Inevitability
2023-09-23, 06:01 AM
Inspired by the current Iron Chef round (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?659069-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-in-the-Playground-CXXVIII), I thought I'd try my hand at a fix to the terrible Vengeance Knight from Champions of Ruin.
For those wondering what's so awful about it: it's a fighter-targeted class that fixes none of the issues of being a fighter, it locks you into the awful fighting style that is heavy armor shield-bashing sword-and-board (literal sword and board; the class demands weapon focus with a sword), it has surprisingly harsh prerequisites, and there's a weird skill check theme running throughout despite the class giving 2 + int skill points and being targeted at fighters. Worse, it suffers from 3.5 prestige class syndrome in that its final real new class feature is gained at level 4: almost everything after that is a quantitative improvement on things you already have. You'd be better off taking ten levels of fighter even if you were committed to the sword-and-board thing, which given the abysmal design of the fighter is saying something.
This fix is intended to keep the 'soul' of the class intact: the final product will be a heavily armored shield-using bounty hunter with some skill at mounted combat. The idea of a heavily armored debt collector with a bit of an anti-arcane and skillful thread running through isn't an uninteresting one; the current design just botches that. The intended power level is somewhere around tier 4, rather than the low tier 5 that the class currently seems to hover around.
Vengeance Knight
Prerequisites:
Base Attack Bonus: +5
Skills: Intimidate 6 ranks, Gather Information or Survival 4 ranks
Feats: Improved Shield Bash, Weapon Focus (any melee)
Special: Must be an agent in good standing of the Knights of the Shield.
Special: Must be proficient with heavy armor and heavy shields.
The easiest single-class entry is of course fighter, who gets full BAB, free bonus feats, and gets both entry skills (if accessing Gather Information via Skilled City-Dweller). Weapon Focus has been unrestricted for the sake of greater build variety, and Improved Shield Bash has been made a prerequisite instead of a class feature so we can delve into the good shield combat feats slightly sooner. The alignment prereq is removed in favor of a slightly more permissible fluff-based one.
I toyed with the idea of requiring Heavy Armor Optimization to enter, but the +4 BAB makes that work awkwardly as a prerequisite, and I wanted to keep it possible for most characters to enter as their 6th character level.
Class Features
Hit Die: d12
Skills: 4 + int (minimum 1)
Class skills: Balance (DEX), Climb (STR), Craft (INT), Diplomacy (CHA), Gather Information (CHA), Handle Animal (CHA), Intimidate (CHA), Jump (STR), Knowledge (Local) (INT), Listen (WIS), Ride (DEX), Sense Motive (WIS), Spot (WIS), Survival (WIS)
Straightforward hit die and skill bumps; we're tough-as-nails and supposed to have more depth than your average fighter, so let's have our basic chassis reflect that.
The skill list is expanded a bit. Balance lets you get a bit more use out of ACP reduction (in addition to being useful for a melee warrior), Handle Animal is added to complement the class's mounted subtheme. Listen is there because c'mon, why give a class Spot but not Listen anyway? Lastly, Survival lets our bounty hunter actually track the people he's supposed to kill. Search is removed to prevent the list from growing all too bloated.
Table: The Vengeance Knight
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
1st+1+2+0+2Armor Training (Basic), Bringer of Vengeance +2
2nd+2+3+0+3Shield Training (Basic)
3rd+3+3+1+3Counterstrike (Damage), Bringer of Vengeance +3
4th+4+4+1+4Armor Training (Advanced), Arcane Backlash
5th+5+4+1+4Bringer of Vengeance +4
6th+6+5+2+5Counterstrike (Opposition), Shield Training (Expert)
7th+7+5+2+5Armor Training (Expert), Bringer of Vengeance +5
8th+8+6+2+6Adamantine Tombstone
9th+9+6+3+6Counterstrike (Disobedience), Bringer of Vengeance +6
10th+10+7+3+7Armor Training (Master), Armored Unity
Armor Training
You reduce the armor check penalty of any heavy armor you wear by 3. In addition, you can sleep in heavy armor without becoming fatigued, and when you don armor, you may do so as if you had assistance.
At level 4, you ignore the movement penalty caused by heavy armor, but not by medium or heavy encumbrance, and the armor check penalty reduction increases to 5.
At level 7, you gain proficiency with one exotic heavy armor of your choice.
At level 10, your armor bonus to AC (including any enhancement bonus) also applies to your touch AC.
The benefits are a bit less conditional than they are on the base class, and go a bit further: armor to touch AC is already an ability that martials can acquire at high levels, and it seemed like a fine capstone for this feature.
Exotic Heavy Armor proficiency was granted because Vengeance Knight's ACP reduction is so massive that it almost serves as proficiency all by itself: Mithral exotic armors rarely have more than +5 ACP, so a nonproficient vengeance knight could wear them without penalty already. This merely makes it official.
Bringer of Vengeance (Ex)
Your masters make regular use of your service to hunt down dissenters, would-be heroes, or other enemies of the organization. Through mundane and magical communication channels, you periodically receive information on creatures to hunt down, usually including their name (or alias), their race and appearance, a brief description of their abilities, their crimes against the Knights, and the fate to be visited upon them (which is usually, but not always, death).
Under normal circumstances, your masters assign you a number of Vengeance Targets no greater than one-half your Vengeance Knight level, rounded up. Whenever you exact vengeance on such a foe, you gain temporary HP equal to twice your class level and a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls: the temporary HP and attack bonus disappear after 24 hours. When a Vengeance Target of yours is killed or otherwise indisposed (by you or another party), your masters assign you a replacement target within 24 hours.
You gain either Track or Urban Tracking as a bonus feat (if you already possess both feats, you may instead gain any other feat you meet the prerequisites for). You gain the indicated bonus on the table on Spot and Listen checks made to perceive your Vengeance Targets, as well as Gather Information or Survival checks to track them. You and any mount you ride also gain the bonus on Constitution checks to resist damage from forced marches, provided you are traveling towards the presumed location of a Vengeance Target.
At 3rd level, you also gain the bonus on attack and damage rolls against your Vengeance Targets, as well as on checks to grapple, bull rush, or trip them, as well as their checks to do the same.
At 5th level, you also gain the bonus on any Intimidate or Sense Motive check made against your Vengeance Targets, and you can make such checks faster. You only need to spend a move action to demoralize a Vengeance Target or to assess its CR (as per the rules in Complete Adventurer), as opposed to a standard action.
At 7th level, you reduce any miss chance your targets of vengeance possess by 10% for each point of bonus.
At 9th level, you gain the bonus on saving throws against your Vengeance Targets' spells or special abilities.
A scaling bonus that applies to more and more stuff, including some social and out-of-combat skills that 3.5 martials tend to sorely lack. I'm not sure about how interesting the miss chance reduction is, but miss chances are annoying and being able to overcome them felt solidly flavorful. I initially had some supernatural tracking in here, but decided against it as being against the spirit of the class.
Shield Training (Ex)
Starting at level 2, you reduce the armor check penalty of any shield you use by 1. In addition, when you make a shield bash, you gain a bonus on the damage roll equal to your class level.
At level 6, you gain Shield Specialization and Shield Ward as bonus feats. For each of these feats you already possess, you may instead select any feat from the fighter bonus feat list that you meet the prerequisites for.
There's a lot of cool shield-based abilities that could fit here: I especially regret not being able to fit in something that boosts Reflex saves or grants cover.
Level to damage rolls is a big buff, but given how unimpressive shield bashing normally is, I think it should be fine from a balance perspective.
Counterstrike (Ex)
In the pursuit of your targets, you may have to contend with a variety of lesser foes, not worthy of your masters' attention but in your way nonetheless. Starting at level 3, if a creature deals damage to you, it becomes a Lesser Vengeance Target for 24 hours or until its death, whichever comes sooner. Lesser Vengeance Targets function in all ways like normal Vengeance Targets, except all bonuses against them are reduced by 2 (non-numeric bonuses function identically).
Starting at level 6, your enmity extends to creatures that act against you in less direct ways. A creature no longer needs to outright damage you: this ability now affects any hostile creature that directly affects you with a spell or special ability (either by including you in the area or by targeting you), that tries to grapple, trip, disarm, or bull rush you, or that damages your mount.
Starting at level 9, neutrality is no longer an excuse. You may immediately declare a creature a Lesser Vengeance Target when it insults you or when you become aware it has disobeyed an order you gave it. You can have only one such special Lesser Vengeance Target at a time: the only way to 'free up' this ability is by waiting 24 hours or killing the offending creature.
Tying Counterstrike into Bringer of Vengeance seemed like a very natural and elegant way to go about things, and cleans the class up some by not having two separately advancing damage boni.
Arcane Backlash (Su)
The pure steel of your armor is more than a physical shell: at your command, it serves as a bulwark against magic.
Starting at 4th level, once per day per two vengeance knight levels you can grant yourself and your equipment Spell Resistance equal to 10 + your vengeance knight level + your armor bonus to AC (including enhancement bonuses). Activating this ability is an immediate action, and its benefit lasts until the end of your next turn. If a targeted arcane spell with a range greater than touch fails to penetrate this spell resistance, it is reflected back onto the original caster as if you were under the effect of a Spell Turning spell. Spell-like abilities and divine spells are still nullified by this SR, as are other arcane spells, but these are not reflected back.
The original Arcane Backlash is just insultingly useless: this one is based more on Occult Slayer's features, and should actually make casters think twice before targeting you with a spell.
Adamantine Tombstone (Ex)
Starting at level 8, your armor becomes more than a tool of protection: it is a magnificent weapon onto itself.
On your turn, when you hit a creature at a lower elevation with a shield bash attack, you can attempt to crush your target beneath your bulk. Make opposed grapple checks to start a grapple as normal; your opponent takes a penalty on this check equal to your unmodified armor check penalty. On a success, you are now grappling. You immediately knock your opponent prone and move into its square; if you were mounted, you safely dismount at this point. Until the grapple ends, your opponent cannot stand up by any means and takes a penalty on grapple checks equal to your unmodified armor check penalty. If you fail the grapple check, you land on your feet in the nearest unoccupied square level with or lower than your target, and your turn ends.
After eight levels of a very defensively-oriented class, I think it's fair to grant a very nasty offensive power that turns restrictive armor into an advantage. It seems pretty flavorful too.
Note that 'high ground' can be achieved with a mount, so this isn't as conditional as it might sound.
Armored Unity (Ex)
At level 10, you and your armor have become a seamless whole; moving in it is no harder than moving in your own skin. You may make use of special abilities that prevent the use of heavy armor or a shield (like Spring Attack or a monk's unarmed AC bonus) even while wearing heavy armor and while using a shield.
I like capstones that are punchy, potent, and immediately encourage you to build around/towards them. Plus, while building for Iron Chef, lots of the build ideas I had ended up being cut short by the number of abilities that restrict you from wearing heavy armor.
I had some more ideas for class features: some way to make the shield a reflex-boosting tool, a mobility-improving power that forced you to move closer to your target but allowed you to break through barriers/smash past creatures in the way, even a variant of Goad that'd get boosted by your armor bonus rather than your charisma modifier. Building this made me realize just how many boring hurdles had to be cleared before 'sword and board fighter' could even be halfway decent as a concept.
I find myself wondering if the end product is still too focused on combat, or whether that's just an inevitable feature of 3.5 melee and at least we're doing better than fighters. Do discuss!
For those wondering what's so awful about it: it's a fighter-targeted class that fixes none of the issues of being a fighter, it locks you into the awful fighting style that is heavy armor shield-bashing sword-and-board (literal sword and board; the class demands weapon focus with a sword), it has surprisingly harsh prerequisites, and there's a weird skill check theme running throughout despite the class giving 2 + int skill points and being targeted at fighters. Worse, it suffers from 3.5 prestige class syndrome in that its final real new class feature is gained at level 4: almost everything after that is a quantitative improvement on things you already have. You'd be better off taking ten levels of fighter even if you were committed to the sword-and-board thing, which given the abysmal design of the fighter is saying something.
This fix is intended to keep the 'soul' of the class intact: the final product will be a heavily armored shield-using bounty hunter with some skill at mounted combat. The idea of a heavily armored debt collector with a bit of an anti-arcane and skillful thread running through isn't an uninteresting one; the current design just botches that. The intended power level is somewhere around tier 4, rather than the low tier 5 that the class currently seems to hover around.
Vengeance Knight
Prerequisites:
Base Attack Bonus: +5
Skills: Intimidate 6 ranks, Gather Information or Survival 4 ranks
Feats: Improved Shield Bash, Weapon Focus (any melee)
Special: Must be an agent in good standing of the Knights of the Shield.
Special: Must be proficient with heavy armor and heavy shields.
The easiest single-class entry is of course fighter, who gets full BAB, free bonus feats, and gets both entry skills (if accessing Gather Information via Skilled City-Dweller). Weapon Focus has been unrestricted for the sake of greater build variety, and Improved Shield Bash has been made a prerequisite instead of a class feature so we can delve into the good shield combat feats slightly sooner. The alignment prereq is removed in favor of a slightly more permissible fluff-based one.
I toyed with the idea of requiring Heavy Armor Optimization to enter, but the +4 BAB makes that work awkwardly as a prerequisite, and I wanted to keep it possible for most characters to enter as their 6th character level.
Class Features
Hit Die: d12
Skills: 4 + int (minimum 1)
Class skills: Balance (DEX), Climb (STR), Craft (INT), Diplomacy (CHA), Gather Information (CHA), Handle Animal (CHA), Intimidate (CHA), Jump (STR), Knowledge (Local) (INT), Listen (WIS), Ride (DEX), Sense Motive (WIS), Spot (WIS), Survival (WIS)
Straightforward hit die and skill bumps; we're tough-as-nails and supposed to have more depth than your average fighter, so let's have our basic chassis reflect that.
The skill list is expanded a bit. Balance lets you get a bit more use out of ACP reduction (in addition to being useful for a melee warrior), Handle Animal is added to complement the class's mounted subtheme. Listen is there because c'mon, why give a class Spot but not Listen anyway? Lastly, Survival lets our bounty hunter actually track the people he's supposed to kill. Search is removed to prevent the list from growing all too bloated.
Table: The Vengeance Knight
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
1st+1+2+0+2Armor Training (Basic), Bringer of Vengeance +2
2nd+2+3+0+3Shield Training (Basic)
3rd+3+3+1+3Counterstrike (Damage), Bringer of Vengeance +3
4th+4+4+1+4Armor Training (Advanced), Arcane Backlash
5th+5+4+1+4Bringer of Vengeance +4
6th+6+5+2+5Counterstrike (Opposition), Shield Training (Expert)
7th+7+5+2+5Armor Training (Expert), Bringer of Vengeance +5
8th+8+6+2+6Adamantine Tombstone
9th+9+6+3+6Counterstrike (Disobedience), Bringer of Vengeance +6
10th+10+7+3+7Armor Training (Master), Armored Unity
Armor Training
You reduce the armor check penalty of any heavy armor you wear by 3. In addition, you can sleep in heavy armor without becoming fatigued, and when you don armor, you may do so as if you had assistance.
At level 4, you ignore the movement penalty caused by heavy armor, but not by medium or heavy encumbrance, and the armor check penalty reduction increases to 5.
At level 7, you gain proficiency with one exotic heavy armor of your choice.
At level 10, your armor bonus to AC (including any enhancement bonus) also applies to your touch AC.
The benefits are a bit less conditional than they are on the base class, and go a bit further: armor to touch AC is already an ability that martials can acquire at high levels, and it seemed like a fine capstone for this feature.
Exotic Heavy Armor proficiency was granted because Vengeance Knight's ACP reduction is so massive that it almost serves as proficiency all by itself: Mithral exotic armors rarely have more than +5 ACP, so a nonproficient vengeance knight could wear them without penalty already. This merely makes it official.
Bringer of Vengeance (Ex)
Your masters make regular use of your service to hunt down dissenters, would-be heroes, or other enemies of the organization. Through mundane and magical communication channels, you periodically receive information on creatures to hunt down, usually including their name (or alias), their race and appearance, a brief description of their abilities, their crimes against the Knights, and the fate to be visited upon them (which is usually, but not always, death).
Under normal circumstances, your masters assign you a number of Vengeance Targets no greater than one-half your Vengeance Knight level, rounded up. Whenever you exact vengeance on such a foe, you gain temporary HP equal to twice your class level and a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls: the temporary HP and attack bonus disappear after 24 hours. When a Vengeance Target of yours is killed or otherwise indisposed (by you or another party), your masters assign you a replacement target within 24 hours.
You gain either Track or Urban Tracking as a bonus feat (if you already possess both feats, you may instead gain any other feat you meet the prerequisites for). You gain the indicated bonus on the table on Spot and Listen checks made to perceive your Vengeance Targets, as well as Gather Information or Survival checks to track them. You and any mount you ride also gain the bonus on Constitution checks to resist damage from forced marches, provided you are traveling towards the presumed location of a Vengeance Target.
At 3rd level, you also gain the bonus on attack and damage rolls against your Vengeance Targets, as well as on checks to grapple, bull rush, or trip them, as well as their checks to do the same.
At 5th level, you also gain the bonus on any Intimidate or Sense Motive check made against your Vengeance Targets, and you can make such checks faster. You only need to spend a move action to demoralize a Vengeance Target or to assess its CR (as per the rules in Complete Adventurer), as opposed to a standard action.
At 7th level, you reduce any miss chance your targets of vengeance possess by 10% for each point of bonus.
At 9th level, you gain the bonus on saving throws against your Vengeance Targets' spells or special abilities.
A scaling bonus that applies to more and more stuff, including some social and out-of-combat skills that 3.5 martials tend to sorely lack. I'm not sure about how interesting the miss chance reduction is, but miss chances are annoying and being able to overcome them felt solidly flavorful. I initially had some supernatural tracking in here, but decided against it as being against the spirit of the class.
Shield Training (Ex)
Starting at level 2, you reduce the armor check penalty of any shield you use by 1. In addition, when you make a shield bash, you gain a bonus on the damage roll equal to your class level.
At level 6, you gain Shield Specialization and Shield Ward as bonus feats. For each of these feats you already possess, you may instead select any feat from the fighter bonus feat list that you meet the prerequisites for.
There's a lot of cool shield-based abilities that could fit here: I especially regret not being able to fit in something that boosts Reflex saves or grants cover.
Level to damage rolls is a big buff, but given how unimpressive shield bashing normally is, I think it should be fine from a balance perspective.
Counterstrike (Ex)
In the pursuit of your targets, you may have to contend with a variety of lesser foes, not worthy of your masters' attention but in your way nonetheless. Starting at level 3, if a creature deals damage to you, it becomes a Lesser Vengeance Target for 24 hours or until its death, whichever comes sooner. Lesser Vengeance Targets function in all ways like normal Vengeance Targets, except all bonuses against them are reduced by 2 (non-numeric bonuses function identically).
Starting at level 6, your enmity extends to creatures that act against you in less direct ways. A creature no longer needs to outright damage you: this ability now affects any hostile creature that directly affects you with a spell or special ability (either by including you in the area or by targeting you), that tries to grapple, trip, disarm, or bull rush you, or that damages your mount.
Starting at level 9, neutrality is no longer an excuse. You may immediately declare a creature a Lesser Vengeance Target when it insults you or when you become aware it has disobeyed an order you gave it. You can have only one such special Lesser Vengeance Target at a time: the only way to 'free up' this ability is by waiting 24 hours or killing the offending creature.
Tying Counterstrike into Bringer of Vengeance seemed like a very natural and elegant way to go about things, and cleans the class up some by not having two separately advancing damage boni.
Arcane Backlash (Su)
The pure steel of your armor is more than a physical shell: at your command, it serves as a bulwark against magic.
Starting at 4th level, once per day per two vengeance knight levels you can grant yourself and your equipment Spell Resistance equal to 10 + your vengeance knight level + your armor bonus to AC (including enhancement bonuses). Activating this ability is an immediate action, and its benefit lasts until the end of your next turn. If a targeted arcane spell with a range greater than touch fails to penetrate this spell resistance, it is reflected back onto the original caster as if you were under the effect of a Spell Turning spell. Spell-like abilities and divine spells are still nullified by this SR, as are other arcane spells, but these are not reflected back.
The original Arcane Backlash is just insultingly useless: this one is based more on Occult Slayer's features, and should actually make casters think twice before targeting you with a spell.
Adamantine Tombstone (Ex)
Starting at level 8, your armor becomes more than a tool of protection: it is a magnificent weapon onto itself.
On your turn, when you hit a creature at a lower elevation with a shield bash attack, you can attempt to crush your target beneath your bulk. Make opposed grapple checks to start a grapple as normal; your opponent takes a penalty on this check equal to your unmodified armor check penalty. On a success, you are now grappling. You immediately knock your opponent prone and move into its square; if you were mounted, you safely dismount at this point. Until the grapple ends, your opponent cannot stand up by any means and takes a penalty on grapple checks equal to your unmodified armor check penalty. If you fail the grapple check, you land on your feet in the nearest unoccupied square level with or lower than your target, and your turn ends.
After eight levels of a very defensively-oriented class, I think it's fair to grant a very nasty offensive power that turns restrictive armor into an advantage. It seems pretty flavorful too.
Note that 'high ground' can be achieved with a mount, so this isn't as conditional as it might sound.
Armored Unity (Ex)
At level 10, you and your armor have become a seamless whole; moving in it is no harder than moving in your own skin. You may make use of special abilities that prevent the use of heavy armor or a shield (like Spring Attack or a monk's unarmed AC bonus) even while wearing heavy armor and while using a shield.
I like capstones that are punchy, potent, and immediately encourage you to build around/towards them. Plus, while building for Iron Chef, lots of the build ideas I had ended up being cut short by the number of abilities that restrict you from wearing heavy armor.
I had some more ideas for class features: some way to make the shield a reflex-boosting tool, a mobility-improving power that forced you to move closer to your target but allowed you to break through barriers/smash past creatures in the way, even a variant of Goad that'd get boosted by your armor bonus rather than your charisma modifier. Building this made me realize just how many boring hurdles had to be cleared before 'sword and board fighter' could even be halfway decent as a concept.
I find myself wondering if the end product is still too focused on combat, or whether that's just an inevitable feature of 3.5 melee and at least we're doing better than fighters. Do discuss!