Talk:Peacock Sage (3.5e Prestige Class)

Ratings

Hammerhead is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.

I feel a bit of a disconnect with the flavor of this class. Where exactly does the peacock style come from? Are peacocks supposed to be magically powerful creatures? Are these the royal guards for some peacock-based nation? We have references to Hera and Quetzalcoatl and Argus? Is this Greek mythology or Mayan mythology? Nothing in this class is really explained. It's balanced, I suppose, though I'm dubious of a +5 untyped bonus to a stat with no cost, and having a swarm of coualts is nerve-racking. I would allow a person to play it, but I consider this prestige class unfinished, so the player would have to justify it.

I tend to subscribe more to a mechanical view of class features, with flavor being somewhat more whatever the player makes of it, so there's little I can tell you other than I had a picture (which is no longer on the wiki because I do not know who to credit or who owns what rights to it) and that picture formed the basis for a sorcerer-intended prestige class focusing on a few themes derived from a peacock's appearance (color, vision) with a handful of semi-related abilities thrown in to create something of (what I at the time thought of as) a well-rounded package. Basically, I am not going to defend ability names, they simply are what they are. I think it is valuable for setting-specific prestige classes to focus on flavor, but for something like this I am more concerned with the actual interaction with core rules than how it intersects with this campaign setting or that one. As far as the Charisma bonus from the plumage, it was intended to be balanced around Charisma already being tied to the shoulder slot, so to speak, although I concede one could circumvent this with sufficient gold. This would break character wealth by level trends, but it is doable. The unspecified bonus type is an oversight on my part that would fix the whole issue, so I will add that in now and it should be a non-issue. Not advancing spellcasting at that level was also a conscious choice. -- Jota (talk) 21:49, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, mechanics and flavor play equal roles in a class, and you do have flavor, it's just incomplete and not explained. Tha'st why my rating was neutral instead of oppose or favor. You didn't get an oppose because you did have a style of what the class is, but lacking flavor is like lacking mechanics. If it's clear what a mechanic is supposed to do, but there are gaps in the rules text, that is a similar problem which, either way, means more work for the player or the DM. It's it's flavor, they have to fill in gaps for the flavor concerning what is happening. If it's mechanics, they have to rule in one way or another. My neutrality remains, because work still needs to be done in most campaigns for this class to be used. -Hammerhead.

	Eiji-kun favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	This is actually pretty awesome. The flavor and the mechanics mesh well, and the lack of spellcasting when you get Hera's Favored is balanced.