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CAMBION

Half fiend, half mortal, all dangerous.


Base Attack Bonus: 1/1
Good Saves: Fortitude, Reflex, Will
Hit Dice: d8
Weapons: Simple and Martial
Armor: None
Class Skills: Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Disguise, Escape Artist, Hide, Intimidate, Knowledge, Listen, Move Silently, Search, Spot, Survival, Use Rope
Skill Points: 8 + Intelligence bonus


1 Natural Weapon, Natural Armor, Ability Boost, Fiendish Resistances
2 Ability Boost
3 Natural Weapon, Ability Boost, Spellcasting: Darkness 1/hour and Desecrate
4 Ability Boost
5 Damage Reduction, Wings, Unholy Blight
6 Natural Armor, Spell Resistance
7 Poison 1/hour
8 Natural Armor
9 Contagion
10 Natural Armor
11 Shadow Walk
12 Natural Armor
13 Blasphemy
14 Natural Armor
15 Unholy Aura 1/hour



Upon gaining the first level of Cambion, the character's type changes to Outsider, and they gain Darkvision 60.

Save DCs for abilities of this class are derived from Charisma.


Natural Weapon
Each time this ability is gained choose one:
• 2 Claws as secondary attacks dealing 1d4 + STR damage each attack for a size Medium character
• 1 Bite as primary attack dealing 1d6 + STR damage each attack for a size Medium character


Natural Armor
Gain Natural Armor bonus +1 each time this ability is listed.


Ability Boost
Each time this ability is gained choose one:
• +4 Strength
• +4 Dexterity
• +2 Constitution and +2 Charisma
• +4 Intelligence


Spellcasting (Sp)
At the specified levels the Cambion gains spell abilities usable once per day unless specified otherwise.
Spell abilities for the Cambion count as coming from their own sphere, the "Cambion" sphere, and can be improved with feats and classes that affect sphere access.


Fiendish Resistances
• Immunity to poison
• Resistance to acid, cold, electricity, and fire equal to level, maximum 10.


Damage Reduction
Equal to level, bypassed by magic, maximum 10.


Wings
Fly speed 60 with average maneuverability.


Spell Resistance
Equal to 10 + Level, maximum 35.

I like it. There's literally no downside to playing this instead of a fiendish brute. You get even more stat boosts than a half BAB class designed around getting stat boosts, Just as many feats, and blasphemy before a cleric can cast it. Let me say that again, you get more "Be a giant monster" stats than the "Be a giant monster" class and you get the "Do not save, do not pass go, I win this encounter right now" spell before clerics get it.

Amazing.

Actually I did find a downside. You have no armor proficiencies and you only get a natural armor of 1. So everything hits you. You can sidestep this to a certain extent by sucking caster cock for Mage armor etc. But hey, you have a d12 hit die, Full BAB, and ridiculous str and con. I don't think you were going to be bothering to dodge attacks in the first place.

You like it?!? Weren't you the very same person that told me not to make it!

Not to correct you but I used Outsider HD, they get 8 HP not 12, and indeed there is no armor.
I guess I could boost the natural armor a bit, but figured the stat boosts would cover that, I mostly just kept it true to the Half Fiend template it was derived from.

EDIT: As for Blasphemy coming early, I'll change that. Didn't notice it was SL7.
Half Fiend gets it early. I just copied from that.


Changes made were granting a scaling Natural Armor bonus equal to every odd level, inserted Shadow Walk, bumped up Blasphemy and Unholy Aura while removing Horrid Wilting (it sucks anyway)

sigma999 wrote:You like it?!? Weren't you the very same person that told me not to make it!

Yeah, I was being a bit sarcastic.

Not to correct you but I used Outsider HD, they get 8 HP not 12, and indeed there is no armor.
I guess I could boost the natural armor a bit, but figured the stat boosts would cover that, I mostly just kept it true to the Half Fiend template it was derived from.

Ok, so we're in monk/ranger territory now. Good saves, good BAB, good offense (Fiend feats are the shit), SLAs, Gigantic stat boosts for no reason, awesome. Like, I've played fiendish brutes before. And they are actually really fucking strong as far as melee classes go. I think you are underestimating how strong stat boosts + fiend feats + All good saves/NA/Full BAB is.

EDIT: As for Blasphemy coming early, I'll change that. Didn't notice it was SL7.
Half Fiend gets it early. I just copied from that.


Changes made were granting a scaling Natural Armor bonus equal to every odd level, inserted Shadow Walk, bumped up Blasphemy and Unholy Aura while removing Horrid Wilting (it sucks anyway)

Ok, now blasphemy doesn't come before a cleric gets it, but I'd still never ever let your class in my game. It shits all over true fiend, fiendish brute, and conduit has to wait a long fucking time before it is more useful.

Basically this entire class is just "I break the RNG for no reason". And more importantly, it doesn't actually do anything interesting. You get skills like a rogue (but better because +4 int at first level), at levels 1-5 you just maul people with natural attacks and/or a spear (you have +4 strength, which makes charging in with a spear pretty viable at low levels). Once you hit level six you take Large size (and huge size once you hit 12) and generally just stack on a bunch of natural attacks to be a tentacle monster mid game (remember, you're handing out a fiend feat every two levels on top of character feats and full BAB/saves/8+int skill points).

So yeah, aside from doing the Fiendish brute thing a million times better than fiendish brute does, I don't even know what to say. Fiendish brute is a pretty balanced class and you just took away all the weaknesses and then proceeded to add more stat creep. Then you gave it blasphemy for no reason. I'm gunna do a SGT to see how this fares at level 6/12 in a bit. I'll comment again when I finish. Obviously level 1 you're just a barbarian, but your rage bonuses are "all the time" and you have more skill points. So you're level 1 is good (because you're better than a rogue and a barbarian at the same time), but I wanna see just how ridiculous this gets.

ubernoob wrote:Like, I've played fiendish brutes before. And they are actually really fucking strong as far as melee classes go. I think you are underestimating how strong stat boosts + fiend feats + All good saves/NA/Full BAB is.

You compare this to Fiendish Brute a lot.
IMHO the Brute sucks. It's an NPC class.

I did a challenge years ago with someone on this forum with a FB demon using poison claws, while the other person used a Tome Samurai.
I got slaughtered. Fast.

FB stat boosts are low to negligible. It's a terrible choice for a PC to play.

My balance comparison for the SLAs was something more like Sorcerer, so that's fine there.
The HD chassis has a lot of skill points because of Outsider. I could reduce that some but plenty of Tome classes get 6+INT points....

As far as the +4 boosts breaking RNG it's only +2 bonuses.
I seriously don't see the problem.


EDIT: On reconsideration the scaling armor and BAB do push the upper limits of RNG a bit.
But if it's the Fiend feats you're concerned about, they can be removed and just give dead levels.
Or I can insert the Natural Armor +1 in every level an SLA isn't gained.

sigma999 wrote:I did a challenge years ago with someone on this forum with a FB demon using poison claws, while the other person used a Tome Samurai.
I got slaughtered. Fast.

I did a challenge with a Wizard, and the other guy used a Beholder Mage. I got destroyed. This proves the Wizard is worthless and I should make a much stronger class version of it.

sigma999 wrote:

ubernoob wrote:Like, I've played fiendish brutes before. And they are actually really fucking strong as far as melee classes go. I think you are underestimating how strong stat boosts + fiend feats + All good saves/NA/Full BAB is.

You compare this to Fiendish Brute a lot.
IMHO the Brute sucks. It's an NPC class.

I did a challenge years ago with someone on this forum with a FB demon using poison claws, while the other person used a Tome Samurai.
I got slaughtered. Fast.

FB stat boosts are low to negligible. It's a terrible choice for a PC to play.

My balance comparison for the SLAs was something more like Sorcerer, so that's fine there.
The HD chassis has a lot of skill points because of Outsider. I could reduce that some but plenty of Tome classes get 6+INT points....

As far as the +4 boosts breaking RNG it's only +2 bonuses.
I seriously don't see the problem.


EDIT: On reconsideration the scaling armor and BAB do push the upper limits of RNG a bit.
But if it's the Fiend feats you're concerned about, they can be removed and just give dead levels.
Or I can insert the Natural Armor +1 in every level an SLA isn't gained.

http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Tome_of_Fi ... #The_Feats
This is what fiend feats look like. Note large size, huge size, Stat damage, Save or Dies, Greater Teleport, Extra Arms, Carrier. Fiend feats are really good. And I've played fiendish brute before. It pretty easily outshines other melee types. In anycase, here's your level six Same Game Test

Tiefling [Stupid Class] 6

I used 32 point buy. 25 Pointbuy would drop modifiers at the most by 1 since most of my stats come from class/feats.

Combat School, Sting of the Scorpion, Extra Arms, Large Size.

Stats:
28 (+9) str = 14 PB, 4 class, 8 size, 2 enhancement
18 (+4) dex = 14 PB, 2 tiefling, 4 class, -2 size
24 (+7) con = 16 PB, 2 class, 4 size, 2 enhancement
20 (+5) int = 14 PB, 2 tiefling, 4 class
12 (+1) wis = 12 PB
8 (-1) cha = 8 PB 2 class -2 tiefling

HP+ 6d8+42. Average 72, DR 6/Magic, Resist (Acid, electric, cold, fire) = 6
AC 20, 16 FF, 15 touch
Saves 14 fort, 11 ref, 8 will
SR 16

Items:
Resistance +2
+2 Greatsword
+2 amulet of natural attacks
+2 Str
+2 Con
+2 Deflection

I'm not going to bother cheesing out a 0 ACP armor. Suffice to say that AC could go higher really, really easily.

Attack sequence:
+17/+12 3d6+15 greatsword
Secondary naturals
+19 (combat school, remember) to hit on all
2 claws 1d6+13 Fort save DC 22 vs 1 round daze (combat school)
1 bite 1d8+13 again, if at least one of the natural attacks hits apply combat school DC 22 fort save
Scorpion tail (poison 7 times per day) 1d6 Con damage initial and secondary. Fort save DC 20 negates.

OK, before we go any further let's sum up what we can do.
We can fly. We can out combat maneuver anyone (because we have high str, full bab, and large size). We can deal con damage. We can dazelock. Solid HP.

Skills maxed: Pick 13. You're the party rogue on top of being a hideous monster.

Our weaknesses: Lowish will save and armor.

Next post will be the SGT.

So, remove the Fiend feats?

I was thinking a player can use their level feats to grab some if so desired.

Ok, here's the deal. You can just one shot all the CR 2 creatures in the SRD and they can't drop you. So we're going to skip groups of CR 1/2 creatures (you have fire resistance 6, just start a fire and stand in it to deal with swarms).

Starting with CR 4 pairs.

Aranea(pair): Win. You make the str check easily, can fly, and one shot them in melee. Easy win.
Hound Archons(pair): Draw. Neither of you can breach the others DR, so this is grindy. They can teleport away/kite you. If they DM wants to be a jerk, they win because they kite you and just spam ranged attacks/bolas/whatever to kite you indefinitely and grind you down. If the DM is nice, he has them stay in melee with you autoattacking til you win by virtue of numbers.
Baleen Whale: Lose. You have no swim speed and he has better stats than you. Drown to death embarrassingly.
Barghest pair: Win. You just melee them to death.
Brown Bear pair: Win. You outgrapple it, so he can't lock you down and you deal more damage. Your DR largely wins this one.
Belkar: Win. Your DR makes you basically immune to his attack sequence, large size immune to his special attack, and you just punch through his hit points.
Any Dragon Encounter: Win. You just grapple it to death. You're larger than equal CR dragons and have better stats. Your resistances/SR/HP/saves are good enough to get into range tanking the breath weapon/SLAs, then you just grapple rape it.
Bralani: Lose. Kites you to death with its holy bow and better fly speed.
Five headed Cyrohydra: Draw. You can fly, so it can't kill you, but if you get in melee it just blows you up with its breath weapon. Your ranged abilities aren't enough to break through the fast healing.
Babau: Win. You just grapple rape it.
Kyton: Win. Grapplerape again.
Digester: Win. Grapple rape.
Megaraptor: Win. Punch it in the face.
Dire Boar pair: Win. You can fly. Grab a bow and go hunting.
Earth elemental large/huge: Draw. You can't one shot it, it has earth glide, and you have flight. Either of you can disengage. Armor/HP/Attack/Damage numbers are pretty close to each other too (even the DR is close). You could win, but the earth elemental can escape at any moment.
Fire elemental: Win. No earth glide, and the damage breakdown is shifted so your fire resistance comes into play. You just maul him to death and there's nothing he can do about it.
Air elemental: Draw. Same deal as earth elemental. Your numbers are bigger, but the elemental can disengage.
Ettin: Win. Your stats are bigger and this is just a stats monster.
Gargoyle pair: Easy win. They don't do much damage and they don't have much HP.
Janni: Win.
Giant Stag Beetle pair: win. Fly and hunt.
Gibbering Mouther: Win. You're too big to get grappled, and have acid resistance. It can't even hurt you.
Girallon: Win. You have flight.


Yeah, I'm done. Point is that you curbstomp everything except for the creatures that can kite you. Literally everything your CR and lower you can just autoattack/grapple to death OR fly and throw rocks at til they die. If the only thing that can challenge you is the creatures specifically designed to kill you (angels), then your class is not balanced.

sigma999 wrote:So, remove the Fiend feats?

I was thinking a player can use their level feats to grab some if so desired.

HOLY SHIT WHAT A NOVEL IDEA. See that thing where Fiendish brute is balanced, but his only class feature (+5 str and dex over ten levels just makes it a 3/4 BAB class instead of 1/2) are bonus fiend feats. Yeah. But more importantly, your whole concept is "I HAVE MORE STATS" and that's just dumb. Go find a DM that will let you play a Warhulk. Because that's what you seem to be after. The whole premise was just stupid stat inflation. There was no theme to start with.

Let me show you what the devil traits are:

Devil Traits

Most devils possesses the following traits (unless otherwise noted in a creature’s entry).

Immunity to fire and poison.
Resistance to acid 10 and cold 10.
See in Darkness (Su): Some devils can see perfectly in darkness of any kind, even that created by a deeper darkness spell.
Summon (Sp): Some devils share the ability to summon others of their kind (the success chance and type of devils summoned are noted in each monster description).
Telepathy.

That's IT. We have a feat in tome of fiends to give those to a first level character (well, most of them. I wouldn't get too pissed if someone wanted telepathy either because it solves the exact same encounters as comprehend languages).

But yeah, when you have a class idea that isn't "I want bigger numbers on my character sheet than my neighbor" get back to me. Because your class rapes the SGT... because it has bigger numbers and the ability to fly. No strategy. No tactics. Here's the whole algorithm:
Can it fly?
If answer = no
Then: Fly and throw rocks at it til it dies
if answer = yes
Then just grapple it to death

That's the entire class.

So much of what it is doing is based on the initial ability boost, natty attacks and having fiend feat access at all that it's also a pretty freaky first level dip. I mean, hey, it sucks to slow down your stance gains a level, but tacking extra attacks, limbs and stats onto a tome monk always ends in hilarity.

Whipstitch wrote:So much of what it is doing is based on the initial ability boost, natty attacks and having fiend feat access at all that it's also a pretty freaky first level dip. I mean, hey, it sucks to slow down your stance gains a level, but tacking extra attacks, limbs and stats onto a tome monk always ends in hilarity.

Honestly no. High level stances are The Bomb(tm) and you the shit you care about from Fiend feats is limited by character level and the low level ones are underwhelming compared to a combat feat. You can either be an aasimar/tiefling monk and just take fiend feats or a human with product of infernal dalliance (which gives you claws and a bite attack).

For clarity, here is the stuff that this class gives that IS NOT related to fiend feats:

Flying (given at level 5)
+4 str, +4 dex, +2 Con, + 2 Cha, +4 Int (over 4 levels)
Natural attacks you don't care about as a monk (hint: you get iteratives/stunlocks/the extra damage is not a big deal)
Some shitty resistances (energy immunities can be gotten in other places)
Some shitty DR (DR/Magic... yay you can beat up a bear better)
SR. Meh.

As you can see, all the stuff that is actually "Do things" comes from the feats (except for flight, permanent flight at level 5 is pretty bomb).

So what does this class do that Fiendish brute didn't cover? A grand whopping nothing! As an added bonus, the Fiendish brute is actually more interesting because he has one more fiend feat (I'm counting Wings as a feat because that's exactly what it does).

And to top it all off let's point out this last thing. To make the fiendish brute feel even more small in the pants, this class gets not 2, but 3 abilities that require character level 5/6 by level six. A fiendish brute only gets 2.

Renaming this class:
"I didn't think fiendish brute was strong enough because I've never actually played one, so added a good will save, Full BAB, rogue skill points, a bite attack (because a fiendish brute doesn't get a bite attack by default), even more stat inflation, AND stacked levels 5/6 to manage every fiend feat I could want right at those levels"

Keep in mind the entire time I've been ignoring the fact that you get Darkness and Unholy Blight. Because your class is strong enough to beat every single encounter in the monster manual at level six except for Angel Archers. Who kind of beat EVERY level six character that isn't specialized in ranged combat.

I was admittedly thinking in lower level terms given a lot of games I play tend to pitter out around 7 or 8, but I can't really argue with the idea that if this class was allowed that you'd gun straight for flying.

ubernoob wrote:Natural attacks you don't care about as a monk (hint: you get iteratives/stunlocks/the extra damage is not a big deal)

You are completely wrong. Monks benefit tremendously from extra natural attacks, because you can use all your natural attacks in addition to your iterative slam attacks. So since a lot of Monk Stances do something on an attack, having 3 extra at every level is worth delaying stances for one level at most levels for specifically melee monks. Obviously, you can also get attacks other ways that don't delay your progression, but those don't give you ability boosts too, and they probably cost something.

Fiend feats are gone.
I wasn't trying to beat the True Fiend with this, but replace the Half Fiend template with a progression worth taking.

sigma999 wrote:Fiend feats are gone.
I wasn't trying to beat the True Fiend with this, but replace the Half Fiend template with a progression worth taking.

OK. so we remove Extra Arms from the character sheet. He can still grapplemance/rock throw almost every encounter in the SRD by himself. And now it's just a 5 level class that no one in their right mind would ever take past fifth level. You are still stupid broken and better than a Fiendish Brute at low levels except your class is five levels long.

Did you not learn anything about frontloading martial classes from the original 3EPHB? If you put all your goodies in the first five levels, that just means you have a five level class. It doesn't somehow make it less broken early game or more worthless lategame.

Also, being half fiend is a roleplay thing. There are a million things to competently written already to support it mechanically. Your whole class started as boring stat increases and is still boring stat increases. Dropping one bonus feat at level six does not change how this class handles challenges. It still just checks "Is the enemy large or smaller" and grapplemances everything under huge size while flying and throwing rocks at the rest of the monster manual (which isn't much actually).

Yes, your class has all the same problems of a grapplemancer (the ability to just automagically win every melee encounter large size and under) except that flight doesn't last for 6 rounds, but all the time.

That's all your class is. A grapplemancer with no dispel/wait for the buffs to run out counterplay.

On top of that, it gets better skills than a rogue (8+int, +4 int bonus, pretty much only usable by a +2 int race).

Let me say it a couple more times.
A) Needless stat inflation is a dumb design paradigm. It just breaks the RNG (as I actually fucking demonstrated for you).
B) True Fiend and Fiendish Brute exist. Your class is objectively better than BOTH by a large margin. Are you smoking crack?
C) What is your fucking design goal beyond "Have bigger numbers on my character sheet than my neighbor"? What do you want to be able to do. Wizards cast spells. Barbarians go into a rage for rage dice and other bonuses. Fighters do all sorts of cheesy shit because combat feats are awesome. Druids turn into a bear and eat your face while also providing no save crowd control. Your class... breaks the RNG and has permanent flight. It's identical to a grapplemancer that can never have his spells dispelled.

Should we call this a lost cause then?

sigma999 wrote:Should we call this a lost cause then?

100%
A) You don't have a design goal that isn't borked from the start.
B) Your thematic stuff is already covered in playtested, more tactically deep classes other places.