Hey Homebrewers:
For those who may be interested, I have uploaded a page for stats for an alternate class, the librarian, for the Pathfinder RPG. The librarian is an experiment in several aspects of player character making. First, the librarian is essentially a wizard who is limited to spells from the school of divination. This in itself presents two challenges. There weren't any offensive divination spells until Occult Adventures delivered Mind Thrust I through VI and Synapse Overload. Also, there aren't many high-level divination spells. If I did my research right, I found only one ninth-level divination spell: Foresight.
The second experimental feature of the librarian class was tying the class to a faction, "The Community of Librarians", dedicated to a Major Artifact, "The Portable Library". Like other extraplanar repositories of knowledge referenced in Pathfinder (the Akashic Record and Mnemovore), the Portable Library houses an extensive array of information. However, it is unique in two features. It is a work-in-progress, created by mortals rather than gods or outsiders and it possesses a door to every other library in the multiverse. Thus a librarian can use the Portable Library not only for research but also to move from library to library as a druid uses "tree stride" to move from tree to tree, except there is no finite range.
The obvious challenge to the use of the Portable Library as a practical in-game resource was library access. Fortunately, Pathfinder is a game in which libraries frequently appear in Adventure Paths and Modules. To illustrate this point, I compiled (an admittedly incomplete) list of more than 200 libraries pulled from Pathinder Adventure Paths, Modules, Player Companion and Campaign Setting books. Again, the purpose of this list is to illustrate the utility of libraries for transport around Golarion and through-out the planes. It is not intended to provide a complete listing of libraries. I may add to it in the future.
To add personal flavor and diversity within the class of librarians, I relied on their role as information-content generators for the Portable Library. As adventuring librarians progress, they compose a doctoral dissertation, which has five chapters and which will eventually be submitted to the Portable Library. As each chapter of the dissertation is completed (at 2nd, 6th, 10th... level), a new class feature is gained. The feature is unique to the librarians field of study. I put eight sample doctoral dissertations (including phrenology, metaphysics, and material dialectics) on the page as examples. This listing too is incomplete. People write doctoral dissertations about all sorts of diverse and rarefied topics.
Anyway, the class page is located on my blog:
http://poisonpie.com/publishing/rpg/text/librarian.html
The Librarian class is provided on a free and anonymous basis for players of the Pathfinder RPG system. If you have constructive comments, please post in this forum. If you think the librarian is a poor idea, then I encourage you to exercise your better nature and move onto other topics of more interest to you.
Thanks. Enjoy!
