Showing posts with label classes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classes. Show all posts

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Mail Call!

Look what came in the mail yesterday!


Hardcovers of White Star from +James Spahn, Between Star & Void by +Matthew Skail and a softcover of the B/X Rogue from +Gavin Norman.

They all look great and since they came in at the same time I am thinking a Plays Well With Others is in order.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Class Struggles: B/X Classes

The last few weeks I have been focussing on various classes and it dawns on me that I need something along the lines of a B/X Class Compendium for myself.  Not to publish or anything, but just my own use.   I also have to admit that I have been following (but commenting as much as I would like) +Jonathan Becker's analysis of the Holmes classes and subclasses.  If you have not read it, please do, it is great stuff.  Yeah it might be nostalgia and navel-gazing, but who cares, it is fun stuff.

Like Becker I am a fan of B/X, aka Moldvay/Cook/March era D&D.  So my class choices will be ones that are largely compatible with that.  It's also no big surprise that most of the classes I like also tend to be magic ones.

Lets see what I have.

Witch
Covered many times and many places here.  Yes, I am partial to my own witch, but I am also rather fond of the witches from other designers. While some have this class as a sub-class of the Magic-User but I have the Witch as her own thing.
Warlocks have always been problematic for me.  It was not till I started working on for Pathfinder. I looked a few of these as well.  I am still not 100% certain which is my favorite to be honest.  Maybe the one from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.
But if I am going to have witches and warlocks then I am going to need a witch hunter.  I looked at a few, but I think I will have to go with the one from Jonathan Becker's The Complete B/X Adventurer.

Fighters
I have maybe played two fighters, proper fighters, in the last 36 years.  But I really enjoy rangers and paladins.
Knights/Cavaliers.  I have not covered these guys yet, but I am rather fond of the Castle & Crusades Knights.
Beastmasters. I rather like these guys and my favorite is from The Complete B/X Adventurer.
If I am going to have a paladin then I am going to want an Anti-Paladin. My favorite is the one from the ACKS Player's Companion.

Rogue
Covered yesterday, the B/X Rouge could be a replacement for the normal thief class.  With this class I can make a thief, a bard, an arcane-trickster, or any other thief like class. There some templates though I can look at.
The Bard is of particular interest to me really.  A really good bard would be great.
The Occultist is a class from Fantastic Heroes & Witchery is another rogue-like class that I could build using the rogue.

Magic-Users
I would opt for the Wizard alternate I have in my Witch book.
For Illusionists I am going with the Basic Illusionist  from +Nathan Irving. I think it is the best choice.
For Necromancers there are so many choices, I might have to make my own.

Psionics
For psychic classes, +Richard LeBlanc has me covered with his Basic Psionics Handbook. That gives me a Mystic and a Monk.

Clerics
I have always been fond of clerics. They were the first class I ever played.  I would keep them as is, with the additional rule that they can use the same weapon as their god.
I will also keep Druids and add in a Healer class I made back in the early 80s.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Review: The B/X Rogue

I love new B/X classes. If I have demonstrated nothing else here it is that.  So when +Gavin Norman of the excellent City of Iron blog and Necrotic Gnome Productions came out with a new B/X class, well I had to get it.
Gavin has already given us some great classes in his Theorems & Thaumaturgy and The Complete Vivimancer. Now he takes on the thief archetype in The B/X Rogue.

I say archetype because what this book tries (and succeeds, but more on that in a bit) to do is create a Rogue class that encompasses all of the various "sub-classes" we have seen on the thief over the years.  How he does it is both very elegant and very, very basic, if not Basic.

Like the thief the rogue has a number of talents at his/her disposal.  Instead of a percentile (or d20) roll the rogue is assumed to be fully proficient in their talent.  The differences lie in the choice of talents and some of the talents themselves.  The example given is the iconic Remove Traps.  If a rogue has this at 1st level then they can remove or disable a trap 100% of the time.  However the types of traps are now changed.  The rogue can only disable small mechanical traps. Not huge pits in the floor.

The rogue class begins with 4 talents. This increases by 1 per level.  Some talents have prerequisites and can only be taken at 5th level (Expert Talents, love the split of Basic and Expert Talents here).  Outside of that the class it remarkably like the B/X thief.  

The bulk of the book describe the 36 talents a rogue might take.  This allows for near infinite (or close enough for the amount of character sheets I'll print out) rogue types.  There are even magical talents for the Bards and Arcane Tricksters out there. Of course I immediately went to the magic section and quickly figured out an Occult Scholar, a rogue that raids tombs and libraries for bits of arcane knowledge and some spells to help them out. Won't help you when you need an orc killed, unless he has a scroll for it.

There is also a very useful table to help you with your archetypes.  Want an assassin? Great, take back-stab, hide, garotte, move quietly at 1st level.  There are 10 of these, so a d10 will also get you up and going fast.  Don't want a magic-one? Easy. Roll a d8 instead.

The PDF itself is 26 pages; a front cover, a back cover and two page OGL, all for a $1.50.  Not a bad deal at all really, especially when consider how flexible this class is now.

If you are a fan of the thief class, B/X or Gavin's other classes then this is a must buy.

Plays Well With Others
With the options of adding magic to the Rogue to come up with other classes (Bards, Dabbler's and Arcane Tricksters) you can add other powers to make even more classes.

Grab +Richard LeBlanc's Basic Psionics Handbook and use some of the wild talents for rogue talents to create a Psychic Dabbler or a Charlantan with some actual clairvoyance.

Take the Arcanve Dabbler and replace the magic-user spell at 1st level with a witch spell and then a minor or least occult power at 5th level and now you have a Hedge Witch.

I could go on and on, but for cheaper than a 20 oz Mt. Dew at the gas station you can have this book and make up your own!

I can see this replacing the thief in my B/X games easily.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Demon Hunter Class for AA (and C&C)


Just in time for Halloween (but I just found it now) Jason Vey has put out a new Demon Hunter class for his SIEGE Engine Amazing Adventures RPG.

http://bit.ly/aafreeclass

While designed for the Pulp-era adventures of Amazing Adventures this class also would work fantastic with Castles and Crusades.

The class is much more "Buffy" than it is "Solomon Kane" but you could do either with it.  Mostly though it reminds me of John Gregory, the Spook, from the "Last Apprentice" book series.

It compares well to the Paladin really, except it doesn't have healing, spells or a special mount. It does have supernatural senses and a special weapon.

Just another reminder that I need to play more Castles & Crusades.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

What Will the Great Pumpkin Bring You?

Still buried in projects include my day job.

But I always get myself something gaming related for Halloween.  Not sure what I am getting myself this year, I got a lot of really cool books at Gen Con that I have barely cracked open.

One thing that has me interested in The Demonolater from +Joseph Bloch.
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2015/10/31-days-of-halloween-dark-offering.html

His Darker Paths books for the Witch and the Necromancer were a lot of fun and I expect this to be the same.

What are you looking forward to?

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Class Struggles: The Occultist & Skylla

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery has crazy number of classes. There were  so many to choose from and this is even given the fact that there is no "cleric" class to speak of.    I wanted to address this and talk about the Wiseman/Wisewoman and maybe I still will, later down the road.  But today I want to focus on the Occultist.

The Occultist is a magic-using character that ends up having a lot of dealings with various fiendish creatures.  The class is one of the "Weird Tales" era classes presented in the book, but there is no reason it could not be used with other dungeon crawling types of classes.  It is not the strongest character on the block and it's spell selection and use is a little limited, but it has some nice features.

To begin with the Occultist will be the undeniable expert on anything fiendish.  Demons, Devils, whatever your world has, they will know about it.  They can add their level to any skill check involving demonic/fiendish lore.  This applies to any skill. The example given are survival checks when crossing a hellish-plane or a charisma check when dealing with demons.  Not too shabby really.
At third level then even get secret knowledge of the demon slayers to aid them.
As the occultist gets higher levels they can even banish a demonic creature al together. Much like a cleric turning undead.

But all of this comes at a price.  The occultist is tainted by corruption.   The abyss staring back at you.
As they earn higher levels they have to make a Wisdom save vs. corruption or move closer and closer to chaos.  A nice idea really.

Occultists learn spells from books or other occultists.  But unlike wizards they do not have a number of spells per level they know, but rather a total number of spells and the highest level they can learn.  So a 7th level Occultist knows 7 spells and the maximum spell level of 4th.  Of those seven spells all can be 1st level or some other mix. It depends what the occultist can find in their travels.
Personally I would modify that up based on Intelligence, but that is me. The Occultist uses "Black Magic" spells, but I wonder if starting occultists could get away with using Grey magic too.  At least until they fail more saves and become chaotic.

In many ways this spell casting system is the same as what you see in the Witch from The Complete B/X Adventurer.  There are in fact many similarities in tone and the manner in which they get spells.  I can see some overlap in these classes.


Which gives me an idea.

Skylla, 7th Level Occultist

Strength: 9
Dexterity: 11
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 13

Hit Points:  20 (d4)
Alignment: Chaotic
AC: 4 (Ring of Protection +1)

Special Abilities
1st: Dark Lore (+7 to fiend-based/related skill checks)
3rd: Secret knowledge of demonslayers
6th: banish fiend 1/day

Spells
Maximum Spell Level: 3rd
Number of Spells known: 6
1st Level: Read Magic, Cause Fear, Chill Touch, Find Familar
2nd Level: Black Lightning
3rd Level:  Bestow Curse

Not bad, I only gave her the minimum spells, but she would likely have more secreted away in a tome for later learning.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day: Multiclassing




For this Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day I want to put out something I have been playing around with.

For the record I am using the Swords & Wizardry Complete Rulebook from Frog God Games.

Swords & Wizardry Multiclassing

I LOVE the old school games. B/X, AD&D, BECMI, and the clones.  But the one thing I always felt 3.x Edition did better than any other edition, past or future, was multiclassing.  The rules were easy, you could multiclass into a lot of great combinations to get that character concept you really wanted.
With many of the OSR games (original and clone) the multiclassing rules were less than optimal in my mind.

So I wanted to bring 3e style multiclassing to the clone world. The biggest issue with doing this though is 3e made the classed more alike in terms of advancement.  Now people will complain that this attempt at game balance "ruined" the class's uniqueness. I say rubbish.  So the classes are bit more balanced than before, that's not a bug, it's a feature.  I was looking over SW and I realized I could do what I wanted easily.

Swords & Wizardry classes are largely like 3e ones now.  The unified Save and Ascending AC make saves and to hits much easier to deal with.  I just need to see if something like this is feasible.

So I dumped it all into Google Sheets. Which I am sharing below.



The tabs are where I worked out median XP vaules, base to hit and base saving throws.
The final analysis is on tab SW Level Advancement.

So like 3e, this has all the classes  use the same level advancement table.  Base Saving Throw is based on Character Level (not Class Level).  Classes then add what ever bonuses they need.
Now if you are adding things up in your head you can see a problem right now.  Take a level of Ranger and improve your total saves.  I thought about that.  My solution is not elegant, but it works.  I will get to that in a moment.

So how does it all work?  Simple you take a class just like you do in SW when you get enough XP to level up you can keep going in that class and get the advantages listed for that class you you can take another class.  Your hit points are determined by your Class Levels.  Saves are based on Character Levels.

So if you are a Fighter 3/Magic-User 2 you have at least 16,000xp, your Base Save is 11.
Your hit points are 3d8 + 2d4 + Constitution Modifier x 5 (class level).
With these rules this character can still use a sword and cast spells.  He can't wear armor since that is a restriction of the Magic-user class.

There are a couple of logical next steps here.

First this opens up a wide variety of choices for demi-human characters.  Keep level caps if you like, but I think there are not enough game-design reasons to do this.  If you want to "balance" things out give humans +1 on any two ability scores of their choice and +1 on saves.  Call it Human Resilience.

The other logical leap is this would allow Prestige Classes in SW.

Prestige Classes in Swords & Wizardry

Here is an example of the Loremaster.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClasses/loremaster.htm

Requirements
To qualify to become a loremaster, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Skills
Knowledge (any two) 10 ranks in each.

Feats
Any three metamagic or item creation feats, plus Skill Focus (Knowledge [any individual Knowledge skill]).

Spells
Able to cast seven different divination spells, one of which must be 3rd level or higher.

These would have to change to something more fitting to S&W.

Requirements
To qualify to become a loremaster, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Character Level: 6th
Intelligence Score of 16 or higher.
Wisdom Score of 14 or higher.
The ability to cast five different divination spells, one of which must be 3rd level or higher.

Loremaster
Level Attack  Special Spells
1 +0 Secret Add additional level of previous spellcasting class 
2 +0 Lore Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
3 +1 Secret Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
4 +1 Bonus Language      Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
5 +2 Secret Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
6 +2 Greater Lore Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
7 +3 Secret Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
8 +3 Bonus Language Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
9 +4 Secret Add additional level of previous spellcasting class
10 +5 True Lore Add additional level of previous spellcasting class

Saving throws are based on Character Level, not Class Level.
Level is obvious.  Attack just adds to the attacks as the base class (like Cleric or Magic-User).  Spells are also obvious, keep advancing in spells as you normally would.

The Special will need some work.

From the SRD:
Class Features
All of the following are Class Features of the loremaster prestige class.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Loremasters gain no proficiency with any weapon or armor.

Spells per Day/Spells Known
When a new loremaster level is gained, the character gains new spells per day (and spells known, if applicable) as if she had also gained a level in a spellcasting class she belonged to before she added the prestige class. She does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained. This essentially means that she adds the level of loremaster to the level of some other spellcasting class the character has, then determines spells per day, spells known, and caster level accordingly.

Secret
At 1st level and every two levels higher than 1st (3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th), the loremaster chooses one secret from the table below. Her loremaster level plus Intelligence modifier determines the secrets from which she can choose. She can’t choose the same secret twice.

Loremaster Secrets
Level +Int Modifier Secret Effect
1 Instant mastery 4 ranks of a skill in which the character has no ranks
2 Secret health +3 hit points
3 Secrets of inner strength +2 bonus on Will saves
4 The lore of true stamina +2 bonus on Fortitude saves
5 Secret knowledge of avoidance +2 bonus on Reflex saves
6 Weapon trick +1 bonus on attack rolls
7 Dodge trick +1 dodge bonus to AC
8 Applicable knowledge Any one feat
9 Newfound arcana 1 bonus 1st-level spell
10 More newfound arcana 1 bonus 2nd-level spell

Lore
At 2nd level, a loremaster gains the ability to know legends or information regarding various topics, just as a bard can with bardic knowledge. The loremaster adds her level and her Intelligence modifier to the lore check, which functions otherwise exactly like a bardic knowledge check.

Bonus Languages
A loremaster can choose any new language at 4th and 8th level.

Greater Lore (Ex)
At 6th level, a loremaster gains the ability to understand magic items, as with the identify spell.

True Lore (Ex)
At 10th level, once per day a loremaster can use her knowledge to gain the effect of a legend lore spell or an analyze dweomer spell.

So items in red need to be redone.  In order:
+4 to any check involving Intelligence on a previously unknown topic.
+2 on Saving throws vs. Mind control, ESP and Charm.
+2 on Saving throws vs. Petrify or Polymorph
+2 on Saving throws vs. moving out of the way.
Applicable Knowledge = Something like Secondary Skills.

Each prestige class would require some tweaking.  But at least now there is a place for them in S&W.

Earlier I mentioned the Ranger and Paladin are a bit too much (despite the fact that the median XP per level is the same as the Paladins).  My solution is make them Prestige Classes.

You would have to be a fighter first before moving into the vocation of Paladin or Ranger.  There is some precedent for this in Rules Cyclopedia and even Unearthed Aracana.

It would take some cleaning up, but I think this is a solid system.  It would still have the same feel as S&W while giving you the flexibility of 3e.

What do you all think?