Apologies for the delay, had some things to do and was pretty tired until now. So let's finally get down to writing about the eternal nightmare of:
Complete Warrior (Pt 1)
This book has taken ages to get through. This is because unlike the other books I've gone through so far, this fucker has twice the content in terms of PrCs, since there's over 30 of them to go through. The big problem is that Wizards of the Coast still were not aware that Martials were not as strong as they thought, since they still weren't sure about their balancing. As a result a lot of these classes are underpowered and outdone by classes in either core or the other splat books they wrote since. Still this book has a few gems, and I'll point them out as they come along.
Also it has the worst Martial class in the book. You fuckers know what I'm talking about. As usual, classes that are just bolded in their titles are base classes while if they're italicized they're PrCs. Anyways, let's dig in:
Hexblade
Oh boy, the unmodified Hexblade. For those not in the know, this class is a little bit infamous in that it is one of the few classes that the creator apologized for making, and made a revised version for free.
The idea of a hexblade, along with quite a few others you’ll see in this book due to it being a big wad of “hits thing but does X”, is it splices arcane might with martial prowess. In this class’ case, it clearly steals the Paladin’s formula (right down to having a full BaB too) but replaces remove disease and smite with curse. What is curse you may ask?
Well curse is an interesting debuff that inflicts penalties on saves, to hits, and checks in general. It basically is a somewhat nicer ability to curse on the fly that gets nastier with level.
At first the class seems pretty good, but there are three things that really cripple it. The first is that they can’t quick cast like the Paladin can; this sucks given that most of the Hexblade’s spells aren’t able to be cast as a swift action like the Paladin can with their Battle Blessings. This seriously limits the type of casting that you can do in a fight.
The second item that hurts the class is that it suffers arcane failure chance with no reduction beyond light armors, making it not as good for fighting like the Duskblade or Arcanamach, who can fight in medium armors too. The third is you lose the curse chance if the enemy succeeds its saving throw, which also sucks given that you at best have five tries by the time you hit the capstone.
The fixed version resolves all of these issues, and I’d recommend it if you want an Arcane Paladin, but not want to play something like a Duskblade, which I do want to say is better. But as it stands in this book? It’s at least playable.
Rating:
Playable
Samurai
Oh boy, we’re at one of the worst classes in the game! It’s very fitting that a weeaboo bait class is probably the worst Martial class in existence, and I can feel the souls of a thousand sobbing Katana Myth believers shattering like their shitty Steel/Iron swords. Let’s go here we go.
Even the flavor of the Samurai is hideous given how hard the writer of this trash fire wanted to emphasize how ONURABRU the class is. Why not just tell me that the class requires you to be lawful due to the code you follow? Probably because the writer thought Japan could win World War 2 if they made more Katanas. But I need to move on, because each item merits commentary.
Now the fucked up thing is that the skeleton for the class is pretty much spot on; I’d have given the Sammies a good Will save and a 4+INT skill pool, but it’s mostly fine. But then you get into your skills. Let’s start with the first item; Daisho Proficiency. This skill just gives you proficiency with bastard swords, which is okay for the purposes of wanting to use a two-handed sword in one hand, but fucks you later because of the SECOND LEVEL forced feat.
For some ultra-retarded reason, you gain the ability to duel wield your fluffed bastard and short sword in a two weapon fighting style worse than normal two-weapon fighting styles. Now this is one of the weaker styles of fighting, since you are automatically taking -2 penalties to get a second hit early and then a few more swings later on, but only if you stick with the class. You would honestly be doing more consistent two-handing a Katana since at least that gets you bonus STR damage and doesn’t weaken your to-hit. But it is then made worse because you don’t get an Epic variation of the Sammy’s two weapon fighting style, making you somehow worse than a fighter already. How. How. HOW.
Then you get a far shittier Smite the next level. This shitty smite only gives you a bonus to attack and damage based on your CHA. The issue is a Paladin does this better because your damage also takes your Paladin level Too.
And now we get to why the Complete Warrior Samurai is a hot mess; getting Iaijutsu Master. Now, the Oriental Adventures Samurai got Iaijutsu focus, which adds pure d6 damage to your hits based on if you catch the enemy flat-footed. You can also duel enemies where your checks add to initiative, allow you to then geek them with the D6s. This cheese is a source for making Savants suck less, AND THE COMPLETE WARRIOR SAMURAI DOESN’T GET IT!
Nope, tough shit Yajirobe, you aren’t getting the thing your ADnD class was built on! You just get a fucking Quick Draw feat for your two shitty swords… when the feat works better with throwing weapons. I’m now beginning to suspect that my hypothesis on this guy being a weeb is wrong; he probably hated the bastards and made this.
The next level just gets you a slightly better version of skill focus (Intimidate) feat, but worse because you only apply it in combat rather than times it’d be useful. Fun fact: there’s a fighter variant that does this but better too. The stupider thing is that Hexblade I mentioned? He could get a feat like that AT LEVEL ONE. The stupidestest thing is that if you’re like me, then you can see the class is just a worse fighter that doesn’t get to pick their feats, and fuck that.
So anyways, this staredown becomes mass and can be improved to the point where the enemy can become panicked for several rounds. The problem is you’re getting this garbage at level 20, and everything I mentioned can actually be done better by a FIGHTER.
The best/worst thing about this shit class? Did you know you can fall like a Paladin and you can’t take it again like monk? Ironically you can argue that’s an improvement due to how bad this is, but fuck that it can dick you over. When the fighter can outmatch you by level 2, then you need to commit Sudoku.
Rating:
Truenamer
Swashbuckler
Ever want to play a Bard or Rogue but without the things that they can do? Well good news friend, let me tell you about the Swashbuckler. The Swashbuckler is probably one of the better pure Martial classes that were made in my opinion, and this is because you actually have a decent skill set and have a decent skill point per level to use it.
They work quite differently from the majority of Martials we’ve seen so far, in that they benefit more from DEX than STR, similar to bowman-built Rangers. This is because you get Weapon Finesse as a starting feat, which subs your DEX for STR in terms of BaB.
After that, you get a mix of weak to nice items, and quite a few dead levels too. For example, the next level of Swashbuckler gets you a slight bonus to reflex saves that is similar to the mediocre Barbarian’s Trap Sense. But then you get Insightful Strike, which is a very nice damage booster that lets you add your INT bonus to damage, which helps quite a bit in balancing out your focus on DEX over STR. Other neat abilities is ignoring difficult terrain while charging, a class specific boost to AC that stacks with Dodge, damage to attributes via criticals, and other nifty items.
It does have some dead levels, but I’d always suggest a Swashbuckler over Fighter given you have agency outside and inside combat. You still mostly hit with stick, but you have things you can do involving them.
Rating:
Decent
Bear Warrior
Welcome to the Prestige Classes, and say hello to the first of over thirty variations of “Hit things this way” and why this book took so long. The Bear Warrior is one of the more interesting PrCs that Complete Warrior has, and is as a result is one of the better ones.
The Bear Warrior is clearly tailored for the Barbarian given you need Rage or Frenzy and takes its theme from the Norse Berserker myths, where brotherhoods of drugged up lunatics could shapechange into the form of a Bear. As a result, this PrC is at least interesting in that you essentially can wildshape and add some nice boosts to STR, DEX, and CON by becoming a bear. You later on get to turn into increasingly stronger bear forms, which culminates in a hideous +20 to STR when you can turn into a Dire Bear.
The book almost made me want to say that the Bear Warrior was worse than straight up Barbarian, but I was reminded of Lords of Madness. You see, that book has what are known as Mouth Pick weapons. They work for characters that cannot use normal weapons (like the Beholders who were given these) but have a bite attack. This means that the Bear Warrior can now do full attacks with that ludicrous strength and get a pair of claw attacks or a grapple.
Without the book, it’d still be decent, but with Lords of Madness you have sheer pigshit in character form.
Rating:
Amazing
Bladesinger
Oh boy, another attempt to try and make a gish build. So the Bladesinger’s idea is if you threw a Fighter, a Wizard, and a Bard into a blender to try and make something amazing. But like the actual results (mangled corpses and gurgling screams of those still living), the final result is shit.
So let me explain: you need to waste four feats, have two perform skills, fucking Tumble, and a level dip in an arcane caster. This makes the class have a pretty high bar to jump over to qualify for it. Technically you can do this with a Bard, but haha no don’t do that since you have Sublime Chord or the Troubadour of Stars.
What you get in terms of item is okay at best; you gain a boost to AC based on INT, but only when you single hand rapiers. You gain some weak quicken abilities on spells, and lastly can do a weaker version of the fucking Monk’s Flurry of Blows. You only get half caster levels too, which gimp most arcane spells and forces you to at best cast as a 15th level caster.
This gish build is just plain overshadowed by literally every other one I can think of… except MAYBE Space Junkie.
Rating:
Garbage
Cavalier
Why hello there trapped PrC, nice to see you. This is another major theme of the Complete Warrior book; many of the classes on a surface level look useful, but in practice tend to suck due to quirks in the class.
The Cavalier is your eponymous knight in shining armor, related to the Paladin but serves an Earthly lord rather than a heavenly one. The PrC focuses clearly on mounted combat, given that it gives you some solid bonuses to hit with Lances and Swords, boosts the hell out of charge damage on mounts, and even full attacks while on horseback. Combine this with a little bit of boosts to Ride and Knowledge (Noble) and it just breaks my heart to ding this PrC.
This is because this class by its nature is flawed, like the rapidly going senile and delusional Don Quixote. The Cavalier does advance mount levels, but the problem is that it doesn’t provide bonuses to a Martial that enters the PrC. If you go into this as a normal Martial like Fighter (why), then you only can use your shit war horse stat forever and gripe as it dies instantly from Ettins to Otyughs.
The Cavalier also isn’t ideal for Paladins too, since you gain no caster levels with the class, and Paladins critically need their spells for support and for the purposes of resisting said spells.
It is so close to greatness that a simple fix would have been that your mount becomes like the Paladins or improves to match the Paladin’s quickly… but without this, then the Cavalier just has to ride in the sunset, off for his last Joust.
Rating:
Garbage
Dark Hunter
The Dark Hunter is a flavor PrC pretty much designed around Underdark settings or if you play a Dwarf. Dark Hunters are people that specialize in keeping the labyrinthine Underdark safe for travelers by learning to hunt the monsters that lurk in it.
This is a five level PrC with a lot of requirements, ranging from needing a craft (trapmaking) to getting Blind-Fight. It’s weird in that the class seems designed for ranger, but you get more out of it if you’re a Dwarf or a Rogue. The first bonus is that you get the Stonecunning of the Dwarves, but you get a better version if you are a Dwarf already, which is pretty much the only time you can do that. Then you get a sneak attack die and a +10 to hide if you’re along rocks or dirt and a Death Attack like Assassin.
It’s really weird, situational, and the class that best uses it would most likely be a Dwarf Rogue… which is weird to say the least. It actually makes me want to try that build now: Dylan Pursesnatch, the Dwarven Thief… oh God.
Rating:
Playable
Darkwood Stalker
You remember when I talked about the Seeker of the Misty Isle? Well, I can already state that this is its prototype. The Darkwood Stalker has a titanic hate boner for the Orcs, and have channeled it into the purely normal and not at all due to any form of creepy attachment to it act of murdering them.
The bar is reasonable to enter, especially for the Elf/Half-elf Ranger, but besides the one item this class gets it’s utterly forgettable. You get uncanny dodges, a race specific death attack, some sneak attack dice and some darkvision. The one item that really highlights the massive throbbing murderection towards the Orcs is Ancient Foe.
Ancient Foe is fucking hideous as an ability, since it is a scaled up favored enemy (Orc) that stacks with other favored enemy bonuses. That means that after a certain point you can just gib Orcs… and that’s a problem. You see, you can really only marmalize Orcs and jizz into your pantaloons at the slaughter you’ve committed. If it ain’t an Orc, then you’re just a slightly fancier Ranger.
Honestly, unless you’re making a revenge character against a DM that has an Orc fetish, then just skip it and do something more disgusting… like Mystic Ranger Stormlord with the Glove of Infinite Javelins… or the Mystic Ranger/Suel Arcanamach.
Rating:
Playable
Dervish
Neat, it’s the Sufi Monastic Class. Dervishes are based clearly on the famous Whirling Dervishes that practice dancing to reach Allah via religious ecstasy caused by said dance and prayer. In this world though, they are tribesmen who practice the art of the Dance to murder things.
This PrC has an annoying entry bar in that you need a truly stupid amount of feats to get into as well as things like Tumble and so on. It really feels like you need to be a Fighter that dips into Bard to make this class work. And what you get is a steaming pile of garbage that is absolutely Haram.
You get a weak AC boost if you just wear light armor, which several classes can do already like Moon-Warded Ranger and Swordsage. Then you get to the main meat; the Dervish Dance. This ability at first seems decent; you can move and still make a full attack so long as you dance around for the tiles and use tumbles to avoid attacks of opportunity. This could have made the class decent for Battle-dancer or even a Swashbuckler, but there are problems with it.
The first is you need to max out your perform (dance), since every two ranks gives you one more round to dance. The second is you get exhausted afterwards, which is lethal in a fight and you can’t avoid this until near the capstone level.
The sad thing is like Chevalier, the Dervish is almost good. But the prerequisites and the slow gain of the Dervish dance, and the mediocre abilities gained until 4th or 5th level kills it. What would’ve been a great PrC for a Dex based fighter (like the criminally undersupported Battle Dancer) is ruined. The only change it’d need is replace the feats with some skill focus feats for Tumble and Perform and swap Tireless Dance (9th level) with Death Dance (free cleave you get at 4th level). The Sufis weep.
Rating:
Garbage
Drunken Master
This PrC can only be entered as a pure Monk. Ignore the fluff and the requirement pretending you need improved unarmed strike for it is fucking lying to you. You need Flurry of Blows, meaning you at minimum need one monk level, and usually you want to max out Monk levels to at least seven since you need to have Evasion and at least a scaled fist damage too.
The only other option at the point this shit heap was written was if you did Monk 1/Rogue 2 (for the required Evasion) and then whatever else you want, but at that point you’re making a far worse character than if you just mono-classed. Once you realize the lie, then you realize the class fucks you over as a Monk.
One of the few good things Monks can do rely on Wisdom, and what does this PrC do? Give you a shittier rage that penalizes WIS when you booze up. Fun fact: this makes it so that you usually cannot benefit from the full booze effect by 5th level in Drunken Master. This is because on average you won’t boost INT, or actually have it be lower than 10, and the effects stack. This means you can drink yourself to mindlessness if you don’t pay attention, and then just shit yourself spasming on the floor for the next few rounds.
Then you just get free 1d4 damage if you use improvised weapons and the ability to make non-linear charges and only need one DC 15 Tumble check to avoid all attacks of Opportunity during said charge. Then you get a not-quite replacement for your WIS based armor that you lose by chugging.
That’s the thing about this weird as shit class; you get quasi nice abilities while crippling yourself. I’m saying this because you get the very tempting Jackie Chan Ladder-fu ability at level 5 that then does up to a free 1d12 damage die. But through this class, you do not improve any monk abilities at all, meaning you just have your 1d6+STR+1d12 as a guide at worst.
The capstone ability is shit; 3d12 fire damage at near the end of your 1-20 game. Fuck you Wizards. Fuck you.
This class is a mess, and needs to sober up.
Rating:
Garbage
Exotic Weapon Master
There’s really not much to say about this PrC other than you can use it to get a variety of mediocre stunts that allow you to do some fancy tricks with exotic weapons.
The problem is this is already useless because you need to be proficient in the exotic weapon first and you get nothing but shit in return, meaning you wasted a feat for that proficiency in exchange for effectively nothing. The best item on this list is beaten by a fighter variant called Exoticist that gives you special bonuses to exotic weapons anyway.
Skip.
Rating:
Garbage
Eye of Grummsh
Why hello there lie in the fluff and hello there inferior Blessed of Grummsh PrC that
@Dunsparce talked about. This is again another PrC that Complete Warrior made that on the surface looks quite nice for Barbarians, but again is actually overshadowed by other options, even in terms of worshiping Chaotic Evil Orc gods.
So the idea is an Orc Barbarian rips out his right eye and succeeds in the test of not making a sound when doing it. In exchange you gain some very mediocre abilities. You can boost other Orcs by +2 on Will Saves, gain a bit of cheap AC, a slight STR bonus on other Barbarians without feats, and the ability to sense things blindly and vomit at people to blind them.
The problem is that the Blessed of Grummsh beat them with this one simple item: you gain up to 10 free AC by the time you finish the PrC. The Blessed can also do some gaze attacks and one a day abilities that gives them options in combat. You also are not restricted by class and can be Neutral as a Blessed. Even the normal Barbarian is a bit better since those bastards get more rages.
It’s telling when you get worse taking this class as an Orc and something exists that beats it as a concept.
Rating:
Playable
Frenzied Berserker
Ah… the Yang to the Apostle of Peace’s Yin has arrived. The Frenzied Berserker is the OTHER class that the group as a whole has to agree on before being played. This is because these bastards are a common source of TPK style shenanigans.
You see, the Frenzied Berserker has a unique quirk: Frenzy. This disgustingly horrific ability adds +6 to STR and Con and drops your AC by 4. This stacks with the improved Rages you have to get to qualify for this class. If this sounds disgusting, then don’t worry: it gets far worse.
The Berserker also gets a super version of Die-Hard, a Cleave that moves, a better Power Attack, and it just culminates in slaughter… of your party. For you see, the Berserker’s Frenzy cannot tell who is friend or foe, and they will keep murdering until the Frenzy ends. This means you if the fight is over and there is nothing else to satiate the desire to marmalize things, the party’s on the chopping block.
But can’t you snap out of it with a Will save, you may ask? Well yes, you can… as a DC 20 check. Oh, and fun fact: You also need to will check every time you get damaged and still have Frenzies left over. The DC for them is 10 + Damage… and the Berserker has a poor Will Save.
So when faced with this bullshit in a can that will not die when mutilated to shit and back and who has turned on you and you cannot fix via mind effects, what can you do? Your only hope is Save or Die effects. Yes. If you play with a Berserker you must at all times have something like Disintegrate, luck with Prismatic Spray, or Power Word: Kill to save the rest of the gang when there’s nothing left.
This PrC is a horror story generator and so fucking insane I actually can’t rate it in a sane manner. What it does is disgustingly good, but the uncontrolled nature utterly ruins its utility. I can therefore only put it into NPC, for I cannot comprehend the true form of where to put this atrocity.
Rating:
NPC (UNRATABLE)
Tiers (Part 1)
Tippy Tier: N/A
Amazing Classes: Bear Warrior
Good Classes: N/A
Decent Classes: Swashbuckler
Playable Classes: Hexblade
, Dark Hunter, Darkwood Stalker, Eye of Grummsh
Garbage Classes: Bladesinger, Chevalier, Dervish, Drunken Master, Exotic Weapon Master
Truenamer Class: Samurai
NPC Class (Fuck you Book): Frenzied Berserker (IT IS UNRATABLE)
Yeah... a lot of the classes in this book kind of suck dick. Yeah, you have the Bear Warrior so far, and the Swashbuckler and the revised Hexblade are still fun to play, but most of the classes are very situational or just plain outshone due to this being early in DnD 3.5's shelf life. Still, there's another way too many to go and I already feel my head hurting now.
Expect another write up sometime next week or so.
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