FaceInTheSand's page

I found myself missing a few classes from other editions of "the world's most successful RPG"; especially the Warlord/Marshal from 4e and 3.5 respectively, so I have been toying around with how to make an effective 'martial buffer' in PF.
The Cavalier is a great start on that sort of thing, but slightly all over the place in terms of role - it has the challenge and mount mechanics that put it in the "Kill Stuff Yourself" camp with the fighter, ranger and barbarian; but the tactician and banner mechanics that erect part of its tent up in the "Help Others Kill Stuff" camp.
I thought I'd make a class that gets mechanics similar to the cavalier, the bard and the paladin - but without the knightly/musical/religious baggage that comes with them. Just a straight up, versatile military commander.

PF loves talents and similar abilities - Barbarians, Rogues, Slayers, Witches, Alchemists, Oracles, Investigators, Maguses (Magi?). All love having them some sweet, sweet talent-ish abilities unlocked once every other level or so.

So, that was the basis of the class - an ability that's a bit like Inspire Courage and a bit like the Paladin's Auras, but always on and also kind of weak, that would be greatly enhanced with the use of talents. Therefore, I came up with a scaling bonus equivalent to other classes' scaling bonuses that wasn't great in and of itself, and a quite a number of talents that interact with class features in different ways, but mostly serve to boost the effectiveness of the Aura of Command.

I didn't like the idea that a talent would be limited to once per day, as that doesn't quite make sense to me for martial characters, but I didn't want powerful abilities to be always-on. So, what's the other thing PF loves? Pools.

PF loves pools so much it's like a California suburb.

Maguses, Investigators, Arcanists, Monks, Ninjas, Gunslingers, Swashbucklers. With the advent of Unchained, I've heard that at least Rogues and maybe even everyone else in the world may be getting a pool.

So, second design feature - a command pool based on level+ Cha mod as default. A lot of classes have 1/2 level (minimum 1) + Stat as their pool, but they mostly only have to help themselves with their pool.

I chose level+stat as the basis of the Marshal because I envisage them as having to really protect and use their allies as a way of interacting with encounters. As giving allies abilities costs points, I thought having - eventually - a large pool would be useful to them.I thought about having a smaller pool, but that recharged on successful conditions (a'la the Swashbuckler) but couldn't work out what the conditions would be.

The third primary class feature comes in the form of the ability to grant actions. Nothing quite matched up with it in PF, but it was a large part of the Warlord class from 4e and the 3.5 Marshal was able to do it as well. If a marshal isn't going to be as effective at hitting a foe, I think it's flavourful and an interesting mechanic to have him direct someone else to do it. I think this gives him versatility by using others' powers to win encounters, if the party is facing a golem, getting the blaster wizard to do something isn't useful, but letting the barbarian with the adamantine greataxe take another swing is a lifesaver.
I did not want this to be the most efficient process in the world, straight-up granting a 1:1 action economy, as I thought that might be abuseable (it still may be, but more on that later). So, I used the diminishing-action-to-activate scale from the Bard's Performances to create a framework for this, eventually leading up to a capstone that makes the Marshal the best for action economy. It is currently abusable by using multiple marshals all giving each other masses of actions, but I think if I add a caveat that a marshal cannot grant another marshal an action, that'd probably fix it a bit.