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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9186176" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002part 9/12A Dame with class ….. and a .38: Classes work pretty similarly to regular D&D, with the base XP, feat & ability increase table reprinted here despite the number of people needing it because they don’t have the D&D corebooks probably pretty low. There are some differences though, most of which will also appear in D20 Modern. There’s an intermediate save category which starts at +1 and gains 2 every 5 levels, so they can make resistance all-rounders without them being overpowered. Plus they have escalating defence bonuses & reputation scores in the same way as D20 modern characters, since most characters won’t be wearing armor. The numbers on these are generally slightly higher than their D20 modern counterparts though, which is interesting to note. Defence has good, medium and bad categories of +4/ +1 per 2 levels, +3/ +2 per 5 levels and +2/ +1 per 3 levels while reputation is either +1 per 2 or 3 levels. Taking 1 level in lots of classes will definitely result in a disproportionately high defence bonus, although you won’t be able to break saves as much as regular 3e and BAB will suffer in the usual way. The individual classes are 20 level ones, rather than the 10 level ones that encourage you to go into a prestige class as soon as possible that both D20 Modern and Adventure! used. Since we only have limited space, there are only 7 of them and they’re pretty broad archetypes. Explorer, the all-rounder with 6+int skills, medium BAB, saves and defence bonus, but the highest reputation in the set, lots of bonus languages and Uncanny Dodge for last moment escapes from all those traps they’ll likely trigger. Gangster, which focusses on the social aspects of being a rogue more than the D&D class, but is otherwise pretty similar, with medium BAB & defence, good reputation & reflex saves and special abilities that alternate between improving sneak attack, adding more underworld contacts and accumulating favours. The kinds of powers that aren’t very useful if you regularly wind up in dungeons or strange otherworldly realms where you don’t know anyone and have to start building relationships from scratch all over again.Martial Artist, which is just a nerfed D&D monk, with all medium saves instead of good ones, no special unarmed combat BAB or increasing movement speed and fewer powers in general. The only thing that’s better is their defence progression, which is the best in the game, starting higher and increasing far faster, but that’s not nearly enough to compensate for everything else, so they’d almost definitely lose a white room fight to a 3e monk of equal level.Mystic, which mashes all the D&D spellcasting & psionic classes into one simplified package with weak BAB & reflex, medium fort, good will, and an overall power level that will be very dependent on what powers you let them select, as they don’t have space to include a proper list of recommended ones from other books in here, let alone descriptions.Private Eye, another skill focussed all-rounder of slightly different flavour: the only one that gets 8+int, plus the ability to turns cross-class ones into class ones so they can specialise in whatever they want without multiclassing, good reputation progression, a moderate number of bonus feats, some favours but not as many as the gangsters, and the equivalent of bardic knowledge. Their saves are pretty weak though, with two moderates and one bad, but since they can reroll a bad result once per session they can still probably keep up overall. Scientist, which is essentially a spellcaster which needs crafted items to access all their powers. Since they have to pay xp for each one and they break after 50 uses that definitely puts them way down in power compared to regular D&D ones long term. Soldier, which are just D&D fighters with a medium defence bonus progression added, putting them at easily the lowest effort in terms of design differences. (which will still let them easily win in a white room fight against a fighter with equal equipment & level)So overall, each of these classes is weaker when compared to its closest D&D equivalent except the fighter one, which just serves to illustrate how crap 3e fighters are. You should definitely be conservative with the challenge ratings of encounters when using them, particularly at higher level where they’ll lack the expected collection of magic items. When you take into account that they’re using Star Wars style Vitality points rather than hit points on top of that, so no matter how high level you get, one bad hit can still take you down, the default settings here are definitely on the grittier side than the high fantasy we’re used to. This is also the most poorly edited section, with multiple obvious formatting errors in the tables, plus mentioning multiclassing but either forgetting to include the rules for that or cutting them for space but not removing the reference, so you’ll have to houserule whether they have XP penalties and favored classes for origins like D&D or just cut that bit out entirely like D20 Modern and many other D20 variants.</blockquote>

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