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Yeah, I kinda thought of things like Eschew Materials and Still Spell were replacing the various parts of the spell with your own raw will. Eschew Materials, Still Spell, and Silent Spell all together were the mark of a master wizard who knew how the spell worked perfectly, and-with great concentration-could replace everything with his thoughts and his will.
Huh. I never thought of it that way. I always thought of wizard spells as using the way certain words and components fold the plane to channel magic along the folds. The whole math thing is just looking at it logically, and calculating exactly how the folds look. Sorcerers create the channels themselves by raw will. An arcane font is less a fold than a tear.
Huh. I never knew about the math thing. Where's the source for that? Oh, and they have d8 HP and more skills now, plus a Cleric-style BAB and proficiency in simple weapons and light armor. They also have a number of talents to make things mean in close combat. So you *can* build a melee arcane font, or you could specialize in blasting. Hooray for versatility!
Yeah, that's more or less where I got the inspiration. Here's the key difference: An eldritch font has, with great ingenuity, opened a stopper and gathered the resulting geyser of magical power. An arcane font, on the other hand, was born in the right place to become part of the magical force of the world. Here's a little more fluff (HEADCANON ALERT!): Magic comes from places where the world is broken. It comes from places where there are 91-degree angles to perfect squares, where you can look up and see the road curving away above you, where parallel lines meet a few feet away. These places are rifts into the impossible nothingness between planes, and the sources of magic. And the arcane font is lucky-or unlucky-enough to have one of those rifts inside of them. A sorcerer's power comes from their blood, suffused with this energy. An arcanist has discovered how to create tiny, temporary rifts to draw power from. The eldritch font archetype represents an arcanist who has discovered an easy way to open a rift. The arcane font, however, is lucky-or unlucky-enough to have a permanent rift. An arcanist can gather energy to themselves and cleverly spin spells from the raw energy. An eldritch font can open a small rift to suffuse a spell with power. But an arcane font eats, drinks, and breathes that power. Their rift never closes. They can't craft spells, because they overload them before the spell's components are complete. The cleverest of fonts, though, learn to use their energy in different ways. They direct it at the fabric of the plane itself, cracking it to travel along a wave of arcane energy. They wield blades of energy, channel power into the weapons of their allies, and-most of all-release it in powerful bursts.
Okay, you are very right. Sorry about that. Hmmm... Okay, here's the concept. It's a class that's basically a tactical nuke. The flavor is that he is literally a living wellspring of arcane force. Sorcerers have power bubbling up from within them. Arcane fonts, on the other hand, literally are raw arcane power. A sorcerer can cast spells because they have internal energy. An arcane font overloads spells. An arcane font would do just as well casting a traditional spell as a nuclear reactor would do plugging into just a single lightbulb. What they do have are a very particular set of skills, skills they have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make them a nightmare for people like their enemies(thank you, Liam Neeson). One might call them...talents. They have learned to hone their power into specific forms that let them do amazing things, like blast a hole in the fabric of the plane and travel on a wave of arcane power, or channel lightning into their blasts of raw energy, or slip the surly bonds of earth, or wield weapons forged of arcane energy. They're a very versatile class, drawing on their own internal pool of arcane energy. When the Tarrasque comes out, they don't fall back to rain spells, or heal their allies. They charge. Does this work?
Spells just don't fit this class. If a wizard is a Gatling gun and a sorcerer is a rocket launcher, then this guy is an air strike. Wizards have a hail of deadly bullets, sorcerers have explosive power, but both can lock down one target. This guy has no finesse, no precision, and little control. He basically just points at things and makes them go boom. And spells are channeling arcane energy into certain descriptions. You can Fly(sort of) with Gravitational Negation, Fireball with the fire arcane blast and the Explosive blast mod, and otherwise mimic a whole host of spells-but that takes careful talent ad training. The arcane font shouldn't get spells because he's too full of energy. Maybe you could make a background where a font tried to be a sorcerer and his first magic missile exploded literally everywhere (Shockwave Blast, anyone?) instead of neatly zapping his target, but fonts don't get real spells.
Okay, let me just first say I love the concept. But maybe that's just 'cause I love the idea of pool-based abilities, period. That said, I really don't like the name of it. Perhaps "stamina pool," or "swordsmanship points"?
Okay, I feel like a dork. Gish is the wrong term for this. It's intended to be in the thick of combat, yes, but it's also intended to use arcane blasts of energy. I don't want to duplicate the magus. Hmmm...any suggestions for a nooblet?
Okay, yeah, I didn't really think this through. I fixed the save progression and BAB. Archetype-wise, this is really just a gish; it's like the magus, except that if you want you can go full-on ranged blasting. I've weakened the arcane blast(on the arcane font sheet at least, it'll take me a little while to go back through all the arcane skills and fix them). I put the at-will blasts thing in there on purpose; it came about after I got really tired of running out of Magic Missiles at 1st level and having to work with the terrible Acid Splash. This is the core of the class. I could fix touch AC...would really hurt the class, but I could do it. And it has a talent pool so big you could swim in it, yes. I'm going to try and work in a few out-of-combat use talents...hey, there's an idea! Arcane talents! Much better name than arcane skills. Anyway, your last concern: Flavor. *starts smiling*
Oh, and please throw some criticism on the arcane skills list too. These are just as important as the rest! EDIT: Whoops, just realized I only set it to "View." Fixed that!
Okay, first of all, ow. And also thanks for fixing the links. Second of all, to those people who said it's just a ranged fighter, YES. This is what it's supposed to be, plus a few cool powers...okay, yeah, those arcane skills are rather OP. The arcane blasts were an intentional thing. Think of it as a fighter's sword, except it only gets better as the arcane font levels, and it can't be buffed except by the font. The arcane skills, I'll admit I was running out of steam for(I constructed this whole thing in 2 days). I was going to add a few more weak-to-reasonable ones, and then divide the whole thing up; a few base ones, a few you can select at level 7+, a few at 15+, and then the arcane mastery at 20. I was kinda running out of ideas, so anyone who wants to, feel free to sling a couple ideas at me(unless this is literally the first post you've made on the forums, in which case you're just as noobish as me, friend!) Oh, and yeah, I really dislike the names for the class and the powers. Any suggestions?
Right, first class I've ever come up with! It's basically the bastard child of the 3.5e Warlock and the new Arcanist, never actually learning spells but gaining a default, powerful blast and a number of special abilities. It is also the living embodiment of the blaster caster. Link is here:
Please be gentle, it's my first try at this. Oh, and a list of the arcane skills (WIP) is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15OFJB5z7pRGoV9-XdD49mb5wMMOmyDYF_y1JiNn 0rfs/edit?usp=sharing
I would guess more that you can prepare a given number of words as your spells per day, and memorize those like a wizard. In terms of crafting spells, though, you can mess with wordspells as much as you want-so long as you only use the prepared words.Admittedly a little powerful, but hey-it makes sense to me. Wordspells are all about flexibility, so it makes sense that a very flexible class combined with a very flexible casting system is going to be like one of those quadruple-jointed people who fold themselves into boxes. |
