The Martial Artist (Class in 30 minutes, PEACH)

Yes, it's another class in 30 minutes, the Martial Artist!

Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Special	Unarmed Strike Damage	AC Bonus	Speed Bonus
1st	+1	+2	+2	+2	Unarmed Strike, Flurry of Blows	1d6	1+WIS	+10 ft
2nd	+2	+3	+3	+3	Ability Score Bonus, Combat Maneuver Master, Evasion	1d6	1+WIS	+10 ft
3rd	+3	+3	+3	+3	Mind over Matter, Impossible Grapple	1d6	2+WIS	+10 ft
4th	+4	+4	+4	+4	Ability Score Bonus, Ki Strike, Slow Fall	2d6	2+WIS	+20 ft
5th	+5	+4	+4	+4	Utter Purity	2d6	3+WIS	+20 ft
6th	+6/+1	+5	+5	+5	Ability Score Bonus, Wallspringer	2d6	3+WIS	+20 ft
7th	+7/+2	+5	+5	+5	Invigourating Strike	3d6	4+WIS	+30 ft
8th	+8/+3	+6	+6	+6	Ability Score Bonus	3d6	4+WIS	+30 ft
9th	+9/+4	+6	+6	+6	Improved Evasion, Strike Through Stone	3d6	5+WIS	+30 ft
10th	+10/+5	+7	+7	+7	Ability Score Bonus	4d6	5+WIS	+40 ft
11th	+11/+6/+1	+7	+7	+7	Body of a God	4d6	6+WIS	+40 ft
12th	+12/+7/+2	+8	+8	+8	Ability Score Bonus	4d6	6+WIS	+40 ft
13th	+13/+8/+3	+8	+8	+8	Soul of a Hero	5d6	7+WIS	+50 ft
14th	+14/+9/+4	+9	+9	+9	Ability Score Bonus	5d6	7+WIS	+50 ft
15th	+15/+10/+5	+9	+9	+9	Impossible Speed	5d6	8+WIS	+50 ft
16th	+16/+11/+6/+1	+10	+10	+10	Ability Score Bonus	6d6	8+WIS	+60 ft
17th	+17/+12/+7/+2	+10	+10	+10	Timeless Body, Higher State of Consciousness	6d6	9+WIS	+60 ft
18th	+18/+13/+8/+3	+11	+11	+11	Ability Score Bonus	6d6	9+WIS	+60 ft
19th	+19/+14/+9/+4	+11	+11	+11	Impervious Being	7d6	10+WIS	+70 ft
20th	+20/+15/+10/+5	+12	+12	+12	Paragon Self, Ability Score Bonus	7d6	10+WIS	+70 ft

Alignment: Any
Hit Die: 1d10

Class Skills:
All skills are class skills of the martial artist.
Skill Points at 1st Level: (6 + Int modifier) × 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Weapon and Armour Proficiency
Martial artists are proficient with all simple and martial weapons.

Unarmed Strike, Flurry of Blows, AC bonus, Speed Bonus, Evasion, Slow Fall, Ki Strike, Improved Evasion, Timeless Body
These abilities work just like the monk abilities of the same name except as given on the table, that there is no penalty for making a flurry of blows, it is a standard action to do so, slow falls can be made at any distance from level 4 and ki strikes are all available from that level.

Combat Maneuver Master (Ex)
Martial artists, from second level, add their level as a bonus on all types of combat maneuvers (not martial maneuvers). That is, attacks such as grapples, trips and overruns. They never provoke attacks of opportunity for any reason.

Ability Score Bonus
At second level, and every second level thereafter, the martial artist gets a +4 bonus to any one ability score. The same ability score can be chosen any number of times.

Mind over Matter (Ex)
From third level, martial artists are immune to mind-affecting abilities.

Impossible Grapple (Ex)
From third level, martial artists can grapple a flying creature by hitting them with a grappling hook and then winning the opposed grapple check. If they do, the creature crashes to the ground, taking full falling damage.

Utter Purity (Ex)
From 5th level, martial artists are immune to poisons and diseases.

Wallspringer (Ex)
From 6th level, when a martial artist jumps onto a wall, that martial artist can immediately make another jump as a free action. This can be done once per martial artist level (plus once for the original jump).

Invigourating Strike (Ex)
From 7th level, the martial artist's allies are inspired by the unarmed attacks that are launched. Each of a martial artist's attacks that hits restores one hit point per level to each ally within 60 feet.

Strike Through Stone (Ex)
From 9th level, the martial artist gets a +5 bonus per level on checks made to sunder or break objects, and ignores object hardness. This means that the martial artist can usually smash through even stone walls or metal doors.

Body of a God (Ex)
From 11th level, the martial artist gets DR 1/- per level and resistance to everything 1 per level.

Soul of a Hero (Ex)
From 13th level, the martial artist gains spell resistance 11+level, which can be raised or lowered as a free action, regardless of whether or not it's the martial artist's turn.

Impossible Speed (Ex)
From fifteenth level, the martial artist can move as a swift action.

Higher State of Consciousness (Ex)
From 17th level, the martial artist is selectively ethereal. Any time it matters whether the martial artist is material or ethereal, the martial artist can choose which one to count as.

Impervious Being (Ex)
From 19th level, the martial artist is essentially impossible to strike. The martial artist has total concealment.

Paragon Self
From 20th level, the martial artist has the Paragon Creature template.

It's the super monk. Looks like fun. As for power level: The stat boost and the unarmed damage are too much imo. The abilities are useful, but kinda typical. This is just imo, but the really interesting homebrew explores what you can do with the mechanics. Though to be fair, I am guilty of doing the same typical stuff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gooddragon1

The stat boost and the unarmed damage are too much imo.

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Well, let's see what happens if you put everything into strength, starting with 18 strength, with an inherent +5 to strength, +5 to strength from levels, and of course +15 from Paragon Creature, and 6 from your item of strength. You end up with 18+31+40=89, for a +39 bonus.

Your flurry of blows entitles you to 7 attacks, meaning that you get 35d6+413 damage, or 535 damage. Stacking up to that is...

Meteor Swarm at an average of 112 damage combined against its 4 targets and 84 damage to each other creature caught in all four blasts, meaning that if you aim four meteors at four different creatures all near each other you deal 364 points of damage to those creatures. Did I mention that the range on that is about half a mile? Because it's about half a mile.
Storm of Vengeance, dealing an average of 210 damage plus 21 damage for each creature in its utterly huge area, plus a load of other stuff.
Wail of the Banshee, which just kills outright a bunch of creatures.
Tornado Blast, which deals an average of 98 damage to one creature and 70 damage to a load of others, more if you overchannel/wild surge.
Empowered Extended Mortalbane Energy Vortex, which does 210 damage to each creature that you can keep in its area. If you quicken one and heighten another, you can deal double that.

Sure, if you put everything into your strength, you can punch out a dragon, but there's a lot of other stuff that can do similarly crazy amounts of damage to everything without a great deal of effort. It's not hard to prepare meteor swarm, and the fact that the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of meteor swarms is that there's something much better you could be preparing just goes on to prove the point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

Well, let's see what happens if you put everything into strength, starting with 18 strength, with an inherent +5 to strength, +5 to strength from levels, and of course +15 from Paragon Creature, and 6 from your item of strength. You end up with 18+31+40=89, for a +39 bonus.

Your flurry of blows entitles you to 7 attacks, meaning that you get 35d6+413 damage, or 535 damage. Stacking up to that is...

Meteor Swarm at an average of 112 damage combined against its 4 targets and 84 damage to each other creature caught in all four blasts, meaning that if you aim four meteors at four different creatures all near each other you deal 364 points of damage to those creatures. Did I mention that the range on that is about half a mile? Because it's about half a mile.
Storm of Vengeance, dealing an average of 210 damage plus 21 damage for each creature in its utterly huge area, plus a load of other stuff.
Wail of the Banshee, which just kills outright a bunch of creatures.
Tornado Blast, which deals an average of 98 damage to one creature and 70 damage to a load of others, more if you overchannel/wild surge.
Empowered Extended Mortalbane Energy Vortex, which does 210 damage to each creature that you can keep in its area. If you quicken one and heighten another, you can deal double that.

Sure, if you put everything into your strength, you can punch out a dragon, but there's a lot of other stuff that can do similarly crazy amounts of damage to everything without a great deal of effort. It's not hard to prepare meteor swarm, and the fact that the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of meteor swarms is that there's something much better you could be preparing just goes on to prove the point.

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The way I've got it figured, by level 20 you want to be dealing about 100 damage after damage reduction per round. It's possible to go way over that amount, but a CR 20 balor has a bit over 200 hp. 3 level 20 characters hitting for 100 each after DR will dust him. A DM is just going to scale his encounters to your damage output in terms of HP or other things if you crank out that kind of damage. The monk is waaaaaaaay behind for a good deal of reasons and there's been a lot of fixes. Making your own thing is cool too. Just remember that a DM adjusts their encounters to make them challenging to the players. So it'll be harder for other guys to catch up and survive if you're outdamaging them by that much. That's just been my experience anyways.

Here's an example:
I made a class for the archer-ish kind o guy and then I revised it to fit with a lower power campaign.

The premise here is that archers run into a whole boatload of problems that melee don't seem to appreciate as fully. Inclement weather, AMFs, Windwalls, Obstacles, Grapplers, and a lack of reliable damage against DR. Some of this gets solved with gear, but in a game you can't automatically make the assumption that you can get the gear you need or even the feats you want. So, I made the class capable of dealing with those things without needing gear. I had to revise the damage output, but it kept the ability to contribute. Thus it filled a niche imo to allow for competent archers in a variety of situations.

The thing with the martial artist is, yes, you can put everything into strength and outdamage everything, but then that's all you're good for. Any WSoD or even FSoD is probably going to put you out of action (and the rare RSoD, at that) despite your all-high saves (I mean, you hit 20th level and get a massive buff to them all but that's at 20th level). And you're not competent at, like, anything other than breaking things. Or people. You're not even that great at not getting killed - I mean, the AC bonus and DR are nice, but not going to stack up to a fighter in his +lots full plate or a wizard who's not even there to be hit.

Ah yes. Near infinite stats. Saves and ac and hitting things are easy, skills will be good because if you boost int even once that's still a good bit of skills, but you still don't have any "I am a god now" buttons like a wizard or cleric has. So low levels this is out shining everything. High levels it's just a monk with a metric load of strength.

I would dip this 2 levels, put the +4 on Wisdom, and go druid. I don't lose 9th level spells, but I gain maybe +7 AC, +2 to spell DC's, +1 BAB, and some minor non-magical combat abilities. Heck, I might even sacrifice 9th level spells. I might dip 6 levels, still getting 7th level spells with a 30+ save DC on them, and a buttload of bonus spells for wisdom. My fists are greatswords, my speed is +20, I still get a +17 BAB and therefore all my iteratives, and my AC would gain about 13 before adding in protective spells. +6 to grappling when I wildshape is just the icing on the cake. Am I missing something?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sengmeng

I might dip 6 levels, still getting 7th level spells with a 30+ save DC on them, and a buttload of bonus spells for wisdom. My fists are greatswords, my speed is +20, I still get a +17 BAB and therefore all my iteratives, and my AC would gain about 13 before adding in protective spells. +6 to grappling when I wildshape is just the icing on the cake. Am I missing something?

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You're missing your eighth and ninth level spells. You're missing shapechange. You're missing the ability to SNAIX for a celestial charger with cleric 4ths and a +24 to grapple even before the inevitable divine power, or just an elder earth elemental with a no-questions-asked +37. In short, you're missing that there are better things you can do as a druid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

You're missing your eighth and ninth level spells. You're missing shapechange. You're missing the ability to SNAIX for a celestial charger with cleric 4ths and a +24 to grapple even before the inevitable divine power, or just an elder earth elemental with a no-questions-asked +37. In short, you're missing that there are better things you can do as a druid.

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I'm just saying that it depends on the game. There's probably a game where this would be an acceptably powered melee class. But you've got to remember that DMs don't all run super high powered or very low powered games. It's better in my opinion to make interesting abilities that can be scaled in power as a DM might want than strictly numerical superiority abilities. That way you can retain the flavor and interesting abilities of a class even if it is nerfed or buffed. It took me a good amount of time to learn that lesson, so I figured I'd pass it along. No homebrew is right or wrong (except the lightning warrior which is the finest piece of homebrew to have been produced by these forums), and more is always better (whether as material for play or material for inspiration). At least imo.

Well, my first though was "This is ridiculous!"

But then I thought "Wait... this is ridiculous, but so is my game.It's perfect!"


Anyway, I agree that it is something that seems very powerful. The Martial Artist is certainly not suited for a group with inexperienced players or a low-power setting. However, in some games, like mine, it could be an excellent alternative to the monk.

Damn, I wanna play that (in the quite evenly attributeboosted variant of the "Ancient Master of the Mountain" way)!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

Well, let's see what happens if you put everything into strength, starting with 18 strength, with an inherent +5 to strength, +5 to strength from levels, and of course +15 from Paragon Creature, and 6 from your item of strength. You end up with 18+31+40=89, for a +39 bonus.

Your flurry of blows entitles you to 7 attacks, meaning that you get 35d6+413 damage, or 535 damage. Stacking up to that is...

Meteor Swarm at an average of 112 damage combined against its 4 targets and 84 damage to each other creature caught in all four blasts, meaning that if you aim four meteors at four different creatures all near each other you deal 364 points of damage to those creatures. Did I mention that the range on that is about half a mile? Because it's about half a mile.
Storm of Vengeance, dealing an average of 210 damage plus 21 damage for each creature in its utterly huge area, plus a load of other stuff.
Wail of the Banshee, which just kills outright a bunch of creatures.
Tornado Blast, which deals an average of 98 damage to one creature and 70 damage to a load of others, more if you overchannel/wild surge.
Empowered Extended Mortalbane Energy Vortex, which does 210 damage to each creature that you can keep in its area. If you quicken one and heighten another, you can deal double that.

Sure, if you put everything into your strength, you can punch out a dragon, but there's a lot of other stuff that can do similarly crazy amounts of damage to everything without a great deal of effort. It's not hard to prepare meteor swarm, and the fact that the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of meteor swarms is that there's something much better you could be preparing just goes on to prove the point.

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The main problem with this is that you assume feats don't exist. With Power Attack, that damage becomes an additional 140, or 675 damage. Add to that another feat, Combat Brute, and your Power Attack damage becomes 210 instead (on the round after a charge), for a total of 745. Lady's Gambit lets you take damage equal to your level to get that as a bonus to hit and damage for one round. Perfect! Now we deal 885 damage.

What if we went Wisdom instead? Picked up Stunning Fist as a feat, and Sun School? The save for SF would be 59, which means most normal characters would fail. Two uses in a row would cause the person to be confused for 1d4 rounds (average 2), so an average effective stunlock of half that, for 3 rounds total. Plus, You have +39 AC, can take the feat Intuitive Attack and get Wis to attack.

It's just very easy to break, with any optimized feat choice. Sure, you could retort, "So is the Wizard, or CoDzilla, with optimized spell choice!" But honestly? They don't have half the tools you built into the class.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thedarkstone

The main problem with this is that you assume feats don't exist. With Power Attack, that damage becomes an additional 140, or 675 damage. Add to that another feat, Combat Brute, and your Power Attack damage becomes 210 instead (on the round after a charge), for a total of 745. Lady's Gambit lets you take damage equal to your level to get that as a bonus to hit and damage for one round. Perfect! Now we deal 885 damage.

What if we went Wisdom instead? Picked up Stunning Fist as a feat, and Sun School? The save for SF would be 59, which means most normal characters would fail. Two uses in a row would cause the person to be confused for 1d4 rounds (average 2), so an average effective stunlock of half that, for 3 rounds total. Plus, You have +39 AC, can take the feat Intuitive Attack and get Wis to attack.

It's just very easy to break, with any optimized feat choice. Sure, you could retort, "So is the Wizard, or CoDzilla, with optimized spell choice!" But honestly? They don't have half the tools you built into the class.

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Being able to do lots of damage to someone isn't actually that amazing, though. There are ubercharger builds that can deal damage in the high thousands, but that doesn't get them super far.

I feel Unarmed Strike damage scales weird. It's a linear increase in a game where nothing else is linear (maybe increase in size every X levels?). 6d6 to 7d6 is practically pointless at the time you get it.