Broken Zenith |
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Superhero Classes - Superhuman, Animalman and Telepath
Hello Everyone,
Zenith Games has more classes coming at you, but first they need some playtesting! These three are superhero classes, and that means a few things.
Superhero classes are played just like any other class in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. They have the same relative power as the other classes, and are designed to fit easily beside them. A party might consist of a wizard, rogue, and superhuman, or perhaps a paladin, alchemist, and telepath. Or, a party may decide to try their luck as Troll-man, Ooze-man, and Bat-man, or even recreate their favorite crime fighting teams from popular fiction.
1: Ability Score Increases: Much of a superhero’s power comes from intrinsic capabilities. Superheroes gain strange and terrifying powers, but they also develop basic abilities to the highest levels. Superheroes gain bonuses to their ability scores as they increase in level, usually +3 to three abilities scores by 20th level. Given that the increases are distributed over three ability scores, these bonuses cannot be game breaking. Compare these increases with the barbarian, who gains a +8 bonus to Strength and Constitution when raging by 20th level.
2: Natural Power: Superheroes draw from the same force as the gods and mystical beasts. Theirs is a natural power, a perfection of mental and physical form that comes with practice, reflection and luck of the draw. As such, most superhero powers are extraordinary abilities or supernatural abilities. Very few superhero powers are spell-like abilities or spells themselves.
3: Permanent Abilities: A superhero’s capabilities are not limited by fatigue. He does not need to recharge his superpowers, nor does he need to rest to recover strength. A superhero either has a power, or he does not – with few exceptions, a superhero cannot run out of an ability, and may use everything at his disposal freely throughout the day. This aspect of superheroics allows for the early permenant receipt of unusual abilities, but at very weak levels. For example, a superhero may gain flight at level 2, but he will only have a fly speed of 5 feet and a maneuverability of clumsy (which will, of course, improve over time). A superhero can even gain fast healing, though fast healing 1 by level 8 and fast healing 2 by level 18 isn’t going to be game breaking by any means.
The three classes I have for you today are the Superhuman, Animalman and Telepath
Superhuman (think Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel): It’s a bird, it’s a dragon, it’s a superhuman! Faster than a speeding arrow, more powerful than a rampaging troll, capable of leaping tall castles in a single bound! The superhuman is everything that most adventurers aspire to be – strong, fast, and stalwart, a man or woman with the powers of a god. Superhumans are known for powerful grace. Whether descending from the clouds, healing from fatal wounds, or seeing through solid stone, superhumans make even the impossible seem easy.
Role: Superhumans are powerful and hearty. They belong in the thick of combat where they can put their physical might to the test. Many superhumans make also excellent scouts, combining super movement such as flight with super senses such as x-ray vision.
Animalman (Think Batman, Spiderman, Antman, Wolverine/Trollman):There is much inspiration to be found in nature. From the bat, to the spider, to the ooze, the animalman believes that power can be drawn from all creatures, no matter how large or how small. Humans and their kin are, after all, relatively weak next to the wonders of the animal kingdom. What is an opposable thumb compared with the regenerative power of the troll or the furnace of a dragon’s breath? All animalmen choose a single animal to serve as their guide and muse. As animalmen grow in strength, they gain the abilities of the creature they model.
Role: An animalman’s role in an adventuring party mimics his animal’s role in nature. While many act as front line combatants, others rely on speed, guile, or sheer invulnerability to achieve their goals.
Telepath (Think Professor X, Jean Grey, Emma Frost): A strong mind is the only weapon a telepath needs, and she wields it fiercely. She leverages her intellect to make attacks from afar, shove her opponents or physically lift them into the air and throw them. She uses her wisdom to protect herself, with mental armor and telepathically enhanced constitution. She uses her force of will to influence her enemies, charming, stunning, or dominating them as the situation merits. The telepath is a multifaceted superhuman, an adventurer who knows that the mind is mightier than the sword.
Role: The telepath contributes in martial combat, subterfuge, and wars of will. She hones her mind into a weapon to deal physical damage or mentally overpower her enemies.
Take a look! Make comments! Hold nothing back!
Malwing |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My imediate thoughts:
I like the simplicity and also the rate of design space for expansion. I can definitely get behind the design and structure because the lack of frills makes for less risk but better versatility.
I will say that my interest in these classes is mostly founded on Legendary Game's/Mike Myler's Hypercorp 2099 finally coming out and these make for interesting additions to pre-hyperscore classes like their class the Veloces.
As for criticism, I feel like the paragon class features are kind of awkward. For one thing they end at odd numbers and is kind of small for a late level boost. I think it would still be fair if they tiered at +2,+4 and +6 by the end of it instead of +3 across the board, and it also leaves room for some of these things to be replaced for archetypes. Right now I just feel like these may as well be dead levels and if they go up by one point at a time I'd rather see it come with some kind of power that represents an increase in the stat other than what you get from just ability score increases because no matter how much your ability scores go up there's a lot of limitations to what you can do because of how the game works and you don't really feel 'super' unless you have class features involved.
Between Psionics, Spheres of Power, and Occult Adventures I'm not sure if I really care that the Telepath exists. That may not be relevant given that most of the examples are other third party things but even with just the Occult classes you I think the concept is kind of well tread. I am somewhat biased because my collection of products has way too many classes and redundancy becomes and issue but I think that Dreamscarred Press' psionics is widespread enough to take into consideration when applying concepts like telepaths to either make things consistent with them or do something drastically new, and I don't think the telepath is mechanically 'new' enough.
Malwing |
Thanks for the thoughts Malwing! Quick question regarding the telepath - what's the other classes that do ranged attacks/combat maneuvers, pick up enemies, and do the whole mind control bit? You have a better sense of 3PP stuff than I do.
From what I can remember, a greater chunk of the psionic classes, particularly Psions and Tacticians, can do varying levels of telekinesis against creatures and mind control.
Spheres of Power has means of going for both from first level, particularly with the Eliciter but really any of the classes that use spheres can focus on it by having the Mind and Telekinesis spheres.
It Came From the Stars has the a class called the Starseed that specifically fits the bill of ranged combat maneuvers and has some level of mind control.
Paizo has Psychics that have access to the Telekinesis and Domimate Person with varying levels of similar effects below that.
wynterknight |
Hot damn, I love superheroes.
I think the Superhuman looks pretty good. The only problem I immediately have with it is: Why would anyone ever choose Wallcrawl over Flight? If Wallcrawl advanced faster or provided additional benefits (bonuses to grapple/disarm? i have no idea) I could maybe see it, but as it is, it seems like a no brainer. I would imagine most people really excited about wall-crawling would be more interested in the animal-themed characters, anyway.
The Animalman looks pretty good, but I'd prefer it if instead of a set progression of animal powers, each aspect had a specific suite of abilities it could choose from (like the oracle or kineticist), so you could take different abilities at different times depending on how you saw your character. Like for instance with the birdman, 18th level is a ridiculously long time to wait for Flyby Attack. Also bonus feats seem kind of crappy compared to the awesome stuff other aspects get that can't be duplicated by feats. If you did want to provide bonus feats, I'd want to see something akin to the "aerial maneuverability" ability or something, maybe granting Hover when you first take the ability, and then Wingover at 7th level and Flyby Attack at 14th level or something. (That's a lot of feats and this is totally just spitballing, so take that with a grain of salt.)
Also, I'd personally amp up the natural attack aspect of the class; as written it's a lot better for all of them to use manufactured weapons than their fists or claws, which is somewhat counterintuitive
and disappointing--and what if I want my antguy or batlady to bite people, or my birddude to slash people with his beak and talons? I feel like those should be easier options to get. And random aside, but why do beastmen get gore if they're based on cats/wolves/bears?
And finally, with the Telepath, I love love love psychic characters, but the specificity of the abilities you get here really turns me off. Each of the other classes has a lot of customization, but everything here is preset, and missing all sorts of options I'd like. What about the ability to detect emotions (like the 100% ogl empathy psionic power)? Why can't the telepath charm animals or monsters until level 20? No memory modification, no illusions, no suggestion? And no useful telekinetic abilities? Flight, the ability to use telekinesis for delicate manipulation, the ability to telekinetically fastball special your bruiser at the badguys, no combat maneuvers at a distance? (Also, I think you missed something with telekinetic throwing damage--you say damage is based on size, but then you say damage is always 1d4/level no matter the size of the object. Which is it?)
Edit: Oops, did you want comments on the Google doc itself? I hate doing that. I hope you don't mind comments here.
Broken Zenith |
Good stuff wynterknight! Thanks for all the comments. Definitely going to add in some customization to the telepath (though, FYI, the telepath does get delicate manipulation and combat maneuvers from a distance - and I guess the ability to throw your bruiser at badguys, provided he is small and doesn't mind a hard landing).
I'm not sure about being liberal with natural attacks for the animal man folks. For the most part spiderman, batman, antman - these guys use unarmed strikes instead of growing claws or biting people.
Birdman definitely needs something thought ... I just am not sure what.
wynterknight |
Oops, I somehow missed Kinetic Combat, sorry.
As for the animal people, you don't see Spider-Man or Batman talking to animals, either :p But also, I don't see anything actually encouraging them to use unarmed strikes instead of swords/axes/warhammers/whatever. Their unarmed strike damage is just 1d3 plus their Strength modifier (or 1 1/2 times their Strength modifier, later), which is not good. (Same holds for the Superhumans, for that matter.) Unless I'm missing something?
As for bird heroes, some ideas might be: Early access to Flyby Attack (treating it like Spring Attack, so avoiding AoOs), Bonuses to vision/Perception and/or ranged attacks, Evasion/Improved Evasion, Wing attacks, Flying charge attacks with increased speed/damage/pounce maybe? My only real references for bird-based superheroes are Hawkman/girl, Swift, Angel, and Beak, so I'm kind of reaching here.
Malwing |
Ah, okay cool. Piazo's Psychic is a full caster, and would play very different from the somewhat martial telepath. As long as I'm not stepping on Paizo's toes, I'm set (I can't speak to the 3PPs).
Thanks for everybody making comments on the google doc!
I probably wouldn't worry about the Starseed that much, although its closer in concept, and maybe the Spheres of Power options can be ignored but Dreamscarred Press' psionic classes are kind of hard to ignore because it's pretty prevalent among the third party crowd. The class has like a 80 to 90 percent chance of getting crowded out at tables. Especially since with just the purchase of Ultimate Psionics you have ten different flavors of the concept of telepath/telekinetic that permeates into concepts past that along with psionic options for each of those class as well as Paizo's classes.
Right now the Telepath concept in the link covers Mage Hand level telekinesis, a blast, a set of charm spells that I'm not completely comfortable being at-will, and assorted telekinesis tricks. Its not that terribly different from a Psychic in basic function except that it has higher BAB (I'm not too big on it having 3/4 BAB but a d6 hit die by the way) and a series of at-will abilities instead of a spell list and the spell list is limited and locked. So it is less of a martial telepath and more of a less diverse caster.
Speaking of stepping on toes, I think you could benefit from having an artificer of some sort. It seems kind of staggered to have two physical super classes and one mental one that covers conceptual ground (and since you're using spells to express the abilities, mechanical ground as well) that already exists. Having some kind of artificer that can macguyver the effects of magic items would cover your types of superheroes that have some sort of signature artifact or technical expertise, a la Iron Man or Green Lantern. Its related to stepping on toes because there are a lot of third party attempts to produce a kind of artificer, but there's always room for the concept because the mechanical makeup is actually pretty diverse and the best ones are more steampunk or scifi oriented when you could really produce a genre agnostic version.
I agree with everyone else that Super Strike is fairly lackluster. There's no incentive to do much with it. At the very least I'd make it function as a free Vital Strike tree with the option to add things to it like free bull rushes on the target of the attack, effective reach by punching one guy into another, an area effect by creating sonic booms from the impact and so on.
I have a suggestion for the paragon class features. What if you could free float six +2s and each +2 unlocked a new ability depending on what ability score you put it in. That way you can either gain superhuman abilities in one area or get mostly superhuman abilities in a diverse range. For example, say Strength granted you a new ability for each +2 put into it. For one you get some rock throw ability, for two your size category increases for the purposes of weapons and Combat Maneuvers, for three you get significant bonuses to skill checks involving strength. (Not specifically those abilities, just setting up a quick example.) Meanwhile Dex gives you different things and Con gives you something else. The tiers of abilities can go up to six so you can put it all in Str, Dex, or Con or diversify. You can do the same with the mental paragon thing.
Broken Zenith |
Thanks for the thoughts. Some sort of exoskeleton guy will definitely make it into the next installment, though I'm trying to keep it at 3 classes per product for now (a worthy amount for $3 anyway).
Telepath is definitely going to get some additional mental options, but I see the class at least as much about punching/tripping/throwing people with her mind as charming them (she does get full BAB and increasing damage die for telekinetic strike after all). I'll try to make this more clear in the fluff. So she should be viewed as a somebody who dips into ranged martial, blasting, and casting each. Moral of the story, I need to make that more clear if that's not coming across.
Yeah, I'm going to give super strike an increasing damage die as well. That said, I don't want to strong arm superhero into using their fists. I'm just as happy if they pick up a sword and shield, or bow and arrow. This is still Pathfinder after all, and there are enough superhero that use weapons in any case.
Regarding the ability score buffs, do you think they are underpowered? Or just uninteresting?
Malwing |
Thanks for the thoughts. Some sort of exoskeleton guy will definitely make it into the next installment, though I'm trying to keep it at 3 classes per product for now (a worthy amount for $3 anyway).
In regards to an exoskeleton guy, I would probably make it a general equipment enhancer guy so that it has more reach in terms of concepts. In all honesty I think you can squeeze one in by collapsing Animalman and Superhuman into one class. They have assorted abilities from each other but the key difference is that the Superhuman is more defined by his choice among assorted abilities and the Animalman is more defined by a suite of abilities. It would be easy to make one class that chooses a suite of abilities and supports them with superpowers accessed by ability score boosts (as per my suggestion above).
Telepath is definitely going to get some additional mental options, but I see the class at least as much about punching/tripping/throwing people with her mind as charming them (she does get full BAB and increasing damage die for telekinetic strike after all). I'll try to make this more clear in the fluff. So she should be viewed as a somebody who dips into ranged martial, blasting, and casting each. Moral of the story, I need to make that more clear if that's not coming across.
I don't think I'm unenthused from a lack of mental abilities but that it basically has a limited at will spell list instead of spells per day which makes it dangerously abusable and less flexible at the same time. Also despite having spells per day I can do basically the same thing with a Psychic and more so with psionics.
Yeah, I'm going to give super strike an increasing damage die as well. That said, I don't want to strong arm superhero into using their fists. I'm just as happy if they pick up a sword and shield, or bow and arrow. This is still Pathfinder after all, and there are enough superhero that use weapons in any case.
You still need some kind of incentive to use fists, even if it's locked into a superpower. As I said, it can be easily turned into a super vital strike so that it actually does something when you're using weapons. Plus it has the benefit of other abilities being able to scale by amount of times damage is multiplied to save wording space.
Regarding the ability score buffs, do you think they are underpowered? Or just uninteresting?
A little of both. The plus 3s don't exactly matter in the long run, amounting to +1 to +2 bonuses, and if they aren't in something that I'm particularly focused on or need, or even if it increases an ability score to an odd number, it might as well be a dead level for all I care. This is in addition to ability increases not actually doing anything to represent the increase being a superpower. For example, if I wanted to start picking up an elephant to chuck it somewhere like Superman; If I have +10 strength I can lift it maybe (Actually I can't at 29 strength so there's something to think about, but lets assume I can for this scenario.) but if it's unwilling I have to grapple it, which automatically fails because it's a huge creature. However if I was still medium sized for most purposes but for CMB effects I'm considered a size category or two bigger then I can actually do it. Currently your Superhuman can get up to a +13 in Str but still can't bull rush an elephant.
Broken Zenith |
Last chance to make comments! I'll be taking down the google doc and then implementing all these wonderful ideas by the end of the day.
Biggest changes are going to be:
A: The ability score bonuses are going to stay at +1 through +3, but they will also get little perks depending on the ability score at each rank. Con will get immunity to fatigue, Strength will get bonuses to encumbrance and lifting, stuff like that. The mental ability scores may be skill focuses.
B: Telepath will become a full caster with access to divination, enchanting, and illusion spells only. Few spells known, decent casting rate. Telepathic strike, lift, throw, mental armor, biopathy, and some of the at-will senses will stay the same. Possibly d8 hit die.
C: Birdman's going to see a total overhaul.
D: Superstrike is going to gain the monk's increasing hit die of damage. This puts it on par with a monk and brawlers incentives to use it (flurry is to TWF as super strike is to THF, so with the Strength bonuses its arguably better).
Thanks for all the comments! The final should be a blast.
Broken Zenith |
Do you mind if I take a crack at the concept and post it here later?
Equipment enhancer guy? Sure! I actually just did something similar (the Runewright) for TRAILseeker, so I'd be curious to get your take on it. Might even get some ideas for the next installment of Superhero Classes.
N. Jolly |
And finished my once over, and I agree with everyone about the telepath, it feels like an awkward inclusion with the rest of the classes. I left my other thoughts on the doc, and while there's some good ideas in there, there's also a rather intense swing in balance between splitting up claws and bites for 4 levels and at will dazing.
Broken Zenith |
Open playtest is now closed! Thanks for all the thoughts guys.
Look for the product by the end of the month on Zenith Games.