Character Customization

[Messageboard Golem]

Want to play a rogue who casts a few spells? A barbarian who does not rage but who can move through the forest like a druid? The variant class system allows these and many other class alterations. Mix and match normal class abilities or add some of the new class abilities contain herein. 29 sample variants are explored in this section.

And that's just the first section of the book. Later section include ways to spend skill points on class features, feats for all occasions including some very high level fighter feats (requiring BAB +16 or greater). There is a section on building prestige classes and a few samples therein.

Next is the monsters as classes section that was previewed way back in January. This section contains a method for playing any monster that advances by character class from level 1. Even drow, hill giants and lycanthropes. The final section contains templates for adding special attacks and special qualities to critters or characters that don't have them. Want a race of elves with poisoned stinger tails? Or a race of dwarves with ram's horns? They are in there. Want to add fire breathing to character? You can.

All that and it's 100% OGC. Enjoy.

 

[GameWyrd]

"This book is not meant to be read cover-to-cover." I think that’s true of many rpg supplements but Throwing Dice Games’ Character Customization is the only one that I can think of that makes the point of saying so. With the aim of writing a solid review I sat down, ignored the advice and read it cover to cover. Ouch. My brain. It didn’t really work. The next day I printed it off, sat down with the pages beside me and tuned in the TV. During the commercial breaks I picked up a page or two at random and read them. I found myself reading through to the natural conclusion of the section even when cute animated policewomen from the future were tracking down rogue robots again. That’s the first note to make on Character Customization. You need to use it right in order to get the most from it.

Throwing Dice Games describes themselves as a vanity imprint for a few veteran gamers. Character Customization really isn’t for the rookie gamers. If you’re at the level where you already comfortably creating your own classes or seriously editing existing ones while respecting game balance then that seems about right to start using Character Customization. Character Customization will work at a professional level too. There’s the risk that if you’re not at this minimum level of competency that Character Customization becomes too much work for the reward. I guess this is the second note to make on the supplement. You need to use it right in order to get the most from it.

Yeah. I know the first and second notes on Character Customization are the same. I think it’s an important enough observation to make twice.

Character Customization allows you to design customised classes, feats, prestige classes, monster classes and templates. That’s an awful lot for a 75-paged PDF. The front and back covers for the product are offered up in two separate PDFs, I guess it makes it easier to print and reduces the amount of heavy weight graphics in the bulk of the document. There are illustrations in the supplement but they’re rare, you get a lot of tightly presented text and helpful tables for your money. There are a whole lot of bookmarks in the PDF, bookmarks that expand into even more bookmarks and given the modular nature of the supplement this is essential.

The customization process for classes works largely by being able to break down classes into equal component pieces. These chunks of character can then be swapped about. You could, for example, remove the Bard’s magical abilities and increase the classes’ hit dice by a suitable amount. Clerics could gain access to more feats as they level up in exchange for their bonus domain spells and powers. Each chunk of character that can be swapped is known as a track. It’s slightly more complicated than that. You can’t abandon the core track for any class. You can’t remove that quintessential element of a character. Sorcerer’s, for example, can reduce their magic abilities but can’t loose them entirely. Paladins can’t loose their "Required Abilities" track, the set of core powers d20 associates with the class. You can’t make a customized version of the Fighter and multi-class your character with another customized version of the Fighter. These restrictions aren’t too bad and there are more than noted here. There are variants on the Druid’s wildshape track and you don’t have to build a barbarian based class that rages. "Should all uncivilized creatures rage?" wisely asks the author Joe Mucchiello (of Joe’s Book of Enchantment). You could easily build a barbarian based class for some wild jungle tribe, where berserk frenzies among the vines are not an evolutionary winner, and so rage is gone and the "Tropical Track" is in. This class will see Disease Resistance at level 1, Trap Affinity (+1) at level 3, Wilderness Camouflage at level 4, and so on.

Much of the Skills Chapter talks about feats. These are those feats that can be built and designed to enhance the use of skills though. Skill points can be spent on things other than skills and the trick is to limit how many skill points can be spend on other things. The supplement run through the core classes and offers a costing for class enhancements. The monk can trade in four skill points for a faster movement or more skill points for a better AC bonus.

The feats chapter itself begins with feat templates and I think most DMs will pounce on the chance to design their own feats and back their creations up with this sort of expertise. Following this there is a long list of feats. Unlike other feat galleries this supplement presents the collection by rule cluster, all the combat feats together, all the magic feats together, etc.

Character Customization does for prestige classes what it does for core classes. In addition there are intelligent observations on the rights and wrongs of prestige class building. Here’s an excessive quote from the chapter introduction:

"One of the first things that many prestige class designers get wrong is that they decide what classes would want to take the prestige class. They then proceed to design the requirements around those classes. They will also pick the hit die type and BAB of the prestige class so that it goes with the base class(es) in mind.

This is backwards. Choice of the class components and requirements should be based on what the prestige class is designed to do. Unless the class in question is specific to a class, like an order of knights might be specific to fighters or paladins or a mage guild might be specific to wizards and sorcerers, assumptions about the base class of the character joining the prestige class should be minimized."

The prestige classes are built from templates rather than tracks though and this seems to work well enough.

I’m not a fan of Effective Level modifiers. They don’t help if you want to start everyone at level one. Character Customization wades in here on two fronts: for templates and for monster classes. There’s the interesting "Maturity Level" requirement for Monster Classes that notes the minimum level that must be attainted before the character can multi-class. The Shadow Class ensures that as some monster classes progress in level that their abilities increase in step so their CR matches their effective level. The Drow, for example, have no noted Maturity Level and so must complete all five levels of shadow classing before mutli-classing is possible. In addition there’s a 20% experience point penalty so it’ll have spent an extra 2,500 extra XP by the time it’s 5th level. It’s this combination of being locked into the monster class for Y levels with Z% experience point penalty that replaces the game balance Effective Character Levels try to do.

The PDF concludes with summary tables that bring much of the supplement’s wisdom together. Feats, for example, are spread out between the Skills chapter and the Feats chapter proper. In the back of the document there’s an uber-table for all the listed feats. It is well worth reading the appendices. Joe bravely invites people with questions to email the company but notes you should read the appendices first. Designer’s Notes are always something I welcome in a supplement and they’re especially helpful here.

I’m going to keep Character Customization close at hand. Not only is the supplement one of a kind, it’s good at what it does. I do admit that I’d like to spend some time with 3.5 edition rules in front of me and my printed copy of this product to see what, if anything, needs to be changed. With Character Customization any lingering obligation I might have felt to use canon classes is gone. I’ll be custom creating core classes or tinkering with them at least for every campaign that I run.

* This Character Customization review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Character Customization allows the players and GMs to play with the rules that build up the classes. Not quite a GURPS or Hero point system, the book allows certain features to be swapped out in exchange for others.

The book is broken up into six parts with three appendices; Core Classes, Skills, Feats, Prestige Classes, Monster Classes, Templates, Author's Notes, Tables, and Licensing Information. This break down is a good thing as it allows the reader to use this book in the way it's written, as a reference document.

Part one, Core Classes, goes over each of the Player's Handbook classes and tries to pick them apart. It doesn't use a point based system, but a path based system. For example, the barbarian, one of the classes with the most skills and abilities, gets mobility, rage, and rugged. You can however, look at templates to change abilities, as well as other tracks. In this case, we've got material like Tropical Track, where you get Disable Device, Disease Resistance, Trap Affinity and other abilities.

The challenge comes into play when the class doesn't have such broad tracks to handle like the bard. The bard can lessen his number of spells and this allows him to take a track from another class. Bards can either go limited spells or spell less for example for one or two tracks from another class.

The most useful factor of these classes is the work already done for you via the sample variants. The Order of the Hearth for instance, is a sample paladin variant with less hit dice and a lower base attack bonus, but more abilities like clerical domains.

While Everquest doesn't come up too much in conversation about d20 games, one of the things they did was provide the characters with Training Points. These points could be used to buy abilities, ranks or extra feats. What Joe does with the Skills isn't quite the same, but similar. He allows skill points to be spent on things outside of skills.

For example, for four skill points, you can buy Iron Skin which increases a barbarians damage reduction by 1/-. Want something like better AC for your Monk? For the low cost of 10 skill points, you've got a Great AC Bonus equal to your Wisdom and Class Base plus 1.

Outside of this intriguing idea which will require a lot of paperwork on the players and GMs part, the skills are broken down with many notes, sub-abilities and information on what DC's are needed for various tasks. For example, if you have 5 or more ranks in a craft skill and are trying to appraise an item you can make, you get the synergy bonus.

In addition, there are several Skill based feats to augment your characters abilities. Expert Rider allows you to ride any type of creature without the -2 to -5 penalty while Quick Feint allows you to make a Feint as a move equivalent action with a penalty.

Those looking for more detail when multiple skills are needed will enjoy reading through how Joe handles Haggle using Bluff, Diplomacy and Sense Motive or Shadowing using Hide and Move Silently. It provides good ideas to insure that you can use a wide mix of skills to get the job done.

Part Three goes into Feats. There are Feat Templates, Creature Turning and Spell-like Ability, that allow you to customize what they do. For example, the former allows you to specify what type of creature you turn while the spell like ability gives you a spell level, minimum character level, and columns on additional uses per day.

More specific feats are broken down into different areas of effectiveness. Combat Action Feats includes broad categories like Activating Magic Items or Attack with specifics like Improved Activate Magic Item and Improved Expertise under them. Part of the problem is that there are so many feats on the market now, it's hard to see true originality. Improved Expertise for example, has seen print in other forms while Blow Through, a cleave attack with a ranged weapon, has also seen use in several forms.

Now to me, game balance has always been a gremlin of the mind. It's something that'll be different for almost every player and GM. Having said that, I wonder how balanced all of the material is here. For example, Rapid Strike is Flurry of Blows but works with a weapon. I can completely understand the logic behind it as Rapid Shot basically does the same thing for missile weapons but for the most part, Rapid Shot is restricted in damage and you don't have to worry about someone using a greatsword doing damage that a monk won't be able to get up to for many levels.

Now for those who feel that the original DMG does a poor job of explaining how Prestige Classes are put together, Part Four has come to your rescue. It provides a list of different factors to help you balance things out. Ideas on what strength things like hit die type, spell progression and other core abilities should take.

It builds on this with four template or general purpose prestige classes, bodyguard, champion, elemental mage and ranged thaumaturge, and then builds those into more rounded PrCs. I believe that some may already recognize the last one as the arcane archer while the bodyguard has seen use in several products, this one is customized as the King's Protector with no real change while the Fire Mage gains a new skill, Intimidate. It's an interesting way to look at things but the real meat for many is the how to section, laying down a lot of food for though.

Let me bring up Everquest again for a second. Unlike every other d20 game on the market, Everquest didn't go with ECL's for their races, instead, they went with an experience point penalty. This book almost takes that whole idea and some of the elements of Savage Species and runs with it. It provides 'Shadow Classes' that monsters can take when they are 'evolving' into character style races as well as monster levels similar to Savage Species. The experience point penalties come into play any time a monster takes a level in its monster class.

It opens up with several classless humanoids, good old standards like aquatic and grey elves, as well as goblins and hobgoblins. Nothing too fancy. It then moves onto other races like drow, derro, hags, minotaurs and ogres. Each class has it's racial class information listed as well as when the class hits its maturity rate, the point at which it can just move onto a regular class and not take any more of its monster classes, although there are some great potential benefits from doing so.

Chapter Six, Templates, provides experience point costs for templates. This allows the GM to add templates to characters without effecting them at that moment as they have to now pay off the experience debt they've earned. Probably of more interest are the reverse monster templates where various abilities are given an experience point cost and a CR adjustment. Take Regenerating, that's hit points x 2,000 with a CR adjustment of +1 per 4 points with a maximum of +3 CR (so 12 points.).

The appendices were ranged from interesting to read, in the author's notes for example, he explains why psions and psychic warriors aren't covered in more depth, to listings of feats, and tables.

There are some things that could be done to make this an easier book to use. For example, I don't mind it too much if the author treats me like I'm stupid. The Forgotten Realms did this in their experience points tables by showing when a ECL character who wasn't level one got experience points and how it went up in levels. Do the same for me here, give me the separate tables with the experience point penalties added to the experience points, do the math for me. Make the book as easy as possible to use, avoid the GURPS and Hero issues altogether.

In addition, while there are some examples throughout the course of the text, because of the nature of the beast here, customization, I would like to see an example of someone breaking the system so that I have a better idea of what to look for. While it's mentioned several times that this system can be abused, show me some examples of how you've seen it abused so I can quickly go, “Nah dude, we're not going to do that today.”

The art in the book is good but sparse leaving you with a lot of text, tightly planted. This is great for those who don't want to kill trees in the printing process but a little larger text would've gave it more readability.

GMs must take an active roll with this material though and not let players just walk all over the abilities or their doomed. If you're not happy with the standard classes, Character Customization can offer a lot to the table. It allows the player to focus on his character in ways just not currently possible in the core system without access to dozens of supplements that still might not hit his soft spot for a non-raging barbarian.

This book is worth a look for anyone whose ever looked at his paladin or rogue and said, “Is this what I want?” Character Customization could be the new Nike for d20. “Is it in you?”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The website for Throwing Dice Games makes special note that this is a 3.0 sourcebook and a 3.5 one is coming down the pipeline and will be free to those who buy it now. Those who buy it in the future will get both products. Now that's customer focus.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Thanks for the review. I suppose more examples will find their way into the 3.5 compatible version because of this review and other feedback.

About the XP tables, they are not Open Gaming Content. While including the table would be nice (I used a spreadsheet to see how applying the XP penalties would work at different levels) it just is not possible with the d20 license.

Finally, your complaint about rapid strike is well founded. I do tend to push the envelope of what is balanced. I also warn about this in the Author's Notes (or at least I should have).

Thanks again. I'm off to the gaming store to pick up a copy of the Everquest game book to see what you mean about it.