Alternate Class Features For All Classes (Feats/ACFs, P.E.A.C.H.)

[Thrice Dead Cat]

If they have polymorph, which is unlikely.

True, but it is a possibility via UMD, Karsus, and maybe one of the supplemental vestiges. I feel like there was an "in-house" way of doing it, but I may just be playing too many wizards.

I gave them the Chakra as normal, the only thing that is slowed is the actual Chakra Binds, Essentia, and Soulmelds.

You should mention that explicitly. Incarnum is weird, and chakra binds aren't technically a part of having essentia and soulmelds, as dumb as that sounds. This leads to odd quirk where each prestige class has to give out melds at its own rate, meaning most of the time, if you aren't dipping totemist to add to something else, you're running from 1 to 20 in a class just for quicker binds and class features that allow you more essentia than normal for X or Y.

Yeah. Also, Iron Rain only really, as far as I can tell, applies to guns, which is sort of useless for some rangers.

Well, Rangers in World of Warcraft use guns... More seriously, though, it may not be a bad idea to remove this ACF not because it isn't a solid idea, but rather due to the "overhaul" you could do with just that instead, going so far to give them some guns (setting permitting), allowing them to do quick loads on said guns, and/or focus on their maneuvers.

That said, this quick and dirty martial adept fix isn't a bad idea.

Aw man, I remember your homebrew being really good.

Mostly, I liked doing homebrew for the various contests, assuming I had proper inspiration, time, and ideas for the concept at hand, but college eats up a good 8-9 months. That said, I still check in over here to help others in fine-tuning the homebrew because of all of the crunch and random ideas that people have.

That said, I'm glad to hear that there are multiple people on these forums that have been interested in my works, either using it for further inspiration or just using it period is kind of touching in an odd sort of way. I've had somethings on the backburner for a while, but nothing's come out recently and struck as something that "fits" yet - either from a fluff via or really any crunch view. The last thing (and I still need to polish them up) I did were the Relicforged. Same goes for most of my stuff on The Bookkeeper. I still need to make spells for that domain list. If you want anything of mine updated or given a second look, feel free to send a PM my way.

Eh, enough about my past! I still have stuff to PEACH and posts to bounce back and forth!

Battle blessing is another option that is quite interesting, both mechanically and from a character point of view.

Part of why I love it so much is that is just such a different type of Paladin. Normally, a Paladin's spells are a sort of "not quite class feature" given to him to make up for a lack of a real class feature. Due to the nature of spells, well, that's still solid! But on that chassis, it's more about tactical useage of your swift actions... which is hard to come by outside of a mage with more immediate action spells than sense or an Initiator.

Heheh, thanks!

Again, no problem! I may not get any credit here, but 'brewing is more about creating something new, interesting, fun, ideally balanced, and new that is either not found anywhere in official printings or, if so, is exceedingly rare to the point that it may as well have a new shot at it!

Plus, I know I'm no artist, but it's good to know I have some creativity in me.

A good point. I can definitely see the SLAs being a problem, but I think the set up of actually having outsiders that sort of make sense with the alignment almost becomes as or more important.

It is a different take on it, and I like that. Maybe you could drops a few lines in there stating that you and your companion are "bound" in such a way that when you do reach a new tier of creature, it either "upgrades" alongside you or decides that its "captain/leader/what-have-you" would be better suiting to guiding the Paladin instead. Considering it is an ACF and thus "nonstandard" and thereby "rarer," and how wonky leveling in DND is in general, it may be a better way of getting that sort of feeling across to the user.

If nothing new comes up, I could do a rough PEACH on the companions each level, but it's still an odd thing to judge. Treating it as a then highest level summons spell and then some isn't fair because it's not generating more spells and uses a different mechanical method for determining how you get them. After a certain point, your uses per day will probably boil down to "Oh, it's been 5 rounds of combat already? *poof*" Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, since it at least means it won't be used to spam a mass of Hound Archons or the like. ...Actually, just have a line saying that only one of the summons may be out at a time.

Yeah, and that is what I ended up doing. Actually, that is a good idea. Maybe they can ignore their weapons and armor while flying?

Ignoring/lessening armor penalties or making heavier armors lighter would fit the theme and encourage a more mobile Paladin, which most of the Special Mount guys do in some regards.

Oh oh oh! Maybe I could give them different feats whenever they summon their weapon, chosen upon summoning, that they must qualify for, and only gain the benefits of while wielding the weapon?

I'm not sure what the number of the feats should be -probably just 1 per 5 Paladin levels - but that would encourage picking things focused on the weapon and possibly some of the TWFing double weapon style feats due to the on the fly choices.

Your example isn't really how it works. The weapon itself would be a +1 Attuned Vorpal Sickle, and the wielder gains a bonus to attack and damage rolls while wielding it equal to their caster level, with a maximum of the total magic bonus. In this case, they gain a +8 bonus to attack and damage, in addition to the enhancement bonus.

Oh! I had assumed that the bonus was enhancement, thus effectively overriding the normal +1 of the weapon to a +9. This encourages doing the normal caster routine of grabbing a +1 [9 special ability points] Blah weapon and then just using a swift action spell each round - or simply attacking each round, given the spell slots. It's not too much more for a full caster based gish, but that sort of just seems off to me. Although, to be fair, weapon qualities are hard to balance in their own right just due to the fact that literally everyone save a Vow of Poverty X could have access to them at some point. As such, at most, it's only an extra +5 to hit and damage.

This definitely needs another person's PEACH over here, though. Does the Playground have a resident magic items guru?

Yeah, I have a serious beef with whoever designed the Sorcerer class.

I agree with you. With the exception of the druid, part of the problem with core casters is just how easy it is for them to look at a prestige and then realize "So why am I waiting another 5 levels to get another class feature again?" and that's just the wizard. The others skip over in a heartbeat, but later "focused casters" a la the warmage, wu jen, favored soul, and even dread necromancers can have hard times finding thematically appropriate prestige classes that either bar them from entry due to class features (no turning, limited spell and skill lists, limited skill points) or just simply require too many feats to be worth it when compared to the core alternative with the larger spell list. "It's one thing to say wizards are best, so commoners can do this!" It's another thing entirely to make classes for your own system and then not support them but once in yet another supplement, if ever again without having to go through loops to either get the right class skills (generally, Educated or skill knowledge: X as feats) or even the right way of "casting" (Arcane Preparation for sorcerers, the Divine Insight ACF for wizards, but less so just due to how things that require spontaneity generally feel "worse" to me for some reason) or to instead take a secondary prestige class just to qualify! (generally, loremaster or other prestige classes with features that help qualify for each other or for multiples via things like Combat Casting and other feats).

No problems.

Although, considering how fast this back and forth is and how little I've done for the bard and others, it may just be faster for me to jump back onto the IRC instead.