General Discussion and Sugestions

[oslecamo]

No, that just messes with light levels; that does not negate the existence of cover or allow you to identify everything about your surroundings. If definitely isn't infinite spot or listen bonuses; if I have good darkvision that equals the same thing.

Last time I checked, darkvision doesn't have a "revealing itself and all features" clause. Lifesight is basically the equivalent of mindsight.

You're reading stuff into it that isn't there. Darkvision does have that clause: if it's pitch black, normally I cannot see anything. If I have darkvision, then I can see all the features of something and its surroundings. All that line is saying is that the illumination isn't just a bright light alerting you to the presence of life, it's something you can see by.

You do realize that lifesight is usually considered one of the best special senses out there, in par with mindsight and the like, right?

By your interpretation, lifesight is completely redundant with darkvision. And undeads get darkvision by default. Meaning you're claiming that a lot of guides out there advise you to get an useless feat.

And how many good homebrew classes completely lack access to all sensory skills?

Wizard and cleric don't have spot or listen. Anybody ever complained those ones need them as class skills? Many wizard and cleric clones that are extremely popular online don't get those either.

How many good homebrew classes, I said. Things that are, essentially, clones of the most broken classes in the game? Not really.

Well, the problem here is that "good" is quite the subjective word. Sirpercival's warcrafter isn't a spellcaster, doesn't have sensory skills, and is extremely popular.

And then bloodhulk also shruggs off poison, mind-affecting, critical hits. Warblade and crusader... Die to a lucky crit from some random 1st level orc with a waraxe. They grab diseases when they enter the cursed swamp. And then they can't go in the underwater caverns because they need, to, you know, breath.

Bloodhulk dies due to a lucky hit from a 1st level orc with a waraxe, too. If it's not at full health? Well, a first level Bloodhulk has either 22 or 24 HP. So, I roll a 12 for my damage roll. Plus 5 from strength and a two handed weapon. Plus six because it's slashing and it got lucky on the bonus damage. 23 damage already. If you're on full HP, at best you have exactly one HP left.

Which is still more than -11, and also more than enough to punch the orc back and win the battle. 

Mind you, I meant more around levels 3-4, where the waraxe orc can still one-shot living PCs, while an undead is shrugging it off like a boss.

[Raineh Daze]

No, that just messes with light levels; that does not negate the existence of cover or allow you to identify everything about your surroundings. If definitely isn't infinite spot or listen bonuses; if I have good darkvision that equals the same thing.

Last time I checked, darkvision doesn't have a "revealing itself and all features" clause. Lifesight is basically the equivalent of mindsight.

You're reading stuff into it that isn't there. Darkvision does have that clause: if it's pitch black, normally I cannot see anything. If I have darkvision, then I can see all the features of something and its surroundings. All that line is saying is that the illumination isn't just a bright light alerting you to the presence of life, it's something you can see by.

You do realize that lifesight is usually considered one of the best special senses out there, in par with mindsight and the like, right?

By your interpretation, lifesight is completely redundant with darkvision. And undeads get darkvision by default. Meaning you're claiming that a lot of guides out there advise you to get an useless feat.

Not redundant, since Darkvision has a hard cap distance limit, and doesn't centre itself on living creatures. I do not, however, agree with guides that say it's an outright amazing sense. Unless the DM's going to rule that no amount of hiding skills or abilities are useful. But that's the DM making it an infinite spot check.

And it also completely fails for any other use of spot than 'oh, hey, living thing'.

And how many good homebrew classes completely lack access to all sensory skills?

Wizard and cleric don't have spot or listen. Anybody ever complained those ones need them as class skills? Many wizard and cleric clones that are extremely popular online don't get those either.

How many good homebrew classes, I said. Things that are, essentially, clones of the most broken classes in the game? Not really.

Well, the problem here is that "good" is quite the subjective word. Sirpercival's warcrafter isn't a spellcaster, doesn't have sensory skills, and is extremely popular.

That's one. Now, how many do have those as class skills?

And then bloodhulk also shruggs off poison, mind-affecting, critical hits. Warblade and crusader... Die to a lucky crit from some random 1st level orc with a waraxe. They grab diseases when they enter the cursed swamp. And then they can't go in the underwater caverns because they need, to, you know, breath.

Bloodhulk dies due to a lucky hit from a 1st level orc with a waraxe, too. If it's not at full health? Well, a first level Bloodhulk has either 22 or 24 HP. So, I roll a 12 for my damage roll. Plus 5 from strength and a two handed weapon. Plus six because it's slashing and it got lucky on the bonus damage. 23 damage already. If you're on full HP, at best you have exactly one HP left.

Which is still more than -11, and also more than enough to punch the orc back and win the battle. 

Mind you, I meant more around levels 3-4, where the waraxe orc can still one-shot living PCs, while an undead is shrugging it off like a boss.

[/quote]

More than -11? Only if you're at full HP.

Though yes, at level 3, of course the creature with an intentionally bloated HP pool is going to survive a critical better.

So, what abilities does this have at level 3? More HP, a rather small STR bonus at this stage, some AC (but not actual armour), the ability to translate its HP pool of 52 into save rerolls as well as... well, HP, and an okayish slam attack. And something that's still technically worse than just having spot and listen as class skills. Meanwhile, it takes extra damage from anything pointy, and absolutely sucks at anything other than hitting something that happens to be right next to it.

So I guess it's not all that different from a barbarian with some immunities stacked on top.

[Stratovarius]

To give a 4th level example to compare against, Simell is a Feral Skarn Barbarian 1/Totemist 2 that played in one of my campaigns on BG. This is what his full attack action looked like.

Granted, there was a fair amount of Op-Fu being utilized there, but it gives an upper bound on what a good melee character can do.

[oslecamo]

So, I was thinking of making the Dokufu a prc of the Monstrous Spider. How does it sound?

Not redundant, since Darkvision has a hard cap distance limit, and doesn't centre itself on living creatures. I do not, however, agree with guides that say it's an outright amazing sense. Unless the DM's going to rule that no amount of hiding skills or abilities are useful. But that's the DM making it an infinite spot check.

You're still disagreeing with what's considered a pretty general ruling.

And it also completely fails for any other use of spot than 'oh, hey, living thing'.

Which is what Spot is used 90% of the time.

That's one. Now, how many do have those as class skills?

I'll make you a counter argument-How many bad classes have Spot and Listen as class skills? I'm not sure we can agree on how many exactly, but I believe we can agree that the answer is higher than zero.

And with this I demonstrate that having certain class skills is not by any means the sign of a bad or good class. After all, you yourself are playing two of them right now.

So I guess it's not all that different from a barbarian with some immunities stacked on top.

Barbarian+. Aka warblade/crusader equivalent. I'm perfectly fine with that to be honest.

[Raineh Daze]

Yes, I am going to disagree with a general ruling if I think it's a stupid one. Ruling it as autospot makes no sense. That's saying that 1) the presence of living things means you know WHERE, and 2) there aren't so many living things in most environments it doesn't screw it up. Trees should make any 'find this' function utterly useless on top of that.

Warblade / Crusader has a better chance of not sitting around twiddling their thumbs outside of a fight.

[oslecamo]

Trees and other inanimate plants are not considered creatures by D&D rules, they're treated as inanimate objects. And lifesense only works on creatures. Now if you're trying to spot somewhere inside a crowd it isn't that useful yes, but luckily the game is dungeons and dragons, not city intrigue and find the culprit from the innocents. Double so if you're playing an undead.

And again, immunities allow for plenty of utility when you think about it:
-No need for sleep means an undead can take care of all sentry shifts.
-No need for rest means they can cover a lot more distance before magic travel becomes available. Heck, for the stronger ones, they can probably carry the rest of the party!
-Auto breath-underwater/poisonous mists, unlocking acess to all kinds of terrain the warblade and crusader can only dream of exploring without magic help.
-While the crusader and warblade need to worry about things such as food and potable water when not fighting, the undead can go take care of other stuff.
-Immunity to Fort saves means they can keep going in the most extreme weather conditions.

So basically, they may not be as skilled, but undeads can keep going all day any place. 24 hours of average work in virtually any condtion can easily measure to 8 hours of good work in just favorable conditions.

[Raineh Daze]

Remind me to use awaken plant on every tree in one world.

Whilst they can keep going indefinitely, that isn't useful for the overwhelming majority of circumstances. They're not really contributing by not needing assistance go do these things. The most useful thing is 'can go underwater', but that isn't a highly in demand ability.*

*I am reminded to play the ocean giant at some point.

[oslecamo]

Sooo, would it finally satisfy you if I, say, went around and added small fluffy thematic utility abilities to the 1st level of each non-prc undead class?

[Anomander]

What I think would actually work best is if there were an Undead class and a Construct class.
They would be about 2 levels long and have the usual bad BAB, saves and so on common to the current undead and constructs.
They would have access to a class ability similar to Panty Plate from the Captured One prestige class that would grant them their undead/construct immunities.
All undead and construct creatures would then no longer be getting their type immunities unless they invest in the Undead/Construct class to get them.
That way undead/construct monster classes are no longer limited to have their entire class crippled for getting a bunch of immunities on their very first level.
I think it would solve the problem of granting a bunch of immunities for a level dip in an undead/construct monster class.
It could also be a way to turn anything into an undead/construct version of the original creature.

Whether or not those levels *must* be taken to progress further into an undead/construct monster class is a different issue.

[Raineh Daze]

Not so much for templates. Things where the undead is the WHOLE class? Would help.

^ No. Just... no. Two levels wasted defeats the entire point of these classes. As does 'no CR 1 undead'.

[Anomander]

They are not wasted. You get a bunch of immunities, with perhaps something else. Could be all into a single level instead if 2 levels is too much.
They could be optional and you'd be able to take levels in your preferred undead/construct monster class without getting any undead/construct immunities.

[Raineh Daze]

They're wasted, because they're a level tax and about as much fun as taxes. And mean you're basically setting the lowest level to be undead and not take undead levels as level 4.

... also a glorious way to make minimalistic undead templates too much trouble to bother with. Get killed and become a ghost? Have fun functioning as alive until you've put four levels into it. Not like that's 1/5 of all the things you'll ever get.

[Anomander]

I'm not sure you're understanding this right.

You're still undead. Negative energy still heals you instead of positive energy. You are still not a living creature.
You however do not get immunity to:

(click to show/hide)

all mind-affecting effects, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects, critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain, or energy drain. Immune to damage to its physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), as well as to fatigue and exhaustion effects and immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects or is harmless).

You can get all the undead monster class levels you want, you just won't have the immunities unless you get the undead levels for them.

[Raineh Daze]

I am understanding this right. You're basically suggesting two levels that are utterly devoid of interesting content to actually function as undead. It's like requiring two levels of commoner before getting to take another class, with the bonus that you have chicken infested. :|

[Anomander]

If its not interesting content to you then there is no point arguing about it. Just don't take them.
One/Two level of commoner doesn't grant you all these immunities otherwise people would be taking them. It would actually on the other side allow you to get normal undead class levels that are more interesting instead of getting them gimped for the immunities they get at first level.

[Raineh Daze]

The undead classes are interesting; the non-template classes simply have trouble being anything other than animate weapons of destruction. Making the immunities take two more levels to get* isn't going to help this much at all.

*Which is especially bad value for the more easily acquired templates.

[Anomander]

They can be anything non-undead monster classes are. If the immunities become a level or two add-on that can be put on at any time (if at all) to those classes, then it allows them to be more interesting classes. That's the whole point of the suggestion.

The easily acquired templates can be handled in a way of their own. Some offer enough penalties to compensate for the immunities and could still grant them. Others do not, they offer them while being otherwise no different than non-undead/construct templates in power. So they basically grant them for a level dip among other things and the standard penalties being applied to those classes (no class skills, bad bab and suches) aren't much of a balance point to compensate.

[ketaro]

Anomander, your idea is basically the same as adding a LA+2 to every Undead character that WANTS the immunities that were behind the entire decision to be an Undead character. The only difference is still getting HP for those sacrificed levels.

[Anomander]

I'd say the entire reason someone would want to be a mummy would be... playing a mummy. The entire reason for taking levels in nightwalker would be being a nightwalker. Because it is interesting to you. Not the immunities themselves.
If you only want to be an undead character for the immunities, you could just take the one or two levels to be an undead character with those immunities. It would effectively be a template to just be undead with undead immunities. Or a construct with construct immunities.
So you could be an undead Troll by taking 1 level of Troll and 1 level of Undead to be a troll undead with undead immunities.
If you just want to play a Wight, then you can take all the levels of Wight and leave it at that.
If you could take 1 level that gives you bad progressions for BAB, saves, no class skills, a good HD and a bunch of abilities, it would be way better than an LA. It is actually a pretty good investment.

[ketaro]

So, I was thinking of making the Dokufu a prc of the Monstrous Spider. How does it sound?

I'm not sure, but I don't think I like that...It's a fairly different creature, in my opinion.
Like a mountain dwelling shapechanging hermit with a spider motif. And then the other way around at the same time...
I feel like it could also be a decent pseudo-sorcerer class with a penchant for illusions and mind-effecting stuff. Despite that the original doesn't actually have spellcasting, it technically could be loosely inferred that it is still has like a CL of 20 just from the wording of it's Alternate Form 
And it has an advancement even beyond the HD True Dragons seem to be able to reach so the class could maybe be taken in a way in regards to spiders like how True Dragons are towards normal Dragons...
But that's just my opinion. I do love how incredibly interesting Dokufu come across as
Maybe some inspiration could come from looking at the Jorogumo that I think they're based off of?
Although that would make them seem better as a PrC for Monstrous Spiders.....huh.