I may disagree, but I understand why you feel that way. IMHO give me stalker over slayer. It screams Batman to me. I would be curious why you feel slayer does it better, not whether or not stalker does it differently enough.Ultimately, I feel like the same complaint that JB has put forth about the APG summoner's eidolon applies to the vigilante playtest: it has 10 tentacles and 2 butts. It's amorphous, devoid of actual design, and lacks differentiators because of it. It is the worst version of Nintendo's Kirby you can imagine. After making Mark rewrite the entire Medium class after the playtest because of wordcount, I believe the least you could do is scrap this monstrosity and start over.
I wanted to believe that the vigilante could be Batman. It turns out the slayer was there for me all along.
There are a couple core elements of Batman that I'd like to focus on here:
He's an unarmed combat master. As in, numerous forms of martial arts. This is better emulated by a full BAB class, as well as being supported by ranger combat styles. In addition...
He adapts to his opponents. While the brawler's Martial Flexibility class ability best emulates this, Studied Target is a close second for combat. There are no analogous talents for the stalker.
Combat gadgets can typically be emulated through Dirty Trick combat maneuvers. Guess who has an archetype devoted to that and taking people alive.
He's an intelligent detective. As it turns out, Studied Target helps out here, as well. The only thing that comes close here is Case the Joint on the stalker side, which is much more about breaking and entering.
There are a ton of other facets of Batman because he's a complex character. Many of them can be covered by both the stalker and the slayer. The issue is that a lot of the critical ones (like being highly effective in unarmed combat) don't lend themselves to a rogue-like class.
To focus on a point: Does hidden strike not work with unarmed strikes?
EDIT: Have more time now.
I could see a stalker doing some serious unarmed damage.
I see adapting to the opponent more a play-style than class features for Batman, but yeah I guess that makes the slayer better at it
I always saw gadgets as a UMD thing, but this seems more like a preference issue.
Hmmm detective. Slayer probably fills that better.
I may disagree, but I understand why you feel that way. IMHO give me stalker over slayer. It screams Batman to me. I would be curious why you feel slayer does it better, not whether or not stalker does it differently enough.Ultimately, I feel like the same complaint that JB has put forth about the APG summoner's eidolon applies to the vigilante playtest: it has 10 tentacles and 2 butts. It's amorphous, devoid of actual design, and lacks differentiators because of it. It is the worst version of Nintendo's Kirby you can imagine. After making Mark rewrite the entire Medium class after the playtest because of wordcount, I believe the least you could do is scrap this monstrosity and start over.
I wanted to believe that the vigilante could be Batman. It turns out the slayer was there for me all along.
There are a couple core elements of Batman that I'd like to focus on here:
He's an unarmed combat master. As in, numerous forms of martial arts. This is better emulated by a full BAB class, as well as being supported by ranger combat styles. In addition...
He adapts to his opponents. While the brawler's Martial Flexibility class ability best emulates this, Studied Target is a close second for combat. There are no analogous talents for the stalker.
Combat gadgets can typically be emulated through Dirty Trick combat maneuvers. Guess who has an archetype devoted to that and taking people alive.
He's an intelligent detective. As it turns out, Studied Target helps out here, as well. The only thing that comes close here is Case the Joint on the stalker side, which is much more about breaking and entering.
There are a ton of other facets of Batman because he's a complex character. Many of them can be covered by both the stalker and the slayer. The issue is that a lot of the critical ones (like being highly effective in unarmed combat) don't lend themselves to a rogue-like class.
Some other things to remember:
Batman, while ACTING like he likes to go solo, is actually significantly BETTER at field commanding than just about every Leaguer - while Superman is the supposed leader of the Justice League, and is, in fact, it's face and non-mission commander, Batman is the one who calls the shots in the heat of battle, because he even beats out Diana for tactical cunning and strategies.
To say nothing of when the entire Bat Family is assembled - Batman calls the shots and everyone else acts accordingly.
Batman has at least a few levels in Exemplar Brawler, or in Vanguard Slayer; this is especially evident in how he calls out commands that basically are Teamwork Feats - Batman providing cohesion to the Leaguers and making optimal use of their talents in battle is often cited as one of the reasons why the various "injustice leagues" have never actually worked: the villains of the DCU almost never actually work together when in large groups, unlike the Justice League, who work as a well-oiled machine.
The Stalker definitely does not gain anything even CLOSE to Tactician.
Batman is a Gestalt Brawler/Investigator with maxed stats, and who put his +2 into Int.
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To focus on a point: Does hidden strike not work with unarmed strikes?
EDIT: Have more time now.
I could see a stalker doing some serious unarmed damage.
I see adapting to the opponent more a play-style than class features for Batman, but yeah I guess that makes the slayer better at it
I always saw gadgets as a UMD thing, but this seems more like a preference issue.
Hmmm detective. Slayer probably fills that better.
Hidden Strike works fine with unarmed strikes. Hitting works better with full BAB and Studied Target. Not only that, but the slayer is getting Sneak Attack dice, too, along with static damage from ST.
I will say that I find it funny that you latched onto my demonstrative closer rather than the rest of the post.
I hope we'll get some developer feedback for the non-stalker specializations when the playtest closes for real in a week or so.
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Calling it! As soon as this mess of a class comes out (or slightly before that) a bunch of Disguise-related abilities and gear will be nerfed. Possibly a bunch of the stuff that the Vigilante is supposed to emulate as well.
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I dislike playtest vigilante because I couldn't build any kind of Vigilante without wondering "Why am I not just using the classes I already have full versions of to build this concept"?
I dislike playtest vigilante because I couldn't build any kind of Vigilante without wondering "Why am I not just using the classes I already have full versions of to build this concept"?
Probably because other classes don't cover the vigilante concept very well, especially with full BAB classes, as having the disguise and bluff ranks that are super high enough to actual function leading two separate lives is very very unlikely. Near impossible at low levels because of how swingy low-levels.
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I dislike playtest vigilante because I couldn't build any kind of Vigilante without wondering "Why am I not just using the classes I already have full versions of to build this concept"?Probably because other classes don't cover the vigilante concept very well, especially with full BAB classes, as having the disguise and bluff ranks that are super high enough to actual function leading two separate lives is very very unlikely. Near impossible at low levels because of how swingy low-levels.
...but a vigilante's Bluff is ass compared to a Bard at low levels. Even with the +4 social talent they are only on par unless they are a Zealot. Am I missing something?
This thread confounds me.
Most of the people who have written on the "Final Thoughts" thread have stated why they don't like the class (either there or at other points scattered in the vastness of the forums). And offered feedback, to boot!
Although, I really do admire Rhedyn's tenacity in defending this class. I think they are one of three(?) positive feedbacks in the "Final Thoughts" thread, and then they started this one to get better understanding.
And I'm saying this without any sort of sarcasm, cynicism, or anything deriding. I appreciate this kind of thing, truly.
Well, now I'll just speed us to the inevitable conclusion of any thread based in peoples' opinions and save us some trouble:
Fighters can't get nice things because they are fighters.
Mages have nice things because f*** you.
(And yet, the Vigilante has neither of these...)
This bit was sarcastic.
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I kind of like parts of the ideas they used in the class, and I kind of like parts of the architecture they used in the class.
The way things were put together did not lend itself to working, though.
The biggest problem for me is the centrality of the social identity. If one person in the party uses the class, it either becomes irrelevant, or it greatly complicates downtime and RP for the GM. It doesn't foster a collaborative play style very well.
As a counterpoint, you could, in theory, have a party made up entirely of vigilantes for a campaign, but why? The difference between Vigilante and its competing classes is the social identity. Why not add social identity as a separate mechanic (a campaign option you get for free, as a feat or feat tree, or as a prestige class, or as a set of archetypes) so that people could play any class they wanted in these campaigns?
The other problem I have with the class is that it doesn't have a cohesive theme beyond "I disguise myself to be someone else!" right now. The specializations don't interact with the social identity (or the base class abilities in general) in very meaningful ways and that makes it an incredibly awkward class to play in practice. The base class has abilities that benefit you if you surprise someone (generally, appear out of nowhere) but most specializations don't synergize with that and you don't get the abilities until very late in the character's progression.
There are of course other problems, like the power level relative to other classes being low (or very low), which are--to be honest--less of a concern to me, although I do hope they are addressed. The problems that worry me the most are the structural ones above.
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I'm personally OK with that provided social talents/identity becomes better than it is and is actually made to punish the class if revealed.
The biggest problem for me is the centrality of the social identity....
The other problem I have with the class is that it doesn't have a cohesive theme beyond "I disguise myself to be someone else!"
Which is fair! I obviously disagree, since I listed them as my big two problems. I think the challenge we have as armchair designers is that we don't know what particular design goals the design team has, so when we're faced with a class that doesn't work very well, we don't know which fixes help meet the right goals. The things that are problems in one context may not be problems in a different context, with different fixes applied.
Like mechanically, I don't know that punishing someone for an accidental reveal of their social identity in the class is a solution. I think that's a task better taken care of by the campaign or scenario or some other RP mechanism. Giving the vigilante many greater synergies between the social and vigilante identity that promote swapping forms--much like the Case the Joint talent--would help a lot here, I think. But there are a lot of ways to skin this particular cat.
(With the Ultimate Intrigue rules not written as of the playtest, of course, not knowing the framework in which you're designing the class seems like an equally big problem for the Paizo designers...)
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The thing is, the class wants to focus on Dual Identity, and then have Specializations so that you can have a character with Dual Identity in each basic role in the party.
However, this whole endeavor would work out better of Dual Identity was a super-archetype like the Mythic Paths were, and the Vigilante was left off being something else entirely that much-more "Intrigue" focused.
If it was a "super archetype" option, then you don't NEED specializations, because you'd just add that Archetype onto any class you want, which ends up naturally supporting the "playable in any role in the party" idea.
...but a vigilante's Bluff is ass compared to a Bard at low levels. Even with the +4 social talent they are only on par unless they are a Zealot. Am I missing something?
But the Vigilante doesn't need bluff or disguise ranks in order to work with two identities. That is the benefit. The issue is, even with that one benefit, there isn't really any reason to take more than one level.
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But the Vigilante doesn't need bluff or disguise ranks in order to work with two identities. That is the benefit. The issue is, even with that one benefit, there isn't really any reason to take more than one level.
...but a vigilante's Bluff is ass compared to a Bard at low levels. Even with the +4 social talent they are only on par unless they are a Zealot. Am I missing something?
Sort of. You don't need Disguise. You still, in practice, seem to need bluff...
I set down. Made some more vigilantes and thought on my builds for and awhile.
The vigilante is a lot stronger than people give it credit for. But... It just not enough. The abilities are strong but have trouble clicking together. Even the stalker has issues. By the time you get the damage abilities you need the nice utility abilities are out of reach or gotten at far too late a level. Warlock has to take 7 mandatory talents out of ten. 7 out of the first 8 are mandatory. After really looking it over, I noticed that it fell short to an arcane trickster.
The vigilante will work as is just fine in most groups. Because each specialization does function in combat and gets a diverse set of tricks. But mere "functioning" isn't always good enough.
Some senergy between the social and vigilante sides would help. Its a way to boost the power minor-ly enough that you can keep most of it intact.
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I set down. Made some more vigilantes and thought on my builds for and awhile.
The vigilante is a lot stronger than people give it credit for. But... It just not enough. The abilities are strong but have trouble clicking together. Even the stalker has issues. By the time you get the damage abilities you need the nice utility abilities are out of reach or gotten at far too late a level. Warlock has to take 7 mandatory talents out of ten. 7 out of the first 8 are mandatory. After really looking it over, I noticed that it fell short to an arcane trickster.
The vigilante will work as is just fine in most groups. Because each specialization does function in combat and gets a diverse set of tricks. But mere "functioning" isn't always good enough.
Some senergy between the social and vigilante sides would help. Its a way to boost the power minor-ly enough that you can keep most of it intact.
That matches my experience, for sure, and I think the experience of several others. Something I've mentioned elsewhere is that it feels very much like a Core monk (no archetypes) to me. Lots of cool abilities but very limited synergy and opportunity to use them.
Although the worst part for me has been the dead space in between spellcasting talents--like levels 2 and 3, you're still at 1 spell per day (not counting bonus spells). They've said they're looking into options for fixing the spellcasting though, so I doubt it looks like that in the final printing. I'm not too worried about how that will work in the end... I think.
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Sort of. You don't need Disguise. You still, in practice, seem to need bluff...But the Vigilante doesn't need bluff or disguise ranks in order to work with two identities. That is the benefit. The issue is, even with that one benefit, there isn't really any reason to take more than one level.
...but a vigilante's Bluff is ass compared to a Bard at low levels. Even with the +4 social talent they are only on par unless they are a Zealot. Am I missing something?
That's what I was getting at. As soon as someone starts talking to the vigilante, they are in deep **** unless they have a decent bluff mod. If you need a decent bluff mod, then it isn't much to have a decent disguise mod if you are a Cha based class. Since only one of the specializations *is* Cha-based, the others are going to come out inferior to a straight Bard (and the bonus to disguise doesn't actually matter that much when the people most likely to detect you will probably have both sense motive and perception maxxed). Plus the bard can disguise themselves as *anyone*, while the vigilante is locked into a single disguise until later on, and even then their choices are extremely limited. The dual identity ability is just way too narrow for the vigilante to beat a straight maxxed disguise+bluff mod on a Cha based skill monkey.