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PrC: bouncy airborne sword fighter
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<blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 873918" data-attributes="member: 3051"><p><em>Originally posted by hong </em></p><p><strong>Prerequisites can balance (almost) anything, is pretty much my philosophy. That is, there's nothing wrong with a powerful PrC that also requires lots of feats and other things.</strong></p><p></p><p>Well, personally, I prefer the other way: PrCs should have fairly easy requirements to enter but have some sort of ongoing cost, whether it's a smaller HD, lower BAB, incomplete spellcasting progression, or whatever.</p><p></p><p><strong>Although Move Silently probably should actually be a class skill, given that one of the abilities gives a bonus.</strong></p><p></p><p>Makes sense, as long as you don't give Hide also. H/MS is probably the most useful 2-skill combo in the game, so giving only half of it isn't unbalanced.</p><p></p><p><strong>Well, sure. That's what Weapon Finesse does in 3.5E.</strong></p><p></p><p>Didn't know that. I'm glad they're making that change, it's one that we house-ruled long ago IMC, but I was looking at the class balance vs 3E.</p><p></p><p>Admittedly, Finesse in every weapon is like Martial Proficiency in every weapon: not really that much more useful than having it be only for one weapon.</p><p></p><p><strong>Well, it's always possible that someone else out there will be getting +10 to Listen, from an item if nothing else.</strong></p><p></p><p>The proliferation of and balance issues with cheap +skill magic items is a separate thread. I'm one of those people who considers them to be horribly underpriced, and I'd never let the players get an item that adds more than +10 to a skill, and even those will be rare.</p><p></p><p><strong>The cloud warrior is an example of a PrC that attempts to provide a richer list of innate powers, rather than relying on magic items for everything.</strong></p><p></p><p>Fine, but you're not removing their ability to wear those items as well, are you? Get +10 to Move Silently, buy a Cloak of Elvenkind, and you can now do the Hide/Move Silently combo without ever spending a skill point.</p><p></p><p><strong>Tumble and evasion only work with light armour/encumbrance anyway, and the monk AC bonus requires no armour.</strong></p><p></p><p>True, and there's also Armor Check Penalty issues. But that was one of my concerns: a Full Plate-wearing tank could take this class and use the massive skill bonuses to make many of the penalties of heavy armor meaningless. Who cares about losing 6 or 7 from a skill if you get a +30 boost?</p><p></p><p><strong>Not that I'm saying +30 skill bonuses are harebrained. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> In this particular case, I don't think the skills in question are that broken; certainly not Jump or Balance. Who needs +30 Jump (which you can get at 1st level from the jump spell) when everyone has winged boots? </strong></p><p></p><p>Well, assuming everyone has a very specific slotted magic item is probably a bad idea. After all, would you rather have Winged Boots, Boots of Speed, or Boots of Springing and Striding? And like I mentioned before, if you're giving the Winged Boots bonus to someone, they can now use that slot to wear the Boots of Speed instead, so you've effectively given them a free slotless item.</p><p></p><p><strong>Tumble is the most useful skill out of this lot, as far as I see. +30 may be on the high side, depending on what uses the DM allows for it, but I still wouldn't necessarily call it broken. </strong></p><p></p><p>It's not so much about the exact size of the bonus. It's just, WHY are you giving that bonus? Let's look at the skills in question:</p><p></p><p>Tumble, Climb, and Balance (you didn't give a bonus to this one, but since you're requiring 10 ranks of it and DON'T require ranks of Climb, I felt like adding it) have set DCs that max out in the 25-35 range. With Take 10 and 10 ranks, even a +10 bonus gives automatic success.</p><p></p><p>Jump: There's no set DC or anything, but you can't Jump farther than you can move. For a running jump, if you have no STR bonus and 10 ranks and Take 10, a +20 bonus means +35 feet, but you can't move that far without taking a double move. You also can't jump further than 6*height, so that's a pretty hard maximum. For standing jumps, the maximum drops faster, so you'll never get much use out of anything beyond +20.</p><p></p><p>Move Silently: Here's the problem. Opposed skill rolls benefit the most from skill boosts; against an evenly-matched opponent a +5 bonus swings the outcome from 47.5% win, 5% tie, 47.5% lose to 70% win, 3.75% tie, 26.25% lose (and if you Take 10, it's 70%/5%/25%). So, giving even a +10 bonus isn't just an almost-automatic success, it's causing the skill ranks the enemy spends on Listen to be worthless.</p><p></p><p>I think you should change the required skills for the class to include all five skills I mentioned, lowering the requirement to, say, 5 or 6 ranks. 10-rank requirements are fine for Rogue-type classes, but for something intended for the 2/4+INT skill point crowd? The Feat requirements will stop people from taking it at level 3 or something.</p><p>Personally, I'd make "Acrobatics" be that incremental sort of ability I mentioned, where the bonus equals your class level. </p><p>If you want, tough, you could do it like Favored Enemy; that is, at levels 2, 4, 7, and 10 you pick one of the five skills at a +5 bonus, and each one previously picked would increase by +5. So, a level 10 Cloud Warrior could be +20 Move Silently, +15 Tumble, +10 Jump, +5 Balance.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Spatzimaus, post: 873918, member: 3051"] [i]Originally posted by hong [/i] [B]Prerequisites can balance (almost) anything, is pretty much my philosophy. That is, there's nothing wrong with a powerful PrC that also requires lots of feats and other things.[/B] Well, personally, I prefer the other way: PrCs should have fairly easy requirements to enter but have some sort of ongoing cost, whether it's a smaller HD, lower BAB, incomplete spellcasting progression, or whatever. [B]Although Move Silently probably should actually be a class skill, given that one of the abilities gives a bonus.[/B] Makes sense, as long as you don't give Hide also. H/MS is probably the most useful 2-skill combo in the game, so giving only half of it isn't unbalanced. [B]Well, sure. That's what Weapon Finesse does in 3.5E.[/B] Didn't know that. I'm glad they're making that change, it's one that we house-ruled long ago IMC, but I was looking at the class balance vs 3E. Admittedly, Finesse in every weapon is like Martial Proficiency in every weapon: not really that much more useful than having it be only for one weapon. [B]Well, it's always possible that someone else out there will be getting +10 to Listen, from an item if nothing else.[/B] The proliferation of and balance issues with cheap +skill magic items is a separate thread. I'm one of those people who considers them to be horribly underpriced, and I'd never let the players get an item that adds more than +10 to a skill, and even those will be rare. [B]The cloud warrior is an example of a PrC that attempts to provide a richer list of innate powers, rather than relying on magic items for everything.[/B] Fine, but you're not removing their ability to wear those items as well, are you? Get +10 to Move Silently, buy a Cloak of Elvenkind, and you can now do the Hide/Move Silently combo without ever spending a skill point. [B]Tumble and evasion only work with light armour/encumbrance anyway, and the monk AC bonus requires no armour.[/B] True, and there's also Armor Check Penalty issues. But that was one of my concerns: a Full Plate-wearing tank could take this class and use the massive skill bonuses to make many of the penalties of heavy armor meaningless. Who cares about losing 6 or 7 from a skill if you get a +30 boost? [B]Not that I'm saying +30 skill bonuses are harebrained. :) In this particular case, I don't think the skills in question are that broken; certainly not Jump or Balance. Who needs +30 Jump (which you can get at 1st level from the jump spell) when everyone has winged boots? [/B] Well, assuming everyone has a very specific slotted magic item is probably a bad idea. After all, would you rather have Winged Boots, Boots of Speed, or Boots of Springing and Striding? And like I mentioned before, if you're giving the Winged Boots bonus to someone, they can now use that slot to wear the Boots of Speed instead, so you've effectively given them a free slotless item. [B]Tumble is the most useful skill out of this lot, as far as I see. +30 may be on the high side, depending on what uses the DM allows for it, but I still wouldn't necessarily call it broken. [/B] It's not so much about the exact size of the bonus. It's just, WHY are you giving that bonus? Let's look at the skills in question: Tumble, Climb, and Balance (you didn't give a bonus to this one, but since you're requiring 10 ranks of it and DON'T require ranks of Climb, I felt like adding it) have set DCs that max out in the 25-35 range. With Take 10 and 10 ranks, even a +10 bonus gives automatic success. Jump: There's no set DC or anything, but you can't Jump farther than you can move. For a running jump, if you have no STR bonus and 10 ranks and Take 10, a +20 bonus means +35 feet, but you can't move that far without taking a double move. You also can't jump further than 6*height, so that's a pretty hard maximum. For standing jumps, the maximum drops faster, so you'll never get much use out of anything beyond +20. Move Silently: Here's the problem. Opposed skill rolls benefit the most from skill boosts; against an evenly-matched opponent a +5 bonus swings the outcome from 47.5% win, 5% tie, 47.5% lose to 70% win, 3.75% tie, 26.25% lose (and if you Take 10, it's 70%/5%/25%). So, giving even a +10 bonus isn't just an almost-automatic success, it's causing the skill ranks the enemy spends on Listen to be worthless. I think you should change the required skills for the class to include all five skills I mentioned, lowering the requirement to, say, 5 or 6 ranks. 10-rank requirements are fine for Rogue-type classes, but for something intended for the 2/4+INT skill point crowd? The Feat requirements will stop people from taking it at level 3 or something. Personally, I'd make "Acrobatics" be that incremental sort of ability I mentioned, where the bonus equals your class level. If you want, tough, you could do it like Favored Enemy; that is, at levels 2, 4, 7, and 10 you pick one of the five skills at a +5 bonus, and each one previously picked would increase by +5. So, a level 10 Cloud Warrior could be +20 Move Silently, +15 Tumble, +10 Jump, +5 Balance. [/QUOTE]
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