[SC2.0] What classes are fantasy appropriate

[Henry]

***Fantasy Rider/Driver (derrived from Wheelman

This really needs to be re-thought out. You can go with the person being a rider of chariots or steam tech, but thats not really straight up fantasy.

If you're going that route, go "Beast Rider" or "Beastmaster" as a class. Same as wheelman, but feats apply to mounts and animal companions. The role of "guy who does amazing things with conveyances" (Beastrider, Rail Conductor, Cowboy scout, Wheelman) is common to ALL genres, but really doesn't have a unifying name for it.

For generic, using the Modern/GT classes as a base is the way I'd go, but I can't even THINK about the task of talent-izing all of the class abilities right now - that's a lotta work!

 

[Denaes]

That's pretty much Talents. They're feats with a different coat of paint.

Yes, they didn't need to be done that way. It was counter intuitive and when players in my group saw it, they were like "oh hell yeah" then after they read them, they were like "Why are they called trees? Most of these arn't chosen in tree fashion... why didn't they just make these feats and give you the ability to choose them off a list?"

Really, the way d20 was/is, does it add anything to have another category of powers?

The way SC2.0 did it, it's not a seperate pool of abilities. They're just class specific abilities you get the choice of. Once you can choose them, you can choose any of them you like. Actually I would love to have double what is available, for each class - just to give you the options of having 2-3 20th level characters in the same class that don't have the same abilities because they had to choose from a shallow pool. But I prefer choosing the order you get your 6 abilities rather than just having them assigned at various levels.

Think of it this way: Talents are more like class-specific feats. You could have feats with a requirement of "Must be level X in class Y" and you'd have the same thing.

Yes, and it's counter intuitive. It isn't exactly what feats do (they're not class specific) and doesn't have enough distinction to lay on it's own.

I would much rather see the Talants as feats with high AbilityScore requirements for the AbilityScore class that it belonged to. Smart Talants would be Feats that required a 16+ Int. Dedicated Talants would be Feats that required 16+ Wis. There might be another pre-req like the order in which you choose them as well, but not a lot of innane little requirements.

When Generic Classes grant you a feat, you can ignore the AbilityScore tied to the Class. Thats the whole point of what the Generic Classes were supposed to be. You were supposed to be able to take a Class in a weak abilityscore to make up for it being weak and balancing yourself out some.

If you're a gunman and you can't take those nicer gunfeats because they require a higher Wis, take a level or two of Dedicated.

That would make the AbilityScore requirements on feats exist without cornholing players for not having higher than average stats across the board.

This way someone who is flat out smart (Int of 18) can choose to take some smarty feats even though they're focusing on being a Strong character. Someone who is stupid (int 8) will need to take the Smart Class in order to take those feats.

This keeps you from having to seperate between two different sort of feats, you just realize that feats with high abilityscore requirements are better suited for their appropriate hero class.

There are some that wouldn't fit Grim Tales, I think (like "Style over Caliber") but the martial arts, combat feats, most of the career and style feats, would fit well, I think.

Why wouldn't Style Over Caliber fit? Oh yeah. I almost forgot that d20M chose to go with unrealistic and boring gun stats so that people could visually choose whatever they liked rather than worry about what is effective. Sorry, I'd blocked that out of my mind.

 

[Denaes]

If you're going that route, go "Beast Rider" or "Beastmaster" as a class. Same as wheelman, but feats apply to mounts and animal companions. The role of "guy who does amazing things with conveyances" (Beastrider, Rail Conductor, Cowboy scout, Wheelman) is common to ALL genres, but really doesn't have a unifying name for it.

Yeah, thats what I figure. Someone who fixes/heals & trains animals... someone who gets more from them than normal people. someone who knows animals well.

For generic, using the Modern/GT classes as a base is the way I'd go, but I can't even THINK about the task of talent-izing all of the class abilities right now - that's a lotta work!

The hardest part of converting classes are really tightly integrated into the gear system and those are all just bunk abilities if you're not using the Gear system. Thats a strong argument for just making all the appropriate abilities into Feats and going with a generic system.

Even feats that wouldn't seem right for a specific genre can be added, just add tags to each of the feats signifying which genres it's suggested for. I'm suprised they don't have something like that in GT with it being multi-genre and all.

 

[Henry]

Even feats that wouldn't seem right for a specific genre can be added, just add tags to each of the feats signifying which genres it's suggested for. I'm suprised they don't have something like that in GT with it being multi-genre and all.

GT separates out the Firearm-specific and Vehicle-specific feats into separate subsections at the end of Feats, so that you can exclude them in a non-modernistic game. All the other feats it includes are generic enough in application that they're usable in any genre from Caveman to Spaceman.

I would much rather see the Talants as feats with high AbilityScore requirements for the AbilityScore class that it belonged to. Smart Talants would be Feats that required a 16+ Int. Dedicated Talants would be Feats that required 16+ Wis. There might be another pre-req like the order in which you choose them as well, but not a lot of innane little requirements.

When Generic Classes grant you a feat, you can ignore the AbilityScore tied to the Class. Thats the whole point of what the Generic Classes were supposed to be. You were supposed to be able to take a Class in a weak abilityscore to make up for it being weak and balancing yourself out some.

If you're a gunman and you can't take those nicer gunfeats because they require a higher Wis, take a level or two of Dedicated.

That would make the AbilityScore requirements on feats exist without cornholing players for not having higher than average stats across the board.

That's actually a pretty interesting take on a variant way for d20 to organize its feats/talents, because I've never seen a d20 system do it that way. I may play around with that some more in my mind and see if there's anything wrong that stands out with it.

 

[Denaes]

Just because you've put so much effort into pimping this book (which sounds neat) I've broken my rule of not supporting backwards companies and put the book on my birthday/xmas list.

If fate wills me to have it, I will.

As far as fantasy SC2.0, I think the easiest way to go about this overall would be to convert all of the class abilities into feats...

One of the SC2.0 writers has guidelines on how the classes were created, so then you can go through the feats and create classes or generic classes based on the massively expanded feat selection.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Hrm. Now, True20 does things more or less that way, with feats every level and the whole thing being left up to the player to choose.

For me, I'm not sure. Talents are a little different than feats in terms of flavor. They give the classes a little definition, and most aren't as powerful as feats until 2nd rank in a tree or so, when they generally become MORE powerful than feats and give out abilities that are more or less unavailable.

At lvl 1, for instance, the Smart talent "Savant" is pretty poor, it's just "your Smart level" added to a skill. So +1. But at levels past 3rd, that ability has become more powerful than Skill Focus or the Dedicated Skill Emphasis.

How do you turn that into a feat? Base it on level? It's too powerful, then, even with a 15 Stat req. (Generally stat reqs are odd numbers) A 6th level Strong/Dedicated with +6 to Research or Electronics?

The Dedicated Skill Emphasis talent is pretty much crap, out of the box. It's Skill Focus. But opens up Faith, which is pretty bombtacular, and if I could buy-in on that without dipping into Dedicated ... oh boy. All day.

Here's the other thing that I see as a problem. If there's a campaign focus, people are going to choose class not on the abilities they're interested in, but in what will give them the greatest edge in the campaign. If we know it's going to be combat focused, instead of building a sniper out of Dedicated for access to things like Faith and Dead Aim, they're going to put a high score in Wis and run straight up Strong for full BAB and depend entirely on tanking their Strength and using Wisdom to replace the need for dipping into another class that doesn't have full BAB.

As to whether you find that a problem or not, I don't know. Strong is always a hard buy. You'd LIKE that full BAB in a gunfighter game, but at the same time, there's pretty specifically no gunfighting feats/talents in the Strong pool. You have to give up good gunfighter progression for full BAB progression ... now, that might lead to hard choices but that's part of balance. If you can get everything you want whenever you want it, you might as well be playing GURPS with all the problems inherent in point buy systems. The various class strengths and weaknesses are part of their balancing factors. If you remove the hard and fast requirements then the game really comes down to playing Strong, Fast, or Smart characters with high ability scores in whatever they want to really buy things in and pimping the basic statistics of the classes for what they offer. Strong for BAB, Fast for Defense, Smart for Skill Points. The other three classes have abilities that are pretty unique and make them attractive, but they're mixtures of the core class FEATURES of the other classes ... Dedicated doesn't get FULL BAB, but decent, nor LOADS of SP, but decent, etc etc. If you can totally replace the talent choices by simply raising your BAB, there's no longer any point in having a finite class for it, y'know? You then choose Strong, Fast, or Smart based on what you want to concentrate on in core class features.

Where are the guidelines that the writers of SC2.0 put out? I'd be interested in looking over their considerations.

--fje

 

[Denaes]

Hrm. Now, True20 does things more or less that way, with feats every level and the whole thing being left up to the player to choose.

It does. I like the concept, not so much the Tri-classes, but it handles magic better than the Sect-Classes of d20Modern. Thats part of the reason Grim Tales has me interested to see how they mixed magic into the 6 generic classes.

For me, I'm not sure. Talents are a little different than feats in terms of flavor. They give the classes a little definition, and most aren't as powerful as feats until 2nd rank in a tree or so, when they generally become MORE powerful than feats and give out abilities that are more or less unavailable.

They're only unavailable because thats how they're currently written. Is there a reason to make them unavailable?

At lvl 1, for instance, the Smart talent "Savant" is pretty poor, it's just "your Smart level" added to a skill. So +1. But at levels past 3rd, that ability has become more powerful than Skill Focus or the Dedicated Skill Emphasis.

Well, first off - skill focus is pretty craptastic. It's one of those crappy feats you take for a one time tiny bonus that seems large by level 1 standards, but won't mean anything 10 levels down the line - so you look back and marvel that you wasted a feat on it.

I think a feat that starts off fairly weak and gets better as you level up is a better idea than one that starts off decent for a 1st level character and it's effect is sadder and sadder as you gain levels as your skills are all progressing and eclipsing.

How do you turn that into a feat? Base it on level? It's too powerful, then, even with a 15 Stat req. (Generally stat reqs are odd numbers)

Base it on Class Level (the class you are when you take it) and give it a high Pre-req like Int 17. Nobody said these great feats tied to a particular AbilityScore had to be easy to get.

If your character isn't smart, she has to dip into Smart Hero to pick it up. Thats what the text says the point of the Heroic classes is. Not only to make your strengths stronger, but to make up for your weaknesses.

And it doesn't quite do that in d20 Modern. A lot of Feats require AbilityScore pre-reqs, but you can take 10 levels in Dedicated and have dedicated abilities (the talants) and still not be allowed to have Feats that require Wisdom. Huh?

I'd make it so that the type of class effected progressions, attack, defense, saves, wealth, etc and help you get feats of the associated AbilityScore.

When you're Dedicated and gain a feat, you can ignore Wisdom pre-reqs. When you're a Strong Hero, you can ignore Str pre-reqs. You can't ignore other pre-reqs like BAB or Def or Saves, etc.

The Dedicated Skill Emphasis talent is pretty much crap, out of the box. It's Skill Focus. But opens up Faith, which is pretty bombtacular, and if I could buy-in on that without dipping into Dedicated ... oh boy. All day.

A 6th level Strong/Dedicated with +6 to Research or Electronics?

Why not? They're generic classes tied to an AbilityScore, but they don't define who you are, but what areas you're actively trying to train in.

Why can't a strong hero have a specialty if he purchased it and met the requirements?

You can be a 10th level Strong Hero with an Int of 18 if you wanted and you can also be a 10th level Strong Hero with a Strength of 5.

Shake the preconceptions of how you view the classes from your mind and just look at it from a design point of view.

The point of generic classes is that they're not specific. You can swap between them and mix/match them to make the character you want. The point isn't to be restricted to what generic classes you've taken and to be sure you fit in their mold.

Here's the other thing that I see as a problem. If there's a campaign focus, people are going to choose class not on the abilities they're interested in, but in what will give them the greatest edge in the campaign.

Generic classes are about getting the effect you're after, not about conforming to a specific idea of what a character is.

If a player wants to have a bunch of smarty pants feats then they're going to take a high Int or Smart Hero Class. If someone wants to be a Strong Hero with smart abilities and throw their highest stat into Int to do it, then why not? Sounds like a Kung-Fu master to me. Smart and physically able.

If we know it's going to be combat focused, instead of building a sniper out of Dedicated for access to things like Faith and Dead Aim, they're going to put a high score in Wis and run straight up Strong for full BAB and depend entirely on tanking their Strength and using Wisdom to replace the need for dipping into another class that doesn't have full BAB.

They'll have the character they want to make. If they want a high Wis and strong fighter, then let them make their character.

Do you really need to penalize people by forcing them to do something they don't want for their character so they can get some special abilities? This isn't a D&D specific class idea where Fighters are fighters and Wizards are wizards and Rogues are rogues. This is a mix/match your strengths/training to get the character you're going for.

Where are the guidelines that the writers of SC2.0 put out? I'd be interested in looking over their considerations.

http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1218?p=77781

2nd post explains things for 1.0 & 1.5 (SG1) and the newer breakdowns for 2.0 are on the last post

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Well, my shortest answer would be to do it your way and playtest it. And then playtest it with a group of people you've never played with before. And then playtest it with some people who are specifically looking to yoink the system for everything they're worth.

Longer answer is, I'm not correlating "strong" with "warrior" or anything of the sort. What I'm saying about balance is that there are finite packages of "BAB" "Defense" "Skill Points" "Bonus Feats" and "Talents".

You can really toss the base classes down to "packages". You can have Full BAB, but you can't have "Automatic Firearms Bonus Feats". You can have "Max Skill Points" but you can't have "Full Defense Progression". You can get close to both, but then you don't get "Power Attack Combat Group Feats".

I'm not saying that you're WRONG, but that it raises flags in my mind. If you can find ways to put them together that you can retain character parity, then it might be the best idea since general classes in the first place.

And Character Parity is an important thing in design. If it isn't, then you're spending too much time playing with Feats and Classes when you could be playing GURPS. Bob's Super Ninja Swordsman should be able to play in the same game alongside Ralph's Gadgeteer Scientist and Sally's Investigative Journalist and Peter's New Wave Gunslinger.

Roughly, that's what SpyCraft 2.0's classes do already. The Scientist is balanced against the Wheelman is balanced against the Soldier ... that way everybody can play and nobody gets overshadowed. You can play a Soldier with huge Int, but there's alot of places where you can't get abilities that the Scientist has already and places where you're forced to take stuff that doesn't play to your high Int. Or multi between them, which amounts to the same thing.

Grim Tales/ d20 Modern does a BETTER job of letting you play "A Smart Soldier", a much better job, but the fact remains that you can't get ALL of somebody who wants to play "A Weak Scientis"'s abilities AND a full BAB AND more HP AND better Defense while doing so. Not because the designers are out to make sure you can't play what you want to play, but so that Bob and Sally and Ralph can play the characters they want in the same party without Bob tweaking on the system to make everybody else redundant.

Combinations of Level and Stat requirements outside of the classes might be a way to go ... I'm honestly thinking Level would be better than Stat. If you can avoid taking Dedicated by having a high Wis ... a little backwards. I think the stat classes should be viable REGARDLESS of your score in their "linked" Attribute, y'know? Dedicated levels should show off Wisdom, high or low, not just bolster having a low attribute.

I think the Campaign Qualities from SC2.0 are pretty genius. They're really just "modular house rules", but I think its methodology is a wonderful way of "letting" people tweak their campaigns.

I think they can be one way to "let" people do something without changing the basic assumptions, and there-fore keep everybody on an even keel. Instead of saying: "You can have any feat any time" to let people play gun-kata stuff, you can let anybody choose gun or martial arts feats as bonus feat selections, etc. etc. It's one of the things I'm looking at right now.

--fje

 

[jdrakeh]

I wouldn't mind seeing a straight Spycraft 2.0 to Fantasy conversion, myself - it would be great for games in the vein of Jack Vance's Maske:Thaery (which is pretty much a fantasy espionage thriller) or his Alastor trilogy (which are essentially fantasy political thrillers). There really aren't any d20 fantasy rules out there which are well-suited to this kind of milieu (sure, there are products that can handle it, but none that I think can handle it well). Here is where I think that a Spycraft 2.0 to Fantasy conversion would really shine.

Personally, I'd mine the Dark Inheritance book for ideas about incorporating magic into Spycraft (although, to be fair, magic doesn't play a huge part in fantasy technothrillers such as those that I've mentione in the previous paragraph) . I'd then mine the aforementioned fiction and stuff like Vernor Vinge's Grimm's World for a better idea of how magic fits into the fantasy technothriller (usually it's in decline, having been upended by technology in most civilized parts of the world). I'd look at characters in the novels for class inpspiration (Matho Lorcas in Vance's Alastor 933: Marune is a great example of a Faceman, for example).

Really, Spycraft 2.0 would be fantastic for this kind of fantasy - a kind of fantasy that other d20 products are really not at all well-equipped to deal with properly (i.e., they lack the rules for emulating the technothriller conventions so common in these sci-fantasy novels). I'm busy with reviews right now (both at RPGNow and elsewhere), but I'd have an extreme interest in contributing to a 'fantasy technothriller' project that uses Spycraft 2.0 as its core rule set when I get some free time.

 

[2WS-Steve]

I'm putting together a Modern classes thing that you can access here:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SecondWorldSims/files/

It's called Mod2 Basic Classes D2.rtf

This is a first revision so numbers and distribution of abilities needs work -- but feel free to use it as you see fit.