Knight's Challenges

[mmu1]

Sorry if this was brought up already - I haven't followed the General forum in a while - but did the Knight's challenge abilities strike anyone else as the epitome of crappy game design?

First of all... Why does everything need to be a swift action all of a sudden? I think that the challenges are, in many ways, quite similar to bardic music, which is always a standard action. It smacks of someone playing with new toys, rather than consitent game design.

Second, why is an ability that is essentially a mind-affecting compulsion effect classified as Extraordinary, when the Bard - the class that actually specializes in manipulating others with words - has only Supernatural and Spell-Like abilities? If it acts like magic (and IMO it does, considering that it even works on things that don't speak your language), then label it as magic.

Third, I realize that it's a combat ability, and it should be relatively uncomplicated... but virtually every other mind-affecting ability and spell (from Charm and Fascinate all the way to Dominate) tends to have some circumstance modifiers listed, to reflect the circumstances it's used under. Also, the fact that you can't, for example, choose to refuse the challenge and end up with a morale penalty as a result, but are instead forced into a fight outright, seems extremely heavy-handed and artificial to me. (unless the ability was outright magical, but it's not)

It's not like any of these things are a threat to the world as we know it, but IMO it's just a prime example of inconsistent and inelegant design, of the sort that ends up unnecessarily undermining a unified ruleset. (and that after all the trouble they supposedly went to in order to make 3.5 more consistent)

 

[Mad Mac]

A lot of abilities are swift actions because they aren't worth taking standard actions to use, or because they open up new possibilities for use. The Ninja's Ghost Step, for instance, would be weak and silly if it wasn't a swift action. Or look at the CW Samurai. His Intimidate abilities are useless because the effects aren't worth giving up attacks to use. Now, if he could intimidate as a swift action while attacking....well, he'd still suck, but at least it would be a more interesting class.

I personally dislike the tendancy to make everything that stretches the limits of human ability magical. I want the Knight to just be that persuasive and charismatic, not a guy who's basically casting a charm spell in a round-about way. I can't see the flavor appeal in that route, myself.

I think that Consistancy for the sake of Consistancy can also be a problem, because when taken too far, you never get anything new, and also because it tends to gloss over the fact that sometimes, the old way of doing things was worse. You don't want to model new classes after the most under or overpowered classes, for example.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Rather than make the ability supernatural, they could rewrite the ability to be ... weaker. They could toss in something like a better Fort save to make up for that.

Right now, there's no way that ability shouldn't be magical. It's mind control.

 

[Agent Oracle]

Oh come on now, for the first half the game, the knight has to challenge the big boss critter in the group.

Their ability is bardic music with higher speed, at the trade of narrower focus, lower bonuses, and

My GM made it ungodly weak when he ruled that the creature had to speak the same language as I do in order for me to challenge it. So far, all we've fought is NPC's that are too low levelwise to accept my challenges, and Monsters with languages I don't speak. What are the rules about learning new languages? I really need to learn Giant if I want to survive in his game...

 

[VirgilCaine]

My GM made it ungodly weak when he ruled that the creature had to speak the same language as I do in order for me to challenge it. So far, all we've fought is NPC's that are too low levelwise to accept my challenges, and Monsters with languages I don't speak. What are the rules about learning new languages? I really need to learn Giant if I want to survive in his game...

I'd add the [Language-Dependent] descriptor to the ability, personally.

I really don't like the ability at all, since 90% of the monsters he will try and challenge would attack him/back off if he used good old Intimidate and failed/succeeded or simply say something like "SLAVES! KILL THE HUMAN!" or "Red Sign of Shudde M'ell! DIE for the glory of Azathoth!".
Maybe hobgoblins would respond. Maybe.

You're already trying to kill each other. You can't kill each other any more than you already are!

 

[Barak]

I think the way it can most easily be shown to be.. Well, weird, is when a NPC knight from an "evil" party uses it on the PC wizard.

 

[Kunimatyu]

I think the way it can most easily be shown to be.. Well, weird, is when a NPC knight from an "evil" party uses it on the PC wizard.

Did you read the whole block of text? All the wizard is forced to do is to preferentially target the Knight with spells, or to make sure to include the Knight in area-of-effect spells. How's that weird? Makes perfect sense to me.

 

[Barak]

I could easily set up situations in which it would be extremely weird. And it wouldn't be metagaming, assuming the enemies know the PC group by hearsay.

 

[Kunimatyu]

I could easily set up situations in which it would be extremely weird. And it wouldn't be metagaming, assuming the enemies know the PC group by hearsay.

Do explain, because at the moment I don't see how it's any weirder than a guy with a lute increasing the amount of damage his buddy does with a sword.

 

[Barak]

Remember that the bard has magical ability, while the knight doesn't.

So you have the regular party. The wizard in the party, a Diviner, has one offensive spell prepared, a Fireball.

On one side of the party is the knight, by his lonesome. He's one level below party level. On the -other- side is a boatload of kobolds, like, 20 of them, massed in ranks. The knight has initiative, by the way.

So he challenges the wizard. Who is next on initiative. So, through no magic, the wizard is forced to do.. What?