This is a character I've been working on. I haven't gotten a chance to playtest him yet, but he is kind of weird, so I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions or criticisms before I took him into an actual game.
Kilazar
Male Orc Wizard
SKILLS
Strength d12 □+1 □+2 □+3 □+4
Melee: Strength + 1
Dexterity d6 □+1 □+2
Constitution d8 □+1 □+2 □+3
Fortitude: Constitution + 3
Intelligence d6 □+1 □+2 □+3 □+4
Arcane: Intelligence + 2
Knowledge: Intelligence + 2
Wisdom d4 □+1
Charisma d4 □+1
POWERS
Hand Size 6 □ 7 □ 8
PROFICIENT WITH Light Armors
When you play a spell with the attack trait during combat, you may add your Strength Die (□ +1) (□ +2) to the check.
When you would incur a penalty for lacking weapon proficiency, you may banish the card at the end of the turn instead.
CARD LIST FAVORED CARD TYPE: SPELL
Weapon -
Spell 6 □ 7 □ 8 □ 9
Armor 3 □ 4 □ 5
Item 1 □ 2
Ally 1 □ 2 □ 3
Blessing 4 □ 5 □ 6
ROLES
Kilazar (Swordslinger)
Hand Size 6 □ 7 □ 8 □ 9
PROFICIENT WITH Light Armors □ Heavy armors □ Weapons
When you play a spell with the attack trait during combat, you may add your Strength Die (□ +1) (□ +2) to the check.
When you would incur a penalty for lacking weapon proficiency, you may banish the card at the end of the turn instead. (□ If you play a weapon during a combat and would not incur a penalty, gain a +2 on the check).
When rebuilding your deck, you may keep up to 4 weapons in place of an equal number of spells.
When playing a weapon during combat, you may discard the weapon to add the Attack trait (□ and Magic trait) and your Arcane Skill (□+1) to the check.
During your move step, you may bury (□ discard) a spell to recharge 1 (□2) random weapons from your discard pile.
Kilazar (Punchmancer)
Hand Size 6 □ 7 □ 8
PROFICIENT WITH Light Armors □ Heavy armors
When you play a spell with the attack trait during combat, you may add your Strength Skill (□+1) (□+2) (□+3) (□+4) to the check.
When you would incur a penalty for lacking weapon proficiency, you may banish the card at the end of the turn instead.
□ Gain the skill Arcane: Strength + 3 (□ You may use your Arcane skill in place of a combat or non-combat Melee check. □ This check gains the magic trait.)
□ You may recharge a spell to add the adventure deck number to a combat check. (□ You may also play another spell on this check)
Is this character meant for Runelords, S&S, or Wrath? Just looking at his stats and powers, he will overkill everything in Runelords (and probably S&S).
I haven't played Wrath but I know it requires bigger numbers, so this might be kosher for it, I dunno.
SWORDSLINGER: I think it's cool that you can share spell slots with weapons, and it's an interesting way to get around the Deck List limitations, but it feels like a core ability (and theme) of the character, but he doesn't get it until halfway through the campaign?
Also, there doesn't seem to be any balance with spells in this class. None of the new abilities support spell usage, so I don't see a reason to not just completely replace all your spells with weapons.
For the last power, why the Move step and not just "start of your turn"? Sounds arbitrary at first glance.
PUNCHMANCER (this name...lol): Doubling up on the same subskill feels like it would break something. In my gut. Not sure what though. Especially since it's not temporary like the Melee Dex fighters in S&S.
The last one, I do like the Veteran ability. I've been trying to find a way to make it useful for characters as well. The problem is that while +4 in AD4 (and +6 in AD6) is nice, I'd probably prefer a 1d4+2 over that or something to be honest. And, again, you could probably get away with this in Runelords, but I'm not sure it's all that helpful in Wrath.
PS: You're also missing a bunch of skill checks in the advanced classes. Should have 4 base and roughly 8 advanced for 12 total.
Overall, I like the idea of a magical fisticuffs fighter, like a Strength version of most RPG Monks. It seems like a bit crude though and still in its early stages. Polish it up a bit, tweak the scaling, balance the advanced role a bit, and it could be pretty cool.
I was definitely aiming more toward Wrath. I was having trouble thinking of interesting things to do with the role powers that wouldn't take too much text, so I defaulted a lot to adding numbers. I'll be trying to think of some ways to get rid of some of the numbers and turn them into more interesting things.
The Move step was just an arbitrary way to limit to once a turn. I think I'd read a power that used the move step recently, so it was fresh in my head. The beginning of the turn probably makes more sense :p
Wasn't sure about the same subskill breaking something. My thought was that you'd just choose a skill to roll.
I don't think I'm missing skill checks? You're talking about the Role Power checks, right? There are 12 for each role (including the ones for proficiencies and powers that require initial buy in). I'll definitely be reworking them, though.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll start reworking some of this into it tomorrow.
Wow, this is a cool idea. I hope I can help you balance out some of his features so you will have even more fun playing him.
First off, the skills: He has just a 40 if you add up the dice, so you might want to get that Intelligence die up to a d8 (would make the most sense in my opinion). For a wizard he sure has a lot of secondary skills and bonuses, so maybe you could reduce the Fortitude a little (or did you want to balance that out with him having worse dice than he could have?).
The card list seems fine to me. Favored card spell is the only thing that makes sense for this character. He has quite a number of armors, but I guess that'S okay.
His first power is in my opinion waaay too powerful. I mean, consider that Crowe has to bury a card just to get a d10 for his checks. You not want to add a d12 for nothing but playing an attack spell... Have you ever considered making him cast his spells from Strength instead of Intelligence from the start? Because the way it is he is, he can use d6+2 + d12 + 2 d4 on every combat check, which is actually kind of in line with what Balazar does when he puts a card on top of his deck and banishes monsters, but the costs are higher in that case. I think this needs some thoughts, because even in Wrath this power is too good.
The second power could need some rewording. Something along the lines of: "If you play a weapon, you may gain proficiency with weapons for the rest of the encounter. Banish the weapon after the encounter." But it's a fun idea, I like that power a lot.
Overall you see that his base card is very combat-heavy, but I guess that is what you were going for.
The Swordslingers powers seem very interesting, especially the one that lets you keep weapons instead of spells (even though with the current incarnation of your first power I don't know why you would use it as you get your Strength die on Arcane spells anyways, so they should be a lot stronger than weapons. And I think with the weapon-healing power you could just go straight to discard a spell to recharge a random weapon. Burying doesn't seem necessary here.
As for the Punchmancer, I don't think having arcane on 2 different skills is a problem here. You could however state that it would replace your current arcane skill, but that'S up to you.
His last power is cool. I think the ADN is a good way to increase its power without having to spend to many power feats on it. The last part however ("You may also play another spell on this check") is unnecessary, as you never actually played a spell so far. You just recharged one for your power. You can play another spell anyway.
I hope this helps, really looking forward to eventual changes you (may) make.
The core concept here was that I wanted to make a conflicted character: one that was really good at being a fighter but didn't want to be a fighter. He wanted to be a wizard. That's why all his stats were meant to be very fighter-y, and why I wanted his skill spread to be more fighter than wizard. His roles were meant to be him learning to merge his natural talents with the thing that he wanted to do: cast spells.
I was trying to balance his stats accordingly (40 dice only to account for him having so many secondary skills). I don't think it quite works. He originally had 38 dice with a d4 in Int, making it impossible to recharge most spells without a blessing, and that was supposed to balance the absurd power of adding a strength die, but then not having spells for most of the game seemed too punishing to the player. I increased it to d6, but didn't rebalance the power.
You're right that the numbers and balance are way off right now. I'm going to go do some major revisions :p
EDIT: Okay, second try. I feel like the Punchmancer is still floundering a little bit, especially since he's supposed to be the spellcasting half but is stuck with the initial skill feats based on weapons.
Is there any prior art for changing a basic power feat once you get to a role? I feel like just discarding the weapon for weapon proficiency is a little OP for the base character, but a necessary part of the Swordslinger build.
Kilazar
Male Orc Wizard
SKILLS
Strength d12 □+1 □+2 □+3 □+4
Melee: Strength + 2
Dexterity d8 □+1 □+2
Constitution d8 □+1
Fortitude: Constitution + 3
Intelligence d6 □+1 □+2 □+3 □+4
Arcane: Intelligence + 1
Wisdom d4 □+1 □+2 □+3
Charisma d4 □+1
POWERS
Hand Size 6 □ 7 □ 8
PROFICIENT WITH Light Armors
When rebuilding your deck, you may keep a number of weapons equal to the adventure deck number (□+1) in place of an equal number of spells.
If you play a weapon, you may gain proficiency with weapons for the rest of the encounter. Bury (□ discard) the weapon after the encounter.
CARD LIST FAVORED CARD TYPE: SPELL
Weapon -
Spell 6 □ 7 □ 8 □ 9
Armor 1 □ 2
Item 2 □ 3 □ 4
Ally 1 □ 2 □ 3
Blessing 5 □ 6 □ 7
ROLES
Kilazar (Swordslinger)
Hand Size 6 □ 7 □ 8 □ 9
PROFICIENT WITH Light Armors □ Heavy armors
When rebuilding your deck, you may keep a number of weapons up to the adventure deck number (□+1) (□+2) in place of an equal number of spells.
If you play a weapon, you may gain proficiency with weapons for the rest of the encounter. Bury (□ discard) the weapon after the encounter.
□ When playing a weapon during combat, you may add the Attack and Magic traits (□ and your Arcane die) to the check.
□ You may reveal a weapon to add 1d8 to the combat check of a character at another location; afterward, place that weapon on top of that character’s location deck (□ or on top of that character’s deck).
At the beginning of your turn, you may discard a spell to recharge 1 (□2) random weapons from your discard pile.
Kilazar (Punchmancer)
Hand Size 6 □ 7 □ 8
PROFICIENT WITH Light Armors □ Heavy armors
When rebuilding your deck, you may keep a number of weapons up to the adventure deck number (□+1) in place of an equal number of spells.
If you play a weapon, you may gain proficiency with weapons for the rest of the encounter. Bury (□ discard) the weapon after the encounter.
□ When you play a spell with the attack trait during combat, you may discard ( □ recharge) a weapon to add your Strength die to the check.
□ Replace the skill Arcane: Intelligence + 1 with Arcane: Strength + 3 (□ You may use your Arcane skill in place of a combat or non-combat Melee check) ( □ Checks made with your Arcane skill gain the attack and magic traits.)
You may bury a weapon to add 1d6 (□+1) ( □+2) to a non-combat check.
Nice changes. The advanced roles feel a lot more focused and thematically cohesive. I really like that the roles have basically the same power but reversed skills.
swordslinger, the last power is great. it gives a reason to keep at the very least 1 spell (if not more). i know this role is more weapon focused but its good that it doesnt completely remove the magical aspect of the char. however, i'm confused about the grammar and wording on the 4th power. whose weapon is getting removed from hand? kilazar or the char doing combat?
punchmancer, good improvements. but being able to use arcane: strength for non-combat melee checks may be a bit too much. his strength is d12 (probably with +'s) so i dont think non-combat melee checks would be a problem that he needs help anyway, especially since the 5th power covers that already. but if you think it gels with the char, go for it.
overall the advanced classes are huge improvements. this seems to be at the cost of the base class a bit though. burying your only weapon (in AD1) after use, he'll probably struggle a lot, but hey, we dont want to make these characters too powerful, right? struggling will add some fun and intensity, and it pays off with great advanced roles.