Quote Originally Posted by Chronos Flame View Post
The fear is that if I front load the class I will be making it too dippable, but I certainly realize I am missing some vital level one abilities and will be front loading. I think I am going to give each form a feat at first level that reflects their preferred fighting style rather than requiring them to use the style to gain form points and expecting them to select the feats themselves through the bonus feats.

I wouldn't worry too much about dip-ability. Being able to use a class as a dip isn't inherently bad. It's only really a problem if it let's someone pick up a really powerful ability or something that scales really well without class levels, particularly if it was meant to be balanced by a loss of power later in the class. You're not really giving out anything that hits that profile, particularly with point dependencies.

This seems as good a place as any to clarify why they are keyed off of what they are, and I will update my second post to to say this as well, and later my first post with more flavor stuff. Each of the forms is meant to have a certain way they approach battle and I want to really reflect that through the point system.

Air i is meant to always be a step ahead, taking advantage of every move the opponent makes. This is why I am trying to give them many options or at least make them very good at AoOs.

Earth is meant to be sturdy and urge the opponent to take them head on where they can turn the tide of the battle to their liking. This is why I have given them ways to make themselves the target of attacks and to reduce damage.

Fire is meant to be unpredictable and quick, surprising enemies with their next action. I tried to give them several options to make use of this, but need to make that a bit better.

Water is meant to be fluid, moving through the battle with their blade never stopping. It is by I want to make them mobile. It is also why they have the ability to move a bit every time they down an enemy, giving them a sort of improved cleave (if they have cleave too.) I need to do more with that.

Wood is meant to be resolute, accepting attackers in and controlling his immediate surroundings with ranged attacks. The way I envision their fighting style seems to be hard to put to paper I guess.
Ok, your basic idea is fairly good, but there are a few problems with execution. The largest problem is that you have a lot of overlap within [wood, air, earth] and [fire, water]. That's going to make it hard to come up with sufficient, unique, abilities without crippling a type by ommiting things.

You might be better off with different specialties. Maybe something like this:

Air: High mobility skirmisher. Uses bows at short to medium range and focuses on getting terrain advantage.
Earth: Strength and inertia. Uses big weapons, charges, and power attacks to do lots of damage. Think like the juggernaut. Also, maybe look at the Dire staff that was floating around here recently.
Fire: Lots of little attacks. "Burn them up with your blades." You'll need to give them something to help with Dr and movement.
Water: Stealth and ambush tactics. Focus on using traps and alchemical items to make the battlefield an unpleasant place. Uses unarmed attacks and poison for direct confrontations. (Water and wind could get swaped or mixed up a bit. For example, wind could take Stealth, traps, and alchemical while water takes skirmishing, bows, and poisons.)
Wood: Stationary area control. Have them sit in an area and make it unpleasant to stay in and hard to leave. Maybe have them use a Whip and look at lasher. You will need to give them a way to make enemies come into range.

Look like? Accepting a charging enemy and punishing them with an arrow after moving subtly out of the way. joining the chaos of battle, rooting himself, and controlling it with well placed arrows.
Ok, so that doesn't work so well for a few reasons. The first is it relies on people bothering to attack you when your movement and effective ranges are extremely limited. The second is that ranged weapons are incredibly limited in 3.5 and this model is asking you to give up one of their few advantages for something that can easily be replicated (and surpassed) by melee weapons. You could, potentially fix this by letting them put down traps and AoEs at range, but that still runs into two problems. First, windwall and similar effects will no-sell their main shtick. More importantly, they still have a very limited effective range, if they actually want to use their abilities, so it's fairly easy to just go around them and leave them for last.

There's also the possibility that, in order to do it well, this type will end up feeling very supernatural.


I guess that is the big challenge. What to give them for it? Obviously they CAN attack from more than 30 feet, but with that being their primary threat, yeah, they are a move away (which is of course the idea, as I said) Do you think I need to focus on upping their attack or is the chance to get extra arrows off like archers usually do enough? Maybe the "lots of arrows, only moderate damage" thing only works when you can sit at the relative safety of 100-200 feet away?
The problem with that is other archers can already do it at greater range and without dealing with points AND they're probably getting something else (like SA or spells) on top of it. If you really want them using a bow at point blank, you're going to need to come up with some novel mechanics that don't simply add slightly larger numbers.


Considering the abilities of casters and some other classes by that point, yeah, I guess I need to make it more impressive, perhaps applying a condition to all attacked? Or being able to make the grapple/disarm as per the earlier ability against all hit.
Conditions are nice. The big problem with grappling and disarming, particularly at range, is that there are a lot of ways to no-sell either. If you're large enough, have freedom of movement, or can teleport (and, at high levels, almost everything will have at least one of those) grappling does nothing. Similarly, if you're using natural weapons, casting or special abilities, getting disarmed isn't an issue.



I'd meant he would force his opponent to use one of their attacks of opportunity if he threatened one, and then he could turn it aside.
What does that actually accomplish? Most characters treat AoOs as a nice bonus that they don't get all to often. Getting someone to use an AoO just so you can waist it doesn't change the status quo.

I was thinking maybe separate lists. Lesser arts at 2,4,6,8. Improved arts at 10,12,14. Greater arts at 16,18. and a capstone mastery art at 20. For now I would like to get the class to a more passable level without that and maybe then work on increasing their options through something like this.
That seems moderately redundant with a point system. I'd also like to point out that you don't currently have enough abilities to fill the fixed progressions for the types, creating tiered menus will require significantly more abilities. Maybe focus on getting down a single functional path for each first?



I don't fully understand... Is that not somewhat what I am doing now? each type has a fixed track of abilities they get as they progress? As far as only a handful of active abilities, I would like to get it to that point. Only a handful of active abilities, but good ones that fit their style.
You're doing something similar, but your tracks aren't as well defined and leave lots of gaps. Also, your active abilities are extremely lacking.

With maybe the exception of fire who, as I said, is based around changing up tactics slightly, so might want the extra options to make use of that.
Be careful of making it so they can sort of do a lot of things, but not at a useful level. Their abilities still need to work well together.

I actually fell into and out of love with Legend a few months ago. The Skeleton Champion track I like, but naturally doesn't have enough it can do with points.
There were two or three feats that also work with them, but it's still not a lot.

Also, I just looked at the available bonus feats. By and large they seem fairly lack luster (generic, tiny, bonuses to a single weapon) or necessary for the type to function (twf line). The former shouldn't are really boring and the later should probably get baked into the class and, possibly, improved. Someone shouldn't be as good, or better, at a type's specialty by going straight fighter or ranger.