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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmu1" data-source="post: 42913" data-attributes="member: 319">I have to say, I find how positive the reports have been so far to be rather surprising... After browsing the book at the store, looking through the prestige classes and the styles section, I have to say I've very unimpressed. First the whole system of basing how many levels of a style you can learn on wisdom seems ridiculous... Even if you're willing to accept the assumption that making a fighter diversify his stats is a Good Thing (a near impossibility if you play the game the way it's been designed and balanced - on 25 point characters), the solution used should still make some sense in terms of game mechanics. Are you seriosuly telling me the only way you're going to learn, for example, how to be the very best at brutal, vicious brawling (forget the name of the syle, but it's the one that allows coup de grace as a move-equivalent action) is if you're so damn wise and enlightened you should be getting ready to ascend for your chat with the Buddha any time now?Second, some of the prestige classes... What's with the apparent fascination with giving away class features in prestige classes? The berserker (a completely unnecessary prestige class if there ever was one) and the brawler both get barbarian rage... The bersker also gets damage reduction - potentially earlier than a straight barbarian, I think, and no effort is made to address how this might interact with barbarian DR either. Also, ignoring all damage from any one source? What does that mean exactly? Can you ignore the effect of a fireball? A critical hit? How is that even remotely balanced? The nearest core equivalent would be the rogue's defensive roll, which is weaker by several orders of magnitude. The knight of something or other gets to ignore fear effects... again, isn't this supposed to be the province of a Paladin? What's it doing in a fighter handbook? Yet another class gets sneak attack damage, 2d6 of it, while retaining a fighter hit die and BAB progression... Another gets to use its lowest iterative attack to deny an enemy one of his attacks (also at his lowest to hit bonus, but what if you're fighting, say, an elemental with two slams at the same value, or some other creature with natural weapons? There is no attempt to clarify this at all.), and then, at a later level, gets an extra attack at his lowest to hit value... effectively being able to automatically have one more attack than anyone he fights not of the same prestige class. A style makes coup de grace a move-equivalent action, another gives a free extra shield bash at highest BAB with no penalties - I'm sorry, but again, where is there even a semblance of balance here? Some of these abilities are stronger than those given by any feat, and as it that wasn't enough you get them for free. (yes, I said for free... rule #1 of class design, don't balance out mechanical advantages with role-playing related disadvantages that can be dealt with in an arbitrary fashion or gotten around in some way- if anything, it places too much of a burden on the DM - the whole point of making a Quintessential anything book is to save the DM some work, no?) This complete lack of balance and sloppy design seems to pervade those two sections - I can't speak for the rest of it, but as they seem to form the core of the book, it doesn't get my hopes up about the rest of it.</blockquote>

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