Spatzimaus said:
Woodelf, that's not bad, but it's a lot like the "Paladin as Prestige Class?" threads have pointed out: these classes are made unique by the special class abilities they get at low level, so if you only make Paladin a Fighter/Cleric who gets certain special abilities once he reaches PrC level, it drastically shifts the demographics of the world. Not that that's always a bad thing, but it's something you need to remember.
Well, i don't think paladin is a god example. I've always been a bit leary of the idea of low-level paladins, but until the prestige class idea was shoved my way, didn't see a way to fix it within a class/level system. Yes, all the characters start out borderline-incopmetent, but for most of them, i can see it. I just can't see a 1st level "champion of my god". Anyway, that one's a matter of taste (and the abilities, if not the attitude, will probably be supported right from 1st/2nd level with my system), so let's skip paladin for a moment and look at other classes: Ranger. What are a ranger's abilities? Can fight pretty well, is a huntsman and has bonuses against favored enemies, wilderness skills, animal friends, and a few spells (starting at middling levels). With my system, you'd take warrior and expert levels in about equal measure to get the fighting and wilderness skills. If you see rangers as having the animal friendship abilities, probably 1 or 2 levels of primitive (which synergizes with what you're doing here, wrt wilderness skills) are all you need. And then, later on, you take the occasional level of caster. You can do all the same stuff, in about the same mix. What changes is the way you acquire it, slightly--now, the abilities that you want to make your character are spread out over 2 or more classes that you alternate between. I admit that's a slight drawback. But in D&D, the same thing happens the minute you want something that no single class supports. The fighter/wizard (or fighter/sorcerer) frex, takes turns getting better at spellcasting (the fighting thing isn't quite as obvious, since BABs stack). Unless you have an infinite number of classes, or just one class, this'll always be the case. But D&D makes the problem worse by tying all sorts of disparate abilities together. Easiest example: you want to be good at dodging? You also have to be good at either sneak attacks or raging. You want to disarm traps? You're also good at sneak attacks. You want to heal people? You're also good at fighting. and so on.
So my goal was to boil this down *just* to related abilities. and to have the themes be fairly archetypal to the sort of fantasy D&D does. So all of the expert's abilities relate to being skillful. In order to maximiz customizability, and also cut down on the stutter-growth effect, i'm upping the feat count a bit. Lots of classes are having their class abilities largely replaced by bonus feats, and an appropriate feat list. General character feats are also a bit more frequent, for those times when your concept is just a couple of feats outside of a basic class, so you don't really want to or need to pick up a whole 'nother class. (Frex, the ranger above--maybe the only reason for that character to pick up a level of primitive is for the animal friendship ability, so why not just spend a feat or two on it?) That also means that i'm trying to trim the class abilities down to only those things that you really shouldn't be able to get without being a member of the class.
Hmmm... i think i had more cool stuff to say, but i should've been in bed an hour ago. g'night.
My friends and I have been working on a generic homebrew usable for both a Shadowrun-type setting and stock D&D. Basically, we felt there were just too many classes with too much overlap. If you add the Psionics classes, that's FIVE "pure caster" classes with heavily overlapping abilities. Then, add Prestige Classes to the mix...
Yeah, there really shouldn't be psion & sorcerer, or psychic warrior & monk, in the same campaign/world, IMHO. Unless you actually make psionics different from spellcasting. But as is, they step on each others' schticks too much.
oh, though i'm not sure i'd class druid or cleric as "pure casters"--they may be roughly as competent as a wizard, but they've got tons of other cool abilities, so they're not nearly as nerfed when they run out of magic.
