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Message: <blockquote data-quote="zombusey" data-source="post: 9757048" data-attributes="member: 7037676">Hello, I'm Jessy, the creator behind Plant Witch Press and the architect behind the 3PP bloodblade class!For class design, the number one best piece of advice I can give you is to have a strong throughline/fantasy of what your class is about. Pathfinder adopts the approach of creating very narrow class concepts and building around those, and it works for the smograsbord, feat-based character-building system they have in place. But 5e and its derivative/adjacent systems tend to have much broader class concepts and let the specificity come from its archetypes/subclasses. To use the marshal from the Adventurer's Guide as an example, at its base it is a class structured around leadership and support. How exactly the details of the fantasy of being a "commander" manifests is tied up in its archetypes. A marshal can be anything from Theoden rallying the Rohirrim at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, to a pirate captain, to the leader of a covert spy network. At its core, a class should support any number of manifestations of its driving theme.As for necessities, you've touched on a number of them yourself:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Knacks" (as I've taken to referring to them in aggregate) are absolutely a neccessity. These are typically tied to the social/exploration pillars of play, granting additional proficiencies, expertise dice, and abilities that are not directly related to combat. If you create a class in A5e they will need their own list of Knacks at their disposal, so definitely think about that as you're designing base class features. Also bear in mind that there is precedent for a class getting proficiency in another class's Knacks at higher levels, so that is also an option at your disposal if you so choose. In terms of how each class gains Knacks at level-up, I used the existing classes to guage how often the bloodblade got a new one. I ultimately settled on a ranger's progression, but bear in mind the more often they receive a Knack, the more you have to write. Most classes have something in the neighborhood of 6-8 Knacks. The ranger has 17. The bloodblade has 21. The rogue has 24.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For martial classes you'll want to grant them access to Maneuver Traditions. Shoot for 2 traditions to be proficient to start with. I tend to avoid more than that (at least initially) because in A5e the fighter's core class is built around "All Maneuvers All the Time" and I don't want to detract from that. If you're designing a martial class, have most of its saves derive from maneuver DC. If it's a spellcaster, saves come from spell save DC. If they're half-casters, pick which one makes the most sense for the given ability.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The "choose one" features are prevalent in A5e, and I see them as a way to keep classes feeling fresh with different choices. If you're designing archetypes for existing classes, definitely try to keep the "choose one" features consistent with any preexisting archetypes. If you're designing your own class from the ground up, determine which levels make the most sense to have those "chose one" features. Just remember that the more of those you have, the more balls you'll have to juggle in terms of overall game balance.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Social features should absolutely be baked in to every class. How that manifests is really up to you. Just remember that even the traditionally "meathead" class options like fighter and barbarian have some very interesting tools in their toolboxes to solve problems outside of "HIT WITH STICK."</li> </ul>As someone who has designed a class for A5e, I would definitely recommend starting small with archetypes, magic items, spells, and other things to get your creative juices warmed up and familiar with how the system works in a mechanical level before diving into a whole class. Classes have A LOT of moving parts, especially in this system. If you feel up to the challenge I'll by no means stop you, however, and look forward to what you have cooked up!</blockquote>

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