Trailblazer Oriental Adventures

Lorthanoth · Jan 30, 2013

Hiya, as the title suggests, has anyone looked at Trailblazerising the classes in the 3.0 book Oriental Adventures? It's one of my favourite books from that edition, and there were quite a lot of updates to it for 3.5 in an issue of Dragon. I have my own ideas of how the classes might work but would be interested to see if anyone else had considered it.

GlassJaw · Feb 2, 2013

Hi Lorth! I haven't looked at my 3ed OA book in a while but it's always been one of my favorite from the d20 era. Great balance of crunch and fluff.

I'll try to take a look this weekend and see if I have any ideas for you.

Lorthanoth · Feb 2, 2013

Cool! I keep meaning to sit down and have a go myself, so thank you!

GlassJaw · Feb 2, 2013

I'm taking a quick look at OA right now. Converting the classes should be fairly easy methinks:

Samurai: You could easily just use the existing TB Fighter as-is and call it a day. The only difference is the Ancestral Daisho, which works very similarly to the Bond Weapon AP Enhancement.

I would use the rules in OA as an "expansion" of the Bond Weapon enhancement but I still require the Samurai to spend an AP to "activate" this ability. AD allows the Samurai much more flexibility than the Bond Weapon enhancement. I would drop the sacrifice gp requirement too since it's clunky (and you should be giving less treasure in TB anyway!).

If you keep the daisho ability, use the Samurai bonus feats progression instead of the Fighter's. The bonus feats based on clan add some flavor too so I would keep that.

Shaman: I would use the cleric spellcasting progression (along with the Shaman unique spell list of course), otherwise the class is pretty much good to go as-is. I would probably leave it at a d6 HD to differentiate with the cleric though.

Shugenja: The Shugenja feels like a sorcerer with a unique spell list and I would treat it as such.

Sohei: Give it 1/2 BMB (like the paladin). Done.

Wu Jen: HD to d6. Wizard spell progression. Done.

Hope that helps!

Lorthanoth · Feb 2, 2013

Sounds good - I wondered about bumping the Shaman up to d8 HD, as they have bonus unarmed feats, and will lose their animal companion under TB.

GlassJaw · Feb 2, 2013

Lorthanoth said:
Sounds good - I wondered about bumping the Shaman up to d8 HD, as they have bonus unarmed feats, and will lose their animal companion under TB.

I would give the Shaman a familiar instead of the companion. TB's version of the familiar should fit very well with the Shaman concept!

Lorthanoth · Feb 2, 2013

Ah yes, of course! I noticed that the TB familiar was quite like the 4E conception of a summoned spirit. Nice one

GlassJaw · Feb 3, 2013

Updating the prestige classes shouldn't be too bad either. Couple of thoughts:

- Use the TB druid wild shape abilities for the Bear Warrior.
- Have "monk" PrC levels stack with normal monk levels for determining their flurry abilities.

AdmundfortGeographer · Feb 3, 2013

Excellent question, love the thought experiment of going back to older products and whipping out quick and dirty TB conversions.

(Contemplating a teratologue of Slavelords of Cydonia . . . hmmm)

GlassJaw · Feb 4, 2013

Eric Anondson said:
Excellent question, love the thought experiment of going back to older products and whipping out quick and dirty TB conversions.

The TB skill, saving throw, and BMB systems probably do most of the work for you. This OA exercise was actually pretty cool since it's been a while since I've gone back and looked at existing 3ed classes and PrCs.

In doing so, my biggest takeaway was that I would probably be more inclined to "a la carte" abilities from non-core classes or PrCs. I don't think it's a coincidence that this would be very reminiscent of Grim Tales or the Custom NPC system we introduced in the Teratologue. So instead of introducing an entirely new class or adapting a PrC, I would simply swap the abilities from the class or PrC into an existing core class. In a sense, this would make multiclassing boil down to the "spine" the player wants at any given level (BAB, BMB, saves, skills, etc), although that's a greatly exaggerated way of looking at it.

For example, if a player wants to go the path of the Henshin Mystic PrC from OA, they could continue to advance as a monk normally but would gain the PrC abilities instead of the monk's. This certainly makes the multiclassing number-crunching a lot easier if nothing else.