Heh, you'd think I'd have remembered about that class, since I'm the one who first dug it up and posted about it at dragonsfoot...Contrarian said:Here's a little-known one: Gygax actually published one AD&D character class after leaving TSR -- the Hunter. It's a fighter subclass that specializes in fighting animals and monsters instead of people and humanoids -- basically a hunter-gatherer character class. (Some of its special abilities overlap with the barbarian's and the ranger's -- hunter might be a good class for people who think the 1E barbarian is too over the top.)
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3589
airwalkrr said:Interesting notes. But it seems as if there was not, in fact, another rulebook with published classes.
However, except for the alternate monk and bard, I'm almost positive that all of those Dragon classes you mentioned were specifically given as NPC classes, NOT playtested or balanced to be used as PCs. No wonder your friend always insisted on taking the beast master - I remember that one being crazy powerful! NPC-only classes are an idea that I'm pretty sure would go over like a lead balloon today, but I always thought they were a pretty keen idea.T. Foster said:Dragon magazine had a ton of alternate classes for 1E AD&D. Most of the best of them were collected in the various "Best of Dragon" volumes: vol. 2 included the berserker, pre-OA versions of the samurai and ninja, and the infamous anti-paladin; vol. 3 included alternate versions of the monk and bard that a lot of folks prefer to the PH versions and the archer class that was popular for awhile but was sort of rendered obsolete by the weapon specialization rules in UA; vol. 4 included a bunch, among them the duelist, bounty hunter, bandit, death master, jester, and cloistered cleric (i.e. cleric who doesn't fight).
From later issues (the "Best of" collections only went up to about issue 100), some that stand out in my memory include a set of alternate paladins (one for each alignment), the elven cavalier (variant of the UA cavalier class), barbarian shaman, and beast master (a horribly unbalanced uber-class that one of my frends always used to insist on playing).
T. Foster said:You are absolutely correct -- most/all of those classes in Dragon were specifically indicated for use as NPCs only. Didn't stop use from using them for PCs in our games, though...
diaglo said:duh jock.
iirc it was in the same issue of Dragon as another class... maybe it was the cavalier.
diaglo "i forget and thus qualify for the class" Ooi
HellHound said:I think Duh Jock was in with a version of the Jester.
It was an april issue.
I ran a Jock to level 8 in one campaign. Even had a Hockey Stick of Holy Terror.
Once again we see the Eternal Champion travel through time.There seems to be a fairly comprehensive list here:
PurpleWorm.org • View topic - Dragon Magazine Classes?