Homebrew classes - some advice please!

[Buttercup]

What about some sort of flesh manipulator? Heal or wound, cause or cure disease, maybe even polymorph at the highest levels.

And then you might want a psionisist--mind magic, if you will, as used in the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey. Toned down, of course, but with the same basic concept.

 

[nameless]

I've put a little thought into this, for my own ideas in a low magic world. If you're already revamping the classes, why not revamp the spellcasting progression? If the prestige class is suitably high level, just give a new spell level at each class level. 0-9 is almost begging for a 10 level prestige class *grin*. If the class begins at level 8, then the spellcaster can still never cast a spell before a wizard can cast the same. And besides, wizards are rare in a low-magic world, but they're powerful. IC, it may be very difficult to actually become a wizard, but the payoff would be tremendous. OOC, a normal progression after 10 levels of non-spellcasting would hobble a spellcaster.

I also like the "sleeper" feat progessions in WoT. Maybe adapt something like that, and give sweeping magical abilities from those feats. Perhaps one feat group will give Illusion, Divination and Enchantment; another gives Abjuration, Necromancy and Transmutation; the third gives Conjuration and Evocation.

Just throwing out some ideas. Those are my 2 cents anyways.

-nameless

 

[Desdichado]

I've put a little thought into this, for my own ideas in a low magic world. If you're already revamping the classes, why not revamp the spellcasting progression? If the prestige class is suitably high level, just give a new spell level at each class level. 0-9 is almost begging for a 10 level prestige class *grin*. If the class begins at level 8, then the spellcaster can still never cast a spell before a wizard can cast the same. And besides, wizards are rare in a low-magic world, but they're powerful. IC, it may be very difficult to actually become a wizard, but the payoff would be tremendous. OOC, a normal progression after 10 levels of non-spellcasting would hobble a spellcaster.

Seems to be fine in d20 Modern. A 10 level prestige class that only gets you a maximum of level 5 spells is fine with me, for a low magic world. That's the whole point of low magic, after all. I don't want high level spells really being available to PCs.

I also like the "sleeper" feat progessions in WoT. Maybe adapt something like that, and give sweeping magical abilities from those feats. Perhaps one feat group will give Illusion, Divination and Enchantment; another gives Abjuration, Necromancy and Transmutation; the third gives Conjuration and Evocation.

I thought about doing something like that: Star Wars sorta does that with classes of force powers. However, I can also do it via seperate prestige classes which give you the spell-lists you have available, and come with other flavorful and nifty special abilities to boot, so I think I prefer that method. However, the sleeper feats are a great idea as a prerequisite for spellcrafting classes.

 

[Apok]

I think the idea of using 10 level PrC's as spellcasters is wonderfull. This puts 5th level spells as 'top dog' in the campaign and that covers alot of ground.

Another idea, if you really wanted to push it, would be to go through the PHB spell list and trim out spells which you feel are too powerful and don't have a good feel to them. This would mean blasting out most of the Evocation school, but maybe that's not such a bad idea anyway. Think of LotR; there was magic everywhere in Middle Earth. The land was literally laced with it, but few could tap into the magic and those few were loathe to wield it frivolously. I highly recommend picking up Decipher's LotR RPG for some great insights into making magic special and not overpowering.

 

[Desdichado]

I really want the LotR game, but unless I get it for Christmas, it' ain't happenin' this year.

And yeah, I would do lots of trimming. Each class would have their own spell list. Of course, drawing from the PHB, Tome and Blood, FCRS, Magic of Faerun, Book of Vile Darkness, Manual of the Planes and Oriental Adventures should allow me to make pretty complete spell lists for each class while still eliminating stuff I don't like for the setting.

 

[Cutty Sark]

In a 2nd edition Players Option book (I think) there was a specialist mage called an alienist. All I remember was that it dealt with extraplanar spells. You could do a class that relied on powerful beings with magic for it's spells. I'd also try to do a skill-based class like a Jedi, just to see how it stacked up against the traditional Vancian classes.