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Warrior Prestige Archetype: The Gold Legionaire $2.00
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Warrior Prestige Archetype: The Gold Legionaire
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Warrior Prestige Archetype: The Gold Legionaire
Publisher: Purple Duck Games
by Sérgio T. d. S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/29/2015 22:27:05

With regards to layout and art, this file has a well-done 2-column layout you might know from other Purple Duck Games products, and the one illustration's on the cover, which depicts Uriska Vanguard, given a background and shown at levels 1, 5, 10, and 15 in the book's back.

From now on, this review is going to be ridiculously rules-centric - I guarantee I am not neglecting to talk about flavor aspects, and instead am talking about all there are: this class is a Good-aligned, melee-focused combatant that has abilities for protecting allies (and a small measure of offensive support to weapon-using allies). The fact that the flavor about ends there may be regarded as the first problem. (I actually don't, because I might reflavor anything anyway, but "a class being 'just mechanics'" is a relatively common complaint.)

The class requires being Good, and has: d12 HD, full BAB, good Fortitude (it does gain other save bonuses, so it's not a glass cannon saving-throw-wise), and a base of 2 skill points/level (I'd call this a problem in any case other than Int-focused classes, but it seems worse here: it has abilities that directly reward investment in Dex and Cha, and is built for melee combat, which adds at least Str; even if you consider its class features mitigate the need to invest in Con, Int would be its fourth-highest ability at best). Its skill list exchanges the fighter's Knowledges for Diplomacy and Heal; with this class being billed as a defensive specialist, I'd say that, if for nothing else, errata is needed to add Perception (Uriska has it at -1 even at level 15). Its equipment proficiencies equal the fighter's.

I'll list the class' abilities; in all cases, "up to" refers to an amount that increases with level.

  • ability to reroll one's attack or save, or force an opponent to reroll an attack against oneself or an adjacent ally, once/day (once/minute at level 20);
  • ability to sacrifice up to 4 points of AC to give double that to a single adjacent ally;
  • 1 AoO/round against someone entering a threatened square, once/day for any given opponent;
  • Stand Still, Bodyguard, In Harm's Way, and Swift Aid as bonus feats;
  • ability to give a bonus up to +3 to attacks, weapon damage, AC and saves to allies (including themselves) within 30 feet who follow the legionnaire's battle plans (as a move, or later on swift, action);
  • up to a +4 bonus to attacks and weapon damage against someone who attacked a friendly (including themselves);
  • up to 4 points of diminished ACP and increased maximum Dex bonus in armor;
  • 1 AoO/round against someone who hits an ally adjacent to the legionnaire;
  • saving throw bonuses against various threat types picked from a list like a ranger's favored enemies;
  • ability to move at normal speed in medium and later heavy armor;
  • ability to make AoOs against 5-ft. steps and withdrawing by adjacent (not "within reach") opponents;
  • improving the aid another bonus to attack or AC from +2 up to +5;
  • level/2 bonus against others' use of Acrobatics and for using Stand Still;
  • Cha modifier extra AoOs/round.

You may or may not have noticed I listed these at random, not in the order they come for the class. Considering that the bonuses generally start from +1, is there any of those class features that looks out of place - as in, can you tell in what order they should be in, because some of them couldn't be given out at low levels? If not, I'd say this shows a character with this class doesn't grow enough as levels pass (obviously, this isn't a problem at low levels). On to specific comments ...

I'd say its +level/2 bonus against Acrobatics and for Stand Still is the big ability of the class, in that it, along with some other basic measures (e.g. reach weapon, enlargement), does allow the legionnaire about a 50% chance of preventing same-CR melee-focused monsters from moving past - higher for lower-CR monsters, so you may have a good chance of holding on to multiple lower-CR monsters. This assumes (generally correctly) lack of Acrobatics on their part; some do have it, but you usually can do the job; beware of close-in-CR extremely-high-Dex monsters with Acrobatics (because those can go through you at half speed near-automatically and may have high speed), and any close-in-CR monster with high Str and high Dex (assume you won't beat their CMDs). Lastly, some of your opposition may teleport past you at middle and especially high levels.

Swift Aid is generally only to be used if the party already gets competence bonuses to attacks or AC (say, from a bard); otherwise, at the level you get it, you already can use authoritative command (see next paragraph) as swift action to a give a bonus about 1 point lower, much more broadly applicable, to as many allies within 30 feet as are willing to follow battle plans.

The class has, starting at 5th and 6th levels, features for which the number of targets you can have at once depends on your skills (respectively, Diplomacy and Intimidate). Three things: A) somebody might arrive at those levels without having trained those skills; B) given that the class has MAD (multiple ability dependency), without Int being one of the directly-relevant abilities, training in both skills leaves the legionnaire with very little choice in skills; C) the ability that gives bonuses to attack enemies (though, to be fair, it's triggered by seeing allies attacked) relies on Diplomacy, while the ability that gives bonuses both offensive and defensive allies relies on Intimidate - those might appear reversed to some readers; also, while the latter does say explicitly that allies are under no obligation to follow orders from the legionnaire (if willing to forego the bonuses), the phrasing as "commands" and "orders" and indeed the name "authoritative command" might irk some and/or cause metagame/out-of-game concerns.

In those cases where an enemy can't for whatever reason (being a non-earth elemental, teleporting) be prevented from closing in on a legionnaire's ally, the latter has abilities that help adjacent allies. However: A) if an enemy bypasses the legionnaire by coming between the latter and their ally, the legionnaire will have to (when able) to move for those abilities to start applying; B) the legionnaire confers no resistance to area effects (not just the ones that allow saving throws) other than the bonus of up to +3 to saves, so trying to protect adjacent allies may increase the party's vulnerability to area effects; C) design intent seems to assume that the gold legionnaire has allies that are, so to say, crunchy and filled with ketchup, which is why somebody else's dedicated to protect them; however, the AC bonuses it can confer on adjacent allies, for example, at level 10 form a total of +5, and at level 15, a total of +10 - if the allies really are crunchy and filled with ketchup, they'll still be easy to hit after those bonuses (although no longer 100% guaranteed); the fact that it can facetank a hit/round after knowing it'd hit with In Harm's Way does help (facetanking a bite can guarantee an ally won't be swallowed, for example), but the legionnaire seems to still be at its best away from allies holding back enemies with Stand Still when that's an option; alternatives here could've been parrying attacks against allies with opposed attack rolls (more readily comparable numbers), or just giving adjacent allies miss chances (simple, stops whatever percentage of attacks is considered appropriate no matter how low allies' initial ACs are). Also, it could have some ability to cover allies' retreats in cases where opponents already caught up to them.

Given what the class does and how (say, Stand Still), characters are encouraged to grow in size and get reach weapons, but some abilities only work on adjacent targets.

Retaliate allows you to, well, retaliate once an adjacent ally has been hit, but doesn't allow you to whack in the back of the head someone who just hit your ally on their opposite side - could this ability only require you to threaten the opponent, instead of both that and your ally being adjacent?

The file includes alternate favored class benefits, which include, among others: +level to CMD against 2 combat maneuvers; +level to Intimidate; +level/2 to AoOs; +level to AoOs against targets 2 or more size categories larger (on the halfling, which should benefit frequently even without figuring a way to be effective while using reduce person; that said, halflings do tend to be at a disadvantage with melee zone controlling classes).

Besides me considering the lack of Perception as a class skill grounds for errata, there's another (this one small) mistake: Uriska's level 15 version has intercept +5 (should be +7).

In closing, this class' level of effectiveness is about "what a fighter would be if there was a greater number of ally-protecting feats available", it can contribute in this capacity provided the adventure plays to its style (i.e. protect fragile allies from monsters who want to reach them in close combat and lack sophisticated methods of doing that), doesn't have any great variety of choices in play, its out-of-combat contributions consist of its skills (basically Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Survival) and the flavor aspects are extremely basic.

Out of the following scale:

1: no reason to even read this; 2: there may be good ideas inside, but it's unusable as-is; 3: usable, but unimpressive; 4: impressive; 5: I look at it and can't conceive how to improve it (i.e. I don't intend to give this ever, but who knows);

this class gets a 3.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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