Vigilante and Liberator Feedback Thread

[Power Word, Haste]

A stacking +4 to either STR/DEX/CHA that turns to hours/level

I'm not sure how much Kenji wants to make this class similar to Blackguard, but Liberator having Aura of Glory as a spell-like ability similar to Blackguard's Bull's Strength which starts at turns/lvl and goes to hours/lvl in epics would go a long way in my opinion.

[Kroatius]

1) Double-check the weapon that is equipped. The Ki Strike 4/5 AB bonus should be appended onto the weapons rather than the character itself

KI Strike 4/5 applies to your weapons when and only when you wear Cloth not Light Armor.

[eddymakaveli]

A stacking +4 to either STR/DEX/CHA that turns to hours/level

I'm not sure how much Kenji wants to make this class similar to Blackguard, but Liberator having Aura of Glory as a spell-like ability similar to Blackguard's Bull's Strength which starts at turns/lvl and goes to hours/lvl in epics would go a long way in my opinion.

I don't think the class should be a 1=1 parallel, but it should be the same in 'power' or the amount of cookies it gets.

[Quidix]

1) Double-check the weapon that is equipped. The Ki Strike 4/5 AB bonus should be appended onto the weapons rather than the character itself

KI Strike 4/5 applies to your weapons when and only when you wear Cloth not Light Armor.

I had not realised that, thank you for the clarification.

On the topic of Vigilante, are there any plans to address the Plantshape + Vigilante combo?

[Bazelgeuse]

On the topic of Vigilante, are there any plans to address the Plantshape + Vigilante combo?

Would that build be called the "Vigiplante?"

[AstralUniverse]

On the topic of Vigilante, are there any plans to address the Plantshape + Vigilante combo?

It's still 'on going experiment'. I'm not sure why we're doing this experiment on the live server rather than pgcc but whatever. The experiment seems to work and as far as we can see, there are no broken op trees running over saruman just yet. The thing about plantshape is that it has so many weaknesses and counters with no answer that it seems that even with the absurd stats you get from a vig dip it's still not that strong. The result of the experiment (so far) is that plantshape without vig dip is not in a good spot, and if the team concludes that the stats with vig dip are not op and put plantshape in a decent spot, I expect that we'll see some buff to plantshape but those buffs probably wont stack with the vig stats.

[Kenji]

On the topic of Vigilante, are there any plans to address the Plantshape + Vigilante combo?

It's still 'on going experiment'. I'm not sure why we're doing this experiment on the live server rather than pgcc but whatever. The experiment seems to work and as far as we can see, there are no broken op trees running over saruman just yet. The thing about plantshape is that it has so many weaknesses and counters with no answer that it seems that even with the absurd stats you get from a vig dip it's still not that strong. The result of the experiment (so far) is that plantshape without vig dip is not in a good spot, and if the team concludes that the stats with vig dip are not op and put plantshape in a decent spot, I expect that we'll see some buff to plantshape but those buffs probably wont stack with the vig stats.

Because PGCC doesn’t reflect the meta on Arelith. PGCC in the end is a better tool for building and function testing, not balancing.

Plenty of new classes have gone through PGCC and they all had to be rebalanced after releasing on live.

[AstralUniverse]

Because PGCC doesn’t reflect the meta on Arelith.

That's so true. pgcc is a tool for stats confirmation and testing mechanics, not balance. There's a lot of stuff you can do on live you cannot do on pgcc. I was still under the impression that this is the sort of thing who would get some run time period on pgcc, but either way, I think the 'experiment' is working.

[Arctic]

I am currently playing a fighter/vigilante strength based combo and so far I have to say: I am really enjoying the class. It takes what I want and like from the rogue and mixes it into a full bab class, in many ways it's like a Blackguard without the divine aspect and more of a focus on skills.

It seems a few people have raised concerns regarding the balance of the class, and while I can see why I don't think the vigilante is overpowered. Being a skill monkey makes your life a lot easier, but it doesn't make you an oppressive force in PvE. Sneak attacks offer great damage, but many creatures are downright immune and it can be hard to set up at times. Fortunately, you can use knockdown and dirty fighting to help land sneak attacks, and if I had any mechanical feedback it would be to maybe make the dirty fighting effects last a little bit longer? Due to how flurries, target swapping and such works it can sometimes be difficult to take advantage when dirty fighting procs. Dirty fighting itself can also be hard to use, as you have to know which technique to use against which enemies, then they have to fail the saving throw. The technique you want to use might also be unavailable as some require a free hand, a weapon, or heavy armor or a shield. The gruesome technique also helps with this, as the fear debuff is great for landing techniques or knockdowns.

I am playing a cause of vindication vigilante as I didn't realized all of them got brutal attack. In hindsight I might have chosen freedom, as you'd get a lot of neat defensive features while still getting sneak attack dmg. However, I am not overly miffed as the increased dmg is still nice, and eventually getting access to crippling strike is chef's kiss.

The main draw for me is the combination of skill points, sneak attack, and a full bab mixed into the same class. The unique class mechanics are themselves a little understated, but overall I find the class very enjoyable.

What I don't like about the class is the flavor and rp baggage of it. I find a vigilante challenging to portray in a player world where society seems mostly benevolent. It shares some similarities with assassin in the way it differentiates not because of how it interacts in PvE but because of how the class identity interact with other players. The alignment restrictions also frustrate me because it is the overall package I find appealing, and the mechanics themselves aren't that unique as they share many features with other classes. This is neither good nor bad but in my opinion it means the class is very flexible in what archetypes it could portray so the alignment limitations feel a bit arbitrary.

I think this class could lend itself well into playing a bloodthirsty pirate, a notorious highwayman or a ruthless bountyhunter or slaver had the alignment allowed for it. So my wish would be for a similar class geared towards evil aligned characters, maybe with some different and unique causes to differentiate them?

[Kenji]

I think this class could lend itself well into playing a bloodthirsty pirate, a notorious highwayman or a ruthless bountyhunter or slaver had the alignment allowed for it. So my wish would be for a similar class geared towards evil aligned characters, maybe with some different and unique causes to differentiate them?

The alignment restriction was put in place before the split between liberators and vigilante. Perhaps vigilante can be opened up to non-lawful evil characters, or characters of all alignments.

If anyone wants to make an argument for or against lifting the vigilante alignment restrictions, I’m all ears.

[Subtext]

If anything, I have trouble seeing Vigilantes be good aligned. Even if they are fighting for a noble cause, they do so in a fairly morally questionable manner - things like fear tactics or poisons are by no means a good thing even if baddies get targeted.
It's a fairly brutal class if you look at the abilities and I don't think it is fitting to be on a similar moral level as a paladin.

[AstralUniverse]

The alignment restriction was put in place before the split between liberators and vigilante. Perhaps vigilante can be opened up to non-lawful evil characters, or characters of all alignments.

If there was a balance reason to disable Liberator levels if one has Vigilante levels, you might want to extend this to blackguard as well.

[Waldo52]

I think this class could lend itself well into playing a bloodthirsty pirate, a notorious highwayman or a ruthless bountyhunter or slaver had the alignment allowed for it. So my wish would be for a similar class geared towards evil aligned characters, maybe with some different and unique causes to differentiate them?

The alignment restriction was put in place before the split between liberators and vigilante. Perhaps vigilante can be opened up to non-lawful evil characters, or characters of all alignments.

If anyone wants to make an argument for or against lifting the vigilante alignment restrictions, I’m all ears.

Vigilantes use shady tactics including poison gas grenades, secret personas and spectacles of gore so violent that enemies flee in uncontrollable terror. I could see an "ends justify the means" good guy doing things like these if he's pissed off and fighting evil people. But I could see a bad guy doing this kind of thing too. Actually, the latter is even easier to imagine. There's just nothing in the class that screams "non-evil only". They're literally guerilla warrior assassins. I was about to say that this class could represent Batman or The Joker equally well, but I really can't imagine a good aligned Batman using gruesome technique (lol).

I think a good alignment approach would be to give the class access to any non-lawful alignment.

[Quidix]

I agree that the alignment should be changed to 'non lawful'.

My reasons:
(1) To operate in evil places, where they might want to drive change, they may be required to carry out evil actions (to maintain cover, if nothing else)
(2) To do 'anything for the greater good' can drive many actions that are individually evil

Very excited about the vigilante tweaks (removing dirty fighting + alignment) - hope it won't be too long.

[AlonelyBard]

We've seen talk of removing the Dirty Fighting Pre-req and switching to perhaps a higher BAB requirement or a separate feat.
Would there be any changes to the vindication path to fit this? As is, guerilla warfare's path only really benefits dirty fighting, and would become effectively dead with the removal of Dirty Fighting's prereq.

[Kenji]

If anything, I have trouble seeing Vigilantes be good aligned. Even if they are fighting for a noble cause, they do so in a fairly morally questionable manner - things like fear tactics or poisons are by no means a good thing even if baddies get targeted.
It's a fairly brutal class if you look at the abilities and I don't think it is fitting to be on a similar moral level as a paladin.

Vigilantes use shady tactics including poison gas grenades, secret personas and spectacles of gore so violent that enemies flee in uncontrollable terror. I could see an "ends justify the means" good guy doing things like these if he's pissed off and fighting evil people. But I could see a bad guy doing this kind of thing too. Actually, the latter is even easier to imagine. There's just nothing in the class that screams "non-evil only". They're literally guerilla warrior assassins. I was about to say that this class could represent Batman or The Joker equally well, but I really can't imagine a good aligned Batman using gruesome technique (lol).

I think a good alignment approach would be to give the class access to any non-lawful alignment.

A wizard/sorcerer or a cleric/favored soul has access to undead summoning and horrid wilting, does that mean they should be locked from good alignment?

The answer is obviously no because the characters don’t necessarily utilize those spells even with access to them. Chances are, if the theme/concept doesn’t fit (mechanical prowess notwithstanding), then the character won't/shouldn't cast them.

The same applies to Vigilantes, where a good-aligned one may choose to use little to none of those fairly brutal/borderline evil/questionable methods. Leave them to the neutral ones.

However, I can see the counterargument to that being vigilantes having relatively limited choices in terms of methods compared to the previous examples given. Another is that liberators, which are good-only, get access to those fairly questionable methods, too.

I will say that there exists the concept of Gray Paladins, where their conviction is so great that they can do evil acts in the name of good without being corrupted by it. It’s how I imagine some hard-line liberators for now. (I read about it somewhere, lore buffs, feel free to chime in and expand further on that)

If there was a balance reason to disable Liberator levels if one has Vigilante levels, you might want to extend this to blackguard as well.

Good idea.

We've seen talk of removing the Dirty Fighting Pre-req and switching to perhaps a higher BAB requirement or a separate feat.
Would there be any changes to the vindication path to fit this? As is, guerilla warfare's path only really benefits dirty fighting, and would become effectively dead with the removal of Dirty Fighting's prereq.

No further plans as of yet. If your prediction holds true after the change, then we (all of us, the team and the players) can come up with a solution later.

A bit off-topic:
Dirty fighting currently fills a niche of bypassing discipline meta and pokes holes at where saves are weakest given the opponent. Sure, someone may be fully decked out with 5% gear and have +20 saves, but that doesn’t apply to all characters.

Regarding save bloat, specific to dirty fighting, live feedback on DF for both PvE and PvP has been fairly positive. Thus, DF may be a nice pick regardless of the requirement or not.

[Arctic]

I think this class could lend itself well into playing a bloodthirsty pirate, a notorious highwayman or a ruthless bountyhunter or slaver had the alignment allowed for it. So my wish would be for a similar class geared towards evil aligned characters, maybe with some different and unique causes to differentiate them?

The alignment restriction was put in place before the split between liberators and vigilante. Perhaps vigilante can be opened up to non-lawful evil characters, or characters of all alignments.

If anyone wants to make an argument for or against lifting the vigilante alignment restrictions, I’m all ears.

My point is if we look away from the label and rp tied to the class and interpret the kind of character you can make from the mechanics alone they really lend themselves towards evil. You could open the alignment restriction to other alignments and allow for evil vigilantes, and there certainly are evil vigilantes from pop-culture to draw from. However I don't know if the DM-team are comfortable with people appropriating the vigilante into all kinds of evil characters. Therefore I'd ideally want an evil (or alignment neutral) class with similar mechanics to the vigilante, but with a different theme that is more malleable to different character concepts. I realize this is a lot of work and a big ask though.

[Ascended Mage]

If anyone wants to make an argument for or against lifting the vigilante alignment restrictions, I’m all ears.

Not insulting anyone or pretending that I know better/more than others, but I think that many often forget or not correct views on alignment and how characters tied to it and how it may influence. Some specific action has specific alignment force in itself. It is like a rule, where exists only few things and something little in between. Nothing complicated, nothing too hard. And repeating such actions forces characters to specific alignment.

It should be non-evil.
Every evil leads to selfish things and every evil vigilante in the end will turn into some sort of blackguard/antipaladin. Evil kills evil only and only for personal benefits, even when it is covered with all that "for good thing".

"I killed all of them, even kids, even innocents, but now they dead and I feel better. I did good thing. I will be forgiven because it was worth in end."

Poisons/grenades/traps/dismembering/whatever-pg13-method-to-kill not arguments. They are chaotic forces, not evil. Paladins against poisons because they are lawful, and cheating = chaos. Not evil.
Killing people who surrender without weapons or something like that is obviously crazy evil and vigilante then turns into an evil zealous fanatic, not a fighter for good.

How they kill - it matters little. Whom they kill - that matters a lot. Killing GOOD is always evil. Killing neautral who surrenders? That is smells of chaos. Killing evil in all possible ways and even if they are naked and surrenders? Not really important if they are 100% evils and no innocent involved. If killed good by mistake few times that is for sure very evil acts.

​It also should be considered that when character working in long time with other characters - their alignment of course may influence and will keep even most chaotic and most neutral vigilante from bombing whole city with a lot of innocents. Their goodly friends, memories, backgrounds, etc, keeps them on edge and they not falling from grace that easy.
Plus, keeping restrictions is some sort of enforcing standards for a class.

Alignment is both hard and easy one topic to discuss. If I am mistaken, or not say something correctly, then please forgive me. Just sharing my views and thoughts.

[TheManBehindTheMemes]

We have a ton of non-good aligned classes.

Blackguards. Assassins. Warlocks. Hemomancers. Pale Masters. Hexblades. (Shadow mage if you count paths)

But out of all the classes that are non-evils..
We have

Paladin.

Yeah that's it.

Liberator is just second good-sided class that Arelith have.

Making Vigilante open to Evil-aligned characters is a bit amusing because they do have Assassins, albeit very different from Vigilante, but Assassins itself exist. Despite it being an Application-based stuff.

[Eyeliner]

Making Vigilante open to Evil-aligned characters is a bit amusing because they do have Assassins, albeit very different from Vigilante, but Assassins itself exist. Despite it being an Application-based stuff.

Heck I'd be happy if you had to apply to be in the Assassin's Guild and get the knife and whatever perks, but the class itself was open to all. An application-based class isn't a class that exists to me because I'm never applying.

[Waldo52]

Making Vigilante open to Evil-aligned characters is a bit amusing because they do have Assassins, albeit very different from Vigilante, but Assassins itself exist. Despite it being an Application-based stuff.

Heck I'd be happy if you had to apply to be in the Assassin's Guild and get the knife and whatever perks, but the class itself was open to all. An application-based class isn't a class that exists to me because I'm never applying.

Agreed.

There should really be an option on the wiki to remove application based classes from the class list, lol

But more on topic (responding to the other poster), the lack of good only classes is not a reasonable argument for barring any particular class from being used by evil characters.

Maybe there should just be more good classes. Like a version of the commoner that auto-pickpockets itself and gives gold to nearby NPCs or an alternate blackguard that trades sneak attack, summoning and evil alignment for the ability to weep until slain animals in the area come back to life.

Oh wait... maybe there's a lack of good classes because being good is kind of lame.

[Wethrinea]

Is the 13 dex req for the Dirty Fighting there because of balance reasons, ie: No high str/int/wis low dex vigilantes unless they also take 4 levels rogue?

If not, removing the stat req for DI would open Vigilante for more characters.

[Kenji]

Not insulting anyone or pretending that I know better/more than others, but I think that many often forget or not correct views on alignment and how characters tied to it and how it may influence. Some specific action has specific alignment force in itself. It is like a rule, where exists only few things and something little in between. Nothing complicated, nothing too hard. And repeating such actions forces characters to specific alignment.

It should be non-evil.
Every evil leads to selfish things and every evil vigilante in the end will turn into some sort of blackguard/antipaladin. Evil kills evil only and only for personal benefits, even when it is covered with all that "for good thing".

"I killed all of them, even kids, even innocents, but now they dead and I feel better. I did good thing. I will be forgiven because it was worth in end."

Poisons/grenades/traps/dismembering/whatever-pg13-method-to-kill not arguments. They are chaotic forces, not evil. Paladins against poisons because they are lawful, and cheating = chaos. Not evil.
Killing people who surrender without weapons or something like that is obviously crazy evil and vigilante then turns into an evil zealous fanatic, not a fighter for good.

How they kill - it matters little. Whom they kill - that matters a lot. Killing GOOD is always evil. Killing neautral who surrenders? That is smells of chaos. Killing evil in all possible ways and even if they are naked and surrenders? Not really important if they are 100% evils and no innocent involved. If killed good by mistake few times that is for sure very evil acts.

​It also should be considered that when character working in long time with other characters - their alignment of course may influence and will keep even most chaotic and most neutral vigilante from bombing whole city with a lot of innocents. Their goodly friends, memories, backgrounds, etc, keeps them on edge and they not falling from grace that easy.
Plus, keeping restrictions is some sort of enforcing standards for a class.

Alignment is both hard and easy one topic to discuss. If I am mistaken, or not say something correctly, then please forgive me. Just sharing my views and thoughts.

I want to say this is a great post, and I agree with the breakdown of the methods and alignment discussion. It has corrected my previous assumptions on the methods, which should not be deemed "evil", after all.

However, I arrived at a different conclusion that because the methods could just as easily be utilized by evil characters, vigilantes should thus allowed to be evil, as well. Rather than continuing to restrict vigilantes to non-evil.

But, I will agree that the alignment restriction is a good way to enforce the standard of the vigilante class, given its initial theme and inspirations. It's worth considering to look at an alternative approach to this. To also respond to this post:

My point is if we look away from the label and rp tied to the class and interpret the kind of character you can make from the mechanics alone they really lend themselves towards evil. You could open the alignment restriction to other alignments and allow for evil vigilantes, and there certainly are evil vigilantes from pop-culture to draw from. However I don't know if the DM-team are comfortable with people appropriating the vigilante into all kinds of evil characters. Therefore I'd ideally want an evil (or alignment neutral) class with similar mechanics to the vigilante, but with a different theme that is more malleable to different character concepts. I realize this is a lot of work and a big ask though.

If we are to look at the mechanics alone, I believe a new "Brute" PrC may be fitting of the "mirror" PrC to Vigilante. At the same time, I believe this new PrC should not completely mirror Vigilante and may only take on the "Vindication" path. Or perhaps it should have a different theme altogether but with a similar design. Not completely the same, but similar.

The easy way out for everyone involved is to remove the restriction, of course. But I do think it's worthwhile to contemplate what that means to existing and future Vigilante players and their concepts.

There are many things to consider here and I'd like to see more discussion both internally and what the players think.

Is the 13 dex req for the Dirty Fighting there because of balance reasons, ie: No high str/int/wis low dex vigilantes unless they also take 4 levels rogue?

If not, removing the stat req for DI would open Vigilante for more characters.

See my to-do list linked in my signature.

[Subtext]

A wizard/sorcerer or a cleric/favored soul has access to undead summoning and horrid wilting, does that mean they should be locked from good alignment?

The answer is obviously no because the characters don’t necessarily utilize those spells even with access to them. Chances are, if the theme/concept doesn’t fit (mechanical prowess notwithstanding), then the character won't/shouldn't cast them.

The same applies to Vigilantes, where a good-aligned one may choose to use little to none of those fairly brutal/borderline evil/questionable methods. Leave them to the neutral ones.

However, I can see the counterargument to that being vigilantes having relatively limited choices in terms of methods compared to the previous examples given. Another is that liberators, which are good-only, get access to those fairly questionable methods, too.

As you already alluded to, compared to wizards or sorcerers, Vigilante has a relatively "limited" toolkit. Necromancy/Animation is merely one of many different ways to play those so I don't see an alignment lock there making sense.

That said. While I think that removing alignment locks generally is a good thing, seeing as how there still are a lot of evil exclusives and less good exclusives, I just had the idea that what's really missing considering all is a neutral exclusive!
While I don't believe that a good alignment fits Vigilante, evil doesn't necessarily either. After all, the class vibe I am getting is a little "I am going to do bad things so you don't have to." Which thematically oddly fits a bit in with some more ruthless harpers of all people.

As far as team evil is concerned...why not just change Blackguard and incorporate some aspects in a way of a different path? I believe some people have asked about alternative ways of building BG that could go without fiendish summons and that would make it a lot more interesting for "acceptable surface evil".

[hi chat]

I've played a liberator for about 4 months now as my main, and the class itself has some things going for it but when compared to BG (Not paladin, since that's a full-30 class), it doesn't even come close to touching it.

For example, a level 16-20 BG would get, along with whatever other class they chose:

• +4-6 Weapon

• Contagion

• Epic Fiendish Summon

• Stacking Bull's Strength

• Undead Summon

• Substantially increased Arelith Custom Poison DC

• Aura of Despair (Any non-mind immune enemies that enter the aura suffer a -2 penalty to saving throws for 1 minute (1 turn). The aura can be cast as an action as many times as the Blackguard likes and it lasts for 15 minutes (15 turns). The effects do not stack with itself.)

• Bonus Language

Whereas a 16-20 Liberator would get:

• Methods I & II (Likely used for signature weapon and imp. signature weapon)

• Woodland Stride

• Pugilist

• Brawler

I don't think anyone in good conscience can say that these are even close to equitable. An animal companion that scaled poorly wouldn't cure this. Maybe a good-aligned BG summon equivalent would make up the gap but even then, there's a massive difference between the two. You may be able to take things like rogue grenades or other methods, but those come at the cost of core effectiveness and aren't baked into the class as BG has it.

If you're going to add anything to Liberator, I'd ask you to look at things that make the classes more similar in positives. A stacking +4 to either STR/DEX/CHA that turns to hours/level, or a +5 Barkskin akin to Oath of Ancients paladin - to pair with woodland stride, maybe the Epic Celestial Summon custom feat or something that gives a nice good-aligned summon. Or something like an hours/level weapon buff, be it an enchantment bonus or a 1d10 deafening clang that lasts hours/level. Or baking in more methods as core class features and not just optional feats that can be taken.

Fully supportive of all these changes - would prefer to see liberator get some cookies without tying it down to a summon and making it good-aligned BG