AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Blackguard- to gimp or not to gimp? Shouldn't be a question

So, I recently began playing a Blackguard despite the numerous warnings from players that the class is still gimped on Amia and found that they were incredibly correct. It's something we could put up for debate but even looking at this prc stacked against the rest of Amia, it's clear that it falls short of even being a basic class. I'm posting an open discussion on how to improve the 'anti-paladin' in order to make it worthy of the title.

For starters, the standard blackguard spells are terrible. With a wisdom score of 14, you still have a DC so low on contagion that even new characters can resist it with relative ease. (this isn't taking into consideration that contagion, while sounding cool, is pretty weak for an emissary of evil). Moving onto the improvements Amia made to blackguard, we see that, in order to have a decent blackguard, you have to further gimp your class. It makes sense for Paladins to have a wisdom score of 14 as they're granted a full suite of useful spells but, in contrast, a Blackguard isn't granted -any- standard spells no matter what his wisdom score; instead, they're given seven spells, a few of which can easily be emulated with common items accessible and usable to everyone.

Corrupt weapon is clearly useful to an anti paladin but probably should come along with the class automatically on a turns/level basis.
Demon flesh, also useful if not a bit unneeded as divine shield is easier to take than dumping a point into wisdom.
Veil of shadow is useless as we all have access to ghostly visage plus damage resistance in a cheap bottle at any potions store.
Darkness and deeper darkness are a trip. 13 wisdom to cast what several items about the isles can do without spell interruption. Bad.
Abyssal might is almost worth it; those gains are really nice but you've still wasted four ability points for something potions can do.
And we come to unholy sword. The reverse holy avenger. A spell that paladins use daily in combat... but paladin is a base class.
This is more useful than any of the other spells but absolutely not worth wasting four points in wisdom for -one- spell.

I'm positing that having fourteen wisdom for three useful spells in a prestige class is not only absurd, but further gimps an already pre gimped class. Anti paladins should, at least, be able to stand up to paladins of a similar build. I don't think it would be insane to suggest that these spells be gained at level or via NPC in game and act on a turn/level basis, completely ignoring a wisdom requirement.

Secondly, I come to something that really threw me for a loop. Blackguard summons. The standards don't get stronger as a blackguard progresses and, at best, the undead and fiend are useful only as a "well, I need to distract (x) for one round and that's all my summon can last in combat while I sneak attack" basis. I'd be fine with the summons being completely brain dead as they are if not for one thing... the epic fiend feat. Available at sixteen, the blackguard can summon an epic Vrock... with less than two hundred hit points and no real threat to anyone or anything at or above level twenty. While it does grow along with the blackguard, one must, again, completely gimp the class by foregoing useful multiclass levels in rogue for blackguard levels... and that's all it does after 16 is make the Vrock a little less crappy.

Here, I'm suggesting that epic fiend be completely replaced with an EMD variant. As blackguards aren't always (in fact rarely are) fighting good nature beings or paladins and -have- to rely on sneak attacks in order to be a build worth playing in pve, I don't think EMD is out of the question as a replacement for the terrible Vrock.

Thoughts?

It's why I don't make a wisdom blackguard, cha and str or dex and cha all the way.

Epic bg summon was pretty nifty last I recall. Certainly wasn't a Vrock though unless it was changed recently.

Commie wrote:

It's why I don't make a wisdom blackguard, cha and str or dex and cha all the way.

And that's precisely what he is. Prior to making him, I made a test BG wisdom build and it was laughable. At thirty, it couldn't survive anything without a mage handy. And Rigs, I don't know if they changed the epic fiend from the vanilla Vrock or not. I've yet to hit thirty and I don't want to take a feat just to find out. If I knew it was going to be something that could, say, hold even a hoard of giants like EMD, I'd take it. As is in vanilla, it's a Vrock with 180 HP.

As some one who plays a lot of blackguard you are totally correct in saying that wisdom is a waste on the class.

For starters it's not even close to viable on a dex blackguard (not that they even care) and should be a way to give str bgs a boost.

I believe that one of the problems is that abyssal and demon, amongst others, only last turns a level. This is problematic given that at most people take 16 in the class which is barley past one rest cycle. If we want to see them more viable the buffs should be changed to an hour a level or two minutes. So deep blckguards could actually bop around for half an hour if need be with abyssal might.

It's only fair given that paladins can extend aura of glory bless weapon ect.

Summon epic fiend is very powerful for le bgs but imo is not worth the effort of 16 class levels.

If the preceding levels had more worth then I would give an OK to heavy bg but honestly I see it merely as a dip you take for flavor and/or might shield or aura of despair

The largest problem is that the wis requirement does not even come close to being worth it and I agree

I've never even seen any of the Epic Fiends in action but I did run across this thread as I was considering starting a BG:

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=76452

thetangerinetornado wrote:

I've never even seen any of the Epic Fiends in action but I did run across this thread as I was considering starting a BG:

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=76452

Bob was actually whom I consulted regarding the Blackguard build and the first to tell me how terrible it is but I definitely disagree with him saying there's no way to change it without breaking balance. It's a prestige class, not a base class. Simply removing the necessity for wisdom on all seven spells the blackguard receives makes it a class worth playing and gives it potential. As is, my blackguard looks like a fighter that can cast bull's strength and eagle's splendor. Divine favor is great but I can't understand the reasoning behind keeping divine favor but not just granting blackguards the other seven spells at level. Heck, forget all seven, I'd be happy with corrupt weapon, demon flesh, and holy sword. The rest are mechanically useless and, in the cases of darkness, actually hindered by the existence of darkness items.

Regarding the epic fiend, I've asked around a lot and so few people have played blackguards (because they're a 'waste') that most don't even remember what the epic summon -is-. When a class is so underutilized due to it basically being "fighter with an aura minus the feats", it needs a change. As an emissary of pure evil, you're already putting yourself on the chopping block in Amia's current environment of "kill evil before it commits evil"; I see no reason why the most evil class available should still be punished further than it already was upon release mechanically. Adding spells, neat. Adding the same wisdom requirement for a fraction of the spells a paladin gets? I can't understand the logic. They don't gain their powers from their gods like Paladins, they literally gain it by being so vile, so corrupt that fiends themselves are -attracted- to them and see them as valuable allies.

Gods can sponsor blackguards it's more that those blackguard are beholden to their gods dogma while a pact based blackguard has only to fulfil their end of the bargain

Gribbo wrote:

Gods can sponsor blackguards it's more that those blackguard are beholden to their gods dogma while a pact based blackguard has only to fulfil their end of the bargain

My current blackguard is a bit of column A, bit of column B. Follows his god's dogma to the details as a method of supressing and curbing his evil tendencies so he doesn't just off and demolish everyone around him. It adds a bit of flavor having it attached to the divine but I meant more that "wisdom shouldn't be necessary for a blackguard as it is for a paladin as it doesn't necessitate a contract with a god".

Truly, it could be looked at as soul sacrifice for their abilities. Delving so much into the deep end of evil that a lot of them can't ever resurface as they were.

I'm currently playing a Drow Blackguard.

While I really, really enjoy the character and some of the benefits you get from being a Blackguard, they are, to be fair, pretty awful. Doubly so for a Drow, with the +2 ECL.

I'm not a character builder by any means, and I've not got the greatest stats, gear, or skills. 10 Fighter/16 Blackguard aiming for 2 rogue to finish it off. If I didn't have people with me in a party, there's no way I can do the more difficult stuff - I know, you're meant to be in a party for things, but when you see complaints about epic fiendish servant, you kinda boggle just a bit.

Arkun wrote:

I'm currently playing a Drow Blackguard.

While I really, really enjoy the character and some of the benefits you get from being a Blackguard, they are, to be fair, pretty awful. Doubly so for a Drow, with the +2 ECL.

I'm not a character builder by any means, and I've not got the greatest stats, gear, or skills. 10 Fighter/16 Blackguard aiming for 2 rogue to finish it off. If I didn't have people with me in a party, there's no way I can do the more difficult stuff - I know, you're meant to be in a party for things, but when you see complaints about epic fiendish servant, you kinda boggle just a bit.

I have a drow blackguard of Kiaransalee, she's quite strong but takes a bit of wonky class building.

If you'd like send me a pm of your build and expectations and I can help you out

PM sent. There is little hope for me outside a full DC rebuild I think, but I'll happily take some advice!

I can understand, but actually Abyssal might is pretty good, since they stack with potions. Worth going to 14 Wis for? Not really. I feel like, in general, you'd probably need a few more casts of the spell, or increased duration on them. Unholy sword? Will last almost no time. same with the other spells. They get you to 15 minutes in most cases (assuming 16 BG), but that isn't really enough. If spells were based off Cha, or they had some other special ability, maybe.

I mean, why go BG?
-divine buffs
-Summon supposedly is pretty good (It shouldn't be the Vrock, if it is, ask a DM for help, BG 15+ summon is the lowest gate summon, and the (lawful) Epic Fiendish Servant is supposedly one of the best summons on Amia)
-Saves-reducing aura (only needs a small dip)
-saves

What does a "standard BG" (a fighter-esque type) gain from the saves reducing aura? Yay, if you have Dev Crit, it hits 10% more. Like Nick said, you're not using Contagion, even if it was instant use, non-interruptable or anything. Diseases are terrible.

The only thing Aura of Dispair does, is make BG more prone to dip into. Assassin gains nicely, I bet a cleric or wizard might like it, even though that loses him a class to go into, it effectively means your spells proc 10% more. I mean, I like Aura of Dispair, but maybe giving BGs something that works well together with it... It seems like now, it would be good in group fights, but apart from the grind to 30, I doubt a BG would have much group fights.

Weapon on-hits already are so low that they only proc on 20s, and -2 saves doesn't change that.

Paladin get that a lot better, can go to level 30, has more spells, immune to fear, etc. The biggest question when comparing the two is whether going 16 BG or 16 Pally would be a better choice.

In my opinion, since BG is a PRC, and one that is not easily appeased (Hide and BAB +6 and cleave -> implies both str and dex), if you look at a build of 9Ftr/5MS and then a questiuon of going 16BG or 16Pally comes up, Pally should all-out lose that trade. But it doesn't really. (Yes, the builds aren't optimised, they are merely examples of what I mean)

Maybe you could say "but pally and BG are different things", but right now, they aren't really. Both get saves, and the divine feats, both get a similar smite...
If they were actually made unique, I wouldn't be comparing them, but now they are comparable, except that BG loses in msot respects.

All in all, I'd like some custom abilities, but like with all previously requested abilities, I have no idea what is allowed, or even what is there. Same with the WM extra custom abilities, heard there was something for epic SDs, but all of those are so hidden that you don't even know what the requirements are, let alone in what direction the RP for them needs to go. And things being theachers only, when there are no teachers around is not really helpful... (slightly off-topic rant)

More abilities that set them apart from Pallies. I mean, maybe you could commit to the whole Anti-pally thing, but I'd personally much rather have an own unique class. Maybe something along the lines of making him a cross between Pally and Bard. Not quite as caster-y as a Bard, but have him have a more martial bent. Or something. I don't know. I knwo there are quite a few PnP spells that might be nice as additional BG spells.

The Lawful Evil variant of the epic fiend (16 BG) is arguably the best summon in the game, only comming into contention with the Repose Domain (27) summon. After it derps out with a bigsby's it's a literal powerhouse and in a trial by fire, myself and two others saw it put a Winter Wight to bed, both of them buffed and unbuffed. That's an incredible boon for a full ab class that also enjoys heavy sneak attack bonuses. I admit the widgets are undewhelming, and I only took them for flavor, it didn't destroy my build. Darkness and deeper darkness are great on a pinch and last longer than any tomes or wands you may find, and incidentally can be used without UMD. You would be surprised how many builds forget or forgo blindfight. So yes. I agree the widgets suck. In fact they suck hard. But BG is far from a gimped class and remains one of the better prestige classes, given it is evil only.

Certainly some things to consider, on the Dev side of things. I've always heard about BG being a bit on the 'meh' side. I do agree that taking an epic summon feat only to get something with 180 HP is kind of ridiculous .. ouch. Though as I understand, the Amnizu is still one of the better, if not allegedly the best, summon on the server. The widgets could always see some love.

can you make it cast off cha not wis

not 'is that balanced' but more like 'can u do it'

So far, I'm glad I'm not alone in this. I love the flavor BG adds for role play but for such a difficult prestige class to hit, the payoff simply isn't worth it and that's forced the majority of Amia to write it off entirely as 'not worth playing'. I had to ask specifically if the aura could be directed for RP effects (questioning someone and directing your evil intent straight into them) and even Lutra seemed to give it an "I suppose it could be done" but seemed unsure. They have so little and making them what they should be, literally, just takes kicking the wisdom out of the equation. You've already suffered building your way through a str dex sneaker just to get a prc that doesn't do what it's meant to, I don't know why when Blackguard was redone on amia it came with a wisdom requirement. They aren't paladins. They aren't meant to be wise beings by nature. I could see having a minimum CHA requirement as the mechanics of being evil rely on it (intimidate, persuade, leading a cult >.> <.<) but even then, an emissary of the vilest evil could just be pure rage and murder and zero charm.

I've seen the top of the mountain for paladins and I know how completely powerhouse they are; you can feel it on the grind up to thirty with them. You can see they're making huge progress as they step into divine kickassery but with BG, I mean, it's gimped. There really isn't an argument to be made. 16 BG is the standard due to divine favor, not an epic fiend. I'm fortunate that I made him LE, apparently, but that means two other alignments for the prc are suffering with the last feat they'll be taking on BG.

I can tell you right now, my BG, built well as it is, could not stand up to -any- of the paladins I've made. Not even the shitty ones I made when I couldn't build properly and just dumped into str and cha. Emissary of evil? Sure. They're evil and serve to evil ends. Anti paladins? Only if they carry about signs in protest of Kohlingen.

I have never played a BG before, and never knew it was WIS based. I always thought it was CHA based in the first place. That seems kinda counter-intuitive right off the bat, unless I'm just crazy? But I presume that we can probably make it happen through scripts.

I have to poke Mav and/or Sune and see if its feasible, 100%!

not to mention blackguard is a prc and so the max levels you can take is capped.

unlike paladin.

also sammy it's wis based because it's like an evil pally which is wis based, but it has a ton of disadvantages, so i legit think making it cha based and doubling the duration of its summon would p. much fix the class.

Commie wrote:

can you make it cast off cha not wis

not 'is that balanced' but more like 'can u do it'

I don't see why not. Sorcerer's cast using charisma, I don't think it'd be a stretch for an anti paladin to make use of force of will of evil to cast evil spells.

Unless mean 'can it be done through the scripts' in which case: definitely.

yeah isn't the blackguard bonus shit just on items?

change it to cha and hand out some free rebuilds. donezo.

Commie wrote:

not to mention blackguard is a prc and so the max levels you can take is capped.

unlike paladin.

also sammy it's wis based because it's like an evil pally which is wis based, but it has a ton of disadvantages, so i legit think making it cha based and doubling the duration of its summon would p. much fix the class.

Ah, I see. I'll mention it for review.

Thank you, Sam.

The class flavour is great, but it falls flat a bit in game when you try to compare it to everything else. I don't want to be OP, but I want to be competitive, otherwise I'm not that great of a villain for all the heroes out there.

I mean, thanks to all of you. I rarely post on the forums for... I think pretty obvious reasons and this went well! Constructive, amicable, no one sacrificed bumbles... yet...

Nick11689 wrote:

no one sacrificed bumbles... yet...

Oh, it's coming soon. I promise you that much~

yeah i just looked at the amia stuff.

even changing the class from wis to cha won't make it -as good- as paladin, just because it still can't get the same number of class levels, it will really help.

auto-extending the summon is also a 'nice' thing to do that doesn't really make the class 'stronger' just more usable.

It would be nice to get some love for blackguards.

I play them for style far more than substance but having both would be welcome

It's been posted for review! Allow some time for people to come back around from Holidays and such to get a hold of it and give their opinions. Thank you guys for your contributions.

Brief Tormak Tl;dr of how to fix BG in his humbledore:

1: Make Abyssal Might and Demon Flesh last hours/level. Abyssal Might stacks with Bulls stacks with BG bulls so this is actually really good.
2: Make Demon Flesh 1 AC/3 CL and max at +5. This means BGs get instant gear viability.
3: Fix all three of the summons so they're properly balanced. LE is a greataxe bigby spamming SLAYER, NE is a self-hasted, self-autofearing, billion skill having, buff casting, DC 57 Mass Blind spamming crossbow user. Yes, for reals, it will cast GMW, flame wep, freedom and imp invis on you, too. CE is... a bad dual weilding rogue. Sorry CE blackguards. Epic Summon defines the BG class.
4: Veil of Shadow should scale with class level and max at 50%, given how easy Imp Invis is to get. Alternately, you could go in some other directions and do things like give it bonus saves, or skills, or slight damage resistnces. The same could happen with Obscuring Mist in Assassin.

re: wis/cha casting - I'm torn here - yes, BGs and Paladins in PF cast on charisma, in 3.5 they're both wisdom, but in NWN you don't get the full spellbook complement and it's not viable to do so.

Paladin is hella stronger than BG and always will be, there's no fixing that imho without vast hak changes. but you can close the gap and better define the classes.

PS: Contagion's DC is static and isn't affected by wisdom or spell foci, same for Poison.

i suggested making them cha based due to the feasibility of just setting the widgets you use to do the effects to cha compared to other things which would require a lot more work.

i wasn't really considering lore.

<-- CE blackguard.

Compared to the others. It sucks. Having it stab things alongside you is nice.. But I'm very jealous of the others.

(Edit: I mean the summons.)

i'd also support bumping their conceal up to 50% and making them all last longer.

it's not like you arn't going to do it anyway with items. it's not giving any new functionality just making it cost less ig gold.

I read once that the idea of having Demon Flesh max at 4 was because one DC isn't too big og a deal, but it means you can clear up your amulet slot for something. And that is kind of nice. For example +4 Con amulets. 1AC for another gear slot does seem like a good trade to me. Of course, it just being +5 would be better.

Never thought I'd be defending obscuring mist... Assassins get Imp Invis multiple times already. I'd rather see some other changes than giving them a few more casts of it. I like the blue glow from it though...

+5 would just free up a gear slot. I think it would be fine.

Yes everyone is just gonna use the +5 saves neck, but they could have just done that before and be at -1 ac.

Having lost my BG's NE summon due to RP and alignment changes from plot. I can say it is greatly missed. My CE one is only viable because I can buff the hell out of it and the two of us pray to sneak attack everything to death. The dumb thing also wears light armor, with over 40 DEX. I wish I can take the poor idiots armor off, he'd be better naked.

Yeah, yours is a bit of a unique situation that no one else can viably do with their CE.

The armor + 40 dex was a classic Aleph/Ruce/Mosh device to make dex based creatures that didn't have sky high Ac but still got the other benefits of dex like Finesse AB, saves, and skills.

I haven't actually looked at the CE one in FOREVER though.

Behold the CE Blackguard Summon.

LE for comparison.

For the CE one, also make sure you talk to it. Tell it to hide then come out. It will fix it's missing attack on the character sheet. It has all the dual wield feats so it should and does get the 6 attacks

Always give it Cats, Mage Armor, etc

Merciful poseidon... I'm sorry for every CE blackguard.
Luckily all this has been given to our lovely devs.
Until then don't go anywhere without a mage.

the CE blackguard summon is the perfect example of why monster stats for PC summons should be posted publicly.

That's not an entirely fair comparison picture. We can't see if it regenerates, what level of sneka attack it has, its skills, or anything.

I don't argue that the LE isn't better, but let's not pretend that those pictures give a 100% truth.

I've also told my summon to hide and unhide and it still has the bugged stats like in the previous image I posted.

7d6 sneak with 6 attacks is pretty good. Superior Weapon Focus definitely does nothing. Monster Uncanny Reflex means it's immune to sneak attacks. ed: no nm i'm dumb i'm thinknig of the DwD feat

The issue here, imho, is not that the CE one is bad, it's that the LE one is that much better.

46 AC on a summon is not "bad", people just think it is because PCs get 55 without blinking. And summons aren't supposed to be as good as PCs, or better.

Character sheet notoriously lies, so have it attack a few goblins or something to see if it's actually +37. Same for the LE.

K. I am going to rebalance the BG summons. You may not like it though. The LE one probably needs to be toned down, while the others just need major rework.

As a side note, as Tormak has addressed, the character sheet stats are awful and lie. You have to test the values to get the true ones. Creature weapons dont show on character sheets for example so while a creature may show 37 Ab in fact they have 45 with +5 creature weapons and the focus skills.

What is on their hides is also significant. If the LE is out performing by such a large margin then I am willing to guess the immunities on its hide are way more over the top compared to the NE and CE ones.

Neat! How are we looking on the spell front? The summons needed to be balanced but this class is still completely dead in the water without those seven spells and their balancing as well.

How are the summons being altered?

Blackguards should probably lose PrC requirements, get immunity to fear too, and a few more goodies, too, imho. I'd argue that unfortunately, buffing the summon either way, it changes the PvM paradigm, of course (whatever, right, PvM is fine on BG since it has high AB/AC/Saves), but in PvP, it kind of just is insuring that future balance will be harder to justify and be less likely to happen because people will point at the silly summon and be like "BUT THIS"; the fact I see is that people playing smart against a BG will just continue to ignore the summon and crush BG in a 1v1 due to them simply having gimpy stats and just being a worse version of a paladin in every possible way. Of course, I'm biased, but the AI in this game sucks, and making someone's class balanced around AI is pretty much ensuring they'll be just as bad as the AI.

We have noone to work on the hak so most of these suggested class changes are dead in the water.

BG isn't an anti paladin and people need to realize that. They are lore wise completely different than just being an 'evil' paladin of some sort.

With that said I can look at the spells too and think them over.

i think you could make the widgets cha based w/o a hak change.

Blackguard- to gimp or not to gimp? Shouldn't be a question

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