Legendary Hybrids: Doomguard (PFRPG) PDF

This hybrid class clocks in at 37 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 2 pages of editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction, 1 .5 pages of SRD, 1 page of back cover, leaving us with 27.5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This hybrid class was created from cavalier and ranger, and gets d10 HD, 4 + Int skills per level, proficiency with simple and martial weapons, light and medium armor and shields, excluding tower shields. The doomguard gets full BAB-progression and good Fort-saves. The class gets solid favored class options for the core races.

The doomguard’s challenge-equivalent, usable 1/day at first level (plus an additional time per day for every 3 levels thereafter) is activated as a swift action, nets a scaling bonus to atk and damage as well as saves prompted by the target, and also nets immunity to fear prompted by that foe if that foe is a fated enemy. The bonuses scale every 4 levels. Here’s the unique thing: This is called defiance, and as such, the doomguard gains temporary hit points versus said foes, and defiance may delay the onset of a negative condition.

As for fated enemy – this is obviously the equivalent of favored enemy, though it does come with meaningful variations – you can, for example, choose character classes! Witch or sorcerer hunter? There you go. I adore this choice. It’s so simple, yet incredibly flavorful. Also unique: This ties in with the doom – falling to the fated enemy makes returning the doomguard to life hard – this enemy, after all, was fated to defeat the doomguard! I love how this ties in flavorful concepts and leitmotif of the class.

Beyond that, the class begins play at 1st level with a so-called doom. This doom represents the “doom” component and behaves somewhat akin to an oracle’s curse, sporting btw. advice for multiclassing – kudos! Unless I have miscounted, we get a staggering 45 (!!!) such dooms, and they are somewhat akin to curses in that they have a linear progression. Dooms provide benefits at 1st level, 5th, 10th and 15th level. The dooms are, in a way, one aspect that really carries the class.

Is your body slowly rotting away? Do you destroy objects held? Are you haunted by disembodied voices? Are you mutating? Are you slowly becoming undead? Do sacrilegious voices constantly try to tempt you to a new credo? Do you bear stigmata? Perhaps, you are truly star-crossed, and natural rolls of 11 under stress are treated as 1s. Perhaps, you suffer from somnambulism…or perhaps the solipsism that has affected you crippled you, yes…but it also grants you significant powers! The interesting thing here is that the dooms range in their power-levels – they oscillate rather strongly, in fact…but at the same time, so do their benefits. When struck by a potent doom, you’ll also have considerable advantage bred from this. Some are in line with curses, while others are truly unique – and here, we can see LG’s crunch-design experience. I found no single doom that I’d consider to be off regarding this ratio. You can choose a doom that doesn’t severely impact the core playing experience…or you can go for a doom that radically changes how you need to play, but which also grants you unique benefits. Dooms take up a significant amount of the page-count, and the pages are, I’m happy to report, well-spent indeed. Curse-spread, internal parasites…there is one minor hiccup, a reference in the introduction to a Cursed feat that has been cut, but this does not compromise the integrity of the section in any way.

2nd level nets a ranger combat style as well as +2 to saves versus curses, hexes, compulsions or bad luck/reroll enforcing abilities. 3rd level eliminates the penalties for charges and 4th level provides Heroic Defiance, but only for use with fated enemy-caused effects, but also for more uses and condition delays. 5th level nets +2 to Con-checks to avoid becoming fatigued/exhausted and quicker tracking. Some conditions may be offset by expending defiance (yay for more player-agenda!). At 7th level, we get a cohort, a familiar or an animal companion at -3 levels…and yes, this gets interactions right. At 8th level, attacking a foe other than the doomguard while threatened elicits an AoO – making the class work as a nice blocker. 9th level allows the doomguard to detect fated enemies, and may choose to further limit this detection ability, ensuring it’s actually useful. At 11th level, having line of sight to fated foes increases movement rate and the doomguard can also immediate action move 10 feet to pursue fated enemies trying to flee. 12th level allows the doomguard to forego critical bonus damage in other to impose the negative aspects of the doom on foes. Cool: Can’t be cheesed.

17th level provides the means to bypass DR/hardness and cause full damage versus incorporeal foes. The capstone makes the doomguard a super-deadly foe for fated enemies, including the chance to permanently destroy even creatures that can potentially rejuvenate.

The pdf also includes 4 different archetypes, the first of which would be the Challenger, who loses medium and shield proficiency, and uses Charisma instead of Wisdom as governing attribute for doomguard abilities. Instead of the companion, the class gets a scaling AC and CMD bonus while wearing light or no armor. Instead of combat style, the archetype gets a few bardic performances, and the 8th level ability is replaced with uncanny dodge. Okay engine tweaks. The second archetype is the Doomwarden, who does get heavy armor and tower shield proficiency. Instead of combat style, the doomwarden gets a massive array of armor-style feats sans prerequisites. 5th level provides improved maneuverability in armor ( less armor check penalty, better maximum Dexterity) as well as better movement, This does replace defiance. The class otherwise gets a modified 5th level ability to prevent save bonuses or pinpoint creatures etc. 12th level allows for reflexive use of defiance, including negating incoming damage. The archetype also comes with a potent 1/day last stand capstone that makes him a fearsome tank.

The third archetype would be the fey foundling, who is prohibited from wearing metal armor. They do get woodland stride and resist nature’s lure, but does gain a unique companion (including pipefoxes, faerie dragons, etc.). That being said, the archetype learns to entice fey I, can at higher levels traverse the secret crossroads and backroads of the fey (amazing) and convert damage to nonlethal damage, adding curses on hits…or even causing targets to suffer from an iron allergy! Heck yeah! Oh, and becoming ageless. Kudos!

Finally, there’d be the raven banner, who becomes fortified versus negative energy, death effects and energy levels. Instead of the 3rd level charge-enhancer, a simultaneous attack versus targets criting the raven banner can make for amazing mutual takedowns. 5th level nets banner (14th greater) and the banner retains its powers at higher levels for a couple of rounds when the raven banner’s slain. Badass: When slain by a non-fated enemy, the character can expend defiance to auto-breath of life! F*** YES! Good example for a fun engine tweak!

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to legendary Games’ two-column full-color standard and there is a lot of content per page. We get a couple of gorgeous full-color artworks, including full-page pieces. Neat! The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

As you all know, I’m pretty much in favor of constant player-agenda and choice – and in a way, the doomguard doesn’t deliver that. It’s not a class sporting a lot of choices, and building one is super-simple. That being said, it’s one of the single best examples ever for a simple, easy to grasp, yet superbly creative class. The doom-angle and vastly diverging playstyles and playing experiences born from them, rocks. From the dooms to the archetypes, the class is incredibly METAL. The concept of the doomed, potent hunter suffuses the whole class, offering exciting tweaks, and manages to be totally distinct from the parent classes.

In short, this is not only a hybrid that stands out, and does so in a category of design that I usually loathe (linear classes), it does so with panache aplomb. Carl Cramér and Jason Nelson deliver a super cool hybrid here, one that absolutely deserves my highest accolades – 5 stars + seal of approval. Super recommended, one of the best hybrid classes out there! If you wanted to play a truly metal warrior-style character, look no further!

Endzeitgeist out.

We love to be doomed.

Well, not in reality, of course, but in game? Having a character who has some terrible fate over their head to strive against provides some amazing chances for game drama. Some of the greatest heroes of myth and media labored under dread fates – be they Norse heroes like Grettir the Strong, or modern creations like Frodo and the One Ring, they stick out in our minds long after the tale is done. However until now there have been only a few ways to reproduce this in Pathfinder. The oracle class has curses. Some story feats allow you to face (or recover from) horrid events. And some magic items and spells can make your character miserable for years. But there was never a class that revolved around facing your doom. Until now.

The latest in Legendary Games' Hybrid Classes, Doomguard is a 37-page PDF. We get one page each for the cover, credits, references, table of contents, a welcome page, a what-you-will-find-inside, and the back cover. There are also two full-page pieces of art, leaving 28 pages of crunchy content.

The base class is a cross between the cavalier and ranger. You get favored class bonuses for all seven of the core races. You can issue something like a cavalier's challenge, here called defiance, against anyone who attacked you in the last 24 hours. When you do you also gain temporary hit points if they injured you, but only against them. How dare they interfere with your fate?

You also get a fated enemy, the foe who will destroy you one day. You can choose any monster type, but humanoids besides giant have to be chosen by class. Depending on who or what you choose, you get bonus skills and bonuses on attack rolls, combat maneuvers, and opposed skill checks. You can also use your defiance against them without it counting against normal uses per day. In return they have an easier time hitting you. And if they kill you, you are dead forever. You also can't inflict non-lethal damage on them and vice-versa. When you fight your fated enemy, someone has to die.

The doomguard also gets the bonus combat feats of the ranger, and increased resistance to things like curses or magical attempts to turn him aside from his path. Your charge attacks are better and you can track the target of your defiance with greater speed. You also gain a companion – either a cohort, an animal companion, or a familiar. You can go for Improved Familiar too if you like. The doomguard basically can't be stopped when they choose an enemy to slay, and they can eventually inflict the nastier aspects of their doom on their fated enemy, cut right through all their defenses, and permanently destroy them even if they can normally return like a lich.

And oh yes, you get a Doom.

Dooms are basically like oracle curses, but more suited to martial characters. That said some look like they'd work fine for an oracle. We also get a list of 45 dooms, so you'll have a fine selection to choose from. Like the Animal Transformation doom – every time you feel stress, you turn into any Small or smaller animal until it's over. Or Bondage, leaving you bound with blinders or gagged or hobbled, which can make life difficult. A Mutant appears like an inhuman monster with associated social problems but gets summoner eidolon evolution points to represent their increasingly twisted form as they rise in level. You can be a Leper, or Maimed, or suffer the heartbreak of Reverse Aging. Where you start out at Venerable with both the mental stat bonuses and the physical stat penalties from the start, and slowly youthen to adult. You can be so Solipsistic you can literally ignore some attacks because the real world just doesn't matter to you. You can be a humanoid beast, or be mad, or hear the voices of fiends dinning in your ears. They may have missed some sort of a horrible fate, but I can't see where!

All of these dooms provide bonuses along with their drawbacks at 1st, 5th, 10th, and 15th levels. Annoyingly to me, the PDF mentions a 'Cursed' feat that I assume would allow anyone other than a Doomguard to take one of these charming conditions. However it's not listed anywhere in the PDF, though 'a Doom for a feat' isn't hard to figure.

We also get four archetypes. The charismatic Challenger fights in light armor and inspires his fellow adventurers like a bard. The slow and steady Doomwarden gets to use heavy armor, can learn armor mastery feats from the Armor Master's Handbook, and can reduce damage when taking a blow from someone they use their defiance one. This last is listed as something gained at 12th level, and while it doesn't say if it replaces the normal Doomguard 12th level class ability, it seems likely that it does. The Fey Foundling can only use non-metal or mithral armor. In exchange he learns how to communicate with the fey, lure them in for a meeting, and masters their secret backroads through reality. The Raven Banner is a classic Norse hero, defying death to make an end the skalds will sing of and getting a cavalier's banner to inspire their allies and followers. At high enough level he can even use a breath of life effect if killed by someone other than his fated enemy. How can you fall to a lesser opponent, after all?

Really, I think this is a great class for players who want to have a character that either embraces their fate or defies it to the end. The list of Dooms alone is amazing and can be very inspiring for characters. Just glancing through them was giving me ideas for characters with this class. I'm giving the Doomguard five stars and I hope you'll like it as much when you get it.