PDA

View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class Powering up low tier classes; caveats?



Bobby M
2016-02-11, 11:41 PM
As the title says, I'm trying to give more punch to a few classes that I love, but no one ever plays in my games. I'm hoping to get them at least up to Tome of Battle classes in terms of power, or as high as "tier 2". I'd like to know if I'm not quite strong enough, or if I'm going too far and obsoleting other options. (I am planning buffs for Paladin, Barbarian, and Ranger as well)

Fighter changes: New class features.
Ex)Weapon training:At level 3, and every 3 levels thereafter, the fighter can select a weapon in which he/she is proficient and can apply the benefits of all weapon specific feats to the chosen weapon.

Ex)Combat Master: At 5th level, and every five levels thereafter, the fighter increases any numerical bonus from fighter feats he or she possesses by 1. Additionally, any duration is increases by 1, any uses per day/round/encounter are increases by 1 and any range is increases by 10".

Monk Changes
Full BAB

Ex)For each level of Monk, use Wis for bonus HP instead of Con

Ex) At level 4, and every 4 levels thereafter, the monk gains a +1 enhancement bonus to unarmed strikes.

Su) Starting at 5th level, the monk can channel energy into his melee attacks. As a swift action, the monk chooses fire, cold, or electricity. The chosen energy wreathes his hands, shedding light as a torch and adding 1d6 damage. At level 10, and every five levels thereafter, this damage increases by an additional d6.

tsj
2016-02-12, 12:18 AM
I would look around this forum for home brew.
There are many many home brew mods of classes of all tiers, that adds both power and versatility.

I too have seen other tiers than 1 too be fixable
by adding larger numbers, but it is more a matter
of being able to

A) Handle any encounter (a fighter can not vanquish any monster without help)
B) Handle any situation (ie. can only proceed in the
dungeon by using dimension door etc)
C) Having meaningful options outside of combat and
D) Having options in social situations

Jormengand
2016-02-12, 06:32 AM
The thing you have to understand about tiers is that this class feature:


Greater Kill Anything (Ex)
From 1st level, you can kill anyone you like as a free action.

Doesn't make you tier 1. It doesn't even make you tier 2. It makes you tier 4. Making fighters and monks very slightly better at killing stuff isn't going to help.

sengmeng
2016-02-12, 09:20 AM
Seconding what Jormengand said.

The fighter is tier four. He does a good job at one thing: killing monsters, usually only in melee, sometimes ranged, rarely both. The rogue can use magic devices, kill things, sneak, be social, find and disable traps, and a lot of other skills. I've never seen them put into a tier lower than 3. You need to take the fighter and monk and give them something else to be good at (if the monk was good at anything in the first place) to lower their tiers, not add to the one thing they already do.

Edit: you did, however, mention power in your title, and power IS related to how well you do something. The monk could use a power boost, or just a way to do what he was intended to do effectively, or for someone to figure out what he was supposed to do. Seriously, I write up monk fixes all the time, and I still don't know what the monk is supposed to be good at. His flavor is great, but what is his role in combat, or out of combat? "Mobile Striker" is the best I can come up with, but a charging build beats him at that. So, power away, just understand what the tier system represents.

Just to Browse
2016-02-12, 02:50 PM
Greater Kill Anything probably makes any class tier 3, consider how effective it makes intimidation and how it could substitute for stealth in a pinch... But Jorm's point is still valid.

Certain classes need real options, other ones needs number buffs, others need something to do outside of a fight. Many classes need a mix of 2 or 3 of those. And that's why people do base class reduxes, because the issue is complicated.

If you really want to make short base class fixes but aren't willing to look at what's already on the forums here, I'd recommend going over some class handbooks and looking for sections where the author gripes about problems with the class. Then write your solutions to address those problems.

Bobby M
2016-02-12, 03:06 PM
Thanks for the replies! I didn't necessarily want to make them tier 1, but my understanding is that tier 2 classes are capable of doing one thing quite well. In my mind (and in my games, usually) my players like to specialize, so I figure they'd be happy if the fighter was really good at fighting and the monk good at anything. My hope, is that with those fighter buffs, he'd be able to be good at several weapon options, including melee and ranged by higher levels. Good enough on his own, but amazing when given support from casters (and good enough to justify a caster spending a spell buffing the fighter rather than himself.) My monk buff I hoped would make them a competent damage dealer, with both an automatic enhancement bonus and damage dice to their unarmed strikes saving them the cost of a magic weapon or amulet of natural attacks, and the Wis mod to HP to help reduce their MAD. Additionally, I had hoped to make the classes viable at being combat efficient outside of specific builds.

So, I suppose my remaining question, would the fighter and monk be good enough in combat with these buffs to justify not being good at much outside of them?

Edit: I suppose I should add, is that until now I've been using Tome of Battle as my melee fix. I've just gotten tired of seeing nothing but War blades and Crusaders and wanted to add some variety to the game.

Bobby M
2016-02-12, 03:14 PM
The thing you have to understand about tiers is that this class feature:



Doesn't make you tier 1. It doesn't even make you tier 2. It makes you tier 4. Making fighters and monks very slightly better at killing stuff isn't going to help.

I suppose its a difference of Tables, but my 3.5 party is very "kick in the door, grab the shinies". My 5th edition group roleplays so heavily we often don't touch dice for hours. In the former type of game, "Greater Kill Anything" would be akin to winning D&D.

sengmeng
2016-02-12, 04:25 PM
I'd probably try out your monk fix, but the fighter one wouldn't entice me to stick with fighter to third level. I'm currently working on a monk fix for the Base Class Challenge, and his main deal is that I've written about fifty feats for him, and most of the ones that provide a bonus scale upwards with the number of feats he has of the same type. I'd think about that as an enticement to keep up the fighter levels. What if Weapon Focus was +1 to attack per two fighter bonus feats, and Weapon Specialization was +1 to damage per two fighter bonus feats? Something to think about.

Jormengand
2016-02-12, 05:11 PM
See, classes like the Avatar (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?475720-The-Avatar-%28Class-in-30-minutes-PEACH%29), Hitman (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?477571-The-Hitman-%28Class-in-30-minutes-PEACH%29), Martial Artist (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?477086-The-Martial-Artist-%28Class-in-30-minutes-PEACH%29), Charlatan (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?477806-The-Charlatan-%28Class-in-30-minutes-PEACH%29), Adventurer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?471934-The-Adventurer-3-5-class-PEACH) and Commander (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?409691-The-Commander-%283-P-class-PEACH%29) are all classes I've made to be a bit more powerful without being as ridiculous as the casters. Maybe try some of those?

Bobby M
2016-02-12, 05:12 PM
I'd probably try out your monk fix, but the fighter one wouldn't entice me to stick with fighter to third level. I'm currently working on a monk fix for the Base Class Challenge, and his main deal is that I've written about fifty feats for him, and most of the ones that provide a bonus scale upwards with the number of feats he has of the same type. I'd think about that as an enticement to keep up the fighter levels. What if Weapon Focus was +1 to attack per two fighter bonus feats, and Weapon Specialization was +1 to damage per two fighter bonus feats? Something to think about.

That would probably work quite well, I'm just too lazy to go through all the fighter feats to change them. I am going to check out some of the homebrew fixes on this forum though to see if I can find any ideas to borrow from or straight up pilfer for my table.

Just to Browse
2016-02-12, 06:56 PM
It's a reasonable goal to make a very powerful class focused around killing things with damage. I feel like it will get old if it's the primary schtick for multiple classes, but if it you intend for the monk & fighter to deal the DPR then your changes are a good starting point. For reference, this barbarian (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Barbarian,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29) is tier 2.

Your changes so far give the fighter some combat flexibility, and improve the monk's numbers a fair margin. Those are good directions to go, but I'm pretty confident that it's not enough and I also want to encourage you to think outside the box. Boosting numbers will generally not be enough to bring these guys up to par, because combat is about more than attacks (especially at mid/high levels). It's reasonable to assume that level-appropriate boss fights will involve one of these by level 6: BFC, save-or-lose, unavoidable damage, hard counters to attack rolls. As you get high enough, even run-of-the-mill opponents will come with one while difficult opponents will have 2 or 3.

Because of this, the buffs you give to low-tier abilities need to be outside the realm of what's normally expected of them. The fighter and monk can't just full attack every turn, they will need ways to avoid slow at level 5, wall of stone at level 9, and baleful polymorph at level 13. They probably need to fly around levels 5-9 (but if you give out the right stuff, you can assume flight will come from magic items) and maybe some sort of anti-grapple effect that scales up until around 11-15.

As a final note, from past experience playtesting class fixes, I recommend avoiding large replacements unless they're well-tested.

If it hasn't been tested, keep it simple. Try to avoid new classes or funky subsystems, because the issues that show up in play will distract from your end goal of creating a balanced replacement.
If you want to use a full base class, make sure you know the quality is good. Unfortunately playtesting isn't always documented, but I've wasted enough time playing with homebrew to know that the barbarian fix linked above has been extensively tested, along with this monk fix (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Monk,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29) this fire mage (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Fire_Mage_%283.5e_Class%29), and grod's beastman (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?213031-The-Beastman-3-5-PEACH) (this last one might not be extensive). The first two are t2 and the latter are t3.

tsj
2016-02-13, 12:57 AM
Hm maybe just give the classes a little white
psychotic cat to neutralize spellcasters :-)

Cosi
2016-02-14, 04:41 PM
The thing you have to understand about tiers is that this class feature:

Doesn't make you tier 1. It doesn't even make you tier 2. It makes you tier 4. Making fighters and monks very slightly better at killing stuff isn't going to help.

This says everything that could possibly be said about the uselessness of the tiers in determining anything at all.

If you want to make people able to keep up with Wizards in combat, use the Tomes by Frank and K. If you feel that's too powerful, use Tome Combat Feats (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Warriors_with_Style#The_Failure_of_Feats) with semi-decent martial classes like Warblade and Duskblade.

If you want people to keep up with Wizards out of combat, let them pick a level appropriate spell each level off of the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list and cast it a number of times per day equal to a Sorcerer of their level, with a minimum casting time of one minute to stop people from using combat spells.

Bobby M
2016-02-15, 01:44 AM
This says everything that could possibly be said about the uselessness of the tiers in determining anything at all.

If you want to make people able to keep up with Wizards in combat, use the Tomes by Frank and K. If you feel that's too powerful, use Tome Combat Feats (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Warriors_with_Style#The_Failure_of_Feats) with semi-decent martial classes like Warblade and Duskblade.

If you want people to keep up with Wizards out of combat, let them pick a level appropriate spell each level off of the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list and cast it a number of times per day equal to a Sorcerer of their level, with a minimum casting time of one minute to stop people from using combat spells.

I don't want any of those things. I want a fighter, monk, ranger, paladin, knight, etc. to keep up with Tome of Battle classes. My favorite thing about 3.5 is how classes can operate with completely different systems, and I'm bored seeing my players constantly using ToB classes because the other classes just don't cut it.I'm not worried about them outperforming the wizard or cleric.

gtwucla
2016-02-15, 03:28 AM
What do you think about tying initiative bonuses to combat oriented classes, something like a bonus equal to 1/2 BAB. I think it's logical that a melee class would react faster, having trained in the heat of combat moreso than the average spellcaster.

Bobby M
2016-02-15, 01:31 PM
What do you think about tying initiative bonuses to combat oriented classes, something like a bonus equal to 1/2 BAB. I think it's logical that a melee class would react faster, having trained in the heat of combat moreso than the average spellcaster.

Would that be a function of BAB or an ability you'd add to certain classes? If its the former, I'd think the party would almost always win initiative.

gtwucla
2016-02-15, 08:36 PM
Would that be a function of BAB or an ability you'd add to certain classes? If its the former, I'd think the party would almost always win initiative.

No everyone. Unfortunately it also goes hand in hand with disallowing some hoop jumps for casters to get massive Initiative bonuses, but you can't get away from that unless you are homeruling a game with only a certain amount of books available to the player. In any case, in my own homebrewed world that's how it works and it grants a tremendous advantage to melee players, especially if they are close enough to close the distance between the spellcaster and itself in one round. Then catching people by surprise becomes very important.

Also more skills for the melee characters, maybe allowing every class to choose 2 skills instead of laying down all skills each class makes available, and making sure each melee character has 2 good saves.

pi4t
2016-02-21, 03:33 PM
Thanks for the replies! I didn't necessarily want to make them tier 1, but my understanding is that tier 2 classes are capable of doing one thing quite well.

That's more tier 4:


Tier 4: Capable of doing one thing quite well, but often useless when encounters require other areas of expertise, or capable of doing many things to a reasonable degree of competence without truly shining.

Tier 3s are able to do one thing quite well well, as well as doing other things decently when their main speciality isn't going to be useful. Tier 2s are capable of doing a large number of different things well:


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.

*"Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing."

nonsi
2016-02-22, 02:20 AM
Seconding what Jormengand said.

The fighter is tier four. He does a good job at one thing: killing monsters, usually only in melee, sometimes ranged, rarely both. The rogue can use magic devices, kill things, sneak, be social, find and disable traps, and a lot of other skills. I've never seen them put into a tier lower than 3. You need to take the fighter and monk and give them something else to be good at (if the monk was good at anything in the first place) to lower their tiers, not add to the one thing they already do.

Edit: you did, however, mention power in your title, and power IS related to how well you do something. The monk could use a power boost, or just a way to do what he was intended to do effectively, or for someone to figure out what he was supposed to do. Seriously, I write up monk fixes all the time, and I still don't know what the monk is supposed to be good at. His flavor is great, but what is his role in combat, or out of combat? "Mobile Striker" is the best I can come up with, but a charging build beats him at that. So, power away, just understand what the tier system represents.

The Monk's role is quite intuitive to me - an unfettered no-magical-gear striker with a lot of combat options. He doesn't necessarily carry the most powerful punch, but what he lacks in raw power, he more than compensates for with maneuverability, mystical powers and the ability to withstand conditions.
I believe there's a reasonable chance that you'll find my Monk (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?396998#21) suitable to carry out that role.

As far as Barbarian/Knight/Paladin/Ranger/etc go - my Warrior (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?396998#11) can cover any of them better than the originals (sans spells that is), on the premise that you don't need separate classes to cover those roles.

Red Fel
2016-02-23, 10:26 AM
Seconding (thirding? fourthing? n-thing?) what Jormengand said.

Look, at the end of the day, the Tier System ostensibly measures versatility. That is, whether a class has options. Adding numerical bonuses to existing abilities doesn't add new options, it just makes the existing options more functional and feasible.

A Tier 3 class can do something quite well, and some other things moderately well. A Tier 2 class can do all the things.

In order to take a Tier 4-on melee class, let's say the Fighter, and make it Tier 3, you need to (1) make sure it's good at its primary job, and (2) give it a few extra things it can do when its primary job isn't an option. In other words, adding your numerical bonuses establishes (1) pretty well - your Fighter fights better. But when the situation doesn't call for fighting, the Fighter remains mostly useless. He lacks adequate skill points to do anything worthwhile. He has no out-of-combat tricks, for diplomacy or crafting or exploration or movement. Even his in-combat tricks are limited; he doesn't have tactical teleportation, flight, immunities, or similar utilities. Fleshing out these areas would be a way to move him up in the Tiers.

Here's the funny thing, though - if you do that, he ends up looking a lot like a ToB class. And there's a reason for that. Love it or hate it, ToB was designed with the goal of giving cool functional abilities (but not spells you guys they're totally not spells okay?) to non-casters. The result was a trio of classes (Crusader, Swordsage, Warblade) that become a more functional, more versatile alternative to their pre-existing counterparts (e.g. Paladin, Monk, Fighter).

Think about it this way. Suppose that ToB had come out before PHB. That Warblade preceded Fighter or Ranger, Crusader preceded Paladin, Swordsage preceded Monk or Rogue. This wouldn't even be a conversation. Nobody would want the PHB melee classes. They're almost universally strictly inferior. We're having this conversation now, considering how to bring the Fighter up to the level of the Warblade, because status quo - because Fighter was there first, so we want to keep it around, just make it better.

We can think about ToB classes as alternatives to the PHB classes, in which case trying to upgrade the Fighter on the tiers is a way of bringing him up to the level of the Warblade. Or we can think about ToB classes as replacements for the PHB classes, in which case trying to upgrade the Fighter is a moot attempt to reinvent the wheel. There already is a higher-tier Fighter; it's called the Warblade.

Rant aside, to bring your typical low-tier class up to par, you need to give them more options, not simply better numbers. How you do that is up to you. But I can tell you that, for example, your proposed Monk changes - more HP and more damage - don't change the problems of the Monk class, and don't give it any new options or versatility. Similarly, your Fighter improvements - which boil down to a Warblade's Weapon Aptitude feature and extra numbers from feats - don't actually let the Fighter do anything he couldn't already. You need more than that.

Jormengand
2016-02-23, 10:38 AM
Of course, sometimes you can give more options with numbers, but they have to be the right ones. For example, what if you got +90 to every roll you made? A +90 to jump checks allows you to jump the previously unjumpable; to strength checks, break the previously unbreakable. Throw the unthrowable, ride the unridable, open the unopenable. Certainly, it adds to the number of meaningful options you have (dealing 12 damage to a creature with 100 hit points isn't meaningful. Dealing 102 damage to it is more meaningful.)

For example, say you want a fighter who is amazing at unrealistic feats of strength and toughness. That's fine: when he wants to sneak into a castle, he can jump onto the roof of the castle and work from there, or kick in the gate, crushing any guards in his path. But if you have a fighter who just gets attack, damage and AC bonuses, he's potentially a monster in combat but not much else.

(Though, I'm trying to think how you would optimise the combat master thing... maybe something using fling enemy? But then, you'll want both your hands full of kukri so you can use lightning maces kukris. Speaking of which, is there anything interesting you could do with a whip's 15 foot reach, or applying whip-specific feats to weapons that actually deal real damage? Hmm...

The monk energy thing could be useful for randomly starting fires everywhere. Not much else, though.)

Red Fel
2016-02-23, 10:45 AM
A +90 to jump checks allows you to jump the previously unjumpable; to strength checks, break the previously unbreakable. Throw the unthrowable, ride the unridable, open the unopenable.

http://t01.deviantart.net/FJC11BMbedOdtRN-oixmxm6NsKE=/300x200/filters:fixed_height%28100,100%29:origin%28%29/pre03/3d3a/th/pre/f/2009/318/a/a/row_row_by_defiant_ant.jpg

Bobby M
2016-02-23, 01:56 PM
Ok. So I'm starting to get the picture here. Even if I make my seldom chosen classes really good at hitting and killing things, it doesn't matter if they get trapped behind walls, can't reach the flying opponent, see the invisible target, or they get gimped with spells in turn 1. So there aren't really any simple fixes, and if I undergo massive rewrites I'm gonna end up with 4e (which I actually like, but no one else in my groups seem to.)

Oh well. I guess I'll just have to keep putting up with parties of nothing but Crusaders and Warblades.

Just to Browse
2016-02-23, 02:25 PM
That's not necessarily true. While I don't think you will ever make a fix that's easy on the designer, it's not impossible to make it easy on the player. One example is at-will or persistent spell effects, which have precedent in the core rules & come in a giant list along with your copy of the PHB. It will take a sobering amount of time to determine the most appropriate applications, but then you can write an intuitive class "fix" with less than a page.

For example, a player can read "Smoke Bomb (Ex): At 5th level, the rogue gets at-will obscuring mist with a 10ft radius. You can see through this normally, only one can exist at a time." and process it in a minute. They won't have to think about the your playtests where rogues threw down smoke bombs and then couldn't sneak attack (woops oversight), or that it used to be a ranger option at level 2 but rogues abused it too much, or a test combat where an antimagic field accidentally broke the effect, blah blah.

It's just important to know that a "simple" fix should only be simple for the reader.

PairO'Dice Lost
2016-02-23, 05:00 PM
So there aren't really any simple fixes, and if I undergo massive rewrites I'm gonna end up with 4e (which I actually like, but no one else in my groups seem to.)


The 4e fighter is not the only possible alternative to the 3e fighter, nor is it necessarily the most desirable alternative. There are many fighter fixes out there that give the fighter non-feat selectable class abilities (with or without an accompanying resource management system) that bring the fighter up to respectable levels of power and versatility. And when I say "many fighter fixes" I mean there are a metric **** ton of such fixes--and those are just the fixes that happened to have been posted on this particular forum and gained some degree of popularity, there are way more out there if you look for them.

If you don't like ToB classes but you do like 4e martial classes, you might want to figure out what the salient differences are between the two for your group, namely, what makes you like the 4e classes but not the ToB ones and what makes your group like the ToB classes but not the 4e ones--is it the exact effects and/or capabilities? The thematic and/or mechanical power/maneuver groupings? The advancement process and power/maneuver selection? The varying and/or multiple resource management systems? Something else? Then, once you have actual design goals beyond "make people want to play fighters or monks" you can design alternates based on those goals so both you and your group are happy with them.