Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6194759" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ironically, I feel the essence of the Barbarian and Monk are generally similar.   Both are martial combatants who are powered as much by emotion - whether fierce rage or fierce inner discipline - as by expertise with arms.   Both eventually find sufficient inner power through honing of their emotions to serve an end that their body becomes a magical item, able to shrug off blows as if made of metal or able to float downward as if light as a feather or otherwise perform amazing feats.   Indeed, when I removed the Barbarian and started crafting a replacement, I looked into making variants powered by different emotions than rage, but found that mechanically it just wasn't very interesting or distinctive.  I may revisit that at some point (I have an idea or two knocking about) to see if can find something as simple and evocative, but for now you can just redress 'rage' and call it 'ki focus' and I'd be perfectly happy with a PC implementing their Monk concept as a Fanatic.   And the class that I borrowed the most from other than the Barbarian for my fanatic build, was Monte's Oathbound class - which was his Monk like variant.    So I've tried to give the Fanatic a distinctive niche based around engendering emotion and fueling his power in this way.     The Fighter is based around the idea of the mastery of weapons, including for example, ones hands as weapons.   Additionally, they also own a sub-area martial arts in the form of Warcraft and fighting along side others that is distinctly theirs and includes the idea of the Captain, Marshall, or Warlord.    The Hunter approaches combat primarily from the opposite direction becoming master over ones prey, studying the target rather than the weapon(s) used to attack the target.   They also have a niche stealth and in inflicting massive and traumatic damage, that shades them off toward the 'skill monkey/trickster' side of the triangle.   I consider each a full class, though related, and they synergize well with each other though at a long term cost in depth of their potential powers.I could however definitely see justification in unifying them as a single martial class and making things like 'rage' and 'favored enemy' merely one of many options.   It was a near call, but ultimately I think there was enough design space to fit the three comfortably together.    I admit you could cut the lines differently.I'm not a big fan of Book of Nine Swords.  I've strived hard to as much as possible avoid turning martial classes into spell-casters in disguise.  Much of the mechanics in Bo9S felt very gamey to me and where ultimately justified for game reasons, and not for any other that I could see.   If you want to play a fighter that also does mystical things, I tried to provide outlets for that through multi-classing.   I have a few mystical fighter related feats, like The Riddle of Steel (it turns every weapon you use into a magical weapon with an enhancement bonus that depends on your BAB), but they tend to be subtle rather than flashy and the never have use limitations based on out of game concepts. I'm exploring those concepts myself right now.  I bought a pdf for a Pathfinder class called the Deductionist, and though I was a bit disappointed, there are a couple of ideas that it opened up that I'm playing with.   There is still room for two classes in my design space - the 'Expert' and the 'Paragon'.   Both are very difficult to pull off but both feel like holes the character space - iconic heroes that you can't quite yet play.However, I consider 'combat tricks' to be primarily the domain of the Fighter.   'Combat tricks' are part of the general 'mastery of technique' concept that I feel is central to the Fighter class.  The Rogue I see based more around mobility, stealth, deception, and the application of non-combat skills to combat situations.   The Monk I don't really see at all - a sort of Fighter, Fanatic, multiclass Fighter/Shaman or Shaman/Fanatic with a distinctive background where the exact build depended on what you wanted to emphasis.   If I was developing a distinctively eastern feeling setting, I'd keep the classes I had and just develop some new feats with kung fu type names to represent eastern style martial arts - although really I've got some of that already, like 'Size Is No Obstacle'.</blockquote>

Verification