How does the Forsaker know it is magic?

[reapersaurus]

The Forsaker doesn't have a compulsion to destroy magic items - he just can't use them without losing abilities, and a couple of his abilities are reliant on destroying them at a voracious pace.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

There is no class feature that says "he must destroy all or be turned into a pink bunny" or something (but he deserved the bunny nonetheless), but it would be bad roleplaying to play a forsaker that runs around with people being full of magic and not minding, at least IMO.

 

[LokiDR]

There is no class feature that says "he must destroy all or be turned into a pink bunny" or something (but he deserved the bunny nonetheless), but it would be bad roleplaying to play a forsaker that runs around with people being full of magic and not minding, at least IMO.

The same question could be brought up with rangers and favored enemy.
Could an elf w/ favored enemy human travel and work with humans? Some wouldn't, for sure, but there is no reason they couldn't. Perhaps the elf wants to show up the humans, or keep and eye on them, or he found himself fighting humans and decided to get better at it. The same kind of reasoning applies to forsaker.

 

[Uruk]

Couldn't you just change some of the flavor text and make him a non-magical warrior who draws his power from the destruction of magical items? Maybe it's a curse in your campaign.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

The same question could be brought up with rangers and favored enemy.
Could an elf w/ favored enemy human travel and work with humans? Some wouldn't, for sure, but there is no reason they couldn't. Perhaps the elf wants to show up the humans, or keep and eye on them, or he found himself fighting humans and decided to get better at it. The same kind of reasoning applies to forsaker.

After some thought, I concur, to a degree: good forsakers seek to purge the world of evil sorcery, while evil forsakers often hunt down all spellcasters. So a good forsaker might not destroy magic on sight, but he will nonetheless use every opportunity to show that you are stronger without magic, and probably will talk about that the rest of the time. Unless, of course, he shuns those people.

The forsaker's quarrel with magic is more severe than the ranger's quarrel with his favored enemies: rangers learn how to fight them well because they fight them often, but that doesn't mean that they'll fight them all the time (see the example of the elf with humans as their favored enemy: there are evil humans and good ones, and that ranger might slay only the evil ones, and get along well with the other). The forsaker, on the other hand, loathes magic, and will not benefit from it. This will probably expand to indirect benefit, so won't let anyone who uses magic support him.
While he may not turn on his party, he will in most cases have no party at all: he is a loner, or works with other forsakers, or people who use no magic (e.g. because they can't afford it), but not with your average party of magic-users and magic item wielders.

 

[Capellan]

My question is how does he know which items are magical so he can destroy them?

His astonishingly acute eyesight lets him see the magical cooties.



In all honesty, I don't think the Forsaker is supposed to make sense. It's just meant to be the 1E Barbarian in 3E terms. Quite why they felt they needed to do the conversion, I'm not sure ... but I guess the class has potential as a villain. Or maybe in a campaign where all magic really is evil.

The entry requirements are a bit dodgy, too ... a human can get two of the necessary 3 feats at 1st level, and the last at 3rd.

 

[Mahali]

And in OA a human Monk can meet all the requirements at 1st level.

 

[demon_jr]

For any of you that have ever played MUDs, the forsaker class reminds me of a clan in a MUD called Hellconia. Nearly the same thing. Couldn't use magic items, attacked mages whenever they were encountered, didn't group with people who cast spells in their presence, etc.

Isn't there a rule somewhere for using a particular skill to detect if an item is magical or not? I think it may be in the Epic Level Handbook, but I'm not sure.

 

[LokiDR]

Alternate Forsaker?

Dragon Magizine #303 (January) there is an interesting PrC on page 45. Called the Occult Slayer, they have "auravision" which functions like dectect magic only it is a free action at 3rd level. They also get a spell turning effect at 2nd level. There is no healing or anti-DR abilites but they can use magic items. They only hate the spell casters themselves. Maybe a mix of the two would work.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Isn't there a rule somewhere for using a particular skill to detect if an item is magical or not? I think it may be in the Epic Level Handbook, but I'm not sure.

Appraise can be used to emulate detect magic, DC being 50. Not much use for your average low-level charakter, unless he had a magical item to boost his appraise skill (which he wouldn't be allowed to use )