Proposal - Unseen Seer from Complete Mage

[Hawking]

Dear Judges,

I would like to join your Living Eberron game, and have a character in mind that I want to play. It's a half-elf Medani investigator, a character that uses divination magic and swift combat to bring down conspiracies and criminal scum. Looking through my books, I found this class to be perfect for my idea, however I did not find it on the list.

So I beseech you, please allow the Unseen Seer. It's in Complete Mage on page 81. The full spellcasting may seem powerful, but I'm giving up caster levels to get into the class (I plan on being rogue/sorcerer), and the caster level for my spells drop even further. The sneak attack progression is slowed as well. I think class is weaker than Arcane Trickster, even.

Love,
Hawking

[Moggthegob]

I am familiar with the class. Personally, I think it would take a while to even get to the point where you could take this class. Longer, I may add, than this game may actually run due to the uncertainty of our conversion to 4e at this point.

That aside, I know we do no have a lot of prestige classes from outside of the Eberron books and there is intended to be a balance that doesn't require players to need the splat books to be "good".

That said it is a good prestige but I want to see what some of the other judges think first.

[stonegod]

All non-Core PrCs are on a "invitation only" membership; thus one reason for their scarcity. The other is that we only have a handful of folks that are even 4th level, so proposing at this stage would be a bit premature (even starting a character at 3rd would take a year at least to qualify).

That being said, there is no harm taking a look. My CompScoundrel is elsewhere right now, so I'll have to get back to you.

[Hawking]

Well it's no problem. I just felt I should ask. I'll still go with the concept, and I do realize that it'll be a while, if ever, that I reach that level. If it's not on the menu, I'll just stick with rogue/sorcerer. I'm not relying on Unseen Seer, just felt it was a neat prestige class. In any case, I'm working on my character's sheet now. Hope to run that by you guys soon.

[Rystil Arden]

The OP mentions Unseen Seer vis-a-vis Arcane Trickster. The trouble in the comparison is, of course, that Unseen Seer requires only 1 level of non-caster to enter. But the coup de grace for Unseen Seer is that you can then qualify for Arcane Trickster off of Unseen Seer and get all 10 levels in Arcane Trickster without paying more than 1 level of lost spellcasting. This basically eviscerates any other Rogue/Mage multiclass combo I can think of (19 levels of casting and 8d6 Sneak Attack, compared to the Rogue/Wizard/AT who will have 17 levels of casting and 7d6 Sneak Attack or 15 levels of casting and 8d6 Sneak Attack, both of which are quite worse (and the Rogue/Wizard/Unseen Seer/AT has more abilities too) ). Whether or not people consider it overpowered is a separate question, but it's safe to say that we should think several times about the players who don't have Complete Mage and whether they will be left behind using the DMG PrCs (like Arcane Trickster) the straight-up way.

[Moggthegob]

I agree with RA's point as well. It has always been a point of ours that we wouldl ike,if possible, for SRD(or Core)-only options to be just as good as non-SRD options we make available.

[Hawking]

I understand. Fairness is important. I think rogue/sorcerer will suit my purposes fine enough.