Post/Author/DateTime	Post
bigbadslog 12-19-07, 01:28 AM	One day Graknog, intrepid barbarian, found him self amidst the hordes of bony undead, armed with naught but an axe. Being the well informed adventurer he was, he knew a club would server him better here. The closest thing he had at the time was a crowbar, so he pulled it out and went to work. Graknog continued to use the crowbar, and eventually figured out new and interesting ways to smash things with it. He bought a tougher crowbar, started using two, liked that better, and started to teach others what he had learned. Thus was born the... Black Bar Marauder Prerequisites Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Crowbar Two Weapon Fighting Improved Sunder BAB: +5 Special: Must own a pair of adamantine crowbars. BAB Fort Ref Will Abilities +1 +2 +0 +0 Weapon Familiarity, Special Ability +2 +3 +0 +0 Sunder Armor, Weapon Focus: Crowbar, Crowbar Use +2 +3 +3 +1 +1 Leverage, Special Ability +4 +4 +1 +1 Crowbar Use +4, Improved Two Weapon Fighting +5 +4 +1 +1 Penetrating Sunder, Special Ability Hit Die d10. Class Skills The Black Bar Marauder’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Ride (Dex), Spot(Wis), and Swim (Str). Skill Points per level 2 + Int modifier. Class Features Weapon and Armor Proficiency Black Bar Marauder gains no proficiency with any weapon or armor. Crowbar Use With long use, the Black Bar Marauder has learned to use his adamantine crowbars to maximum advantage. At level 1 BBM gets a +2 bonus to damage when using his crowbars to sunder. This increases to +4 at level 3. Weapon Familiarity Through practice and experience, the weight of the crowbars no longer impede you as much as they once did. Crowbars now count as light weapons, for the purpose of Two Weapon Fighting. Sunder Armor Using the hooked ends of his crowbars, the Black Bar Marauder can rip, tear, and pry off his opponents armor. Use the rules for sundering a held or worn item, with the following changes: Add double any enhancement bonus to armor or a shield as a hardness rating for the item. This magical hardness bypasses adamantines ability to ignore hardness up to 20 points. Once a piece of armor/shield has reached half of its hit points, its armor/shield bonus is reduced by half. Once a piece of armor/shield has reached one quarter of its hit points, its armor/shield bonus is reduced to 0, and the armor check penalty is doubled. In addition the max dex bonus of the armor becomes 0. Magical enhancements remain unaffected until the item is destroyed. Leverage A BBM has learned to make better use of the strange weight distribution of crowbars. He can use his full strength modifier with his off hand rather than 1/2 his strength modifier when wielding two crowbars. Penetrating Sunder Black Bar Marauder can now make sunder attempts, as part of his normal attack. BBM takes a -2 to all attack rolls this round, and deals only half normal damage to his opponent. In return all of his attacks this round can do normal sundering damage to his opponents armor and shield only. Special Abilitiies Hit it hard: The BBM gets a +1 bonus per black bar marauder level to damage when using his crowbars during a sunder attempt. Give 'em the hook: A black bar marauder has learned to use his crowbars in yet a new way. He gains a +2 to disarm attempts and a +2 to trip attempts made with a crowbar. Chuck it: The BBM finds that sometimes chucking a crowbar can be useful sometimes. The BBM can now throw the Crowbar at a range increment of 20ft. Breaking Throw: The BBM furthers his throwing ability with the crowbar and is able to sunder at range. When throwing crowbars, the BBM is treated with having the Ranged Sunder feat. Crack 'em open: Whenever a BBM hits a single opponent with both crowbars for damage, he can pull the hooked weapons in opposite directions to tear apart the opponent’s body. This attack automatically deals an additional 1d8+2x strength modifer damage. Prerequisites: Leverage, Improved two weapon fighting. As you can see, this PrC is all about smashing stuff. Smash their weapons and they can't hurt you. Smash their armor and it gets easier to hurt them. Smash everything... Because its fun! Any help the good folk of the forum can offer would be great. I want to introduce this class as an NPC opponent, just to give me a convenient excuse to lower the overall party wealth just a hair, so I can give them something cool in the coming future. -Slog
Watsyurname529 12-19-07, 07:13 PM	Intresting class. A crowbar fighter...like the flavor of it. I'm not sure on the Crowbar damage but I think it's an improvised club? As an Exotic Weapon Feat I would give the crowbar some acutal stats for the feat: Crowbar One-Handed Exotic Weapon Price: 10gp Damage: 1d8 Bludgeoning Critical: 20/x3 Range: -- Weight: 4 lb. This functions as a normal crowbar except that you take no attack penalty using it as a weapon with the EWP Feat. Also, since this is a One-Handed weapon, I would add an ability that allows the crowbar to count as a light weapon for TWF purposes (at 1st level) and give the class improved two weapon fighting, giving that at 5th level.
bigbadslog 12-20-07, 12:53 AM	I liked your suggestions so much, I edited them in. Also, yes, I was just counting the crowbars as an improvised club. Didn't occur to me to mention that.
teshen 12-20-07, 03:02 AM	. . . Improved Sunder Armor Black Bar Marauder can now use his crowbars to damage natural armor. Ripping off scales, and getting his hooks under extra thick skin BBM can reduce an opponents natural armor rating. (This is what I would like some input on.) . . . Well, I'm going to repeat my RL criticism... nobody will want to party with this guy after he breaks all the loot... but sure... I'll help with the tuning. This PrC needs skills, skill points, and hit points. This ability could will resemble the rogue's special abilities to do ability damage of one form or another. Monks also can do similar things to ability damage with various stunning feats and alternate class features. Since you could get this at character level 9 the ability needs to be tough but have some sort of limiting factors... Flaying Sunder The black bar marauder has torn apart enough steel and flesh that he no longer sees a difference big between the two... As part of a full attack action, a BBM can choose to negate some of an opponents natural armor bonus. An attack must be designated as a flaying sunder before the attack roll is made. The attack must hit the enemy's AC as normal but causes no damage. Instead, the enemy must make a fortitude save DC 10 + BBM level + Str modifier or loose one point of his natural armor rating as part of his natural protection is separated from his body. The target may never lose more points in his natural armor rating than he actually has. This natural armor loss is healed in the same way as ability damage (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#abilityDamaged) is, one point per day. There's a actually couple of different ways you could go with this feature. One could be a spot check like the feat Deft Strike in Complete Adventurer that lets you zero in on vulnerable spots... another might be to make it a limited times per day or maybe per encounter... another one that might be good is making this feature unusable against creatures immune to sneak attack and/or crits... but maybe not, since some of creatures (like some plant types) could still have bark ripped off, thus justifying the natural armor decrease. I'll think on it and try to get back to you, Slog.
Ralvuimego 12-20-07, 03:43 AM	Ah, shades of Half Life and the early game crowbar-face maulings. Those were the good old days. :D
bigbadslog 12-20-07, 03:43 AM	Well, I'm going to repeat my RL criticism... nobody will want to party with this guy after he breaks all the loot... but sure... I'll help with the tuning. C'mon Teshen! You know it would be fun! And your right, I completely forgot skills, skill points, and hit points. I will edit those in. And as for Flaying Sunder why couldn't you have thought of that before? Thats great! I'm going to add that for now, and leave it out here for people to kick around.
teshen 12-20-07, 11:58 PM	There's something I'd like to mention about sunder Slog, and since the BBM has power attack and improved sunder to get into the class... we'll ignore step one, the AoO. Step 2 Opposed Rolls. You and the defender make opposed attack rolls with your respective weapons. The wielder of a two-handed weapon on a sunder attempt gets a +4 bonus on this roll, and the wielder of a light weapon takes a -4 penalty. If the combatants are of different sizes, the larger combatant gets a bonus on the attack roll of +4 per difference in size category. You may want to improve weapon familiarity at a higher level. Light weapons are fairly weak for sundering, and a +8 just to sunder a two hander before adding the other bonuses is nothing to sneeze at. You may want to add the ability to treat crowbars as one handed melee weapons in situations where it would be advantageous to the character. This would lose the +4 penalty for sundering with a light weapon without screwing the character for two weapon fighting... And while I'm on two weapon fighting, maybe you could add a feature like... Leverage A BBM has learned to make better use of the strange weight distribution of crowbars. He can use his full strength modifier with his off hand rather than 1/2 his strength modifier when wielding two crowbars. Since you'd be giving it on one set of weapons while a monk can use it on several, I think it's fine. I can see the d10 for the hit die. But I think the class could use an extra skill or two, possibly spot.
bigbadslog 12-21-07, 12:39 AM	I thought about giving him spot, and knowledge (engineering), but I didn't have any REAL justification for the second one. What do you think Teshen, should we flesh this guy out all the way, make him really bad, and go ten levels? I don't really want to cram more into five, but we have some good ideas to go on now.
teshen 12-21-07, 06:54 PM	Well, I really think spot should go on this guy... he's looking for the chinks in the armor that he can exploit. If I were to apply that in a metaphorical sense, I'd give him sense motive as well... but that's just too much of a stretch. He should also get profession because everybody gets profession. Knowledge (engineering) could go on this, but it feels too much of a stretch. This guy is more of a brute than a thinker. An easy way to squeeze more possiblities into the class without overpowering it is giving a list of options and letting a player choose so no BBM is quite the same. The core abilities of the PrC that make it feel like itself are Crowbar familiarity, Sunder armor, Penetrating sunder, and Flaying sunder. The rest, for the most part, can be emulated with feats or special equipment. Weapon Familiarity, Leverage Sunder Armor, Crowbar Focus Penetrating Sunder, Leverage Crowbar Specialization Flaying Sunder, Leverage Leverage At first, third, and fifth level, a Black Bar Marauder learns how to use his crowbars to greater effect. He can choose one of the following abilities: Hit it hard: The BBM gets a +1 bonus per black bar marauder level to damage when using his crowbars during a sunder attempt. Bigger than it looks: The BBM is so use to the weight of crowbars that he may treat it as a one handed weapon if doing so would be beneficial, such as with a sunder attempt. Beat down: The BBM may add his full strength modifier rather than 1/2 his strength modifier when wielding a crowbar in his off hand. Take another swing: The BBM is treated as having the improved two weapon fighting feat when wielding a crowbar in his off hand. Give 'em the hook: A black bar marauder has learned to use his crowbars in yet a new way. He gains a +2 to disarm attempts and a +2 to trip attempts made with a crowbar. There's a couple of other ideas that could go in there as well... As for power level, if you look at what a fighter gets at levels 6-10, this PrC is better, but compared barbarian or ranger 6-10, I really don't think it's overpowered in the slightest. I'd compare it to some of the other fighting type PrCs at those levels but some are either really good or just plain suck... so barbarian and ranger are my benchmarks.
Watsyurname529 12-21-07, 10:54 PM	Yea, I would go with Teshen's suggestion about the special abilities. Also, I too would add Spot to the list of Class Skills along with Profession because everyone gets that. Also, some more special abilities: Chuck it: The BBM finds that sometimes chucking a crowbar can be useful sometimes. The BBM can now throw the Crowbar at a range increment of 10ft. Breaking Throw: The BBM furthers his throwing ability with the crowbar and is able to sunder at range. When throwing crowbars, the BBM is treated with having the Ranged Sunder feat.
sigma999 12-21-07, 11:06 PM	"Flaying Sunder" is a bit odd. Please reconsider the mechanic to, say, 'attacks ignore natural armor'.
teshen 12-22-07, 12:56 AM	"Flaying Sunder" is a bit odd. Please reconsider the mechanic to, say, 'attacks ignore natural armor'. What about flaying sunder do you see as problematic? It is much like some of the stunning feats. You have to hit the opponent's AC (granted it is usually a touch attack). They make a save. If they fail their save an ability is lowered or a penalty is put in place. If they save against it, nothing happens.
bigbadslog 12-24-07, 12:29 AM	While I really like the idea of flaying sunder, its a little hard to balance well. Mechanically, it would not be to tough to figure out HOW to do it, but WHEN becomes a problem. Can't really peel the natural armor off of a vampire, but you could a treant, and you could certainly pry scales off of a dragon (and think how cheesed off he would be). So saying that creatures immune to critical hits can't suffer this effect doesn't really work. This leaves it up to the DM to make a case by case judgement of what makes this creature tough, and can you peel it off. As a DM myself, the answer here is, NO! So flaying sunder will be removed. As much as I like the flavor of that, I haven't really seen a way to make it happen without making somebody's life difficult. I am going to add spot and profession, crowbar use goes to 2nd and 4th, penetrating sunder moves to 5th, and the special abilities add in at 1st, 3rd, and 5th. Mainly because I pictured whipping a crowbar at someone, and detonating their pretty new Necklace of Fireballs. :D Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone, and if you see something else I screwed up, or can think of some other way to give him more smashy fun, speak up.
sigma999 12-24-07, 12:35 PM	Well I do like this class, but wish it had more options... like rather than just crowbar-chaku, it could be with any flailing weapon. But you'd have to define in a small list of example weapons exactly which ones would count.
bigbadslog 12-25-07, 12:18 AM	I've actually had something else in mind for flail weapons, but I'm still cooking the concept. This has been an experience for me, and I want anything else I post, to at least be complete when I put it up.
teshen 12-25-07, 01:36 AM	Ok. A couple more things while I'm thinking about them... Improvised Weapons Sometimes objects not crafted to be weapons nonetheless see use in combat. Because such objects are not designed for this use, any creature that uses one in combat is considered to be nonproficient with it and takes a -4 penalty on attack rolls made with that object. To determine the size category and appropriate damage for an improvised weapon, compare its relative size and damage potential to the weapon list to find a reasonable match. An improvised weapon scores a threat on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a critical hit. An improvised thrown weapon has a range increment of 10 feet. So Chuck it would need to improve the range increment to 20' or more since the BBM could already do this. Crowbar use and Hit it hard are effectively the same thing. I meant Hit it hard to be a version of crowbar use that a player could take or leave... You can leave both in, but I suggest changing what it does a little. Same thing with Take another swing... it is improved two weapon fighting for only the crowbar. As you've got the PrC now, it is redundant. And if flaying sunder is such a problem, just tinker with the wording until it feels about right. You could add the stipulation that it's useable on anything with a constitution score. This leaves out constructs and undead, and leaves anything else as fair game. You might even leave it as one of the special abilities but require prerequisites, such as so many ranks in spot. Another ability that could be fun... Crack 'em open: Whenever a BBM hits a single opponent with both crowbars for damage, he can pull the hooked weapons in opposite directions to tear apart the opponent’s body. This attack automatically deals an additional 1d8+2x strength modifer damage. Prerequisites: Leverage, Improved two weapon fighting. As it's based on rend, it should be 2d8+2xStrength modifier, but I made it 1d8 because... well, shifter rend gets hosed like this, even though two weapon rend doesn't. Nevermind... This guy should take two weapon rend anyway.
bigbadslog 01-15-08, 12:25 AM	I shall bump this one time, because I think BBM needs more love. :bump: