dr 310 pugilist

[xyamius]

Attempting to understand this variant because it is either way over powered or vague.

The Fighter:Pugilist variant. from DR 310. Has a fighter feat called: Shake it off. That says it develops non lethal damage only.

It sounds like all damage it takes is now non lethal. Is that correct? For a fighter first level feat? Minus the healing for regeneration it beats out a troll. Then with Iron jaw which isn't damage reduction but generic non lethal subtraction after 2 levels it's pretty much one of the most busted 2 level classes to dip.

So i am correct that shake it off makes the fighter auto convert all damage to non lethal? Or am i missing something?

[InvisibleBison]

As I see it, there are two ways to understand Shake It Off. The process-oriented interpretation is to say "develop" isn't a defined rules term, so the ability does nothing. The results-oriented interpretation is to say that converting all damage into non-lethal damage is ridiculously OP, so instead the ability does something else, with the details of what "something else" is depending on the desired balance level of the game you're running.

[Troacctid]

You're probably missing the errata for it from three issues later.

In issue #310, “Specialist Fighters” includes the pugilist class that can take the “shake it off” ability. The description of this ability accidentally omitted a key phrase. It should read, “The pugilist develops fast healing 1 that applies only to nonlethal damage. This ability also reduces the duration of all stunning effects by 1 round. The pugilist can take this ability multiple times; its effects stack.”

[xyamius]

thank you on that one. DR 313 pg 8 is a ton of help. So adding in Troll Blooded to a build with pugilist makes for a fun build due to the Regeneration 1 drops everything except fire and acid to non lethal and then the pugilist can then do the fast healing to heal up if it wants to even faster. So not a bad feat combo and it's not as broken as originally thought.

The down side is the draw backs from Troll Blooded of course but it's just an example.

[Ruethgar]

Daylight Adaptation can potentially nix those drawbacks. Though Troll Blooded is not a type of creature, if you have light blindness or weakness from say a mere +1 LA template like Shadow Walker taken as a template class to give you 1/3 levels to buy it off as well as a free Shuffle-able Light Armor Proficiency feat to get said Daylight Adaptation. If you really want to cheese it, Bloodline levels are free at ECL 0, so Bloodline 2/Shadow Walker 1(buy off for 0xp as you are ECL 1-1*1000)/Bloodline 1/Pugilist 1. Also note that technically you can trade out Endurance or Improved Unarmed Strike for Shake it Off or Iron Jaw.