Post by Twilight Semner on Feb 6, 2014 15:47:18 GMT
DISCLAIMER: The following is a detailed analysis of the Fallen subrace, its comparison to BUR subraces and similar XR subraces, and its viability for the Bane Knight quasi-class. If you aren't interested in seriously discussing this subrace and how to make it actually useful for Bane Knights, feel free to mentally mark this thread as tl;dr and go about your business.
The Problem:
The premise of my argument is that the Fallen subrace is not nearly as viable for the Bane Knight quasi-class as intended. It offers very little more than a BUR race, both in regards to useful feats and ability scores, and it is not nearly on par with other divine melee XR subraces. For the sake of being able to discuss this subrace in detail, I have posted its statistics below:
Half-Elf
"Fallen" (secret eXtremely Rare; adds wings)
- FC: Sorcerer / BC: Blackguard
- STR +6, CON +1, INT +2, CHA +5, Hide +5
- Free Feats: Cleave, Still Spell, Empower Spell, Great Strength I, Mounted Combat
- Other: Immunity to all Bigby spells, Survival: Levitation
Half-Elf: Great. This is definitely the appropriate base race for Fallen because it allows for LSA Listen, which is not a Blackguard class skill. No problems there.
Adds Wings: Obviously wonderful. Not only should they have wings, but the wings for the Fallen subrace are beautiful and fit both the subrace and the quasi-class perfectly.
STR +6: Definitely a necessity for a number of reasons. No need for any changes here.
CON +1: Completely useless. The only purpose this serves is to round out the bonus ability scores to a total of +14, in light of the +5 CHA bonus.
INT +2: A nice bonus as it is for any class, but doesn't really make sense conceptually for Bane Knights. Wisdom bonus is a much better option for the sake of casting Blackguard spells.
CHA +5: No problems here. CHA +5 allows you to take 14 CHA at creation and get the 19 CHA necessary for level 9 spells.
Hide +5: Required for Blackguard. A nice, useful bonus that saves you from having to spend 10 points in cross-class skills.
Cleave: Also required for Blackguard. A nice bonus for an already feat-starved quasi-class.
Still Spell: Required for Bane Knight. A must have for this subrace. No problems here.
Empower Spell: What? Why? Utterly useless. Any idea how many Bane Knight spells would actually benefit from this? One. Just one. And it's Vampiric Touch at level 3. This feat doesn't belong on any Bane Knight build.
Great Strength I: Useful, but not nearly as useful as Great Strength II. It's just not enough, granting only 1 more Strength than Pharlan currently does.
Mounted Combat: This feat is on a lot of XR subraces and I'm not really sure why. I don't believe it serves any purpose other than as a prerequisite for Purple Dragon Knight, which I would sincerely hope no Bane Knight would even consider as a useful splash.
Immunity to all Bigby Spells: Why? So few enemies cast it. Immunity from items will generally protect characters from the vast majority of these effects. I just don't really see what this minor defensive bonus has to offer to the subrace. Does it add a minute amount of flavor? Certainly. Does it offer any substantial benefit to an already hurting quasi-class? By no means.
Levitation: Yes, please. They have wings. Levitation is always a great bonus.
As a quick point of comparison, let's compare Fallen with Pharlan, which is generally considered the most viable BUR subrace for the Bane Knight quasi-class:
Half-Elf
"Pharlan" (secret Beyond UltraRare; adds wings and tail)
- FCs: Cleric, Paladin
- STR +4, WIS +4, CHA +4, free feats: Great Strength I, Great Strength II, Divine Might, able to walk on quicksand, base SR 15 +1/lvl
Half-Elf: Great for the same reasons as Fallen.
Wings and Tail: From a flavor standpoint, phenomenal. Pharlan gets bonus points here, especially since you can customize your wing colors.
STR +4: Great bonus. An absolute must for BUR race Bane Knights.
WIS +4: Yes, please. Not having to invest more than 2 points at creation to be able to cast level 4 Blackguard spells is a huge benefit.
CHA +4: Not as good as CHA +5 from Fallen, but it's only a BUR race. Still a great bonus to have for a boatload of reasons.
Great Strength I-II: Here's where Fallen begins to seem lackluster by comparison. It's an XR subrace and it only gives 1 more STR than the BUR race. This is not enough. It simply doesn't provide enough added benefit.
Divine Might: Yes please. Great feat. An absolute must for any CC Blackguard Bane Knight. It just makes sense. Now, it doesn't necessarily belong on the XR version because, in my opinion, Fallen should be viable for both CC Blackguard AND CC Sorcerer Bane Knights, but it's still wonderful here.
Levitation: Duh.
SR 15 +1/lvl: The degree to which this bonus is overpowered cannot even be described. This is helpful in so many areas for so many reasons. It's so overpowered, in fact, that my suggestions for a modified Fallen subrace will not include it. It's just too much.
When you compare the two and their varying benefits, I think we can safely say that they're about "on par" with one another. This shouldn't be the case. One is BUR, the other is XR. The XR subrace should be significantly more powerful, especially for the quasi-class for which it was specifically designed. I know there was already a great deal of hashing on in regards to these XR subraces, but honestly, I wouldn't use Fallen, nor do I think any other Bane Knight player would. Would we use male Solarborn? Absolutely. But not Fallen. It just doesn't offer enough to justify using it even over Pharlan. This needs more thought, rehashing and discussion. It needs to be changed.
Fixing the Problem:
But Semner, how should it be changed? Well, it would be downright petty of me to complain about Fallen without offering a better alternative, now wouldn't it? That being said, here's my suggestion for a modified Fallen subrace:
Half-Elf
"Fallen" (secret eXtremely Rare; adds wings)
- FC: Sorcerer / BC: Blackguard
- STR +6, WIS +3, CHA +5, Hide +5
- Free Feats: Power Attack, Cleave, Metamagic: Still Spell, Spell Focus (Evocation), Greater Spell Focus (Evocation), Great Strength I, Great Strength II
- Other: Effective +1 Spell Focus Rank for Bigby Hands, Survival: Levitation
STR +6: Useful for the same reason as the original subrace formulation. STR +6 is absolutely required for this to still be a viable XR subrace.
WiS +3: So much more useful than +1 CON and +2 INT. Blackguard spells has a great deal of flavor and range for Bane Knights, especially CC Blackguard Bane Knights.
CHA +5: Still great, for the same reasons as the original subrace description.
Hide +5: Ditto.
Power Attack: While getting Cleave is a great benefit, the vast majority of Bane Knights are always going to be CC Blackguard. Those Bane Knights are almost guaranteed to take Overwhelming Critical/Devastating Critical in their weapon of choice. Power Attack is required to take Great Cleave, which is required to take those feats. This is a very nice added bonus for Bane Knights who suffer very much from being feat-starved, especially in pre-epic levels.
Cleave: Still good for the reasons above.
Still Spell: Ditto.
Spell Focus (Evocation): Here's where we really get into making this subrace viable for Bane Knights. As it stands now, most Bane Knights feel like they have to exclude spell focus feats from their builds, many of them taking Spell Penetration, by book, just for the sake of landing the few precious spells that they do have. Giving Spell Focus as a subrace bonus does a number of things. First, it allows Bane Knights to not have to rely on a part 3 Abyss set item to have any spell focus, which in itself is a crying shame. Second, it allows for build diversity, increasing the viability of CC Sorcerer Bane Knights who, with this subrace, would be able to take a second set of Spell Focus feats in pre-epic levels, for a total of three school foci total if they use a tome for a third. Thirdly, it allows CC Blackguard Bane Knights to finally be more than gimped Battle Clerics because they can actually afford the feats to take the necessary spell foci to be able to cast offensive spells when necessary. Finally, it does a good job of restricting the subrace to Bane Knights, making it more exclusively designed for them, which is a great thing if you ask me.
Greater Spell Focus (Evocation): See above.
Great Strength I-II: As I said before, Great Strength I just isn't enough. Considering other caster XR subraces get +8 to their stat, and some even +10 including feats, +8 total for Fallen doesn't seem at all out of line or overpowered. This is especially true when you consider the fact that Bane Knights are dependent on their Strength modifier not only for DC, but Spell Penetration as well. Increasing their Strength with this extra feat will allow Bane Knights to more easily reach a 32 STR modifier, granting +8 Spell Penetration and alleviating the need to invest in Spell Penetration feats, which unfortunately most Bane Knights currently have resigned themselves to doing. Just to be clear, you can currently get to a 32 STR mod with Fallen, but you have to invest a lot more in Strength, leaving a lot of other ability scores too low. Because of the nature of the class, which needs to be able to tank a variety of mobs and be marginally successful at passing ability checks, you need to invest at least some amount in DEX and a good amount in CON to make up for your lower Hit Points from Sorcerer levels.
Bonus Effective Spell Focus for Bigby Hands: Not strictly necessary, but, seeing as though so many other subraces get very cool class-specific bonuses (I'm looking at you, Half-Ogre Mage!), this just seems to make sense. As far as their spellcasting goes, Bane Knights are currently pretty much one-trick ponies. If they're going to be one-trick ponies, I say we make sure they're the best darn ponies they can be. There is no chance of the server suddenly becoming unbalanced because Bane Knights are suddenly grabbing things more easily.
Levitation: Still good for the reasons above.
XR Subrace Comparison:
Wow, Semner those are a lot of changes. Do you really think it's okay to give a subrace that many feats? Well, allow me to explain my reasoning and you'll see. If this seems a little extreme, which I could understand if it did, I would also like to compare Fallen to the following subrace:
Half-orc
"Half-Ogre Mage" (secret eXtremely Rare)
- FC: Wizard / BC: Weaponmaster
- STR +5, DEX +2, CON +4, INT +5
- Free Feats: Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, WF/GWF: Quarterstaff, SF/ESF: Concentration
- Other: +4 Regeneration, Blackstaff spell inflicts 1d10 more of chosen damage type
Total Ability Score Bonuses: +16. This is two above the modified Fallen subrace I have posted above. If you include the Great Strength feats for Fallen, they become on par.
Pre-Epic Feats: Half-Ogre Mage gets a total of 6 pre-epic feats. Since pre-epic feats are just about the most valuable feats you can get from a build stand-point, this is absurdly powerful. Compare this to my modified Fallen subrace, which gets only 5 pre-epic feats, and you'll see that my changes to Fallen are hardly game-breaking in this regard.
Epic Feats: Here, the poor, lowly Half-Ogre Mage is a bit lacking. It only gets 1 epic feats, ESF: Concentration. Fallen gets 2 epic feats, Great Strength I and II. However, Half-Ogre Mage gets 2 more ability score bonuses than Fallen. So if we count Fallen's Great Strength feats as included in its ability score bonuses, in order to make the comparison even, we find that, effectively, Half-Ogre Mage gets one more epic feat than Fallen.
Regeneration: This is great. It's completely overpowered at low levels and is always going to be useful no matter how high level your Staffmaster becomes. Probably not quite as useful as Levitation on Fallen, but hey, Fallen has to be better than Half-Ogre Mage somewhere right?
Bonus Blackstaff Damage: Now this here is an absolutely fantastic bonus for Staffmasters. You might say, "Oh, 1d10 damage isn't really that much is it?" But you'd be wrong. With seven attacks, most staff masters are soaring well above 1,000 attacks per run, with a very high hit percentage. An extra 1d10 dice on Blackstaff is an average of 5.5 per hit. And it's not just some random damage that's not useful. It's 5.5 per hit that you are more than likely dealing as your enemies weakest damage type! So that's basically a guaranteed extra 5,500 or more damage per run. This ability is a huge benefit. But then, so is the bonus to Bigby Hands that I've suggested. The difference, of course, is that the Staffmaster is going to be wailing on a great variety of enemies. Grabby hands aren't going to be useful at dispatching problem mobs, so increasing the Bane Knight's ability to use these spells isn't really going to result in them suddenly becoming a highly desired core class. It's simply going to make them better at what they were designed to do.
Discussion:
Well, I've said all I had to say on this post, but I'd be happy to discuss it more if anyone else is up for it. Now it's your turn! I really believe that this subrace needs to be fixed and I think my suggestions do a good job of facilitating that. Please share your thoughts, whether you agree, want to make more suggestions, or just think I'm off my rocker. Any input is welcome. Thanks in advance.
The Problem:
The premise of my argument is that the Fallen subrace is not nearly as viable for the Bane Knight quasi-class as intended. It offers very little more than a BUR race, both in regards to useful feats and ability scores, and it is not nearly on par with other divine melee XR subraces. For the sake of being able to discuss this subrace in detail, I have posted its statistics below:
Half-Elf
"Fallen" (secret eXtremely Rare; adds wings)
- FC: Sorcerer / BC: Blackguard
- STR +6, CON +1, INT +2, CHA +5, Hide +5
- Free Feats: Cleave, Still Spell, Empower Spell, Great Strength I, Mounted Combat
- Other: Immunity to all Bigby spells, Survival: Levitation
Half-Elf: Great. This is definitely the appropriate base race for Fallen because it allows for LSA Listen, which is not a Blackguard class skill. No problems there.
Adds Wings: Obviously wonderful. Not only should they have wings, but the wings for the Fallen subrace are beautiful and fit both the subrace and the quasi-class perfectly.
STR +6: Definitely a necessity for a number of reasons. No need for any changes here.
CON +1: Completely useless. The only purpose this serves is to round out the bonus ability scores to a total of +14, in light of the +5 CHA bonus.
INT +2: A nice bonus as it is for any class, but doesn't really make sense conceptually for Bane Knights. Wisdom bonus is a much better option for the sake of casting Blackguard spells.
CHA +5: No problems here. CHA +5 allows you to take 14 CHA at creation and get the 19 CHA necessary for level 9 spells.
Hide +5: Required for Blackguard. A nice, useful bonus that saves you from having to spend 10 points in cross-class skills.
Cleave: Also required for Blackguard. A nice bonus for an already feat-starved quasi-class.
Still Spell: Required for Bane Knight. A must have for this subrace. No problems here.
Empower Spell: What? Why? Utterly useless. Any idea how many Bane Knight spells would actually benefit from this? One. Just one. And it's Vampiric Touch at level 3. This feat doesn't belong on any Bane Knight build.
Great Strength I: Useful, but not nearly as useful as Great Strength II. It's just not enough, granting only 1 more Strength than Pharlan currently does.
Mounted Combat: This feat is on a lot of XR subraces and I'm not really sure why. I don't believe it serves any purpose other than as a prerequisite for Purple Dragon Knight, which I would sincerely hope no Bane Knight would even consider as a useful splash.
Immunity to all Bigby Spells: Why? So few enemies cast it. Immunity from items will generally protect characters from the vast majority of these effects. I just don't really see what this minor defensive bonus has to offer to the subrace. Does it add a minute amount of flavor? Certainly. Does it offer any substantial benefit to an already hurting quasi-class? By no means.
Levitation: Yes, please. They have wings. Levitation is always a great bonus.
As a quick point of comparison, let's compare Fallen with Pharlan, which is generally considered the most viable BUR subrace for the Bane Knight quasi-class:
Half-Elf
"Pharlan" (secret Beyond UltraRare; adds wings and tail)
- FCs: Cleric, Paladin
- STR +4, WIS +4, CHA +4, free feats: Great Strength I, Great Strength II, Divine Might, able to walk on quicksand, base SR 15 +1/lvl
Half-Elf: Great for the same reasons as Fallen.
Wings and Tail: From a flavor standpoint, phenomenal. Pharlan gets bonus points here, especially since you can customize your wing colors.
STR +4: Great bonus. An absolute must for BUR race Bane Knights.
WIS +4: Yes, please. Not having to invest more than 2 points at creation to be able to cast level 4 Blackguard spells is a huge benefit.
CHA +4: Not as good as CHA +5 from Fallen, but it's only a BUR race. Still a great bonus to have for a boatload of reasons.
Great Strength I-II: Here's where Fallen begins to seem lackluster by comparison. It's an XR subrace and it only gives 1 more STR than the BUR race. This is not enough. It simply doesn't provide enough added benefit.
Divine Might: Yes please. Great feat. An absolute must for any CC Blackguard Bane Knight. It just makes sense. Now, it doesn't necessarily belong on the XR version because, in my opinion, Fallen should be viable for both CC Blackguard AND CC Sorcerer Bane Knights, but it's still wonderful here.
Levitation: Duh.
SR 15 +1/lvl: The degree to which this bonus is overpowered cannot even be described. This is helpful in so many areas for so many reasons. It's so overpowered, in fact, that my suggestions for a modified Fallen subrace will not include it. It's just too much.
When you compare the two and their varying benefits, I think we can safely say that they're about "on par" with one another. This shouldn't be the case. One is BUR, the other is XR. The XR subrace should be significantly more powerful, especially for the quasi-class for which it was specifically designed. I know there was already a great deal of hashing on in regards to these XR subraces, but honestly, I wouldn't use Fallen, nor do I think any other Bane Knight player would. Would we use male Solarborn? Absolutely. But not Fallen. It just doesn't offer enough to justify using it even over Pharlan. This needs more thought, rehashing and discussion. It needs to be changed.
Fixing the Problem:
But Semner, how should it be changed? Well, it would be downright petty of me to complain about Fallen without offering a better alternative, now wouldn't it? That being said, here's my suggestion for a modified Fallen subrace:
Half-Elf
"Fallen" (secret eXtremely Rare; adds wings)
- FC: Sorcerer / BC: Blackguard
- STR +6, WIS +3, CHA +5, Hide +5
- Free Feats: Power Attack, Cleave, Metamagic: Still Spell, Spell Focus (Evocation), Greater Spell Focus (Evocation), Great Strength I, Great Strength II
- Other: Effective +1 Spell Focus Rank for Bigby Hands, Survival: Levitation
STR +6: Useful for the same reason as the original subrace formulation. STR +6 is absolutely required for this to still be a viable XR subrace.
WiS +3: So much more useful than +1 CON and +2 INT. Blackguard spells has a great deal of flavor and range for Bane Knights, especially CC Blackguard Bane Knights.
CHA +5: Still great, for the same reasons as the original subrace description.
Hide +5: Ditto.
Power Attack: While getting Cleave is a great benefit, the vast majority of Bane Knights are always going to be CC Blackguard. Those Bane Knights are almost guaranteed to take Overwhelming Critical/Devastating Critical in their weapon of choice. Power Attack is required to take Great Cleave, which is required to take those feats. This is a very nice added bonus for Bane Knights who suffer very much from being feat-starved, especially in pre-epic levels.
Cleave: Still good for the reasons above.
Still Spell: Ditto.
Spell Focus (Evocation): Here's where we really get into making this subrace viable for Bane Knights. As it stands now, most Bane Knights feel like they have to exclude spell focus feats from their builds, many of them taking Spell Penetration, by book, just for the sake of landing the few precious spells that they do have. Giving Spell Focus as a subrace bonus does a number of things. First, it allows Bane Knights to not have to rely on a part 3 Abyss set item to have any spell focus, which in itself is a crying shame. Second, it allows for build diversity, increasing the viability of CC Sorcerer Bane Knights who, with this subrace, would be able to take a second set of Spell Focus feats in pre-epic levels, for a total of three school foci total if they use a tome for a third. Thirdly, it allows CC Blackguard Bane Knights to finally be more than gimped Battle Clerics because they can actually afford the feats to take the necessary spell foci to be able to cast offensive spells when necessary. Finally, it does a good job of restricting the subrace to Bane Knights, making it more exclusively designed for them, which is a great thing if you ask me.
Greater Spell Focus (Evocation): See above.
Great Strength I-II: As I said before, Great Strength I just isn't enough. Considering other caster XR subraces get +8 to their stat, and some even +10 including feats, +8 total for Fallen doesn't seem at all out of line or overpowered. This is especially true when you consider the fact that Bane Knights are dependent on their Strength modifier not only for DC, but Spell Penetration as well. Increasing their Strength with this extra feat will allow Bane Knights to more easily reach a 32 STR modifier, granting +8 Spell Penetration and alleviating the need to invest in Spell Penetration feats, which unfortunately most Bane Knights currently have resigned themselves to doing. Just to be clear, you can currently get to a 32 STR mod with Fallen, but you have to invest a lot more in Strength, leaving a lot of other ability scores too low. Because of the nature of the class, which needs to be able to tank a variety of mobs and be marginally successful at passing ability checks, you need to invest at least some amount in DEX and a good amount in CON to make up for your lower Hit Points from Sorcerer levels.
Bonus Effective Spell Focus for Bigby Hands: Not strictly necessary, but, seeing as though so many other subraces get very cool class-specific bonuses (I'm looking at you, Half-Ogre Mage!), this just seems to make sense. As far as their spellcasting goes, Bane Knights are currently pretty much one-trick ponies. If they're going to be one-trick ponies, I say we make sure they're the best darn ponies they can be. There is no chance of the server suddenly becoming unbalanced because Bane Knights are suddenly grabbing things more easily.
Levitation: Still good for the reasons above.
XR Subrace Comparison:
Wow, Semner those are a lot of changes. Do you really think it's okay to give a subrace that many feats? Well, allow me to explain my reasoning and you'll see. If this seems a little extreme, which I could understand if it did, I would also like to compare Fallen to the following subrace:
Half-orc
"Half-Ogre Mage" (secret eXtremely Rare)
- FC: Wizard / BC: Weaponmaster
- STR +5, DEX +2, CON +4, INT +5
- Free Feats: Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, WF/GWF: Quarterstaff, SF/ESF: Concentration
- Other: +4 Regeneration, Blackstaff spell inflicts 1d10 more of chosen damage type
Total Ability Score Bonuses: +16. This is two above the modified Fallen subrace I have posted above. If you include the Great Strength feats for Fallen, they become on par.
Pre-Epic Feats: Half-Ogre Mage gets a total of 6 pre-epic feats. Since pre-epic feats are just about the most valuable feats you can get from a build stand-point, this is absurdly powerful. Compare this to my modified Fallen subrace, which gets only 5 pre-epic feats, and you'll see that my changes to Fallen are hardly game-breaking in this regard.
Epic Feats: Here, the poor, lowly Half-Ogre Mage is a bit lacking. It only gets 1 epic feats, ESF: Concentration. Fallen gets 2 epic feats, Great Strength I and II. However, Half-Ogre Mage gets 2 more ability score bonuses than Fallen. So if we count Fallen's Great Strength feats as included in its ability score bonuses, in order to make the comparison even, we find that, effectively, Half-Ogre Mage gets one more epic feat than Fallen.
Regeneration: This is great. It's completely overpowered at low levels and is always going to be useful no matter how high level your Staffmaster becomes. Probably not quite as useful as Levitation on Fallen, but hey, Fallen has to be better than Half-Ogre Mage somewhere right?
Bonus Blackstaff Damage: Now this here is an absolutely fantastic bonus for Staffmasters. You might say, "Oh, 1d10 damage isn't really that much is it?" But you'd be wrong. With seven attacks, most staff masters are soaring well above 1,000 attacks per run, with a very high hit percentage. An extra 1d10 dice on Blackstaff is an average of 5.5 per hit. And it's not just some random damage that's not useful. It's 5.5 per hit that you are more than likely dealing as your enemies weakest damage type! So that's basically a guaranteed extra 5,500 or more damage per run. This ability is a huge benefit. But then, so is the bonus to Bigby Hands that I've suggested. The difference, of course, is that the Staffmaster is going to be wailing on a great variety of enemies. Grabby hands aren't going to be useful at dispatching problem mobs, so increasing the Bane Knight's ability to use these spells isn't really going to result in them suddenly becoming a highly desired core class. It's simply going to make them better at what they were designed to do.
Discussion:
Well, I've said all I had to say on this post, but I'd be happy to discuss it more if anyone else is up for it. Now it's your turn! I really believe that this subrace needs to be fixed and I think my suggestions do a good job of facilitating that. Please share your thoughts, whether you agree, want to make more suggestions, or just think I'm off my rocker. Any input is welcome. Thanks in advance.