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Aaron Peori said:
Hmm.

Skeptic
Stats: As Rogue.
Powers: (Supernatural) Anti-Magic Shell, Constant, 60ft radius around self per level. May be reactivated as a free reaction instantly upon being successfully Disjoined.

There you go. That should fuck over basically every magic user in the game short of gods.
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Gate or Planar Ally in some creatures from outside the radius, have them go in and attack.

The posts upthread weren't kidding about just magic immunity not being enough. Though at least Gate is high level and Planar is a cleric spell.


Sightedjt said:
Flight+ Orb of Element line- instantaneous conjuration effects are unaffected my AMF so can still be used to plink the target. Alternately, summoning of creatures with ranged attacks or similar abilities, calling spells so things are physically present and not summoned.
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AMF does get rid of summoned foes, but something that's just a means of planar travel is good.
 
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Q99 said:
Sure, but I am asking to design a class to do so.
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Oh, that wasn't clear to me previously.

It looked to me like you were looking to build a character using the pre-existing tools, but limited to non-casting.

If you're trying to build a new class, that's significantly easier:
- Steal from Tome of Battle (Maneuvers).
- Steal from Rogue & Spellthief.
- Steal from the Jumper PrC in that one Drow supplement.
- Steal from the Occult Slayer.

Basically, give the class magical powers which are totally not spells. And don't work like spells. And can put some serious hurt on primary spellcasters, in addition to all their other tricks which work vs. monsters and non-spellcasters alike.
 
It gets rid of the summon but if the summon has any ranged attack of it's own it can use that. Or even just pick up large rocks and drop them

There's the orb of X line as well, a blasting set from conjuration school which will go through an antimagic field due to them being instantaneous duration spells- the only time the magic is involved is in the actual summoning, not the actual attack- it's why just walking near a wall made by wall of stone with AMF up won't vanish the wall.
 
Q99 said:
Gate or Planar Ally in some creatures from outside the radius, have them go in and attack.

The posts upthread weren't kidding about just magic immunity not being enough. Though at least Gate is high level and Planar is a cleric spell.
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Hmm. Okay:


Skeptic
Stats: As Rogue.
Powers: (Supernatural) Anti-Magic Shell, Constant, 60ft radius around self per level. May be reactivated as a free reaction instantly upon being successfully Disjoined.
(Extraordinary) Anti-Planer Shell, Constants, 60ft radius around self per level. Any creature summoned or called via any spell within this radius is instantly dismissed back to their home, no save or resistance.

There you go. That should fuck over basically every magic user in the game short of gods.
 
Q99 said:
Sure, but I am asking to design a class to do so. And assuming a lot of the time, the magic users they'll facing will not be loaded specifically for them.

Let's aim for up to, oh, level 12-13 or so. Or 'let's see how high we can go before it requires an absurd amount of abilities/abilities that don't thematically fit'. Eventually the raw width of magic ability is too much, but I'd think you could get that far- the high level slots are quite limited at that point, after all, and run out fast.

The things that seem to be covered so far as necessary-
1- the ability to disrupt magical walls and the like (walls become available at 7th level)
2- the ability to deal with flight and invisibility/other vision impairment (Flight is ability to wizards by 5th, Invisibility and fog cloud by 3rd)
3- at least high resistance to 'save or lose' effects (always, but grows in need with levels)

Anything else that's definitely necessary?
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You need a way to disable or pre-emptively counter spells that would either displace the Wizard (ex: Them teleporting themselves away) or the Fighter (ex: Them teleporting the Fighter away). Otherwise the fight still ends with "Wizard vanishes to their stronghold on the opposite side of the planet".
 
Orb of X line and other instantaneous conjuration spells cast from outside the area, flying creatures dropping large rocks on them or using other nonmagical ranged attacks, the wizard pulling out a crossbow and shooting them in the face while flying because that character is physically incapable of being healed ever.

So not only is it a class that still can't beat a wizard, it can't even hold up to regular monsters because it can't be healed and fucks over the entire party as long as they stay within 60ft of them.

10/10 design
 
earthboy said:
Basically, give the class magical powers which are totally not spells. And don't work like spells. And can put some serious hurt on primary spellcasters, in addition to all their other tricks which work vs. monsters and non-spellcasters alike.
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in other words, exactly what i said to do a page ago?
 
Sightedjt said:
Orb of X line and other instantaneous conjuration spells cast from outside the area, flying creatures dropping large rocks on them or using other nonmagical ranged attacks, the wizard pulling out a crossbow and shooting them in the face while flying because that character is physically incapable of being healed ever.

So not only is it a class that still can't beat a wizard, it can't even hold up to regular monsters because it can't be healed and fucks over the entire party as long as they stay within 60ft of them.

10/10 design
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60' per level. By level 10 nobody can come within 600'.
 
Drachyench said:
You need a way to disable or pre-emptively counter spells that would either displace the Wizard (ex: Them teleporting themselves away) or the Fighter (ex: Them teleporting the Fighter away). Otherwise the fight still ends with "Wizard vanishes to their stronghold on the opposite side of the planet".
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See, I think that's not too bad. If you're invading a stronghold or fighting the grand vizier before confronting the evil king, the enemy wizard retreating is fine. It's not until reasonably high level that a wizard is going to teleport out *and* back.

Though, considering the anti-mage should be good at disrupting spells in general, there is simply that generic method.


A dimensional-grounding effect to stop 'porting out *and* in would be good, but that is pretty magic in itself, which is off-theme.


Chloe Sullivan said:
in other words, exactly what i said to do a page ago?
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I don't think that's quite necessary til high levels. Abilities like spell-disruption, deflection, moment powers and saves, and such aren't mimicing magic, even being powerful and useful against magic.

I think one could put together a class that still looks martial in most of what it does, and can compete without anything that's "hey wait, that's *totally* magic," for at *least* mid-level.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
in other words, exactly what i said to do a page ago?
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Uh... all I see on the previous page is a metaphor about plasma canons and lasers instead of rocks.

If my post is what you secretly meant by that metaphor, then sure.

But I don't think that you said exactly what I posted.

(I do think we basically agree, of course.)
 
Aaron Peori said:
And they're a Rogue. With Rogue skill points. And sneak attack.

These guys don't stand up fight Mages. They kill them in their sleep.
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For a supposedly sneaky class, you'd think they'd realize an anti-magic bubble a quarter mile in diameter is bound to throw up some alarms. And, probably, have every guard in the province looking for the person responsible.
 
earthboy said:
Uh... all I see on the previous page is a metaphor about plasma canons and lasers instead of rocks.

If my post is what you secretly meant by that metaphor, then sure.

But I don't think that you said exactly what I posted.

(I do think we basically agree, of course.)
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it was actually in that same post.

Chloe Sullivan said:
You need supers to beat supers. A mage slayer is a magic user using a differnt type of magic, spec'ed to take down the type of magic he is slaying.

a non-magic dude is scenery.
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Drachyench said:
For a supposedly sneaky class, you'd think they'd realize an anti-magic bubble a quarter mile in diameter is bound to throw up some alarms. And, probably, have every guard in the province looking for the person responsible.
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They asked for an anti-mage class, not an "anti mundane art of throwing perfectly normal warm bodies at me" class.
 
I bought Curse of Strahd today since my game store has a deal with Wizards and gets stuff early. I love me some Ravenloft, so I'm really happy with my purchase. It's great that we're getting back to a bunch of the other settings with 5th Edition and I can't wait to see what sourcebooks come out next.
 
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Winged Knight said:
I bought Curse of Strahd today since my game store has a deal with Wizarda and gets stuff early. I love me some Ravenloft, so I'm really happy with my purchase. It's great that we're getting back to a bunch of the other settings with 5th Edition and I can't wait to see what sourcebooks come out next.
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I wish I had the money to get it. But my horror money this year is going to Innistrad stuff and the new Pathfinder Horror guide :(
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
it was actually in that same post.
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So, basically a more general version of what I said, without any examples of mechanics.
earthboy said:
If you're trying to build a new class, that's significantly easier:
- Steal from Tome of Battle (Maneuvers).
- Steal from Rogue & Spellthief.
- Steal from the Jumper PrC in that one Drow supplement.
- Steal from the Occult Slayer.
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Again, I don't think we disagree, but neither do I think we said the exact same thing.
 
Winged Knight said:
I bought Curse of Strahd today since my game store has a deal with Wizards and gets stuff early. I love me some Ravenloft, so I'm really happy with my purchase. It's great that we're getting back to a bunch of the other settings with 5th Edition and I can't wait to see what sourcebooks come out next.
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On one hand, Zakhara being mentioned by name in multiple books now (to the point of even being directly mentioned / invoked in some of the Sword Coast book's backgrounds), along with several of the Unearthed Arcana stuff being applicable to the Athas, leaves me hopeful as to either of them being given supplements.

On the other, however, Ravenloft is not mentioned in any of the "Adjusted for another campaign setting" entries that I can find for most of the D&D 5E campaigns. Contrastingly, Athas is. It's possible that the settings we see overtly mentioned in the PHB, DM Guide, and so-on won't be given their own supplements.
 
If I was going to build a mage-slayer class that wasn't just "a wizard spec'd into counterspelling" or something similar, I'd go for a theme of "implacable man" and "inescapable"

In addition to a basic, low-level "counter spells by hitting them with your sword/bow" I'd give them two other core features. First, there are caps on how incapacitated they can be - their miss chance can never be greater than X, the maximum penalty they can suffer on an attack roll is Y, and so on. This means that "save or suck" can never be worse than "save or be somewhat less good, while still useful". The second is some kind of supernatural "designated enemy" effect, which allows you to intuitively track an individual within Z feet while preventing them from fleeing.

This doesn't stop all the typical wizard tactics, but can shut down a broad swathe of typical ones. The flying invisible wizard can still have a reasonable chance of getting shot, and can have his spells dispelled on hit. The ability to dispel things on attack means you can declare a full attack with your longbow, punch through their wall of force with the first hit, their wind wall with the second, and shoot them with the rest. The "haha fuck you and your ability to do anything" casters run into the issue of "actually, I can still act, fuk u." The "fite me IRL" aura prevents them from just teleporting away.

That said, it still runs into issues with things like instantaneous conjuration (can't dispel wall of iron, etc.), outright save-or-lose spells, and so on.
 
there is an option for "favored enemy Arcane" somwhere already. Throw on nemesis and you autodetect arcane casters.
 
Drachyench said:
AD&D had a sort-of solution with what was either a Fighter or Paladin kit (I think Paladin), with the Fighter getting some innate Magic Resistance (which was effective against any instantaneous attacks against them) as well as a range Dispel Magic ability that treated the kit user's level as twice its base amount for the purpose of dispel (effective both at ending things like Flight and removing Walls of Force and such).

It had a LOT of drawbacks (I think the only magic items they could use were armor and weapons, maybe potions too), but its simplicity covered a lot of the basics. Good fighter saves plus resistance plus super-Dispel for when the prior two failed / didn't apply.
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I do have fond memories of playing through Baldur's Gate II (which used a tweaked AD&D system) with an Inquisitor-kit Paladin. True Seeing and a ton of high-powered daily Dispel Magics made magical opposition a lot less powerful than it might otherwise have been.
 
tzar1990 said:
The second is some kind of supernatural "designated enemy" effect, which allows you to intuitively track an individual within Z feet while preventing them from fleeing.
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On this note, I would recommend taking a look at the Harbinger and associated disciplines from Path of War. Maneuvers in there like Doppelganger Waltz can give you free movement when an opponent moves, including teleporting past obstacles.
 
Has anyone tried tiered gestalt before? I've just joined a game using it (priced so that you can't take a tier one class 1-20 and with bonus feats on a tier 3 track), and it seems like a good hack to combine 3.5s absurd number of options with some sense of balance.
 
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