The Current State of Pale Masters

[Waldo52]

I think I read something about how a pale master's crit (and possibly sneak) immunity have been changed from 100% at level 10 to 5% per level, or they will be soon. If this is happening is this going to remain a viable class for martial characters?

There's a build on the wiki that uses 10 PM levels and 16 blackguard and I'm thinking that's gonna be hurting pretty bad.

[Inordinate]

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=35420&p=278221#p278221

[RedGiant]

The short answer is no.*** Full crit immunity now requires 20 lvls in the class, which despite Arelith improvements, is still kind of a dead end. Even with 10 lvls in a complementary martial class, you only ever achieve BAB 15 by 20 (this will inevitably gimp your discipline too, since the last level you could take said discipline-granting class to achieve full immunity is also 20). This puts you on par with a middle AB class, who, for whatever reason, is also gimped on discipline. Ergo, this is not a recommended way to build a warrior.

All of this is obviously intentional and done with a mind to make PM completely caster-oriented, but even here you hopelessly gimp yourself compared to literally almost any other sort of caster. What you end up with, IMO, is the true-flames of necromancy (in the sense of, sure you can do some cool stuff, I guess, but yeeeeeeow the negatives!!!). I also believe that even in the case of Undying warlock synergy, which was baked into the class, you still end up with what amounts to a really bad idea. Sure you can summon a dracolich, and heal it a bit with your blasts, but good luck getting by as a caster with your CHA-based 4th lvl spell casting ability. Take craft wand and plan on dying alot in PvP!. (Ironic for your Undying master, no?!?)

*** There are some heavy PM melee builds people will likely still choose to play, because they involve typically 15 or 16 levels of PM ( which now grants you 75-80% crit-immunity), Some people might think this is better than nothing to salvage their concept, but this is still a straight down-grade to them, and anything less become IMO completely unworth the associated sacrifices.

**** If you want to feel better about your melee PM, at least you didn't use an award to relevel your pre-award, neutral melee PM, based on a previously optimal 10 lvls in the class, only to log into this change two-days later. [True Story.]

[garrbear758]

You haven't logged in to this change because it isn't live and nothing has been finalized for it, and the intent is not to make PM caster only we are ensuring that melee pm builds will be preserved, albeit probably not 10 pm builds.

[DM Starfish]

This is not going anywhere good or productive. Locked.