Kensai, why even legacy?

[Sab1]

Why not do away with all Kensai now, I mean "The kensai receive an extra attack at full AB
They also receive +2 AC (untyped)" hardly seems worth the sacrifice of just being able to use mundane items. So why even legacy and not just do away with totally? I am a bit curious why even let it linger? Or if going to allow legacy why chop benefits in half?

[Hunter548]

Why do you want your character and all other kensai to be nerfed even harder?

[Sab1]

Honestly I think it would be better to just of done away with it all, instead of taking away half the benefits.

[Baron Saturday]

Getting rid of Kensai entirely would leave a bunch of characters with no UMD and no extra attack/AC to compensate for it.

[ReverentBlade]

This seems like a large enough change to warrant free rebuilds.

[Peppermint]

The point of kensai isn't the perks it gets, per se.

The point of kensai is that it gets free perks for a character that wouldn't take UMD anyway.

Kensai is still fine. This isn't a case of 'only +1 attack and +2 AC'. That's a lot to get for free.

[Xanos950]

The extra attack by itself is already pretty nice.

[flower]

The point of kensai isn't the perks it gets, per se.

The point of kensai is that it gets free perks for a character that wouldn't take UMD anyway.

Kensai is still fine. This isn't a case of 'only +1 attack and +2 AC'. That's a lot to get for free.

Yes, until you made your character around current things and suddenly it is poof, gone, and to fix that gap you have to undertake re doing tons of levels.

Some people got to keep their "legacy" like old spellswords, and then there is a kensai who is not just removed but existing characters are on top of that nerfed. If they are removed why nerfing existing characters, who can slowly disappear in time? This makes no sense to me.

[RedGiant]

I am a fan of grandfathering...not of hard downgrades to existing characters. I would agree this could have stayed...my only thought is that every kensai was a detector on the level of current bat totems? I dunno...

But to the point Peps already said, kensai was almost a straight upgrade to pure class characters. It likely needed to go or get completely overhauled.


This was well noted in the thread during my last kensai meltdown:
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=16010

Still...rather than knock off top tier detectors...I would take that +10 disc back. It was more thematically appropriate anyhow!

[Stath]

THE PEOPLE DEMAND A ONE TIME ABILITY TO UNTAKE KENSAI

[Cerk Evermoore]

THE PEOPLE DEMAND A ONE TIME ABILITY TO UNTAKE KENSAI

[Sab1]

I'm an all or nothing type. I want all the abilities or none. Somewhere in between is for those filthy neutral types that can't decide if they are good or evil.

But honestly the issue is when Kensai came out, gods it was horrible and way too restrictive ( I remember being a kensai, everyone died and having to carry them everywhere to find someone who could use raise scrolls) But then as the list of things they could use greatly increased the balance of pro/cons got way out of whack till there were very few cons and the things they were being given such as +6 saves was a too big of a power boost. The speed was just insane and was glad that went away and freedom I knew was never going to stay. I thought the listen and spot was a nice perk. I think kensai could be useful if what they could use was toned down some. I mean why can I use imp invis on the displacer cloak but not shadow shield on the SD outfit? I understand the class going away over change after change to try and make them right.

[Orian_666]

I think the main issue is, one one of my own characters now has, is that many Kensai built around the benefits, making the best use of them they can, neglecting certain build choices in favor of others because the benefits allowed for that. Where as now half of those have been taking away, thus, in some cases, heavily crippling the builds.
Granted 2AC and 1 extra attack is nothing to wag a stick at, but the fact of the matter remains that it's not as beneficial as UMD in most cases, especially not that they have lower saves and no way to boost the skills they may have relied upon for their RP back to what they were.

[flower]

I think the main issue is, one one of my own characters now has, is that many Kensai built around the benefits, making the best use of them they can, neglecting certain build choices in favor of others because the benefits allowed for that. Where as now half of those have been taking away, thus, in some cases, heavily crippling the builds.
Granted 2AC and 1 extra attack is nothing to wag a stick at, but the fact of the matter remains that it's not as beneficial as UMD in most cases, especially not that they have lower saves and no way to boost the skills they may have relied upon for their RP back to what they were.

The issue with the nerf of saves is this: builds, which had top high saves will keep them. Removing 6 points of saves from CoT, paladin, BG builds and other will not hit them at all.

Removing these saves from overpowered meleers with barb/wm/* whatever and other variattions will not nerf their devastating melee effect.

The only thing it does is hitting people with mediocrate builds. They can rework it yes but at the cost of undoing and redoing levels and feats, which is matter of players time.

The main reason of all of this lays in fact, elsewhere. Who put in quarterstaffs so they use monk BAB? Who made dual bladed weapons large weapons to benefit from +2 ab? Who made update of rage to grant additional full AB attack? Who gave out free dual wielding feats and connected them to the powerful racial weapons? All these minor changes had impact elsewhere. People just combined it together. And will keep doing it as all these things remain.

[BegoneThoth]

The issue with the nerf of saves is this: builds, which had top high saves will keep them. Removing 6 points of saves from CoT, paladin, BG builds and other will not hit them at all.

Are you joking? It impacts those strong builds as saves were the only weak point they had. Now they have a much stronger weak point and can realistically get jobbed by reflex or will effects. It specifically hurts the good builds as they can no longer hit 30ish ref/will vs spells and now sit at or below 30. That means things like Stonehold or Mindfog which require repeated saves are actually worth using against them as before they almost hit total spell immunity.

Spells are now their weakness and while I'm glad kensai is gone as it was just "more better" for some builds, it didn't serve its initial purpose (make bad builds viable) and instead only really benefitted the top 5%. It actually encouraged bad play in less then optimal players and was toxic as a result. So it got re-balanced and removed.

[flower]

The issue with the nerf of saves is this: builds, which had top high saves will keep them. Removing 6 points of saves from CoT, paladin, BG builds and other will not hit them at all.

Are you joking? It impacts those strong builds as saves were the only weak point they had. Now they have a much stronger weak point and can realistically get jobbed by reflex or will effects. It specifically hurts the good builds as they can no longer hit 30ish ref/will vs spells and now sit at or below 30. That means things like Stonehold or Mindfog which require repeated saves are actually worth using against them as before they almost hit total spell immunity.

Spells are now their weakness and while I'm glad kensai is gone as it was just "more better" for some builds, it didn't serve its initial purpose (make bad builds viable) and instead only really benefitted the top 5%. It actually encouraged bad play in less then optimal players and was toxic as a result. So it got re-balanced and removed.

How does it impact builds which add charisma bonus to saves? Or get saves per class like COT?

Kensai was never meant to make bad builds viable, where did you get that idea?

And if you think removal of Kensai will make someone else to behave better, i am not sure if you are just that naive...or...

When you keep rolling each round you are not immune to that spell. People can still make top saves even on WM, but in addition to the kensai can also use items granting them full immunities you must deal with first.

[BegoneThoth]

Furthermore, experience shows that a 'casual play' class leads to flawed outcomes. Either the end result is a path that is weaker overall, in which case it is regarded as a 'trap class' that might disillusion new players who were led into a dead end, or the path becomes an overly powerful tool that can be used by casual players but is more often employed by more experienced players to upend the power curve

Its right there. A casual class for people that don't want to "deal" with umd.

And 6 saves vs spells is a loss even for high save cha builds, as those cot/pally/bg are not stacking cha, and at most get <10 saves. Combine this with some builds not even allowing for spellcraft, and you now have 20-25 or so reflex/will vs spells at best, and that's a world of difference to be rolling when the spell DC is high 30's.

[Cortex]

They could get nigh invulnerable saves before, some still can (like div builds) but it'll take spellcraft and plenty of save items. On a barb/CoT kensai I played before, she had +30 saves across the board with 6 CHA and 52 AB with dual wield thunder rage APR.

On a less extreme example of another kensai I still play on occasion, a simple barb/ftr, he's affected less in regard that he'd fail will/reflex saves regardless, while his fort is still beefy.

So unless you already built for saves, I doubt the +6 bonus made much of a difference.

[BegoneThoth]

As an aside, I feel the Nerfs the kensei got combined with them being made Legacy, is exactly what needed to happen. I don't really see a need for any more changes, or anybody needing a rebuild, having only lost 6 saves.

[MissEvelyn]

Absolutely not a fan of more paths being removed. Should a player get a million warnings before picking a weaker path? Sure, of course. But outright removing it is just silly. No Kensai will outpower a 'traditional' UMD dipper, same as no Weavemaster could beat a regular wizard/sorcerer.

Removing a path just because it's not top tier only furthers this mentality that we have to play what's in, what's 'meta'. And on a server where the main focus is supposed to be roleplay, I'd see that as doing more harm than good for the server.

But if you do go ahead and remove any given path, at least give us a courteous warning in advance

[Thanatosis]

Kensai was better, which is bad -- mandatory paths are bad, obviously.

The alternative is a trap path. Trap paths are bad because an option that is strictly worse than another (especially one as fairly "invisible" as kensai was. Nobody needs permahaste or extra APR to roleplay being an Eastern themed warrior or something) only serves to confuse and irritate players not as familiar with the system as a long term player.

Why put up more barriers of entry to an already somewhat nuanced mechanical system?

EDIT:

But if you do go ahead and remove any given path, at least give us a courteous warning in advance

I don't think this would have been a good idea. Then you'd have a bevy of legacy kensais suddenly created and stored in vaults, when the purpose of removing them is to have less of them, and eventually none.

[Black Wendigo]

I for one am glad to see kensai go. It was a class that did not have any real focus and the changes only ended up making things worse. Worse because the changes lured people into believing that kensai were a certain thing, but that thing never really emerged.

It is best to cut the losses and not try to faff around with existing kensai chars. Just let the whole class go. And this is cumming from a person who currently plays a kensai char that has bee really messed up by the changes (Less mechanically speaking, more because I had intended for him to rp'd according to things that existed but are now removed).

Removing kensai now and removing kensai benifits is the better solution in my eyes. Because if it isn't removed now it will only continue to be a problem.

[Freyason]

I'm curious why barbarian tribal path is not removed too, it's not getting a rework

[rat0a]

The new Kensai sucks

And I played my original Generation one all the way to level 30

And I always knew what I was getting into

[susitsu]

It sounds to me like you guys didn't go kensai for the roleplay.