Talk:Lorechaser (3.5e Class)

Theoretical Class

This little attempt of mine explores the idea of Rogue replacement without being a Rogue. What does it take to fill that niche, and what is unique about it? The support part of this class is fairly solid. The character can easily step into the rogue's shoes without being better than a rogue, and do things that no rogue can do. Where the class differs greatly is in combat support. The class is fair in combat, but does not gain the stacking sneak attack of Rogue. When I look at all the nifty things that this class gets, I don't believe that any of it surpasses a rogue's sneak attack ability. In a combat-heavy game, the loss of a combat ability is actually a huge loss to a class.

In addition, I had a bit of fun playing with luck, charisma, and divination spells. These are all fairly unexplored areas of D20. I also had fun exploring ways to make combat interesting without resorting to an "arm's race."

--Dmilewski 09:35, 11 March 2006 (MST)

I changed "Defensive Roll" to "Nine Live". Defensive roll was only useful once per day, and then you needed to save. The worse the damage, the more unlikely that your ability would help. That's bad. Instead, it now directly reduces damage taken. A 1/day defensive ability should be guaranteed to work.--Dmilewski 06:31, 20 February 2008 (MST)

Interesting.

It appears that you are invoking the ancient "hero" archetype, the true "jack of all trades, master of none". I think it could do with a little beefing up, possibly by boosting the HD by one die size, but this is just my opinion. I like my heroes to be, well, "heroic".

Heroizing

I bumped up Luck a little. It now progresses from +1 to +4. It now applies to both Initiative and Saves. I combined the second half of Luck into Lucky Star. I bumped Luck up a few levels. I wanted this ability to cost a little more than a quick dip. It now costs +1.5d6 sneak attack die or 1.5 spell levels to gain this ability. (That's a big hit for those classes). I dropped Inspired Strike down a notch as I want Bards dipping into this class for that ability.

I dropped Lucky Star down many levels. It is now the centerpiece of this class's combat contribution: add and remove randomness. I nudged down Tenser's Tranformation and Improved Lucky Star.

I twiddled a bit. There's now an ability to let the Lorechaster take 20 with a luck reroll attempt and a normal skill use.

Forcing rerolls, either good or bad, is now the center of the Lorechaser's power. Do not underestimate the power of manipulating die rolls. The DM says "It's a possible crit" and the lorechaser says "reroll that crit attack roll." If the creature makes a critical save, you can force a reroll. Likewise, imagine the lorechaser blowing a Disable Device roll but getting out of his mistake unharmed. There's power.

--Dmilewski 09:35, 14 March 2006 (MST)

I'd recommend making lucky star an immediate action instead of an free action usable anytime. At high levels it could get a bit out of hand. Also, does the lorechaser get to choose the more favorable of the two results, or is she stuck with the second roll regardless of whether it's better or worse? —Sledged 13:28, 7 December 2006 (MST)

It's a free action on purpose. Its use could get out of hand, but likely won't. Look at the number of rolls in combat, and you'll see find that 15-20 uses of luck burns out VERY quickly. (In our last game, the first round had six saves. One round had about fourteen attack rolls, ten damage rolls, and a few spell rolls. That was 24 rolls in a single round.) The luck power should otherwise work as a luckstone. Honestly, it never struck me that you would want to choose the better of the rolls, as you wouldn't be rerolling if you didn't need a better roll. I can clarify that bit. --Dmilewski 07:02, 8 December 2006 (MST)

Hells yeah.

The title is self-explanitory. Great job dude, I like what you've done with your class. I hope to see more stuff like this soon! BTW, I hate to promote myself, but if you haven't looked at and critiqued my Windblade (DnD Class) class or my Magna Blade (DnD Prestige Class) PrC, I highly suggust you do so. Not only are they fairly ok in concept, but I could use some objective criticism on both.

Lord_Canius

Basic Playtesting

I tested this class out in one of the Level 10 solo challenges. I found a few places where the class broke. Most importantly, the class could manipulate the the outcome of randomized items a little to well, so I capped the uses per day on those items on ONCE per day. I also removed the ability to use this on artifacts. In challenge, that all worked rather well. The class, with good thought and a little corner-casing, can do some neat stuff. The class still needs an in-game playtest. --Dmilewski 09:13, 27 October 2006 (MDT)

Spellcasting Questions

On what stat are the save DCs based?

Is this a spellcasting class or a faux-spellcasting one like the Shadowcaster in the Tome of Magic? May characters use PrCs that increase pre-existing spellcasting ability to improved the lore-using abilities? —Sledged 08:46, 2 December 2006 (MST)

Good catch. Charisma. I updated the entry. --Dmilewski 12:36, 6 December 2006 (MST)

This strikes me as faux spellcasting. Spells are gained as special abilities, and so would not be gained from prestige classes. I'll make a note. --Dmilewski 21:03, 7 December 2006 (MST)

You have spellcasting classes (druid, wizard, bard, etc...), and you have faux-spellcasting classes (warlock, shadowcaster, psion, etc...). They're like spellcasters, but they use seperate (though similar) mechanics. One thing the faux-spellcasters all have in common is that none of their abilities are ever referred to as "spells." They're either invocations, powers, mysteries, or the like. "Lores" and "spells" are used interchangeably in the write-up, implicitly stating that lores are spells.

You could possibly use a term to further differentiate it like "lore-casting," "lore-using," lore-calling," "lore-requesting," "lore-slinging," "loring," "lore-summoning," "river-dancing," "lore-soliciting," or "lore-conjuring." Another common element faux-spellcasting classes is that the use of the abilities are not referred to as "spellcasting." They're either "manifesting," "invocation-using" ("invoking?"), "shadowcasting," or something else other than "spellcasting." The write-up says "A Lore is a style of spellcasting" when it should say "using a lore..." (or synonymous term of choice) "... is like spellcasting."

Once you have an independent mechanic (or rather terminology), you don't need to specify its interaction (or lack thereof) with PrCs that build on existing spellcasting abilities. —Sledged 14:17, 8 December 2006 (MST)

I vote for calling it "river-dancing" ==Alabastor 08:17, 20 April 2007 (MDT)

Rating - 5/10

i give it this because while it would make a good secondary combatant, most of its skills are combat oriented. i compare this to the Loremaster. If this class is truly as the description of it implies, than it should have more abilities to aquire information, rather than luck bonuses to abilities. ==Alabastor 08:15, 20 April 2007 (MDT)

I think Lorechaser was meant to be an "Indiana Jones" sort of character. Not the bookish sort of Loremaster type character. --Aarnott 08:18, 20 April 2007 (MDT)

I got that impression too, but the description and the table dont really match in abilities, of course, i might be the only one who thinks so. ==Alabastor 08:34, 20 April 2007 (MDT)

I feel that skills adequately cover most information gathering. I believe that the ability to re-roll Gather Information or Knowledge rolls is quite a powerful ability that no other class gets. At later levels, the lorechaser can re-roll Knowledge checks until he succeeds!!! What other class can blow ten re-rolls to remember that one piece of information that the party needs? Aside from that, he's an action-adventure hero. If you go read those pulp detective novels, the detective always winds up is some kind of fight. His ability to weasel out of dying is just as important as his ability to dig out information. Finally, a class without combat abilities is mostly useless in a combat oriented game.--Dmilewski 13:53, 22 April 2007 (MDT)

ok, i got it. except for the combat part. you can take a wiz/sor, give him all abjurations/protection/buff spells, and he'll be pritty important to the party. but wait...the lucky star ability applies to any dice roll, not just knowledge and gather info checks. and when you are the secondary combatan, i would think your using it more for those attack rolls rather than skill checks (although when you DO need info, it will be used for those checks)==Alabastor 07:21, 23 April 2007 (MDT)

You can also use lucky star for defense. If the opponent targets your fighter and he misses a save, then the lucky star ability can help the fighter. If your fighter takes a critical, you can force the attacker to reroll. If your fighter has a large threat range, lucky star can help him roll more often to get more criticals. It's one of those abilities that is meant to synergize with the party. --Dmilewski 21:07, 23 April 2007 (MDT)

Thoughts -- Rating Pending a Playtest

I thought I'd give some ideas/observations before I playtest this.

• Incredible luck and improved luck seem to overlap.
• The lores seem fine.
• Same saves, skills, attack bonus as a rogue.
• Lucky star is not busted (it is fair)
• Inspired X is good -- keeps the support role up (since there is no sneak attack)
• Improved Luck and Incredible luck seem broken -- getting a 20 automatically seems too good -- only gods get to do that!

I think this class is better than the rogue. I again will have to playtest though. An idea I saw that goes munchkin is using a good kill/disabling wand/staff and using UMD and rerolling the opponents saves to kill fast. --Aarnott 21:48, 23 April 2007 (MDT)

Thanks for playtesting it. A few observations on my design:

• Improved Luck is a poor-man's maximize. It does NOT apply to d20 rolls.
• Incredible Luck only applies to skill rolls. (In essence, it gives you a one round take-20.)

I don't believe that the class is better than rogue as the rogue is simply the better battle-to-battle damage dealer. Sneak Attack damage is just that good.

That much said, I would like to see how your playtest works. It will be interesting to see how the class plays out for you. If you find problems and work out fair solutions to the class, please help me make the class better.--Dmilewski 08:16, 24 April 2007 (MDT)

I must have misunderstood Improved Luck and Incredible Luck. Thanks for the clarification. Incredible luck is still iffy, but I will have to playtest to really see (I am just comparing to Skill Mastery, which is really good on its own right).

Off topic -- I've always considered wands some of the most busted things D&D has, so loss of sneak attack may not be huge. I was very surprised to see a feat in the DMII that allows any class to get UMD as a class skill (Apprentice feat). It's really stupid...

Back on topic -- As far as I can see though, this base class is probably the best at public relations. Being able to re-roll a bad bluff seems good. I'm not sure how this would work with the group I DM for as well. They really metagame and I constantly have to remind them not to, and one of my solutions has been to roll certain saves and checks for them just so that they don't metagame when they are ambushed and such. --Aarnott 09:20, 24 April 2007 (MDT)

Lore Question

The Lores are a little confusing. "Each lore enables you to perform one lore from the appropriate list, once per day. You may use spells from the Lore 0 list three times per day." What exactly does this mean? Is there a Lores Known list (1 of each lore level) or just 1 lore use per day? I assumed the former. Like I was thinking when you gain Lore X you gain a spell like ability of a spell in the lore X category 1/day. I think the ruling is ambiguous a little. --Aarnott 13:03, 25 April 2007 (MDT)

For example: You get a 5th level spell. You can cast a 5th level spell with that, or any spell below 5th. That's pretty much the same as a sorcerer.--Dmilewski 13:18, 25 April 2007 (MDT)

How many spells known do you have? Do you learn 1 per spell level? --Aarnott 14:08, 25 April 2007 (MDT)

Yes. You only get one per spell level. --Dmilewski 20:55, 25 April 2007 (MDT)

Deathwatch

It is a lore, but good Lorechasers can cast it? Does it still have the evil descriptor (ie. is it an evil act to cast it)? --Aarnott 13:20, 15 August 2007 (MDT)

I leave that the the DM to ultimately decide.

Unlike clerics, good lorechasers are not restricted from casting [evil] spells.

In my imagination, deathwatch has no purpose being an evil spell. The only reason to make it an evil spell is to make characters avoid this spell, and thus keep the mystery in the fight. From a gameplay standpoint, if you don't want players knowing the hit points of the monsters, the DM can substitute another appropriate spell. --Dmilewski 20:18, 15 August 2007 (MDT)

Rating - 17/20

Power - 5/5 I give this class a 5/5 because it is well balanced and offers great versatility without being overpowered.

Wording - 5/5 I give this class a 5/5 because Dmilewski is excellent at being clear and concise with his wording. This is no exception.

Formatting - 5/5 I give this class a 5/5 because it is a model class as far as tables, linking, and emphasis.

Formatting - 3/5 I give this class a 3/5 because it should be put through the preload again. I agree with GD. Otherwise this class is very close to a FA.

Flavor - 4/5 I give this class a 4/5 because It is almost there with descriptions and definitely has a place, but lacks some extra "fluff" material (empty sections).

--Aarnott 17:49, 19 February 2008 (MST)

Rating

Formatting - 4/5: I give this a 4/5 on formatting because it uses a old table instead of the standard new table (see preload for example). --Green Dragon 12:29, 20 February 2008 (MST)

Formatting - 3/5: I change my rating to a 3 out of 5 on formatting because this really does not use the standard formatting for all base classes as defined by the preload. It uses it's own unique formatting. To improve this I would recommend putting it through the preload once again. --Green Dragon 15:05, 28 February 2008 (MST)

Redid the formatting to match the standards. I still need to fill a few things in.--Dmilewski 11:02, 22 April 2008 (MDT)

Changes

• I simplified the spellcasting. The lore system was flavorful, but caused too much confusion.
• I recreated all the formatting to match the wiki.
• I remove "chaotic" from the class requiremenets.
• I focused the class further towards the investigator archetype.
• Filled in fluff.
• Increased hit die to d8. They are far more likely to spend more time in combat than a rogue, who can dash in, sneak attack, and withdraw.

--Dmilewski 11:07, 22 April 2008 (MDT)