PDA

View Full Version : Part finished class (3.5 Semi-Core), needs some PEACH



Carl
2013-10-04, 04:33 PM
Note expected final power is about high T3 to T2, and Semi-Core means i'm only considering stuff i'm aware of which is mostly core stuff, (I've got a better handle on some things like ToB, but there's a lot of splat books and the like out there).

Ok I’m only about a third finished here. I’ve still got to write the Wanderer class feature, (it’s mostly code of conduct stuff though it does limit some things as well, particularly how much time you can spend in town), and the second half of the main features and flesh out the natural materials crafting stuff, e.t.c. However I’m already getting concerned about the rate of scaling, (though not so heavily with dipping as the Wanderer class feature makes that kind of hard and adds fairly hefty downside), and as I note in one of the spoiler sections further down I wrote a lot of this late last night and left a bunch of intended features out. Specifically: Trapfinding, Poison and Disease use, (and some extra’s to make it cheaper, and make the poisons/diseases more customisable/usable/potent), A resistance bonus to saves to fill that magic item hole, plus Uncanny Dodge, Evasion, Mettle and improved versions, (though mettle and Evasion’s improved forms are more mid level items anyway). That’s a lot of extra’s on top of everything already there, important for various reasons as I see them being. I’d kind of like feedback on existing features and thoughts on what adding those would do.

Sorry for the lack of proper background on the class, going to be the last thing I write, sorry, sorry, and sorry again.


Alignment: Neutral Good, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Neutral and True Neutral, (but see general notes)

Class SkillsBalance, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, Craft (All, but only hen using Natural Material’s, see below under General Notes), Decipher Script, Disable Device, Disguise, Escape Artist, Forgery, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Heal, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Geography, History, Local, Nature, Religion, The Planes), Listen, Move Silently, Open Lock, Search, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Spellcraft, Spot, Survival, Swim, Tumble, Use Rope

Skills Points at 1st Level: 4*(18+Int)

Skills Points at Each Level:18+Int

Hit Dice:D20

Okay a LOT of skills and points to go with that. Bear in mind however there are significant limit’s not noted above on he social skills, (Specifically Bluff, Disguise, Forgery, Gather Information, Handle Animal, and Intimidate. Plus of course the noted limit’s on Craft skills).

It’s also thematically important because a lot of what Wanderers do involves using various methods of information gathering and prediction. A Wanderer protecting a Pilgrimage route from bandits and predator’s and other natural dangers might well turn up to drive off or extricate you from such things. Or a Wanderer seeking to stop a Dragon family from destroying a village on a local mountain might well turn up to defend the village from direct attack. But those are last stop options. Far more likely is that she will track down and warn off or destroy the dragons before anyone is aware they are nearby, or that she will take preventative action to minimize natural dangers upon the pilgrimage route whilst driving away, (say by removing the normal means of sustenance for them), or slaying any would be predators before they can be a threat. A Wanderer is ultimately an expert in using his or her skills to both prevent the need for direct open conflict, and in turn he or she will almost always seek, (as a matter of their nature), to do so in an unobtrusive way that is invisible to all others. It’s thus important she has as many useful skills to that end that I can think of and the ranks to use them. Knowledge is Power, Guard it Well.

The size of hit die is extreme and I admit open to some modification one of the aims here is to kick rocket tag in the teeth and tell it to go home. That for Ubercharger builds means a lot of Hitpoint’s backed up by a bunch of other stuff and a D20 seemed the best way to get lots that didn’t mess with the traditional stuff. Though of course if you play with a DM who house-rules all HD are maximized it’s a bit different.

{table=head]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st |+1 |+2 |+2 |+2 |Wanderer, Forceful Parry, Quick Swap, Endurance, Run
2nd |+2 |+3 |+3 |+3 |Track, Hide, Bonus Feat
3rd |+3 |+3 |+3 |+3 |Rapid Attack
4th |+4 |+4 |+4 |+4 |Might of the Burden
5th |+5 |+4 |+4 |+4 |Survival Lore
6th |+6/+1 |+5 |+5 |+5 |Deathstorm
7th |+7/+2 |+5 |+5 |+5 |Storm of Blows
8th |+8/+3 |+6 |+6 |+6 |Secrets of the Wanderer’s
9th |+9/+4 |+6 |+6 |+6 |Strength of Mind and Body
10th |+10/+5 |+7 |+7 |+7 |Your Legend Begins
11th |+11/+6/+1 |+7 |+7 |+7 |
12th |+12/+7/+2 |+8 |+8 |+8 |
13th |+13/+8/+3 |+8 |+8 |+8 |
14th |+14/+9/+4 |+9 |+9 |+9 |
15th |+15/+10/+5 |+9 |+9 |+9 |
16th |+16/+11/+6/+1 |+10 |+10 |+10 |
17th |+17/+12/+7/+2 |+10 |+10 |+10 |
18th |+18/+13/+8/+3 |+11 |+11 |+11 |
19th |+19/+14/+9/+4 |+11 |+11 |+11 |
20th |+20/+15/+10/+5 |+12 |+12 |+12 |
[/table]

Weapon & Armour Proficiencies: Wanderers are Proficient with Light Armour and Shields, (But not Tower Shields), they are also proficient with the following weapons: Dagger, Light Maces, Clubs, Heavy Maces, Morningstar’s, Spears, Shortspear’s, Longspear’s, Quaterstaff’s, Dart’s, Javelins, Slings, Throwing Axes, Light Hammers, Handaxe’s, Light Shields, Shortswords, Battleaxe’s, Flails, Longswords, Heavy Shields, Warhammers, Falchions, Glaives, Greataxe’s, Greatclubs, Heavy Flail’s, Greatswords, Longbow’s, Shortbows, Bastard Swords, Dwarven Waraxe’s, Orc Double Axe, Dire Flail’s, Gnome Hoocked Hammers, Two Bladed Swords, Dwarven Urgrosh’s, Bolas’s and Nets.

Note: Wanderer weapons are typically made of natural material’s, (see General Notes), as such Hammer and Axe heads, Spear points’, and small blades like those of daggers are typically made from stone, (typically flint), or bone, (Teeth or sections cut from beaks/pincers/mandible are common for bladed item’s whilst long bone’s are used for haft’s, larger bone pieces cut from specific area’s or plated layers of bone are used to construct bludgenoning heads like Hammer heads). Large bladed items like Swords are typically either fashion from whole Pincers or have a wooden, bone, or chitchin blade into which multiple stone or bone, (teeth, sections of beak or pincer or mandible), cutting edges have been placed.

Also note that many of the racial weapons listed here are being used to represent the kind of custom weapon variants a Wanderer might develop. So something like an American Indian Tomohawk might be be represented by a Dwarven Waraxe for example.

General Note:

Whenever the sections below use the term/s Base Save Modifier they are referring to the total save modifier granted by the cumulative total of all class levels. So for a character with 20 levels of Wanderer this would be +12 for all three.


A creature must be at least to size categories larger than the weapon being crafted to use it bones and teeth in this manner, (though arrow heads and crossbow bolts may use the teeth/beak sections of a creature 1 size category larger instead). Each Creature used provides enough teeth to craft upto 5 bladed weapons or 50 arrow heads, and enough long bones and bone segments to construct up to 5 hafts and 5 bludgeoning heads, or 50 arrow shafts. If using a creature larger than the minimum size, double the values for each size category above the minimum the creature is.

Class Features:

Forceful Parry, (Lv 1 Ex): A Wanderer’s strength and coordination allow them to Parry the blows directed at them and sweeping projectiles from the air. A Wanderer may add their Strength Modifier to their Armour Class as an Armour Bonus.

Taking a few hints from some recent homebrew’s I’m going to be handing out a number of bonuses of types normally found on equipment. That way there’s no need to worry about it overly much. This is kind of important anyway because I view Wanderer’s more as the stone tools and bearskin’s type when it comes to equipment. Well Stone, Bone, Chitchin, Wood, anything easily available in quantity and easily manufactured without large permanent manufacturing centre’s.

Quick Swap, (Lv 1 Ex): As a free action a Wanderer may swap any weapon or weapons they are currently holding for a weapon or weapons they have stowed. They may even do this in the middle of an attack sequence allowing them to make different attack’s with different weapon types.

Wanderer’s are supposed to be powerful and Versatile Warriors skilled in many forms of combat and at ease mixing different forms and weapons. This allows you to easily switch between them at will without the normal penalties.

Endurance & Run, (Lv 1): A Wanderer gains the Endurance and Run feat’s as Bonus Feat’s at 1st level even if they do not meet the requirements for them.

I was a bit wary at first of handing these out so early, but ultimately felt that their low utility made the potential power worth it. Some people may not that Ranger’s also get Endurance but at a higher level and may question why I feel it’s justified this low down. Simply put A ranger is much less isolated generally than a Wanderer. Rangers often interact on a semi-regular basis with civilisation, gaining supplies and such like amongst other things from them. Wanderer’s however, unless compelled by their Burdens to do so, will interact rarely if ever with civilisation, Indeed given the nature of the way Wanderer’s deal with their Burden’s, it is not unusual for a child born to 2 Wanderer’s who chooses upon his own adulthood to become one also to then go on to live his entire life, including taking a mate, raising a family, and ultimately dying at great age, (though rarely of age given a Wanderer’s nature), without ever setting foot within sight of a town, village or other outpost of civilisation. Rarer still though possible are Wanderer’s who live their entire lives encountering no living being save other wanderer’s and those their Burden’s bring them into conflict. Few Rangers can claim such isolation and total dependence on the Wilderness around them, so it seemed appropriate that Wanderer’s should get them earlier.

Track, (Lv 2): A Wanderer gains the Track feat for free at 2nd Level even if they do not meet the requirement for it.

As Wildness types they really need this thematically imo.

Hide, (Lv 2): A Wander is adept at hiding their track’s in the wilderness and will habitually make use of minor variations in dress, accent, and alternate names to make himself hard to trace magically, since few people will easily be able to tell that both Wanderer’s they have met are in fact the same person. Unless of course the Wanderer chooses to identify himself as such. A Wanderer cannot be tracked or found at a distance, (i.e. beyond ranges at which they can be spotted or heard via spot and listen checks) via any non-epic mundane mean’s.

Any attempt to track him via non-epic supernatural or magical means with any effect except Scrying, Greater Scrying, Discern Location, or affects that function as per these spells fails automatically.

In addition, unless the Wanderer and the individual have Intimate familiarity the caster must have met the Wanderer on two or more separate occasions and succeeded on a spot check opposed to the Wanderer’s hide check at least twice. (No more than one check per encounter, and separate encounters must be at least 1 week apart), or be treated as having a Familiarity of None. If the succeed on the checks they have a familiarity of Second Hand.

Other Wanderers are immune to this rule.

Wanderer’s thrive on being hidden unseen movers and shaker in the world. It would hardly do for a Ranger to be able to detect and track them now would it. I also threw out the lower level spells and made scrying much harder, though you can still track them via sufficiently high level effects. For now. The limit to 3 specific spells was mostly to deal with all the magical tracking mechanisms I don’t know about and can’t write rules for as a result.

Bonus Feats, (Lv 2): At Second Level and every second level thereafter a Wanderer may select a Bonus feat from the list below. They need not meet the ability score requirements, and they may ignore any requirements for the Rapid Shot and Power Attack feat’s, but you must meet all other requirements.

Blind-Fight
Combat Expertise
Improved Disarm
Improved Feint
Improved Trip
Whirlwind Attack
Combat Reflexes
Dodge
Mobility
Spring Attack
Improved Critical
Improved Initiative
Improved Unarmed Strike
Deflect Arrows
Improved Grapple
Snatch Arrows
Stunning Fist
Point Blank Shot
Far Shot
Precise Shot
Improved Precise Shot
Manyshot
Shot On The Run
Improved Bull Rush
Improved Overrun
Improved Sunder
Rapid Reload
Toughness
Weapon Finesse

If I’m going to get you to pull various different fighting style tricks you need to have the feats to make them work. The Power Attack/Rapid Shot ignore is due to certain class feature’s effectively replacing them.

Rapid Attacks, (Lv 3 Ex):Any time you make a ranged or melee attack as a standard action, or use the Full Attack Action you may choose to take a -2 penalty on all attack roll’s in exchange for making one extra attack that round with each weapon you wield at your full base attack bonus, (though it is still subject to the -2 penalty as normal, and if it is an off-hand weapon your still subject to the normal dual wield and off-hand penalties, e.t.c.). You may not use the Power Attack or Rapid Shot feat’s in conjunction with this class feature.

This is effectively Rapid Shot re-worked for both melee and ranged. Naturally I thus took it out to prevent stacking. Given what I’m going to do with Deathstorm and this class skill I also dropped Power Attack out now so people don’t feel like picking it up, (Deathstorm comes early enough not to make it’s lack prior to that a huge issue IMO).

Might of the Burden, (Lv 4 Ex): Whilst the nature of the burden’s each Wanderer chooses to bear varies greatly, no Wanderer will seek to do ought save his best to fulfil it and will thus seek ever to improve himself so that he might best fulfil his chosen burden. At 4th level and every 2 levels thereafter until 14th level, pick a single ability score at level up. You gain a permanent +6 Enhancement Bonus to this stat. You cannot pick any stat more than once obviously.

In addition at 20th level and every 2 level thereafter the magnitude of the bonus for all stats increases by 2, (so +8 at 20th, +10 at 22nd, +12 at 24th, e.t.c.).

Remember what I said about Magic items? This gets rid of all those annoying stat booster items for you. That said I’m not sure on the progression. By WBL once every 3 further levels would be too slow, but every 2nd level may be too fast. I’d appreciate thoughts here.

Also I did add a bit of epic and beyond scaling to it, if there’s any class I’ve made that I expect you to take into the epic levels it’s this.

Survival Lore, (Lv 5 Ex):Wanderer’s spend extraordinary amounts of time in wild tractless places surviving off nothing but their own wit’s and whatever they can take from the land in the hunt. And the land in turn often tests them further by making them the subject of the hunt. Only those who make their own luck survive long enough to reach this level of power.

A Wanderer may add half her Wanderer class level to all skill checks made with the following skills: Balance, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, Craft (All, but only hen using Natural Material’s, see above under General Notes), Heal, Hide, Jump, Knowledge (Local, Nature), Listen, Move Silently, Search, Sense Motive, Spot, Survival, Swim, Tumble, Use Rope

Pretty powerful and IMO fairly important, they’re supposed to be master outdoorsmen, hyper observant, and when they wish to dammed near impossible to find, as well as capable of serious “heroic” stuff on the battlefield. These are all skills that are important to doing a lot of that from a skills PoV so it was important you had above mundanely acquirable skill check’s on these pretty early on. Still very powerful and there is some concern balance wise IMO.


Deathstorm, (Lv 6 Ex): For every attack A wanderer make in a round which kills or causes an opponent to go unconscious due to being at 0 or less HP’s you may make a bonus attack. If one or more of these attack’s fulfils the prior conditions they also grant bonus attacks. All attacks are subject to the normal rules.

In addition for each attack that hit’s and subsequently causes the damage in a round, all subsequent attacks in that round made with the hand wielding the weapon gain a bonus to their attack roll and damage equal to half her Wanderer class level. If the weapon is two-handed the damage bonus is multiplied 1.5 times.

Each “hand” is counted separately, however due to the quick swap rule it is possible to mix 2-handed weapon attacks with one handed weapon attacks. The following rules thus clarify how this works:

A weapon wielded in 2 or more hands adds one increment of the bonus to each hand wielding it. But uses only the highest bonus amongst the hands.

A weapon wielded in One hand only increments the Hand it is wielded in.

You may not combine this class feature with Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, or Rapid Shot.

Coming in where it does it gives you a benefit effectively identical to great cleave plus a stacking attack roll and damage bonus that not only makes sequential attack’s fully useful, but gives a damage boost that doesn't, (IMO, I’d like feedback on this though), throw 2-handers out as the auto superior option.

Storm of Blows, (Lv 7 Ex): You may now make a Full Attack action as a Standard Action.

Fairly common martial addition but not sure if this is the right level for it. It’s high enough people probably won’t dip just to get it, but I’d like thoughts.

Secrets of the Wanderer’s, (Lv 8 Ex): A Wanderer who has studied at length in the secrets of their kind can seemingly deflect impossible blows and survive seemingly deadly blows with nary a scratch. Weather they have truly discovered ways to do the impossible, or weather it “seemingly” is the appropriate word is a secret they keep to themselves.

A Wanderer may add her base Reflex Save Bonus as a Deflection Bonus to her AC, and her base Fortitude Save Bonus as a Natural Armour Bonus to her AC.

Again this deals with the need for a few Magic item’s At the same time it’s yet another power play element in that it severely boosts touch and non-touch AC’s really throwing some stymieing into the paths of anything anyone tries to do involving attack roll’s. Ubercharger’s are going to be hit by the combination of very high class HP’s and the difficulty of getting a second hit whilst casters are going to have real issues with anything requiring an attack roll. It’s not enough alone to shut either down but they won’t like it that’s for sure.

Strength of Mind and Body, (Lv 9 Ex): Wanderer’s more than anything else are famous for their simple refusal to die until their job is done, even terrible wounds that should fell far larger and mightier races are treated as nothing. And more than one Wanderer has seen of her foes only to collapse dead as soon as they are gone.

A Wanderer gains the Diehard feat as a Bonus feat, even if they do not meet the normal requirements, in addition they Gain Fast Healing and DR/- equal to their base Will Save Bonus.

I split this off from the previous feature to avoid too many features at one level. Still it’s a powerful one-two when combined with everything else they have up to this point. And I admit I’m concerned about the balance implications.

I also know at this point I’m wanting to add several more low level items, (everything above was written late last night and I forgot some important stuff due to lack of sleep ok). So even if things are passable now it’s going to get less so later on.

Your Legend Begins, (Lv 10 Ex): Whilst all Wanderer’s posses a certain legendary aspect. The ones that are remembered outside their own kind for actions profound and terrible are invariably the greatest of their kind. Tempered and driven in equal parts by the trials that have led them to such greatness and masters of the most powerful secrets of their kind. Yet all legends must begin somewhere…

A Wanderer may not be affected by any spells, (this functions with the same rules and effects as a globe of invulnerability, barring the spell level/s affected and it’s nature as an extraordinary ability, (meaning it’s can’t be dispelled, destroyed or suppressed)), with a spell level equal to or less than half their wanderer level minus 4, unless they wish to be effected by it. For Metamagic’d spells include only levels added via metamagic that modifies the save DC or Spell Resistance Penetration. They also automatically pass any Fortitude, Reflex, or Will save, (regardless of magical or mundane source), with a DC equal to or less than 10 + The spell level they are immune to + The saves governing stat.

A very powerful 2 part trick. The auto pass on some saves isn’t such a huge issue as any save subject to it would only fail on a natural 1 anyway, but it is a nice extra. The spell immunity on the other hand is a huge deal, even if the spells it affects at 10th level aren’t the most powerful, it does provide some nice immunities and scales rapidly to provide immunity to a large number of low level effects, the metamagic also stops people getting these off on you through basic metamagic and shuts down mailman style pure damage rocket tag somewhat by throwing the more popular damage dealers out.

I don’t feel it’s overly powerful at initial acquisition but I’d like thoughts on this.

Amnoriath
2013-10-04, 05:59 PM
What are you trying to do here? Make a class that makes any other kind of base martial character completely irrelevant? Your "restrictions" are nothing as magic greatly strengthens a weapon and your class features do very little with them. If a class is to have restriction it needs to have features to embrace them fully while leaving some sort of edge to the originals in certain situations. As of now this is just insane and these "restrictions" do not warrant hit die 167% that of a dragon's or skills points more than double a rogue's.

Carl
2013-10-04, 08:14 PM
Perhaps my title is the fault here. When i say 3.5 Core in the title i mean i'm only considering spells and feats that i'm aware of (which is mostly core), not that i'm in any way trying to create a class that matches up power wise with mundane Core classes. Power wise i'm looking at an aim around high T3 as the low point, probably T2 though. And a general ability to step into a high level Rocket Tag match and laugh in everyone's faces to a degree, (basically they can';t play proper rocket tag themselves, but they can force everyone down to their level so it doesn't matter).

What i don't want is to end up with a class progression that outstrips T1's at the low end only to peter off to a Low T2 or high T3 at the top end.

To try and touch on some of your questions.

The limits on entering civilisation are severe: spending more than 24 + charisma modifier hours in civilisation, (cumulatively or otherwise and across any number of area's considered as such), leads to very bad effects and you "lose" accursed hours only very slowly, (an hour or week a less is my rough starting point). There are quite a few other limits in terms of what you can and cannot do. It's not as restrictive in some ways as a paladin's, but in other's it creates a lot more issues doing many of the basic things of adventuring as it's less able to get certain forms of help, or access to certain capabilities, particularly early on. As such many of the class features and skills are meant to replace that amongst other things.

The various magic item bonuses that are common, (weapon bonuses, Stat Boosters, Resistance Boosters, Deflection AC, Natural Armour AC, and several types of immunities), are meant to be achieved via class features. This was an idea i've seen a few recent fighter fixes go for which i liked because it reduced magic dependence, and i felt it hit an important thematic point, Wanderer's survive on their own wits and what they can make themselves. I may well make that a limit of them TBH, (Thoughts?).

The Hit die is explicitly to go after Ubercharger's, Mailmen, and other nasty builds that play Rocket Tag via pure damage, i'm putting a number of other features, (some of which aren't written yet), in place to downgrade those further but i have to accept i'm not gonna get them below maybe a 100 damage a round. Even with a solid con score you need a lot of HP's to handle that for long. A D20 does that pretty well.

Skills. Well i'm going to be honest i put skills on classes i brew based on what i think should be there. So the various Physical skills + Spot, Search, Listen, Hide, and Move Silently are all there because they're area's i feel a wilderness type who spends much of their time hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of civilisation would need to be good at to survive, (track as a bonus feat covers a similar base, it's something i'd fully expect them to have for hunter gathering alone), so they got those.

At the same time though they have a less visible side, they hide it from outsiders rather well, (but that's getting into the lore side a bit much), but use it to achieve their aims, known as burdens, (and these are odd things, though i will be working them into the rules somewhat i think). That side is the bit represented by things like the Knowledge skill's, and the various limited skill's and the like. A wanderer may be a devastating opponent in combat such that anything with an ounce of sense should fear him. But he's got the depth of knowledge, the crafting skill's, and the abilities to figure out a solution that doesn't even require a fight. Whilst Gandalf had the advantage of Magic to get a better idea of what to do, Gandalfs little scheme to deal with Smaug is more or less exactly the kind of indirect underhanded scheme a Wanderer would use their knowledge to pull off, although they'd be even less direct about it than Gandalf was. Likely no one would ever figure out they where even involved if they could help it. But much like Gandalf they have exactly the kind of power required to take the threat down head on in a fight if they have to.

It's thus important with over 30 skills i see as important to playing the class properly that they get enough skill points to go around. A rouge is a pretty broad definition and most "styles" will use only a portion of it's smaller skill list, so 8 base is ok, (though i note a number of rouge fixes increase it to 10 or sometimes 12), but a lot more are needed for a Wanderer's expected skill usage. I mean sure if you think going from 8 to 18 is more than the increased skill usage really needs. Say so. This is the kind of info i want feedback on ;).

Anyway hope that helps answer a few questions for everyone.

Just spotted a minor error, bonus feats where supposed to be every second level. Ooops. Not a huge power change but i fixed anyway.

Amnoriath
2013-10-04, 09:22 PM
Perhaps my title is the fault here. When i say 3.5 Core in the title i mean i'm only considering spells and feats that i'm aware of (which is mostly core), not that i'm in any way trying to create a class that matches up power wise with mundane Core classes. Power wise i'm looking at an aim around high T3 as the low point, probably T2 though. And a general ability to step into a high level Rocket Tag match and laugh in everyone's faces to a degree, (basically they can';t play proper rocket tag themselves, but they can force everyone down to their level so it doesn't matter).

What i don't want is to end up with a class progression that outstrips T1's at the low end only to peter off to a Low T2 or high T3 at the top end.

To try and touch on some of your questions.

The limits on entering civilisation are severe: spending more than 24 + charisma modifier hours in civilisation, (cumulatively or otherwise and across any number of area's considered as such), leads to very bad effects and you "lose" accursed hours only very slowly, (an hour or week a less is my rough starting point). There are quite a few other limits in terms of what you can and cannot do. It's not as restrictive in some ways as a paladin's, but in other's it creates a lot more issues doing many of the basic things of adventuring as it's less able to get certain forms of help, or access to certain capabilities, particularly early on. As such many of the class features and skills are meant to replace that amongst other things.

The various magic item bonuses that are common, (weapon bonuses, Stat Boosters, Resistance Boosters, Deflection AC, Natural Armour AC, and several types of immunities), are meant to be achieved via class features. This was an idea i've seen a few recent fighter fixes go for which i liked because it reduced magic dependence, and i felt it hit an important thematic point, Wanderer's survive on their own wits and what they can make themselves. I may well make that a limit of them TBH, (Thoughts?).

The Hit die is explicitly to go after Ubercharger's, Mailmen, and other nasty builds that play Rocket Tag via pure damage, i'm putting a number of other features, (some of which aren't written yet), in place to downgrade those further but i have to accept i'm not gonna get them below maybe a 100 damage a round. Even with a solid con score you need a lot of HP's to handle that for long. A D20 does that pretty well.

Skills. Well i'm going to be honest i put skills on classes i brew based on what i think should be there. So the various Physical skills + Spot, Search, Listen, Hide, and Move Silently are all there because they're area's i feel a wilderness type who spends much of their time hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of civilisation would need to be good at to survive, (track as a bonus feat covers a similar base, it's something i'd fully expect them to have for hunter gathering alone), so they got those.

At the same time though they have a less visible side, they hide it from outsiders rather well, (but that's getting into the lore side a bit much), but use it to achieve their aims, known as burdens, (and these are odd things, though i will be working them into the rules somewhat i think). That side is the bit represented by things like the Knowledge skill's, and the various limited skill's and the like. A wanderer may be a devastating opponent in combat such that anything with an ounce of sense should fear him. But he's got the depth of knowledge, the crafting skill's, and the abilities to figure out a solution that doesn't even require a fight. Whilst Gandalf had the advantage of Magic to get a better idea of what to do, Gandalfs little scheme to deal with Smaug is more or less exactly the kind of indirect underhanded scheme a Wanderer would use their knowledge to pull off, although they'd be even less direct about it than Gandalf was. Likely no one would ever figure out they where even involved if they could help it. But much like Gandalf they have exactly the kind of power required to take the threat down head on in a fight if they have to.

It's thus important with over 30 skills i see as important to playing the class properly that they get enough skill points to go around. A rouge is a pretty broad definition and most "styles" will use only a portion of it's smaller skill list, so 8 base is ok, (though i note a number of rouge fixes increase it to 10 or sometimes 12), but a lot more are needed for a Wanderer's expected skill usage. I mean sure if you think going from 8 to 18 is more than the increased skill usage really needs. Say so. This is the kind of info i want feedback on ;).

Anyway hope that helps answer a few questions for everyone.
2 hours a day in a town isn't that much of a burden especially when he has the skills to go in and succeed easily. Also the rest of the party can search and buy items for him.
Uberchargers and Mailmen don't exist Core play. Any Ubercharger needs Shock Trooper from the Complete Warrior to drain all of its capable BAB for Power Attack while still being able to hit competently. Also the major multipliers such as Battle Jump and Leap Attack are not in Core either. The Mailman needs non-core PrC's, ACF's, and Feats to stack metamagic effectively. Even if they did making a class with such large hit die and bonuses is just being outright obnoxious to everyone else.Yes, those bonuses are common, but then you just incentivise this guy to get charged items or items for specific uses. Keep in mind you can give a fighter an instant kill, no damage or save, touch attack but he will still be tier 4 because all he can do is really kill. The feature is broken and unfair but he still doesn't do anything else. So, yes you may have achieved your goal, but you did so where even other tier 1's in Core can't kill this guy short of Miracle in a rather hum-drum manner.
But logically there isn't any reason to invest in all of the skills you have. What use does this character have use for Concentration, Open Lock(DD with trapfinding does the same thing), Decipher Script, Forgery, Gather Information, Escape Artist? Some don't have anything to do what it does, others are rendered useless and replaced by class features or they take too much time to use where it is relevant. Then a few others don't recquire much investment at all to gain their maximum use(heal, tumble, balance..etc). As such each Wanderer will have almost the exact same skill investment.
All in all your Wanderer obscenely stomps on anyone that isn't a caster. Then even the full casters in Core may not be able to defeat the guy. While not even focusing on any flavor to make good, unique mechanics. I am sorry but you need to go back to square 1.

Carl
2013-10-04, 11:58 PM
2 hours a day in a town isn't that much of a burden especially when he has the skills to go in and succeed easily. Also the rest of the party can search and buy items for him.
Uberchargers and Mailmen don't exist Core play. Any Ubercharger needs Shock Trooper from the Complete Warrior to drain all of its capable BAB for Power Attack while still being able to hit competently. Also the major multipliers such as Battle Jump and Leap Attack are not in Core either. The Mailman needs non-core PrC's, ACF's, and Feats to stack metamagic effectively. Even if they did making a class with such large hit die and bonuses is just being outright obnoxious to everyone else.Yes, those bonuses are common, but then you just incentivise this guy to get charged items or items for specific uses.

It's not 2 hours a day it's an hour a week, (since thats the rate it dissipates at), sure for short periods he can spend a lot more time in town, but that comes at the cost of not being able to go near town at all for moths to work of the accrued hours. The point about getting others to buy stuff for him is exactly why i suggested throwing out access to most types of items fairly completely. They're not intended to be heavy on that kind of thing unless they can make it themselves.

Your right of course that some of the stuff needed for mailmen and uberchargers and god knows how many builds i don't know about is non-core. That why i corrected things to "mostly core". I'm not trying to make something languishing in the T4 depths that core relegates mundane's do. So if this steps all over anything sort of a highly optimised non-core mundane class with non-core feats and ACF's abounding, well thats ok. Even then i'd expect purely mundane's to only keep up in a few cases if i exceed high T3. That's more or less it's whole point. I'm trying to create a higher end mundane and that's not something most current mundane's really support.


But logically there isn't any reason to invest in all of the skills you have. What use does this character have use for Concentration, Open Lock(DD with trapfinding does the same thing), Decipher Script, Forgery, Gather Information, Escape Artist? Some don't have anything to do what it does, others are rendered useless and replaced by class features or they take too much time to use where it is relevant. Then a few others don't recquire much investment at all to gain ther maximum use(heal, tumble, balance..etc). As such each Wanderer will have almost the exact same skill investment.
All in all your Wanderer obscenely stomps on anyone that isn't a caster. Then even the full casters in Core may not be able to defeat the guy. While not even focusing on any flavor to make good, unique mechanics. I am sorry but you need to go back to square 1.

Concentration: As far as i'm aware you can't use any skills whilst threatened without a concentration check or suffering an AoO, same with a few item uses that he might reasonably have access to. Or maybe I'm mis-understanding what concentration is trying to say.

Open Lock is the fault of me forgetting to add trap-making last night, i'd have realised i didn't need it when writing the skill up from the SRD and dropped it, but thanks for the catch.

Decipher Script is related to their info Gathering, they're expected to be able to decipher any message they intercept.

Forgery: This is thematic, if you want to manipulate empires and townships you may well have to fake documents to do it. A single altered dispatch could change the outcome of an entire war very easily.

Gather Info: remember what i said about not dealing with problems directly? Well this is part of it. Also Wanderers need hours in town to properly use this, i may actually write that whole class sub-feature in a way that lets me drop this one though. (Basics you have to covertly listen in one a number of conversations lasting a minimum number of minutes, Once you've accrued enough you can make gather info check/s then do some more listening and some more checks till you get what you want).

Escape Artist: This is there because at the end of the day Wanderer's aren't really supposed to be the kind of people you can catch and imprison. try and they'll squirrel out. It also makes infiltration and sneaking about easier. A wanderer may not attempt to hide what he is if openly challenged, but if he feels the need and can pull it off he'll just as happily sneak through town unobserved to swap the Mayor's stack of signed orders for subtly altered ones as he would directly attack whatever objective he's going after, in fact that would be the preferred method.

I can understand where your coming from though and that's why one of the later class features is intended to really emphasise skill usage by opening additional uses of the skills with varying DC modifiers and the like. Skills aren't something they just shrug at as a class, but with the power of those extra's i haven't put most of them in yet. A good Wanderer might be able to walk upto that dragon and lop it's head off as it rampages through the village. But he'd much rather arrange matters so the village is never even aware it's in danger. Likewise if they want a city destroyed they could potentially call in a handful of other wanderer's walk in the front gate and massacre all within. But they'd much rather sneak in one night dropping vials of slow acting low con damage poisons into he well's, then a few weeks later come back and drop long incubation period disease into the well's, then a few weeks later as it begins to break out sneak in and drop forged orders into certain untouched guardhouses to burn certain infected buildings down to contain the spread. Follow that up with more orders to prevent anyone leaving. Pretty soon nearly everyone dead of the fighting or disease and the few weak stragglers can easily be hunted down. They're infamous for their straight up fighting skills not because that's what they do to solve most of their problem's, but because when they do do that, it's very serious and the results tend to match that spectacularity.

Also honestly, with Wizards having a roughly 1/3 chance of bypassing any of the saves here with on level spells and a whole range of SoD, SoL, and SoS effects running from Spell Level 1 to 9 and a metamagic to bypass the 10th level features, they've got more than enough way's to hurt them. Not to mention that currently at least there's no answer here to a Wizard sitting up a couple of hundred feet in the air under layered protections. I'll be giving some of that out sure, and some immunities. But casters are still going to have a bunch of ways of hurting or debuffing them and they're still going to have a defensive edge. Remember the aim here is to degrade SoD and Mailman and SoL and SoS, and Uberchargers down to their level by targeting their OTT elements with class features rather than trying to match up to those levels.

I guess a lot of the issue here is that i haven't given you the lore that goes with them. So no it's not that the abilities aren't flavourful. They are. But i haven''t given you the Lore so you can't understand how they are flavourful.

What I'm looking for here isn't a discussion on the flavour anyway, i'm trying to get a feel for the power progression and how each individual ability fit's into that. Now sure i can see where your coming from on the skills thing, i need to emphasis them more. That's handy feedback that in hindsight i should have seen but how does the rest fit in?

Amnoriath
2013-10-05, 10:43 AM
It's not 2 hours a day it's an hour a week, (since thats the rate it dissipates at), sure for short periods he can spend a lot more time in town, but that comes at the cost of not being able to go near town at all for moths to work of the accrued hours. The point about getting others to buy stuff for him is exactly why i suggested throwing out access to most types of items fairly completely. They're not intended to be heavy on that kind of thing unless they can make it themselves.

Your right of course that some of the stuff needed for mailmen and uberchargers and god knows how many builds i don't know about is non-core. That why i corrected things to "mostly core". I'm not trying to make something languishing in the T4 depths that core relegates mundane's do. So if this steps all over anything sort of a highly optimised non-core mundane class with non-core feats and ACF's abounding, well thats ok. Even then i'd expect purely mundane's to only keep up in a few cases if i exceed high T3. That's more or less it's whole point. I'm trying to create a higher end mundane and that's not something most current mundane's really support.



Concentration: As far as i'm aware you can't use any skills whilst threatened without a concentration check or suffering an AoO, same with a few item uses that he might reasonably have access to. Or maybe I'm mis-understanding what concentration is trying to say.

Open Lock is the fault of me forgetting to add trap-making last night, i'd have realised i didn't need it when writing the skill up from the SRD and dropped it, but thanks for the catch.

Decipher Script is related to their info Gathering, they're expected to be able to decipher any message they intercept.

Forgery: This is thematic, if you want to manipulate empires and townships you may well have to fake documents to do it. A single altered dispatch could change the outcome of an entire war very easily.

Gather Info: remember what i said about not dealing with problems directly? Well this is part of it. Also Wanderers need hours in town to properly use this, i may actually write that whole class sub-feature in a way that lets me drop this one though. (Basics you have to covertly listen in one a number of conversations lasting a minimum number of minutes, Once you've accrued enough you can make gather info check/s then do some more listening and some more checks till you get what you want).

Escape Artist: This is there because at the end of the day Wanderer's aren't really supposed to be the kind of people you can catch and imprison. try and they'll squirrel out. It also makes infiltration and sneaking about easier. A wanderer may not attempt to hide what he is if openly challenged, but if he feels the need and can pull it off he'll just as happily sneak through town unobserved to swap the Mayor's stack of signed orders for subtly altered ones as he would directly attack whatever objective he's going after, in fact that would be the preferred method.

I can understand where your coming from though and that's why one of the later class features is intended to really emphasise skill usage by opening additional uses of the skills with varying DC modifiers and the like. Skills aren't something they just shrug at as a class, but with the power of those extra's i haven't put most of them in yet. A good Wanderer might be able to walk upto that dragon and lop it's head off as it rampages through the village. But he'd much rather arrange matters so the village is never even aware it's in danger. Likewise if they want a city destroyed they could potentially call in a handful of other wanderer's walk in the front gate and massacre all within. But they'd much rather sneak in one night dropping vials of slow acting low con damage poisons into he well's, then a few weeks later come back and drop long incubation period disease into the well's, then a few weeks later as it begins to break out sneak in and drop forged orders into certain untouched guardhouses to burn certain infected buildings down to contain the spread. Follow that up with more orders to prevent anyone leaving. Pretty soon nearly everyone dead of the fighting or disease and the few weak stragglers can easily be hunted down. They're infamous for their straight up fighting skills not because that's what they do to solve most of their problem's, but because when they do do that, it's very serious and the results tend to match that spectacularity.

Also honestly, with Wizards having a roughly 1/3 chance of bypassing any of the saves here with on level spells and a whole range of SoD, SoL, and SoS effects running from Spell Level 1 to 9 and a metamagic to bypass the 10th level features, they've got more than enough way's to hurt them. Not to mention that currently at least there's no answer here to a Wizard sitting up a couple of hundred feet in the air under layered protections. I'll be giving some of that out sure, and some immunities. But casters are still going to have a bunch of ways of hurting or debuffing them and they're still going to have a defensive edge. Remember the aim here is to degrade SoD and Mailman and SoL and SoS, and Uberchargers down to their level by targeting their OTT elements with class features rather than trying to match up to those levels.

I guess a lot of the issue here is that i haven't given you the lore that goes with them. So no it's not that the abilities aren't flavourful. They are. But i haven''t given you the Lore so you can't understand how they are flavourful.

What I'm looking for here isn't a discussion on the flavour anyway, i'm trying to get a feel for the power progression and how each individual ability fit's into that. Now sure i can see where your coming from on the skills thing, i need to emphasis them more. That's handy feedback that in hindsight i should have seen but how does the rest fit in?
1. Again, how much time does this guy really need to spend in a village or city in a typical quest-type campaign when there are others to do most of the mudane stuf for him? Very little, for how well you make him step on everyone else infultration shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
2. Wizards, Clerics, and Druids can't normally cast a metamagic spell above 9th level because they have to store the augmented spells in slots at the beginning of the day, only spontaneous casters can in which costs them a whole round. This character has how many good saves, checks, bonuses, and immunities? Fighters still have a lot more bonus feats than a Warblade so it still has use even though it is a low tier 4. A Barbarian can deal far more damage consistently and acceptably than a Factotum or even a Wizard but yet the latters are still a higher class of tier. This class isn't simply just a higher tier it is a complete overshadow of any mundane characters below it. Now if this was to meet a tier 1 challenge like Grod in which there is no serious thought in play there wouldn't be a problem. Tiers aren't a simple matter of how much power and battle prowess I have to outrank anyone below me making them completely useless it is much more of a matter of how many options I have and how I can change situations.
3. If something isn't spell/-like and doesn't say it provokes it doesn't. You do remember that restriction in which suppose to be so crippling, right? Gather information checks take hours to complete. Yes forgery is powerful, but at the end of the day is this what this class is really about, managing civilization? Escape Artist checks are easily replaced with lower strength checks in which he gets big bonuses in.
4. No, the abilities are not that coherent with flavor. You have this idea of this primitive, rennaissance man of all power but it does nothing with its primitive tools or life except for a couple of specific bonus feats. Also he really isn't that primitive because you can still have any item because they aren't restricted. As for weapons find a fancy jewel and its masterwork for enhancement or kill something dangerous with a bounty. Barbarians have Rage to explain flavor of primal fury, fighters have bonus feats for martial expertise(boring yes, but fits), rogues have skills, sneak attack, trapfinding..etc to be the sneaky burglar to kill people with small weapons. How does this class do anything special with its "customized" primitive weaponry? Those abilities are copied out of other feats with no application to your flavor other than you want to make this better than any other mundane class. As you can see I really don't think they fit in well. The biggest advantages this has is shear numbers and immunities but nothing in active strategies or "making" solutions.

Carl
2013-10-05, 05:23 PM
1. When i say civilisation i mean any civilisation. That watch tower out in the wilderness would count as much as some backwater village. Obviously it's somewhat dependent on the DM, ut that's true of a lot of class limits.

2. Gather Info i 1D4+1 hours. Your looking at more than that with my method. Listening into conversations given you 1 point, you need enough to equal the DC of the gather check to make the check though, you've got to make checks for every conversation to avoid suspicion and there a minimum length. Naturally there are ways and mean's, (mostly involving large or important conversations), to get more at once but it adds upto a slower method more likely to invoke suspicion and or deplete his hours faster.

3. And a full caster at least has full access to his 4 highest Spell Levels at all times up till epic's. And then he has ways of increasing his maximum spell level or accessing epic magic so he can keep ahead. He just doesn't get to spam low level SoL, SoS, or SoD effects at you.

Bear in mind the criteria i'm using for High T3 to T2 is:


Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks, and while the class itself is capable of anything, no one build can actually do nearly as much as the Tier 1 classes. Still potentially campaign smashers by using the right abilities, but at the same time are more predictable and can't always have the right tool for the job. If the Tier 1 classes are countries with 10,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, these guys are countries with 10 nukes. Still dangerous and easily world shattering, but not in quite so many ways. Note that the Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility.

In my case it's more i'm already going to define which of those capabilities, (hence why it might end up high T3 IMO), but i'm going for the idea of handing out a selection of T1 like feature's but not the whole package. But at the same time i'm doing it in a roundabout fashion because i don't want the class playing rocket tag. So to handle other T2's it needs ways of eliminating rocket tag attempts on itself.

That why they combine such strong save's, AC, hitpoints, and some immunities plus features like deathstorm and storm of blows. They provide multiple layers of ablation and outright immunities vs a variety of effects whilst giving them a fair amount of damage without allowing ubercharger nonsense. At the same time since i was trying to build a high level character that wouldn't rely on magic items to get the basics done.

To break it down:

A) As i've noted already several times, both from an available WBL and from a lore PoV i didn't want them festooning themselves with a horde of items they have no means of producing, replacing, or maintaining themselves. So i needed to cover certain bases like Resistances to save's, enhancements to stats, magic weapons, armour, natural armour and deflection bonuses to AC, that kind of thing in the class feature's. But i need feedback at when they should come in.

B) In the same vein i created Rapid Attack, Deathstorm, an Storm of Blows to cover a few common points. Namely the need for great Cleave for mass combat, the need for Power attack for damage, and to deal with PA's 2-hander superiority), and to provide the Wanderer with those two fairly universal T3 non-manoeuvre based staples. Usable sequential attack's and the action economy to use a full attack without having to use a full round action. Now if you think deathstorm's bonus scales too much or you think Storm of Blows should be later on, say so, that's the kind of info i'm after.

C) A lot of magic item bonuses whilst helpful aren't exactly enough to begin scratching things like ubercharger's, mailmen, or SoD, SoL, SoS stuff. Those would still rip right through the AC's and saves of a Wanderer. Yes getting all those stat bonuses and standard +5 magic item bonuses and the like does a lot to help. But, (to use AC as an example), many casters and martial types can roughly double their base BAB with ability modifiers, magic item's, and buff spells in combinations. That makes the typical AC values available at a given level rather insufficient to really stopping anything but sequential attacks, and not always then. By going for larger deflection and natural armour bonuses and effectively disconnecting armour bonuses from dex bonuses Touch AC and non-touch AC rises rather firmly to harder to bypass area's.

D) Some things however, (and SoD's and SoL's, and most SoS's fall into this), aren't going to be dealt with by simply having solid save and some solid Ac so that a moderate percentage of the attempts fail. You've pretty much got to stop them or die right there if you can't rocket tag them back. Some as yet un-written bonuses are designed to target that kind of stuff. And the 10th level feature stops you not only from using lower level spells of this kind spammed via quicken to force 1's, on stuff you aren't immune to, but shuts down arcane thesis based metamagic abuse as you either have to apply a lot of levels of heighten metamagic, or use higher level spells to start with.

4. Ahh that first line. It's half a matter of pride you said that half annoying. Pride because well, what you've said is exactly what wanderer's want outsiders to think of them as. But it's a long way from all they are. Certainly their existence in the most wasteland of area's makes them expert outdoorsmen, hunter gatherer's, e.t.c. But that's a long way from everything they are. People look at their stone knives and bear skins and see a primitive. But a more discerning eye would quickly note the expert construction of them, they don't use them because they see them as somehow better or they disdain metals for the sake of it. It's about pure practicality. Without ready access to Forge and furnace facilities they don't have any way of maintaining metal equipment for extended periods of time, it just isn't practical. But because they use them so extensively, (and because of the "other side" to them i'm going to talk about below), they know a lot of fancy techniques to make them much potent than a simple stone-age equivalent.

Don't get me wrong i fully intend to add some more focus on that side of things, but mostly through features involving skill's, the crafting, or the poison stuff i already mentioned i wanted to add.

As noted though the wild outdoors-man is just one side to a rather large coin that Wanderer's have. Where many people go wrong is in seeing them as isolated lonely wanderer's, (hence the name), in practise not only are there a lot more of them than most people realise, (depending on the size of your campaign world anywhere from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands), but they are very interconnected through their own routes of communication, (though your not going to find any wanderer cities before you ask. Small settlements of maybe a 100 may exist depending on the size of your campaign world but they'd be rare, probably only 1-2% of the total population would live like that), and they preserve a hell of a lot or exotic and archaic knowledge, both of people, place's, event's, but also matters such as combat techniques and various skills.

There's the whole concept of "burdens" as well but that's getting complicated and very nuanced.



That's why they get a lot of the class features I've given them. Mechanically speaking I've provided what i see as important capabilities. But they represent aspects of that martial lore and knowledge they posses. They don't get a natural armour bonus because really have super tough skins. But because they know how to field attacks in ways that reduce or deflect them.Outsiders just aren't very good at realising this, (for many reasons, the Wanderer's own tenancies towards secrecy about their abilities being a particular factor). Other effects are more about heroic willpower, (this comes back to the concept of "Burdens" that I've skated around), at work.

Hope that helps a bit.

Amnoriath
2013-10-05, 11:44 PM
1. When i say civilisation i mean any civilisation. That watch tower out in the wilderness would count as much as some backwater village. Obviously it's somewhat dependent on the DM, ut that's true of a lot of class limits.

3. And a full caster at least has full access to his 4 highest Spell Levels at all times up till epic's. And then he has ways of increasing his maximum spell level or accessing epic magic so he can keep ahead. He just doesn't get to spam low level SoL, SoS, or SoD effects at you.

Bear in mind the criteria i'm using for High T3 to T2 is:



In my case it's more i'm already going to define which of those capabilities, (hence why it might end up high T3 IMO), but i'm going for the idea of handing out a selection of T1 like feature's but not the whole package. But at the same time i'm doing it in a roundabout fashion because i don't want the class playing rocket tag. So to handle other T2's it needs ways of eliminating rocket tag attempts on itself.

That why they combine such strong save's, AC, hitpoints, and some immunities plus features like deathstorm and storm of blows. They provide multiple layers of ablation and outright immunities vs a variety of effects whilst giving them a fair amount of damage without allowing ubercharger nonsense. At the same time since i was trying to build a high level character that wouldn't rely on magic items to get the basics done.

To break it down:

A) As i've noted already several times, both from an available WBL and from a lore PoV i didn't want them festooning themselves with a horde of items they have no means of producing, replacing, or maintaining themselves. So i needed to cover certain bases like Resistances to save's, enhancements to stats, magic weapons, armour, natural armour and deflection bonuses to AC, that kind of thing in the class feature's. But i need feedback at when they should come in.

B) In the same vein i created Rapid Attack, Deathstorm, an Storm of Blows to cover a few common points. Namely the need for great Cleave for mass combat, the need for Power attack for damage, and to deal with PA's 2-hander superiority), and to provide the Wanderer with those two fairly universal T3 non-manoeuvre based staples. Usable sequential attack's and the action economy to use a full attack without having to use a full round action. Now if you think deathstorm's bonus scales too much or you think Storm of Blows should be later on, say so, that's the kind of info i'm after.

C) A lot of magic item bonuses whilst helpful aren't exactly enough to begin scratching things like ubercharger's, mailmen, or SoD, SoL, SoS stuff. Those would still rip right through the AC's and saves of a Wanderer. Yes getting all those stat bonuses and standard +5 magic item bonuses and the like does a lot to help. But, (to use AC as an example), many casters and martial types can roughly double their base BAB with ability modifiers, magic item's, and buff spells in combinations. That makes the typical AC values available at a given level rather insufficient to really stopping anything but sequential attacks, and not always then. By going for larger deflection and natural armour bonuses and effectively disconnecting armour bonuses from dex bonuses Touch AC and non-touch AC rises rather firmly to harder to bypass area's.

D) Some things however, (and SoD's and SoL's, and most SoS's fall into this), aren't going to be dealt with by simply having solid save and some solid Ac so that a moderate percentage of the attempts fail. You've pretty much got to stop them or die right there if you can't rocket tag them back. Some as yet un-written bonuses are designed to target that kind of stuff. And the 10th level feature stops you not only from using lower level spells of this kind spammed via quicken to force 1's, on stuff you aren't immune to, but shuts down arcane thesis based metamagic abuse as you either have to apply a lot of levels of heighten metamagic, or use higher level spells to start with.

4. Ahh that first line. It's half a matter of pride you said that half annoying. Pride because well, what you've said is exactly what wanderer's want outsiders to think of them as. But it's a long way from all they are. Certainly their existence in the most wasteland of area's makes them expert outdoorsmen, hunter gatherer's, e.t.c. But that's a long way from everything they are. People look at their stone knives and bear skins and see a primitive. But a more discerning eye would quickly note the expert construction of them, they don't use them because they see them as somehow better or they disdain metals for the sake of it. It's about pure practicality. Without ready access to Forge and furnace facilities they don't have any way of maintaining metal equipment for extended periods of time, it just isn't practical. But because they use them so extensively, (and because of the "other side" to them i'm going to talk about below), they know a lot of fancy techniques to make them much potent than a simple stone-age equivalent.

Don't get me wrong i fully intend to add some more focus on that side of things, but mostly through features involving skill's, the crafting, or the poison stuff i already mentioned i wanted to add.

As noted though the wild outdoors-man is just one side to a rather large coin that Wanderer's have. Where many people go wrong is in seeing them as isolated lonely wanderer's, (hence the name), in practise not only are there a lot more of them than most people realise, (depending on the size of your campaign world anywhere from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands), but they are very interconnected through their own routes of communication, (though your not going to find any wanderer cities before you ask. Small settlements of maybe a 100 may exist depending on the size of your campaign world but they'd be rare, probably only 1-2% of the total population would live like that), and they preserve a hell of a lot or exotic and archaic knowledge, both of people, place's, event's, but also matters such as combat techniques and various skills.

There's the whole concept of "burdens" as well but that's getting complicated and very nuanced.



That's why they get a lot of the class features I've given them. Mechanically speaking I've provided what i see as important capabilities. But they represent aspects of that martial lore and knowledge they posses. They don't get a natural armour bonus because really have super tough skins. But because they know how to field attacks in ways that reduce or deflect them.Outsiders just aren't very good at realising this, (for many reasons, the Wanderer's own tenancies towards secrecy about their abilities being a particular factor). Other effects are more about heroic willpower, (this comes back to the concept of "Burdens" that I've skated around), at work.

Hope that helps a bit.

1. I just described a situation in which he would need to complete a short infultration which is about he would really need to do. I don't see how what you said is remotely relevant.
2. You didn't the have -4 before, but still these huge bonuses and immunities is really a bunch of nonsense that torques off any other mundane when you don't have any flavorful mechanics. Again those builds don't exist in Core. I know you changed you title to semi-core but only you know what that means as semi is incredibly vague. In which again I say you don't "handle" these builds by being sure you are sturdier than anything else in the game and removing any affect advantage of other mundanes. Instead make mechanics that goes with your restrictions and your tools to deal against the conditions those characters need to meet.
3. You forgot what I said in that this character is incentivised to get charged items and or specific immunities to diversify his strategy and immunities. Everyone is blowing slots for passive bonuses in which this guy never needs to worry about. Really are you trying to say you don't want this to have items or what? Then you have the problem of VoP without decently explained and applied flavor.
4. Except you ignored the word Renaissance. Definition: A revival of intellectual and artistic achievement and vigor. I know exactly the idea of what you are trying to do the problem is you made it so bloated that going anywhere with it as it is will just make a sturdier and better fighting CoDzilla. In all honesty though, I think you just made this class to exact vengeance to any of these builds you are angry.

Carl
2013-10-06, 09:35 PM
1. The point is unless your DM gives you a really favourable pure wilderness campaign the chances are you are going to have to go into town to some degree and the class makes that harder work.

2. The -4 has been there since the beginning, you'll note i last edited after my 1st reply post and i guarantee it was there before that, (I've got an un-edited copy open in word right now). You must have just missed it the first time. *shrug*, no problem really.

3. VoP? And yes the intent behind this class having all those things was to minimise magic item use. If they can't make it and maintain it themselves it's not commonly used because between their infrequent visits to civilisation and their hard lifestyles most things will break or run out more often than they can reasonably replace them. If that honestly means barring use to one degree or another i'm fine with that.

4. Your probably the first person on the internet i've seen use the phrase renaissance man properly, it gets so misused i've no idea how to parse it with most people.

5. Ok you touched on some other stuff above but i want to deal with a number of broader things raised.

The most important thing to understand is the lore comes first. In this case the Wanderer is a developed concept I've had for years before discovering OOTS, (around the time of the fall of azure city), never mind started posting in homebrew. What's more important than the when though is the specifics. I don't generally create backgrounds that are capable of rocket tag, i prefer the more heroic imagery that goes with a drag out knockdown fight. Sure if it's a really powerful character they might ultimately walk away with nary a scratch, (and Wanderer's very much fall into that category), but they aren't going to take their opponents down with one perfectly placed spell or one perfectly placed attack. That if you want to get above mid T3 represent an issue, it's why i almost never try to aim above that. There's no point. But Wanderers as a whole really should be sitting in T2, they tend to have that big an effect on a campaign world as a whole.

That's a bit of a dichotomy that with this class i have to deal with. If i'm not going to hand out Mailman/Ubercharger, (i know an ubercharger isn't T2 on it's own, but that kind of combat power can represent one aspect of whats needed fotr T2), damage, if i'm not going to hand out Sod and SoL and major SoS effects it's very hard to make them hit T2 in combat, despite that being one of their strong points supposedly. If you can tell me how to do that without forcing the other T2's down out of the SoD, SoL, major SoS, Ubercharger/Mailmen stuff i'm listening.

The second thing is a prefer simple mechanics over complex ones. If the only way to represent a lore aspect is a new or custom mechanic, i'll do it. If the only way to do that mechanic is complex, i'll do it. But if I've got ready access to an existing simple mechanic i'll use that instead.

To take an example:

Strength of Mind and Body:

I could have written this as a mechanic that stops you dying at -10 by forbidding death as long as you have temp HP's and granting you once per encounter a huge dose of temp HP's upon hitting -10 plus a lareg amount of temp HP only fast healing.

That represent's how un-killable a Wanderer is quite well. But so dos a bunch of DR and ordinary fas healing, and it's simpler to do.

Amnoriath
2013-10-07, 01:09 PM
1. The point is unless your DM gives you a really favourable pure wilderness campaign the chances are you are going to have to go into town to some degree and the class makes that harder work.

2. The -4 has been there since the beginning, you'll note i last edited after my 1st reply post and i guarantee it was there before that, (I've got an un-edited copy open in word right now). You must have just missed it the first time. *shrug*, no problem really.

3. VoP? And yes the intent behind this class having all those things was to minimise magic item use. If they can't make it and maintain it themselves it's not commonly used because between their infrequent visits to civilisation and their hard lifestyles most things will break or run out more often than they can reasonably replace them. If that honestly means barring use to one degree or another i'm fine with that.

5. Ok you touched on some other stuff above but i want to deal with a number of broader things raised.

The most important thing to understand is the lore comes first. In this case the Wanderer is a developed concept I've had for years before discovering OOTS, (around the time of the fall of azure city), never mind started posting in homebrew. What's more important than the when though is the specifics. I don't generally create backgrounds that are capable of rocket tag, i prefer the more heroic imagery that goes with a drag out knockdown fight. Sure if it's a really powerful character they might ultimately walk away with nary a scratch, (and Wanderer's very much fall into that category), but they aren't going to take their opponents down with one perfectly placed spell or one perfectly placed attack. That if you want to get above mid T3 represent an issue, it's why i almost never try to aim above that. There's no point. But Wanderers as a whole really should be sitting in T2, they tend to have that big an effect on a campaign world as a whole.

That's a bit of a dichotomy that with this class i have to deal with. If i'm not going to hand out Mailman/Ubercharger, (i know an ubercharger isn't T2 on it's own, but that kind of combat power can represent one aspect of whats needed fotr T2), damage, if i'm not going to hand out Sod and SoL and major SoS effects it's very hard to make them hit T2 in combat, despite that being one of their strong points supposedly. If you can tell me how to do that without forcing the other T2's down out of the SoD, SoL, major SoS, Ubercharger/Mailmen stuff i'm listening.

The second thing is a prefer simple mechanics over complex ones. If the only way to represent a lore aspect is a new or custom mechanic, i'll do it. If the only way to do that mechanic is complex, i'll do it. But if I've got ready access to an existing simple mechanic i'll use that instead.

To take an example:

Strength of Mind and Body:

I could have written this as a mechanic that stops you dying at -10 by forbidding death as long as you have temp HP's and granting you once per encounter a huge dose of temp HP's upon hitting -10 plus a lareg amount of temp HP only fast healing.

That represent's how un-killable a Wanderer is quite well. But so dos a bunch of DR and ordinary fas healing, and it's simpler to do.

1. No it isn't, the only campaigns in which this class is really of stringent use is in an Urban and/or War type campaign. However the most common is an adventure based one in which the restrictions are only mildly annoying so long as it isn't a solo because others can get your common needs while you stay outside.
2. You aren't making these item restrictions very clear at all here which is why I brought up VoP. If the restrictions are of an extreme ones of a druid in which no metal may be present in any item used than you effectively have a VoP type of restrictions when this class has no crafting of special items of any kind. If not then you are not minimizing the use of items at all. You are just incentivising him to buy the items with a bigger bang for a short and/or specific situations in which just makes him that more versatile while possibly being the hardiest and best fighting character in the group.
3. I think you more or less described a character that functions as more of a support and harasser build. I have made my opinion of what this character is and will likely become when you seriously start adding in spell level 9th abilities. The best way to draw out battle is to distract, debuff, and divert attention. I would say take them down to d10 hit die and 6+int. skill points this means they are decently hardy and skillful, also limit the bonuses. These "natural" items can use the custom item rules in the DMG for crafting to get very sufficient skill bonuses and maybe replicate some low level spells except they are supernatural. Additionally he could have some means to easily maneuver about the natural world like tree-stride and maybe even set up their own sanctuaries that act like a huge extradimensional space to keep your materials and such. As for your higher level stuff I really need to know more about this world you creating and what