Class: Unbound Witch
Source: Secrets of Pact Magic
How it Works:
I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for pact-making classes as a whole, which can be found here.
Preface:
It’s time for more pimping of Secrets of Pact Magic, with my favorite class from the entire set, the Unbound Witch.
If you don’t have the book, you can still follow along; the Unbound Witch is part of the free sample available here.
Fluffy Bits:
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?
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.”
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.
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.
Crunchy Bits:
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.
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.
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.
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.
And at level 20, you become a monstrous humanoid and gain darkvision. Woo.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Usage:
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Summary:
Strengths:
Great flexibility in what you can build
Obscene save DCs
Single stat dependence
That stat is the best possible stat
Surprisingly good skills
Awesomene NPCs
Weaknesses:
Very limited flexibility once you set your granted abilities
Low BAB limits you
Feat intensive
You’re liable to end up a hideous freak of nature
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.
Next Time: Soulborn
Showing posts with label Secrets of Pact Magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secrets of Pact Magic. Show all posts
Friday, December 3, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Expanded Class Feature 7: Foe Hunter
Class: Foe Hunter
Source: Secrets of Pact Magic
How it Works:
I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for pact-making classes as a whole, which can be found here.
Preface:
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.
Full disclosure, I’ve never actually used this particular class, either as a DM or a player.
Fluffy Bits:
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.
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.
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.
Still, it’s a cool class for that dark, hateful hunter/assassin type character.
Crunchy Bits:
Mechanically, the Foe Hunter is a synthesis of Ranger and Rogue with binding flare.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You also get supersenses. Scent at level 7, 30’ blindsense at level 16, 30’ blindsight at level 19.
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.
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.
And if you don’t know what you’ll be dealing with for the day, well… sucks to be you.
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.
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.
Usage:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Summary:
Strengths:
A broad and useful array of flexible abilities
Solid thiefy skill list
Secure employment in the murder industry
Weaknesses:
Lots of conditional abilities makes it difficult to bring out your full power
Compulsions to murder are bad for your social life
Spirit selection is often largely done for you
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.
Next Week: Incarnate (I need a little more time to work on the Tome of Battle primers)
Source: Secrets of Pact Magic
How it Works:
I’ve worked up an all-purpose ‘How it Works’ article for pact-making classes as a whole, which can be found here.
Preface:
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.
Full disclosure, I’ve never actually used this particular class, either as a DM or a player.
Fluffy Bits:
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.
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.
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.
Still, it’s a cool class for that dark, hateful hunter/assassin type character.
Crunchy Bits:
Mechanically, the Foe Hunter is a synthesis of Ranger and Rogue with binding flare.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You also get supersenses. Scent at level 7, 30’ blindsense at level 16, 30’ blindsight at level 19.
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.
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.
And if you don’t know what you’ll be dealing with for the day, well… sucks to be you.
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.
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.
Usage:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Summary:
Strengths:
A broad and useful array of flexible abilities
Solid thiefy skill list
Secure employment in the murder industry
Weaknesses:
Lots of conditional abilities makes it difficult to bring out your full power
Compulsions to murder are bad for your social life
Spirit selection is often largely done for you
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.
Next Week: Incarnate (I need a little more time to work on the Tome of Battle primers)
Saturday, August 28, 2010
How it Works: Pact Magic
This 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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Secrets of Pact Magic and Villains of Pact Magic are available from Radiance House Publishing. The official site is pactmagic.com, which includes information, free samples, and supplemental materials.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Secrets of Pact Magic and Villains of Pact Magic are available from Radiance House Publishing. The official site is pactmagic.com, which includes information, free samples, and supplemental materials.
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