Quote Originally Posted by deuxhero View Post
Slow Fall still isn't worth a 20 level class feature, it costs 2000 something gold to replicate (and 2000 gold does it better!).
Yeah, but later on, you can:
1) Get another ring on that slot instead of a 2000 gp item. Something perhaps more worthwhile.
2) Recover 1000 gp. Perhaps not enough, but consider that, for much of your time, you'll be using an item that could be replaced with something else.

Furthermore, it all depends on how you fall. Slow Fall can be combined with the Tumble ability to reduce damage, so I feel it's reasonable enough.

Besides, what's with protesting about free stuff? :P

[QUOTE-Delandel; 7369655]Main criticism though:
Too much.

This class looks to me like a rogue that decided to kick more ass and gain a whole bunch of useful spell abilities as swift actions. You even bumped the amount of skill points gained from 6 to 8. You even gave the use magic item skill. Then you decided to curve-stomp the assassin PrC by giving away their trademark ability, and the PrC pales in comparison to this.

I can see the argument here for the abilities to stay. They all fit the ninja theme, so why not? Isn't death attack and using poisons ninja-y? Striking from the shadows and all that? I believe so.

However, my question would be, is the rogue / assassin classes bad enough to warrant merging them together to make something even greater than the sum of its parts? Maybe for the assassin PrC. I don't think so for rogues though. The only thing a rogue has going for it here is trapfinding, which is a very situational skill at best, and if you absolutely need it then it's just a 1 level dip. You could say that assassins have spells, but I'm looking at the spells and they ain't that great compared to when your ninja would be getting some of their later abilities.[/QUOTE]

The Rogue class is great at what it does, and it can do a pretty lot. The Assassin, sadly, is on a state of confusion where it was unnecessarily nerfed in order to justify its existence as a Prestige Class. Save bonus vs. Poison? Instead of...perhaps, immunity against Poison? Don't think I'm saying this in a bad way, but rather, something that wasn't even thought of when the developers began making classes here and there.

And even then, I wouldn't ditch the Assassin's spell list. It's by far its best ability, and they're no slouches on what few spells they've got. For example: Alter Self doesn't need too much of a CL to work (5 at max), and it can be exploited to good measure. Feather Fall is invaluable for a fall, which can be the best way to escape (at least until Dimension Door). Obscuring Mist is a great way to provide an escape route, or in the case of a one-on-one fight, to somewhat even the odds. Invisibility lasts minutes per level instead of rounds per level (the Ninja doesn't ever get beyond rounds per level). Spider Climb pretty much obviates the need for Climb, ever (that's one skill of the many skills of a Rogue or Ninja replaced entirely). Cat's Grace for a Dex-based class is invaluable, perhaps right until they get a Gloves of Dex +6, and even then it can be invaluable. Magic Circle against Good might not be the best protection, but if you're going against a Good-aligned Enchanter, it is insanely good (perhaps if they had MCaE, they would rock, but then again that is a function of alignment...). Dimension Door has a lot of uses, from escaping to tactical movement to even a simple distance shortening move. Freedom of Movement is perhaps one of the best spells around, and it has myriads of uses. Greater Invisibility is more like what the Ninja eventually has, with the same rounds/level cap, but the Assassin gets more potential uses of it than a Ninja ever does, given the nature of the ki pool.

And that's without adding the few spells they get every new splatbook. Assassins don't get much love, but spells are one way in where they get some love.

Rogues, on the other hand, have their builds already worked. They get Sneak Attack (which is far better than Sudden Strike, if only because you only need to flank the opponent to make the ability work, instead of finding a way to reduce the Dex bonus to a creature in order to make the ability work. That's another plus the Rogue has. The special abilities they get at later levels are also great enough, but they show a devotion to the Rogue class, one devotion that is quite enough broken. They also get Trap Sense (which is great if you're going to be the main trap-disabler, since Ninja's can't do that very well, even with trapfinding) Finally, the Rogue has something that the Ninja would only dream of, and that this retooling mostly dealt with: virtually no MAD. You only need Dexterity to make a Rogue work fine. Ninjas need both Dexterity and Wisdom to work well, and with a fine balance since both abilities have equal importance. Rogues could either work their Intelligence (both recommended AND granting them more skill points), or Charisma (if they want to be social creatures), but Ninja don't have that much of a benefit.

I understand your concern, and I'll deal below with why I reached those conclusions.

I would tone things down. Drop the amount of skill points and skills known. Do ninjas really need to do alot of talkie-talkie, or just focus on stealth / scouting? I'm talking mechanics, this steps on rogue's toes too much.
A Ninja that doesn't know how to talk is a bad Ninja. The art of disguising and gathering information required a great deal of acting and knowing how to talk. Ninjas were required to know a lot of dialects (which isn't shown in here): Japan at that time was full of different dialects that could mess up the information; equally, the D&D world is full of various languages and various dialects and even various methods of speaking within each other that would reveal a disguised person in their deceit. Besides, you would have expected a Ninja to be disguised as a peasant, speaking to bar patrons about X and Y thing than being all "stealthy and silent" and stuff. They only got "stealthy and silent" in their actual assassination job.

Undoubtedly, and as you'll see. Ninjas step on the toes of Rogues quite a lot. Mostly, since Ninjas were pretty much the Japanese variant of Rogues, and because WotC didn't got Rogues right. At all. As a bare minimum, Rogues were supposed to have all skills on their list.

If you want to know, thematically speaking, the Factotum is more akin to the original concept of a Rogue than a Rogue does. If you can get a book about picaresque, which is from where the Rogue archetype perhaps emerged, you'll see that they learned to do just about everything.

I would also further limit the amount of ki points available a bit, since they're meant to go in, overwhelm the target with their abilities, and get out. Prolonged battles should hurt.
I'm using the actual progression given by WotC. I haven't changed that one.

At first level, assuming a good Wis (18), that's 5 uses of ki per day. However, you could get less than that depending on your actual starting Wis (since there's few if none 0 LA races with a Wis bonus, you'll not get much higher than 18 starting up, unless you scavenge a lot) At 2nd level (which still would imply 5 uses of ki per day), that means 5 rounds of invisibility; hardly game-breaking, since you don't get much to work with.

Later, it only gets more complicated. You get abilities that use two daily uses of ki per day, and you get a myriad of abilities. Furthermore, you lose some of your supernatural defenses if you waste all of your ki points, so you need to have at least one.

I find the uses of ki to be rather balanced, considering that what really killed the original Ninja was their very limited use. Your first battles or so would have been a cinch, but later on, you'd need a spellcaster or you'd be left useless (since you can't even flank to use your extra damage dice).

And yes, I noticed you scratched that down. Still worth an explanation, no?

And then I'd nix Use Magic Device. The last part is the big one.

A word on Use Magic Device: it's by far the most powerful skill in the game. Very very few classes have it. I would strongly urge caution when giving it to a class. That said, I do believe it fits a ninja theme, because I see the skill as basically deceiving an item to trigger, and deceit is in the ninja's repertoire. Another example of use magic item being deceit is that warlocks have it, and then eventually get an enhancement to it called Deceive Item. However, like I said, it's very powerful. I wouldn't give the class such powerful base abilities and then give them this too on top of it. Use Magic Device fits very nicely with the rogue theme, but mechanically it's crucial because at higher levels because all their ranks in Hide and Move Silently mean diddly squat when spells like Silence and the Invisibilities become readily available. Rogues need it to keep their core mechanics functional. Ninjas have these spells built into the class, thus Use Magic Device is not crucial.

On the same note, I loved your warmage homebrew, but I thoroughly disagree about the Use Magic Device there too for the reasons pointed above. Deceiving items to trigger is not a very warmage thing to do, and it defeats the purpose of having limited spell pools. If a wizard, a crusty old fart that studies ancient knowledge every day but can't manage to wave a wand of cure minor wounds, I really don't see how or why a warmage could.

Those are my thoughts on the matter. I don't mean to be harsh, but constructive. I agree you have a very flavorful class, but I just wanted to raise my concerns about mechanics. I don't think this class is cheese, but I do think it's pushing it a bit.
A very reasonable concern. UMD has more than its reasons to stay here, but indeed, it's kinda taboo to speak of it. The problem isn't really the Ninja having UMD (even cross-class is magnificent), but that UMD is really, really powerful. And, even then, the Rogue for a few reasons becomes actually better than a Ninja at UMD. UMD isn't exactly a Rogue-specific ability (Open Lock and Disable Device are), and it delivers a lot of power to the Rogue, but it's not the be-all end-all ability of the Rogue.

First, how Rogue can be better. Rogues have less of a need for optimal stats than a Ninja does. Rogues, as mentioned before, need only Dex to be worthwhile; you could argue Con, but then again, everybody needs a good Con score. Strength is unnecessary: between Weapon Finesse, Sneak Attack, and Bags of Holding, you don't need Strength at all. Wisdom for Rogues could be used if they want to be better at Spot or Listen, but they don't need Wisdom at all. Charisma is great since they get a lot of Charisma-based abilities, and Int equally since they get more skill points per level. So, they can get their second best skill and add it at either Charisma or Intelligence, in whatever they need.

Ninja, on the other hand, require a very balanced Dex and Wis to work well. One granted thing is that they need a bit more Wis than Dex: it strengthens their attack, damage and AC, so they'd be Wis primary, Dex secondary. That leaves either Charisma or Intelligence as tertiary, so the Rogue has a distinct advantage score-wise.

Second, Ninja don't need UMD too much. Sure, they can get a good scroll or two, but the reasons why they need it are scarcer than for a Rogue. However, and this is crucial: without UMD, Ninja's Sudden Strike would suck even more than a Rogue's Sneak Attack than it currently does, since it would deny them the benefits of the SA/SS defense-bypasses (Grave Strike and equivalents, Wraithstrike)

Third, and why Rogue can get a much better UMD than Ninja:
1) Can choose Charisma as a secondary score. That's about 1 or 2 points above a regular Ninja in UMD, which can make it worthwhile.
2) They can multiclass without losing too much. If a Ninja multiclasses, it can lose a few things, including and not limited to their marvelous 20th level capstone. A Rogue is almost forced to multiclass before level 19 since they don't have a capstone at all, and what they get is pointless: only multiclassing or PrCing to a class that provides d4 Hit Dice, no BAB and no Saves would be bad. A Rogue can get a very decent benefit even if they eventually lose some skill points on the exchange (and by that point, losing 1 point wouldn't matter that much)

I can understand that UMD is insanely good, and that it serves mostly as a deception rather than anything else. I *could* work on that, but in theory, the real problem with UMD is UMD itself. A Ninja can already turn invisible and ethereal, and gets quite a lot of damage, so their uses of UMD are more limited in scale, albeit not limited in importance.

EDIT: I was looking at the class a bit more, and recalling my own experiences playing a Ninja at level 8.

Like I said before, I think the vast majority of the abilities are fine. However, I still think that it's stepping on a rogue's toes far too much. This is my revised suggestions:

1) Lower amount of skills known. Bad news bear when you have more skills than a rogue.
2) Lower amount of skill points to 6.
3) Take away these competence bonuses to skills. You've set up ninjas to out-skill rogues with more skills known, just as many skill points, and then competence bonuses to actually make them better than a rogue could be at its main schtick.
4) Remove Use Magic Device skill.

That's about it. If that was all done, you'd be end up with a better Assassin which is fine, but you wouldn't be absolutely stomping rogues as is the current situation.
Upon your revised suggestions:
1) This is the current Ninja's skill list:
Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Gather Information, Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowledge (geography), Knowledge (local) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Open Lock (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex), Use Magic Device (Cha), and Use Rope (Dex)
That's about 29 skills. Each skill, even Use Rope, has its justification. (I also noticed that I placed Craft twice...

This is the Rogue's skill list:
Appraise (Int), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (local) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Open Lock (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex), Use Magic Device (Cha), and Use Rope (Dex).
That's about 29 skills. About the exact same skills as a Ninja, and the Rogue can still do things that a Ninja can't. A Rogue isn't interested in meteorology or geography, a Rogue can still forge documents (about the only truly exclusive skill for a Ninja), a Rogue can do Open Lock or Disable Device just as well, a Rogue can Appraise (which is great to determine the price of stuff)

For comparison, this is the original Ninja skill list:
Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Disable Device (Int), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Gather Information (Cha), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Open Lock (Dex), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Swim (Str) and Tumble (Dex)
That's 20 skills. From those:
--Knowledge (nature) is justified as the Ninjitsu art of Tenmon. It's perhaps one of the few best skills they have over Rogue, since they can identify many creatures
--Knowledge (geography) is justified as the Ninjitsu art of Chi-mon. As it stands...well, you can't use Know (geography) that much, since it doesn't provide info about monsters.
--Diplomacy has its roots on the Ninja being the servant of a feudal lord. You could expect that at least some of the Ninja's missions weren't assassination or spying, but rather diplomatic missions. Also, a diplomat could also serve as a spy, so why not give him the tool that he needs to make his acting better?
--Knowledge (Local) is justified as the Ninjitsu art of Cho-ho. If you don't know jack about the area, how are you expected to blend in? Gather Information can tell you much, but you'll have to do it as a stranger. Plus, it gives info on humanoids: the classic target of a Ninja.
--Ride is justified as the Ninjitsu art of Bajutsu. More often than not, Ninja were also Samurai of their Shogun (or, to make it clearer: a Samurai usually learned the arts of Ninjitsu to better serve their lord in terms of espionage and sabotage, but they still served their lord in battle as a Samurai). The classic skill of a Samurai, and indeed an important skill to have to escape is the ability to ride a horse or similar suitable mount. Not having that skill usually meant the Ninja needed a method of extraction, or was always on its own to escape.
--Profession is pretty odd that it's absent from the Ninja when it's pretty much one of the few skills that anyone can have as a class skill. Well...I mean, pretty much every single class has Profession. Plus, it works great when you need to provide a suitable excuse for your disguise.
--Perform is the equivalent of Profession to a musician. Ninja don't have much need of it, true, but then that means you couldn't hide out as a traveling musician, and that meant absolutely no access to the hearts of bar patrons and pubs. Yes, it's fluff, much like Profession above.
--Use Rope is oddly justified, as Ninjas were skilled on ropes for entry and capture. Don't trust me; I got most of that from Wikipedia.
--Use Magic Device is mentioned above. That's mostly the one skill that really gets troubling.

I'll go to the second point to illustrate this a bit clearer:

2) As the list currently stands, a Ninja with 8 skill points, as a Human, and with an average Int (12-14) would cover about 1/3rd of the entire skill list. With 6+Int skill points per level, you'd cover just around...3/5ths of the list. A Rogue with roughly the same except a much better Int (16) would cover around 3/4ths of its own list. The original Ninja, in comparison, using 6+Int skill points per level, would cover almost half of its own list, using average Int. With 16 Int and human, it would cover half of its own list.

Why these weird proportions? A Ninja, dealing in proportions between list size and skill point, covers more skills than a Rogue with slightly better stats, using the same race and covering both 6+Int and 8+Int. By comparison, using direct amount of skills, a Ninja and a Rogue with 8+Int would be roughly equal, only depending on race and Int, and a Rogue has a higher chance of getting more Int than a Ninja. You'd need three high scores compared to the Rogue's two. So...skill point total is, or should be, proportional to the amount of skills that a class possesses. I can't reduce the amount of skill points if the class is both a skill-monkey and having a large skill list. I could if I do reduce the skill list, since it wouldn't be so necessary, but as it stands, giving them 6+Int would make them really bad skill monkeys.

3) Competence bonuses to Hide, Disguise and Jump are a tad hard to explain, but they should be easy to understand once I explain. Compared to the Rogue, a Ninja has supernatural powers which it can use to enhance its abilities. From those three, only Disguise is an extraordinary ability: the other two skills are Supernatural, which means that on an AMF a Rogue and a Ninja are pretty much equal, except that Sudden Strike is weaker than Sneak Attack and the only real competence bonus that remains is the Disguise bonus...which IS one of the hallmarks of the Ninja (get a good look at the Wikipedia page, it's pretty decent even though further study might be much better). Even at a non-AMF circumstance, here's part of the rationale behind this:
--Jump, as it stands, sucks. Long jumps are cool and whatnot, but high jump are nearly impossible. A competence bonus equal to 1/2 class level won't do much, aside from adding perhaps two, almost three feet to the Jump. Meanwhile, both of them might eventually disregard the skill once they get a flying method. Ninja has an added "flying" method, which is Air Walk; Rogue doesn't, but it's not like it can't fly at all (and if it does, it won't be Air Walk, you can be sure of that).
--Hide, on the other hand, is invaluable for a Ninja. Part of their largest training is knowing how to Hide, and the class provides for several enhancements to Hide than a Rogue does. In fact, a Rogue may not need Hide that much, since it doesn't get the skill that an Assassin and a Ranger of all people get (Hide in Plain Sight). As the competence bonus starts, a Rogue is much better at hiding than a Ninja (since it'll probably have a better Dex bonus than a Ninja), but that slowly shifts eventually. And also...by the moment they both get Invisibility, Hiding can be also left pretty worthless. Unless you get True Seeing or an anti-invisibility ability, in which case you really want the master of Hiding to be screwed completely?
--Disguise is the other key skill of a Ninja. They NEED to be masters of acting and disguise in order to complement their hiding in plain sight abilities. That is why the competence bonus in Disguise is an extraordinary ability: because they need to be that good. In fact, the ability that complements Art of Disguise isn't pretty mind-breaking either: it behaves like Alter Self, but it works as Disguise Self, to the point that it only makes disguising easier. Those two are meant to provide the Ninja with one of their most valuable skills at a more than competitive rate (at an insuperable rate). The Rogue, on the other hand, might not need to Disguise that well as a Ninja does.

So...with one skill bonus being a gift to a skill that eventually becomes useless, and two skills in which the Ninja has to be beyond competitive, it can be easy to understand why a competence bonus is a gift for them. In much easier terms, it's not that with competence bonuses I make a Ninja better than a Rogue at what it does (skill-monkeying), it's that a Ninja HAS to be better than a Rogue in at least Hide and Disguise, period. And Jump? Well...where haven't you seen that a Ninja makes awesome jumps? Seems like a given.

4) I'll think very carefully about UMD. I wish to consider it carefully, since I still believe that they could make a great use of said ability, but that the ability itself is troubling and problematic (yes, I was deliberately redundant)

As for Ninja stomping Rogue: while the supernatural abilities are clearly stronger than the Rogue's extraordinary ones, I don't think the Ninja is overtaking the Rogue's job. The Ninja and the Rogue have very specific niches, which they don't overlap unless they multiclass into each other. Aside from the UMD situation (which is the one I'm most critical about), the Ninja competes very well to a Rogue (giving the impression that it outfights the Rogue in its own game), but it's very ability-dependant. The Rogue, however, has various abilities which make it equal, if not stronger, and one of them is multiclassing. The Ninja is very dependant on its class level, and just moving yourself from that line dents all of the Ninja's abilities: two, and you get dented even harder (since in that occasion, DC modifiers and 1/2 class level-based abilities get hit as well). The other is sheer simplicity, in which you don't need to do much to be a good Rogue, and most of what benefits a Ninja could benefit a Rogue (Ring of Freedom of Movement, Ring of Blinking, Ring of Evasion, Gloves of Dex, etc.), while a Ninja needs a bit more to be roughly as competitive as the Rogue (Periapt of Wis, for example; also, a Ninja can't equip armor) Think of that.

I won't say I won't think about this (I did say I was going to think about the future of UMD). I thank you for exposing some strong points, and I'll meditate about them. However, I consider I have strong reasons to, aside from UMD, keep it as-is. Ninjas are also skill-monkeys, comparable to Rogues (which is the intention), but also quite different.