Indomitable (3.5 PrC, PEACH)

[Fako]

First class attempt, so I might have missed some things...

Indomitable

No picture as of yet…

You think petty words can sway me? I know my odds as well as I know yours, and you‘re not walking away from this alive…
Dwurt Valgrin, to a now-deceased military general

Commoners are stubborn, unwilling to leave their land in the face of any danger.
Paladins are stubborn, using their holy devotion as an excuse to ignore simpler plans
Inevitables are stubborn, refusing to let a breach of contract slide for any reason
And yet, none of them hold a candle to the Indomitable, a fighter who uses his bull-headed closed-mindedness to keep himself (and his allies) alive, no matter what others try to tell him.

BECOMING AN INDOMITABLE
Indomitables have no formal organization, instead forming of their own accord, for better or worse. As such, the training for Indomitables will vary greatly from one member to another. Dwarves, Humans and Half-Orcs have the highest number of members, simply due to their tendency to bludgeon their way through situations. However, every race can lay claim to at least a handful of Indomitables in their history.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Base Attack Bonus: +6
Feats: Endurance, Iron Will, Indomitable Will

Note

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Indomitable Will is a feat from Player’s Handbook II. To put it simply, it requires Endurance and Iron Will, and allows you to roll twice against mind-affecting or fear effects, taking the higher of the two results. Also felt it fit the image I had for the class…

Class Skills
The Indomitable's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Balance(Dex), Climb(Str), Concentration(Con), Craft(Int), Intimidate(Cha), Jump(Str), Profession(Wis), Spot(Wis), Survival(Wis), Swim(Str)
Skills Points at Each Level: 2 + Int

Hit Dice: d10

Indomitable
{table=head]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special|Man. Known|Man. Readied

1st|

+1

|

+2

|

+0

|

+2

|Done Talking, Deny Influence|3|3

2nd|

+2

|

+2

|

+0

|

+2

|Mettle, Deny Obstacle|3|3

3rd|

+3

|

+3

|

+1

|

+3

|Closed Mind, Deny Weakness|4|3

4th|

+4

|

+3

|

+1

|

+3

|Improved Mettle, Deny Strike|4|3

5th|

+5

|

+4

|

+1

|

+4

|Done Listening, Deny Fate|5|4[/table]
Weapon Proficiencies: An Indomitable gains no extra weapon or armor proficiencies.

Maneuvers: The Indomitable’s sheer force of will allows for slight bends in reality, letting them pull off moves that normally require years of training. You gain access to a small number of maneuvers from the Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, or Stone Dragon disciplines. You must meet all prerequisites of the maneuver to learn it.
The unique source of your maneuvers provides slightly different rules for determining your highest level known. All other class levels (including martial initiator levels) are halved and added to your Indomitable level to determine your Initiator Level in regards to maneuvers gained from the Indomitable class. Also, your maneuvers known and readied from any other class are kept separate from those gained by virtue of the Indomitable class, and recovering another class’ maneuvers does not recover those from the Indomitable class.

Maneuvers Readied: Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it. You ready your maneuvers by talking to yourself for 5 minutes, reinforcing how correct your opinion is. The maneuvers remain readied until you decide to change them. You don’t need to sleep or rest to ready your maneuvers, and any time you want to spend 5 minutes, you can change them.
You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you have used them since you last readied them. When you use a maneuver, you expend it for the duration of the encounter, so each maneuver can only be used once per encounter (unless you choose to recover them).
You can recover a maneuver by spending a move action to bolster your willpower. Doing this does not provoke attacks of opportunity, but it prevents you from initiating maneuvers until the start of your next turn. However, you can use multiple move actions to recover maneuvers during the same round, as long as you have actions to spend.

Done Talking (Ex): People talk too much. They talk and talk in the hopes of wearing away their opponent, allowing them to get what they want. As such, you have learned how to shorten any conversation, forcing them to either get to the point or get out of your way.
From now on, you may never use Diplomacy, for any reason. Furthermore, you can trade ranks in Diplomacy for ranks in Intimidate, up to your normal maximum ranks allowed. If you still have ranks in Diplomacy, you can continue to trade them in on each level-up.

Deny Influence (Ex): Your stubborn nature makes you less prone to succumbing to the influence of others, giving you a +4 morale bonus on saves against mind-affecting or fear effects.

Mettle (Ex): As the Knight class feature. If you already have Mettle through merits of another class, you gain Improved Mettle instead.

Deny Obstacle (Ex): Things that get in your way usually don’t stay there for long, whether they are real or not. As a full-round action, you can make a single attack against an object, ignoring hardness. You are also allowed a Will Save whenever you walk within 5’ of an illusion, as if you had interacted with it.

Closed Mind (Ex): Your will actively fights off outside influence, giving you another chance in dire situations. This ability functions as the Slippery Mind Rogue class feature.

Deny Weakness (Ex): Your stubbornness has spread to influence your body, allowing you to ignore some of the damage your body takes. You gain DR equal to 3 + 1/3 your character level, overcome by epic attacks. Also, the point at which you die is improved to your Con Score or -10, whichever is lower.

Improved Mettle (Ex): As the Knight class feature.

Deny Strike (Su): You can shrug off any attack, at least temporarily. Once per encounter, you can delay almost any hostile spell or attack for one round. The effect must leave your body intact for this ability to work, but there are no other restrictions (barring Rule 0).

Done Listening (Su): Nothing can break through your iron curtain of will now. Any mind-affecting or fear effect that allows Spell Resistance automatically fails against you.

Deny Fate (Su): You can use your will to push yourself beyond mere mortal boundaries. Once per day, you can ignore most things that will kill you. For one minute, you cannot die due to HP damage or death effects, and any petrification effects are delayed. All damages and penalties still affect you once the minute is over, and you can still die by other effects (such as disintegration, or being severed limb from limb).

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Current Changes

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-Upped BAB to full at suggestions, as well as increasing Fort.
-Swapped Bluff for Intimidate in Done Talking ability... don't know why I missed that in the first place...
-Added maneuver progression modified from Warblade

And that's it. A five level prestige class, built to reflect those characters too stubborn to quit. I tried to keep the power level close to ToB prestige classes, but I wasn't sure if the abilities were too strong for full BAB. Please critique it, and tell me if anything is too strong/weak, doesn't fit, or breaks the class in half...

Thanks for taking a look

[drakir_nosslin]

Well, the first thing that strikes me is that it is a incredibly defensive class. Because of that, this class will probably get stomped by any of the martial adepts. They have more versatility and can actually deal damage, something this class lacks. Sure, someone with 5 levels in this will probably survive for an extra round or two, but when you can't do anything useful during that time, it's no good anyway.

I suggest adding more offensive abilities to balance it out.

[Pyromancer999]

Well, the first thing that strikes me is that it is a incredibly defensive class. Because of that, this class will probably get stomped by any of the martial adepts. They have more versatility and can actually deal damage, something this class lacks. Sure, someone with 5 levels in this will probably survive for an extra round or two, but when you can't do anything useful during that time, it's no good anyway.

I suggest adding more offensive abilities to balance it out.

I have some suggestions:

Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick: You learn to kick like Chuck Norris, a famous Indomitable,although only with a small fraction of the power. Once per encounter, as a full-round action you may make an unarmed attack that deals 2d6 damage per class level. This ignores any natural and armor bonuses to AC.

Indomitable Will of Chuck Norris: You don't tell what an Indomitable to do, he tells you. If the Indomitable succeeds on the Will save against any effect, the originater of the effect becomes the target of that effect, with the Indomitable treated as the originator of the effect (ex. a sorcerer tries to cast Dominate Person on an Indomitable. The Indomitable succeeds on the Will save, and the sorcerer comes under the effect of Dominate Person, taking his orders from the Indomitable.

Never Say Die!: At 5th level, the Indomitable learns the true meaning of how to unleash an attack that cannot be defeated. Once per day(week), as a swift action, the Indomitable may make a standard melee attack with any melee weapon. The attack is automatically a critical, deals 5 times as much damage, and destroys manufactured goods on the target of this ability, with magical items receiving a will save. All people within 20 feet of the target receive 1d6 damage per item or +1 AC granted by an item that destroyed, as the shrapnel of the destruction shoots out and hits them.

Might be a bit overpowered, but I came up with these on the spot. Do with them what you will.

[SurlySeraph]

...oooor you could give it some offensive abilities. I personally think it's strong enough already, but if the consensus is that it needs some offensive power, giving it some maneuver progression (choosing from Iron Heart and Stone Dragon) would certainly fit the flavor.

[Pyromancer999]

...oooor you could give it some offensive abilities. I personally think it's strong enough already, but if the consensus is that it needs some offensive power, giving it some maneuver progression (choosing from Iron Heart and Stone Dragon) would certainly fit the flavor.

....but.....but.....Chuck Norris!.....okay, that could work too.

[DracoDei]

If it needs more offense, the first thing to do is to give it full BAB. I actually think it is pretty weird to have a class with a noticable BAB requirement (it is going to be the limiting factor for anyone with racial or martial-type class bonus feats) not to have full BAB. Good Fortitude saves might not hurt either, but that is perhaps something you can leave out. I actually think that many Crusaders might dip this after they get Mettle so as to get Improved Mettle in two levels.

You need more fluff explaining "Done Talking" or you need to change it from Bluff to Intimidate.

The only problems I see with "Done Talking" for paladins would come from fluff (Paladins don't get much mileage out of Bluff in some campaigns, but if you can live with not being able to use Diplomacy upon taking this class, you can live with not putting any ranks in it before that). Fighters don't have diplomacy OR bluff on their skill list, so that is a wash. Both Paladins and Fighters would benefit from my proposed change to Intimidate.

A quick look through the full texts for all White Raven maneuvers leads me to think that none of them involve a skill check, so that won't be a problem. As for homebrew disciplines Golden Saint is the only one that has Diplomacy as the associated skill and it doesn't have any maneuvers that require a skill check that I can find.

[Fako]

Well, the first thing that strikes me is that it is a incredibly defensive class. Because of that, this class will probably get stomped by any of the martial adepts. They have more versatility and can actually deal damage, something this class lacks. Sure, someone with 5 levels in this will probably survive for an extra round or two, but when you can't do anything useful during that time, it's no good anyway.

I suggest adding more offensive abilities to balance it out.

I was actually worried that the defensive abilities were too strong for the levels you can get them at, which is why I reduced the BAB and the Fort save from my original idea, as well as a once per encounter smite effect. I'll look at buffing the offensive features.

I have some suggestions:
[snip]
Might be a bit overpowered, but I came up with these on the spot. Do with them what you will.

All of them are very cool, but if you look at the fluff above they don't really have any "formal" method of training, so I don't see how they could learn abilities from another Indomitable...

...oooor you could give it some offensive abilities. I personally think it's strong enough already, but if the consensus is that it needs some offensive power, giving it some maneuver progression (choosing from Iron Heart and Stone Dragon) would certainly fit the flavor.

That sounds like a good idea. My question though, is whether to assume they already have maneuvers and expand, or to keep them separate from other maneuver progressions they've learned? Considering they don't require maneuvers to enter, I'm thinking the latter...

If it needs more offense, the first thing to do is to give it full BAB. I actually think it is pretty weird to have a class with a noticable BAB requirement (it is going to be the limiting factor for anyone with racial or martial-type class bonus feats) not to have full BAB. Good Fortitude saves might not hurt either, but that is perhaps something you can leave out. I actually think that many Crusaders might dip this after they get Mettle so as to get Improved Mettle in two levels.

As I said above, I was worried it might be too strong as is, so I gimped the BAB. I'll up it (and the Fort) now.

You need more fluff explaining "Done Talking" or you need to change it from Bluff to Intimidate.

The only problems I see with "Done Talking" for paladins would come from fluff (Paladins don't get much mileage out of Bluff in some campaigns, but if you can live with not being able to use Diplomacy upon taking this class, you can live with not putting any ranks in it before that). Fighters don't have diplomacy OR bluff on their skill list, so that is a wash. Both Paladins and Fighters would benefit from my proposed change to Intimidate.

A quick look through the full texts for all White Raven maneuvers leads me to think that none of them involve a skill check, so that won't be a problem. As for homebrew disciplines Golden Saint is the only one that has Diplomacy as the associated skill and it doesn't have any maneuvers that require a skill check that I can find.

...I thought I had typed Intimidate when writing it up (it's in the notes for it), but I must have mistyped it when posting... I'll change it now.

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Thank you for the comments guys :D More than I expected to receive, which is always nice.

[Fako]

Double Post/Bump-with-purpose!

Added in a maneuver progression based on the Warblade. Not sure if I should increase/lower it, as it's just a rough guess right now.

The main thing I'm worried about it is the added clause at the end of the Maneuver description: the unique method of obtaining maneuvers means that your other IL classes only provide 1/2 level towards maneuvers available from the Indomitable class. I added it because I'm not sure if maneuvers makes the class a bit too strong, so I figured that might be an acceptable gimp...

[drakir_nosslin]

I like it. Now, it feels that it has some offensive punch as well as nice, thematic class features. I'm not that good at balancing things, but I don't think it's OP, considering that your maneuvers will be much weaker than those of a martial adept of the same level.
All in all it's a much more interesting class now

[Dust]

I'm taking the full 5 Indominitable levels in the 3.5 game we're starting Wednesday. I'll PM you at some point in the distant future and let you know how it goes. Thanks for making this!

[Fako]

I like it. Now, it feels that it has some offensive punch as well as nice, thematic class features. I'm not that good at balancing things, but I don't think it's OP, considering that your maneuvers will be much weaker than those of a martial adept of the same level.
All in all it's a much more interesting class now

Thank you. Good to hear it's more desirable now :D

I'm taking the full 5 Indominitable levels in the 3.5 game we're starting Wednesday. I'll PM you at some point in the distant future and let you know how it goes. Thanks for making this!

Awesome I look forward to hearing about it!

So, does the intentional gimp to the martial adept level seem justified? Any suggestions on the disciplines? I put Iron Heart for killing, Stone Dragon for display of power, and Diamond Mind to represent the clarity forcing out all other opinions provides...