I want to try my hand at making a class, but don't know where to start. The class I want to make is an arcane spell caster that has the ability to morph his body into different creatures for different buffs and abilities. It would be a varied playstyle class that's more of a jack-of-all-trades. Here's some posts I made on Discord to some friends for examples.
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Hey. Think I want to try my hand at making an official class. A metamorphosis class that's kind of a jack of all trades. Depending on how you build it, it could be a DPS, Tank, Support, CC, or a mix of all of them. Of course mixing them all will leave you weak in all the areas as well, but it would give you more diversity. It's a class where no two players are ever the same. Unless they do the exact same thing.
So say you get to a certain level and unlock your golem form, your golem form has high defense, slow movement, and average attack. Good for tanking, and if you take spells to increase your aggro or put up walls, you'd make a good tank and support. However this leaves you weak in attack and would mean the other players would need to be your offense while you hold back the enemy.
Or unlock Angel form which would have good healing and CC abilities such as blinding and movement impairment, but they have lowered defense and attack and high wisdom. If you spec yourself for attack, you can have some decent attack and be a self-healing glass cannon, but don't expect to survive very long. Or spec in Con and Dex and be tanky as hell, then you can be a self-healing tank that keeps enemies distracted while allies take them out. It's a good way to play pretty much any playstyle and learn your niche without sacrificing anything unless you play a jack of all trades, master of none.
It does rely on the party to pick it up where you slack off at, but to be fair all classes are kind of like that. Clerics aren't much for attack but they have good healing and decent defense. Rogues are nimble and damaging but aren't very tanky.
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Each form would have its own abilities, and there would be basic, advanced, master, and legendary forms depending on your CL. Legendary would be things like dragons that are incredibly powerful, even though at that point the whole party can pretty much take on Gods.
I know it will be difficult to make and may be confusing at first, but could be a good beginner class as well for finding your niche as the forms and builds would allow you to play any playstyle you would want to try out. Find out if it's right for you.
I have a general idea of how I want the class made, but don't know where to start in terms of balancing, numbers, and skills. Does anyone here think they could give me a hand figuring all that out?