Talk:Traditional Ninja (3.5e Class)

This is incomplete, I'm still working on the extra stuff. Here are the basics:

P.S. also, I'm not completely used to the formatting of this site, so please bear with any formatting errors you find. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wllmfiore8 (talk • contribs) at

Naming Convention

Normally we keep an identifier on the end of the page name, (3.5e Class) in this case, to help keep things straight. I would just move the page to add it back in, but we already have a page with the name Ninja (3.5e Class). You'll need to come up with an alternate or expanded name for your class, like Ninja of the Silent Strike or whatever. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:43, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I would like to name this 'Traditional Ninja', pointing to the fact that I want this to be as accurate as possible to how the ninja actually operated (although it's impossible to do this perfectly, due to the level of secrecy involved), but due to the fact that I'm new, I don't know how to change the name of the class. Help, please? Wllmfiore8 18:01, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Ratings

	MisterSinister dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.
	Just one thing stuck out amid this recycling of badly-worded and useless mechanics - Loner. Having an ability that discourages you from adventuring with a mixed party is silly on so many levels, I can't possibly rate a class with it as anything better than 'dislike'.

Yeah, that ability was a suggestion and I never liked it myself. I meant to delete it but forgot among the confusion of pasting it onto the site. I just fixed that, but if you could expand a little on what else you dislike about the class, I would be glad to think about fixing it. Wllmfiore8 21:37, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

You desire elaboration, and I shall provide. And I put the "labor" in "elaborate", so be warned that I am about to write a shitload. Much of it may include jargon related to this site's particular standards, so if it's at all confusing I will be happy to rephrase.

Firstly, and I will touch on this more in a moment, this initially strikes me as a retooled monk. And that may be the idea. But the monk sucks, and this class reeks of the same scent. Moderate BAB on what essentially is a martial class makes me cry. While admittedly, that weakness can be partially overcome by the selection of certain fighting style choices (leaving people flat-footed, in particular), that means you are basically shoehorned into those selections in order to be effective. Taking the real choice out of the equation isn't a good thing.

As much as it could be stated that the combination of Medium BAB and bonus damage (a la Silent Strike) makes this on par with a rogue, it really doesn't. By the standards of this site, the Rogue Balance Point takes into account the fact that the Rogue has Use Magic Device, which allows it to take full advantage over the virtues of sneak attack and compensate for its lower BAB by making touch attacks almost constantly. At its core, however, the aforementioned Moderate BAB + Sneak Attack is actually fighter-level. Without Use Magic Device, I think Fighter-level is more appropriate for this class in its current incarnation.

Moving on. As MisterSinister alluded to, there is a rather large amount of mechanics involved here that do not particularly help the class be effective in their current state. This includes, but is by no means limited to, just about anything that is recycled from the SRD monk or WotC ninja (ie. Wisdom to AC, Flurry of Blows, Improved Grapple, Evasion, etc.). We've pretty much seen all of that before, and it rarely impresses. The Wisdom to AC seems OK in theory, but as with the monk it doesn't fully replace armor. Especially when mathematically, attack bonuses scale more quickly than Armor Class does even without being cut lightly by the inability to wear armor. Essentially, your AC is likely to suck.

Flurry of Blows, when combined with Silent Strike, could be worth something. That said, the penalties it gives you in addition to your Moderate BAB means you are going to have trouble hitting anything at low levels. That's a big problem, assuming you're not always badass enough to catch everything flat-footed all the time.

Speaking of Silent Strike, the damage doesn't scale very well in my opinion. Not even as much as Sneak Attack, which is fairly standard and accepted. Of course, this assumes that mass damage rules are not used in the game (they often aren't, to the extent of my knowledge, which renders your use of that rule moot). Keeping in mind your problems hitting people, adding a little bit of damage to a lot of attacks is just asking to miss a lot and do not much in the way of damage. That being said, I would always (ALWAYS) opt for the knocking someone unconscious. Because then they're helpless and you can stab them to death as much as you like. So in a sense, you have two parts vastly opposite in their effectiveness, one being not very good and the other being essentially an at-will save-or-die. This makes the class a potential nightmare for balancing. Last thing about Silent Strike, I don't think the Listen check bit has any particular consequence at the moment, as the description does not elaborate on the consequences for success or failure and the SRD Listen skill doesn't either.

After that, I think this class faces somewhat of a division in goals. Part of its class features are geared towards the tried and true strategy of face-stabbing and getting face-stabbed back. This would be the various bonuses to attack rolls, damage, and whatnot that you get, not to mention the evasion and damage reduction. Then you have the other half, which I see as the honest attempt to keep it in the shadowy warrior theme (low-light vision, nondetection, etc.). The nondetection and stuff should probably be present much, much earlier (say, around level 6-8), but it conflicts with the strategy of the other class features geared towards what are basically the slugfests that you find in fighter-level D&D.

My real gripe probably revolves around the mechanics that MisterSinister would likely term as useless, without even counting the previous Loner shenanigans. These would be the "here, have a +2 on this skill" or the absurdly situational (Case-in-point: "gains a +2 bonus to attack rolls while coming out of water to surprise an opponent on land") bonuses that so many of the fighting styles and other miscellaneous class features offer. They don't actually grant you options to help you fight, which is what they kind of need to be in order for you to hold your own. That having been said, some of them (the Weapon Training with the Kawanaga jumps out, although it requires multiple round of occupation, successful grappling, and an appropriate target to execute) could be taken for a potentially abuse-worthy 1-2 level dip. So this class is really all over the place right now in more ways than one.

Sorry if I bombarded you (I did preface that I was going to write a lot). Hopefully that will help. - TG Cid 22:32, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I will have to think about what to chop off, what to add. But thanks for the suggestions. Wllmfiore8 22:49, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Holy shit, Cid. That was the most spectacular ninja I have ever seen. Also, thanks. I would have likely said the same thing, but been much more acidic and nasty about it. And with a lot more penis jokes. - MisterSinister 10:13, 31 January 2012 (UTC)