Talk:Caustic (3.5e Prestige Class)

Rating

Power - 4.5/5 I give this class a 4.5 out of 5 because the character seems really well balanced. The sheer range of his ability to disolve items may prove to be an issue though, such as dissolving a door meant to serve as a puzzle, or being able to destroy magic items. Additionally, his penalties to constitution become moot when he becomes undead (who do not have constitution scores)--Alphacron 16:14, 6 February 2011 (MST)

Wording - 4.5/5 I give this class a 4.5 out of 5 because for the most part, its abilities are clear. However, what is unclear is whether those items he can disolve at will (such as magic rings) can save against it. Additionally, his ability to be more effective against opponents with acid resistance is really unclear. --Alphacron 16:14, 6 February 2011 (MST)

Formatting - 5/5 I give this class a 5 out of 5 because everything is in its proper place, and well built --Alphacron 16:14, 6 February 2011 (MST)

Flavor - 5/5 I give this class a 5 out of 5 because it is an incredibly original idea, and is an interesting option for warlocks who lose their "patron's" favor. The idea of a warlock trying to keep his powers despite them trying to kill him makes for an interesting character, both from a PC and NPC perspective. One thing I would change is that a warlock could theoretically take this class by shunning his source of power (an interesting plot point) and still trying to keep what he has been awarded, as his "patron" tries to take them back. --Alphacron 16:14, 6 February 2011 (MST)

"This class just happens, to warlocks."?

This is a little confusing. It's pretty blatant and obvious but... if it "just happens", then how does one "become"?

Does this occur, say, when enter your "venerable age"? Does this merely occur at the DM's decision? Or does the player actually decide one day "Oh, hey, I'd like to be a Caustic now!" and *poof* they become one?

The way I see it, the player should discuss this with the DM. The DM should then secretly roll every time the Warlock advances to the next level. The DC should somehow be tied against the player's now current level. I'm not to good with math, but if the DM is able to check against the player's level it could be considered that the God's have taken back their power.

Review for DanDWIki Magazine #4

Ok, most of this is just nitpicks and such, but I don't feel comfortable enough to make changes to an article this old without valid approval. All-in-all, if I didn't talk about it, I thought it was ok. Lets get to it shall we?

• Entry Requirements: I have an issue with this being "evil-only". What if the person is being turned caustic because their good behavior has finally put them out of favor enough that when they reached for that next level of power, it burned them inside and the world out. Maybe because the capstone turns them undead? The rest of the entry requirements seem ok to me for the time being.

• Table and Skills

Ok, table and text seem to match in terms of levels of abilities and such. Skill points are sitting at the standard (2+Int) for warlock and the class skills don't really add anything to support the lore (not a bad thing, just a thing), nor does the list detract from the idea of the prestige class itself.

• Class Features

• Caustic Blood: "At 1st level of this class the caustic's blood has provided the first signs of his transformation. Whenever the caustic is struck by piercing or slashing weapon, that weapon takes acid damage equal to his caustic level, as the acid from his blood dissolves the material. If the damage is dealt from a natural weapon, the acid damage is instead dealt to the attacker. Every level of caustic an increases the caustic's Acid Resistance by 2."

• Infernal Acid: "When the caustic deals acid damage to a creature with Acid Resistance, he ignore an amount of Acid Resistance equal to twice his caustic level." Take it or leave it, I may just be being petty with wording. All in all, I understood what this feature wanted to accomplish.

• Acidic Embellishment: Ok, so normally being able to tack on MOAR damage with dice that normally scale at 1/2 level (or 1/3 since the warlock is past level 10) is seen as not ok. But grand scheme, this doesn't even tip the Warlock towards being a top tier blaster. And that is just fine. The specification at the end felt sorta redundant, but I get why it might be needed. Overall a neat mechanic for an invocation that was already a gem, so the "recharge" dice makes sense.

• Burning Body/Soul

Whew, that is a heck of a list of immunities. For the price of 4 constitution (potential 30 HP drop overall for level 15), you gain 13 different types of immunity. Many of which can be Fort-or-Die.

Also I did notice that this whole prestige class is designed to allow the PC to still dive into Hellfire Warlock, but the double tap to Constitution definitely makes it a much more dangerous game. That is until there reach 7th level and become undead, stripping away their Con score and allowing them to rip away at their Cha for Hellfire Warlock instead. The 7 level seems intentional to ensure that Warlock 10/ Caustic 7/ Hellfire 3 can be done pre-epic. Not that I'm super upset about that, just making sure that people (including myself, so please correct me when wrong) understand what could happen. Anyhoo, overall the class seems to accomplish it's goal of making a neat Acid themed prestige class for a class that was severely lacking in reasonable content. Also props for not including a feature to bypass immunity to acid (the Achilles of the class if you will). I would like to potentially see the "Caustics in the Game" section more complete, but I guess I can see about drawing one up. My 3.5ese is a tad rusty, but not completely busted yet. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gr7mm Bobb (talk • contribs) 02:46, 19 January 2017‎. Please sign your posts.

Fixed some formatting on your comment because it bothered me. Sorry for the intrusion.

The changes you suggested look good. Burning Body/Soul is strong, but it makes sense as is. Go ahead an make any other changes you feel like. If you check the history, I already did some fiddling of wording. You don't need approval to edit home-brew unless the author has something explicitly requesting that it be left alone. I, personally, just have my pages watched and then play goaltender for any edits that come through. --Salasay Δ 22:12, 18 January 2017 (MST)

Balance Concerns

While I'll leave the wording and grammar concerns to others, I've been looking over the item from the technical side and have been preparing an SGT for the class from a number of levels. I won't be editing the class for balance as I personally don't think this should be a prestige class; If you want to represent a creature slowly burning away into some kind of acid undead of doom, that is what templates are for.

Here is what I know and have worked out in my preparation for the SGT:

• The earliest point of entry is level 9; Most of the requirements aren't very hard to meet with OGL resources, and Fiendish Resilience is the only real gatekeeper because it is only available (in OGL) within the Warlock class at Level 8, which makes the invocations requirement and the alignment requirement redundant.
• Using 28 point buy, a True Neutral Lesser Aasimar can achieve something akin to 8 STR, 14 DEX, 16 CON, 10 INT, 10 WIS, and 20 CHA, before entering this class, including ability score adjustments for levels. This means they have an average of 31 hitpoints (Max 51) before entering the class. They can have more if they dedicate more points to Constitution.
• None of the penalties this class imposes are permanent; All losses are eventually recouped when you reach the capstone level, but no benefits are lost.
• A significant portion of these class features are redundant or unnecessary.
• This class encourages you to dump constitution in character generation, but doesn't consider what happens if your character has negative HP due to the class features.

I'll go through the SGT gauntlet later, but for now, I do have some concerns about balance that I think are sturdy enough without the backing of an SGT, as well as some concerns about the way the class is presented, such as redundant information and features.

• Spellcasting: We all hate losing casting progression, but with this many features, something has to drop out. It is either full caster with some neat features, or partial caster with a lot of them.

• Caustic Blood: 1-7 acid damage corrodes swords and spears entirely in a handful of attacks at first, but soon becomes instantly/nigh-instantly; every manufactured weapon will be required to be magical to avoid this, and even then, the weapons do get any save against this effect, because, and this will be on the test because it shows up a few times in this class: Acid ignores hardness. This is equivalent to a constant spell/power. I highly recommend a save against this, along with some other kind of limitation, if not removing it entirely.

• Infernal Acid: This utilizes an unorthodox mechanic, but that's the least of it; This feature is made completely redundant by Superacid, at level 5.

• Vitriolic Blast: The class is a full-casting prestige class, that for some reason, gives a gigantic amount of features, including a bonus invocation for the highly sought "Vitriolic Blast". Vitriolic Blast ignores spell resistance, which is the biggest reason it is so coveted, but it also does a large amount of damage. Most ranged warlocks, and even glaivelocks will probably already have this; The class feature doesn't acknowledge it (it doesn't give a choice for a different invocation if you already have it), and honestly, it shouldn't. I'd say this should be a requirement for the class, if at all.

• Acidic Embellishment: Gain either 3-6 HP per Eldritch Blast, or do 1-3 extra dice of damage per round for 'MATH' number of rounds. These mechanics are silly and cumbersome on their respective ends.

• Burning Body: Lose 11-20 hitpoints depending on entry level, gains immunites to poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects. Not all that much when you consider that undead get this normally, but it is telling that this is also the equivalent of a handful of races and individual class features, normally. This feature is also nullified and made redundant by Fortitudinous Presence and Burning Betrayal.

• Thinning Skin: Boosts Caustic Blood by making it affect all basic damage types and weapons thereof, and expands it by making all attackers take damage, with natural weapons users taking extra damage now. This is kind of an unnecessary feature - it should be wrapped into caustic blood, since it introduces almost nothing new by itself.

• Dissolving Grasp: This instantly destroys almost any small item. Very few non-magical, mundane fine items have HP values more than 50, and again, acid bypasses hardness. Also, this turns touch attacks and disarm attempts into sundering, which is a problem in three ways: 1)Acid bypasses hardness, 2) Why attempt to disarm when you can touch attack, and 3)touch attacks don't provoke attacks of opportunity, which bypasses at least one of the main deterrents of sundering and makes improved sunder less significant. This is equivalent to a feat and then some.

• Burning Soul: Lose another 13-20 hitpoints, which by this point has potentially killed the player character (no restriction or note about that possibility, by the by), but gain the rest of the Undead immunities, except for immunity to CON damage. This feature is also nullified and made redundant by Fortitudinous Presence and Burning Betrayal.

• Vitriolic Eruption: Enables both effects of Acidic Embellishment. This is an unnecessary feature - it should be wrapped into acidic embellishment, since it introduces nothing new by itself.

• Fortitudinous Presence: You get all of those health points back, and also don't care about your awful constitution anymore. Furthermore, you get your vastly superior CHA key stat to fill in the blanks, making you not only an undead with all the benefits and detriments that this brings due to Burning Betrayal, but you're an even stronger undead than most undead are! Partially nullifies Burning Body and Burning Soul, and then decides that isn't enough and tosses your HP through the roof.

• Burning Betrayal: You're already mostly an undead in the way that most people care about, at this point, but lets go ahead and just officially cross that line. On top of now getting HP from Charisma, you also get to re-roll your HP with d12 dice. ALL OF THEM. Even the ones from other classes. This also makes Burning Soul and Burning Body redundant, with their trade-offs already nullified by both this and Fortitudinous Presence. The only thing that doesn't seem all-around better about this is that you now have a weakness to turning (not smiting, though, because you're undead, not necessarily evil.)

As you can see, I have a concern with just about everything about this class. I'm not even sure if I need the SGT, at this point. --Jwguy (talk) 15:58, 23 January 2017 (MST)