Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

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Endelyon
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Endelyon »

Just glancing at the PNP class it looks like the most they can even summon is a fiendish cat/rat/bat/horse. :P I'm not sure that making them into an epic GPB summoner is a great idea or even makes sense in the scope of this class's PNP theme. Metaquad's suggestion seems a bit over the top to me in general at first glance, making the class extremely valuable compared to other PRCs in general (anything that gets three perks per level-up on almost every level is questionable to me from a balance standpoint). It also seems to drop the 4th spell tier, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.

I could probably expand their spell choices some, but their CL will never be superb.

I played around with some different ideas and this seemed to sound about right to me:
Poison Use: Blackguards are skilled in the use of poison and never risk accidentally poisoning themselves when applying poison to a blade.

Turn Undead (Su): At 1st level, the blackguard gains the ability to rebuke or destroy undead as would an cleric of two levels lower.

Spellcasting: Beginning at 2nd level, Blackguards get a spellbook and are capable of casting first tier spells. At 4th level they become capable of second tier spells. At 6th level they become capable of casting third tier spells. At 8th level they become capable of casting fourth tier spells.

Smite Enemy (Su): At 2nd level, the blackguard gains the ability to smite any target he deems an enemy. For the duration of one round, he adds his Charisma modifier to his attack roll, and his Blackguard levels to the damage roll. This ability has a cooldown of five minutes, which shortens to two minutes at 5th level, and one minute at 10th level.

Dark Blessing (Su): Beginning at second level, a blackguard applies his Charisma modifier (if positive) as a bonus on all saving throws. This bonus is capped at the user's number of Blackguard levels.

Aura of Despair (Su): Beginning at third level, the blackguard radiates a malign aura that causes enemies within 10 feet of him to take a -2 penalty on all saving throws.

Divine Might (Su): At 4th level, the blackguard gains the Divine Might feat for free, regardless of whether he meets the requirements or not.

Sneak Attack (Ex): This ability, gained at fourth level, is like the rogue ability of the same name. The extra damage increases by +1d6 every third level beyond 4th (7th and 10th). If a blackguard gets a sneak attack bonus from another source the bonuses on damage stack.

Summon Fiend (Su): At 5th level, the Blackguard can summon a hellfire hound (which grows in strength once more at level 10).

Divine Shield (Su): At 6th level, the blackguard gains the Divine Shield feat for free, regardless of whether he meets the requirements or not.

Blood Bond (Su): At 8th level, if the blackguard is harmed in combat, the blackguard's Aura of Despair is modified to also give a +2 bonus to attack rolls and saving throws to all of the blackguard's allies within the aura's area of effect. This effect lasts for three rounds after the blackguard is harmed. Repeated injuries renew the effect, but it does not stack with itself.

Profane Strength (Su): At 10th level, once per day, the blackguard may call upon his patron to grant him a +8 bonus to Strength for 10 minutes.
I'll give it some more thought and maybe put this one on my "to do" list. I have a lot of dev work piled up in general, so it probably won't be done any time soon.
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Bobthehero
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Bobthehero »

That smite enemy looks tasty, smite good is cool, but nearly useless unless you're pvp'ing
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Steve
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Steve »

Steve wrote: Tue Feb 26, 2019 6:22 am
Corrupt Weapon

Blackguards have access to a special spell, corrupt weapon, which is the opposing counterpart of the paladin spell bless weapon (see page 205 of the Player's Handbook). Instead of improving a weapon's effectiveness against evil foes (as the paladin spell does), corrupt weapon makes a weapon more effective against good foes.
https://dndtools.net/classes/blackguard/
What about this?!? It’s PnP and fitting. Make it like the Crusader kit or like 1 min/level, 1/day at Level 5 and 2/day at Level 10, or something.

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Hendrak
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Hendrak »

I like your approach Endelyon,

but Smite ag all alignments on a relativley short cooldown (1 min) is quite devasting.

We have the Great Smite line of feats. You can even pick Great Smite (I-V) as Divine Champion bonus feats. https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Divine_Champion

I ve seen Paladin 20 / Divine Champion 10 crit for 600+ dmg a blow, not just a round, with those feat lines.

Alternativly i still can see to give the Blackguard instead of cooldown smiting some weapon buff (+1 negative dmg on 5,6 or 7 and +1d4 on 9 or 10; with negative energy Vfx)
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Endelyon
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Endelyon »

Hendrak wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 5:09 am I like your approach Endelyon,

but Smite ag all alignments on a relativley short cooldown (1 min) is quite devasting.

We have the Great Smite line of feats. You can even pick Great Smite (I-V) as Divine Champion bonus feats. https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Divine_Champion

I ve seen Paladin 20 / Divine Champion 10 crit for 600+ dmg a blow, not just a round, with those feat lines.

Alternativly i still can see to give the Blackguard instead of cooldown smiting some weapon buff (+1 negative dmg on 5,6 or 7 and +1d4 on 9 or 10; with negative energy Vfx)
Your example has a +30 damage bonus on their Smite. A Blackguard would only ever be capable of +10 (it will not stack with Divine Champion levels). Even at Great Smite V this would bring the extra damage on Smite Enemy to 320, which is really not absurd for a 1 minute cooldown. I guess we could raise it to 2 minutes at level 10 though? This seems to hurt everyone else who didn't sink 5 feats into smiting and just want a free/slightly more damage attack.
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Endelyon
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Endelyon »

Steve wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 4:56 am
Steve wrote: Tue Feb 26, 2019 6:22 am
Corrupt Weapon

Blackguards have access to a special spell, corrupt weapon, which is the opposing counterpart of the paladin spell bless weapon (see page 205 of the Player's Handbook). Instead of improving a weapon's effectiveness against evil foes (as the paladin spell does), corrupt weapon makes a weapon more effective against good foes.
https://dndtools.net/classes/blackguard/
What about this?!? It’s PnP and fitting. Make it like the Crusader kit or like 1 min/level, 1/day at Level 5 and 2/day at Level 10, or something.
I considered it, but on our server Bless Weapon is mainly useful for 2d6 extra damage vs undead, and I don't really know what the 'reverse' of undead would be. It does give +1 damage vs evil which good be flipped to +1 damage vs good at least. In PNP Bless Weapon is a bit different (providing 1 EB vs evil, it makes the weapon good aligned, and auto-confirms crits against evil targets) so the flip is more readily apparent.

In either case, I wonder if it would even be useful (damage vs good) since so many in here are complaining that Smite Good was already useless?
Hendrak
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Hendrak »

Admitted that 300+ dmg is then only for Great Smite V. I find that a lot of burst dmg for a single attack and players will build for it. BG 10 let us have more build options then lets say Paladin 20. I think BG 10 / Divine Champion 10/ some fighter base and add a rogue dip for evasion, EDM of course ;D.

Also the initial smiters (Paladins) would ask for a cooldown smite.

I think Bless Weapon still gives the good alignment to the weapon enabling breaking some DR/good.
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Steve
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Steve »

My bad. I probably not explaining the suggestion very well.

The idea for Corrupt Weapon being some hybrid of Bless Weapon and Holy Sword. Unholy Sword. Quite like what Hendrak suggested in terms of a Weapon buff, with Evil VFX.

And please consider allowing Blackguard to qualify a build for Darkfire Disciple (which would be a perk as well to raise the CL of a Blackguard spellbook).

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Wolfrayne
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Wolfrayne »

If you do go corrupt weapon why not just make it a 1/2 negative Energy bonus damage on the weapon they wield i mean Death ward will stop it against players anyway
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Hendrak
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Hendrak »

Not all players running around with Death Ward up. Death Ward is only on the cleric list, others have to use scrolls or wands for it.

The initial idea was to give something to the Blackguard in higher levels which make it intresting to do more than dip BG.

Other Classes give Weapon Enchantments on 3rd or 4th level with usual +1 weapon dmg. Which increases to +1D4 at 8th,9th or 10th level.

That seems more with the norm of other classes and is a nice extra on top of the other lower level BG goodies.(saves,DM,DS)
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Wolfrayne
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Wolfrayne »

Death Ward/Shadow Shield are pretty well the same spell last i checked. Could be off.
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metaquad4
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by metaquad4 »

Wolfrayne wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 10:01 am Death Ward/Shadow Shield are pretty well the same spell last i checked. Could be off.
Death Ward lasts 1 hour/level (as opposed to 1 min/level) and has no vfx, Shadow Shield gives 10 DR and 5 Natural AC in addition to Death Ward's benefits, as well it is higher tier (7th vs 4th). Other than that, both are the same.
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Wolfrayne
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Wolfrayne »

1 min a level is still 30 mins minimum at max level. Point is anyone can have access to the immunities regardless and most people who are looking for a fight will be buffed to the teeth.
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Sun Wukong
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by Sun Wukong »

Since I am utterly bored... I SHALL MAKE A POST!

While I may not play here, I used to. And the funny thing is that the Blackguard 10 is a strong PRC. In stock Nwn2 the skeleton summon is one of the strongest in the game and only really outclassed by stock Epic Gate. This server even had few players using Blackguard instead of Pale Master for summons. I recall a Cleric/Blackguard buffing up that Skeleton and kicking (hiney) in PvP. But that was years ago. Summons have been buffed up and that already includes Blackguard.

So how to use a Blackguard 10? You go for sneak attack damage. You use summons to flank to get the sneak attack dice, and those summons are strong pre-epic and can act as distraction during those later epic levels. You max out BG early to get the most out of it.

So if you want to improve BG add spells to buff summons. Maybe some epic feat to increase summon HD by few points.

But other than that, it is just a learn to play issue. BG has enough direct damage on its own by default.
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Re: Blackguards - BG's Dipping Sauce.

Unread post by chad878262 »

metaquad4 wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 10:36 am Death Ward lasts 1 hour/level (as opposed to 1 min/level) and has no vfx, Shadow Shield gives 10 DR and 5 Natural AC in addition to Death Ward's benefits, as well it is higher tier (7th vs 4th). Other than that, both are the same.
This isn't entirely accurate mq4. Unless Endelyon has made some changes she discussed on Discord a while back Deathward gives complete immunity to stat loss and energy drain. Shadow Shield specifically makes you immune to Necromancy Spells while Deathward makes you immune to a whole litany of effects including poison for example. It is not lore accurate, but that's how the vanilla game was made. On my wizards a always carried a wand of Deathward and then used Spiderskin for the AC. Lower spell tier and better protection that way, plus if you stack deathward and shadow shield it glitches and you are worse off so that isn't an option.
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