Author Topic: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?  (Read 9749 times)

Offline Tonymitsu

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #20 on: April 18, 2012, 10:04:59 PM »
… force seven Fort save-or-die's per round.   That works out to, what, a 30%-ish minimum chance every round of instantly killing what I'm attacking?

The ability does say that any given creature is only subject to it once in any 24-hour period.  As written, it could be construed as once per each of the 3 selectable effects, but I assume it's meant to be once for the ability as a whole. 

Bow of the solars (Book of Exalted Deeds) makes every arrow it fires into a slaying arrow of any type the wielder chooses.  Using the splitting property (Champions of Ruin) and either haste or the speed property, you can potentially hit a target with 10 arrows per round, resulting in a 40% chance to roll a 1 on at least one of those saves.

Ah, I misread that.
That's not a bad ability.

I guess I'd still wind up stuck on the fact that it's simply a flat out superior chassis to every other melee class out there.
Unless you had a very specific reason, such as qualifying for a Prestige Class, there would be no reason whatsoever not to play this class as a base.
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Offline ImperatorK

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #21 on: April 18, 2012, 10:12:31 PM »
There would. Warblade is better.
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Offline Zionpopsickle

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #22 on: April 18, 2012, 10:29:02 PM »
… force seven Fort save-or-die's per round.   That works out to, what, a 30%-ish minimum chance every round of instantly killing what I'm attacking?

The ability does say that any given creature is only subject to it once in any 24-hour period.  As written, it could be construed as once per each of the 3 selectable effects, but I assume it's meant to be once for the ability as a whole. 

Bow of the solars (Book of Exalted Deeds) makes every arrow it fires into a slaying arrow of any type the wielder chooses.  Using the splitting property (Champions of Ruin) and either haste or the speed property, you can potentially hit a target with 10 arrows per round, resulting in a 40% chance to roll a 1 on at least one of those saves.

Ah, I misread that.
That's not a bad ability.

I guess I'd still wind up stuck on the fact that it's simply a flat out superior chassis to every other melee class out there.
Unless you had a very specific reason, such as qualifying for a Prestige Class, there would be no reason whatsoever not to play this class as a base.

I don't think this point is necessarily wrong but I think it is worth noting that most mundanes have terrible chassis, even though their classes are entirely their chassis.  Maneuver users still are better because they have an ability set beyond their class stats.

However, I think that this build in general falls into the same trap that most homebrew fixes of mundanes falls into, which is that it is a top-down approach of trying to stick mechanics onto a preexisting chassis.  Instead one should be using a bottom up approach of asking "what does this class need to do to maintain relevance over the level span of D&D" and "what methods will it use to achieve this?"

I talked about this in another thread but the problem with warriors is that people get caught up in the mundanes shouldn't have nice stuff thinking even when they are trying to give mundanes nice stuff.  This is because they look at the class top-down and are trying to do things by simply improving numbers instead of providing actual abilities. 

For a tongue-in-cheek example at level 20 if we assume a warrior is relevant alongside a caster then the following things should be able to occur:
An Adult Red Dragon breaths fire at party.  Warrior looks over to wizard (who has immunity to fire) and asks, "hey is it warm in here?"
Seeing his breath is inneffective the dragon begins to retreat.  The warrior decides, "hey, I would really like to suplex a dragon" so he jumps up, grabs dragon and does so.
Party is ambushed by Hobgoblin NPCs.  Warrior picks up nearest heavy object (Hobgoblin A) and uses it to beat the rest of the hobgoblins to death.  Wizard bitches about noise waking him up.
Demonlord Evildude Badguy is on the ropes so he tries to planeshift outta there.  Warrior uses manly strength to hold open the planeshift so party can follow.
Etc.

At high levels warriors should be doing the same kind of ridiculous things that casters are doing, just doing them in their own idiom.  Maneuver users are good at this, which is why they are tier 3.  They can IHS outta damn near anything, stop time for a round, dance fight the enemy like a Westside Story reject or trip harder then Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock.  Other mundanes should be doing similar things but should use different mechanical approaches (which there are tons of) to accomplish this.

Offline ImperatorK

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #23 on: April 18, 2012, 10:32:35 PM »
I don't think that equaling the casters should be the goal when "fixing" mundanes. Tier 3 isn't the sweet spot for many people for no reason.
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Offline Zionpopsickle

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #24 on: April 18, 2012, 10:45:51 PM »
A lot of casters are tier 3 as well, such as bards, beguilers, etc.  And they still tend to kick the stuffing out of mundanes.  Tier 3 is the sweet spot because it is were your character can be relevant over all levels of the game without major optimization. 

Offline ImperatorK

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #25 on: April 18, 2012, 10:58:35 PM »
You know what I meant.
Magic is for weaklings.

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Offline JohnnyMayHymn

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #26 on: April 18, 2012, 11:19:56 PM »
 But if you combine BMX Bandit's AND the Parkour Prankster's abilities why would anyone ever want to play another character?  It's just too overpowered.
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Offline ImperatorK

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #27 on: April 18, 2012, 11:35:23 PM »
Fighter was already overshadowed by Warblade or Crusader and Rogue was overshadowed by Factotum. Fighter//Rogue really isn't better than any one of those three.
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Offline Tonymitsu

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #28 on: April 19, 2012, 01:05:45 AM »
I don't think that equaling the casters should be the goal when "fixing" mundanes. Tier 3 isn't the sweet spot for many people for no reason.

Pretty much this.

I've always been of the mind that, when narrowing the gap between casters and mundanes, it's much better to fix spells than to break mundanes.
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Offline ImperatorK

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #29 on: April 19, 2012, 01:12:44 AM »
IMO it's not bad that there are T1 and T2 classes. I don't ban or nerf them (much :smirk), but mainly because all I need is to ask the player who wants to play one to be mindful of everybody's fun. It's good to have a T1 or T2 PC in the team, because his power and versatility is a great addition. And I always can use the classes for my more challenging bosses. :smirk
When I homebrew or houserule things it's alwaysmostly to make the game more fun, not less.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2012, 01:16:12 AM by ImperatorK »
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Offline skydragonknight

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #30 on: April 19, 2012, 02:41:58 PM »
It's a low T3. Better staying power with saves/evasion (doesn't run from/get burned by dragons) and SA marginally raises its threat level (higher threat level = better tank). Horrible at actual stealth thanks to ACP (unless you intentionally ditch heavy armor). But the skills add a fair bit of versatility. With UMD it could potentially buff/heal itself.

Probably a hair below Swordsage on the power scale.
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #31 on: April 19, 2012, 03:38:19 PM »
It's a low T3. Better staying power with saves/evasion (doesn't run from/get burned by dragons) and SA marginally raises its threat level (higher threat level = better tank). Horrible at actual stealth thanks to ACP (unless you intentionally ditch heavy armor). But the skills add a fair bit of versatility. With UMD it could potentially buff/heal itself.

Probably a hair below Swordsage on the power scale.

If you'll humor me, I'm curious how you would rank Swordsage compared to this.
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Offline Ziegander

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #32 on: April 19, 2012, 03:57:46 PM »
It's a low T3. Better staying power with saves/evasion (doesn't run from/get burned by dragons) and SA marginally raises its threat level (higher threat level = better tank). Horrible at actual stealth thanks to ACP (unless you intentionally ditch heavy armor). But the skills add a fair bit of versatility. With UMD it could potentially buff/heal itself.

Probably a hair below Swordsage on the power scale.

My thought was that all ACFs for the Fighter AND for the Rogue should be allowed to be used with the class, so you could have a Hit & Run, Dungeoncrasher, Zhentarim, Penetrating Strike Fighter. Which doesn't seem so bad.

Note (@Zionpopsickle): This isn't meant to be an actual "Fighter fix." It's just something I mentioned off-handedly to my DM when he called the Fighter the worst class in the game and the Rogue the second worst class in the game. I suggested just gestalting both of them and calling it a day. He laughed, shook his head, and just said, "no." Even though he acknowledged that it would be "on par" with a Warblade.

Offline awaken_D_M_golem

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Re: How Does This Look as a Non-Gestalt (Fighter+Rogue)?
« Reply #33 on: April 19, 2012, 08:03:22 PM »
Ranger already occupies this sort of niche.

Skills would have to be the stuff that doesn't suffer the armor penalty.
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