Your Experiences with Non Core Characters

[vongarr]

Warmage - Hugely powerful boom spells. I don't like it being CHA based, but that's just an opinion. What it lacks in versatility it regains in the ability to wear armor and fight ok. But at the same time most of the spells are meant as artillery - They will damage your fellows if in radius.

Good class if you want a simple, effective caster.

Psion - I love them. Most powers scale, so unless you pick the flashlight eyes power, the majority of powers you pick can be used effectively 1-20. Not too many PrC's.

Beguiler - The opposite of a Warmage when it comes to spell choice. Lot's of skills, trapfinding, and some good spell choices. But it's harder to play because the spells are more save/special things dependent.

Artificer - Lovely class. If you play Eberron, that is.

Warblade - Very good class. If it's compared to straight core-20 figher, than the Warblade is much better. But if you have all of the splat feats, then they are equals. It also has an interesting motivation idea for characters.

 

[meomwt]

I played a Swashbuckler and loved the class: whilst light armour isn't ideal for a character designed to be in the front line, it has excellent mobility and works well in tandem with a combat-capable Rogue (and probably just as well with a skirmishing Scout). My character had Two-Weapon Fighting and Two-Weapon Defence for added AC and it was a deity-send.

As a DM, creative players have used:
Favoured Soul - frighteningly effective, focussed on Cures and Combat Buffs, and took Air Walk for when combat took to the skies. Its a easy class to play - no spell choices each day, and good combat ability - which helped as the guy running the FS was a newbie - with assistance from his vastly more experienced mate.

Hexblade - presently in use at low level in my new campaign - played by the FS guy from above. Main drawback so far is lack of spells, which is hurting the group who have no arcanist!

Marshal (from the Miniatures H/B) - a buffing fighter, use of Auras to bolster followers is an interesting ability. The Auras don't seem overpowered, but the Marshal doesn't have the best Combat Ability around for a front-line fighter. Again, still at low level, effectiveness may have to be judged at higher levels.

Ranger-Archer - from ENWorld Publishing's Three Arrows for the King - an attempt to make Archers more of a threat in 3.x, as they have been somewhat nerfed. Effective at range, they lose focus close in. Now multi-classed with a home-brew shaman class to bolster the party's healing capabilites.

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, for me psionics are core - it's also the main focus of my campaign. My players have only chosen psions and wilders so far (the latter now becoming an illithid slayer).

So the only non-core class so far has been a dragon shaman which everyone seemed to like except the dragon shaman's player. He's now playing a barbarian, so I guess he didn't like to be in a supporter role.
From what I've seen a dragon shaman is an excellent addition for a group that has the bases covered, but a bit on the weak side if on his own or trying to fill one of the main roles.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Haven't seen too many of the non-core classes in the D&D games I've played, mostly since the last D&D game I was before the current one was back when new PrCs were the big rage.

That said, I'm playing a Warblade in a friend's campaign. I don't recall the last time I had this much fun playing the party beatstick

Did see a Knight in action briefly, but the player wanted beatstick whereas Knight is better at meat shield.

 

[Particle_Man]

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.

QFT. That said, I love the Warlock as a PC too.

Knight - I liked this one. Finally, a Defensive Fighter that the monsters can't easily ignore! And an easy to use code of honour (as opposed to Paladin arguments ad infinitum).

Crusader - Also fun. Again, you can be the holy warrior without worrying about your DM and you having different ideas about the paladin code. The random powers bit requires you get some playing cards or something, but when you think about it, it is automatic in giving you a power to use every round, without you needing to spend an action, so that gives them quite the edge over the Warblade, and especially the poor Swordsage. Actually, all three classes look neat, but I have only played the Crusader. I would say that their is a chance for power abuse if skill-boosting items become common, as many of the W/S powers run on skills

Swashbuckler looks underpowered, I agree. Maybe with that feat from Scoundrel, it doesn't suck so much, but that requires three levels of rogue.

Hexblade is weak but fun. I had to cheese out like you wouldn't believe to make it work (the DMG II Stunning Strike item, before modifications a la MIC, for example).

Psion. I love them, especially the Shaper (and the Complete Psionic nerf does not exist in my continuity). That said, many of my friends are still anti-psionic, so I had to wait a while to play one.

Factotum from Dungeonscape. A bit weak, but wayyyyy cool. I am having a blast, and am spending all my feats on "Font of Inspiration" from the wotc website. I am staying single-classed, so most of the cheesy options will not be activated. I do wish that the arcane spells could be chosen on the fly rather than set for the day (and a similar thing for the 19th level ability, not that my character will ever get that high). But that is a personal preference.

 

[Particle_Man]

Oh, I forgot one-shots! I did play a Swashbuckler in a one shot but it was for campy fun. They are good for that.

And another one from Unearthed Arcana. 6th level Half-Orc Paragon/Orc Paragon. His weapon of choice? Orcish Double Axe, of course! Seriously, it is a full BAB run, and you get a nice strength boost of +4 if you stick it out. But it is short (2 classes of 3 levels each). Still a solid foundation upon which you can build as you see fit for a meelee type.

 

[Dyne]

The warlock is starting to go sour on me. I often have players wanting to play trigger-happy warlocks who rely waaay too much on their eldritch blast instead of actual roleplaying. Since the class is leading to way too much munchkin-y rollplaying, I'm thinking about banning the class and forcing players to actually consider the personalities of their characters instead of just the stats.

A friend of mine played a knight once. The extra boost to mobility was huge, made him quite a tough character.

I tried making a Swashbuckler character once, but it was very limited in any amount of swashing or buckling. Seems like a weak class, might be better to just make a Dex-based Fighter.

I've messed around with paragons a bit, but they seem a little weak, especially if you're playing a spellcasting character. You basically trade off one full level of spellcasting for a handful of rather minor abilities, and maybe an odd skill point. I don't know, it just seems to me that way too many classes/PrC's penalize spellcasting a bit too much.

That's pretty much it. So yeah, my experience with non-core base classes isn't very positive.... Except for Psions, but I consider the XPH to be core. I pretty much stick with the core classes, since those seem to me to be the best-designed.

 

[Grymar]

I've played:

Swashbuckler - the campaign only lasted a single session, but I could already tell he was pretty weak. I love the concept, but the class does nothing to reinforce the image of the role.

Scout - I'm playing a Warforged Scout Fighter/Scout in an Eberron game and he's a blast. He consistently does solid damage and the warforged immunities have been the key to keeping him alive.

I've DM'ed:
Warlock - character only lasted one session, but already the player was getting bored with the "I eldritch blast again..." mechanic. I think it is a solid class but you have to have someone who is willing to put effort into it.

Knight - Beautiful meat-shield. I'm not a big fan of the taunts, but it is needed for this sort of class to work. It even has some role-playing mechanics that apply through the knight's code.

Duskblade - only saw it for a session or two, but it seemed very weak (2nd-3rd level). But that really could have been the player and not the class. I'd like to see this at mid levels with a good player to see how it could really work.

Artificer - *sigh* This one has a ton of potential, but it's complexity led it to be a burden on a campaign of mine. The player just went into vapor lock in combat because he had too many options. From the wide variety of wands to Spell Storing Item infusion, he felt like he had the key to winning every fight somewhere if he could just find it. He would, no joke, take 20-40 minutes on some turns pouring through books looking for the right spell to "win" every encounter. I reluctantly asked my players to avoid the class in my next campaign.

Psychic Warrior - It is good to see that others have found the class to be effective. The only time I saw it was when someone decided to multiclass in barbarian and psychic warrior and he ended up destroying both. While there were moments here and there, he was just useless 98% of the time.

 

[Particle_Man]

The warlock is starting to go sour on me. I often have players wanting to play trigger-happy warlocks who rely waaay too much on their eldritch blast instead of actual roleplaying. Since the class is leading to way too much munchkin-y rollplaying, I'm thinking about banning the class and forcing players to actually consider the personalities of their characters instead of just the stats.

This is strange to me. I would think that archers would be in the same boat. Is that the case in your games? Also, usually warlocks are thought of as weak at the higher levels, but maybe you are using munchkin in a different way from "trying to maximize power, even if it means breaking the rules".

 

[Doug McCrae]

The warlock is starting to go sour on me. I often have players wanting to play trigger-happy warlocks who rely waaay too much on their eldritch blast instead of actual roleplaying. Since the class is leading to way too much munchkin-y rollplaying, I'm thinking about banning the class and forcing players to actually consider the personalities of their characters instead of just the stats.

Why's a warlock less conducive to roleplaying than other classes? Any physical fighter - fighter, barbarian, ranger, etc - can kep hitting things all day long if they like. Diplomacy abusers can make their diplomacy rolls all day long without any in-character conversation. Druids can go bear and beat up on bad guys for hours. Casters can blast away without a hint of roleplaying, rest up and blast away some more. What's the difference? I don't see any connection between having to rest and roleplaying, and lots of classes don't need to rest anyway.

And also warlocks are pretty weak, not munchkinny at all. You want munchkinny, try a mid-level druid with access to Spell Compendium. Or an Abjurant Champion with wraithstrike and power attack.