Class Compression

[Username17]

The reason why Fighters can't compete at high levels is because everything they do is weak sauce at high levels. Back in AD&D days, the final boss of AD&D (Demogorgon) could be beaten up by some high level warriors with magic swords. That was a real thing. But in 3e D&D land, the final boss of the game (Szass Tam) is seriously just immune to death by sword blows. It doesn't matter what kind of damage output you have or don't have, you can't beat him that way.

It isn't just that the Fighter doesn't get big enough numbers or that his abilities accumulate too slowly - although that is true. It's that by the time you get to the high levels there is nothing on his entire list of abilities that can make you matter.

Giving out higher numbers or faster ability progressions might make the Fighter overpowered at low level if you did it enough. But it's never going to make him even balanced in the over-tens class.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

20 levels of "warrior" classes is now equal to a gestalt character, compared to 20 levels of a single full caster. No XP adjustment is required, and spell slots remain within the 20-level window.
Yes, yes, I realize the former sucks and the latter is god, but it's still better off than what we had before.

But 20 levels of warrior classes still isn't really 'level appropriate'. Once your barbarian is 10th level, branching out into ranger isn't a way to keep up.

[VladtheLad]

Maybe heavy prereqs prestige classes that practically need 10 levels of fighter/ranger/barbarian and give useful high level abilities would make it work.

This actually is in agreement with tomes smaller classes arguement that "for some classes the concept collapses after 10 level (knight)".

[Cynic]

vlad: Any martial prestige in the 3.5 books are absolute shit. I mean you can twink them to extremes but the results you get by just doing it as a cleric/druid/wizard are just as potent if not better.

Shit, the best archer is the cleric archer. the best fighter is the bear of the north build. Hell, there are tons of batman/God wizard builds that are insane. You don't even need prestige builds to be kick ass as straight spellcasters.

the 11 class fighter compression just isn't potent. I mean almost all the fighter bonus feats just don't cut it. A whopping 16 feats is really not that great. This would be if you played a human fighter.

I think the most potent ability to give a core fighter is just to give them UMD as a class skill and allow them to use strength as the skill prereq.

The flavor on that can be something silly. But even this is just dip into the magic bag of tricks.

[tussock]

But in 3e D&D land, the final boss of the game (Szass Tam) is seriously just immune to death by sword blows. It doesn't matter what kind of damage output you have or don't have, you can't beat him that way.

Hell, in 2nd edition a lot of high end monsters couldn't be beaten any other way. 95% MR that saves on a 4 was a PITA for the casters, and they still dominated the game, even though it took them four days of quiet study to get all their spells back at high level, and you couldn't cast the good ones anyway for the penalties.

At least 2nd edition Wizards needed the grunts now and then (or always, given how much suck being in melee was, and the ever slower recovery cycles).

[Koumei]

Wait, Szass Tam is final boss? I only ever heard about him in that sentence there, and had to Google his decomposing ass just to know who he is. So 29 class levels plus lich plus whatever bullshit they added to him to make him special...

What makes him the final boss? That he's the head of a Srs Bzns organisation (as opposed to most other Arbitrarily Epic High foes that, sure, have big numbers, but whatever, they're just there, no-one cares)?

[Cynic]

Aren't the Thay wizards just a smaller sort of the Lady of Pain? Untouchable that is.

[CatharzGodfoot]

vlad: Any martial prestige in the 3.5 books are absolute shit. I mean you can twink them to extremes but the results you get by just doing it as a cleric/druid/wizard are just as potent if not better.

Shit, the best archer is the cleric archer. the best fighter is the bear of the north build. Hell, there are tons of batman/God wizard builds that are insane. You don't even need prestige builds to be kick ass as straight spellcasters.

the 11 class fighter compression just isn't potent. I mean almost all the fighter bonus feats just don't cut it. A whopping 16 feats is really not that great. This would be if you played a human fighter.

I think the most potent ability to give a core fighter is just to give them UMD as a class skill and allow them to use strength as the skill prereq.

The flavor on that can be something silly. But even this is just dip into the magic bag of tricks.

The fighter in this should be 5 levels long. Two fighter feats a level. You can do prestige class compression as well.

[JonSetanta]

Wait, Szass Tam is final boss? I only ever heard about him in that sentence there, and had to Google his decomposing ass just to know who he is. So 29 class levels plus lich plus whatever bullshit they added to him to make him special...

What makes him the final boss? That he's the head of a Srs Bzns organisation (as opposed to most other Arbitrarily Epic High foes that, sure, have big numbers, but whatever, they're just there, no-one cares)?

Eh, that's just Franks opinion and/or experience. In my experience it's someone like Vecna or Asmodeus that signifies the endgame (although they were dramatically unattainable, and campaigns I've played in never got that far)

If you want a true final boss... go fight Ao of Faerun.

The fighter in this should be 5 levels long. Two fighter feats a level. You can do prestige class compression as well.

I might do that next.

EDIT: And, the more I think about it, Fighters really should get 2 feats a level. Those bonus feats are pretty much shit and other classes are getting "cherry pick" stuff in those first few levels, and in multiples.
So, what, 10 levels of 2 feats per level?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Sigma, I think that 10 feats from a class is enough for just about any character. You could extend it arbitrarily, but 20 feats in 10 levels is a fucking lot to deal with.


I was looking over prestige classes, and a lot of them just don't compress well. They end up way overspecialized.

Here's an example that I think works well, though:
Darkstalker
1: Improved Stonecunning, Enhanced Darkvision +30', Sneak attack +1d6
2: Stone's Hue, Enhanced Darkvision +60', Death Attack

The drunken master works as well:
Drunken Master
1: Drink like a Demon, Improvised Weapons, Stagger
2: Swaying Waist*, Improved & Greater Improvised Weapons
3: Improved Grapple, Improved Feint, For Medicinal Purposes.
4: Corkscrew Rush, Superior Improvised Weapons, Breath of Flame

And the tattooed monk:
Tattooed Monk
1: Monk abilities, Tattoo
2: Tattoo
3: Tattoo
4: Tattoo
5: Tattoo

...which works as long as you're choosing good tattoos.

[Koumei]

For the fighter, why not just give it a special ability at level 5 or 7 called "HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS FIGHTER IS SO FUCKING AWESOME", which is basically "pick one of the following to be good at, get +$TEXAS to the check and special uses of it" and then have level-appropriate Prestige Classes with that as the requirement?

[Cynic]

I think we could do a 10 class fighter. But we specialize after the first five levels. Give the fighter two feats every odd level up to 5. THen we add choice-picked versions of prcs. Do the knight thing where there are definite specialties and you can pick which one you want for the next 5 levels. But as Catharz mentioned, this is a little hard because the prcs don't compress well. But we could take archetypes and just make abilities based on that.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I have this feeling that making up your own shit totally defeats the purpose of the exercise.

[Koumei]

True, but I don't think *this* exercise (just compress lame classes into half the levels) works. Not that I'd hijack this thread with my projects, but it doesn't seem to be doable, so I would suggest taking it another direction (and for whoever decides to do so, doing it in its own thread).

[RadiantPhoenix]

I thought the point was that the fighter class did sorta work ... for the first couple levels or so.

[VladtheLad]

vlad: Any martial prestige in the 3.5 books are absolute shit. I mean you can twink them to extremes but the results you get by just doing it as a cleric/druid/wizard are just as potent if not better.

I didn't suggest using prestige classes from the 3.5 books, I said that maybe creating prestige classes that would need bab +10 and mightyrage/hide in plain sight/ swath of feats to get into and would give appropriate high level powers.

However as Catharz said making up shit propably defeats the purpose of this excercise...

[Username17]

The SRD melee classes basically get first level class features at every level of their progressions. If you condense those progressions, you can keep the character viable for as long as first level class features can do that. Condense them enough, and you can make the class unbalanced in the other way at levels low enough that having a lot of 1st level class features could do that.

But no amount of condensation is going to keep a character relevant after you get high enough level that you can't keep mattering with larger stacks of 1st level class features. So the answer to the original question is a resounding no.

Moving on.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

You lot got to me with your revision suggestions.

I did some stuff with the abilities last night, but left the original progressions in spoiler blocks for comparison.

Prestige classes are up. They all have spellcaster progressions for characters that have it.
The first level is usually without spellcasting to deter cherrypicking.

[Cynic]

I'd flat out say no to the fighter. Managing 20+ feats is insane. I do like pure muscle though. It's one way to get closer to the goal of melee/magical equivalence.

The monk is a lot more deadly now. Give him a ring of blink and you start kicking a little bit of ass. This is with the rogue sneak attack that is. I'd actually be kinda interested in seeing how this might play out. I'm going to be playing a game of tome for new years. I might test it out against other tome classes. I'm sure it's going to be a little subpar compared to the other classes but it is worth a try.

ALso does anyone know a way to make a monk's unarmed attacks as touch attacks?

[PoliteNewb]

Thoughts:

Pure Muscle...racial or enhancement, pick one. I'd go with enhancement, personally.

Rage...if it no longer causes fatigue, isn't Tireless Rage (lvl 9) kinda useless?

Sneak Attack...are you saying it now deals +1d6 + (2 x rogue lvl)? That's...actually kinda neat, now that I think about it. I may play around with that and adapt a version myself.

As for the PrC compressions, I rather like them...I find most PrCs aren't super bad, they just take too long to get to the good stuff. I'm in favor of capping all PrCs at 5 lvls...if you don't even finish up your concept until 15th lvl, there is a good chance you will never finish it.

ALso does anyone know a way to make a monk's unarmed attacks as touch attacks?

You mean using base 3.5 rules? Besides using Wraithstrike (wand, ring of spell storing, etc), I think there's some magic item from MIC that lets you do that a limited number of time per day (make a regular attack as sneak attack). You can also use the Emerald Razor maneuver (ToB) to do it with 1 attack as a standard action, but that's kinda shitty most of the time.

[JonSetanta]

Cynic: Yeah I'm planning on playtesting some new creations with my brothers and some friends this winter in a custom underground setting, will post results.

While I didn't hold Tier 1-2 classes (read: Tome) in mind with these, I was striving for around Tier 3, and perhaps a bump up from 4-5 up to 3 when possible.

Wraithstrike is the only possible means I know of to ignore armor.

EDIT: For custom non-caster feats I've made, look here: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51868
There's a feat for Rogues (and anyone, really, but it's Rogue-themed) that ports Wraithstrike in.

What spell level is Gravestrike and Golemstrike? I'd like to make feats for those too.

---

PoliteNewb: ... Tireless Rage is indeed worthless. I'll get to replacing it and granting Barbarian some "barrier breaking" capabilities soon.
Nothing complex like Tome warrior feats (which would be AWESOME when combined with these compressed classes) but perhaps more like certain Tome Samurai features, a cool class.


Pure Muscle (and similar stat boosts I made for racial classes, such as Fiend and Celestial ones) was designed to overlap and supercede both racial and enhancement bonuses whenever higher. This is to both prevent godly RNG breaking and reward characters for being independent from item stat boosts.
For example, how often do Fiends wear shit at all? They have nice stats across the board, but it shouldn't blow the top off what PCs are capable of.

I suppose I could remove the racial element to it, but then you'd have things like Ogre Barbarians with 50+ STR or something.

The Sneak Attack change was a result of some discussions on Brilliant Gameologists about reducing die rolls. After all, with two weapon Rogues you're rolling Xd6 dice on top of damage PER ATTACK.
Rather than grant a new iteration of the same ability, I just granted it once and made it progress, and certain classes "count as Rogue" for adding to the 2 x level progression, much like Sneak Attack originally stacked.
Also, Sudden Strike and Skirmish sucks balls, just count it as the same.

[Kaelik]

While I didn't hold Tier 1-2 classes (read: Tome) in mind with these, I was striving for around Tier 3, and perhaps a bump up from 4-5 up to 3 when possible.

WARGARBARGALALALAWAR!

While I didn't hold a;lksnlasndj in mind with these, I was striving for lkajsdlkasfkas and perhaps a bump up from l;kasflkas up to lkajsdlkasfkas when possible.

[Leress]

While I didn't hold Tier 1-2 classes (read: Tome) in mind with these, I was striving for around Tier 3, and perhaps a bump up from 4-5 up to 3 when possible.

Well there's your problem you are using some shitty tier system.

[RobbyPants]

It's funny that that very same system got mentioned in OOTS. It has become quite popular in other forums, but I think a lot of people don't know why it's fundamentally useless.

[For Valor]

Let's not get derailed, guys. Tiers are shitty, but the idea of dividing balance into 6 points makes me a lot happier than the 4 points we use here. Sigma probably has some similar rationale.

In other news, I'm pretty sure Gravestrike and Golemstrike are level 1 spells. I'd like those things to be rogue special abilities, if possible.