naming home brews are a pain in the ass sometimes

[robiac3]

hi guys, big question: i'm having a problem with naming a homebrewed class could you wonderful gamers help with naming it?

it's sort of a cross between a fighter/rogue/monk where the fighters bonus feats are replaced with sneak attack and he also gets fast movement, the monk AC bonus, and the unarmed strike damage, he has no armour proficiency and has monk weapons, he gains urban tracking as a feat at 1st lvl and his skills are a mash up of fighter variant thug skills and dex based skills with few to no str skills.

for those interested in actually reading the class breakdown, tell me and i shall happily give it to you, i care little for who uses my homebrews, i take enjoyment from making them.

 

[Celebrim]

hi guys, big question: i'm having a problem with naming a homebrewed class could you wonderful gamers help with naming it?

Sure.

it's sort of a cross between a fighter/rogue/monk where the fighters bonus feats are replaced with sneak attack and he also gets fast movement, the monk AC bonus, and the unarmed strike damage, he has no armour proficiency and has monk weapons, he gains urban tracking as a feat at 1st lvl and his skills are a mash up of fighter variant thug skills and dex based skills with few to no str skills.

Multiclassed fighter/rogue/monk?

To begin with, I think you are having problems because you are doing it wrong.

It's sounds like what you've done is cobbled together a wish list of mechanical features you want, and now you are trying to come up with an archetypal concept that fits it. The problem with that is that even if I give you some names, it's never going to work. Base classes are built from archetypal concepts. You need to be able to point to the archetypal characters of literature in your chosen genera that are of you 'class'. You need to be building the class to meet some concept people would come to you with, "I want to play an X", and not building some mechanical features that make sense from the perspective of obtaining certain abilities. In the early era of 3.X people making 3rd party supplements cobbled together tons of these sorts of mish mashes, and for the most part I think no one cared.

That said, is your concept, "The Batman"? City of heroes might define this class as 'Scrapper'. I'm currently rereading Book of the New Son, where perhaps your class would be Torturer (if it had pain touch) or Cultellarri (if instead it had Survival as a class skill). Without knowing what you are trying to create, how can I name it?

The conventions of your class seem mostly suitable to certain sorts of comic book characters. I'd probably be looking toward super hero games to see what they named similar classes.

 

[robiac3]

you are absolutely right, it is technically cobbled together from multiple classes, and it is based on batman for the most part, so it's understandable, "why not just call it *The Batman*?" well for the most part i'd agree but i'm trying to create a name that is less specific and more general, the same way a fighter could technically be a soldier or a warrior, but is easily summed up as a "fighter", so more or less he's technically batman or a stealth martial artist, but what would that sum up as? and yes before you say it batman is a ninja assassin lol but 3.5 already has both a ninja and an assassin class, and i don't know, call me picky but it wouldn't feel right just naming it after another class, especially since both of the other two classes are actually quite different from mine.

 

[the Jester]

This doesn't sound anything like a base class to me at all. No offense, but I think you're better off just multiclassing a ton.

Is there anything unique that this class offers, or is it just an assortment of abilities from other classes? If it's just a mishmash of other classes' abilities, there's no reason whatsoever to design a specific class to cover this, and if your new base class is better than such a multiclass, it's broken by definition.

What you might want to do instead is work this concept up as a prestige class sort of like the theurges and so forth- something to improve the viability of the multiclassed combination.

 

[Celebrim]

This doesn't sound anything like a base class to me at all. No offense, but I think you're better off just multiclassing a ton.

Well, I agree that it isn't a base class, but for different reasons.

Is there anything unique that this class offers, or is it just an assortment of abilities from other classes?

It offers both full sneak attack progression and full monk unarmed combat progression. Nothing else does that and you can't get there by multiclassing. It might arguably be a strictly superior monk, but then again, what isn't superior to the monk?

What you might want to do instead is work this concept up as a prestige class sort of like the theurges and so forth- something to improve the viability of the multiclassed combination.

This is the traditional 3.X responce to the multiclassing problem. You make a class that offers full or near full monk progression and full or near full rogue sneak attack progression over 10 levels so that you can play a multi-classed rogue/monk and it actually works.

The problem with that is that you need a separate multiclass for every combination of base classes, and even then you are pulling in lots of baggage you might not want.

Fundamentally, I think the central problem here is 'Monk'. Monk just needs to go away as a separate class. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to build an unarmed combat Fighter that is as effective as the monk without carrying all of the Monk's unwanted baggage. There is also the additional problem of the low tiering of Fighter combined with the fact that moving fast is seen as a class feature rather than a class skill. If you want to make a non-mystical martial artist, you should be able to with minimal straining. And if you want to make a mystical martial artist, then you ought to be able to get there too.

I'd be coming at this problem principally from the direction of fixing the Fighter rather than creating new base classes. If you are feeling like you can't create 'The Batman' through some combination of <warrior class> + <skill monkey class>, the base classes are built wrong.

 

[robiac3]

Well, I agree that it isn't a base class, but for different reasons.



It offers both full sneak attack progression and full monk unarmed combat progression. Nothing else does that and you can't get there by multiclassing. It might arguably be a strictly superior monk, but then again, what isn't superior to the monk?



This is the traditional 3.X responce to the multiclassing problem. You make a class that offers full or near full monk progression and full or near full rogue sneak attack progression over 10 levels so that you can play a multi-classed rogue/monk and it actually works.

The problem with that is that you need a separate multiclass for every combination of base classes, and even then you are pulling in lots of baggage you might not want.

Fundamentally, I think the central problem here is 'Monk'. Monk just needs to go away as a separate class. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to build an unarmed combat Fighter that is as effective as the monk without carrying all of the Monk's unwanted baggage. There is also the additional problem of the low tiering of Fighter combined with the fact that moving fast is seen as a class feature rather than a class skill. If you want to make a non-mystical martial artist, you should be able to with minimal straining. And if you want to make a mystical martial artist, then you ought to be able to get there too.

I'd be coming at this problem principally from the direction of fixing the Fighter rather than creating new base classes. If you are feeling like you can't create 'The Batman' through some combination of <warrior class> + <skill monkey class>, the base classes are built wrong.

honestly the only thing fighter about the class is Base attack bonus, it's mostly unarmed strike, fast movement, and sneak attack with a three path choice progression that allows for improvement of attacking, stealth or durability where you can only decide on one and the class builds from there.

 

[robiac3]

Well, I agree that it isn't a base class, but for different reasons.



It offers both full sneak attack progression and full monk unarmed combat progression. Nothing else does that and you can't get there by multiclassing. It might arguably be a strictly superior monk, but then again, what isn't superior to the monk?



This is the traditional 3.X responce to the multiclassing problem. You make a class that offers full or near full monk progression and full or near full rogue sneak attack progression over 10 levels so that you can play a multi-classed rogue/monk and it actually works.

The problem with that is that you need a separate multiclass for every combination of base classes, and even then you are pulling in lots of baggage you might not want.

Fundamentally, I think the central problem here is 'Monk'. Monk just needs to go away as a separate class. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to build an unarmed combat Fighter that is as effective as the monk without carrying all of the Monk's unwanted baggage. There is also the additional problem of the low tiering of Fighter combined with the fact that moving fast is seen as a class feature rather than a class skill. If you want to make a non-mystical martial artist, you should be able to with minimal straining. And if you want to make a mystical martial artist, then you ought to be able to get there too.

I'd be coming at this problem principally from the direction of fixing the Fighter rather than creating new base classes. If you are feeling like you can't create 'The Batman' through some combination of <warrior class> + <skill monkey class>, the base classes are built wrong.

honestly the only thing fighter about the class is Base attack bonus, it's mostly unarmed strike, fast movement, and sneak attack with a three path choice progression that allows for improvement of attacking, stealth or durability where you can only decide on one and the class builds from there, with the addition of a few specific bonus feats, the assassin death attack, and hide in plain sight.
THAT in a nutshell is my class

 

[Celebrim]

honestly the only thing fighter about the class is Base attack bonus, it's mostly unarmed strike, fast movement, and sneak attack with a three path choice progression that allows for improvement of attacking, stealth or durability where you can only decide on one and the class builds from there, with the addition of a few specific bonus feats, the assassin death attack, and hide in plain sight.
THAT in a nutshell is my class

Well, in a nutshell that would be OP at my scale of power and I, as a DM, would never approve it. In the context of 3.5, where nothing is OP really, who is to say?

But what I'm trying to say is that for the most part, if I was willing to open the unarmed combat tree a little, that entire concept at least is within the sphere of my variant of the Fighter.

For example, Fast Movement per se doesn't exist in my game. No class has 'fast movement' as a feature. Instead, classes intended to be fast, like Fighters for example, have a Run skill. Ranks in the run skill improve their movement rate, so that it wouldn't be unusual for a 20th level fighter to have 60 move despite having no 'fast movement' class ability.

Or for example, a fighter in my game has 27 feats by 20th level. It would be quite easy to take Improved Unarmed Strike, Superior Unarmed Strike, Combat Reflexes, Lethal Weapon, One Two Punch, Weapon Specialization (Unarmed Strike), Improved Critical (Unarmed Strike), Flying Kick, Circle Kick, Great Throw, Secret Technique, Brawler, Hard as Nails and many feats and become a master of unarmed combat in some senses well beyond anything a 3.5 Monk could do and have plenty of feats left over for learning to throw gas grenades and batarangs.

My fighter has 4 skill points per level base, and you could easily expand your class skill list and splash a few levels in Rogue so stealth wouldn't be a problem.

Sure, you'd not end up with the full sneak attack progression, but frankly I doubt any DM is going to allow full BAB, full sneak attack, and full monk unarmed strike progression to say nothing of all the other things on your wish list as well. That's what, 200-300 damage per turn with just a little tweaking?

The point being that you don't need to kludge together likely unbalanced single purpose classes in my game, and you wouldn't have to in yours if classes like the Monk and Fighter were built better.

 

[Herobizkit]

Take Fighter base.

Swap Fighter Bonus Feats for Rogue Sneak attack

Swap Weapon/Armor prof. for Monk H2H, defense/AC bonus, and bonus feats.

Drop to D8 hit Dice.

How does that look?

Or, Gestalt Fighter||Monk and trade Fighter Bonus Feats for Rogue Sneak Attack.

Done.

Call it a Shinobi. Or a Bruiser. or a Gladiator.

 

[robiac3]

Take Fighter base.

Swap Fighter Bonus Feats for Rogue Sneak attack

Swap Weapon/Armor prof. for Monk H2H, defense/AC bonus, and bonus feats.

Drop to D8 hit Dice.

How does that look?

Or, Gestalt Fighter||Monk and trade Fighter Bonus Feats for Rogue Sneak Attack.

Done.

Call it a Shinobi. Or a Bruiser. or a Gladiator.

thanks boss