Point Based Class Design, CUSTOM CLASSES!

[Sravoff]

Under this system you design your own class. Be it whatever you want. Because many abilities have a low cost, it is highly recomended the player firest come up with a conept and then work with the DM to complete that design. Otherwise you could get some rather powerful classes.

Each class should have around 7-9 points when you are completed. Make sure your DM aproves.

By using this system you give complete Veto Power to your DM.

Bab
Fighter +1
Cleric +0
Wizard -1

Saves
+.25 for every good save beyond the first

Skills
2 -.5
4 +0
6 +.5
8 +1.5

Hit Dice
d12 +2
d10 +1.5
d8 +.75
d6 +0
d4 -1

Armor
None -1
Shields +.25
Tower +.5
Light +0
Medium +.5
Heavy +1

Weapons
Chosen -1.5
Simple -.5
Simple+ +0
Martial +1

Spell Casting
Cast One Wizard School +3
Cast Any Wizard School +13
Cast One Cleric School +2
Cast Any Cleric School +6
Half Caster Divine (Ranger Paladin) -1/2 Points
Halfcaster Arcane (Bard) -1/4 Points

Agile Abilities
Trap Sense +.5
Uncanny Dodge +.5
Evasion +.5
Speed Increase +.5
Sneak Attack +.2
Improvement +.25

Combat Abilities
Rage +.1
DR +.1
Bonus Feats(Monk) +.1
Special Ability(Rogue) +1.25
Bonus Feats(Fighter) +3.5
Improvement +.25

Unarmed/Unarmored
Slow Fall +1.5
Unarmed Attacks +.75
AC Bonus(Fixed) +.5
AC Bonus(Sts Mod) +1
Ki Strikes +.1
Quivering Palm(Must Have Ki Strikes) +.5
Monkish Hardening(Diamond Soul,Still Mind, ect.) +.1
Improvement +.25

Nature
Animal Campanion(As Ranger, Improve to Druid) +.75
Wild Shape +.1
Druidic Affinity(Wod Stride, Venom Imune, ect.) +.75
Improvement +.25

Holy
Turn Undead(As Paladin, Improve to Cleric) +.75
Domains +.75
Smite +.75
Paladinal Grace(Divine Grace, Aura Courage, Lay hands, ect.) +.75
Remove Disease +.75
Improvement +.25

Critisizim/opinions and help is all welcome. It is close to being ready in my opinion but may need some tweaking. The basic idea was from the 2e dungeon master guide. Also if there are any more abilities I either missed or that someone else has please share!

Thanks for any replies

-Sravoff

 

[The Traveler]

Hmm. These area always tricky to balance.

Still, if you want a good breakdown of how existing classes break down into points, there's a conversion section in BESM d20 Revised.

 

[tjoneslo]

Oooohhh. Another point based system for building classes.

Have you seen Buy the numbers? or it's companion Point Buy Numbers. I've got a Class construction guide which discusses many of the same issues as you have covered.

Also look through this board for Dr. Spunj's Classless system disucssion. He also derived a spreadsheet for building balanced characters with no classes.

And (as the previous poster mentioned) the BESM D20 book has a conversion system which can make for a point buy character creation system.

I don't mean to sound like a complete wet blanket, but this is something that begins to fall into the "beaten to death" topics.

 

[Sravoff]

Ah.... I hadn't seen anything along this line. If I remember correctly someone was looking for a system that allowed custom classes. Thanks for the links, I'll look into them.

-Sravoff

 

[tjoneslo]

I'm a big fan of not doing any work that someone else has already done, unless, of course, no one has done it correctly. I've got a couple of more fan-based class construction/point buy systems in PDF which I can no longer find on the web. If you've looked through the links above and want more, let me know and I'll send along the others as well.

I've looked through your system above. Like the other systems which are designed starting with the base classes, it works to build other classes like the base classes. But if you want some abilities which don't exist in the base classes, the system isn't obvious enough to add something random into. For Example: I want to add Psi powers, what do they cost? I want to reconfigure the wizards school list to fit the campaign better, does that change the cost of the spell lists? If I wanted to borrow some special abilites from a few prestige classes in some of the hundreds of D20 books, is there a way to cost them into the system?

 

[Sravoff]

scornedthought@yahoo.com. Yeah, I currently have no credit card so downloading stuff after buying doesn't work. If you could send me those files I would be much abliged.

Thanks,

-Sravoff