Zephyrus Base Class (PFRPG) PDF

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Unleash the fury of the zephyrus base class upon your foes (or upon your players). The zephyrus is a martial class capable of incredible acrobatic feats, from falling safely from extreme heights, to jumping over an entire army to strike down a single foe. The zephyrus can even move at high speeds, rivaling those of the monk, rarely being encumbered by even the heaviest of armors.

The zephyrus is a master of the charge and thus gains various abilities that aid in his charge attacks, from charging through the squares of allies to charging through squares occupied by enemies. The zephyrus is a master of mobile combat.

A new base class brought to you by ARMR Studios.

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An Endzeitgeist.com review

4/5

This base class clocks in at 11 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 3 pages of SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The zephyrus base class has a full BAB, gets d10 HD, 4 + Int modifier skills per level, and sports good Fortitude and Reflex saves. The class gets proficiency with simple weapons as well as all polearms and spears and all armors and shields, excluding tower shields. Being clearly inspired by Final fantasy’s dragoons (if the cover artwork wasn’t ample clue), the class begins play with leaping charge, the option to use a full-round action to charge and inflict +1d8 damage with it, increasing said damage by a further +1d8 at every two levels. This is noted in the class table as well for your convenience. The zephyrus adds class level to Acrobatics and always counts as having a running jump. At 3rd level, when the zephyrus uses the charge action, he may move through the spaces of allies unimpeded; at 5th level, the class gets up to one 90 degree turn while charging; 9th level nets the ability to ignore difficult terrain while charging and 13th level unlocks the ability to charge through the zephyrus opponent’s spaces, though this does provoke AoOs. Starting at 17th level, the charges of the zephyrus no longer provoke AoOs form leaving the square the zephyrus charges from.

At 3rd level, the class reduces armor check penalty by 1 (minimum 0) and increases the maximum Dexterity bonus allowed by the armor by 1, increasing this by a further 1 (properly worded!) for both every 4 levels thereafter. This culminates at 19th level, when the zephyrus reduces armor check penalty to 0, may always use full Dex-mod, and when in light armor or no armor, he gets improved evasion; in heavier armor “just” evasion. Potent, but at 19th level, justified.

Also at third level, we get leap attack, which is a standard action attack versus a foe threatened for +1d8 damage, which increases by a further +1d8 at 7th level and every 4 levels thereafter. This would be as well a place as any to note that this is once more noted in the table (nice) and that both bonus damage abilities come with precise verbiage regarding critical hit interaction. 4th level nets fast charge (+10 ft. speed when running or charging, +5 ft. for every 2 levels thereafter), again, noting the distance on the class table. Starting at 4th level, the class also progressively reduces falling damage incurred. The capstone is cool: When you hit with a leaping charge (that’s the first level charge attack), the foe gets a save (DC 10 +1/2 class level + Strength modifier) and take 20d8 bonus damage on a success (!!). What happens on a failure? Well, to nitpick – it’s not properly stated, but the flavor mentions dying, so yeah…not ideal, but it kinda works. Thankfully, the ability has a witch-caveat that prevents you hitting a target more than once per day with this brutal attack.

The class also sports customization options in the form of lancets. These are somewhat akin to bloodlines and orders in that they provide a set array of tricks that unlocks over the levels. 5 lancets are provided, and each comes with a basic ability: These include free bull rush, dirty trick or trip attempts at -2, +4 to atk instead of +2 when charging, instead gaining a bonus to damage (at a slightly increased AC penalty), swift action Acrobatics after a charge (cool!) or penalty-less leaping charges. Beyond these, the lancets also add ½ class level to skill checks. (Skills have not ben properly capitalized.) Beyond these, each lancet features four ability-progressions: 2nd level nets a bonus feat (not capitalized properly), and the second of these set feats is gained at 10th level. The other abilities are gained at 8th and 15th level. For 8th level abilities, we have e.g. better maneuvers for the maneuver-based lancet 8gets rid of the -2 penalty for the maneuver added to the leaping charge), while another provides a tightly codified cleave-like bonus attack at the cost of AC penalty; better Power Attack charging, taking 10 when using Acrobatics to move to a new position after a charge, getting a dodge bonus – these basically build on the respective lancet themes. Same goes for the 15th level abilities, making the lancets feel like distinct ability-progressions that make sense.

Conclusion:
Editing is good on a formal and rules-language level; on the formatting side, we have quite a few deviations from the standard, but no deal-breakers per se. Layout adheres to the two-column b/w-standard of ARMR Studios, and the pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length. The hand-drawn b/w-artworks are nice.

I’m horribly nostalgic for the old Final Fantasy titles; it’s one of the very few things that manages to tug at my heart’s strings. Heck, I grinded out all of FF V’s jobs, including the mimic. Thus, the zephyrus hits a kind of sweet spot for. The class is not exactly the pinnacle of excitement, and I probably wouldn’t want to play one for a prolonged amount of time, as it’s very much a charge-based class, though one lancet does allow you to be pretty decent at setting up flanks/skirmishing, so that’s a plus. Then again, this class does come as PWYW, and it imho is worth a donation – or, well if you want to make a dragoon NPC (curse the inevitable betrayal!), then this has you covered without requiring much work, so there’s that. Usually, this would be a 2.5 to 3 stars-type of class, but taking the PWYW-nature into account, I will round up from my final verdict of 3.5 stars. It’s worth taking a look to save time.

Endzeitgeist out.


5/5

This one has been making it's rounds on the Paizo forums. For a few days I couldn't see a reference to Final Fantasy's Dragoon job without mention of the Zephyrus. Being free it's not hard to take a look at it and at least judge for yourself but if this is completely off your radar I would suggest checking it out.

Its a full BAB class with good reflex and fortitude saves. It's main class feature is a leaping charge and a leaping attack. Both have scaling d8s for extra damage but one is a full round action charge that deals a lot of extra d8s and one is a standard action that deals less d8s. Of course it gets a lot of jumping and charging class features to help it be more mobile and bouncy. It's High Jump Class feature adds it's level to Acrobatic checks to jump, Tactical Charge lets it charge through allies and difficult terrain and even through enemy spaces. It gets armor training as per the fighter ability. His charge speed scales up to +50ft at lvl 20. It takes less damage from falls.

They also get a bloodline like package called Lancets that allow them a significant skill boost, some bonus feats and some extra abilities abilities based on the Lancet's theme.

Overall, on paper it's a more 'neat' than amazing. Being less than ten pages worth of crunch it feels more lackluster than it could be. With just five Lancets it has room for diversity but overall pretty bland. In play, however, it's pretty fun. it plays out like an ambush diversion tank with the right feats. Close quarters is not as fun due to many of the abilities making you want to move a lot but if you have a lot of enemies that are scattered about you wind up being a pinball of death. Because of it's shortness I don't expect anyone to really give it a second glance but its worth playing at least once and I hope to see more of it since it's a solid class that has a lot of potential. In a previous article I noted that a lot of ARMR free classes were buckets of potential that needed more support. In the Zephyrus' case, more lancets, archetypes and probably some feats would be nice. On it's own the pdf does stand on it's own more other novelty classes I've seen to the point where if I could see it as a class that I'd play more than once. If I had something bad to say, it would be that I think Leaping Charge would need to be more defined, specifically that it being a type of charge I wonder if it lowers AC for a round, whether or not I'd get the bonus to attack rolls or any other benefits from charge related feats. Some of that information I had to extrapolate based on the other abilities the Zephyrus has which was slightly annoying.

For anyone wondering if this adequately represents the Dragoon from the Final Fantasy series; Well it's the closest thing I've seen so far. It jumps and drops a lot of burst damage which is close enough I guess. More importantly it's a simple but solid class that doesn't die at the drop of a hat and is useful as an ambush caster sniper.

So my final verdict would be 4 out of 5 for it being a solid class that grants a new play experience but needs a bit of clarification and some more options to spice it up, but this being free business and that it actually does look like a Final Fantasy Dragoon rounds that up to 5 out of 5.


4/5


Community Manager

Also shiny and free (and welcome ARMR Studios)!


Not bad for a first attempt. Like the FF 'dragoon' feel of the class. The formatting in places is a bit off so you might want to work more on that for next time. Overall pretty solid, though, and can't beat the price point.

Dark Archive

Liz Courts wrote:
Also shiny and free (and welcome ARMR Studios)!

Thank you!

Dark Archive

Aleron wrote:
Not bad for a first attempt. Like the FF 'dragoon' feel of the class. The formatting in places is a bit off so you might want to work more on that for next time. Overall pretty solid, though, and can't beat the price point.

Hey! Thanks so much for the feed back, I will definitely keep this in mind and implement it in my next PDFs!

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Once you have released a few more PDFs, you should consider bundling them all together into a single organized document. I would also suggest making multiple versions with identical content but different prices, that way customers may choose to donate every once-in-a-while.

Dark Archive

Lycanphoenix wrote:
Once you have released a few more PDFs, you should consider bundling them all together into a single organized document. I would also suggest making multiple versions with identical content but different prices, that way customers may choose to donate every once-in-a-while.

I had thought of the bundle before. Thanks for the reminder though! :)

That second suggestion though, I had never though about that! It's an amazing idea. Thanks! I'm definitely doing that! :D


Review is up. You can see it and more over on my blog.

I've said this before but if you compile these classes (or at least the classes I've read thoroughly so far) I would add more options to them. Their chassis aren't bad but I think these classes can easily be much more interesting with some options and I for one would gladly pay money to see that.

Dark Archive

Malwing wrote:

Review is up. You can see it and more over on my blog.

I've said this before but if you compile these classes (or at least the classes I've read thoroughly so far) I would add more options to them. Their chassis aren't bad but I think these classes can easily be much more interesting with some options and I for one would gladly pay money to see that.

Oh wow! Thank you!


Biggest change I would make is turning the half DC part of High Wind Lancets level 10 ability into a base class feature. I think it's odd that the most defining skill of the inspiring material is locked to one lancet.

Make High Wind Lancet further half Vertical jumps so vertical distance=DC.


Always good to see those free stuff out there in the wilds. :)


Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, etc.

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