ExposedWires's page

You know you can re-theme ninjas in a setting to be a secret society of spring-heeled jack terrorist thieves right?

No I did not. In fact, I'd never even heard of that particular urban legend either so you've done me two services. I mean, retheming things is nothing new to me, but every time I looked at the Ninja specifically, it seemed like it was just a murder-rogue, so my brain automatically passed it up if my character had any other focus (and they always do).

Hell, both my character and the other rogue are doing non-lethal builds into sap master because we anticipated lots of interaction with functionally innocent people for whom murder would cause us more problems and make them impossible to blackmail later. For that reason, I looked at the ninja and just kinda snorted and moved on. It was only yesterday that I looked again and found it was basically a rogue with a magic resource that makes him just that much more useful in most every way.

Why is he billed so hard as a totally combat class?

The whole debate is pretty interesting, but I think the value of rogues (and monks if you'll let me roll them in) is that they have a niche. This niche is not open combat and it's pretty clear that they weren't ever meant for that.

I'm currently playing in an urban gang war campaign. (In Sharn. We're doing an eberron conversion.) We're playing criminals with hearts of gold (Sorta but not really. At least we're better than the other gangs.) who deal in fencing and smuggling and thievery and gambling. We have to deal with the law all the time and subterfuge and misdirection are absolutely key. As such, our party has 2 rogues, a monk, and an alchemist. I'm playing one of the rogues and I'm a sap adept underhanded rumormonger who uses improvised weapons exclusively. The other rogue fights unarmed. This is all critical because it means our party never wears visible armor or carries any weapons. We can get into parties, clubs, police stations and generally never be suspicious. Even when we do get into serious altercations, we can all talk our ways out. The monk even contributes to our ruses with monstrous sense motive rolls to read body language. Together we keep everything close to the chest. If we ever slip up, the alchemist just burns it all to the ground. It's working for us.

We can also outrun or easily hide from things that are serious threats (of which there are many) and I honestly can't see too many other classes working out as well. We're up against huge organizations so individual combats aren't about defeating our enemies so much as surviving and then hiding bodies or making it look like somebody else killed them or even faking our own deaths. Maybe some cheeky spellcasters would fit into our party, but anybody who relied on ranged would be boned in these tight streets and anybody in heavy armor is just bait for the griffin rider guardsmen.

I think in this situation, rogues are perfect. They're gonna suck in open honest combat, but here they are kings.

I played my most favoritest barbarian in a Crimson Throne campaign that was pretty much exactly what Grizzly the Archer spelled out with only a few differences. Oh look! I have her coffee-stained character sheet in my bag!

Sydney
12th level Superstitious Barbarian

STR: 20 DEX: 12 CON: 14 INT: 10 WIS: 14 CHA: 14

Trait: whichever ones give you will bonuses
human: favored class bounds: 1/3 level superstition bonus

1 Dazzling Display- feat , Race feat: Weapon Focus (Longsword)
2 Intimidating Glare- power
3 Gory Finish- feat
4 superstition- power
5 Power Attack-feat
6 Witch Hunter-power
7 erp: Strength Surge
8 Spell Sunder-power
9 Intimidating Prowess-feat
10 Terrifying Howl- power
11 Combat Reflexes
12 Eater of Magic- power

She went in with a sword and shield without raging to get into position and lay waste to a weak enemy so she could get off gory finish. With a monster intimidate, she would get almost every living creature within 30 ft and then rage->terrifying howl to get them all panicked. From there it's chasing down the witches and warlocks and butchering them while two-handing the longsword and dropping the shield for massive damage.

She was a real pleasure to play. There was nothing better than using strength surge to boost my roll for the spell sunder on some enchanted jerk. And her will save against magic stuff was just intense.

The intent is that you are the creamy chocolate center of a unholy murder machine. Your Con doesn't really matter until your Eildolon shell cracks. So while you're fused together, your effective Con is the Eidolon's, be it higher or lower than your Summoner's.

So I've gone over this whole thread trying to figure out why this is so confusing. The designers couldn't possibly have intended for people to deal that much damage each turn. It's not like this is even some combo with an obscure feat that they didn't think about. This is the archetype as-is.

As it stands, I can't see any justification for why Thunder Call & Inspire Courage can be used in the same round. Thunder Call is a Bardic Performance. Inspire Courage is a Bardic Performance. The rules are super clear on this.

Each round, the bard can produce any one of the types of bardic performance that he has mastered, as indicated by his level.

A bard cannot have more than one bardic performance in effect at one time.

That's the RAW. If you want some kind of precedence to assess RAI for yourself just look at the Bardic Performances that have immediate effects.

Suggestion (Sp): A bard of 6th level or higher can use his performance to make a suggestion (as per the spell) to a creature he has already fascinated (see above). Using this ability does not disrupt the fascinate effect, but it does require a standard action to activate (in addition to the free action to continue the fascinate effect). A bard can use this ability more than once against an individual creature during an individual performance.

That's a long quote, but you'll notice that TWICE it makes an exemption for the fact that it doesn't stop the fascinate performance. Thunder Call does not mention the same exemption.

Clearly the intent was to give you the option to deal damage with your performances not deal damage AND keep buffing your allies.

One more example:

Inspire Greatness (Su): A bard of 9th level or higher can use his performance to inspire greatness in himself or a single willing ally within 30 feet, granting extra fighting capability. For every three levels the bard attains beyond 9th, he can target an additional ally while using this performance (up to a maximum of four targets at 18th level).

By the way everybody else is interpreting multiple performances of Thunder Call, I should be able to use Inspire Greatness on multiple allies by simply starting the performance multiple times. If that was the case, why does it start granting additional targets as you level? Wouldn't the additional rounds of Performance you get as you level scale it well enough? And even then, why would it put a cap on the number of targets at lvl18, when you're doing it to three people by lvl13 following the rules people are using for multiple Thunder Calls?

The truth is that Thundercaller is a side-grade from vanilla Bard that makes you give up suggestion so that you can contribute some damage when the party doesn't need you to be Inspiring Courage. You know, because you can't do two performances in one round.