The Gaming Den

Just bringing this back because something jumped out at me:

virgil wrote:I'm looking for ideas similar to the Beguiler, Puppeteer, etc. Can you make an fantasy diviner class that isn't just a big middle finger to the plot (or from the plot, depending on the DM's railroad tendencies)? Obviously they'd get detect spells, scrying, and the like. But giving them combat roles that're more evocative than +$TEXAS insight bonuses seems at first glance difficult.

Say you want a class that's "similar to the Beguiler," except (a) you'd start off with Detect spells and work your way up to stuff like Discern Location, and (b) you'd get a combat role that's more evocative than just a big bonus, like knowing how to bluff your way through a feint -- though, as per the insight bonus from Moment Of Prescience, plenty of your magic could be fluffed as 'knowledgeable' successes with skills: you're not just slapping Detect Thoughts on top of Sense Motive; you Spider Climb instead of rolling the dice, and you use Freedom Of Movement to get out of a grapple, and maybe even Disguise Self and Hesitate fit into that; but there's also Glibness, and in that vein there's Hypnotism and Suggestion and so on -- and even when you didn't actually have Foresight up and running, you'd still have a just-know-stuff knack when it comes to traps.

And you'd have some other divinations, and some abjurations to counter enemy divinations -- and some abjurations to counter enemy magic, because you're a See Stuff Coming And Counter It guy.

So you could do worse than play a Beguiler, right?

A beguiler with the Apprentice feat to select extra divinations who PRCs out to snag Mind Bender at level 6 and the Mindsight feat. i mean, that's a valid life choice, even if kaelik will never ever let me use mindsight because he hates it when i have fun.

If you even more stuff for a Diviner-type character, there's the entire Clairsentience psionic discipline to get ideas from. Not only their exclusive power list, but also the Clairsentience generic powers, even if these seem to be "get Insight Bonuses on everything".

For a diviner, I'd actually take the route of allowing the player to, for example, roll their melee attack and then after seeing the result decide whether that was a trip/disarm/etc or a regular attack - that's the fairest way that has leapt to mind so far of allowing foresight in the short term.

Other ideas included things like the Shadow Hand maneuver where you roll twice to hit, and if both land you get a bonus. Stuff that makes you more likely to succeed, even if you're succeeding in slightly unintended ways.

Heh. What's practically the motto, hereabouts? That a character's mundane abilities are typically worth less, in-story, than a character's magical toolkit, right? Be it information, or transportation; or offense, and defense; or bypassing some problems with stealth, in between solving others with wealth; or playing diplomancer, or playing minionmancer; anything, everything?

And a healthy amount of time gets spent explaining why a wizard, who prepares specific spells that day, is often said to be Tier 1 -- you know, as opposed to a sorcerer, who (despite having the plus of not needing to commit to one spell or another until the moment it becomes obvious which spell would've been the right choice) is Tier 2 for other reasons.

So how about this: design a sorcerer who isn't Tier 2, but Tier 1: with just enough advantages and drawbacks to be exactly on par with a wizard -- and, as far as anyone could tell, he'd be a wizard, preparing spells ahead of time -- except with the 'diviner' fluff that he knew to prepare the right spells ahead of time.

Could that work?