3.5 Classes that Broke Your Heart

[Honest Tiefling]

Yes and no. Is it a good class? For most cases, yes. Overall, I like Beguilers. But the lack of flexibility in spells is really unappealing to me. I get why it is for the sake of balance, but I love my battlefield control and buff spells, so it doesn't really scratch that itch.

[Darkweave31]

Ranger. I feel like it's one of the iconic character concepts, but falls flat mechanically when trying to build it without extensive use of multiclassing and alternate class features.

[Thealtruistorc]

I don't see anything in either the Warlord or the Privateer that gives Cha to hit. The closest that I can find is that one of the Warlord gambits gives +1d6+Cha to damage against targets you use Acrobatics to avoid the AoOs of.

Gambits add your charisma modifier to the attack/combat maneuver/ability check roll. I like to houserule that they require some sort of catchphrase to be yelled whenever somebody executes them.

[Taveena]

Soulborn honestly makes me sad. I'm a huge sucker for Paladin types and I love Incarnum so much more than casting, but...

... a Divine Mind makes for a more mobile higher-damage character WITHOUT Ectoplasmic Ally. A /divine mind/.

[Milo v3]

Druid surprisingly. Its just such a grab-bag of abilities, I could never work out a character with a theme with it.

[Urpriest]

Sha'ir. Such a cool concept, but it doesn't specify whether it counts as a spontaneous caster or a prepared one, despite there being a large number of character options that hinge on that distinction.

[Shin]

I'm honestly disappointed by the rogue. This was the class I wanted to get my hands on when I was about to start playing 3.5/D&D in general, and boy, did it feel...incomplete. (Ofc I had no knowledge of rings of blinking, penetrating strike, and other stuff back then, but still, I think the class isn't built well) There are just so many classes that do better what the rogue is supposed to do and stand for. An empty 20th level (to look forward to), really!? No capstone!? Almost any level filled "just" with +1d6 SA or +1 trap sense? Not Mighty! Not Special!

Don't even let me get started about the "all-your-ass-are-belong-to-us" ninja *turns away and cries silently*.

Would've played a martial adept then, but no, every group thinks that martial adepts are op and outright bans them

[nyjastul69]

Oh, nonsense.

Fighter's Little Wish [General]

Prerequisites: Fighter level 4th.

Benefit: You gain Limited Wish as a Spell-like ability, usable 3 times per day.

A fighter may select Fighter's Little Wish as one of his fighter bonus feats.


Fighter's Bigger Wish [General]

Prerequisites: Fighter level 8th.

Benefit: You gain Wish as a Spell-like ability, usable 3 times per day.

A fighter may select Fighter's Bigger Wish as one of his fighter bonus feats.

You pobably should indicate sarcasm/jk in some way in a post like this. I *almost* thought you were quoting rules text. The dead giveaway is no citation, but some may not realize that.

[Pluto!]

You missed the point.

Those feats are an argument that powerful fighter feats are easily possible within the existing rules without just scaling up the system's power level outside the fighter class.

[Story]

Pathfinder witch.
It just bored me. Never got to the major hexes, so maybe I'm missing something. The two best/most used hexes are evil eye and slumber. One is underwhelming and the other.. I just feel dirty using over and over again. The class is great against a single powerful enemy that takes many rounds to beat, but I can't see how it would ever be effective against many weaker opponents.
I like the shaman so much more.

I haven't played one myself, but aren't you supposed to be using Misfortune and Cackle to perma-debuff enemies?

[Curmudgeon]

Unrelated, but do you actually play by any of the rules interpretations you post here?

Every one of them. I've got 2 house rules for the Factotum: Cunning Surge taking a swift action rather than a standard action is one of them. Resolving silliness (FAQ "answers" in conflict with actual rules being a big part of it) regarding the Factotum, without adding any house rules, requires many additional paragraphs of citations.

That's...not a definition. That's just more evidence they needed a Thesaurus.

They're citations of actual game text. Some people are content to do a lot of squinting and hand-waving when it comes to D&D rules, but I don't work that way. I take things exactly as they are, and if necessary I add house rules. Monks really aren't proficient with their unarmed strikes. That's silly, but it's the RAW; so another house rule.

[RedMage125]

Soulknife. Just, Soulknife. Such a cool concept and so badly executed.

Als0 Truenamer.



Monk broke my heart but PF Unchained Monk and Pummeling Style mended it.

Agreed on Soulknife. Although I liked it enough that when Dragon Magazine had their Prestige Class concept, I made a PrC that required the Mind Blade class feature (this was before the Complete Psionic came out, and we had ZERO PrCs that improved a soulknife's ablities).

I must say, Psyren, that I had yet to check out the Unchained classes until I read this from you.

WOW, the Monk looks good. Rogue changes look good. The Barbarian...I understand the desire to make changes to Rage so players are not constantly recalculating their math, but it seems to me that 2h-weapon barbarians lose out on some damage there.

[Saintheart]

Scout, in particular. My dreams of playing Genghis Khan died the day WOTC decided to rule that a scout's mount's movement did not count for skirmish damage.

[kellbyb]

You missed the point.

Those feats are an argument that powerful fighter feats are easily possible within the existing rules without just scaling up the system's power level outside the fighter class.

But at that point, we're moving out of the territory of feats and into that of highly variable class abilities.

[Curmudgeon]

But at that point, we're moving out of the territory of feats and into that of highly variable class abilities.

No, we're still firmly in the area of feats, following the pattern of Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Focus, and Savvy Rogue. Adding a requirement for 8 levels of Fighter or 10 levels of Rogue doesn't keep these from being feats.

[eggynack]

Druid surprisingly. Its just such a grab-bag of abilities, I could never work out a character with a theme with it.

I think the trick is moving away from standard druid flavor. Like, if you're just "Druid who art of nature", then everything in all the books is a part of your existence, and you're picking for reasons separate from theming, because everything is on theme. Even with a cool underlying concept, you're still ultimately beholden to vast swaths of text from a mechanical standpoint. Like, sure, you're trying to destroy cities because you love nature so much, but that doesn't mean you're not just casting entangle and kelpstrand.

Thus, a good way to go is to pick something unorthodox. My favorite druid concepts are the ones you wouldn't necessarily expect, like the necromancy/aberrations druid, which actually just picked up some new minionmancy synergy when I found deepspawn and great old master neogi forms, or the really city focused druid using piles of cityscape web enhancements, or the dragon themed druid running all the cool stuff that that's party to. Each plan cuts down options on the character design side, giving a lot of focus to feats, ACF's, and even prestige classes, and they also grant some direction to your more day to day build decisions.

In any case, I can respect the idea that the class can be a bit much. It's a lot of power, and a lot of book keeping, and a hell of a lot of plain old fashioned looking through a lot of books. Understanding the class means understanding just about every facet of the game, with the possible exception of subsystem stuff, and it can be tricky to reduce all of that down to something workable if you want to do things right. I do think it's very much possible, however.

[Zordran]

It surprised me when I realized that the Complete series added twelve new classes, and only the Scout and Warlock (and occasionally Wu Jen) are ever talked about. Has anybody ever played a Shugenja? I've never even heard anybody mention the Spirit Shaman, not ever.

For me, it was the Hexblade and especially the Dragon Shaman. OK, so I'm not a shaman, and I'm certainly not a dragon, and everybody thinks I'm a Fighter, but I'm worse than a Fighter in a lot ways... and I'm optimized, so I have Spider Climb?

[General Sajaru]

Swashbuckler; when you can't become a Dread Pirate before level 13, a Legendary Captain before level 7, or a Scarlet Corsair before level 13, there's something wrong with a class that's supposed to embody daring deeds and pointy one handed weapons. Then again, I guess I shouldn't have gone looking for a class with skills in the book entitled Complete Good at Hitting Things and Nothing Else.

[Story]

It surprised me when I realized that the Complete series added twelve new classes, and only the Scout and Warlock (and occasionally Wu Jen) are ever talked about. Has anybody ever played a Shugenja? I've never even heard anybody mention the Spirit Shaman, not ever.

For me, it was the Hexblade and especially the Dragon Shaman. OK, so I'm not a shaman, and I'm certainly not a dragon, and everybody thinks I'm a Fighter, but I'm worse than a Fighter in a lot ways... and I'm optimized, so I have Spider Climb?

I've seen Spirit Shaman mentioned, but mostly in the context of arguments about whether it should be Tier 1 or not. It's strange how noone ever talks about actually playing one.

Warmage is sometimes recommended for low op players who want to be a blaster Wizard. And of course it's mentioned whenever Rainbow Servant cheese comes up.

[bekeleven]

It surprised me when I realized that the Complete series added twelve new classes, and only the Scout and Warlock (and occasionally Wu Jen) are ever talked about. Has anybody ever played a Shugenja? I've never even heard anybody mention the Spirit Shaman, not ever.

For me, it was the Hexblade and especially the Dragon Shaman. OK, so I'm not a shaman, and I'm certainly not a dragon, and everybody thinks I'm a Fighter, but I'm worse than a Fighter in a lot ways... and I'm optimized, so I have Spider Climb?

Shugenja has a decent spell list, one that makes it tier 3-4ish, but it feels so bad to build. Because the spells are framed as what you take away rather than what you add, it feels like building a sorcerer and cutting spells rather than, say, building and adept and adding some. I recall there being at least one combination where your chosen element didn't even have enough spells of some levels and you end up just losing spells known. You know, in addition to all the other issues.

The class also gives no reason not to prestige.

[squiggit]

I'd probably want to add Warmage to my list too.

The class isn't terrible and you can do nice things with it.

But it was definitely heartbreaking the first time I started reading up on Warmage optimization and the whole thing could basically be summed up as "Do everything you can to be as unwarmagey as possible".

[Chronikoce]

I'd have to say wizard. The whole vancian spell system combined with needing to prepare spells ruined it for me. In concept I'm an all powerful wizard who can bend the cosmos to my will. In reality I can do all of that in 15 minutes as soon as I prepare the proper spell...

It's not that it's not good. It's that it runs counter to story progression and leads to short adventure days or empty slots being filled during 15 minute breaks.

Now if I can just find a DM who will houserule wizard spell progression onto sorcerer casting. I'll gladly trade knowing all spells for being able to spontaneously cast the few I know, especially if it means the story can keep moving along!

[Darkweave31]

Also my long distance relationship with psionics is trying at times. I love the system but my DMs always ban it.

[Socratov]

my disappointments:

Truenamer. This class is the end all and be all of fail. With the best fluff in all of the books it fails to actually even work as a class.

Shadowcaster. It barely works, but too little, too late.

Duelist PrC (DMG): so cool fluff, such great options, such a big letdown. It would have great synergy with Swashbuckler, but ultimately failed

Invisible Blade: are you kidding me? this is barely playable, but if it actually worked, it would have been soooooo cooooool.

Seeker of the Song: As cool as it seems, it's got nothing good for Bard to use at the time it comes on-line.

Dragon Shaman: Most of what DS has is actually BS


I think we can conclude that the more flavourful a class is, the more disappointing it will be. It's like a disillusionment paradox.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Theurgic necromancer prestige classes: True Necromancer and Yathrinshee (latter has a drow requirement, too >.>). More generally, all theurgic prestige classes (some more than others, hi mystic theurge).

I really like the fluff of mixing arcane and divine magic, and manipulating magic in ways lost since the destruction of the X empire/newly discovered from the libraries of Y/so precise that even Z wears glasses to do it. You get that with geomancer, dweomerkeeper, incantatrix and so on (geometer, too, runecaster, ultimate magus, and StP erudite has a bit as well). For some reason, none of the actual theurgic classes have anything like that. You just get to advance casting twice. Well, great.



LA -- templates/races with awesome powers, too. Phantoms, for example.

[Extra Anchovies]

Theurgic necromancer prestige classes: True Necromancer and Yathrinshee (latter has a drow requirement, too >.>). More generally, all theurgic prestige classes (some more than others, hi mystic theurge).

I'm going to call out Noctumancer as the exception here, they get some really cool stuff. Plus you can go Wizard 1 (with Precocious Apprentice)/Shadowcaster 3/Noctumancer 10/Mystic Theurge 6 and actually progress both casting types the whole way rather than randomly stopping like you have to do with MT alone.

[ericgrau]

Ever found a class that just didn't do what you wanted it to do, for whatever reason? This thread is so you can pour out your heartbreak and relate to others.

My heartbreak was Monk, of course. So many cool options, no empty levels... But it SUCKS! If only monks got pounce, or had a way of obtaining pounce through a prestige class!

Dip for pounce?

Rogue. I like the concept but too many DMs hate skills with an unwarranted passion. Skills are minor. If you can auto-pass with minimal optimization and/or taking a 10 that's a good thing. Stop thinking that skills need to have a good chance of failure on every check for D&D to be a gamey game, and stop thinking it's hilarious every time a failure screws over the player. Why should I even try if I have a 50:50 chance of utter character destroying suck 10 times a day, and if I pass I only accomplish something minor?

I once had a campaign where the DM decided to extend it to concentration checks. He thought it was too easy to pass concentration checks and introduced a harsher scaling factor. Our instant solution for all our casters was to stop casting in melee altogether. We'd take a 5 foot, withdraw, buy anklets of translocation ASAP, pick up flight, etc. but never actually attempt the check. Frequently failing on skills with bad consequences for failure is utterly stupid.

[Chronos]

Better feats, even without requiring fighter levels like weapon specialization, can absolutely fix the fighter. Yes, the wizard can get feats, too, but the wizard probably isn't going to be interested in feats that make her better at hitting things with sharp pieces of metal, and even if she is, she isn't going to be able to make as effective use of them as a dedicated warrior will. And yes, barbarians, paladins, monks, rangers, etc. also get feats, and they will be interested in the same feats as fighters and will be able to leverage them. So by improving fighters, we'll also improve those other classes (though not by as much, since they don't get as many). Is this a problem?

Now, we won't be able to improve fighters all the way up to Tier 1. But that's a problem with Tier 1, not with the fighter. Being less powerful than overpowered is a good thing. Everything should be less than overpowered.

[ShurikVch]

Not only is the fluff great, but I like the idea of a skill-based casting system.

Do You know about the Force Skills in Star Wars D20?

[A Tad Insane]

Acolyte of the skin
The singular most metal class that isn't a bloodrager or literally uses metal, and you can't even dip it without feeling dirty. I've had so bbeg ideas where I thought "if only aots was good, I would so use it right now"