Classes you wanted to like, but were mechanically bad.

[vasilidor]

As the title says, classes you really wanted to like but just did not live up to the hype of them. I will start things off with a couple that I think many of us can agree on.
Monks. Monks need a lot of work to be viable in an otherwise average party, to keep up with fighters and rogues.
True Namers. They just did not work. not really.
Soul knife. The original seemed like it would be good because it gave you a magic weapon that was near to impossible to take away. The math did not really work in it's favor until Dream Scarred press released their version for pathfinder.

[RandomPeasant]

I like the basic idea of Incarnum (allocating a pool of points between abilities), but the system has so much extra cruft on top of it and the classes are so mediocre that I've never really appreciated it.

Warlock has enough stuff going on to be interesting, but any individual Warlock gets so little of it that playing the class feels painfully limited. Invocations like the dead walk are really cool, but as a character you basically can't get a reasonable range of abilities without resorting to UMD cheese.

I do like the ToB classes overall, but I'll still frustrated by little edges in the system, like the fact that you can't make a Shadow Hand Master who just has Shadow Hand maneuvers, or the near-total lack of non-combat abilities in the system.

I really wish Marshal had anything at all to allow you to play to the fantasy of being a leader of men. Instead 90% of the utility of the class is captured by a single Marshal level and putting as big a pile of points as you can into Charisma.

Shugenja is almost there as a spellcaster, but the combination of delayed spells and a deeply inconvenient casting mechanic means the class just doesn't quite work.

[Soranar]

the complete adventurer ninja:

-you're almost as good as a rogue using a few wands

[DivineOnTheMind]

I think this applies to basically every skillmonkey prestige class, except Unseen Seer, Ninja Spy and Assassin

I played a Thief Acrobat once, and I thought it went about as well as it could, but that prestige class, which you can first enter at level 6, really really hates the existence of the fly spell that can get cast at level 5. I open Complete Adventurer and Complete Scoundrel and get that vibe from basically every entry.

[One Step Two]

Truenamer, the idea that by speaking the true names of objects, concepts or people can have powerful effects is awesome! The mechanics... big oof.

[RandomPeasant]

I think this applies to basically every skillmonkey prestige class, except Unseen Seer, Ninja Spy and Assassin

Honestly, a lot of PrCs are like that. Green Star Adept gives you abilities that range from "niche" to "arguably not even a benefit", and you are expected to light half your casting on fire for the privilege. Which is a shame, because "you are a jade statue" is very cool, and I would gladly pick that up (even over more objectively powerful options) if doing so was not absolutely crippling. Even PrCs that are good are often bizarrely limited in scope. Ruby Knight Vindicator is a perfectly respectable class, but it's linked to a specific church for no particular reason.

[The Glyphstone]

I loved the Fleshwarper PrC, right up until Magic of Ebberon came out and cut the legs out from under the grafted items rules.

[Jervis]

I really wish that Marshal was reprinted in Tome of Battle. All the same features it already had except for granting a move action, but add Initiator abilities. Honestly it would end up about in line for those classes, probably give it White Raven, Iron Heart, and… not sure what exactly. A supporter that focuses an maneuvers that help Allie’s and buffing with auras.

[DivineOnTheMind]

I really wish that Marshal was reprinted in Tome of Battle. All the same features it already had except for granting a move action, but add Initiator abilities. Honestly it would end up about in line for those classes, probably give it White Raven, Iron Heart, and… not sure what exactly. A supporter that focuses an maneuvers that help Allie’s and buffing with auras.

There was a really highly regarded Tempest Stormwind homebrew to that effect. I can't post links, but if you google "Sublime Way Marshal" and "Falling Star Discipline," the results might be useful.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Factotum. It seems like it could be an amazing class, but most of the abilities really need some houseruling to make work, since there's not enough detail to make them function properly. And the pseudo-casting is pretty "meh." I'd rather toss on some psionic manifesting, like a psionic rogue with its choice of a psionic discipline, maybe.

Erudite psion could really use some cleaning up, playtesting, and tweaking, with its UPPD fixed to be more balanced throughout progression to make it more playable and the multiclassing restrictions removed.

Wilder enervation mechanics suck and need a major revamp.

And all the psionic classes should have the various online ACFs be standard options to choose from instead of needing to play "mother may I" with the DM.

[vasilidor]

One class from pathfinder that irked me after reading it (really wanted it to be good, or functional) was the kineticist.
just, no.
the class starts going wrong with burn and gets worse from there.

[Wildstag]

One class from pathfinder that irked me after reading it (really wanted it to be good, or functional) was the kineticist.
just, no.
the class starts going wrong with burn and gets worse from there.

Yeah, it reads like it was written by two different people and haphazardly mashed together without editors.

On the topic of Pathfinder classes, I'll include "bad = confusing", so Medium is my entry. I get the principle of it (make a class that emulates Mythic paths, but swaps daily), but it doesn't really work except to make headaches for the GM.


I like the basic idea of Incarnum (allocating a pool of points between abilities), but the system has so much extra cruft on top of it and the classes are so mediocre that I've never really appreciated it.

Yeah, the Incarnate confuses me. Like, what do they do in battle? With half-bab, and relatively few battle-options, I just don't see how people could have fun playing them.

[vasilidor]

The Medium essentially has a list of templates they apply to themselves. they get to change it every day, but from what I can see you effectively need multiple character sheets to play one character.

[Particle_Man]

I agree with kineticist. It feels like they wanted warlock without getting sued so they went complex instead of simple.

Hex blade and Swashbuckler could use more heft. Knight seems a little lacking. And Ranger seems to need a DM that will play to your favoured enemies, which might require a specific campaign. In which case why not just save time and make the ranger have Favoured Enemy: Everything I fight?

And I agree with Green Star Adept. I have even dreamed up character that uses all 10 levels of it just because it sits well in my imagination, backstory and all. But actually playing it? Nah. At best it could be an NPC the party meets for colour.

Assassin has flavour but that death attack is hard to set up and has a save most opponents can make, assuming they are not out right immune to sneak attack (and thus death attack).

[Harrow]

Binder, Incarnate, Chameleon. They've all got various abilities that they can swap out day-to-day, most of which are borderline useless or worse. In my experience, the abilities these classes get aren't good enough to actually accomplish anything unless you spend feats and buy magic items to specialize in what you want to do, at which point you are no longer a jack of all trades. And, if you trade something out from your usual load-out, then you're doing so at a heavy penalty, dis-incentivizing their main shtick. What I'd really like is a fifth party member style character. Someone that can fill in for any of the main four when something happens and the usual problem-solver isn't available. The problem is, specialists still need a chance of failure, and a jack of all trades needs to have a lower success rate than the specialist does. Otherwise, why have the specialist in the first place? But, that extra chance of failure just feels like playing a wizard that suffers from arcane spell failure (which I've never seen someone actually play) or only casting spells that have multiple points of failure (say, Phantasmal Killer, which requires two saves).

Dragonfire Adept. I really like a lot about the class, but their breath weapon really drops in power at later levels, and they have so few options that there's not much in the way of build variety that you can do with them.

[StSword]

Those disappointed by the Kineticist might want to check out the Legendary Kineticist, which you can check out here (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/legendary-kineticist).

[Maat Mons]

I'll throw in Healer, Warmage, Wu Jen, and both versions of Samurai. On a more controversial note, I think Psychic Warrior and Psychic Rogue didn't get enough power points or powers known. I think Ardents need more powers known too, and they also need more freedom in choosing powers.

[Kurald Galain]

Duskblade!

I mean sure, you can get high enough numbers with it, but its spell list is just sooo tiny and one-sided, and (despite its shortness) it even manages to have quite a lot of pointless spells on there.

Seriously, its main claim to fame is that its level 13 feature will probably take down a single enemy in a single round... but any decent martial can do that on a full attack. And that's assuming your campaign gets to level 13 in the first place.



kineticist.
just, no.
the class starts going wrong with burn and gets worse from there.
I definitely second that.


On the topic of Pathfinder classes, I'll include "bad = confusing", so Medium is my entry.
The issue is that in practice, most parties have absolutely no need of a character that switches party roles each day. However, if you ignore its switching mechanic and stick to one spirit/template/role, then medium becomes a competent party buffer via its shared seance.

[Biggus]

A lot of the ones I was going to say have already been mentioned, but I'll add a few more:

Dragon Disciple - you gradually turn into a dragon, how cool is that? Except...who is this class for? It doesn't really fit into any build.

Duelist - they did this archetype twice, once as a prestige class and once as a base class (Swashbuckler) and they both sucked so hard. What have WotC got against Inigo Montoya?

Pretty much all the theurge classes - being able to cast both arcane and divine spells sounds like a dream come true. Could easily have been overpowered, so they made them underpowered instead, unless you use early entry tricks.

[Maat Mons]

Maybe Inigo killed the father of one of the WotC staff members. "Hello, I am the son of the six-fingered man. Prepare to die."

[Bad Wolf]

Shadowcaster. Absolutely dripping in flavor, but when it comes to mechanics...

[Paragon]

Shadowcaster. Absolutely dripping in flavor, but when it comes to mechanics...

You can find a "fix" from the actual designer of the class here (https://www.enworld.org/threads/shadowcaster-fixes-by-mouseferatu.184955/) that I implement for my games.

I like the spellthief class most and I feel the mechanics aren't that bad but it's all the more frustrating that a little more work would have made it perfect.

Same feeling goes for the Dragon Shaman

[Mordante]

Warlock isn't a bad class. The main issue is IMHO that the class never got any love after the initial creation. There are hardly any PrCs, alternative class features etc. for the Warlock. This party I think because of how invocations work.

[Kurald Galain]

I like the spellthief class most and I feel the mechanics aren't that bad but it's all the more frustrating that a little more work would have made it perfect.

Spellthief definitely has issues.

One is that it's frontloaded enough that the best build is probably two level of spellthief, all the other levels in some other casting class, and the Master Spellthief feat. Features other than Steal Spell (L1) and Steal Active Spell (L2) don't really matter all that much.

Another is, what are you going to do when facing enemies that don't cast spells? Because in most campaigns, there are a lot of enemies that don't cast spells. This is essentially the ranger's favored enemy problem, but worse.

[Paragon]

Spellthief definitely has issues.

One is that it's frontloaded enough that the best build is probably two level of spellthief, all the other levels in some other casting class, and the Master Spellthief feat. Features other than Steal Spell (L1) and Steal Active Spell (L2) don't really matter all that much.

Another is, what are you going to do when facing enemies that don't cast spells? Because in most campaigns, there are a lot of enemies that don't cast spells. This is essentially the ranger's favored enemy problem, but worse.

That's from an optimizer's point of view. I read the question as "what's problematic for a casual player" and well if you find classes other than Tier 1 & 2 (meaning that can pretty much solve every issues they are faced with) to be unplayable (or only as dips to get what you want from them), you don't play D&D.

My Spellthief is really fun and yes he is a gimped rogue when it comes to fighting martial NPCs yes but he is a rogue on steroids when fighting the actual threats : spellcasters. (Because Master Spellthief doesn't let you store & cast spells you steal).
That's for the rollplay part but on the roleplay part, skillmonkeys are fun !

[Kurald Galain]

That's from an optimizer's point of view. I read the question as "what's problematic for a casual player"
"I want to steal spells but my enemies don't have any" strikes me as a problem for casual players, because you want to do something cool and the campaign won't let you. It's entirely possible that a campaign's main enemy is, say, trolls or giants or something and they don't cast spells.

[RandomPeasant]

Yeah, the Incarnate confuses me. Like, what do they do in battle? With half-bab, and relatively few battle-options, I just don't see how people could have fun playing them.

And on top of that, the resource system is overcomplicated for no reason I can see. "Take these points and put them in piles" is a fine mechanic. You don't need that and the chakra bind system and the tradeoffs with magic items and the Totemist's super-chakra. The Incarnate would be fine if it just picked X soulmelds each day and divided Y points among them, with no additional complexity.


And Ranger seems to need a DM that will play to your favoured enemies, which might require a specific campaign. In which case why not just save time and make the ranger have Favoured Enemy: Everything I fight?

I have long argued that the Ranger should look like this one (https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Ranger,_Tome_(3.5e_Class)), with Favored Enemy giving non-numeric bonuses against strategies that are generally employed by those enemies, but potentially generally applicable. That way you can have a character that is good against Giants or Aberrations without being worthless if you happen to fight mostly Undead or Elementals.


I'll throw in Healer, Warmage, Wu Jen, and both versions of Samurai. On a more controversial note, I think Psychic Warrior and Psychic Rogue didn't get enough power points or powers known. I think Ardents need more powers known too, and they also need more freedom in choosing powers.

I have to ask what your issue with Wu Jen is. It seems like a fully-capable caster to me. I do definitely agree on the Warmage though. I really wish it had gotten some kind of baseline non-combat utility options at least.


Seriously, its main claim to fame is that its level 13 feature will probably take down a single enemy in a single round... but any decent martial can do that on a full attack. And that's assuming your campaign gets to level 13 in the first place.

It is sort of baffling that you don't get full attack channeling when you get the ability to make full attacks. I'm also personally annoyed that the Duskblade continued in the pointless proliferation of partial casting progressions. By my count, there are four different partial caster progressions (Bard, Paladin, Duskblade, Mystic Ranger), and that's without checking whether some classes have different numbers of spell slots than others.


Pretty much all the theurge classes - being able to cast both arcane and divine spells sounds like a dream come true. Could easily have been overpowered, so they made them underpowered instead, unless you use early entry tricks.

Beyond even that, most Theurge classes last only ten levels, so even if you use an early-entry option to get a workable build, you get kicked in the junk partway through the campaign when you just run out of levels. Wizard/Binder/Anima Mage can be a cool character at 8th level or 12th level, but at 14th level you run out of Anima Mage levels to take and your character (who was already far from the best thing you could do as a Wizard) starts inevitably falling further and further behind.

[Max Caysey]

I think this applies to basically every skillmonkey prestige class, except Unseen Seer, Ninja Spy and Assassin

I played a Thief Acrobat once, and I thought it went about as well as it could, but that prestige class, which you can first enter at level 6, really really hates the existence of the fly spell that can get cast at level 5. I open Complete Adventurer and Complete Scoundrel and get that vibe from basically every entry.

I've found Dungeon Delver to be the best infiltration/exfiltration thief in the game so far... Thief Acrobat thinks you're going to be fighting on ladders and tightropes... and it seem to focus on a niche of combat I have yet to see come up in real games. Its a shame as the thief acrobat gives to impression of a cat burglar, yet is combat oriented, something a person taking acrobat thief probably isn't!

My other vote goes for Marshal. I really like the idea, but besides very few things, it sucks bad. I really wished it had some better or more potent auras...

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Green Star AdeptShould've been a template, not a class.

[Jervis]

Should've been a template, not a class.

Nah should have been a 5 level class

[Maat Mons]

One issue I have with Wu Jen is that you gain weaknesses as you level up. Weaknesses like losing your spellcasting ability for the rest of the day if you touch a dead body. That means you can't loot dead enemies, you have to be very careful in the aftermath of the many battles you'll be in, and you're screwed if an undead succeeds in attacking you with a natural weapon. Or there's the one where you lose your spellcasting ability for the rest of the day if you bathe. Hope you don't have any adventures that take place underwater, and it doesn't rain, and none of your enemies use water-based spells. And there's the one where you can't wear a certain color, which means every time a treasure table generates an item you want, you have to ask the DM what it looks like before you know if you can use it.

Other than that, Wu Jen isn't bad in a vacuum. But it's so similar to Wizard that it begs the question of why it wasn't just an ACF for that class. For that matter, you probably could have done the Wu Jen concept without any ACFs. Just pick Eastern-themed spells, or fluff other spells to have an Eastern theme. And where it does differ mechanically from Wizard, it's worse. It's like the class exists to punish people who don't realize flavor is mutable.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Nah should have been a 5 level classI'd rather have low-LA template that could be bought off. It's not like judicious use of spellcasting can't give equal or better results for virtually nothing, after all, and it seems like it'd be far more for mundanes than magicals.

[helgershaw]

I vote for Warmage. The flavor text screams blaster mixed with either battle field control or Gish. If your army has a few Warmages, wouldn't you want them to corral the enemy forces and blast them until the enemies surrender? Or one meets the opposing army's champion, and your Warmage uses their fighting magic to hand the champion his posterior.

It would be cool if Warmage Edge added another damage die per Int mod instead of a flat bonus. This helps to make the Warmage different than being a blaster wizard/sorcerer. Obligatory use just Int for spell casting.

The sudden metamagic features should be usable multiple times per day. Not sure on what the limit should be. Three sounds right, but not sure how that might work.

Lastly, give medium armor proficiency and the ability to cast while holding a weapon and shield at level 1. I don't understand why the armor proficiency is broken up. Nor do I understand why the magical soldiers don't learn how to cast while holding their weapon and a shield.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Most of the Magic of Incarnum PrCs, with the easiest to fix probably being Witchborn Binder. If it was effective against both divine and arcane magic (and ideally SLAs and Su abilities), I think it would be viable, albeit niche. As is, even as an NPC enemy it's too limited to be impressive.

Also, seconding Shadowcaster.

[AsuraKyoko]

Honestly, spontaneous casters in general. Specifically, the fact that they get spells one level later than their prepared counterparts just feels really bad. My group has been playing around with bumping up the level they get access to spells to match the prepared progression, and it's been working pretty well, all in all.

[Kurald Galain]

Honestly, spontaneous casters in general.

Right, because tier-2 characters are mechanically bad :smallamused:

[RandomPeasant]

One issue I have with Wu Jen is that you gain weaknesses as you level up.

I think you're really overstating the importance of the taboos. "Can't bathe" isn't "can't get wet", you don't lose your casting just for going out in the rain. Even "can't touch a dead body" isn't all that big a deal, as you can just have one of the other three people in the party take stuff off corpses for you. Plus, they come with a benefit attached, and if you play a Wu Jen the way almost all spellcasters are played (i.e. PrCing out immediately), you only get one. Not being able to sit facing west is a small price to pay for a free Extend Spell somewhere and access to body outside body.


But it's so similar to Wizard that it begs the question of why it wasn't just an ACF for that class.

Well, sure, but you can raise that question for plenty of things. Why not just make Favored Soul a Sorcerer ACF that swapped arcane for divine and Wizard spells for Cleric ones? One of the things you have to accept in D&D, particularly 3e, is that there are going to be a lot of classes, and that means a certain number of them will not be clearly distinguished from others. The Beguiler basically exists because Bards aren't as good as advertised at being Enchantment/Illusion casters, but that doesn't mean it's a bad class.


I vote for Warmage. The flavor text screams blaster mixed with either battle field control or Gish. If your army has a few Warmages, wouldn't you want them to corral the enemy forces and blast them until the enemies surrender? Or one meets the opposing army's champion, and your Warmage uses their fighting magic to hand the champion his posterior.

It would be cool if Warmage Edge added another damage die per Int mod instead of a flat bonus. This helps to make the Warmage different than being a blaster wizard/sorcerer. Obligatory use just Int for spell casting.

The sudden metamagic features should be usable multiple times per day. Not sure on what the limit should be. Three sounds right, but not sure how that might work.

Lastly, give medium armor proficiency and the ability to cast while holding a weapon and shield at level 1. I don't understand why the armor proficiency is broken up. Nor do I understand why the magical soldiers don't learn how to cast while holding their weapon and a shield.

If you google "Warmage fix" or "Warmage rework", you can probably find a hundred people's attempts to make the class better. For some reason, it caught the imagination of the community as the thing that needs to be fixed (not saying it doesn't, but it's interesting that objectively-worse classes like Swashbuckler or Ninja don't seem to get nearly as much love).


Right, because tier-2 characters are mechanically bad :smallamused:

The question is "mechanically bad", not "underpowered". It's not the same thing. The Artificer, for example, is about as far from "underpowered" as it is possible to get (at least, once you can consistently make your UMD checks). But it's absolutely mechanically bad, because the sheer level of complexity involved is a massive pain to deal with and it encourages toxic behavior like "dumpster dive through as many books as possible for maximum power" or "abuse WBL to the breaking point to trivialize encounters".

The half-spell-level penalty spontaneous casters get is absolutely an example of something that is mechanically bad. There's no reason the Sorcerer needs to PrC later than the Wizard or the Dread Necromancer needs to get less out of reserve feats than the Wu Jen, even if the margins are small and the classes themselves are fine. The Sorcerer in particular takes it in the ear a lot. As a 10th level Sorcerer, you get three 5th level spells per day and you know one. A Wizard who has not specialized and who has learned only the spells he gets from level up has two 5th level spells per day and knows four. It makes the idea of "flexibility" on your part kind of a joke.

[Lans]

All of the non tob fighter variants except barbarian and ranger

[RexDart]

Duskblade!

I mean sure, you can get high enough numbers with it, but its spell list is just sooo tiny and one-sided, and (despite its shortness) it even manages to have quite a lot of pointless spells on there.

Seriously, its main claim to fame is that its level 13 feature will probably take down a single enemy in a single round... but any decent martial can do that on a full attack. And that's assuming your campaign gets to level 13 in the first place.


My DM made Duskblade a very fun class, mostly by changing its casting stat from INT to CHA, and adding a bunch of spells to the Duskblade spell list.

(Partly adding touch spells that the Duskblade should have had in the first place, partly beefing up the spell list with spells from every school. Which in turn fit Duskblade's status as the preferred class for his campaign's elf-analogue race and that race's innate magic affinity. Basically, each individual has a "birth school" and a duskblade must pick half their spells from that school.)

[Cygnia]

Hexblade. I know the creator had fixes for it, but still...

[AsuraKyoko]

The question is "mechanically bad", not "underpowered". It's not the same thing. The Artificer, for example, is about as far from "underpowered" as it is possible to get (at least, once you can consistently make your UMD checks). But it's absolutely mechanically bad, because the sheer level of complexity involved is a massive pain to deal with and it encourages toxic behavior like "dumpster dive through as many books as possible for maximum power" or "abuse WBL to the breaking point to trivialize encounters".

The half-spell-level penalty spontaneous casters get is absolutely an example of something that is mechanically bad. There's no reason the Sorcerer needs to PrC later than the Wizard or the Dread Necromancer needs to get less out of reserve feats than the Wu Jen, even if the margins are small and the classes themselves are fine. The Sorcerer in particular takes it in the ear a lot. As a 10th level Sorcerer, you get three 5th level spells per day and you know one. A Wizard who has not specialized and who has learned only the spells he gets from level up has two 5th level spells per day and knows four. It makes the idea of "flexibility" on your part kind of a joke.

This is exactly my point: it feels crappy to get your cool spells later than you would otherwise. I'm not aware of a particularly compelling reason why moving Sorcerers's new spell level access up to match that of the Wizard would be problematic, and it makes choosing the class feel much better.

[Jervis]

I vote for Warmage. The flavor text screams blaster mixed with either battle field control or Gish. If your army has a few Warmages, wouldn't you want them to corral the enemy forces and blast them until the enemies surrender? Or one meets the opposing army's champion, and your Warmage uses their fighting magic to hand the champion his posterior.

It would be cool if Warmage Edge added another damage die per Int mod instead of a flat bonus. This helps to make the Warmage different than being a blaster wizard/sorcerer. Obligatory use just Int for spell casting.

The sudden metamagic features should be usable multiple times per day. Not sure on what the limit should be. Three sounds right, but not sure how that might work.

Lastly, give medium armor proficiency and the ability to cast while holding a weapon and shield at level 1. I don't understand why the armor proficiency is broken up. Nor do I understand why the magical soldiers don't learn how to cast while holding their weapon and a shield.

Honestly I just wish Warmage was a 3/4 BAB class. WME giving an extra die could get kinda goofy, and remember it applies to cantrips. I would like to see it apply to melee damage rolls though.

[Jervis]

This is exactly my point: it feels crappy to get your cool spells later than you would otherwise. I'm not aware of a particularly compelling reason why moving Sorcerers's new spell level access up to match that of the Wizard would be problematic, and it makes choosing the class feel much better.

Because Monte Cook hates sorcerers. Spontaneous casting is already worse than prepared even if they had the same level schedule, it’s just annoying

[Kurald Galain]

This is exactly my point: it feels crappy to get your cool spells later than you would otherwise. I'm not aware of a particularly compelling reason why moving Sorcerers's new spell level access up to match that of the Wizard would be problematic

Because in the hands of a casual or average player, spontaneous casting is much better than prepared.

Obviously different rules apply if you're playing with GITP forum users and/or competent optimizers. But for the average group, it is entirely fair that the sorcerer gets a downside to balance the big advantage it gets over wizards.

[RandomPeasant]

Hexblade. I know the creator had fixes for it, but still...

If we're talking about things that should've been ACFs, that class would've been way better off as a Duskblade variant (yes, I know the timeline doesn't line up, whatever).


Honestly I just wish Warmage was a 3/4 BAB class. WME giving an extra die could get kinda goofy, and remember it applies to cantrips. I would like to see it apply to melee damage rolls though.

I don't really see the benefit of making Warmage 3/4 BAB, TBH. It's not really a good base for a Gish (outside of Duskblade, gishes want buffs, not blasting), and the only attack rolls a Warmage is likely to make are ranged touch attacks that will very rarely miss either way. IMO, it needs to be slightly better at blasting (and ideally in a way that doesn't encourage nova-ing like the Sudden Metamagic feats do), get slightly more non-blasting offensive options, and get a utility suite of some kind.

Warmage Edge kinda annoys me because it feels like it's written in an over-complicated way to prevent very minor forms of abuse.


Because Monte Cook hates sorcerers. Spontaneous casting is already worse than prepared even if they had the same level schedule, it’s just annoying

Skip Williams, really, but yeah. Sorcerers have it rough. Worse casting progression, worse metamagic, worse (read: nonexistent) class features, arguably even a worse casting stat. And for that you get the ability to use your top-level spell slots for whatever combination of the one spell of that level you know. Feel the power! Warmage-types have it a bit better, since they at least know enough spells that the ability to select your spells during the day is likely to mean something.


Because in the hands of a casual or average player, spontaneous casting is much better than prepared.

No it isn't. You get slightly more spells per day than a specialist Wizard, but the advantage is only really significant in low-level slots that are, if anything, less relevant in low-op games. Our 10th level Sorcerer has the same number of 5th level spell slots as a specialist Wizard and only one more 4th level slot. That's just not enough to make up for the laughable level of flexibility even in very low-op games.

[Kurald Galain]

Sorcerers have it rough. Worse casting progression, worse metamagic, worse (read: nonexistent) class features, arguably even a worse casting stat.
It's probably worth mentioning that Pathfinder Sorcerers get bloodline-based class features, and bonus feats, and extra spells known. Oh, and they can actually use quicken spell.


Our 10th level Sorcerer has the same number of 5th level spell slots as a specialist Wizard and only one more 4th level slot.
Sure, but the point is that they can pick their spells when needed, instead of at the start of the day. If you need, say, three invisibility spells or four mounts or five resist energies, you've got them. Wizards are stuck with "oops, I prepared that only once".

[RandomPeasant]

Sure, but the point is that they can pick their spells when needed, instead of at the start of the day. If you need, say, three invisibility spells or four mounts or five resist energies, you've got them. Wizards are stuck with "oops, I prepared that only once".

Sure, but they pick from a much smaller set. Maybe you end up with the Sorcerer who knows resist energy on the adventure where you raid the Fire Temple and he casts it a bunch and everyone is happen. But maybe you end up with the Sorcerer who knows invisibility instead and it's not really relevant. Conversely, it's pretty likely that if you face a problem that requires some specific spell, you'll be able to come back tomorrow and the Wizard will be able to solve that problem 100% of the time. New players aren't going to mathematically perfect their spell selection based on the available information from the DM, but they're not idiots either. If your fireball-happy Wizard discovers that the party is going to be fighting through the Fire Temple, he's going to stop preparing so many fireballs.

[Maat Mons]

I don't see how standing in the rain is different from standing under a shower head. And the fact that we can't agree on how the Taboos even function just seems like another strike against the mechanics.

Even the "can't sit facing west" one is surprisingly tedious, because you need to ensure that your character can reliably determine which direction west is, even when winding your way through the twisting underground passages of a dungeon, teleporting across the globe, or spending several months on an expedition into the underdark.

I guess you can get 5 ranks in Survival at level 7 by spending 10 cross-class skill points. But the value of having your Hold Person spells auto-Extended diminishes as you level up. You'll gain higher-level spells that you'd rather spend your actions on instead, and you'll get to the point where the duration would have been plenty even without Extend. I don't know that I'd be eager to be permanently down by 10 skill points for a benefit I'm not going to care about in a few levels.

And even if the Taboos were trivial, it's mechanically inelegant to add restrictions as a character advances. The downsides should come up front, so the progression after that point is strictly positive. If, as a silly example, Paladin had no alignment restrictions or Code of Conduct at 1st level, but gained increasingly severe limitations as you gained more Paladin levels, that would be bad design... more so than the existing bad design in that class. Or for an absolute travesty of an example, look at Ardent Dilettante, in Planar Handbook.

If Wu Jen really had to have Taboos, you should have gotten as many as you were going to get at 1st level. And they should have been straightforward and well-defined. You don't want to wind up like Paladin, ranging from fine to borderline unplayable depending on what the DM thinks your class's limitations actually are. And the Spell Secrets you got at low levels shouldn't have been permanently limited to low-level spells.

Wu Jen occupies a relatively unique position, alongside Erudite and Wilder, in that it actively punishes you for sticking with it, unlike most classes, which lose out to PrCs only because their benefits stop being competitive.

As for the fact that many classes are largely redundant with other classes, yes, but Wu Jen is a more egregious case than most.



If we're going to count Artificer because it's overly-complex, tedious to play as or with, and highly abusable, then I guess I'll also nominate all prepared casters. The whole thing about deciding, at the start of each day, how many times you'll cast each spell was never a good idea, and it's ridiculous that it survived as many editions as it did. It's also kind of bizarre that you forget how to do things from one day to the next, but at least it keeps you from being locked into a small list of spells forever.

[Emberlily]

It's been a long time since I read the old sourcebooks so I had forgotten about the Wu Jen taboos, and honestly gaining drawbacks as you level up is a really fun idea (though I can't speak to this particular execution)! D&D being a story of ever-increasing power the further yr character goes can be boring sometimes.

Also, I really think some people here have an incredibly skewed idea of how the average person plays D&D, as shown by this discussion of the sorcerer vs wizard in low-op play. Even if you have a player who's not very deep into the game that wants to put in the thought to utilize daily-spellbook mechanics, the odds of them being all three of: willing to do that every day, able to do it without bogging down play, and able to read ahead in the game well enough for picking spells to be a huge boon, is pretty rare!

[Biggus]

My DM made Duskblade a very fun class, mostly by changing its casting stat from INT to CHA, and adding a bunch of spells to the Duskblade spell list.


I gave them an advanced learning class feature similar to the Warmage's, except they can choose any evocation or transmutation spell of a level they can cast (those are the two schools they have most of so it seemed thematic). As there are so many transmutation spells (and so many good ones) it gives them a fair bit of customisation potential.

Why the change from INT to CHA?

[Feldar]

Honestly, spontaneous casters in general. Specifically, the fact that they get spells one level later than their prepared counterparts just feels really bad.

Agree with this.

[RexDart]

I gave them an advanced learning class feature similar to the Warmage's, except they can choose any evocation or transmutation spell of a level they can cast (those are the two schools they have most of so it seemed thematic). As there are so many transmutation spells (and so many good ones) it gives them a fair bit of customisation potential.

Why the change from INT to CHA?

I think partly for flavor, as they "feel" more like swashbuckling swordsmen than wizardly magic nerds. It also might be that the elf-analogue race is inherently magical (and even a fighter naturally knows a spell or two from their birth school), which feels more like sorcery magic than "learning from studying a lot" magic.

[Seward]

Dragon Disciple - you gradually turn into a dragon, how cool is that? Except...who is this class for? It doesn't really fit into any build.


People who want to be really, really strong. That is who goes for Dragon Disciple. Even the crappy 3.5 version. You can do kind of interesting things with 3 natural weapons, power attack and an unusually high strength, especially if you also somehow mix in an unarmed strike flurry to stack onto it or otherwise wield a weapon that doesn't tie up the hands or mouth (like armor spikes, although you can't power attack with those). Go all in and get some reckless rage on, etc.

If you stick it out, always on flight at about level 15 is pretty cool too. Saves a shoulder slot and 50kish of WBL, which still is significant at L15.

I had pretty good luck using the Pathfinder version (which is superior to 3.5 version on many levels) in real play for two very different characters (one who punched things. And had every single feat that scaled by strength, many of which were unarmed-strike-only. The other who mixed fire magic with pathfinder-style-polymorph which resembles a acf-shifter-druid mechanically and needed that high base strength) Pathfinder nonlethal damage can overflow to lethal if you hit somebody hard enough. His punches got so potent there were occasional accidental kills when trying to strike for nonlethal, usually on crits.

In CRPG's like Neverwinter Nights that made it to epic levels, Dragon Disciple was my go-to for brute builds and arcane archer for ranged builds. Both abilities scaled faster in epic than their alternatives, in spite of the bab hit in case of dragon disciple. Granted the way crpgs work, they reward martials who can fight several screens of mooks without running out of gas, and casters never get the opportunity to break the game the way they can at tabletop by changing the paradigm.

A lot of PRCs in 3.5 are late bloomers, that don't really work till like level 18 or epic. PRC's just come too late and are too expensive. The pathfinder archetype system worked better because you could start your "duelist" equivalent dude at level 1 doing his "dex based fighter thing" and have it actually function in the levels that most people actually play.

[Jervis]

People who want to be really, really strong. That is who goes for Dragon Disciple. Even the crappy 3.5 version. You can do kind of interesting things with 3 natural weapons, power attack and an unusually high strength, especially if you also somehow mix in an unarmed strike flurry to stack onto it or otherwise wield a weapon that doesn't tie up the hands or mouth (like armor spikes, although you can't power attack with those). Go all in and get some reckless rage on, etc.

If you stick it out, always on flight at about level 15 is pretty cool too. Saves a shoulder slot and 50kish of WBL, which still is significant at L15.

I had pretty good luck using the Pathfinder version (which is superior to 3.5 version on many levels) in real play for two very different characters (one who punched things. And had every single feat that scaled by strength, many of which were unarmed-strike-only. The other who mixed fire magic with pathfinder-style-polymorph which resembles a acf-shifter-druid mechanically and needed that high base strength) Pathfinder nonlethal damage can overflow to lethal if you hit somebody hard enough. His punches got so potent there were occasional accidental kills when trying to strike for nonlethal, usually on crits.

In CRPG's like Neverwinter Nights that made it to epic levels, Dragon Disciple was my go-to for brute builds and arcane archer for ranged builds. Both abilities scaled faster in epic than their alternatives, in spite of the bab hit in case of dragon disciple. Granted the way crpgs work, they reward martials who can fight several screens of mooks without running out of gas, and casters never get the opportunity to break the game the way they can at tabletop by changing the paradigm.

A lot of PRCs in 3.5 are late bloomers, that don't really work till like level 18 or epic. PRC's just come too late and are too expensive. The pathfinder archetype system worked better because you could start your "duelist" equivalent dude at level 1 doing his "dex based fighter thing" and have it actually function in the levels that most people actually play.

The problem is that everything the class does is some better by classes that focus it. Totemist is so much better at natural attacking that it’s laughable. You need to dip into a half BAB class to get in, and the class has 3/4 anyway. A lot of its budget is tied up into bonus spell slots that do nothing for someone who isn’t a Polymorpher (and then you’re better off going elsewhere anyway). You’re better off taking the hilariously over costed half dragon template than this, you loose less casting and the same amount of BAB. The PF version is actually pretty good though.

[Seward]

Dragon disciple works fine with duskblade (full bab) or bard (3/4 bab). The entry is kn arcane 8, and 1 level in a spont casting arcane class, that's it. You can enter with 5 bab or zero, it's up to you. Typically you have 4 bab going in, and end up with a typical 3/4 bab class that traded each lost point of bab for +2 strength over the course of 15 levels. Your attack mods keep up with a typical martial, and your damage in a full attack is usually a bit higher, your damage in a single attack is the same (you use a 2h weapon and power attack, like everybody else, and you can't power attack for as much but your higher strength offsets that damage). Like everybody else the usual ways to get pounce or otherwise full attack after a move are still available to you, usually you qualify before you enter if you aren't doing it via gear.

You also don't clutter that up with useless feats, a bunch of druid levels for wildshape or whatever. So you are free to take it in a lot of directions, as long as a bunch of stat boosts, natural armor, 3 natural attacks and a little bit of enhanced senses are interesting to you. It also has the very great virtue that it is a core-only prc, and no GM will ban it unless he hates the idea of dragons breeding with pc races or otherwise granting them power in his campaign.

That is decidedly not the case with most other ways of getting natural attacks 24x7 that aren't named "druid" and unlike druid leave you in your humanoid form with all gear intact (and benefit from starting out strong, unlike druid).

I'm not saying it is a good prc, it isn't. It is a niche prc, one that will appeal to only a few character concepts. But it does get played, which isn't true of, say, Scar Faced Hunter or about 2/3 of prc's in any given splatbook. The bonus spells are a bizzare concept that nobody but a duskblade-5 entry will make much use of, but again....there are some edge cases where they are also useful. (if you dipped stalwart sorcerer, are built to have a devastating natural attack full attack and your only L1 spell is "blood wind" you'll want as many castings of it as you can get, and those bonus spell slots are nice) Pathfinder I agree did a much better job of it, they made it a half-caster class and juiced up both the natural attacks and breath weapon to match the dragon type and stay more relevant as levels progress (your claws and teeth grow, then get energy damage, your breath weapon gets more uses etc)

My pet class for this thread is warlock. I like the idea of always on powers, it is one reason spont casters like Sorcerer appeal to me, they can kinda pretend to be that because encounters-per-day are often limited most days. They just have such a tiny selection of powers that you can't build a theme out of it, so warlocks either end up useless or they all resemble each other if they make the 1-2 best choices at each opportunity and the abilities they end up with don't make sense beyond "it was on the list and it was a good ability".

[jdizzlean]

soulknife and by extension soulbow. both either take to long to do anything, and/or are so vastly underpowered it's irrelevant.

sha'ir has an interesting mechanic, but a bad roll of the die either makes them irrelevant, or useless by the time your gen comes back.

kensai is ok, but should be far more flexible in what weapon you want to use. you're pretty much forced into melee combat as a "slightly better?" fighter with "free" enchants to your weapon

[Jervis]

soulknife and by extension soulbow. both either take to long to do anything, and/or are so vastly underpowered it's irrelevant.

sha'ir has an interesting mechanic, but a bad roll of the die either makes them irrelevant, or useless by the time your gen comes back.

kensai is ok, but should be far more flexible in what weapon you want to use. you're pretty much forced into melee combat as a "slightly better?" fighter with "free" enchants to your weapon

As the thread’s resident Sha’ir obsessed nerd, it really isn’t as bad as it sounds. In actual play you can get some problems if you aren’t smart about it but the spell retrieval mechanics aren’t that bad. There is the issue that, even for the research I’ve done, no one can say authoritatively how their casting even technically works. There’s a solid argument for them being spontaneous casters for example. The worst interpretation has you loosing spell slots after class level hours after retrieving a spell and basically requires you to burn a feat on Arcane Preparation, the best lets you send your Gen to retrieve a spell while it’s already out retrieving a spell to get infinite spells retrieved at a time with spontaneous casting that makes you a discount beholder mage.

Realistically between the two you’re a generalist wizard with more spells known and spells per day than any other generalist wizard who didn’t spend downtime filling up their book, doesn’t have a book to babysit and loose, can change their spells prepared in the middle of the day, and fetch any wizard spell they’ve ever seen in 15 minutes or less. Oh, and you’re a party face that can take divine only PrCs, making you ideal as a base for a Gish.

Yeah I might like Sha’ir a little too much for my own good… I’ve even taken to making it in 5e just so I have something I like to play in that edition

[Eldan]

Yeah, the Incarnate confuses me. Like, what do they do in battle? With half-bab, and relatively few battle-options, I just don't see how people could have fun playing them.

The only use I've ever seen for them was in Gestalt. As in "I have my main build, I need a secondary class that just buffs my stats a bit on top of that".

[noce]

Dragon disciple works fine with duskblade (full bab) or bard (3/4 bab).

I'd rather go battle sorc 4, so you get a lot of slots to use on either wraithstrike or wings of cover. Then you could dip paladin for saves, or cleric for divine might or a devotion feat, or marshal...you could even go battle sorc 6 before entering the PRC to get those bonus slots on 3rd level spells.
Really, it's not as a straightforward PRC as it seems, its power resides on which base classes you pick.

Back on topic, I really like the theme of the Lurk, an intelligent psionic killer that uses cunning and stealth.
Apart from the fact that it is worse than psychic rogue, what kills it are its mechanics: there's no way you can be effective losing a swift action and pp to do your shtick every round, while having so few power points and hoping to preserve them for powers usage.
That's not even taking into account the facts that the augment works on a single attack and not your full attack routine, works by default only in melee and you have a d6 HD, works off your level in the class and you would like to PRC out of it.

I feel so sad for Lurk. :(

[Asmotherion]

When I read the title, I pictured the Hex Blade. While an interesting concept I'd love to play, it's really sub-optimal.

[King of Nowhere]

The problem with wu jen taboos is that they are roleplaying restrictions imposed by mechanics. Annoying roleplaying restrictions, the worst kind.
If you want to play the guy with ocd that won't sit facing west, that's your choice. Your class should not force you to do it. Especially when those taboos have no connection with what you do anyway

[noce]

kensai is ok, but should be far more flexible in what weapon you want to use. you're pretty much forced into melee combat as a "slightly better?" fighter with "free" enchants to your weapon

I really do not agree here. I did a fighter/kensai and by level 15 I had +40/+35/+30 for my full attack routine (no buffs except the kensai one), my weapon dealt 2 CON damage on every hit plus around 40-60 damage depending on power attack, and my saves were sky high, with 20 fort and 35 on both ref and will (the concentration maneuver from tob) and a ring of evasion.

[Brackenlord]

I really do not agree here. I did a fighter/kensai and by level 15 I had +40/+35/+30 for my full attack routine (no buffs except the kensai one), my weapon dealt 2 CON damage on every hit plus around 40-60 damage depending on power attack, and my saves were sky high, with 20 fort and 35 on both ref and will (the concentration maneuver from tob) and a ring of evasion.

I'm also a fan of Kensai but I call bull on that attack routine without buffs. Could you elaborate?

[loky1109]

Did somebody mention Dragon Shaman?

[noce]

I'm also a fan of Kensai but I call bull on that attack routine without buffs. Could you elaborate?

I was a fighter 4 / warblade 1 / exotic weapon master 1 / kensai 10 (so level 16 not 15, I was wrong on this)
Race was earth dwarf with 37 pt buy and starting stats as follows: 19 12 16 16 10 6 (iirc)
13 from bab
1 from +1 weapon
3 from martial discipline weapon enhancement (of the same discipline of my stance)
1 from weapon focus
2 from melee weapon mastery
10 from 30 base strength (23 +6 item +1 inherent)
4 from kensai power surge
3-5 from knowledge devotion (I had education feat and invested all my ranks in all knowledges, plus a portion of my wbl)
1 from boots of speed (I said no other buffs I know, I misremembered)
-----
That's 38-40 for a routine of 40/40/35/30 under boots of speed and with a good knowledge roll, or 39/34/29 without boots of speed.

EDIT: I misremembered a couple of things.
First, I also had a level in exotic weapon master, so my statement was for level 16.
Also, I remembered 40 but it was only during rounds with boots of speed activated, otherwise it was 39.
Sorry, anyway I was in good faith.
On the other hand, my damage was higher than what I said, dealing average 46 without power attack and average 74 with full power attack (again at level 16).

[Brackenlord]

-snip-

I stand corrected, that's some neat optimization, stacking not so big bonuses from various sources.

[Wildstag]

On the dragon disciple discussion, I really want to like PF’s over 3.5, but the former just doesn’t become a Dragon. It’s a PrC for cosplaying a dragon occasionally instead of just becoming a half-dragon.

For another PrC, Invisible Blade intrigues me but fails due to an editor’s bad design choice. Somehow in the editing process from a level 10 PrC to a level 5 one, its granted bonus feat Far Shot turned into a prerequisite. The original writer’s fix for it looks fun though.

[RandomPeasant]

I don't see how standing in the rain is different from standing under a shower head.

It's magic, it cares about intent. You haven't broken your taboo if you're, like, bull rushed into a bathtub or something. I mean, really, when someone comes in from the rain, do you ask them if they enjoyed their bath?


And even if the Taboos were trivial, it's mechanically inelegant to add restrictions as a character advances. The downsides should come up front, so the progression after that point is strictly positive.

But again, the taboos come with a benefit (I agree that the argument that the benefit is not necessarily great in the long run is probably your best case against the class). You're not getting punished for taking more levels, it's just a tradeoff you're allowed to make. Is an ability that reduces your move speed, but increases your AC, inherently badly designed? What about partial casting progression PrCs (that one is a bit unfair of me, as I do hate those, but a lot of people don't)?


If we're going to count Artificer because it's overly-complex, tedious to play as or with, and highly abusable, then I guess I'll also nominate all prepared casters.

I'm not as down on prepared casting as some people, but it's a really bad fit for a class that is potentially allocating 20+ spell slots. As a Wizard, you should get somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 6 spell slots and simply get better spells to put in them as you level up, not get new spell slots for new levels.


It's also kind of bizarre that you forget how to do things from one day to the next, but at least it keeps you from being locked into a small list of spells forever.

I never really got that complaint. You prepare a specific set of things, of course that set of things can change from day to day. If a soldier loads up with frag grenades one day, it's not at all strange that he would have no frag grenades on a subsequent day where he took flashbangs or extra magazines. It's not even without precedent in fantasy, as you can see something like Allomancy having a clear parallel to preparing different spells (in that you have separate pools of Iron, Tin, and so on and can use or replenish one separately from the others)


If you want to play the guy with ocd that won't sit facing west, that's your choice. Your class should not force you to do it. Especially when those taboos have no connection with what you do anyway

But you can just not play a Wu Jen. It's like complaining that Warlock "forced you" to play a guy who was a servant of a demon lord. No one tricked you, the class was very upfront about where the power was coming from and what restrictions came with it.


Did somebody mention Dragon Shaman?

No, but that's a good answer. Frankly, I always found it kind of bizarre that they went with "party buffer" as the mechanics for a dragon-themed class. In what world is "make your allies more effective" a thing people associate with dragons? Dragonfire Adept is more reasonable approach, and even that class isn't great.

[Lans]

It'.



No, but that's a good answer. Frankly, I always found it kind of bizarre that they went with "party buffer" as the mechanics for a dragon-themed class. In what world is "make your allies more effective" a thing people associate with dragons? Dragonfire Adept is more reasonable approach, and even that class isn't great.
I think it's the dragon part of the class, if you flavor it as making your allies more dragon like it would make sense. Imagine if one of the auras gave a breath weapon.





Yeah, the Incarnate confuses me. Like, what do they do in battle? With half-bab, and relatively few battle-options, I just don't see how people could have fun playing them. they can be a pseudo warlock or warblade with dissolving spittle/lightning gauntlets. And if your evil you get a zombie.

At level 1 it works, 2-3d6 on a touch, but it doesn't scale Right and at later levels your best move is running up and hugging people with flame mantle.

[Cygnia]

I think it's the dragon part of the class, if you flavor it as making your allies more dragon like it would make sense. Imagine if one of the auras gave a breath weapon.

Energy Aura reminded me of the Retribution Aura on World of Warcraft paladins back in the day...

[King of Nowhere]

But you can just not play a Wu Jen. It's like complaining that Warlock "forced you" to play a guy who was a servant of a demon lord. No one tricked you, the class was very upfront about where the power was coming from and what restrictions came with it.

perhaps you like the mechanic part of the class, but not the fluff. that's actually a very common occurrence, because every class has crunch and fluff which are somewhat distinct.

on the plus side, refluffing is a thing. and when you refluff, you should alter some of the mechanics that don't fit. like, maybe you want to play a fighter in heavy armor with some magic and a cool horse, but you don't want to have to be a knight in shining armor archetype/clichè, so you can talk with your dm and take paladin levels without having the paladin code, perhaps swapping it for something more appropriate for your character. same should probably go for a wu jen.

[Seward]

on the plus side, refluffing is a thing. and when you refluff, you should alter some of the mechanics that don't fit.

The best Paladin I ever played was chaotic good and had no paladin levels. But she could kinda do everything a paladin could do and was a chosen champion of her deity. She existed to "smite jerks and protect wimps" and said things like "just because they detect as evil doesn't mean they are a jerk". Sure her celestial pony only stuck around for one round, and her detect evil was a compass that pointed to the most evil entity in the room. But she did the holy warrior with great AC and saves and even had the thing where if she violated her ethos she'd lose most of her power (100% of her melee damage required a feat acquired through a divine-variant of a bard class...without that feat she didn't even have weapon finesse, and had a 5 strength...).

Of course her religious views were odd enough that a lot of party members stopped listening to her. She made actual priests of her religion sigh a lot. She was spot on a surprising amount of the time though, since she did have a good feel for the things her own deity cared about and when something was off, she tended to notice. Sort of genre-savvy, in a backwards way.

Sometimes you reflavor the fluff just by reflavoring the existing class and tinkering, kind of like creating an ACF or a Pathfinder template. Sometimes you just build it with other classes to suit your taste, while retaining the enough of the same capabilities that if you were swapped in for the official class, your party would still know what to expect you to contribute and you would do it well.

[skunk3]

Shadowcaster is one that springs to mind immediately. I love the flavor of it but aside from a couple of nifty things that you can access later on, it just plain sucks.

Assassin is another class that seems like it would be super fun to play but Death Attack is so weak that even with high levels of optimization, it is borderline useless.

Duelist is another one that I like in terms of flavor but it's just crappy in the end unless you are playing in a game perfectly tailored for it.

Also, pretty much any class / PrC that specializes in thrown weapons is pretty much underwhelming unless at very high levels and optimization.

[RandomPeasant]

I think it's the dragon part of the class, if you flavor it as making your allies more dragon like it would make sense. Imagine if one of the auras gave a breath weapon.

I mean I guess? But that seems really loose to me.


At level 1 it works, 2-3d6 on a touch, but it doesn't scale Right and at later levels your best move is running up and hugging people with flame mantle.

That much is true. The Incarnate is legitimately one of the better classes at very low levels. It just doesn't scale at all, and at high levels you're (largely) running around with low-level abilities with bigger numbers, which doesn't make for an effective high-level character.


Also, pretty much any class / PrC that specializes in thrown weapons is pretty much underwhelming unless at very high levels and optimization.

WotC didn't really seem to understand that the power you give a class to take a crappy strategy up to the power level of non-crappy strategies shouldn't count against the overall power level of the class. Someone specializing in thrown weapons or unarmed combat or wielding a single one-handed weapon should get a whole bunch of free power to mitigate their garbage taste in tactics before they start getting class abilities. An option can't be judged by the size of the bonus it gives, it has to be judged by what it lets you do overall.

[Silva Stormrage]

Can I just list the Tome of Magic in it's entirety :smallsigh:

All three base classes are so cool and have such glaring flaws mechanically that its just obnoxious. Binder works well at high levels but playing a straight binder levels 1-10 is just PAINFUL and incredibly weak. Then once you get Zerycll it overshadows every other vestige dramatically...

Shadowcasters also have glaring flaws that really should have been fixed such as their lack of mystery options and low sustain at earlier levels.

Truenamers are Trunamers and I don't think I need to elaborate on that one.

[skunk3]

WotC didn't really seem to understand that the power you give a class to take a crappy strategy up to the power level of non-crappy strategies shouldn't count against the overall power level of the class. Someone specializing in thrown weapons or unarmed combat or wielding a single one-handed weapon should get a whole bunch of free power to mitigate their garbage taste in tactics before they start getting class abilities. An option can't be judged by the size of the bonus it gives, it has to be judged by what it lets you do overall.

I don't think that thrown weapons, unarmed combat or single one-handed weapon usage are "crappy strategies" or "garbage." If you are looking at it from the perspective of maximizing damage output like you're playing a video game, then yeah, obviously 2H power attacking / TWF is the way to go. That being said, other options aren't garbage per se.

The problem with thrown weapon specialists is that their schtick is fairly hard to pull off until the mid-teens in terms of levels due to the required feats, class features, and gear (money) needed to excel at it. That being said, I'm an advocate of playing whatever seems cool to you thematically / RP-wise, whether or not it is as mechanically impressive as some other options. Flavor wins the day. I'd much rather play something rarely used at tables and be weak than play another damn T1 demigod.

[Kurald Galain]

I don't think that thrown weapons, unarmed combat or single one-handed weapon usage are "crappy strategies" or "garbage."

True, but it's fair to say that (e.g.) monk unarmed damage is, at most levels, not a bonus, but instead the mitigation of a penalty. And that means that the monk needs to have more to it than "dealing the same damage with his fists that other people deal with a big sword".

[icefractal]

In PF1 -

Shifter (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/shifter). I was hyped by the idea of a class that's shapeshifting-focused, as opposed to the Druid who has it as one of their many areas of expertise, or Sor/Wiz who can only do it short-duration. Something like a Wildshape Ranger/MoMF, but more streamlined.

What we got was ... anemic. Worse than Druid at Wild Shape (although TBF, better between 4th-6th level), and with a restricted set of aspects which you only get a few of. And just to add insult to injury, they get A Thousand Faces later? Part of this is that I wanted a general "shapeshift to any kind of thing" class and they never promised that, this is clearly an animal-aspect class specifically. But also, it's just not very good.

Probably because of Paizo's consistent over-valuing of full-BAB. Apparently in their minds, trading full casting + 3/4 BAB for no casting + full BAB is an upgrade that needs to be balanced by reducing the shapeshifting power somewhat. :smallyuk:

Fortunately, then I found out about the other Shifter (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/shifter) (Spheres of Power), and I like that one a lot, it does exactly what I wanted from the class (I'd recommend the Apex Shifter archetype if you just want to focus on the polymorphing itself; the base class has a fair amount of infiltrator / envoy stuff at higher levels).

[RandomPeasant]

Binder works well at high levels but playing a straight binder levels 1-10 is just PAINFUL and incredibly weak. Then once you get Zerycll it overshadows every other vestige dramatically...

I think the problem with the Binder is that going from one vestige to two vestiges is just not something that can be done smoothly. The class needed to either be designed in a way where a vestige was a full suite of class features, or always get multiple vestiges (or at least get multiple vestiges closer to 3rd level than 8th level). Vestiges also generally need to be better than they are, and like Incarnum the class suffers from shoveling too many complications onto a system that would have been fine with far fewer.


Shadowcasters also have glaring flaws that really should have been fixed such as their lack of mystery options and low sustain at earlier levels.

The Shadowcaster is the most frustrating failure in the book because it's the least mechanically novel. It works almost exactly like a Wizard, except instead of potentially having three or four 1st level spells per day, it has one (and IIRC none of them are all that impressive). I can sort of forgive the Binder being bad because there's not really anything like the Binder, but I don't understand how your QA process allows "existing content, but instead of working it doesn't work" to get through.


True, but it's fair to say that (e.g.) monk unarmed damage is, at most levels, not a bonus, but instead the mitigation of a penalty. And that means that the monk needs to have more to it than "dealing the same damage with his fists that other people deal with a big sword".

There's this common thing that happens when you say that something is bad where people assume you are saying they are a bad person for liking it. Saying that unarmed strikes are a crappy strategy doesn't mean you're saying that the guy who wants to play a Monk is a bad person. It means that unarmed strikes are mechanically worse than other things people can use. And that means that when you make a character who specializes in unarmed strikes, you should get bonuses that characters who specialize in weapons like Greatswords or Longbows that are already good don't get (and, indeed, would be broken to give to those characters), and you need to get them in addition to the things a character of your level would normally get to be competitive. The Monk's ability to deal 1d6 damage with a melee attack isn't a class feature. It's fluff. A Sorcerer can deal 1d8 damage with a melee attack just by picking up the heavy mace they get to be proficient with for free, and they get to cast spells on top of that.


That being said, I'm an advocate of playing whatever seems cool to you thematically / RP-wise, whether or not it is as mechanically impressive as some other options. Flavor wins the day. I'd much rather play something rarely used at tables and be weak than play another damn T1 demigod.

That's the Stormwind Fallacy. The point is not that you should play a Greatsword-wielding Warblade because that is mechanically optimal (when what you really want is to dual-wield Sickles). The point is that you should not be forced to choose between playing the thing you think is cool and having an effective character.

[Elves]

I think the problem with the Binder is that going from one vestige to two vestiges is just not something that can be done smoothly.
It can be done smoothly if each vestige has its own level progression, starting at the level you unlock it. When you get your 2nd vestige you only get 1-2 new powers, equivalent to a new class feature or two.

The core problem of binder is that its design didn't start from a solid place. TOB had a clear mission: martial powers using the spell format, per-encounter instead of per-day. What is the binder's premise? Something about modular sets of class abilities, but that's uninspiring. In contrast to TOB, it seems to me like binder's concept starts with flavor, not mechanic -- the class concept is "get possessed by a demon to gain its powers". That's what you should build the mechanics on. The influence mechanic is what should be front and center (turned into something fun and mechanically significant), not combining modular class feature sets.

[AsuraKyoko]

I think the problem with the Binder is that going from one vestige to two vestiges is just not something that can be done smoothly. The class needed to either be designed in a way where a vestige was a full suite of class features, or always get multiple vestiges (or at least get multiple vestiges closer to 3rd level than 8th level). Vestiges also generally need to be better than they are, and like Incarnum the class suffers from shoveling too many complications onto a system that would have been fine with far fewer.

The Pactmaker (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/pactmaker) is a pathfinder conversion/expanded rewrite of the Binder mechanics, and it does a lot to really expand and rebalance the class. You get to bind a second vestige (called Spirits in the conversion) starting at level 4, and the vestige abilities are a lot more standardized. You also get abilities based on what type of vestige you bind, and the class gets some nice goodies.

For example, one of the 1st level Spirits gives an ability similar to Zceryl's Summon Alien, except it's Summon Nature's Ally, and the ability stays on cooldown until 5 rounds after the summon expires.

Additionally, rather than knowing every single available Spirit, you have to research them or find them, much like a wizard adding spells to their spellbook.

[RandomPeasant]

It can be done smoothly if each vestige has its own level progression, starting at the level you unlock it. When you get your 2nd vestige you only get 1-2 new powers, equivalent to a new class feature or two.

I'm not really sure what you're describing here, but it sort of sounds like it'd be roughly equivalent to having one vestige, just with more pushing things around.


What is the binder's premise? Something about modular sets of class abilities, but that's uninspiring.

I don't agree with that at all. The Binder has a very clear premise: it's a Wizard, but instead of preparing individual spells you prepare suites of abilities like "fire magic" or "mind magic". I don't know what exactly you're looking forward in terms of "inspiring", but that seems like a fine thing to be trying to do, and one with clear appeal to all the people who find Wizards too complex. The issue is that the suites of abilities it gives you tend to be rather baffling combinations of things, rather than the focused concepts you might want to prepare a priori.


The influence mechanic is what should be front and center (turned into something fun and mechanically significant),

I am open to ideas on how you make "demon controls you" into a fun mechanic.


Additionally, rather than knowing every single available Spirit, you have to research them or find them, much like a wizard adding spells to their spellbook.

I'm not convinced that's a good idea. Managing spell acquisition is good for the Wizard, because there are massive number of Wizard spells, but an expansion class is just not going to have enough material to require that.

[Elves]

I don't agree with that at all. The Binder has a very clear premise: it's a Wizard, but instead of preparing individual spells you prepare suites of abilities like "fire magic" or "mind magic".
There was a homebrew shaman class that did this, using elemental spirits instead of vestiges. But for binder it doesn't come across that way.

The vestiges give diverse, un-unified abilities. And unlike the shaman's elemental theming, the names of Goetic demons don't evoke clear or distinct things.

Compare:
"Fire, water, earth, air" vs "Paimon, Naberius, Agares, Lucifuge".

Also, binding multiple vestiges becomes confusing when they're all unique characters. The shaman's elemental spirits were faceless (fire spirit, water spirit, etc), which made them less distracting to combine. By contrast, with the unique demons, you want to emphasize each one's particular personality and identity, which gets lost if multiple vestiges are onstage at once.

So a better way to put it is that the binder's fluff isn't a good fit for its mechanic. The shaman started with the mechanic and thought of a better fluff fit for it. (My own take would be a schizophrenic multiple-personalities class.) Meanwhile, if you take the binder fluff as the starting point and try to think of a mechanical match, it wouldn't be the current system.


The issue is that the suites of abilities it gives you tend to be rather baffling combinations of things, rather than the focused concepts you might want to prepare a priori.
And this.


I am open to ideas on how you make "demon controls you" into a fun mechanic.
Influence, not control. Full loss of control for a round is probably an 'overload' endstate the player wants to avoid.

An idea I had for a binder-TOB theurge is that each vestige gives you a recovery mechanic fit to their personality (steal something with Sleight of Hand for the thievery one, etc). That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

[Cortillaen]

It can be done smoothly if each vestige has its own level progression, starting at the level you unlock it. When you get your 2nd vestige you only get 1-2 new powers, equivalent to a new class feature or two.
The Pathfinder Shaman's Spirits are an example of the general direction I wish they had gone with Vestiges (though they are much smaller and fewer than I would want for reworked vestiges). Give each vestige 3-4 tiers of benefits, and most levels of the class either raise the tier of a vestige slot you already have or grant a new slot starting at the lowest tier. That would smooth out the progression a lot, allow deeper (and more coherent) vestige benefit packages, and still leave room for some basic class benefits alongside. You could even have the vestiges unlocked at higher levels have fewer tiers so there would still be a reason to use earlier vestiges that have the highest tier. There's a lot of flexibility inherent to the general concept.

[StSword]

In PF1 -

Shifter (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/shifter). I was hyped by the idea of a class that's shapeshifting-focused, as opposed to the Druid who has it as one of their many areas of expertise, or Sor/Wiz who can only do it short-duration. Something like a Wildshape Ranger/MoMF, but more streamlined.

What we got was ... anemic. Worse than Druid at Wild Shape (although TBF, better between 4th-6th level), and with a restricted set of aspects which you only get a few of. And just to add insult to injury, they get A Thousand Faces later? Part of this is that I wanted a general "shapeshift to any kind of thing" class and they never promised that, this is clearly an animal-aspect class specifically. But also, it's just not very good.


There is also the Legendary Shifter you can check out here (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Shifter_(Legendary)). If nothing else not every game is a SOP game, so perhaps you'll find this version more up to snuff.

[Gruftzwerg]

I loved the Fleshwarper PrC, right up until Magic of Ebberon came out and cut the legs out from under the grafted items rules.

??
I think you missed this line in MoE:

Regardless of origin, all grafts in this book have the following rules in common.

MoE grafts are mechanically a thing of their own. They have their own special rules that only count for them.

And you can combine regular and MoE grafts. Sole the MoE grafts follow their rules. The old regular graft have no interaction with those from MoE. (e.g. theoretically you could stack multiple normal "arm"-grafts on the same arm and add a single MoE arm-graft ontop of the same arm by RAW).

I'm recently working on a crazy Fleshwarper build for some time. Just for fun's sake. Dunno if and when it may be released in the forum. If you are interested, I can share you some ideas via PM.

[AsuraKyoko]

I'm not convinced that's a good idea. Managing spell acquisition is good for the Wizard, because there are massive number of Wizard spells, but an expansion class is just not going to have enough material to require that.

For the Pactmaker, there are 14+ vestiges for each level of vestige, up through 9th (they mapped them to spell levels, rather than the weird progression Binder had). Each vestige has 5 different abilities (with a handful of exceptions). I understand them not wanting to just give that all right out of the box.

Honestly, though, I feel like it was more of a flavor thing. The Binder/Pactmaker is digging up forgotten and forbidden lore, and using that to contact entities that should no longer exist. It makes sense that digging up said lore is an integral part of the process. Your mileage may vary, though; It does require a bit more DM judgement than I usually like, and I'm of the opinion that a spellbook is a crappy excuse for loot, unless it has some really rare/unusual spells in it.

[DigoDragon]

I want to like the Ranger, but dang they just don't have enough damage options per attack at later levels.

They're decent with their 6+ skills/level, and have a few interesting spells, but the two times I played one I just keep multiclassing out into something else that can add more damage.

Also, they need a meatier animal companion.

[El Dorado]

It's been said, but core monk. Even the Pathfinder core monk, while better, didn't really come into its own until Pathfinder Unchained or slapping some of the better archetypes on it (Tetori, zen archer, hungry ghost, etc). I think the big problem was the hesitancy to build in dex to damage with unarmed strikes and monk weapons. Would it have caused problems? Maybe (I point to 5e where this was implemented; the gripes over there are having to spend ki points to do anything, not dex to damage, but I digress. . .). Anyhoo, yeah, core monk.

[Faily]

I want to like the Ranger, but dang they just don't have enough damage options per attack at later levels.

They're decent with their 6+ skills/level, and have a few interesting spells, but the two times I played one I just keep multiclassing out into something else that can add more damage.

Also, they need a meatier animal companion.

One of the things we tried for a Pathfinder game to give a boost to the Ranger was to give them the full-level Animal Companion (and reduce the Druid's animal companion, because seriously the Druid doesn't need that powerful AC).

It worked pretty great and we felt it worked better with the Ranger's history of being the one with the Animal Companion originally, and for a melee Ranger it is a great power boost (flanking buddy!).

[RandomPeasant]

The vestiges give diverse, un-unified abilities. And unlike the shaman's elemental theming, the names of Goetic demons don't evoke clear or distinct things.

I agree with the former, but I think that's an implementation detail. You could have thematically-focused Vestiges, they just didn't do that, just like you could have Vestiges that are broadly powerful enough that a single one can support a character and they just weren't implemented to that spec. The name thing I'm less sold on, as Vestiges have titles, and it seems like those could mitigate the concerns if used effectively. I don't see much difference in clarity between an "air spirit" and "Naribex, Lord of Howling Winds".


By contrast, with the unique demons, you want to emphasize each one's particular personality and identity, which gets lost if multiple vestiges are onstage at once.

I guess we're coming at this from opposite directions, but I see the fluff and personality details of the Vestiges as largely unnecessary. I would be perfectly fine with a "Holothar, Apocalypse Caller" who was just a sentence about how there's a dude named Holothar who gives people explosion powers and then a list of explosion powers. I don't think the personalities are a core part of what makes the Binder interesting at all.


An idea I had for a binder-TOB theurge is that each vestige gives you a recovery mechanic fit to their personality (steal something with Sleight of Hand for the thievery one, etc). That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

I suppose that could work, but it seems like an awful lot of effort for one class. Even if you just have nine ToB Vestiges and they scale somehow, that's ten mechanics (binding + one each) for a single class. It seems wasteful to me.


The Pathfinder Shaman's Spirits are an example of the general direction I wish they had gone with Vestiges (though they are much smaller and fewer than I would want for reworked vestiges). Give each vestige 3-4 tiers of benefits, and most levels of the class either raise the tier of a vestige slot you already have or grant a new slot starting at the lowest tier. That would smooth out the progression a lot, allow deeper (and more coherent) vestige benefit packages, and still leave room for some basic class benefits alongside. You could even have the vestiges unlocked at higher levels have fewer tiers so there would still be a reason to use earlier vestiges that have the highest tier. There's a lot of flexibility inherent to the general concept.

That starts feeling like a different mechanic to me. To my mind, the premise of the Binder (from a resource management perspective) is that you have a kind of ability ("ice magic", "archery", "shadow magic") and you prepare a thing that gives you that type of ability. Maybe you prepare one at a time, maybe you prepare a couple, but the ability suites are self-contained and don't have an additional fiddling on top of them.


Honestly, though, I feel like it was more of a flavor thing. The Binder/Pactmaker is digging up forgotten and forbidden lore, and using that to contact entities that should no longer exist. It makes sense that digging up said lore is an integral part of the process. Your mileage may vary, though; It does require a bit more DM judgement than I usually like, and I'm of the opinion that a spellbook is a crappy excuse for loot, unless it has some really rare/unusual spells in it.

I think I would rather have that flavor come through from the other end, by giving the class some Bardic Knowledge-type ability that shows off how they gather random knowledge in their quest for Vestiges. Especially with less than 20 Vestiges per level, that just doesn't seem like enough variety to justify requiring them to be tracked separately on a per-character basis. You can pretty easily make a couple of reasonable Wizards with little or no overlap in spell selection, I'm sort of skeptical you could do that with Binders (though I've not read the system).

That said, I disagree that spellbooks are bad loot. Spellbooks are fine loot, and the fact that a Wizard can get class-specific loot they care about in a way Sorcerers or Warmages largely can't is one of the ways the class is a better design than other casters. I just don't know that the extra tracking is worth it for a splat class with so few abilities to choose from.


I want to like the Ranger, but dang they just don't have enough damage options per attack at later levels.

In addition to what I said earlier about favored enemy, I think taking a leaf from Swift Hunter and giving the class Skirmish would help with its viability. Mobility fits the Ranger conceptually (and you could give them some class features to help more), and both combat styles are the "make lots of attacks" strategy that works well with damage bonuses. There's probably also a case for bumping them up to Bard casting (I sort of like the idea of 6/9 Recharge casting as the default "partial caster"), but that'd be a lot more work.

[AsuraKyoko]

I think I would rather have that flavor come through from the other end, by giving the class some Bardic Knowledge-type ability that shows off how they gather random knowledge in their quest for Vestiges. Especially with less than 20 Vestiges per level, that just doesn't seem like enough variety to justify requiring them to be tracked separately on a per-character basis. You can pretty easily make a couple of reasonable Wizards with little or no overlap in spell selection, I'm sort of skeptical you could do that with Binders (though I've not read the system).

They actually do get something similar to Bardic Knowledge: they add half their class level to Knowledge (arcana, history, religion, planes) and can make them untrained (in Pathfinder, Bardic Knowledge adds half the bard's level to knowledge skills and they can make them untrained). Those are the 4 skills that are most useful in researching vestiges in the system.

Regarding learning new vestiges, I think that it's largely fine either way. IIRC, the book talks about how commonplace pact magic is, and what that means for the campaign world (making it easier/harder to research vestiges; or, if it's commonplace enough, you can just learn them all automatically). Each vestige generally feels complete enough to be a significant suite of abilities, especially when combined with your other class abilities.

I'm actually running a campaign where pact magic is rare, and there is an inquisition that hunts down binders. Each of the PCs is some sort of binder, either the Pactmaker class, or one of the archetypes that gets access to soulbinding in other classes. For that game, researching ancient lore and unearthing secrets plays a major role, and in some ways is the major driving force for the plot; the game is pretty sandbox-y, and largely player-driven, so having something that acts as a motivating factor for exploration is nice.


That said, I disagree that spellbooks are bad loot. Spellbooks are fine loot, and the fact that a Wizard can get class-specific loot they care about in a way Sorcerers or Warmages largely can't is one of the ways the class is a better design than other casters. I just don't know that the extra tracking is worth it for a splat class with so few abilities to choose from.

I've just always found that the extra tracking is a huge pain for Wizards, because there are so many individual things to track. The difference with Pactmaker and Vestiges is that you only have to keep track of a handful of things. Then again, it's really a matter of preference, in my opinion; I like to have the core spells be pretty freely available, and have the more exotic ones be more of a reward.

[King of Nowhere]

i nominate the vow of poverty.
the idea that you give up on using magic items has a lot of flavor, especially when you refluff it away from the ideal of monastic religious poverty and adapt it to other contexts - a character I'd like to play one day is a vop wizard who's basically a political activist with an ideal of "improving the lives of the common people by teaching them magic, and if we want magic to be widespread then it cannot cost a fortune, and so I will demonstrate that you can eschew the crazy expensive stuff and still practice magic".

In fact, I like the concept so much that I'm willing to shoot my characters in the foot by taking it. because that's what it does mechanically.
the worst thing about it is that it's a feat. with a prerequisite. only humans can make a vow of poverty at first level, and then it prevents you from entering many prestige classes. such are the ramifications of poverty.

[Wildstag]

i nominate the vow of poverty.
the idea that you give up on using magic items has a lot of flavor, especially when you refluff it away from the ideal of monastic religious poverty and adapt it to other contexts - a character I'd like to play one day is a vop wizard who's basically a political activist with an ideal of "improving the lives of the common people by teaching them magic, and if we want magic to be widespread then it cannot cost a fortune, and so I will demonstrate that you can eschew the crazy expensive stuff and still practice magic".

In fact, I like the concept so much that I'm willing to shoot my characters in the foot by taking it. because that's what it does mechanically.
the worst thing about it is that it's a feat. with a prerequisite. only humans can make a vow of poverty at first level, and then it prevents you from entering many prestige classes. such are the ramifications of poverty.

Fwiw, Vow of Poverty works a LOT better for non-WS shapeshifters, since magic items don't usually function properly in alternate forms. Additionally, it kinda makes sense when you see the justification for the armor: the WBL budget works better if "Exalted Armor = Bracers of Armor". Most counter arguments say "But the +10 armor is equal to 5,500 gp Full Plate", which is technically true but also ignores the intent. And if you use the Vow of Poverty article from the archives, the impoverished fighter would have +4 to their armor because of their lack of heavy armor and shields.

I've used it effectively a couple of times, tbh. It also runs hand in hand skipping merrily with Fist of the Forest.

[Elves]

I guess we're coming at this from opposite directions, but I see the fluff and personality details of the Vestiges as largely unnecessary.

That's my point -- if you start with the mechanic, the binder's fluff does stand out as unnecessary, because it's not a natural fit. Meanwhile, if you start with the binder's fluff, the mechanic isn't a natural fit for it.

If I'm on the TOM design team and see the current binder draft, I say "Ok, are we going to stick with this mechanic and write new fluff on top of the result? Or are we going to stick with this class fantasy and change the mechanics to really deliver on it?"


I don't think the personalities are a core part of what makes the Binder interesting at all.
You find the underlying mechanic more interesting than the class flavor. But for someone who's mainly excited about the class fantasy -- an occultist who becomes willingly possessed -- the question is how to bring that across in rules, and the spirit's particular personality and powers are important there.

An example of the disjunction is the current vestige kits. The disparate abilities are about emphasizing that vestige's particular quirks and lore. But as you note, it would make more sense if it were a unified, theme-first kit. That doesn't mean one is unimportant, it means you have to choose your starting point.

[Luccan]

Monk and Ninja. Wis-focus on half-BaB warrior/skill-monkey combos that don't cast spells isn't great and then they feel arbitrarily limited on top of that with their special abilities.

Dragon Shaman. Cool idea but the implementation isn't great. Breath recovery sucks, auras are too limited, and the special abilities for each dragon vary wildly in use and come too slowly.

I really wish both versions of the Samurai were better. Making a personalized magic weapon is a cool feature for a martial, but it being basically your only feature (and not even one they expect you to use in all situations) sucks. Likewise, a TWFer that can stare down enemies so well they freeze up is neat, but your progression on both those things is so weak and slow you actually become that dual-wielder faster just going straight Fighter. And since you have no other uses for Cha, you're probably not actually any good at the stare-down thing either.

[noob]

Spellthief definitely has issues.

One is that it's frontloaded enough that the best build is probably two level of spellthief, all the other levels in some other casting class, and the Master Spellthief feat. Features other than Steal Spell (L1) and Steal Active Spell (L2) don't really matter all that much.

Another is, what are you going to do when facing enemies that don't cast spells? Because in most campaigns, there are a lot of enemies that don't cast spells. This is essentially the ranger's favored enemy problem, but worse.
Do you not get to simply cast some spells every day by keeping captive opponents with slas to drain power from them like a big bad evil guy?

[icefractal]

Personally speaking, the individual vestige flavor is the main selling point of the Binder. The mechanics aren't anything I'd choose to use, for several reasons:

1) False Flexibility. Like with prepared spells, IME it's not common that you have that much advance notice about what you're facing on a given day. So you generally end up preparing the same stuff on most days, with maybe a few large-grained splits like dungeon / social / downtime. Additionally, many vestiges require building the rest of your character appropriately to get much advantage from their abilities, further locking you into them.

2) Limited Options. You only get one vestige until 8th, two until 14th, and only get a fourth at the level that seldom happens 20th. The fact that a Wizard usually prepares the same spells every day isn't a problem because they have over a dozen of those spells in short order, but a Wizard who could only prepare 1-4 spells would suck too.

3) Five-Round Cooldown. What the hell is the use-case for this? IME, it's very rare for combat to go 6+ rounds, so these are basically 1/encounter abilities. But they're balanced like they're usable repeatedly - with some vestiges, their only offense is a 1/5r ability. Which forces your primary combat strategy to be something unrelated to being a Binder - both unthematic and it exacerbates problem #1, because the feats/gear don't change each day and therefore lock you into certain vestige choices.

And incidentally Binder is exactly the thread-subject for me. My favorite of the ToM classes flavor-wise, and something I've tried using but could never make much of except as a side dish.

[RandomPeasant]

You find the underlying mechanic more interesting than the class flavor. But for someone who's mainly excited about the class fantasy -- an occultist who becomes willingly possessed -- the question is how to bring that across in rules, and the spirit's particular personality and powers are important there.

I would question whether that is a meaningfully large demographic. In this very thread, we have multiple people who view "your character is a vegetarian" as an unreasonable imposition. Maybe there is a silent majority (or even silent large-enough-minority-to-be-worth-servicing) of people who really want meaningful restrictions to go with their ability suites, but my suspicion is that people want the fluff here to mostly be fluff.


Dragon Shaman. Cool idea but the implementation isn't great. Breath recovery sucks, auras are too limited, and the special abilities for each dragon vary wildly in use and come too slowly.

It is kinda weaksauce that despite each dragon type having a bunch of SLAs they do, you barely get any of those. You are more like a dragon if you play a Sorcerer who just takes a bunch of that dragon's Heritage feats. Honestly, the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that the "Dragon" part of "Dragon Shaman" was doing anything all the other dragon-related content wasn't.


I really wish both versions of the Samurai were better. Making a personalized magic weapon is a cool feature for a martial, but it being basically your only feature (and not even one they expect you to use in all situations) sucks.

That's another example of the thing I was talking about earlier (albeit from a slightly different perspective). Having a magic sword is not ability. Even having a magic sword with the powers you want isn't an ability. Those are things you can do by just putting enough gold in a pile. If your class is going to have "magic sword" as one of its core focuses, you need to get some bonuses with that magic sword that are roughly as impressive as what a Warblade is doing normally, because he can also have a magic sword.


Do you not get to simply cast some spells every day by keeping captive opponents with slas to drain power from them like a big bad evil guy?

That is a thing you can do. But it's not something a lot of people are going to be in a position to do for various reasons, and I'm not really sure "Blue Mage" is what people are thinking when they hear "Spellthief".


False Flexibility. Like with prepared spells, IME it's not common that you have that much advance notice about what you're facing on a given day. So you generally end up preparing the same stuff on most days, with maybe a few large-grained splits like dungeon / social / downtime. Additionally, many vestiges require building the rest of your character appropriately to get much advantage from their abilities, further locking you into them.

I would argue the Binder's large ability suites are better-suited to this dynamic than the Wizard's. With the Wizard, you have a double-digit number of abilities to allocate, so the temptation to try to generate value by tweaking your mix of 3rd level spell slots is fairly large. With a Binder you just pick a thing to do so it is, at least to me, okay to just have that thing be "we're raiding the Fire Temple, I'll bind the Ice Vestige".


Limited Options. You only get one vestige until 8th, two until 14th, and only get a fourth at the level that seldom happens 20th.

Yes. The class either needed to get its second vestige much sooner (honestly, even 4th might be too late for campaigns that progress organically from 1st, but maybe the PF vestiges are better), or it needed to get it never and have each vestige be a full suite of character abilities. This thing where you're expected to have one set of abilities for a third of the campaign, with that set of abilities sometimes being something like Savnok (who has no offensive options attached to it) is just not workable.


Five-Round Cooldown. What the hell is the use-case for this? IME, it's very rare for combat to go 6+ rounds, so these are basically 1/encounter abilities.

That's the exact thing they are. They are 1/encounter abilities with a definition that allows you to avoid debates about whether pulling a rat out of a sack counts as a new encounter. At least, that's what it looks like to me. You are absolutely correct that Vestiges generally don't get an adequate suite of abilities if that's the model you're working under. I think that's because WotC just chronically under-tunes things, but it's possible that they though encounters would last long enough that you would get to fire off those abilities multiple times.

[Elves]

I would question whether that is a meaningfully large demographic. In this very thread, we have multiple people who view "your character is a vegetarian" as an unreasonable imposition. Maybe there is a silent majority (or even silent large-enough-minority-to-be-worth-servicing) of people who really want meaningful restrictions to go with their ability suites, but my suspicion is that people want the fluff here to mostly be fluff.
Sure, you'd have to think about how to do it (specific action taboos? An overload mechanic where you have to save vs. confusion each round if you use too many vestige powers? A class where the PC is the spirits, and the binder host is like a familiar, or even an NPC?) That's a whole thing you'd have to go through.

The point is a class's fantasy has to fit its mechanic. You can start from either one, but at the end they need to sync. The binder's sin in my view is that they don't -- as a binder I don't feel like what the fluff says I am; meanwhile the fantasy (obscure demons with heterogeneous powers) is out of step with the full potential of the mechanic.

Shadowcaster, also from TOM, has the same sin. The mechanical concept of spells that eventually become spell-like and then supernatural has nothing to do with shadows. (It's an unexciting idea in the first place, but...maybe you could wring something out of the idea that SLAs are like "shadows" of real spells?)

In the binder's case, the mechanic is more compelling than the current fantasy, so you probably want to start from there. In the shadowcaster's case, the fantasy is more exciting than the mechanic, so you want to dish the current mechanic and ask "what's an exciting way to depict a shadow mage?"

[Jervis]

Sure, you'd have to think about how to do it (specific action taboos? An overload mechanic where you have to save vs. confusion each round if you use too many vestige powers? A class where the PC is the spirits, and the binder host is like a familiar, or even an NPC?) That's a whole thing you'd have to go through.

The point is a class's fantasy has to fit its mechanic. You can start from either one, but at the end they need to sync. The binder's sin in my view is that they don't -- as a binder I don't feel like what the fluff says I am; meanwhile the fantasy (obscure demons with heterogeneous powers) is out of step with the full potential of the mechanic.

Shadowcaster, also from TOM, has the same sin. The mechanical concept of spells that eventually become spell-like and then supernatural has nothing to do with shadows. (It's an unexciting idea in the first place, but...maybe you could wring something out of the idea that SLAs are like "shadows" of real spells?)

In the binder's case, the mechanic is more compelling than the current fantasy, so you probably want to start from there. In the shadowcaster's case, the fantasy is more exciting than the mechanic, so you want to dish the current mechanic and ask "what's an exciting way to depict a shadow mage?"

Thing is demon pacts usually do have weird stuff tied too them in fiction, stuff that’s very unintuitive. Example Stolas, a owl demon in the Ars Goetia, gives knowledge of astronomy, “liberal sciences” (whatever that means) and knowledge of your enemies weaknesses IIRC. None of that really fits together in any thematic way at first glance. Vestiges give powers based on what they’re based on. The vestige of a dead god of war gives armor and proficiency in weapons. Karsus gives the ability to act as a wizard for the purposes of magic items. Know the lore of the vestige you’re binding and it makes a decent amount of sense.

[Particle_Man]

In defence of the incarnate, in can lead into the Sapphire Heirarch, which imho is one of the theurge classes done right and can easily be entered with 3 cleric/1 incarnate.

[Elves]

In defence of the incarnate, in can lead into the Sapphire Heirarch, which imho is one of the theurge classes done right
I agree, I tend to view theurge classes as kind of an OP concept (controversial, I know), but the exclusion of new chakra bind tiers makes hierarch work well. Same with MT having no class features.


would be interesting to explore theurge content that doesn't require custom PRCs. For example, could you have thought of a spellcaster oriented soulmeld with a powerful enough chakra bind effect that wizard 16/incarnate 4 is actually a viable build?

Of course, not really, because 9th level spells are so strong. But for other classes it could work.

In a way it's spellcasting that ruins 3e's multiclass system. Spells are just so strong that gaining a new level of spells is better than almost anything else. That's not true of other classes. Even martial adepts can't say the same about maneuvers.


Vestiges give powers based on what they’re based on. The vestige of a dead god of war gives armor and proficiency in weapons. Karsus gives the ability to act as a wizard for the purposes of magic items. Know the lore of the vestige you’re binding and it makes a decent amount of sense.
Most vestiges are goetic demons. And those are very samey. Oh great, someone else who can teach me all arts and sciences.

Sure, you can give them easier to perceive themes with titles, as Randompeasant said. "Kal'goras of the howling winds". But at that point it's just waste syllables and overly specific fluff -- you might as well say "wind spirit" or "wind domain". And all the fluff about influence is at that point unnecessary.

We've taken the binder's mechanic and used it for shaman. Now its fluff is sitting homeless on the table. What do we do with it? I put it into warlock. The Goetia is direct historical source material for the idea of calling demons to gain powers and schooling from them -- perfect fit for the post-3e pact-oriented warlock. Cut the idea of direct possession and just make pacts with demons and other entities for their powers.

In fact, you could keep the basic mechanic, possibly segregating the spirits by warlock subclass (infernal warlocks draw pentagrams to summon demons, fey warlocks create fairy circles to summon fays, etc).

[King of Nowhere]

Perhaps it's me being unable to play them, but i believe bards also fit the bill.
They are supposed to be great buffers, except they aren't. They have several buff spells, but all of them apply morale boosts, so they don't stack with each other - or with bardic music. Ultimately, a wizard or cleric can do it better.
Ok, they have out of combat utility, but that's very campaign dependent, snd a cleric or rogue with maxxed diplomacy can do it as well.
I just can't find a use for the class

[noce]

Perhaps it's me being unable to play them, but i believe bards also fit the bill.

For me Bard is the opposite of what the thread title says: not mechanically too bad, but I really don't like it and neither I want to.
What with all that nonsensical singing and dancing and guitarring around the battlefield...and the Perform(rallying speech) is more suited to a lawful character anyway.
I dislike bard fluff so much that I theorycrafted a bard without any music or perform ranks.

Anyway, strictly speaking about mechanics, it doesn't suck too bad, but I do not agree with people saying that a bard can do everything decently.
Sure, the class can be built to do anything decently enough, but not everything in the same build.
Say there are four fields of expertise: melee, DC casting, buffing, skillmonkeying. In my experience, a given bard can do somewhat well in two fields, and be somewhat decent in a third field.

The fact is, D&D 3.5 is not a game where doing a little bit of everythings helps much. Mediocre attack bonuses won't land, mediocre DCs won't land, small bonuses won't stack with what you get from bigger bonuses from other effects. Even a bard has to specialize, thus failing the concept of the class.

[noob]

For me Bard is the opposite of what the thread title says: not mechanically too bad, but I really don't like it and neither I want to.
What with all that nonsensical singing and dancing and guitarring around the battlefield...and the Perform(rallying speech) is more suited to a lawful character anyway.
I dislike bard fluff so much that I theorycrafted a bard without any music or perform ranks.

Anyway, strictly speaking about mechanics, it doesn't suck too bad, but I do not agree with people saying that a bard can do everything decently.
Sure, the class can be built to do anything decently enough, but not everything in the same build.
Say there are four fields of expertise: melee, DC casting, buffing, skillmonkeying. In my experience, a given bard can do somewhat well in two fields, and be somewhat decent in a third field.

The fact is, D&D 3.5 is not a game where doing a little bit of everythings helps much. Mediocre attack bonuses won't land, mediocre DCs won't land, small bonuses won't stack with what you get from bigger bonuses from other effects. Even a bard has to specialize, thus failing the concept of the class.
You can with the right build make a bard that will do everything very good: just abuse sublime chord and inspire heroic stacking multiplier items and feats then you are both great at hitting stuff and at casting spells.

[Jervis]

For me Bard is the opposite of what the thread title says: not mechanically too bad, but I really don't like it and neither I want to.
What with all that nonsensical singing and dancing and guitarring around the battlefield...and the Perform(rallying speech) is more suited to a lawful character anyway.
I dislike bard fluff so much that I theorycrafted a bard without any music or perform ranks.

Anyway, strictly speaking about mechanics, it doesn't suck too bad, but I do not agree with people saying that a bard can do everything decently.
Sure, the class can be built to do anything decently enough, but not everything in the same build.
Say there are four fields of expertise: melee, DC casting, buffing, skillmonkeying. In my experience, a given bard can do somewhat well in two fields, and be somewhat decent in a third field.

The fact is, D&D 3.5 is not a game where doing a little bit of everythings helps much. Mediocre attack bonuses won't land, mediocre DCs won't land, small bonuses won't stack with what you get from bigger bonuses from other effects. Even a bard has to specialize, thus failing the concept of the class.

I mean Clerics and Druids will disagree that you can’t make a character that’s good at everything

[noce]

I mean Clerics and Druids will disagree that you can’t make a character that’s good at everything

Well true, they don't even have to try hard. Bards? Another story.

[RandomPeasant]

Shadowcaster, also from TOM, has the same sin. The mechanical concept of spells that eventually become spell-like and then supernatural has nothing to do with shadows. (It's an unexciting idea in the first place, but...maybe you could wring something out of the idea that SLAs are like "shadows" of real spells?)

The Shadowcaster is basically a Wizard-ish character with Shadow spells. There's not any particular thematic link between that and its weird mechanics, but there's not a thematic link between the mechanics and fluff of the Dread Necromancer or the Barbarian or the Druid. Sometimes you just stick a thing in a framework that works because you want to have a Necromancer or Shadow Mage class, and that's okay. Not every class is going to be a perfect marriage of flavor and mechanics (which is not to say you should avoid that when you can reasonably do it).


would be interesting to explore theurge content that doesn't require custom PRCs. For example, could you have thought of a spellcaster oriented soulmeld with a powerful enough chakra bind effect that wizard 16/incarnate 4 is actually a viable build?

Maybe. But how does that scale? Class combinations grow quadratically. Build sequences grow exponentially. How do you expect to write enough material to cover even a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of that? As it is, there's no Rogue/Binder theurge (despite there being multiple Rogue-themed Vestiges) and there's no ToB Druid PrC (despite "Tiger Claw Druid" being like the third thing I thought of when reading that book). I just don't see how you could possibly cover it, especially since you also want to write material who aspire to be a Blood Mage or a Bladebound or a Ice Guy or a Relic Knight. The solution to multiclassing is modularity. You define a general interface for being a "multiclass X", you write a version of that for each class you write, and you let people pick the one they want. That scales, because it grows linearly with new content. Anything else is bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon.


In a way it's spellcasting that ruins 3e's multiclass system. Spells are just so strong that gaining a new level of spells is better than almost anything else. That's not true of other classes. Even martial adepts can't say the same about maneuvers.

Sort of, but you're putting the blame in the wrong place. The issue is that no other class has anything that justifies sticking with it to 20th level. You light your future on fire by multiclassing as a Warblade almost as much as you do as a Wizard, it's just that your future is "I deal +100 damage" instead of shapechange, so you don't care (especially because you're not likely to get to that point in most campaigns).


Sure, the class can be built to do anything decently enough, but not everything in the same build.

That's exactly the thing. You can build a decent Bard (well, kinda, I'm not completely certain how much Bardblade or Sublime Chord should count as Bards). But you have to invest hard in your chosen strategy, and you aren't good outside it. People talk up the "jack of all trades" thing, but that's not really a viable role in D&D.


You can with the right build make a bard that will do everything very good: just abuse sublime chord and inspire heroic stacking multiplier items and feats then you are both great at hitting stuff and at casting spells.

Honestly, Sublime Chord isn't really "great" at casting spells. I mean, yeah, you get 9ths off the Sorcerer/Wizard list, so you're not bad, but at the same time you get a progression that is slower than the Sorcerer and a more limited number of spells known. It's fairly hard for me to imagine a campaign that's at a high enough power level for Sublime Chord to be allowed, but a low enough one for it to shine.


I mean Clerics and Druids will disagree that you can’t make a character that’s good at everything

Not really. There are plenty of things Clerics and Druids are bad it, they're just bad at them by the standards of a T1 caster, which is still better than a lot of other classes. But you would 100% rather have a Sorcerer Mailman for blasting or a Beguiler for stealth/social stuff.

[Telonius]

Extending "classes" to "prestige classes" - Master of Masks. I really want to love this class. It's flavorful, has a unique shtick with the persona masks, and is awesome on a character concept level. The sort of character that would be interested in it, is the sort of character I'd love to play. But it's at most a one- or two-level dip. Any more than that, and it loses way too much from what your entry class is trying to do. (Not enough skills to be a Rogue, no music advancement and 4/10 casting if you're a Bard). The masks don't give back enough, for what you're giving up.

[thompur]

It's interesting to me that most of my favorite classes, Binder, Warlock, Warblade, Kineticist, and Bard have been discussed. I've found their mechanics to be fairly balanced and fun.
As to the subject of the thread: Incarnum just confused the hell out of me. I don't know if it was poorly written, or if my brain doesn't function in the right way to appreciate it, but, I tried to study it, but nothing clicked for me. I ended up selling the book to my buddy because I knew I'd never use it.

I agree with the criticism of the Dragon Shaman. I love the idea, but it needed more...ooompff.

Truenamer: Soooo flavorful, but no nutritional value. Like a pastry filled with cotton candy.

[Martin Greywolf]

For me, two come to mind.

Arcane archer was a pretty damn cool concept, but the loss you took to caster levels really wasn't worth it.

Legacy champion was... underwhelming. It was supposed to make you a master of using one particular weapon with a lot of history to ot, Anduril style, but all it did was allow you to shift around some abilities, which was completely unnecessary if you were making a custom weapon in the first place, and give you a few more ability uses.

[RandomPeasant]

Extending "classes" to "prestige classes"

Expanding it to prestige classes almost makes it to easy. You can open a book like Complete Arcane or Complete Warrior to a random page and find a PrC with an interesting concept and a mediocre-to-bad execution. Class like Spymaster or Animal Lord could be cool, but they are almost invariably disappointing.


As to the subject of the thread: Incarnum just confused the hell out of me. I don't know if it was poorly written, or if my brain doesn't function in the right way to appreciate it, but, I tried to study it, but nothing clicked for me. I ended up selling the book to my buddy because I knew I'd never use it.

No, I think that's pretty reasonable. As I said previously, the system just has too much going on. "Put points in abilities" is a fine mechanical concept. "Allocate abilities between slots" is a fine mechanical concept. "Have a super-slot that elevates one of your abilities" is a fine mechanical concept. Even "class abilities should trade off with magical items" is a reasonable proposal (if difficult to apply to the system after-the-fact). But putting all of those together in one system? That's just too much.


Legacy champion was... underwhelming. It was supposed to make you a master of using one particular weapon with a lot of history to ot, Anduril style, but all it did was allow you to shift around some abilities, which was completely unnecessary if you were making a custom weapon in the first place, and give you a few more ability uses.

Legacy Champion suffers from the exact problem I was talking about with Elves. It's trying to be compatible with every class in the system, and the result is something that feels flavorless, and is also abusable in weird ways.

[Telonius]

As to the subject of the thread: Incarnum just confused the hell out of me. I don't know if it was poorly written, or if my brain doesn't function in the right way to appreciate it, but, I tried to study it, but nothing clicked for me. I ended up selling the book to my buddy because I knew I'd never use it.

The writing wasn't awful. The editing and layout was what made the thing so unreadable - even worse than usual for WotC, and that's saying something. The first chunk of Chapter 4 should have been the first chunk of Chapter 2. Then you'd have some idea of what these "soulmeld" things were supposed to be, before they went off on describing all the classes that would give them to you. The completely weird placement of the Essentia Capacity table (one of the most critical things in the book, and the source of all kinds of misconceptions and confusion for first-time readers) would have made some sort of sense then. The book needed at least two or three read-throughs to catch on to what it was supposed to be doing.

[Nihilarian]

In PF1 -

Shifter (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/shifter). I was hyped by the idea of a class that's shapeshifting-focused, as opposed to the Druid who has it as one of their many areas of expertise, or Sor/Wiz who can only do it short-duration. Something like a Wildshape Ranger/MoMF, but more streamlined.

What we got was ... anemic. Worse than Druid at Wild Shape (although TBF, better between 4th-6th level), and with a restricted set of aspects which you only get a few of. And just to add insult to injury, they get A Thousand Faces later? Part of this is that I wanted a general "shapeshift to any kind of thing" class and they never promised that, this is clearly an animal-aspect class specifically. But also, it's just not very good.

Probably because of Paizo's consistent over-valuing of full-BAB. Apparently in their minds, trading full casting + 3/4 BAB for no casting + full BAB is an upgrade that needs to be balanced by reducing the shapeshifting power somewhat. :smallyuk:

Fortunately, then I found out about the other Shifter (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/shifter) (Spheres of Power), and I like that one a lot, it does exactly what I wanted from the class (I'd recommend the Apex Shifter archetype if you just want to focus on the polymorphing itself; the base class has a fair amount of infiltrator / envoy stuff at higher levels).remember when it was released and had no way to leverage the BAB because natural weapons dont normally get iteratives? Good times.

I have to agree with Incarnate. The more I worked with it, the less impressed I was. In theory it was supposed to be the wizard to the Totemist's bard. But where the Totemist spends all their blue points getting cool stuff like extra claws or the ability to teleport all day, the Incarnate spends them to get like +4 to swimming. It has to devote resources to making up for its awful chassis.

A minor one for me is Duskblade. Until 13th level, arcane channeling means you trade the ability to make touch attacks for like 1d8+strength damage. Also: if a class is focused around one ability, that class should get that ability at level 1.

[Seward]

remember when it was released and had no way to leverage the BAB because natural weapons dont normally get iteratives? Good times.

It couldn't take power attack? If you have 3+ natural attacks, power attack can be very efficient, assuming you can still hit reliably at whatever level you choose (granted this is easier on critters like magical beasts that have full bab and advance at 3hd/cr)

Agree on Duskblade. The class works mechanically between level 3-5 and 13+. At other levels its signature move either doesn't exist or is like skirmish, a move+attack thing, which in 3.x, is always inferior to just full attacking no matter how you dress it up, and channeling can't work with pounce or similar effects until L13 either.

Doubly stupid on a class that has the rare ability to 1/d/5lvls at level 5+, teleport over and full attack without having to buy MIC swift action gear or have a buddy do the teleporting for you.

I will say, against stuff you can affect with either shocking grasp or vampiric touch, it does do stupid amounts of damage after L13, as a martial should. Which is why I say it finally works after it gets full attack channeling. It would be nice if it had something that worked on a lich though (immune to electricity, immune to vampiric touch, and weirdly those are the only real damage spells it gets in the first 4 tiers of spells. They couldn't find a few more touch spells? Or written one or two?)

[Nihilarian]

It couldn't take power attack? If you have 3+ natural attacks, power attack can be very efficient, assuming you can still hit reliably at whatever level you choose (granted this is easier on critters like magical beasts that have full bab and advance at 3hd/cr)

Agree on Duskblade. The class works mechanically between level 3-5 and 13+. At other levels its signature move either doesn't exist or is like skirmish, a move+attack thing, which in 3.x, is always inferior to just full attacking no matter how you dress it up, and channeling can't work with pounce or similar effects until L13 either.

Doubly stupid on a class that has the rare ability to 1/d at level 5+, teleport over and full attack without having to buy MIC swift action gear or have a buddy do the teleporting for you.

I will say, against stuff you can affect with either shocking grasp or vampiric touch, it does do stupid amounts of damage after L13, as a martial should. Which is why I say it finally works after it gets full attack channeling. It would be nice if it had something that worked on a lich though (immune to electricity, immune to vampiric touch, and weirdly those are the only real damage spells it gets in the first 4 tiers of spells. They couldn't find a few more touch spells? Or written one or two?)my interpretation of arcane channeling (13) is that it goes off once and affects everyone you hit rather than just going off every time you hit someone, so ymmv

[Pex]

Truenamer. Cool concept, does not work mathematically. You get worse as the levels progress.

Incarnum classes. I love the game mechanics, but I firmly believe you are not given enough Essentia to do your stuff. They're playable, and I suppose it's ok for those who really like and want low magic games, but they don't fulfill me. To spend a feat and get only 1 point of Essentia is a travesty.

Swordsage. Too low AC for someone who needs to be in melee, and the maneuver recovery is a joke. They have a feat tax to make recovery decent.

Binder. To be fair I'm not a fan of its existence. So technically it's not a class I wanted to like. However, given I would play one I find it limiting. It's fine if you want to change what you can do each day, but that doesn't appeal to me. Even what you can do for that day it isn't much. You get a few powers, but that's the only thing you can do for that day. It's analogous to low level 2E wizards who get one or two spells per day and are then firing crossbows. I'm not feeling the distinction of being a binder.

[noce]

A minor one for me is Duskblade. Until 13th level, arcane channeling means you trade the ability to make touch attacks for like 1d8+strength damage. Also: if a class is focused around one ability, that class should get that ability at level 1.

The last sentence reminds me of another class I'd really want to like, but it's not even a class. Barbarian is a single level dip, plus a feat tax on extra rage.
At that point you have everything the phb class is worth: rage. If variants are allowed, you also have pounce.
If DM allows, a second level also gives you improved trip without combat expertise, and that's it.

I agree with you that a class should have its iconic features early, but it also should progress them smoothly, and should have something else here and there good enough to justify the paper it's printed on (and everything in the barbarian table at level range 2-20 isn't).

[Martin Greywolf]

Legacy Champion suffers from the exact problem I was talking about with Elves. It's trying to be compatible with every class in the system, and the result is something that feels flavorless, and is also abusable in weird ways.

That's not even my main problem with it - it fails at what I expect of the class in the first place, which is "make me really good at using this one cool magic thingy". I don't know if a PrC like that could even be made, what with how many possible legacy items there are, but... I think the book would be better off without the class, honestly.

[noob]

Honestly, Sublime Chord isn't really "great" at casting spells. I mean, yeah, you get 9ths off the Sorcerer/Wizard list, so you're not bad, but at the same time you get a progression that is slower than the Sorcerer and a more limited number of spells known. It's fairly hard for me to imagine a campaign that's at a high enough power level for Sublime Chord to be allowed, but a low enough one for it to shine.

You get your first ninth level spell early if you do early entry tricks.
It might not be as good as an UR priest but not every class is at that level.

[RandomPeasant]

A minor one for me is Duskblade. Until 13th level, arcane channeling means you trade the ability to make touch attacks for like 1d8+strength damage. Also: if a class is focused around one ability, that class should get that ability at level 1.

The Duskblade really suffers from not getting its features to come online on time. It'd be a lot more satisfying if you could consistently use your Arcane Channeling on all your attacks. That has the benefit of giving you a mid-tier martial character who is different from the Martial Adepts, wanting to make full attacks while they can move + use a strike. And, again, the class should not have its own special spell progression. Just make it cast like a Bard, and have it use Recharge Magic so it doesn't just feel like a worse full caster.


I will say, against stuff you can affect with either shocking grasp or vampiric touch, it does do stupid amounts of damage after L13, as a martial should. Which is why I say it finally works after it gets full attack channeling. It would be nice if it had something that worked on a lich though (immune to electricity, immune to vampiric touch, and weirdly those are the only real damage spells it gets in the first 4 tiers of spells. They couldn't find a few more touch spells? Or written one or two?)

Just make Arcane Channeling work with ranged touch attacks like scorching ray or acid arrow. It probably doesn't by RAW, but I've seen a number of tables who play that way, and while I'm not one for RAI, it is sort of odd that it gets those spells, but not ones like fireball if neither works with Arcane Channeling.


You get your first ninth level spell early if you do early entry tricks.

I think that says a good deal more about early entry tricks than it does the Sublime Chord, because the class requires multiple skills at 13 ranks, and that (along with BAB) is one of the hardest things to cheat your way past. And I'm not even sure if it's good by that standard, because if you're going early entry maximalist you're looking at people doing things like Warmage 1/Rainbow Servant 10, which may be casting lower level spells than you, but casts way more of them and from a way broader list. Again, yes it does get 9th level Sorcerer/Wizard spells, so there is a floor to how bad it is, but I just do not see how it gets very far above that floor.

[Kurald Galain]

The Duskblade really suffers from not getting its features to come online on time. It'd be a lot more satisfying if you could consistently use your Arcane Channeling on all your attacks.
That and (in my view) an arcane casting gish should do more with his spells than just increase his damage to meet the benchmark. Dusky needs more and better defensive spells, crowd control, or maybe party buffs.

Backport the Magus, y'all.

[Scots Dragon]

That and (in my view) an arcane casting gish should do more with his spells than just increase his damage to meet the benchmark. Dusky needs more and better defensive spells, crowd control, or maybe party buffs.

Backport the Magus, y'all.

You're only saying that because the magus is rad as all get out.

[RandomPeasant]

That and (in my view) an arcane casting gish should do more with his spells than just increase his damage to meet the benchmark. Dusky needs more and better defensive spells, crowd control, or maybe party buffs.

I think at the point you are giving someone crowd control and party buffs, what you have is a Wizard with a sword, not a Gish. Gishes should, in my view, have a relatively limited range of magic that is focused on improving their personal combat skills, and I think Arcane Channeling + touch spells is fine for that.

[Elves]

Just make it cast like a Bard, and have it use Recharge Magic so it doesn't just feel like a worse full caster.
What do you think of this? (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g7u3Bik0kZSdxJEBQ4SooYpLudQ2U5Lc/view?usp=sharing) It's from a while ago so I don't swear by it.

[Nihilarian]

the duskblade emphasizing dps is fine. There's plenty of gishy ways to do defensive or buffing stuff, the unique part of the class is Arcane Channeling and that's what should be focused on. Arcane Channeling should be given at 1 and be a net positive to use in some way instead of being the worst of both worlds (until level 13). From a casting perspective you lose targeting touch, from a martial perspective you lose full attacks.

[Seward]

I think at the point you are giving someone crowd control and party buffs, what you have is a Wizard with a sword, not a Gish.

Agreed. A wizard is a primary arcane caster. A gish is some kind of striker - heavy infantry, light infantry, archer. They are there to kill things, not to manipulate the battlefield.

They might do it as a side thing (eg, many have great mobility spells, so they provide that aspect of party support, and some have buffs that ALSO work on the party when buffing themselves, such as a bardic gish doing song buffs) But if they're spending their actions on crowd control instead of killing, it is usually a sign the party is in trouble (or they got focus-fired as the primary threat and are just trying to stay alive, serving as a distraction while the party runs wild).

In the case of the Duskblade - they have cheap Resist Energy spells, enough slots to buff the whole party if the threat is known. They have dimension hop, regroup and dim-door which gives you anything you want in terms of getting party members (or themselves) where needed. The have see invisible to help cope with those threats (generally by killing it themselves, dead means you don't need glitterdust). If the party really needs more, well, obscuring mist is a great all-purpose "block sneak attack, block targeted spells, block charge" emergency buff that they can carry as a 25gp scroll for when they roll high initiative, everybody else did not and the party is at risk from things fog stops cold. That's plenty of battlefield control/buffs for a gish.

It can go the other way too. There's a scene in one of the Black Company books, where the Taken called Shapeshifter casually just carpet-bombs an island in fire. It isn't what he's good at - he specialized in polymorph-type spells on self and others, plus infiltration skills and spells of other sorts but he is STILL a Taken (which in D&D terms, is somebody near epic or low epic primary caster with troll-level durability) so he can do all the basic stuff too. Just because some wizard prefers to play chess with the battlefield doesn't mean she shouldn't have a bit of asskicking up her sleeve. It is just how you spend your time most rounds that shows what role you've taken.

[Gruftzwerg]

Obtain Familiar (+maybe Improved/Celestial.. Familiar) is another good option for Duskblades. The familiar gets half of d10 d8 HP, full BAB and 2 good saves. The easiest way to get a beefy combat familiar.

edit: misremembered the HD of duskbalde

[Wildstag]

Obtain Familiar (+maybe Improved/Celestial.. Familiar) is another good option for Duskblades. The familiar gets half of d10 HP, full BAB and 2 good saves. The easiest way to get a beefy combat familiar.

D8 hd, fwiw. But yeah, it's a pretty good option. That and Dragon Familiar works well too.

[Gruftzwerg]

D8 hd, fwiw. But yeah, it's a pretty good option. That and Dragon Familiar works well too.

oh yeah, I misremembered that somehow. Thx for pointing it out.

[noce]

oh yeah, I misremembered that somehow. Thx for pointing it out.

You maybe were thinking the other Gish we wanted to like but is undeniably mechanically bad, Hexblade.

I really don't know how someone could call good design casting a single 1st level spell at level 4 and no more than 2 1st level spells at level 7 (and that's assuming casting stat between 12 and 19). And with half caster level!

This is a rant against every half casting base class. 5e acknowledged that in multiple ways, fortunately, but for people like me it's two editions too late :(

[Kurald Galain]

what you have is a Wizard with a sword, not a Gish.
Why yes, that is the main issue with most 3E gish builds; and that is why I suggested backporting the Magus.


Gishes should, in my view, have a relatively limited range of magic that is focused on improving their personal combat skills
The problem with the Duskblade is that (1) it's really bad at improving personal combat skills, because an almost complete lack of to-hit or defense self-buffs on their list, and because of the piddling range of Dimension Hop; and (2) most other gish builds in 3E have a much broader range of magic. Hence, duskblade is mechanically lacklustre.

[Scots Dragon]

I think at the point you are giving someone crowd control and party buffs, what you have is a Wizard with a sword, not a Gish. Gishes should, in my view, have a relatively limited range of magic that is focused on improving their personal combat skills, and I think Arcane Channeling + touch spells is fine for that.

Except that the original definition of a gish basically was just a multiclass fighter/mage in AD&D rules. The idea has always been a multi-role concept, and being able to do stuff outside of the hyper-narrow focus of the duskblade is a well implemented option for a gish.

They literally are wizards with (silver) swords.

[redking]

Shai'ir. Great flavour, junk mechanics that require an accountant to manage for you. Worse, the Shai'ir cannot credibly deal with genies. It's a shame.

Most of the Thrall of X, except Fraz-Urb'luu.

[RandomPeasant]

What do you think of this? (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g7u3Bik0kZSdxJEBQ4SooYpLudQ2U5Lc/view?usp=sharing) It's from a while ago so I don't swear by it.

I'll ignore most of my specific mechanical concerns, but that sort of seems like a Warblade, doesn't it? Not just in the sense that it's an effective melee combatant, but the recovery mechanic for your spell points is pretty much the same as how the Warblade gets maneuvers back, asking you to choose between using and recovering abilities. That's not necessarily terrible, but if you're going to make a class that much like a Warblade, I'd sort of rather just make more stuff for the Warblade. I'm also concerned it seems pretty lacking in utility (though it's possible my skim missed something), and I don't like the additional layer of complexity of giving two-turn recharge for some spells on top of everything else.


Obtain Familiar (+maybe Improved/Celestial.. Familiar) is another good option for Duskblades. The familiar gets half of d10 d8 HP, full BAB and 2 good saves. The easiest way to get a beefy combat familiar.

I have to be honest with you, I'm really skeptical about using something that hits you for a bunch of XP if it dies as a combatant.


Why yes, that is the main issue with most 3E gish builds; and that is why I suggested backporting the Magus.

And so your suggestion is that the guy who specializes in using magic to kick ass should get party buffs and evard's black tentacles? I'm confused how that makes him less like a Wizard with a sword.


The problem with the Duskblade is that (1) it's really bad at improving personal combat skills, because an almost complete lack of to-hit or defense self-buffs on their list, and because of the piddling range of Dimension Hop; and (2) most other gish builds in 3E have a much broader range of magic. Hence, duskblade is mechanically lacklustre.

The Duskblade is bad at self-buffing, but dumping a spell through Arcane Channeling is largely fine for improving your personal combat ability. And, yes, it's more mechanically limited, but that's because it's a Gish as a first-class concept, while everything else is building a Gish on top of a generalist caster. The solution to that isn't to have Gishes be generalist casters, it's to give the Duskblade some kind of non-combat utility.

[Kurald Galain]

And so your suggestion is that the guy who specializes in using magic to kick ass should get party buffs and evard's black tentacles? I'm confused how that makes him less like a Wizard with a sword.
Magically holding enemies in place (so you can hit them) and/or casting Haste fits very well with how I envision a gish, yes. I note that pretty much all common gish builds in 3E can also do that.

Pathfinder gishes have the ability to cast in the same round as attacking, which is another way to solve the "wizard holding a sword" issue.


dumping a spell through Arcane Channeling is largely fine for improving your personal combat ability.
It is largely fine for improving your damage. But if dealing damage was sufficient to be an effective combat class, then the fighter wouldn't be so low-tier.


it's to give the Duskblade some kind of non-combat utility.
I agree that dusky is sorely lacking in (almost entirely devoid of) out-of-combat spells, and should have some.

[Seward]

I agree that dusky is sorely lacking in (almost entirely devoid of) out-of-combat spells, and should have some.

The cantrip list is a joke, and no the thing where they get a few cantrips as SLAs doesn't fix it. You need at least one thing in the cantrip list that isn't a spell you will stop using at level 3. (Warmages get Light, at least, which has some utility, and can use advanced learning for dancing lights, but that's about it for them. Eclectic learning doesn't help, prestidigitation on a L1 slot doesn't help your lack of use for cantrips).

You can't even use cantrips up with arcane strike.

Seriously, they couldn't give Duskblade Detect Magic in that slot? Given that they can detect invisible it wouldn't have been much of a stretch.

[Scots Dragon]

Magically holding enemies in place (so you can hit them) and/or casting Haste fits very well with how I envision a gish, yes. I note that pretty much all common gish builds in 3E can also do that.

Pathfinder gishes have the ability to cast in the same round as attacking, which is another way to solve the "wizard holding a sword" issue.

Not only that, I personally feel that a gish without at least some actual wizard or sorcerer type functions is really just a glorified warblade or swordsage or something. They have access to arcane spells, let them be second-run mages on top of their other abilities. It adds a lot to the feel of the magus as essentially someone who's a mage and a warrior. And not just a glorified warrior with a bunch of extra damage options or a wizard holding a sword.

I also personally like the idea of the magus dropping the Evard's black tentacles on a group of lower-level incoming enemies to help themselves and their allies deal with more immediate threats and break up the battlefield. And that they can do this while attacking with spell combat is just an extra bonus.

Incidentally, it should be remembered that the magus is essentially an attempt to create a base-class version of an eldritch knight in several respects, given its origins being tied to Seltyiel.

[RexDart]

It couldn't take power attack? If you have 3+ natural attacks, power attack can be very efficient, assuming you can still hit reliably at whatever level you choose (granted this is easier on critters like magical beasts that have full bab and advance at 3hd/cr)

Agree on Duskblade. The class works mechanically between level 3-5 and 13+. At other levels its signature move either doesn't exist or is like skirmish, a move+attack thing, which in 3.x, is always inferior to just full attacking no matter how you dress it up, and channeling can't work with pounce or similar effects until L13 either.

Doubly stupid on a class that has the rare ability to 1/d/5lvls at level 5+, teleport over and full attack without having to buy MIC swift action gear or have a buddy do the teleporting for you.

I will say, against stuff you can affect with either shocking grasp or vampiric touch, it does do stupid amounts of damage after L13, as a martial should. Which is why I say it finally works after it gets full attack channeling. It would be nice if it had something that worked on a lich though (immune to electricity, immune to vampiric touch, and weirdly those are the only real damage spells it gets in the first 4 tiers of spells. They couldn't find a few more touch spells? Or written one or two?)

Among other things, my DM added Combust to the Duskblade spell list, and it works quite well, and seems like a natural addition. So natural, in fact, that I expect someone purposely excluded it lest the Duskblade class be "overpowered."

Actually, I'm so used to my campaign's expanded spell list, I forgot how many of them aren't on the official list. This is just the ones my character has, excluding 0-level, which also was greatly expanded. As I mentioned somewhere uptopic, the principle was to both give Duskblades more spells in general, and to give them some reasonable options in every school of magic, because the class is tied to a custom elf-ish race where every member has a "birth school" that gives them some bonuses and also the restriction that half their spells must be from that school.

Level 1 Spell
Ice Dagger*
Persistent Blade*
Lightfoot
Stand
Expeditious Retreat, S
Blood Wind*
True Strike

Level 2 Spell
Combust*
Fly
Scorch*
Battering Ram*
Acid Arrow
Disruption Missiles*

Level 3 Spell
Blade of Pain & Fear*

I find the addition of 1st level mobility spells (many of which are Swift) to be especially useful.

[Nihilarian]

The duskblade does not need to be a magus or a wizard with a sword to be an effective gish. If i were to change their spell list it would be to give them a deeper pool of touch spells to cast through arcane channeling. More debuffs maybe.

[RandomPeasant]

Magically holding enemies in place (so you can hit them) and/or casting Haste fits very well with how I envision a gish, yes. I note that pretty much all common gish builds in 3E can also do that.

Pretty much all common Gish builds in 3e can walk around with an army of zombies. That doesn't make it a core Gish competency. I'll give you that hasting yourself is a reasonable thing for a Gish to do, but I don't really see how that should extend to hasting your allies other than "because the spell that provides the effect does that and I don't want to write a new one".


Pathfinder gishes have the ability to cast in the same round as attacking, which is another way to solve the "wizard holding a sword" issue.

You mean like the Duskblade already does? In three different ways, no less.


It is largely fine for improving your damage. But if dealing damage was sufficient to be an effective combat class, then the fighter wouldn't be so low-tier.

It's not just dealing damage, it's dealing damage without requiring a massive resource investment. A full attack Arcane Channel deals enough damage to be relevant without needing to invest a single feat, item, or PrC into your build. You can't do that as a Fighter.


Eclectic learning doesn't help, prestidigitation on a L1 slot doesn't help your lack of use for cantrips).

Speaking of things that should be better. That class feature is a damn joke. If you can find a 2nd level spell that's good enough to be relevant out of a 3rd level spell slot at 7th level, you should just play a Wizard and get on that train at 3rd level. It's the same basic issue as the Sublime Chord. You're voluntarily making yourself a fish in a big pond, and while that might produce results that are impressive on paper, it'll very rarely make you good in practice.


Not only that, I personally feel that a gish without at least some actual wizard or sorcerer type functions is really just a glorified warblade or swordsage or something. They have access to arcane spells, let them be second-run mages on top of their other abilities.

I would ask you to more clearly articulate what you're thinking here. Because I see a range of options, none of which I find terribly compelling. If you're saying that a Gish should have non-combat utility, I don't disagree, but so should a Warblade or a Swordsage. If you think they should be able to cast spells outside their gishing, the Duskblade can already do that. If you just mean "you should get random casting in addition to your Gish" powers, that seems like it just corrodes class identity.


Among other things, my DM added Combust to the Duskblade spell list, and it works quite well, and seems like a natural addition. So natural, in fact, that I expect someone purposely excluded it lest the Duskblade class be "overpowered."

No, it's just that combust is in the Spell Compendium and Duskblade is in the PHBII. I can't think off, off the top of my head, a class that was printed with a spell list that included anything that wasn't either a Core spell or in the book the class was in (though some books add additional spells to existing lists). WotC wanted you to be able to play things without needing additional books. It's like how the Beguiler in the same book gets vertigo field but not greater rebuke. It's not because the latter is the tipping point to broken, WotC just didn't want to force you to buy the Spell Compendium.


The duskblade does not need to be a magus or a wizard with a sword to be an effective gish. If i were to change their spell list it would be to give them a deeper pool of touch spells to cast through arcane channeling. More debuffs maybe.

The Duskblade list isn't all that bad, it's just that the class is worded in a way that probably excludes a whole bunch of spells that you'd want to use with Arcane Channeling from working with it.

[Scots Dragon]

I would ask you to more clearly articulate what you're thinking here. Because I see a range of options, none of which I find terribly compelling. If you're saying that a Gish should have non-combat utility, I don't disagree, but so should a Warblade or a Swordsage. If you think they should be able to cast spells outside their gishing, the Duskblade can already do that. If you just mean "you should get random casting in addition to your Gish" powers, that seems like it just corrodes class identity.

The term gish comes from AD&D 1E's Fiend Folio, where it referred to a specific rank and role of the Githyanki, a specialised combatant who was a multiclass fighter/magic-user using the same rules for multiclass fighter/magic-users that an elf or half-elf would. They were both fighters and wizards, and had access to all of the spells that you would expect from that.

And that's what a gish should be. A fighter/wizard multiclass who can remain effective. The magus achieves this feel, while the duskblade does not.

[Kurald Galain]

If you just mean "you should get random casting in addition to your Gish" powers, that seems like it just corrodes class identity.
The issue seems to be that you're conflating "duskblade" with "gish". Almost all gish builds in 3E (as well as the gish classes in PF) have a far wider selection of spells than dusky, and therefore dusky falls short as a gish, when compared to other gishes. Dusky is not a good gish when other gishes can do a ton of stuff that dusky can't.


A full attack Arcane Channel deals enough damage to be relevant without needing to invest a single feat, item, or PrC into your build.
So how are you planning to be relevant at the twelve levels before that? Campaigns don't usually start at level 13.


The Duskblade list isn't all that bad
It has not enough spells on it to pick a good option at each levelup. So yes, it is all that bad: you need to invest in feats, items, or PrCs just to fill your levelup picks with something decent.

[icefractal]

I mean, they're better, but are they more gish-like? I'd say that at the point where you cast standard spells more than use the sword, what distinguishes you from a normal mage?

There's also the concept (not very well supported by default, but Gestalt or SoP/SoM do it) of a character who uses their spells primarily for non-combat utility while relying on weapon skills in combat. Personally, I would call that a type of gish, but YMMV.

[Kurald Galain]

I mean, they're better, but are they more gish-like? I'd say that at the point where you cast standard spells more than use the sword, what distinguishes you from a normal mage?
That's why I recommend magus and warpriest and bloodrager, yes :smallamused:

[Mordante]

For me Bard is the opposite of what the thread title says: not mechanically too bad, but I really don't like it and neither I want to.
What with all that nonsensical singing and dancing and guitarring around the battlefield...and the Perform(rallying speech) is more suited to a lawful character anyway.
I dislike bard fluff so much that I theorycrafted a bard without any music or perform ranks.

Anyway, strictly speaking about mechanics, it doesn't suck too bad, but I do not agree with people saying that a bard can do everything decently.
Sure, the class can be built to do anything decently enough, but not everything in the same build.
Say there are four fields of expertise: melee, DC casting, buffing, skillmonkeying. In my experience, a given bard can do somewhat well in two fields, and be somewhat decent in a third field.

The fact is, D&D 3.5 is not a game where doing a little bit of everythings helps much. Mediocre attack bonuses won't land, mediocre DCs won't land, small bonuses won't stack with what you get from bigger bonuses from other effects. Even a bard has to specialize, thus failing the concept of the class.

I think you are mixing up mechanically bad and wanting a class to be tier 1 or 2. If you chose a character on how powerful it can become there are very few options. (Druid, Cleric and Wizard?)

[noce]

I think you are mixing up mechanically bad and wanting a class to be tier 1 or 2. If you chose a character on how powerful it can become there are very few options. (Druid, Cleric and Wizard?)

Oh no, maybe I wasn't clear. It's not that I think bard is too weak, I like classes weaker than bard.
But bard is too weak if you stay unfocused, and I think it's a problem on a class designed to support such a playstyle.

[Bavarian itP]

I'd say almost every class has a bunch of mechnical issues which makes them less than perfect (the bookkeeping for wizards and other prepared casters, the gimped spellcasting of the sorcerers, the being-better-than-the-ranger-in-every-way of the druids, the being-worse-than-the-druid-in-every-way of the rangers etc). So practically every class is a class that I want to like, but is mechanically bad. Except the monk. Because I never wanted to like the monk.

[Mordante]

Oh no, maybe I wasn't clear. It's not that I think bard is too weak, I like classes weaker than bard.
But bard is too weak if you stay unfocused, and I think it's a problem on a class designed to support such a playstyle.

Maybe your are correct. Also depends largely on the party. The party I play my Catfolk Bard in consists of a Gnome Sorcerer, Half Elf Ranger, and a Lizardfolk Hexblade. So optimization really isn't necessary. I will go for Swiftblade in a few levels.

[RandomPeasant]

The issue seems to be that you're conflating "duskblade" with "gish". Almost all gish builds in 3E (as well as the gish classes in PF) have a far wider selection of spells than dusky, and therefore dusky falls short as a gish, when compared to other gishes. Dusky is not a good gish when other gishes can do a ton of stuff that dusky can't.

And you're conflating "ought" with "is". Yes, it is true that as a Wizard/Fighter/Eldritch Knight you can cast planar binding and cloudkill. That doesn't mean those are spells Gishes should be casting, or that you are less a Gish if you instead have spells that are focused.


So how are you planning to be relevant at the twelve levels before that? Campaigns don't usually start at level 13.

Sure, the class is poorly implemented. I thought, given the thread, that admission could be assumed. But the point is that the ability does do the job, even if in practice you don't get it early enough.


It has not enough spells on it to pick a good option at each levelup. So yes, it is all that bad: you need to invest in feats, items, or PrCs just to fill your levelup picks with something decent.

You suffer a bit at very high levels, but for the most part the only reason you're struggling is, again, because the class has mechanical issues and is written in a way that stops it from using most of its spells with Arcane Channeling. If you rule that you can put scorching ray and polar ray in your sword, the class has spell selection that is as good as a Paladin or Ranger.


I think you are mixing up mechanically bad and wanting a class to be tier 1 or 2. If you chose a character on how powerful it can become there are very few options. (Druid, Cleric and Wizard?)

If you believe that's the appropriate power level, it's entirely reasonable to say that classes which don't reach it are mechanically flawed. Certainly you don't have to believe that, but it's not an unreasonable thing to believe for a variety of reasons.

[Kurald Galain]

And you're conflating "ought" with "is". Yes, it is true that as a Wizard/Fighter/Eldritch Knight you can cast planar binding and cloudkill. That doesn't mean those are spells Gishes should be casting, or that you are less a Gish if you instead have spells that are focused.
It strikes me that most people in this thread think the duskblade spell list is WAY too narrow, whereas you think that the duskblade is ok and every other gish in the game has a spell list that's way too broad. I don't believe that your opinion on what gishes "ought" to do is a common one.


the class has spell selection that is as good as a Paladin or Ranger.
At first glance, paladin has twice as many spells on his list as dusky, and ranger gets more than that, AND neither paladin nor ranger is known for being good spellcasters. So no, I don't think dusky is anywhere near as good as you think.

Anyway, let's agree to disagree on that and let's harp some more on, oh say, the rogue?! Last time I saw a rogue in a 3.5 campaign, easily over half of our enemies were immune to sneak attack for one reason or the other. I know there are certain "standard charop tricks" to allow sneak attacking (e.g.) undead, but those are from some pretty obscure sourcebooks OR outrageously expensive, so I have not yet met any DM that allowed these. Rogue without SA is not all that useful in combat.

[Bonzai]

It's sad that there are so many.

I played a Soulborn to lvl 15, and it was one of the most boring grinds of my life. It wasn't a lack of melds or essentia that bothered me so much. It was the inability to swap melds during the course of a day that frustrated me the most. Soulborns have a limited but useful selection of melds. But since you can't change them out pre epic levels, you will almost never get to use your utility stuff. Being stuck with your standard daily binds makes the small meld choice even smaller and more constricting. A feat that let's you swap a meld over 10 minutes would go a long ways towards being able to your options.

Shadowcaster. Early on they are extremely under whelming. If you are playing as a pure caster, you will quickly run out of stuff to do. Fortunately I played mine as a gish, so my casting was for mobility and utility. But I could clearly see the flaws in the class.

Truenamer. I also played a Truenamer to lvl 15. In my experience my biggest issue with it was always being limited to single targets until very high levels. My recommendation would be create a feat where a truenamer can research and come up with a true nickname for a group... such as his adventuring party. Do that and the Truenamer becomes an interesting support character, able to bolster the party with things like massive fast healing, flight, etc..

[Nihilarian]

Duskblade's spell list is definitely too small, but that's the fate of spellcasters introduced after the phb, with some exceptions. I think I'd be fine with just giving them unfettered access to all wizard touch spells 5th level and below.

The rogue kinda stopped existing for me when psychic rogue came out. Lurk is also a good class but it's less of a class that directly supplants rogue

[RandomPeasant]

It strikes me that most people in this thread think the duskblade spell list is WAY too narrow, whereas you think that the duskblade is ok and every other gish in the game has a spell list that's way too broad. I don't believe that your opinion on what gishes "ought" to do is a common one.

It strikes me that if you asked people on this forum "is the Wizard spell list too broad", you would get pretty universal consensus. As, indeed, you do whenever someone complains about spellcasters being able to "do everything" (despite that not being true). But apparently all those spells are totally okay to have if you are a Sword Wizard, despite the fact that being a Sword Wizard means doing even more stuff. So, yeah, I think people are not thinking consistently about their demands here, and your argument ad populum is unconvincing to me.


Duskblade's spell list is definitely too small, but that's the fate of spellcasters introduced after the phb, with some exceptions. I think I'd be fine with just giving them unfettered access to all wizard touch spells 5th level and below.

The Duskblade's list is too small, but the idea that that means Gishes should be running around with planar binding or they're not real Gishes is a bizarre leap to make. If you want a Sword Wizard, you can just do that. Hell, you can have full BAB for all I care. Wielding a sword is just not a big deal. But if you want to be a guy who uses magic to be good at martial combat (or, you know, a Gish), the Duskblade is obviously where you want to start. Don't pull in someone's favorite PF class, just fix the class that does the thing you want to do.

[Scots Dragon]

The Duskblade's list is too small, but the idea that that means Gishes should be running around with planar binding or they're not real Gishes is a bizarre leap to make. If you want a Sword Wizard, you can just do that. Hell, you can have full BAB for all I care. Wielding a sword is just not a big deal. But if you want to be a guy who uses magic to be good at martial combat (or, you know, a Gish), the Duskblade is obviously where you want to start. Don't pull in someone's favorite PF class, just fix the class that does the thing you want to do.

Okay, but the magus gets nearly everything a duskblade does except for full-BAB, and does it better. And while it has a much broader spell list than the duskblade, its spell list is not as broad as that of the wizard. It's pretty much the duskblade done right.

The only thing that the duskblade really has over the magus is the full attack arcane channelling.

[Kurald Galain]

if you want to be a guy who uses magic to be good at martial combat (or, you know, a Gish), the Duskblade is obviously where you want to start.
Since the duskblade is mechanically bad, that's obviously not where we want to start.

And nobody (except you) is saying anything about gishes requiring the full wizard list. Nevertheless it is entirely valid to expect a gish to have some form of crowd control, or defensive buffs, or utility spells. Dusky does poorly in all of that, which is one of the reasons why it is mechanically bad.


Okay, but the magus gets nearly everything a duskblade does except for full-BAB, and does it better. And while it has a much broader spell list than the duskblade, its spell list is not as broad as that of the wizard. It's pretty much the duskblade done right.
Precisely.

[Nihilarian]

Pathfinder has a dozen gish-in-a-can classes besides Magus that all function differently and I refuse to believe the only way to fix the Duskblade is to turn it into the Magus, which already exists and doesn't need to be mimicked

[Scots Dragon]

Pathfinder has a dozen gish-in-a-can classes besides Magus that all function differently and I refuse to believe the only way to fix the Duskblade is to turn it into the Magus, which already exists and doesn't need to be mimicked

The reason we bring up the magus is because mechanically, conceptually, and even aesthetically it's super close to the duskblade.

[RexDart]

No, it's just that combust is in the Spell Compendium and Duskblade is in the PHBII. I can't think off, off the top of my head, a class that was printed with a spell list that included anything that wasn't either a Core spell or in the book the class was in (though some books add additional spells to existing lists). WotC wanted you to be able to play things without needing additional books. It's like how the Beguiler in the same book gets vertigo field but not greater rebuke. It's not because the latter is the tipping point to broken, WotC just didn't want to force you to buy the Spell Compendium.


Huh, that seems like a surprisingly restrained approach, but I came to 3rd edition after it had already been out of print for many years. I'm a little surprised they didn't publish "suggested expanded spell lists" at some point for such classes. It also seems like a place for house rules to fill in an obvious gap, though I suppose not every DM wants to go to the trouble.

[Zombimode]

Huh, that seems like a surprisingly restrained approach, but I came to 3rd edition after it had already been out of print for many years. I'm a little surprised they didn't publish "suggested expanded spell lists" at some point for such classes. It also seems like a place for house rules to fill in an obvious gap, though I suppose not every DM wants to go to the trouble.

Well, there IS a passage like this in the Spell Compendium. Not actual list of spells to be added to various classes, but the expressed intent that the spells printed in the book are not just for the core classes.
In practice I don't know how often this advice is followed. I certainly have not added to spell lists, for two simple reasons:

1. In my view, most spell lists are actually fine. That is you can work with them. Healer is the one exception.
2. It sounds like a lot of work.

[ShurikVch]

I dislike bard fluff so much that I theorycrafted a bard without any music or perform ranks.
Can I see it?
I mean - no music or perform is obvious, but "Every bard spell has a verbal component (singing, reciting, or music)", and Silent Spell don't works on it.
And without the Music, spellcasting, and Perform skill - it's what, Bardic Knowledge/Bardic Knack?
(Sure, dip in Dark Scholar can remove verbal components - but not for the two highest spell levels, and no earlier than character level 11...)

[SimonMoon6]

I really wanted to like Acolyte of the Skin.

"Acolytes of the skin seek to gain power by replacing their skin with that of a demon's."

They gain power by taking a class that only grants spellcasting on every other level. And the bonuses that they do get are so small and minor that they would definitely be better off just taking more spellcasting. Like fire resistance 10. Great, but I could cast resist energy or energy immunity instead. Some of the bonuses are just insulting, like 1 point of natural armor. The 6th level of the class grants cold resistance 10, as if that's a worthy ability for a character who is a minimum of 11th level.

Probably the most unique ability that the class grants is the 9th level ability (for a character who is a minimum of 14th level), to summon one demon/devil (babau or chain devil) for an hour. Most summons don't last that long but we're approaching "planar binding" territory, so it's not as great as it sounds.

[Wildstag]

I really wanted to like Acolyte of the Skin.

"Acolytes of the skin seek to gain power by replacing their skin with that of a demon's."

They gain power by taking a class that only grants spellcasting on every other level. And the bonuses that they do get are so small and minor that they would definitely be better off just taking more spellcasting. Like fire resistance 10. Great, but I could cast resist energy or energy immunity instead. Some of the bonuses are just insulting, like 1 point of natural armor. The 6th level of the class grants cold resistance 10, as if that's a worthy ability for a character who is a minimum of 11th level.

Probably the most unique ability that the class grants is the 9th level ability (for a character who is a minimum of 14th level), to summon one demon/devil (babau or chain devil) for an hour. Most summons don't last that long but we're approaching "planar binding" territory, so it's not as great as it sounds.

Acolyte of the Skin is like someone looked at the Infused (and the fiendish alternative) and then decided to make it garbage. At least with the fiendish alternative, you bonded souls with a specific kind of devil or demon and then got powers related to the bonded fiend. Still not great, but less generic and boring.

P.S. Found it, it's the Tainted of Dragon #302. Still has half-progression for the casting variant, but it's also just got decent abilities.

[icefractal]

Complete Arcane had several like that.
Green Star Adept, Alienist, the blood one.

All with cool concepts, all seriously inferior to just taking more Sort/Wiz levels. And while some of the abilities were flavorful, some really failed.

Oh yeah, 1/day True Strike and -1 for people to attack you because you look freaky ... definitely the essence of far realm horror. 😑

[Kitsuneymg]

The Duskblade's list is too small, but the idea that that means Gishes should be running around with planar binding or they're not real Gishes is a bizarre leap to make. If you want a Sword Wizard, you can just do that. Hell, you can have full BAB for all I care. Wielding a sword is just not a big deal. But if you want to be a guy who uses magic to be good at martial combat (or, you know, a Gish), the Duskblade is obviously where you want to start. Don't pull in someone's favorite PF class, just fix the class that does the thing you want to do.

Nah. Pull in their favorite PF class. It’ll be far better than trying to fix dusk blade. And the end results will be better too.

I agree about planar binding and how most forum gishes end up as wizards with worse casting stats who occasionally stab things. Magus, Warpriest, Inquisitor, and even Bard (PF: with the right archetype) all do gishing sooner and in more fun ways than any 9th level spells build. There’s no point in trying to fix the dusk blade, because it’s been surpassed. It’d be like trying to find a way to make a cassette tape that doesn’t tangle as much in 2022.

[noce]

Can I see it?
I mean - no music or perform is obvious, but "Every bard spell has a verbal component (singing, reciting, or music)", and Silent Spell don't works on it.

Well, I'd cast spells with a "spoken" verbal component instead of those listed (really, the type of verbal component seems just fluff to me). Anyway, going back on topic:


Complete Arcane had several like that.
Green Star Adept, Alienist, the blood one.

All with cool concepts, all seriously inferior to just taking more Sorc/Wiz levels.

I don't agree that Alienist is inferior to Sorcerer or Wizard.
Alienist requires two feats, but they're quite useful so they're not feat taxes (not as much as Endurance anyway). It also requires a skill not normally on the sorcerer list, and imposes a hefty penalty on social skills.
In exchange, it gives you two bonus metamagic feats, a bonus spell slot, progresses your familiar and gives it a template, and you eventually get the outsider type.

As a sorcerer you trade social skills for two metamagic feats, a spell slot and the outsider type.
As a wizard, you don't care about social skills, so the net positive is a spell slot and the outsider type.

Alienist is bad solely for the opportunity cost that a build based on it doesn't have room for the many better prestige classes that exist, but it is not worse than going pure base class.

[ShurikVch]

Complete Arcane had several like that.
Green Star Adept, Alienist, the blood one.
Hey, Blood Magus isn't that bad: 8/10 spell progression (and "missing" levels aren't even 1st or 2nd, but 5th and 10th - you can take 4 levels without losing progression)



Oh yeah, 1/day True Strike and -1 for people to attack you because you look freaky ... definitely the essence of far realm horror.

I don't agree that Alienist is inferior to Sorcerer or Wizard.
Alienist requires two feats, but they're quite useful so they're not feat taxes (not as much as Endurance anyway). It also requires a skill not normally on the sorcerer list, and imposes a hefty penalty on social skills.
In exchange, it gives you two bonus metamagic feats, a bonus spell slot, progresses your familiar and gives it a template, and you eventually get the outsider type.

As a sorcerer you trade social skills for two metamagic feats, a spell slot and the outsider type.
As a wizard, you don't care about social skills, so the net positive is a spell slot and the outsider type.

Alienist is bad solely for the opportunity cost that a build based on it doesn't have room for the many better prestige classes that exist, but it is not worse than going pure base class.
The problem isn't with the Alienist PrC by itself, but with its change in Complete Arcane:

Summon Alien: Whenever an alienist would use any summon monster spell to summon a celestial or fiendish creature, she instead summons a pseudonatural version of that creature. For example, by casting summon monster IV, she could summon a pseudonatural dire wolf. This adds the pseudonatural template (see page 160) to the summoned creature.
An alienist gives up the ability to summon nonpseudonatural creatures with a summon monster spell. For instance, the alienist described above couldn't summon a mephit or howler with summon monster IV.
Compare it with the original variant:

Summon Alien (Sp): When an alienist casts any summon monster spell, she summons a "pseudonatural" version of a creature chosen from the appropriate list on page 258 of the Player's Handbook. For example, by casting summon monster VI, she could summon a pseudonatural rast. This adds the pseudonatural template to the summoned creature (see Pseudonatural Creatures below). If the selected creature would normally be celestial or fiendish, the pseudonatural template replaces that template.

[noce]

Hey, Blood Magus isn't that bad: 8/10 spell progression

But it requires you to die and contract a debt to whoever resurrects you.

[bekeleven]

There are a lot of pitfalls classes can fall into. One of the most common I see in homebrew is making a class that is something rather than a class that does something.

I fall into this trap all the time. For instance, I wanted to make a class that was a feruchemist (https://mistborn.fandom.com/wiki/Feruchemy), capable of storing various bodily properties and then releasing them later. And I did! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20024288&postcount=15) I'm reasonably happy with my implementation of the concept. Except that it's a class that is something; it doesn't have anything to do. All it does is have bonuses to actions commoners can take. Sure, it swings swords better than a fighter (not a high bar) and diplomances about as well as a bard, but there's a high bar for classes that don't give you novel ways to spend actions.

What first-party classes fall into this trap? The ones that come to mind most readily for me are the Binder and the Factotum. Binder, as previously mentioned, gives you around 1 extra action per combat until midlevels, and Factotum gives you so few spells per day that you're likely using them on panic buttons or long-duration buffs, meaning they give you zero extra actions per combat. So you're just... hitting people with a stick, like a fighter, but maybe with some sneak attack damage or something.

The thing you are has to let you do something. It's a lot more work to make, but it's necessary.

[RandomPeasant]

In my view, most spell lists are actually fine. That is you can work with them. Healer is the one exception.

Shugenja and Warmage too, though the former is more a case of the spell list being constructed in a baffling way (spells upleveled with no real rhyme or reason, a mechanic that makes it really difficult to get the spells you want). The Warmage definitely needs some kind of utility suite, and arguably a bit more BFC. There are some other isolated issues, like the Dread Necromancer getting lesser planar binding and planar binding, but not greater planar binding for some reason, but most classes are ~fine.


The reason we bring up the magus is because mechanically, conceptually, and even aesthetically it's super close to the duskblade.

I mean, aside from the thing where it doesn't have the class's signature ability, sure it's mechanically close to the class. The Duskblade does "use magic with martial skill" in a way that is much more that than the Magus, who just does "sword" and also "spell" rather than "sword and spell" as a unified thing.


Complete Arcane had several like that.

Complete Arcane is just the poster child, but there are things like that all over. Like the various Gish PrCs that are half casting and generally only arguably better than alternating base class levels. I believe I've said it before, but caster PrCs really should just all be full casting. Trying to make people choose between "getting mildly flavorful class abilities" and "getting level appropriate combat powers" was a terrible plan, and in a world where the best PrCs are already full casting it's a dead letter anyway. Just let the guy who wants to wear a demon or turn into a green robot do that. Game balance will probably even get better because the class features of the average caster PrC are worse than the class features of the average full-casting PrC.


Alienist is bad solely for the opportunity cost that a build based on it doesn't have room for the many better prestige classes that exist, but it is not worse than going pure base class.

Alienist is something I'm fine with. It's not an optimal power choice, but an Alienist continues to get level-appropriate abilities and contribute effectively, so I'm perfectly happy with people taking it if it makes them happy. You could make it better in some modest way if you wanted, but it's not really necessary.


What first-party classes fall into this trap? The ones that come to mind most readily for me are the Binder and the Factotum. Binder, as previously mentioned, gives you around 1 extra action per combat until midlevels, and Factotum gives you so few spells per day that you're likely using them on panic buttons or long-duration buffs, meaning they give you zero extra actions per combat. So you're just... hitting people with a stick, like a fighter, but maybe with some sneak attack damage or something.

The Factotum also suffers from the same issue as the Bard: "jack of all trades" is just not the niche people think they are. If you have a primary niche, secondary niches can be useful. But if you don't have a primary niche, having a bunch of secondary niches means that you'll suffer from overlap (having 75% of a Cleric is rarely useful when you already have 100% of a Cleric) and from failing to measure up to whatever niche you try to cover (75% of a Fighter will fail to fight appropriately, making it much more like 0% of a Fighter than 100%).

[bekeleven]

The Factotum also suffers from the same issue as the Bard: "jack of all trades" is just not the niche people think they are. If you have a primary niche, secondary niches can be useful. But if you don't have a primary niche, having a bunch of secondary niches means that you'll suffer from overlap (having 75% of a Cleric is rarely useful when you already have 100% of a Cleric) and from failing to measure up to whatever niche you try to cover (75% of a Fighter will fail to fight appropriately, making it much more like 0% of a Fighter than 100%).
There was a period of a year or two after I got "into" factotum where it was the best class in the world. I was using it for everything, every new game I entered, I thought "I bet I can make this character Int SAD somehow."

Looking back, that was a time period where I was in 3 or 4 consecutive gestalt games. You know what's great in gestalt games? Characters with a lot of passive bonuses, especially when they're SAD on a spellcasting stat. Sure, my wizard will take extra standard actions, sounds great.

[RandomPeasant]

Looking back, that was a time period where I was in 3 or 4 consecutive gestalt games. You know what's great in gestalt games? Characters with a lot of passive bonuses, especially when they're SAD on a spellcasting stat. Sure, my wizard will take extra standard actions, sounds great.

Factotum definitely shines in Gestalt. Getting to spend your extra actions on "things that matter" and not "under-leveled spells" or "single attacks and average BAB with extremely minimal damage bonuses" is a big game. Though I'm more bearish than most people on Factotum//Wizard, just because I don't think what the Wizard wants is to be able to nova harder. But Factotum//Warblade? That's cooking with gas. Starting every fight, no matter how minor, with a move plus two or three maneuvers, or a move + full attack + maneuver, or something similar? That's cooking with gas.

[Nihilarian]

As limited as it is, the Factotum's casting is pretty much its #1 resource. What else can it use its extra standard action for? An extra basic attack? Even then, you cap out at like 8 spells a day, and you can't repeat them so you can't build around any one individual bomb spell. Who cares if you only get six spells, if all of them are polymorph?

I wish it had like, a system where you could recast a spell for an increasing amount of inspiration? That would go a long way towards making it more consistent

[Seward]

There’s no point in trying to fix the dusk blade, because it’s been surpassed. It’d be like trying to find a way to make a cassette tape that doesn’t tangle as much in 2022.

And also, like that cassette tape, it still plays music if you can find a cassette player and know how to use it. It just isn't a smartphone, or even a 2002 era ipod. So if not allowed to bring in Pathfinder classes that do it more smoothly from level 1, you can play one. Just try to pick a campaign where you'll get some actual play after L13 (this is exactly the same tradeoff somebody who wants a TK focused ranged gish has to make, most approaches that don't involve being a ghost or perhaps psionics don't really rock the world until L13 at earliest, and often don't mature till 14 or 15. They aren't a load on the party before that, they just don't make people go "OMFG" yet when they do their best schtick,)

Duskblade is a decent class after level 13. It can still contribute before then, it's just contributing at a more tier 4 level (not as much raw offense as a fighter or barbarian but enough arcane utility to not drop it into tier 5). As long as it isn't expected to fill an arcane caster role, it's ok, either as heavy or light infantry (you can build a perfectly good heavy armor 2h+power attack type fighter that does ok till level 12 and be quite decent in 13-20. It's more the ones that are amazing in 13-20 at damage dealing that often struggle in lower levels because there is a tax of some kind on trying to get extra attacks to use with the L13+ channeling, and if you, say, spend all your feats on the TWF tree you'll fall enough behind the 2hF+power attack guy in any situation where you aren't both move+attack AND the target is vulnerable to either shocking grasp or vampiric touch. You can also build a more mobility focused light infantry type that works in light armor to have better spell variety and leverages the swift xp retreat/swift fly/dimension hop chain to get around like a monk or barbarian without having to be one)

[RandomPeasant]

As limited as it is, the Factotum's casting is pretty much its #1 resource. What else can it use its extra standard action for? An extra basic attack? Even then, you cap out at like 8 spells a day, and you can't repeat them so you can't build around any one individual bomb spell. Who cares if you only get six spells, if all of them are polymorph?

I wish it had like, a system where you could recast a spell for an increasing amount of inspiration? That would go a long way towards making it more consistent

Honestly, even if you could cast any spell as often as you wanted, the Factotum still wouldn't be very good. Your spell progression is really slow, and you only get one at your highest level. You have to be doing something really broken with your 4th level spells for four of them to be relevant at 13th level, and if you can do something that broken it's hard to see how the Wizard didn't completely obliterate you six levels ago when they were already doing it. Even nova-ing isn't great, because you can only throw out a nova maybe twice, and your nova just isn't as good as what even a Warmage could do with some optimization.

[Nihilarian]

The Chameleon is a class I really like that fulfills its design goal in an unintended way. Most of the focuses are garbage, but getting access to every spell up to 6th level still lets you perform the roles that are required of you. It's also a fun way to build a "themed" spell list. I could just use the chameleon to grab every sword adjacent spell and play a sword wizard, and still have 10 levels to play around with

[Bavarian itP]

I've said it before, but caster PrCs really should just all be full casting.

On the contrary, caster PrCs should always lose at least one caster level, and at best at first level, so you can't just take a dip without losing anything. PrC or Base should always be a tough choice, because what's the point of a 20-level base class otherwise? Of course, the abilities of the PrCs need to be strong enough to justify that. Malconvoker, for example, gets it right.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

On the contrary, caster PrCs should always lose at least one caster levelNo, although they should have something that balances them out. For instance, archmage loses spell slots in exchange for special abilities, some of which scale with the level of the slot sacrificed. It definitely seems like a more interesting exchange, and it's too bad that seems to be one of the few times it's ever done that way (if not the only time).

[RandomPeasant]

The Chameleon is a class I really like that fulfills its design goal in an unintended way. Most of the focuses are garbage, but getting access to every spell up to 6th level still lets you perform the roles that are required of you. It's also a fun way to build a "themed" spell list. I could just use the chameleon to grab every sword adjacent spell and play a sword wizard, and still have 10 levels to play around with

I will say that of all the things that do the "pilfer spells off weird lists at low levels" thing, Chameleon is by far my favorite.


On the contrary, caster PrCs should always lose at least one caster level, and at best at first level, so you can't just take a dip without losing anything. PrC or Base should always be a tough choice, because what's the point of a 20-level base class otherwise? Of course, the abilities of the PrCs need to be strong enough to justify that. Malconvoker, for example, gets it right.

What is the point of a 20 level base class when that base class does not have class features? I agree that it should be an interesting choice whether to take levels of your base class or a PrC. But that choice should be interesting because your base class offers something worthwhile, not because PrCs penalize power progression. Look at the Druid. Druids mostly don't run around dipping every PrC that exists, because Druid has class features you care about and Druid 20 is worth taking even if it means you never take any Arcane Heirophant levels.


No, although they should have something that balances them out. For instance, archmage loses spell slots in exchange for special abilities, some of which scale with the level of the slot sacrificed. It definitely seems like a more interesting exchange, and it's too bad that seems to be one of the few times it's ever done that way (if not the only time).

I do agree that Archmage is, in a vacuum, the best paradigm. You pay a cost for things that is directly related to the things you get, and it works properly in the context of Open Multiclassing (in a way that lost levels of casting do not). But getting everything to work on the Archmage paradigm is a lot of work. IMO, it's better value for your money to just accept that people are not going to be 10th level Sorcerers and sacrifice the one build that is Sorcerer 20 in exchange for having the dozens of builds that are Sorcerer/Acolyte of the Skin or Sorcerer/Dragonslayer or Sorcerer/Green Star Adept not suck. I would rather live in a world where casters were slightly more powerful, but had flavorful abilities that reflected the player's vision and character concept, then one where they were nominally more balanced but encouraged to think long and hard about taking fluff abilities like "is a jade robot" or "wears a demon suit".

[Bavarian itP]

They have class features. They are called "spells".

But if you think the druid is the pinnacle of good class design, we just have to agree to disagree.


Sorcerer/Green Star Adept

If a player told me they want to play a Sorcerer/Green Star Adept, I would just eyeball how many caster levels it "deserves" to lose. 8/10? 9/10? No idea, I've never read through this class. But I would do my best to allow the player the concept without making it suck.

[Maat Mons]

Green Star Adept gives more immunities than Bone Knight or Pale Master, but forces you to give up your Constitution score. It could probably get the same 9/10 casting as those other classes and be a wash.



Pathfinder as a whole does a pretty good job of making it appealing to take all 20 levels of a base class, yet it also has full-casting prestige classes. In 3.5, Archivist, Beguiler, and Dread Necromancer all have something to lose by PrCing, even if the PrC is full-casting. It's definitely possible to have full-casting PrCs without them winding up as a strict upgrade to the base classes.

Losing a level of casting in a prestige class is actually a little problematic, in that the delay in spell acquisition will stay with you forever. Many prestige classes don't have benefits that scale with you and remain relevant for your whole career. So if you lose a caster level at ECL 5, and gain a benefit on par with delayed access to 3rd-level spells, you'll later find yourself at ECL 17, suffering from delayed access to 9th-level spells, but only getting a benefit on par with delayed access to 3rd-level spells, not on par with what it's actually currently costing you.

[RandomPeasant]

But if you think the druid is the pinnacle of good class design, we just have to agree to disagree.

You're the one who said you wanted it to be a hard choice whether to take PrC levels. For the Druid, it is. It's such a hard choice, in fact, that even most full casting PrCs aren't generally considered worth losing Druid levels. If what you want is to make the choice between twenty levels of your base class and taking PrCs hard, wouldn't it be easier to make the dozen-or-so base classes like the Druid than to make every single PrC (of which their are scores, if not hundreds) hit whatever you think is a fair tradeoff?


But I would do my best to allow the player the concept without making it suck.

What if their character concept was to have two or three levels of several PrCs? The premise of Open Multiclassing is that such a character is supposed to be viable, and combining full casting PrCs is the only place where it is throughout the game. Why should we take that away from people? If you think spellcasters are too strong, make them worse directly, don't try to nerf them by making an opt-in system that lets people customize their characters worse.


Green Star Adept gives more immunities than Bone Knight or Pale Master, but forces you to give up your Constitution score. It could probably get the same 9/10 casting as those other classes and be a wash.

How many people have you seen play Bone Knights or Pale Masters? Bone Knight is particularly offensive, as it presents Paladin as a preferred entry, asking you to give up some of your already subpar Paladin casting.


Pathfinder as a whole does a pretty good job of making it appealing to take all 20 levels of a base class, yet it also has full-casting prestige classes.

By, it should be noted, making classes more like the Druid. People having class features is good. Just saying "they have spells" isn't enough when classes like the Totemist or Wilder or Shadowcaster get spell-equivalents and also class features. Would giving casters class features (or full casting PrCs) make them better? Yes. But it would be better design, and you should prioritize making design better over using random options for power tuning. Especially since we can already see that, in the status quo, lost casting is crippling for the viability of fun and flavorful options throughout the system. It will not break the game for people to be Acolytes of the Skin. We should let people do that. If it means the Fighter needs more toys, so be it, he already needs way more toys than he's getting.


Losing a level of casting in a prestige class is actually a little problematic, in that the delay in spell acquisition will stay with you forever. Many prestige classes don't have benefits that scale with you and remain relevant for your whole career.

Exactly. Lost casting is a variable cost. At 6th level, a Wizard losing a level of casting to be a Green Star Adept or something means you lose a 3rd level slot and a 2nd level slot. At 11th level, it means you lose a 3rd level slot, and access to 6th level spells at all. At 16th level it means you lose an 8th level slot and a 7th level slot. I am profoundly skeptical that you can balance that at any type of scale, particularly without re-writing the abilities PrCs provide.

[Bavarian itP]

Now we are getting at something. If you'd used the Beguiler as example instead of the druid, we wouldn't have had any argument at all.

[ShurikVch]

But it requires you to die and contract a debt to whoever resurrects you.
Outside of a game where resurrection access is problematic - why it should be a problem?
(Heck, you can just write it into your backstory!)
But if you're so paranoid - arcane (or psionic) resurrection can be arranged...
Honestly, I expected complains about the prerequisite feats, or lost level - not such in-world speculations...



There are a lot of pitfalls classes can fall into. One of the most common I see in homebrew is making a class that is something rather than a class that does something.
What - like the Monk class?

[noce]

In my experience people stay it their base classes if there is a worthwhile class feature strictly tied with the level of the base class. Examples (again, in my experience) include Daring Outlaw that sticks with swashbuckler, Swift Hunter staying in ranger and to a lesser degree Tashalatora psychic warriors.

What is compelling about these builds is that their base classes give you something you can't easily get with a prc without losing something else: druid is another good example, but not because druid is strong, it's more because druid is unique.
Examples I gave above are considerably weaker than druid but still worth staying in your base class of choice.

[Scots Dragon]

I mean, aside from the thing where it doesn't have the class's signature ability, sure it's mechanically close to the class. The Duskblade does "use magic with martial skill" in a way that is much more that than the Magus, who just does "sword" and also "spell" rather than "sword and spell" as a unified thing.

Have you even read the magus class (https://aonprd.com/ClassDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Magus)? Like, at all? A vast chunk of its abilities mix magic and martial combat in direct terms, and it even has got the signature ability of the duskblade. It's just called Spellstrike rather than Arcane Channelling, and they get it at second level rather than third. It can apply any touch spell through a melee attack that does normal damage and adds the spell effect.

The two main abilities they get at first level are Spell Combat and the Arcane Pool.

The Arcane Pool is a pool of 'mana' points equal to half-class-level plus intelligence modifier, and they can be spent on various tricks. The initial of which is enchanting any held weapon so that it has an improved enhancement bonus, and this scales by level. Starting at fifth level they can swap out enhancement boosts for equivalent-scale magical abilities such as dancing, flaming, flaming burst, frost, icy burst, keen, shock, shocking burst, or vorpal. This bonus lasts for one minute.

The Spell Combat ability is their signature focus. This basically allows them to, while wielding a one-handed or light weapon, effectively dual-wield their spells and melee combat. While performing a full attack, they can treat their melee attacks as if dual-wielding with a light weapon in the offhand (so a -2 to attacks) while casting any spell with a casting time of a standard action. This spell still needs to be cast defensively to avoid attacks of opportunity, but they can take a penalty to attack rolls to boost the concentration check, and after a certain level the concentration check becomes pretty much automatic due to the bonus being high enough.

And as a bonus point? They can perform a Spellstrike and basically make the spell-attack into a bonus attack.

At third level they start getting various Magus Arcana, one of which allows them to perform any ray spell as a touch spell, and this can be used with the Spellstrike. This means that one of the possible Spellstrikes they've got is disintegrate. Various others are minor and major bonuses to spellcasting, melee, or both, sometimes involving the expenditure of the arcane pool. This is incidentally the reason that the magus can't full-attack with the Spellstrike, because one of their ray spells is disintegrate, and I don't know about you but I feel like an additional 120d6 damage on a full attack is a little close to overkill.


Your complaint about the magus here really does not hold any water at all.

[Curbludgeon]

I've spent some time looking over the old DragonMech setting books, trying to find a way to make some classes work, to little avail. The Coglayer, for one, is far too curtailed by maintenance limits to allow for much of anything past either a couple of personal items or weapons (to make use of with low BaB) or, more likely, to be a member of a team dedicated to some small aspect of a mech.

The Mech classes are slightly less one-note, but still fall short. I've been trying to hammer together a half-orc Steamborg(Mark II)/Mech Jockey/Assimilated/Mech Symbiote/X combo, using Leadership and the Might Makes Right feat to collect a host of Coglayers to fill the eventual city mech with doohickeys. The simple fact is that the 4th level spell Rebuild Soul (or 5th level Ferrous Soul) do the same job far more efficiently, obviate the need for most piloting feats, and allow the character to among other options grab caster levels instead

The Riftwalker, by contrast, has pretty great potential in a theurge build, but I'm not sure how to best make use of it.

Sorry about the digression, everyone, this one's just been boiling up for a while, and I finally got enough of a head of steam to spout off.

[StSword]

In my experience people stay it their base classes if there is a worthwhile class feature strictly tied with the level of the base class. Examples (again, in my experience) include Daring Outlaw that sticks with swashbuckler, Swift Hunter staying in ranger and to a lesser degree Tashalatora psychic warriors.

What is compelling about these builds is that their base classes give you something you can't easily get with a prc without losing something else: druid is another good example, but not because druid is strong, it's more because druid is unique.
Examples I gave above are considerably weaker than druid but still worth staying in your base class of choice.

Alternate Paths: Prestige Classes by Little Red Goblin Games for pathfinder solved this issue by introducing groundwork feats, that enable levels in prestige classes to count as furthering a base class for a feature like say spellcasting, or monk damage, or druid wildshape, etc, etc.

I really really like that, gotta say.

[Nihilarian]

Alternate Paths: Prestige Classes by Little Red Goblin Games for pathfinder solved this issue by introducing groundwork feats, that enable levels in prestige classes to count as furthering a base class for a feature like say spellcasting, or monk damage, or druid wildshape, etc, etc.

I really really like that, gotta say.I've been thinking for a while now that it wouldn't be unbalanced to just let people use "+1 to spellcasting" to advance whatever class feature they wanted. There'd be some stuff to iron out but, it already advances the most powerful class feature, letting it advance less powerful class features should be fine.

[RandomPeasant]

What is compelling about these builds is that their base classes give you something you can't easily get with a prc without losing something else: druid is another good example, but not because druid is strong, it's more because druid is unique.

I picked Druid because it's the caster class that people stick with, not because it's the only class that it's not worth PrCing out of. FWIW, I do think Druid might push too far in that direction, but so does taking a level of casting off for PrCs, so it evens out.


I've been thinking for a while now that it wouldn't be unbalanced to just let people use "+1 to spellcasting" to advance whatever class feature they wanted. There'd be some stuff to iron out but, it already advances the most powerful class feature, letting it advance less powerful class features should be fine.

It'd mostly be fine. The big issue would be trying to use it to advance PrC features that cap out early, which could be problematic in some cases. But the bigger problem is that most caster PrCs wouldn't be all that appealing to non-casters even if they qualified. If you make Incantatrix advance Sneak Attack, it's still not really appealing to a Rogue. Certainly there's some things where it'd help on the margin, but if you want to help non-casters I think you need to do the hard work of re-writing classes like Eye of Grummsh or Dread Pirate to not suck.

[Nihilarian]

It'd mostly be fine. The big issue would be trying to use it to advance PrC features that cap out early, which could be problematic in some cases. But the bigger problem is that most caster PrCs wouldn't be all that appealing to non-casters even if they qualified. If you make Incantatrix advance Sneak Attack, it's still not really appealing to a Rogue. Certainly there's some things where it'd help on the margin, but if you want to help non-casters I think you need to do the hard work of re-writing classes like Eye of Grummsh or Dread Pirate to not suck.i'm not really thinking about Incantrix, but classes like Abolisher or Knight Phantom that either don't really do anything with casting beyond advancing it or else provides spell-like abilities as needed. In any case I know it's pretty much a bandaid, but I don't want to write a book of houserules to fix 3.5 anymore.

[AsuraKyoko]

It'd mostly be fine. The big issue would be trying to use it to advance PrC features that cap out early, which could be problematic in some cases. But the bigger problem is that most caster PrCs wouldn't be all that appealing to non-casters even if they qualified. If you make Incantatrix advance Sneak Attack, it's still not really appealing to a Rogue. Certainly there's some things where it'd help on the margin, but if you want to help non-casters I think you need to do the hard work of re-writing classes like Eye of Grummsh or Dread Pirate to not suck.

It's an interesting idea, and you could make a common-sense ruling that it doesn't allow someone to progress features beyond the limits of their class. I think that it would be interesting to take a look at the bad PrCs out there and see which ones could be saved by making them advance class features. Additionally, a number of classes that give caster progression every other level are designed for things that are limited in casting anyways, so those are probably fine if you just allow the casting progression to advance everything.

Regarding Dread Pirate, a little while back a friend and I reworked Dread Pirate rather extensively; we compressed it into 5 levels and re-tuned its abilities to be a bit better. (This initially was because we looked at the class and saw that it did some pretty cool things, it just did them too slowly.) I'll see if I can dig it back up, if people are interested.

[Lans]

some things where it'd help on the margin, but if you want to help non-casters I think you need to do the hard work of re-writing classes like Eye of Grummsh or Dread Pirate to not suck.

Have them advance martial abilities, so you don't loose out on barbarian or fighter abilities as you take the prestige classes.

[noce]

...I think you need to do the hard work of re-writing classes like Eye of Grummsh or Dread Pirate to not suck.

I never understood the hate against Eye of Gruumsh, I find it perfectly fine, if not stronger than average.
Race requirement is a strong pick, alignment requirement is ugly as always, feat requirements are admittedly very ugly (but more on this later).

Over 10 levels it gives you:

barbarian rage progression (and doesn't even require you to be one)
a free feat (weak, but prerequisite for pierce magical concealment)
+4 additional strength while raging (a pure classed barbarian would have to wait until lvl 20 for that +8)
blindsight (with enough range to cover enemies that have reach)
a nice ranged option (with a decent DC and a strong semi-permanent condition)
+5 total AC while not raging (+1 total while raging, offsetting both standard rage penalty and the additional -2 it gave you)
+2 morale to all saves (doesn't stack with +2 will from standard rage, but stacks with +2 ref from whirling frenzy)
you don't fall unconscious (great if the party has access to delay death)


I think all this is well worth two feat taxes, expecially when taking into account that you can replace Exotic Weapon Proficiency with Shadow Marches Warmonger (so that you can benefit from the weapon focus on a greataxe) or with Improved Weapon Familiarity (so that you also get proficiency with the orc shotput).

What should a prestige class do more than this to be deemed worth taking?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

How many PrCs would be worthwhile if they gave the same abilities but in one-half or even one-third the levels?

[Feldar]

For me, two come to mind.

Arcane archer was a pretty damn cool concept, but the loss you took to caster levels really wasn't worth it.

I agree with this -- too much is lost and the abilities gained do not make up for it.

Another prestige class I really wanted to like was Hospitaler -- I like the concept of the roving warrior-priest and it suits the adventuring bent very well, but the loss of spellcasting for a cleric or paladin is just too much. Very similar to the arcane archer in that regard.

Mystic Theurge -- I want to like it, but it frankly has no flavor. It's completely vanilla, with no class features other than spellcasting. It's just bland.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Mystic Theurge -- I want to like it, but it frankly has no flavor. It's completely vanilla, with no class features other than spellcasting. It's just bland.You take that back! Good French vanilla ice cream is amazing.

[Feldar]

You take that back! Good French vanilla ice cream is amazing.

Sure, let me know where the good is. It's generic vanilla :)

Let me add this though -- as a basis for a custom prestige class for a home game, it's a great start. Flavor added by the GM and players as appropriate for the campaign. I just wish there were some class features as a basis, like a limited divination class feature or some such.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Sure, let me know where the good is. It's generic vanilla :)I think we'll agree that cheap, generic vanilla ice cream is pretty 'meh' and leave it at that. So long as you admit that vanilla ice cream can be great.

Mystic theurge is definitely pretty 'bleh,' though. Still better than just taking two casting classes, and the epic progression is even worse than alternating them.

[Feldar]

I think we'll agree that cheap, generic vanilla ice cream is pretty 'meh' and leave it at that. So long as you admit that vanilla ice cream can be great.

Mystic theurge is definitely pretty 'bleh,' though. Still better than just taking two casting classes, and the epic progression is even worse than alternating them.

I think we're in full agreement. I don't dislike Mystic Theurge -- I just don't like it.

And I prefer good vanilla ice cream over almost every other flavor.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I think we're in full agreement. I don't dislike Mystic Theurge -- I just don't like it.

And I prefer good vanilla ice cream over almost every other flavor.I seem to have misplaced the "+1" button, since I can't find it.

[RandomPeasant]

Have them advance martial abilities, so you don't loose out on barbarian or fighter abilities as you take the prestige classes.

That helps a little, but the fundamental problem with Fighter and Barbarian is that they just don't get high-level abilities. Martial builds involve a bunch of dips because nothing Fighter 20 gives you is worth sticking around for. Allowing you to layer other stuff on top helps, but at some point you have to reckon with the fact that a 13th level Fighter is expected to be able to fight an Ice Devil, and his class features just don't allow him to do that.


What should a prestige class do more than this to be deemed worth taking?

A 10th level Eye of Grummsh is a 16th level character. He is expected to be able to hold his own in an adventure where Mind Flayers are a horde monster. I just do not see how the things the class does allow you to do that. Blinding Spittle isn't "a nice range option", it is a 2nd level spell, but worse in a number of respects. And the list goes on like that. PrCs shouldn't set you up to complete your build by qualifying you for a nice feat down the line, they should just make you an effective character. You know, like you are if you take a bunch of Sorcerer or Druid or Mage of the Arcane Order levels.


How many PrCs would be worthwhile if they gave the same abilities but in one-half or even one-third the levels?

Some of them. But while that solves the issue at low or mid levels, it doesn't solve it at high levels. The issue with the Animal Lords or Spinemeld Warriors of the world isn't that they give you abilities too slowly per se (though certainly that is part of it), it is that they do not give you high level abilities at all. What martial PrC is there that gives something that is as good as the utility options casters just get as 10th level characters?


Mystic Theurge -- I want to like it, but it frankly has no flavor. It's completely vanilla, with no class features other than spellcasting. It's just bland.

I've said it before in this thread, but Theurges as a whole were tuned wrong. Getting -3 levels of progression on both sides is too much, and having only 10 levels of progression screws you for no real reason. The fact that early ones have no class features isn't great, but to be honest I'm not sure I prefer the hyper-specialized Theurges that came later. At least with a Mystic Theurge I can be whatever I want. If I want to combine a martial adept and an arcane spellcaster, my only option is to be a reincarnated phoenix dude.

[AsuraKyoko]

How many PrCs would be worthwhile if they gave the same abilities but in one-half or even one-third the levels?

Honestly, I suspect that many of them would be. Hell, I could potentially see a case where 5/10 casting classes were instead 5 levels long and didn't advance casting at all, though I don't know if that would be an improvement; it would encourage you to alternate taking levels with another class, which could lead to some interesting builds.

I have half a mind to take a handful of 10 level classes and try making them into 5 level classes, just to see what they would look like. Does anyone have any suggestions for me to try out?


EDIT: Thinking about it, while many 10 level classes would be better designed if they were compressed into 5 levels, theurge classes would be much better served if they were extended to take you to level 20. That's one of the very few things the True Necromance did completely right: it's 14 levels long, so the normal entry of cleric 3/wizard 3 will take you all the way to level 20. (Of course it spoiled that by not actually advancing casting enough). Honestly, as a DM I'd consider allowing Mystic Theurge to not have a level cap, since it makes the standard entry (cleric 3/wizard 3) not have to sacrifice one side after level 16. sure it makes getting 9ths on two lists rather trivial, but you get them at level 20, and you're 1-2 spell levels behind at any given point up to then, which feels like a fine tradeoff to me. Other theurge classes would probably need a little bit more work to extend, since they tend to have actual class features, but it wouldn't be that hard, I think.

[Feldar]

I've said it before in this thread, but Theurges as a whole were tuned wrong. Getting -3 levels of progression on both sides is too much, and having only 10 levels of progression screws you for no real reason. The fact that early ones have no class features isn't great, but to be honest I'm not sure I prefer the hyper-specialized Theurges that came later. At least with a Mystic Theurge I can be whatever I want. If I want to combine a martial adept and an arcane spellcaster, my only option is to be a reincarnated phoenix dude.

We're not going to agree on this -- I think you're only partially correct.

The three level hit, ok. It makes sense.

Limited ten levels of progression, ok-ish.

Both together? BAD.

[RandomPeasant]

sure it makes getting 9ths on two lists rather trivial, but you get them at level 20, and you're 1-2 spell levels behind at any given point up to then, which feels like a fine tradeoff to me.

I'll be honest, I never really cared about the whole "dual 9ths" thing. I don't care if you get two kinds of 9th level spells. I care if you are able to pull your weight as a 8th level (or whatever other level) character. The worst part of CharOp culture is people pointing at a build that does something impressive at a particular breakpoint, but ignoring that it'd be totally miserable to play in practice.


Limited ten levels of progression, ok-ish.

Why? If it is okay to be a below-par Wizard and a below-par Cleric at 7th level and 12th level and 15th level, how do you justify cutting that off at 17th level?

[Brackenlord]

5/10 progression sucks if you need to be 1/4 of a Tier 1 party, facing Tier 1 challenges.

If you want to downgrade and keep adventuring in a way your fellow Fighter and Rogue pull more weight than an animated or called minion, they are serviceable.

[noce]

A 10th level Eye of Grummsh is a 16th level character. He is expected to be able to hold his own in an adventure where Mind Flayers are a horde monster. I just do not see how the things the class does allow you to do that. Blinding Spittle isn't "a nice range option", it is a 2nd level spell, but worse in a number of respects. And the list goes on like that. PrCs shouldn't set you up to complete your build by qualifying you for a nice feat down the line, they should just make you an effective character. You know, like you are if you take a bunch of Sorcerer or Druid or Mage of the Arcane Order levels.

Wait, you're not fair comparing a barbarian PRC to T1 stuff.
There's plenty of mundane prcs considered to be good. Frostrager for example is considered a top pick for barbarians.
How come that Frostrager is good while Eye of Gruumsh is considered utter garbage?

[RandomPeasant]

If you want to downgrade and keep adventuring in a way your fellow Fighter and Rogue pull more weight than an animated or called minion, they are serviceable.

But what if you are a Warmage or a Healer, who is already not causing problems in a party with Fighters and Rogues? What if, similarly, you are a Wizard whose favorite spells are ones like haste, black tentacles, and cone of cold, which give the Fighter and Rogue plenty of opportunities to shine (indeed, haste makes them better at it)? For that matter, is planar binding really any less game breaking out of a 16th level Wizard 6/Green Star Adept 10 than it is out of an 11th level Wizard? Very few of the game breaking spells people can take would be fine at a later level, so if your Wizard is going to try that delaying them just buys time rather than solving anything. Conversely, getting them to cast spells that aren't game breaking solves the problem while allowing them to continue getting new abilities at an appropriate rate.


Wait, you're not fair comparing a barbarian PRC to T1 stuff.

I'm not. Or at least not directly. I'm not saying "the Eye is bad because it isn't a Wizard", I'm saying "the Eye is bad because it does not give you the tools to deal with level-appropriate encounters, and the Wizard is good because it does". It is entirely fair to compare a Barbarian to the monsters from the Monster Manual, because those are the problems a Barbarian is expected to solve. It doesn't matter if some Barbarian option is better or worse than other Barbarian options, for the same reason that writing a thousand spells better than planar binding wouldn't make it not broken.


How come that Frostrager is good while Eye of Gruumsh is considered utter garbage?

I won't claim to be terribly enamored of Frostrager either, but the fact that it is A) half as long and B) enhances your offensive out directly rather than giving you a fallback that a cohort-tier Bard could cast seem like they provide a better place to start than the Eye does.

[Seward]

I agree with this -- too much is lost and the abilities gained do not make up for it.

Arcane archer is a full bab martial class, not a caster class. It is the equivalent of an arcane ranger. You can tell because it gives fortitude and reflex, not will save. It works with an archer chasse well, poorly with a caster chasse. If there was an actually good PRC for a volley-archer class then it might suck, but it's better than most if you aren't doing stupid skirmish-30' range single shot stupidity. (I might be a little biased against archers that don't full attack in 3.5. If you're going to fight at close range and often get only one attack, play a power attacking fighter type)

What it is for is a party whose primary caster won't share GMW with the martials (or who can't because the only primary casters are a druid and a sorcerer who didn't take the spell). I found it fairly effective in Living Greyhawk where party mixes were random, and the single level of wizard was decent (a couple guided shots and a benign transposition, a familiar for a transposition buddy to give my archer a perch or more distance in the surprise round, and pearl of power1s to bring it all back for each new fight, plus basic ranger L1 wand and wizard L1 scrolls for other arcane utility).

It also is pretty nice in epic because the enhancements advance and you never have to buy an epic bow. (which granted I only played in CRPGs, but it was quite decent there, where reality warping is limited by what the game allows for tier 1 classes)

I agree, if you took it to shoot a spell out of your bow that normally has no range, the loss of 2 caster levels isn't worth it. If you hate ranger mechanically, you will probably hate arcane archer.

Just remember to take 4 levels of fighter when qualifying so you can get weapon spec and ranged weapon mastery (piercing), because it won't give out any extra feats. The steady +1 to hit and damage every 2 levels is better than most archer feats, but that assumes you have the basic ones nailed down by level 9.

(the stupid 1/day arrow abilities are only better than dead levels by a miniscule amount, although like most abilities of that sort, you will very occasionally get a nice thing like killing that spellcaster with a sliver of hitpoints left who is fleeing behind full cover. Guided shot helps if he went a long way away - dim door won't save you from a seeking arrow, my bow outranges the spell, unless you go into a sealed box...phase arrow could help with that if it isn't a forcecage, but you sadly can't combine the two and for phase arrow to work you have to know what square they are in. Your teammates usually have to help out with that.)

[Nihilarian]

surely as a martial archer you have better options than "full bab, +4 attack/damage, and a bunch of abilities you'll never use because they're standard actions and only available 1/day anyway". Even if archery focused prcs themselves are limited, you can definitely cobble something better together for those 10 levels. IIRC it was actually Horizon Walker that was the go-to ranger prc in core only games.

[Nihilarian]

I forgot Enhance Arrows only worked on nonmagic arrows. That makes it a sidegrade at best - you lose out on +5 worth of special abilities in return for not having to pay for magic ammunition.

[Maat Mons]

Does anyone use magic ammunition in 3.5? Back in 3.0, when the enhancement bonus from a magic arrow stacked with the enhancement bonus from a magic bow, I could sort of see people wanting to do it. But now, if you have a +5 bow, firing +5 arrows gives no benefit over firing mundane arrows.

[Nihilarian]

Does anyone use magic ammunition in 3.5? Back in 3.0, when the enhancement bonus from a magic arrow stacked with the enhancement bonus from a magic bow, I could sort of see people wanting to do it. But now, if you have a +5 bow, firing +5 arrows gives no benefit over firing mundane arrows.that's why you don't have both a +5 bow and +5 arrows

+9 worth of special abilities will still stack with a +5 bow

[Lans]

That helps a little, but the fundamental problem with Fighter and Barbarian is that they just don't get high-level abilities. Martial builds involve a bunch of dips because nothing Fighter 20 gives you is worth sticking around for. Allowing you to layer other stuff on top helps, but at some point you have to reckon with the fact that a 13th level Fighter is expected to be able to fight an Ice Devil, and his class features just don't allow him to do that
.

1 I don't know if a fighter can't fight an ice devil, but there are also situations like 4 what ever elemental is CR 9 that they should be able to easily handle with out heavy optimization and equipment That this sort of thing can help with. If a Fighter/barbarian and the like could handle brute stick monsters with out sinking there wealth and other non class resources they could at least theoretically cover other situations with cash, race and level up feats.


2 It is easier to fix the base classes and allow the option to stack a prc than it is to fix a bunch of prestige classes

[Maat Mons]

Making frequent use of +1 arrows with +9-worth of special abilities sounds even less plausible than making frequent use of +5 arrows. So I reiterate my previous question, does anyone use magic ammunition in 3.5?

What are these special abilities that are worth so much to you that you're willing to constantly burn through your wealth? Bear in mind, you already put the best abilities on your bow itself. So you're really just left with the dregs to pick from when it comes time to enhance your arrows. If you've got enough sourcebooks allowed that you can find enough really solid special abilities to make it worthwhile, you almost certainly have access to Raptor Arrows, from the Magic Item Compendium, making the whole idea of buying expendable ammunition silly.

If you have a reasonable selection of books, you don't need to keep buying new arrows. And if you don't have a reasonable selection of books, I'm skeptical that you'll find abilities above and beyond what you can fit on the bow that would be worth the cost of buying magic arrows. I just don't see a situation where magic ammunition is worth it.

[Lans]

Making frequent use of +1 arrows with +9-worth of special abilities sounds even less plausible than making frequent use of +5 arrows. So I reiterate my previous question, does anyone use magic ammunition in 3.5?

What are these special abilities that are worth so much to you that you're willing to constantly burn through your wealth? Bear in mind, you already put the best abilities on your bow itself. So you're really just left with the dregs to pick from when it comes time to enhance your arrows. If you've got enough sourcebooks allowed that you can find enough really solid special abilities to make it worthwhile, you almost certainly have access to Raptor Arrows, from the Magic Item Compendium, making the whole idea of buying expendable ammunition silly.

If you have a reasonable selection of books, you don't need to keep buying new arrows. And if you don't have a reasonable selection of books, I'm skeptical that you'll find abilities above and beyond what you can fit on the bow that would be worth the cost of buying magic arrows. I just don't see a situation where magic ammunition is worth it.

From my experience it tended to be a few +1 silver holy arrows and the like to deal with DR and regeneration

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Remember, raptor arrows are still ammo, and they can be enhanced as such. As can riverine arrows, shapesand arrows, and aurorum arrows.

[noce]

I'm not saying "the Eye is bad because it isn't a Wizard", I'm saying "the Eye is bad because it does not give you the tools to deal with level-appropriate encounters, and the Wizard is good because it does". It is entirely fair to compare a Barbarian to the monsters from the Monster Manual, because those are the problems a Barbarian is expected to solve.

I really don't agree here. D&D isn't a solo game, you're expected to be in a party.
Saying that a particular PRC is bad because 1v1 it can't kill CR appropriate monsters on its own and without consumables is just wrong.

Following your reasoning, every PRC that doesn't provide its own forms of protection from evil and flight is bad, because CR appropriate monsters can fly and control you. So again, you're saying "casters are good, barbarian is bad unless he is also able to cast spells".

A barbarian PRC is good if it makes you better at what you do or if it gives you more things to do while not weakening your base. Soloing every monster manual encounter is an oversimplified benchmark standard.

[Scots Dragon]

I really don't agree here. D&D isn't a solo game, you're expected to be in a party.
Saying that a particular PRC is bad because 1v1 it can't kill CR appropriate monsters on its own and without consumables is just wrong.

Following your reasoning, every PRC that doesn't provide its own forms of protection from evil and flight is bad, because CR appropriate monsters can fly and control you. So again, you're saying "casters are good, barbarian is bad unless he is also able to cast spells".

A barbarian PRC is good if it makes you better at what you do or if it gives you more things to do while not weakening your base. Soloing every monster manual encounter is an oversimplified benchmark standard.

Honestly it's an incorrect standard for balance and is a sign that you've made something a bit more powerful than it ought to be.

[loky1109]

Making frequent use of +1 arrows with +9-worth of special abilities sounds even less plausible than making frequent use of +5 arrows. So I reiterate my previous question, does anyone use magic ammunition in 3.5?
Yes. It's great and cheap. Arrow +10 is only 4000 gp! +3 - 360 gp. +6 - 1440. Only!!!


What are these special abilities that are worth so much to you that you're willing to constantly burn through your wealth?
Bane. +5. Dispelling. Merciful. Sacred/Holy/Axiomatic/Aquan/Auran/etc.

[RandomPeasant]

1 I don't know if a fighter can't fight an ice devil, but there are also situations like 4 what ever elemental is CR 9 that they should be able to easily handle with out heavy optimization and equipment That this sort of thing can help with.

But is that the sort of thing a party needs help with? Cleaning up groups of low-level foes is simply not very difficult, even if those foes nominally represent a level-appropriate encounter. I will grant that martials do largely keep up if your idea of advancement is "fight an even bigger pile of mooks", but at some point the party will be called upon to fight a Kraken or a Demon or a Dragon.


What are these special abilities that are worth so much to you that you're willing to constantly burn through your wealth?

Having a Defending bow allows you to apply greater magic weapon on the bow to your AC while using greater magic weapon on the arrows for attack and damage. I've seen people argue that you can do the reverse, and stack the bonuses for multiple Defending arrows in a round, but I would also accept the argument that "stacks with all others" does not mean "stacks with other instances of this bonus".


Saying that a particular PRC is bad because 1v1 it can't kill CR appropriate monsters on its own and without consumables is just wrong.

If you can't kill CR appropriate monsters, you are not an appropriate character. Whether you can beat up an appropriate monster with three friends doesn't tell us anything, because team PC is supposed to win that fight, and there are three other people there to carry you. If you think our Barbarian 6/Eye of Gruumsh 7 can't beat an Ice Devil or a Ghaele, I would accept an argument by which they beat a Storm Giant or a Glabrezu instead. Alternatively, if you feel the team aspect is important, feel free to pit four comparably power characters against a Marilith or Formian Queen. And I'm not saying the character should win all these fights. But they should win some of them. Roughly half, since a 13th level character is themselves a CR 13 foe.


Following your reasoning, every PRC that doesn't provide its own forms of protection from evil and flight is bad, because CR appropriate monsters can fly and control you. So again, you're saying "casters are good, barbarian is bad unless he is also able to cast spells".

You could also provide ranged attacks, or some means of negating enemy ranged offensives. But, yes, a character who cannot deal with flying archers is not level appropriate at a level where flying archers are expected opposition. There's no guarantee that you will have a party member who can cast fly on your behalf when the time comes to fight an Astral Deva or a Mature Adult White Dragon. And again, I don't necessarily think that every character needs to provide all these capabilities. But if the Wizard is expected to provide flight, and long-distance travel, and information gathering, and protection from hostile environments, and protection from mind control, and removal of status conditions, and fight in a level-appropriate way, it is not really clear to me why the Eye doing only the last of those (and not terribly well at that) should be tolerated.

[Lans]

But is that the sort of thing a party needs help with? Cleaning up groups of low-level foes is simply not very difficult, even if those foes nominally represent a level-appropriate encounter. I will grant that martials do largely keep up if your idea of advancement is "fight an even bigger pile of mooks", but at some point the party will be called upon to fight a Kraken or a Demon or a Dragon.
.

I was using the four elementals as more of a proxy for a fairly straight up fight. Usually it would just involve shock trooper glass cannon so I went with multiple opponents. An Iron golem, 12 headed fire hydra or storm giant would also work for my example of things a 13th level fighter should be able to deal with with out having to go outside of his class features and say half his WBL



[QUOTE=RandomPeasant;25378179]
If you can't kill CR appropriate monsters, you are not an appropriate character.

. But, yes, a character who cannot deal with flying archers is not level appropriate at a level where flying archers are expected opposition. There's no guarantee that you will have a party member who can cast fly on your behalf when the time comes to fight an Astral Deva or a Mature Adult White Dragon. And again, I don't necessarily think that every character needs to provide all these capabilities. But if the Wizard is expected to provide flight, and long-distance travel, and information gathering, and protection from hostile environments, and protection from mind control, and removal of status conditions, and fight in a level-appropriate way, it is not really clear to me why the Eye doing only the last of those (and not terribly well at that) should be tolerated.I want to pushback on this, hypothetically ma character could provide enough support and utility that they are level appropriate but he incapable of defeating enemies. I say hypothetically because the classes that can do this level of support and utility can defeat enemies.

[noob]

The guidelines on encounter design indicates that a lone character should have 50% chance to defeat a CR = level creature due to it being an encounter of a CR equal to the CR of the creature + 4.

[RandomPeasant]

I was using the four elementals as more of a proxy for a fairly straight up fight. Usually it would just involve shock trooper glass cannon so I went with multiple opponents. An Iron golem, 12 headed fire hydra or storm giant would also work for my example of things a 13th level fighter should be able to deal with with out having to go outside of his class features and say half his WBL

I'll grant you that a Fighter can probably beat up on an Iron Golem reasonably well, but the Iron Golem is pretty badly over-CRed. They have a +0 to Spot and Listen, you can just not fight them if that's not something you want to do. I'm not really sure he wins the other fights. He can't really engage the hydra at ranged (at least, an Eye can't, there are ranged Fighter builds), and he's going to take a lot of damage from the breath weapon before he brings it down. The storm giant has better BAB and (probably) Strength than he does, and has a range of SLAs on top of that.


I want to pushback on this, hypothetically ma character could provide enough support and utility that they are level appropriate but he incapable of defeating enemies. I say hypothetically because the classes that can do this level of support and utility can defeat enemies.

Sure, I will grant that this sort of testing does not capture certain classes very well. I think there are things you can do to capture that better, but it is a valid objection. That said, I don't think this is particularly relevant in the case we're discussing, as the Eye is very much a solo contributor.


The guidelines on encounter design indicates that a lone character should have 50% chance to defeat a CR = level creature due to it being an encounter of a CR equal to the CR of the creature + 4.

Yes, exactly. And it's worth noting that while high level casters do sometimes overshoot that by a certain margin, casters come way the hell closer to that target than all the classes that people here call "more balanced". When compared to the challenges they are supposed to be solving, rather than some fuzzy personal metric of what characters are "supposed" to do, casters are by far the best-balanced group of classes in the game.

[Saint-Just]

I thought the consensus was that 3.5 was designed with magic items in mind, so the fact that certain classes may find themselves in situations where they are useless does not count unless magic items to cover that edge case would cost too much. Low-magic campaigns were given a lip service, but so were the campaigns on the plane of Fire; that doesn't make characters with water-based powers useless.

[Lans]

I thought the consensus was that 3.5 was designed with magic items in mind, so the fact that certain classes may find themselves in situations where they are useless does not count unless magic items to cover that edge case would cost too much. Low-magic campaigns were given a lip service, but so were the campaigns on the plane of Fire; that doesn't make characters with water-based powers useless.
Yes, but I think many classes are tooo reliant on magic item to do there job. A fighter or barbarian should be able to be a threat at high levels with a rock they picked up off the ground.

[Harrow]

Yes, but I think many classes are tooo reliant on magic item to do there job. A fighter or barbarian should be able to be a threat at high levels with a rock they picked up off the ground.

Can you really have it both ways? How I see it, you either assume lots of magic and hand out Wealth By Level at the rate the table tells you too, or you assume less magic and make Fighters and Barbarians able to do their jobs without magic items. If a melee class can get by without magic items, then getting their hands on a bunch of +numbers items will remove all challenge from the game. 3.5 assumed magic items were plentiful, and made classes (some more than others) reliant on them. Fifth edition, from what I've heard, went the other way, with bounded accuracy and a +3 sword being the kind of artifact that wars were fought over.

The problem, as I see it, is too many magic items coming down to +numbers, when they should be opening up new options. Options are more difficult to come up with than just making existing numbers bigger though, so designers gravitate towards the latter instead.

[Lans]

Can you really have it both ways? How I see it, you either assume lots of magic and hand out Wealth By Level at the rate the table tells you too, or you assume less magic and make Fighters and Barbarians able to do their jobs without magic items. If a melee class can get by without magic items, then getting their hands on a bunch of +numbers items will remove all challenge from the game. 3.5 assumed magic items were plentiful, and made classes (some more than others) reliant on them. Fifth edition, from what I've heard, went the other way, with bounded accuracy and a +3 sword being the kind of artifact that wars were fought over.

The problem, as I see it, is too many magic items coming down to +numbers, when they should be opening up new options. Options are more difficult to come up with than just making existing numbers bigger though, so designers gravitate towards the latter instead.

In a previous post I put the goal at half WBL and no level up feats as a concrete balance point. This let's significant chunk of wealth go to utility.
I'll grant you that a Fighter can probably beat up on an Iron Golem reasonably well, but the Iron Golem is pretty badly over-CRed. They have a +0 to Spot and Listen, you can just not fight them if that's not something you want to do. I'm not really sure he wins the other fights. He can't really engage the hydra at ranged (at least, an Eye can't, there are ranged Fighter builds), and he's going to take a lot of damage from the breath weapon before he brings it down. The storm giant has better BAB and (probably) Strength than he does, and has a range of SLAs on top of that. .Are we talking a fighter as is or the ' fix' that let prestige classes advance martial class abilities so we'd be essentially be discussing fighter 5 prestige class 8 with more bonus feats/ access to ACFs


. .

Sure, I will grant that this sort of testing does not capture certain classes very well. I think there are things you can do to capture that better, but it is a valid objection. That said, I don't think this is particularly relevant in the case we're discussing, as the Eye is very much a solo contributor . Sure, I mainly want to bring it up for later discussions that could occur

[Silly Name]

The problem, as I see it, is too many magic items coming down to +numbers, when they should be opening up new options. Options are more difficult to come up with than just making existing numbers bigger though, so designers gravitate towards the latter instead.

This is compounded by the fact that 3.5 is designed with +X items in mind. You don't need gigantic bonuses to your To Hit rolls, but, for example, having magic items boosting the ability score you use to hit things is definitely recommended in order to comfortably hit things, as well bonuses to AC (for example, a pit fiend has +30/+28 to hit with its attacks... A fighter in mithral plate armor and wielding a tower shield would have 25 AC at the most, which means they'd always get hit by the pit fiend except on nat 1s).

5e "solves" this by using bounded accuracy and making +X items completely optional to progression, but the basics of the math in 3.5 make applying this impossible unless you completely rewrite how monsters work.

[noob]

This is compounded by the fact that 3.5 is designed with +X items in mind. You don't need gigantic bonuses to your To Hit rolls, but, for example, having magic items boosting the ability score you use to hit things is definitely recommended in order to comfortably hit things, as well bonuses to AC (for example, a pit fiend has +30/+28 to hit with its attacks... A fighter in mithral plate armor and wielding a tower shield would have 25 AC, which means they'd always get hit by the pit fiend except on NAT 1s).

5e "solves" this by using bounded accuracy and making +X items completely optional to progression, but the basics of the math in 3.5 make applying this impossible unless you completely rewrite how monsters work.

There is something called the automatic bonus progression which does adds a +x to varied stuff in function of your level which is meant to allow using less + items.
But it is homebrew.

[Kurald Galain]

This is compounded by the fact that 3.5 is designed with +X items in mind.

It's pretty obvious that the DM can deal with an underequipped party by just using lower-CR enemies; or conversely, to deal with an overequipped party by using higher-CR enemies. This is not practically different between 3E and 5E, either.

[Gnaeus]

Can you really have it both ways? How I see it, you either assume lots of magic and hand out Wealth By Level at the rate the table tells you too, or you assume less magic and make Fighters and Barbarians able to do their jobs without magic items. If a melee class can get by without magic items, then getting their hands on a bunch of +numbers items will remove all challenge from the game. 3.5 assumed magic items were plentiful, and made classes (some more than others) reliant on them. Fifth edition, from what I've heard, went the other way, with bounded accuracy and a +3 sword being the kind of artifact that wars were fought over.

The problem, as I see it, is too many magic items coming down to +numbers, when they should be opening up new options. Options are more difficult to come up with than just making existing numbers bigger though, so designers gravitate towards the latter instead.

There are a lot of issues with that
1. One of the most common deviances from the rules is not to use WBL. Many DMs won't even think of it as breaking a rule. Or maybe they put out treasure PCs didn't find...
2. A DM following tables isn't going to give fighters what they want. Yes, you can assume that the fighter has a magic weapon. But you can roll a lot of trash before getting the magic spiked chain or long bow with the qualities you want. So yeah, you are at recommended WBL but your 2 suits of magic padded armor and the tonfa +2 aren't exactly helping you.
3. Another very common campaign situation is inability to buy what you want. Either because you are somewhere with no shops (Shipwrecked, zapped to a strange continent, etc) or because the DM thinks that having a shop in town with every magic item under 20kgp is gamist and breaks realism.

Martial classes don't just need WBL. They need very specific WBL. Casters, aside from being to break WBL far more easily, can make their own gear if it's needed, or adjust spell selection to fix holes in equipment, like by casting greater magic weapon or fly.

A wizard will get enough random scroll drops to pad his 2 spells added/level. Maybe he finds a scroll of acid arrow when he really wanted scorching ray. But he can work around that, or just hold the scroll if it isn't worth scribing. A cleric is happy with a much larger range of even totally random gear than the fighter. Both want the same armor. Cleric is likely happy with any simple weapon unless he is a melee type in which case he is no worse than a specialized fighter. He can use almost half of the wands, scrolls, staves and rods in the game compared to 0 for a barbarian. And then he can take a crafting feat if that is beneficial. And if the caster does get a casting feat, or if someone else gets one, they can cooperate in crafting, making it more likely everyone gets the gear they want. An Eye of Grummsh is completely shut out of that game unless it's to hope that some of his teammates made more team oriented characters than he did and then (being evil) that they are willing to make gear for him when he can't reciprocate.

[Silly Name]

It's pretty obvious that the DM can deal with an underequipped party by just using lower-CR enemies; or conversely, to deal with an overequipped party by using higher-CR enemies. This is not practically different between 3E and 5E, either.

I was mostly talking about the system expectations. Both systems expect a party to be able to take on appropriate CR challenges, but only one expects the PCs to be able to do so thanks to possessing +X items.

Again, if we look at the 3.5 Pit Fiend, it's obvious even the best mundane defensive measures aren't good enough, and you need to have some magical +X to your AC to face against it. The same monster in 5e has +14 to hit, so a PC in full plate + shield + Defense fighting style has 22 AC. They're still going to get hit more than half the time, but "the enemy hits on a 8 and higher" is better odds than "the enemy always hits except on Nat 1s".

And the fiend's AC changes too - 3.5's Pit Fiend has AC 40 at CR 20: a full BAB character with, let's say, +6 STR/DEX has a +26 to hit, and needs to roll a 14 to hit that AC (and higher for iteratives), while in 5e the Pit Fiend has AC 19 at CR 20: any level 20 character with +5 STR/DEX has +11 to hit, so they only need an 8 (and if they have Extra Attack, their accuracy on iteratives doesn't get worse).

5e also clearly expects its PCs to obtain magic items, by all means, but numerical bonuses aren't considered strictly necessary the same way they are in 3.5.

[RandomPeasant]

Yes, but I think many classes are tooo reliant on magic item to do there job. A fighter or barbarian should be able to be a threat at high levels with a rock they picked up off the ground.

Reliance on magic items is a subjective preference. I happen to agree that classes should function reasonably well without them (as casters do), but by the rules you are expected to get them. The issue isn't that the Fighter needs magic items, it's that he needs magic items he can't really afford by WBL tables at mid levels. Getting magic gear that is even as good as casters can get for free thanks to greater magic weapon and greater magic vestment chews up a big chunk of money, and that doesn't even begin to cover things like "magic back-up weapon" or "stat boosters" or "any utility items".


Are we talking a fighter as is or the ' fix' that let prestige classes advance martial class abilities so we'd be essentially be discussing fighter 5 prestige class 8 with more bonus feats/ access to ACFs

I don't think it matters terribly much. My expectation is that we would be talking about a relatively simple build, as I think a part of a well-balanced class is being playable without the kinds of tortured "builds" that are common in CharOp discussions. Wizard 20 isn't ideal, but it is able to handle level-appropriate challenges, as is Wizard 10/Some PrC 10 (for full casting PrCs). I am sure there is an amount of optimization you can do that allows an Ubercharger to nuke stock enemies, but at that level of optimization you aren't going to be fighting stock enemies, so I don't care.

[Seward]

surely as a martial archer you have better options than "full bab, +4 attack/damage, and a bunch of abilities you'll never use because they're standard actions and only available 1/day anyway".

Actually you don't. Archer support is limited past about level 8 (for fighter class, level 12 still provides a bit of a bump), even free bonus feats don't help that much once you've got ranged weapon mastery and maybe improved crit and one of guided shot or improved precise shot.

And those standard action abilities do get use, they get used in the surprise round, when you can't volley-shoot anyway. As a high perception character (spot and listen are in the AA wheelhouse, with 4 skill points a level even a 6 int half-orc can keep up with them) you should start a lot of fights in the surprise round, either initiated by you, or you noticed the threat and got to act. They're not great abilities, but they're not nothing, which is what you get in every other base class past level 11 ranger or 12 fighter (or past about level 2 in any of the PRC's...the only worthwhile PRCs for a volley archer are maybe 2 levels of OOTBI for close combat shot, or 2 levels of exotic weapon master if you use an exotic bow for the equivalent "no aoo in melee" ability, maybe a second level to boost your crit multiplier with that exotic weapon). Every single so-called archer prc assumes you are within 30' and sneak-attacking instead of doing volley archery, or they require wasted feats to get an extremely minor benefit (like cragtop archer).

So your choices to be a martial archer are base classes, getting a small bump if you pay an extra feat to use an exotic weapon (but that will lock you out of other prc's and sometimes feats - woodland archer is bow only, arcane archer is longbow or shortbow weapon focus, pious templar can be used for a longbow or crossbow deity but no deity has an exotic favored weapon) or getting the equivalent of weapon focus/weapon spec/ranged weapon mastery and greater weapon focus over the course of 9 levels via arcane archer. Also a wood elf makes a pretty good archer, and the other elves aren't terrible, except Grey Elf, with half-elf providing better multiclass options prior to entry. Grey elves shouldn't be martials unless they're a crossbow-sniper-type build, which excludes arcane archer.



reliance on magic weapons


Complaining about a martial needing to have gear at appropriate WBL levels is like complaining a wizard can't compete without using spell slots past his L1 and cantrips. The game is designed from the ground up for you to be decked out from head to toe in magic items by the second half of the game, and even as you enter the second quarter (L6-7) you are assumed to have weapons that can handle magic, cold iron, silver, adamantine DR and also to probably have a +1 resistance item, a +2 strength item (or maybe dex for archers) and quite often a miscellaneous magic item like a handy haversack or quiver of ehlonna or mount barding or something. Heavy armor users might not have +1 armor, but the light infantry will usually have their mithril chain shirt+1 by then (about 2k in WBL will be spent on armor class in the body slot. More might be spent on a shield, or a +1 ring of protection or similar)

If you want a game without gear, all martial classes need automatic armor class, to-hit, hitpoint and damage bumps that simulate what such gear provides, and also saving throw bumps that keep up with typical purchase of resistance items, constitution item and dex item a typical martial will buy as he levels from 1-20. Just make them enhancement bonuses to any weapon they use, or to their appropriate attributes, or resistance bonuses to saves and finding magic gear that simulates it won't break anything - it will at best give a temporary advantage but would exist mostly for non-martials to pretend they are martials for a while when they are buffed with spells. Basically the opposite of how the game is actually designed.

If you take away gear, you make the only folks with level-appropriate stats casters, and them only when they've burned resources to cast the equivalent spells, and only while those spells are running. You basically encourage the 5 minute adventuring day. Just let your martials buy or commission to get crated the gear they need, and your games will go smoother. If you try to fight that, you're wrestling with the entire game system, not just a poorly designed class or prc.



magic ammo in 3.5


The only time you see magic ammo is on minions who can't afford a proper bow, and divide the cost between them of the 50 arrows that get an equivalent enchantment. If you find such ammo after slaughtering the minions, you will fire it away happily, but not count on finding more.

Mostly, you see flame arrow and keen edge cast on ammunition, or sometimes GMW if there is only one GMW spell and several potential archers (this is sometimes done when nobody is a dedicated archer, so they only have masterwork bows, but the martials don't want to be useless if they encounter a flying, resistant foe like a Gargoyle or some dragons)

So most of the time, the arcane archer is firing mundane ammo and getting the full benefit of his class feature, past the +1 on his bow that he got back at level 3-4 to fight stuff with DR/magic. Although in actual play, it let me have a "Fatigue bow" (a lower strength composite bow for fatigue or strength damage situations to avoid the -2 to hit for pulling his usual bow) and an aquatic bow that didn't cost much but were still pretty effective, neither were even paying the 300gp for masterwork. All stored in the extra bow slots provided by a Quiver of Ehlonna of course.

[Gnaeus]

Complaining about a martial needing to have gear at appropriate WBL levels is like complaining a wizard can't compete without using spell slots past his L1 and cantrips. The game is designed from the ground up for you to be decked out from head to toe in magic items by the second half of the game, and peven as you enter the second quarter (L6-7) you are assumed to have weapons that can handle magic, cold iron, silver, adamantine DR and also to probably have a +1 resistance item, a +2 strength item (or maybe dex for archers) and quite often a miscellaneous magic item like a handy haversack or quiver of ehlonna or mount barding or something. Heavy armor users might not have +1 armor, but the light infantry will usually have their mithril chain shirt+1 by then (about 2k in WBL will be spent on armor class in the body slot. More might be spent on a shield, or a +1 ring of protection or similar)

If you want a game without gear, all martial classes need automatic armor class, to-hit, hitpoint and damage bumps that simulate what such gear provides, and also saving throw bumps that keep up with typical purchase of resistance items, constitution item and dex item a typical martial will buy as he levels from 1-20. Just make them enhancement bonuses to any weapon they use, or to their appropriate attributes, or resistance bonuses to saves and finding magic gear that simulates it won't break anything - it will at best give a temporary advantage but would exist mostly for non-martials to pretend they are martials for a while when they are buffed with spells. Basically the opposite of how the game is actually designed.

If you take away gear, you make the only folks with level-appropriate stats casters, and them only when they've burned resources to cast the equivalent spells, and only while those spells are running. You basically encourage the 5 minute adventuring day. Just let your martials buy or commission to get crated the gear they need, and your games will go smoother. If you try to fight that, you're wrestling with the entire game system, not just a poorly designed class or prc. .

It is possible to be both correct and entirely irrelevant. I am not encouraging games to not give WBL. Games just don't. I've been in published games, plural, where all your gear gets taken. I've been in published campaigns, plural, where ability to buy is restricted for big chunks of the campaign. And I've been in homebrew games where both of those things happened, as well as no magic mart games, and below WBL games. I've seen disjunction used. In exactly one of those games we got a heads up at chargen. In exactly 0 of them did the DM or published adventure suddenly start using automatic bonus progression.

So, yeah, don't run your game like that. But if your class can't handle games like that, it's a bad class. Any character that relies on gear they can't make, beyond basics that can be acquired quickly off a random item table from stuff you fight, is a bad character. How characters perform in theory land is less relevant than how they perform in play. And in play, characters without WBL in picked gear is a thing that can happen.

[noce]

While I agree that 3.5e has game balance issues, I think this is just tangentially relevant to the thread.

Most players know about tier system, linear fighter quadratic wizard argument, half charged wands monk, and the like.
I'd take for given the fact that every mundane is heavily reliant on gear and buffs and utility spells from fellow party members, I agree that this is a fact and I agree that it's not well balanced.
Still, in the 3.5e set of rules, some melee classes are well designed while others lack severely. At the same time, some caster classes are underwhelming at what they do, despite the fact that they're still better than every mundane.

For example, in a game where equipment is stolen from you, a dragon shaman who specialized in breath weapon could be more effective than a fighter that invested heavily in his weapon of choice, but this doesn't make a dragon shaman better than a fighter.

Maybe we should evaluate classes assuming normal circumstances, and avoiding to come to the simplicistic conclusion that a given class is bad if it doesn't have a spell list.

[RandomPeasant]

But the question then becomes, what are "normal circumstances"? I agree that Gnaeus probably overstates the impact of gear-dependence, but there are a great many variables in playstyle that impact character power. Consider, for instance, the question of non-combat or utility abilities. Martials, even generally-effective ones like the Warblade, are pretty much hosed there, as they're lucky to get even a handful of options beyond whatever skills they have. Even classes like the Binder or Incarnate do pretty poorly, as there are very few things other than true casters that get tools to compete with even 5th level spells like teleport and raise dead. So how we define the expected level of utility has a great impact on our conclusions about character power.

[Seward]

There's no guarantee that you will have a party member who can cast fly on your behalf when the time comes to fight an Astral Deva or a Mature Adult White Dragon.

This can be true even with an iconic party. Mialee might not have prepped fly today, or already cast it, and Jozan may have taken freedom of movement instead of air walk.

In organized play (where party composition was kind of random) it was typical for martials to have a few potions for unbalanced parties (starting with everybody, martial and otherwise, carrying a healing potion not in an extradimensional space for somebody else to use on them when bleeding out, and everybody, no matter what the build, buying a wand of CLW or equivalent to pass to somebody who can use it to help with inbetween combat healing). For your average melee grunt you picked up a silver and cold iron weapon at character creation, using ammunition or cheap things like a light silver weapon+cold iron spear if you were in a cash crunch. After covering your healing obligations you'd pick up a potion of bless weapon (for melees, it is magic DR penetration AND dr Good penetration. Archers get magic weapon and align weapon potions, and that's costlier). You'd also upgrade your silver and cold iron options to something masterwork you could power attack with, or was your favored weapon. Around about level 5 you'd invest in adamantine (although in Living Greyhawk you needed access, so sometimes a non-martial would pick up something like an adamantine mace and pass it to a martial who was unlucky with access at start of adventure). Fly potions were common on everybody martial but archers, who finally caught up after falling behind spending consumable cash on align weapon potions, again around level 5-6 (before level 6, fullbab+bow or javelin was adequate for fliers even with a 12 dex and no feat investment. After level 6, you did so little damage at range it was pointless if you didn't invest in feats+more than a masterwork bow)

Depending on your particular weaknesses you might have other stuff. Heavily armored dudes would sometimes pick up a scroll of water walk before an ocean trip and pass it to the party member who could cast it. A light infantry who relies on charging would sometimes do something similar with a scroll of air walk before entering an awkward environment like a swamp, or lava field.

Because of access rules, and also player system mastery rules (a martial at the table who did none of this wasn't uncommon) primary casters usually reserved some spells known or slots to cover party buffs, and to ease the consumable burn on martials, who by level 5 WOULD have a potion of flight, but would much rather have you cast obscuring mist and make those flying archers come to you and melee in the fog, or save them 700gp and an action casting it on you so you could fly out and do your job drawing fire as heavy infantry.

To be successful, we realized it was a team game, but to pull your weight, you were expected to take care of yourself in an emergency (that white dragon encounter could have the arcanist bleeding out after one pass, and the divine caster trying to wake him up before the breath weapon recharged, and nobody is fighting the monster itself unless you suck it up, drink that fly potion and go out after it).

Perhaps mildly ironically if your party mix was mostly casters, you got into trouble with slot-burn. Simulating martials with magic burns spell slots, especially high level spell slots, at a ferocious rate. Not a problem in the sort of adventure where you are traveling and maybe have one big fight a day. A big problem in an adventure like Rise of the Spider Queen, where you were hitting the old Fire Giant King's lair (from GDQ, 1st edition) packed with drow, demons, high level traps, scouts that ambush you in your sleep with widened silence fields, etc. To clear it you were doing something like 10 EL appropriate encounters, many of which would respond to attack and support each other, and resting, as noted, was risky unless you teleported home between assaults (we did that one with a 6 arcane party, all primary casters, at level 16. It was exciting, we just managed in one push. And we were all tapped at the end of it). In such adventures, that's when the primary casters actually bust out their own consumables, usually leftover scrolls from when they were lower level, occasionally something more pricey like a wand. Usually also the most martial of the primary casters would receive all the long running buffs, to simulate having a fighter along and not waste resources on weaker fights.

[Silly Name]

For the sake of discussion, "normal circumstances" is what can be reasonably assumed to have been the designers' intent.

That is to say, low-to-mid optimisation levels, WBL being followed (not religiously, mind you, but still applied), combat being a large part of the game but not the only one, and that the game is played cooperatively between the characters. That is not to say that excessive focus on a single thing (i.e., one-trick ponies) isn't bad for a base class, but that stuff like "Fighters can't cast Restoration", for example, isn't an actual issue with the class, because it's expected that someone in the party is able to fix status effects.

Classes should be evaluated by their ability to perform their stated role and to generally contribute to a party.

[Kurald Galain]

TIn organized play (where party composition was kind of random) it was typical for martials to have a few potions for unbalanced parties (starting with everybody, martial and otherwise, carrying a healing potion not in an extradimensional space for somebody else to use on them when bleeding out, and everybody, no matter what the build, buying a wand of CLW or equivalent to pass to somebody who can use it to help with inbetween combat healing).

Can confirm, Pathfinder Society works similar to this.

[Seward]

Can confirm, Pathfinder Society works similar to this.

Pathfinder society explicitly recognized the problem and let you buy consumables (and other items) of up to 750gp with favors instead of cash. That really helped, to the point where I'd forgotten what a drain consumables were in Living Greyhawk, as in that game WBL punished you permanently for any consumable you ever used (ditto things like spellbooks, although it allowed item creation which let the casters at least catch up).

[Gnaeus]

.For example, in a game where equipment is stolen from you, a dragon shaman who specialized in breath weapon could be more effective than a fighter that invested heavily in his weapon of choice, but this doesn't make a dragon shaman better than a fighter.

Maybe we should evaluate classes assuming normal circumstances, and avoiding to come to the simplicistic conclusion that a given class is bad if it doesn't have a spell list.

Yes, it absolutely does. And it is.

IME, a game with exactly WBL, magic marts, and the consistent ability to use those things throughout the campaign is not a normal circumstance. Or at least not normal enough to be assumed as a default.

And there are non caster classes who do ok without picked gear. Curiously, they are pretty much all the T3 martials. ToB classes. Wild shape ranger. Dragonfire Adept. If you need the DM or other PCs to hand you a specific set of gear, you aren't a PC, you are a charity case.


For the sake of discussion, "normal circumstances" is what can be reasonably assumed to have been the designers' intent.

I've seen way too many first party campaigns/adventures that strip gear for me to agree that was designers intent. There are also way too many regions of published campaigns where going to a store is highly unlikely.

But even if it were, unless theory crafting, designer intent is less relevant than game as played.

[Seward]

but that stuff like "Fighters can't cast Restoration", for example, isn't an actual issue with the class, because it's expected that someone in the party is able to fix status effects.


That somebody might be "put him on my mount till we ride back to town and find a cleric to pay". Even balanced parties have the wrong guy take the level drain or whatever sometimes, and many balanced parties have a divine caster role that doesn't have restoration (druid say) or doesn't have it in spells prepped/spells known and doesn't have a 800gp scroll handy (or used it on the guy whose con was reduced to 1 by the dread wraith, and didn't have an extra for his own 4 levels of drain from the spectres).

Which is another reason GM's need to remember that NPC populations and spellcasting services are ALSO just as assumed as WBL. If you put the party somewhere that such resources don't exist or are excessively hard to access (as in, all the clerics work for Iuz the Evil and do an alignment check before casting a heal that the rebel PC's can't pass) you need to either increase the magic mart for consumables (without counting such consumables against WBL when placing loot) or place a ton of them as loot (the way Red Hand of Doom had a bazillion healing potions on typical opponents PC's fought....PCs often got mauled but could usually continue their objectives without having to rest for 3 days or run to Brindle or empty out all their CLW wands).


If you need the DM or other PCs to hand you a specific set of gear, you aren't a PC, you are a charity case.

Purchasing from a merchant or commissioning a caster to create an item isn't a charity case, any more than buying an automobile with money you earned makes you a charity case. But it is bull**** for a campaign to expect you to have an automobile by a certain point and then prevent you from buying one, only allowing people with superspeed-inborn powers to move around at machine-speeds.

That is a problem with the GM, not with the game system. If you don't want people buying automobiles, then don't require them in play, or provide them as loot before they're needed. As for designer intent, most published adventures have a paragraph at the beginning saying "tailor the loot to the party". Again picking RHOD as an example, they frontload a lot of loot because crafting/purchase opportunities are limited and some encounters are really dangerous if a party is undergeared that come up when you may have no opportunity to shop at all, and say "if nobody uses a bastard sword, turn this into something else appropriate", basically. What NPC casters do exist are pretty cooperative on custom-crafting potions, scrolls and even, given a few days to work uninterrupted, basic items like resistance cloaks or attribute enhancement items. Although granted it helps that the PC's are swimming in wealth if they loot all the bodies they find and somehow get it all back to a population center, but again, those population centers are preparing for war and a lot of that stuff just gets issued to soldiers or sits in a warehouse as the local economy is messed up due to the crisis. So getting caster time and attention is a sign of their own importance to the overall effort, more than any gp-equivalent of loot they might be able to provide.

There are, as noted, PRC's and base classes that do better when WBL isn't available or is erratic. If the GM is up front about it being that kind of campaign, then he should be warning a PC choosing a bad class for that situation that he will struggle. Some players will want to stick with their choice anyway but shouldn't then complain if they struggle. (I played a crafting wizard in a campaign where there was almost no downtime, and I was given fair warning by the GM. It was a roleplay decision on my part and I was ok with mostly living off level-up spells in spellbook and only getting to actually craft maybe 1-2 times in the campaign, and saved resources to do so, and crafted stuff for the whole party when I got that time).

[Gnaeus]

).
Which is another reason GM's need to remember that NPC populations and spellcasting services are ALSO just as assumed as WBL. If you put the party somewhere that such resources don't exist or are excessively hard to access (as in, all the clerics work for Iuz the Evil and do an alignment check before casting a heal that the rebel PC's can't pass) you need to either increase the magic mart for consumables (without counting such consumables against WBL when placing loot) or place a ton of them as loot (the way Red Hand of Doom had a bazillion healing potions on typical opponents PC's fought....PCs often got mauled but could usually continue their objectives without having to rest for 3 days or run to Brindle or empty out all their CLW wands).

What DMs ought to do, and what they do, are not the same thing. If they do this, great. If they don't, do you plan to be ineffective or walk out of the game? Because those are your options if your character can't function without WBL. I agree with your moral statement on what they should remember. It just doesn't matter at all


.
That is a problem with the GM, not with the game system. If you don't want people buying automobiles, then don't require them in play, or provide them as loot before they're needed.

I didn't say it was a problem with the game system. It's a thread about classes you want to like but which are mechanically bad. A class that can't function in a range of play environment is mechanically bad. I agree, I would absolutely give a warning about non valid concepts. I agree it's good practice. But again, what should happen at a perfect table doesn't matter. If you are worried about your class, you are a player. You can gripe about it or flip the table and walk. (And while I can see justification for it, I think "I'm Leaving now" is not a common response to "I don't allow magic mart") I swear I know some otherwise sane DMs who just can't get over the idea of having you walk into the town magic shop and getting to describe in their best gnome wizard accent the dozen items they have generously allowed you to buy.

[Seward]

I didn't say it was a problem with the game system. It's a thread about classes you want to like but which are mechanically bad. A class that can't function in a range of play environment is mechanically bad.

I fundamentally disagree with that. Just about any class can be screwed by the play environment. Tier 1s get screwed if you just get a lot of encounters per day, and encounters that tend to be reactive, instead of proactive. Prep casters suck under those environments, spont casters do better till they run dry. What often happens is those guys turn into buff-bots for the martials. (see every D&D CRPG ever written for an example of this. Your best protagonist is almost always a martial, with your companions providing support magic. While a CRPG will often let you rest at will, it is boring to do that after every 3 fights, where your martial protagonist can clear a couple-three maps without needing to rest and rarely even needing consumables).

Archers are screwed in underwater adventures, as are a variety of other martial builds that don't involve a swim speed and piercing weapons. Folks who are covered in armor and weapons tend to suck in social campaigns, or stealth oriented campaigns. All of this can be overcome, and yes, some classes are better at faking being effective in many campaigns, but the solution isn't to only play prep casters with large spell lists.

The solution is to find out what you are getting into before you design the character, and choose a character concept appropriate to the environment. You might find that a despised class like, say, Arcane Archer does quite well in one setting and is just a weak martial archer in another, where it is routine for the party sorcerer to take GMW at level 8 and use his rod of chain spell to buff the whole party.

To me a flawed class is one that doesn't do what it is advertised to do, where another class does it better regardless of setting. Like ninja, which is in every way inferior to a rogue with maybe a 1 level dip in an arcane class. Or Warlock, which could have been kind of cool except that there is no way to organize the invocations either along thematic or even "generally useful" lines because the list of invocations is so sparse, and it was never expanded. (see Pathfinder Witch class for a better design of the same idea. The hexes aren't quite "at will" but they are "one per target per day" which on enemies is often close enough, and it has some adept-style spellcasting to back it up).


And while I can see justification for it, I think "I'm Leaving now" is not a common response to "I don't allow magic mart")

No, the common response is "how do I spend my wealth then? Can I commission magic items from NPCs? Or give my wealth and maybe xp to a party crafter and have them make what I need?" and if the answer isn't satisfactory and you still want to play a martial, you ask about the opposition and pick stuff they're likely to use as gear and find as loot in your build design.

For campaigns that start at level 1, the primary casters are often screwed by lack of a magic mart. D&D assumes you will be buying L1 scrolls to supplement spell slots, and if there is no market and scrolls/wands don't drop as loot they spend the adventure plinking with a crossbow and feeling useless. Since many campaigns end well before level 6 that start at level 1, this is sometimes their whole play experience (where the guy who functions regardless of loot is the high strength raging barbarian who can kill anything with one swipe of a zero gp club)

[Kurald Galain]

I'd say that charop forums overstate how much you actually "need" certain items. Like, a level-5 martial doesn't need an adamantine weapon. Sure, he benefits from an adamantine weapon, and he won't be the MVP against a creature with DR/adamantine, but he can cope. Therefore, it is not a requirement for DMs to allow the PCs to purchase exactly what kind of adamantine weapon they want, always and everywhere.

Likewise, it is not a requirement for (e.g.) a fighter to find a good magical weapon of exactly the type he took Weapon Specialization for. I'm not saying the fighter is a strong class, but dealing 2 less damage? Yeah, he can cope with that.

Now flight items against a flying enemy, that's something you'd actually need; because a str-based martial just can't use dex-based archery well. Thankfully most DMs (in my experience) don't use "kiting" strategies on their enemies, but characters should really be able to mechanically cope with kiting.

[Gnaeus]

I fundamentally disagree with that. Just about any class can be screwed by the play environment. Tier 1s get screwed if you just get a lot of encounters per day, and encounters that tend to be reactive, instead of proactive. Prep casters suck under those environments, spont casters do better till they run dry. What often happens is those guys turn into buff-bots for the martials. (see every D&D CRPG ever written for an example of this. Your best protagonist is almost always a martial, with your companions providing support magic. While a CRPG will often let you rest at will, it is boring to do that after every 3 fights, where your martial protagonist can clear a couple-three maps without needing to rest and rarely even needing consumables).

Archers are screwed in underwater adventures, as are a variety of other martial builds that don't involve a swim speed and piercing weapons. Folks who are covered in armor and weapons tend to suck in social campaigns, or stealth oriented campaigns. All of this can be overcome, and yes, some classes are better at faking being effective in many campaigns, but the solution isn't to only play prep casters with large spell lists.

The solution is to find out what you are getting into before you design the character, and choose a character concept appropriate to the environment. You might find that a despised class like, say, Arcane Archer does quite well in one setting and is just a weak martial archer in another, where it is routine for the party sorcerer to take GMW at level 8 and use his rod of chain spell to buff the whole party.

To me a flawed class is one that doesn't do what it is advertised to do, where another class does it better regardless of setting. Like ninja, which is in every way inferior to a rogue with maybe a 1 level dip in an arcane class. Or Warlock, which could have been kind of cool except that there is no way to organize the invocations either along thematic or even "generally useful" lines because the list of invocations is so sparse, and it was never expanded. (see Pathfinder Witch class for a better design of the same idea. The hexes aren't quite "at will" but they are "one per target per day" which on enemies is often close enough, and it has some adept-style spellcasting to back it up).

The difference between this post and your previous posts is that in your earlier posts your answers were irrelevant but true. This post is relevant but false.

If we are discussing RAW, not what happens, why are we bringing up encounters per day? There's a chart for that.

But irrelevant. Casters can cope with any number of encounters better than martials for at least 2/3 of game, for some classes all game. If you can't function underwater, that's pretty heinous. Martials do not make particularly good protagonists. Basically this was one bad opinion bolstered by worse examples.

[Seward]

I'd say that charop forums overstate how much you actually "need" certain items. Like, a level-5 martial doesn't need an adamantine weapon.

If he does less than 10 damage per hit, he needs to be able to penetrate any kind of DR. Some martials rely on lots of attacks, rather than one big attack. This is especially true of anybody relying on precision damage, since a lot of dr/adamantine guys are ALSO immune to their extra precision damage. This number goes up (damage/hit needed to be ok with ignoring DR limits) as common DR rises from 5 to 10 to 15 and as hitpoints on monsters explode, so even the power-attack-dudes need their iteratives to hit to do meaningful damage.

Your 2h-power attack-high-strength guy can get by without dr-penetrating stuff, and if he's also a weapon spec/weapon mastery guy his higher attack mod and damage from preferred weapon makes it superior to always trying to pull the right weapon out of the golfbag.

TWF types tend to lean more on quickdraw and multiple weapons carried, prefering to do 60% of their max damage by choosing a masterwork weapon instead of their best blades, instead of zero damage or so little as to be ignored.

Archers of course have little trouble with material DR, even if adamantine is expensive, as you can put that on the ammunition. They struggle more with dr/blunt and will often switch to melee if facing something like a lich or a clay golem.




Likewise, it is not a requirement for (e.g.) a fighter to find a good magical weapon of exactly the type he took Weapon Specialization for. I'm not saying the fighter is a strong class, but dealing 2 less damage? Yeah, he can cope with that.

It is a similar issue to depriving rogues of anybody their precision damage ever works on. If that's your campaign, warn your rogue that all his opponents will be undead and plants before game starts, so maybe he can take ACFs or a different skillmonkey class to remain relevant. If you deprive a martial of his feats routinely, it's just the same **** move as routinely level draining spellcasters before they get any spells off, or never ever letting them rest or letting somebody pick all fire spells and having all enemies be fire resistant or immune. Occasional DR <not his favored weapon> is usually plenty to make it clear that something like weapon spec isn't always the perfect choice.