What classes do you hate?

[Buufreak]

Social studies. :P

[Telonius]

As-written, Paladin, Monk, Truenamer, and Soulborn. Paladin, because of that "can't associate with..." clause in the code. Any class that forces the other players to choose between playing their characters a certain way and not gaming with you is just a bad idea. Monk, for being a flashy trap. Truenamer, for having some of my favorite fluff in the game (I want to play Sparrowhawk, confound it!) and turning it into a nightmarish hodgepodge of things that either don't work without cheese, turn on way too late, and don't do much even when they do work. Soulborn, for doing a similar thing with Incarnum.

[CaPtMalHammer]

wizard:) flat out, to generic, ohhh look another wizard... oooo all that cosmic power in a little bitty body! :) ok I know its a bit harsh. But they are just boring. no fun to play at all. they are either underpowered and weak or overpowered and seem to piss off the rest of the players at the table:)

[Soranar]

Druid because "I have class features more powerful than entire classes" shtick.

Consider the fact that a druid is tier 1 with his spellcasting alone

Now add an animal companion that is stronger than any familiar and better than the ranger's. Said animal companion is probably tougher than the fighter.

top it off with wildshape, an extremely versatile ability that makes your physical stats completely irrelevant, lasts hours and add natural spell to make sure you never get out of wildshape

oh and give him x4 skillpoints with listen and spot as class skills, 3/4 BAB, d8 hitpoints and two good saves

now compare it to a fighter (which is overshadowed by the animal companion alone)

a fighter gets less skillpoints (and no listen or spot), worst saves, no wildshape, no spellcasting

but hey, the fighter is full BAB, a few more hitpoints and has feats

seriously what were they thinking?

[Grod_The_Giant]

seriously what were they thinking?

By my understanding of the playtest? That Wild Shape was a useful scouting ability, that none of the animals you can pick for a companion are that strong so they're really just like a less intelligent familiar, and that they don't have great damage spells so they need to be able to fight in melee.

[Necroticplague]

By my understanding of the playtest? That Wild Shape was a useful scouting ability, that none of the animals you can pick for a companion are that strong so they're really just like a less intelligent familiar, and that they don't have great damage spells so they need to be able to fight in melee.

I remember reading somewhere that the core of the Druid play test build dual wielded throwing scimitars. Since that was incompatible with WS, they never did it except to scout as a hawk, their AC was similarly only used to scout, and the usually didn't cast spells due to action limits (and when they did, I believe it was to use flame seeds). Given this knowledge, it explains quiete well why they thought Druid and Monk were balanced (though it should have been a warning sign that a Druid ignoring most of their class features is as good as a monk using what they can).

It really says something about the play test optimization level that a joke build (Lord Berrington, the bear riding a bear that summons bears) is more competent than what they used as a baseline.

[Lord Raziere]

Wizard. Mostly because its pointless to play. If you can be so godlike, where is the challenge in anything? They feel less like Batman and more like One Spell Man.

Fighter: The Mumen Rider to the Wizard's One Punch Man. Neither of these are particularly fun. If I wanted to play either of these archetypes, I wouldn't need mechanics, I just say "Wizard rules: always win, Fighter rules: always lose." no need to roll dice.

I prefer something between the two, something competent and some specialness but not y'know, godly omni-competent.

[LordOfCain]

Wizard. Mostly because its pointless to play. If you can be so godlike, where is the challenge in anything? They feel less like Batman and more like One Spell Man.

Fighter: The Mumen Rider to the Wizard's One Punch Man. Neither of these are particularly fun. If I wanted to play either of these archetypes, I wouldn't need mechanics, I just say "Wizard rules: always win, Fighter rules: always lose." no need to roll dice.

I prefer something between the two, something competent and some specialness but not y'know, godly omni-competent.

I heard One Punch Man?

[Stealth Marmot]

Addressing the OP: I love the Factotum. I don't consider a Factotum to be a Mary-Sue so much as a walking plot contrivance. They always happen to have just the thing to top off what the others are doing. They aren't the baker, but they always have the cherry for the top of the cake. Plus they are also the best skill monkey available, but they are no substitute for the rest of the classes. They can't outcast a wizard, or even a bard. They certainly can't outheal a cleric, and they are weaker than the fighter or barbarian in melee. The one class they DO tend to overshine a bit is the rogue, but the rogue has more skill points, uncanny dodge, and can use evasion and sneak attack without having to worry about inspiration points. More importantly though, a Factotum is still bound by the fact that his stats have to be spread pretty thin if he wants to try to perform in any of his versatile functions. The factotum works best as the backup, the guy who helps when the main guy is busy or incapacitated. He's the plan B, or the guy filling whatever small holes or gaps in your group. He'll cover any skill the rest of the group lacks, add some healing if a core healer is missing, be a flanking buddy for the rogue or supply a spell that the sorcerer is missing in a pinch.

As for classes I hate? I have to agree with OP on the Monk. Not because I think it overpowers anything, but because the monk rarely seems to serve a purpose. Everything about the monk is defensive and selfish. The monk is immune to half the things in the game, and pretty much able to take anything except a barbarian to the face, but what good is the monk for except EXISTING? The monk's unarmed strikes hit for utter crap and are hard to enhance at all, much less turn into +3 flaming holy weapons, and their crit range is horrible. They can't even use a bow and instead have to use shurikens, or sling bullets, or javelins that do craptastic damage. They don't even have a lot of skill points, especially since INT is their second biggest dump stat, barely beating CHA, and they only get 4+int. The only use I see for monks is as a caster killer, and only if they run and grapple the caster. They can't grapple most monsters since most monsters have Huge BAB and strength bonuses and, for the most part, size bonuses. Stunning fist is sort of useful, but considering how many creatures in the game are immune, or have fort saves that make a barbarian blush, the monk is only useful in very specific circumstances, and even then only marginally. They get a little better in Pathfinder, but in 3.5 they rarely contribute anything but a flank and occasional trip.

3.5 classes that cheese me off: Arcane Trickster. This class requires someone to be horrible at two classes while getting very little in return. It grinds my gears that they only get 4 skill points per level when you already sacrificed 5 levels to the 2+int wizard or worse, 6 levels to the 2+int sorcerer. The ranged legerdemain ability is borderline useless (especially since you take a major -5 PENALTY when using it), and is still limited in how many times you use it per day. Impromptu sneak attack is nice, but you get it once or twice a day. Your weak BAB means that the sneak attack you use will at best compensate for your catastrophic spell level loss from taking 3 levels in rogue, and only when using certain spells. Without supplements, the Arcane Trickster is just a horrible idea, and with supplements you may as well go to the vastly superior Unseen Seer. Arcane Trickster makes me extra mad mainly because I love Rogue/mages. You're better off going bard.

Similarly, the Swashbuckler is a terrible base class. Only a single bonus feat, and a few extremely sparse abilities. You don't even get Improved Critical, Combat Expertise, Uncanny Dodge, or EVASION. You get some dodge bonuses, but they never get close to bridging the gap between chain shirt (light armor) and Plate armor, and barely bridges the gap between breastplate and chain shirt at 10th level, only getting larger at 15th, even then only barely. This is disastrous considering that the class is designed to be in melee. You get a bonus to damage that is probably smaller than a single level of sneak attack, not to mention the difference between rapier damage and say, greatsword. So to review, a fighter does more damage and has a higher AC even when using a two handed weapon. In fact, they probably do more damage when going sword and board (longsword over rapier), and don't have any dependence on intelligence. The reflex save bonus amounts to no better than Lightning Reflexes until 20th level, and Lightning Reflexes is considered a crap feat. This class is significantly worse than fighter, and fighter is considered a pretty low tier class. I could literally build a better swashbuckler using 4 levels in rogue and the rest fighter using only Core.

The. Samurai. Need I say more?

Swordsages also cheese me off for some reason, not sure why. Maybe it's because their solution to melee being outshined by casters is, turn melee into pseudo-casters? I don't know that much about them, so that might be my error, but I also don't want to learn and adapt a whole new set of what are essentially spells for fighters. This is probably for the same reason I don't care to learn about psionics, since they are a new pseudo-caster and now everything in the world needs to adapt to psionics existing. They may work for you, but I don't care for them.

Other classes don't cheese me off so much because if they are a bad class, I can just ignore it and not play it. I only care if it's a class that is a potential staple of a D&D setting that turns to fail.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I remember reading somewhere that the core of the Druid play test build dual wielded throwing scimitars. Since that was incompatible with WS, they never did it except to scout as a hawk, their AC was similarly only used to scout, and the usually didn't cast spells due to action limits (and when they did, I believe it was to use flame seeds). Given this knowledge, it explains quiete well why they thought Druid and Monk were balanced (though it should have been a warning sign that a Druid ignoring most of their class features is as good as a monk using what they can).

It really says something about the play test optimization level that a joke build (Lord Berrington, the bear riding a bear that summons bears) is more competent than what they used as a baseline.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of-- knew I was forgetting some details of the stupidity. I really have to wonder about the playtest, sometimes... like, I understand missing a lot of unintended interactions and individual spells, and I understand that 3e has lower HP totals, which probably threw their damage output impressions off, but how did you not notice that the Monk is fundamentally incapable of skirmishing? Or that, you know, "I turn into a bear!" is the first thing you'd do as a druid?

[Zanos]

Is this the same playtest where the character doing the most damage to the balor was the elven wizard using a longbow with quickened truestrike?

[Stealth Marmot]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of-- knew I was forgetting some details of the stupidity. I really have to wonder about the playtest, sometimes... like, I understand missing a lot of unintended interactions and individual spells, and I understand that 3e has lower HP totals, which probably threw their damage output impressions off, but how did you not notice that the Monk is fundamentally incapable of skirmishing? Or that, you know, "I turn into a bear!" is the first thing you'd do as a druid?

Initial playtests are one thing, but how did it make it through the 3.5 update?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Initial playtests are one thing, but how did it make it through the 3.5 update?

reticence to make such a drastic change from what was previously printed?

[Stealth Marmot]

Is this the same playtest where the character doing the most damage to the balor was the elven wizard using a longbow with quickened truestrike?

Spoiler

Show

[Morphic tide]

Addressing the OP: I love the Factotum. I don't consider a Factotum to be a Mary-Sue so much as a walking plot contrivance. They always happen to have just the thing to top off what the others are doing. They aren't the baker, but they always have the cherry for the top of the cake. Plus they are also the best skill monkey available, but they are no substitute for the rest of the classes. They can't outcast a wizard, or even a bard. They certainly can't outheal a cleric, and they are weaker than the fighter or barbarian in melee. The one class they DO tend to overshine a bit is the rogue, but the rogue has more skill points, uncanny dodge, and can use evasion and sneak attack without having to worry about inspiration points. More importantly though, a Factotum is still bound by the fact that his stats have to be spread pretty thin if he wants to try to perform in any of his versatile functions. The factotum works best as the backup, the guy who helps when the main guy is busy or incapacitated. He's the plan B, or the guy filling whatever small holes or gaps in your group. He'll cover any skill the rest of the group lacks, add some healing if a core healer is missing, be a flanking buddy for the rogue or supply a spell that the sorcerer is missing in a pinch.

So, Factotum is basically the perfect skillmonkey? Honestly, the iaijutsu focus stuff is surprisingly close in function to Sneak Attack, only instead of Flanking or unaware as the painful use restriction, you get having to draw the weapon in the same round as the attack.

As for classes I hate? I have to agree with OP on the Monk. Not because I think it overpowers anything, but because the monk rarely seems to serve a purpose. Everything about the monk is defensive and selfish. The monk is immune to half the things in the game, and pretty much able to take anything except a barbarian to the face, but what good is the monk for except EXISTING? The monk's unarmed strikes hit for utter crap and are hard to enhance at all, much less turn into +3 flaming holy weapons, and their crit range is horrible. They can't even use a bow and instead have to use shurikens, or sling bullets, or javelins that do craptastic damage. They don't even have a lot of skill points, especially since INT is their second biggest dump stat, barely beating CHA, and they only get 4+int. The only use I see for monks is as a caster killer, and only if they run and grapple the caster. They can't grapple most monsters since most monsters have Huge BAB and strength bonuses and, for the most part, size bonuses. Stunning fist is sort of useful, but considering how many creatures in the game are immune, or have fort saves that make a barbarian blush, the monk is only useful in very specific circumstances, and even then only marginally. They get a little better in Pathfinder, but in 3.5 they rarely contribute anything but a flank and occasional trip.

They ultimately try to do too many things. Honestly, the PF Brawler is a better Monk than the actual Monk in most situations. Fighter-exclusive feats are one of the most ridiculous things in the game, because they make it look like the Fighter actually is the best at melee, when most of those feats are just small number changes.

3.5 classes that cheese me off: Arcane Trickster. This class requires someone to be horrible at two classes while getting very little in return. It grinds my gears that they only get 4 skill points per level when you already sacrificed 5 levels to the 2+int wizard or worse, 6 levels to the 2+int sorcerer. The ranged legerdemain ability is borderline useless (especially since you take a major -5 PENALTY when using it), and is still limited in how many times you use it per day. Impromptu sneak attack is nice, but you get it once or twice a day. Your weak BAB means that the sneak attack you use will at best compensate for your catastrophic spell level loss from taking 3 levels in rogue, and only when using certain spells. Without supplements, the Arcane Trickster is just a horrible idea, and with supplements you may as well go to the vastly superior Unseen Seer. Arcane Trickster makes me extra mad mainly because I love Rogue/mages. You're better off going bard.

So very much agreed. It would have worked better if there was more focus on the Sneak Attack, or on the skill monkey stuff, but sadly WotC has issues with properly focused classes. Like the entirety of Wizards.

Similarly, the Swashbuckler is a terrible base class. Only a single bonus feat, and a few extremely sparse abilities. You don't even get Improved Critical, Combat Expertise, Uncanny Dodge, or EVASION. You get some dodge bonuses, but they never get close to bridging the gap between chain shirt (light armor) and Plate armor, and barely bridges the gap between breastplate and chain shirt at 10th level, only getting larger at 15th, even then only barely. This is disastrous considering that the class is designed to be in melee. You get a bonus to damage that is probably smaller than a single level of sneak attack, not to mention the difference between rapier damage and say, greatsword. So to review, a fighter does more damage and has a higher AC even when using a two handed weapon. In fact, they probably do more damage when going sword and board (longsword over rapier), and don't have any dependence on intelligence. The reflex save bonus amounts to no better than Lightning Reflexes until 20th level, and Lightning Reflexes is considered a crap feat. This class is significantly worse than fighter, and fighter is considered a pretty low tier class. I could literally build a better swashbuckler using 4 levels in rogue and the rest fighter using only Core.

Now I want to make a Swashbuckler fix, like the Unchained Rogue, specifically to bring Swashbuckler more in line with the other "hybrid" classes... Seriously, Brawler is amazing because it gets dice size bonuses to actual weapons. This makes them a lot better at dealing damage than most Monk builds, because they get to use normal magic weapons. And Fighter feats. Granted, Archanist should never have seen the light of day because it's a horrific pile of nonsense, but that's a small gripe.

Swordsages also cheese me off for some reason, not sure why. Maybe it's because their solution to melee being outshined by casters is, turn melee into pseudo-casters? I don't know that much about them, so that might be my error, but I also don't want to learn and adapt a whole new set of what are essentially spells for fighters. This is probably for the same reason I don't care to learn about psionics, since they are a new pseudo-caster and now everything in the world needs to adapt to psionics existing. They may work for you, but I don't care for them.

Would have worked a lot better if they based it on Warlock than if they based it on regular casters. Daily uses for mundane abilities always seem wrong to me... At-wills make a lot more sense because then you can get away with weaker individual abilities and the Warlock basis makes it so that you have important access to using combo tricks. Yes, it's even more Wuxia than the existing ToB classes. So what, it makes more sense because they keep the Martial advantage of "fight as long as I live" to keep them in front of casters in long games with few chances to rest.

Is this the same playtest where the character doing the most damage to the balor was the elven wizard using a longbow with quickened truestrike?

Which both spells out how broken Wizards are and how horribly optimized that game was. Seriously, why the hell do only Wizards and Sorcerers get the near-guarantee hit spell? Rangers would kill so damn many to get ahold of that one spell, just to get the ability to ensure one good hit. It also makes Artificers even more bull**** because, as a 1st level spell, infinite use is extremely cheap to get, leading to +20 to-hit on basically every attack.

[Zanos]

Spoiler

Show

It's real. Even better, they specifically had prep time and knew they were fighting a balor, yet quickened true strike manyshot(why does he have manyshot?) was still the wizards strategy. Also he isn't actually an elf, meaning he burned another feat on longbow proficiency.

Which both spells out how broken Wizards are and how horribly optimized that game was. Seriously, why the hell do only Wizards and Sorcerers get the near-guarantee hit spell? Rangers would kill so damn many to get ahold of that one spell, just to get the ability to ensure one good hit. It also makes Artificers even more bull**** because, as a 1st level spell, infinite use is extremely cheap to get, leading to +20 to-hit on basically every attack.

Not unless you're some kind of Gish built around truestrike. It takes a standard action to cast and only lasts for a single attack or one round, meaning that unless you're using high level slots to quicken true strike and then making 1 attack every round, it isn't helping that much. I'd much rather use my 5th level slots to cast an empowered fireball every round than making a single ranged attack every round.

And dedicated archers have very little trouble hitting.

[Doug Lampert]

Initial playtests are one thing, but how did it make it through the 3.5 update?

It didn't. Most of the broken was ADDED in the 3.5 update.

3.0 Druid simply wasn't that broken, no ability to spellcast in animal form (natural spell is 3.5 only); animal friendship (a spell which where the animal companion came from) wasn't that good, and if it had been all that good then every character in the game with UMD would have trivially stolen access to it (but they didn't, it wasn't all that good); wild shape was a polymorph effect, with added limits on what you could change into, but the actual polymorph spell was almost globally better; ext...

Dinosaurs and a bunch of other things were "beasts" not animals, and hence 3.0 druid animal based stuff didn't work for them.

3.0 Druid wasn't a WEAK class by any means; but it wasn't nearly as broken as the 3.5 version.

[Stealth Marmot]

So, Factotum is basically the perfect skillmonkey? Honestly, the iaijutsu focus stuff is surprisingly close in function to Sneak Attack, only instead of Flanking or unaware as the painful use restriction, you get having to draw the weapon in the same round as the attack.

What is iaijutsu focu- *googles*...

Who in Pelor's shiny bumhole thought adding that to a game was a good idea? That's not a skill, that should be a class ability. Then again, back in 3.0 there was no cross class skills, but yeah technically the Factotum would have that as a skill somehow.

[Zanos]

Iaijutsu focus requires more effort than that to use. They have be flat-footed and you have to draw your weapon. It's more restrictive than sneak attack, and you can't full attack with it under normal circumstances.

[Kurald Galain]

I don't consider a Factotum to be a Mary-Sue so much as a walking plot contrivance.

The main problem with the factotum is that it's a highly Gamist class in a primarily Simulationist game.

Classes I dislike include psions (because ectoplasm and sentient crystals are just stupid, and because pretty much all psion powers are a copy/paste job of wizard spells); monks (primarily for their class ability to cause endless forum strife); and samurai (don't make highly specialized subclasses that should simply be a fighter build). And wild mage (not strictly speaking a class, but anything that generates utterly random effects whenever you're trying to cast is fun for the DM but not the rest of the group).

Oooh, can we include Pathfinder? In that case gunslinger (very much a one-trick pony, and guns don't fit in most fantasy campaigns); and kinny (because it's overcomplicated and rather underperforming, and because it could simply have been the Warlock).

[ryu]

Iaijutsu focus requires more effort than that to use. They have be flat-footed and you have to draw your weapon. It's more restrictive than sneak attack, and you can't full attack with it under normal circumstances.

On the other hand, you're limited to classes with lots of skill points, and ideally native class skill access, instead of purely sneak attack classes. Also IAFO isn't natively immuned against by such large portions of the expected encounters. It's more consistent, freely available, and the intelligent strat with optimizing throwing daggers means you're doing this at range. Do keep in mind it only says you must use a suitable melee weapon to do it. It doesn't say that weapon must be used in melee.

[GilesTheCleric]

Clerics. For a class that purports to be about faith in a higher power, attempting to share their word, and show others their philosophy, it's pretty piss-poor. At least in 2e there were spheres that different priest classes were limited to, as well as having greater limitations compared to arcanists; and the first 3.0 FR books had a decent number of deity-specific things like spells and initiate feats. But in 3e as a whole? Clerics just get to run rampant with a spell list that contains over 1200 spells!

How does an individual Cleric show that their deity's ideology is best when there's literally only 0-1% of their spells to do that with, and not a single class feature? "Ah, use your roleplay!" you might say. "How?" I ask. Domains are widely shared between deities, with many obscure deities (particularly evil ones or racial ones) having the exact same selection, and no other deity-specific feats, abilties, or anything. FR is the only choice for even a small selection of them, and then only the most well-known and popular deities are allowed to have unique worshippers.

The spell list doesn't help, because even if Clerics do choose different spell selections, they're going to immediately start to revert to the mean of the same useful spells when they figure out that preparing nothing but Longstride to show their devotion to Fharlangn isn't actually a feasible playstyle.

And no, the three PrCs that have a deity's name in the title don't count, because they're just as generic as every other Cleric.

[Morphic tide]

It's real. Even better, they specifically had prep time and knew they were fighting a balor, yet quickened true strike manyshot(why does he have manyshot?) was still the wizards strategy. Also he isn't actually an elf, meaning he burned another feat on longbow proficiency.

Not unless you're some kind of Gish built around truestrike. It takes a standard action to cast and only lasts for a single attack or one round, meaning that unless you're using high level slots to quicken true strike and then making 1 attack every round, it isn't helping that much. I'd much rather use my 5th level slots to cast an empowered fireball every round than making a single ranged attack every round.

And dedicated archers have very little trouble hitting.

Range penalties, various other penalties, the nearly guaranteed hit if you are at normal ranges and the fact that it can be used for an extremely hard shot or one that simply will hit. Also, bypassing party killingly over CR encounter's AC, like running into an adult dragon in a level 11 party of 4. The distance matters not, the AC is no issue and you will hit the damn Dragon. Oh, and Arcane Archer doesn't care about the one attack per round bit, as long as they hit, the DM can't say the shot carrying the Fireball went off target. Otherwise, they didn't hit. And this can give you enough to guarantee hitting a specific 5' square well over a mile away with some weapons...

The main problem with the factotum is that it's a highly Gamist class in a primarily Simulationist game.

Eh, gamist things are okay once in a while, but a class built around them isn't normally acceptable in a typically Simulationist game.

Classes I dislike include psions (because ectoplasm and sentient crystals are just stupid, and because pretty much all psion powers are a copy/paste job of wizard spells); monks (primarily for their class ability to cause endless forum strife); and samurai (don't make highly specialized subclasses that should simply be a fighter build). And wild mage (not strictly speaking a class, but anything that generates utterly random effects whenever you're trying to cast is fun for the DM but not the rest of the group).

Agreed on all except the Psion bit. The similarities to Wizard spells is a case of saving on design time to rush a product to increase profits. The flavor, however, opens up many interesting options. I, personally, would like more magic equivalents for esoterics like Shadow spells and Warlock type stuff present in Psionics, because you have excuses to make them different due to the different power source. And one important difference between Psionics and magic is that Psionics tends to have single things be highly versatile. The attribute bonus thing is a set of 6 spells, but only one power. Direct damage powers are a matter of choosing your damage type from the basics, rather than having to find spells that are "like Fireball, but Cold damage!" or get piles of metamagic.

And yes, this makes Psions even more crazy than Wizards because they can just use whatever they need without needing to look up the specific variation of a spell, then using one of their spell learning chances on it, then actually prepare the spell. Why use Fireball as an Erudite when the Psionic equivalent gives you a choice of several damage types?

Oooh, can we include Pathfinder? In that case gunslinger (very much a one-trick pony, and guns don't fit in most fantasy campaigns); and kinny (because it's overcomplicated and rather underperforming, and because it could simply have been the Warlock).

Well, Gunslinger is one of those things that is pigionholed too much. It would be much better off if the class simply had the Swashbuckler deeds available as part of the base class. As well as Deeds for archery stuff in the base class. Granted, at that point you are basically making ToB Manoeuvres as Psionics-like instead of Magic-like, but PF doesn't have 1st party ToB anyway.

[thoroughlyS]

All the classes in tome of battle, because they're presented - partly by developers but mainly by players - as the answer to the competent noncaster question, and they neither match up to a full caster, nor refrain from using magic.

In defense of Tome of Battle, I believe they succeeded at creating competent non-casters. No, they do not match up to full casters, but full casters are MORE than competent, insofar as they routinely break the game. Initiators more closely match up to bards, duskblades, barbarians, et cetera in terms of power and versatility. And while there are maneuvers that are supernatural, most of them are extraordinary, and not just on paper. What is inherently magical about making an extra attack, hurling an enemy 10 feet away, or hitting so hard and fierce it ignores damage reduction? It is easy to make a ToB character who never does anything resembling magic. As much as you can in D&D anyway...

Swordsages also cheese me off for some reason, not sure why. Maybe it's because their solution to melee being outshined by casters is, turn melee into pseudo-casters? I don't know that much about them, so that might be my error, but I also don't want to learn and adapt a whole new set of what are essentially spells for fighters. This is probably for the same reason I don't care to learn about psionics, since they are a new pseudo-caster and now everything in the world needs to adapt to psionics existing. They may work for you, but I don't care for them.

I'm having a little trouble understanding what you mean precisely by "pseudo-caster". Could you elaborate, so I can better understand what you don't like?

Would have worked a lot better if they based it on Warlock than if they based it on regular casters. Daily uses for mundane abilities always seem wrong to me... At-wills make a lot more sense because then you can get away with weaker individual abilities and the Warlock basis makes it so that you have important access to using combo tricks. Yes, it's even more Wuxia than the existing ToB classes. So what, it makes more sense because they keep the Martial advantage of "fight as long as I live" to keep them in front of casters in long games with few chances to rest.

Actually, initiators don't have daily uses and are much closer to at-will abilities than anything else. The system they use sounds wonky, but flows smoothly in-game. In addition, the individual abilities aren't "weak" necessarily, but very importantly don't scale with level which avoids the quadratic wizard problem. Also, in order to learn higher level maneuvers from one "school", you usually have to know at least a few from the same "school" which kind of mechanically enforces a theme for your character.



In regards to the thread, I don't really have much to add. I mostly dislike the fighter, monk, and paladins for the same reasons as everyone else. The fighter gets a slight pass because it is still really useful to splash into builds, and has some ACFs that can add flavor and power. The monk and the paladin never really got that kind of boost.

I'm also disappointed in the sorcerer and wizard as kind of a matched set. The sorcerer doesn't have nearly the breadth of ACFs that the wizard gets, and usually prestiges out later thanks to the delayed spell levels. And then the wizard stomps on the sorcerers toes by having ways to gain more spells per day and ways to gain semi-spontaneous casting (Not like it matters, because they both get such versatile spells that one can usually solve any problem).

[Zanos]

Range penalties, various other penalties, the nearly guaranteed hit if you are at normal ranges and the fact that it can be used for an extremely hard shot or one that simply will hit. Also, bypassing party killingly over CR encounter's AC, like running into an adult dragon in a level 11 party of 4. The distance matters not, the AC is no issue and you will hit the damn Dragon. Oh, and Arcane Archer doesn't care about the one attack per round bit, as long as they hit, the DM can't say the shot carrying the Fireball went off target. Otherwise, they didn't hit. And this can give you enough to guarantee hitting a specific 5' square well over a mile away with some weapons...

Okay, so you do 1d8 damage(or not, because damage reduction) to the dragon, and then it eats you because it has a 200 ft fly speed, and is a dragon.

The arcane archer could have just CAST fireball and had it gone on target. Dragons have spell resistance and get a reflex save either way.

Are you one of WotC original playtesters, back from the grave to convince us that the manyshot truestrike wizard is totally sweet, dude?

[Morphic tide]

Okay, so you do 1d8 damage(or not, because damage reduction) to the dragon, and then it eats you because it has a 200 ft fly speed, and is a dragon.

The arcane archer could have just CAST fireball and had it gone on target. Dragons have spell resistance and get a reflex save either way.

Are you one of WotC original playtesters, back from the grave to convince us that the manyshot truestrike wizard is totally sweet, dude?

I'm thinking more along the lines of hitting the Dragon with save-or-sucks from several rounds of flight away. And the Manyshot Truestrike Wizard is trash because it's a wizard. They have better things to do. Manystrike Trueshot Arcane Archer, however, is an amazing assassin type character thanks to landing a fireball or three on target from over 1000 yards with relative ease. That's what I'm getting at, Truestrike should be on classes with more Martial stuff because those classes get a lot more use out of it.

To demonstrate, let's say that the default AC-equivalent of hitting a specific 5' square is 10. At level 9 on a full BAB chassis, you will only miss on a 1, provided there aren't any penalties. Let's use a shortbow as an example. So, at +9 BAB, you will always hit your tile of choice within 60 feet. Truestrike turns this into 1260 feet of only missing your tile on a nat 1. With a heavy crossbow, you instead have a massive 2520 foot range of always hitting your tile of choice outside of auto fails. For an Arcane Archer, this is their AoE spell range. The range for all of their AoE spells is now 2520 at +9 BAB.

[PacMan2247]

Fighter. Just... fighter. Mainly for sucking completely and utterly even at the role it claims to be best at. It's existence was a mistake, It's fluff is boring and fully of lies, and worst of all it's part of the baseline play assumption with hilariously little to break out of being a useless pile of muscle with a stick.

It has less skills and utility than the supposed unskilled illiterate. Lacking spot and listen, with less skill points than most anyone else, it can't even function adequately as a night-shift guard. Literally everything this class is capable of can be done better or rendered moot by low level spells across a wide range of lists. Don't believe me? Try to find something, ANYTHING, they can do that can't be done better or rendered moot by a spell of 4th or under. You have access to fighter 20 with only the stipulation that you can't use WBL to get casting items of any kind. Can't have you voiding the challenge by pretending to be one of the actually strong classes.

Survive combat against a prepared enemy that drops AMF on you when retreating isn't an option. Sarkrith are bastards.

[Jormengand]

Survive combat against a prepared enemy that drops AMF on you when retreating isn't an option. Sarkrith are bastards.

Celerity. Oh, you're throwing an AMF at me? No you're not, it's my turn first.

[Necroticplague]

Survive combat against a prepared enemy that drops AMF on you when retreating isn't an option. Sarkrith are bastards.

A wizard does that better. Abrupt Juant when the AMF is dropped (AMF has small radius), pelt with instantaneous conjurations. A fighter in an AMF has the magic items he needs to operates shut down.

[Zanos]

To demonstrate, let's say that the default AC-equivalent of hitting a specific 5' square is 10. At level 9 on a full BAB chassis, you will only miss on a 1, provided there aren't any penalties. Let's use a shortbow as an example. So, at +9 BAB, you will always hit your tile of choice within 60 feet. Truestrike turns this into 1260 feet of only missing your tile on a nat 1. With a heavy crossbow, you instead have a massive 2520 foot range of always hitting your tile of choice outside of auto fails. For an Arcane Archer, this is their AoE spell range. The range for all of their AoE spells is now 2520 at +9 BAB.

True, but it doesn't let you ignore the normal rules for sighting targets or the massive spot penalties at that range. And arcane archer doesn't progress casting. A half mile range fireball sounds OP on paper, but I don't think most encounters really benefit from super long ranges.