Class Books: How would you do them?

[John Crichton]

But some players are crummy powergamers and they want to powergame as part of their character. For instance, take a player who wants his character to be "the best swordsman in the world". The player may be a great role-player, but may not have a great idea about the most efficient way to spend his skills, feats, and levels. The result is that by level 5 he's being out performed in melee combat by another character. It is frustrating when another character out performs you in your own niche.

This is a good point. One of my old gaming buds is an excellent player. Writes great histories and really plays his PC's well but he is horrible with math and number crunching. He goes more for flavor than anything and gets stuck when it comes to making an effective PC (use BG's quoted swordsman as a good example). Having a few pages, which is really all that is needed, on how to make a good character build would be helpful to many players I think. Plus, it would give newbies something to start with so they aren't swallowed whole by the rules (which can and does happen).

Add in that it can speed up character gen from time to time and it's an even better idea. I have found that character gen for 3e takes almost twice as long as it did for 2e (I was too young for 1e). Not that this is a bad thing but even the experienced players I have run into take some time (2-3+ hours) to just stat out a character with equipment/spells/etc. And this only includes a minor character concept. I know that some people are slower/faster than others at character gen (I am on the slow side) and it will vary but to me, every little bit helps. I miss the days of being able to create a character and play that night...

 

[DonAdam]

5) Ways to develop the character. Yes, this is very power-gamer-ish. But maybe someone wants to play a ranger who is the best with the bow. What's the fastest and most efficient way to do that? Answer those questions.

That's not powergaming.

No, powergaming is taking something like the above, which can already be done in the core rules, and making it the requirements for a prestige class that can do it ten times better. *cough*order of the bow initiate*cough* So I would like to see Class Paths in class books.

Think about it philosophically: if its a book for fighters, why is its main purpose to get me to switch classes into a PrC? Why not give useful things for a fighter?

Along those lines, I would like to see more feats and less prestige classes. There are a few feats that get out of hand (Improved Sneak Attack from FFG, Kick 'Em While They're Down from Dragon Magazine, Energy Substitution from T&B) but if I had to pick blindly if a feat or PrC was more balanced, knowing neither which feat nor prestige class was up for questioning, I'd go with the feat 100% of the time and be right at least 90% of the time.

Nothing that can't be done in the core class, in terms of flavor rather than rules, should be done in a PrC, unless that PrC belongs to an organization, in which case it belongs in a DM's book rather than a player's book. With that in mind, my book would look something like this:

1) Class paths, including a fair amount of roleplaying notes for each. This is in lieu of a general roleplaying section, which is only useful for very narrow classes like paladins and monks. Most importantly, it gives the DM a collection of premade and fleshed out NPC's to choose from while showing players, especially newbies, the possibilities of the system.

2) Optional rules- I love rules changes in books- it gives me a plethora of things to choose from without just adding material, which can be unbalancing. For Fighters, for example, I'd like to see rules for lightly armored fighters, but not "skilled fighters," because the former is an ability that someone is stuck with that they'll never use and the latter is something that can be done that will waste no abilities. I'd also like to see a skillmonkey without sneak attack.
Included in this chapter would be new uses for skills or optional/alternate rules for skills.

3) Feats

3.5) If you have to put prestige classes, here's the place. However, even though I don't like most of the prestige classes in the book, the only book I've seen do this well is Path of the Sword. It gives a huge organization description first. Kudos to them. Again, this increases versatility because it becomes more useful to both players and DM's.

4) Gear- this would include a couple "typical stronghold" maps

5) Tactics- if monster get them in 3.5E, show some real whoppers of combos. This would always be underemphasized in 3e though because of the assumption that most fights are of the party's CR, which is just way too easy already.

6) Example NPC's

7) Appendices

 

[bondetamp]

I would like the books to focus on stereotypes rather than classes.

So we could have a Complete Guide to Thieves, which while obviously focused on the rogue class, aslo had stuff about ways that clerics, fighters, wizards and sorcerers could be efficient burglars/thugs/pick-pockets as well.

Likewise, a Complete Soldiers' Guide would have stuff about military life and how the different classes could be utilized in a military campaign.

The Complete Guide to High Society would have stuff about politics, the aristocracy and roleplaying in a campaign where these factor greatly.

Some books would be narrow in focus, with great detail given to every aspect, while others would be wider, but perhaps dealing with less usual campaign aspects.

I think this way of doing it would make it easier to find out what books would be relevant to your campaign and character.

 

[DonAdam]

bondetamp's idea is simply fantastic

I would pay much to see a collection of well done books like that sitting on my shelf.

 

[DDK]

So we could have a Complete Guide to Thieves, which while obviously focused on the rogue class, aslo had stuff about ways that clerics, fighters, wizards and sorcerers could be efficient burglars/thugs/pick-pockets as well.

Some would say that wizards make better rogues than rogues do...

But yeah, this would be good. Showing the different roles other classes could play in various environments.

This could also tie in to the previously mentioned 'character builds', where someone has a concept of a character and wants to utilize it in game but doesn't exactly know how to. Someone could make a thug, for instance, using the fighter class with Improved Unarmed Strike, Dirty Fighting, etc. and it could detail how they would be used in a thieves' guild or what role they fill in regular society.

That'd be a great boon for DM's too...

Likewise, a Complete Soldiers' Guide would have stuff about military life and how the different classes could be utilized in a military campaign.

The Complete Guide to High Society would have stuff about politics, the aristocracy and roleplaying in a campaign where these factor greatly.

Yeah, these two would go down well with me too. I can't remember how many times I've run games where the PC's went to the frontlines of some battle or another and I had to think on the fly of how a war would run, ack! Same with the court system and high society.

Some books would be narrow in focus, with great detail given to every aspect, while others would be wider, but perhaps dealing with less usual campaign aspects.

I think this way of doing it would make it easier to find out what books would be relevant to your campaign and character.

Actually, I reckon you could put these concepts into the various books. Have these sections in the rogues book and the fighters book rather than these concepts being books unto themselves detailing all the classes.

To be fair, some of the splatbooks attempted some of the above however whenever I read those sorts of things I feel as if I'm being spoken down to, like I'm too stupid to realize the absolutely obvious things that are being said. Sure, some people wouldn't know the stuff, but in general I think a lot of the splatbooks are being aimed at a younger audience these days and therefore seem to assume you're not knowledgable on anything.

 

[Olive]

the complete soldiers guide would be cool, although Cry Havoc from malhavoc press mught fill this niche nicely.

the complete guide to high society might be good, although its may be so culturally variable that it would be hard to do.

 

[Starman]

Wasn't there a mention in the DMG about customizing a class for a player, say swapping out one ability for another or one skill for another. I would like to see that expanded in each of the class books. That is I want to see *balanced* options. Say a character wants to play a swashbuckler so he goes fighter but swaps out some of his armor proficiency feats for more skill points. I would really like to see stuff along that line.

Starman

 

[haiiro]

1) Keep the format the same for all the books. I can't find anything in the WotC classbooks because the different authors put thier content in different orders.

3) One or two NPC-oriented PrCs/feats is fine. Not more than that though.

4) New non-magical equipment is always nice.

A big "ditto" on these three from me -- I rarely use NPC-specific stuff, I love new equipment, and flipping around to find stuff gets old fast.

My eyes start to glaze over when I hit the sections describing drop-in organizations -- I own all of the splatbooks, and I've never read any of these sections. Are they useful? Perhaps, but I'd rather have extra pages of feats, equipment, rules options and things focussed on the class in question than vague setting info. Compile all of those into a DM-oriented book so I can use or ignore it at my whim.

I like the basic concept of combining multiple classes into one book, but I dislike the fact that this means the books come out sort of disjointed. Overall, the WotC class books are very underwhelming, despite the good ideas that are spread throughout the series. They really hit their groove with Masters of the Wild, though -- I wish the others could have been more like MotW.

I can't really compare the WotC splatbooks to class books from third party publishers because I only have one: Green Ronin's Assassin's Handbook, which is decidedly so-so.

 

[DDK]

I can't really compare the WotC splatbooks to class books from third party publishers because I only have one: Green Ronin's Assassin's Handbook, which is decidedly so-so.

What was good/bad about it? The original question was meant to encompass all class books, regardless of creator.

 

[John Crichton]

I like the basic concept of combining multiple classes into one book, but I dislike the fact that this means the books come out sort of disjointed. Overall, the WotC class books are very underwhelming, despite the good ideas that are spread throughout the series. They really hit their groove with Masters of the Wild, though -- I wish the others could have been more like MotW.

Agreed. I would love some officially supported material on class intermingling. The section that Monte had in the DMG could have gone on for pages and been infinately helpful. I'd love more examples that have been playtested of swapping out class features for other class features. I am hesitant to do so myself because I don't have the experience with d20 to see how unbalancing something will be over the course of leveling up. I can assume but it would be great to have a dozen more examples of how powerful something is in the developers eyes compared to something else.

And to echo some thoughts above, I think another handbook (DM or PC supplement) could handle this with no problems at all. These tweaked classes should be able to be in the same game as PrC's (which to me have always been for flavor). Dragon has been touching on things like this for some time and I'd love to see some official support. I'd gladly shell out $25-30 on such a sourcebook.