Difference between revisions of "Talk:Antitheist (3.5e Prestige Class)"

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== Ratings ==
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==Statement of Intent==
{{Rating |rater=Billybillerson
 
|rating=favor
 
|reason=I was really enlightened by this prestige class.
 
}}==Statement of Intent==
 
 
I want this class to be the following:
 
I want this class to be the following:
 
:1) Have a satanic theme.
 
:1) Have a satanic theme.
Line 11: Line 7:
 
:5) Have most abilities explainable as carnival trickery, psychology or sleight of hand. (A few supernatural abilities is fine.)
 
:5) Have most abilities explainable as carnival trickery, psychology or sleight of hand. (A few supernatural abilities is fine.)
 
:6) Be balanced and mechanically sound.
 
:6) Be balanced and mechanically sound.
:7) Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
 
  
 
Everything else I am willing to debate, and for the right reasons, change. --Franken Kesey 11:17, 3 March 2019 (MST)
 
Everything else I am willing to debate, and for the right reasons, change. --Franken Kesey 11:17, 3 March 2019 (MST)

Revision as of 11:18, 13 May 2019

Statement of Intent

I want this class to be the following:

1) Have a satanic theme.
2) Not be a devil worshiper (plenty of classes do this already).
3) Be playable to all alignments. It should allow all players to play this class (even Lawful Good).
4) Have some anti-divine, anti-spell-casting and anti-alignment abilities.
5) Have most abilities explainable as carnival trickery, psychology or sleight of hand. (A few supernatural abilities is fine.)
6) Be balanced and mechanically sound.

Everything else I am willing to debate, and for the right reasons, change. --Franken Kesey 11:17, 3 March 2019 (MST)

Rating

Issues with Mechanics or Balance

Note here any issues with mechanics or balance:

Marksman’s Edits and Changes

There were some major issues with wording and balance. Then marksman helped with some major edits. A few things were changed or added (after these edits):

  • Re-balanced a lot of spells Levels That Spells Are Obtained is a very good resource.
  • Satan’s Speech: added moral and demoralizing abilities, increased shout damage, added immunity, split infernal instrument from shout abilities, unified all shout abilities into one, changed levels.
  • Know Thy Enemy: moved detect alignment to subability, added “opponent” qualifier, changed level of reduction of risk (8th)
  • Turn Enemy: add link to cleric, increased level to 4th, reduce requirement for rebuking.
  • Sell Your Soul: reduce level to 6th, simplify charm and compulsion to “enchantments”, change immunity to spell resistance.
  • Bonus Feat: added a bonus feat at 9th level.

Thank you marksman.--Franken Kesey 10:53, 4 March 2019 (MST)

You're welcome! Glad to be able to help. The-Marksman (talk) 10:58, 4 March 2019 (MST)

Okay, lot of stuff here so lets look, in order:

Satan's Speech

  • At will use of a standard action 2nd level maneuver, usable only on those of good alignment as a swift action. Also a +2 bonus to something with evil characters. Not seeing the any alignment thing here, only anti-good/pro-evil
  • At will use of a 1 round action, 0 level spell, as an (Ex) ability and as a standard action. You don't need to mention it is a standard to use b/c of the general rules of satan's sacrament applying. Caster level = class level.
  • 3/day use fascinate as a bard, but no limit on number of targets, 2/3 range, and (Ex) instead of (Sp)
  • 4/day use shout as the spell, again as an (Ex) ability. The various levels and effectiveness is not as important here as the (Ex) fact.
  • weird bard style casting 6/day with max spell level = half class level. neat but odd. Only Enchantment spells
  • 3/day charm monster as you guessed it an (Ex) ability. also gimped duration
  • 3/day use a combined version of a bard's inspire courage and competence, but with a limit on allies affected and again (Ex)
  • 3/day confusion as (Ex)
  • the first (Su) abiliy is a +8 bonus on basically any roll 1/day
  • 2/day (Ex) mass suggestion with gimped target and duration (10 minutes at level 10 and 5 targets in comparison to the spell's hours/level and 1/level
  • oh look a debuff version of the combined version of inspire courage and competence above.
  • 2/day use profanity as spell, its shockingly a (Su) ability. again anti-good.
  • 2/day irrisistable dance but multiple targets (still touch range though), and much better duration (8 rounds when you get it instead of 2-5) and (Su)

So what I see here is a bard with almost no offensive options, a ton of no SR spelllikes as extraordinary and a pro evil agenda. not bad but against your any alignment thing. maybe make all the aligned stuff just be all aligns different than yours? Also a lot of its abilities could be reworded as "The Antitheist may use spell' as an (Ex)/(Su) ability, except exceptions". and please only list how often you can do something when it is different than the default. Word clutter is ewww.

Lucifer's Light

  • Spellcasting. independent spellcasting. a 6th level character should not be gaining 1st level spells and be expected to be happy about it. also only utility spells at first. is the per day thing per spell or for each set of spells. unclear. Also aligned spells should have to match your own alignment.
  • Exactly like the enchantment spell one for satan, but divination, also only 4/day, start at 5th rather than 1st, and choose from sor/wiz list.
  • devil in the details: remove the save. It is not that powerful. clarify how you are getting to use it twice in a round because as far as I know it still requires an immediate action which you only get one of each round.

Not bad, but again lacking in offensive options and variety of them.

Belial’s Black-Magic

  • independent spellcasting again, but this time with a nice spell list. same issues as lucifer's version except the bit about offense.
  • eye for an eye: powerful bu really unlikely to succeed. if you and opponent are of equal level (let's say 15, with you having 10 levels in this class), your looking at a DC of 25+wis vs your roll of 11-30 +wis. and it gets worse the higher you go, at 20 its DC 30+wis vs the same roll.

Know thy enemy: favored enemy (alignment)

The rest is fairly unimpressive, but solid, with a few odd pieces (DR that applies only to aligned damage?!). Grog toad (talk) 23:35, 8 March 2019 (MST)

Response:
Satan’s Speech:
  • 1) You are right about the alignment issue. Fixed terrible taunt to alignment neutral, and increased the level by one, so that it did not come before Know Thy Enemy (balanced it with this ability).
  • 2) Not sure what you mean with second point, it does not repeat that it is a standard action. I also hate excess wording. (I even made an article which replaced all uses of “and” with “&” – two extra symbols is excessive.) Where have you spotted redundancy?
  • 3) Ranked fascination with HD. Let me know if the balance is still off. All satanic speech is Ex, real world musicians can fascinate people without using magic. This follows that same rational.
  • 4) This is the only Satanic Speech ability that deals damage. As such gave it 4/day instead of 3, so they would not completely suck in combat. Is the damage too low or high?
A sorcerer can deal 15d6 damage (or 52.5 average) at 15th level, a player with the same character level, but with 10 levels of antitheist deals 49.5 damage on average. 1/3 of this is the 1st level ability, 2/3 is the 4th.
  • 5) Of the three, the satanic speech had the least options. They needed to be balanced with the other two. If you can think of a better way to compensate I am listening. If I added more speech abilities, it might work.
  • 6) Plenty of people use mundane means to confuse and charm people. It is quite common.
  • 7) The GM could always state that they will not allow the manifest destiny effects because they were not what the antitheist premeditated. But it is only one check, and only for attack, skill, or damage. It has a lot of stipulations. Since this is the first ability that is not explainable via psychology or trickery, I made it Su. It made more sense this way.
  • 8) Weakened mass suggestion, because some thought it was too powerful (which it is at that level).
  • 9) I like the buff and debuff moral abilities. However, if the ranking bonus (i.e., “At 6th and 9th levels, this bonus increases by 1 (+3 at 6th and +4 at 9th”) is too much it can be changed.
  • 10) …So profanity. It is a direct copy of blasphemy, holy word, etc. spells. Except it does not cause death or paralysis, and is a lower level. It is a weaker version. However, the original spells are all alignment driven. I do not know how to make it alignment neutral. Do you have any ideas?
  • 11) Reduced duration of demonic dance, you are right 8 was too much.
Thank you for bringing up the alignment inconsistencies. Will be changing this to fix it. I am open to ideas on how to fix profanity.
Lucifier’s Light:
  • 1) Technically, this class does not require previous levels as a spell-casting class. As such a few first level spells would be useful to classes that do not have a prior history.
  • 2) It is per set of spells (i.e., beginner spells). How would you word it to better clarify this?
  • 3) Lucifer's Light abilities are weaker than Belial’s Black-Magic, but not as weak as Satan’s Speech, so they got a weaker supplemental spell progression.
  • 4) Remove save to devil in the details, cleared up language (to second time is a free action).
  • 5) Agreed Lucifer is bad at offense. It is my biggest issue with the feature. Any ideas that meet the flavor of enlightenment abilities?
Belial’s Black-Magic:
1) Fixed eye for an eye to be ranking with HD, and higher chances (but the opponent still has an advantage).
The issue with the Ex abilities is Ex is stronger than magic, Ex>Su>Sp because Su ignores SR and cant be disrupted or counterspelled etc. Ex beats Sp and Su for the same reasons, but also is not countered by antimagic. you cant dispel an Ex effect. Satan's scream damage is fine, since it also carries deafening, maybe increase uses per day as you go up in level or make it like a breath weapon (at will but with a cooldown so you cant spam it)? Black Mass is a relatively weak ability, remove stipulations or increase uses, 1/day per 2 levels round up. The bonus numbers don't bother me, it is why are you limiting the number of targets. The original abilities didn't have that limitation because it requires you to say well I'll only help some of my friends. YOur basically giving an encouraging/demoralizing speech. I also didn't have a problem with fascinate lacking the limitation, I was just pointing it out.
As for rewording the spellcasting, you already used a good solution in the enchantment section of satan speech "An Antitheist can use enchantment spells from this subfeature only 6/day (total for all, not each)." so just reword that from enchantment to Beginer instead:
An Antitheist can use Beginner spells only 2/day (total for all, not each). +2 uses per day at levels 3 and 5.
Lucifer offense, go with some sort of madness inducing ability ala Mindbreak (3.5e Variant Rule) perhaps 1d4+1/3 levels madness in close range as a ranged attack? or some form of sneakattack
As for the profanity unaligned issue, I'll reply on its talk page. Grog toad (talk) 16:17, 9 March 2019 (MST)

Issues with Flavor

Note here any issues with flavor:


I'm not sure how much of levayan Satanism I understand (only did a Wikipedia skim through), but this class doesn't really seem to match with your stated flavor or intentions. So lets boil down its sorce material. "Satanism" is a religion where you are your own god, with rules emphasizing selfishness and pride, along with a few basic morals, like not harming young children. It also encourages both leaving others alone, doing whatever you want, and destroying those who bother you. This seems like Evil or neutral at best in dnd terms.

It also denies the existence of supernatural beings (which clearly exist in dnd), the separation of body and soul (which is true for outsiders, fey, and elementals but not others), and the afterlife (there are many of these confirmed to exist in dnd).

So you have a class, based on a real world religion, that preaches logic, rational thought, the value of self, and denies the supernatural. But comes across as flat-earthers living in Super Mario Odessey. A Class with a pro evil bent allowing good aligned characters to enter (and may I add that the alignment system is stupid), or the equivalent of the KKK setting up shop in Africa and Actively recruiting those they hate. I'm just not sure how well thought out this was. Grog toad (talk) 23:35, 8 March 2019 (MST)

With regards to flavor:
  • 1) Will fix the alignment issues. Thank you for highlighting them.
  • 2) Your first paragraph is a good summary of satanism. They also are against rape and harming animals, and pro LGBT. But you get the just of it.
  • 3) In a dnd setting they are not atheists. An atheist denies the existence of gods. An antitheist, actively fights against gods. In many ways antitheists have even more reason to exist in a world surrounded by fickle gods. Which you bring up a really good idea of giving them an anti-deity ability. Might consider it later.
Thank you again for the feed-back. Will be incorporating the changes shortly.

Major Overhaul and Re-Balance

Major changes: Mostly re-balanced the three pathways to be more even with each other (Satan’s Speech used to be significantly weaker than Belial’s Black-Magic).

  1. Satan’s Speech: Gave a new spell list. Reduced number of Satanic Symbolism (some “treat like spell” became spells). Added a bluff (Hellish Heroics) and debuff (Paralyzing Panic) to Symbolism. Removed Enchantment spell selection
  2. Lucifer’s Light: Reduced and changed spells. Removed all damage dealing spells. Gave an offensive ability (Light Bringer). Gave Knowledge Overload. Removed Divination spell selection.
  3. Belial’s Black-Magic: Major changes to spells. Removed all damage dealing spells. Gave a powerful offensive ability (Energymaniac).
  4. Changed all offensive abilities to a round cooldown.
  5. Added spell per day section to table (and changed some other tables).
  6. Know Thy Enemy: Added detect magic to detection ability.
  7. Reduced redundancy (tables fixed a lot). Whoever created “Simple Tables” deserves a lot of credit. They are so much easier to work with.

Most other features remained unchanged.--Franken Kesey 21:09, 22 March 2019 (MDT)