Horizon Walker

The Souljourner

First Post
Dimension Door every 1d4 rounds? Tremorsense out to 30'? Resist fire and cold 20? Darkvision 50'? +4 to a bunch of skills? Wow. Neat class!

Am I the only one who thinks this is a cool class? I mean, it's not overpowering, but man, it's pretty cool, and not very difficult to get in to (rangers get endurance as a bonus feat - woo hoo, no wasted feat slot!).

Of course, there's the interesting dilemma that high level rangers actually get cool abilities now. Hide in Plain Sight? Sweet!

Still... I'm impressed with this class.

One thing to verify... they do get to use dimension door regardless of where they are, correct? The main description of the terrain abilities does specifically say they take the abilities with them wherever they go.

-The Souljourner
 

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actually i think it is a tad nasty with that dimension door every 1d4 rounds (sure beats walking), and the tremorsense is a bit nice.

Tellerve
 

the SRD said:
Horizon walkers take their terrain mastery with them wherever they go. They retain their terrain mastery bonuses on skill checks, attack rolls, and damage rolls whether they’re actually in the relevant terrain or not.

Although it doesn't specifically state that you keep your Terrain Powers, you DO keep every bonus that your Terrain Mastery gives you.

Dimension door every 1d4 rounds is... something.

Are the powers granted by (Planar) Terrain Mastery Ex? Su? Sp?

TS
 

Yup, I just got to create a new character for out PlaneScape campaign, and went with Rogue / Ranger / Horizon Walker. I definately like the class, and look very forward to finding out how it works in play.

However, I'm having some doubts about the Dimension Door. It says that the ability works by anticipating "shifts in the reality of the plane that bring you closer to your destination." This seems to indicated that it works only on planes with the Shifting trait. On normal planes, there's nothing to anticipate, so it wouldn't work. Compare to weightless, that also specifies that it only works on certain planes.

Even though you don't unlearn the Dimension Door trick, it's only useful on Shifing planes. This seems to be backed up by game balance, which I think would be violated by once every 1d4 rounds, always and everywhere.

Fanog
 

anticipating "shifts in the reality of the plane that bring you closer to your destination."

I read that as flavor text, with the ability defined in the rest of the sentence. It does specifically say you keep your terrain mastery wherever you go, and the shifting ability doesn't state it only works on planes that are shifting, unlike weightless that does.

I think if they wanted to say it only works on shifting planes, they would have said so.

Yes, I think it's very powerful, but it's not far off tremorsense 30' radius or permanent fire resistance 20.

-The Souljourner
 

I LOVE this PrC!

I've been waiting for a "travelling" PrC since the beginning of 3e for my LG PC (a cleric/ranger/rouge of Fharlanghan who's big thing is wandering)...

Seems a bit potent at the upper levels, but then again, those awesome planar abilities don't kick in until 6th level...

-Rugger

"I Wander!"
 

Rugger said:
I LOVE this PrC!

I've been waiting for a "travelling" PrC since the beginning of 3e for my LG PC (a cleric/ranger/rouge of Fharlanghan who's big thing is wandering)...

Seems a bit potent at the upper levels, but then again, those awesome planar abilities don't kick in until 6th level...

-Rugger

"I Wander!"

That's just 'cause the abilities accent with your vermilion outfit.

But seriously, those are pretty beefy abilities. Not sure if they are "unbalanced" but they are certainly powerful.

Tellerve
 

It's self-contradictory. One sentence says they take their bonuses with them, but that appears to just be flavor text for the sentence after it, which says that you keep the bonuses on skill checks, attack rolls, and damage rolls wherever you go. The ability to dimension door is not a skill check, attack roll, or damage roll, so you wouldn't take it with you.

The problems with this interpretation:
1> The Fly speed on weightless planes is explicitly said to only apply there. None of the other specials say that.
2> Most of the other specials would be useless if they only applied on one plane, making the class far weaker than it should be, especially considering the class can't plane shift itself.

The ability to dimension door once every 1d4 rounds isn't too unbalanced, IMO, since 1d4 rounds can be a long time in most combats and you waste a round just recovering from the jump. And, you can't take it until 11th character level at the earliest. But it just doesn't make much SENSE to be able to do that on the prime, especially since dimdoor lets you take people with you.
(Solution: change it to dimension slide, the close-range self-only Psionic power, but on Shifting planes you get teleport instead. Likewise, the Weightless one could let you levitate on normal planes)

The abilities NEED to be good. This class is clearly intended for Rangers, since only they, Bards, and Wizards have Knowledge (geography) as a class skill and Rangers get Endurance for free at level 3. Yet, compared to a Ranger you have 2 fewer skill points and a bad Reflex save, not to mention the loss of Evasion, bonus Feats, and spells. The planar attack/damage bonuses make up for the lost Favored Enemy points and the skill boosts for terrains make up for the lower skill points, but the special abilities you can select need to cover the rest of the gap.

There are a few other problems I have with the class. Don't get me wrong, overall I love the class. I'm currently convincing the DM to let me retroactively alter one of my characters so that he can take it.
1> Why get Fire Resistance 20 if Fire planes do 3d10 damage per round? You'll still take damage pretty quickly if the DM rolls anything above average.
2> If you pick Aligned plane, it says that "spells and abilities that harm the opposite alignment don't affect you" and that "you have the dominant alignment of the plane with respect to magic."
The Prime is True Neutral, so while on the prime things like Detect Good fail because of the second one, and abilities like Smite Good fail because of the first one. So far so good. But does this mean that nonmagical abilities that don't harm you directly but are based on alignment would still work? (Example: a Ranger who picks "Good Outsider" as a favored enemy would still get his bonuses against a Hound Archon Horizon Walker on the Prime, except maybe the damage bonus)
Does this also mean that an Evil Horizon Walker can pick up a Sun Blade without negative levels? It's magic, after all, so it should be fooled...
3> If you pick Desert it says you can't be Fatigued, and then says that if you get Exhausted you become Fatigued instead, but didn't it just say you were immune to Fatigue? (I know what it MEANS, I'm just saying it's badly phrased.)
4> If you're giving planar bonuses, why isn't Knowledge (the planes) a class skill?
 

The benefits to this PrC look better than anything a ranger gets past 6th-level, except for Camouflage, if you ask me. Well, you do lose out on skill points though.

Now wait to you see the barbarian/horizon walker combo. You can get Tireless Rage a few levels early by doing that.
 

Looks pretty good to me. I'm glad to see a ranger prestige class that doesn't suck.

The abilities aren't all that overwhelming. Most of the skill bonuses (except listen) don't stack with common and inexpensive magic items. (Listen also wouldn't stack, if there were any common item that actually boosted listen.)

The planar abilities are nice, but those only kick in at higher levels, and come at the cost of combat style, evasion, camoflauge, higher level spells, and skill points. (Ooh, and fast tracking!)
 

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