers would be very fair teachers and no, they're still not PCs.

Leadership's broken. And in other news, the pope sits in Rome. A DM including a Homebrew class is more than likely aware of how strong Leadership is, and take steps regarding how bad it is at breaking the game; if it's really being included, then giving to everyone for free stops it becoming *too* unbalanced outside of the fact that there are 4+ additional *Player characters* around.

@Network/Grod, I don't know why I said that it had to be a PC. It was never intended as such. It was intended so that a party could have more options available to it; if a party included a Rogue, a Barbarian, a Paladin, and a Knight, and it simply copied all the abilities from them, it would be allowed, and intended as such, but not recommended.

However, it was intended so that if that same party is visiting a Castle, and there was a Character with an ability that none of the party had access to; say a CW Samurai with Mass and Improved Stare Down, provided the party spent enough time alongside them, then he could learn Mass and Improved Stare Down. Aside from the fact that those abilities aren't especially brilliant, and were used simply as an example, he would have an ability that the party wouldn't have access to.

To see the ability in action, the Character must actually locate the relevant class - a person wanting to get Monk levels must find a monk, say, go to a monastery. If they want to learn some Initiator Abilities, then likely finding a ToB school house is also on the cards.

In regards to *same as, but worse*, you don't have to get the progressively advancing abilities, you can just go for the abilities that have a set, none-level dependent ability, and neither do you have to use the same abilities as your party, but you can do if you really want to.