How Much Is Too Much?

[MatrexsVigil]

Wow, thanks for the detailed input GuardianLurker. Your advice has given me several things to think about. I often forget that most people will gravitate towards very human-like races. I like exotic races myself. Heh.

If I was only going to put around 7-9 races in the core book, I'd have to choose the humans, elves, dwarves, Telek, Zaven, Seikar, Plyaer, Peophin, and Leikin, if only because they are a bit more numerous than other races. I definitely need to think of how I should split the other races to fit within sourcebooks.

Would continent sourcebooks (among others) be too 'large' of a scope to cover?

-P.C.

 

[Tonguez]

My only problem with making several of the classes into prestige classes, is that why should a player who wants to play a Swashbuckler, take five or six levels of fighter (and/or rogue) just to start being able to fight well on ships? The same with the Samurai, Knight, Archer, and Guardian, to name a few. Although, I do see your point.

I'm at a loss with what to do with the 'fighter' hybrid classes. I hope to evolve them out of the 'hybrid' feel into something more unique. Any ideas?

-P.C.

What I'd suggest is instead of PrC make them into 'Paths' which a Fighter can choose to take from Lvl 2.

Build them up with Feats and Talent Trees (as per Modern) - so from your base Fighter Class a PC can perhaps choose to follow the Guardians Path (which involves Feats A,B & C and Talent trees X, Y & Z or the Knights Path (Feats B & C and Talents X, S & R)

 

[Terraism]

What I'd suggest is instead of PrC make them into 'Paths' which a Fighter can choose to take from Lvl 2.

Build them up with Feats and Talent Trees (as per Modern) - so from your base Fighter Class a PC can perhaps choose to follow the Guardians Path (which involves Feats A,B & C and Talent trees X, Y & Z or the Knights Path (Feats B & C and Talents X, S & R)

Very good point here - if you included sidebars detailing how to make minor modifications to a number of core classes (keeping the number down) it'd allow for a lot more versatility without getting overwhelming. Plus, if it's well done, I know I - along with at least a handful of other people - would be tempted to pick up a campaign sourcebook (even if I'm not interested in the campaign world) just for that. I'm a sucker for modified classes as opposed to completely new ones.

 

[Umbran]

My only problem with making several of the classes into prestige classes, is that why should a player who wants to play a Swashbuckler, take five or six levels of fighter (and/or rogue) just to start being able to fight well on ships? The same with the Samurai, Knight, Archer, and Guardian, to name a few. Although, I do see your point.

It is a common misconception that every imaginable role should be equally accessible. However, part of a world's flavor is found in what roles are more common and/or easily accessible. Each fictional world has it's own styles - King Arthur's England has lots of knights in armor, but no swashbucklers. But if you want to play Arabian Nights-ish stuff with lots of swashbucklers, you make a swashbuckler core class. But you get rid of some of the other roles that are less common.

In addition, if you try to give everyone everything, you run in to just hat we see here - too much stuff to handle. If you try to present too much all at once, the audience won't absorb it all well, and they will find a hard time trying to get the "feel" of the world, because they have problems seeing it all at once. And, honestly, there's only so much development you can give to so many roles in a single product. You're likely to end up with developing nothing particularly well, and who needs that? Focus is useful.

I'm at a loss with what to do with the 'fighter' hybrid classes. I hope to evolve them out of the 'hybrid' feel into something more unique. Any ideas?

Well, for one thing, stop thinking about them as hybrids. If you find that difficult, it may be because they don't have a well-defined place other than as a hybrid. Ask yourself what is supposed to be the difference between a fighter-artificer and a tech warrior?

 

[GuardianLurker]

More unfounded opinions...

For the classes, I'd suggest putting the 4 basic classes in the "core", plus single-focus classes that deal with the key unique aspects of your world. I'd strongly suggest limiting your "basic core" to ~10 classes.

Many of these classes seem better suited for PrCs. You may also want to put a few of these in the racial supplements.

As much as I hate to say it, you've probably got too many "core" classes. But then, I think 3e itself has too many core classes. Your list really just exaggerates the existing problem.

• Basic Core (20-level); 4 basic, 2-3 unique, and 3-4 semi-spell casters matching the magic types. The wiggle is from Champion, as I'm not sure where it fits.
  • Artificer (creators of Magi-Tech items)
  • Cleric
  • Champion (to replace the Paladin with something general)
  • Fighter
  • Mage (to replace both the core sorcerer and wizard, elemental caster)
  • Rogue
  • Shaman {What's the difference between Shaman and Druid?}
  • Sorcerer (a fighter-mage hybrid)
  • Tech Warrior (a fighter-artificer hybrid)
  • Totem Warrior (a fighter-shaman hybrid)
• Basic PrC; This is fighter-heavy, as those PrCs were easy to recognize. Many of the supplemental magic classes could be made PrCs.
  • Archer
  • Gladiator
  • Guardian (a master of shields, armor, and defense)
  • Knight {What's the difference between Knight and Samauri?}
  • Ranger
  • Samurai
  • Swashbuckler
• Supplemental
  • Barbarian
  • Bard
  • Death Warrior (a fighter-Necromancer hybrid)
  • Druid (sans wild shape) {A PrC?}
  • Monk
  • Morpher (where wild shape went to, with of course, more options) {A PrC?}
  • Necromancer (think Diablo, not the magic school)
  • Ninja {A PrC?}
  • Psion
  • Psychic Warrior
  • Summoner (a touch or research, summon later caster) {A PrC?}

 

[WayneLigon]

Re: The races. How many of those have your players actually used? Or are they just NPC's for local color? If the later, make them appear in a beastiary supplement or something.

 

[GuardianLurker]

No, I'd say continent/regional sourcebooks would work very well. FR has used that very same formula.

I'd also put in a strong second for the feat-tree/recipe approach for the core classes. It's an approach that works very well. Add in capstone bonus feats and you can get a lot of the "punch" of a PrC with much simpler mechanics.

 

[clark411]

All I can recommend is looking at your lists and refining them to suit your vision of the setting. What races are absolutely pivotal for someone skimming your book to get an appropriate feel for where you take the setting with it's combination of places, politics, adventure possibilities, "genre", spells, special rules for combat / roleplay etc?

Do the Sizumi (species name is dangerously close to Nezumi, imo) need to be in the core chapters of the book or are they minor players in your vision? How about the Sanun or K'tan?

If your vision is primarily a setting with tons of possibilities and nifties... well, I may be wrong in saying this, but that's not really hard to find out there right now, and doing so will simply wedge you into that category- another PDF or wee book to be scanned over rather than paused upon by a player remarking "Oh i've heard of this interesting, original Setting." Finding a coherent setting with flavor and deep thematics seems far harder than finding new publishers who are more than willing to churn out crunch, stats, and "options" for their potential buyers. I'd rather see someone take 10 races and 10 classes to the moon, than see 30 and 22 sputter erratically with not much more chance than to have this idea here and there ripped for other people's pre-existing campaigns.

As for classes, are you not going to make any of them PRCs? The world loves PRCs... except for those who think they're drowning in em. Artificer (Prerequisite: Int 13, Squaresoft/Final Fantasy legal issues feat) for example, sounds like a PrC. Is every 20th or 30th adventurer an Artificer? If so? What does this mean for your setting? What's it mean as far as Race 16 is concerned?

 

[Ackem]

Beyond just looking at how many you can jam into a single book, I think that many races and classes requires a serious look at what's needed and what's overblown everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style excess. 22 races strikes me as far past that point and the sheer number of "anthro" and "{insert stereotypical trait here}" in all those descriptions sortof makes me feel validated.

If it isn't necessary or especially inspired, then murder it brutally on the cutting room floor. Keep on cutting til you find the core of what makes your setting compelling. Don't even bring the scrapped ones back in, if a race is unimportant enough that it could be removed from the setting, even temporarily, without leaving a gaping hole in your world then it probably wasn't worth having in to begin with and should either be completely scrapped or brought in as a sub-culture* of another race.


*sub-culture not sub-race

 

[GuardianLurker]

As a certain French engineer-architect said:
"The design is complete, not when you have nothing left to add, but when you have nothing left to remove."