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View Full Version : Can't we just talk about this? [Base Class]



BisectedBrioche
2008-01-01, 11:57 AM
Alignment: Any
Hit Die: d6
Class Skills:
Diplomacy, Forgery, Decipher Script, Bluff, Sleight of Hand, Speak Language, Move Silently, Intimidate, Open Lock, Gather Information, Hide, Disguise, Perform (oratory)
Skill Points at 1st Level: (8 + Int modifier) ×4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 8 + Int modifier.

The Negotiator
{table=head]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st|
+0|
+0|
+2|
+1|Merciful Ambush +1d6

2nd|
+1|
+0|
+3|
+1|Incapacitation

3rd|
+2|
+1|
+3|
+2|Motivate, Merciful Ambush +2d6

4th|
+3|
+1|
+4|
+2|Second Layer

5th|
+3|
+1|
+4|
+3|Half Truth, Second Persona, Merciful Ambush +3d6

6th|
+4|
+2|
+5|
+3|Silver Tongue

7th|
+5|
+2|
+5|
+3|Putting in a Good Word, Merciful Ambush +4d6

8th|
+6/+1|
+2|
+6|
+4|Slander

9th|
+6/+1|
+3|
+6|
+4|Unthreatening, Merciful Ambush +5d6

10th|
+7/+2|
+3|
+7|
+5|Disguise Self,

11th|
+8/+3|
+3|
+7|
+5|Demoralise, Merciful Ambush +6d6

12th|
+9/+4|
+4|
+8|
+6|

13th|
+9/+4|
+4|
+8|
+6|Disguise Ally, Merciful Ambush +7d6

14th|
+10/+5|
+4|
+9|
+6|

15th|
+11/+6/+1|
+5|
+9|
+7|Disguise Enemy, Merciful Ambush +8d6

16th|
+12/+7/+2|
+5|
+10|
+7|Slippery Mind

17th|
+12/+7/+2|
+5|
+10|
+8|Study Background, Merciful Ambush +9d6

18th|
+13/+8/+3|
+6|
+11|
+8|Facinating speech

19th|
+14/+9/+4|
+6|
+11|
+8|Merciful Ambush +10d6

20th|
+15/+10/+5|
+6|
+12|
+9|Barter With Reality

[/table]

The Negotiator shuns combat in favour of talking their way out of dangerous situations. Using diplomacy, politics, blackmail, bribery or simply fleeing they survive and succeed on their wits and charisma. Good aligned Negotiators tend to be individuals who prefer words over action and negotiation over war, evil aligned Negotiators tend to be manipulative or cowardly. Negotiators are proficient with all simple weapons, they tend to favour small clubs or saps, often they will adopt the use of a defensive weapon (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65079&highlight=Defensive+weapons). They often carry and use caltrops (if you're interested (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2798979#post2798979)by the way...).

Silver Tongue The Negotiator is an expert at talking their way out of trouble. They may add half (to a maximum of 5) their levels in negotiator to their Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidation checks.

Merciful Ambush This functions as a rogue's sneak attack but always deals non-lethal damage. If the opponent is in a situation where they would be denied a sneak attack then the Negotiator may deal non-lethal damage (with no penalty) with an extra 1d6 non lethal damage per odd level. Ranged weapons may not be used to make a Merciful Ambush.

A Negotiator can ambush only living creatures with discernible anatomies—undead, constructs, oozes, plants, and incorporeal creatures lack vital areas to attack. Any creature that is immune to critical hits is not vulnerable to ambushes. The Negotiator must be able to see the target well enough to pick out a vital spot and must be able to reach such a spot. A Negotiator cannot sneak attack while striking a creature with concealment or striking the limbs of a creature whose vitals are beyond reach. Creatures immune to sleep or which cannot sleep are immune to the effects of Merciful Ambush.

If a Negotiator has levels in rogue then those levels may stack for the purpose of calculating damage for Merciful Ambush. Their levels in Negotiator may stack with levels in rogue for the purpose of deciding damage for Sneak Attacks.

Incapacitation A number of times per day equal to half the negotiator’s class level s/he may force a target of his or her merciful ambush ability to make a fortitude save with a DC equal to [Negotiator Levels] + [Rogue Levels] - [Target's HD] or be knocked unconscious for 1d4-1 hours.

Motivate A negotiator may give up a use of incapacitation to give a speech (1 full round action and a successful Perform (oratory) check) which grants a number of allies equal to the negotiator’s charisma modifier a +1 morale bonus to attack rolls and saving throws for the next hour.

Second Layer The negociator may learn to disguise one aspect of themselves more effectivly. They may either choose one of the following to ignore the disguise check modifier for: gender, age category, race or they may treat each level of familiarity as one level lower (e.g. A close friend is treated as a friend or associate for the purpose of a disguise check).

Half Truth A negotiator may tell a half truth rather than an outright lie, granting a +2 bonus to bluff checks and giving them a chance to reroll the check should they choose to.

Second Persona The Negotiator creates a second persona: a fictional individual with "their" own separate relationships, reputations and "personality". The negotiator may disguise themselves as this "person" with a +20 bonus to the check. Anyone who is familiar with the second persona or the negotiator’s persona has a ([wisdom modifier] - [negotiator’s charisma modifier]) x 5% chance of noticing the similarities between the two each time they interact with the other persona.

Putting in a Good Word The Negotiator may make a diplomacy check on behalf of someone else to someone who has a neutral or better attitude to them. If successful then the individual being vouched for gains a +2 on all diplomacy checks with the target.

Slander The Negotiator may make a diplomacy check on behalf of someone else (using the negotiator’s score) to someone who has a neutral or better attitude to them. If successful then the target's attitude moves one step closer towards hostile towards the victim. The check takes a -2 penalty if the target has a friendly or helpful attitude towards the victim. Providing some positive proof (real or not) grants a +1 bonus (or more if the DM feels its appropriate) and the target must have at least a friendly attitude towards the negotiator if they have a helpful attitude towards the victim.

Unthreatening The negotiator may expend a use of incapacitate to change a hostile creature's attitude to indifferent with a successful diplomacy check with a DC equal to the total of the target's wisdom and intelligence. This can be used against any creature capable of independent thought (i.e. it won't work against undead or hive minds for example).

Disguise Self The negotiator may expend one use of incapacitate to cast Disguise Self as a spell-like ability.

Demoralise As the ability motivate however a speech is made to give a -1 penalty to a group of hostile creatures.

Disguise Ally As disguise self but targeting one willing creature rather than the negotiator.

Disguise Enemy As disguise self but targeting one unwilling creature. The victim must make a diplomacy check of DC (1d10 + [negotiator’s int modifier] + [negotiator’s wis modifier]) to convince anyone who they really are. The save DC is reduced by 5 if the negociator is trying to make the victim appear to be someone else (e.g. disguising the BBEG as his worst enemy, whom he ordered his guards to attack on sight).

Slippery Mind As the rogue ability.

Study Background The negotiator may make gather information checks to find out about a specific person. If they are successful then they gain a +2 bonus to any checks made to deceive or manipulate them (e.g. forgery, disguise enemy skill, intimidate).

Fascinating speech The negotiator starts giving an impromptu speech. As long as they succeed on a DC 25 check each round any creatures with an indifferent or better attitude stop and pay attention to what they are saying. The negotiator can use this ability to get the attention of a large crowd granting a +2 to intimidate or diplomacy checks.

Barter With Reality Once a month the negotiator may give up all their uses of incapacitate for the day to use lesser wish as a spell like ability. They do not need to use the material components of a focus however they must still pay the XP costs.

Relationship with other classes

Negotiators tend to get on well with most classes by their own nature. They have common ground with rogues (both relying on deception and trickery). Paladins and clerics may appreciate their habit of avoiding harming others but may not approve of their dishonourable behaviour. Negotiators tend not to get along with classes which are able to see through their trickery such as wizards (although they may enjoy the challenge).

BisectedBrioche
2008-01-01, 01:59 PM
No comments?

pyrefiend
2008-01-01, 02:23 PM
I like it. It's a bit hard to gauge whether or not it's overpowered/underpowered because it's so different from other classes.

Just a few little things I noticed:
(emphasis mine on all these)

Silver Tongue The Negotiator is an expert at talking their way out of trouble. They may add half (to a maximum of 5) their levels in negotiator to their Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidation checks.

Exaggerate Strength The Negotiator gains a +2 bonus on intimidate checks made to demoralise opponents.
I don't think you need both of these. I would suggest you remove Exaggerate Strength because silver tongue already conveys the Negotiator's ability to intimidate well.



Motivate A negotiator may give up a use of incapacitation to give a speech (2 full round actions) which grants a number of allies equal to the negotiator’s charisma modifier a +1 morale bonus to attack rolls and saving throws for the next hour.
This sounds a lot like perform(oratory). However, this class doesn't get perform as a class skill. I would either give them perform as a class skill and require they have a certain amount of ranks in perform to use motivate, as per bard, or remove this ability. I really like the idea.


Unthreatening The negotiator may expend a use of incapacitate to change a hostile creature's attitude to indifferent with a successful diplomacy check with a DC equal to the total of the target's wisdom and intelligence modifiers. This can be used against any creature capable of independent thought (i.e. it won't work against undead or hive minds for example).
That's going to be a very easy diplomacy check. That's all I noticed looking over it quickly. Overall, I really like the concept and I think the abilities represent the idea well.

boomwolf
2008-01-01, 02:35 PM
A bit on the overpowered side. and its not a caster, good job?

Try moving the abilities "downwards", so there will be less blanks. you got 3 very good abilities at level one, and massive outstanding abilities later, spread them more.

Disguise Enemy is unclear, DC to what?

Unthreatening is far too powerful, by the time you get it you are likely to auto-succeed on any front-line and skillmonkey, and almost surly succeed on casters.

In general-tune down the power. but the concept is very nice. (Monk/Negotiator multiclass is nice.)

BisectedBrioche
2008-01-01, 02:53 PM
OK, I've removed Exagerate Strength, and made motivate a Perform based skill. Unthreatening now uses the target's scores rather than their modifiers. I've made some abilites available at later levels and clarified disguise enemy.

If anyone thinks the abilities need nerfing I'm open to suggestions.

wadledo
2008-01-01, 06:26 PM
.....8 skill points?
This has allot less than the rogue, and you give it the same number of skill points?
Try 4.

Charlie Kemek
2008-01-01, 11:51 PM
"the negotiator" gets "disguise self" but not "charm person" or "charm monster" etc. you might want to change the disguises to charm spells. but it depends on your style of the character class.

paigeoliver
2008-01-02, 06:18 AM
I don't mean to be insulting here, but...

This class suffers from a few problems in that one of the combat abilities is nuts, another one poorly defined, and most of the other stuff doesn't show a full understanding of what you can already do with diplomacy in the first place.

Merciful Ambush: Improperly defined, amount isn't stated, and it is unclear if this ability continues to improve as the character gains in level. Nor is it defined how this stacks with actual sneak attack. This is important because normally it isn't possible to get above the 1d6 per odd level curve of sneak attack damage (non-rogue classes either don't offer it at 1st, or have entry requirements making it impossible to enter as pure rogue). ***

Incapacitation Far, far too overpowering of an ability. By basing it on damage dealt the character can force saves at impossible DCs. And making it knock the opponent out rather than kill just makes it more powerful.

Second layer This isn't really a proper class ability, this is really just an odd sort of circumstance for a skill check that has been added to the class description for some reason.

Half truth This adds percentile dice to an area of the game that doesn't normally have them. It would work smoother as granting a reroll instead.

Second persona This has similar issues to "second layer" as in it is something anybody COULD do, and it is also pretty much the same thing spymaster does, although defined totally differently.

Putting in a good word Another case of calling a skill use that anyone could attempt a class feature.

Slander Once again this is something you can already do with diplomacy and you are just stating DC modifiers as a class ability. The Pirate Kingdoms book had a class with a similar ability that could cause a charisma penalty in the community to the affected character, which is a more interesting way to do it, since you can already make your minions do anything with the right diplomacy check.

Demoralize Difficult to use and the power level of the ability is far too low for an 11th level character to actually ever want to use. Pretty sure you can actually get a better effect than this with the existing intimidate and diplomacy rules.

Disguise Self and Disguise AllyFeh, way underpowered by the time these abilities come the character will already have a disguise check capable of incredible feats of disguise, and will likely also have magical hats that do the same function.

Disguise Enemy Sort of poorly worded and doesn't really make sense, particularly in the part about special rules to get people to realize their identity. The rules for what the diplomacy check are follow no known method for calculating things like that, and also are likely to produce a diplomacy DC of about 5 or so (a charisma/combat character likely has a wisdom dump of -1 and an int modifier of +1 or +2).

Also, think about the level this is happening at, at 15th level are you really sneaking up to the BBEG and using disguise self on him and then running off? Even if you were the opponent could likely deal with the problem fairly easily at that level.

Also the method of calculating both the save DC and caster level of this ability are not defined.

Study background Please see the section of the rules on circumstance modifiers. This just added as a class ability a circumstance modifier that you could already get in the first place. The small number of the modifier is meaningless for a 17th+ level social character who is going to essentially be automatically successful at all social skills unless he is going against a target built to resist them (event then he will still be successful in many of them due to some fixed skill checks in the rules).

Fascinating speech What sort of check are they making (a DC 25 social skill would be automatic anyway, so that question is mostly conjecture)? Also this is heavily overlapped with some bard stuff, except less powerful and at a much higher level. Once again getting those +2 bonuses on social skills are meaningless at that level.

Barter with reality. Did you mean LIMITED Wish? This ability requires a caster level and method of determining the save DC.

Also, the skill list isn't quite right. At the bare minimum several knowledge skills are missing. Perform should be an open one, not a defined one. Both craft and profession should likely be class skills for a learned character such as this, and so should ride. Skill lists are generally presented in alphabetical order.

The class doesn't mention anything about armor proficiency.

The biggest issue is that you were trying to make a negotiator class but instead you made a class that runs up behind people and knocks them out. The negotiating parts of the class are simply stomped by any functional social/diplomacy build, but that incapacitation ability is a death attack offered at second level. So in actual play you would see a lot of character with builds that start off like this Barbarian 1/Negotiator 2 as it is really easy to ramp up the old melee damage to an amount that no one could make as a fort save.

For revision ideas I suggest checking out the Marshal class and reading up on some assorted diplomacy builds. The marshal class because it is similar (tends to out diplomicize this class at most levels too) and it has multi-class interactions with this class.


*** Yes I know you can get above the curve using certain attacks with a halfling substitution level.

Binary Stars
2008-01-02, 05:07 PM
What, no giant robots? :smallannoyed:

Stycotl
2008-01-02, 05:12 PM
unthreatening: just for kicks and giggles, maybe you ought to consider making that a DC 10+creature's CR+creature's Wis modifier or something. i think that this approach is a little more standard.