Changing the Barbarian and Sorcerer

[Gregor]

Hey everyone,

Im currently working on my homebrew setting and I am trying to pick people's brains about how I can change / improve the barbarian and sorcerer to better reflect my setting (my setting basically consists of an amalgam of things I and my players find interesting, compelling and cool in other settings, fantasy novels, etc.)

Barbarian:
In my setting, I dont want the PH version of a barbarian. To me, a barbarian is not a class, but an upbringing or heritage. A fighter, rogue, ranger etc. can all be barbarians. In my opiniotn, rage does not a barbarian make.

Therefore, I want to change the barbarian to be more of a berzerker - preferably one with a bit of nordic flair. If anyone has read any David Gemmel, think of someone who is baresark. Obviously rage stays, although it can be called something else. I also like uncanny dodge, but I dont know about the rest of the abilities (i.e. trap sense) and im sure skills can move around. Any ideas?

Sorcerer:
In my setting, sorcerers do not have draconic blood. Sorcerers are people who cannot pursue wizardry (wizardry in my setting is a highly regulated activity with strict codes of learning and behaviour) either for lack of talent, will or money. Sorcerers are people who, driven by their failure to be a wizard, make unholy pacts with fiends. They get arcane power in exchange for their souls. The fiends then use these souls to supplement their armies and fight eachother in the lower plains (hence devils and demons compete with one another to grant sorcery). The sorcerer in the PH doesnt really do anything other than cast spells and there is no real incentive to stay in the class instead of a PrC.

Thus, I want to change the sorcerer around to reflect their infernal bargain and give them some abilities or feats or features that offer some kind of incentive to stay a sorcerer. Ideas?

Any and all suggestions, advice, comments, other are welcome!

 

[Cheiromancer]

Replace the sorcerer with the warlock. They fit the flavor of your campaign perfectly.

 

[szilard]

Alternately, remove the Sorcerer's Familiar. Replace it with bonus feats: Fiendish Heritage at level one and subsequent feats from that feat tree (or related things) at every level divisible by 4 (or 5, if you prefer). Give them Intimidate and Knowledge (the planes) as class skills.

Limit their spell list somewhat. They can only summon fiendish creatures - things like that... though you may want to give them access to some appropriate Cleric spells (primarily the ones that half-fiends get).

After a certain point (10th level?), they could get the fiendish template, but be restricted from being raised or resurrected like an outsider (since their soul has been otherwise accounted for).

-Stuart

 

[sirwmholder]

In our game we did something similar for the Barbarian... we used a melding of Barbarian, Ranger and Scout for our Berserker. Without the magic and skirmish abilities. Our Berserkers are a melding of Native American, Viking, and Celtic backgrounds... so far it's worked for us.

Hope this helps,
William Holder

 

[hong]

Just remove trap sense from the barbarian. 99% of the time, they won't notice it's gone. You could also remove illiteracy while you're at it. 90% of the time they won't notice it's gone, since only single-classed barbarians are illiterate and IME all barbs multiclass eventually.

 

[Nifft]

Barbarian -- Here's some rules that I've been considering.

For everyone: You get +2 Education Skill Points each level (8 at 1st level) which you can put in any Craft, Profession or Knowledge. These skills are always bought one-for-one -- you cannot purchase "cross-class" skill ranks with these points.

Then, make Barbarian and Aristocrat into background feats (which I'll call "Savage" and "Noble"). Background feats can only be taken at 1st level, of course.


Savage [Background]
You were raised in the wild.
- Your Education Skill Points must be spent on Strength based skills instead. Intimidate, Listen and Survival are considered class skills for all your classes.
- You are illiterate (and must spend skill points to become literate).
- Any class that would grant you Heavy Armor proficiency instead grants only Medium.
- You gain +2 hit points at 1st level.


Noble [Background]
You had a privileged upbringing.
- Your Education Skill Points must be spent on Perform, Knowledge or Speak Language. Appraise, Diplomacy and Sense Motive are considered class skills for all your classes.
- You gain a +2 bonus on Fort saves against poison and disease.
- You are proficient with long swords. If you would already be proficient with long swords, you instead gain proficiency with bastard swords.


- - -

Now we can follow up with feats for other class features, like Rage:

Rage [Fighter]
Prereqs: Savage, BAB +1, Intimidate 4 ranks
Benefit: You can Rage 1/day (as the Barbarian class feature)

Extra Rage [Fighter]
Prereqs: Rage
Benefit: You can Rage +2/day.
Special: This feat stacks with itself.

Savage Toughness [Fighter]
Prereqs: Savage
Benefit: You gain +1 hp per HD.

Greater Rage [Fighter]
Prereqs: Savage, Rage, BAB +11
Benefit: You gain Greater Rage (as the Core Barbarian class feature).

Now a Savage Fighter can take some feats and become somewhat Barbarian like; but a Rogue could also go feral. I'd expect the average Barbarian would be a Savage Fighter / Rogue. However...

- - -

Let's also make a Ranger variant -- well, just a ranger Combat Style really.

2: Fast Movement -- Your land speed increases by +10 ft. when you are wearing light or no armor -- or maybe not, since longstrider is a Ranger spell.
6: Uncanny Dodge -- as the Rogue class feature.
11: Rage (if you already have Rage, you instead get Greater Rage).

... or something like that.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Gregor]

Alternately, remove the Sorcerer's Familiar. Replace it with bonus feats: Fiendish Heritage at level one and subsequent feats from that feat tree (or related things) at every level divisible by 4 (or 5, if you prefer). Give them Intimidate and Knowledge (the planes) as class skills.

Limit their spell list somewhat. They can only summon fiendish creatures - things like that... though you may want to give them access to some appropriate Cleric spells (primarily the ones that half-fiends get).

After a certain point (10th level?), they could get the fiendish template, but be restricted from being raised or resurrected like an outsider (since their soul has been otherwise accounted for).

-Stuart

I like alot of this.

 

[Gregor]

For everyone: You get +2 Education Skill Points each level (8 at 1st level) which you can put in any Craft, Profession or Knowledge. These skills are always bought one-for-one -- you cannot purchase "cross-class" skill ranks with these points.

I like this as a general rule to implement for all classes in my game. Do you encourage your players to use those skill points they put into specific professions / craft? If so, how?

 

[evilbob]

For everyone: You get +2 Education Skill Points each level (8 at 1st level) which you can put in any Craft, Profession or Knowledge.

I've toyed around with this idea myself, but come to the conclusion that it just favors wizards too much. Why? For crafting, wizards are the only characters who would ever put points into crafting, and arguably the only ones who would even need points in crafting, and they already get a boatload of skill points. For knowledge, all characters can really get some benefit from knowledge skills, but a wizard is more likely to dump tons of points into knowledge anyway due to a lack of other class skills and still having so many points. So for both of these situations, you're giving free points to everyone but giving tons of points to wizards to use toward something they were already going to do anyway. Winner: wizard (arguably the strongest class anyway and clearly not needing a boost).

Now, I will agree that profession is useless to all classes equally, but giving free points in that skill doesn't really hurt or help at all.

 

[Darklone]

Just remove trap sense from the barbarian. 99% of the time, they won't notice it's gone. You could also remove illiteracy while you're at it. 90% of the time they won't notice it's gone, since only single-classed barbarians are illiterate and IME all barbs multiclass eventually.

You don't use barbarians as trapspringers ?