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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Frostmarrow" data-source="post: 1555837" data-attributes="member: 1122">Behind the scenesI got the idea for this class whilst playing in our current campaign. It's a city based campaign and it seems a lot of the abilities we have are redundant. We have little or no use for a number of abilities, such as trap finding or turn undead. We are fish out of water. On the other hand the game sports a lot of skills that aren't readily available to our classes, such as appraise or gather information. My character is a cleric and I do have gather information but it's cross class which means I'll never become any good at it.I wanted the class to be a mix of fighter and rogue. The reason I didn't simply make a recipe for a multi-class fighter/rogue is that the rogue comes with a lot of bagage. All rogues have sneak attack, for instance. Something that can't rhyme with all civilized men.In order to be able to fight I gave the class the best possible BAB. This is the result of a first rate education. I was thinking Paul Atreides from Dune here. Paul knows how to fight for he has been trained to do so since he was a toddler. It stands to reason that the heirs of nobility, in dangerous world, would be given such training. On the other hand, the citizen lacks the grit of fighters and barbarians so I opted for a lower hit die; d8.The class has two good saves. Fort and Will. Fort is the result of good nourishing food throughout the character's upbringing. Will is the result of having to deal with a lot of abstract concepts, something a city slicker might be subjected to more than say, for example a peasant hero. I didn't want a good ref save as there are a whole slew of swashbuckling write-ups already. The citizen is not a swashbuckler, although it could probably be used as such by taking mobility instead of tumble for instance.I chose class skills with two things in mind. I wanted skills that an educated person would have and also I wanted to bring out the less commonly used skills in the open. The skills are those I'd imagine a gentleman detective, such as Sherlock Holmes would have. Also since the class lacks the no-brainers such as tumble, spot, and climb, characters with this class will automatically get a different flavour than other characters. I.e. Knowledge (local) is a very interesting skill. However, it's low profile and the general lack of skill points makes it extremely rare. (At least in my experience. Keep in mind that your game probably is not quite the same as mine.)I really like the idea of bonus feats rather than special abilities. I find feats more interesting since they can be used to define my character. Special abilities sometimes ruin any attempts at uniqueness. You simply have to come up with a reason for your scholar to have learned the art of sneak attacking, for you do get it whether you like it or not. (You may substitute sneak attack for inspire competence by music in the above sentence if you want.)Naturally the fighter is the feat master of the game so it's not very nice (or good game design) to assign as many bonus feats as the fighter gets. I think half the number of bonus feats (6 instead of 11) is quite enough without stealing too much of the fighter's thunder. I also stripped heavy armor proficiency off the list. Not because I can't see the citizen wearing full plate but rather that he maybe wouldn't want too. The citizen can wear heavy armor, but it fits the character to take the penalty for it.I chose four skill points rather than six for two reasons. First, the ranger has six skill points but that is due to the ranger's class skills. Rangers simply must invest twice as many skill points in their basic skills than others. Rangers need spot AND listen and they need move silently AND hide. This means that the six skill points of a ranger is not exactly three times as many as the cleric's two. Secondly, bards get six skill points too. Since citizens fight better than bards it's only fair if the bard is the better of the two when it comes to knowledge. (Other abilities of the bard supports this.)I didn't want to add a lot of flavor schticks to the citizen as I want it to be versatile. It is a mix of fighter and rogue, after all. Still I needed something to define the character and I chose to invent an opposite of the barbarian's illiteracy: tenderfoot. Tenderfoot will keep the citizen where he belongs (in civilization) or make for some interesting role-playing if the citizen accompanies a group of rangers and barbarians into the wilderness. You might have met people without any wilderness experience in real life, and if so you know how awkwardly they can behave when faced with the great outdoors.A lot of the character of a citizen will be define more by what the class lacks rather than what he has. With special abilities comes special responsibilities. If you can heal you are required to heal. If you can detect evil the party will rely on you to do so. If you lack these abilities you are free to make yourself useful in other, less obvious ways. This is strength in my book. Add to this the citizen's rather unusual class skills and I think the citizen might be useful, not only in a city setting, but also when the party goes spelunking: "Hm, what strange runes... I remember seeing something like this in my father's library. Hm.. let's see..."</blockquote>

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