The Gaming Den

Lurk
"Hey guys, where did Jim go?"

HD: d6
BAB: 3/4ths
Saves: Good Will and Ref, bad Fort.
Skills: 8 + Int, Autohypnosis, Bluff, Concentration, Disguise, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Knowledge Psionics, Listen, Move Silently, Psicraft, Sleight of Hand, Spot, Tumble, Use Psionic Device.

1: Mind Static, Weapon Augment, Power Point Pool.
2: Cloaking, Psionic Focus
3: Psionic Knock, Psionic Speak with Dead, Psionic See Invis
4: Precognitive, Evasion
5: Swift Augment
6: Blinking
7: Enhanced Focus
8: Trace Teleport, Psionic Dimension Door
9: Improved Cloaking
10: Force of Mind
11: Total Augment
13: Improved Blinking
14: Double Augment
15:
16: Extended Blinking
17: Divert Teleport
18:
19:
20: True Mental Master.


Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Lurks are proficient with all simple and martial weapons, as well as Light Armor.

Mind Static (Ex): Any target struck by a Lurk takes a -2 penalty to all saves, skill checks, AC, and attacks for two rounds. This penalty never stacks with itself, and is Mind Affecting.

Weapon Augment (Su): A Lurk charge's their weapons with a pattern of attacks as riders channeled from their mind. The pattern maintains until they change it up. Every attack they make comes with a modifier based on the pattern, but no pattern can repeat the same rider in a row, If any attack has a DC of 10+1/2 level+Int modifier.

A level 1 Lurk may choose two Augments from the three available at level 1, and gains a new Augment at every odd level thereafter, but must meet the level requirements to select each Augment. Setting a pattern takes 10 minutes.

At level 5 the action to set a pattern is reduced to one minute.

At level 11 the action to set a pattern is reduced to a full round action.

At level 14, A Lurk may apply two Augments to each attack and patterns become way more complex, consisting of doubles. No pattern can have the same augment twice or can have any augment that was in the last double.

Power Point Pool (Ex): A Lurk has a Power Point Pool with 5 power points. He gains additional Power Points from his Intelligence Score as per the Psionics and Abilities table.

Cloaking (Psi): As a full round action, a Lurk may use Invisibility (as the spell) as a Psi-Like Ability at will.

At level 9 he may spend two consecutive full round actions to use Greater Invisibility as a Psi Like Ability.

Psionic Focus (Ex): When a Lurk reaches second level he gains a competence bonus to attack equal to his Int modifier. He may expend his Psionic Focus to be treated as rolling a 20 on any skill check once per day per skill. This is a non action that occuts simultaneously with the action of making the skill check.

At level 7 when holding Psionic Focus he gains an insight bonus to saves equal to half his Int modifier, rounded down.

Psi-Likes (Psi): At level 3 a Lurk may expend one power point as a standard action to activate one of three Psi Like abilities: Psionic Knock, Psionic Speak with Dead, and Psionic See Invis.

At level 8 he may do the same for Trace Teleport and Psionic Dimension Door.

Precognitive (Psi): A Lurk may, at level 4, use any of the precognition powers (Offensive, Defensive, and Offensive Prescience) as a Psi Like ability with a standard action manifestation that costs one power point to activate.

However, he may only do so 5 times a day.

At level 10, the cap increases to 10 uses per day.

Evasion (Ex): A Lurk can avoid even magical and unusual attacks with great agility. If she makes a successful Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, she instead takes no damage. A helpless Lurk does not gain the benefit of evasion.

Blink (Psi): At level 6, a Lurk may choose to blink (as the spell) for up to his Lurk level in rounds per day. Activating this effect for one round is a free action.

At level 13 this becomes a Greater Blink effect.

At level 16, he may blink for up to twice his Lurk level in rounds.

Force of Mind (Psi): A Lurk gains the effects of Psionic Mind Blank at all times. In addition, each time he strikes an opponent with a weapon, they are subject to the effects of Shatter Mind Blank, with a DC of 10 +1/2 level + Int modifier, and a ML of 25.

Divert Teleport (Psi): A Lurk has an alway active Divert Teleport effect out to 40ft, and may use an immediate action to Divert Teleports, as the power, when they are within his range.

True Mental Master (Psi): A lurk who reaches level 20 gains total control of their mind, and uses it to mask themselves from the world. The Lurk is now Incorporeal, under the effect of Superior Invisibility, and Non Detection as if cast on himself with a CL of 40. However, unlike normal incorporeality, he cannot even interact with ghost touch weapons so he is totally useless.

Lurk Weapon Augments:

1) Nerve Overload, Distracting, Targetting.

3) Mind Burn, Nauseating, Penetrating.

5) Magic Destroying, Lasting, Stunning.

7) Crippling, Infecting, Blowback.

8) Retributive, Dazing, Transdimensional.

9) Lazor, Criting.

11) Explosive

13) Death, Gate

Nerve Overload: 2 Dex damage per hit.
Distracting: Will save or slowed for 1 round. Mind Affecting.
Targetting: Ignores Concealment, +5 bonus to AB.
Mind Burn: 2 Wisdom damage per hit. Mind affecting.
Nausteaing: Fort or Nauseated one round.
Penetrating: +10 damage, negates all DR.
Magic Destroying: Either use Attack action make Dispel check against spell in reach, or if striking a caster, cause them to lose highest level spell slot.
Lasting: Attack automatically repeated next round.
Stunning: Fort save or Stunned for one round.
Crippling: 2 Str damage.
Infecting: 2 Con damage.
Blowback: Creates 60ft Line of Windstorm force wind, can be used to create wind, or can trigger wind on striking opponent.
Retributive: Strikes self or ally and does damage. When that ally is struck in melee, the Attack hits opponent for same damage as it did to ally, and ally heals that amount.
Dazing: Will save or Daze for one round.
Transdimensional: Strikes through all concurrent dimensions, Ethereal/Astral/Shadow/Rope Trick/ect.
Lazor: Attack is a 120ft line. Make one attack roll and apply to everyone in that line. Roll one damage roll, everyone hit by the attack roll takes that damage.
Criting: You are treated as rolling a natural 19 on your attack, roll to confirm as normal.
Explosive: Everyone within 20ft radius of Lurk is struck.
Death: Fort save or die, not a death effect, but only applies to corporeal creatures.
Gate: As Transport Travelers option duration of one round. Treat as Greater Planeshift with Ref negates instead of will when enemy is struck.

Wow, his level 1 is... strong. Very strong.

I really like where this is going. Thoughts:

Apparently he learns 1 and only one augment from each tier? That seems... very limiting. I mean, I can see why you don't want a level 10 guy having ten augs, but have more sooner and doing some swapping would make for smoother gameplay.

Also, are the stat damage ones... terrible? What has a low enough Wisdom to knock out, and how likely are they to fail the saves?

Orion wrote:Wow, his level 1 is... strong. Very strong.

I don't think so? He's a Monk with a shittier fighting style, no ability to apply fighting style more than once a round (multiple weapons/AoOs), often needs full rounds to attack, but does get mind static.

I don't think his level 1 is overpowered, and comparing him to a Monk I keep wondering if I'm screwing him.

Orion wrote:Apparently he learns 1 and only one augment from each tier? That seems... very limiting. I mean, I can see why you don't want a level 10 guy having ten augs, but have more sooner and doing some swapping would make for smoother gameplay.

Well, actually, he can go back and choose a second one from a tier, but most of the limits on augs is because I can't think of enough.

Also, they are supposed to be good enough that you might actually want to use them even when they aren't your highest tier. So switching out should occur round to round.

Orion wrote:Also, are the stat damage ones... terrible? What has a low enough Wisdom to knock out, and how likely are they to fail the saves?

Yeah, I don't know. Infecting and Crippling are basically just Rogue Crippling Strike and Monk level 1 Fighting Style, so I'm not sure.

But the Wis and Dex ones have saves because I don't want the Lurk auto winning all Dragons by full attacking with TWFing. And likewise, anyone throwing around too much Wis damage with no bypass is going to cripple any divine spellcasters to easily.

I just don't know, I hate the stat damage minigame when it comes to dex and casting stats, and there is no int one because of animals.

I don't think Wisdom damage does anything good, and should be cut from the class.

The dex one... I dunno, dragons have like 8 or 10 dex, right? Something that requires you personally to land 4 hits on a dragon to take it down, and doesn't stack with the efforts of your comrades, seems... not unreasonable? Especially if you restrict it to real weapons and not flasks.

But each incremental -2 to DEX is such a small deal that I don't want to roll a saving throw for it.

As for level 1... he's squishier than a monk, sure. But with 16 Dex and 12 Str, he's twanging a longbow for +8, 1d8+1, which will kill something every round.

I don't think it's a huge balance issue--he has *really* strong offense but only tolerable defense; but it is a problem if you want people to take anything but the +to hit augment.

Orion wrote:As for level 1... he's squishier than a monk, sure. But with 16 Dex and 12 Str, he's twanging a longbow for +8, 1d8+1, which will kill something every round.

I don't think it's a huge balance issue--he has *really* strong offense but only tolerable defense; but it is a problem if you want people to take anything but the +to hit augment.

??

You think that +8 AB and 1d8+1 is killing something every round?

You think that's even worth crippling your character at later levels?

I mean, it's an average 5.5 Piercing damage a round, with a +8 to hit.

Barbarians already have that to hit without crippling the character, and they do more damage.

You are still missing about a fourth of your shots, you still can't kill anything with DR, you still can't kill anything with more than 5 HP, which is like, all the CR 1 and 2 animals.

You still can't kill the animated objects, you still can't kill any CR 1 undead, even Commoner zombies, and Warrior Skeletons.

The only thing you can kill is CR 1/2 humanoids, and even against the crappy ones, you still have less than a 50% chance of killing them.

I mean, level 1 Barbarians have +9 ABs and do 2d6+11 damage. That really will kill everything in one hit.

But if you are shooting at an Orc with 1d8+1 Hp, and you do 1d8+1 damage... How you think that's a guaranteed kill when you only have a 50% chance of killing him assuming you hit, which you only do on a 7 and up anyway, is beyond me.

A level 1 Barbarian is +7 to hit by my numbers (+2 rage, +4 str, +1 BAB)

You could say that's unoptimized but I could throw back at you a halfling lurk with +10 or more. Sure the Barbarian does more damage, but inly in melee. The more I think about it, the problem isn't that the level 1 Lurk is too good...he's really not. It's that all he has going for him is that one ability. Anyone who doesn't take the +to hit augment is gimping themselves completely.

Orion wrote:A level 1 Barbarian is +7 to hit by my numbers (+2 rage, +4 str, +1 BAB)

You could say that's unoptimized but I could throw back at you a halfling lurk with +10 or more. Sure the Barbarian does more damage, but inly in melee. The more I think about it, the problem isn't that the level 1 Lurk is too good...he's really not. It's that all he has going for him is that one ability. Anyone who doesn't take the +to hit augment is gimping themselves completely.

Actually, I'd rather ride around on a horse kiting things with slow.

For serious? If you have the speed and the space to kite, you probably don't need the slow to win. If you *do* need the slow, then you're fucked because you're fighting a group or orcs or centipedes or whatever and you have about a 50% chance of slowing one each round (70% chance to hit, 75% for failed save, let's say), which won't save you.

Meanwhile everything you fight at level one dies in 1-2 hits, meaning that often the slow does nothing and when it does, it's being weighed against more hits that kill things. The only thing that can survive 2 shots with a light crossbow is a zombie, and zombies are immune to slow.

Killing things faster helps more for kiting a group, and helps more when you can't kite. Kiting a single opponent is a trivial challenge not worth devoting resources to.

Semantics questions:

On the psi-like abilities granted at first and eighth levels, you might want to make it more clear that the lurk gains several separate psilike abilities that each cost one point to activate, rather than a single aggregate psilike that manifests all of those abilities for one power point.

On Precognitive, same question: does one activation get you only one abilitiy, or does one activation get you a subset of the list?



As for balance and kiting, I'm more worried about the at-will invisibility starting from second level. Kiting becomes much more feasible when the victims don't know which way to run, and kiting while invisible lets you kite things that are faster than and have better range than you.

I'd rather not play at level 1, because level 1 is shitty. But honestly if I was a Lurk at level 1, I'd be TWFing flasks to take advantage of Mind Static for my Wizard/Sorc/ect friends.

And honestly I'd have a low as fuck dex, since I would prioritize Int, because Int is like eleven times as good as dex for a Lurk.

1) I changed how Precognitive and Psi Likes are worded, to make them clearer.

2) I assume that the Lurk is part of a party. As such, he can totally use invis for defense, for surprise rounds, and for +2 to attack and denied Dex. But not for Kiting, since they will just attack the rest of the party.

But not for much else. And honestly, half the MM after level whatever can ignore invis anyway.

You can't TWF flasks at level 1, you run out in like 2 rounds. Nor is armor heavy enough to justify the range penalties you'll take if you're not suicidal.

As for dex, well, there's a reason I only assumed a 16; but it *is* gonna be second-highest (and in a game that stops before level 5, arguably more important than INT)

Anyway if you don't care below a certain level, that's fine, but the other level 1 augments could use a little something.

Not sure how helpful, but tried to fix both invis kiting and the stat damage augments that offer saves.

Hey, like Assassins, this guy should probably get a clause where he can charge a crossbow and load it in the same action.