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

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== Authors Notes ==
 
== Authors Notes ==
  

Revision as of 04:43, 6 December 2020

Source

Authors Notes

This one was obnoxious. There are a couple of fundamental issues with a Warmage-style Divination caster:

1. Divination isn't really something you can hang a whole character on. There are Divination specialist Wizards, but that's because you can find one Divination you want at every level, then fill the rest of your slots with the spells every other Wizard casts (like Color Spray, Fear, and Planar Binding). There's I think one offensive divination spell (Unluck), and then a couple more things that are useful in combat but don't directly kill people (e.g. True Strike, Sniper's Shot). 2. Lots of Divination spells are really over-leveled. Foresight has no business being a 9th level spell. Moment of Prescience is not worth an 8th level spell slot (though it falls into the weird niche of spells that are basically class features). 3. There isn't that much high-level Divination out there. Even before you start down-leveling the Legend Lores and Analyze Dweomers of the world, high level Divination is a pretty sparse field. The Spell Compendium has a total of four (Sorcerer/Wizard) Divination spells that are 6th level or higher (compare Transmutation, which has four or more spells at every level).

From this, you can tell that whatever Warmage-equivalent you write for Divination is going to need to pick up some kind of side line, and probably more than one. Now, there are a lot of ways you could do that. Your Diviner could be like a Jedi, getting various "move stuff with your mind" powers, and a high-mobility combat style. You could staple Divination to another spell school (Evocation is the obvious choice, being as lacking outside combat as Divination is in it). I went with a combination of approaches, giving the Seer some time magic, a passable sneak attacking plan, borrowed some psionic powers, and wrote a couple new spells.

At low levels, the Seer is a Rogue-type. You're frailer than a standard Rogue, don't get as much Sneak Attack, and your skill list doesn't support the full range of Rogue skills (you can't be a trap-monkey or face, for example). But in exchange you have a bunch of magical tricks you can pull that let you do Rogue stuff better. You can pop Swift Haste to get extra Sneak Attack, Sniper's Shot to get better range, or the appropriate Strike for whatever Sneak Attack immune enemy you're fighting. You've also got the Divination suite to do out of combat stuff, plus a few party support options.

At mid levels, you start abusing the action economy. You get extra swift actions, which you can either use for more temporary buffs or (once you hit 10th level) to drop some extra offensive spells, particularly if you burn an Advanced Learning to get some kind of SA-eligible 1st or 2nd level spell. You also get some save-or-dies at these levels, though you're not as impressive in this department as a Beguiler or Dread Necromancer. Outside combat, you continue to scout and gather information magically.

At high levels, you break the action economy even more (though hopefully not to the degree that TO Psion builds can). You probably want to pick up Delay Spell to better abuse Temporal Aacceleration and Time Stop, allowing you to dump out even bigger novas.

That's the idea. The question is: does it play out that way? Is it balanced? I'm not sure. Action economy abuse is prone to pretty wild swings in effectiveness (for example, there was a draft that got Celerity, until I remember that the spell is stupid with Arcane Fusion). Frankly, it's quite possible that as a class that is A) basically telling you to scry-and-die and B) gets a bunch of ways to take extra actions, the Seer is inherently too strong and needs to be rebuild along some other lines.