| KOticneutralFTW |
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Pirate of the High Seas
Base class: cavalier
- Weapons and armor proficiency: pirates of the high sea are not proficient with medium or heavy armor or shields. Pirates of the High Sea gain exotic weapon proficiency with the harpoon and net.
- Pirate’s code:
o Replaces: order
o At level 1, a Pirate of the High Seas swears an oath to the Pirate’s code. The Pirate’s Code features many “guidelines” that are more flexible than the edicts of a cavalier’s orders, but a pirate can still be stripped of his post and power if he fails to follow the code to the intent, if not to the letter. A pirate who violates the Pirate’s Code ceases to gain abilities that the Code grants him and cannot rejoin his pirate brethren until he has made reparations to the pirate lords by paying a tax of 1000 gold pieces times his current HD.
Guidelines: the Pirate’s Code dictates that the pirate of the high seas swears an oath of loyalty to himself and his crew. His crew can include the party he joins for the purposes of this feature. A Pirate cannot take any action that endangers his own well-being without there being reasonable profit from which it can be won. This speaks nothing of the conduct a pirate must keep with his crew. So long as he is a part of the crew, he cannot take any unprovoked acts of violence against his fellows, he must agree to split any spoils equally with his allies, and he cannot abandon his allies unless it would put the rest of his crew (NPC or otherwise) in danger.
Challenge: against the target of his challenge, a Pirate of the High Seas gains a +1 dodge bonus against the subject of his challenge. This bonus increases by +1 for every 4 levels the pirate possesses.
Skills: a pirate of the high seas adds acrobatics and appraise to his list of class skills. When making an acrobatics check, a pirate of the high seas gains a bonus equal to half his level to the check (minimum of 1).
Order abilities:
• Pirate’s Savvy: at level 2, a pirate can spend a swift action to gain a +2 competence bonus on all attack and damage rolls, to his AC, to all skill checks, or to all his saves. The pirate chooses which to affect when he uses this ability, and can alter which affects he is under by spending another swift action.
• Sneak attack: at level 8, the pirate gains sneak attack as per the rogue. He treats his effective rogue level as his current level- 3 to determine the damage bonus he receives from this ability.
• Thwart authority: at level 15, the damage from a pirate’s challenge ability is doubled against an agent or representative of the law. This includes lawfully aligned creatures, creatures with the lawful subtype, and creatures that represent authority such as soldiers, police, politicians, enemy leaders, etc.
- Ship
o Replaces: mount
o The Pirate of the High Seas starts play with a sailing ship worth 10000 gold pieces. When on board his ship, the pirate suffers no armor check penalties for climb or acrobatics checks, and any additional penalties he would take from rough sea and weather conditions are halved.
o The pirate receives a portion of gold to spend on upgrading his ship at every level after the first. This amount is equal to the level he just attained, times 1000 gold pieces. The pirate need not spend all this gold at once, and he may remove certain upgrades in exchange for the monetary cost of the upgrades. In this way, the pirate has a pool of gold that he can use to upgrade his ship as he sees fit. This gold can only be spent to upgrade his ship.
o The ship grants the pirate of the high seas the Leadership feat, even if they do not meet the prerequisites. It also functions a base of operations for determining the pirate’s leadership score.
- Daring charge
o Replaces: cavalier’s charge, mighty charge, and supreme charge
o Starting at 3rd level, a pirate gains a +4 bonus to attack rolls when making an attack as part of a charge (instead of a normal +2).
o At level 7, the pirate can charge through difficult terrain with no penalty
o At level 11, a pirate doubles damage done by an attack made at the end of a charge when wielding a one handed or light weapon.
o At level 20, a pirate now triples damage done by an attack made at the end of a charge when wielding a one handed or light weapon.
- Dread pirate:
o Replaces: nothing, because I feel that the cavalier doesn’t really have capstone abilities in the way of some other classes.
o At level 20, a Pirate of the High Seas possesses a fearsome reputation. He gains an aura of fear with a radius of 30 ft. Any enemy affected by a fear effect within this aura has the intensity of that fear increase by 1 step (shaken becomes frightened and frightened becomes panicked. Panicked creatures must make a fortitude save (DC=10+ ½ the pirate’s HD+ the pirate’s charisma modifier) or die of fright). In addition, a pirate can take 10 on any intimidate check and gains a bonus to intimidate checks equal to ½ his HD, and can make an intimidate check as a free action once per round after successfully striking an opponent in melee.
| MC Templar |
The archetype looks interesting and a fun take on including a class that is essentially cut out of pirate style games
Order abilities:
• Pirate’s Savvy: at level 2, a pirate can spend a swift action to gain a +2 competence bonus on all attack and damage rolls, to his AC, to all skill checks, or to all his saves. The pirate chooses which to affect when he uses this ability, and can alter which affects he is under by spending another swift action
This sounds a little too good to me.
At a glance it appears mechanically superior to every other order ability.
| Colten McMickens |
The archetype looks interesting and a fun take on including a class that is essentially cut out of pirate style games
KOticneutralFTW wrote:
Order abilities:
• Pirate’s Savvy: at level 2, a pirate can spend a swift action to gain a +2 competence bonus on all attack and damage rolls, to his AC, to all skill checks, or to all his saves. The pirate chooses which to affect when he uses this ability, and can alter which affects he is under by spending another swift actionThis sounds a little too good to me.
At a glance it appears mechanically superior to every other order ability.
You're probably right about its superiority. I wanted to give it a good amount of flexibility because, in playing as this archetype, you have no other choices in your order, so I wanted players to feel like they had options. If you decide to use this in one of your games, I suggest either making it a move action, and then decreasing it to a swift action around 10th level, or make it so that the player has to make the decision that day and stick with it. Thanks for the feedback, btw.
| KnightUrsaBorealis |
I like this. Not only does it bring in the cavalier to games that may normally exclude knights, but it does so in a way that really fits the theme. Its also great to see an archetype that trades abilities from the base class in a way that even though I'm missing out on certain cavalier abilities, I'm getting something equally awesome.
I do worry that in games where leadership is banned, this archetype may lose some umph. What would you suggest is done instead? I also prefer Pirate's Savvy to scale, but I'm not up to snuff on all the orders so I'm not sure how it compares. Another thing is that sneak attack as 5th level rogue all of the sudden at level eight seems strange. I might swap sneak attack (and have it function as rogue -2 minimum 1) and Pirate's Savvy so as to give Pirate's Savvy more bang and sneak attack feel more natural.
nice job.
| Colten McMickens |
I like this. Not only does it bring in the cavalier to games that may normally exclude knights, but it does so in a way that really fits the theme. Its also great to see an archetype that trades abilities from the base class in a way that even though I'm missing out on certain cavalier abilities, I'm getting something equally awesome.
I do worry that in games where leadership is banned, this archetype may lose some umph. What would you suggest is done instead? I also prefer Pirate's Savvy to scale, but I'm not up to snuff on all the orders so I'm not sure how it compares. Another thing is that sneak attack as 5th level rogue all of the sudden at level eight seems strange. I might swap sneak attack (and have it function as rogue -2 minimum 1) and Pirate's Savvy so as to give Pirate's Savvy more bang and sneak attack feel more natural.
nice job.
In games where leadership is banned, I think this archetype would lose a lot of its purpose as well as some umph. I originally had the 3.5 swashbuckler in mind when I imagined the cavalier as a pirate, but then I thought of the cavalier's leadership abilities and aimed the pirate in the direction of being kind of a captain-turned-privateer-admiral as he levels up. If leadership is not aloud, then I would give the PoHS (pirate of the high seas) rogue talents at the 3rd level and every 3 levels beyond the third, or give him the canny defense ability and have it stack with any levels in duelist for determining how many points of intelligence he may add to his AC.
I see what you mean about sneak attack. Having the pirate advance his sneak attack at the 2nd level and every even numbered level thereafter would make it more consistent.
Generally speaking the first order ability is usually a +2 that applies to specific circumstances, and it doesn't usually scale. I felt that pirates savvy kept with this trend well while giving the player more options. If the pirate doesn't get it until level 8, then I would say that his allies should benefit from it as well, if they would benefit from the pirate's banner, or "Jolly Roger", ability.