Hey there everyone, after playing Scout actively for over half a year in the module, I want to lay out my current experiences with the class, how the individual abilities feel and perform, as well as changes that could be made for the upcoming class balance passes.
Current gameplay experience
Scout is currently one of the most consistent, high-damage dealing classes in the module, especially if using crossbows. Full BAB and the possibilities of feat-stacking for crossbows, combined with the bonuses from either of the two stances, allows a Scout to easily keep pace with the damage output of strength builds from other martial classes using two-handed weapons, without the danger of actually entering melee. This high damage output is then combined with a strong skill spread. Stealth, spotting, opening locks and handling traps are all accessible.
These severe advantages are balanced out by minimal downsides. Scouts has bad saves and only has a D8 hitdice. From the long months playing the class I can say that neither are really significant. The low will save can sometimes be annoying when fighting enemies with fear howls, but that can be easily played around by hanging back whenever those are engaged. You could probably also concoct weird PvP scenarios in your head where the low saves are meaningful, but I don’t think class balance decisions on this server should be made based on theorycrafted 1v1 battles. The lower HP is also not much of a downside for a class mostly spending time at range. I’ve had countless cases where all the melee fighters were badly wounded or near death while my character stood unphased and uninjured.
All of this produces a class that feels like it is outperforming many other classes, both in damage and utility. This is the case while overall feeling very passive in combat. You basically just pick a stance before the fight starts and left-click the enemy, letting auto-attacks fly until the fight is over. While some small tweaks downward are needed, I do think that bringing up other classes to the level of scout will be a better way.
Abilities
Call Target
In its current iteration this ability is useless. Scout’s current high damage output means that it is never really worth it to give up a full round of your own shooting to apply the damage bonus to an enemy. You can give up a round of shooting and then apply Call Target, but the time to kill on many enemies is so short that they are likely to die before the two rounds of damage bonus even runs out, especially if you get people to actually focus on one specific enemy in a normal 6 player group.
Scout’s Guile & Hawksense
Going to talk about both of them together since they are largely the same abilities. Scout’s Guile gives a good perception (and search) bonus on a short cooldown, very useful to boost the skill for mechanical reasons to discover hidden entrances, traps and sneaking enemies, as well as a boost to those skills when a DM asks for a roll during an event. Much of the same can be said for Hawksense, though there you get the obvious extra advantage of see invisibility (and later blindsight). These are strong abilities that I would say core to the Scout experience, reinforcing the core class fantasy in a good way.
Ranging & Skirmish Stance
Both stances can be strong depending on the situation. Currently Ranging Stance gives the extra attack to melee weapons as well, which I assume is unintended and will be fixed. The damage potential of both stances for ranged weapons then is fairly balanced. Concerns about how easily it is to get into the 15ft range to trigger sneak attacks and the AC of enemies often determines which one is better to pick. This could in theory lead to a dynamic gameplay experience of switching stances as needed, but that is not made viable by the switching taking a full round. In practice this means that you choose one stance before the fight starts and stick with it through the fight.
Apprehend
Feels like a suitably strong ability. You have to learn which enemy types have a reflex save that is low enough to make it worthwhile to attempt, but once you get a solid grip of that it can have strong situational uses. Being able to disable high damage dealing NPCs and saving your own/someone else’s ass feels good.
Blood Trail & Improved Stances
With the current level cap at 11 I can’t give much useful feedback.
Blood Trail feels like a strong tool to prevent the escape from magic users through invis, but otherwise there is not much use to it. It’s probably too strongly focused on PvP use in my opinion.
The boni for the improved stances feel very uneven. Improved Skirmisher Stance getting an extra 1d6 sneak attack damage probably has it pull ahead of Ranging Stance by a fair amount, giving 3.5 extra damage on any hit landed. Though to be fair I’m also not clear on how the +1 enhancement bonus from fletching is supposed to interact with existing gear bonus.
Stealthy, Fast Movement, Uncanny Dodge, Bonus Feat, Evasion, Practiced Prowess
These are all the various bonus feats Scout gets access to. I don’t really have much to say about them, they feel overall fitting and I don’t feel they strongly tilt the balance of the class one way or the other. Of note is perhaps the general Bonus Feat scouts get two of, which I do feel is important to keep, simply because ranged builds require a larger amount of feats as auto-picks to be viable.
Suggested changes
Rework Sharpshooter
As mentioned above the high damage level for crossbow Scouts is mostly the result of stacking some general feats. Sharpshooter, be it as the 1d4 damage bonus as stated on the wiki or the 1d8 bonus it mentions for the feat ingame, is probably the biggest contributor to it, pushing crossbows in particular over the edge. My suggestion would be to make the feat work for all ranged weapons and simply have it be a reverse Point Blank Shot. Have it give +1 AB & +1 DMG against enemies more than 15 ft. away. The bonus would be more in line with what you expect from a feat called “Sharpshooter” that way and it can give a small boost to bow builds as well.
Combine Scout’s Guile & Hawksense
I called both abilities core to the Scout class fantasy, but I also believe that there is no reason for these to be separate abilities, it’s not really necessary bloat. As it stand the current ranks of Hawk Sense are separate abilities already, so there is no reason to have Scout’s Guile with the lower cooldown be rolled into Hawk Sense I, giving this first rank the main focus on the skill ranks, while Hawk Sense II & III have their main draw in the See Invisibility & Blindsight components. This doesn’t really impact the balancing of Scout and mostly serves to simplify the ability set slightly.
Make Call Target an instant use ability
The big problem with Call Target currently is that it’s not worth sacrificing a round of shooting for a minor damage bonus against an enemy. Having it be instant use is an easy change that would instantly make it a net positive to use.
Make activating stances an instant use ability
Both stances have situational use and giving Scouts the ability to switch between the stances more easily would make the gameplay feel a good bit more dynamic. To prevent any sort of funny business with people rapidly changing to game the system in unexpected ways, activating stances should then also come with a short cooldown of a couple (maybe 3) rounds or so.
Different extra bonus for Improved Skirmisher & Ranging Stance
I don’t think piling up more passive boni is terribly interesting design wise and as written above, the +3d6 Sneak Attack for the Improved Skirmisher Stance probably makes it pull ahead of the Ranging Stance. A better option would be to give both stances a short 1 round bonus whenever activated. This rewards the switching between the stances and reward not just standing somewhere like a turret, letting auto attacks fly until the fight is over.
Improved Ranging Stance grants a small (10 or 25%) concealment bonus for 1 round, reinforcing the idea that switching to it is to disengage from enemies to fight them at range.
Improved Skirmisher Stances grants a larger movement speed bonus (maybe 25%) for 1 round, allowing the Scout to more efficiently close the distance to be able to trigger the Sneak Attack bonus.
Current gameplay experience
Scout is currently one of the most consistent, high-damage dealing classes in the module, especially if using crossbows. Full BAB and the possibilities of feat-stacking for crossbows, combined with the bonuses from either of the two stances, allows a Scout to easily keep pace with the damage output of strength builds from other martial classes using two-handed weapons, without the danger of actually entering melee. This high damage output is then combined with a strong skill spread. Stealth, spotting, opening locks and handling traps are all accessible.
These severe advantages are balanced out by minimal downsides. Scouts has bad saves and only has a D8 hitdice. From the long months playing the class I can say that neither are really significant. The low will save can sometimes be annoying when fighting enemies with fear howls, but that can be easily played around by hanging back whenever those are engaged. You could probably also concoct weird PvP scenarios in your head where the low saves are meaningful, but I don’t think class balance decisions on this server should be made based on theorycrafted 1v1 battles. The lower HP is also not much of a downside for a class mostly spending time at range. I’ve had countless cases where all the melee fighters were badly wounded or near death while my character stood unphased and uninjured.
All of this produces a class that feels like it is outperforming many other classes, both in damage and utility. This is the case while overall feeling very passive in combat. You basically just pick a stance before the fight starts and left-click the enemy, letting auto-attacks fly until the fight is over. While some small tweaks downward are needed, I do think that bringing up other classes to the level of scout will be a better way.
Abilities
Call Target
In its current iteration this ability is useless. Scout’s current high damage output means that it is never really worth it to give up a full round of your own shooting to apply the damage bonus to an enemy. You can give up a round of shooting and then apply Call Target, but the time to kill on many enemies is so short that they are likely to die before the two rounds of damage bonus even runs out, especially if you get people to actually focus on one specific enemy in a normal 6 player group.
Scout’s Guile & Hawksense
Going to talk about both of them together since they are largely the same abilities. Scout’s Guile gives a good perception (and search) bonus on a short cooldown, very useful to boost the skill for mechanical reasons to discover hidden entrances, traps and sneaking enemies, as well as a boost to those skills when a DM asks for a roll during an event. Much of the same can be said for Hawksense, though there you get the obvious extra advantage of see invisibility (and later blindsight). These are strong abilities that I would say core to the Scout experience, reinforcing the core class fantasy in a good way.
Ranging & Skirmish Stance
Both stances can be strong depending on the situation. Currently Ranging Stance gives the extra attack to melee weapons as well, which I assume is unintended and will be fixed. The damage potential of both stances for ranged weapons then is fairly balanced. Concerns about how easily it is to get into the 15ft range to trigger sneak attacks and the AC of enemies often determines which one is better to pick. This could in theory lead to a dynamic gameplay experience of switching stances as needed, but that is not made viable by the switching taking a full round. In practice this means that you choose one stance before the fight starts and stick with it through the fight.
Apprehend
Feels like a suitably strong ability. You have to learn which enemy types have a reflex save that is low enough to make it worthwhile to attempt, but once you get a solid grip of that it can have strong situational uses. Being able to disable high damage dealing NPCs and saving your own/someone else’s ass feels good.
Blood Trail & Improved Stances
With the current level cap at 11 I can’t give much useful feedback.
Blood Trail feels like a strong tool to prevent the escape from magic users through invis, but otherwise there is not much use to it. It’s probably too strongly focused on PvP use in my opinion.
The boni for the improved stances feel very uneven. Improved Skirmisher Stance getting an extra 1d6 sneak attack damage probably has it pull ahead of Ranging Stance by a fair amount, giving 3.5 extra damage on any hit landed. Though to be fair I’m also not clear on how the +1 enhancement bonus from fletching is supposed to interact with existing gear bonus.
Stealthy, Fast Movement, Uncanny Dodge, Bonus Feat, Evasion, Practiced Prowess
These are all the various bonus feats Scout gets access to. I don’t really have much to say about them, they feel overall fitting and I don’t feel they strongly tilt the balance of the class one way or the other. Of note is perhaps the general Bonus Feat scouts get two of, which I do feel is important to keep, simply because ranged builds require a larger amount of feats as auto-picks to be viable.
Suggested changes
Rework Sharpshooter
As mentioned above the high damage level for crossbow Scouts is mostly the result of stacking some general feats. Sharpshooter, be it as the 1d4 damage bonus as stated on the wiki or the 1d8 bonus it mentions for the feat ingame, is probably the biggest contributor to it, pushing crossbows in particular over the edge. My suggestion would be to make the feat work for all ranged weapons and simply have it be a reverse Point Blank Shot. Have it give +1 AB & +1 DMG against enemies more than 15 ft. away. The bonus would be more in line with what you expect from a feat called “Sharpshooter” that way and it can give a small boost to bow builds as well.
Combine Scout’s Guile & Hawksense
I called both abilities core to the Scout class fantasy, but I also believe that there is no reason for these to be separate abilities, it’s not really necessary bloat. As it stand the current ranks of Hawk Sense are separate abilities already, so there is no reason to have Scout’s Guile with the lower cooldown be rolled into Hawk Sense I, giving this first rank the main focus on the skill ranks, while Hawk Sense II & III have their main draw in the See Invisibility & Blindsight components. This doesn’t really impact the balancing of Scout and mostly serves to simplify the ability set slightly.
Make Call Target an instant use ability
The big problem with Call Target currently is that it’s not worth sacrificing a round of shooting for a minor damage bonus against an enemy. Having it be instant use is an easy change that would instantly make it a net positive to use.
Make activating stances an instant use ability
Both stances have situational use and giving Scouts the ability to switch between the stances more easily would make the gameplay feel a good bit more dynamic. To prevent any sort of funny business with people rapidly changing to game the system in unexpected ways, activating stances should then also come with a short cooldown of a couple (maybe 3) rounds or so.
Different extra bonus for Improved Skirmisher & Ranging Stance
I don’t think piling up more passive boni is terribly interesting design wise and as written above, the +3d6 Sneak Attack for the Improved Skirmisher Stance probably makes it pull ahead of the Ranging Stance. A better option would be to give both stances a short 1 round bonus whenever activated. This rewards the switching between the stances and reward not just standing somewhere like a turret, letting auto attacks fly until the fight is over.
Improved Ranging Stance grants a small (10 or 25%) concealment bonus for 1 round, reinforcing the idea that switching to it is to disengage from enemies to fight them at range.
Improved Skirmisher Stances grants a larger movement speed bonus (maybe 25%) for 1 round, allowing the Scout to more efficiently close the distance to be able to trigger the Sneak Attack bonus.
