Urban Class Features (Cityscape web enhancement)

[Agamemnon]

I find the idea of a Druid wildshaping into an Animated Object to be incredibly goofy. Turning into an animated sedan chair, pillar, mailbox or a paving stone just doesn't have the je ne sais quoi.

 

[boolean]

How about a slight variation to the City Soul ability. Instead of transforming into an animated object, maybe the character could merge with and animate pre-existing objects?

Better?

 

[Agamemnon]

Yes, it certainly would. Like merging with statues and going for a stroll, sort of thing.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Hey, folks. I'm glad to see that most of these, at least, seem to be fairly well received.

It wouldn't be entirely accurate to say that these were "cut" from Cityscape. When C.A. and I first outlined and wrote the rough drafts of the book, there was a section on alternate class features, and it was indeed cut. However, these class features and those overlap by less than 50%. In the intervening time, my skils as a developer have changed, and I think these are much better than the ones I wrote initially.

As for why we focused just on the nature characters... Well, the others possess class abilities that fit much more smoothly into an urban setting without alteration. We could have included others, but in addition to making the enhancement longer than Bart wanted, a lot of it would have been fairly forced. (I know, because I tried on a few of them.)

I certainly see how druids shifting into objects could come across as silly, but I think it's all in the way you make use of it. I can just as easily see it being fairly creepy and even menacing. And it makes them into fantastic urban scouts and spies.

But hey, if you don't like it, don't use it. That's why I made the point at the start of the article that not every member of these classes who operates in the city makes use of these abilities. Like everything else, they're meant entirely as options.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Incidentally, this is the first of two Cityscape-related web enhancements I've done. Not sure when the next one is going up, but I hope that, between the two of them, they'll address many of the complaints people had about Cityscape being too light on crunch.

 

[Greg K]

Ari,
Great article. Personally, this web enhancement is probably my favorite thing (other than Fiendish Codex I) to come out of WOTC since Unearthed Arcana. If I have any complaint, it is that the abilities were not organized by class, but by name which makes it difficult to quickly find the variants approprite to a given class.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I find the idea of a Druid wildshaping into an Animated Object to be incredibly goofy. Turning into an animated sedan chair, pillar, mailbox or a paving stone just doesn't have the je ne sais quoi.

Obviously you haven't watched Disney's Beauty and the Beast lately- the Beast's servants are terrors against the enraged mob!

I like these a lot. I really like the Go To Ground and Crowd Walker features, actually. The last one reminds me of Hawk and Fisher for some reason. It would be a good feature for a character in that SWAT thread that's somewhere here on the boards.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The last one reminds me of Hawk and Fisher for some reason. It would be a good feature for a character in that SWAT thread that's somewhere here on the boards.

Glad I'm not the only Simon Green fan 'round these parts.

I didn't have H&F in mind specifically when I created any of these class features, but there are certainly worse models to follow when it comes to urban adventuring.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I didn't have H&F in mind specifically when I created any of these class features, but there are certainly worse models to follow when it comes to urban adventuring.

After reading over the Web Enhancement, I'm tempted to try and stat out some of the H&F characters, or do a d20 Haven writeup or something.

 

[The Iron Mark]

Incidentally, this is the first of two Cityscape-related web enhancements I've done. Not sure when the next one is going up, but I hope that, between the two of them, they'll address many of the complaints people had about Cityscape being too light on crunch.

If the second one is as good as this one, I'll be looking forward to it. Your Streetfighter variant for the Barbarian is awesome by the way, strong enough over the default DR that a Barb gets that I as a character optimizer would be very willing to go Barb 20 over some mish mash of Prcs. Who knew that there were more than 2 levels of Barbarian?