Your Experiences with Non Core Characters

[Hussar]

For the first time in some time, I'm not DMing and getting to just play. It's a very nice break. It has actually been years since I've played and not DM'd, so, I perused my library for what PC to make. Having purchased the Tome of Magic some time ago, I decided to give the Binder a drive around the block.

It's been a blast. The sweetest thing about this class is that your character is essentially multiple characters rolled into one. Your abilities, focus and even personality can change literally every day depending on which vestige you bind and whether or not you make a good pact. I've been playing in an excellent Eberron campaign and I find that the binder works very well there. The class is definitely pulpy in feel. And, having made a failed pact with Leraje, I was forced to free an elven prisoner which surprised the heck out of everyone at the table. Just way too much fun. I actually almost look forward to failed pacts just to give that extra bit of personality to the character.

On a mechanical end, I would say that the binder is not for novice players. There are a ton of fiddly bits with the class and it requires a lot of attention to get it right. I know that I've made more than a few mistakes already - it's been a real learning process. While the class can emulate just about any role, it's not like a bard in that it can do it all at the same time. What you actually do is emulate one particular role - tank, blaster, face, whatever - at a time. It really pays to think ahead. IMO though, the abilities of each vestige are broad enough that any time you focus on one role, you'll get mileage out of it. Granted, if you take a tank vestige and head to the Duke's ball, you might not be in a great position, but, no worse than any other tank really.

So, what are your experiences with non-core characters? Either as a player or a DM. What classes did you try, or see played at the table, that stood out as either good, bad or bland?

 

[MrFilthyIke]

Love the Binder...playing a planar-jaunting Wild Elf Binder (level 4) as we speak. I have been the party's lifesaver on more than one occasion when I've pulled a new ability from my but.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

... on more than one occasion when I've pulled a new ability from my but.

Ewww... Living up to your name?!

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

As a GM or other player, I've seen:

Akashic (Arcana Evolved)
I want to say 'weak' because the character in question essentially couldn't fight. But, he was the most effective skill monkey I've ever seen, one of the most fun characters I've ever seen in a game, and hugely influential in the campaign. GREAT class for players who want to impact the game in ways other than doing damage.

Genius (OGL Steampunk)
Combat weak, generally a decent skill class. Broken only because of getting Savant in a 20-level class; it was designed for a 10-level d20 Modern class, and at higher levels, it shows. Restrict the Savant bonus to +10, or slow it down to +1/2 level, and this would be another fine skill user.

Gun Mage (Iron Kingdoms Campaign Setting)
Kind of weak, I think. Most of the class's spells aren't hugely synergistic with its fighting abilities, so even though the spell and combat progressions are both good, the end result isn't.

Ninja (both Rokugan and Complete Adventurer varieties)
The Rokugan variety seemed more fighty than sneaky - the flip-out-and-kill-people '80s bad movie ninja, basically; it's balanced, albeit very much a glass cannon. The Complete Adventurer version is just the opposite, being more sneaky than a rogue; it seemed very difficult to play well, and perhaps a bit weak.

Psion (Expanded Psionics Handbook)
Basically a spell point wizard. Breaks earlier than the wizard, but never as badly. Better designed than the core spellcasters, but I'd still prefer not to have them in my game.

Psychic Warrior (Expanded Psionics Handbook)
Probably the coolest of the XPH classes. A very, very different fighting class that comes out about as strong as the core warrior types, possibly a bit better. Well balanced and well designed, with interesting mechanics that seem easy to grasp.

Samurai (Oriental Adventures)
Better than the fighter because of 4 sp/level and good Will save. Well designed class.

Samurai (Complete Warrior)
See Samurai (OA) above. Remove all the positive commentary. A *terrible* class.

Scout (Complete Adventurer)
An extremely popular class, though I can't quite figure out what they bring to the table. They seemed weaker than rangers or rogues to me, but not a bad class. In Saga, they would be really cool (because of the removed emphasis on iterative attacks) and perhaps a bit too strong, but in D&D they're on the weak side. Still, I can't argue with their popularity.

Warlock (Complete Arcane)
Decent, reliable, played like an archer-fighter more than anything else. Powerful against armored targets, weak against dexterity-based fighter types. Surprisingly, did not seem like a glass cannon despite a d6 hit dice.

Wilder (Expanded Psionics Handbook)
Like the psion, but more random. I've seen them go off MASSIVELY, arguably to the detriment of the game, but I've also seen them completely suck. Probably balanced, but I'm not sure in a good way - they remind me of pre-3e druids who were awesome in wilderness but poor to awful indoors, a very up-and-down class.

 

[exile]

I've recently played two non-core classes. The first was a human scout blessed with particularly high ability scores. The rest of the party consisted of a bard, a rogue, and an NPC fighter. My scout actually brought a relatively good deal of muscle to the party (but then again, you saw the party composition listed above). Scout combat abilities can be decent in any party, if you can just keep the scout moving- Mobility and Spring Attack are must-take feats.

The second character is a binder (actually a binder/wizard/anima mage). The character played pretty well, and would have been more potent yet had her career not been cut short by my real world relocation. I found that she actually played very different from most binders, relying instead heavily on her wizard spells. The binding was used primarily for a little extra protection or firepower, and I was just getting to the point that she coudl torture the poor vestiges into metamagicking her spells. Still, she was a lot of fun to play.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I'm mostly not going to list ones I saw as a player or GM in this section. On to...

As a GM I've used:

Courtier (Rokugan)
An absolute must-have. The ideal party face/skill monkey, and a great class for important but combat-incompetent NPCs. I've used it again and again, always to great effect.

Magister (Arcana Evolved)
A better-designed wizard, basically. Flavorful, great mechanics. Perhaps a bit complex for an NPC, though.

Martial Artist (Beyond Monks: The Art of the Fight)
Monk flurry with barbarian rage and fighter BAB? OMG teh br0kenz!! Actually a balanced class in a glass cannon sense, because its AC is just *horrible* and it has only d8 hp. It's essentially an offense-focused monk class, whereas the PHB version is defense-focused. Great for NPCs, but I would be reluctant to take it for a PC unless the force/action point to avoid death rule were in use.

Mystic (Dragonlance Campaign Setting)
A very weak spontaneous divine caster. Possibly balanced to non-casters, meaning it looks all but unplayable compared to regular casters. Conceptually more appealing than the more core-power-level-like favored soul, though.

Shugenja (Oriental Adventures/Rokugan/Complete Divine)
A good elementalist caster who is considered divine but doesn't play like it. I saw one in play, too, in retrospect. Weaker than core casters, but then, who isn't? Some of the spell list seemed odd; I was disappointed with a fire-typed shugenja's lack of some of the arcane blaster spells, for example.

Soulknife (Expanded Psionics Handbook)
Now that I think about it, I saw one of these in play, too. A neat class, well designed, but very, very narrow.

Swashbuckler (Complete Warrior)
The best three-level class WotC ever produced, definitely better than the racial paragons. It allegedly has a 20-level progression, but this is misleading: its capstone ability, and the last really good one it gets, is at 3rd level.

Unfettered (Arcana Evolved)
Excellent light fighter class. Possibly a bit weak, especially compared to his big buddy the warmain.

Warlock (Complete Arcane)
Deserves special mention as an NPC class. SO much easier to use and create than traditional spellcasters; this one is a godsend even if a PC never takes a level.

Warmain (Arcana Evolved)
Excellent heavy fighter class. Stronger than the core fighter (at least without taking PHB2 feats into account, because that wasn't out at the time I last ran a warmain) but less versatile, it's not exactly locked into the tank role but it certainly fits best there.

Witch (Arcana Evolved)
Rather weak spellcastery-type class, probably better balanced than the core spellcasters and with a lot of flavorful abilities. Not pathetic, but certainly not on par with a wizzie, cleric or pre-polymorph druid, or even the better-balanced AE magister.

 

[pogre]

Swashbuckler (Complete Warrior)
This is the only non-core class PC I have had in my campaign. He seemed painfully underpowered compared to the core class characters overall.

 

[Hussar]

As a DM, I had a player use the Favored Soul. I gotta admit, I didn't like it. Cleric spells, by and large are far too specific use to make a sorcerer style cleric work. To give an example, the party needed to cross an area of deep water. Had they had a cleric instead of a FS, it would have been a simple thing.

But, what FS is going to take Water Breathing as a spell? Not a chance. So, they were stuck with a single scroll to use between the 6 PC's. Made for some real excitement since they couldn't retreat.

Not a bad idea, but, I look at it this way - take away all the cleric's versatility, turning abilities, and give it a couple of feats and extra spells per day. Not worth the tradeoff IMNSHO.

 

[MerricB]

The Favoured Soul can be absolutely brilliant - but you're not talking about a versatility caster. It has the same relationship to the Cleric as the Sorcerer has to the Wizard: it uses its spells to great effect, but only within a limited frame of reference.

I would never want to play a sorcerer, but give it to the right player, and it's excellent.

Cheers!

 

[Yair]

Favored Soul (Complete Divine)
I played one, albeit briefly and online. I found it annoying - you are battle-focused on one hand, but need to buff on the other. It's just clumsy. (Choosing offensive spells from the cleric's spell list is a bit of a joke.)

Psychic Warrior (Expanded Psionics Handbook)
Played one and I've been seeing one in play as a DM too. Slightly too powerful if played right, but very very colorful and nice. Leads to more dynamic and interesting combat, IMO.

Psion (XPH)
A bit more powerful than normal spellcasters, especially when going Nova. I'm contemplating limiting it to 1/4 of its power points per day for each encounter; that might make it actually balanced. At any rate, it isn't so unbalanced that it ruins the game (well, except one combo I had to nix) and seems a lot of fun to run.