Homebrew Class needs Balancing. Experienced Masters help apreciated.

[Avatar of Groetus]

Hello all you good people. Recently i have beem tinkering on a homebrew class for pathfinder. Not to actually play it but for the joy of creating something and working myself through rules, gaining a better understanding of balance in general.
Naturally my first attempt was as broken as it gets.
My seccond attemot was much better but still pretty high powered.
i Made some drastic reductions on it and am now at 2.5 of my Class.

What might my class be you ask? Well here comes the fancy part. Its a Timemanipulation based semicaster who uses his abilites to gains combat bonuses.
Here is what i set out to do: A Class with great initiative, high speed, the ability to power itself up and deliver punishing attacks in melee and eventually limited controll over time.
I based it on the playtest version of the magus since the melee caster setup fits this class well i think. Here a Link to the recent version.
http://www.mediafire.com/?bvgxlujcsix0low

Here is what i would ask from you: What abilities should i tweak at which levels does he need a increase /decrease in power? Where might I put the "forewarned" class feature of a divination Wizzard in there? Any Ideas for Tempora i could implement?

Thanks in advance. I am looking forward to your feedback.

[Avatar of Groetus]

I am brainstorming about an idea of a core ability this class i lacking at the moment. For the MAgus its spell combat for the paladin its smite. So far this class has some gimmicks but no true unique ability.
If im going to implement something like this then im going to throw out some other stuff of course.

Heres my ideas so far:
-whenever hitting an enemy it gets slowed a little. I am thinking decerased movement speed, dodge bonus -1, bab -1 per hit and casting is a full round action for casters hit by my class. This debuff increases as the level of the tb increases. The Enemy needs to be designated like with smite. No two enemys can be designated at once. It has limited uses per day.
-Personalized version of Haste available at level 1 and increasing with level. It would start fairly weak but would eventually evolve into something close to timestop. I would take out the spell like abilitys of slow and timestop.

Im tinkering a little on my 2.5 Version and will post a link to version 2.6 soon.

[LazarX]

First suggestion: If you're going to share docs, share them in a more open format such as PDF or RTF, or generic doc format. Not everyone is going to have your version of Word. And the conversion can add a long time to loading or otherwise skew the document.

Second suggestion: The TB finds a way to fix his physical condition in Time and gains the Timeless body class feature of the Monk. He can’t outlive the life expectancy of his race but his body doesn’t age.

Just dump this line. The inclusion of so many "I don't age but I don't live past my time" type powers is one of the lamest things I see in any class. It has no particular game impact and it's cliche at this point.

Third suggestion: the name makes me understand why paizo has avoided compound names for most of it's classes. I'm sure there is a good one word name waiting out there. If all else fails look up some Latin and play around with the spelling a bit.

Third: Your paragraph that reads

At level 7 the TB uses his understanding of timebending effects to obtain Haste as a Spell Like ability. He cast Haste as if under the effect of Still Spell and Eschew Materials with his TB level as Caster Level. He can cast Haste a number of rounds per day equal to His Int Score. At level 11 you gain more mastery over this ability and its duration is 50% longer. He may choose to first learn to cast slow and learn Haste at Level 11 instead of Haste. He can only master either Haste or Slow depending on which he learned at Level 7.

Delete this line. At level 11 you gain more mastery over this ability and its duration is 50% longer. 50 percent longer is still essentially one fight. Most fights won't last longer than the standard duration of Haste, and you don't want this to be a long lasting power. And since it's a spell like ability, you don't need to mention Eschew Materials.

[Avatar of Groetus]

point taken with word. Ill pdf it in later uploads should i do them.

Aging does have a significant effect on characters. They get weaker physically and stronger mentally. Thats the reason the Monk ges the timeless body class feature. So he can be a fighter till high age and still get the increases in wisdom and intelligence.

granted fights dont last that long. Ill change that.

And while appreciated i wasnt looking for formulation pointers.

Also i jsut learned of a time based class and might consider my work on a homebrew class redundant once i get a look on the TimeThief class.

[Avatar of Groetus]

well i looked over the Time Thief class and have to say that i think its quike funny that i had the basic same idea about it.

Ill put my project on hold until I playtested the time thief.

[Golden-Esque]

Rigged wrote:

point taken with word. Ill pdf it in later uploads should i do them.

Aging does have a significant effect on characters. They get weaker physically and stronger mentally. Thats the reason the Monk ges the timeless body class feature. So he can be a fighter till high age and still get the increases in wisdom and intelligence.

You may have realized this, but there are two reasons that Timeless Body is a very weak special ability.

1) Few (if any) campaign settings last long enough to delve into old age; its very much a rule that mostly applies to NPCs. Many players are more likely to have their characters die of old age off-screen or die in old age off-screen or as an NPC and play their character's son or daughter should a campaign story run that long.

2) As of Paizo's Advanced Player's Guide, there are almost NO magical aging effects. There's one, maybe two creatures with the ability to age their victims (I think), but for the most part the avenue of screwing with age has never been explored, partially because the races have such drastically different age thresholds.

These reasons make Timeless Body very, very weak unless, as you said, you're a DM that wants to use the Stereotypical wise old master monk. Who happens to be something silly like 17th level.

[Avatar of Groetus]

so timeless body is a gimmick. Ok. But ballance wise. how does it feel to you guys? is it overpowered or underpowered?