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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other So I heard you liek ACFs and class variants...



Morphic tide
2016-02-14, 04:45 PM
AFCs. They make a class interesting. Some have odd consequences, like the Armored Mage Fighter AFC. It can let you enter Arcane Trickster at level 5 as a single class, if you trade in Fighter bonus feats for Sneak Attack as a Rogue. Heck, one build can get Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight off of one Fighter variant. Turns out that I was wrong again, will overhaul the losses accordingly. Can still get nasty amounts of extra tricks with it, though, like Sneak Attack in Heavy armor with full casting on a two feat price tag. So, what about doing that based on Rogue? Or Ranger Scout? This is to be a setup for those who want to be crazy with their characters without multiclassing, by adding a large variety of AFCs to make your character be a gish without needing a pile of multiclassing.

Morphic tide
2016-02-14, 05:23 PM
Armored Mage, as established in the first post, can do odd things. Let's give it to a lot more things, shall we? Will add more classes and power types as I figure out how to make it work

For what I thought Armored Mage was: Armored Spellcaster: Lose Medium and Heavy armor proficiency and martial weapon proficiency, gain casting of one Arcane class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. Ignore arcane spell failure from armor for that class and the casting of this class. Only spells from the Transmutation and Abjuration schools and Divination spells not from the Scrying subschool may be cast. OOC: Kept the loss of weapon proficiency because it's a one feat loss to use your favored martial weapon, or go exotic and basically lose nothing

For Divine Fighters: Armored Priest: Lose Medium and Heavy armor proficiency and martial weapon proficiency, gain casting of one Divine class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. Only spells from the Transmutation and Abjuration schools and Conjuration spells from the Healing subschool may be cast. OOC: Arcane gets the non-Scrying Divination, Divine gets the Healing. Damage or durability, essentially

For Psionic Fighters: Armored Psion: Lose Medium and Heavy armor proficiency and martial weapon proficiency, gain manifesting and power points of one Psionic class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. Only powers from the Psychometabolism and Metacreativity schools may be manifested. OOC: Gave Metacreativity to give a thing that the magic doesn't have that fits with the 'smith', 'meatshield' and 'weapon master' archetypes

For Maneuvering Fighters: Lightly Armored Maneuverer: Lose Medium and Heavy armor proficiency and martial weapon proficiency, gain maneuvers of one Initiator class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. OOC: All those combat bonus feats are good, m'kay? Especially if you are getting something other than Swordsage maneuvers. The name theme is broken because most maneuvering classes get medium armor proficiency. The change makes a very big difference, but may be worth it for Fighter bonus feats on Crusader maneuvers

For Arcane Rogues: Stealthy Spellcaster: Lose Trapfinding and Trap Sense, gain casting of one Arcane class of your choice, but none of it's class features. Only spells from the Illusion school and Enchantment spells not from the Compulsion subschool may be cast. OOC: The 'party face' role is the main sort of magic you will be using, as low to mid level illusion is kinda sucky. Unless you get Shadow illusions going, then you have a lot more to wipe out enemies with

For Divine Rogues: Stealthy Priest: Lose Trapfinding and Trap Sense, gain casting of one Divine class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. Only spells from the Enchantment school and Illusion spells not from the Shadow subschool may be cast. OOC: Mind rape for the Divine, Shadow blasting for the Arcane.

For Psionic Rogues: Stealthy Psion: Lose Trapfinging and Trap Sense, gain manifesting of one Psionic class of your choice, bit none of it's other class features. Only powers from the Metacreativity school and Telepathy powers not from the Cumpulsion subschool may be manifested. OOC: And the Psychic gets a big bag of tricks and minions, all the better for Flanked Sneak Attacks

For Maneuvering Rogues: Stealthy Maneuverer: Lose Trapfinding and Trap Sense, gain maneuvers of one Initiator class of your choice. OOC: For when you want to Sneak Attack with Crusader maneuvers.

For Arcane Scouts: Scouting Spellcaster: Lose Battle Fortitude, Uncanny Dodge and Evasion, gain casting of one Arcane class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. Only spells from the Illusion and Divination schools and Conjuration spells from the Teleportation subschool can be cast. OOC: Plain Rangers are flat out useless here. And all the stuff striped is to give a bit more 'squishy' to it, as they are scouts, not ninjas, the go look for things, not kill them while dodging everything that attacks them. Though the Illusion spells will let them do that anyway

For Divine Scouts: Scouting Priest: Lose Battle Fortitude, Uncanny Dodge and Evasion, gain casting of one Divine class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. Only spells from the Divination and Conjuration schools can be cast. OOC: Go find the enemies and summon the wrath of the the Heavens upon them. Or the legions of the Hells, if you're a jackass and/or Malconvoker. Or the wrath of nature of you're a badass hippy

For Psionic Scouts: Scouting Psion: Lose Battle Fortitude, Uncanny Dodge and Evasion, gain manifesting of one Psionic class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. Only powers from the Clairsentience, Psycoportation schools and Telepathy powers not from the Charm or Compulsion subschools may be manifested. OOC: Psionic Scout gets to act as a message relayer and currier, with an odd potential role as a recharger, given that Bestow Power is a Telepathy power and that move speed lets them run fast enough for getting PP charges to other positions at a practical rate

For Maneuvering Scouts: Scouting Maneuverer: Lose Battle Fortitude, Uncanny Dodge and Evasion, gain manuvers of one Initiator class of your choice, but none of it's other class features. OOC: For when you REALLY want to move with them maneuvers

Just to Browse
2016-02-16, 02:25 PM
These seem more like Variant Classes (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/variantClasses.htm) than alternate class features. Not that the terminology is particularly important, just a nitpick.

You may want to look at the variants a little more in-depth, because some of them seem completely crazy. I mean, divine fighter (cleric) is a better cleric from level 1 sans Divine Metamagic abuse. Psionic Fighters (psion) is better than the psychic warrior, Arcane Rogue (sorcerer) is better than the sorcerer in essentially every way.

"More options" is not in and of itself a laudable goal. Each option should have a reason to exist, and you should pick the feat/class/variant/ACF/skill/spell/build that properly reflects your needs. A fighter with cleric spells already exists in the cleric. A fighter with psychic powers exists in the psychic warrior. A rogue with arcane powers probably needs a class of its own. Maybe try these jester (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Jester_%283.5e_Class%29) or ninja (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Ninja,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29) reduxes? If you really just want to write an ACF/variant because they're fun (which I am 100% behind) then you should find a problem with the current system and mold your ACF/variant as a solution to that problem.

Morphic tide
2016-02-16, 04:41 PM
These seem more like Variant Classes (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/variantClasses.htm) than alternate class features. Not that the terminology is particularly important, just a nitpick.

You may want to look at the variants a little more in-depth, because some of them seem completely crazy. I mean, divine fighter (cleric) is a better cleric from level 1 sans Divine Metamagic abuse. Psionic Fighters (psion) is better than the psychic warrior, Arcane Rogue (sorcerer) is better than the sorcerer in essentially every way.

"More options" is not in and of itself a laudable goal. Each option should have a reason to exist, and you should pick the feat/class/variant/ACF/skill/spell/build that properly reflects your needs. A fighter with cleric spells already exists in the cleric. A fighter with psychic powers exists in the psychic warrior. A rogue with arcane powers probably needs a class of its own. Maybe try these jester (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Jester_%283.5e_Class%29) or ninja (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Ninja,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29) reduxes? If you really just want to write an ACF/variant because they're fun (which I am 100% behind) then you should find a problem with the current system and mold your ACF/variant as a solution to that problem.

With the point having been to make Armored Mage variants, I found out that I misunderstood what Armored Mage was. Now, you need to spend a feat on your martial weapon proficiency or go unarmed or simple weapon on them. Still potentially nasty, but not as much as the actual full caster classes that have class features making them worse. Will change the Rogue stuff to be less overwhelming as soon as I figure out something other than Sneak Attack to give up, because the point of that is Sneak Attack on a full caster/manifester/etc.. In the case of Fighters, a lot of weapon specialization is exclusive to them, which is bull****e that I must work with, because typing up a class for a variation of an existing one is silly.

Just to Browse
2016-02-16, 07:13 PM
If it helps, you can also look into restricting the stuff you've already got out. So instead of letting a rogue pick up any arcane casting, make a "Bardic Rogue" (or whatever you want to call it) and implement bard casting instead. Or perhaps go the way of the Dungeonomicon Assassin (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Assassin,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29), which provides a spells-per-day table and restricts the schools of magic you can use. Those restrictions allocate less power budget to the spellcasting, so you can focus on the synergy between class features instead of having to dance around abuse cases.

Morphic tide
2016-02-17, 07:13 PM
If it helps, you can also look into restricting the stuff you've already got out. So instead of letting a rogue pick up any arcane casting, make a "Bardic Rogue" (or whatever you want to call it) and implement bard casting instead. Or perhaps go the way of the Dungeonomicon Assassin (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Assassin,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29), which provides a spells-per-day table and restricts the schools of magic you can use. Those restrictions allocate less power budget to the spellcasting, so you can focus on the synergy between class features instead of having to dance around abuse cases.

So, something like restricting Rogues to Illusion and Enchantment, restricting Fighters to the buffing and healing schools and other thematically fitting sets of spells? What I'm focused on is giving the actual direct casting of another class, but mandatory restrictions seems like a good choice. Guess I'll force category restrictions on them as I figure them out

Edit: Oh, also, in regards to flaws in the system, a lot of feats and PRCs are almost literally class locked, but a single class non-caster is so sub-optimal that they are ignored in practical mook slaughtering play. Being able to have 9th level spells and 10th level Fighter feats pre-Epic would otherwise need complicated houserules or a lot of level shuffling tricks

Morphic tide
2016-02-17, 11:11 PM
Instead of an exhaustive list of combinations, I'm just going to give a list of things to trade between, including stuff already published as valid combinations. Will add more to the list and other lists as time goes on.

Trade between any two:
3.5 Fighter bonus feats (A feat every level is a wonderful thing)
Rogue Sneak Attack (It's a LOT of extra damage if you Full Attack on it)
Scout Skirmish (AC and damage is a rather good deal)
3.5 Monk move speed (So you can trade your mobility for more useful things, like actually hitting people)
Animal Companion, as Druid (it's a significant chunk of a Fighter anyway)
3.5 Psychic Warrior bonus feats (They get to pick from the Fighter list and the general Psionic list, which is nasty)
3.5 Wilder Wild Surge (Trade for Psychic Warrior feats to be better at the Psionics thing)
3.5 SoulKnife Psychic Strike (They need something to trade, and trading damage for other things is helpful)

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Trade between any two:
Proficiency with all armor and shields (Armor and shield proficiency is actually less valuable that I thought. It's all of +5 AC, with dex limits and casting issues)
Proficiency in all weapons (ALL weapons, you have to have proficiency in all the Exotics to do this, and you give up all of it down to Simple. Here because it can be negated with one or two feats, for most builds)
3.5 Monk Flurry of Blows (Again, 3.5 Monks need to trade things away)
Barbarian Rage (Does Not Include Capstone)

Morphic tide
2016-02-26, 12:45 PM
Reduced to placeholder

Morphic tide
2016-12-28, 10:35 PM
So, coming back to this old thread after a rather long time. Seeing as I'm the thread maker, I'm fairly sure that thread necro doesn't apply. Instead of the previous setup of listing off stuff in one big post (and dear god was I dumb, trying to make a feat locked build for 3.5 Fighter) I'll do some in their own isolated posts. I'll have this post be for a PF Summoner archetype. Namely, one made to change the remaining Summoner things that Synthesyst doesn't change.


Mutationist
Some Summoners decide to forgo use of using the powers of their Eidolon to summon lesser creatures to instead infuse this power into themselves and allies, or into things summoned in more conventional ways. This skill also allows them to alter their Eidolon further, as well as change those alterations with greater ease.

Infuse Aspect: At 1st level, a Mutationist can use a Standard action to give points of Eidolon mutations up to 1/2 their Summoner level to a target creature for 1 minute per Summoner level as a spell like ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + his Charisma modifier. The creature must meet any prerequisites of the mutations granted. Drawing upon this ability uses up the same power as the summoner uses to mutate his Eidolon. As a result, if this ability is used while the Eidolon is summoned, the Eidolon loses 1/2 the evolution points granted while the ability lasts. This ability replaces Summon Monster I.

Shared Aspect: At 10th level, a Mutationist's Eidolon gains an additional 5 evolution points. Any evolutions these points are used to purchase must be ones that the Mutationist qualifies for. When the Eidolon is not summoned, the Mutationist gains these evolutions. At level 18, the number of evolution points increases to 10. This ability replaces Aspect and Greater Aspect.

Twinned Aspect: At level 20, a Mutationist has a total connection with their Eidolon. Using this connection, as a full-round action, they may expend a use of Infuse Aspect to assume the power of their Eidolon. They gain their Eidolon's base Strength, Constitution and Dexterity scores if they are higher and 3/4 their Eidolon's evolution pool. The Mutationist can use this ability for a number of minutes per day equal to his summoner level. This duration does not need to be consecutive, but it must be spent in 1-minute increments. The Mutationist can end this effect as a free action.

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Yes, Synthesist doesn't do anything to Summon Monster, Aspect or Twin Eidolon. I 'fixed' this by making one that has AFCs that all boost Synthesist without getting in the way. Probably horrifically game shattering when used in combination with Synthesist.

nonsi
2016-12-29, 02:36 PM
Edit: Oh, also, in regards to flaws in the system, a lot of feats and PRCs are almost literally class locked, but a single class non-caster is so sub-optimal that they are ignored in practical mook slaughtering play. Being able to have 9th level spells and 10th level Fighter feats pre-Epic would otherwise need complicated houserules or a lot of level shuffling tricks

Wouldn't it be simpler and cleaner to (re)write the classes to suit your vision (anything from minor tweaks to complete rewrites or even redefining the classes) than to maneuver around the official classes?

Morphic tide
2016-12-29, 03:08 PM
Wouldn't it be simpler and cleaner to (re)write the classes to suit your vision (anything from minor tweaks to complete rewrites or even redefining the classes) than to maneuver around the official classes?

What I'm looking at literally can't be found in a rewrite. The changes are too big for a rewrite of the classes they are based on, and there are enough complaints of Paladins, Rangers and Psychic Warrior being Fighter based without making them qualify as Fighters for feats. It's a hell of a lot better for these to be their own classes, but down that path lies piles of pointless classes that need a lot more work to make workably balanced than "Have a Fighter with Cleric casting, but only buffs and healing." Sure, the way I'm doing it has balance issues, but it stays thematic and minimized the pileup of thread space consuming tables. Among other things, independent classes are strongly recommended to do something new and unique. Why make half a dozen classes with "Counts as a Fighter for the purposes of feats everything" when almost everything I want out of it is described by just giving the Fighter the thing and taking away stuff that either doesn't interrupt their martial capabilities or costs all of one feat to get back, but is enough to fool the worst sort of DM that thinks casters are balanced to allow these in. Same for the other classes given that style of gishing here.

The point of them, from the start, is to literally be "X class, minus Y abilities, plus X casting-type thing." Why not describe them as AFCs with such wording?