First note: the flavor text on these documents was our original, rough blurbs of ideas. It has since been edited on many classes (all, actually, to varying degrees) from the version you're seeing. A fighter's cited ability to limit an enemy's mobility doesn't really come into play until they are a Knight. That bit could use some changing.


There are feats that already cover sac'ing BAB for AC. Combat Expertise is one, of course. I disdain the general idea of granting free feats that require an ability score to utilize--especially if it's not a vital ability score to that class. Intelligence is easily the 5th most important attribute a fighter possesses if you average out all of the potential builds.

Locking fighters into anything wasn't something we wanted to do, and because it's a pre-req for a lot of other feats, we wanted feat lines like Combat Expertise or Combat Reflexes or Combat Vigor or whatever the hell else to be a player choice, not a freebie.

The free feats they do get are all geared to making them generally better with weapons, shields, and armor and to provide simple, easy-to-understand +1's to their stats.


The Guard ability that we gave fighters was just a way for them to really shell up inside of their armor--akin to what you can do in most FF games in lieu of dealing damage. A defensive-centric class only gaining 4 AC for spending an action to do nothing else seemed a bit lackluster, especially since you're not likely to have ranks in Tumble as a thief or black belt assuredly will. Moreover, with the armor as DR/- variant, their overall AC was lowered slightly, so giving them a little extra on the total defense action seemed doubly pertinent.

The Guard ability is not supposed to be a prominent class feature, merely augment an option they already had in combat. The feats a fighter selects, be it power attack and two-handed damaging feats or combat vigor and up that defensive line or whatever else is supposed to be the defining aspect of the character.


I actually don't mind the idea of extending the bonus of Guard when fighting defensively to +1. But the problem there is that it, again, steps on the toes of Combat Expertise, which is exactly what you shouldn't do. Improved Guard, assuming you don't use a tower shield, still works with your Bulwark of Defense and Vigilant Defender abilities, though that is far, far along in the class's development at 17th level.


I guess what I'm mostly trying to say is that I don't really know what you're trying to say. That's why this post was so long.

We're totally open to comments and ideas. Bring them up as often as you want.

And you can Provoke some huge ass-beating enemy. After that, if you know it worked or failed (in the DMG the DM is told to specify if the monster's attention appears to have shifted), you can choose to go on Total Defense because you already know the monster is going to leave your allies alone for this round.

If Provoke fails, or you're not in a hallway or you're not otherwise able to block it with proper positioning, then no, you would probably not use the Total Defense action.

On Combat Expertise option:

Giving a feat that is conditional on wielding a shield doesn't lock a fighter into anything, actually it does it locks the fighter into shields. (Which is already somewhat done). I really like the feeling that a fighter should have a shield. I think that is one of the unique parts of your fighter class.

The biggest issue is the ability doesn't feel powerful enough to make me regret throwing my shield down and pulling out a two handed weapon. Its a slight benefit in one small situation when using a shield.

It may just be my view of flavor and concept and giving combat expertise when using a shield still leaves the option to go down any path you want. It would just raise your defensiveness when wielding a shield and by making it so if you get combat expertise as a feat normally you can go down the combat expertise line of feats if that's your goal or just be able to defend yourself better when you have your shield out. If you throw the shield away they lose both the shield bonus and the defensive power of a powerful feat.

I'm not sure if my point even makes since.

I just feel like the [shield] mechanic should be implemented a bit more. It is cool it should be used.

A good class does not necessarily have only class features that build off one another. In fact, it's not a bad idea to have lots of options; this is the main difference between tier 1's and tier 2's, not power.

Not that I like the level 17 ability. Besides coming really late, I just think that fighting defensively is a superior option. Your shield bonus is likely more than +2 so defense is higher. You can use any weapon you have and you get to actually attack on your turn so you'll almost certainly get more damage. You take a -4 penalty to attacks, though.

EDIT: @ the above post: So you just want more bonuses for shield wielders to offset the strength lost when choosing to wield a shield?
This message was last edited by the player at 14:12, Thu 10 May 2012.

SILI, Right, several of our classes have abilities that aren't necessarily synergistic. Not every class's features are going to be used all the time. Some of them might only see occasional use if a player takes their character in a direction differing from the ability's common use.

And since you brought up the tier system, we were going for all of our classes to be weak tier 3's or very strong tier 4's.



Garus, The down side of throwing your shield on the ground is the loss to AC (including touch AC) as well as the resistances to trip/disarm/bull-rush/grapple etc. If you don't need those things for some reason, then you obviously don't need defense, so why are you even holding a shield to begin with?

And a fighter should have a two-handed weapon with them, or always be aware of the option to drop their shield to use one in both hands. It's a tool in their arsenal. Fighters are what you call "golfbaggers". They should have every type of pieces of wood and steel at their disposal they can carry and then use them when they're appropriate. IE: you can be jokingly said to drag around a golf bag full of weapons.

Reach Weapons, weapons that can be set against charges, high damage two-handers, nets, throwing weapons, bows/xbows, non-lethal weapons (saps), easy to draw light weapons, and hell, even some useful exotic weapons they might not even be proficient with. It goes without saying that, especially at lower levels, you should have a weapon for piercing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage without fail. All of that shit. Put spikes on your shield for good measure (unless you use a tower shield (and you should carry a tower shield and a heavy shield and use whichever is best in the situation)).

The [shield] tag I added in after the class was finished to make it clear which abilities were dependent on it at a glance. We didn't want to make the shield any more central to the class (it's already pretty damn big) lest we discourage anyone from going with a more permanent two-handed route with their characters. Two-handed characters didn't need any special abilities to make them better because two-handed builds are already, due to the way 3.5 works, markedly better than shield users in nearly every situation. 2-H people can still use bucklers and get the benefit of shield specialization/shield ward and only suffer a -1 on their attacks for it. Still a pretty good trade, even if they do lose the benefits when they attack (and it's not hard to carry around a few mwk. bucklers and dequip+drop/equip them in combat).

I wouldn't turn down any ideas on another ability centering on shield use, but at this stage we're trying to stay away from adding any more "+1's" to classes--especially if it stomps all over the toes of feat options.



And a disclaimer: I wrote Red Mage and 90% of Thief, Black Mage, and White Mage. Fighter and Black Belt (other than Mind's Eye) was the other guy, haha.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:41, Thu 10 May 2012.

And by far one of the best damn [shield] abilities a fighter has is Protective Presence. That shit is amazing. It's not some simple +1 or maths-centric crap that's super conditional that you have to keep track of. It's easy to remember, and works.

It also plays into the positioning aspect of the difficulty of fighter and playing with one in the party. Do you stay near the fighter for Cover and Protective Presence, or do you get the fuck back.

If getting the fuck back isn't an option, the above abilities, along with Provoke, give our fighter something to do about you getting beat on that the D&D fighter doesn't have. The D&D fighter just has to stand there and watch you get beat on or shot in the face.


Also, the other creator spelled "presence" incorrectly.


Also, also, if you wanted to have a fighter with lots of charisma, you could pick up the Goad feat and basically have double Provoke. That would be hilarious. One is a Swift action and the other a Move.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:38, Thu 10 May 2012.

Ill consider a bit.

Here is my first idea for a non +1 or 2 bonus to full defense that's kinda cool. First level of Guard. The fighter is considered one size larger for the purpose of taking up squares. Enemies can reflexively shift out of the square that the fighter is now considered to be occupying or be unable to move without making a Fort save DC:Half the fighters level +str mod.

This is ruff but its kinda a control ability.

Perhaps downgrade it a bit and make it so the Fighter only adds one square to his left and right or just one square on his left and right.

Improved guard allows you to threaten and maybe even makes it so you take up a full size increase with reach befits (thereby raising the range of bulwark defense while in full defense.

May be to much but its kinda cool idea.

Oh, and to make the book I wrote any longer:

We are going to sit down and do a re-pass through all of material here soon. We both agree that some of the Fighter's abilities come a little too late (as in one or two levels only) for starters, among a lot of other things.

Stuff on the table:

1: The above fighter stuff. Will probably also add in a reduction to worn armor's weight vs. your carrying capacity as a separate ability--letting you carry more crap. It's difficult to elegantly work in the thematics/mechanics when they already have Armor Mastery and Heavy Armor Optimization, so it's not quite as simple as it sounds.

2: Black magic damage scaling tests and repass. It's a little over the too high line. The damage is supposed to be very high, but only when utilizing a creature's elemental weaknesses. This change could be done on a per spell basis or by slightly tweaking the progression on the black belt's +damage class feature. It's going to take some number crunching, thought experiments, and liberal use of www.anydice.com

3: Black Belts will probably get Alertness or Track as a bonus feat at an early-ish level, their choice as to which. I'm open to suggestions on a third option.

4: Steal probably going to be changed to wake sleeping creatures and break Vanish.

5: Explicit elaboration on a lot of house-rules. Stuff like tower shields + Shield Ward.

6: Ninja will actually, you know, have a limit break.

7: Master will have its last few levels fleshed out.

8: Knight will have its last few levels worked out.

9: White and Red Mages will have their capstones finished. Black Mages will also get one.

10: Blue Mage will be in a similar unfinished yet "playable" state to bard.

11: Extensive and unapologetic buffing of a red mage's Macaroni ability, even though it was easily already the best feature any class gets.

12: Characters whose name begins with 'D' and ends with 'AI' will have one of their arms chopped off at character creation. And sadly, yes, I'll have to ret-con that into our game even though that was a long time ago. It's a playtest afterall.


Stuff we won't be doing just yet:

10: Final bard tweaks

11: Massive stylistic overhaul. IE: some of our class descriptions use gender, while others do not. Other wordses fixes such as when abilities described aren't descriptified in their descriptions as descriptively as would be desired--with special acknowledgements to rules-lawyering (mechanics should be written to well enough where it's not necessary to begin with).

12: A few high-level magics still need to be finalized and paid attention to. Ultima/XXXX/Holy are on this list.

13: Exportation to proper PDF files.

14: Work on official DMG.

15: Work on compiling all of our scattered-ass notes on monsters and NPCs into a bestiary.


All of this, though, doesn't really affect this party at its current level, which is why I haven't been talking about any of it.

This is a logistical nightmare to put down into paper. What squares around him does he get to "grow" into? What if some of them are blocked, is he then squeezing (which is how it would have to work if you use any previous convention)? And if he's one size larger for taking up squares, then what happens on difficult terrain or slanted terrain or whatever else? They call this a problem that begets other problems what begets other problems, etc.

Fortitude saves generally wouldn't cover that type of situation. In fact, there's really no good way to approach that that I can think of off of the top of my head.



3.0 and prior allowed 1x2 creatures. 3.5, as a matter of explicit finality on the matter, made it to where EVERY creature in EVERY situation, no matter what, takes up a square. I happen to agree with this decision. The lone exception is when you're squeezing, but it's literally called squeezing for christ's sake and you take horri-bad penalties for doing it.



This is kinda hard to make it work thematically, or, much like above, mechanically. If you want more range on bulwark of defense, use a reach weapon. and put a spiked gauntlet on one of your hands (though some DMs don't let that fly; that is up to the particular DM) and dump your shield.



Keep the ideas coming. The worst that can happen is that I say why I don't think that's a good idea.

I am a loser and have nothing better to do on most days than to read what other nerds like you put on the parts of the internet I visit.

Fighters have a Rampart ability that will be shield based. We have tossed around ideas for it being supernatural or extraordinary and what all it could do. It might be broken into two separate things even.

One of the options that was tossed around is that you can give up your shield bonus to AC for the round but grant it to an adjacent square. The action required to do this, if it even took one, would need to be discussed. Whether you could stop doing this at any time, even if it's not your turn, as a free action or you would have to wait until your turn to do it would obviously also be in need of determination.

Wait your thinking like guard from final fantasy. How about this when a fighter takes a full defense he halves physical damage after applying his DR. The damage is rounded up. (Or rounded down with a minimum of 1 damage)

Improved Guard causes any damage to be halved after reducing it by any form of resistance or damage reduction.

Its simple tanky and fits the goal you were looking for.

Rather then halving you could just add the shields AC bonus as a bonus to DR/- However that might be to much with a tower shield. Improved guard makes it so you gain Shield bonus to Ac to Dr and all resistances (this creates resistances if you don't already have them)

Just an idea.

Also I'm taking it as you don't like the previous one so I'm going to drop it.

Protect II, the spell, already does this. Moreover, that's much too incredibly powerful for an (Ex) ability that can be used an unlimited times per day. edit- If you'd like me to elaborate on why I believe that, or anything else, let me know.



A shield shouldn't up your resistances to elemental attacks. DR, maybe, but there are already a lot of sources of DR for fighters to play around with.

A level 10 Fighter in adamantine Full plate +3 already has DR 9/-. That's a pretty intense investment, yes, but it's entirely possible. There's a feat in PHB II (that I think requires BAB +12?) that would give you two more, for a final DR 13/- at level 12 assuming you had +5 armor. If you took an exotic armor proficiency in something from Races of Stone you could get it to DR 14/-. Red mages can also buff that up even further with Phalanxga.

If your DM allows ____ ward crystals from MiC, then that's 1, 3, or 5 more respectively, which really makes it silly. Roll With It is another feat but it requires Toughness and a CON score of 20. I don't allow it because it's from Savage Species but other DMs might.

I think I did the maths way back in the day, and if you did everything possible available to a party of level 20 humans with the source books I normally allow DR 26/- was possible. You don't even need higher than level 12 for the fighter but more caster levels for the red mage levels 13-20 helps a ton.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:24, Thu 10 May 2012.

I dont have my comp right now but i wanted to respond to one thing.

The warrior that channels holy power through his weapon at will cant channel that power into his sheild on defence to resist magical attacks?

I think for a late knight ability thats not unbelivable.

Knights can't do that until levels 19 and 20--way, way, way, way in the career and campaign of anyone. Other than that and their spells, they are an entirely (Ex) class. If they did get any (Su) abilities, it would have to be very late game to keep the theme we had going.

But in general, themes should adjust to best describe the mechanics, not usually the other way around.

This brings me back to what I was talking about with Rampart, if you read that.

A Shield Other effect may be interesting

About Track/Alertness: May I ask why? It would have fit my character well enough, but not everyone would want one or the other. In general I dislike giving bonus feats.

That seems counter intuitive to me it seems to me that you start out with the concept you want a character class to do. Whether that be a role. A combat style a general ability archetype and then build the mechanical method of putting that idea into existence and then after you have done so you go back and see if what you ended up with meets that idea.

Heres my idea on Rampart some flavor text is added just because i think it helps the concept:

A knight is the valiant defender of his allies. Sometimes one must sacrifice mobility to hold the line. A knight takes a full round action to dig into to his location. As long as he does not move or make any attacks other then AoO he remains dug in. As long as this condition he provides soft cover (or total cover due to protective presence.) against any attack originating or passing through a square he threatens unless the attack targets him. I was thinking maybe adding half his shield bonus to AC to allies adjacent to him but i think providing that much total cover is enough. Also everyone treats squares you threaten as difficult terrain (this includes allies the concept here is the fighter is actively preventing attacks and people from walking through stay out of his way.

The knight has sacrificed mobility for defensive prowess. He is treated as flat footed against all attacks and any attacks that threaten to crit automatically confirm. The Knight is to busy defending his allies to worry about himself.

I just don't like the idea of sacrificing Ac bonus for adjacent allies when he has cover. He can just take the hits for 2 allies indefinitely. (formation all 3 allies adjacent he can just take every blow from every source. Why sacrifice ac when you can do that.)

Also I know sometimes my D&D balance is wonky. My main Game is exalted. The power level of abilities in that game are leaps and bounds higher then D&D. I try to pull the abilities I think of down a bit but I'm more about ideas I figure first you figure out what you want to do then make it happen.

Because you have an idea for what you want to make, then make it. After that, your duty as a designer is to make it place nice with everything else. If this causes you to have to tweak it slightly outside of your original idea, then so bit.

Yeah, that was one of the things (well, something similar) we had considered doing with Rampart.


Having criticals automatically confirm against you is pretty damning, and there are a lot of cheap ways to get around that with fortification and other effects.


And when you sacrifice your shield bonus like that, you're doing it to protect an ally who most likely is still going to be the target of whatever attack was coming their way, instead of you. Moreover, if you use Cover for them, you move into their square, which means that you now have your shield bonus back. If you do in fact get attacked instead, then good, that's what you were hoping for anyway, and it probably wouldn't have happened unless you were protecting your ally. Even though you're out your shield bonus to AC, you still have all of your DR and saving throws.

But this was just an idea, nowhere near finalized, it was simply on the table. There are many like this.

I just got done completely re-writing the elemental subtype/weakness section of the PDF. There were some glaring errors and some conflicting situations. It will be included with the next edition of the PDFs.

For now:

Subtypes

Elemental subtypes of the six basic elements are the same. No caster level checks are involved. You have no modifier for your own elemental type (though many creatures do additionally have resistance/immunity/absorption to their own subtype).

Having the Light or Dark subtype is special. You are weak to the opposite element and strong vs your own.


Weakness/Resistance/Immunity/Absorption

Unchanged, though the wording is better.


Reduction

Unchanged, though with slightly more elaboration. In D&D 3.5 terms, resistance is by how many points incoming damage is reduced. We renamed this to reduction. Just as in D&D, although extremely rare, it is possible to have negative reduction (you take a set amount of extra damage from certain sources). The text now describes this.



Examples:

A fire goblin has the [Fire] subtype. It automatically takes 50% more damage from water attacks and suffers a -2 penalty for saves vs. spells with the water descriptor. It automatically takes 50% less damage from ice attacks and gains a +2 bonus on saves vs. spells and effects with the ice descriptor. Fire goblins are part of the population of creatures that also have resistance to their own subtype. In this case a fire goblin has Fire Resistance, and therefore to cast spells with the fire descriptor on it you must pass a caster level check.

A lightning elemental has the [Lightning] subtype. It automatically takes 50% less damage from water spells and effects and 50% more damage from earth spells and effects. Additionally, it possesses lightning absorption. No caster level checks ever occur.

A treant has no subtype, but has Fire Weakness and Earth Resistance. It automatically takes 50% extra damage from fire attacks with no caster level check required. To affect a treant with an earth spell, you must make a caster level check of 11 + the treant's HD. If you succeed by 21 + HD (ten higher), you affect the treant with the spell as if it had no resistance.

As stated in the PDF, if a creature has both elemental resistance and spell resistance, it uses the best resistance for the situation. IE: If a creature had Spell Resistance 15 and Fire Resistance 18, it would use its fire resistance for all fire spells and spell like abilities and spell resistance for all other magical effects.

Why does Fire II have the limitation of not being adjacent to more then 2 squares? I'm not sure I get the thought process behind that...

Thematically, the point of it was that it was supposed to be like a wall of fire that you create one square at a time rapidly. Because of that, no squiggly junk or balls of areas.

Mechanically, because it is the strongest AoE spell as far as damage is concerned, by far, it has special limitations to keep it from affecting a huge area or to nail an entire group of enemies all clumped up--there are other spells for that.

There is an oversight for the casting times of the "ancient" magics.

Flare, Tornado, Flood, Burst, Quake, and Freeze are full-round casts, not standard actions.

It's so long ago now that it does not matter, but mages will now begin with only three cantrips known. They can buy the rest for extremely cheap.

There were already some cantrips available later in the game at several instances to be learned or even purchased.

The spell list is going to be going through some changes. Stuff of note:

Fire II/III AoE's are getting better defined.
They may have their physical lengths reduced by 1 (but probably not), and the rules about how to create/draw the effect are much more clear and slightly changed.

Harm is getting a "nerf".
The range is staying the same, though the save/full damage is going to be reduced slightly at the edges of it. Basically, you'll do full damage to undead right next to you (and right next to that (and that)), but less to an entire huge room full of them.

Minor wordsing enhancements to a lot of spells.

A bunch of higher level spells have been pseudo-"balanced" after some theorycraft, though they still will require playtesting at some point.


Class features:

The healing/damage mastery of white and black mages is probably going to be reduced to three levels of it slightly more spaced out instead of four levels of it. In their place will be two new class features (and some of the class features you already have might be bumped around a very tiny bit to make all 20 levels give you something). The black magic damage was just slightly too high for black mages, while being perfect for red mages. The change doesn't affect white mages too awfully much, and after some theorycraft, the higher level Heal spells were slightly too potent too soon.

All classes have capstones, and Rampart now does something, but that doesn't really affect you guys.


Nothing has changed as of right now, so keep on truckin', and none of these changes will take place until everyone (except Garus) levels up so that if class abilities are moved, they are much less likely to affect what your character already has.

Ranged touch attack spells (pretty much just all the elemental nukes) are going to be changed slightly. They still have Medium casting range, but will "suffer" from a 60' range increment. Far Shot will make that 90' (and then 180' for the second penalty). Probably not worth taking, no, but having it on a magic item or something wouldn't be awful. Most fights take place in phone booths anyway, or, like DAI, a mage will have Point Blank Shot and prefer to be much closer than 60' anyway if he's got some allies around him.

Don't worry about this in the game right now. Just posting it here for feedback reasons.

The other creator had an idea, which I think I like, but I want your opinion.

Creatures with hit point damage gain a +2 bonus on saves vs. Sleep (and Sleepga and Lullaby).

1: This helps players as well. Remember the fight where both LEO and JACK died due to being slept and slowed down?
2: Most of the time you use Sleep as a crowd control to thin out a fight at the start (like DAI just did in this combat), so creatures won't be injured anyway.
3: It makes sense, thematically, at least in our mind.
4: It makes a lower-level spell slightly less useful against one creature halfway through a fight, especially a boss (or your white mage keeping people alive).
5: It's a balance point for parties, though thoroughly not suggested, that have two black mages. R1: Sleepga -> Stone II, R2: Sleepga -> Stone II, etc, etc is too effective.