Factotum Remastered: New Feats and adapted class abilities

**Stealth Marmot** · 2017-04-04, 02:35 PM (ISO 8601)

The Revised Factotum

"If you pay attention, learn the right tricks, and apply a little ingenuity, you can fake being good at something long enough to get it done." - Victor Cain, Factotum

The Factotum might be one of the most hotly debated classes of 3.5. Many argue whether it is a good tier class, while others argue that it is a terrible class, particularly in combat.

I find the class something I like, but profoundly flawed in the following ways:

Poor scaling: Due largely to a rather low inspiration pool, the player gets into increasingly harsh situations that far outweigh the potential bonuses they could get. Other classes get exponentially greater at their roles while the factotum only gets a few more chances to use their inspiration. The later inspiration abilities also cost a great deal, leaving factotums shy about using much of their inspiration pool for fear of needing it, or draining it fast with what amounts to not much. This leads to the next part.

Lacking Variety: Because Factotums get very few inspiration points, most builds involve ignoring nearly every other feat except for Font of Inspiration until level 9 or later. Most expect at lest 3 feats used on Font of Inspiration, and usually 4 if not 5. Because the feat actually scales UP in provided inspiration points, the players want to max out the feat wherever possible. The only other feat included in Knowledge (Devotion), which is used to get rather large bonuses on attack and damage against most creatures. While useful, the damage and attack bonus scale rather poorly, and in the end we have every player having the same build because all feats go to the same area. By the time you can start actually getting new feats, it is rather late to be trying to create a build around it. Being human barely helps.

Cheese: The aforementioned specific builds also center around a few specific ideas. First, when the factotum gets extra potential standard actions, an optimizer uses the massive number of extra inspiration fron Font of Inspiration to use Use Magic Device and sling multiple spells in a single round from a wand or a bunch of scrolls. (Up to 6 actions in a single round). Optimizers also try to use the factotum's "all" skills to allow them to get Iajatsu Focus, which involves a DM allowing material from a somehwt lesser used 3.0 supplement. It also opens a can of worms concerning adding new skills meant for specific classes. (The Factotums Handbook describes using the "Handle Humanoid" skill skill from an April Fools article for Krom's sake!)

Because of these problems, and the fact that I love the class, I decided to try my hand at a revision of the class that should hopefully iron out the problems.

IMPORTANT: This build assumes all changes are made, including the changes to Font of Inspiration. The original version of Font of Inspiration may be unbalanced with the new additions depending on interpretation.

I have highlighted the new abilities in blue.

FACTOTUM ABRIDGED

Alignment: Any
Hit Die: d8
Starting Age: As rogue
Starting Gold: As rogue

Class Skills
A Factotums's class skills include Every skill listed in the Players Handbook or the Expanded Psionics Handbook. (Note: This excludes skills not listed in one of those books)
Skill Points at First Level: (6 + Int modifier) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier
Weapon and armor proficiency: A Factotum is proficient with all simple and martial weapons, shields (but not tower shields) and light armor.

Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Spell Level	Inspiration	Special
1st	+0	+0	+2	+0	-	2	Inspiration, Cunning Knowledge, Cunning Insight, Trapfinding
2nd	+1	+0	+3	+0	0	3	Arcane Dilettante (1 spell)
3rd	+2	+1	+3	+1	1	4	Brains over Brawn, Cunning Defense
4th	+3	+1	+4	+1	1	5	Cunning Strike 1d6, Arcane Dilettante (2 spells)
5th	+3	+1	+4	+1	2	5	Opportunistic Piety
6th	+4	+2	+5	+2	2	6	Cunning Preparation (3 feats)
7th	+5	+2	+5	+2	2	7	Cunning Strike 2d6, Arcane Dilettante (3 spells)
8th	+6/+1	+2	+6	+2	3	8	Cunning Surge
9th	+6/+1	+3	+6	+3	3	8	Cunning Evasion, Arcane Dilettante (4 spells)
10th	+7/+2	+3	+7	+3	4	9	Cunning Preparation (4 feats), Opportunistic Piety (+1 use)
11th	+8/+3	+3	+7	+3	4	10	Cunning Breach, Priority Shift
12th	+9/+4	+4	+8	+4	4	11	Cunning Strike 3d6, Arcane Dilettante (5 spells)
13th	+9/+4	+4	+8	+4	5	11	Cunning Dodge
14th	+10/+5	+4	+9	+4	5	12	Cunning Preparation (5 feats, 2 prepared), Arcane Dilettante (6 spells)
15th	+11/+6/+1	+5	+9	+5	6	13	Opportunistic Piety (+1 use)
16th	+12/+7/+2	+5	+10	+5	6	14	Improved Cunning Defense
17th	+12/+7/+2	+5	+10	+5	6	14	Cunning Strike 4d6, Arcane Dilettante (7 spells)
18th	+13/+8/+3	+6	+11	+6	7	15	Cunning Preparation (6 feats, 2 prepared)
19th	+14/+9/+4	+6	+11	+6	7	16	Cunning Brilliance
20th	+15/+10/+5	+6	+12	+6	7	17	Arcane Dilettante (7 spells)

Changed abilities:

Unless otherwise noted, the class abilities work the same as listed in Dungeonscape.

Inspiration: Unless otherwise noted, using Inspiration is a free action that can be taken when it isn't your turn. Under no circumstances can an inspiration total come to more than the listed maximum for that level. Inspiration returns to the maximum between encounters.

Cunning Strike: Can only be used once per round, lasts until beginning of next turn and works on all attacks. Increased bonus to 2d6 at 7, 3d6 at 12, 4d6 at 17. This prevents the Cunning Strike Bomb while reducing the cost, making it work on multiple iterative attacks and potential attacks of opportunity.

Cunning Preparation (New Ability!): The Factotum picks three feats he meets the qualifications for. At the beginning of the day, at the same time he memorizes his spells, he chooses one feat that he can use that day. Every time the Factotums gains a level, he can replace one of the three possible feats with another he meets the qualification for. At 10th level, 14th level, and 18th level, he chooses an additional feat to add to his possibility list, for a total of four at 10th level, 5 at 14th level, and 6 at 18th level. At Level 14, the Factotum may choose two feats from the list at the beginning of the day. Any daily abilities granted by these feats can still only be used only once per day, even if they are swapped out before the time is up (From Priority Shift for example).

Priority Shift (New Ability!): As a swift action, the Factotum may spend 2 points of inspiration to switch one of the feats prepared by Sunning Preparation to another until the end of the encounter. They immediately lose all benefits of the prepared feat until the encounter ends and instead gain the benefit of the newly prepared feat.

Cunning Surge: Starting at 8th level, a Factotum learns to push itself when needed. Once per encounter a Factotum can spend 3 inspiration points during their turn to take an extra standard action. (This is to encourage flexibility and prevent cheese. )

Cunning Evasion (New Ability!) - If Inspiration is used one a reflex save, the Factotum takes no damage on a success.

The changes allow for a much better scaling Factotum while addressing the munchkin-like potential in some of the class abilities. However, just the addition of some inspiration and rebalancing does not really address the problem of the Factotum seeming lacking in support, and also does not address the problem of the Font of Inspiration feat, which was both considered essential and was ambiguously worded enough to cause a load of arguments that continue to this day. I have created a new list of feats that are designed for the Factotum that will hopefully allow characters to have much better success in focusing their characters, as well as synergize with existing feats.

NEW FEATS

Font of Inspiration REVAMPED!

Font of Inspiration:
Requirements: Inspiration class feature.
Benefit: Once per day, you can recover 2 points of inspiration. This is a free action that can be done while it is not your turn. This recovery cannot bring your inspiration total up beyond it's normal maximum.
Special: You can take this feat multiple times, each adding another use of this ability, however you can only use the ability once per turn.

Arcane Dillettante Related Feats:

Gifted Dillettante:
Requirements: Arcane Dilettante Class Feature
Benefit: The caster level of all spells cast using the Arcane Dilettante class ability get +1 to caster level. You may also spend up to 3 inspiration points to increase the caster level.

Prodigy Dilettante:
Requirements: Gifted Dillettante, Factotum level 10
Benefit: The spell DC of Arcane Dilettante spells increases by 1. In addition, any inspiration points used to increase the caster level of an Arane Dilettante spell using Gifted Dilettante also increase the Spell DC by the same amount.

Extra Dabbling:
Requirements: Arcane Dilettante Class Feature
Benefit: You gain an extra spell per day for your Arcane Dilettante class feature. This feat does not allow you to cast more than one spell of your highest spell level per day, nor does it allow you to cast the same spell twice.
Note: This feat can be taken multiple times.

Double Dabbling:
Requirements: Arcane Dilettante Class Feature, Extra Dabbling, Factotum Level 4
Benefit: You can cast 2 different spells a day from your highest level spell.
Normal: You can cast only 1 spell of your highest level per day.

Cunning Insight related feats:

Inspired Two Weapon Fighting:
Requirements: Two Weapon Fighting, Cunning Insight
Benefit: If you use inspiration to help the attack bonus of a main hand attack, you can add that same bonus to an off hand attack. If you have multiple off hand attacks (From imporved two weapon fighting and the like) then you choose which off hand attack to apply this to. If you try to use additional inspiration to gain more bonus on the off hand attack roll, the bonuses will not stack. You can use this ability multiple times in a round if you have iterative attacks, but each off hand attack can only get this bonus once.

Inspired Rapid Shot:
Requirements; Rapid Shot, Cunning Insight
Benefit: If you use inspiration to gain an attack bonus on the extra attack granted by Rapid shot, you may choose another ranged attack you make during that round to get the bonus at no inspiration cost.

Inspired Power Attack:
Requirements: Power Attack, Cunning Insight
Benefit: Any time you apply a penalty on your attack roll from Power Attack and you use inspiration to add your INT bonus to your damage roll, you add extra damage to the damage roll equal to either your INT modifier or the penalty you took on the roll from power attack, whichever is less. (You can up to double the INT bonus, but no more, and less if you took a smaller penalty on your attack)

Inspired Combat Expertise:
Requirements: Combat Expertise, Cunning Insight
Benefit: Any time you apply a penalty on your attack roll from Combat Expertise and you use inspiration to add your INT bonus as a bonus to an attack roll during your turn, you can negate the penalty of the combat expertise by up to your INT modifier on one attack during that round, reducing the penalty to up to 0. These do not have to be the same attack. You cannot gain an actual bonus to the attack this way. The negated penalty need not be during your turn, (it can be used for an attack of opportunity for instance), but must be used before your next turn.
Special: This feat can be taken multiple times, each time allowing you to negate the penalty of another attack during the turn.

Feats related to Fighter style bonuses:

Armored Factotum:
Requirements: Factotum level 6
Benefit: You become Proficient in Medium Armor. In addition, you can spend an inspiration point to remove all the movement penalties AND armor check penalties from medium armor and shields (but not tower shields) for one round. If you exhaust your inspiration using this ability, you have to rest for several minutes before you can use it again. (Translation: You can't use it to help your overland or long term movement, just in combat movement)
Special: Even if penalty for armor is entirely negated, the character is still treated as wearing that armor for purposes related to class abilities. For example, the Barbarian's move speed bonus is negated even if the regular move speed penalty for medium armor is negated.

Greater Armored Factotum:
Requirements: Factotum level 12, Armored Factotum
Benefit: You become proficient with Heavy Armor. In addition the inspiration point use of Armored Factotum now extends to Heavy Armor and Tower Shields.

Soldier Factotum:
Requirements: Factotum level 1
Benefits: Your Factotum levels count as fighter levels for the purpose of qualifying for feats such as Weapon Specialization or Greater Weapon Focus.

Feats related to Opportunistic Piety:

Opportunistic Faith:
Requirements: Opportunistic Piety
Benefit: You gain an extra use of Opportunistic piety.
Note: This feat can be taken multiple times. Each time adds an extra use of Opportunistic Piety.

Opportunistic Healer:
Requirements: Opportunistic Piety, Opportunistic Faith, Heal 5 ranks
Benefit: Each use of Opportunistic Piety used for healing heals 3 hit points per Factotum level + Int
Normal: Each use of Opportunistic Piety heals for 2 hit points per Factotum + Int

Opportunistic Doctor:
Requirements: Opportunistic Piety, Opportunistic Faith, Heal 10 ranks
Benefit: Healing an ally with the Oppurtunistic Piety ability also may remove ONE of the following status ailments: Staggered, Fatigued, Sickened, Dazzled. In addition you can spend a charge of Opportunistic piety as a standard action to attempt a DC 20 heal check on a target. If you do so, they are treated as though being the target of a Remove Disease or Neutralize Poison spell.

Opportunistic Zeal:
Requirements: Opportunistic Piety, Opportunistic Faith, Knowledge: Religion 5 ranks, Non-Evil Alignment
Benefit: If you are using your Opportunistic Piety to turn undead you no longer require using a point of inspiration to do so. However, you can spend up to 3 points of inspiration on the turning attempt. Each point of inspiration spent increases your effective turning level by 1.

Opportunistic Bolster:
Requirements: Opportunistic Piety, Opportunistic Faith, Knowledge: Religion 5 ranks, Non-Good Alignment
Benefit: You can use your Opportunistic Faith to Bolster undead as a cleric of your level.

Feats related to Cunning Strike:

Improved Cunning Strike:
Requirements: Cunning Strike Class feature.
Benefit: Increase the die size of Cunning Strike to d8.

Greater Cunning Strike:
Requirements: Cunning Strike Class feature, Improved Cunning Strike, Factotum Level 13
Benefit: Increase the die size of Cunning Strike to d10.

**Beheld** · 2017-04-04, 03:40 PM (ISO 8601)

1) The factotum does not have a maximum amount of IP, he can gain 50k IP if he tries. You should probably fix that.

2) Cunning Surge still costs one standard action, I would make that a swift action to activate, then you don't even have to limit it, because it's only ever 3.0 Haste levels of actions.

3) I don't like Cunning Preparation. I'd much rather see the Factotum say "Well if we fight in a fog cloud, I'll have blindfight" than "I made the choice today to be X." Just let him have a Chameleon floating feat that he can change to another feat with an inspiration point, so that he's actually capable of dealing with situations as they come up, instead of just being a guy who has one more feat than everyone else that he retrains on level up.

**Stealth Marmot** · 2017-04-04, 04:53 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Beheld

1) The factotum does not have a maximum amount of IP, he can gain 50k IP if he tries. You should probably fix that.

2) Cunning Surge still costs one standard action, I would make that a swift action to activate, then you don't even have to limit it, because it's only ever 3.0 Haste levels of actions.

Fixed with an updated passage about Inspiration.

Given the increased Inspiration levels allowing a lot of increased standard actions would possibly lead to some problems, not the least of which would be abuse from Manyshot or Use Magic Device. While these would not exactly make a character amazingly broken, they would still end up outclassing other classes that don't have their versatility.

Originally Posted by Beheld

3) I don't like Cunning Preparation. I'd much rather see the Factotum say "Well if we fight in a fog cloud, I'll have blindfight" than "I made the choice today to be X." Just let him have a Chameleon floating feat that he can change to another feat with an inspiration point, so that he's actually capable of dealing with situations as they come up, instead of just being a guy who has one more feat than everyone else that he retrains on level up.

Chameleon's have to decide the feat at the beginning of the day as well. That's where I got the idea. The idea is to allow a character some thought and preparation based on changing circumstances, party makeup, or planning.

I do like the idea of being able to swap the feat at the cost of an inspiration point, I think I might add another ability to allow that.

Edit: Added new ability: Priority shift at level 11. It costs 2 inspiration points, mainly because you have to take into account the idea that the Factotum might use abilities that the feats augment or even give and want to switch after using them, so it is a valuable ability.

**Beheld** · 2017-04-04, 07:03 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Stealth Marmot

Fixed with an updated passage about Inspiration.

Given the increased Inspiration levels allowing a lot of increased standard actions would possibly lead to some problems, not the least of which would be abuse from Manyshot or Use Magic Device. While these would not exactly make a character amazingly broken, they would still end up outclassing other classes that don't have their versatility.

I don't think ManyShot twice a round is going to outclass anyone. That's not outclassing fighter archers, SA Rogues, or Barbarian charges.

Originally Posted by Stealth Marmot

Chameleon's have to decide the feat at the beginning of the day as well. That's where I got the idea. The idea is to allow a character some thought and preparation based on changing circumstances, party makeup, or planning.

I know Chameleon's do, but I'm saying that Factotums (and honestly chameleon's too) should just be able to pull a random feat out when that's worthwhile.

**Bill Bisco** · 2017-04-05, 12:38 AM (ISO 8601)

I like where you're going with this. I will have to post some more feedback later.

**Gildedragon** · 2017-04-05, 01:56 AM (ISO 8601)

This is an interesting remaster of factotum.

Cunning preparation is pretty good.

I appreciate the revamping of Cunning Strike; makes the IPs more spread-out-able.

I think quite a few of these feats are v. good.

Not sure how keen I am about the only 1/encounter Cunning Surge, I'd have gone for a per-round limitation, but it's pretty solid nonetheless

The only real criticism I have is regarding the: "must have waited for a few minutes" in Inspiration recovery. it suffers from the same ambiguity as the original wording does.
Personally I'd go with something akin to one of these:
a) "At the start of an encounter a factotum's inspiration points are fully restored."
b) (more limited option) "At the start of combat, a factotum's inspiration points are fully restored; outside of combat inspiration points are restored after 5 minutes"
c) (more lax option, for protracted encounters) "A factotum starts an encounter with their inspiration points fully restored; a factotum's inspiration points fully replenish after 1 minute"

Also you made an error in the greater cunning strike feat, calling it G. Cun. Surge

Other than that:
Great stuff. Thumbs up.
I might crib a few of these ideas for my own reworking of the factotum ;D
Especially the Cunning Strike stuff.

**Stealth Marmot** · 2017-04-05, 06:57 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Beheld

I don't think ManyShot twice a round is going to outclass anyone. That's not outclassing fighter archers, SA Rogues, or Barbarian charges.

Manyshot twice a round isn't too much of a problem, but I definitely didn't want Manyshot 4 times in a round.

I actually mulled over the once per round idea, and was considering it, but then we get into the massive UMD use turning the Factotum into a pseudo-artificer. Still considering whether it should be once per round or once per encounter. I am erring on the side of caution considering how many new additions I made and how much new inspiration was added.

The idea behind once per encounter also makes it more strategic in its use during the combat over it just being an assumed use every round.

Originally Posted by Beheld

I know Chameleon's do, but I'm saying that Factotums (and honestly chameleon's too) should just be able to pull a random feat out when that's worthwhile.

I decided to go ahead and add the capability of getting one of the other feats for an encounter at the cost of some inspiration after 11th level.