The Undoer [3.5 base]

[TheGeometer]

A class shamelessly inspired by my favorite job from the Bravely Default series (whose name I changed because it didn’t make any sense). I hope you guys like puns based on the word "undo," because they came up with "Undo Trois" and I couldn't help but add a few.

THE UNDOER

"Don’tcha ever wish we could go back to the good ol’ days? When we were young and happy, and I didn’t have a spear in my neck?"

-Dravius, an Undoer, just before snapping his fingers and healing himself completely.

Some people have the ability to make things un-happen. It’s like magic; there’s really no point trying to explain it. Are Undoers born with the ability? Do they learn it? Even Undoers themselves have no clue. By their own admission, they didn’t learn how to do it so much as …un-forget. Regardless of how they exist, these strange people who can snap their fingers and set things back the way they were can be an enormous help to adventuring parties.

MAKING AN UNDOER

Abilities: Undoers can be whatever they want to be. None of their abilities rely on their ability scores specifically. They’re not particularly hardy warriors or skillful scouts, but they can’t easily branch out into spellcasting, either. Their strange undoing ability is all they’ve really got going for them.
Races: Any
Alignment: Any
Starting Gold: As Bard
Starting Age: As Bard.

Class Skills
The Undoer’s class skills are Appraise, Balance, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Heal, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (History), Listen, Move Silently, Profession, Ride, Search, Sense Motive, and Spot.
Skill Points at 1st Level: (4 + int) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + int

Hit Dice: d8

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special	Undos per Day
1st	+0	+0	+0	+2	Undo HP, Undo Magic	2
2nd	+1	+0	+0	+3	Undo Action	4
3rd	+2	+1	+1	+3	Calm Undo Pressure	6
4th	+3	+1	+1	+4	Undo Luck	8
5th	+3	+1	+1	+4	Undue Process	10
6th	+4	+2	+2	+5	This Will Be Your Undoing	11
7th	+5	+2	+2	+5	Undo Magic, Improved	12
8th	+6/+1	+2	+2	+6	Undo, Round Two	13
9th	+6/+1	+3	+3	+6	Undo Displacement	14
10th	+7/+2	+3	+3	+7	Undo unto Others...	15
11th	+8/+3	+3	+3	+7	Enlarged Undo	15
12th	+9/+4	+4	+4	+8	Undo or Die	16
13th	+9/+4	+4	+4	+8	Undo Magic, Perfect	16
14th	+10/+5	+4	+4	+9	Malady Undone	17
15th	+11/+6/+1	+5	+5	+9	Undo Trois	17
16th	+12/+7/+2	+5	+5	+10	Undo Gravity	18
17th	+12/+7/+2	+5	+5	+10	...As You'd Have Them Undo	18
18th	+13/+8/+3	+6	+6	+11	Undo Your Best	19
19th	+14/+9/+4	+6	+6	+11	Explosive Undo	19
20th	+15/+10/+5	+6	+6	+12	Impossible and Undoable	20

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: Undoers are proficient in light armor and shields (except tower shields), with all simple weapons, and with the longsword, rapier, and hand crossbow.

Undos per Day: The Undoer has the ability to revert certain effects back to the state they were in at the end of her last turn. She may use this ability 2 times per day at level 1, plus 2 additional times for each class level she attains beyond the first, though the rate at which she gains undos slows down at later levels as shown in the table above. She may not use an ability for which she has less than the required number of daily undos to expend. She is also barred from using identical abilities more than once at the same target in the same turn. Unless otherwise stated, the Undoer may affect herself with her abilities (resetting her own HP, regaining her own spells, etc.).

When she uses such abilities, the Undoer snaps her fingers. If she is holding a two-handed weapon, has no fingers to snap (claws or tentacles will work fine, but paws or fins will not), or is unable to snap her fingers for some other reason, she may not create any undoing effects that require expending a daily undo attempt.

Undo HP: The Undoer may expend a daily undo and select a creature (which may be unconscious, but may not be dead) within 15 ft. as a Standard action. That creature's HP value, including temporary HP, reverts to the value that it had at the end of the Undoer's previous turn. If that creature had been dead at the time, this ability has no effect. If the creature had been unconscious, it resumes its unconscious state.

Undo Magic: The Undoer also has the ability to select a spell or limited-use spell-like ability used since the end of her last turn by a caster currently within 15 ft. of her (not 15 ft. away when she had cast the spell). By spending a Standard action and a number of daily undos equal to the spell's level, the Undoer can cause that spell, spell slot, or SLA use to become un-expended (though the effect of the spell/ability is not undone). A caster that prepares spells would regain the cast spell, for instance, or a spontaneous caster would regain a spell slot of the level used. This ability can function for psionic powers, but it works a bit differently. She selects a manifester within 15 ft. who used a power since the end of her previous turn. She then returns the manifester's PP value to what it was at that point, expending a number of daily undos equal to half the difference (absolute value, rounded up).

At level 7, this ability improves; she need only spend half the number of daily undos (rounded up) that were required before. At level 13, the Undoer perfects this ability, and only needs to spend a third of the number of daily undos (rounded up) that were required at class level 1.

Undo Action: As a Standard action, the 2nd-level Undoer can expend a daily undo to undo one of the actions that another character within 15 ft. already spent since the last time the Undoer acted. As a result, that character may immediately take a Standard action after the Undoer's turn ends (though any effects from the actions that the character had originally taken are not undone). The initiative order is unchanged by this effect. This effect may not be used on the Undoer herself, nor can it be used on characters which had not taken any Standard actions since the end of the Undoer's previous turn (or in a longer range of time; see Undo, Round Two).

Calm Undo Pressure: The knowledge that she can always correct her mistakes has a way of keeping the Undoer calm and confident. From level 3 onward, as long as the Undoer has at least one daily undo remaining to use, she gains a +1 Morale bonus to AC, attack rolls, skill checks, and saving throws.

Undo Luck: At 4th level, if the Undoer gets unlucky, she can just undo and try again. She can expend a daily undo as an Immediate action to reroll any d20 used to determine either her own success or failure at something or that of a character within 15 ft. of her.

Undue Process: At 5th level, the Undoer gains the ability to disrupt magical effects by making it so that they were never created at all. She may expend a daily undo as a Standard action to attempt to reset all magical effects on a creature or area to what was affecting it at the end of her last turn. She makes a dispel check against each such effect that wasn't active at that time, using her class level in place of caster level without the normal cap of 10. If she fails to dispel any of the effects, she may attempt to dispel them again at a later turn, though if she attempted to reset them to just one round in the past, they would be active (but see Undo, Round Two, below). On an attempt where she fails to dispel anything, the daily undo is still expended.

This Will Be Your Undoing: When the Undoer reaches 6th level, she becomes proficient enough with her powers of undoing that she surprises her enemies whenever their advantages are suddenly taken away. Whenever the Undoer's undo effects target an enemy creature, that creature becomes flat-footed until its next turn.

Undo, Round Two: At 8th level, the Undoer's abilities double in scope. When using an effect that resets a quantity to the value it had at the end of her last turn (such as Undo HP), the Undoer may instead reset that value to where it was at the end of her turn on the round before last.

Undo Displacement: At level 9, the factors that the Undoer can undo expand again. She can expend a daily undo to reset the position of any creature currently within 100 ft. of her to where it was at the end of her previous turn (or at a point further in the past by making use of class features like Undo, Round Two).

Undo unto Others...: Starting at 10th level, once per turn the Undoer may use an undo effect as a Move action instead of the normal Standard action. This allows her to more easily affect multiple characters in a single turn or a single character multiple times in a single turn (though she still may not use the same ability on her twice in the same turn).

At 17th level, this class feature changes to read 'Swift action' instead of 'Move action'. The ability is still usable only once per round.

Enlarged Undo: At level 11, the Undoer gains the ability to undo effects from greater distances away. The range of all of her abilities from this class that had been 15 ft. at lower levels grows to 60 ft.

Undo Or Die: At level 12, the Undoer's ability to undo damage breaks the barrier between life and death. If she expends 2 undos instead of 1, she may affect a dead character with her Undo HP ability, returning it to life if it had been alive one round earlier (or before; see Undo, Round Two and Undo Trois). Similarly, if the creature is now living or undead and had been dead/undead/living in the appropriate time frame, she may expend 2 undos to return it to its previous state and HP value, if applicable. This effect cannot restore life unless the soul of the creature is permitted to return to the body; this prevents restoring life to most outsiders. Bringing creatures to life in this way does not cause any level loss.

Malady Undone: By level 14, the Undoer has perfected the art of using undoing to heal. By expending a daily undo, she may rid a target within 60 ft. of all afflictions (except damage) that can be cured by a Heal spell that were sustained since the end of her previous turn (or further in the past; see Undo, Round Two and Undo Trois).

Undo Trois: At 15th level, the Undoer's abilities reach still further into the past. When using an effect that resets a quantity to the value it had at the end of her last turn, the Undoer may instead reset that value either to where it was at the end of her turn on the round before last or where it was at the end of her turn on the round before that.

Undo Gravity: The 16th-level Undoer somehow unlocks the ability to temporarily undo the force that keeps terrestrial creatures bound to the Material Plane. She can expend a daily undo use to either replicate the effect of a Reverse Gravity spell (DC 12 + class level / 2, rounded down), using her class level in place of caster level, or to grant a creature within 60 ft. a fly speed of 150 ft. with a maneuverability of perfect for 1 round per class level.

Undo Your Best: When an Undoer of at least 18th level grants another creature a turn using her Undo Action ability, any damage healed or dealt by that creature during its granted turn is maximized.

Explosive Undo: At or above level 19, the Undoer may expend a daily undo to undo all effects of the last 1, 2 or 3 rounds since the end of one of her turns (her choice) on all creatures within a 60 ft. burst. Their HP resets to the value it had at that time, including whether they were alive or dead. Any spells or limited-use effects they expended during those rounds are undone, and they move back to the positions they had occupied. The only difference is that all creatures' memory of the undone rounds remains. The Undoer must include herself in this effect and cannot exclude any creatures within its area by any means, nor can she reset different creatures within the effect to their conditions at different rounds.

Impossible and Undoable: The 20th-level Undoer can undo her own fate. If an effect would cause her to die (before her natural death) or fall unconscious and she has not yet exhausted her Immediate action for that round, she may expend 3 daily uses of her daily undo. If she does, a second after she loses consciousness, (if her soul still has access to her body), the effect is undone. If a direct attack felled her, that attack never happened. If an ongoing effect, such as a Storm of Vengeance spell, fells her, not only does the last round of damage that felled her undo itself, but the entire spell blinks out of existence. If she had died of poison, she is immediately cured. And so on.


PLAYING AN UNDOER

Do not take on this class unless you are prepared to take notes on where everyone was over the last few turns and what was affecting them. You don't need to know their total HP values, just how much damage they healed or took over the last round or two. If this proves too difficult (in campaigns with frequent mobs of enemies, for instance), Undo Displacement can be reworded to simply move the enemies by up to their full movement rate in a direction of your choice along a path that their movement could have taken them in (which excludes, for example, moving the giant octopus 40 feet straight up out of the water). Similarly, if keeping track of attributes over more than one turn is too challenging, I would recommend replacing Undo, Round Two and Undo Trois with bonus feats. To me, these quick fixes are infinitely preferable to dumping the responsibility for keeping track of your character's abilities onto the GM.
 Combat: The Undoer's abilities are well-suited to support and healing, but she also does a good job disrupting enemies, especially those trying to heal themselves. Since her abilities are all reactive by definition (she has to wait for someone to start attacking before she can revert the situation to give her side an edge), she'll often have a few rounds at the start of the fight before she has to use any of her abilities at all. Making her somewhat competent at sword-fighting or another role will make her useful before she needs to employ her class abilities.
 Advancement: Ruling that the Undoer can apply for prestige classes that require casting like she would have if her class levels were caster levels is a good way to increase her number of options. I would recommend in that case that the PrC only increases the number of undos per day, and that she not be granted all of her other class features. This mode of advancement could open the door for some very interesting characters that combine the undo mechanic with spellcasting (via Mystic Theurge, for instance) or more complex fighting styles.
 Adaptation: Though I mentioned spellcasting and psionics under the ability Undo Magic, it could potentially apply to a lot more. It could automatically refresh a maneuver, free up an expended point of essentia, suppress the DC increase of an utterance, or even restore a spent charge from a wand or staff. Work out the extent of the ability with your GM if you're interested in using it on more than just spells and powers.

[TheGeometer]

Reserved in case I want to make Undoer-specific feats. I'll probably make at least a couple of them, since an Extra Turning-esque feat for adding undo attempts seems appropriate.

[Stratovarius]

The bookkeeping to play with this class is immense - all players/DMs need to track every change to their character for up to three rounds. Especially in higher level play, the table will just grind to a halt...

Undo Action - does it undo the results of the action? Doesn't specify.

[ketaro]

I kind of like this. At the least, you'd have the time and all the info from previous roundsreadily on hand with PbPs so this could at least workrather smoothly in that regard.

On the side, I kept thinking of Retconjurers from the Erfworld webcomic when reading this

I do worry that the undos per day is incredibly limiting tho. Only 17 at 20th with many abilities that you could easily need or be wanting to use somewhat often requiring multiple undos to use. Like undoing a 2 8 or 9th lvl spells and you're already down to half points and needing to start seriously rationing for the rest of the day.

It doesn't say, also, whether you can use Undo Magic to Undo your own Undos and get your spent Undones back. Though I could see that being irritating to deal with as a DM hahaha

[sirpercival]

Reminds me of a Nullblade on steroids. 

[ketaro]

True. This is like a full support version of a null blade heheh. Guess that's also kind of why I like it. I love heavy support classes

[TheGeometer]

I kind of like this. At the least, you'd have the time and all the info from previous roundsreadily on hand with PbPs so this could at least workrather smoothly in that regard.

On the side, I kept thinking of Retconjurers from the Erfworld webcomic when reading this

I do worry that the undos per day is incredibly limiting tho. Only 17 at 20th with many abilities that you could easily need or be wanting to use somewhat often requiring multiple undos to use. Like undoing a 2 8 or 9th lvl spells and you're already down to half points and needing to start seriously rationing for the rest of the day.

It doesn't say, also, whether you can use Undo Magic to Undo your own Undos and get your spent Undones back. Though I could see that being irritating to deal with as a DM hahaha

Okay, I fixed the undos/day progression to what I think is a bit more reasonable. I wanted to make sure the Undoer doesn't run out easily, but also prevent the Undoer from giving everyone essentially unlimited magic and perfect rerolls. I thought the 17-at-20 progression was the way to go, but now that you mentioned it, this is probably better.

Being able to undo your own undoing is probably a bad idea. Any spell cast outside of combat could be undone, and then the undos spent could be undone. I had considered an ability like "Undo Undos" which resets your number of remaining undos back to where it was up to 3 turns ago for the price of an undo (spent afterwards ). But I just couldn't predict all of the ways that that could break stuff, so it's probably best to have a hard limit.

The bookkeeping to play with this class is immense - all players/DMs need to track every change to their character for up to three rounds. Especially in higher level play, the table will just grind to a halt...

Undo Action - does it undo the results of the action? Doesn't specify.

Thanks, I just fixed it to be more specific. It doesn't undo the effects of the action, just the action itself. As for the bookkeeping, I made it clear in the "Playing an Undoer" section that the responsibility of the note-taking is entirely on the person taking the class. It shouldn't be that bad, actually. Just make notes like "HP -20, 4N3W" next to each character's name on their turn to show how much their HP changed and how many squares in each direction they went on that turn. That should be enough info for anything this class can do. To undo them, just do the opposite of those things in inverse order.

[Stratovarius]

The bookkeeping to play with this class is immense - all players/DMs need to track every change to their character for up to three rounds. Especially in higher level play, the table will just grind to a halt...

Undo Action - does it undo the results of the action? Doesn't specify.

Thanks, I just fixed it to be more specific. It doesn't undo the effects of the action, just the action itself. As for the bookkeeping, I made it clear in the "Playing an Undoer" section that the responsibility of the note-taking is entirely on the person taking the class. It shouldn't be that bad, actually. Just make notes like "HP -20, 4N3W" next to each character's name on their turn to show how much their HP changed and how many squares in each direction they went on that turn. That should be enough info for anything this class can do. To undo them, just do the opposite of those things in inverse order.

A full three round explosive undo at level 19 (when you get the ability) for the entire battle is what I had in mind as a worse case scenario - I wonder what it would look like if someone tried to roll back a boss battle on one of the PbPs around here as a sample.

On a different matter, what does the class do that is proactive, as opposed to reactive? In some ways it seems like you want to have terrible initiative, otherwise there's very little you can do. Say an Undoer wins init for an encounter and goes first out of everything, what class features does it use? There's nothing to undo, so all of that's out the window...

I guess my reaction to this class is that the only way it works is if things go wrong for the party - if it's a good fast encounter where the party takes little damage and cleans up, this class is more or less a walking opportunity cost compared to being any other class. At that point it's just an energy pot for the party caster(s).

[TheGeometer]

A full three round explosive undo at level 19 (when you get the ability) for the entire battle is what I had in mind as a worse case scenario - I wonder what it would look like if someone tried to roll back a boss battle on one of the PbPs around here as a sample.

On a different matter, what does the class do that is proactive, as opposed to reactive? In some ways it seems like you want to have terrible initiative, otherwise there's very little you can do. Say an Undoer wins init for an encounter and goes first out of everything, what class features does it use? There's nothing to undo, so all of that's out the window...

I guess my reaction to this class is that the only way it works is if things go wrong for the party - if it's a good fast encounter where the party takes little damage and cleans up, this class is more or less a walking opportunity cost compared to being any other class. At that point it's just an energy pot for the party caster(s).

Again, I don't think it's that bad, especially (as ketaro mentioned) in PbP's where all of that is already chronicled. Everyone would just go back through the last 3 rounds in reverse order, undoing all the changes. Since Explosive Undo by definition can't put your party in a better position than it was in a few rounds ago, it's not useful for anything but those situations where the enemy has some secret weapon that it would have been better if we'd known about it 3 rounds ago. So I don't anticipate undoing on that scale happening too often, even once characters have access to it.

As for how the class is only reactive and you're better off getting bad initiative, you're right to an extent. You want to delay until after your allies go. Even in the first round, as long as you move after your allies, you can give them back crucial spell slots, for instance. At later levels, you can help out the fighters, too, by granting them extra turns (effectively) with Undo Action (this works on the casters, too, obviously). So yeah, you have nothing to do if you're the absolute first character in the round to go except swing a sword kind of pathetically, but if you're the 2nd to go, you definitely have options. Even if you're the first in the party to go after the enemies, you can move their positions back or dispel their effects even on turn 1. I'd argue that an Undoer with some undos remaining never has rounds where there's nothing she can do.

Also, in the scenario where the party is cleaning up easily, the Undoer still has the option to use Undo Action to effectively make her turn into a copy of an ally's turn. So, rather than being an opportunity cost, the Undoer is actually as useful as the most useful party member, because she's enabling that character to have double the effect. Or, yes, she could be an energy pot for the casters, which is also really useful in a fast encounter like the one you're describing. Not having to waste your highest-level spells on a quick encounter is pretty sweet. Either way, having an Undoer in the party seems really nice even when everything's going fine.

EDIT: Once I realized how central to the Undoer's strategy Undo Action is, I nerfed it slightly and made it so that the Undoer gets it earlier (I replaced it with Perfect Undo Magic to make regaining spells a bit easier at high levels). I also tweaked the undo distribution because starting with 6 undos makes the class way too good a dip.