Adam Teles's page

Wild idea for Brawlers to have something to call their own...

What if Brawlers just flat up don't provoke attacks of opportunity for performing combat maneuvers? I'm not talking about the Improved X feats that give +2 on top of that or the great X feats that then do more things, but what if we just say at X level they don't provoke. They'd still need improved whatever for the +2 and to qualify for greater, but this would mean that with no investment you can just reposition, drag, trip, disarm, whatever your opponent. I've found on fighters there's often times when you want to just take the AoO to perform a maneuver. Last game I was in, I took an AoO to trip an opponent (by intentionally moving through his threatened area first so that if his AoO hit I wouldn't lose my trip attempt), and I use bull rush plenty, and the allure of a class that can just do that no penalty seems really cool.

Another thing I'd REALLY like Brawlers to be able to do, either just by class features or by feat options, is hit foes into each other to damage them both.

Oh, man, what if "awesome blow" included other creatures as obstacles you could throw people at?

I'm still trying to figure out how Swashbuckler can be considered a Gunslinger alternate when they don't even get proficiency in any firearms. But then; this is the only one of the advanced classes that I see no use for. There are far better ways to make a good swashbuckler than take levels in Swashbuckler. Just the basic Rogue is pretty damned good at it. Take four levels of Fighter with your Rogue and you should be able to swash your buckle to your heart's content and you don't have to go through the annoyance of tracking Grit/Panache points. As such I would think that a Figher-Rogue combination would be better Alternates for this concept.

Grit. The premise of this class is a melee character that uses Grit points. Compare panache to grit and you'll see how it works.

As for fighter/rogue being a good swashbuckler... I respectfully disagree. I've seen people try it, and I've never seen it be good.

I suspect the brawler will also be fighting lower-CR foes, even when she's at level 20. So "I can't make use of this" is hyperbole and inaccurate. "Rarely works on the boss encounter" is accurate... and something I'm comfortable with.

Last year I finished up a years-long game that went from 1-18, and I have to say...

CMDs are /stupid/ at high levels. Even a character built to do nothing but perform combat maneuvers will have an incredibly difficult time succeeding against high level foes. Looking at Bestiary 2, lets go through the CMDs of foes at high CRs, meaning here 16+:

Bythos, CR 16, CMD 44, Large
Pleroma, CR 20, CMD 57, Large
Draconal, CR 20, CMD 51, Large
Star Archon, CR 19, CMD 42, Large
Brigidine, CR 17, CMD 43, Medium (Hey, something the Brawler has a not-horrendous chance against)
Astrademon, CR 16, CMD 41, Large
Olethrodaemon, CR 20, CMD 54, Gargantuan
Purrodaemon, CR 18, CMD 47, Large

As a side note, I haven't been noting which creatures here are immune to trip, but it's a lot of them.

Shemhazian, CR 16, CMD 48, Gargantuan
Vrolikai, CR 19, CMD 47, Large
Bdellavritra, CR 16, CMD 41, Large
Purgarus, CR 19, CMD 49, Large

And then there's a bunch of dragons... Not goign to list them all, but
CR 16, Huge, 47 is the low and CR 19, Gargantuan, 50 is the high

Rune Giant, CR 17, CMD 44, Gargantuan...
Adamantine Golem, CR 19, CMD 54, Huge

okay, I think I've made my point. At a +30 CMB, Awesome blow is less than 50% likely to work on any of these, with the "best" chance being against the CR 17 Brigidine, where he needs a 13. For comparison, if his favored combat maneuver is grapple (and mine always is), he has a +39 to grapple and can grab the biggest, baddest thing here on a 17. Awesome blow doesn't work against challenges even close to appropriate.

I'd like to bring up the elephant in the room again... This class is being built to be between Fighter and Monk but... Fighter and Monk (especially Monk) are both notorious for being underpowered. There's a lot of cool ideas here, but none of them overcome the sizable point that this class is /incredibly weak./ It keeps most of the monk's problems, loses some of the Monk's random coolness, and all it's really getting from being a Fighter is a few points to hit and AC.

What this class needs is a serious re-evalution of what Monk and Fighter's main problems are and some features that plug those holes.

Monk's main issues are that it gives up two-handed weapons, shields, and armor, and its class features only bring it back to "slightly worse than" the damage and AC of just using those. It compares poorly to Warrior in many aspects. The one thing it has going for it is a bunch of abilities that help keep it alive- All good saves, spell resistance, self-healing, that sort of thing.

Fighter's issue, which the monk also has, is that combat maneuvers just don't compare to spells after a point, and the job of being the big guy in front doesn't work if you can't reliably get and hold aggro. Fighter also lacks options other than "Hit target with my weapon" as often as not, because while few things are outright immune to combat manuevers, CMD scales insanely with size such that even the best at combat maneuvers need natural twenties to deal with things that have two size categories on them.

So what do I suggest for fixes here?

A) More AC. Adding Wis to AC while in light armor would help a lot, and Swordsage in 3.5 proved that this is fine. Alternatively, letting them gain Con as Natural Armor. The point is, they currently have similar AC to Monks which is just... not enough.

B) Better chance at using maneuvers against larger foes. New special ability: "The Bigger They Are (Ex): The Brawler knows how to undermine the defenses of even the largest creatures. Large and Larger creatures don't gain a size bonus to CMD against a Brawler's Maneuvers and add only half their strength bonus."

By my count, that brings the Tarrasque's CMD down to 43, still very respectable at high levels, but something doable by a high level character. For comparison, its AC is only 40.

C) More damage options. My suggestion, as a feat or a class feature.
"Full Body Press
When you make an unarmed strike, if you have nothing in either hand, you may put your full force into it. Increase the damage dice by one size category, and you may treat your unarmed strike as a two-handed weapon for all purposes. You may not use this ability in conjuncture with a Flurry."

This allows them to push for Power Attack and gives them a better option for a standard action attack.

D) Combat Expertise. Swashbuckler has that thing where it doesn't need Int for Combat Expertise. Brawler needs that, too, along with any feat with Combat Expertise as a prerequisite. We've got a guy here whose whole schtick is Maneuvers, but he doesn't actually GET any if he doesn't have at least 13 intelligence, an ability score that none of his class features actually use. (That said: Maybe give it Int to AC, if this is supposed to be a studied, Batman-esque Martial Artist rather than the spiritual Monk.) The Monk's ability to ignore Combat Expertise and still have Maneuvers is one of the best things it has going for it.

E) Skills. One of fighter's main problems is that if he doesn't have anything to hit, he doesn't have anything to DO. Stealth would be a great skill for this guy (see: Batman-esque), as would Knowledge (Local) and Heal, the two skills used to know human anatomy. Perform would be great as well, giving us the idea of professional fighter of some sort.

F) Evasion, a good will save, and/or upping Brawler to a d12 hit die would go a long way toward helping this guy be the guy who stands in front and doesn't go down. With trip and grapple he can actually monopolize enemy attention pretty well (see comment C), so this could be made into a guy who can actually tank, something fighters and monks have been hoping to do and failing to do since forever.

So, just to show what I think is a more "appropriate" power level, here's a link to the Martial Artist class me and my friends made for an E6 game. It's eternally a work in progress, but it's ideas.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RXNkNzZBhOLVfrZhgmGH5jsy1351q8AoA4VwA01 yHxw/edit#

If I could influence the class, I would dump the blood pool concept. Instead, I would add a series of abilities surrounding the motif of magical genius. Allow the arcanist more control over the effects of his or her spells. Let them change things like area, range and duration and element type. They already look to be focused on fluidity, embrace it, and separate them thematically from the sorcerer and wizard.

When I first read this, I thought it was a great idea, and it definitely /feels/ like one, but the more I looked it over and thought about implementation, the more I realize you're talking about something already in the game: Metamagic feats. Now, maybe what you're saying here is "they should get bonus metamagic feats and be able to play with them better than Sorcerer or Wizard can," in which case that's a valid idea, but what I'm seeing here is just "metamagic master." And my problem with this, and even your whole concept the more I read, is that it really DOES seem to be the wizard.

You bring up the idea of a Genius, but our geniuses historically aren't people who have something special other than intelligence... They're just those guys who maxed out intelligence. If we were to randomize ability scores like real life sort of gives, we're talking about 0.08% of people, the guys packing that 20 intelligence at level one. (Note that this is only 0.46% of elves, which encourages the belief that elves are the masters of arcane)

I don't think the idea of the natural genius is a good one, because plenty of Wizards with high int would have that, and it's just that their study lets them learn this knowledge.

Flavorwise, I think our best example in cultures are Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker, and even these are poor ones. The Arcanist, at least the one presented, is someone who has natural magic within but who, unlike our X-Men Sorcerers, it doesn't explode out of. They're characters who have to /understand/ what they are in order to properly maximize their capabilities.

Really, I think what we need most of all is an example. Harry Potter, for all his hard work and study, plays like a spontaneous caster.

...And a good example just came to me.

I don't know who even remembers this show, but I used to watch Charmed pretty regularly. It starred three 'witches.' They had innate magical talent, and they each had some powers that they could just 'do' whenever they wanted (Precognition, telekinetics, etc), but then they also had their book. And when they wanted to do something else, they went to the book and the book told them how to do it and they read and tinkered and recited and did their spell... But the only things they could do without the book were their handful of personal powers.

THIS could be a good direction for the spellcasting to take, and I've actually got a pretty crazy notion for how it might work, which would help really make it feel between sorcerer and wizard and help alleviate some of the issues of straight up merging them...

Two sets of spell slots

One set would be the "Combat" set. These would be a number of spells known and spells per day, all spontaneous, that just worked like a sorcerer's. It'd have fewer spells known and spells per day than a sorcerer, though not by too much. This would just be their magic. Maybe 1 known per level less than sorcerer, one or two less per day. This is flavorfully just "your powers, this is what your magic lets you do."

And then the other set uses a spellbook. And maybe it's prepared, giving you one or two prepared slots per level on the side, but what I'm actually thinking is to not even fill the slots. Let it, a few times per day, spend lets say 3 full round actions, or maybe 1 minute to just cast a spell out of the book. You wouldn't be able to "silver bullet" enemies without friends acting as road blocks because of significantly increased casting times, but what you COULD do is say "You know what we need right now? Knock" and then cast Knock right out of the book. Maybe this isn't even slots, because when you're talking noncombat spells the spell level isn't so important. Maybe you just have a book and X times a day you can spend 1 minute to cast a spell directly from the book, and it doesn't matter what the spell is. And you'd also get scribe scroll for free, representing the ability to prepare spells from your book ahead of time but not as well as a wizard does it.

The result of this is a character who, in combat, plays like a slightly weaker sorcerer, but then manages to swiss-army-knife other encounters better than a Wizard because the person's innately magical and can come up with answers on the fly as long as she's made sure they're in her book.

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A second, simpler option, would be to have its casting work /mostly/ like a wizard, but give it "Spontaneous Spells" like a Cleric or Druid have, but instead of spontaneously casting Cure/Inflict/Summon, you get to choose what spells you can spontaneously cast as you level up, creating a character who can prepare all sorts of utility spells and then when combat happens say "Screw it, fireball" because they were secretly a sorcerer the whole time.

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I really do think the casting as presented is too good. The math's been done by others, and I can think of a fix that would appease me that would fit the flavor better- Eliminate one prepared slot per spell level per day, automatically give them the bloodline spell of the appropriate level in place of that slot, prepared instead of just learned. This, of course, doesn't mesh with my "no bloodline" idea, but with my idea I'd then make it a specialized slot where they have to prepare something with the appropriate Descriptor, or Summon Monster. (Why Summon Monster? Because it doesn't get its descriptor until you actually cast it, and it easily accesses 8 descriptors.) Of course, if I was doing a total rebuild, I'd probably find someone to help me with the numbers on my charmed-style casting to make it work.

Larkas, for all the ideas I brought forth I didn't even touch the spellcasting method... But I think you're right. It has major issues and seems like it's just going to be too good in a lot of aspects.

The thing is Adam... would you like to suggest HOW it should progress along the path you have in mind? It's easy to knock something, what's your alternative?

Well, Lazar, that's fair. Here's a skeleton of the sort of thing I'd suggest. Obviously it'd need work. This is more a question of being cool and interesting than balance to me at the moment.

First off, scrub the whole "Special" column. No Blood Focus. No Scribe Scroll. No bonus feats. Cantrips can stay.

Spellbook and casting stay, but she no longer gets bloodline spells because she no longer has a bloodline.

At first level, the Arcanist gains

"Arcane Focus (Ex): While Wizards exhaustively study the eight schools of magic and Sorcerers follow their blood, Arcanists take hints from their magical heritage to direct their study. At 1st level, an Arcanist chooses a spell descriptor (such as Fire or Evil.) At 1st level and whenever she learns a new level of spells, she adds one Sorcerer/Wizard spell with the chosen descriptor to her spellbook of a level she can cast. She may choose to learn a Summon Monster spell in place of a spell of her descriptor."

[Note: The descriptors are acid, air, chaotic, cold, curse, darkness, death, disease, earth, electricity, emotion, evil, fear, fire, force, good, language-dependent, lawful, light, mind-affecting, pain, poison, shadow, sonic, and water.]

"Arcane Heritage (Su): At 1st level, the arcanist learns to harness the power of her magical heritage to push the boundaries of her magic. An Arcanist gets a number of Arcane points each day equal to 3 + her charisma modifier (minimum 1). She may expend Arcane points in the following ways.
- Expend an Arcane point as free action to add +1 to the caster level and save DC of a spell of with her Arcane Focus descriptor as she casts it.
- Expend an Arcane point as a free action to cast a cantrip from her spellbook, even if she hasn't prepared it.
- Expend an arcane point as a standard action to fire a ray at a target within 30 feet. This ray deals fire damage equal to 1d6+ your arcanist level. If your Arcane Focus descriptor is an Energy or Elemental type, this instead deals damage of that energy type or that elemental's associated energy type (for example, if your descriptor is Water or Cold, this ray does Cold damage)"

[Notes: Yes, charisma. Clerics have to deal with a Wis/Cha split and they're fine. Also, I know the ray there is better than sorcerer bloodline 1st tend to be, but those bloodline rays are very weak and quickly become something you never use, so I wanted this to scale a bit better]

Then, every two or three levels (lets say three. This IS a full caster after all), give

"Arcane Talent: At 3rd level, the Arcanist gains one Arcane Talent. She gains an additional talent for every 3 levels of Arcanist attained after 3rd level. An arcanist cannot select an individual talent more than once."

An then we get a talent list... Here's my sample list.

"Eldritch Heritage: Select one sorcerer bloodline. This bloodline cannot be a bloodline you already have. You gain the first-level bloodline power for the selected bloodline. For purposes of using that power, treat your sorcerer level as equal to your arcanist level – 2. You do not gain any of the other bloodline abilities."

"Improved Elemental Ray: When you use an Arcane Point to fire a ray, that ray deals an additional 1d6 points of damage of its energy type.”

“Preferred Spell: Choose a spell you know with your Arcane Focus descriptor. You may expend an arcane point and a spell of the same level or higher to spontaneously cast that spell. If the spell sacrificed was higher level, this spell is Heightened to that same level.You may take this Talent multiple times. Each time you do, choose a different spell.”

“Arcane Defense: You gain a +3 bonus on saving throws against spells with your Arcane Focus descriptor.”

“Countermastery: When you successfully identify a spell being cast that has your Arcane Focus descriptor, you may spend an arcane point as an immediate action to counterspell it by casting a spell with the same descriptor of the same level or higher. (It need not be the same spell)”

“Inherent Understanding: You may expend an Arcane Point before rolling a spellcraft check to gain a +5 insight bonus to that check.”

“Eldritch Heritage II: (Prerequisite: Eldritch heritage, level 6). You gain the 3rd-level power of the bloodline you selected with the Eldritch Heritage talent. For purposes of using that power, treat your sorcerer level as equal to your arcanist level – 2. You do not gain any of the other bloodline abilities.

“Eldritch Heritage III: (Prerequisites: Eldritch Heritage, Eldritch heritage II, level 12), blah blah level 9 power blah blah”

“Spell Focus: You gain Spell Focus as a bonus feat.”

“Forceful Ray: When you use an Arcane Point to fire a ray, if that ray deals damage, you may make a free trip attempt or a free bull rush attempt against the target, using your Arcanist level as your BAB and your charisma modifier as your strength modifier.”

“Inherited Spell: Choose a spell from the Cleric or Druid spell list with your Arcane Focus descriptor. Add that spell to your spellbook and your spell list. You must spend an Arcane Point to cast that spell.”

“Amiable Heritage: You gain a +3 bonus on skill checks made to interact with, know about, or understand creatures who have your Arcane Focus descriptor as a subtype.”

“Family Bonds: Whenever you cast a Summon Monster spell with your Arcane Focus descriptor, you may spend an arcane point to reduce the casting time to a standard action.”

“Scribe Scroll: You gain scribe scroll as a bonus feat.”

The Capstone, School Supremacy, would stay the same, except work for Descriptor rather than school.

And then there’d be an “Extra Arcane Heritage” feat for +2 arcane points.

So, why did I focus on Descriptor rather than school here? Because of what makes a sorcerer and what makes a wizard and what would work between. Wizards study and learn and specialize in a school, much like a college major, where their focus is based on how things intrinsically ‘work.’ An Evoker understands how to make fire come and explode, but is less learned on the subject of fire elementals. Sorcerers are about Bloodline, they get powers innately and work with that, and they tend to be latched onto a theme. Bloodline Arcana often focuses on descriptors or subtypes, and I wanted to latch onto the idea that the Arcanist would still have a focus of study, but it wouldn’t quite be just “the bloodline” and it wouldn’t be the studied school. An Arcanist understands “I have Evil heritage from my demonic great great grandaddy”, and so he focuses on things that resonate with that (likely Conjuration (Summoning) [Evil] spells), but doesn’t really learn about conjuration as a whole, and he isn’t so demonic (without eldritch heritage) that he’ll just have claws or whatever.

I would just say that while I like all the other classes (even the Brawler which is woefully underpowered), I absolutely loathe the Arcanist. While all the others feel like "I want to do this, lets make it halfway between two classes instead of an AT or a totally new class", this feels like "The editors say we need a sorcerer/wizard hybrid. Lets make something."

Sorcerer and Wizard are ALREADY just a few steps away from each other, and the compromises here aren't good ones in any case.

-The strange spellcasting method doesn't make this between Sorcerer and Wizard. It just makes this do silly things, granting insane versatility. Yes, it's at the slower sorcerer progression, but it still feels overall better than wizard or sorc for most purposes... But more importantly it's clunky and annoying. It feels like a shoehorned compromise rather than an interesting method of casting in its own right. A preferable answer would be for it to cast like a sorcerer mostly, but be able to prepare one slot per level with something else (anything else, perhaps! Don't even need a spellbook?) at the start of the day.

-Bloodline Focus is clunky as well, and compromises two things that didn't need to be compromised. The reduced bloodline abilities in exchange for being able to just buff spells instead is odd, and considering most bloodlines I feel it will usually result in just not using bloodline abilities. One of my big issues with this is that most of my favorite bloodline powers are passives, and using a standard action to activate them for a few rounds. I think this would make a lot more sense if you just sort of "got" a sorcerer bloodline, but at reduced level... But even then, it has this whole "On the fence" feel rather than feeling like its own class. If anything, Arcanist shouldn't have ANY bloodline powers, and should instead have something like "Arcane Talents" that it can take every few levels.

-Bonus feats. This is the easiest thing to get rid of to make something more interesting or to do something interesting with.

Also, this class could really use some strange features going up. Something that makes it feel like its own man. I really think Blood Focus and the bonus feats need to just /go away/ in exchange for a Talent list like some of the other classes have. Or even keep them with a number of "Blood" points per day, but give them more unique things to do with them the way Monks, Investigators, Swashbucklers, and everyone else with points per day gets a sizable list.

All in all: I'd like to see this class be taken further from Sorcerer or Wizard, and I'd like to feel like it /does/ something that makes it its own class.

Brawler looks bad to me, overall, in part for the same reason Monks are bad and in part because fighters aren't particularly good, either. I think this class would be a good opportunity to fix the issues in both, instead of making them worse.

Monk's main problem is that it spends a lot of class features making up for a lack of weapons and armor, and none of these are actually as good as a Warrior wielding a weapon and wearing armor. Brawler, being directly compared to Fighter, gets this worse. At level 1, a Brawler has a weapon that does 1d6, 20/x2, while a fighter is generally packing 2d6, 19-20/x2 OR has 1d8, 19-20/x2 and a shield. His armor is probably Medium (becuase level 1), but a shield can help make up for the low AC there.

Jumping ahead to 4th level when the Brawler picks up +1 AC, the Brawler's AC is 10+Dex+4 (chain shirt) +1 AC bonus... Whereas the Fighter has 10+dex+9 (full plate) and potentially +2 shield. If he has a shield, he's swinging for 1d8, same as the Brawler, but has a higher threat range. If he's shieldless, he's going in for 2d6+strength and a half. Even if the Brawler is full-attacking and thus flurrying, the brawler's getting 2d6+twice strength, at a -2 penalty... So if he maxes strength and has gotten a magic item early, he's taking -2 to hit for +3 damage if and only if he can full attack. And he's still got half the critical threat range.

This doesn't get much better for the Brawler at higher levels. Magic swords are cheaper than amulets of natural armor, and the Brawler's AC never gets comparable to the Fighter's. So what does the Brawler get instead? Maneuver training is comparable to Weapon Training, except Weapon Training applies to a number of combat maneuvers already, and some fighter archetypes let you trade features for more.

Toe to toe with a fighter, the Brawler really has nothing going for him other than Martial Maneuvers letting him change his feats on the fly, but a fighter will be just getting feats in greater quantity. Good Reflex saves and +2 skill points per level are not enough to save this class...

...So what do I think it needs?

-If the class must have light armor and no shield, give it AC to compensate. This class doesn't reward high dexterity at ALL, so it feels weird that it penalizes armor. I suggest letting it add Wisdom to Armor class while wearing light or no armor, on top of the AC bonus, like Swordsage used to do. Alternatively, give it an active defense: Let it use its strength or con to AC as it actively blocks, parries, and knocks aside incoming blows.

-Two Weapon Fighting is a joke. It's a penalty to hit and only works on a full attack. The Brawler either needs Pounce or the ability to attack twice as a standard in order to make this reasonable. Alternatively: Let him go in with a full body attack (like a tackle) and treat his unarmed strikes as a two-handed weapon.

-I like maneuver training, but it needs more than just a bonus. Perhaps allow combining maneuvers (for example: let the Brawler get a free Trip attempt when he Bull Rushes, or if he successfulyl disarms someone let him get a free attack with the disarmed weapon as though he were proficient), or making maneuvers work as riders on successful attacks (like a wolf's trip or a tiger's grab.) Eidolons can get both of these abilities, I think a PC specializing in maneuvers should have the option as well.

-Damage reduction. If you're gonna tell me this guy is standing in front of the armored dudes in light armor and punching them in the face, I expect him to be tough as nails. And I don't mean dinky Barbarian DR, I mean like DR/- equal to half Brawler level.

I understand that you don't want to overshadow Monk too badly with this class, but keep in mind that Monk is really, really bad and try to compare it to fighter not in what abilities it says it gets, but what those abilities can actually do for it. Being able to punch a man for 1d8 damage is not a relevant ability when the alternative was cutting a man for 2d6.