That is what most RPG fans want. If their class does not perform well, then they want your help to make it better.
That's what they
say that they want. But in reality if you tell them
why their class doesn't perform well or
how their class doesn't perform well or you know
help them evaluate and design their fucking useless class, then they get all pissed off.
What they actually want is for people to tell them that their class is
great! or for people to tell them that their class is wonderful
but it needs more unicorns and rainbows! If you bust out the numbers and show the failure points of the class, that would in any objective sense be a completely required portion of class evaluation and design. But they don't want to hear that, and they will get
really hacked off when it happens.
So the stress points of his class were:
- The character never gets any offensive ability worth mentioning, meaning that without the rest of the party he can't meaningfully contribute to any combat.
- His only meaningful contribution past the level 1-3 gimmes is in providing defensive bonuses for his friends. But he doesn't provide enough defensive bonuses to actually keep friends alive longer enough to compensate for essentially losing a character's worth of attacks since before the beginning of the battle.
- His abilities don't do what he thinks they do and aren't really useful at any level.
- For a mage harrier character, he doesn't actually interfere with spellcasters in any significant fashion.
And that's damning. To really do something with the class you'd have to scrap it and give him something to...
do in combat. Chasing around after the party Wizard so that you can provide a +2 AC bonus to him and his familiar is kind of insulting. And when you can only "pull" one monster at a time, you're only doing the party a favor if you actually
take less damage than other characters.
So yeah. What do you tell a guy like that?
"Your idea didn't work. It didn't work because it wasn't based on a solid base of observation. It was, in short, a
completely random hypothesis. The fact that it falsifies rather trivially when placed against the harsh light of testing is unsurprising. Out of the infinite possible completely random hypotheses you could have made, a substantial proportion of them would return the same result. And if you keep putting together essentially random collections of exceptions to the basic rules in this manner you will only ever make something playable in the manner in which monkeys with typewriters will eventually write
Hamlet. Your methodology is flawed and doomed to failure.
Take a step back. Don't create whole classes from scratch and hope they do something cool. While there is a chance that can work it is the creative equivalent of purchasing lottery tickets. Use the tools that science has shown us. Start with an idea of what you want them to be doing at each level in combat. Then write abilities that seem like they would actually reward that behavior. Don't give +1 bonuses at 2nd level because that
looks like a 2nd level ability. Don't give any mind to what the abilities
look like. Give a mind to what the character
as a whole is capable of. If they are supposed to scare mages, consider the kinds of save bonuses they would actually need just to survive a
color spray thrown by a spell focused Gnome at 1st level (DC 16 for the kids at home).
Look at the opposition. Look at the D&D tactical map. consider what options your fourth or fifth man would be using to influence the table to the benefit of the player characters. It's fine to make a defensive character or a teamwork oriented character. But run the numbers on what kind of attacks you are being defended
from. Run the numbers on what kind of force multiplier the team would get from just having an extra man on the front lines with a riding dog and a lance.
Remember that any defensive abilities
and any teamwork oriented abilities are inherently limited. Before you get all hung up on taking half damage from cold monsters, ask yourself how much you'd care about an attack power that made you do double damage against just cold monsters. Also remember that while in the duel situation taking half damage yourself is logically equivalent to dishing out double damage, in the case where you have 3 compatriots taking full damage it's really really not (since you won't see the extra damage dividends from your greater survivability until your allies have dealt with the problem or been ground to dust beneath the problem's heels)."
Do you honestly think this yokel is mature enough to get told that and not throw a fucking temper tantrum?
I don't.
-Username17
