[3.5e PrC] Late Mage (PEACH)

[Welknair]

After making my Mage Commander, I was still bored. And still had my Complete Arcane. So I'm scanning through feats and see an interesting one: Delay Spell (I'm a big fan of spellcasters if you didn't know). I had already had some interesting ideas about inventive uses for a Delayed spell. Like preparing six fireballs with Delay Spell on five. One set to each of 1-5. Then you find your target and begin casting Fireballs with progressively shorter Delays. Then they get hammered by six Fireballs at once. Okay, maybe not very inventive. Or useful. But I thought it was interesting (And actually that is useful for breaching Skyship hulls in my Magite- nevermind) and decided to expound upon it with a neat little five-level PrC.

Late Mage

"Better late than never."

-Noon, Late Mage

You cast a spell and it goes off. Occasionally you cast a spell, it goes off, and it sticks around a bit. But rarely do you cast a sell, it sticks around and then it goes off. Right when they're laughing at you for fumbling a Fireball and telling their troops to move in. BAM. The Late Mage focuses on the art of delay. A lot. They're hardly ever on time for anything in fact. But when they do show up, its always at the best possible time. And with just the right spell

Becoming a Late Mage
1. Become a Wizard
2. Be late for something
3. ???
4. Profit

...

I am a horrible person.


Entry Requirements
Feats: Delay Spell
Skills: Spellcraft 8, Knowledge (Arcana) 8
Spells: Ability to cast 3rd level arcane spells

Skill Points each level: 2+Intelligence Modifier
Class Skills: Concentration, Craft, Decipher Script, Knowledge (all skills, taken individually), Profession, and Spellcraft.
Hit Dice: d4

Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Special	Spellcasting
1st	+0	+0	+0	+2	Increased Delay	+1 level of existing arcane spellcasting class
2nd	+1	+0	+0	+3	Held Delay	+1 level of existing arcane spellcasting class
3rd	+1	+1	+1	+3	Greater Delay	+1 level of existing arcane spellcasting class
4th	+2	+1	+1	+4	Targeted Delay	+1 level of existing arcane spellcasting class
5th	+2	+1	+1	+4	Delay Mastery	+1 level of existing arcane spellcasting class

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Late Mages gain no proficiency with any weapons or armor.

Increased Delay: The first thing that a Late Mage knows is that delay is flexibility. More delay is more flexibility. The max delay on a Delayed spell is now 10 rounds.

Held Delay: Its somewhat bothersome that Delayed spells can't move. Now they can. When casting a Delayed spell the Late Mage may choose to Hold it. In such a case, the directions and whatnot are given relative to the Late Mage (Such as centered twenty feat in front of me). Per usual, these specifications may not be changed after the spell has been cast. Which can often lead to hilarity. A Held Delay cannot survive the holder being subjected to a teleportation spell or effect. They spell "Dropped" where the Late Mage was and goes off relative to that position.

Greater Delay: Darn, one minute isn't enough! I need MORE TIME! What if I boost the spell slot adjustment on the Delay Spell meta- WOAH! By increasing the spell slot of a Delayed spell by a further one, the Delay maximum is now equal to the Late Mage's Caster Level squared. (Yes Cipher, squared).

Targeted Delay: It would be really nice if I could Delay enchantments and such. Then I could be all like "BAZAM" and they're all like "HA! Musta made my Will Save!" and then... I don't know. He turns on his buddies or something? A bit later than usual? The Late Mage may now delay any spell they can cast. Delayed Ranged Touch attack spells are set to target a specific square and treat the target as if they had total concealment.

Delay Mastery: Man, it's annoying having to plan to be late. These are the types of things you should be able to do spntaneously. Like on a whim. Oh well, I guess I'll cast my- Hey! I didn't Delay that one! AWESOME. The Late Mage now may spontaneously apply Delay Spell to spells that he casts with no slot adjustment or casting time increase, to a max of 10 spontaneously delayed rounds per day, distributed as they see fit.



Don't know how useful this would be. Just an interesting idea.

Note: A Wizard can be late, but only when he intends to be.

[JoshuaZ]

I haven't thought at all about the balance, but the way you describe the various abilities is hilarious.

[Elfstone]

This is brilliant. However to keep the world from exploding, we should keep you busy all the time. Otherwise, your brilliance might blow up the world.


Oh and about the ability with squared as a progression part. Its very very basic math that I hope everyone that is above the age of 9, is able to do. Even in America. (Yes I live in America, yes it was a reference to public school systems..)

[Welknair]

This is brilliant. However to keep the world from exploding, we should keep you busy all the time. Otherwise, your brilliance might blow up the world.


Oh and about the ability with squared as a progression part. Its very very basic math that I hope everyone that is above the age of 9, is able to do. Even in America. (Yes I live in America, yes it was a reference to public school systems..)

Oh, you've heard, right? I'm about 60% done with my game system. Working out the kinks in my combat now. Playtesting with my group should be beginning in a couple of weeks. I posted some of the basic mechanics and the background story here but took it down after a couple of hours. I think it was titled something like "A Simpler World (Idea Check)" or something like that. I'm spending most of my time working on that now. These are just little side projects.

Edit: Found it here. I deleted all my posts besides my first and last.

What I have done:

• Basics of combat (Revisions pending. Need bleed out and infection rules)
• In-depth skill system. You actually need to practice to get better. No fighting goblins in a desert to become a better swimmer.
• Four supernatural systems (Manipulation, Utilization, Channeling and Martial Arts)
• System for Magic Radiation (Manipulation Saturation)
• Massive background story
• Rules for selling your soul
• Stat system worked out. Four pairs of linked stats.
• Weird damage system. No HP. As above, revisions pending.
• "Path" system. You may have seen the idea first appear in my Deity Rising. I don't have classes, but that doesn't mean that you can't go down a Path.
• Much more. And magic mutants.

I have a couple of revisions to make still then its time to start cranking out combat styles, spells, equipment, tricks, traits, monsters and the like. Should be fun. My friend back from my Magitech system now wants me to publish this. Likely with the same plan as before. Since I'll be using Amazon Createspace, I won't have any advertising aside form word of mouth. So because of that I intend to type of the rest of my Magitech system on these forums with a link to the Amazon page of the much larger work. Hopefully that'll attract buyers. And stop people hassling me about the rest of the system. As for a time to publish, I really have no idea. I'd like to publish this, but I'd feel really bad if I said it was a sure thing and I ended up dropping like I did the Magitech system. But if I do end up going through with it, I could likely have it done by the end of the summer. Or a bit sooner. Then there's still the problem of art. My friend suggested taking images from online then photoshopping them to the point that they all look similar and are no longer legally considered the same work of art. However, this seems kinda sleezy to me. Instead I'm looking at contacting the local community college's art class. Hopefully I could get some decent-grade free art from there.

And it's a 2d10 game. Where you aren't rolling for 1-100. It's 2-20.

/irrelevant rant

[Elfstone]

Oh, you've heard, right? I'm about 60% done with my game system. Working out the kinks in my combat now. Playtesting with my group should be beginning in a couple of weeks. I posted some of the basic mechanics and the background story here but took it down after a couple of hours. I think it was titled something like "A Simpler World (Idea Check)" or something like that. I'm spending most of my time working on that now. These are just little side projects.

:O

That would be a resounding no. I missed that apparently. Out of curiosity, how well adapted to Pbp is it.

[Welknair]

:O

That would be a resounding no. I missed that apparently. Out of curiosity, how well adapted to Pbp is it.

See above post.

And actually... It wouldn't be half bad as a pbp. One of the things I'm stressing is the phrase "You don't have to roll for everything". For example, if you're fighting a particularly uninteresting or routine fight (guards, for example) and it's a forgone conclusion, you can have both sides simply roll once, compare the results, and extrapolate what happened. But then when you're fighting a boss and every second counts... I have really in depth combat rules. So you can choose how detailed versus quick you want the encounter to be. I liked this mechanism as it allows for the interesting characters resulting from hard optimization work, but at the same time integrates one of the things I really liked from Mouseguard: You don't spend all your time on combat.

I'm somewhat scarred by that four-hour encounter with the slime monster... In game it was thirty seconds. 3.5 has its problems...

[Elfstone]

Yes the main problem with DnD is the lack of player control. Say play A attacks monster B. Dm then has to ensure everything is in order before giving results. Then Player B, Ect....

Also, thats a massive Edit ninja on me.


2d10.. I remember a thread about wishing there was one of those. I should go find it for you. As for teh Magitech system, YAY. Freebies!!!

As for your system, you could advertise it freely in several ways. You might also be able to contact drive-through-RPG the site and see if they would be willing to sell it. Don't see why not.

[Ashtagon]

This class really needs a better name. "Late" is a rather common euphemism for "dead".

[Welknair]

This class really needs a better name. "Late" is a rather common euphemism for "dead".

Eh, I've never been great with names. Though hopefully people think of the literal definition before they think of the euphemism.

[Qwertystop]

Eh, I've never been great with names. Though hopefully people think of the literal definition before they think of the euphemism.

Make him be late for his own death!
(increased natural lifespan)

[Veklim]

What about 'Hold-out Mage'?

[DracoDei]

Greater Delay should modify the MAXIMUM delay, not the actual delay.


Wikipedia-like cross-indexing for future years:
If one scrolls down in the discussion of THIS one will see that they do, in fact have an ability that is very much like Delay Spell, and it was actually suggested that I make Delay Spell a pre-requisite and change up some of the mechanics.

[Welknair]

Greater Delay should modify the MAXIMUM delay, not the actual delay.

Good catch.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

This looks like a standard caster prestige class. HD, BAB, saves, skills, and caster level progression are all fine. It's a little odd that a caster could enter this class when the only thing he could delay (assuming no outside mitigation is involved, like easy or practical metamagic) are cantrips.

Increased Delay is fine, but it further allows a caster to nova someone, but doing so requires somewhere between one round and a minute of being in range of an enemy to do so.

Held Delay worsens the above, as now a caster can chain up to nine spells before teleporting to his target. That being said, this is okay due to the, at worst, +1 metamagic adjustment due to delay, and that requires you blow two extra feats to do that and, for a wizard, it's with just one spell and just delay. spell.

Greater Delay is stupid in conjunction with Held Delay, simply due to the fact that when you get it, it offers up to 64 rounds of delay when a level earlier you had at most 10. Because it is now keyed off of caster level^2, it only gets worse. By CL 10, a Late Mage can wait up to 10 minutes for his spells to have effect, and, being a wizard with teleport, that could be his entire spell list in a day save for 1-2 rope tricks and 1-4 teleports. Casters do not need more novas! A better option would be to have this level instead give, say, Delay at only +2 slot adjustment or to instead have the maximum wait be increased to 5+CL. This quadratic business just offers way too many rounds for a caster to prepare.

Targeted Delay needs to give rules text for melee spells, non-touched ranged attack spells, and a few other screwballs, too, such as buffs of all kinds. Other than that, this is a solid and fun class feature.

Delay Mastery is currently too much. No slot adjustment with full spontaneity is cuh-razy good. I would instead lower the slot adjustment to +2 or +1, depending. This still allows a caster that blew a feat on Easy Metamagic (Delay Spell) to get it for free, but it' better. I would also make the spontaneous aspect useable either a hardcapped 3/day or INT mod times per day, depending.


A general note, your rules text is very unprofessional, which I don't like seeing. It's fine having some fluff in there, but Greater Delay, Targeted Delay, and Delay Mastery all need to have solid, pure rules-text sentences instead of just what they have now.

[Welknair]

Wow. My first miss. Oh well, it was a joke idea to begin with. Though I find it surprising that the Omni-Caster was okay. Eh. Back to my game system I guess.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Wow. My first miss. Oh well, it was a joke idea to begin with. Though I find it surprising that the Omni-Caster was okay. Eh. Back to my game system I guess.

To be fair, it is not a bad idea... just one hard to pull off due to the nature of casters and just how many options they have at one time. Generally, when I PEACH, I shoot for something about as strong as the base class meant to enter it. For most fullcasters, I may be a little overly harsh, though, just out of habit, considering the base.

[Cipher Stars]

the Delay maximum is now equal to the Late Mage's Caster Level squared.

(Yes Cipher, squared).

[Moribundus]

I've got nothing on balance, but this seems powerful. Also, hilarious.

What I do have, however is a bunch of name ideas which I pulled out of my a-- I mean, a thesaurus. I offer no promises in terms of quality, but take a gander at these.

Leisure Mage (takes his time, and gets the job done with style)
Lax Adept (ahhhh dunnno)
Dawdling Mage (not so much, this is the illusion)
Subsequent Spellbinder (honestly, I think this is the best one I found)
Meandering Thaumaturge (hmm)
Prorogue Charmer (i just wanted to use prorogue)
Interval Archimage
Cunctation Mage

[EdroGrimshell]

It's not really a miss, it just needs to be reworked a bit

[Fyermind]

I think I may have some late mage tenancies given when I am finally commenting here, but I would consider a capstone effect of:
Exactly When He Means To: You can as an immediate action trigger any and or all delayed spells you have cast and are currently holding.

That is the sort of capstone I would stick around for. I think I might build a ten level version of this class because level 10 is a little early to Nova that hard.