@Sheng: Sometimes one must make design decisiions based on mechanical aspects more than fluff aspects. This was one of those decisions.

kevin_video wrote:

I ask for a revision on the "Special" for this. Change it to "must have killed, survived an attack from, or have a hatred for" that particular psionic. Because there are tons of dick DMs out there who do nothing but teleport their NPCs out of combats when they have less than 10% of their hit points left.

I have another solution that works brilliantly: Don't game with dick DMs.

You can't fix out-of-game problems with in-game solutions, and it's better not to try.

Dabbler273 wrote:

I have another solution that works brilliantly: Don't game with dick DMs.

Considering where I live, not going to happen.

Again, with Slayer it should be something closer to the original Foe Hunter of 3.0. While wanting to wipe out their race is nice and all (unless you're a good character), the special is too limiting. What about if your whole village was taken out by them? Your only hope is to be a ranger for umteen levels for the favored enemy, and hope that eventually you kill one of those bastards. I'd also consider that the Special should include the classes too. I've been in campaigns where enemies have been wanting to wipe out mages, and have rangers with the favored enemy arcane user. Just makes some sense.

Good gaming > no gaming > bad gaming

There's always on-line games you can join, and you can always DM yourself to show them how it's meant to be done.

Dabbler273 wrote:

and you can always DM yourself to show them how it's meant to be done.

I do one-shots. I'm not good at lengthy scenarios.

While I can understand the argument and point about the Special requirement for the prestige class, the biggest change I could see would be surviving an attack by the creature - since that requires a more concrete event than something as abstract as "intense hatred".

However, it still requires DM adjudication and intervention. I'm not really opposed to that aspect of the class and, in the case of the Slayer, I would always say that you should discuss your character plans and concepts and goals with your DM. Pain in the butt DMs would still be a problem, but they'd be a problem for more than just this prestige class... so I'm not really sure we should make the Special requirement an abstract concept rather than an objective criteria.

Jeremy.Smith wrote:

While I can understand the argument and point about the Special requirement for the prestige class, the biggest change I could see would be surviving an attack by the creature - since that requires a more concrete event than something as abstract as "intense hatred". However, it still requires DM adjudication and intervention. I'm not really opposed to that aspect of the class and, in the case of the Slayer, I would always say that you should discuss your character plans and concepts and goals with your DM. Pain in the butt DMs would still be a problem, but they'd be a problem for more than just this prestige class... so I'm not really sure we should make the Special requirement an abstract concept rather than an objective criteria.

All I'm saying is that you have to have a reason to want to slay this creature. Just because you killed it you're now just going to automatically slay all of them? Why? What'd they do to you personally? Did you randomly kill one during a village raid and now have a taste for their blood? There's something very off with that.

I see the Slayer as something like the 3.0 Foe Hunter, but dedicated to psionics. You shouldn't have to kill that creature before you make them your favored enemy. Why do you have this hatred for them? You racist? Is your family the Belmont clan, and this whole time Dracula was actually psychic vampire (variant template)? But Slayer is closed off. Flavor wise, the ranger is the only way you could properly depict why you're going after that race. I bring up the Punisher movie with Tom Jane. Say he was just your typical fighter (navy seal) with some extra skills, and Travolta and his mob that wiped out his entire family, and tried to kill him, were mostly psionics. When he comes back from the brink of death, why couldn't he become a Slayer? Oh, well, the ones you did randomly kill weren't psionics.

If it's more open to interpretation, then it makes more sense. Like, they raided your entire village when you were a child, but because of your parents quick thinking, you were thrown into the cellar with a few other children who you'd been playing with, so you survived. However, from the cracks you saw a bunch of cerebrilith take down everyone in the village. You're haunted by this, and have dedicated yourself to wiping them out. However, due to the fact that you've never killed one (CR 10), and the limitations of the written Special, you'll just have to deal with being a high level ranger until such time that you can. Too bad, so sad.

I've always said that if a player can tell me exactly why he should get the PrC, and find a loop hole in the class for prereqs, he can take it. Like a traveling ranger that has pious templar. He's supposed to be guarding a temple. He will. When they call him with his bracelet of friendship. He has a helm of teleport. He'll be there instantly. And he has to be willing to take things on in their home plane. He's got favored enemy (evil outsiders) and is traveling to the Abyss to rescue a friend. It works. But when you're confronted with a RAW (read as written) write up, you can't.

For the special, if you leave it open the adjudication and intervention, yes, I'd leave it as "has to have a valid reason to want to slay psychic races." It could be anything. Hatred, revenge or justice (ie the Punisher style), big game hunter/assassin of psychics, etc. And it would be up to the DM and player to talk it out and see if the reason was valid or not.

Pain the butt DMs are usually those who read what it says, and go "Nope, no house rules. It says that you have to kill one of the race first. Until that happens, you can't take it." If it's left open, at least the player can argue it.

kevin_video wrote:

All I'm saying is that you have to have a reason to want to slay this creature ... if you leave it open the adjudication and intervention, yes, I'd leave it as "has to have a valid reason to want to slay psychic races." It could be anything. Hatred, revenge or justice (ie the Punisher style), big game hunter/assassin of psychics, etc. And it would be up to the DM and player to talk it out and see if the reason was valid or not.

That tracks fairly closely with some of the local discussions that my groups have been having about rangers (and PrCs with favored enemies) since 3.0 came out. Kevin raises a good point: having a ranger (or Slayer) that can't articulate why they're dedicated foes of a given race/class/species are about as hard to believe as clerics who haven't picked a deity.

I've always insisted that there be a logical reason for the character's focus that's internally consistent with the game world presented at the beginning of the adventure. If for no other purpose, you get to preemptively de-conflict clashes between accidentally opposed PC builds (e.g., the orc-hating elf ranger and the orc paladin). There are times when you want to tell the story of the angry anti-hero who overcomes his prejudices; there are (I've found) a lot more times when it's too much added burden on the storyteller to fight past. Let the PCs and the DM work out character designs that are acceptable.

That being said, I'm very much in favor of both flavors of Phrenic Slayer that have been discussed in this thread -- the hunter who preys on psionic creatures, and the hunter who uses psionics to prey on creatures -- provided you have a logical, in-game reason for this kind of hunter to exist. I'd advocate that this PrC works best when the party's primary adversary is or makes us of the race/class/species that the Phrenic Slayer hunts (that is, it's central to the adventure's or campaign's primary plot).

My favorite example of this was an idea thrown out by one of the Wizards game designers in their official D&D podcast. The designer (apologies for not remembering which fellow it was) suggested that psionics was the metaverse's natural "immune reaction" to an incursion of aberrations from the Far Realm into the material plane, just like white blood cells and antibodies rise up to defend the body against foreign organisms. I adored that plot hook, since you can drive any number of psionic PCs, PrCs, monsters, items and adventures off of it, and it stays completely coherent no matter what else is going on in the narrative. In such a scenario, the Phrenic Slayer becomes either a sentinel, guarding the innocent against newly-arising psionic threats (preys on type) or guards the innocent against unspeakable monsters from beyond space and time (uses type). Given that I sprinkle a lot of Lovecraft into the background of my adventures, this works very, very well.

Per Kevin's point, however, if you have a poorly conceived or weakly-designed character wanting to branch into the PrC just for munchkin purposes, it's both right and proper for the DM and the other players to say "no" to the would-be slayer. Any class, power source or PrC that threatens the integrity of the game overall should be politely refused.

All that being said, I submit that there's a welcome place for the Phrenic Slayer PrC in the system, even if it's only used under rare and explicit circumstances.

I agree and disagree on a couple of parts.

Myrokhad wrote:

there's a welcome place for the Phrenic Slayer PrC in the system, even if it's only used under rare and explicit circumstances.

Yes, and no. It really all depends on how rare and explicit the circumstances are. If it's "Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father! Prepare to die!" then that's awesome.

As for rangers and favored enemy, I've allowed that if you fight them all the time, you should be favored against them. Not necessarily just the one type that you're looking to go after. Although, it's good to have still. Especially if you plan on going up just ranger. Slayer on the other hand, that's a little more dedication. That's also a specific area of expertise. I could see the "rare" aspect being that psionics themselves are rare in that campaign world, but then again I've seen DMs houserule that psionics and magic are exactly the same, so you can take the favored arcane ability in Complete Arcane and have it work on both. Or, if you take Slayer, I've seen DMs who allow it so you can have favored enemy (arcanists) for the ranger part, and favored enemy (psionics) for the slayer part. Kind of defeats the whole racial thing right there.

The idea you brought up from someone else regarding psionics coming into our world and changing us slightly for adaptation, is a brilliant idea. And I recognize where it's from too. RIFTS. I used to play that system all of the time, and when the world essentially broke open due to all those portals from other dimensions, you had a ridiculous number of things coming out of them. A large number of it being psionics. I wonder if it's because it's too close to RIFTS that Wizards didn't go with it. But yeah, it's a good idea for introducing psionics into a campaign world instead of it just randomly showing up.

The question is - do we really NEED "roleplaying" prerequisites? I'm considering that a blurb about suggested "reasons" for becoming each Prestige Class might be interesting.

For example, a League of Explorers whom you must map a new area to be accepted into (Elocater) or the Rite of the Scourge Slayer, a mystic rite in which an aspiring slayer must ritually consume a living scourge-worm and survive to become a Slayer (and access its powers).

kevin_video wrote:

The idea you brought up from someone else regarding psionics coming into our world and changing us slightly for adaptation, is a brilliant idea. And I recognize where it's from too. RIFTS.

Hmmm. Interesting. That could well be; I've never played RIFTS, so I'll take your word for it.

Angellis_ater wrote:

The question is - do we really NEED "roleplaying" prerequisites?

Do we need them? Perhaps not, if you consider game design to be analogous to car design. The more versatile you build your creation, the more places and ways it can be used, and you'll never likely guess them all. Sometimes, that's more beneficial to the consumer than a purpose-built, single-function object that is unusable or inherently counter-productive outside its narrowly-defined lane.

Do we want them, though? I submit that we do ... Perhaps nothing so regimented as "The aspirant must slay the three-toed sloth of Mount Ubuntu on a partly-cloudy Tuesday." Weapons of Legacy and other such books have soured me on such irritating specifics. I submit instead that we should offer up to both players and DMs an answer to three fundamental questions:

1. Why would an otherwise-functional character want to stop progressing in their chosen path and become one of these? (Motivation)

2. What is this PrC likely to do to your game that is different from what you're experiencing now? (Impact)

3. How much of a burden will this PrC place on the DM's story? (Cost)

To illustrate my point, let me attempt (blindly) to answer these for the proposed Phrenic Slayer.

1. Motivation. A character stops progressing as a psion, wilder or psychic warrior when their dominant focus in life changes to zero in on opposing other psionic creatures to the exclusion of most other activities. This is a long-term commitment, usually inspired by a painful loss (psionic beasties killed your loved ones), a looming threat (psionic beasties threaten your world) or an overwhelming rivalry (your ultimate rival is a psionic beastie). You become unparalleled at defeating psionic foes, but are still adept at fighting everything else; you lose bonus feats and class features (most notably wild surge) in order to gain abilities that help you hunt your chosen foe.

2. Impact. Once the DM allows this PrC, he/she is acknowledging that psionic beasties are going to be encountered relatively frequently in order for the Slayer to get his/her share of the spotlight. "Relative" is entirely dependent on your game and players; one would expect that your Slayer will want at least one "limelight" moment per game session to feel vindicated. If you can't commit to that frequency of psionic foes in the story you have ahead, your Slayer will likely feel slighted and disappointed in spending so many PrC levels on features that don't really help any against non-psionic foes.

3. Cost. If your game centers around psionic and psionic villains, then there's very little cost. Just keep playing. If you allow magic and psionics to be effectively the same thing, then nearly any published adventure that features wizards and dragons will satisfy your Slayer. If, however, you intend to run pre-printed material that doesn't have level-appropriate psionics in it regularly, decide if you're comfortable changing the printed villains to include psionics or if you can "weave in" psionic beasties so that the Slayer has something to oppose. If you can't, consider a different PrC path.

I'm sure that Mr. Wolf can phrase this far more eloquently, but I trust you'll see what I'm trying to say. Something this simple would be a huge boon for me as a DM when trying to weigh the merits and risks of a new PrC, and would help my players understand why I'm not willing to approve one when circumstances warrant it.

I'll add to what Myrokhad has said. My DM runs pre-made scenarios all of the time, and during one session we suddenly had a bunch of mind flayers coming after us as they created an alliance against the aberrations that we'd been at war with. I was a ranger 4/psychic warrior 2, and I was at a point where I had I could either take a 5th level of ranger, or take slayer. I was hurting for a Will save, so I considered the latter. I talked with the DM first and let him know my plans, but he assured me that it would be more worth it for me to take the fifth level of ranger, and forgo slayer completely. He had no problem with psionics in the party (we have an elan psion, a thri-keen warblade, and a red dragon psychic rogue), but he didn't want me to waste a level. We fought the mind flayers one more time after that, but since then it's just been evil outsiders, and the occasional aberration. While I would have liked the Will save, I'm glad we had the amount of communication that we did so I wouldn't have wasted my levels.

I had the motivation (had been fighting lots of aberrations and now mind flayers), the impact was minimal as it was already happening, but the cost would have been high for both parties as the DM would have had to somehow made it so that we had more psionics as antagonists, when really all we had was one arc of them, or I would have had to have done without.

just re-checked this and the Favored Enemy/Psionic Creature bit could use a little clarification.

1) does it have to be a specific creature that uses psionics? Ie, Mind Flayers, Xeph, etc?

or

2) can it be a general psionic creature, ala the Ranger. Ie Psionic Abberations, Psionic Outsiders, etc?

Originally this was very focused on just Mind Flayers, but then due to that being closed content, was generalized into psionic creatures.

I think, if you allow the Phernic Slayer to pick one general type of psionic creature ala the Ranger, this would make the class much more viable, and i think would quite many concerns others have with it.

Finally,
KV what you said should be applicable regardless of PrC or even any class. If you are unsure about a choice you make and its potential usefulness in a game, your DM will generally assist you on the choice. the current pre-reqs are fine, and harken to the non PF version of the class. No need to add in things like "I hate this monster cuz he murdered my puppy" into the pre-reqs, that's up to you.

case in point:
I made an epic level Ranger/Druid, whose main favorite enemy was Human(he was a Shifter from Eberron). However, he eventually took the badass focused slayer from an issue of Dragon and chose Aberration, due to some such one of them rampaging through one of the forests he protected and laying waste to a lot of it.

the PrC lacked such a need to explain why as did and does the Ranger. If the core class which grants the basic ability needs no such explanations, why does a PrC extension?

The special reads: Special: Must have killed the psionic creature to be selected as the favored enemy, either individually or
as part of a group composed of fewer than seven members. It would be nice for some clarification on it. As well, a variant on Complete Mage's Arcant Hunter variant would suffice as well (as opposed to just house ruling it like some DMs have).

The special is very limiting. Like say you fought a group of psychics, but the ring leader got away. Well, you know him and his buddies are going to be coming after you, but because you didn't kill HIM, you can't select him. However, you can select the other races that you're probably not going to ever fight again. That's just plain wrong. And it's why I question its existence.

My question to you though, Lordmonkeysama, is if you don't hate this creature, or have a viable reason for hunting down their entire race (ie a psionic SLAYER), much like Buffy the vampire slayer, how can this class even be considered a viable PrC? Again, I ask, is the character a racist now? Were his/her parents bigots? I don't get it. And why can you only choose a favored enemy based on what you've killed? Why not what you've seen, too?

As Lordmonkeysama said, if the PrC lacks such a need to explain why as does the ranger, then why does the slayer? Just imagine that kind of limitation on the ranger. At first level you choose a favored enemy based on what you've killed. I sure hope daddy took you hunting and it's animals, otherwise it's going to be one heck of an interesting campaign where you're an orc murderer, or your first kill was a dwarf or human. Maybe you're from Kansas, and your house landed on a witch thanks to a tornado. It's great if you're planning on being evil and an assassin, or a racist ("I'm an orc, I hate all elves." "I'm an elf, I hate all orcs.")

Taking everything into consideration, yes the slayer was an easy class to get into in 3.5 and without the incredibly limiting special it currently has it'll be almost as easy for PF. So what? Your limitation is still going to be the psionics as a favored enemy. What's wrong with that? That's like taking the Arcane Hunter variant from Complete Mage. That uses up ALL of the favored enemies so that you can take on mages, or outsiders with spell-like abilities, or other beings such as those. Yes there are tons of stuff that spells and spell-like abilities, but there's just about as many things that don't. Like, T-rexes, or the tarrasque.

being a racist in D&D and being a racist in RL are two totally different things.

for starters, technically its impossible to be an actual racist in the real world. we are all HUMAN of the human RACE. however in D&D one can be a Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Drow, etc. so its very easy to be and even acceptable and understandable to be a racist.

Also, many races are inherently racist(Drow for starters), and they are taught pretty much from birth that they are superior to all other races, who should be enslaved or in some cases(like their sun-loving cousins) killed outright. Which is why Drow Rangers are common: they believe its their divine right to hunt down and enslave/kill non-Drow.

Same with Elven Rangers: many of them have favored enemies that are those who have hunted in, or somehow violated their sacred forests.

Racism isn't nearly as bad in D&D as it is in the real world. and as i said, if often acceptable and understood.

ps,
when i get a chance, i'll post up some of the features of that aforementioned focused slayer PrC

Lordmonkeysama wrote:

Racism isn't nearly as bad in D&D as it is in the real world. and as i said, if often acceptable and understood.

LordMonkeySama is quite right in this, although I would like to caveat his statement with "to varying degrees, depending on the campaign setting."

My first encounter in the Forgotten Realms involved an adventure where several paladins encountered a nest of young orcs. The paladins' players took great joy -- and suffered no alignment penalty -- in slaughtering them all because it was cosmologically impossible in FR for an orc to ever be anything by chaotic evil. Therefore, they had no requirement to even make a token attempt at rehabilitation; they simply burned them all to death. I found the campaign setting revolting specifically because of that aspect.

Given that I was playing the recently-released Eberron campaign setting at the time, where any creature (especially dragons!) could be any alignment -- where species was never more than a general trend -- such brutality would never be tolerated. The setting even included a morally-reprehensible crusade (the Silver Flame's lychanthrope extermination, if you want to look it up) as an example of how racist (speciesist?) bigotry had terrible and morally-indefensible repercussions.

Given a choice between the two settings, I will take Eberron every time, because I like exploring the moral dimension of actors and their actions in a story. That's my choice. Not everyone agrees. Most of the aforementioned paladin group vastly preferred the FR setting because they wanted the good and evil of their actions utterly predetermined. Moral relativism versus moral absolutism, if you want to get philosophical about it.

I say this because a setting like FR lends itself very well to a Slayer (or Ranger) class that lets you choose to hate/hunt/defy some creature or species without ever having had a personally-defining encounter with it. In such a setting, one can take a level of ranger and decide (quite arbitrarily) that one is now devoted to fighting/hunting/killing orcs.

Whereas, a more film noir setting like Eberron precludes any such glib selection. When any creature can be good or evil (usually a little of both) based on their choices and experiences, the bar to become a Slayer-type ought to be posted quite high. There should be some sort of defining moment or condition.

In the former, in-game racism is trivial and almost pre-programmed. In the latter, it's anathema. Hence, my suggestion that LMS's aphorism should include the statement "to varying degrees, depending on the campaign setting."

Take it all with a grain of salt, of course. Sometimes, there's no campaign setting at all, and you're just getting together with a bunch of like-minded heroes in a tavern to go plunder a dungeon.

aye, very true, Myrokhad. personally i'm with you, i like my races to be however and whatever i want. If i want my Drow to be uber evil that's how i play them, but i am rather fond of the style and culture given to the Orcs in WoW: that of honorable warriors with a strong tradition of Shamanism and ancestor worship coupled with a general desire to get a long with the land.

it's different, yet very much like the stereotypical Elves. and yet the Elves in WoW are both the same and very different, which is also badass.

Hi!

After picking up Pathfinder I want to give some suggestions:

Brain Nausea:
The ability states that at 10th level you might stun someone after a successful save vs a mind affecting effect. This is a nice end level effect, but after 9th level you are immune vs mind affecting effect while psionically focused. There should be some text to clear up what happens if someone attacks you while the immunity is active.
Does is automatically trigger?
Do you need to make a will save and only on a successful save it will trigger while on a failed save nothing happens as you are actually immune?
Do you actually need to allow the effect to affect you so you can trigger Brain Nausea and if you fail your save you will be affected even while being psionically focused?
Also is Brain Nausea an mind-affecting effect by itself? So would someone with Mind Blank be affected or not?

Cerebral Immunity:
While the ability has immunity in it's name it only says that it shields you against mind-affecting effects. To be a bit more clear would probably help.
Does it only suspend these effects while you are focused so they would take effect if you would lose your focus during the duration of the effect?
Does it make you immune vs such effects so you can't be affected by them in any way and the mind-affecting ability fails completely?
If you become focused while under the effect of an mind-affecting ability will this ability automatically end or will it be just suppressed or even remain in effect while you are focused?

Beside this I like what you did with the Slayer. I especially liked that you did remove some manifester levels and added the one thing that it was really missing (power resistance).

Adressing this class is very important to me - one of my favourite characters is a Slayer, and a character in a campaign that I've been dungeonmastering for quite a long time also is a Slayer, so I know both ends very well.

In the thread above it is widely assumed that if you play a Slayer and your DM doesn't dish out a lot of your favoured enemies he's a bad DM. That's just not true. It's just, a specific psionic creature just cannot be that repetitive without appearing to be forced into the adventures against any adventure concept. When I as a DM did an FR Underdark adventure, sure, the Slayer got it's opportunity. But when I did a long surface travelling campaign, I only once during an entire long campaign let some Illithid slave hunters appear, more just wouldn't have been believable. So the Slayer player only encountered Illithids twice in years. That happens without bad will or inability to draw an Illithid out of every hat.

Same the other way round - As a player of a Telepath/Marksman who went Martial Savant/Slayer I wrote an extensive background story backing up a hatred for Illithids, then took the DM permission (in a campaign with changing DMs) to select Slayer (you can take that class early, much earlier than you usually encounter Illithids) with the assumption to fix the lack of real ingame Illithid slaying sooner or later, and even after a long time of playing I'm still waiting for that.

A specific creature is just that - to specific to be interesting in a broad campaign in a large and diverse campaign world. So please, make it psionic [creature type] and let the types be the same as the ranger enemies. So with a choice like "psionic aberrations" you get illithids, but usually not beholders, while a ranger with aberrations wouldn't suffer that restriction. In many campaigns psionic aberrations will be the most obvious choice, but psionic humanoids can be as rewarding as a class for an illithid with a taste in psionic brains, or a psicop hunting renegade teeps.

Having actually killed an illithid in some encounter is roleplaying-wise not necessarily better than a well-designed story. Also, this class is available early. If you want to join this class at level 5 and don't have a suitable encounter until already at a higher level this will spoil your build. Or like in my example above your build becomes unpleasantly questionable. So make this an "emotional intense hostile encounter" instead of killed in a group of 6.

DnD 3.5 - on contrary to some d20 psionic classes - was very harsh in taking away 1 manifester level initially from many prestige classes. That is some bitter pill to swallow, but in case of a cool class like the Slayer acceptable. Taking away 2 manifester levels from a class that previously just suffered minus 1 level is just to much. It breaks in a bad way the cherished backward compatibility. "Guys, now that DSP released psionic PF, lets finally fully go PF" - "Nah, if we do that, I'll lose that power level that features all the powers I contributed to solving last campaigns plot with." For the sake of consistency and continuity, please leave the Slayer's manifester level as it has been before.