[Class] Warper

[ubernoob]

I am DMing a PbP with a guy playing one. The PCs are currently level 10, and have had one combat. I'm about to have one more against this guy one on one, since he split up from the party and an enemy has been watching and is going to take the opportunity to try and gank him. As far as evaluating it, things are complicated by the fact that everyone has a fair amount of homebrew in their characters, with quite a bit of it having been previously untested.

So it's been quite an adventure, both IC and OOC, but we're all having fun I think. The first battle spanned a couple of planes of existence, and took them through the whirling chaos of Limbo, a tornado (which was a portal), and into the middle of a raging battle in Ysgard. Due to some really crappy rolls on my part, the enemy didn't manage to do much to them, but did survive several rounds at least (which is more than most can claim vs. a party of 10th level Tome PCs ).

PbP will help a lot with the Anticipate Teleportation juggling accounting. In real time, it will be more of a headache.

As far as power level goes, at ninth level you get:

Crowd Dispersal (Su): At 9th level, a Warper can affect all creatures within Close range with Dispersal as a Move action.

Now, by itself this would be a really good as is. Combined with the anticipate teleportation, this means you win all swarms of mooks encounters that come within close range forever. This is at will. You can juggle as many creatures as are in close range as you want. And if the DM throws a Big Bad at the party, you're immune to him because of this:

Xeno's Treadmill (Su): At 7th level, the Warper may as a free action choose one creature or object that he can see/sense. The creature/object is considered to be infinitely far from him for the purposes of all attacks or spells they target him with until the beginning of his next turn. Any attacks it uses against him seem to move progressively slower as they approach, stopping when they reach halfway. This even applies to attacks that they make while adjacent to him or in his space. If the target tries to approach the Warper bodily, they also get progressively slower but never reach him as well.

Strangely, this has no affect at all on their capacity to attack or approach anyone else, including allies who are adjacent to the Warper. Any abilities which allow the target to teleport, or bypass intervening space with their attacks (such as a Sharn's hex portals), also allow them to also bypass this ability. Only one target may be affected by this ability at a time.

So what I'm really saying is that by level 9 no encounter can challenge your class ever. Like, you've written in to the class that at level nine no printed encounter can ever damage your class. That's dumb and overpowered even if your class did not also get massive action juggling abilities or immediate action disengage or at will teleportation.

Keep in mind, these are the big powerful effects that a ninth level wizard has access to (a limited times per day and with durations on everything)-
5th- (1 base, 1 specialization, 1 int because you don't have 28 int at level 9) Baleful polymorph (1/day), Telekinesis (1/day), Wall of Stone (1/day)
4th- (4/day) Polymorph (1/day), Charm Monster (1/day), Black Tentacles (1/day), Solid Fog (1/day)

Note how no where on that list is an at will "You can't harm me" ability as a free action. The closest thing to massive action denial would be solid fog/black tentacles, but both of those just keep you in place, not shunt you out of reality entirely, which is even better than a stun or daze because you can't possibly be immune to anticipate teleportation.


So yeah, the major concern I have with the class is being able to use anticipate teleportation off your own abilities. I can write off Xeno's Treadmill because whatever wizards get polymorph, but the anticipate teleportation action juggling is both broken AND a headache.

YMMV

[Kaelik]

Yeah, this class is both too strong and too weak.

Basically, giving a move action several round selective stasis to go with an attack action selective stasis means that first everyone has to save or lose, then everyone who succeeds has to save or lose, and then maybe save or lose again.

Basically, if people don't know what they are fighting, they sort of automatically lose to this class walking in and successively 1v1ing everything.

On the other hand, once someone knows what they are fighting, they cast Chained Dimensional Anchor and then they fuck you the hell up.

EDIT: No wait, you made it so at level 11 they win everything forever.

Hint, If you give a class Finger of Death at will, you don't also give them the ability bypass all possible immunities that could ever save anyone. Especially not if you give them AoE Finger of Death followed by Several More Finger of Deaths in the same round.

[ubernoob]

Yeah, this class is both too strong and too weak.

Basically, giving a move action several round selective stasis to go with an attack action selective stasis means that first everyone has to save or lose, then everyone who succeeds has to save or lose, and then maybe save or lose again.

Basically, if people don't know what they are fighting, they sort of automatically lose to this class walking in and successively 1v1ing everything.

On the other hand, once someone knows what they are fighting, they cast Chained Dimensional Anchor and then they fuck you the hell up.

EDIT: No wait, you made it so at level 11 they win everything forever.

Hint, If you give a class Finger of Death at will, you don't also give them the ability bypass all possible immunities that could ever save anyone. Especially not if you give them AoE Finger of Death followed by Several More Finger of Deaths in the same round.

Your edit came first. Only way you can challenge this class (take actions at all) is to be Immune to Magic or to somehow put an antimagic field on the Warper (which probably doesn't work because he has continuous greater blink, free action "you can't reach me," is immune to charges categorically, and has an immediate action teleport).

Yep, completely binary. Before the anticipate teleportation kicks in, you just give your allies full attacks while denying the enemy full attacks (for melees at least because you have so many reposition abilities per round) and at high levels you just action juggle everything forever because you have a move action "everything in close range" save or lose that bypasses the only immunity you can have against it that isn't "Be a Golem."

[Kaelik]

So I'm doing a SGT at level 10, modified. It is modified in the following ways:

1) Any time there are a number of creatures, that number will be doubled.
2) The Warper will be 11 to be able to bypass Dimensional Lock.

The Warper will be a Buoman, because even though an Anthrobat can more appropriately abuse the incredible bullshit that is that class, might as well low ball the DCs.

Here are the relevant factors: DC 10+5+8+2 Ability Focus=25.

Wis: 18PB+2 Race+2 levels+4 Items=26 or +8 mod. Now, technically at level 11-12 we could start talking about Wish and +6 from items, so by level 12 I expect the character to have a Wisdom mod of +12, I am just under numbering his wisdom because he gets to do the save over again if they succeed. He also has two attack actions, assuming he can't two hand attack or something else. He also bought a Belt of Battle, because why wouldn't you turn your swift actions into Move actions 3 times a day. Frankly, aside from Wisdom boosts, the only thing he should buy is more belts of battle.

Next to each monster I put their will save, because that is the only thing that matters. Maybe Reflex if he wants to take all the treasure before he kills them.

Two Maruts. (+8) (roll 17 to pass) So he Dispersals then both to right next to him, and if they both fail saves he puts one in stasis and the other adjacent to him and Xeno's him then touches him to send him to the sun. If one succeeds he Xeno's that one and puts the other in stasis and proceeds to use his standard action or belt of battle to do it again. They never both pass or survive the standard action, but if they did he can survive one round of attacks from one Marut.

Two Hullathoins (+13) (roll 12 to pass) (with its army of skeletons and bloodfiend locusts). The Armies instantly go far away in stasis. The Hullathoins are like the Maruts above, but less dangerous if they do anything but slightly more likely to end up attacking for a round.

Two Nightmare Beasts (+6) (roll 19) deep in a hedge maze. Could plausibly Cloudkill if they get surprise, for all that matters to the teleport mage who fucking locks one in Stasis and Sends the other into the Sun.

Two Windghosts (+13) in the sky. At will AMF, can plausibly lose.

Two Yakfolk clerics with a party of Dao. (+some number, could maybe do something, but probably not.)

Two Drow Priestesses with an army of ghouls. (Same as above)

Two warparties of Cloud Giants. (+10)

Two Mature Adult White Dragons. (+13)

Two Death Slaads riding a Titanic Toad. (+13) Finger of Death if they get surprise.

Two Cornugons. (+15) basically can't do anything, but if they get lucky with an attack they can stun long enough to not kill him in a couple rounds before he kills them by teleporting them into the Sun.

Two Gelugons and their Iron Golem bodyguards. (+15, +6) Contrary to what uber said, Immunity to magic does nothing to stop being action juggled and teleported into the sun.

Two Rube Goldberg series of contingent weirds triggered to a set of symbols of pain surrounding the artifact. Teleports item to him.

Two pair of Glabrezus. (+11), Power Word Stun allows them to get like, 4-8 attacks off. Maybe more if they summoned successfully. That will maybe get them something. I'd probably use all of those on spamming confusion because you can't kill him in those rounds. But they don't know that.

Two harem of Succubi. Sun.

Forty Dire Bears. Sun.

24 Medusa mounted archers on Hellcats. Sun, thank you magic touchsight.

A forest made out of lava and infested with hostile fire-element dire badgers. teleport?

Four Beholders. +11, but you have to make sure they are facing away from you, so this one you probably want to use Dispersal for it's actual purpose of throwing them away instead of as a perm stun that holds them right next to you.

One sure loss. One likely loss to beholders. One "Draw" because we will pretend the Glabrezue catching you by surprise and having both successfully summoned more Glabs the one time that ever works counts for against the times you surprise them with your huge as fuck spot check and hide/ms because why not.

14 Sure wins with absolutely no thought put into it at all.

[ubernoob]

Technically you can't teleport anything into the sun. The range is limited to close range unless the Warper gets into melee with something and use Universal Teleport. But this would be a retarded class for a solo game anyways, so assuming that your party can mop things up while you stasis juggle everything is pretty trivial.

Edit: That is not to say that you couldn't infinitely juggle all but one enemy and keep them at the edge of your range, while activating Xeno's Treadmill vs the one enemy you keep in melee for immunity[you] and pick them off. It is just slightly more complicated.

[Kaelik]

Technically you can't teleport anything into the sun. The range is limited to close range unless the Warper gets into melee with something and use Universal Teleport. But this would be a retarded class for a solo game anyways, so assuming that your party can mop things up while you stasis juggle everything is pretty trivial.

Edit: That is not to say that you couldn't infinitely juggle all but one enemy and keep them at the edge of your range, while activating Xeno's Treadmill vs the one enemy you keep in melee for immunity[you] and pick them off. It is just slightly more complicated.

No that is why I said you use your move action to(except for Beholders) place them adjacent to you. That way they all go stasis except the one you then use your two attack actions to Send into the Sun. And the way Xeno's works against everyone except Beholders and the AMF ghosts (and possibly even against Beholders) adjacent is the same as max distance, so you put them in range of your sun teleport one at a time.

[Pixels]

OK, so Hicks reminded me that this class exists, and looking back it is a bit embarrassing. I clearly had a weird fixation on swift actions, some of the abilities are either at an unusual level or favored a complicated solution when something simple would do. So I've made a few tweaks. The original version is in a spoiler at the bottom of the first post.

Mostly I shuffled abilities around, rewrote a few for clarity, and made nearly everything a standard action. Several abilities got axed entirely for being too fiddly or too aggressively full of action denial: Treacherous Space, Curved Walk, Follow the Lead, See the Paths, and Out of This World fall into this category. See the Paths was particularly pernicious. I removed the possibility of using Anticipate Teleport either for or against a Warper entirely, starting with the reduced-to-level-4 Unlocked Space. I added shield proficiency and some skills, mostly the Int-based skills that I had left off for no particular reason.

I also added two three new abilities: Fixed Point, Warp Trace, and Deep Pockets. Fixed Point should save Warpers a feat tax on flight. Warp Trace is meant to cover some of the conceptual space of Follow the Lead, but also offers some ability to keep track of your teammates. Deep Pockets gives a base of operations and unlimited gold economy wealth.

EDIT: Actually, don't use Alpha Metamagic, or at least not Strong Spell, Spell Timing, or Quicken Spell. The damage scaling (particularly at level 9+) was a bit too much. Be content with d8s Fort half for the straight damage abilities.

I changed Unlocked Space to not be an absolute. At level 4+ it's a coin flip against equal level opponents, at level 9+ it becomes about 3/4th effective. I want Warpers to feel like they can at least try to use their cool teleportation abilities if they get hit by Dimensional Anchor, but utterly ignoring counter play was too much.