Who wants to review a book of classes?

[pawsplay]

So there is an eight point spread between the fighter and the scholar/martial artist/fighter. You can cut that in half just by getting the fighter a magical shield and a ring to match. I am kind of surprised to see Dex 20 and Int 20. I wonder what kind of ability scores the fighter has by comparison, and why he seems to have thousands less in defensive gear.

Looking at some CR 9 monsters, I see that most will require about an 8 or so to hit the fighter, but around a 16 to hit the other character. That seems pretty normal. With buffs, those ACs will go through the roof, but that is just as true of the fighter as the other character. With an AC of 38, a greater air elemental will need a 17 or higher to hit the fighter and a a young blue dragon will need a natural 20. That reflect less on the AC disparity you have described than with the relative ability of equal CR monsters attacking PCs in melee combat and having much chance of hitting when the PCs are fully buffed. Normally, I would expect the PCs to be fully buffed only for more difficult encounters. In a more challenging situation, say against a CR 12 adult green dragon, the dragon needs a 17 just to hit the buffed fighter. That's Pathfinder for you.

So from what I can see, and I hope I am not trivializing your concerns, it would appear to be that the character in question has unusually high ability scores, while the fighter has a fairly normal Dex and much less in the way of magical defensive gear. Without knowing more, I can guess that the character has basically sunk a lot of points or a good roll into Int for a permanent +5 to AC, in exchange for losing a point of BAB, a hit point or two, and ending up two levels further behind in getting fighter or martial artist abilities.

 

[Mortagon]

The fighter choose to spend most of his money upgrading his weapon instead of his defensive gear, while the martial artist choose to focus on defense. He has a +2 stat boost item in both dex and int, and his int is only 18 not 20, he had forgotten to remove one point of AC from the Agile defense feat for wearing light armor and when I calculated his AC I assumed the extra point came from int (I didn't have the sheet in front of me, only my players words).

But although my concerns stern from actual game-play, there's also my DM intuition telling me that the ability might need some kind of balancing factor, mostly because it's usable with any kind of armor and stacks with similar abilities from other classes. By itself the ability seems fine, but I think it can be abused in certain combination's. Mind you I had the same concerns about the swordsage class when it first came out, but I had to scratch that entire book from my games when it turned into a cheese-fest (long story).

I have thought of a solution, let the Int bonus count as Dex for the purpose of armor, I was thinking the same thing for the Agile defense feat.

But nitpicking aside, the Pdf is awesome and I think it is very well put together and balanced. I especially love the various medical feats, and minor medical miracle has saved three lives so far in my Campaign. Most of the classes fill niches that has been sorely lacking and others are just to fun. The only class that has yet to find its way into my game so far, is the Corbie, but I'm sure I'll find a use for him soon enough.

 

[pawsplay]

But although my concerns stern from actual game-play, there's also my DM intuition telling me that the ability might need some kind of balancing factor, mostly because it's usable with any kind of armor and stacks with similar abilities from other classes.

That's probably true. Still, I think pumping Int to raise your AC is usually a losing game.

 

[Sigurd]

Mortagon I am curious about your situation but I have to say there are a lot of ac bonuses due to exceptional stats and magic items.

I'd like to see the same build with the elite array and no items compared to the fighter under the same conditions at the same level.


Sigurd

 

[pawsplay]

I checked the math, and the items are plausible. The ability scores do seem a little high.

Btw, I uploaded the final version of the PDF with errata.

 

[Alzrius]

Can you give us a list of what errata was implemented?

 

[pawsplay]

Can you give us a list of what errata was implemented?

Apart from the animal companion tweak, there are not any mechanical changes in later versions. Mainly, all the abilities that grant lower-level animal companions were reset to be in line with the ranger ability, and all classes should now have skills ranks per level listed. There were a few cut-and-paste errors with class names and such. Finally, starting gold for 1st level characters has been added.

 

[Alzrius]

I wanted to check on something: a 1st-level beastmaster gets wild empathy, correct? It's listed in the class table, but it's not mentioned in the list of class abilities in the text.

 

[pawsplay]

Yes.