3.5 A Mindbender that People Actually Want to Play! (PEACH)

[NeoSeraphi]

The Mindbender

Prerequisites:

Spellcasting: The ability to cast suggestion as an arcane spell or a spell-like ability.
Skills: Bluff 5 ranks, Diplomacy 5 ranks, Intimidate 5 ranks, Sense Motive 5 ranks
Feats: Spell Focus (Enchantment), Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment)
Special: Arcane Caster level 7th



Hit Dice: d4
Class Skills: The mindbender has Bluff, Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Forgery, Gather Information, Intimidate, Knowledge (All skills, taken individually), Profession, Sense Motive and Spellcraft as class skills.
Skill Points: 4+Int per level

{table=head]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special|Spellcasting

1st|+0|+0|+0|+2|Telepathy, Enchantment Spellpower +1|

2nd|+1|+0|+0|+3|Eternal Charm (1)|+1 existing spellcasting class

3rd|+1|+1|+1|+3|Enchantment Spellpower +2|+1 existing spellcasting class

4th|+2|+1|+1|+4|Eternal Charm (2)|+1 existing spellcasting class

5th|+2|+1|+1|+4|Enchantment Spellpower +3, Pierce Immunity|

6th|+3|+2|+2|+5|Eternal Charm (3)|+1 existing spellcasting class

7th|+3|+2|+2|+5|Enchantment Spellpower +4|+1 existing spellcasting class

8th|+4|+2|+2|+6|Eternal Charm (4)|+1 existing spellcasting class

9th|+4|+3|+3|+6|Enchantment Spellpower +5, Dominate|+1 existing spellcasting class

10th|+5|+3|+3|+7|Thrall|[/table]

Class Features:

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The mindbender does not receive any additional proficiencies.

Telepathy (Su): A mindbender gains the telepathy ability, allowing him to communicate mentally with any creature within 100 feet that has a language.

Enchantment Spellpower (Ex): A mindbender's words are very persuasive. This power flows into his magic. The DC to resist a mindbender's spells and spell-like abilities with the [charm] or [compulsion] subschool increases by +1. This bonus increases by +1 at 3rd level, and every odd level after that, to a maximum of +5 at 9th level.

Spellcasting: At every level except 1st, 5th, and 10th,, a mindbender gains new spells per day, spells known (excluding casters who prepare from spellbooks) and an increased caster level as if he had gained a new level in an arcane spellcasting class that he belonged to before he took levels in mindbender. If he has multiple arcane casting classes, he only advances one, chosen when he gains the level.

Eternal Charm (Sp): Starting at 2nd level, once per day the mindbender can use charm monster as a spell-like ability, except that its duration is permanent. The caster level is equal to his arcane caster level (minimum of his mindbender class level). The save DC is based on his casting modifier. He can only have one creature charmed with this ability at one time. If he uses the ability again, the creature that was charmed by this ability least recently is freed.

At 4th level, and every 2 levels after that, he can charm another creature, to a maximum of 4 at 8th level. This does not increase the number of times he can charm per day, just the number of creatures he can have charmed at once.

Pierce Immunity (Su): At 5th level, the mindbender gains the power to pierce a creature's immunity to mind-affecting abilities, whatever the source. Starting at 5th level, any creature with an Intelligence score that has immunity to mind-affecting abilities, whether natural (such as a vampire) or magical (such as a wizard with the mind blank spell) is instead treated as if it had a +4 racial bonus on saving throws against mind-affecting abilities.

Dominate (Sp): At 9th level, a mindbender gains the ability to cast dominate monster as a spell-like ability once per day, with a caster level equal to his arcane caster level (minimum of his mindbender class level). The save DC is based on his casting ability score modifier.

Thrall (Su): At 10th level, a mindbender can choose to make the duration of his dominate ability permanent. He may only ever have one such creature dominated and if he uses a permanent dominate ability on a new creature while he already has another creature permanently dominated, the first creature is set free.

[Zakaroth]

Nice work, you met your goal if you ask me. Class abilities are great, not to many, neither to few. All in all, simple but elegant. So, I don't have much to suggest. The only thing that bugs me a bit is that the entry requirements are pretty easily met. There is almost no reason not to take levels in this class (unless I'm missing something).

[NeoSeraphi]

Nice work, you met your goal if you ask me. Class abilities are great, not to many, neither to few. All in all, simple but elegant. So, I don't have much to suggest. The only thing that bugs me a bit is that the entry requirements are pretty easily met. There is almost no reason not to take levels in this class (unless I'm missing something).

Hm, good point. I added Spell Focus (Enchantment) and Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment) as prerequisites. Now the majority of skill points and half the feats of a 7th level caster will be going in to making this class work, and the feats only really benefit an actual focused enchanter rather than a generalist caster.

[Zakaroth]

Much better. This makes it a poor dip-PrC (for the telepathy), which is a good thing if you ask me.

[NeoSeraphi]

Alright. Does anyone else have any suggestions/comments?

[Garryl]

You may wish to change Enchantment Spellpower to a caster level bonus instead of a save DC bonus. Most everything of similar form was like that in 3.0, but the 3.5 updates changed them to CL boosts across the board due to making save DCs high enough to make saving just about impossible.

Charm and Compulsion are subschools, not descriptors.

Thrall is a nigh-useless capstone. Instead of capturing one foe per day until you have a number equal to your CL that you keep refreshing 1/day, you get just one. It's only really useful if you need a dominated creature deep undercover or something for extremely long period of time (more than a few weeks), which dominated creatures aren't even that good at (easy to detect so deep cover is hard, you have to concentrate every so often to keep up control and issue orders so after-death contingencies are tough, and I can't think of any other situations in which you would need more than 2-3 weeks apart). Never mind, just noticed that only another permanent dominate removes a previous permanent dominate.

Pierce Immunity is nice and appropriate. Good to see it letting you actually use Enchantment spells instead of seeing immune foes all the time.

Eternal Charm inherits most of the same ambiguities regarding power and versatility that Charm Person already has, so I'm not going to touch that. It seems flavorful and appropriate though. Might want to change what happens when you charm over your limit. As written, the last charmed creature is freed, which means if you have 2+ creatures charmed the first one (and second and third, as appropriate) stays charmed forever and only the 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) keeps changing. Since, it isn't dismissible, you have to go over and dispel the previous charms yourself if you want to make room for more friends.

Edit: Since you can get in on a Suggestion SLA, you might not even have an arcane caster level for Dominate to use, nor a casting modifier for Eternal Charm and Dominate.

Any reason you don't want new spells known for non-spontaneous casters?

[NeoSeraphi]

You may wish to change Enchantment Spellpower to a caster level bonus instead of a save DC bonus. Most everything of similar form was like that in 3.0, but the 3.5 updates changed them to CL boosts across the board due to making save DCs high enough to make saving just about impossible.

There's no reason to increase the caster level. It gives you a few hours or a few days extra of control. That's not helpful. Either way, you're just going to spend a spell to ensnare them again at the end of it.

Plus, this ability is is just right out of the original mindbender class in Complete Arcane, except I spread it out over 9 levels and increased the total by +1 (from +4, to +5)

Charm and Compulsion are subschools, not descriptors.

Alright, changing.

Thrall is a nigh-useless capstone. Instead of capturing one foe per day until you have a number equal to your CL that you keep refreshing 1/day, you get just one. It's only really useful if you need a dominated creature deep undercover or something for extremely long period of time (more than a few weeks), which dominated creatures aren't even that good at (easy to detect so deep cover is hard, you have to concentrate every so often to keep up control and issue orders so after-death contingencies are tough, and I can't think of any other situations in which you would need more than 2-3 weeks apart).

Read it again, you can still use dominate once per day, you just have the option of making it permanent once. Even after you have one dominated permanently, you can keep using the non-permanent one once per day.

Pierce Immunity is nice and appropriate. Good to see it letting you actually use Enchantment spells instead of seeing immune foes all the time.

Thank you.

Eternal Charm inherits most of the same ambiguities regarding power and versatility that Charm Person already has, so I'm not going to touch that. It seems flavorful and appropriate though. Might want to change what happens when you charm over your limit. As written, the last charmed creature is freed, which means if you have 2+ creatures charmed the first one (and second and third, as appropriate) stays charmed forever and only the 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) keeps changing. Since, it isn't dismissible, you have to go over and dispel the previous charms yourself if you want to make room for more friends.

Oh? I thought that any spell with a duration of Permanent was dismissable.

[NeoSeraphi]

Edit: Since you can get in on a Suggestion SLA, you might not even have an arcane caster level for Dominate to use, nor a casting modifier for Eternal Charm and Dominate.

Alright, I'll change it to (minimum of your class level) for the SLA-users.

Any reason you don't want new spells known for non-spontaneous casters?

That's part of the FAQ, it specifically stated that wizards who don't advance in the wizard class no longer get new spells in their spellbook from prestige classes. I just add that reminder text in to all my caster prestige classes, it's not specific to this one.

[Garryl]

Read it again, you can still use dominate once per day, you just have the option of making it permanent once. Even after you have one dominated permanently, you can keep using the non-permanent one once per day.

I saw. I must have edited my post while you were typing up yours.

That's part of the FAQ, it specifically stated that wizards who don't advance in the wizard class no longer get new spells in their spellbook from prestige classes. I just add that reminder text in to all my caster prestige classes, it's not specific to this one.

Assuming that the rules actually are that way (I don't trust trust the FAQ's validity as written rules after all the arguments I've seen back and forth about it), what about other non-spontaneous spellcasters than the Wizard?

[NeoSeraphi]

Assuming that the rules actually are that way (I don't trust trust the FAQ's validity as written rules after all the arguments I've seen back and forth about it), what about other non-spontaneous spellcasters than the Wizard?

All non-spontaneous arcane casters use a spellbook. (It's impossible to prepare spells unless they're written down or you're using a divine source)

Edit: It looks like the RAW supports it too. Wizards do not have a spells known progression like a sorcerer (nor do wu jen). Instead, they have a class feature called "Spellbook":

Spellbooks

A wizard must study her spellbook each day to prepare her spells. She cannot prepare any spell not recorded in her spellbook, except for read magic, which all wizards can prepare from memory.

A wizard begins play with a spellbook containing all 0-level wizard spells (except those from her prohibited school or schools, if any; see School Specialization, below) plus three 1st-level spells of your choice. For each point of Intelligence bonus the wizard has, the spellbook holds one additional 1st-level spell of your choice. At each new wizard level, she gains two new spells of any spell level or levels that she can cast (based on her new wizard level) for her spellbook. At any time, a wizard can also add spells found in other wizards’ spellbooks to her own.

Emphasis mine. This can be assumed to be from the base class only, and as the prestige classes clearly state "You gain no other benefits, such as improved familiar progression (which also only uses wizard levels) or bonus feats", you don't get spells added to your spellbook.

[Garryl]

All non-spontaneous arcane casters use a spellbook. (It's impossible to prepare spells unless they're written down or you're using a divine source)

Not true. There are a few non-spontaneous arcane spellcasters out there that don't use spellbooks, like the Sha-ir and the Magewright. They're generally a bit obscure, though. I think a few PrCs count, too.

[NeoSeraphi]

Not true. There are a few non-spontaneous arcane spellcasters out there that don't use spellbooks, like the Sha-ir and the Magewright. They're generally a bit obscure, though. I think a few PrCs count, too.

The Sha-ir is 3rd party. I've never heard of the Magewright. But alright, I'll update it to "excluding casters who use spellbooks".

[Cieyrin]

The Sha-ir is 3rd party. I've never heard of the Magewright. But alright, I'll update it to "excluding casters who use spellbooks".

Sha'ir is in Dragon Compendium, which is most certainly not 3rd party. Magewright is the other new class out of the ECS besides Artificer and I don't think we really need to mention it, as it's a new NPC class, anyways. They're neat, certainly, but that doesn't make them necessary for mention.

[NeoSeraphi]

I never did get much PEACH on this. Seeking other peoples' opinions.

[sreservoir]

Sha'ir is in Dragon Compendium, which is most certainly not 3rd party. Magewright is the other new class out of the ECS besides Artificer and I don't think we really need to mention it, as it's a new NPC class, anyways. They're neat, certainly, but that doesn't make them necessary for mention.

DrComp is ... strange; not quite first-party, but not really third-party, either.

[Southern Cross]

Perhaps Dragon Compendium should be called "second-party", then?

[Roak Star]

For the record, PrCs with spellcasting clearly state that when they get the "+1 Existing Spellcasting", its as though they took another level of that previous class, which means that wizards DO in fact get new spells in their spellbooks.

If you really don't want wizards to get spellcasting progression, why not just make it a pre-req that you have to be able to spontaneously cast spells, and that the spellcasting progression only applies to your spontaneous casting class?

[NeoSeraphi]

For the record, PrCs with spellcasting clearly state that when they get the "+1 Existing Spellcasting", its as though they took another level of that previous class, which means that wizards DO in fact get new spells in their spellbooks.

*shrugs* I'm just saying what I saw in the FAQ

If you really don't want wizards to get spellcasting progression, why not just make it a pre-req that you have to be able to spontaneously cast spells, and that the spellcasting progression only applies to your spontaneous casting class?

I'm not stopping them from getting access to new spell levels, or more spells per day. I'm just stopping them from adding 2 free spells per level to their spellbook. And it's not because I "don't want them", it's because that's what it seems to be RAW

[Ziegander]

Were you trying to make the PrC less attractive for the Telepathy dip? Because I don't know if making the PrC higher level and more dependent on Enchantment focus is that much of a deterrent. Sure, existing builds won't dip the class for Telepathy anymore, but new builds certainly might.

Also, since this gives the specialist Enchanter an enormous boost in effectiveness while taking nothing away, shouldn't it lose some caster levels? 1st, 5th, and 9th level seem to be ripe for the picking.

[Tael]

Needs to lose a Caster Level somewhere, probably at 10th level. It has a lot of really nice class abilities, and the dominate monster and Thrall are very powerful.

Just my 2cp.

EDIT: Scratch that, loss of CL should be at 5th. Pierce Immunity is damn good, and this way anyone who wants to get the final 2 powerful abilities still has to lose a CL, and it prevents taking everything except the last level.

[Reluctance]

I'm trying to think what spontaneous casters would have the skill points to do this while still keeping vital caster skills like Concentration. It sounds too much like a specialist Enchanter direct path. Specifically one with the Social Proficiency ACF.

OTOH, it's still a default beguiler booster. It doesn't let the 7th level Advanced Learning grab a new power, but it does give a +1 DC to a good chunk of his powers. That's getting into no-brainer dip territory.

Having most of your class features take the form of followers is tricky at best. It might work for certain groups, but the ability to yoink any monster the party meets can limit the DM's options. It's the same as making sure that the driud never meets the monsters that break Wild Shape.

And the original Mindbender had all those DC bumps in part because he lost all those caster levels. You give and you, um, give. I really like Pierce Immunity, although granted that's largely because I'm not a fan of blanket immunities. Still, the rest of the class overcorrects.

[NeoSeraphi]

Alright, I'll remove the CL at 1st, 5th, and 10th level. 7/10 casting is good.