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I think the Vigilante needs a serious lookover in regards to its Costume Change thing.
5 Minutes until lv13 is just... excessive.
Like, cripplingly bad.
My group tried this quickly, and it immediately became apparent that there was nearly no reason for the Vigilante to ever be in their street Persona, simply because the amount of time it takes to switch meant that it was more dangerous to NOT be Batman than to try and switch between Batman and Bruce Wayne.
If you're knee deep in an adventure, and you need 5 WHOLE MINUTES to change, you may be completely stuck in your Street persona for the entire adventure if you're lv1-12.
This thing is intended to be put into play for Pathfinder Society, right?
So what exactly is the point of making the Quick-Change ability well out of the PFS range for adventuring?
At worst, it should be a soft-capstone ability at lv11.
It also needs to be significantly faster from the get-go, and would work better as a progression of speeds as you level.
Think of this thing as Kamen Rider/Sailor Moon/Batman/Shazam! etc.
lv1: it's a 1-minute Action.
lv5: Full-Round Action
lv8: Standard Action
lv11: Move Action
Lv14: Swift Action
lv17: Free Action
lv20: Immediate Action
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Making it faster may also open up crazy strategies of things like characters switching into and out-of personas between each Hit, which wouldn't really be possible until lv14+ here, so you wouldn't need to worry about this nonsense in PFS.
A quick & easy way to eliminate that silliness would be to say that you can only switch Personas once per Round.
Free action is way too fast to do this at any level. In the time it takes to draw an arrow, you've changed outfits? Dropping it below a full-round seems a bit much.
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Yeah...especially when a Bard archetype can do it in a Standard at 5th level.
Free action is way too fast to do this at any level. In the time it takes to draw an arrow, you've changed outfits? Dropping it below a full-round seems a bit much.
Magic.
It's not a magical ability.Free action is way too fast to do this at any level. In the time it takes to draw an arrow, you've changed outfits? Dropping it below a full-round seems a bit much.Magic.
But it could, and perhaps should, be one. Just saying that if the current fluff doesn't fit the proposed mechanics that does not mean the mechanics cannot be changed and the fluff changed accordingly.
I'd go with something like this.
Lv. 1: 5 min
Lv. 5: 1 min (Ex)
Lv. 10: full round (Su)
Lv. 15: standard action (Su)
Lv. 20: move action (Su)
Since it is a core classes feature I think making it easier at higher levels is necessary even if it needs to be supernatural.
I'd say make a Warlock ability that lets you magically change as a full-round (alongside a Universal talent that lets you swipe that if you want it).
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I'm just sad that you can't morph like a Power Ranger or something.
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This just doesn't happen to Batman. When Bruce Wayne gets jumped, Bruce's biggest problem is explaining how a billionaire playboy just maimed three deadly cyborg assassins.
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Tony Stark getting power from his alter-ego makes sense. Iron Man is 75% the suit.
Tony can suit up in a matter of seconds, and can grab just pieces of his armor to get the job done.
Kamen Rider, The Guyver, Power Rangers, and basically every single Magical Girl team out there from Sailor Moon to Pretty Cure to Madoka Magica all have very involved transformation sequences until you see it from the outside, where it's basically just a flash of light and BOOM! suited up.
And all of those characters get boosts from their outfits.
But Batman, Zorro, Daredevil, Punisher, Nightwing, Rorshach...
None of them are super (technically not even Daredevil, since humans can actually do the stuff he does).
Every single one of them has their abilities active all the time, and simply choose not to use those abilities in order to keep up their charade.
And Batman et all don't take very long to get suited up - basically about as fast as donning armor.
FIREMEN, for chrissake, have to be completely suited up in SECONDS.
There's no reason Captain Andoran can't go from Mundane to Super as a Move Action at mid levels, and can't use their abilities 24/7, whether wearing their Super Suit or not.
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I think the problem as it stands is that the Vigilante doesn't know what the hell it is:
Is the Vigilante a Badass Normal?
Because if so, then the Vigilante should/must have access to the abilities of their alternate persona available - they are awesome because they are awesome, and they simply wear a suit to conceal their identity.
Is the Vigilante only as badass as his suit/source of power?
Because if THAT is true, then the very, very hard divide between the Civvie and the Super makes sense.
Billy Batson is the poster child for this:
Normal everyday 8-to-12-year-old... until he says SHAZAM!!!
And then, LITERALLY with a bolt of lighting, there appears in Billy's place, CAPTAIN MARVEL!
The Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of Hercules, the Invulnerability of Achilles, the Power of Zeus, the Stamina of Atlas, the Speed of Mercury!
Billy has jack-nothing for power, but Captain Marvel has so much freaking power that he stands on equal footing with Superman, Icon, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter.
If the Vigilante is given a shtick more like Captain Marvel than Batman, then the split makes sense, but ALSO justifies making the change in literally no time at all.
SHAZAM! is a Command Word in its purest form. That's a Standard Action.
It takes a Standard Action for a character to go from Small Child levels of power to New God levels.
Admittedly, SHAZAM, like Superman and all other Kryptonians, Daxamites, Terminusians, and Martians, isn't operating so much on Class Levels for their powers (Superman is pure Brawler), so much as having ludicrously-powerful Races, but still, the point stands.
It takes no real time for Tony Stark to become Iron Man. It takes blinks of an eye for Jaime Reyes to become Blue Beetle III. It takes a flash of light for Ryuko Matoi to activate Senketsu.
The idea that you have to be level THIRTEEN!? just to transform in SIX SECONDS, and that's ALL you can do for that whole time... that's just absolutely ridiculous.
Maybe have the main class be a transformation (quick change but most of your power is locked in your vigilante persona) and then have a Badass Normal archetype (trade a slower change for having access to most of your abilities even in your social identity). A Super humanoid archetype (Quick change, keeps most of his powers in social identity) could be possible but it would hae to trade in other stuff, like Many Guises, Loyal Aid and all the Appearance abilities.
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Vigilante: Ah, heck! Cities under attack! Deal with them the best you can guys, I'm gonna go get changed!
Party Members: Ok, we'll try.
FIFTY Combat Rounds Pass
Vigilante: . . . Guys, what's with the party? We should be repelling the attackers!
Party Members: Uh, ya, about that? Sorry, we've decided we don't need you in the party. We cleaned them up over 45 Combat Rounds ago.
This is my exact problem with the class.
A lot of stuff that happens in adventures and APs starts with some event triggering (e.g. goblins attacking the town) and provoking the response. As such, the Vigilante is going to be woefully unprepared. At lower levels, he might be able to formulate some response; you still have all your 1st level abilities in your social identity. However, doing so risks exposing his dual identity to onlookers.
Two options PCs have for resolving this:
a) Remain in your Vigilante persona 24/7. Keep your social identity solely for going undercover.
b) Play a Warlock Vigilante and keep Disguise Self prepared for the day. Whenever the alarm bell sounds, cast that first. That'll protect your secret identity (and let you use 1st level abilities) for ten minutes.
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As it stands now, it's a class with a crippling mechanic. Gm's will either have to cater specifically to the class with their storylines (much like a comic author does) and build in times for their costume changes, or the player will just forget about the social persona and play the superhero portion exclusively.
It's a bizarre design choice. One that screams "it's all about this one character" requiring special snowflake storylines to fit in.
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I wouldn't be surprised if there was some magic item (perhaps a ring) that could speed things up for the character.
I'm waiting for the player to show up at the table with a phone set to play the "Sailor Moon transformation" music when his PC switches personae.
Darling, we haven't even waited for Vigilante to make that a reality...
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I've seen strippers do it as a free action... just sayin'It's not a magical ability.Free action is way too fast to do this at any level. In the time it takes to draw an arrow, you've changed outfits? Dropping it below a full-round seems a bit much.Magic.
I'm betting it wasn't really a free action. ;)
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I'm betting it wasn't really a free action. ;)I've seen strippers do it as a free action... just sayin'It's not a magical ability.Free action is way too fast to do this at any level. In the time it takes to draw an arrow, you've changed outfits? Dropping it below a full-round seems a bit much.Magic.
It is when they are using their pole vaulting masked stage personae... it is not when they are using their social personae... :P
While I'm loathe to suggest adding another spend points from a pool mechanic class, the idea of something like that would probably work, essentially using a point to make it a full round action to change at low levels. It would still be a tax and I have concerns about how many classes have these point pool abilities but in principle the idea would work as a patch.