Talk:Pyroblade (3.5e Class)

Intro

This is my first attempt at making a class, so if it is horrible, I will in no way feel terribly offended if you tell me so. I am also a relatively new player to d&d, so I would be surprised, although very pleased, if it turned out to be a good class.

I made this class somewhat in response to the fact that all of the fire-wielding classes I have seen in the d&d universe (pyrokineticist, pyromancer, fire bender) all require the character to be chaotic. The only one I have seen where the character can be something other than chaotic is the homebrew flameweaver, but that class is far from complete. I like to break such stereotypes, so here is a fire wielder who cannot be chaotic, and it makes sense for him. It makes sense that to control a chaotic element, you would need to be extremely controlled yourself. If a chaotic character wants to wield fire, they already have an option. So I am giving a fire wielding option to the lawful and neutral characters out there. And the idea of using a power to increase weapon damage is fun.

Help

I always love feedback, even if you just say it is crap (but please say why). I also need more ideas for cool fire powers for the higher level powers. The pyroblade seems to be a fairly flexible class even with the small amount of powers I have already given him. But the more the merrier. Some powers may end up to be overpowered, and some may just be laughably week. That is why I am submitting this class. This is not so much me saying that it is a good class to play, but I just want to get it out there in order to get other people's opinions. And I need help with epic levels, because I have never played an epic character, and don't really know how they work.-- Dragonfire (Class Creator) July 13 2010

for what its worth WoTc went out of its way to not make full manifesting, full BAB base classes. even getting up to 6th level powers normally gives no higher thasn 3/4 bab and this gets 9th level powers and a full bab. thats too much IMHO. it should probably have the same bab and powers as a psywarrior--Name Violation 22:15, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I did try to use the psychic warrior as an example class. The BAB is only slightly higher, 17 instead of 15 at the top, and the maximum power points is slightly lower, 100 at lvl 20 instead of 127. I am not sure what real difference it would make to change to only 6th lvl spells instead of 9th lvl, because the 7th, 8th, and 9th lvl spells I have so far could easily be reduced in power slightly and made 6th, they are not extremely powerful. Another thing is I did reduce the amount of powers known, but I may need to do so more. -- Dragonfire July 13 2010

you need to use standard BAB progressions. there is no 17 bab at 20, its either 15, 20, or 10. if you want them to hit better give a class ability of a +# to hit (maybe even +1 per 4 levels while psionically focused or something)--Name Violation 02:41, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Done, thanks. -- Dragonfire 4:02, 14 July 2010

I have another question. How am I supposed to make a starting package and example NPC? -- Dragonfire July 14 2010

look at another class that has one filled out and copy the code, then adjust what you need to and paste it on the class. the esample NPC is just that. make a sample character --Name Violation 21:40, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

If you're still looking for help with class features, I have some questions. First, "summon weapon" hides a weapon. Is that weapon held in some extrademinsonal space? If a guard is frisking you before you speak with the king, can he find your hidden longsword? That has huge power implications. Another question I have is "Flaming Weapon". It doesn't stack with the flaming enchantment, how about with flaming burst? Does it stack with other enchantments, like frost? --Badger 18:32, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess I should have been more clear on that. The hidden weapon is not physically present on the body. So, yes, it would be in some other dimension. This gives him certain advantages similar to those of the soulknife, in that he can get weapons past security. But any security guarding a king would almost certainly know that a pyroblade can do this, and would be on guard from unarmed magical attacks anyway, so even with this ability it would be extremely hard to assassinate the king. If you are powerful enough to do that, then I am guessing that a security checkpoint is the least of your worries. But it would be useful for many other things as well (e.g. if you get captured, they can't take away your weapon).

Flaming weapon is supposed to stack with other enchantments, but I doubt it would stack with frost, due to the incompatibility of fire and ice.

Powers

You do not say what type of magic powers use. From the description it would be divine magic, or if you are going for something slightly diferent you can reword it a bit so that it is arcane magic. For game mechanics concerning how this class interects with items, other class abilities, spells, etc. it must use one of the core types of magic.

Isn't that only for spells, not powers? --Dragonfire July 15, 2010

as far as i know. never hear of divine or arcane psionics --Name Violation 17:39, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Even though metagame I don't like to think of the pyroblade as a psionic class, in game for all intents and purposes, I think it best to treat it as one. -- Dragonfire 12:48, July 17, 2010

Overall Power

So how do you all think this classes power distribution is? I have tried to be careful not to over power him, but I am not a good judge of that. I have put him through a couple sample encounters, and he seems to do all right. But I have not been able to play test him or try a dungeon crawl, both of which would be necessary to get a completely accurate assessment. I am also only good at/had major experience playing a rogue, so the pyroblade absolutely destroying a barbarian in my 1v1 match may be simply my incompetence and not any sign that he is op. Enough of me rambling, what do you think? --Dragonfire January 20, 2011

honestly... it looks to be really on the weak side. Its a psy-war with energy resist instead of feats, less powers to choose from, and not much in the way of making up for the loss (a free bastard sword prof and some skills? That's it?). The class seems rather cornered into its role of trying to melee (I guess) while not being able to pull it off (trying to play this as a straight caster type is even worse). What are they supposed to do? They can barely melee, have low hp, low ac, and only get 6th level powers. what are they good at? It manages to do everything badly. It would take an extremely optimized build just to scrape by.

also, you should use normal save numbers (good starts at 2, ends at 12, bad starts at 0 ends at 6). The existing saves don't conform to standards. That needs to be fixed.

this class is a trap. the first time you fight anything immune to fire shuts down your whole gameplan. Maybe an ability to deal half damage to things immune to fire could help.

I suggest vastly expanding the learnable powers, giving better class abilities (energy resist and a burst weapon is really just saving a few gp, it sounds cool, but its crap), giving at least a d8 hd, and adding more armor profs. Drop the bastard prof. This is just an underpowered psywar Name Violation 04:51, 20 January 2011 (MST)

Even though he works for how I would choose to play him, I agree he could use some more things that enable him to branch out more. And he does need a few non fire skills, I definitely agree. Thanks for the input. He is not supposed to be either a strait caster or strait melee. I recognize that this class might be hard to play, but if done right I think it would be fairly powerful. I will make some changes.

If you don't think he works well as a melee character, I would think you could easily build him to be a ranged character (his powers are intended to work with a bow as well, he could still use a free hand when not drawing the bow). I enjoy characters with high dex bonus to ac instead of lots of armor, so building him similar to a rogue would work, just without the fun side skills.

I am also thinking of completely redoing the class so that the base class does not have the full 20 levels but samples all of the elements. Then the player would be required at some point to choose a prestige class based upon a single element. This is somewhat breaking standards, but I am of the opinion that that shouldn't matter as long as he is balanced and fun to play.

Maximum Power points

First off, I would like to say that I like this class. It seems interesting.

But I have several points I would like to discus. Though these are more about the words you used and not so much as to numbers and values used, because I am not a good balancer.

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When you say "Maximum" power points, does this mean that he cannot go over his "maximum" when you add his racial bonus, item bonus, feat bonus and intelligence bonus? Or is that just a base number to add his other bonuses to? It is a bit confusing, and some assholes will use that one word to cockblock our fun in a game. And also "a few" and "several" are not actual numbers to go about. I recognize that as a DM I would choose how many of each qualify for the multiplier and how close they need to be the character, but a statement like: "The sources of the flame need to be within close range (20+5ft/2CL) to provide a bonus", "There must be as much as (digit based on CL) torches, fires and etc. to get the bonus multiplier."

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Starting fires is easy, but keeping them running for 2-3 hours is the difficult bit. So who keeps the fires active through this time? I would over-rule that the character doesn't need to keep his eyes closed and in fact staring into the fire, nurturing it, keeping it growing and blowing, is what recharges your mind and spirit. And based on the size of the flame that we are staring into, we get the different multiplier. Based on that you might even give the character a small moral bonus for a short amount of time after meditating.

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I would also give a small bonus when the only noise we hear is that of the flame. Imagine you are on a ship, and there is a giant thunderstorm, or the other crew members start a friendly brawl, or there are people screaming in pain, or you hear other distracting sounds, but when it is quiet and you also hear the fire burning, the sweat flick and flinck of the wood or coal, and you just listen to the mesmerizing sounds of fire, that is when your soul gets most recharged. - edited by Jokeboy 12.10.2017.

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Why not the opposite? He should be able to convert any other energy into fire. Else there is no point to have a "Pyro"blade. Change Energy: A Pyroblade of level 3 or greater can spend twice the normal power points to convert any attack that deals fire damage into any other type of energy. Again Jokeboy - 12.10.2017.