Innominat's page

A class that utilizes high-risk/high-reward mechanics.

Wouldn't that just be taking a penalty to success checks and increasing the effect? For example, PF1E's Power Attack. Seems trivial to implement, but could make a better archetype than a class.

A character who advances the plot by screwing up

I mean, anyone can try and fail and still advance the plot. That's more player choice to choose consequences than character mechanics.

I think the key thing is they somehow screw up, cause serious consequences for others but don't face serious consequences personally. Perhaps the player invokes this ability which results in some kind of bonus to not face the consequence (attacks against them, saves, etc)?

The characters you mention also play off the "lucky halfling" trope. Like the old line "Providence protects idiots, drunkards and children"

the power to manipulate distance

Yeah, I have no idea how to do that mechanically. That would basically need to rewrite all the rules on distance/range/movement. This sounds hard.

steals enemy abilities and uses them

This is a super common archetype in video games. It does kind of break the normal rules about character knowledge of enemy abilities. Quina Quen would be the character I'd base it off of (though Kirby is similar) . It pulls from ancient traditions of eating things to gain their power. Bite off the target's flesh and swallow to understand their powers, another bite and swallow with a declared target power to gain a use of that power. How you get this to progressively scale over 20 levels would be interesting, probably mostly relaxing restrictions as you grow.

I would totally make this Gourmand class. Plus, it gives a setting specific reason why people would want to kill monsters and collect their bodies. Probably can steal some aspects of barbarian and sorcerer. I think there was also a 1e Sorcerer archetype that gained bloodline powers based on drinking the blood of creatures.

I'm making up new classes for my party, and one player has no idea what concept to use for a "not covered by existing classes" character. Power will still be balanced against existing classes, but I will try to make up new mechanics.

Pitch him a character concept that is novel and far outside of what can be done by existing classes.

Include the Chinese ghost (gui), since that's the biggest part of East Asian mythology. There's enough mythology on them to build a series of splat books. Chinese culture has an entire month per year devoted to gui, and the Ghost Festival is a major holiday in many countries.

Some examples:

Egui: hungry ghosts, a key part of Buddhist mythology (see also Preta). Suffering or unfulfilled people who die have their souls remain looking for something. Often it's filling their suffering with food (e.g. when dying from starvation or thirst), but it could be a lust to travel or experience new things they missed in life, wanting to be married or just wanting a proper funeral. Loved ones and descendants can help guide them through their pain to transcendance, with offerings like their favorite foods or burning money or pictures of things they need.

Yaogui: weird ghosts, who practice magic for various transformation goals. Some might be dead gods who want to become living gods again, or humans who want to become demons or demigods, or animal or statue spirits that want to become a living person. This is a huge body of legends which inspired related Japanese myths of yokai and mononoke.

Shuigui: water ghosts, often bound to reside in water (or sometimes take the water with them). They can be seen in reflections, and try to drown the living to trade places with them.

Just make sure you've got a sensitive person picking out the terminology and editing, since gui can also be used as an insult (particularly in racial/ethnic slurs).

- Fighter trading legendary weapons for legendary armor.

I think there are better ways to do this than class archetypes though. Like a "Defender" archetype with a prerequisite of weapon expertise that drops your weapon proficiencies one rank and raises your armor proficiencies one rank. One archetype applicable to all classes.

Add class variants to summoner and maybe magus so we can have a better chasis to improve later, something in the Cloistered/Warpriest line.

Maybe one more focused on spellcasting and the other more martial options ( for the eidolon or even the summoner ).

It's really disappointing that decent combat plus decent magic is for prepared casting arcane only. Please give us more options here.

I think the Champion Codes you're discussing could come from deities or pantheons. For example, Nethys has domains of Magic and Protection, so their Champion might be eligible for a Magic Protection code. This opens up the potential for an insane number of code options, which has pros and cons.

We don't generally consider people poisoning rats in their house to be evil, but we do generally consider people punching non-consenting adults to be evil.

The biggest ethical question is "can you control the damage"? With punching, someone can surrender and you can stop punching them. With poison, if they surrender, can you stop the poison? If no, then it could end up killing someone who surrendered, which would be murder and an evil act. That is why canonically paladins were prohibited from using poison in some D&D editions.

The arcane spell list only and prepared casting only make the Magus very limited in which players are going to like the class. This is the fundamental flaw with the class as written.

Magus is different from Champion in that the Champion isn't doing divine magic strikes every round, every combat. And Champion isn't really a caster. Cleric with Warpriest similarly doesn't get the same capability of "mix magic and combat" - they get both, but they don't really "mix" them.

One part of what you're talking about would be covered by the Magus MC Archetype, using a Fighter or Champion base and MC into Magus. More weapon proficiency advancement, less magic.

But I agree that martial class + Magus MC would never get the full range of "mix magic and combat" options that Magus has out of the box, even sinking all your class feats into Magus MC feats.

Totally agree. I want the non-arcane tradition options added as other types of Magus Synthesis options. It's easy enough as written to replace the word "arcane" with "magic" and get 95% of the class ready for three other traditions.

Based on how the Magus MC archetype Striking Spell will be basically useless* for other spellcasting tradition classes, it really needs to have the other traditions as options in the core class.

Striking Spell (Spellstrike) is the fundamental action of the class. Wizard with Fighter archetype (or vice versa) doesn't get that. Champion doesn't get that. Cleric with Warpriest doctrine doesn't get that. That could change with a Magus MC archetype (and it should).

*Spellcasting is the Magus class' hook into Striking Spell. For a caster taking a Magus MC archetype the spellcasting is not needed, but the missing weapon proficiency advancement would make Striking Spell useless. Similarly a martial taking a Magus MC archetype spellcasting is necessary for Striking Spell to have any utility, while the weapon/armor proficiency advancement is not. Either way, you're using a 2nd level feat to MC and more feats to either get weapon proficiencies (most needed by other casting tradition classes) to be useful in striking or spellcasting MC feats to make it useful. It's just not easy to adapt to a MC archetype.

To edit the class to accommodate other traditions, the spellbook verbiage could just as easily be modified to allow a holy text or occult grimoire if it has to be prepared from books. But rules for preparing from prayer/meditation/familiar already exist from Cleric/Druid/Witch and are easy to reference for the tradition Synthesis options.

There are also some feats that specifically talk about arcane tradition spells, but those could just as easily require the right Synthesis options as prereqs. But the class feats themselves are already almost all good fits other traditions.

Multiclassing seems to be intentionally very painful in 2E, which I feel is a better reason for each class to have more options.

Why shouldn't a Rogue get an Int based racket with the Investigator class features as feat options? Why shouldn't a Sorcerer get the option for Mysteries replacing bloodlines? Why shouldn't a Wizard get the option to trade spellbook for a patron? Why shouldn't a Fighter choose Panache as a Feat option?

Even as a skill monkey, you don't need to be trained in 80% of all skills. You just need to be good at the ones you plan on using a lot. I doubt anyone building the character would waste skill increases on training new skills. You'd have at least 7 skills with 1 from background and 6 from class with 10 Int. But of course no Investigator will only have 10 Int.

Compare this to the other 6 skill classes: Alchemist, Bard and Ranger. Bard is a full caster, Ranger is a martial. Is two skills worth sacrificing full casting or being a martial? I don't think it is, because you've already got the 10 to 12 most useful skills - the next two skills have diminished marginal returns.

Instead, I would give a skill increase at level 1, the ability to become a Master in skills earlier (level 5), and more skill feats.

Investigator was originally between Alchemist and Rogue, and there really isn't much space between them in 2e. I think multiclassing is terrible in 2e, but an Alchemist MC Rogue or Rogue MC Alchemist are each superior to Investigator right now.

Why does an Int based character needs 8 skills trained from the class? If you're getting one skill from your race, one from your background, 8 from the class and 4 from intelligence, that's 14 out of 16 skills you're trained in. [Lore of course is useless because the player and GM will never agree on the scope of the skill.] Performance is useless for non-bards, so that's really 14 out of 15 skills. Plus, other players at the table probably want to be useful at skills sometimes too.

I'm playing a Rogue multiclassed into Alchemist, mostly for smokesticks. He was only multiclassed since making smoke is excessively expensive and the Rogue class feats are very underwhelming. I assumed the Investigator class would be a good replacement. [Why making smoke would ever cost 3GP is beyond me, since smoke bombs in the real world have been around for since the 13th century and one hour of unskilled labor can buy hundreds of smoke bombs, but that's beyond the scope of this.]

Nope. Investigator can't get free smokesticks like Alchemist can. Only elixirs. So while my rogue can make poison, elixirs, tools and bombs, the Investigator can only make elixirs. They should be able to use any of those like an alchemist can - or at least choose between elixirs, bombs, tools or poisons.

I'm playing a Rogue multiclassed into Alchemist, and the Investigator seems like just a weakened version of my character.