Removing DEX-to-damage (Swash, Rogue, Gunslinger changes)

[Secret Wizard]

So, for aesthetical and thematic reasons, I'm removing all DEX-to-damage options from my table. The one thing that makes me hesitate is the state of Swashbucklers, Rogues and Gunslingers afterwards, for different reasons.

To compensate, I added the following features to each class. I was wondering if you could give them a look and tell me if they suffice.

UNCHAINED ROGUE
So the UnRogue loses base damage without Finesse Training's damage component (they still get WF for free), and they lose attribute points that now need to go to STR. Here are added features to compensate:

Wicked Luck
At 1st level, the rogue can escape dangerous situations in uncanny fashion. As an immediate action, the rogue can roll a 1d6 dice and gain the result as a bonus to either AC, CMD, Fortitude saves, Reflex saves or Will saves, choosing before rolling the bonus. This effect lasts for 1 round. The rogue can use this ability a number of times per day equal to her Intelligence bonus + her Wisdom bonus + her Charisma bonus (if any). Negative modifiers in any of those attributes is treated as 0 for this purpose.
She may spend more than one use of this ability simultaneously to roll that many dice. The results stack as a bonus.

Twist the Knife
At 3rd level, the rogue can inflict grievous damage even to prepared enemies. The rogue deals bonus damage equal to her total sneak attack dice to weapon damage against enemies when she does not deal sneak attack damage. (So +2 at level 3, +3 at level 5, etc.)

Improved Sneak Attack
At 6th level, if the rogue rolls a 1 on a sneak attack damage dice, she may reroll that dice and keep the second result.

Greater Sneak Attack
At 11th level, the rogue adds her Twist the Knife bonus damage on attacks against creatures affected by debilitating injury, even when dealing sneak attack damage.

SWASHBUCKLER
Swashes have a hard time already - low Fort saves, low Will saves, Charmed Life sucks because it takes away swift actions, they don't have many skill points so dumping INT is discouraged. So without DEX to damage, here are my proposed changes:

Precise Strike Deed
Same, but gained at 1st level.

Charmed Life [remake]
At 2nd level, the swashbuckler gains a knack for getting out of trouble. She gains a bonus to all saves equal to her Charisma bonus (if any).

Balanced Thrust
At 3rd level, the swashbuckler learns how to deal great damage while maintaining a balanced stance. She gains Power Attack as a bonus feat. When using this feat, she adds damage as though she were wielding a two-handed weapon, even while wielding a one-handed or light weapon, as long as she is not performing any action with her offhand nor wielding a shield other than a buckler on it.
If the swashbuckler already has Power Attack, she may choose to gain any other feat she qualified for when she gained Power Attack.

Improved Charmed Life
At 6th level, once per day as a free action that can be taken even not during the swashbuckler's turn, the swashbuckler may double the bonus to saves granted by Charmed Life. At 10th level and every four levels thereafter, she gains another use of this ability.

GUNSLINGER
This is a more theoretical thing than anything because we don't have slingers in my table, but I find the fact that all people want from this class is DEX-to-gun damage. For that reason, I propose the following change - it should not only make this class better at higher levels but also give it a more balanced progression.

Firearm Training [remake]
At 1st level, the gunslinger improves his expertise with weaponry. He gains a +1 bonus to damage when using firearms. At 3rd level and every two levels thereafter, this bonus increases by 1.
At 5th level, when she misfires with a firearm, the misfire value of that firearm increases by 2 instead of 4.
At 11th level, as a free action, the gunslinger may reduce a firearm's critical multiplier by 1 to double that firearm's critical range. This effect stacks with Improved Critical and similar effects and lasts until cancelled.
At 17th level, the gunslinger may treat the range increment of any firearm she wields as doubled.

[Zwordsman]

On the rogue I might consider gifting them the scout archetype's movement = SA bonus. That way the players, while not having dex to damage, can still feel like they're playing a character who is quicker than say a heavy armoured fellow. Though i suppose they could just take the archetype.
I like Twist the Knife, but you should specifiy if its simply bonus damage, precision damage, and if it isn't precision if it crits. I would keep it standard damage and critical ok.

Swashbuckler: so they always gain the CHA to saves like a paly? That is a good call. For the power attack similiar effect. I might consder giving the class the option. Gain two handed damage under that situation, or gain power attack without losing accuracy in general. That way they can formulate both versions of a traditional swashbuckler. The kinda that over powers the defense and the kind that choses the spot to run people through.
Also be sure to specifiy how/if it interacts with furious focus.
Alternative to both (so as to not have weird feat issue) is you could give them CHA to damage, but you may not want anything but Str to damage. but it is a thought and would provide an offensive measure to the class' cha.

If you wanted to add spice to the guns as well. You could take a note from Final Fantasy d20 and put in Kick... some guns have higher kick which gives static damage, but if you don't have the str of the kick you lose accuracy.

[Dasrak]

In general, this is going to hurt dexterity-based builds, but I think that much is pretty obvious. As to the classes in question, it looks like a mixed bag.

URogue changes look overall like a nerf, but affect different builds differently. On the plus side the rare strength-based and archery rogue benefit since dex-to-damage was largely wasted on them to begin with. On the minus side, the two-weapon rogue looks somewhat weaker, and the elven curve blade rogue is basically unplayable.

Swashbuckler looks alright; I'd have to do some number crunching to see how much it's hurt or benefits from this net change, but you've given it some interesting benefits and also helped its biggest weakness - those horrific saves.

Gunslinger is completely useless other than as a 1-level dip with these rules. The entire class, and really the entire weapon group its based on, is balanced around that extremely powerful class feature. Remove it and there's not much reason to use guns at all, and no reason to stick with gunslinger past the first level.

[Cyrad]

Gunslingers are pretty much a 1-level dip class now.

Swashbuckler looks fine, but I don't think Improved Charmed Life is necessary at all. Adding Charisma mod on all saves is really powerful and useful at all levels.

[Deighton Thrane]

Well, first few things I noticed is that the language is kind of off from what Paizo uses. I know that's quibbling, but it bothers me for some reason, so "roll a 1d6 dice and gain the result" should read "roll 1d6 and gain the result", and the whole line about not adding negative modifiers in wicked luck is unnecessary. A bonus is a different thing than a modifier, bonuses are always positive, a modifier is either positive or negative, and a penalty is always negative. So telling someone to add bonuses, then explaining you don't add negatives is redundant, since that's a general rule.

As for the actual abilities:

Wicked Luck
Not a bad ability, but adding int and wis and cha is kind of an in-elegant mechanic. I would simply make it int based, though a more open solution would be to allow the player to choose one stat when they gain the ability to key off. And since you're not adding every stat, making 3+int mod would work, or have it scale every 4 levels, so int/day at first level, int+1 at 4, int+2 at 8, and so on. I would also change the additional dice to be an additional ability when you roll a 6, and have the ability be gained at higher level, maybe 5 or 6, since gaining 3-4 AC at low level can basically bring a character from hard to hit to nearly un-hittable, and allowing characters to double up on that is really unnecessary and unbalancing, similar to how crane wing at level 2 was a problem.

Twist the Knife
Not bad, but not great. It's a complete buff for strength based builds, neutral for dex based one handers, worse for dex based 2 handers, and a buff for dex based 2 handers. Except it also starts off really slow and doesn't combo with sneak attack, your main combat feature, until halfway through play (or the majority in most campaigns). It keeps damage pretty close end game, but it also favors strength builds and two weapon fighting builds, which don't play to the classes strengths, and was one of the major complaints with core rogue.

Improved Sneak Attack
Basically powerful sneak without the penalty to attack, not bad.

Greater Sneak Attack
You basically get the ability you should have already had 10 levels late.

Precise Strike
2 level early access to something you would have gotten anyways. Considering most swashbucklers can't get dex to damage at this level, I don't know why the change.

Charmed Life[/b}
It's probably what the swashbuckler should have got, except that it now replaces Paladin in Oradin builds who don't want to, or can't be lawful good.

[b]Balanced Thrust
This is actually spot on for damage progression, though it does push players into using power attack, and certain players believe using power attack on a swashbuckler is a mistake. I'm not one of those people though, and believe you should ignore any such complaints.

Improved Charmed Life
I don't think it's necessary, but would definitely take it as a player.

Firearm Training
Also pretty spot on for damage scaling, maybe a couple levels behind, but should be pretty comparable. The increase critical multipliers are pretty unnecessary though, turning the gun into a ranged falcata isn't a great idea in my opinion, and making a 15-20 crit range on a x3 weapon possible, even at level 17, isn't the most balanced of ideas. I would stick with scaling damage and give them Martial Focus (from the weapon master's handbook) as a bonus feat at level 5. Though, this level of scaling damage really locks you into the class, and most people admit there's little reason to stay for after level 5.

So, TL;DR Swashbuckler and gunslinger are mostly fine, but rogue kind of needs a bit of retooling. As is, it's pushed into basically 2 combat styles to perform favorably, which isn't so much a balance issue, but more of a player option issue. So it makes it a poor class but not an unplayable one. Mind you, I don't know if I'd play any of these classes over other options, since strength to damage is already perfectly workable as is. Also something just bothers me about the homogenization of doing +1 damage every 2 levels rounded up, even if that's the expected math.

[Helikon]

I am one of those people and I think any options that reduces your hit is a very bad idea for a swashbuckler, whose main defense against melee attacks is to parry riposte. Already hard as soon as the enemy get´s bigger, with penalties to hit due to power attack it will be nigh impossible. Especially if you insist on damage to strength, it will force players to invest in that field, meaning fewer points to dex, meaning even less AC.

[Secret Wizard]

@Zwordman: I totally meant it as regular damage, precision damage would be a direct nerf. I'd stay away from CHA to damage for thematic/aesthetic reasons though...

@Dasrak: I think the Rogue changes could use a little reframing for sure. Gunslinger is already a dip class - this gives extra damage ahead so you want to keep on leveling, and meanwhile you pick up a ton of defense utilities and some extra boosts to damage.

@Deighton: As a MTG player, I do care for standardized language, so correct away! Thank you for the comments, they've been really useful. The one thing I don't see as particularly intrusive is the ranged falcata thing. One of my players said he'd always play Bolt Ace over base because the higher crit rate meant more grit, so I was trying to make the base Slinger appealing.

@Helikon: Point taken. I'll try to bake the damage in some other way.

[Alex Trebek's Stunt Double]

This may lead to hugely favouring crossbow builds because almost as important as gaining dex to damage is avoiding penalties for low strength.It's well known that casters can dump the hell out of strength to max out dex. Dex-to-damage builds are how non-casters can stay competitive. Realise that dex to damage can never have that damage multiplied by using the weapon two-handed. So Dex 22 with dex to damage is actually having the same modifier to weapon damage roll as if they had Str 18 but were using the weapon two-handed. But you're not doing dex for damage.

Have you considered at least having something like light or weapon-finesse piercing weapons never apply their strength modifier to damage, so like how crossbows are strength insensitive so is a rapier. I would argue this makes sense considering the frontal surface area of the tip of a knife is so small that even a small force will pierce right through even a very tough target, trying to push harder doesn't really do any more damage. I remember hearing this from a sword fighter, when it comes to piercing swords you do NOT have to be strong and it's all about how well you can control the weapon, finesse.

Quote:

At 6th level, if the rogue rolls a 1 on a sneak attack damage dice, she may reroll that dice and keep the second result.

This is a lot less than it seems.

average for a 1d6 is (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6) /6 = 3.5

But since '1' effectively is knocked out to be another d6 you can treat it as the average of the d6 so the new average is

(3.5 + 2 + 3 + 4 +5 + 6) /6 = 3.917

This is a damage boost that is only equivalent of a +1 damage every 2-3 sneak die. It's really not much. Also, it's going to slow the game down, inherently it's going to be looking for the 1's and then re-rolling them again before adding up. I would recommend against this feature jsut for how much it can slow things down.

Twist of the Knife is a great name and a great idea though I don't think it's quite there. Tying it with sneak die may cause it to be lost in the shuffle of consideration. I mean in the sense they get Sneak die which could be a +6 (if they get sneak and if they roll that high) a +1 isn't considered that much. Also every 2 levels it too slow a rate for only a +1. Yet +1 every level builds too quickly. +10 damage at level 10 is too much. Yet +5 at level 10 is too little.

How about they are able to add their BAB score to damage? That goes up at a rate which is in between Sneak Die rate and Class Level. But bring some condition to it, like it is only when you attack as a standard action with a piercing melee weapon, so no full attacks. As that can be the problem, a damage bonus independent of the weapon try try to invoke it repeatedly.

Twist of the Knife, love the name, love the idea, just elevate it a little bit in rate and control for spam abuse. I don't think it would be that much of a problem combo-ing it with sneak attack. Lots of attacks are limited to when you make a standard action to melee attack. It could de-value sneak attack too much if they're depending on Twist of The Knife to bring them up but then lose with with sneak attack.

One nice flavour to make dex-fighters less about massive damage would be to emphasise the combat manoeuvre more, particularly those which can be used with a finesse weapon, dex would be used for things like Dirty Trick to blind, to disarm the enemy or to trip them up. I think it would be pretty nice to give them a limited bonus feat for Improved Trip, Improved Dirty Trick or Improved Disarm or the not-a-CM-but-like-a-CM Improved Feint and emulate Ranger with none of those needing pre-requisites. It's the sort of rogue thing to do to disarm, blind and trip, rather than trying to compete with a Greatsword swinging Fighter.

Another consideration is maybe increasing rogue's base speed. Even if only circumstantially. Because positioning is so important for rogues and that's all going to be harder for them.