Invisible Blade

[the grim yeeter]

I'll just start the obligatory thread. Has this class just been mindlessly copied from NWN2, without taking into consideration Arelith's current meta, mechanics and dynamics at all?

A full BAB class with tumble as class skill and +3 AC +3d6 effective sneak damage after only five levels. That's already too much, and I haven't even gone over the rest of the abilities yet.

And please tell me we are not giving the already unfun Pickpocket/SoH skill - which has never really created any RP worth mentioning in Arelith's entire history - more use versus players.

Dex builds really do not need a buff in current Arelith. And before anyone mentions it: no, dodge, mobility and WF: 1h edge are not a significant enough "sacrifices" to excuse a class this strong.

I am fully aware this is PGCC only for now, but the way these new classes, abilities and other mechanics just get crammed into the server at this pace, clearly without much thought, is truly worrying.

[Drowboy]

(Didn't see there was a thread already!)
So, bugs and stuff first:

The actual class on the radial is a white square.
Bleeding Wound (indeed, anything that adds bleed damage) doesn't appear to actually work.

The Abilities As They Are:
1. full bab sneak attacker hit good
2. The extra AC is a nice pull for non-monk, non-divs, I guess, but the buyin is big enough that you'd not bother for almost all cases.
3. WF, Dodge, Mobil, ambidex, twf, and ITWF is more feats to get your class running at level 1 than anything other than WM. WM this isn't.
4. It's hard to judge bleeding wound without seeing it work, but my gut is that it might need reducing if it works the way I suspect it does. (maybe it doesn't!)
5. Crippling throw: At 53 sleight of hand and 20 int, the DC for this was, like, 27. I could've geared for sleight of hand, I suppose, but similar to gearing a swashbuckler for social skill x for the intentions, it doesn't feel worth it right now.
6. Uncanny Feint: How often is this supposed to trigger? I feel like I saw it go off once, maybe twice, total, and the DC is, as mentioned above, fairly low for both what it does and how often it does it.

Other stuff:
What's the niche, here? It's a full BaB class seemingly intended for rogue dippage, but it neither gives disc (which would probably be too much with its power set), advances rogue anything, or gives any bonus feats to make up for what's essentially a six feat buyin: WF, dodge, mobil, and then you need amb/twf/itwf to make it actually function. That's approaching WM-levels of investment, not to mention the skill points, one of which is dubiously useful for anything but this class and griefing, but can't really be judged until we know what the rework looks like.

In fact, it actually inhibits rogues, as it encourages being unarmored, and rogue encourages running your choice of light armor options.

It wont work with assassins, spellswords, or swashbucklers, the other obvious 'dexer-type' chassi, due to competing on-hit abilities.

Which leaves rangers and weird niche monk-dips that want to use kukris but also love having wis AC and being 4 to 5-stat builds, I guess.

I'd actually really love to know what the intended 'class usage' of this is, I guess, to give further feedback on tweaks, but at a guess I'd suggest:

1. Look at the DC on these abilities a bit
2. Reduce the pre-reqs somehow (it has six prereq feats, realistically), but maybe also take a sneak attack die or some of the AC away to compensate 1 and 2.
3. I'll probably have something on the bleed damage once it's working.

Final thought: In its current state, it's too niche, too pre-req heavy, but has some cool ideas behind it. The issue with judging this class is partially in the hands of the sleight of hand rework: If sleight of hand ends up doing some wild stuff (shady sands shuffle, some sort of feint-effect to land sneaks, other combat tricks), the DCs and prereqs might be alright. If it stays as 'basically pickpocket,' a class that encourages its use and gearing is a full yikes.

Edit: On the topic of development pace vs testing and iterating, I'm going to be a jerk here and agree. We've got classes from April/May, now, that still haven't seen iteration, tweaks, gear, and other needed tidbits to make them viable. Featlines- illusion comes to mind immediately- that have announced reworks that sort of just dropped off, seemingly, and the elephant in the room that everyone is mentioning: pickpocket has a pending rework so we can't really judge this class that uses it heavily until that gets done, and tested, and feedback'd, and hopefully iterated on. I know you're all volunteers, and I know the team only works on what they want to work on, but it almost feels like making more work for, likely, future devs to come back through and fix, at this point.

[AstralUniverse]

-Cloth armor only
-Only dual wielding (no shield)
-Only weapons which arent ubab
-Plenty of synergy with the monk class, except the weapons thing.
-No discipline. (rules it out as a late game dip for this important skill all builds with this class will need)
-No synergy with any of the rogue scaling feats.
-Full bab (allows 3/4 bab classes to get max apr + late game 5th lvl for sleight of hand and tumble maxing)

Honestly I cant think about something to do with this class as it is. It's not bad for a 5 lvl dip that gives tumble, full bab and some ac and sneak but it's one of 3 classes in a build and I cant think of what other two classes fit in here. except again, monk... maybe ranger?

[Drowboy]

So, I took improved sneak attack 1 as a bonus feat. Activating bleeding wounds removed it. Permanently, it looks like.

[Zaphiel]

So, I took improved sneak attack 1 as a bonus feat. Activating bleeding wounds removed it. Permanently, it looks like.

It is due to sneak attack library. It will calculate your total sneak attack dice, remove all your sneak attack feats (they will be returned back upon server restart, before leveling up etc.) and give you appropriate sneak attack feats starting by rogue. Until 20 sneak attack dice, you will recieve Rogue's sneak attack feats. If you hit to 21 sneak attack dice, you will get 20d6 rogue sneak attack feats and 1d6 blackguard sneak attack feats. At 35 sneak attack dice, you will have 20d6 rogue sneak attack feat, 15d6 blackguard sneak attack feat. At 40 sneak attack dice, you will get 20d6 rogue sneak attack feats and 15d6 blackguard sneak attack feat, 5d6 improved sneak attack feat. Until total of 45d6.

[Drowboy]

On the (now working) bleed:
Should I be able to make mummies and other things immune to sneaks bleed?

[Zaphiel]

On the (now working) bleed:
Should I be able to make mummies and other things immune to sneaks bleed?

Bleed will respect crit. / sneak immunity, it is on my fix list.

[Security_Blanket]

Will this be a change to bleed damage as well or is this specific to the Invisible Blade? As it is bleed doesn't pierce DR, so anyone (which is everyone) with an adamantium/mithril bracer is going to have the DR to prevent any bleed damage.

[Gouge Away]

Just an offhand thought but... I get the reasoning for making crit immune things immune to bleed but what would actually sell this class for me would be if it gave rogues some utility against those things. Rogue-types already eviscerate anything they can sneak attack... They could use some utility against things they struggle with. (Yes, I know, grenades, but I mean in combat.)

I fully acknowledge I may be missing something of course.

[Nevrus]

Will this be a change to bleed damage as well or is this specific to the Invisible Blade? As it is bleed doesn't pierce DR, so anyone (which is everyone) with an adamantium/mithril bracer is going to have the DR to prevent any bleed damage.

As I understand it this special bleed damage is stackable magic damage and not the Bleeding effect.

[Kuma]

Not broadly a fan of encouraging Pickpocket on more characters, although I imagine/hope the skill rework will make it less RP-less quasigriefing.

[Diegovog]

What got me confused is that I thought we were looking to expand STR melee builds instead of more DEX in current meta.

Class looks interesting, though. Might be on the stronger side but I appreciate the devs coming with low investment classes for build variability.

[CNS]

So, this is a really cool class concept and I like the work that has gone into it.

Some areas I'd look at tweaking for from a build point of view:

It doesn't seem to fit with any other class combination? What’s the thinking here, where is it meant to exist in the Arelith build universe. Its skill, feat and two weapon (so more feat) requirements pigeon hole it to a few classes. Primarily Rogue, Ranger and Swashbuckler.

However, Rogues start to lose their rogue bonuses that come from deep investment into rogue levels and that really hurts. The requirement to wear no armor conflicts with rogue's very specific rogue only way of dealing with armor. A deep rogue missing all the arelith cookies is a rogue in a poor state. Lastly the key thing rogues are lacking is discipline which this class doesn't provide.

Rangers always face the "why not just monk" problem. A ranger really wants to be past level 21 (Bane of enemies) or more likely 27 (+5 blade thirst, not dispel bait). Which makes it very hard to fit in IB. You're also then looking for cross class skills to get into it, with quite an investment. Otherwise this is probably the best synergy class wise at this early stage of considering.

Swashbuckler, assuming the potential issue of conflicting on-hit properties is solved this probably has legs, 21 swash 5 IB 4 X.

The high feat requirement basically makes it tough (impossible?) to effectively combine this with WM, divine and the build itself tries to discourage monk which I appreciate. However, it also makes it really hard to actually fit into anything as well - this drives the balance decisions into a really tough spot, generally people won’t invest the high requirements to get this class unless the reward is high, which means a lot of power, which then makes the point where its balanced but not overbearing razor thin.

This kind of brings us to the second problem to think about. We live in a meta where Dex is by far the better choice over strength. I believe driven by two factors, 1 it’s possible to get such high AC's that most characters are going to struggle to hit the 65-75 AC some dex builds are pulling. While some builds can get more, your average strength-based build (heck let’s use the 20/7/3 WM) tops out their AB in the high 40's/low 50's. Figures around 55 can be reached with short term intrinsic buffs (Knight, Divine Champion jump to mind) but you're still a long way from being able to hit reliably. I'd rather avoid discussions of things like true strike since the innate Dex based haste (blinding speed) lasts a lot longer than the strength version (a giant stack of potions of speed).

The other aspect of this that kept much of this in check before was the fact that dex didn't do any damage. Sure, you can be an unhittable meme but you can't do anything either so everyone can safely ignore you while you try and tickle people to death. It's a strong incentive to pull back on the AC in favour of finding sources of damage.

Here however, just like swashbuckler, we're bringing in very synergistic sources of damage for dex tank focused builds. Both classes bring additional sources of AC with them (Swash dodge scaling, IB is 3AC for 5 class levels, both are tumble classes) and they bring the damage (full BAB, swash int to damage and what IB is doing).

This is why monk as a dip is so unhealthy, the c. 8 wis to AC and the damage increase of getting UBAB is so nice to the builds that take it. You get more of the thing your class is good at and you fix the most glaring weakness it has.

This isn't about dex builds doing anywhere near the damage of strength builds (although spellmonk and ranger/monk do anyway) but as soon as that damage gets enough that it’s a threat, all that AC they can stack becomes a real problem. I worry that an IB that gets fixed up to the level it’s a class people take, just ends up feeding into unhealthy meta - and it kind of has to do that to be viable as a choice, with its current direction, because it’s in competiton with classes that are already trying to do the same.

[jomonog]

Seems too restricted to build much at the moment given the pre-reqs and given it only works with no armor and a limited range of weapons. I'd suggest removing the restriction on no armor so it can work with strength as well as dex builds and opening it up to all weapons except monk ubab ones.

[the grim yeeter]

There are several other ways to work out an IB build (e.g., 21swash/5IB/4BG,and 9ranger/5IB/16WM maybe, but probably not), but this is just a quick and dirty example to show the potential (feel free to point out any mistakes, of course). You would probably optimize feat order a bit more.

Note that the AC up there is the potential AC out of expertise mode. With improved expertise on, you'd be looking at 76 AC. Damage is fine with

Code: Select all

1d6 base, +4 ench, keen, +3d6 IB sneak, +9 divmight, bleed, parry damage bonus, bane, FE, STR mod, temp essence, perm essence

Spam bleed to force people into using (and running out of) resto.

[CNS]

Not to nit pick/ maybe I'm not understanding a few things in that build:

1) What is pit gnoll MV
2) The +3AC parry AC isn't avaliable on server as far as I know (yet)
3) I think you hit the dodge cap here:
1 dodge from the feat
4 from haste
3 from DDW
3 from IB
1 from MA
1 from boots
9 from Divine shield
= 22
(Maybe also the pit gnoll?)


Its also a bit little misleading including the 5 ripost AB bonus into the AB calculation. As is potentially including Bane with only 7 FE although you can get the most common player races so maybe its ok.

It also might struggle with Disc?

It is illustrative of some of the wider problems that this class might be feeding into though.

[the grim yeeter]

I think you hit the dodge cap here:

You're right; I forgot to consider IB's AC as Dodge AC. So it exceeds the cap by 1. Pit gnoll MV is Magic Vestment, so that isn't Dodge AC. And I didn't take into account the AC bonus from the Dodge feat at all.

So take 1 AC from there, amounting to 68 out of imp exp, and 75 in it. I suppose all the Dodge AC exceeding the cap is still nice to have when div shield is not running.

Its also a bit little misleading including the 5 ripost AB bonus into the AB calculation. As is potentially including Bane with only 7 FE although you can get the most common player races so maybe its ok.

I do not think this is misleading at all. With 7 FE/SEs, you cover a substantial portion of the most prevalent player races. And parry is something you'd want to use often, so why not add it to your calculations?

It also might struggle with Disc?

Dex builds, with the amount of discipline items out there, no longer struggle with discipline these days, even when they forgo esf: discipline. This is yet another issue that makes dex builds so strong in current Arelith.

[AstralUniverse]

This feat starvation is real and without even cracking down specific numbers I'm quite confident a standard 21 ranger 5 fighter 4 monk (or 23/4/3 for serious grinders) comes out with better numbers in almost every factor and as said above, this build really shows loud and clear the lack of synergy this class has with pretty much anything.

[the grim yeeter]

I am completely open to discussion, and sure, it may be that 21ranger/5fighter/4monk competes.

Also, what feats are not on that sheet that are really necessary to have? Improved Critical? Toughness? ESF: discipline? Because those are feats that you can comfortably miss.

[Zaphiel]

It is interesting to see a DEX build without weapon finesse.

[the grim yeeter]

It is interesting to see a DEX build without weapon finesse.

Good call. As I said, it was a quick and dirty example, and I asked for people to point out mistakes. And that is certainly one of them. So thank you for thinking along.

So a way to solve this is to go human instead, and lose out on 2 AB and 1 AC (size mod + dale sword are lost; very significant indeed), or to let go of improved expertise on the build shown above (though, I'm not sure I'd do that, myself). A yuan-ti might, in this case, be the best race for this particular build (as it would start with 19 instead of 17 DEX, have 51 AB / 67 AC in parry mode, and 74 AC in imp exp).

Keep in mind that I did not post the build above to somehow "prove" that the IB class is too strong (even though I am still inclined to think it is, in its current state). I, too, like some of you, am just here to thoroughly run the numbers of the potential builds that include the class (which, so far, only Drowboy, CNS and me have been doing in this thread). Other builds should (and I probably will once I have the time) be closely looked at just the same, and compared with other builds to see where the class fits in Arelith's current meta. Only then will we ascertain whether newly introduced mechanics are broken or not.

[ReverentBlade]

I feel like this full BAB class should get Discipline so that with 5 levels it can serve the role of the pre-20 four levels of high BAB, and a level left over for a Disc dump. It just seems to be the purpose its screaming out for. Take power away from it elsewhere if you have to.

[AstralUniverse]

We're obviously talking about a build you're very much familiar with. hence... you're angery. I'm done here.

[Amnesy]

@Zaphiel
Have you considered Fast Healing / Regeneration auto-heal wounding (As per SRD)?

Thanks

[the grim yeeter]

Another way of looking at it, is by considering the monk wisdom AC (1 - 8 AC) + divine shield synergy nerf. This was considered too strong because of the high AC it allows you to reach.

Now we are looking at a build, dual-wielding with 5 IB levels, that has 3 dw AC (ranger), 3 parry AC and 3 IB AC + divine shield.

The only difference between these two things is that one requires heavy wisdom investment to reach the maximum (which was only made possible with, let's be honest here, ridiculous items), and the other requires, effectively, two feats: dodge and mobility (as you really always want weapon focus already anyway, so that can hardly be considered an investment).

There may be a tad more nuance to this (which is why we run numbers), but the point is: some developer once said "this is too much", but now you can just achieve the same thing in a different way again. It smells like that one time where owl's insight scrolls were removed so that monks couldn't reach their maximum wisdom as easily, but got given a ton of wisdom items instead.