Talk:Jack of Spades (3.5e Class)

Rating

Power - 3.5/5 I give this class a 3.5 out of 5 because there seems to be no combat abilities inherent in this class. Skills and feats are meant to improve a class' combat or other abilities, and putting these as the character's main focus ruins any combat skill, an unavoidable part of the game.

Wording - 4.5/5 I give this class a 4.5 out of 5 because I found nothing wrong with my understanding of the class, but did not see any outstanding wording.

Formatting - 4/5 I give this class a 4 out of 5 because this page is tagged as not fitting the standards and formatting of DnD, I did not personally notice any egregious errors, but the page did seem rather loose as I read through it.

Flavor - 5/5 I give this class a 5 out of 5 because flavor is all this class has going for it, but it does seem pungent. I personally enjoy playing rogues, so this idea was new and welcome to me, but it does look like an unbalanced rogue (though that flaw is reflected in my power rating, not here). This class seems like it came about from two friends talking about DnD abominations, and this was jokingly suggested by one, and taken seriously by the other. Flavorful, sure, but not something I'd want to invest time into.

Thank you for your rating, but I'd like to explain this class through a misguided desire to protect my work. The class is made to be the designated, unadultered, and indesputable group expert. As such, it may function just fine in a combat situation, sometimes exceedingly well if you focus on combat-related skills, but primarily this is for player who would like to simply survive combat but be the character who is absolutely necessary in covert infiltrations or peaceful negotiations. This class, though weak combatatively, has a particular power in most other cases should the player so choose. Therefore, I would like to contest your power rating in that it is based on the class's combat prowess rather than overall player viability. I know this may seem ridiculous, but I'd rather it be a 4 out of 5. If you have a suggestion for this class, I'd love to know it so that I might consider it and perhaps look at my own creation a little differently. Thank you for your rating once again and for your time. -Valentine the Rogue 18:07, 10 May 2008 (MDT)

Hm

I like it. In fact if I were giving a rating I would give it a 4.5 or 5 on everything done. But I do have a single issue. The Botany, Cripple Undead, and Tinker abilities are off only because those three types are all immune to critical hits. So when you say that if the target is naturally immune to critical hits the target doesn't take the sneak attack damage, you simply say that the special ability is a waste because from the lowliest zombie to the most powerful vampire all undead are naturally immune to criticals. The best way to reword it would be to say "unless the undead is immune to critical hits for another reason, such as the base creature is immune to critical hits, or the creature is wearing fortification armor."

This is still in my top 10 of Homebrew Classes. --Janwulf 15:59, 26 August 2008 (MDT)

Thank you for pointing tha out. I've no idea what I was thinking as I wrote that. Allow me to rectify it. --Valentine the Rogue 16:14, 26 August 2008 (MDT)

Problematic

This class is basically a 1-level dip. Levels 2-20 might as well not exist because they are bad. Rogue just does it better. Yeah Jack of Spades has "more skills" and that would be impressive if skills actually did anything level-appropriate -- which they do not. So you take the 1-level dip if your build needs Wisdom instead of Intelligence and also a lot of skills for some reason (random gestalts are the only thing that come to mind -- I've used it there for that purpose). And since the Jack of Spades doesn't do anything else that can be considered level appropriate, you proceed to ignore it for the next 19 levels of the game.

So basically it needs to do something level-appropriate that isn't skills. So cut down on the skill points to 8 + int/wis and give us a reason to care about it past level 1. Surgo 01:36, 29 May 2009 (MDT)