The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:I'm not some strawman off-boarder you can just snipe at in an attempt to be funny.
Doesn't stop your repeated, and continued uses of non holy knight abilities to defend the holy knight from being A GIANT HILARIOUS JOKE. Membership in the tree house boys club doesn't bring anti mocking privileges.
it 'appears' that you only get 24 points of damage to play with. But you're using Power Crit, so it starts at 72 damage and can go way, way up. For example, a 20 charisma level 20 holy knight (how to get your buff on is explained below) can dish out 300 hp of damage with their trick before we throw on expansion options.
So lets get this straight
A) Level 14 wasn't enough, now level 20 builds get a mention.
B) I SEE, it all relies on using critical hit to multiple your inflict touch. But... wait why the fuck does THAT get to critical multiply and all the damage it's comparing against doesn't especially since...
C) Power Crit and all your critical feats AREN'T HOLY KNIGHT ABILITIES DUMBASS. Anyone can take them, anyone can use them, by your reasoning EVERYONE gets to multiply all their damage bonuses for comparison purposes and your "starts out at +72" really doesn't look like much at all.
Does it temporarily gimp you? Yes, it does and doesn't start giving benefits until level 9 at least, which is why I won't recommend Holy Knight for most campaigns.
Any class you can't recommend because in most campaigns it is totally gimped for if not the ENTIRETY of a normal campaign certainly the majority of it is a BAD CLASS.
I mean how the hell is that "head and shoulders above his companions"?
You can't say "The holy knight is a kick ass combat class, except in the majority of the majority of campaigns." Once you've qualified it that much I can state that the SMART hero is a kick ass combat class, except in the majority of the majority of campaigns.
Early levels? Oh, yeah, that +3 bonus from your class features are going to help so damn much. Well, enjoy it while it lasts, because that's the only advantage you're going to get until with a suspiciously similar build to yours takes Field Officer.
By level 3 you are getting +6 MORE to diplomacy than just class skill, feats and charisma investment get you vs 50% of all NPCs and +3 more vs the rest. Every level of charismatic you go up after that gives you +2/+1 more and at level 5 that's to basically 100% of NPCs for the larger bonus.
That's seriously a noticable something or other you are doing there as early as level 3, and by level 10 you never fail at diplomacy again. You are still inferior to everyone (except smart heroes and some of the extra dumb prestige classes) in every other respect but you at least get one big giant thing you can do in a big giant way.
The field officer gets to stand there giving everyone other than himself bonuses, doesn't take actions himself, and everyone shoots him every turn until he dies because he is the simultaneously the easiest and highest priority target in the group. That isn't a player usable character class, its a cluster fuck.
If you want to diplomatize, be a dedicated hero. Their bonuses are bigger. Pick up skill emphasis and empathy and leave the gimp-ass charismatic hero in the dust. Hell, the bonus is untyped as well, so it'll stack with the bonuses from magical items.
The bonuses aren't bigger for dedicated, indeed one of them is smaller, and the one that is the same size has a more costly and stupid requirement for use.
The charismatic ones are also untyped.
And you can stick one level of dedicated onto your charismat for the +3 skill focus if you must (heck once you've done your charismatic hero levels you can fill out dedicated for an extra untyped +1 per dedicated level) but really you've wandered well off the RNG by then anyway...
1) ??? Buffs are easy to get on in Urban Arcana. The party mage or acolyte (preferably both) use online spellcasting. Everyone else uses a PDA or MP3 player or whatever and open up all of their e-mails.
Did I miss something because I see only ONE attribute boosting effect in the entire system.
I don't give a shit if you deliver it by email or potions, "+5 and that is it" isn't getting any better that "+5 and that is it" even if it IS sent to you by an honest to goodness prince of Nigeria who just needs your credit card number.
There isn't an 'always hit' feature since dual rocket launchers are worthless are around your buddies and <30 feet away.
Like I said, melee bonuses are worthless at a range greater than 5 feet, so really what the hell point do you think you are making in your favour?
You get 5 feet, I get 30+ out to a gazillion I'm going to LIE and instead of calling that vastly in my favour call it a wash.
Then I'm still going to laugh at you over range limitations because MINE is an area effect.
3) In case you didn't recognize from my subtle hints, you don't dual-wield rocket launchers, ever. They're heavy weapons, so you need your hands on both of them. They require a move-equivalent action to arm, so you can't just load up on 10 of them and quick-draw/drop them.
Nowhere does it state anything other than a move action at SOME point to arm them, hell it doesn't even need a free hand. Meanwhile the class I was discussing explicitly gets to use a Large weapon in each hand.
You ignore all the text telling GMs to take away Holy Knight class abilities like it wasn't even printed but you like to make bullshit up about rocket launchers.
Finally, yes, there is a sunk cost on using them. You need at the bare minimum Exotic Weapons Proficiency that's good for nothing else.
A) Oooh, if I don't I'll get -4 to hitting that square's AC what? 10...
B) Screw it, I'll invest the feat so I can hit things directly and ignore some funky hardness (like I care). Gee, guess that puts me one feat behind on investing the HOW many? feats in critical hit stuff (which magically doesn't apply to damage from sources other than inflict, like say, rocket launchers).
In fact, did you notice you actually CAN power crit a rocket launcher? Man that's one poorly written and conceived feat (I won't say it's outright bad or broken, or deserving of GM nerfing, d20modern characters need all the help they can get and we all know it).
4) We've already been over that, only a jerkass DM will take away your abilities anyway.
And that jerk ass GM has direct rules text supporting his jerkery. Unlike say, when he want's to stop me dual wielding rocket launchers.
5) So looks cool is a criteria now?
Fuck yeah. Coolness is the primary and fundamental criteria. The reason actual functionality and mechanical capability are a criteria at all is because failing in those regards is
not cool.
Read my reviews. Flavour is an issue. Such as, oh, off the top of my head, the way field officer never personally does anything ever, or the way Holy Knight isn't even a motherfucking modern themed class. And therefore is totally uncool and not hip with the times in a cool modern style setting.
Those stunlocks you mentioned? Cost. Action points. You know, the action points you so revile.
Action point reliant ability, minus significant amount to power of ability.
Large amount of stunlock with NO SAVE or roll of ANY form. Plus well nigh infinite amount of ability.
Well nigh infinite minus significant amount, equals fucking lots.
But he's not going to do that generally; he's going to inflict daze-lock with subdual damage.
Ah, the "holy knight" is going to do that is he... Oddly, it's in no way a holy knight class ability to do so at all, is it? You know what I'm thinking.
If he doesn't have the action point, then he distributes the Holy Touch ability through his unarmed strikes to push the damage over the daze threshold meter.
You know what else I'm thinking? I'm thinking, WTF, that ability doesn't work like that at all. It's a special touch attack, which you can apply smite to, not the other way round. Even if you CAN charge it up like it were chill touch or some junk it deals HOLY DAMAGE BATMAN.
In fact WTF? What the hell is your holy knight doing dealing non lethal damage anyway? I mean "Haha, demon lord Khan, I shall take you alive, with my SAP/Kung Fu/Flat of Blade at -4" Only one of those does anything other than make the already highly specific setting that even allows the holy knight anything less than even more specific/stupider. And it causes a -4 penalty, something which five seconds ago stopped you from wanting to do something much cooler like dual wielding rocket launchers.
And, of course, what are you going to do with this ability when you're NOT fighting Shadow opponents? Shadow is a campaign feature exclusive to Urban Arcana/Shadow Chasers to begin with.
And holy knights are exclusive to those campaigns and have abilities that either don't work or are deprived when you use them against targets of an even more specific subset which may be common only in a more specific subset of those settings.
The holy knight is throwing stones from a glass house, no wait, sorry, making touch inflict attacks at the same time as sap/kungfu from inside glass houses.
The world your DM cooks up might not even have Shadow as a concept. Furthermore, you might now fight Shadow creatures all of the time. So then what?
Well then Holy Knight is screwed as a magical class then isn't it?
Word of Slaying is a very nice ability that has a lot of applications. But it's not the end-all, be-all. It doesn't do anything above and beyond what's in your standard arsenal of tricks.
No. Save. Stunlock. It even lasts 1d4 rounds so you get to mess about in between. It even effects EVERY applicable target in 15 feet. It even has better stunlock effects on mooks (up to the ultimate stunlock, death with no save). I know, hard to believe, but I just checked again just in case it someone drugged me with psychedelics when I did the write up on it last time.
this isn't like taking the whirlwind chain where you're led astray by a bunch of bullshit feats like dodge and mobility to get an ability. You're taking feats that are useful in of themselves, like Power Crit, a feat almost everyone should put in their arsenal anyway.
And therefore should be accounted for for everyone. Everyone multiplies their damage by whatever (which as far as I can tell from a brief overview is only ever really double because this is d20 modern and all x3 or better weapons aren't and I can't find that improved critical multiplier feat anywhere so it mustn't have made the leap).
So the holy knight really only gains well, nothing here. Plenty of other classes get loads of synergy from multplying damage, like you know the guy with 30 fricking strength (BEFORE magic bullshit).
In other words, you advance normally and get a lot of mileage out of your feats and THEN your damage suddenly spikes and explodes.
No, you advance with weaker attributes and abilities because you invested in charisma and built for an ability you don't get till 14. and for at least 3 levels before you get it you advance in a class that gives you stuff that isn't as good as 3 more levels in other classes gets you, and even once you get there you haven't really pulled ahead in any way that is worth that amount of pain (not that there IS anything worth that as we know that sort of trade off is stupid).