comrade raoul
Explorer
Is it me, or does this advanced class just seem sort of lame? I mean, compare it to the soldier. Over ten levels, the archaic weaponmaster loses tactical aid, improved reaction, greater weapon specialization, and critical strike, and gains quick draw, expert in your field (skill bonuses because you're acknowledged as a master), weapon stun (subdual damage at no penalty) and imbue weapon (can overcome DR).
So the AWM gives up many of the soldier's best combat abilities (including the very powerful greater weapon specialization and critical strike), and gets fluff -- the AWM abilities are sort of cute, but nothing all that impressive. Imbue weapon is probably the best among them, but it's rendered useless when the AWM finds a good magical archaic weapon and is far inferior to the slayer weapon that a shadow slayer gets (along with a superior base attack progression, I might add).
The result is that a soldier is just going to be a flat-out better fighter than the AWM, especially if the soldier has a round before the fighting really starts to throw up tactical aid. So one asks of the archaic weaponmaster -- what's the point? Are there any obvious fixes? (One solution, though it might lean to the overpowered, is to up the BAB to +1/level, but I'm not sure.)
So the AWM gives up many of the soldier's best combat abilities (including the very powerful greater weapon specialization and critical strike), and gets fluff -- the AWM abilities are sort of cute, but nothing all that impressive. Imbue weapon is probably the best among them, but it's rendered useless when the AWM finds a good magical archaic weapon and is far inferior to the slayer weapon that a shadow slayer gets (along with a superior base attack progression, I might add).
The result is that a soldier is just going to be a flat-out better fighter than the AWM, especially if the soldier has a round before the fighting really starts to throw up tactical aid. So one asks of the archaic weaponmaster -- what's the point? Are there any obvious fixes? (One solution, though it might lean to the overpowered, is to up the BAB to +1/level, but I'm not sure.)
