Talk:Intercessor (3.5e Class)

Issues to Resolve

• Divine intervention is confusing as written. Rewrite.
• How to account for spells outside of combat?

--Dmilewski 12:03, 9 October 2007 (MDT)

Commentary

I think that all paladin rewrites miss the elephant. Paladins are a deity's agent, and that lends itself to some interesting class possibilities. This is my vision of a deity's agent.

• Changes the "all or nothing" nature of the paladin into a "three strikes" rule.
• There are firmer rules for removing strikes against you. Removed the need for the Atonement spell (a pay-to-play mechanic, and rather awkward at that) and replaced it with a mechanism that feels holier. "Pray and meditate" seems holier than "pay to play."
• Instead of having no abilities in common with the deity, the spells and abilities are directly tied to the deity.
• Introduced moral relativism and outcome based ethics. For this class, the ends do justify the means, as the ends are entirely determined by the god that you follow.
• Removed of the chivalry ethic from the class. A poorly defined chivalric code with a poorly defined good code was a recipe for argument and misunderstanding.
• I put up a bigger firewall between the behavior of the class and the behavior of the party. The intercessor's ethic is not external to his companions. It is up to him to influence his companions, but he is not penalized should his party choose a contrary course of action. This can lead to abuse, but the reverse also lead to abuse.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dmilewski (talk • contribs) 08:26, 27 October 2006 (MST). Please sign your posts.

The negative levels approach is not a bad mechanic. You should put this under variant rules as an alternative to the loss of abilities for acting against alignment or deity. As a result, this could potentially affect other class abilities, not just the divine ones, since negative levels are indiscriminate to classes.

With regards to gaining absolution from a higher power, it's good to keep in mind that the atonement approach doesn't have to be a simple "receive a spell and all is forgiven" (and I've met few DMs that play it that way). There's all kinds of tasks that the absolving NPC priest could require in return (which could be fasting and praying for a few days). And if the atonement requires the priest to lose XP, too (which is the real kicker), the PC might never find a priest anyone willing to make such a sacrifice. The rules leave it to the DM to determine what hoops her PCs have to jump through to gain absolution, and if the abilities should be different among the (un)holy warriors of gods, why should their means to absolution be the same?

As far as paladin class features, I agree they should have something in common with the interests and abilities of a paladin's god. A god shouldn't have paladin followers just because the god's alignment is LG, LN, or NG. It would be like a N god without any interests in nature having druid followers. It is important to note, however, that the core rules do not require divine classes to have a patron deity (with the possible exception of clerics). Characters may adhere to ideals instead.

"Ends justify the means": The problem with this approach is that it implies the gods would allow sinful acts from their followers just to promote their goals and aims. With the neutral and chaotic gods, such might be the case, maybe even the LE gods, but the LG and LN deities would be far less likely to allow such a thing. Though I could see a situation where if the follower of a LG god had to make a choice between committing a chaotic act versus an evil act, the god might grant leniency. And it's hard to see gods tolerating their (un)holy champions willing associate themselves with others that continue to offend the god's aims and goals.

Lastly, argument and misunderstanding are the staple of interpreting alignments and behavior. Unless the DM refuses enforce alignment restrictions, there's always potential for points of contention. The only other way to avoid it is to take levels in classes with neither alignment nor behavioral restrictions. —Sledged 21:54, 18 December 2006 (MST)

Contradictions

"Few can deny the genuine zeal of an intercessor. They truly believe in their mission. Whatever it is they stand for they stand for it whole-heartedly. That zeal does not mean that they are uncompromisingly blind or foolish. Zealotry is a thing to be avoided."

They're zealots but not zealots? --Xenophon 08:01, 8 November 2006 (MST)

I would say this needs a re-wording... Would you like to do this? --Green Dragon 16:09, 8 November 2006 (MST)

Done. I felt using "passion" was appropriate of the nature of this class and I varied the word usage by using intensity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Xenophon (talk • contribs) 23:17, 8 November 2006 (MST). Please sign your posts.

There is no contradiction. Having "zeal" is different from "being a zealot". In the same way, "being a patient" is not the same as "having patience". The words are similar but have very different meanings. The author of the piece (me) heartily shakes his head in dismay at this. That aside, I am not happy with the my flavor text and will be doing another rewrite. --Dmilewski 11:29, 9 November 2006 (MST)

The problem is the text book definition is someone full of zeal. It's just simply a bad choice of words and sounds contradictory. It's much easier and clearer to use a positive word that isn't the root of the word in the next sentence about something negative. --Xenophon 12:55, 9 November 2006 (MST)

Ex, Su, or Sp

The class features need to be labeled as Ex, Su, or Sp where applicable. —Sledged 15:50, 18 December 2006 (MST)

Alignment

Despite the alignment restriction, I don't really see anything about this class that says "good only" (though the "Free Will of Others" class feature kind of says "chaotic-inclined"). It could easily fit the champion of an evil god. —Sledged 16:23, 18 December 2006 (MST)

Changed to "within one step of a good god's alignment." It could fit the champion of an evil god, but that's not what I chose to designed. --Dmilewski 17:12, 18 December 2006 (MST)

Negative Levels and Questions

It says Intercessors may remove negative levels from other sources. The problem is that it takes a day of prayer and fasting to remove each negative level. Negative levels from energy drains only last for 24 hours. So when the character finishes his first day of penance, all the negative levels from energy drain will have already been removed.

The only other sources of negative levels (that I can find) is from holding an item with a conflicting alignment. And the negative level "remains as long as the item is in hand and cannot be overcome in any way (including restoration spells)."

Questions:

• Are there any multiclass associations with the Evil, Death, and Darkness domains?
• Do heroism and intercession interact with domain abilities, and domain spells from levels of cleric, or just those associated with the levels in intercessor? (I recommend limiting them to just intercessor-associated domains.)
• Can evil intercessors still use intercessions to produce conjuration (healing) effects?

—Sledged 12:10, 19 December 2006 (MST)

Thanks for the refresher on negative levels. I may have had old rules stuck in my head. It will be easiest to just clip that ability.

• There are no associations with the Evil, Death, and Darkness domains.
• Intercessions only come from the associated domain spell lists. As written, Heroism affects domain granted abilities and spells derived from domain special abilities. It does not affect bonus domain spells or divine spells in general.
• Intercessors can not be evil.

--Dmilewski 12:41, 19 December 2006 (MST)

All alignments now allowed

I thought about this for a long time. Sledged won me over. The intercessor is now alignment-neutral. --Dmilewski 05:56, 18 May 2007 (MDT)

Removal of Planar Ally

I removed Planar Ally from the spell list.

I have been designing an 11th level Intercessor for a playtest. (I'm hoping that I actually get a chance to play it.) Along with that, I had started developing a cool set of rules for the Planar Ally. Rather than have it be something random, it would be something specific, well known, and develop with the character. Eventually, I reached the point where the importance and impact of that planar ally was too big. There were to many ways to game the ally. The ally was so good that choosing the ally became the clear, best tactic. That was a bad problem. More importantly, the ally took my attention away from the character development process. The ally focused me on the wrong things about the character.

The Intercessor is about the relationship with his god, and the world at large. The intercessor is about supporting his god's agenda. If the god had wanted to send another of his servants to do this job, he would have done that. Instead, he sent his intercessor, and he expects his intercessor to overcome the problems that he faces on his own.

I removed planar ally because it was bad for class.

--Dmilewski 18:41, 18 May 2007 (MDT)

Removed Contrition

I just did another revamp of the class. In general, I greatly simplified it. 'Contrition was an interesting mechanism, but no longer fit the looser conception of the class. I added a few more uses of divine intervention. With those new uses, I want to add more divine interventions per day. That confounds the spell aspect of the class. I'll be thinking about how best to solve that dilemma. All in all, it should be a much easier and fun class to play. In whatever direction I go, I want the domain choice of the character to be the single most influental part of making this character. --Dmilewski 15:13, 1 August 2007 (MDT)

Changed Divine Intervetion

Giving more divine interventions tends to build up the character high-level abilities. Yet, it did not give the character the same feel.

• The character now gains divine interventions per encounter similar to Tome of Battle. The game will now see far more interventions.
• Any spell can only be used once per day. This keeps a player from always using the same thing.
• DC for a divine intervention uses the character's Divine Intervention Level + Strength to determine the DC of the effect. More spells will now be appropriate as the character advances in level. MAD is slightly reduced.--Dmilewski 09:04, 22 September 2007 (MDT)

The changes to divine intervention made the fighter feats redundant. I removed the fighter feats.--Dmilewski 11:51, 9 October 2007 (MDT)