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View Full Version : Contest Base Class Contest XXXVII Voting Thread



Temotei
2017-02-12, 05:32 AM
Welcome to the voting thread for Base Class Challenge XXXVII, Upsy-Daisy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?509863-Base-Class-Contest-XXXVII-Upsy-Daisy)! Voting will consist of each voter giving a first, second, and third place vote for three separate base classes. Anyone can vote, and in fact, entrants must vote to qualify for victory.

A first place vote is worth three points, a second place vote is worth two points, and a third place vote is worth one point. You may not vote for your own class.

You are encouraged to include reason with your votes, though this is not absolutely required.

The class that ends up with the most points wins the challenge contest. Voting starts now and will continue until 23:59 (Central Standard Time USA/Canada; GMT-6) on February 25th.



Base Class
Author
1st
2nd
3rd
Total Points


Daredevil (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21525945&postcount=3)
Jormengand
3
1
0
11


Psychic Fool (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21527778&postcount=4)
Morphic Tide
0
0
0
0


Incompetent (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21527963&postcount=5)
JNAProductions
4
0
2
14


Kneesniper (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21531456&postcount=6)
sengmeng
1
2
2
9


Fool (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21537210&postcount=7)
Lanth Sor
0
1
1
3


Cliché Villain (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21550335&postcount=8)
Celestia
1
3
2
11


Follower (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21697735&postcount=9)
nikkoli
0
2
2
6

Celestia
2017-02-12, 06:09 AM
1st: Incompetent
This class is the purest epitome of the theme. In fact, I was going to do this, myself, until I saw that someone beat me to it.

2nd: Fool
This class is also quite good, but I think the Incompetent is more, well, incompetent.

3rd: Kneesniper
Yeah, it's an old joke, but if I reject the old jokes, I'd lose over half my material. :smalltongue:

nikkoli
2017-02-12, 08:57 AM
Everyone made such fun looking classes this time around, but my favorites this time around are:
1st the dare devil
2nd the cliche villain
3rd the incompetent

JNAProductions
2017-02-12, 01:29 PM
Daredevil, for number one.

Kneesniper, for number two.

And Fool for three.

Morphic tide
2017-02-12, 02:35 PM
1. Kneesniper, because it's the only one of the classes that inflicts targeted incompetence.

2. Follower, because while it's themed on incompetence, it can get quite a bit of compitence with the right picks.

3. Cliche Villain, because it's a class that can be utterly terrifying when played right, but is nearly impossible to do so.

lylsyly
2017-02-12, 02:43 PM
Daredevil for number one.

Kneesniper for number two.

Incompetent for three.

Temotei
2017-02-13, 02:40 AM
Votes tallied.

Lanth Sor
2017-02-16, 03:02 PM
1st the incompetent
2nd the cliche villain
3rd the follower

srry the kneespiper made me hurt and the dare devil while design is sound is to competent.

Temotei
2017-02-16, 07:07 PM
Votes tallied. Jorm and seng still have to vote.

neriractor
2017-02-17, 06:14 PM
1st: Incompetent

2nd: Daredevil

3rd: Cliché villain

Temotei
2017-02-20, 05:25 AM
Votes tallied.

Jormengand
2017-02-22, 08:23 PM
1st: Cliché Villain: This class does a few things right and a lot of things wrong, but it's by far the most soundly put-together of all these classes. The class has the ability to do something useful at first level - which surprisingly many of the others lack - just because of its talent for skills, though its utter combat ineptitude is an issue (repeating crossbow proficiency helps, though). It has a variety of useful and flavourful abilities.

However, many of its class features are problematic: it rewards dumping intelligence on what is otherwise fundamentally skill-based, it has class features with massive drawbacks including potentially losing your ability to gain levels or definitely losing 20% of your wealth, and most of your minions' builds will involve trying to make up for the fact that they only have one hit point. The corporate funding ability is easily abusable, especially if you use Dedicated Wrights (ECS) to make items for you, but otherwise you probably don't want to gain that ability. One of the sentences in the level 20 ability turns into another sentence halfway through. The concept is great, but the execution needs a rewrite. You should never become less powerful, in any way, because you took a level.

2nd: Follower: Two eight six five seven. Glorious.

The follower is interesting, but has fundamental problems. Spellcasters don't get cantrips or orisons at will in 3.5, and there's a reason that there's no cure minor wounds in Pathfinder where they do. I'm not sure what others are particularly broken, but in PF I know that spamming create water to cause floods is common. Those are probably the two I'd take. If there were any class skills worth taking I'd probably follow up with making the rogue cry, but since your class skills aren't good enough to justify more than the 4/level you get anyway, I'd probably just take the decent manifesting you get, and then some feats to give me more power points. Oh, and the 1/week wish is nice, given that it's a SLA so no components needed.

The fact that the class also rewards being on your own is problematic, because that usually means everyone else is twiddling their thumbs waiting for you to do whatever. Oh, and you're near-useless at first level.

3rd: Kneesniper: Why commoner, and not warrior? I assume that guards are warriors? You have CLASS NAME in at least two places. The class has no noncombat utility apart from the mediocre skills it has, which is unsurprising for a class that's just based on a meme taken too far (which is something I am also guilty of (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?417189-The-Raid-Leader-3-5-silly), to be fair).

I should point out that the combination of the negative levels and the commonerification will probably kill most creatures anyway - they lose 5 hit points per negative level (which is a number of levels equal to or greater than their hit dice), they only have 2.5+CON hit points per level, and they've taken damage anyway. No-one's ever going to use Knee's Bane because the second attack makes them more likely to hit at least once than losing the -4. One Shot One Knee is also unlikely to see much use, because the extra attacks are almost as effective anyway and you're not putting everything all in one shot.

Also, some enemies have legs but do not actually have knees, but can apparently be sniped in the knee. Zombies and skeletons should be very vulnerable to damaged knees, but are actually immune to the kneesniper's sneak attack! Also, the dead level ability is strictly worse than just, say, inflicting another negative level because they're treated as that many levels lower to determine details of their special abilities, such as whether or not they're high enough level to use them or how many SA dice they have.

(4th: Fool): So, it seems that at first level you choose between making rogues and factota share in tears of redundancy, slowly raising your middle finger to all martial classes, and... being a really awful caster? Okay? Also, the casting abilities are written awfully. Am I choosing the spell list of a 6th- or 9th-level caster? How do I prepare spells and what ability scores do I use, theirs or the bard's? Write your abilities out in full. Technically, you never even said that you had to choose between one of these four paths; as written you get all of them. Taking magic talent to get bard casting off the wizard or cleric list is okay, but you could just be a wizard or even a bard if you were going to do that.

I dislike the "dump wisdom, make gains" class design. I tried a class that worked by failing will saves (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?483024-The-Madness-Disciple-(Class-in-30-minutes-PEACH)), but it turned out that the game doesn't really support trying to de-optimise your abilities like that. Oh, and the "No" ability is the kind of thing I give to my epic classes. Spells are Capricious Things is an inherently dumb ability because it just gives the DM an additional power when the DM was infinitely powerful anyway. Activating the spell forcefully is a novel idea, but not knowing what the bleeding thing actually does is completely unhelpful. That said, the possiblility of a second-level orc fool who casually decides to cast animus blizzard one day, and then continues to cast it on a daily basis after realising what spell it is, seems absurd.

The idea that these abilities range from "Slow fall any distance by expending a use of your important ability" to "Epic spell might just cast itself by expending a use of your important ability" is crazy. Critical gamble reads like it should require that it be used - it has a duration but doesn't explain how you activate it. Every single ability is badly written. It gets worse when you look at the fate's designs and realise that you can be casting an epic spell several times per day. More ridiculously, it costs 2 uses to cast this epic spell, and 3 uses to cast "Limited miracle", a seventh-level spell which doesn't exist and isn't defined well enough to understand what it does, but which is presumably weaker than said epic spell. Poking holes in reality allows you to spend 2 uses of... something. It's not specified what. To cast teleportation circle and 4 to cast gate. Both are 9th-level spells. For some reason the 7th-level spell that doesn't exist (limited miracle) is also more expensive than limited wish, which is a 7th-level spell that does exist. I have no idea what the love of the mob ability is trying to tell me, but I do know that it hands you the second most powerful epic feat in the game on a silver platter. You wanna know what the most powerful one is? Epic spellcasting.

(5th: Incompetent): Repeat after me: "If you're not making plays, you're not having fun."

Let's look at what you're doing at level 1: a resounding sod-all. Strike that, what you're doing is running up to enemies with 8 strength and an improvised weapon you're not proficient with in each hand and causing them to take either a -1, -15 or a -19 (no-one's sure which) to attack rolls. No, I'm curious, do they take a penalty equal to the penalty for your mainhand weapon, or the penalty for your offhand weapon, or maybe the penalty you get to kick them in the face? Either way, said enemy will then proceed to walk out of your 5 foot aura and go and hit someone else. Sure, take that attack of opportunity you get; you're not gonna hit. You have no out-of-combat utility, ever (your intelligence fail can possibly give you, and no-one else, the ability to use some minor movement trick that a truenamer would laugh at you for relying on, and negatives can be good takes so long to become usable at all regularly that you'll probably be dead by then); you die to archers, and the only thing you do is make everything the DM does slightly more boring. Classes based on deliberately nerfing your character into the ground simply do not work the way you want them to. God of failure doesn't work because free actions can only be taken on your turn. The class features aren't exactly evocatively named either.

Everyone Around You Sucks at Fighting is better if you have a HIGH armour class, and I think you want it to say "10 minus your AC" where it actually says "your AC minus 10". Oh, and let's talk about Everyone Around You Sucks at Moving. For starters, it "Reduces" people's speed to a speed which may well be higher than theirs. Second, it's not clear what it actually means by "Speed". If you can't fly, enemies have their Fly Speed (capital-F capital-S) reduced to 0, but that's not the same as not being able to fly at all; they just float in place and may be forced to move half of nothing if they have bad enough maneuverability. However, this also applies to teleportation, but there's no such thing as a Teleportation Speed (capital-T capital-S). Therefore, it must refer to the actual distance per round that you can teleport, which is almost certainly zero. But then, if you're unconscious, the actual distance per round that you can move is 0, irrespective of your movement speed. This means that everyone is locked in position (well maybe), which may suck for your allies because all of the Except your Friends abilities switch off when unconscious.

Also, can we talk about how all of your abilities which mysteriously prevent people from moving are all extraordinary? Like, the emanating aura of pure suck isn't supernatural? Also, you could have given them actual (ex) tags; I had a paragraph written up asking why in the name of all that was right and proper they were natural, then I realised they weren't. If it were just "You're lucky, so enemies fail to hurt you" I could grok that, but the problem is that the abilities have no fluff at all apart from "You make people suck in an unspecified manner."

Also, repeat what I said right back in the cliché villain critique about how you should never be made weaker in any way by taking a level in a class. WotC does it, but we're better at class design than them because we've had years to learn from where they, and we, screwed up. By taking an odd level of incompetent, you enter that with the understanding that you're going to make your party hate you for a while. By taking any level of it at all, you're guaranteeing that you personally are going to suck. Yes, I know that's the point, but the theme shouldn't come at the expense of making a class that is actually well-designed.

(6th: Psychic Fool): Okay, let's look at this.

What is the point, for a start, of getting the extra power points from bonus feats rather than just, Iunno, getting more power points than most classes do?

I would like to start by drawing your attention to first level: you have two class features. One of them provides you with 2 power points, giving you 5. The other allows you to spend up to half a power point (which rounds down to zero power points) to give you absolutely nothing. You have 2+int skills - bearing in mind you want your int to be negative, apparently - off possibly the most godawful skill list I've ever seen apart from "None", no bab, two high saves, a d8 hit die, two class features that do nothing, and that's it. Oh, and the way you get power points from a high intelligence penalty is bad for reasons I've been over above.

Given that you're hard-pressed to get an intelligence penalty worse than -2, and can't get one below -5 however hard you try, ignorant guard isn't actually great. At level 2 and 3, you get a +1 bonus on rolls and DR 2/- and resistance to everything 2, however both of these abilities eat your limited power points and you have low bab, no skills and no class features that actually do anything. At level 4 and 5, you get a +2 bonus on rolls, DR 2/- and resisttance to everything 2, but don't worry, you have a BONUS FEAT! Just like a level 1 fighter! Or rather, a level 1 psychic warrior, because you can choose psionic feats as well, except if they require spending power points to use.

Forced misfortune now allows you to inconvenience others, so from levels 6 to 9 - bear in mind that you've probably spent literally days playing this character by the time you even reach level 6 - you're increasing your rols by 3 or 4 and reducing other people's by the same amount (with no apparent range - or anything much else - limit). However, because you're never actually rolling to do anything because you have no skills, no combat ability, and no anything else either, you're not doing anything useful. Also, if an enemy would knock you out, you have to spend all your power points, meaning you are now a bad aristocrat for the rest of the day.

Subpsionic overflow allows you to get half your abilities for free, but it's not clear whether this stacks with actually using the ability (so you can get 1.5 times the normal maximum) or shares a total maximum (so you can only get the normal maximum but doing so costs half as much). In the former case, it's nice - you now have an extra point of DR, and the bonus to your rolls is actually relevant - in the latter case, not so much.

Being treated as an abberation for mind-affecting abilities does... absolutely nothing unless you're a humanoid. Except make you vulnerable if you were already an undead, plant, construct or vermin. But anyway, at 14th level you get an amazing +2 to will saves. You still have no actual ability to do anything apart from hitting people with a stick with your medium base attack bonus and +7 to attack and damage rolls, which almost sounds appealing until you realise that you are basically devouring power points at this rate.

At 18th level, you get an SLA which you don't really want to use because of its experience cost. Then again, leveling up will never grant you access to real class features, so why not? Actually, that's not quite true: you hit your capstone, and get a free +20 to all rolls, and then get to spend your 600-ish power points to add whatever you like to that. Want to do 620 points of extra damage? Yours, my friend. It's like a really bad version of the truenamer's conjunctive gate thing: it's neat, but it doesn't make up for the first nineteen levels of the class. And the first nineteen levels of truenamer look quite playable by comparison.

My first instinct with this class is to cheat on some way of spending my power points to do somethng useful. I'm thinking that if you dip 3 levels of psion, you can cast 3rd-level powers, which means you can take expanded knowlege (astral construct), but there's nothing that says you manifest astral construct as a psion power; you can manifest it using your psychic fool levels instead. You then use the high number of power points afforded to the psychic fool to become a master of that one power (though you can use expanded knowledge again to sneak on a few more useful first-level powers, such as energy ray, minor creation, charm, claws of the beast and metaphysical claw). Using practiced manifester to get your ML back up, you can then just use augmented low-level powers and boost up your claws with your class features that add to attack and damage rolls so you can pretend you have full-bab (though I'd be tempted to take slayer levels so you have real full-bab and real enchantment-immunity). But the lesson here is this: when the main reason someone would take your class is to do something unrelated to the class's actual purpose, something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong.

Temotei
2017-02-23, 12:52 AM
Damn, Jorm. Props.

Votes tallied.

sengmeng
2017-02-25, 02:04 PM
1) Incompetent

2) Cliche Villain

3) Follower