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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9819418" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/40d37b32bfbe.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Chapter 5: Character Base Classes Part 2<a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nYrEvE" target="_blank">D&D Classes Design by Franco</a>With 21 classes in total, these serve as supplemental material to the "Core" material of the Tomes. Given the volume that we have, I'm going to be a bit more rapid-fire in covering them, focusing more on my opinions and analysis over paraphrasing class features.One important thing to note before moving onward: quite a few of these base classes are written by other Gaming Den regulars, but the PDF doesn't properly link to or credit them. The Credits in the back of the book attribute non-Frank & K writers mostly to Prestige Classes, skill feats, and so on. It thus wasn't unreasonable for me to think that this entire section was written by Frank and K, and then when I noticed the discrepancy I thought that the Additional Classes were all fan-community material. But neither are the case; the Frank/K and fan material are all mixed together in this chapter without clear acknowledgement. For example, the <a href="http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=50032" target="_blank">Warmage</a> is written by Koumei, the <a href="https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=49091" target="_blank">Curator</a> is written by Manxome, while the <a href="https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=28549#p28549" target="_blank">Jester,</a> <a href="https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=24348#p24348" target="_blank">Marshall,</a> and <a href="http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=50949" target="_blank">Soldier</a> are all written by Frank Trollman. <a href="https://radthemad4.github.io/gamingdenbookmarks/Base_Classes.html" target="_blank">I was able to find a proper credit list via a link to Github in the stickied thread on the Gaming Den's homebrew subforum,</a> but I had to jump through hoops the average reader isn't going to be aware of, much less bother with.Clearly credit your contributors, folks!The Curator is a divine caster that focuses on empowering their allies. The crux of their powers are in the form of Benedictions, various buffs spent as immediate actions to take effect on other creatures. They also make use of Spheres, a mechanic covered later on in the Tomes which are akin to Cleric Domains in granting progressive spells and powers revolving around specific themes.Thoughts: The Curator is a very strong battle-healer and party buffer. The main problem with combat-based healing in D&D 3.5 is that it was inefficient to do in terms of action economy. The best defense is a good offense, and spending a precious standard action for a touch or short-range Cure Wounds spell was very rarely worth it. Buff spells were similarly done out of combat, with the ones worth taking in a typical dungeon crawl having durations long enough to last for more than a single encounter. The Curator solves this conundrum via Benedictions which key off a quicker action type that can be done out of turn. Even the low-level Benedictions have some very appreciable modifiers, making it a very dip-friendly class, and the multi-target Heal Injuries is great for campaigns that make use of "hordemaster" and summoner archetypes; which are OP in 3.5 but even more so in the Tomes.We'll cover Spheres in the post after this one, but to sum them up they grant a character a new themed spell at every odd-numbered level. Spheres are split into 3 levels of Access: Basic Sphere Access lets the character cast all such learned spells once per day, Advanced Sphere Access 3 times per day, and Expert Sphere Access at will. Spheres are gained at certain levels in certain classes, and choosing the same Sphere again grants you the next level of access. The Curator gains a Sphere at 2nd level and every 4 levels thereafter, choosing from "heavenly" sounding Sphere names such as Mystery, Splendor, and Valor. The at-will spells can get pretty unbalanced. For example, Mystery grants Greater Invisibility at 7th level and Mirage Arcana at 9th, and the spells get only more powerful going up. Restraint has several battlefield control options such as Stinking Cloud, Black Tentacles, and Wall of Stone all accessible by 10th, and Revelation does the same but with divination spells such as Clairvoyance and True Seeing. Oh, and Vigor is the quintessential healing Sphere, granting Cure Light and Serious Wounds at 3rd and 5th, so by 10th level you can kiss resource tracking for wounds goodbye! For these reasons, the Spheres make this class potentially overpowered depending on what is picked.Elementalist is pretty much what it says on the tin, and as the Gaming Den homebrew resource has two classes of the same name, this is the one written by Frank Trollman. They're squishy arcane casters who have their own list of spells going up to 9th level, which derive strong inspiration from the Druid's spell list.Thoughts: It's a primary caster with a focus on damage and battlefield control with some summoning thrown in, so it's going to perform well. The middle and higher level class features aren't very impressive: setting one target on fire as a standard action at will isn't so impressive when you spent the last 4 levels able to cast Wall of Fire or have access to a small fire elemental familiar.The Fire Mage  is a blaster-centric class that goes up only to 15th level, and instead of having a proper spell list they just get oodles of unique class features. At-will fire blast, Contact Other Plane but only with Plane of Fire creatures, high resistance and then immunity to fire damage, a fiery Entangle spell equivalent, etc.Thoughts: This is an unnecessary class. There's many fire spells in the game available to many classes, so a player who wants to be all about fire can play those instead. And it's more limited in scope on what it can do in comparison to actual spellcasters.The Jester is a Bard/Rogue hybrid, getting Sneak Attack up to 8d6 and spells up to 6th level which are geared towards illusion, enchantment, and debuffs.Thoughts: The class looks decent in terms of balance for a partial caster: it has a good mixture of offensive, defensive, and utility effects, and its class features and spells are strongly thematic. I like this one.<img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/fd236c199f2d.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 493px" /><a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DWDAo" target="_blank">Warlord by Max Hugo</a>The Marshall is a 12-level support class that is mostly martial but with a twinge of magical abilities but no actual spellcasting. It makes heavy use of the optional Leadership rules and feats in the Tomes, and is predictably focused on making other people perform better than doing awesome things themselves.Thoughts: Straight off the bat, the Marshall isn't proficient with martial weapons, which feels really weird for a fighting-man class. And before several commentators point out that it's a misspelling ("proficient with Marshall weapons"), by the standards of the Gaming Den's own design philosophy and innate distrust of DM Fiat, this merely means that it's proficient with weapons of its class, which definitely does not include "Martial Weapons." This may sound pedantic, but I am merely judging the Tomes by Frank and Keith's design goals. This spelling error hasn't been fixed in the many revisions either, so it's going to remain that way.But on a more serious note, the Marshall is a very powerful class. For one, they get at-will Dispel Magic at 3rd level, at-will Restoration at 6th, gain access to a 9th level spell (Mass Heal) at 10th level and can cast the equivalent of Raise Dead more times per day than an equivalent-level Cleric. For this last feature, the resurrected can get back on their feet quicker, and the Marshall doesn't require expensive material components to do this.Furthermore, the at-will Restoration at relatively low level opens up some pretty major setting implications. In line with the Gaming Den's rules-as-physics design and the setting continuing on outside of actual play, what happens when these Marshalls are stationed long-term in border towns, or peace returns to their lands and they move back to their hometowns to turn swords into ploughshares? They're not only skilled veterans, but magical doctors par excellence who can cure even devastating plagues with but 18 seconds and a touch. This would have massive consequences for any society. Much less a feudal one, which the Tomes later on confirm is their adhered-to economic system later on in the product.The Monster Tamer is a pseudo-magical class that revolves around trapping monsters in magic items known as Soul Prisons and then later summoning them to act on the Tamer's behalf. The definition of monster is very broad and includes 10 different creature types, provided they advance by Hit Dice and not character class. The kind of monsters they can control is determined by the Monster's CR, which must be equal to or less than the Monster Tamer's Caster Level. Dragons double their effective CR due to their power.Thoughts: Soul Prisons require the expenditure of gold and experience points in order to craft, meaning that in practical terms players are going to either get someone else to craft them or saddle the party Artificer with supplying the Monster Tamer's key feature. As magic items require 1 day worth of work per thousand gold, the campaign needs at least several weeks' worth of downtime. The Tomes note that basic Soul Prisons can be bought if available, but all the more powerful ones don't specify this, implying that they can only be crafted and nobody would part with one for mere gold. This class' power and usability is going to vary widely depending on what monsters they encounter and thus can catch, leaving a lot of it up to DM Fiat.The Ninja is the iconic Japanese spy/assassin as written by a gooner-brained weeaboo.Thoughts: First off, this class has way too many features: virtually every level has around 3 new abilities added to the repertoire, so option paralysis is inevitable. Not only that, the design heavily relies upon handing out at-will abilities that fundamentally trivialize stealth/scouting: at-will Invisibility and Knock, short-range teleportation plus illusion via the Ninja Log trick, flight, and uh…some sexual content that you should only use with a gaming group you really trust and know exactly what they're signing up for:Content Warning: Rape by drugging, implied sexual violence[spoiler]The ninja can create a magic dust that can induce emotions in targets to make them more agreeable, including lust. If the ninja sleeps with such an affected character, they become Fanatical in attitude. A higher-level feature makes this multi-target and a save-or-die effect[/spoiler]While the class feature names and overall vibe point towards a tongue-in-cheek parody, it is still written with enough depth that it can plausibly see use in actual play. It also runs against the design philosophy of anti-social player behavior being a fault of the rules, for these rules can reinforce such behavior.The Puppeteer is a 12th-level magical-but-no-spells class in the vein of Doctor Frankenstein, which is weird as it brings to mind a demented Geppetto rather than someone using electricity to reanimate dead tissue. This is a hordemaster-style class that specializes in creating and buffing zombies that have the construct type, and eventually Flesh Golems and more powerful forms of undead at higher levels.Thoughts: In addition to being very powerful due to action economy, the Puppeteer also gains an at-will healing effect they can apply to their constructs at 3rd level, which basically lets them top off their minions out of combat and can really screw around with resource balance. By 6th level the zombies they make can last for 24 hours instead of 10 minutes, which easily gives them enough time for a dungeon crawl that isn't a labyrinthine megastructure. By 9th level they can animate a total number of zombies equal to their level, and they also have Call Lightning and Lightning Bolt at will by this level. The latter has no damage cap, which is basically a Warlock's Eldritch Blast on steroids. While a flesh golem still costs quite a bit of gold to build (10,500), the Wish Economy's purchasing limit tops out at 15,000 for magic items and materials, meaning that the Planar Binding genie aristocrat slaves can give the Puppeteer an army of golems if they get appreciable downtime.The Shadow Warrior is pretty self-explanatory, being a martial class that makes use of supernatural darkness.Thoughts: The class has some decent stealth and scouting abilities as can be expected, and are no longer auto-detected by special senses at 5th level which is very good. They do have less utility than the Assassin, though. The Shadow Warrior does get an effective "infinite heal" trick with undead allies, where their natural weapons deal bonus negative energy damage starting at 4th level. Just have an unarmed strike do subdual damage (which undead are immune to) and you're golden! And since there are a few abilities in the Tomes that let PCs be undead or treated as undead when advantageous, this is an exploit that can work on more than just animated minions. The easy infinite healing tricks are starting to become a pattern here…The Sohei is a cerebral warrior with divinely-inspired powers.Thoughts: The author doesn't bother listing any class skills and for the reader to make their own, since they "don't believe in cross-class skills." Which is a pretty strong case of Magical Tea Party if I ever heard one. The format of class features doesn't mention what levels they correspond to, meaning that one will need to cross-reference the class table frequently. The 10th level feature of "create anything worth 15k gp or less at will" is overpowered, and much like Vow of Poverty the "Sohei can't own anything personally" isn't much of a hindrance when they can just give out the stuff to their allies and community at large. Additionally, this pretty much blows any semblance of resource management out of the water, as any spell scroll that doesn't use expensive material components easily fits within the 15k gold piece limit, to say nothing of healing potions and a lot of wands! The text says that it's a "flavor thing, so use common sense," but once again that's Magical Tea Party.<img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/b6157c3eda9b.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 429px" /><a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zerKD" target="_blank">Fantasy Warrior by Alejandro Olmedo</a>The Soldier is Frank Trollman's take on the Tome of Battle. Like classes from those books they gain access to Stances which are persistent buffs they can activate but only one at a time. Maneuvers are special abilities they use as a Standard Action, and unlike the Tome of Battle they're all pretty much just offensive Strikes and have no cool Boosts or Counters.Thoughts: The Soldier is a poor man's Tome of Battle. Not only does it have less Stances and Maneuvers to choose from, the Maneuvers are all straightforward offensive stuff. The class features have quite a bit of non-combat utility stuff, but not much in the way of features that directly benefit their core abilities. In several cases Frank commits the cardinal sin of Magic Tea Party, such as a useless class feature at 14th level that lets them use the Survival skill to "manage Logistics on any scale, from the personal to the Imperial," and a CTRL + F search through the rest of the Tomes can't find any particular rules for whatever these capitalized terms might mean. At 20th level Frank throws in the towel and is unable to think of any worthwhile class feature, saying that "the Soldier wins D&D." This joke will be repeated in several other classes in this section.Not only that, but the Soldier makes for a great 1-level dip for Intelligence-based casters. At 1st level they get a customizable Stance. A Stance is built via the combination of two abilities: one which lets them add their Intelligence modifier to something (AC, Saves, Strength/Dexterity skill checks, or Spell Resistance of 5 + Level + Intelligence Modifier), and a Race name that is implied to derive from that society's martial arts. For the Spell Resistance, it doesn't specify character or class level, so presumably we go with the broadest interpretation. The Gnome race option lets the Soldier become effectively invisible to all creatures they damage until the beginning of the Soldier's next turn. Get a Fireball or AoE effect dealing damage and become invisible to a bunch of enemies at once!The Soulborn and Totemist classes make use of and reference the rules in Magic of Incarnum, which I never got around to reading and don't plan on anytime soon, so I fear that any analysis of these classes is going to be rudimentary at best. I'll pass that on over to more experienced readers who feel like chiming in with their opinions.The Storm Lord is similar to the Elementalist, albeit their class features are themed around weather-related stuff. They don't get outright spells, instead getting various spell-like abilities to cast at will.Thoughts: The Storm Lord commits the same sins as the Ninja in cramming individual levels with many class features, and it gains access to a huge amount of spells at will which other classes of equivalent level would be limited in per-day uses. Some class features, such as Control Winds and Earthquake, don't even specify the number times they can be used, leaving this a poorly-designed and unclear class.The Spirit Shaman is a divine caster that learns to see and communicate with the unseen souls suffusing reality. They are a primary caster with access up to 9th level spells and have class features that interface with nature and invisible/ethereal stuff.Thoughts: As usual, a primary caster isn't going to be struggling to keep up. A lot of their class features are rather situational but are the kinds of things that will be greatly appreciated when they do come up. Their Animism feature  is a neat and well-scaling flavorful in being able to communicate with a wider variety of creatures and objects..The Summoner is exactly what it says on the tin. It is a primary caster, as to be expected, and the bulk of its class features revolve around being able to cast stronger summons and conjuration magic in various ways.Thoughts: I don't have much to say. The class looks pretty straightforward and should be easy enough to understand for a first-time reader. As it empowers summoning in multiple ways, it has the potential to break games for action economy reasons.The Swashbuckler is a nimble, lightly-armored warrior who has a thing for showmanship.Thoughts: The class has a bunch of cool abilities, but also has an awful lot of them and there's a lot of independent modifiers and buffs/debuffs to keep track of, which can result in options paralysis and double-checking details in play. The incorporation of jokey flavor text within the entries for class features is an acquired taste, but can make the looking-up process unnecessarily cumbersome for some readers.The Thief Acrobat was most likely written by someone who realized that the Rogue is now useless when the Tome Assassin exists.Thoughts: This class can be summed up as a much more mobile Rogue, with the bulk of its class features focusing on stuff like three-dimensional movement via grappling hook pulley systems, "tumbling" through the Plane of Shadow to avoid physical impediments, and even Detect Magic at will and Trapfinding for the ever-useful "check the dungeon for unseen dangers." Unfortunately, the class still uses Sneak Attack as the Rogue but with 1d6 less damage, meaning that it's going to barely contribute against a large portion of monsters in the game.The Thaumaturge has absolutely no flavor text, and the mechanical text isn't any more illustrative of how and where the class is expected to be implemented into the world. They are squishy primary casters, and they draw from the Cleric, Druid, and Sorcerer/Wizard spell lists. They are spontaneous casters, but the spells that they "know" are learned like that of a wizard: by finding spell scrolls and teachers in the wild or via spell research. Otherwise, their only other significant feature are bonus metamagic feats.Thoughts: There's already a buffet of casting classes in 3rd Edition D&D, and the Tome adds even more. Even classes that share or heavily borrow from the spell lists of other classes can still have their own distinctive features and themes to make them stand out. So this makes the Thaumaturge feel bland, with their big thing being "they can learn both divine and arcane magic, but need to write it down like a wizard."<img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/70ca4613e8c4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 370px" /><a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Ye5G1d" target="_blank">Fix and Vita Warlock dnd by Nerva1/Nerval/Natalia</a>The Warlock is the Tomeified version of perhaps the most popular WotC-era D&D character class. Since this was written back during 3rd Edition, the Tome Warlock is specifically fiendish in nature, deriving their powers from making bargains with evil outsiders. The class goes up to only 15th level, but their more notable features include an Eldritch Blast that scales faster at 1d6 damage per class level, can summon evil outsiders whose number and CR depend on class level, and can have said Eldritch Blast deal alternative damage types at a decreased cost in damage. They have no Invocations, but gain access to Fiendish Spheres which more or less do the same thing in granting them access to various thematic spells.Thoughts: For the at-will Expert Sphere Access, a Warlock can get this as early as 6th level, for they gain a Sphere at 1st level, 3rd level, and every 3 levels thereafter. As mentioned with the Curator above, there's quite a bit of Spheres with abusable at-will features by this time. Bone has Summon Undead V, so you can potentially get infinite waves of minions with successive castings, with the spell's 1 round/level the major limiting factor. Seduction sphere grants Suggestion, Glibness, and Charm Monster at 3rd, 5th, and 7th level respectively, causing the party Bard to cry as they're effortlessly upstaged, while Violation has similar powers such as Modify Memory, Dominate Person, and Lesser Planar Binding. And this is to say nothing of higher levels which give even more powerful spells this way, also potentially at-will.Warmage is our final Additional Base Class, and is pretty much what it sounds like. They are proficient with martial weapons, although their real claim to fame is being a primary caster with a spell list chock-full of offensive and battlefield control stuff. They also have a list of alterations to basic spells that are enhanced when cast by a Warmage. The bulk of their class features revolve around further empowering their spells, such as adding on rider debuffs or making a single-target effect "chain" to other secondary targets.Thoughts: Once again, a primary caster is going to be eating good tonight in 3.5, and the buffs and rider effects make purely damaging spells more worth it to both learn and cast. Unlike the Elementalist, Fire Mage, or Warlock, their spell lists and class features are less tightly themed and more broad, with some "team player" stuff like Heroes' Feast and being able to summon an Instant Fortress. One particular thing I must point out is that a Warmage can effectively create a localized post-scarcity economy by 2nd level, where they can cast not only Create Water at will, but Create Food at will, and then Purify Food and Drink at will by 3rd level. Much like the 6th-level Marshall being a better doctor than most low-level Clerics, the Warmage's class features have huge world-building implications for the setting at large, which the Tomes don't really discuss.Thoughts So Far: While I found the prior Core Classes to be a mixed bag, the Additional Classes leave me a lot less impressed. The balance is even wonkier between them, and the writers violate the standards of their own design philosophy and the Gaming Den's at large in several places. The classes are also too liberal in the handing out of at-will spell-like abilities. While some spells are perfectly fine to do this with, they're usually not very powerful or situational. Tome classes, by contrast, have at-will spells that are not only of questionable balance, but can fundamentally change core aspects of gameplay and trivialize resource management. What's even worse is that the Tomes don't provide any DMing advice for how to build encounters and adventures around these differing standards and expectations, much less how they can affect the wider campaign at large.Join us next time as we finish up this chapter with Monster Base Classes and NPC Classes!</blockquote>

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