I'm converting D&D 3.0 Disciple of Mephistopheles from Book of Vile Darkness to Pathfinder. I think what I've done may be overpowered though so I need some feedback.
yeah cant look at this. permission denied.
yeah cant look at this. permission denied.
Sorry. Fixed it. Should be able to use the link now.
You still need to change the permission. As it is now, we need to request access.
It's public. Anyone should be able to see and comment.
Overall, I'm not seeing this as at all overpowered for a PC. You can get in as a 6th level fighter, but then you're giving away bonus feats (not to mention 2 other feats for the underwhelming prereqs) and progression on armor training and stuff in exchange for a bunch of fire blasty stuff that's not that much better than full attacks. And that's the best thing you can do with it; enter the class as a caster and you're trading too many spell levels for this to be even contemplated. The blasty stuff is AoE (except scorching ray, which never gets 3 rays), so this PrC doesn't support sneak attack for a rogue that well.
All that said, it would be cool for a DM to add to a low-CR 6 HD monster like barghest or even a dryad, in order to make an interesting fire-themed threat for the party.
P.S., What good is "unholy fire" when applied to hellfire? I'm at a loss.
Also, the hellfire spell description should specify "energy resistance," not "damage reduction."
I believe good aligned creatures take half again damage from unholy damage, but it's not like divine and unholy damage have consistent definitions.
Overall, I'm not seeing this as at all overpowered for a PC. You can get in as a 6th level fighter, but then you're giving away bonus feats (not to mention 2 other feats for the underwhelming prereqs) and progression on armor training and stuff in exchange for a bunch of fire blasty stuff that's not that much better than full attacks. And that's the best thing you can do with it; enter the class as a caster and you're trading too many spell levels for this to be even contemplated. The blasty stuff is AoE (except scorching ray, which never gets 3 rays), so this PrC doesn't support sneak attack for a rogue that well.
All that said, it would be cool for a DM to add to a low-CR 6 HD monster like barghest or even a dryad, in order to make an interesting fire-themed threat for the party.
P.S., What good is "unholy fire" when applied to hellfire? I'm at a loss.
Also, the hellfire spell description should specify "energy resistance," not "damage reduction."
I don't think unholy actually has any benefit when applied to hellfire since there isn't anything with hellfire resistance that I'm aware of. I will make the change to the hellfire DR/ER wording.
Do you think it's actually a weak prestige class for a PC then? Perhaps replace unholy fire with something else?
Would you lose the feat requirements?
I believe good aligned creatures take half again damage from unholy damage, but it's not like divine and unholy damage have consistent definitions.
As far as I can tell, holy and unholy are just damage types like fire and cold.
Do you think it's actually a weak prestige class for a PC then? Perhaps replace unholy fire with something else?
I think it's not sure what it wants to be when it grows up. If you're angling for a guy who kills people with hellfire blasts, you'd be a lot better off playing an Infernal bloodline sorcerer. If you want to play a full BAB combatant who uses fire, a barbarian with a flaming sword is probably more effective except at range. If you want to be someone who spends his whole career becoming one with fire, then a flame oracle is hard to beat.
I'm also not entirely sure that "hellfire" is enough of a schtick for a PC class of its own, even one that's only 10 levels long. Maybe an archetype that swaps some other class features is a better way to go, once you decide on the answer to what first paragraph is asking?
But, like I said, this is a dandy PrC for monsters as-is, because it increases their BAB and hp at a reasonable rate while still giving them powers they couldn't otherwise get. And a lot of monsters don't really need a broader scope of abilities, because they'll get killed after one encounter anyway. From that perspective, I almost wouldn't want to change it at all.
Do you think it's actually a weak prestige class for a PC then? Perhaps replace unholy fire with something else?I think it's not sure what it wants to be when it grows up. If you're angling for a guy who kills people with hellfire blasts, you'd be a lot better off playing an Infernal bloodline sorcerer. If you want to play a full BAB combatant who uses fire, a barbarian with a flaming sword is probably more effective except at range. If you want to be someone who spends his whole career becoming one with fire, then a flame oracle is hard to beat.
I'm also not entirely sure that "hellfire" is enough of a schtick for a PC class of its own, even one that's only 10 levels long. Maybe an archetype that swaps some other class features is a better way to go, once you decide on the answer to what first paragraph is asking?
But, like I said, this is a dandy PrC for monsters as-is, because it increases their BAB and hp at a reasonable rate while still giving them powers they couldn't otherwise get. And a lot of monsters don't really need a broader scope of abilities, because they'll get killed after one encounter anyway. From that perspective, I almost wouldn't want to change it at all.
Hmm. Yeah it does lack a certain amount of utility and it would be cool to add onto a monster as is.
However, I have a barbarian character who is a descendant and worshiper of Mephistopheles and when I saw this PrC, I thought "oh wow, a full BAB PrC focused on my demon lord!" Also, he's a dragon (DM did that) so he can't really throw anything or use a bow so I was thinking it was a cool way to get decent ranged attacks.
I think I'll leave this one as-is and call it Minion of Mephistopheles (maybe it will get used on a monster) and make some changes to try to focus the Disciple more toward the fighter-types.
I can start by replacing flare and unholy fires with bonus combat feats at 4 and 8.