Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nazerel" data-source="post: 2087585" data-attributes="member: 24002">I'm rather ambivalent about adding new core classes. A few are decent, but some seem underpowered in the long run. The Scout, for example, is a very good core class, almost too good. Just when Wizards has fixed the Ranger to the point where one can conceivably play one straight for 20 levels, what do they do? Come up with a class that effectively out-rangers the Ranger with its bells and whistles, and is almost as flexible as the Fighter when it comes to the bonus feats (as opposed to the Ranger's conditional "virtual" feats). Granted the skirmish mechanic is an interesting one, but I'm still a little irked that the Ranger has yet again had its spotlight taken away.The Hexblade, Swashbuckler, and Samurai I like if only for their flavor, but their mechanics are more than a little on the underpowered and questionable side. Min-maxers know that there's little reason to go beyond level 3 for Swashbuckler after attaining Insightful Strike (kinda like how everyone and their grandmother picked up only 1 level of Ranger with 3.0 rules just to get Track, TWF, Ambi, and Favored Enemy). The Samurai has become the defacto TWFer of 3.5, which may or may not fit some people's view of what a samurai should be. The Hexblade is the most flavorful of the bunch, but their choice of spells, bonus feats, and Fort save progression are ridiculously limited (I never understood why a d10 HD, full BAB warrior class had a poor Fort save while non-warrior classes like Cleric and Druid get a good Fort - worse yet, one of the Hexblade's class abilities, Mettle, depends heavily on a good Fort save).Several classes that depend heavily on a higher Dex than Str and would greatly benefit from Uncanny Dodge, such as Monk, Ranger, and Swashbuckler, don't get the ability while the Barbarian (who tends to rely more on Str) does, which is just plain odd. The Spell-Thief seems overspecialized (most of their powers are useless against non-spellcaster foes). The Spirit Shaman has some flavor but I feel needs a bit more to differentiate them from Druids, particularly their spell list. The Favored Soul is just your Sorceror version of a Cleric but without Turn Undead.In many of these cases, PCs are almost encouraged to pick up PrCs if only to plug up their weaknesses, or to attain a greater level of power than if they stuck to their core class, as opposed to role-playing reasons. In that regard, PrCs are a double-edged sword. So your Monk, Ranger, or Swashbuckler gets creamed every time they're flat-footed? Pick up a PrC that gives them Uncanny Dodge. A lot of PrCs don't even bother with organization joining requirements, and aren't even balanced when compared to each other. The 3 core classes I consider somewhat underpowered - Hexblade, Samurai, and Swashbuckler - come from a book (Complete Warrior) that also has some of the most powerful PrCs (Dervish *cough* Dervish), which makes this issue all the more apparent. I look at Arcana Unearthed, and I'm starting to like how they broke some of their core classes down (the Mage Blade seems more effective at the fighter/sorceror hybrid as a core class than a Hexblade, for one example).</blockquote>

Verification