JRutterbush
|
I've been working up a pretty heavily house-ruled setting with no actual spellcasters, and in the process have been trying to come up with a few archetypes to remove spellcasting from some of the classes that I still want to include. This is what I've got for the Investigator so far (I know that the Sleuth exists, but I wanted another option to be available). I'd love some feedback on the power level. The overall purpose of the abilities (studying a battlefield before fighting on it to gain bonuses, being able to give your allies bonuses if they do what your plans tell them to do, and so on) are where I want them to be, but getting the mechanics balanced properly is a big step, and I thought I'd run it by some other people to see if there are any glaring issues. And if somebody can point out a better way to do what I want this to do, that's always a plus. In addition, if there's any part of the mechanics that's unclear, I'd like to know now before I present it for actual play, just to make sure it's easy to understand.
So, thoughts?
(Just to note: I'm aware that some things - like what exactly constitutes a "battlefield" and what types of actions can be taken in order to perform a task as part of a plan - are somewhat subjective and will require GM interpretation. I'm okay with this.)
The Tactician
Battlefield Training
You gain proficiency with martial weapons and with shields. In addition, you can use your Inspiration to modify attack rolls without spending extra points of Inspiration.Tactician's Lore (Replaces Alchemy)
Starting at first level, you have the ability to study a battlefield and make plans and preparations that allow you and your allies to gain the best possible tactical advantage from that battlefield. Studying a battlefield takes one hour, and you can only have a number of battlefields studied at one time equal to your Intelligence bonus (minimum 1). If you study a new battlefield when you already have the maximum number of battlefields studied, you must choose to "forget" one of your current studied battlefields. The size of a battlefield can vary, but it must be a specific location – such as "The Dockyards of Roseport" or "The Field of Woe". You can't study a battlefield from a distance - you must be able to walk through the battlefield itself, and you must be able to concentrate on studying the battlefield while you do so (this means that some battlefields, like an enemy camp, might require one or more skill checks - such as Stealth - before you can study them properly). If you can't walk through the majority of a battlefield in one hour or less, then that battlefield is too large to study (though you may be able to study a smaller part of that area as its own battlefield).While within a studied battlefield, you and all allies that can see and hear you gain a competence bonus to attack rolls (including combat maneuver checks), damage rolls, and all checks and saves made to interact with the battlefield itself (such as Acrobatics or Athletics checks to maneuver the battlefield's terrain, or Stealth checks to hide withing the battlefield, or Fortitude saves to resist the effects of hot or cold weather on the battlefield). This bonus also adds to any bonus to AC, CMD or Reflex saves granted to your or your allies by cover that lies within the studied battlefield. The bonus is +1 at first level, and increases by +1 at every fifth level (to a maximum of +5 at twentieth level).
You can spend a point of Inspiration as a full round action to quickly assess a battlefield that you are currently in, which allows you to treat the battlefield as a studied battlefield for the next hour, which does not count against your normal limit of studied battlefields. However, you do not grant your studied battlefield bonuses or the bonus damage from Press the Advantage to allies on a battlefield studied in this way. When you study a battlefield in this way, the battlefield can't be larger than what you can see from where you are already standing.
The Perfect Plan (Replaces Swift Alchemy)
At fourth level, you have learned to make detailed and comprehensive plans, allowing you and your allies to better perform various tasks in order to accomplish those plans. You can spend ten minutes to detail a planned course of action to any number of allies, then assign each ally a single specific task in your plan (such as "Sneak into the castle and open the gates from within." or "Subdue the guards at the east entrance.") For each ally that you assign to a task, you can give that ally one of your points of Inspiration (which means that you can't assign more tasks than you have points of Inspiration available). Allies given Inspiration in this way can spend their point of Inspiration to add to any attack roll, ability check, skill check or saving throw that is directly related to performing their assigned task. The ally gains the benefits of any ability you have that modifies the use of Inspiration except the ability to add an Inspiration die to a roll without spending Inspiration. Any Inspiration that isn't spent after an hour is lost.
At tenth level, each ally that you give Inspiration to in this way gains two points of Inspiration instead of one (this still costs you only one Inspiration per ally).Press the Advantage (Replaces Studied Combat and Studied Strike)
At fourth level, you gain the ability to use your knowledge of a battlefield's terrain to turn a minor advantage into a major one. While within a studied battlefield, whenever you hit with a melee or ranged attack against a creature that you were flanking or that is denied its Dexterity bonus to AC, that attack deals +1d6 damage. The damage increases by +1d6 at every sixth level above level four, to a maximum of +3d6 damage at nineteenth level. Any ally that can see and hear you also gains this bonus damage. The bonus damage provided by the ability is precision damage, and doesn't apply to attacks when the target has concealment or to ranged attacks against targets beyond 30 feet.
Battlefield Training: I want this archetype to have a bit more of a martial bent. This ability is also designed to make up for the fact that Tactician's Lore requires a lot more setup and is far more limited in scope than Alchemy. This is in part meant to make sure the Tactician has good options even when they haven't had the time to study a battlefield before a fight.
Tactician's Lore: The primary ability. The scaling of the bonuses is pretty standard for abilities like this. The benefits take a lot of preparation to set up, and won't get to be used in every fight, but that's part of the intention of this archetype: I want it to truly shine when it's had time to prepare for a fight, and I want its abilities to get the player thinking ahead. I want to incentivize things like setting up ambushes and the like.
The Perfect Plan: Again, this is here to incentivize preparing for an upcoming encounter rather than just rushing into things. It also helps shore up the role of the Tactician as party support. Plus, it rewards the Tactician having a deep knowledge of their allies' capabilities, allowing you to assign tasks that best fit a given ally's talents.
Press the Advantage: I mostly created this as an alternative because I didn't want the Tactician to have to keep track of too many stacking things, and adding the Studied Combat bonus to the Tactician's Lore bonus would get a little cluttered and finicky. So instead, I expanded the support role to basically give everybody a small amount of Sneak Attack. The overall damage boost is probably more than the Studied Combat and Strike abilities would have granted, but since it only functions in a studied battlefield - which, again, won't be available in every fight - I think that's okay.