Unstoppable

[animorte]

Ok, so this was a class I made years ago while still playing 3.5e. I haven't looked at it in a long time, but recent postings reminded me and inspired me to share. I was planning to post all three classes I crafted but I didn't realize how much work this would be putting together the table, as it is my first attempt. Transferring all of the information was a bit more than I expected as well. I may not have as much time to modify the class as I haven't looked at it in years and currently play 5e.

Anyway, have a look and let me know what you think! Feel free to try it out and respond with feedback.

Spoiler: Unstoppable

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Unstoppable

Alignment: any neutral

Table: Unstoppable					Hit Die: d10
Level	Base Attack Bonus			Saving Throws	Special	AC Bonus
		Fort	Ref	Will
1st	+1	+2	+0	+2	AC Bonus, Fast Healing	Wis (+0)
2nd	+2	+3	+0	+3	Combat Stance	Wis (+0)
3rd	+3	+3	+1	+3		Wis (+0)
4th	+4	+4	+1	+4	Awareness	Wis (+0)
5th	+5	+4	+1	+4	Fast Healing (2)	Wis (+1)
6th	+6/+1	+5	+2	+5	Improved Combat Stance	Wis (+1)
7th	+7/+2	+5	+2	+5	Stand Still	Wis (+1)
8th	+8/+3	+6	+2	+6	Improved Awareness	Wis (+1)
9th	+9/+4	+6	+3	+6		Wis (+1)
10th	+10/+5	+7	+3	+7	Die Hard, Fast Healing (3)	Wis (+2)
11th	+11/+6/+1	+7	+3	+7		Wis(+2)
12th	+12/+7/+2	+8	+4	+8	Unstoppable	Wis (+2)
13th	+13/+8/+3	+8	+4	+8		Wis (+2)
14th	+14/+9/+4	+9	+4	+9		Wis (+2)
15th	+15/+10/+5	+9/	+5	+9	Fast Healing (4)	Wis (+3)
16th	+16/+11/+6/+1	+10	+5	+10		Wis (+3)
17th	+17/+12/+7/+2	+10	+5	+10		Wis (+3)
18th	+18/+13/+8/+3	+11	+6	+11	Unstoppable (2)	Wis (+3)
19th	+19/+14/+9/+4	+11	+6	+11		Wis (+3)
20th	+20/+15/+10/+5	+12	+6	+12	Fast Healing (5)	Wis (+4)

Class Skills: (4 + Int modifier per level, x4 at 1st level)
Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Disable Device (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Open Lock (Dex), Search (Wis), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Tumble (Dex)

Class Features

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: You are proficient with all simple and martial weapons. You are not proficient with any type of armor or shields. When wearing armor, using a shield, or carrying a medium or heavy load, you lose your AC bonus, as well as your Combat Stance, Awareness, and Unstoppable abilities.

Fast Healing: At 1st level you gain the bonus feat Fast Healing. You have a supernatural ability to regain hit points at an exceptionally fast rate. Except where noted here, fast healing is just like natural healing. At the beginning of each of your turns, you heal 1 hit point. In addition, this healing increases by another 1 at 5th level and every 5 class levels therafter (3 at 10th, 4 at 15th, and 5 at 20th level). If you have taken both nonlethal and lethal damage, you heal the nonlethal damage first. Fast healing does not restore hit points lost from starvation, thirst, or suffocation, and it does not allow you to regrow lost body parts. Unless otherwise stated, it does not allow lost body parts to be reattached. Fast healing does not increase the number of hit points regained when you polymorph. This ability has no affect when you are unconscious.

Combat Stance: At 2nd level, you must select one of two combat stances to pursue: offense or defense. This choice affects the character’s class features but does not restrict your selection of feats or special abilities in any way. If the you select offense, you gain the Power Attack feat. If you select defense, you gain the Combat Expertise feat. You lose this ability when wearing any type of armor or shield, or when carrying a medium or heavy load.

Awareness: At 4th level you have studied combat well enough to cover your own weaknesses. You must choose either Evasion or Uncanny Dodge. With Evasion, you can avoid even magical and unusual attacks with great agility. If you make a successful Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, you instead take no damage. When helpless you do not gain the benefit of Evasion. If you already have Evasion from a different class, you may choose to automatically gain Improved Evasion. With Uncanny Dodge, you can react to danger before your senses would normally allow you to do so. You retain your Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) even if you're caught flat-footed or struck by an invisible attacker. However, you still lose your Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized. If you already have Uncanny Dodge from a different class, you may choose to automatically gain Improved Uncanny Dodge. You can only have either Improved Evasion or Improved Uncanny Dodge this way. If you already have both Evasion and Uncanny Dodge from a different class, you may still only choose one. You lose this ability when wearing any type of armor or shield, or when carrying a medium or heavy load.

Improved Combat Stance: At 6th level, your aptitude in the chosen combat stance (offense or defense) improves. If you selected offense at 2nd level, gain one of the following feats: Cleave, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Overrun, or Improved Sunder. If you selected defense at 2nd level, instead gain one of the following feats: Improved Disarm, Improved Feint, or Improved Trip. You lose this ability when wearing any type of armor or shield, or when carrying a medium or heavy load.

Stand Still: At 7th level you gain the bonus feat Stand Still. When a foe’s movement out of a square you threaten grants you an attack of opportunity, you can give up that attack and instead attempt to stop your foe in his tracks. Make your attack of opportunity normally. If you hit your foe, he must succeed on a Reflex save against a DC of 10 + your damage roll (the opponent does not actually take damage), or immediately halt as if he had used up his move actions for the round. Since you use Stand Still in place of your attack of opportunity, you can do so only a number of times per round equal to the number of times per round you could make an attack of opportunity (normally just one). Normal attacks of opportunity cannot halt your foes in their tracks.

Improved Awareness: At 8th level you excel at covering all of your weaknesses. If you chose Evasion at 4th level, you now gain Improved Evasion. You still take no damage on a successful Reflex saving throw against attacks, but henceforth you take only half damage on a failed save. When helpless you do not gain the benefit of Improved Evasion. If you chose Uncanny Dodge at 8th level, you now gain Improved Uncanny Dodge. You can no longer be flanked. This defense denies the ability to sneak attack by flanking, unless the attacker has at least four more levels than you do. The levels from the classes that grant uncanny dodge stack to determine the minimum level required to flank. If you already have Improved Evasion and Improved Uncanny Dodge, gain a bonus feat instead. You lose this ability when wearing any type of armor or shield, or when carrying a medium or heavy load.

Diehard: At 10th level you gain the bonus feat Die Hard. When reduced to between –1 and –9 hit points, you automatically become stable. You don’t have to roll d% to see if you lose 1 hit point each round. When reduced to negative hit points, you may choose to act as if you were disabled, rather than dying. You must make this decision as soon as you are reduced to negative hit points (even if it isn’t your turn). If you do not choose to act as if you were disabled, you immediately fall unconscious. When using this feat, you can take either a single move or standard action each turn, but not both, and you cannot take a full round action. You can take a move action without further injuring yourself, but if you perform any standard action (or any other action deemed as strenuous, including some free actions, such as casting a quickened spell) you take 1 point of damage after completing the act. If you reach –10 hit points, you immediately die. A character without this feat who is reduced to between –1 and –9 hit points is unconscious and dying.

Unstoppable: You have learned, from much experience and study, many magical tricks of combat. At 12th level, as a free action once per day (and one additional time every 6th level after), you can completely ignore all unfriendly magical affects for 1d4+1 rounds. For the duration, this allows you to automatically succeed on saves against all spells and spell-like abilities, and those that require no save immediately fizzle out as if counterspelled. Spells that have already taken affect can't be dispelled in this way and continue on as they normally would unless another save is required, at which point you automatically succeed. You lose this ability when wearing any type of armor or shield, or when carrying a medium or heavy load.

Table: Epic Unstoppable
Hit Die: d10
Epic Level	Special	AC Bonus
21st		Wis (+4)
22nd		Wis (+4)
23rd		Wis (+4)
24th	Unstoppable (3)	Wis (+4)
25th	Fast Healing (6)	Wis (+5)
26th		Wis (+5)
27th		Wis (+5)
28th		Wis (+5)
29th		Wis (+5)
30th	Fast Healing (7), Unstoppable (4)	Wis (+6)

Epic Abilities: AC Bonus, Fast Healing, and Unstoppable all continue to increase at the same rate.

Thank you!


I used this D20 Class Construction Engine as a guide for balance.

[Maat Mons]

I feel the class really needs more things. After 12th level, all it gets are numeric increases. Even before that, it mostly just gets bonus feats that others could easily take with their normal feat slots or a Fighter dip. The ability to gain Improved Trip without meeting the Intelligence prerequisite is kind of nice, but also available elsewhere.

The only things the class gets that aren't bonus feats are Ac Bonus, Fast Healing, (Improved) Evasion, (Improved) Uncanny Dodge, and Unstoppable. Fast Healing and Unstoppable are the only ones of those that aren't easy to get elsewhere.

The Fast Healing starts off useful in combat, but it is quickly outpaced by the rate of increase in player HP totals and enemy damage. At 1st level, one point of healing is maybe 8% of your health. At 20th level, it's probably less than 2% of your health. It's going to wind up mostly only being useful for starting each combat at full health. But at higher levels, spamming Wands of Cure Light Wounds to get back to full health between combats is pretty viable already, so Fast Healing becomes a cost-saving measure.

[Morphic tide]

The most visible problem is that this does almost nothing, being nearly solely a pack of survivability, and not even that good of one with the lack of up-front resistances. "Combat Stance" is a bad idea because everything else about it is about making the character hard to kill, so being able to choose between Even More Defensive or Something To Actually Fight With is largely pointless because hardly anyone is taking yet more defense.

In formatting terms, copied effects usually refer to the source class or feat rather than duplicating the mechanics, "Evasion: As the Rogue feature" or "You gain Power Attack as a bonus feat", and there's an absence of feature typing. Usually, homebrew will use an abbreviation to note the book it's from if it isn't on the SRD, and these abilities are fine as straight Extraordinary but leave out the (Ex) "tag" to specify. Also a lack of Epic Bonus Feats to pad out the table.

[animorte]

I appreciate the honest responses! I hope to be able to spend a little time to adjust it accordingly. I've also added a link to the formatting guide that I used to design this class (and the other two that I hope to post soon). I promise they're both better; this one just had the least amount of information to transfer (as my first attempt).

I feel the class really needs more things. After 12th level, all it gets are numeric increases. Even before that, it mostly just gets bonus feats that others could easily take with their normal feat slots or a Fighter dip. The ability to gain Improved Trip without meeting the Intelligence prerequisite is kind of nice, but also available elsewhere.

The only things the class gets that aren't bonus feats are Ac Bonus, Fast Healing, (Improved) Evasion, (Improved) Uncanny Dodge, and Unstoppable. Fast Healing and Unstoppable are the only ones of those that aren't easy to get elsewhere.

The Fast Healing starts off useful in combat, but it is quickly outpaced by the rate of increase in player HP totals and enemy damage. At 1st level, one point of healing is maybe 8% of your health. At 20th level, it's probably less than 2% of your health. It's going to wind up mostly only being useful for starting each combat at full health. But at higher levels, spamming Wands of Cure Light Wounds to get back to full health between combats is pretty viable already, so Fast Healing becomes a cost-saving measure.

I agree, it does need more things. All of the free feats on top of the feats that you will be able to build naturally always felt like you just had more options. You can use the usual progression feats to actually focus more on utility because you generally get what you need for combat (or focus even more combat if preferred).

The Fast Healing levels up over time. Obviously the percentage gets smaller with the higher levels, but still tons of free healing that really shows up for the rounds you avoid damage completely. It's clearly not the best healing, but is solid considering lack of required resources (as you mentioned yourself). It's only intended to make healing you a little easier.

The most visible problem is that this does almost nothing, being nearly solely a pack of survivability, and not even that good of one with the lack of up-front resistances. "Combat Stance" is a bad idea because everything else about it is about making the character hard to kill, so being able to choose between Even More Defensive or Something To Actually Fight With is largely pointless because hardly anyone is taking yet more defense.

In formatting terms, copied effects usually refer to the source class or feat rather than duplicating the mechanics, "Evasion: As the Rogue feature" or "You gain Power Attack as a bonus feat", and there's an absence of feature typing. Usually, homebrew will use an abbreviation to note the book it's from if it isn't on the SRD, and these abilities are fine as straight Extraordinary but leave out the (Ex) "tag" to specify. Also a lack of Epic Bonus Feats to pad out the table.

It thematically focuses entirely on one thing, admittedly not all that great. I've learned a lot sense I made this some 3-4 years ago, but I didn't edit this at all. A thing to note, to reiterate from up above, is that the free combat focused feats kind of make room for being able to focus other feats on something else, perhaps skills or alternate combat methods, but you've made an excellent point.

I thought nothing about that formatting, so thank you for bringing that up. You've inspired me to try finding more time to update it.

[Maat Mons]

I've never seen that guide before, and I vehemently disagree with it.

[animorte]

I've never seen that guide before, and I vehemently disagree with it.

Would you mind noting the issues of concern?

For me, it was a matter of preexisting classes and their range of total points didn't necessarily confirm the formula.

[Maat Mons]

Perhaps the biggest issue is that the numbers don't seem to take into account when the abilities are gained. A class that gives literally all it's special abilities at 1st level rates the same point total as one that spreads the abilities out evenly, or one that gives absolutely nothing for the first 19 levels, and then gives everything all at once at 20th level.

Another pretty egregious issue is that the formula for determining the point value of spellcasting considers only number of spell slots, not level of spell slots. For example, Wizard spellcasting is deemed to be worth 80 points, with 8 of those points coming from the 4 cantrips, and 8 of them coming from the 4 9th-level spells. Cantrips are not worth the same amount as 9th-level spells.

The guide also erroneously assigns arcane spellcasting a higher value than divine spellcasting. All other things being equal, divine spellcasting is a stronger mechanic than arcane spellcasting. The only reason anyone ever plays a Wizard over a Cleric is that Wizards get the best spell list in the game. The fact that their spells are arcane is a hindrance meant to balance out their class spell list. But the guide doesn't assign any adjustment for class spell list. The one thing that initially looked like it might be intended to account for that instead turned out to be a poorly-named adjustment for spontaneous casters.

And Wizards are assigned another 10 points over Clerics because they can learn their entire spell list, with enough time and money. Clerics know their entire spell list without expending time and money. As I said, divine casting is a more powerful mechanic than arcane casting, and the way the game endeavors to adjust for this is with class spell lists of varying desirability.

The guide suggests that alignment restrictions give license to make a class more powerful. But the logical endpoint of that is nine different classes, which are all identical except that each is exclusive to only one of the nine alignments. Needless restrictions and the proliferation of multiple, similar classes isn't something that should be encouraged in game design.

The point values for save progressions don't seem cognizant of the fact that Fortitude and Will saves are both markedly more valuable than Reflex saves. Or that Will saves are somewhat more valuable than Fortitude saves.

Illiteracy is assigned a point value of -5. But 20 extra skill points over a class' full progression is valued at +15 points. Illiteracy costs 2 skill points to buy off, so this doesn't represent a consistent idea of how much a skill point is worth.

The guide also suggest that adding multiclass restrictions is a good counterbalance to adding extra abilities. But multiclass restrictions are a terrible mechanic.

Animal Companion is given a value of only 5 points.

I could probably find more if I kept looking.

[Metastachydium]

That by this metric, monk is the strongest class, followed by bard while sorcerer and wizard lag behind in the bottom three is also quite the red flag.

[animorte]

-snip snip-

I noticed it was an imbalance but didn't dive into it like this. Very detailed of you, indeed. Spells overall have a much higher value than martial features, and many features are imbalanced to one another. This was published by WotC after all.

That by this metric, monk is the strongest class, followed by bard while sorcerer and wizard lag behind in the bottom three is also quite the red flag.

That's quite amusing. I remember having used another guide along with this one, but I can't recall exactly.