Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Roguish Archetype: The Corsair [Second Draft]



People loved the first corsair!

...except for just about everything mechanical about it. Ah well.

But that's okay. I got even more quality criticism than usual, and revised most of the corsair's abilities to improve flavor and general, all-around power balance.

CHANGELOG:

  • Compressed Sea Legs and Bonus Proficiencies into Scallywag's Tricks, removing the additional skill proficiency while maintaining the rest.
  • Moved the animal companion to 3rd level as its own feature, First Mate! The animal companion can even use a diminished form of your Sneak Attack, and is balanced against having an off-hand attack.
  • Replaced Captain at the Helm with Dirty Fighting to give the class option more things to do itself, and less abilities reliant on others doing things.
  • Compressed Captain at the Helm into Infamy, offering players a choice of abilities depending on whether they're a naughty or nice pirate. 
  • Added rules for having a hook, because really, what's a pirate without a hook?
CONCERNS:
  • Balance on First Mate is something I'm sure will come up, but I'm fairly certain it trades off well against an off-hand attack. Unless there's something I didn't notice, but we'll find out. 
  • Touched up the companion stats a little bit, maybe not enough, let me know. 
WHAT I LEARNED:
  • If you're trying to make a pirate, don't make some sort of rogue-warlord. Just make a pirate. 

5 comments:

  1. Amazing! little dissapointed you can't have a flying snake as a pet, but ah well. Here's an interesting idea, how about you make some rules for some artificial limbs, expanding on your hook rule, maybe some magical flesh golem arms, or some more limbs of vecna, because i'm sure he's got some spare

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    1. Not a bad idea, but maybe for another time. Robot arms don't fall under the umbrella of pirate stuff, after all. :p

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  2. I think that 6 Intelligence is still a bit too high for a monkey. 6 INT is as smart as a duodrone, quaggoth, or young white dragon, all of which are sentient and definitely smarter than a mere monkey.

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    1. I actually kicked that question around for a bit before settling on 6 INT, for the reasons you described.

      What finally made me decide on 6 INT was the Ape (MM 317) that also has an INT of 6. This in mind, 5 or 6 seems the right neck of the woods for a monkey's INT, as I'd want the monkey and ape to be roughly parallel in terms of intelligence.

      Now that I'm looking again, a baboon (MM 318) has only 4 INT, however, so perhaps 5 INT would be closer to the mark.

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    2. 5 seems about accurate to me.

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