tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63757258751471519472023-11-15T07:37:32.507-08:00V's Gaming BlogValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-30641326844303916922011-01-01T14:19:00.000-08:002011-01-01T15:35:38.526-08:00Expanded Class Feature 13: Spirit Binder<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Spirit Binder<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Secrets of Pact Magic<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for pact magic classes as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-it-works-pact-magic.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />And, bouncing over to Secrets of Pact Magic again. This one’s the most basic, and there’s really not a whole lot to say about it. Which makes it good double feature fodder.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />Yeah, this one’s pretty generic. The Spirit Binder is a person who binds spirits. Whatever fluff is going on for the spirits themselves is the fluff for this class.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />We’re looking at a d8 hit die, medium BAB, strong fortitude and will, simple weapons, light armor, and 2+ skill points per level from a fairly uninteresting caster-style list. Aside from the light armor, this is pretty much a Cleric-style skeleton, and that’s about how this class acts.<br /><br />Starting with the big feature this time, you get spirit binding. No surprise there. Spirit Binders get full progression, and the fastest progression; they’re the only class to get Wizard progression, with 9th-level spirits at level seventeen.<br /><br />Other than that, your one class feature at level one is your Reserve Spirit. In addition to whatever normal spirit you bind, you can also bind a second spirit that you can call on once a day for two minutes. Handy, but not Faerun-shattering.<br /><br />Intuit Sprit is some unimportant fluff giving you a bonus to identifying spirits.<br /><br />Now, getting into the more distinctive features, at every even level, the Spirit Binder gets a Binder Secret. This can be either a small perk or a bonus feat. The perks only function while bound to a spirit, and they start small, getting bigger as levels rise. At second level, you can regain 1d4+level hit points once per day. At fourteenth level, once per day, when you die, you immediately come back without penalty.<br /><br />The other big feature starts at level six, when you get bonus spirit levels on top of what you can normally bind. At level twenty, you have a total of twenty-four levels of spirits you can bind. That’s a lot of spirits. This is the truly distinctive feature of the class, though it takes quite a while to get off the ground. The ability to bind a single first-level spirit in addition to your normal third-level spirit isn’t very impressive. The ability to bind two sixth-level spirits when that’s the highest level you can bind… is.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />The big thing you have to do in order to run a spirit binder well is- say it with me- know your spirits. Especially at higher levels, your biggest benefit is the ability to mix and match spirits, to build them on top of each other and have them cover each others’ weaknesses. To do that well, you have to know what your spirits do in the first place.<br /><br />As I said before, this class functions in a manner similar to the Cleric; you’re probably either a gish or a dedicated caster. Have a clear picture of which you are and how you’re working towards it. The problem that comes up is… there’s not a real clear place for the Spirit Binder as either. If I wanted a more combat-oriented binder, I’d look to the Empyrian Monk or Pact Warrior. If I wanted more of a caster-binder, the Unbound Witch and its massive save DCs does it better, and has comparable breadth thanks to abilities known, though the Spirit Binder does make a better toolbox character. If they had at least halfway decent skills, you could multiclass with something to get an effective skill monkey, but as it stands, you’d probably be better off using the ready-made Foe Hunter or Rookblade.<br /><br />As usual, charisma is optional. You can fairly safely dump it and still use your spirits’ powers, but on the other hand, gaining access to capstone abilities is a very good thing. If you’re going more of a melee route, your stats are needed elsewhere, so don’t worry overmuch about charisma. If you’re going for a caster, other than constitution, you don’t have much else in demand for high stats, so you’re free to invest in charisma quite a bit, as well as feats to raise your binding check and lower the bar to gain capstone abilities. High constitution is a must either way, and if you’re relying on various effects to cripple your foes, initiative is vital.<br /><br />Moving on to feats, Ignore Binding Requirements is even more important. You’re going to be binding lots and lots of spirits. Tracking requirements on all of them is a nightmare.<br /><br />For warriors, blowing feats on proficiencies is generally a bad idea. Better to either take a level in some other class or be an elf for longbow proficiency; there are a number of archery spirits, after all. Or just gain proficiencies through spirits. Throwing a couple feats into boosting saves to decent levels can help round things out. Also keep in mind that combat-focused spirits tend to age better than casting-focused spirits, so you may find it wise to use a fourth-level spirit through to the end of your career, which combines with the second point; a number of spirits provide feats, sometimes important feats. For example, Tyrant Cromwell is a second-level spirit that can give you greatsword proficiency and Power Attack, and if you plan to rely on both, binding him for the rest of your career may not be a bad idea, but in doing so, you’re boxed into that selection and you’re a lot less flexible. Matters of just how to mix and match various spirits get… involved. Especially when you have a dozen spirit levels to work with, and some of the spirits you’re binding are second and third level. And the entire dynamic changes as you level up, so while making a good level eight character isn’t that tough, keeping it a well-oiled machine at level ten when everything’s just changed is… difficult. This is a better option for GMs than players since, for an NPC, you only really have to worry about one point in time.<br /><br />For castery types, flexibility is key. Anima spirits are useful, particularly since they scale and can plug extra spirit levels nicely. If you have the charisma for it (even if you need an item to pull it off), Vatic Spellbinder gives you spells from a domain (though not a granted ability). The various feats that ramp up save DCs are also valuable. If you leave a few spirit levels unassigned, Rapid Binding lets you fill that slot as a full-round action, adding a great deal of flexibility. One feat to warn against, however, is Focal Constellation.<br /><br />Multiclassing is a sticky point. It doesn’t advance your bonus spirits, and some of the higher-level secrets are awesome. Tenth level is immunity to exorcism, which is a must if exorcism ever comes up in-game, since it leaves you pretty screwed, and fourteenth brings you back from the dead once per day. However, since all you get is spirit binding, with barely anything in the way of class features, gaining actual class features from PrCs can be great. It’s a toss-up, but the Angel/Demon/Devil Binder prestige classes split the difference nicely, being only three levels long (and you can get away with just one), and they’re particularly useful since each one opens up a new list of spirits to draw on. The third level of each costs you a level of spirit progression (which you can afford), but keeps one angel/demon/devil spirit from counting against your allotment of spirit levels, which means you can bind a lot more spirits. Thirty levels worth if you play your cards right. And binding a balor can be fun; when you die, everything within a hundred feet takes a hundred damage, and then if you took that level 14 secret, you come back to life. Fun times. Particularly funny if you let an army kill you just to let ‘em get blown up.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Fast spirit binding<br />Broad spirit binding<br />Some good perks through secrets<br />Bonus feats are always nice<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Poor proficiencies<br />Crappy skills<br />Bonus feats do not replace actual class features<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Templar, Totemist, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Time: ArdentValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-2591910186161816402011-01-01T14:12:00.000-08:002011-01-01T15:36:05.755-08:00Expanded Class Feature 12: Soulborn<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Soulborn<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Magic of Incarnum<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for incarnum classes as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-it-works-incarnum.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />Okay, it’s been a while, so I’m coming back with a double feature. A short double feature, but hey, not every class has all that much to be said about it.<br /><br />Back to Magic of Incarnum for the turkey of the incarnum world, the Soulborn. Prepare to be underwhelmed. This one’s going to be brief. And, other than the Exorcist from Villains of Pact Magic, this is the last real turkey of a class. Everything from here (again, except the Exorcist) is actually fairly decent.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />You fight. You have meldshaping (eventually). You’re a zealot. That’s about it. Really, beyond being an incarnum paladin (of any of the four extreme alignments), there’s not much to it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />Not much here, either. Full BAB, d10 hit die, strong fortitude, 2+ skill points from a skill list on par with the Paladin. You gain one social skill depending on your alignment. They get martial weapons, heavy armor, and shields.<br /><br />Moving on to the secondary class features, at first level, you have an aura of your alignment as a Cleric of your class level. At second level, you gain an immunity dependent on your alignment; fear, paralysis, exhaustion, or strength drain. At levels 3, 7, and 11, you gain a bonus incarnum feat. At level 9, you can share whichever immunity you got at level two with the rest of the party once per day (and a few more times as you level up). At level 19, you gain Timeless Body like a Monk or Druid.<br /><br />Now that all that meh is out of the way, the main features.<br /><br />First, you gain smiting as a Paladin, save that it works against both opposed alignments, so if you’re Lawful/Good, it works against both evil and chaos. It still only works once per day at level one, and up to five times per day at level twenty, and you don’t even get any of the other charisma-related boons Paladins get.<br /><br />Then, there’s the main course. Meldshaping. They gain the ability to shape soulmelds starting at level four (and before that, they’re not meldshapers), can only shape one soulmeld per four levels, and you gain your first point of essentia at level six, only going up to ten points by level twenty. A joke. Especially compared to an Incarnate’s twenty-six and a Totemist’s twenty. They gain their first chakra bind at level eight, only getting three of them by the end. When both Incarnate and Totemist start on chakra binds at level two. They also only go up to the middling throat and waist chakras, and even then only at level eighteen. In fact, you could gain the chakra binds as soon or sooner by taking feats.<br /><br />And they have absolutely no class features that tie into their meldshaping.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />It’d be easiest to just say not to use the thing. It’s a crappy class with hardly anything going for it.<br /><br />That said, if you really want to go Soulborn, multiclass. The first four levels don’t suck. You get your smiting, an immunity, a bonus feat, and you open up a soulmeld. It’s not much, but it would take way too many levels to get much. You could do worse than going from Soulborn to some prestige class or another.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Adaptation:</span><br />The Soulborn is basically a Paladin that trades away far, far too much just for meldshaping. It would be an improvement to just make this a Paladin variant, swapping out spellcasting for Soulborn melds, essentia, and chakra binds.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />They get meldshaping<br />Ye olde melee skeleton<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />The meldshpaing sucks<br />It really doesn’t get much<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Totemist, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Time: Spirit BinderValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-589847199820289182010-12-03T19:09:00.000-08:002010-12-03T19:15:11.147-08:00Expanded Class Feature 11: Unbound Witch<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Unbound Witch<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Secrets of Pact Magic<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for pact-making classes as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-it-works-pact-magic.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />It’s time for more pimping of Secrets of Pact Magic, with my favorite class from the entire set, the Unbound Witch.<br /><br />If you don’t have the book, you can still follow along; the Unbound Witch is part of the free sample available <a href="http://www.pactmagic.com/downloads/sample2.pdf">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />You know that magic thing? Don’t you hate dealing with that whole, “knowing what the Hell you’re doing,” thing? Wouldn’t it be a lot better if you just let the power consume you and became a horrific freak of nature?<br /><br />Yeah, that’s this class. An Unbound Witch is a binder who throws caution to the wind and fully embraces the spirits they call upon. While other binders negotiate terms and try to stay in control, try not to lose themselves, the Unbound Witch skips straight to, “Gimme your power. More. More.”<br /><br />As you level up, you can also cherry pick a few individual abilities off of specific spirits, gaining them permanently. Each time this happens, the powers you’ve been tapping cause a mutation of some sort, from simple things like angel tears or a third eye to the more extreme like metallic skin or quills sprouting out of you. By twentieth level, these mutations can turn an ordinary human into some hideous thing build like a gorilla with flesh made of toxic algae and rock, with fangs and wings and a barbed tail and hair made of snakes and compound eyes, that has the power to shoot laser beams and toss around curses and come back from the dead when killed- twice, no less- and all this bizarre stuff, and that’s before actually binding anything. Those are inherent powers. Of course, you don’t have to go that far out in picking mutations, but eventually it’ll get hard to hide, and can become a table issue in some parties. But that’s not the party you bring the, “I turn into a horrific [for varying definitions of horrific] abomination against God and nature,” class to.<br /><br />This class is also great for monsters, since piling “horrific freak” on top of an already-horrific freak is always a good thing, and the class just generally meshes well with monsters, particularly since it doesn’t really rely on any mental stats.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />First, the skeleton. Strong fortitude and will, low BAB, d6 hit die, and 4+ skill points per level from a rather eclectic list. Light armor, simple weapons. This class acts more as a caster.<br /><br />Moving on to secondary abilities, at level one, you get Elusive Nothing. A number of times per day equal to your caster level, you can spend an immediate action to add your wisdom modifier (minimum +1)to AC against a single attack.<br /><br />Also at level one, you get Dark Nature. -4 Diplomacy and Handle Animal, +2 Intimidate and Knowledge (Dungeoneering). Starting at level two, the Diplomacy penalty doesn’t apply to monsters.<br /><br />And, starting at level five, you get Volatile Mind. Your mind is such that anyone trying to target you with a mind-affecting spell/ability, they need to make a will save (with a wisdom-based DC) or become shaken and the spell fails. This feature advances to fear, panic, and even unconsciousness. You might remember a similar ability from the Wilder, which would drain power points when you’re targeted by a telepathy power. This version is more sensible, though since wisdom’s a secondary stat, the DC will be low, and most creatures targeting you with mind effects probably has a strong will save, so it’s not gonna see use all that often.<br /><br />And at level 20, you become a monstrous humanoid and gain darkvision. Woo.<br /><br />Getting into the main features, Unbound Witches get full binding at the slowest progression, gaining access to 9th-level spirits at level 20 (making them your real capstone). Your binding stat is… nothing. This is one of the major aspects of the Unbound Witch; you don’t make binding checks. You automatically fail them every single time, no matter what, meaning you’re always subject to physical signs and personality shifts. However, you automatically gain spirits’ capstone abilities and never have to worry about alignment shifts. Save DCs are still based on constitution.<br /><br />Next, you also gain Acquire Ability starting at level 2, the most definitive ability of the Unbound Witch. As you level up, you can pick out individual abilities from spirits you’re capable of binding to gain permanently. You gain eight of these by level twenty. This includes capstone abilities. For example, at level two, you can permanently gain Marat’s slam attack without the need to ever actually bind Marat again. You can swap out one ability at 10th- and 20th-level.<br /><br />For every ability you gain, you also gain a monstrous characteristic such as a tail, goat legs, insect eyes, a leathery hide, and so on. Aside from looking freaky, these come with various benefits. Clawed Hands grant you natural claw attacks, insect eyes grant you 15’ darkvision, webbed hands grant you +3 to swim checks, and so on. Paired with spirits’ physical signs, this can turn you into a real freak.<br /><br />Last but certainly not least, you get Terror Surge. This is ripped straight from the Wilder’s Wild Surge, except it boosts save DCs for your spirit abilities. This advances from a +1 bonus at level 1 to a +6 bonus at level 19. That’s a lot. Basically, it means Unbound Witches are meant to be primarily a save-or-die class.<br /><br />Like Wild Surge, there’s a downside. Spirit Enervation. For every point by which you boost a power’s save DC, you have a 5% chance of being dazed for a round, then you lose the power you boosted for another 1d4 rounds. Again, similar to the Wilder, but this time, it’s considerably less debilitating. Though considering a lot of powers have a multi-round round recharge time to begin with, you’ll have to hammer out with your DM whether that’s concurrent or consecutive.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />Starting with stats. With low BAB, you’re not likely to ever be much good in melee, so you can dump strength. You don’t really get any benefit from charisma or intelligence, so you can dump those if you want. You have a couple class features that are keyed off of wisdom, but nothing major. You can dump wisdom if you want. No one wants a penalty to dexterity, but even then, you could get away with dumping dexterity. Constitution is the one all-important stat, primarily for save DCs (though the hit points are always nice).<br /><br />That said, dexterity is your second most important stat. When your bread and butter is save-or-die, initiative is vital; you want to disable the enemy as soon as possible. Improved Initiative? Good idea. Other stats are something you toss in to taste.<br /><br />Ignore Binding Requirements is virtually requisite for this class, since a failed binding check if you don’t meet requirements means you fail to bind the spirit at all.<br /><br />Regarding your potentially horrific appearance, there are generally three ways you can go. First, you can try to hide it. You can take Suppress Physical Sign and take monstrous characteristics that are easier to hide, like gills and angel tears. Unfortunately, Unbound Witches are specifically banned from taking Suppress Personality Shift, so you’ll always have to deal with that. Towards this end, there is a focal device variant class feature that can avoid both the physical sign and the personality shift, but I find that particular variant dubious in terms of balance and inconsistent with anything I’d go for with an Unbound Witch. Second, you can embrace your monstrous nature. Who cares if your aasimar ends up a horned lizard person who sheds lethal poison and whose hair is snakes that are on fire while suffering an urge to eat babies? Just… mind how it affects the rest of the group when you start feeding the princess’ left arm to your hairdo. Third, just take the mutations that turn you into a cute cat girl, like paws and a tail.<br /><br />As I’ve said multiple times, your bread and butter is the save-or-die (or save-or-lose, or save-or-suck, or save-or-amuse-me, or whatever). As the book points out, if you just start off with 15 Con and boost that at every opportunity for 20 Con at level 20, when you throw in Terror Surge, you’re throwing around DC31 abilities. When you start out with much higher constitution, boost it with a magic item, and take feats to raise it even higher, you could easily be talking something in the forties, which is actually viable at high levels. Expect a large chunk of your feats to go into boosting those DCs; Secrets of Pact Magic introduces a number of save boosters. Volcanic Burst, Terror Surge Overchannel, Words of Power. Also, Ability Focus in your favorite ability can be worth it. When you add all these up, it comes out to a lot of feats, which will likely be in high demand for your entire career.<br /><br />As a PC, selecting your acquired abilities is perhaps the most difficult and important choice you face. You only gain eight of them (nine with a feat), and they’re almost completely cast in stone once you pick them; you only get two chances to swap ‘em out. Once at level ten, once at level twenty. These abilities are your bread and butter, so they have to be powers you can use a lot, that are always useful in any situation, and that can last your entire career without ever becoming obsolete. Like I said. Difficult.<br /><br />First off, save-or effects are your bread and butter, since you can boost your save DCs high enough for them to always remain useful. It’s good to have a debilitating save-or effect that goes after both will and fortitude. We’re talking things like sleep and paralysis, that can take someone out of a fight in one go, though the better abilities tend to be higher-level. Due to immunities, you may want a bit of redundancy there, but once you have that covered, you have your main combat abilities covered and you can focus more on useful and flexible effects. Hexus’ curse ability allows you to throw around Bestow Curse effects, which are very flexible debuffs (and if you impose a -6 intelligence curse on that 2-int twelve-headed hydra, it’s comatose), Janya Warlock’s capstone is a daily use of Limited Wish, which is pretty much the ability to solve any problem once per day if you’re sufficiently familiar with spells, Goliath’s capstone is a rare reflex save-or-lose that can bind enemies in chains with an extremely high DC to escape via Escape Artist, The Crow has Shadow Conjuration, which can emulate a ton of useful effects, and Son of Dobb’s capstone can bring you back from the dead without penalty once per day (great for villains). Those are just some of my favorites to get you thinking about the possibilities, but go forth and search, yourself.<br /><br />Also, Anima Binder can be an extremely useful feat, since it lets you draw granted abilities from anima spirits, who sometimes have very good low-level abilities (like the ability to get Wild Shape at level two and qualify for Master of Many Forms at level three). This And No Other’s Restraining Gaze is almost Hold Monster available from the word go, and makes for a great go-to will-based disabler. On the other hand, others scale badly, being keyed directly off of spirit level, so proceed with caution.<br /><br />Unfortunately, while you can get some really cool melee abilities and loads of natural attacks, that low BAB really cramps the melee witch’s options outside of gestalt.<br /><br />Though the greatest use for an Unbound Witch is as an NPC, and especially as a boss. Remember everything I said about making sure your chosen abilities are both flexible and have the longevity to age well, how that’s what makes choosing your granted abilities so hard? Yeah, forget that. NPCs are only liable to be around for one fight anyways, and even that’s only going to last a few rounds, so you can afford to make an NPC gimmicky, mechanically one-dimensional, and devoid of any clear advancement. You can build an NPC Unbound Witch entirely around a single ability and have it work well enough to get through an encounter.<br /><br />Unlike other magic-users, a high-level Unbound Witch is still very easy to put together. For a level 20 witch, you’re still talking eight abilities and one bound spirit. As a boss, their emphasis on constitution gives them enough hit points that they won’t go down right away (particularly if you toss in some defensive abilities), they have strong fortitude and will saves (plus an extra line of defense against mind-affecting abilities in Volatile Mind), which are the saves most likely to cripple a boss in one shot, and they can service a very broad array of character types and present a broad array of challenges. And it’s more likely to be a good thing if the bad guy’s the one with fangs and claws and baby-eating hair. All around, I’d far sooner suggest them as NPCs than PCs.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Great flexibility in what you can build<br />Obscene save DCs <br />Single stat dependence<br />That stat is the best possible stat<br />Surprisingly good skills<br />Awesomene NPCs<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Very limited flexibility once you set your granted abilities<br />Low BAB limits you<br />Feat intensive<br />You’re liable to end up a hideous freak of nature<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Incarnate, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Soulborn, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Totemist, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Time: SoulbornValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-87793744564487067912010-11-09T21:20:00.000-08:002010-11-09T22:00:02.337-08:00Expanded Class Feature 10: Warblade<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Warblade<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Tome of Battle<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for pact-making classes as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-it-works-tome-of-battle.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />Yes, this took a long time. I’ve lost my primary source of readership, which kinda killed my mojo. I’m not sure about the future of this blog, but we’ll see. I’m still shooting for biweekly updates.<br /><br />Anyways, this is the first class I’m tackling from the greatest 3.5 supplement WotC’s ever put out, though quite frankly, with the nine schools and the How it Works sections already covered, the majority of the class is already covered.<br /><br />This one's a part of the Tome of Battle free sample, by the way, so if you don't have the book, you can follow along <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060802a&page=2">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits: </span><br />Warrior.<br /><br />That’s all you need. This is the definitive nonmagical warrior class, one of the game’s very few true nonmagical classes, and one of its even fewer good ones. It can fit most traditional warrior archetypes from the savage berserker to the stalwart commander, though the finesse warrior has little less trouble than it always has.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />I’ve already done write-ups on the nine schools of maneuvers, available <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/11/nine-swords.html">here</a>. Warblades get Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, Stone Dragon, Tiger Claw, and White Raven. That is to say sword smart, sword good, hit hard, be angry, and lead good.<br /><br />Now, then. Skeleton. Strong BAB and fortitude, d12 hit die, martial melee weapons, medium armor, 4+ skill points from a so-so list, though it does include Tumble, Diplomacy, and Knowledge (History), which are beyond most melee classes. Unsurprisingly, this is a warrior’s skeleton. The Barbarian skeleton, in fact, save for skills.<br /><br />Moving on to the general class features, as you level up, you add your intelligence modifier to various things. Reflex saves, confirming critical hits, damage against flat-footed enemies, defense against some of the standard martial tricks (trip, disarm, et cetera) and eventually damage on attacks of opportunity. Odds are intelligence is a tertiary stat, so these bonuses aren’t likely to be very big, but they’re still nice to have. Those start at level one and roll in over the course of the first fifteen levels.<br /><br />Also at first level, you get what could be the most almost-interesting-but-ultimately-meh class feature ever. Weapon Aptitude. You can spend an hour to shift the designated weapon for any feat you possess (like Weapon Focus). And… all that really means is that random treasure is less problematic, since instead of taking the magic halberd to the city to sell as a down payment on a magic greatsword, you can train with the halberd to move your greatsword feats over. Ultimately, not a big deal, particularly since most feats it could apply to (again like weapon focus) are pretty crappy to begin with. The other half of this class feature is that you can qualify for Fighter-specific feats as a Fighter two levels lower than your Warblade level, but again, aren’t a whole lot of useful Fighter feats.<br /><br />Other than that, you gain Uncanny Dodge in a timely manner and get a few bonus feats from a small but decent list.<br /><br />Then, at level twenty, you get your capstone. Stance Mastery lets you assume two stances at once. A nice capstone.<br /><br />Then, you have your maneuvers. You go from three maneuvers known and three maneuvers readied up to thirteen known and seven readied. You also go from one to four stances known. This is the least of all initiators, just slightly less than the Crusader. You’re liable to find the supply rather tight, so choose carefully. With five schools available, you get a lot of good maneuvers to choose from, so it may help to focus things a bit.<br /><br />Your refresh method is also possibly the best of all ToB classes. If you need to refresh your maneuvers, make a swift action after standard action or full attack, which can still inflict a nice bit of pain between maneuvers. Alternately, you can use a standard action for some sort of flourish if there’s no one within reach.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />How to use the Warblade is a big question. However, in general, it lends itself most to offense, with a side of support through White Raven. On that note, consider how many allies you have to support in the first place before investing heavily in White Raven; if you’re going to be alone or close to it on the front line, then many of its maneuvers could well be useless.<br /><br />Ultimately, odds are your job is going to be to deliver the mail in the form of hit point damage. Your maneuvers should generally be geared towards killing things and any defenses only serve to keep you functional long enough to kill more things. Moment of Perfect Mind is probably wise; a dominated Warblade can be terrifying.<br /><br />To that end, Tiger Claw, Diamond Mind, and Stone Dragon are good at hitting hard. Diamond Mind has some of the best defenses, but Iron Heart has its own powerful defenses as well. Iron Heart serves well as your unique school, with nice accuracy boosts and mob-clearing maneuvers that the other initiators just don't get.<br /><br />Stats are rather self-evident; strength and constitution are primary stats, while dexterity and intelligence are secondary. Unfortunately, 3.5 hates finesse warriors, so unless you manage to get Shadow Blade working for you (most likely through a dip in Swordsage), dexterity will probably be a poor choice for primary stat.<br /><br />Ultimately, there’s not a whole lot to say here. Tome of Battle adds a lot, but the procedure is still similar; make a face-breaker, find a face, and break it. The face-breaking process has just been made more interesting.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Great skeleton<br />Good school access<br />Great recharge method<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Fewest maneuvers known<br />Purely melee<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Incarnate, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Soulborn, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Totemist, Unbound Witch, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Time: Unbound WitchValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-9658504524579374272010-11-09T21:19:00.000-08:002010-11-09T21:20:11.393-08:00How it Works: Tome of BattleThis is the unified “How it Works” section for all the Tome of Battle classes. That’s the Crusader, the Swordsage, and the Warblade.<br /><br />Tome of Battle is, far and away, the best book WotC has ever released for 3.5, and the one that finally resolves some of the crushing legacy issues that have been haunting melee classes since the beginning, when Fighter was a punishment class for people who didn’t roll good enough stats to be anything else and the wargaming days when warriors were mooks only valuable en masse while casters were leader units with amazing powers.<br /><br />ToB is, in simplest terms, a book of martial arts. Actual, involved combat techniques that advance with level rather than the same homogenized, “attack, full attack, charge, trip, grapple,” that every melee’r from the kobold mook to the 20th-level Barbarian uses with minimal variation at ridiculous cost.<br /><br />The linear warrior, quadratic wizard issue- in which a warrior class’s power tends to rise at a constant rate, while a mage’s power increases at an increasing rate- is long established. This is a major problem, because it’s the very definition of unbalanced, other than in a narrow range where the two are comparable in power. Outside of that range, the game breaks; one is overpowered, the other under. In this case, the two are more of less balanced around levels 1-6 and then mages explode.<br /><br />What’s more, the defined power scale that PCs are supposed to follow is exponential, not linear; characters are expected to double in power every two levels. If you’re expected to be able to take on a T-Rex (a CR8 encounter) at level 8, then you’re expected to be able to take on two T-Rexes (a CR10 encounter) at level 10. A traditional warrior’s linear progression just can’t keep up without really twinking out on an ubercharger or some such. They carry less and less of their share until they may as well not be there.<br /><br />Tome of Battle comes to this situation and cuts the Gordian knot. It uses mechanics known to keep pace with the power scale- the spellcasting model- and revises them to represent martial combat techniques, actually adding nuance to melee combat beyond, “Find the right place to stand and then spam the one trick I’ve kitted myself out to actually be good at until the fight ends and repeat the process for the next 259 fights until we hit level 20.”<br /><br />The crux of this system is maneuvers and stances, which have a corresponding level (comparable to spell level) and discipline (comparable to spell school). Just replace “shoot laser beams” with “roundhouse kick” and give the kick appropriate effects, and you’re half-way there. <br /><br />Stances are exactly what it says on the tin. You take a fighting stance and get some manner of benefit for it. In practice, these are like ongoing buffs that you can switch between as a swift action. Some are fairly simple, like +1d6 melee damage paired with -2 AC or +2 to allies’ will saves. Some are more interesting, like having 5’ steps provoke AoOs or gaining a stacking +1 to hit and damage with each critical hit. Stances tend to be somewhat secondary, as there aren’t a whole lot of them, and even the Swordsage, the class that gets the most maneuvers and stances, only gets six of them by level twenty.<br /><br />The real bread and butter are the maneuvers, which are various martial techniques. These are split up three ways; boosts, counters, and strikes. Boosts are generally swift actions, and they’re little perks, usually buffs. For example, with Lion’s Roar, after defeating a foe, you can spend a swift action to boost your allies’ morale and grant them +5 damage for the round. Counters are immediate actions that can be used to alter the flow of battle even when it’s not your turn. Shield Block, for example, can be used in response to an enemy attack to grant your shield bonus to an adjacent enemy, protecting them. Then, there are strikes, the most important of the three. These are attacks with some sort of special effect. It may be an attack with a large attack bonus but a penalty to defense, or an attack that smashes through DR, or an attack that strikes multiple targets, or an attack that denies the target attacks of opportunity for a round, or an attack that grants allies a bonus to hit the target for a round, or an attack that grants allies attacks of opportunity against the target, or any number of effects. These are usually a standard action, though some are full-round actions.<br /><br />These maneuvers are usable at will, with a caveat. You can’t just spam the same maneuver over and over again like a traditional melee type spams their full attack. If you picture a big action scene, maneuvers are the flashy action moves, like the drop kick. Once you do a drop kick, you’re not just gonna do another drop kick and another drop kick; you’re in no position to do so. Thus, after using a maneuver, you have to refresh it somehow to do it again. How that refresh works varies by class.<br /><br />One important thing to understand is, maneuvers and stances aren’t nearly as powerful as spellcasting. We’re not talking about full casters with warrior skeletons. In fact, in terms of raw power, maneuvers are generally less powerful than the traditional full attack. By and large, they build power outward rather than upward, broadening the melee classes’ horizons while staying true to what it means to be a warrior, particularly in the context of a fantasy world.<br /><br />More importantly, it breaks the mold of, “Get into position and spam full attacks until something dies,” for every fight forever. Rather, it mixes things up, introduces new effects, forces diversity. Because most maneuvers are standard actions, you’re free to move around without worrying about losing the full attack. Instead of repeating minor variations of the exact same thing, characters gain new techniques every level.<br /><br />And it adds more desperately needed zots. Consider a single-classed Barbarian. Let’s say this Barbarian is going the path of a front-line two-hander. There’s not a whole lot of differentiation between this Barbarian and any other Barbarian. Things like starting with 16 strength instead of 18 or 20 don’t particularly affect how you operate. Whether you’re a dwarf or an orc, you’re still standing there, raging and full attacking, just with different to-hit values and hit point totals. Skills are rather tertiary. Really, all you have to differentiate yourself from every other Barbarian in the world and do anything different are 1-7 feats, depending on level, many of which will be identical (Extra Rage, Power Attack). That’s it. And if you want to do something other than stand there raging and full attacking, that’s liable to cost several feats. If you want to Spring Attack, that’s three feats. If you want Whirlwind Attack, you’re giving up most of your feats just to eventually do that, and it doesn’t even kick in until level twelve or so. There’s a severe lack of mechanical diversity.<br /><br />Compare that to, say, a Sorcerer. You can put three enchantment-specialized halfling Sorcerers side by side and they can still function very differently by virtue of their other, fully-functional spells, as well as slightly differing selections within the enchantment school. Deep Slumber and Confusion are very different spells, and if one Sorcerer takes some summoning spells, those spells are not diminished for the effort.<br /><br />Similarly, Tome of Battle’s maneuver system lets melee characters use diverse and interesting effects by default, with meaningful diversity from level one without requiring six to twelve levels’ worth of feats to get there.<br /><br />And then, we get to multiclassing. The highest level of maneuver you can use is based on your initiator level. Unlike with casters, this is your initiating level (say, Warblade) plus half of any other levels you may have. Maneuvers known still key off of class level exclusively, but you have a 4th-level Fighter who then takes one level of Warblade, you can learn second-level maneuvers. This makes a structure where you can go all the way to level 20 as a single-classed initiator or multiclass extensively, and either way, you’re not shooting yourself in the foot. This is as opposed to most traditional classes where full casters pretty much never multiclass at all, except for full-casting PrCs, because almost nothing is ever worth losing caster levels over and you’d be shooting yourself in the foot for the effort, while melee classes tend to multiclass extensively because most of them have too many dead or useless levels past the lower levels to justify taking them to level 20 or even level 5. This model could have been a good addition to a better-designed spellcasting system.<br /><br />This leads into one of the big objections to Tome of Battle classes, in that they replace normal melee classes. Regarding replacement, this both is and is not true for one simple reason. Most conventional melee classes have so few class features that they’re forced to multiclass extensively. Not doing so is often as suicidal as a mage multiclassing extensively at the loss of caster levels. Many conventional melee types take as few levels in base classes as possible, instead escaping to a prestige class that gets actual class features as soon as possible. The last two thirds of most melee classes are already obsolete. Tome of Battle doesn’t change this. In fact, due to the way multiclassing works with Tome of Battle, it can even make more levels in the old melee classes worthwhile. <br /><br />My biggest problem with Tome of Battle, however, is a lack of material. It gives melee classes all these zots to spend, but there’s not a whole lot to spend them on to the point where a lot of stuff begins to overlap. The PHB has over a hundred pages of wall-to-wall spells. The Expanded Psionics Handbook has about eighty pages, and it’s a bit light. Tome of Battle has less than fifty pages of maneuvers. It could do well with an entire additional supplement, or even the kind of treatment Pact Magic got in Secrets of Pact Magic. It’s really a shame Tome of Battle was just a 150-page lightweight.Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-22622084589802160382010-11-09T21:16:00.000-08:002011-02-14T11:46:13.325-08:00The Nine SwordsTome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords has, unsurprisingly, nine schools of swordplay. These are shared among the three classes, so I’m giving each school a quick rundown here so that I can just reference back here for the disciplines themselves.<br /><br />The nine schools are Desert Wind, Devoted Spirit, Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, Setting Sun, Shadow Hand, Stone Dragon, Tiger Claw, White Raven. Or as I tend to call them, fire sword, holy sword, sword smart, sword good, judo, shadow sword, hit hard, be angry, and lead good.<br /><br />Every school has an associated skill which varies in importance from school to school, a list of associated weapons which are more an expression of the school’s aesthetic than they are actually important- you can use Iron Heart maneuvers and stances even if you’re not using an Iron Heart weapon- but they’re relevant for some feats and abilities, and they’re all only available to certain classes, so I’ll lead with that information. Also, since every school has one (and only one) ninth-level maneuver, I’ll talk about that for each school since… well, there’s only one per school.<br /><br />Now, taking them from the beginning.<br /><br /><br />Desert Wind: Kill ‘em with fire.<br />Tumble<br />Scimitar, light mace, light pick, falchion, spear<br />Swordsage-only<br />This is one of the three Swordsage exclusive schools and one of the three supernatural schools. It focuses mainly on enhancing your combat abilities with supernatural fire, and is considered the weakest school for one simple reason; everything and its mother is either highly resistant to or outright immune to fire. It’s the most commonly resisted energy type in the game. That doesn’t mean it’s useless, of course. A number of the fire-based maneuvers are quite useful for that extra bit of damage. It’s just not wise to invest too heavily into it.<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Desert Wind is the Inferno Blast. It deals a flat 100 fire damage in a 60’ burst centered around you, reflex for half. The save DC is wisdom-based. This is an unimpressive capstone maneuver, and highlights a lot of what’s wrong with Desert Wind. Martial adepts really can’t afford to ramp up their save DCs, especially not wisdom-based ones, so everything and its mother is will make that save, and by the time you finally get it, not only is the damage unimpressive (if you’re a dedicated artillery mage and can’t deal at least a hundred damage a shot in an area, you’re doing something wrong), but anyone and everyone who wants immunity to fire can get it pretty easily. Also, it has nothing to do with martial ability, which at least most of the school is better at, with things like the ability to charge at someone and stab them while on fire.<br /><br />Desert Wind does have some cool stances. Holocaust Cloak inflicts five points of fire damage on anyone who hits you with a melee attack, for example. However, for reasons I’ll get into when I get to Shadow Hand, most Swordsages will probably never use Desert Wind stances in a fight. Which is a bit sad.<br /><br />As a houserule, I’d suggest allowing the energy type for this school to change to suit the character. Maybe let it deal cold damage or electric damage, or perhaps slashing damage for a character whose swordplay causes ye olde razor wind.<br /><br /><br />Devoted Spirit: Sword of the God(ess[es])(s)<br />Intimidate<br />Falchion, greatclub, longsword, maul<br />Crusader-only<br />This is the sole Crusader-exclusive school, and it’s what really defines the class. This is one of the three supernatural disciplines, and incorporates a great deal of divine power. Stances and maneuvers from this school tend to revolve around healing, protecting allies, and smiting heathens (though mostly the first two). This school has two first-level stances; one heals two hit points to yourself or an ally any time you strike an enemy, and the other imposes a -4 penalty to hit on any opponent you threaten who tries to attack one of your allies (but not foes attacking you). At the next maneuver level, you can get shield block, which is an immediate action to grant an adjacent ally your shield bonus plus four to AC for a single attack, protecting them, which actually brings up an odd point. Devoted Spirit is a more defensive style, and appears to have sword-and-board very much in mind, but all but one of its favored weapons are two-handed. Granted, most Crusaders would probably just use the longsword anyways, but it’s still odd. I’d probably be open to houseruling in some additional weapons if it ever became relevant, like a warhammer or waraxe for a dwarven crusader.<br /><br />And for the record, the healing maneuvers/stances only apply when you’re actually fighting an active threat, so you can’t just spam them against a tree to heal up to full after every fight. While they can significantly add to your longevity, none of the healing stances/maneuvers really heal enough to outpace the damage you and your party are liable to take in a serious encounter.<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Devoted Spirit is the Strike of Righteous Vitality, and it’s probably one of the more useful ultimate attacks. It’s a single standard action attack and if it hits, you gain the benefits of a heal spell for either yourself or a nearby ally. At the level you get it, it’s not about to outpace damage, but it is a lot of healing. Though at that point, a single standard action attack is usually a joke.<br /><br /><br />Diamond Mind: The Disciplined Discipline<br />Concentration<br />Rapier, shortspear, katana, trident<br />Swordsage, Warblade<br />Diamond Mind is the first school for which its signature skill is actually important. Extremely important. If you take any significant number of Diamond Mind maneuvers, you’re going to need full ranks in Concentration. This is the school of extreme focus and precision, of mind over body and mind over sword.<br /><br />The most known are probably the three maneuvers that let you replace a save with a Concentration check (though it’s rarely worth taking more than one; they hog readied maneuvers otherwise, and really aren't all that useful in boosting your strong saves). There’s one that lets you make a Concentration check to treat the target as flat-footed against your single standard action attack, a Concentration check versus the target’s AC to resolve a single standard action attack as a touch attack, a Concentration check versus the target’s AC to deal double damage (and before anyone cries broken, do note that you’re forgoing iterative attacks and need to make both a Concentration check and a normal attack roll, both against the target’s full AC), a standard action attack that uses your Concentration check instead of damage (far less impressive than it sounds, actually).<br /><br />Not every Diamond Mind maneuver requires Concentration, but a ton of the better ones do.<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Diamond Mind is called Time Stands Still. No, it is not supernatural time manipulation; it’s just fast, precise swordmastery. It allows you to make two consecutive full attacks instead of just one, which can of course be quite deadly, especially if you set it up right. As a technique that amounts to your capstone should be.<br /><br /><br />Iron Heart: For the swordiest of sworders.<br />Balance<br />Bastard sword, dwarven waraxe, longsword, two-bladed sword<br />Warblade-only<br />This is the sole Warblade-exclusive school, and it’s about… swording good. It’s a fairly generic but well-rounded school with both offensive and defensive techniques. Iron Heart maneuvers tend to be more accurate and target multiple foes, but can also damage enemy weapons, allow rerolls, provide a small amount of healing, and parry/counter enemy attacks.<br /><br />The unifying theme here is very much an aesthetic, that of the tough, determined swordsman tearing through hordes through skill with the blade and heroic resolve, carving your way to a clear leader, taking him on in a duel and ending it with a big, decisive blow (like, say, the aptly named Finishing Move which deals a big pile of extra damage if the target’s at half health).<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Iron Heart is a thematically appropriate boss-slaying strike. A fitting capstone, but the Strike of Perfect Clarity is a single standard action melee attack that deals +100 damage. It sounds impressive at first, but it’s actually not all that great considering it’s only available from levels 17 to 20. At that point, it’s entirely reasonable to have 30+ strength and a +10-equivalent sword or close to it, among other perks, such that you deal 10d6+20 damage or better on a hit. You have full iterative attacks, so with haste (which you’d likely have at the most crucial moments, at least), that means five attacks that deal an average of 55 damage each, two of which are at your highest base attack bonus, and that’s being fairly conservative. Still, it’s a nice visual raising your sword overhead, giving your battle cry and bringing down that one telling blow.<br /><br /><br />Setting Sun: It’s judo.<br />Sense Motive<br />Short sword, quarterstaff, nunchaku, unarmed strike<br />Swordsage only<br />This is the second of the three Swordsage-specific disciplines, but this time, it’s not supernatural. Setting Sun can best be compared to judo; it is the least direct discipline with a great many throws to rearrange the battlefield as well as a lot of countermeasures to defend yourself with, plus some tactical mobility effects. For example, one of the first-level Setting Sun maneuvers is Counter Charge. If an enemy charges at you, you can make an opposed strength or dexterity check (your choice) and if you win, the enemy’s charge fails as you either evade the charge and they keep going or you forcibly redirect them. If you’re larger than the charging foe, you can get a bonus to the strength check, and if you’re smaller, you can get a bonus to the dexterity check.<br /><br />For the throws, the standard format goes something like this; you move, make a trip attempt against your enemy with a bonus from the maneuver and if you succeed, they fall prone and you can move them ten feet or so with your throw and (for the higher-level versions) they may take some damage. There can be additional effects. For example, Comet Throw lets you throw your target at another enemy, who has to save against some damage or they also fall prone.<br /><br />Some of the higher-level maneuvers even let you redirect an attack meant for you towards another target.<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Setting Sun, the Tornado Throw, basically allows you to move up to twice your speed and make a throw as described above against pretty much everyone you come across, which can really rearrange the field to your advantage. As expected from this school, it’s the least direct ultimate technique, but if used well, it can be very effective.<br /><br /><br />Shadow Hand: With a name like that, you should be able to guess.<br />Hide<br />Dagger, short sword, sai, siangham, unarmed strike, spiked chain<br />Swordsage only<br />And now, the third Swordsage-only school, and the last of the three supernatural schools. Picture an assassin with shadowy magic. That’s this school. It has stealthy techniques, your supernatural movement forms (including short-range teleportation), a few ways to deal ability damage, a couple flavors of “throttle the enemy with dark magic,” temporary invisibility, status effects, miss chance. Lots of fun and sneaky stuff, but it does tend to rely heavily on save-or effects that are utterly unimpressive if the foe succeeds, and Tome of Battle classes are usually very bad at those since they need to boost combat stats instead of things like Wisdom or Charisma that the saves tend to be based on, rendering some of the maneuvers pretty much useless, which is always unfortunate. The school could have done well with dexterity-based save DCs rather than wisdom-based.<br /><br />Shadow Hand stances are… well, it really doesn’t matter. Most Swordsages are probably going to spend all their time in them regardless of what they do for one simple reason. Shadow Blade. This is a feat that lets you apply dexterity to damage while using a Shadow Hand weapon if you’re in a Shadow Hand stance. This feat is one of the few ways to make a real finesse-based combatant work, or at least one that isn’t rendered useless by the first zombie, construct, plant, ooze, elemental, or critter who just happens to be immune to critical hits. And, since Swordsages tend to need a lot of stats to be rather high, a lot of them end up going the finesse route to alleviate that stress. It’s not that Shadow Hand stances are bad or uninteresting, and this really isn’t a problem with the school itself- quite the contrary, finesse combatants really needed the love- but it does mean Shadow Hand stances tend to get old after a while. Particularly since about half of them tend to be movement modes that you’re not likely to use in combat, that brings it down to about three combat stances that most Swordsages will spend almost all their time in.<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Shadow Hand is the Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike. Stupid name, mediocre effect. It’s a single standard action melee attack (which, as always, means it needs to be pretty impressive to compare to a full attack) that deals an additional 15d6 damage (average of 52.5, which isn’t stellar at this point) and it has a special effect, which fortitude mostly negates (and due to the save issue stated above, the enemy will probably succeed). The effect is chosen at random, but can be 2d6 dexterity damage and the enemy’s speed is reduced to 0 for 1d6 rounds (nice, but many monsters at that point wouldn’t be hindered by it), 2d6 strength damage and a -6 penalty to attack rolls and Concentration checks (not bad against a melee foe, admittedly, but a melee foe is all but guaranteed to make the save), or 2d6 damage to all physical stats (which is quite nice, but again, the enemy will save). One of the big problems here is that in the level 17+ range, so many creatures are immune to ability damage that this move is oftentimes fairly useless, save for the unimpressive (for the level) damage bonus. I’d say this school is competing with Desert Wind for worst ultimate technique.<br /><br /><br />Stone Dragon: For when you just need to hit someone really hard in the face.<br />Balance (again)<br />Greatsword, greataxe, heavy mace, unarmed strike<br />All<br />This is the one school that everybody gets (despite seeming a bit odd for Swordsages), and it’s rather straightforward. It’s all about standing firm and taking the other guy down with brute force. And to that end, I really like the weapon selection for this one; a big, sharp sword, a heavy, brutal axe, a really big stick… or just punch the other guy in the face.<br /><br />A lot of the Stone Dragon moves amount to, “I hit that putz really hard,” but by and large, the effects aren’t simply, “Normal damage plus Xd6.” They’re actually still interesting, like hitting your foes so hard and in such a way that they’re staggered and immobilized for a round, or you fracture their bones through brute force granting anyone who threatens a crit against them a big bonus to confirmation rolls, or one of the signatures of the school, bypassing hardness/damage reduction. Also, the save DCs against Stone Dragon maneuvers are strength-based, so you’re going to have more reasonable save DCs for your maneuvers than Shadow Hand is liable to get.<br /><br />There are other moves as well, such as a stance that grants you a constrict ability, significantly increasing your damage in a grapple, or temporarily give you damage reduction, or give you bonuses to/against things like bull rush or overrun (though not to the point of making bull rush/overrun actually, y’know, useful).<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Stone Dragon is the Mountain Tombstone Strike. It’s a standard action attack that inflicts 2d6 constitution damage if it hits, no save. Now, this does sound impressive at first, but so did Strike of Perfect Clarity. On average, this maneuver deals 7 constitution damage, which is effectively on par with dealing 3.5 damage per hit die the enemy has, so unless the target has well over 30 HD (which is rare even at level 20), you’re worse off than Strike of Perfect Clarity where the extra damage just doesn’t compare to a full attack. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that by the time you get it, a great many enemies are outright immune to ability damage, which comes together to make the move useful in an all-too-slim array of circumstances.<br /><br /><br />Tiger Claw: I have fury!<br />Jump<br />Kukri, kama, claw, handaxe, greataxe, unarmed strike<br />Swordsage, Warblade<br />Tiger Claw is the school of savage fury, which has you jumping around and ripping peoples’ heads off. This is the school for the more primal, barbaric techniques. It’s also the only school that gives any real, direct love for dual-wielding, but not much, sadly. A number of Tiger Claw maneuvers are the most damaging attack of their level.<br /><br />The signature technique for Tiger Claw are the various jumping strikes, where you leap up into the air and come down on them to inflict pain. These tend to require Jump checks made against either a fixed DC or the target’s AC, and if you fail the check, the maneuver fails outright.<br /><br />The school also has quite a few save-or effects, but the DCs are strength-based, so they’re a little more reasonable. One that really secures this school’s brutality in my eyes is Fountain of Blood. Basically, if you kill someone (or multiple people), you can spend an immediate action to turn it into a grisly display that forces enemies to save or be shaken. Not very good, admittedly, but certainly stylish.<br /><br />Also, Tiger Claw has a maneuver called Girallon Windmill Flesh Rip. That secures Tiger Claw’s status as awesome. What’s Girallon Windmill Flesh Rip do? With a name like that, it doesn’t matter. (But for the record, it adds a rend attack onto the end of a full attack that deals additional damage based on the number of times you’ve managed to hit the target in the course of a round, to a maximum of 20d6 in the unlikely event that you manage eight hits in one round.)<br /><br />The ultimate technique for Tiger Claw is… actually rather disappointing. Feral Death Blow. Make a Jump check against the target’s AC, then a single attack. Save or die. On a failed save, you still do normal damage plus 20d6 (70 on average), but death effects are just obsolete at this point; so many enemies are immune to them, and even with strength-based DCs, not a lot’s gonna stand a reasonable chance of failing their save at that level. Oh, and anything immune to critical hits is also immune to the death effect, in case there weren’t already enough enemies that are immune to it already. Also, it takes a full-round action to pull off, so it doesn’t even give the mobility benefits of Strike of Perfect Clarity or Mountain Tombstone. It’s the only literal save-or-die in Tome of Battle, and the book would be better off without it. But most of the rest of Tiger Claw is of far greater quality.<br /><br /><br />White Raven: Go forth, mine minions!<br />Diplomacy<br />Longsword, battleaxe, warhammer, greatsword, halberd<br />Crusader, Warblade<br />Finally, there’s White Raven. What the Marshal wishes it could be. This is the school of commanders and generals, centering on teamwork and supporting your allies. This, of course, means that depending on what kind of allies you have behind you, this school’s power can range from nigh useless to the most powerful school of all.<br /><br />One of the first White Raven maneuvers, for example, is Leading the Attack. It is… a completely ordinary standard action attack. However, if it hits, all allies get a +4 bonus to attack rolls against whoever you just hit. If you have a lot of party members making attack rolls, that’s great. If you don’t, well, it’s not so great.<br /><br />White Raven techniques can grant allies extra accuracy and damage, prevent foes from making attacks of opportunity, render targets flat-footed for your allies, allow your allies to move around on your turn, rearranging the battlefield, or even (at higher levels) grant allies an extra attack.<br /><br />The ultimate technique for White Raven, War Master’s Charge, is like much of the school; it can be either the most powerful of them all or one of the worst depending on what kind of support you have behind you. When you use it, you charge an enemy, dealing an extra fifty damage. Also, every ally within thirty feet can charge your target (assuming all the standard caveats for a charge), dealing an extra 25 damage. Also, you all share your +2 AB bonus for charging, meaning if you have four people charging (yourself included), you all get +8 to hit. If two or more of you hit, the target is stunned for a round. Note that limits in party structure mean you’re probably going to have two or three people (yourself included) in this charge in fairly decent circumstances, and even under excellent circumstances with huge amounts of backup, limits in geometry tend to make it rare to get more than four or five people charging, and that’s assuming you can get them into position in the first place. I point this out because more than once I’ve seen folks arguing that you can use Warmaster’s Charge to get a couple dozen peasants charging a balor to kill the thing, therefore Tome of Battle is the broken, ignoring the fact that getting a couple dozen peasants in charging range of a balor without getting incinerated is a task unto itself and if you've managed it, you've already earned the win, but I digress. War Master’s Charge. My candidate for best-made ultimate technique in Tome of Battle.Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-64689428382455007132010-09-18T08:15:00.000-07:002010-09-18T08:30:21.942-07:00Expanded Class Feature 9: Divine Mind<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Divine Mind<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Complete Psionic<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for psionics as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-it-works-psionics.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface: </span><br />Okay, back to psionics. This time, we look at the absolute worst psionic class out there (with the caveat that Soulknife really doesn’t count) in my quest to get all the crappy classes out of the way first so that I’m left with the good stuff.<br /><br />This is the first class from Complete Psionic, which is widely regarded as a piece of trash that overly relies on reprinting old material from XPH with minor (and often unnecessary and often ignored) updates paired with mediocre original content. Which isn’t to say it’s all crap, particularly since there aren’t many other sources of psionic material, but it’s still not a well-made book.<br /><br />Anyways, there’s actually a bit of history behind the Divine Mind, or at least rumors that I’ve heard. Apparently, Ardent and Divine Mind were originally meant to be one class, but they were deemed to be a bit much, and so they were split. Ardent won out of that divorce, though like the Shadowcaster, on closer inspection, Divine Mind isn’t quite as bad as I thought going in, but it’s still a mess.<br /><br />Full disclosure: I’ve never actually really used this class for anything. And for good reason.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits: </span><br />The Divine Mind is a psionic Paladin without the alignment restriction and less code-related rubbish. And… that’s really it. Or perhaps a Favored Soul would be a better comparison? Basically, they channel god juice to get stuff done.<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits: </span><br />Skeleton! Medium BAB, d10 hit die, strong fort/will, 2+ skill points from a crappy list, martial weapons, heavy armor, shields.<br /><br />Medium BAB and a d10 hit die. The only other WotC creation I can think of that has that frame is the Soulknife.<br /><br />For features, the Divine Mind has three things going on; mantles, auras, and powers. While with regards to fluff, they’re psionic Paladins, with regards to mechanics, they’re more like psionic Bards or Marshals, just with crappy skills.<br /><br />First, mantles. These are similar to domains for Clerics. They have up to nine powers, and an associated special ability (though mantle abilities tend to be comparable to half a feat rather than a full feat like domain abilities tend to be). Mantles are a feature exclusive to the Divine Mind and the Ardent.<br /><br />However, there’s one big thing that separates mantles from domains; the Ardent and Divine Mind don’t have spell lists. Period. Instead, they can only select powers from their respective mantles. To make up for this restriction, they get more mantles than Clerics get domains. The Ardent gets six mantles over fifteen levels, gaining three in their first two levels, and the Divine Mind gets… three. One at first-level, one at sixth-level, and one at twelfth-level. Also, unlike Ardents who derive their powers from personal philosophies and may choose whichever mantles they please, the Divine Mind is linked to a deity and has her mantle choices restricted by her deity in much the same way as a Cleric. There’s a page dedicated to listing mantles for PHB, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron deities, giving each four mantles in their portfolio. You get three. So your choices are very nearly made for you unless you’re playing in Eberron and can worship the entire Sovereign Host as a single entity gaining access to any of their domains/mantles that you please.<br /><br />Then, there’s power progression. This one is just bizarre. They go up to sixth-level powers, sure, but they don’t gain access to first-level powers until level five, then don’t get sixth-level powers until level 20. They only get nine powers, ever, and only get 62 power points by level 20, in comparison to the Psychic Warrior- one of the other main manifesting classes that cap out at 6th-level powers- who has 127 power points and 20 powers by level 20. Manifesting is based on wisdom.<br /><br />Then, there are auras, which are similar to Marshal auras or Dragon Shaman auras or Bardic Music. They start out affecting allies within a whopping five feet and the range increases five feet at a time up to fifty feet at level twenty. This means that at low levels, when you don’t have any powers at all yet thus making your one mantle and its half feat pretty much a joke, when all you really have to set yourself apart is your aura… it only works within five feet. Blah.<br /><br />You can only have one aura active at any given time (scaling to two or three at a time later) and changing auras takes an hour’s meditation (falling all the way to a swift action by level 18). There are no use-per-day restrictions on auras; you can keep them up all day long.<br /><br />Divine Minds start with three generic auras- one granting a 1-5 point bonus to AB (scaling with level), one that does the same for AC, and one that grants a +2-6 point bonus to Spot, Listen, and initiative (scaling with level).<br /><br />In addition to the generic auras, Divine Minds get an additional aura option with every mantle they have. All three of them. Here’s the problem. Most of them are utterly mediocre and a lot of them don’t scale. For example, +2 on bluff checks made to feint! Woo! Or a flat +1 bonus to damage, but only if the target’s already wounded. Or a +2 to overcome spell resistance, but only against outsiders. Admittedly, some are pretty good, like DR1/- scaling to DR5/- at level 20. Admittedly, DR5/- is pretty cruddy at high levels unless you’re facing hordes of nickel-and-dime mooks, but being able to constantly grant that to the whole party at once is nice, and at first level, DR 1/- is actually meaningful.<br /><br />However, since you have so few mantle options, already restricted by deity, and they’re your only source of a spell list, there’s just so much stacked on mantle/deity selection in order to simply not suck eventually. You need all your limited supply of powers and auras to be top-notch at all times in order to just be decent, but that’s nigh impossible given the constraints.<br /><br />Oh, and there is a series of feats- Tap Mantle, Don Mantle, and Extra Aura- that can grant you access to the power list, granted ability, and aura of another mantle. The feats must be taken in order. Unless you’re worshipping a pantheon, if you go that route, these three feats essentially grant you access to a fourth mantle that you chose not to take in the first place because it’s the least useful mantle your deity offers. Woo.<br /><br />Oh, and they get Divine Grace as a Paladin at level four.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Adaptation: </span><br />Put the Divine Mind side-by-side with a Bard, and it comes up short on almost every level. Divine Mind auras don’t really keep up with the more versatile Bardic Music, their manifesting is less effective and far more constrained than bardic casting, and that’s really all they have; no skills, no secondary perks, just a bigger hit die and heavy armor/weapons. Meh.<br /><br />But, the class is salvageable. First and foremost, it needs the same power point/power level progression as the game’s other two manifesters who cap out at 6th-level powers- the Lurk and the Psychic Warrior. Powers available from level one, power points topping out at 127. I’d also give them two mantles at level one, for a total of four (all their deity’s mantles), and a total of twelve powers (two per power level).<br /><br />I’d also be open to stepping up some of the crappier, non-scaling auras to make them… well… stop being crappy.<br /><br />Then, as more of an aesthetic move than anything, I’d probably switch them over to charisma-based manifesting. The Psychic Warrior’s already a medium BAB melee class that gets up to 6th-level powers, and it also shares company with the more casting-centric Ardent from whence it’s spawned; putting a little more distance between the two is a good thing. There’s room for a more melee-oriented charisma-based manifester to sit next to the Wilder. I’d also probably make the aura a flat 30’ aura, maybe bumping it up to 60’ at level 10 or 15, simply because the itty bitty aura sizes at low levels are very annoying.<br /><br />There’s still the problem of having your power selection restricted by your mantle selection, usually resulting in a hideously crappy makeshift spell list, but that’s kind of a balancer to the class. It may be such a big deal, however, that tossing full BAB into the mix may be appropriate.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />Divine Mind is pretty much a melee class. You don’t have the power point supply or power selection to be much of a caster, you don’t have skills, and while you could do archery in theory, it really doesn’t work out well unless the party’s built around you; your auras don’t reach very far, and they’re most useful on the front lines, so you need to be suitable for the front lines.<br /><br />To that end, strength and constitution are your main stats, and you don’t want a penalty to dexterity. You need wisdom, of course, since it’s your casting stat, though it has extra importance here; you don’t have much of a power point pool, so you need all the bonus power points you can get. I probably wouldn’t raise it above 16, but it may be wise to pair that with a wisdom-boosting item for more power points. Your skill list sucks and you only really need Concentration, so you can dump intelligence. Charisma fuels Divine Grace, but you have a lot of other stat demands, so you may only be able to manage, like, a twelve in charisma if you’re not forced to dump it outright.<br /><br />Also, a lot of your auras- including your three generic auras, which could well be your best- are morale bonuses that don’t stack with other morale bonuses. If your team has other significant sources of morale bonuses, you’re pretty much useless and should probably consider something else, like Psychic Warrior.<br /><br />However, by and large, I’d almost classify this as a misfiled NPC class, the same category I put the Marshal, Healer, and Dragon Shaman in, though it’s not quite as bad. It’s not very good, can’t do much, and they’re mainly an aura-meister who can’t do much themselves. Not very interesting as PCs, but they can work as NPC leader units, particularly since aura types are really only any good when they have a group of allies of a type and size that PCs rarely have. If the party has two people in melee, one being the Divine Mind and the other the Rogue, then that +2 AB aura just isn’t as good as it is for the NPC leading a group of five gnolls and an ogre. Also, as an ally, Divine Mind tends not to be a glory class, so it’s a good ally to give to back up the party.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary: </span><br />Strengths:<br />Buffing auras<br />Um... has powers, eventually, kinda...<br />Um… not much else<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Very slow to start<br />Ridiculously small auras at low levels<br />Late and stunted casting<br />Lots of auras either don’t scale or outright suck<br />Mantles tremendously limit power selection<br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Soulborn, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Totemist, Unbound Witch, Warblade, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Time: Probably Warblade. Really, this time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Postscript: </span>Due to the amount of time writing these things takes, some installments may shift to biweekly, depending on how much time and energy has to go into them. Some are quick, some aren't, and of course, sometimes life's busier than other times. This next installment's probably two weeks away.Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-2049553157293152192010-09-08T14:22:00.000-07:002010-09-08T14:51:20.625-07:00Expanded Class Feature 8: Incarnate<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Incarnate<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Magic of Incarnum<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works: </span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for incarnum classes as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-it-works-incarnum.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface: </span><br />This time, we crack open Magic of Incarnum and take a look at the definitive incarnum class, the Incarnate. Incarnum is the second-to-last alternate system to start work on, and probably the most obscure, so let’s go.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits: </span><br />If you’ve read what incarnum is in the ‘How it Works’ article, then the bulk of the fluff here can be explained by simply explaining the class’ name. Incarnates have an alignment restriction, in that you must be neutral/good, neutral/evil, lawful/neutral, or chaotic/neutral. You can be a Good Incarnate, an Evil Incarnate, a Law Incarnate (who is contractually obligated to make at least one Judge Dredd reference in her lifetime), or a Chaos Incarnate. You can call these distinct classes in about the same way that you can call an Illusionist and an Enchanter different classes.<br /><br />The Incarnate is, quite literally, the incarnation of a single alignment aspect, and through that alignment they can pull the associated aspect from the well of souls that is incarnum to create their soulmelds. So a Law Incarnate who makes an Incarnate Weapon is literally forging a sword made of cosmic-level justice and honor.<br /><br />Ironically (and thankfully), Incarnates don’t have any sort of code of conduct binding them like the Paladin’s overbearing code. Just a clause that if your alignment changes, you lose class features.<br /><br />And that’s really the long and short of it; the Incarnate is a paragon of their alignment that wields it as their tool.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits: </span><br />As always, skeleton first. Low BAB, strong fortitude/will, d6 hit die, 2+ skill points per level, simple weapons, medium armor, shields.<br /><br />It’s worth mentioning the skill list. You get seven skills. Three of them are Knowledge skills. Two are Craft and Profession. The last two are Spellcraft and Concentration, but meldshapers aren’t spellcasters. This is, quite possibly, the crappiest skill list in the entire game. Intelligence isn’t a major stat and you only get 2+ skill points per level, but a great many soulmelds give significant skill boosts that could make this class a decent skill monkey.<br /><br />Anyways, as you should be able to tell from the low BAB and d6 hit die, the Incarnate is primarily a frontline melee class. Yes, I am being serious. Each of the meldshaping classes corresponds to one of the three core divine casters; Totemist to the Druid, Soulborn to the Paladin, and Incarnate to the Cleric. However, meldshaping doesn’t have the healing or the vast array of utility and support abilities. Really, they’re just personal buffs, so buff your hit points up, boost that AB, and wade into the fray. It’s a case of confused design, but it works.<br /><br />Anyways, class features, starting with the incidentals. At level 1, you get an aura as a Cleric of your alignment and Detect [Opposed Alignment] at will. Meh.<br /><br />At level 3, you get a +1 to your soulmelds’ essentia capacity, increasing to +2 at level 15. Considering soulmelds normally top out at 4 at level 18, that’s pretty big.<br /><br />Also at level 3, you get Incarnum Radiance, which is boost based on your alignment; melee AB for law, AC for good, melee damage for evil, and movement speed for chaotic. The bonus scales from +1/+1/+2/+10’ to +5/+5/+10/+50’ by level 20. This works in a manner similar to rage, with a duration based on wisdom, and like rage is only usable a few times per day and it leaves you fatigued afterward (at least until level 17). This starts off as self-only, but you can share it with your allies at level seven, which is quite nice.<br /><br />Next, you get Rapid Meldshaping, which lets you swap out a soulmeld a few times per day as a full-round action.<br /><br />Then, you have your capstones. First, you become an outsider with your alignment subtype. Second (but more importantly), you have Perfect Meldshaper, a.k.a. asskicking mode. Once per day, for a number of rounds dependent on your wisdom modifier, all your soulmelds are filled to their essentia capacity. This is liable to effectively be equivalent to double your essentia or close to it. A real, meaningful capstone. There’s a rarity.<br /><br />And then, we have the actual meldshaping. Incarnates get the best meldshaping abilities, though they are followed closely by Totemists. Their essentia pool grows from one to twenty-six. They gain access to the crown chakra at level two (earlier than the Totemist, though considering that’s when the Totemist gets their unique totem chakra and the crown chakra’s pretty underwhelming…) and they’re the only base class that can access the soul chakra (at level 19, where it’s actually not all that impressive). Otherwise, they gain access to chakras at the same rate as Totemists. Your supply of chakra binds scales from one at level two to five at level eighteen.<br /><br />And of course, you have the soulmelds. You go from being able to shape two at a time at first-level to being able to shape nine at a time at 19th-level, though the number of soulmelds you can shape is also limited by your constitution score; you need 19 constitution to shape nine soulmelds. And on that note, the save DCs for your soulmelds’ effects are calculated as ten plus essentia invested plus your wisdom mod. In other words, complete trash that enemies will probably only fail on a natural one at higher levels.<br /><br />Incarnate soulmelds lack the tighter central theme of the Totemist (and yes, I know I’m comparing a lot to a class I haven’t even reviewed yet, but… they’re really all there is to compare to), but you have a lot of them; more than any other class. Generally, these can be split three ways. You get a lot of skill boosters, which you can’t generally make the best use of single-classed unless they have good chakra binds, you have buff effects that can get your AB, HP, and the like up to the levels you need (which are pretty much your bread and butter) and incidental effects, like short-range flight/teleportation that really help round out your ability set. A lot of chakra bind effects fall in that last category, and they all come together to be pretty good and round you out quite well, but it’s not really good enough to truly justify twenty levels in this class as-is.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Adaptation: </span><br />Today, we have a new section. The adaptations! A few of the older feature segments could have probably used this, most notably the Shadowcaster, and this will probably be a fairly regular addition in the future, as-needed.<br /><br />I’d say WotC dropped the ball a bit on the Incarnate, but only a bit. In the Incarnate skeleton, they treat meldshaping with the same weight as full spellcasting, but it’s not at that level. Not even close. Incarnate is supposed to be the incarnum Cleric, but doesn’t get the Cleric skeleton when the Totemist gets the Druid skeleton.<br /><br />Really, the Incarnate could a far more worthwhile class to take to level 20 (as opposed to being dipping fodder) if it had a Cleric’s medium BAB and maybe the d8 hit die and heavy armor. And some skill boosts would be nice, too. Nothing major, but maybe 4+ with the physical and diplomatic skills.<br /><br />On the fluffy side, the D&D alignment system is an incoherent mess and encouraging it is rarely a good idea. A class so closely tied to alignment itself is… problematic, in all the same ways that alignment is already problematic. At the very least, I’d ease up a bit and allow, say, a lawful/good Good Incarnate, if only because the combination with Paladin is appropriate and attractive.<br /><br />However, it’s easy enough to strip away the alignment aspects and instead make the Incarnate a manifestation of an ideal or an emotion, like love or rage, then either replace existing features or pick the most appropriate. For example, a Love Incarnate might be able to detect attraction and grant fast healing or temporary hit points with her Incarnum Radiance. A Rage Incarnate might swap out Incarnum Radiance for Barbarian Rage (and perhaps get Share Rage at level seven; probably not as useful as it sounds, especially in a normal group, but it could be cool).<br /><br />Incarnate can also fairly easily fit the standard Cleric/Favored Soul mold, wielding the power of their deity, or be a more traditional arcane scholar who simply knows how to make these soulmelds through intensive study rather than being the physical embodiment of impossibly pure pureness.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage: </span><br />My own experience with using Incarnates has pretty much fallen into three types. Those who don’t go past level four, those who multiclass out by level four, and those who are gestalt. In a standard game, it’s just never seemed worth it to go past level four because of that low BAB.<br /><br />But… that’s really not a big deal; Incarnate multiclasses phenomenally well with almost anything, just take a 1-4 level dip. If you multiclass a skill monkey, your soulmelds boost skills and provide useful options like short-range flight. If you multiclass melee, Incarnate brings a plate full of buffs. And usually, “Never give up caster levels,” is nearly an axiom for casters, but the Sapphire Hierarch prestige class is essentially the incarnum theurge, advancing both meldshaping and divine magic at every level, and you can get in on one level of Law Incarnate with a few levels in nearly any divine caster. It doesn’t give you access to any chakra binds, but six soulmelds and an essentia pool of eleven (before feats, race choice, and items) on top of almost full Cleric or Archivist (or whatever) progression is nothing to balk at. In any of those cases, you pretty much just build as you would build the other side of the multiclass. There’s even a Soul Manifester in the Mind’s Eye web enhancement series which combines incarnum and psionics in much the same way as Sapphire Hierarch. It requires the ability to bind to a chakra, so you’ll either need to take a second level of Incarnate to get in or wait until sixth level to take the Open Least Chakra feat; I suggest the latter, to keep your power progression up.<br /><br />Now, if there is a skeleton boost in place, Incarnate could well be worth taking to level twenty. In that case, constitution is a big deal; you need a constitution score of 19 to shape as many soulmelds as possible at higher levels. There’s also a feat, Expanded Soulmeld Capacity, which can increase the capacity of a single soulmeld by one… up to a maximum equal to your constitution modifier. That means, at the highest levels, you’d need a constitution score of 24 to get a single extra point of essentia in a single soulmeld. If the game’s expected to go to level 18+, it’s probably not worth it (though 24 isn’t horribly unreasonable with a magic item), but you can skip that feat. (Then again, at lower levels, that feat is awesome.)<br /><br />In general, if you’re focusing more on tanking, you want to be on track for a constitution score of 20ish before magic items by level 20. If you’re focused more on murder, you want to be on track for a constitution score of 20ish after magic items by level 20. If you don’t expect to get that far, you still want a serious constitution score since you’re a front-line class with a d6 hit die.<br /><br />Either way, odds are strength will be your main stat, since you have major troubles hitting people. Law Incarnate helps here with its AB boosts. Dexterity is, as always, something you don’t want a penalty in. Intelligence, you can outright dump; your skill list is garbage. Charisma can be dumped. And wisdom? While you don’t want a penalty to it, it doesn’t give you much.<br /><br />For soulmelds, AC boosts can make you one of the few effective tanks. Vitality Belt is a must, eventually. It’s like Improved Toughness for every point of essentia you put into it (note: the bonus equals your meldshaper level, making this awesome for pure Incarnates and crap for multiclass incarnates), and you need the hit points. This thing can take you from dangerously squishy to one of the biggest sacks of hit points the party can ask for. AB-boosts are a godsend, though the best of them are Law Incarnate exclusives.<br /><br />If there is no skeleton boost, but you’re still dead-set on pure Incarnate, there is a way at higher levels, if you incorporate psionic material. If you play as one of the psionic races, like Elan, or just play as an Azurin and spend your bonus feat on Wild Talent, you get a power point pool which allows you to become psionically focused and take psionic feats. One of these feats (which has another feat as a prereq) is Deep Impact, which lets you expend psionic focus to resolve a single melee attack as a touch attack. Unfortunately, it requires +5 BAB, so you’re not going to qualify until level 10 and without retraining, you’re not going to get it until level twelve. Add Psionic Meditation, which allows you to regain psionic focus as a move action, and you can take a single standard action attack as a touch attack per round, and against most foes, touch attacks are much easier to pull off, often laughably easy. Next, get a two-handed weapon like a spear and use Power Attack; you’re only getting one attack per round, so make it deal as much damage as possible. This works best with Evil Incarnate and its damage boosts. And in case you haven’t noticed, this route is highly feat-intensive, hinging on a combination of five feats, and doesn’t come together until high levels.<br /><br />Another, easier option to consider is something I’d really only recommend for the Incarnate. The Book of Exalted Deeds’ Vow of Poverty. This feat basically means you forgo all material goods- including pretty much all gear- and instead gain a bunch of pluses that are supposed to approximate level-appropriate gear. For most classes, this is an extremely bad idea because, although the pluses are your bread and butter, the other magical effects like flight are the kinds of things you’re completely boned if you don’t have access to. However, the Incarnate’s soulmelds can emulate a great many magic item effects, and actually chakra binds tend to come into conflict with magic items anyways, so this is a two-fer. And it makes sense for a Good Incarnate.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary: </span><br />Strengths:<br />Largest array of soulmelds<br />Largest essentia pool<br />Ready-made excuse for Judge Dredd references<br />Good tank (after very low levels)<br />Multiclasses spectacularly well<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Crappy skills<br />Weak skeleton<br />Poor scaling<br />Chakra binds can conflict with magic items<br />Closely tied to alignment<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Soulborn, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Totemist, Unbound Witch, Warblade, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Week: Divine MindValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-58574073936877019892010-09-04T19:25:00.000-07:002010-09-04T19:32:46.365-07:00How it Works: IncarnumThis is a unified “How It Works” section for all incarnum-using classes. That’s Incarnate, Soulborn, and Totemist.<br /><br />Incarnum comes from Magic of Incarnum, one of the later entries into the 3.5 library and one with fairly little support. Dragon Magic has a few more soulmelds, as do web supplements. I don’t know if Dragon Magazine ever put anything out, but really Magic of Incarnum has nearly all the incarnum material.<br /><br />So, to start off, what is incarnum? It’s essentially cosmic soul stuff. Incarnum is the energy of all souls, whether they’re living, dead, or not-yet-born. Any mana analogue works, though.<br /><br />Also, incarnum is blue.<br /><br />There are a few vocabulary words to know when dealing with incarnum, and really, they’re the hardest part.<br /><br />Soulmelds: These are the bread and butter of incarnum. Basically, a soulmeld is where you take a bit of incarnum and shaping it into a tool and melding it to your soul (hence the name) for a time. You can think of a soulmeld as a kind of phantom magic item, or a visible buff. Each is associated with a part of the body (those Cerulean Sandals go on your feet), and tend to manifest as ghostly body parts or equipment. They each have a certain benefit, like bonuses to skills, AC, or AB, or more interesting abilities like the ability to spit acid or fly short distances or inflict fire damage on foes who strike you in melee. These benefits improve via the next two vocabulary words. Soulmelds do not have levels, and all meldshaping classes gain access to all their soulmelds automatically. The number of soulmelds you can shape at a time are limited by your class level and your Constitution score.<br /><br />Essentia: Personal soul energy. Mechanically, essentia’s just a pool of points that you shuffle around your soulmelds (or in some cases, feats and abilities) to improve your benefits. So, the Gorgon Mask increases your fortitude saves by one, and for every point of essentia you have invested in it, the bonus improves by one more. Essentia can be shuffled between your soulmelds as a free action once per round, letting you adapt to changing circumstances. So, when you really need to strangle somebody, you can shunt that essentia from your Gorgon Mask, losing the fortitude boost, to your Girallon Arms, gaining a bonus to grapple checks. Essentia can be gained from race or magic items, but it’s mainly a class feature. The maximum amount of essentia you can invest in a single place is limited by level, going from one at level one to four at level eighteen. Certain feats and class abilities can improve this, up to about seven or so.<br /><br />Chakras: Every character already uses chakras. They just go by a different name; magic item slots. Normally, soulmelds don’t use item slots, so you can have a soulmeld associated with your throat and still use a magic amulet. However, as your level goes up, you open up chakras, letting you bind soulmelds to them. When you bind a soulmeld to a chakra, it becomes more powerful but uses up a magic item slot. So, for example, Mauling Gauntlets normally grants a bonus to strength checks that scales as you invest essentia. If you bind it to your hands chakra, it takes up a magic item slot but grants you an equivalent bonus to unarmed damage along with the benefits of Improved Unarmed Strike. Which chakras you can bind to and how many soulmelds you can bind are limited by class level.<br /><br />And, with that vocabulary, that’s pretty much the bulk of it. Just get your eight hours’ rest, do your hour’s spell preparation- in this case, it’s shaping and binding soulmelds for the day- and go about your adventuring way shuffling around your essentia between your soulmeleds as needed. It’s a very simple system.<br /><br />Characters who don’t take any levels in incarnum classes can still get in on the incarnum game. Shape Soulmeld lets you shape a single soulmeld, and it’s an awesome feat for filling in blanks if you ever have a feat to spare. Almost anyone can put it to use. The Azurin race are basically incarnum-infused humans who get a point of essentia instead of bonus skill points, and an Essentia Jewel is a cheap magic item that can get you a second point. So, if you’re planning a human Paladin of Kossuth (FR’s god of fire), you can go with an Azurin and spend a feat and a few gold to get Shape Soulmeld: Mantle of Flame so that anyone who hits you in melee takes 3d6 damage (2d6 before you hit level 6).<br /><br />Incarnum has a lot going for it, but ultimately, it has one major flaw. It doesn’t really scale well. Essentia capacity goes up with level regardless of whether you take incarnum classes (though incarnum classes get a little more capacity than non). You get all your soulmelds at level one (or level four for Soulborn, but they suck). All you really get for leveling up is more essentia (which is admittedly very nice) and the higher-end chakra binds, which tend to be underwhelming for the number of levels you have to invest to get them.<br /><br />On the other hand, incarnum makes for some great dips. 1-4 levels in Incarnate or Totemist get you a huge stack of soulmelds, some essentia to play with, and your basic chakra binds, and you can just multiclass out to some melee class or skill monkey or something with a nice sack of goodies. There are even a great many incarnum feats that are explicitly designed for multiclass incarnum-users, like Cobalt Rage (which you can invest essentia in for bonus damage while raging) or Indigo Strike (which you can invest essentia in for bonus damage on sneak attacks). And while the incarnum dip is not a bad thing- in fact, it's a rather good and interesting thing- the fact that it’s so rough going straight meldshaper is a bit problematic (though it is entirely doable if you know what you're doing).<br /><br />In addition to multiclassing spectacularly well, incarnum also fares well in gestalt, since it compliments everything. Not much more to say, there.Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-74216673920703552422010-09-03T14:22:00.000-07:002010-09-03T14:28:08.368-07:00Expanded Class Feature 7: Foe Hunter<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Foe Hunter<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Secrets of Pact Magic<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for pact-making classes as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-it-works-pact-magic.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />Alright, stepping into Secrets of Pact Magic. This time, we’re working with the Foe Hunter, one of several hybrid-type classes that integrate a solid base set of class features with spirit binding. In this case, a rogue/ranger/binder mesh. This one’s my least favorite of the spirit-binding classes, and I still like it, which should say a great deal about how highly I regard the material. As if my glowing praise for Secrets of Pact Magic hadn’t already. Next time I dip into pact magic, I'll probably go for my favorite pact magic class, the Unbound Witch.<br /><br />Full disclosure, I’ve never actually used this particular class, either as a DM or a player.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />The Foe Hunter is… exactly what it says on the tin. All binders haggle with spirits who hardly exist anymore, beings grasping on any means to influence the world again. The Foe Hunters are the ones who entice spirits by promising to kill people they don’t like. And this class is about killing people, in no uncertain terms. In fact, you can pretty much take penalties for NOT killing people. This is a sneaky/stabby class in the same vein as the Rogue or Ninja, with a dark magic edge. It’s also a darker class, leaning more towards bounty hunters and assassins than the noble thief.<br /><br />Overall, this class has a very antiheroic edge to it. There is lip service given to good-aligned Foe Hunters who only go after evil foes and who subdue/capture targets, but we’re talking about a class that takes penalties for not killing people. This is a major antihero class, at best.<br /><br />And whatever their bound spirit’s favored enemy is, the Foe Hunter is compelled to kill them or suffer penalties, so if they bind a spirit who hates dwarves, you’d better hope you don’t happen upon some friendly dwarves. And there’s actually a spirit whose favored enemy is all humanoids, so that could well mean the Foe Hunter takes penalties for not murdering the entire party in their sleep. This really hinders their social life and tends to make them loners, often more suited for NPC status than PCs.<br /><br />Still, it’s a cool class for that dark, hateful hunter/assassin type character.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />Mechanically, the Foe Hunter is a synthesis of Ranger and Rogue with binding flare.<br /><br />First, the skeleton. Medium BAB, d6 hit die, 6+ skill points per level from a Rogue-like list, strong reflex saves, rogue weapon proficiencies and light armor. A Rogue-like skeleton for a Rogue-like class.<br /><br />The foe hunter partly centers around their bound spirit or spirits’ favored enemies, which you get bonuses against. So, if you bind Aza’zati you get bonuses against humanoid spellcasters, and if the next day you bind Mute Sylvus, you get bonuses against magical beasts instead.<br /><br />The first bonus you get is Favored Spirit Enemy, which is like a Ranger’s Favored Enemy, but applies only against your bound spirit’s favored enemies. This bonus goes from +2 at level 1 to +10 at level 20. You also get a bonus on some skill checks (like Diplomacy) when working with your spirit’s favored allies.<br /><br />Also at level one, you get Track (with Swift Tracker at level 8) as a bonus feat and a rather nice feature called Mark Foe. At will, you can take a standard action to essentially declare vendetta against a single foe, marking it for two minutes during which time you add half your favored enemy bonus to hit and damage (even if they’re not a favored enemy). You can only mark one foe at a time. Of course, blowing a standard action in combat is a significant price and may not always be worth it, but if you sneak up on a foe, mark them, then open fire, it’s nice. Of interest, this is a medium BAB class and Mark Foe adds up to +5 to hit, making up for lower accuracy, with certain constraints. Actually being able to hit is always good.<br /><br />The last feature you get at level 1 (other than binding) is Spirit Driven. This feature is very simple. If you see one of your favored enemies, you are compelled to kill them. As soon as you recognize any favored enemy within thirty feet, you suffer a -1 penalty to all d20 rolls and a -4 penalty to Concentration unless you are trying to kill the enemy. This penalty lasts until you kill a favored enemy (not necessarily the one who triggered this effect) or until your pact ends. And the wording is unclear, but it seems like the penalty would stack with itself, such that if you run into seven dwarves and they’re your favored enemy, you eat a -7 penalty to all d20 rolls for the day unless you kill a dwarf.<br /><br />This is the feature that really turns me off of the Foe Hunter. The murderous bloodlust on sight is just… not something I’d want to deal with, from any angle.<br /><br />Moving on, you get Evasion at level two (advancing to Improved Evasion at level 13) and Trapfinding at level three (which is odd). Also at level three, you start gaining Sneak Attack at half progression, going from 1d6 at level 1 to 5d6 at level 17.<br /><br />At level four, you get Boon of Lost Souls. If you kill someone, you can get a bonus to an attack roll made soon thereafter. It works three times per day. At level five, Uncanny Dodge (advancing to Improved Uncanny Dodge at level 9). At level six, Death Attack like an Assassin. At level eight, you can make coup de graces faster. At level ten, you get Locate Creature once a week. You also gain Scrying at level 13, Slay Living against marked foes at level 15, Power Word: Kill at level 18, and Discern Location at level 20, with various uses per day/week depending on the ability.<br /><br />You also get supersenses. Scent at level 7, 30’ blindsense at level 16, 30’ blindsight at level 19.<br /><br />And then, you have spirit binding. You get a Bard-like progression, capping out at 6th-level spirits, which limits some of the effects you have access to, but does tend to make those binding checks a bit easier to make.<br /><br />Lower spirit levels, of course, limit what you can do with them, and you’re probably not going to have the big constitution score required to really make good use of anything that has a save DC, once more limiting the range of powers you can use effectively more towards the buffs and passive abilities. However, there’s the matter of your spirit’s favored enemy and, to a lesser extent, favored ally. If you know what you’re hunting and want to get your Favored Spirit Enemy bonus, then the choice of spirit has already been made for you, even if the spirit’s powers aren’t any good at hunting your enemy. On top of that, if you’re hunting, say, a dwarf, you have to worry about all the friendly dwarves who may stack penalties on you if they come close if you don’t kill them, which really complicates hunting down your dwarf. Also, you have to keep track of your spirits’ favored allies because a lot of your features outright don’t work against them.<br /><br />And if you don’t know what you’ll be dealing with for the day, well… sucks to be you.<br /><br />Plus, there’s the issue of access. Your spirits advance slowly, and you are restricted by what favored enemies they have, so if you want to go minotaur-hunting, no spirit has monstrous humanoids as a favored enemy and if you’re third-level going after an ogre, sorry, but Vandrae isn’t available until you hit level eight, and she only has the male giants as her favored enemy.<br /><br />Bringing all that together, it just puts way too much importance on what really seems like it should be an unobtrusive secondary aspect of spirits, applying too many obnoxious penalties to contend with if you have to deal with a favored enemy on friendly terms or oppose a favored ally.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />You’re the sneaky scout, same as the Rogue or the Scout or the Beguiler or the Factotum or a number of others. The fundamentals are similar. You have quite a few sources of bonus damage (mark, Sneak Attack, Favored Enemy, spirits), so dual-wielding can work well, and archery is another obvious choice on a dexterity-based class like this. Either way, I suggest going a route that doesn’t demand a great deal of strength; you need a lot of stats.<br /><br />Odds are dexterity will be your main stat, since this is a sneaky/stabby class. Constitution is always important, particularly since you only get a d6 for hit points and they determine the save DCs four your spirit’s granted abilities. Normally, I’d advise just blowing off save-ors entirely on a class like this, but since favored enemies/allies play so strongly into what spirits you bind, you may be stuck with save-or effects as your most useful granted abilities, and in those cases, it helps to has save DCs that someone might actually fail against. Still, constitution probably won’t be your primary stat.<br /><br />Strength, you don’t want a penalty in, and a bonus here can help, but it’s not extremely important. You have 6+ skill points per level, but as a skill monkey, you need lots of skill points and if you can’t afford to take Ignore Binding Requirements, you’re going to need some of those skill points to meet prerequisites for your spirits. That makes intelligence important for every Foe Hunter. Wisdom is something you can take or leave; it affects your weak will saves and detection skills, which aren’t that important. You’ll probably need something to dump, and wisdom is a good candidate.<br /><br />Then, there’s charisma. Really, charisma isn’t all that important. You can even dump it. At lower levels, so long as you can meet the requirements for binding spirits, the consequences for failing your binding checks aren’t too terribly significant. Not many personality influences are more significant than, “If you see a dwarf, kill it,” and few physical signs are as bad for your social life. Admittedly, if you fail too badly too often, your alignment could be in peril, so you may not want to dump charisma too badly. At higher levels, you get your usual scaling binding check with levels, but since you only get up to 6th-level spirits, the DCs to bind them tend to be more forgiving. Damian Darkstar, for example? DC26. You gain access to him when you hit level 18, so even if you have a charisma score of six, your binding check is +16 and your alignment is guaranteed secure as long as you’re not eating any penalties. Of course, a twelve or fourteen here is always nice.<br /><br />One of the bigger concerns is feat selection. This class is pretty strapped for feats. It gains no bonus feats and the two most obvious styles- archery and dual-wielding- are rather feat-intensive. Darkstalker (Lords of Madness) is always a must-have on higher-level sneaky sorts, since it lets you actually get a roll against the stock supersenses (Scent, Blindsense, Tremorsense, Blindsight) rather than simply automatically being detected. Also, Secrets of Pact Magic provides Soul Strike; as long as you’re bound to a spirit, you can use your Sneak Attack against foes who are normally immune, like constructs and undead, but only up to a number of damage die equal to the highest level of spirit you can bind. Another must-have in most campaigns. Just covering the barest essentials, you may chew through most or all of your feats, leaving little freedom in that regard. However, if you have some feats to spare, it may be worth considering spending a feat to secure your alignment and Volcanic Burst, which can give you a hefty boost to save DCs, but most likely only once per encounter. While you really shouldn’t rely on your save-or abilities, Volcanic Burst lets you get more bang for your buck when you have to take them.<br /><br />One last feat worth mention that’s a real double-edged sword is Anima Binder, which would allow you to bind anima spirits that don’t have things like favored enemies and allies. If you bind an anima as your spirit for the day, you would forgo your favored enemy bonus, but you wouldn’t take penalties for not killing every dwarf that walks by or be unable to use a class feature because the foe is a favored ally. As a safety net for when you’re uncertain what the day will be, it’s worth considering if you can spare the feat, but you probably can’t.<br /><br />And, as always, know your (relevant mechanical element)s. In this case, spirits. A lot goes into picking which spirit or spirits you’re gonna bind. You have to balance all the complications and benefits that favored allies and enemies bring with your overall build and the abilities themselves, so there’s quite a lot of data you need in order to make an informed decision.<br /><br />As a final note, if you want to use a Foe Hunter NPC, life becomes a lot easier as the NPC can explicitly build around a single spirit at a single level for use against a single creature type and doesn’t really suffer as much from social stigmas brought about by compulsions to murder. For that reason, I see the Foe Hunter as more of a DM tool than a player character (even though the vast array of class features and fiddly bits screams “PC”) for use for the demon hunter NPC or the undead hunter NPC or the PC hunter NPC.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />A broad and useful array of flexible abilities<br />Solid thiefy skill list<br />Secure employment in the murder industry<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Lots of conditional abilities makes it difficult to bring out your full power<br />Compulsions to murder are bad for your social life<br />Spirit selection is often largely done for you<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Incarnate, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Soulborn, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Totemist, Unbound Witch, Warblade, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Week: Incarnate (I need a little more time to work on the Tome of Battle primers)Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-19855060926882908892010-08-28T10:46:00.000-07:002010-09-22T18:01:14.744-07:00How it Works: Pact MagicThis is a unified ‘How it Works’ section for all the pact-making classes from Secrets of Pact Magic (and those who tap into pact magic through other means). This does not include the Tome of Magic’s Binder, though there are similarities.<br /><br />Getting down to business, spirit binding is pretty much what it sounds like; you barter, haggle, and coerce spirits into lending you their power- usually four or five abilities that tend to be passive, at-will, or have a five-round recharge- through a ten minute ceremony. Fundamentally, this works in a manner similar to the Tome of Magic version. Every spirit has its own legend, persona, quirks, themes, and all that rot. In fact, they all get their own nice, organized two-page spread sorted by spirit level first, then alphabetically within their given level, because that’s how anyone who’s looking for a given spirit is probably going to look through them anyways. Huzzah. Also, there are charts that are actually useful, giving you every spirit’s name, level, the page it’s located on, and a list of its powers. You know, the information that’s actually useful in a chart for all the spirits.<br /><br />To form a pact, you make a binding check rolling 1d20 plus your binder level plus your charisma modifier (usually) versus a DC set by the spirit; the higher the level of the spirit, the harder it is to bind, and you need a certain minimum level to bind any given spirit at all. Lots of modifiers can tweak it up or down, but generally, regardless of the result, you get the spirit’s power. The results are as follows:<br /><br />If you succeed, you get the powers with little consequence. You can hide whatever physical sign is associated with the spirit (like, say, horns) at will and it does not influence your personality.<br /><br />If you succeed by a margin of ten or more, you gain an additional power, a capstone ability, which is generally the most powerful or significant ability (your mileage may vary). This is a nice reward for a good binding check.<br /><br />If you fail your binding check, you still get all your powers, however you cannot hide the spirit’s physical sign and it has an influence on your personality, so be careful if you’re not fond of eating babies or being an anarchist for the day or… *looks for a good-aligned one* helping people without hesitation. More inconvenient than it sounds. Failing also impacts some specific abilities and is generally more significant than in Tome of Magic.<br /><br />If you fail your binding check by a margin of ten or more, well, let’s just say you can expect to eat more babies in the future. Your alignment shifts one step towards the spirit’s alignment, and if you fail a will save, the change is permanent.<br /><br /><br />Save DCs for granted abilities are determined by your constitution modifier, which tends to make most pact magic users pretty tough regardless of their hit dice.<br /><br /><br />To make these binding checks, annoying requirements for any given spirit make their ‘triumphant’ return. Granted, most of them are just, “dump a few skill points here,” even if the skill requirements tend to be harsher, but a lot of them get oppressive and annoying. One spirit’s requirement is, “Must be in sight of an elf riding a dragon.” Yeah, there’s a reason I don’t enforce those requirements. You can attempt to bind a spirit without meeting its requirements, but that imposes a -6 penalty on your check and if you fail the check, you outright fail to bind the spirit at all. Adding to the annoyance, there’s no chart listing the requirements, so you have to go digging through the spirits themselves to plan ahead and make sure you actually qualify for the spirits you want. Even if that means… gaining the ability to lay eggs? There’s a reason one of my first feats on my binders is usually Ignore Binding Requirements, if they’re being enforced. If I haven’t made this point clear, I consider this an optional rule to be ignored. And one I’ve spent too much time on already, so it’s time to move on.<br /><br />All spirits also have an associated constellation (similar to spell schools), a favored enemy, and a favored ally. If you are a spirit’s favored enemy, you take a -4 to your binding check, but otherwise, these don’t have much immediate value and are simply referenced for other feats and abilities.<br /><br />And then, all spirits offer four tactical bonuses. These are little actions and conditions related to the spirit’s persona. For example, for one spirit, you meet criteria if you drink a cup of tea, fight near a hobgoblin ally, successfully use the spirit’s Dazing Strike ability, or move through rocky terrain. When you meet these criteria, you get a +1 bonus on all d20 rolls for three rounds, and these bonuses stack. It’s difficult, but if you meet multiple criteria, the bonuses can get rather large, especially if you’re binding multiple spirits at once. Like getting a +6 on an attack roll with your bow for having sex with a shape-changing chicken while drinking tea brewed from the blood of infants! A silly example, of course. Actually, unless your spirit has a pretty easy bonus (for example, I believe one grants you a +1 for using a bow), they tend to be a bit contrived and more easily met by villains. Like a fire giant binder getting a +2 for sitting on a throne that’s on fire. And anything that encourages thrones that are on fire is a good thing in my book.<br /><br />On that note, time to mention binding multiple spirits. Classes from SoPM aren’t like the Binder, who can bind, say, three vestiges of up to 6th-level at level 14. Rather, if you can bind 5th-level spirits, you can bind one 5th-level spirit or any combination of spirits that adds up to five; two 1st-levels and a 3rd-level, a 4th-level and a 1st-level, two 2nd-levels and a 1st-level, and so on. Certain abilities can modify this. In general, SoPM spirits don’t scale quite as well as Tome of Magic spirits, but the way binding multiple spirits works this time around as well as the more well-rounded nature of most of the binding classes this time around, it’s for the best.<br /><br /><br />There are a great many feats that futz with all these aspects. If you don’t like physical signs, binding requirements, alignment shifts, or personality shifts, there are feats to ignore each of them. If you hate all of them, here’s hoping you have a bunch of bonus feats. If you like capstone abilities, there’s a feat to reduce the required margin of success to five (which really helps as some of the higher-level spirits have very high binding DCs). If you want to play up favored allies and enemies, there are a couple feats to grant bonuses related to them. There’s a feat to make tactical bonuses last longer. There are feats rather more fleshed out than Spell Focus to play up constellations. Various classes tend to play with these aspects a little more.<br /><br /><br />And then, there are anima spirits. Anima are a little different from the unique spirits that are the default. They’re generic. They don’t have a constellation, or favored enemies, or personality/alignment shifts, or tactical bonuses. They don’t even have a level; rather, you can bind them at any given level, and their abilities grow stronger if you bind them as a higher-level spirit. It costs a feat to access these spirits, but their flexibility and lack of baggage can be very useful, even if they do tend to be a mixed bag.<br /><br /><br />Finally, there are some ways for non-pact magic classes to dip into the pact-making goodness. The first is an optional rule for trying out pact magic in which spellcasters, instead of preparing spells for the day, you bind spirits up to the highest level of spell you can cast. Since spirits are (generally speaking) less powerful than spells for most purposes, this is generally a raw deal for most save, say, folks who only get up to fourth-level spells anyways, but it’s a good way to sample pact magic in an existing campaign. If you’re not using that variant rule, there’s a feat you can take that has the same effect, as well as alternate class features for the Bard, Druid, Ranger, and Paladin that trade spellcasting (and, in the case of the Paladin and Ranger, additional class features… for some strange reason) for spirit binding at the same rate as they’d normally gain spells.<br /><br />Then, there’s Minor Binding, a feat pretty much anyone can take to gain a little bit of binding. It lets you gain one granted ability from one first-level spirit. There are two additional feats that improve upon this, one letting you take two abilities and the other letting you bind up to a third-level spirit in this way. Finally, there’s Supernatural Dabbler from web supplements, which lets you trade out spell-like abilities to bind spirits for granted abilities. Not many classes get enough spell-like abilities for this to be worthwhile, making it more useful for monsters than PCs, but some do, and as a DM, I’m all for any ability that lets a succubus trade Detect Good for a laser that renders the target so overwhelmingly horny that they cannot properly defend themselves. And it’s rather scary when that marilith reveals that she has the power to actually eat spells cast at her (gained for a couple minutes at the expense of her Summon Demon ability).<br /><br /><br />Secrets of Pact Magic and Villains of Pact Magic are available from <a href="http://www.radiancehouse.com/games.htm">Radiance House Publishing</a>. The official site is <a href="http://www.pactmagic.com/">pactmagic.com</a>, which includes information, free samples, and supplemental materials.Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-66066935980894763352010-08-28T09:58:00.000-07:002010-08-28T10:12:46.487-07:00Expanded Class Feature 6: Binder<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class: </span>Binder<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source: </span>Tome of Magic<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prelude:</span><br />And now, we come to the last of the three classes (and three systems) from Tome of Magic. After the mediocrity that is Shadowcaster and the failure of the Truenamer, this final class, the Binder, is… actually quite good, in most respects. And it actually got some real support. Web supplements, an extra vestige in Dragon Magic, some Dungeon/Dragon articles. There’s a list in the <a href="http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=137.0">Consolidated Binder Guide</a>, though some of the links are broken.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />Roll a charisma check. If you succeed, you get superpowers. If you fail, you still get superpowers.<br /><br />In more detail, pact magic works by making pacts with vestiges. You spend a minute to perform a ritual that summons some spirit from beyond, haggle with it, and get powers from it for the day. These powers can be things like supernatural abilities, bonus feats, proficiencies, damage reduction, stat/skill boosts, and so on. Most of these effects are continuous or at will, but many of them have a five-round recharge period. For example, Amon (one of the first-level vestiges) grants you 60’ darkvision, fire breath that deals [level]d6 damage (with a five-round recharge period, reflex for half), and a natural gore attack in the form of goat horns.<br /><br />In general, the abilities that vestiges grant you are supernatural abilities, meaning they have no verbal or somatic components, ignore spell resistance, and depending on the ability, you may be able to use them without anyone notice that you’re the source.<br /><br />You make a binding check as a part of the ritual, rolling 1d20 plus your charisma modifier plus your binder level, and every vestige has its own binding DC. Regardless of the result, you still get the vestige’s powers, but if you fail, that means you made a poor pact and the vestige also has an influence on you both physically and mentally (actually, the physical influence happens no matter what, but you can usually suppress it if you succeed). Taking Amon as an example again, if you fail your binding check, you become surly and irritable, and because of Amon’s hatred of all things bright and orderly, you’re forced to make a save against any spell from the Fire, Sun, or Law domains, even if they’re beneficial. Also, you grow goat horns and cannot hide them (at level 2, you get the ability to hide the horns if you make a successful binding check). The distinction between a good pact and a poor pact also influences certain other abilities.<br /><br />And that’s essentially it for pact magic itself; most of the rest is just how specific vestiges and class features work.<br /><br />However, there is one other annoying aspect worth mentioning. Special requirements. Some vestiges require, say, five ranks in Knowledge: Religion or the ability to speak Giant or having once stolen a candy bar without ever apologizing in order to bind them. Little things, mostly. My problem isn’t so much the mechanical impact, but the fact that you have to go through every vestige you ever intend to use to make sure you’ll actually be able to bind them. And there is not a convenient compilation of special requirements that you can just glance at, nor any other convenient resource organizing vestiges. It’s a general failing of the books; sifting through vestiges sucks. You can take a feat to ignore special requirements, but that’s just a tax to avoid a nuisance.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />Remember the fluff for the Warlock? Gain power through a pact with some eldritch horror. The Binder is similar, but instead of having haggled with Cthulhu once on page two of your character’s backstory in order to gain power for the rest of their career, you’re haggling with the otherworldly horrors on a daily basis to maintain your powers.<br /><br />This isn’t like signing your soul over to Asmodeus or some fey queen giving you a gift, or even any sort of higher power deigning to deal with those lowly mortals. Rather, you’re dealing with beings that were once great, powerful, or otherwise significant, who are of such cosmic significance that they can never fully fade away, but who have fallen so far from the height of their power that they can no longer directly affect the multiverse proper. Hence, vestiges. They each have their own stories and aspects, but they mostly follow a similar format. Some being (possibly mortal) of considerable power/significance with major character flaw X gets destroyed horribly for said flaw and gets consigned to the void. You’re not sealing deals with the mightiest creatures in the multiverse at the height of their power. You’re making deals with cosmic losers who barely exist and are desperately grasping at any chance to affect reality. And they’re what co-op your brain if you fail your binding check. Sweet.<br /><br />Also, apparently quite a few of the vestiges are throwbacks that’ll test your D&D lore, like Acererak, the demilich from ye olde Tomb of Horrors. This is what I'm told; I'm not exactly up on all that lore.<br /><br />So, a Binder is someone who knows the secret knowledge needed to contact these vestiges, at which point the Binder offers them a chance to be relevant again in exchange for borrowing their power for a while.<br /><br />Oh, and they default to being classified as heretics, which is always fun.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />Okay, as usual, we’ll start with the skeleton, move on to the secondary features, and end at the main course.<br /><br />Medium BAB, strong fortitude/will, d8 HD, 2+ skill points with a list consisting largely of the scholarly and diplomatic skills, simple weapons, light armor. They gain a few bonus feats that can be used to gain higher armor proficiencies, and some vestiges grant better weapon and armor proficiencies (though relying on vestiges for those proficiencies does rather limit you).<br /><br />So, we’re basically looking at a Cleric skeleton, which accurately describes how a Binder is expected to run much of the time. They can do self-buffing melee with supernatural support abilities quite well.<br /><br />At second level, you gain Pact Augmentation; when you make a pact, you select a little perk from a list, like DR 1/- or +5 HP or +1 AB. This bonus applies whether or not you make your binding check, which seems odd to me; this feature seems like it should be a reward for making your binding check, but that’s no big deal. As you level up, you can select more augmentations, to a maximum of five at level 20, and they stack with themselves, so if you select the AB boost, you can get +5 AB from it at level 20.<br /><br />At the same level, you get Suppress Sign. If you succeed at your binding check, this ability lets you hide or show your vestiges’ physical signs as a swift action. Handy if you don’t want to be burned as a commiemutanttraitor. If you fail your binding check, well… I hope you like that face on your torso.<br /><br />Bonus feats at levels 4, 11, and 18 are standard fare. You can pick proficiencies, those useless +2/+2 skill feats no one takes unless it’s a prereq, or pact magic feats.<br /><br />Then comes Soul Guardian at level 6. At this point, your vestiges start protecting your brain (and your generic soul/life force). This starts with immunity to fear, then goes on to Slippery Mind (which is far more useful with strong will saves than it is for a Rogue), immunity to negative levels/energy drain, and full on Mindblank. This functions as long as you’re bound to a vestige, regardless of the outcome of the pact. (Again, it seems like it should be the reward for a good pact. Again, no biggie.)<br /><br />And of course, there’s Soul Binding. You start out with the ability to bind one first-level vestige at level 1, and advance to the ability to bind four vestiges up to 8th level at level 20. Now, how to tackle this beast…<br /><br />Remember that old tagline for Othello (the game)? A minute to learn, a lifetime to master. Yeah, that sums up the way soul binding works. At its core, it’s very simple, but the Binder is quite possibly the most complicated class in the game to put to use. This is not because it only functions if you’re using some esoteric and exacting build- far from it. However, the Binder’s abilities come almost entirely from the vestiges, which are extremely diverse, and you can swap them out every day, so you really have to be on your A game and really have to know which vestige does what and pick the right one for any given situation. This is even more important than for a Wizard preparing spells. A Wizard might pick twenty spells, all of which are pretty powerful and general-purpose. You’re probably picking two vestiges with a fairly specialized role that you’ll be spamming all day. If you choose poorly, you’re useless. And unfortunately, a lot of vestiges tend to fall into this pattern where they’re more of a side dish than a main course, which can leave you with all kinds of awesome secondary abilities but no central features to take advantage of.<br /><br />Also, a lot of your best abilities (especially your save-or-be-beaten abilities) are only usable once every five rounds, so if you haven’t planned out something useful to do those other four rounds and don’t secure the battle in one round, you’re useless again.<br /><br />That said, the vestiges are immensely flexible covering melee to area damage to scouting to diplomacy to healing (Buer is an infinite healing pool; Cure Minor Wounds at will). If you can master your vestiges and- more importantly- your combinations of vestiges, you can adapt to nearly any circumstance and shore up the party in nearly any weak area (though 2+ skill points per level from a decent but not spectacular list limits your skill monkeying).<br /><br />And unfortunately, that’s not something you can get a lot of help with, just as Batman-caliber Wizard spell preparation isn’t something you can really help someone learn. However, since you can bind a vestige within two minutes (one minute to draw the seal, one to make the pact), you can leave a vestige slot blank for later, or take the Expel Vestige feat so that you can swap a vestige out once as the day goes on, as needed.<br /><br />There is, of course, the alternate option of building around a specific combination of vestiges and specifically binding that combination at every opportunity, but that largely misses the point of the class. (Except when you’re the DM making NPCs, in which case it’s the way to go and makes it considerably easier to make memorable and effective opponents.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />It seems like a lot of these usage sections can begin and end with “Know your X,” but it’s critically important to know your vestiges. Unfortunately, slipshod organization and editing don’t help. There’s not a single chart on the vestiges that’s actually any good. Expect to make your own lists. And do look into some of the vestiges from outside Tome of Magic; their inclusion makes you a lot more effective. Zceryll’ summoning ability is extremely useful, for example.<br /><br />It becomes far more important to know your vestiges at higher levels, when you can bind multiple vestiges simultaneously and instead of being worried about how a single vestige works on its own, you’re worried about how multiple vestiges work together, how they complement each other. If you can’t manage combinations, you’re liable to lag. Also, keep in mind that just because a vestige is lower-level doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worse; they tend to scale fairly well (Naberius may be a first-level vestige, but he’s still the go-to social vestige for pretty much your whole career). Yes, if you can bind three vestiges of up to fifth-level, you can bind three fifth-level vestiges if you want, but odds are there’re lower-level vestiges that are more appropriate and more effective.<br /><br />Now, then. Stats. Charisma determines your binding check and the DC to save against your myriad supernatural abilities. This, of course, makes charisma… entirely optional. This is pretty much your first big, stylistic choice. The two main approaches to a Binder are to either pump charisma through the roof to ramp up those save DCs and rely on save-or abilities as your bread and butter, pretty much abandoning all hope of being remotely decent at melee, or to go with a more modest charisma (possibly even dumping it outright) in favor of stronger melee stats. After all, even if you fail your binding check, that really only means you suffer the physical/personality influences; you still get full powers and class features.<br /><br />There are vestiges that work for both routes, but in general, the high-charisma route is stronger at higher levels where you get the really shiny vestiges and the melee route is better at lower levels (where melee’s more effective anyways).<br /><br />In either case, intelligence is fairly important; you don’t get many skill points, and some of them will be tied up in meeting your spirits’ prerequisites. Also, your skill list is pretty good, including all the social skills, making you a good face. Especially if you bind Naberius. Just resist the temptation to use his Persuasive Words power to order folks to kneel before Zod.<br /><br />And then, you have feats/skills. The hard part is, as a Binder, you have two sets of elements working in tandem; your vestige abilities, which are modular and can be swapped out, then your standard feats and skills, which are fixed. This becomes a challenge in that you need a permanent array of feats to support a dynamic array of vestige abilities, which goes right back to “know your vestiges.”<br /><br />And as a final note on usage, remember how earlier I mentioned that a lot of vestiges tend to bring great secondary abilities but lack a solid main course? Well, that lends itself quite well to one of my favorite variants; gestalt. For those not familiar with it, gestalt is a variant rule from Unearthed Arcana that essentially lets you take full features from two classes simultaneously. I could go on about gestalt for quite a while (and it’s good fodder for another post), but suffice it to say, Binders are a great class in gestalt. They go with pretty much anything, since there are vestiges for every occasion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Tremendous flexibility<br />Nigh at-will abilities<br />Fundamentally simple<br />Solid skill list with all the social skills<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Jack of all trades, master of none<br />If you bind the wrong vestige, you’re liable to be useless<br />Complicated to make work well<br />A failed binding check can mean you go around for the day with your skin turned inside out and an intense craving for fried baby.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Postscript:</span><br />Now, I’m gonna do something I’m not planning on doing often. Pass judgment on Tome of Magic.<br /><br />So, is Tome of Magic worth it? Honestly, not really unless you’re a completionist. There are three things in ToM. Pact magic, shadow magic, and truenaming. Truenaming is an abysmal flop. Shadow magic is barely salvageable despite having some decent ideas. And pact magic? Pact magic is awesome. Awesome enough to warrant ToM’s existence and then some, and normally I’d say it’s reason enough to justify it, except… there’s Secrets of Pact Magic.<br /><br />I pimp the Hell out of this book, but that's only because it is awesome, easily rating among the best 3.5 sourcebooks ever. Imagine Tome of Magic if it were three hundred pages on pact magic, but awesomer. That’s Secrets of Pact Magic. Honestly, as much as I like the class, I only really used the Binder a couple times before I got Secrets of Pact Magic. I haven’t used the Binder since.<br /><br />Remember how earlier I mentioned that Binders tended to get great secondary abilities but lack a solid main course? Yeah, Secrets of Pact Magic fix that. Remember how I said binding goes with everything? Secrets of Pact Magic runs with that. It has eight base classes (plus an extra in a web enhancement and four more from Villains of Pact Magic, for a total of thirteen), two of which are variants of, “I bind spirits and I do it better than anyone,” and the rest have more limited binding ability alongside more solid class features that serve as a base (well… plus the Exorcist and Templar from Villains of Pact Magic, which are rather anti-binding). The first class in the book? A Monk that doesn’t suck. Pugilism with supernatural spirit-binding action. There’s the roguelike Foe Hunter, the self-explanatory Pact Warrior, and that’s just the classes.<br /><br />More spirits (rather than vestiges), more interesting spirits, much better organization (hallelujah), loads of pact magic feats, organizations a la Complete Champion (something I like, but probably wouldn’t use prominently) complete with scorecards- one of the organizations’ll even promote you for disintegrating people! Yay! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; this is one dense tome.<br /><br />Now, admittedly, there are a few balance issues to keep your eyes on; the odd no-save daze effect and the like (the author really underestimated how debilitating daze is), a few things that could stack to ridiculous extremes, but just slap a save on it, toss in a, “That doesn’t stack with itself,” and tweak a bit here and there and it’s some awesome stuff.<br /><br />So, in what’s liable to be a move no one else is interested in, we add the Secrets of Pact Magic classes to the list, plus one from web enhancements and four from Villains of Pact Magic. That’s Empyrean Monk, Exorcist, Foe Hunter, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Unbound Witch, and Warbinder. So, let’s start with my least favorite pact-making class (possibly until I give Villains of Pact Magic a better once-over). Least favorite, and I still like it. Next week, we’ll start with the Foe Hunter. Guess what they do. (Don’t worry, we’ll get back to WotC classes for at least a week afterward.)<br /><br />Note, I would start with the Spirit Binder as a direct analogue to the Binder, but there's not exactly a whole lot to talk about; they can bind more spirits than anyone and get a lot of bonus feats, but that's about it, so I'm not gonna make them the first class feature.<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Empyrean Monk, Erudite, Exorcist, Foe Hunter, Incarnate, Lurk, Muse, Occult Priest, Pact Warrior, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ravaged Soul, Rookblade, Soulborn, Swordsage, Soul Weaver, Spirit Binder, Templar, Totemist, Unbound Witch, Warblade, Warbinder.<br /><br />Next Week: Foe HunterValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-30430484149892309922010-08-22T10:46:00.000-07:002010-08-22T10:51:13.196-07:00Expanded Class Feature 5: Wilder<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Wilder<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Expanded Psionics Handbook<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for psionics as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-it-works-psionics.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />Last week was the Wizard of the psionic world, so it’s only appropriate that this week be the Sorcerer. Relatively rarely used and not as popular, the Wilder is still more than worth the look. So, look we shall.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />I described the Psion as a synthesis of Sorcerer and Wizard; they’re born to natural power like a Sorcerer, then hone it with Wizard-like discipline. A Wilder is like a synthesis of Sorcerer and more Sorcerer. They’re born to natural power, and then go nuts. If the definitive Psion is Dr. Strange, then the definitive Wilder is Carrie.<br /><br />A stock Psion is very calm, very controlled and very methodical in her art. A Wilder gets angry and blows your head off. They’re driven by raw, untamed emotion. The concept is simple and iconic, and you can go a lot of ways with it. When making a Wilder, it’s important to give careful consideration to how their emotions relate to their powers, rather than simply cranking out another stock personality since for a character who draws power from their anger or hope or courage or greed or sexual frustrations, their emotional state is very important.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />Wilders get full 9th-level charisma-based manifesting and the highest power point pool along with a d6 hit die, medium BAB, strong will, simple weapons, light armor, shields, and 4+ skill points from an odd mix of skills, with both the stock caster skills and some physical skills, plus Spot, Listen, Bluff, Intimidate, and Sense Motive.<br /><br />Oh, and they get eleven powers known. Spread across nine spell levels. I’m gonna come back to that. A lot. Also, being the Sorcerer analogue, the class gets their power progression delayed by one level like the Sorcerer for no adequate reason; the Sorcerer’s progression is delayed as a counterbalance for being able to cast spontaneous (whether you agree with that logic or not), but all psionic characters are spontaneous anyways, making it a moot point.<br /><br />Looking at the frame, the class seems like it’s meant to be a gish, using their full manifesting to back up the rather squishy d6 HD and medium BAB. However, their main class feature suggests a full-on dedicated caster.<br /><br />At level 1, you get Wild Surge +1. This scales to +6 at level 19. This ability is an emotional supercharge, granting an effective +N power points to the effect of a power, and the points are supplied by the surge itself rather than your own pool. This power is usable at will, any time you manifest a power, and can take you above your normal limit for power points spent on a single power. So, if you’re an 11th-level Wilder, you can effectively spend 15 points on Astral Construct for no extra cost, which is similar to being able to cast Summon Monster VIII instead of Summon Monster VI.<br /><br />Why, this is an incredible class feature, gamebreaking even, and every Wilder should use it all the time… except… it isn’t and you shouldn’t. You see, it comes with Psychic Enervation. Whenever you actually use your Wild Surge, you roll a percentile die and have a 5% chance per power point added to suffer psychic enervation, which means you’re dazed for a round and lose a number of power points equal to your manifester level. So, that 11th-level Wilder getting four points from the void to beef up Astral Construct then has a 20% chance of losing eleven power points and losing a round, which is a huge deal in combat. Wild Surge is definitely nice, but you must use it carefully.<br /><br />But here’s the rub. That’s your main class feature, on a gishy skeleton. If you’re a hardcore caster, that tougher skeleton is going to waste and you’re hobbled by your limited power selection. If you’re a gish, then being dazed on the front line is a death sentence and you can’t afford to use your main class feature, giving the class a lack of focus that ultimately hurts it. But, let’s go over its other class features.<br /><br />Surging Euphoria is the third wheel of the Wild Surge array. When you Wild Surge without suffering enervation, you get a bonus to attack, damage, and saves equal to the Wild Surge boost. This bonus is +1 at level 4, +2 at level 12, and +3 at level 20. A nice boost to melee Wilders, but the daze effect is still a huge risk.<br /><br />And then, there are two more features. At level two, they gain Elude Touch. It applies your charisma to AC, but only against touch attacks, and it cannot take your touch AC above your normal AC. It’s an odd ability, but it’s… handy. Mainly, it’s a minor defense against spellcasters’ touch attacks, but it guards you from a lot of dangerous stuff. Particularly since a lot of touch attack users simply bank on touch attacks being easy to land, without really emphasizing AB.<br /><br />And then, you have Volatile Mind. Whenever someone targets a Wilder of 5th level or higher with a telepathy power, it costs an additional 1-4 power points (depending on level). That is all kinds of meh. It only works against psionic characters using a specific subschool of powers? Blah. One should think a spellcaster using Detect Thoughts to peek in on the heart of your magical superangst should leave a spellcaster at least a little perturbed, doncha think? After all, the ability is described as your raging magic emotions being so immensely overwhelming that telepaths trying to break your brain suffer for the effort.<br /><br />Also, your eleven powers? They don’t include the best powers available. You don’t have access to any Psion disciplines. This is a big blow to a class teetering on the brink, but… read on.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />First of all, in their Mind’s Eye series, WotC has released some <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a">alternate class features for the Wilder</a>. One of them is called Educated Wilder. If you are making a Wilder, TAKE IT. It replaces that useless Volatile Mind with Expanded Knowledge at each step. That’s four instances of Expanded Knowledge, a feat that lets you learn any power up to one lower than the highest level you can cast. So, you just went from 11 powers known by level 20 to 15 powers known by level 20 (less if you PrC out, but you come out ahead no matter what. That is huge. These additional powers can be chosen from any discipline or class, as well, meaning you get access to a lot of the cool stuff you normally couldn’t use.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Mantled Wilder pretty much just sucks. It locks a lot of your very limited power selections into what’s pretty much doomed to be mediocre power choices you can’t afford to make.<br /><br />After that, there’s one big choice. Do you want to be a gish, combining melee (or archery, if you can swing the proficiency), or do you want to be a dedicated caster? In either case, the most important part of making a Wilder is power selection. Every power you take needs to be useful all the time. If a power is remotely incidental, get a power stone of it and hold out for something that will always be useful. You’re not gonna have very many options available to you by full caster standards, so those options have to be damn good.<br /><br />If you’re going the full caster route, pump charisma through the roof as you would any dedicated caster. Constitution and dexterity are next in line. If you intend to use metapsionic feats regularly, or the Psionic Endowment line (which is the psionic equivalent of Spell Focus, instead increasing DCs by expending focus), then you may want to invest in 13 wisdom to qualify for Psionic Meditation. Otherwise, you can safely dump wisdom. Strength and intelligence are your dump stats, but you may be able to bump them up a bit. Because of the way augmentation works, your Wild Surge can boost save DCs for your powers, so Psionic Endowment and vast amounts of charisma, possibly along with Ability Focus in your favorite save-or power can be a very good thing.<br /><br />Use your Wild Surge sparingly, as if you suffer enervation, you lose a turn and lose a painful stack of power points. For that reason, you have to be even more cautious than a Psion when it comes to managing your power point reserves. That said, Wild Surge is pretty much the only reason to make a dedicated caster Wilder instead of a Psion, so when picking powers, keep an eye out for powers that benefit from the caster level boost, like Astral Construct. Also, remember that even if you do suffer enervation, you still successfully manifest your power, so if that boost is the last little bit you need to clinch a win against the big bad, go for it.<br /><br />For a melee Wilder, your main stats are strength and constitution. You may not even need much dexterity, but you need lots of constitution to make up for that d6 hit die. Even charisma doesn’t need to be very high. You only need 14 or 15, maybe even as little as 13. Charisma-boosting magic items can get you the stats you need to cast higher-level powers when the time comes. You should be able to easily afford them by the time you need them. Also, you may want 13 wisdom for Psionic Meditation as well. The Deep Impact feat lets you expend psionic focus to make a single melee attack as a touch attack. With Psionic Meditation, you can still get off one attack every round, and it can always be a touch attack. Pairing that with things like Power Attack (the penalty means little when you’re making a touch attack) and damage boosting powers (hello, Expansion) means that, while you’re only making one attack per round, that attack HURTS. If you do it right. Of course, this also means you care about every single stat except intelligence, which you’re pretty much forced to dump.<br /><br />Most likely, you’re going into the Illithid Slayer prestige class, since it gets full BAB, almost full manifesting, and both martial weapons and heavy armor (which is part of the reason you don’t need dexterity as much, but even if you’re aiming for mithral heavy plate, you’ll probably want 14 dexterity one way or another). This costs you a lot of Wild Surge, but you can’t afford to use that much anyways unless you’re some sort of archer; being dazed is pretty much death on the front lines.<br /><br />For your powers, you mainly want buffs, especially swift action buffs, but a few powers outside that range can be useful, so long as you’re not going with the save-or powers. Astral Construct (through Expanded Knowledge), Dispel Psionics, things that are always useful. Vigor is a solid power, giving you huge piles of temporary hit points for its duration, really helping to shore up your hit die problems, even if it does take a standard action and only lasts a minute per level. Heck, it’s nice enough to consider on a dedicated casting Wilder.<br /><br />And of course, low charisma means few bonus power points, meaning you have to be even more careful when manifesting your powers. But, since your main shtick is ultimately hitting people with a pointy stick, you shouldn’t need to use powers quite as often.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Full manifesting is always good.<br />Stronger skeleton than ye olde squishy Wizard<br />Wild Surge can clean house.<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Limited access to discipline powers<br />Cripplingly few powers known<br />Lack of focus<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Remaining classes:</span> Ardent, Artificer, Binder, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Erudite, Incarnate, Lurk, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Soulborn, Swordsage, Totemist, Warblade.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Next Week:</span> BinderValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-52686629828468438032010-08-14T12:56:00.000-07:002010-08-14T12:59:14.783-07:00Expanded Class Feature 4: Psion<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Psion<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Expanded Psionics Handbook<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it Works:</span><br />I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for psionics as a whole, which can be found <a href="http://valgaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-it-works-psionics.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />This week, we start looking at psionics proper (since Soulknife really isn’t a psionic class) with the most definitive class of the entire subsystem: The Psion. So, let’s get down to business.<br /><br />And remember, folks, you don’t have to use the psionic vocabulary in-character.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />The Psion class is very much a blank slate that can be used to suit pretty much any mage-type character with greater ease than Wizard or Sorcerer. You can even easily use the class to represent a sorcerer or wizard character quite effectively, depending on fine details (for example, psionics really don’t do necromancy).<br /><br />That said, the class does have its own default fluff that seems like it’s trying very hard to be different from magic, but… it isn’t. Psionics is magic, after all, and the class fits within the grand array of magic-using classes. Psions are mages who cast spells. Heck, the picture of the definitive Psion, Ialdabode, is a point-by-point on a lot of fantasy’s depictions of mages. Magic staff? Check. Magic runes inscribed on his person? Check. Glowing magic crystal? Check. Magic glowing eyes of ominousness? Check. Mages usually aren’t quite that ripped, but I suppose you’re not allowed to wear an open vest like that in a D&D sourcebook without having killer abs.<br /><br />A few pages later, we have Mitra the shaper with her glowing eyes and pendant, wearing heavy, practical traveling clothes (yet apparently she didn’t have time to button her shirt before the photo op, giving us the completely necessary double boob window) , bringing some strange, ethereal, implike creature into being, and the picture does something the Wizard never did. It actually conveys magic as a mysterious part of the world, worthy of awe. The core Wizard really conveys the notion that magic is a bunch of discrete boxes sitting off to the side. Also, Mialee is an abomination and whoever inflicted her upon the world deserves a swift kick in the head. Not only is she uglier than sin, you can’t say, looking at her, that you look at her standing there looking bored and holding a stick and say, “Why yes, this is what I think of when I hear the word ‘wizard.’” At least Hennet is visibly magicking.<br /><br />This notion that magic is actually mysterious and unusual and hard bleeds over into the class fluff and mechanics. The way the class is described is, essentially, a synthesis of Wizard and Sorcerer. They are born to their talents like Sorcerers, but hone those powers through intense study, reflection, and discipline like the Wizard. You can also frame them as a mystical monk or an eastern yogi, which is where a lot of the inspiration for the class seems to come from.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy Bits:</span><br />Low BAB, low fortitude and reflex, strong will, 2+ skill points per level from mainly geek skills, proficiency in a slim selection of simple weapons but no armor or shields, bonus feats at levels 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 from psionic and item creation feats, and full manifesting. If this frame makes you think Wizard, that’s because that’s pretty much what it is, so it’s no surprise.<br /><br />They gain the highest power point progression and the highest number of powers known (save the Erudite, but that doesn’t really exist); 36 by level 20. For comparison, Sorcerers get 43 spells by level 20, but because of how powers scalein relation to spells, those 36 powers can go a lot farther; you’re not taking Burning Hands, then Fireball, then Cone of Cold just so you can keep dealing Nd6 damage to an area.<br /><br />However, one the best ideas for the Psion? Disciplines. These are like Wizards’ spell schools, except- don’t freak out when I say this- they actually matter. What a concept!<br /><br />With the Wizard, a necromancer isn’t really any better at necromancy than any other Wizard, and isn’t really defined by being a necromancer. Rather, he’s defined by not being able to use, say, Enchantment and Illusion spells, because that’s the part that’s actually meaningful. That necromancer can spend a Sunday afternoon in the library with a nice, hot cup of tea and learn to Polymorph as well as the focused specialist transmuter (who can, in turn, animate dead as well as the necromancer). Sure, there are prestige classes and alternate class features that can make specialization a little more relevant, but at its base, specialization means approximately jack. This is one part of why the core casters do not remotely convey magic as mysterious or difficult; magical texts are readily available at any market and you can learn any spell from them in an afternoon with a fairly easy skill check.<br /><br />What disciplines do is different. Imagine if any Wizard could cast Crushing Despair or Mind Fog, but only an enchanter could cast Geas or Dominate Person. Yes, every Wizard can use enchantment, but only the enchanter gets the most world shaking of enchantment effects. Also, imagine if the enchanter added Bluff, Diplomacy, and Sense Motive to her skill list, and a diviner added Listen and Spot.<br /><br />That’s what disciplines do. The Psion class has its unified power list that has some nice, solid, reliable powers, but each discipline has a short list of powers (usually only a couple per level) that only they can use. So, any Psion can learn Conceal Thoughts or Cloud Mind, but only a telepath can take Suggestion or Crisis of Breath (which has the oh-so-stylish effect of making the victim forget to breathe). The exception to this is taking the feat Expanded Knowledge, which lets you gain a single additional power known, including discipline-specific powers. If you want, you can have, say, an Egoist to uses Expanded Knowledge to pick up Astral Construct and Dominate and Teleport, but at that point you’re spending so many feats that this versatility is the crux of your build.<br /><br />The disciplines are as follows.<br /><br />Egoists specialize in Psychometabolism. These include a lot of self buffs that could be useful on a gish if you take the Illithid Slayer prestige class, though otherwise a lot of them are likely to be a bit wasted. They include the Metamorphosis spells, which are basically Polymorph and Shapechange, and they get some of the few psionic healing powers (which tend to be underwhelming, but that’s really not what psionics does).<br /><br />Kineticists specialize in Psychokinesis. They blow stuff up, mainly. They start off getting some of the better shapes for explosions, like Energy Ball (20’ burst at range), but also get abilities like Control Body (the telekinetic version of Dominate Person), Control Air, the psionic Antimagic Field, and other handy incidentals.<br /><br />Nomads specialize in psychoportation. They get teleportation/movement powers like Teleport and Fly. Moving is useful, but it is somewhat one-dimensional. They do get things like Detect Teleportation, Banishment, and one of their 9th-level powers lets them blow XP to actually redo an entire round, but overall, it’s pretty boring.<br /><br />Seers specialize in clairsentience. They’re exactly what you expect seers to be. Scrying and divination-y buffs.<br /><br />Shapers specialize in metacreativity, which is most comparable to conjuration. And much like conjuration, it’s the most versatile of the bunch; Astral Construct is the equivalent of the Summon X series (and my favorite power), creation spells, some damage spells (though not on the same level as Kineticists), making new universes, lots of fun.<br /><br />Telepaths specialize in (dramatic pause) telepathy. Surprise, surprise. They break your brain. Telepaths have the biggest list of additional powers, but they’re ultimately very similar. Control brains, read brains. It’s less one-dimensional than enchantment, including such fun things as making a target to forget their heart needs to beat (one of psionics’ few literal save-or-dies). Then, there’s Mind Switch. It’s exactly what it sounds like, and always fun. Then, the most stylish of all possible powers, Mind Seed; the target’s mind is slowly overridden until they become you. In other words, something that’s actually interesting and scary rather than just “control the target again.”<br /><br />Also, WotC released a series of alternate class features for each of the specializations, letting you trade away bonus feats (after all, you don’t have much else to trade) for various perks, like a Bardic Knowledge analogue for Seers or Minor Shapechange for Egoists (basically Disguise Self at will, but it’s not an illusion). Most of them aren't huge or world-shaking, but they're nice.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />One thing to keep in mind when running a Psion is that just because you can fire off your powers at full blast every round, always using the maximum allowed power points doesn’t necessarily mean you should. If you’re always going full blast, you’ll run out of power points very quickly, so you must exercise self-control.<br /><br />This feeds into the most important choice you have to make; power selection. You need powers that are reliable, age well, and at least some of them need to stay useful even with lower power point expenditure; even if you’re fifth level, a one-point astral construct is still a useful and worthwhile contributor, even if only as a one-square wall, a speed bump, or a flanking buddy. You should also consider flexibility; a power that can be used for a great many things in a great many circumstances is a powerful asset. Again, talking about Astral Construct, you can have it do many things, scout around corners, run down a hallway to trigger traps, fetch a key from a wall, possibly even ride it as a flying mount, or any number of things in a broad array of circumstances. Meanwhile Catfall… um… decreases falling damage.<br /><br />Also, be careful not to get too many redundant powers. You don’t need Energy Ray and Energy Cone and Energy Ball and Energy Wave and Energy Missiles and Energy Bolt and whatever other energy shape variants happen to be out there. You can probably get by with just Energy Ray and either Energy Bolt or Energy Ball (depending on if you’re a kineticist).<br /><br />Do not spread yourself too thin. I’ve seen a lot of folks stock up on the situational powers that they “need” to the point where they don’t have any bread and butter abilities to use in normal situations. If you need incidentals, carry power stones of them (which are just reskinned scrolls).<br /><br />Now, all that said, your party role is probably going to be similar to that of a Wizard or Sorcerer, unless you go for a spellsword route. That is to say, not dealing damage. Granted, you can do damage, and you’re not horrible at it, but most other classes are better at it and don’t have to spend power points to do it. Rather, you’re there for utility, control, buffing, and debuffing (though psionic powers tend to be a bit greedier than magic, and thus a bit lighter on buffs you can actually share with the party). You’re probably going to be the Knowledge monkey, though if you choose the right discipline and a decent charisma score (or the powers to replace a charisma score), you can manage as party face; and since powers are effectively still and silent by default, with a fairly easy Concentration check, the diplomatic powers and mind reading become far more useful.<br /><br />As for stats, just like the Wizard, you want your intelligence as high as possible, and everything else is a distant second. Constitution is important for hit points and Concentration checks. Dexterity is for AC and that all-important initiative. Season with wisdom, charisma, and strength to taste, but you can dump all three if you really want.<br /><br />Gear is… a bit of a blank slate. You don’t have a spellbook to pad out, so you won’t be pouring half your wealth there. There are the standard stat boosters, and you can expect to dole out a hefty sum for those expendables that make you more flexible, but overall, there’s not a whole lot you need. However, because powers do not suffer from arcane spell failure, you can wear armor despite lack of proficiency. Leather armor and masterwork studded leather would have no penalty, nor would a mithral chain shirt or a feycraft (DMG2) mithral breastplate. Since the only penalty for wearing armor you aren’t proficient in is that the armor check penalty applies to attack rolls, you may not even care about the penalties and you could go around in mountain plate with a tower shield if you really wanted, though I wouldn’t recommend it; you’re not likely to have the strength to carry it, and the loss of mobility hurts.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Strongest (real) true manifester<br />Low reliance on gear<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Psionics do tend to be weaker than magic (a good thing, but still a weakness)<br />Even having the most powers of any (real) psionic class, it’s a limited selection<br />Has the squishy Wizard skeleton<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Binder, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Erudite, Incarnate, Lurk, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Soulborn, Swordsage, Totemist, Warblade, Wilder.<br /><br />Next Week: WilderValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-71098632312133279632010-08-07T12:37:00.000-07:002010-08-07T12:38:18.449-07:00Expanded Class Feature 3: Soulknife<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Soulknife<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Expanded Psionics Handbook<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />This is the first class I’m going through from the Expanded Psionics Handbook, but it’s not really a psionic class. It gets a couple power points, but no powers, which is about like saying a class gets one spell slot, but no spells. So, it's usable with about zero knowledge of psionics.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy Bits:</span><br />You have a knife. It’s made of your soul/mind/chakra/generic metaphysical component of self. It’s for stabbing people.<br /><br />And, that’s about it. Like the Fighter or the Rogue, this class isn’t really tied to any strong fluff baggage. It’s really whatever you make of it. The class is mainly a way of giving a character a magical bent in combat without making them a spellcaster.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cruncy Bits:</span><br />You have a knife. It’s made of your soul. And that’s about it, but I get ahead of myself.<br /><br />The class has a d10 hit die, medium BAB, strong will and reflex saves, 4+in skill points per level with a list comparable to the Monk’s, along with proficiency in simple weapons, light armor, shields, and their own mindblades.<br /><br />Right off the bat, we run into one of the class’s biggest problems. What is it? Is it supposed to be a frontline combat class? Is it supposed to be a secondary skirmisher? The d10 hit die suggests one, the medium BAB and skills suggest the other, and the class features themselves are similarly indecisive.<br /><br />Your primary class feature is your mindblade, a weapon made of generic magicness that you can summon and dismiss at will. We’ll get back to it shortly.<br /><br />Other than that, you get Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus for free. You get two power points, mainly to let you use psionic feats. You get Psychic Strike, which lets you spend a move action to charge your mind blade with bonus damage for your next attack; this scales from 1d8 at level 3 to 5d8 at level 19. The problem there is that if you spend that move action, you can’t make a full attack, so most likely it’s really just a bonus to your first attack’s damage, and not a very impressive one at that when compared to something like Sneak Attack, which is much greater and can be applied to an entire full attack. Also, creatures that aren’t alive or are immune to mind-affecting abilities are immune to Psychic Strike, for some reason.<br /><br />Later, they get Speed of Thoughs- a bonus feat that amounts to +10’ to their movement speed- the equivalent of Whirlwind Attack, and at level 13, they get a feature called Knife to the Soul, perhaps their most unique and dangerous feature. It allows them to swap out those mediocre damage die from Psychic Strike for ability damage to mental stats, so they can deal 3-5 damage to intelligence, wisdom, or charisma. Remember, any stat reduced to zero renders the subject dead, comatose, or paralyzed, so this is a way to bypass some enemies’ hit points entirely. Still, three points of mental damage at level 13 isn’t earthshaking.<br /><br />And then, there’s the mindblade. It starts out as a shortsword, and later you can change it into either a bastard sword or a longsword, or you can split it into two mindblades, reducing the enhancement bonus on each by one. You can throw your mindblade starting at level 2, but can’t make a full attack throwing it until level 17, nearly making it a capstone, and perhaps the lamest capstone ever.<br /><br />The weapon scales from being a +1 weapon at level 4 to being a +5 weapon at level 20. You can start applying weapon enhancements to it as early as level six, ranging from +1 to +4 in enhancements (for a total of +9-equivalent weapon by level 20) and you can change the enhancements through eight hours of meditation, but you have to pick them from a fairly short list, and that list isn’t very good.<br /><br />This is probably the class’s biggest failing. Their primary ability is that they have a free magic weapon, but every melee character is going to have a magic weapon. If that weapon is going to be their primary ability, it had better be one awesome weapon. However, at level 4, wealth by level is 5400 gold. A +1 weapon costs about 2300 g. A Fighter probably has a +1 sword already, along with armor and shield. At level 20, wealth by level is a whopping 760,000 gold, which makes that 81,000g-equivalent +9 mindblade less than spectacular since the Fighter’s probably walking around with a +10 sword or close to it. What’s more, at that level, the +10 sword probably has +9 from various enchantments making it a +1 lotsofstoff sword, then the party Cleric or Wizard casts Greater Magic Weapon to bring its enhancement up to +5. Meanwhile, the Mindblade’s enhancement is already +5 meaning it can’t benefit, so effectively, you may as well be getting a +5-equivalent weapon. You could say that the big benefit of the class is the ability to change the enhancements on that weapon, but the list of available enhancements is pretty crummy.<br /><br />And that’s the class in its entirety. Really, all it gets is a sword, but without the combat chops to really back it up or any secondary perks like Sneak Attack or Skirmish to back up its lighter frame.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />Really, just build like nearly any melee character. Physical stats are important. Mental stats really aren’t. Dexterity’s more important than it is for a Fighter since you only get light armor and both stealth and detection skills appear on your list, but don’t think you can go full-on skill monkey.<br /><br />The problem with multiclassing is, your main feature is your mindblade and you slow progression if you multiclass, so it’s something you’ll have to keep to a minimum.<br /><br />Some of your strongest enhancements, like Soulbreaker, only trigger on a critical hit, so even though you don’t get any 18-20 crit weapons, it may be worth your while to invest in a critical hit build, possibly splitting your mindblade in order to dual-wield for more attacks (and thus more chances to crit) and using the usually underwhelming Power Critical for a bonus on confirmation rolls.<br /><br />Your list of available enhancements is short, so know them well and use them as best you can. Wounding’s constitution damage is always welcome, since the more hit die an enemy has, the bigger the impact of constitution loss. This also goes well with a dual-wielder, for more attacks, more hits, and more constitution damage, and Mindcrusher can really sap psionic characters dry by inflicting power point damage.<br /><br />However, mainly, I’d suggest talking with your DM about implementing some Soulknife fix or another. Google should reveal many. My ad hoc version would be to grant the Soulknife full BAB, scale the mindblade from +1 to +10 from level 2 to level 20, working like normal weapons in that you get a +X equivalent weapon, so at level 4 when you’d get a +2 mindblade, you can have a +2 enhancement bonus or convert it to a +1 flaming mindblade. Then, for the whole nine yards, grant martial weapon proficiency, let you turn the mindblade into any weapon you’re proficient with (possibly including ranged weapons), and remove the restriction on the enhancements that can be placed on it, then maybe something to change weapon materials (though that may be worth a feat). So, if you know you’re gonna be fighting an undead horde, you can turn your sword from a +1 keen, wounding falchion into a +1 undead bane disruption maul, and that’s entirely appropriate. A class built around the notion of, “I have an awesome weapon,” and that’s all they get, then that had better be the most awesome weapon in the group most of the time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Stealth and detection skills<br />Gets a free weapon<br />Can inflict ability damage with no save<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />That weapon is pretty crummy<br />Limited weapon enhancements<br />Poor focus keeps it from doing anything particularly well<br /><br />No, I didn’t say much about this class, simply because there’s not a whole lot to say.<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Binder, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Erudite, Incarnate, Lurk, Psion, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Soulborn, Swordsage, Totemist, Warblade, Wilder.<br /><br />Next Week: PsionValiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-7061950503067372392010-08-01T16:17:00.000-07:002010-08-01T20:14:07.824-07:00How it Works: Psionics<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">This is just a unified “how it works” section for all the psionic classes, so I’m not reposting the same thing for every psionic class. That’s Ardent, Divine Mind, Erudite, Lurk, Psion, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, and Wilder.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">As D&D’s redheaded stepchild, there’s not a great deal of psionic material. There are only two dedicated psionic books in the 3.5 library; Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionic, which is generally regarded as the worst of the Complete series (though it is still decent for extra content). Also, there’s the Mind’s Eye, which is a series of WotC web enhancements that amounts to a third psionic sourcebook. Other than that, bits and pieces of psionic material have cropped up randomly throughout the library whenever WotC remembered they exist and probably needed to pad a book a bit. Sandstorm and Races of Stone have psionic material. Eberron has significant psionic material as well.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">So, first, what is psionics? Quite simply, it’s a magic system designed specifically for spontaneous casting. Nothing more, nothing less. Some people decry psionics for the very word, yet overall, it’s far truer to most classical depictions of magi in fantasy than Vancian. In fact, other than in Vance’s own works, Vancian is fairly rare, and it’s fairly silly to boot.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Psionics are not science fiction. This is a myth, and it is baseless. If you don’t like the words “psionic” or “manifest,” that’s fine, but they need ever come up in-character. When describing my psionic characters in-character, they’re not “psions who manifest powers,” they’re “mages who cast spells.” That’s not refluffing. That’s what they are. The effects are magic, and unless you want to houserule it, “Psionics are magic,” is an explicitly stated rule. The variant, “Psionics is different,” is basically prefaced with, “This is a bad idea.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">I know this has little to do with how psionics work, but it’s a necessary preface to any discussion of psionics as a whole, so it goes here in the primer. There are far too many people who write psionics off with, “Bester has no place in D&D,” without ever actually looking at the material (or worse, just looking at the pictures of creepy bald dudes with crystal fetishes). Hell, I used to hold that position, and it was blatant idiocy on my part. (And the standard disclaimer: This does not mean anyone who doesn’t have psionics in their games is Doing It Wrong.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Of equal importance, 3.5 psionics are not 1e psionics. 3.5 psionics aren’t 2e psionics. 3.5 psionics aren’t even 3e psionics. Yes, in the older editions, psionics were totally broken. 3.5 is not the older editions, and 3.5 psionics are not the older editions’ psionics. In another case of “all too often,” people accuse psionics of being broken based on older editions. Or based on someone in their group who ignored a lot of the rules that balance it. Or call it “too complicated” when psionics are vastly simpler than Vancian, and they’re just less familiar with psionics, which is a completely separate issue, and one that’s completely temporary.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Anyways, on to the actual mechanics. First, the vocabulary. “Manifest” is another word for “cast.” “Power” is another word for “spells. “Power points” are the currency that replaces spell slots. “Disciplines” replace “schools” for magic spell, and psionics have their own divisions.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">With Vancian, you generally keep track of up to ten pools of points- the spell slots from cantrips to 9th level spells- and every spell costs one point. With psionics, you have only one pool of points, your power points, but powers have a variable cost. Each level of powers has a minimum cost (1 for 1st-level, 3 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd, and so on through 17 for 9th). Thus, five power points are roughly comparable to a third level spell slot. You get so many points per level, and there is a table for determining bonus power points from high ability scores, much like with magic. You can spend your points to cast any of your limited powers known, so long as you have the points.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Manifesting a power works mostly like casting a spell, however powers do not have verbal components, nor do they have somatic components, nor are they subject to arcane spell failure, so psionic characters can legally use armor with little penalty and they’re capable of manifesting powers in a number of situations where magic-users can’t. Like when polymorphed into a housecat. Oddly, the circumstances that force Concentration checks are the same, so you need to make a Concentration check to manifest while entangled, but you can manifest without penalty when completely paralyzed.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">For the most part, other than effects like range and duration, powers do not scale naturally. A Psion spending one point to manifest Energy Ray (which is, unsurprisingly, a ray attack that deals energy damage) can only deal one die of damage, whether they’re 1st-level or 20th. What psionics does have, however, is an augmentation system. A one-point Energy Ray deals one point of damage, but a two-point Energy Ray deals two die of damage and a twenty-point Energy Ray deals twenty die of damage. Depending on the power, there can be various augmentations like increased saves, affecting additional creature types, increased duration, and so on. This lets powers age much better than spells, and stay useful for much longer. Even though you’ll have fewer powers than, say, a Sorcerer, it’s not a huge deal since your powers stay useful longer.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">This does not mean that a 10th-level Psion with a hundred power points can blow them all on a hundred-die Energy Ray. One of the most important rules in psionics is that you cannot spend more points on a power than your manifester level (translation: caster level), save through a scant few abilities that let you reach a little higher than normal. So no blowing a hundred points on a power unless you’re level 100.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Also, XPH introduces psionic focus. In short? Make a Concentration check as a full-round action. If it’s 20+, you’re focused. It doesn’t really do much on its own, though you can expend focus to take 15 on a single Concentration check (making you not-focused). Mostly, it’s another form of currency that numerous other abilities rely on. Some bonuses are only available while focused, some abilities require you to expend focus. For example, metapsionic feats increase the power point cost of a power (still subject to standard limits) and require you to expend psionic focus, so don’t expect to ever pile on three or four metapsionic feats on the same power, even if you can spend the points.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And that covers the bulk of it. The rest are the details of the powers, classes, and feats themselves.<br /><br />On the whole, psionics is more streamlined and intuitive than Vancian (and more balanced, to boot), and the way the powers and augmentations work, powers are far more a part of the character that can stick with you from beginning to end than something you just use for a little while only to toss it out for something completely different a couple levels later.<br /></span></span>Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-38551228799786609372010-07-29T09:25:00.000-07:002010-07-29T09:28:59.418-07:00Expanded Class Feature 2: Truenamer<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Truenamer</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Tome of Magic</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Preface:</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Last week, we looked at the Shadowcaster, a class from Tome of Magic that tends to get a bad reputation as a useless class but, while somewhat underwhelming, does have some real merits that give it use as an NPC class, if nothing else.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">This week, we stick with the experimental grab bag that is Tome of Magic, moving on to the Truenamer. And of course, with any experiment, there is a chance for failure. This is Tome of Magic’s failure. I’m telling you right up front, this thing is the absolute worst class WotC has ever put out, and the one class that is really and truly broken. Not underpowered. Not overpowered. Broken. As in nonfunctional.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Now that that’s out of the way, like the Shadowcaster, this is another class that got absolutely no support past Tome of Magic. All truenaming-related material is fully contained on pages 198 through 285 of Tome of Magic, again including the class, feats, prestige classes, spells, magic items, monsters, organizations, and plot hooks.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Fluffy bits:</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">So, let’s start with the flavor, which is actually very good and the reason the class is such a disappointment. Truespeak is a cosmic language of unfathomable power, the language of creation itself capable of rewriting the universe. It is the most obscure, primal, fundamental form of magic there can possibly be; an entire branch of arcana dedicated to unraveling the secrets of reality.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Truenames have a long-standing tradition both in mythology and in the genre itself. There is no greater hold over someone than to know their truename and command them by it. In Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, you can end the campaign by learning the truename of Mephistopholes, archdemon and lord of the 8th layer of Hell and skipping the final boss fight entirely by calling out his truename, bringing him to his knees, at which point you can command him to leave to the farthest corners of the multiverse, never to return, or even become your thrall and turn over control of the eighth layer of Hell to you.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">So the Truenamer really has an awesome legacy to live up to. Let’s see how it completely and utterly fails to do so. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >How it works:</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Roll a skill check. If you pass, you cast a spell. That’s truenaming in a nutshell.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Truenaming introduces a new skill, Truespeak, which you roll every time you speak an utterance (translation: cast a spell). It’s an intelligence-based skill, and of course it’s only a class skill for the Truenamer (though there is a feat that lets other classes get it as a class skill). You cannot take 10.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The utterances themselves are, again, essentially spells. They have the same structure, with an effective level, spell resistance, and similar effects. Saves are based on half your Truenamer level rather than any sort of spell level, thankfully, since the highest-level utterances are 6th-level.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Utterances are split into three categories; the “Lexicon of the Evolving Mind,” which are basically spells that affect creatures and range from 1st to 6th level, the “Lexicon of the Crafted Tool,” which are basically spells that affect objects and range from 1st to 5th level, and the “Lexicon of the Perfected Map,” which range from 1st to 4th level. You have a separate pool of utterances for each of the lexicons, and each becomes available at a different level; Evolving Mind is your bread and butter, available at level one. Crafted Tool is first available at level 4 and Perfected Map is first available at level 8.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">As stated, you roll a Truespeak check to speak an utterance. The DCs for these effects are as follows:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Evolving Mind: 15+2 x the target creature’s challenge rating.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Crafted Tool: 15+ 2 x the target item’s caster level (or 25 if it’s nonmagical)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Perfected Map: They did not print the DC. How in the world do you manage that? In a class that is entirely centered around, “roll a skill check to cast a spell,” what abomination of bad editing allows the omission of the friggin’ DC of an entire subcategory of spells? I’m beginning to believe the rumors that the staff was drunk when they slapped this thing together.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Now, they did release errata, and in it they set the DC for Perfected Map utterances as 25+5 x the level of the utterance, with an additional +5 if the location is magical, but this is not the sort of thing they should have to put in the errata.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Also, Truenamers do not have spell slots. Instead, every time they use a given utterance successfully, the DC to use that utterance is increased by two until eventually it becomes so difficult as to be impossible.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Another quirk is that for any utterance that has an ongoing duration (like, say, the vast majority of them), you cannot use that utterance again until the duration ends. So, if you use an utterance that inflicts 2d6 energy damage a round for five rounds, you cannot use that utterance again until those five rounds are up. You don’t get a great many utterances to begin with, and if you split your utterances between buffs on allies and ongoing effects on enemies, you can easily find yourself left with no options save your lowest-level spells.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And that goes poorly with another quirk of Truenaming that could have actually been cool. Evolving Mind utterances have two different effects; one when spoken normally and the other when spoken backwards, which tend to be the opposite of each other. Take Knight’s Puissance, which can either grant a target +2 to hit for five rounds or impose a -2 penalty to hit for five rounds. Now, at level one, when you only have one utterance (and no equivalent of cantrips, mind), that means that you speak your utterance once at the beginning of combat, and you’ve got nothing but a crossbow for the next five rounds. Joy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Now, let’s back up a step and return to another issue. Remember those DCs to speak utterances? 15+2 x CR for creatures, 15+5 x CL for magic items, 25 + 5 x UL for locations, with an additional +2 for each successful use of an utterance. So, if you’re a first-level character with 18 intelligence, max ranks in Truespeak, and Skill Focus: Truespeak, you’re looking at a +11 bonus. The DC to use an utterance on the lowliest goblin is 15, a 85% success chance. Not awful. Next casting is 75%. Then 65%. Then 55%. And you don’t have cantrips to fall back on, or any kind of bonus spells, plus this is a character who was really pushing that Truespeak check and utterances are generally much weaker than spells to begin with. And if your party runs into something like a hell hound or an ogre- a very difficult but not unreasonable encounter for a first-level party, particularly a large one- you start with a DC21 check as a first-level character and go up from there. A 55% chance of casting your spell at all, when your party really needs that spell support. That’s before any saves or spell resistance, mind.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And the DCs go up at roughly a rate of +2/level, when you only gain one rank per level, so you’re racing to get all the extra pluses you can through magic items and abilities, but most likely you’re not gonna make much headway through normal means, and you’ll always be in a situation where after three or four castings, you’re at less than a 50% chance of even pulling off your utterance against normal foes, let alone powerful ones, and even before that, it’s not reliable. Wizards avoid even a 10% spell failure chance, after all. Even if you make your Truespeak check, you still have to get through enemy saves and spell resistance, and the layered failure chance really stacks up. Even succeeding at three consecutive 80% chances of success is a 50/50 proposition, which tends to put Truenamers in a bad situation through sheer volume of dice.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">As I said before, you don’t get a lot of utterances, so you’ll probably have only a couple higher-level utterances available to you, which you can’t reliably pull off, and which you can’t use successively because you have to wait for durations to expire, and are rarely anywhere near as good as comparable spells, so you’re frequently left to lower-level utterances which are already obsolete and you can’t use reliably either.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Though the real slap in the face are the metautterance feats. Empower Utterance, for example? +10 to the Truespeak DC. That’s got a good chance of being a -50% chance on what was a 75% chance to begin with against any enemy dangerous enough to bother using it against. Quicken Utterance? +20. Because really, a -100% chance to make what was already a DC 35 skill check is no big deal, right?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Though what really makes Truenamers broken rather than merely crappy is that… skills really aren’t a big deal in 3.5. There are a lot of ways to get big pluses short-term, some of the biggest being Guidance of the Avatar or Divine Insight, two spells that basically give you a large bonus to a single skill check within the duration. Then, there are things like Unearthed Arcana’s ridiculous item familiar, which can basically double your ranks in a skill. Like, say, Truespeak. Or you could just take Leadership to hire a posse that goes around and makes Aid Another attempts to give you a +lots bonus to Truespeak. So, the class is in a situation where normal means (even with a lot of scrimping and scraping) yield a flop that can’t reliably cast any given spell more than once or twice, and if you go all out to ramp up that Truespeak check up to the point where you can speak utterances at 100% success rates a dozen times each per day without much trouble.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Also, that DC is keyed directly off of CR, which begs the meta issue in that you pretty much tell the players the monster’s CR based on whether or not their Truespeak check passed. And for items, you have to know their caster level, which is such an arcane and trivial piece of information that it should never be referenced.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Though one of the most disappointing things in this pile is personal truename research. Oh, yeah, you can research personal truenames, which should be totally awesome, right? Well, just hole up in a library, get a friend to cast some divination spells (which is rather odd in and of itself; truename research requiring arcane spellcasting as what should be the crown jewel of the subsystem… a subsystem that trades arcane spellcasting for truenaming… And it’s absolutely required for research some of the time, making it impossible to even make an attempt to learn a truename otherwise.) and then roll a really high Knowledge check. If you succeed, you learn that creature’s personal truename.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Alright, you’ve got a personal truename, the mighty force that brought Mephistopholes to his knees just by being spoken aloud. And what kinds of power does this personal truename grant you over victims? +2 to save DCs and +2 to overcome spell resistance against that specific target. And you add +2 to the DC of that already unreliable Truespeak check you gotta make.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Okay, I know personal truenames can’t be something as awesome as enslaving demon lords, but come on, that’s pathetic. Knowing someone’s personal truename should at least give you a massive bonus to your Truespeak check, like +10 or something. At least then you’d have a reason to research the Big Bad’s personal truename. The guy’s probably got a much higher CR than anyone else around, so learning his personal truename lets you actually participate in the fight against him! Blech. Anyways, on to the mechanics of the class itself.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Crunchy Bits:</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Let’s start with the skeleton. d6 hit die, medium BAB, strong will saves, light armor and simple weapons, 4+ intelligence skill points with what’s essentially the Wizard’s list. Though the lack of Decipher Script is utterly baffling considering the entire class’s oh-so-scholarly flavor.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Already, this is odd. We’re talking about someone whose entire shtick is talking to rewrite the fabric of reality, and they have medium BAB. Why? No utterance requires an attack roll of any sort, unless I overlooked some. The pictures of the Truenamer usually hold a mace or a spear, and a lot of the spells are buffs. It’s almost as if the Truenamer- the scholar’s scholar- is designed as a self-buffing melee type, a la the Cleric, rather than, y’know, bringing foes to their knees with a word like they’re supposed to.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Anyways, stats. Charisma determines the save DCs for your utterances (if you’re a build that cares about save DCs), and intelligence determines your Truespeak skill, which is all-important. There is no minimum stat to use an utterance. And, of course, if you go the “hit people with blunt objects” route, you need all your physical stats, particularly since you only get light armor. If you’re an elf, you get bows, and can skimp on strength and constitution, but stats are in pretty high demand since you most likely need physical combat as a backup.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Anyways, getting on to the class features, and skipping over those utterances for a moment. We start with (dramatic pause) knowing your own name! You get a +4 bonus to your Truespeak check when using utterances on yourself and you need all the pluses you can get. Another check in towards self-buffing melee. Other than that, you get skill focus a few times for Knowledge skills, a +2 for researching personal truenames, a few bonus feats, and four more substantive features.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">At level nine, you get See the Named. A 1/day ability lets you make a Truespeak check using a personal truename you’ve researched to scry the subject for one round.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">At level thirteen, you can use Sending three times per day. If you make a successful Truespeak check. And you know the subject’s personal truename, which again requires research.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">At level seventeen (the level at which Wizards are getting their ninth-level spells, might I add), you get Speak unto the Masses. It’s the ability to use your Evolving Mind utterances to affect multiple targets. And you get this at level seventeen. Anyways, the DC goes up by two for every enemy beyond the first, and the DC is keyed off the most powerful member of that group. Just in case the DCs weren’t high enough for you yet.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">At level twenty, you finally get something that at least has style, even if it amounts to squat. Say My Name and I Am There. Basically, you get a codeword you can teach your friends, and when they say that word, you can teleport right to them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And then, there are the utterances. Where mysteries were the high point that ultimately redeemed the Shadowcaster as an NPC class, if nothing else, utterances are the last nail in the Truenamer’s coffin.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">You get one Evolving Mind utterance per level, which means that early in your career, you’re pretty much in the same boat as the Shadowcaster with almost no spellpower to draw on. Except this time, it’s worse, because of lack of cantrips. By level 20, you have five Crafted Tool utterances and four Perfected Map utterances, one for each utterance level for both. You get your sole 4th-level Perfected Map utterance at level 20, making it your real capstone.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Now, for utterances, this class needs something cool, something new, something interesting, or at least something effective. And… it doesn’t get it. The effects are bland, boring, and not even very good. Let’s look at the unabridged list of 1st-level utterances.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">+/-1 AC for five rounds, one-round immobilization or freedom of movement, +/-2 AB for five rounds, +/-5 on skill checks for five rounds, and either fast healing 1 for five rounds or 1d6 damage for a round (two if you concentrate).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And this would be a good time to mention that, unless I’ve overlooked one, utterances do not scale. That +/-1 AC for five rounds? That’s not “Grant a bonus or penalty of one to the target’s AC, plus one for every four caster levels, for five rounds plus one round for every two caster levels.” No, a 20th-level Truenamer using Defensive Edge still only gets +/-1 AC for five rounds out of the bloody thing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And the higher-level utterances aren’t any better. Let’s look at what some of the 6th-level Evolving Mind utterances can do. Keep in mind, you get these at level 18.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The target must make a fortitude save or be paralyzed for one round. Cure a list of effects that Panacea, a 4th-level spell available to any 7th-level Cleric, could cure. +/-5 to attack and damage for five rounds. Break Enchantment. Dominate Monster- truenaming’s only compulsion/control effect, might I add, from a class whose text explicitly calls out the lowly Command spell as a form of truename magic- for up to a whopping five rounds IF you maintain concentration… good lord, what were these people drinking when they came up with this stuff?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And that +/-5 attack and damage? Yeah, if you want to use that on one of your 18th-level allies, that’s a DC51 skill check that goes up from there! We’re getting into epic DCs. Climbing a cliff that’s upside down in the middle of a thunderstorm with just your hands is a DC30 Climb check. Turning a hostile enemy friendly in a single round is effectively DC45 (and that’d be more useful than the +/-5 most of the time). With a Jump result of 50, you could jump twelve feet into the air. You could hear a pin drop from the other side of a stone door. Going into the Epic Level Handbook, you can pickpocket a sheathed weapon and control your horse while unconscious and see the invisible and tumble up a vertical wall…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Or you can paralyze an enemy for one round. Fortitude negates.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Okay, so Evolving Mind is a flop. Maybe the other two lexicons are better. Let’s move over to Crafted Tool… of which there are ten utterances. Spread across five utterance levels. And Heat/Chill Metal is one of the second-level utterances (which you don’t get until 11th-level for Crafted Tool). Great selection. You can get things like Identify, which is very meh. Suppress Weapon and Suppress Item (3rd- and 4th-level utterances, available at 15th- and 19th-level respectively) suppress a magic weapon or item’s abilities for a duration of… concentration. Meh. This is really stinking up the court.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Maybe Perfected Map? You start getting those at 8th level, then get stronger ones when you hit levels 12, 16, and 20, and you get higher levels of Perfected Map utterances.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And you can start with… a fortitude save versus falling prone. Well… it’s an area effect, I guess. One can create or remove cover, which is about as interesting as it gets. One of the 4th-level ones (again, available at level 20) functions as the Gate spell, which can be ungodly powerful, I guess, being Gate and all, but it’s not interesting and only contributes to the class being a total mess.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">What’s frustrating is, not only was the concept so awesome, but here and there, you can find hints of what could have been a really cool class. Incarnation of Angels can bestow the celestial or fiendish template on a target for five rounds. Now, if there had been more stuff like that, better considered, where the Truenamer can redefine what a creature is on a fundamental level, that could have been interesting. This could have been a kind of mad geneticist class, using truenames to temporarily rewrite creatures’ natures, so that you could pile on a few utterances (or preferably some better-conceived spellcasting mechanic) to rewrite the universe and turn your ally into a twenty-foot-tall four-armed fire-breathing monster with poison dripping from her claws or something, with the truename effects bestowing abilities and templates. But, that’s not what they put out.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And as a final slap in the face, there’s a section on truename spells. Not utterances, but spells usable by standard spellcasting classes that require a Truespeak check. In fact, many of these require you to speak the subject’s personal truename, and have effects that are actually scary. Spurn the Supernatural, for example, can suppress a subject’s supernatural abilities. Expunge the Supernatural can remove a supernatural ability permanently, so you can permanently rob a dragon of its breath weapon (though probably not, since fortitude negates and dragons have really high fortitude saves). There aren’t a lot of these spells, but the few of them that are actually decent are cool enough to show up the entire Truenamer class.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Usage:</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Don’t.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Now, if you still want to go ahead, good luck. In a traditional fighter/thief/cleric/mage team, expect to fill the cleric slot. Most of your utterances are of the support/debuff variety, but I’d advise focusing on support simply because you know what the DC for using an utterance on a fellow PC is going to be.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Know that most of your utterances are so mediocre that they probably wouldn’t be a huge deal if you were able to cast them infinitely in a manner similar to Warlock invocations. Still, you have to make a ridiculously high skill check to use them, so you need to get that Truespeak skill as high as possible. Skill Focus and magic items that boost your Truespeak skill are, of course, a must. Also, go into Unearthed Arcana and get an item familiar. It’s totally overpowered, but in the case of a Truenamer, it’s absolutely essential if you want a Truespeak skill high enough to be reliable. If that’s out, then you need every boost you can get; prepare to stick mainly to buffing yourself then switching to melee in combat.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">At least some of the Word of Nurturing series is pretty much necessary. It’s your primary healing spell. It’s also your best damage-dealing spell, but it’s only on par with magic missile style spells and you need it for healing, so don’t go too nuts firing it off at the enemies. Also, keep in mind that you only add another +2 to an utterance DC if you succeed, so outside of combat, you can afford to slap on a +5 to the DC to extend Word of Nurturing’s fast healing, even if it takes you all the way down to a 5% chance to actually succeed. This lets you squeeze out a lot more healing that way.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Though in the end, my best advice is to lower your expectations. I’ve done a lot of futzing with this mess, and the only time it hasn’t been anything but a nightmare was one time when I used it as a sideline healing NPC, and that had some houserules in place that she could take advantage of to ramp up her Truespeak skill tremendously.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Summary:</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">This class sucks.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Binder, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Erudite, Incarnate, Lurk, Psion, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Soulborn, Soulknife, Swordsage, Totemist, Warblade, Wilder.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Next Week:</span> Soulknife</span></span>Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-58616005597093472252010-07-24T12:35:00.001-07:002010-07-24T12:40:20.788-07:00Expanded Class Feature 1: Shadowcaster<span style="font-weight: bold;">Class:</span> Shadowcaster<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> Tome of Magic<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preface:</span><br />So, here we have the first Expanded Class Feature. The structure is nothing fancy; I’ll start with the fluff, go on to the crunchy bits, then continue on to leftover thoughts, party integration, or whatever else I think’s needed.<br /><br />Getting started, Tome of Magic is, pretty much without question, the most experimental book in the entire official 3.5 library, and has a lot of cool stuff (which is not necessarily the same as good stuff). It’s a big book at nearly 300 pages, and it covers three new spellcasting systems. Pact magic, shadowcasting, and truenaming.<br /><br />This installment will focus on shadowcasting, which… really isn’t much of an alternate system. It throws around a lot of new words and terms, but ultimately, it’s pretty much still Vancian. Also, to the best of my knowledge, all shadowcasting-related rules material ever put out by WotC is on pages 109 to 190 of Tome of Magic. That includes the class, feats, prestige classes, spells, magic items, monsters, organizations, and plot hooks. They never appear again in any supplement and only official web material I’ve ever seen on them is an article on how they fit into the Forgotten Realms, without so much as a new feat or spell or some sort of alternate class feature.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fluffy bits:</span><br />Shadowcasters are dark. And dim. And black. And gray. And shadowy. And ebon. And umbral. And nightly. And nocturnal. And off-white. And my God, this unlit gloomy nonshininess gets annoying after a while. To whoever wrote the shadow magic chapter: Thesaurus privileges are now revoked.<br /><br />Shadowcasters are mages who draw their powers from the off-white secrets of the mysterious Plane of Shadow and the alien, cthulhic beings that reside there. Of course, since this is D&D, a game where you can plane shift to Celestia to have tea with gods and still get home in time for dinner, rather than Call of Cthulhu… Well, cthulhic horrors aren’t what they used to be.<br /><br />The book points out that dark is not necessarily evil, which is important, but considering you’re drawing on the powers of cthulhic horrors and your limited selection of spells includes such effects as “break the target’s brain with fear in hopes of reducing them to a nightmare-addled coma” or “seal the target in a nigh-unbreakable shadow prison that slowly saps their life away,” it does rather lend itself to villainy or at least antiheroism.<br /><br />And as much as it gets mentioned, I’m pointing out again that this is a dark mage we’re talking about. Normally, dark magic in D&D means raising zombies or summoning demons or something, with nothing to do with darkness. This is an actual dark mage, who’s more likely to stab you with your own shadow and then disappear than summon a zombie horde. For being as iconic as it is, it’s actually very rare in 3.5. There are some PrCs like maybe Shadowcraft Mage, but even those are a bit dubious. You’ve got mage/thieves, necromancers, mystic assassins, necromancers, evilmancers, and thief/mages, more necromancers, but no real shadow mages, so it does fill a significant niche in the genre. A murky, shadowy, umbral, grimdarkmystery niche in the blackest corner of the gloomiest tower at midnight. Probably while sitting between a raven and a barrel of tar.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How it works:</span><br />Shadow magic uses “mysteries.” Mysteries are spells. Half of shadowcasting is now explained. The rest are details.<br /><br />Really, shadow magic doesn’t add much to the Vancian equation, save for some odd complications that are an experiment in limitations. They separate spells into fundamental mysteries (a.k.a. cantrips), apprentice mysteries (1st-3rd-level spells), initiate mysteries (4th-6th-level spells) and master mysteries (7th-9th-level spells). You basically get access to them at the same rate as a Wizard.<br /><br />As for whether these Shadowcasters are spontaneous or prepared, well… imagine a Wizard. This Wizard prepares spells once and only once. Ever. That’s a Shadowcaster. Essentially, once you learn a mystery, it’s locked into a single “slot” permanently. No spontaneous conversion, no swapping out prepared mysteries, not even swapping out mysteries upon level-up like a Sorcerer.<br /><br />What shadow magic does have, however, is one particularly unique mechanic. As you level up, every time you gain access to a new tier of mysteries, your lower-tier mysteries go from being treated as arcane spells to spell-like abilities to supernatural abilities. Also, each spell-like ability gets two uses per day instead of one, and each supernatural ability gets three uses per day instead of two. So, at level seven (when you first get initiate mysteries), your initiate mysteries are treated as arcane spells and your apprentice mysteries are treated as spell-like with doubled uses. At level 13 (when you first gain access to master mysteries), your master mysteries are treated as arcane spells, your initiate mysteries are treated as spell-like abilities, and your apprentice mysteries are treated as supernatural abilities. So, at level 13, you can expect to have 18 uses per day of apprentice mysteries (split among six mysteries), 12 uses per day of initiative mysteries, and one use of a single master mystery. And most mysteries age about as well as spells. Which is to say, they age poorly, so that stack of low-level mysteries is liable to be mostly obsolete by the time you get that far.<br /><br />The change of type also brings in a shift in mechanics as spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities are all treated slightly differently. Mysteries treated as spells are subject to spell failure, counterspelling, attacks of opportunity, and have somatic components (but not verbal components). Those treated as spell-like abilities can’t be counterspelled and have no somatic components. Supernatural abilities can’t be dispelled, ignore spell-resistance, and don’t provoke attacks of opportunity. This ascent’s impact is… subtle, but can be meaningful.<br /><br />As an added bit of weirdness, within any tier of mysteries, you cannot learn the next level of mysteries without first learning two mysteries from the level before (in other words, you can’t learn 3rd-level mysteries without first learning two 2nd-level mysteries), which is really just a more cumbersome way of saying “Wizard spell progression” since you’re probably going to take the highest-level mysteries you can as soon as you can get them.<br /><br />And one of the most annoying parts of shadow magic? All mysteries are organized into paths. Three mysteries within a tier, ordered in sequence. For example, the Black Magic initiate path, which has Warp Spell (4th-level), Echo Spell (5th-level), and Flood of Shadow (6th-level). If you want to learn the second or third mystery in a path, you need to learn all the mysteries before it. You can’t learn Flood of Shadow without first learning Echo Spell and Warp Spell. That can mean that in order to get a mystery you want, you need to go through two mysteries that are of no use to you, and when you only get one mystery per level, that’s a Big Deal.<br /><br />Also of note, there’s a very slim selection of mysteries. While the spells chapter of the Player’s Handbook is a hundred pages long, and there’s supplement after supplement adding more spells to the mix, Tome of Magic gives less than twenty pages of mysteries with absolutely no additional support.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crunchy bits:</span><br />The shadowcaster gets a d6 hit die, simple weapons, no armor or shields, low BAB, strong fortitude and will, and weak reflexes. For skills, they have 2+int skill points per level with what amounts to the Wizard’s skill list with fewer Knowledge skills and three notable additions; Hide, Move Silently, and Spot, which are quite nice, letting you do a little bit of double duty as team sneak/scout. So, essentially, we’re looking at a slightly tougher, slightly more flexible Wizard skeleton on a class that’s meant to function similarly, with a slightly greater emphasis on stealth, but you get neither the skill list nor the skill points to be the team skill monkey.<br /><br />Now, for stats, Shadowcasters are split-stat casters. They use intelligence to determine the highest level of mystery they can cast, but use charisma to determine the save DC. That’s not a big deal for classes like the Favored Soul, who’s probably going to be casting buffs and support spells in place of anything that offers a save, but as a Wizard-like class without a whole lot of spells to draw on, Shadowcasters don’t really have that luxury and save DCs are a big deal, so having to split that casting stat hurts. You also need dexterity for stealth, AC, and initiative, and constitution for Concentration checks and hit points (that d6 hit die doesn’t make you stop being squishy), and if you want a decent Spot check you really can’t dump wisdom, so stats really become an issue. Note that I didn’t mention a stat governing bonus mysteries. Shadowcasters don’t get any.<br /><br />As for actual abilities (also known as the part that matters), Shadowcasters ultimately have four class abilities. From least to greatest, they gain an ability called Sustaining Shadow. As you advance as a Shadowcaster, you start drawing sustenance from the dark forces that fuel your magic such that you need less food and sleep, going from needing only one meal a week at 5th level to having no need to eat, sleep, or breathe along with immunity to poison and disease at 20th-level. From level 3, they gain darkvision (or improvements to existing darkvision) that eventually leads to perfect vision in natural darkness and the ability to see sixty feet into supernatural darkness. Also, they get bonus feats, with an odd stipulation on how you get them. You gain a number of bonus feats equal to half the number of paths you’ve taken mysteries from. The idea is that it forces you to choose between higher-level mysteries and lots of feats, but that choice is a no-brainer; you need higher-level mysteries as much as a Wizard needs higher-level spells. The feats are pretty meh anyways. So, this basically means you get a bonus feat at levels 2, 8, 14, and maybe 20.<br /><br />That rounds out a decent enough looking skeleton for a casting class, but that’s not the real meat of the class, the big determining factor that can either make or break this class. Let’s get to mysteries.<br /><br />For starters, you gain one mystery per level.<br /><br />Let me repeat. You gain one mystery per level. That’s it. And that mystery, once taken, is forever locked in place as if it were a prepared spell. So, as a first-level Shadowcaster, you get one first-level spell per day, with no bonus spells. Even a first-level generalist Wizard can expect to have two thanks to bonus spells. A first-level Sorcerer likely gets four, and can alternate them between two spells known rather than being locked to a single spell. It’s a return to the AD&D problem at level 1 of, “Well, the mage cast his one spell for the day, I guess we gotta rest.”<br /><br />Now, admittedly, you do start with three fundamentals each usable three times per day, but those tend to be things like Detect Magic (sorry, “Mystic Reflections”) or not-Mage-Hand. There is Arrow of Dusk, a fundamental which is a ranged touch attack that deals 2d4 nonlethal damage and can be taken multiple times to give you something more to do in a fight, but that’s not exactly impressive, even compared to plinking with a crossbow. The other caveat here is that there is the Favored Mystery feat, which can advance a single mystery from a spell to a spell-like (thus increasing it from 1/day to 2/day) or from spell-like to supernatural (2/day to 3/day) or add an additional use to a supernatural mystery, so you could have a human Shadowcaster who takes Favored Mystery twice at level one to get three uses of that one first-level mystery at level 1 and thus gets some more staying power, but just like spells, mysteries don’t usually age well and tend to become obsolete, so you have to be very choosy about what you take Favored Mystery for.<br /><br />Now, after all that, how are the mysteries themselves? Well… a lot of them are actually really good, often with unique effects that you’re not gonna get from spells. For example, Warp Spell is totally awesome. This is a 4th-level mystery that takes you can cast as an immediate action when an enemy casts a spell. You and the enemy make an opposed caster level check. If the enemy wins, you just wasted a mystery, but if you win, the enemy’s spell fails (kinda like a counterspell that you don’t have to prepare) and you get an additional use of one of your apprentice mysteries as you absorb the enemy’s spell and you can immediately use that mystery as a part of the same action. So, if the enemy mage tries to hit the party with ye olde fireball, you can negate the fireball and then in retaliation immobilize half the enemy orcs with Clinging Darkness when it’s not even your turn. Now that has potential. Honorable mention goes to Consume Essence, a 9th-level mystery that has one of the coolest effects you can ask for. It kills the target. Twice. Meaning the target rolls a save and if they fail, they die, come back as your slave for a couple minutes, then die again. Now that’s style.<br /><br />The class is a real mixed bag, and is generally panned as a failed class. Heck, I came into this review with the notion that the only good thing to come out of Tome of Magic was pact magic (which still mostly stands), but it’s not nearly as bad as people make it out to be, and it can work reasonably well in capable hands.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Usage:</span><br />First off, before using a Shadowcaster, I’d first suggest talking to the DM about houseruling in a fix. One of the more popular fixes is to 1) Grant bonus mysteries per day based on charisma, 2) Eliminate that stupid rule where you have to take mysteries in a path in order, 3) Make the save DCs for supernatural abilities work like most other supernatural abilities, making them 10+1/2 character level+charisma, making your numerous uses of low-level mysteries as supernatural abilities more useful, 4) Grant a bonus feat for each path you actually complete rather than for every two paths you pick mysteries from, and 5) Allow Sorcerer-esque retraining with level-up.<br /><br />Even then, I would not recommend this class to a beginner; it’s riddled with landmines and potential mistakes that could leave you pretty useless. In fact, I probably wouldn’t recommend this class to a PC and I’d sooner suggest Beguiler, Psychic Rogue, or Lurk.<br /><br />There are a lot of mediocre, situational spells of the type that a Wizard or even a Sorcerer could get away with taking (or even legitimately benefit from taking) that a Shadowcaster just can’t afford because they get so few mysteries, which cuts back on the problem-solving potential expected of an arcanist. We’re essentially talking two spells per level, after all. The best advice I can give? Choose those mysteries wisely and squeeze every bit of use out of them that you can; every mystery you take ought to be something you can use to significant effect on a regular basis for your entire career, and you ought to put some real thought into how best to use them in any situation.<br /><br />However, there is one use for Shadowcaster that I highly recommend. NPCs. They’re a straightforward stealthy mage class with plenty of style and a lot of weird effects that can take the party by surprise, whether it’s from some caster mooks tag teaming to drop the PC Wizard’s strength to zero with Flesh Fails or the Big Bad whipping out the oddball that is Warp Spell at the worst possible moment, they definitely make handy NPCs, and it’s far easier to stat out a 20th-level Shadowcaster than a 20th-level Wizard.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br />Strengths:<br />Relatively stout for a mage-type, especially with those strong fortitude saves<br />Hide/Move Silently as class skills<br />A number of odd and unique spell effects you’re not liable to find anywhere else<br />Reduce food bills<br /><br />Weaknesses:<br />Painfully few spells per day<br />Extremely limited flexibility from not being able to swap out spells in any way<br />Numerous turkey spells make it easy to build a really useless character<br />Lack of support coupled with lack of material<br />Overuses every synonym for “dark” in the English language<br /><br /><br />Remaining classes: Ardent, Artificer, Binder, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Erudite, Incarnate, Lurk, Psion, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Soulborn, Soulknife, Swordsage, Totemist, Truenamer, Warblade, Wilder.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Next Week:</span> Truenamer.Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6375725875147151947.post-56444704040370982142010-07-22T11:38:00.000-07:002010-08-28T11:22:37.590-07:00+1 BlogWell, here's yet another gaming blog, except this one's mine. This is for prattle about pen & paper roleplaying games (mainly D&D 3.5 since that's my main system), though I may ramble about other geek-related topics sometimes.<br /><br />The first order of business, and the impetus for starting this blog? Well, the podcast <a href="http://www.35privatesanctuary.com/">3.5 Private Sanctuary</a> has an ongoing a Class Feature series which analyzes various classes starting with the core classes and then fanning out into other sourcebooks at a rate of two classes per month, interspersed with their standard topics. There were three restrictions on what classes they review: They must come from sources they have access to, they can't be setting-specific, and they can't use alternate mechanical systems. So, that means no psionics, incarnum, tomes, Artificer, or Dread Necromancer (they don't have Heroes of Horror, but Archivist is in the free excerpt on WotC's site). They feel they don't have the experience with the alternate systems required to do them justice.<br /><br />So, I'm picking up where they're leaving off (or... will have left off once they finish... or something). Once a week (unless plans change, expect hiatuses as this is a busy time in my life), I intend to put out a write-up on one class that they're not covering. The list is as follows:<br /><br />Ardent, Artificer, Binder, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dread Necromancer, Erudite, Incarnate, Lurk, Psion, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Shadowcaster, Soulborn, Soulknife, Swordsage, Totemist, Truenamer, Warblade, Wilder.<br /><br />That's twenty classes. I'm not sure what order I'll go in, but the Tome of Battle classes will need a primer or two, so they'll likely come later. The first class I'm gonna tackle will probably be Shadowcaster. I may begin with the real turkeys (Shadowcaster, Truenamer, Divine Mind, Soulknife, Soulborn) just to get them out of the way, but we'll see.Valiumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692858711992638361noreply@blogger.com0