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I'd like to request the cancellation of the following subscriptions on my account: * Pathfinder Adventure Path
I believe I will lose one of my complimentary society subscriptions as part of this, and if this is accurate please remove the Pathfinder Society subscription. Thank you! Dave Coulson
Hello, I see my new subscription order for the past two months generated. I see the Flap-Mat Multi-Pack: Forest product on the order (7493024) but I already picked that up at GenCon. Can you please remove that item? Also, it looks like the order is being split between the bulk of the items and Flip Tiles: Forest Starter Pack item. Can these orders be combined to save on shipping? Thank you! Dave Coulson
I really like what Pathfinder did with the channel energy ability (replacing turn undead). However, I don't think they went far ENOUGH. Here are some of my suggestions for updating the channel energy ability of clerics and paladins: * Make channel energy a range of touch. This would would replace the paladin lay on hands ability entirely. * Add feats that would alter how channel energy works. Channel Energy Ray would focus the ability into a ray of some range. Channel Energy Burst would create a burst of energy with a range of personal. Channel Energy Cone would affect everyone in a 60 foot cone. Etc., etc. Create another feat that would allow a user to use positive or negative energy (at will? take up an extra slot?). I like the progression and the steady supply of healing. I like the fact that it harms undead, which makes the ability useful against undead but not useless against non-undead. It becomes a very usable ability of the cleric or paladin in most scenarios. Discussions welcome.
I really like what Pathfinder did with the channel energy ability (replacing turn undead). However, I don't think they went far ENOUGH. Here are some of my suggestions for updating the channel energy ability of clerics and paladins: * Make channel energy a range of touch. This would would replace the paladin lay on hands ability entirely. * Add feats that would alter how channel energy works. Channel Energy Ray would focus the ability into a ray of some range. Channel Energy Burst would create a burst of energy with a range of personal. Channel Energy Cone would affect everyone in a 60 foot cone. Etc., etc. Create another feat that would allow a user to use positive or negative energy (at will? take up an extra slot?). I like the progression and the steady supply of healing. I like the fact that it harms undead, which makes the ability useful against undead but not useless against non-undead. It becomes a very usable ability of the cleric or paladin in most scenarios. Discussions welcome.
Seeing the changes implemented in Pathfinder to the classes has sparked my thought process, which boiled down to this: How the heck are classes in D&D defined? I don't think there is any rhyme or reason behind it beyond "hey this sounds cool" and "it's been in the game since the beginning." It's time to throw that thinking out the window, my friends. I wanted to start with by explaining my thought process behind this whole idea. I've struggled a lot with how to classify the classes (?). What separates them mechnically? How could they be grouped? 2nd Edition D&D broke the classes down into the following four categories Warrior - Fighter, Ranger, Paladin
Those were the base classes as presented in the 2nd Edition PHB. In 3rd Edition I started to break it down even further. Thoughts that came into mind included grouping by base attack bonus (low, middle, high), ability focus (feats, skills, magic), or traditional (warrior, priest, wizard, and rogue). Nothing really fit. Here are the 11 classes as presented in the 3rd Edition PHB: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard. Of these classes I've had problems with two specifically - Paladin and Sorcerer. The Paladin was too specific, and basically meant that all Paladins were the same beyond their personality (which with LG characters still tended to be the same). The Sorcerer was not different enough from the Wizard to justify a separate class. It had fewer spells and received new spells less often, which meant that a party with a Sorcerer instead of a Wizard would always lag behind in terms of spellpower. In addition, 3rd Edition took the approach that the party should be composed of four characters - Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard. All of the encounters are based around the presence of these four classes, or at least classes that fulfilled their function. What did this requirement actually mean? You need a tank, a healer, a skill-user, and a spellcaster. That's the approach that 4th Edition is taking, and I don't really like identifying them as such. Too World of Warcraft-y. And then it hit me. There are six ability scores - Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. These abilities have been with the game since the beginning, and have persisted throughout each incarnation. Why not base the classes around the ability scores? Heck, 75% of that work's already been done! So you have the six ability scores, and you can divide them into two groups - Physical and Mental. That gives you six base classes. When you look at it like that you start to see how the classes came into being. Fighter? Strength. Wizard? Intelligence. Taking it a step further you can combine abilities between the two groups to create a few more. Bard? Dexterity + Charisma. While combining the aspects of two classes, these new classes took on a life of their own. With that in mind I started looking at the six ability scores and matching them up between the two groups. Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity VS. Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Here's the list I came up with: Strength
Fifteen combinations. Looking at the list like that you can see some immediate corrollations between existing classes. Bard = Dexterity/Charisma. Barbarian = Constitution. Etc. D20 Modern took a similar approach to this but genericized it too much. They removed the classes and made Strength heroes and Intelligence heroes. Too generic for D&D. In comparing the list above to the clases there are still a few inconsistencies. As I stated earlier, the Paladin was a problem. What was the Paladin? A martial Cleric? Isn't the Cleric already martial? Isn't the Paladin really just a Cleric with less spells and a few specific abilities? The Paladin gets dropped to remove duplication. The problem then becomes what defines a Wisdom based class versus a Strength/Wisdom class. So I took a look at a niche that was missing - the pure divine spellcaster. Someone who eschews combat for spells, just like the Wizard. That relegates the Cleric to the Strength/Wisdom niche, which means their spells are going to get reduced (not much) in favor of more abilities. I'm thinking more specific abilities around Domains. The Wisdom class then becomes a pure divine spellcaster with no combat abilities. I'm going to call this class the Priest since that is what it is. Now things make sense - the paladin is now a Cleric of Heironeous (or other LG ideal) and the Cleric is now able to function as a fighting divine spellcaster. The Druid is also a problem. What is a Druid but a nature-themed Cleric who can shapechange? The Druid as written gets dropped and its abilities get absorbed into nature-themed Domains. The wild shape gets turned into something else, but I'll get to that in a moment. Taking the classes as presented in the 3rd Edition PHB here's what I came up with when applying them to the fifteen combos: Strength -- Fighter
Sorcerer is too much of a duplicate class to include, and both the Paladin and Druid get eliminated as discussed above. I think the matches make an eerie kind of sense actually - the Ranger is really a Dexterity and Wisdom based class, and the Monk combines Wisdom and Constitution. Now to fill in the gaps. Let's just populate Wisdom with Priest. It's abilities need to hammered out but getting the concept is the hardest part, which is already done. Charisma and Constitution are problems, and have been a problem in D&D for a long time. These two ability scores are pretty important for EVERYONE depending on how you view your character, Constitution more so because it governs hit points. Charisma is definitely a "throw away" ability score - few game mechanics are based around it. The fix for that is to create a game mechanic that is based on Charisma and to base a class around it. In 3rd Edition they tried this with Sorcerer, but failed to make it unique enough. So where to go from there? I toyed with the idea of making the Charisma-based class psionic in nature. It kind of makes sense - the force of your personality fuels mental powers. But the flavor never really felt altogether there and I abandoned it. One phrase that kept rolling around in my head surrounding this conundrum was "sphere of influence." I don't know why, but I've always associated Charisma with this phrase. Playing around with some naming conventions I decided to create a mechanic that this Charisma-based class would have access to surrounding the idea of "Spheres." Some of the names I considered for this class (since I think the name tells a lot about the thing) include the following: weaver, beguiler, psion, noble, wellborn, and patrician. Nothing jumped out at me, though I liked weaver (and Beguiler was a new class presented in PHB II). I've come around to the idea that this Charisma-based class was going to be an influencer of people and have abilities that make the party better, kind of like the Bard. After mulling the idea around I settled on Lord. The Lord is my Charisma-based class with abilities relating to spheres (like the Cleric/Priest has abilities surrounding domains and the Wizard has abilities surrounding schools). The name lord has kind of a noble connotation, but I think the name works - it's simple, it's direct, and it can apply to any number of character concepts. The Lord is someone who can stop a swordblow from landing, command men and women to do his bidding, and to control the situation from behind the scenes. That covers Charisma. With that in mind the Strength/Charisma class almost writes itself - Knight. This fulfills the honorable warrior role the Paladin previously occupied and creates a new class to incorporate more of the sphere based abilities. I'm going to start with the Knight as presented in the PHB II but take it in a different direction. Four left - Strength/Intelligence, Constitution/Intelligence, Constitution/Charisma, and Dexterity/Intelligence. You could make an argument that the Bard is really a Dexterity/Intelligence class, but I decided to focus it on Charisma instead. One idea I've always liked and haven't seen implemented well in 3rd Edition is the concept of the spellfilch - a thief/mage combo from 2nd Edition. Changing it slightly to be just Filch fills the role of the Dexterity/Intelligence class, which will have abilities akin to the Arcane Trickster prestige class from the DMG. The two Constitution classes took some thinking. I came up with the idea of a class who cavorts and deals with outerplanar entities, perhaps specializing in summoning or controlling. The Warlock falls out of this union (Constitution/Charisma). Not sure what its abilities will be at this point but the concept is there. Perhaps a focus on summoning (kind of like the World of Warcraft warlock). Still thinking on that one. To me, the idea of Constitution and Intelligence brings to mind someone who uses their body to change how they appear. With a little creative tweaking this becomes the Shaper - a classed based around the wild shape Druid ability but with expanded abilities. The Shaper could be a totem-based warrior or an avenger of nature. That leaves Strength/Intelligence. There are quite a few prestige classes that work to fill this niche (including Eldritch Knight and Spellsword) but nothing's really struck me as being the right fit for a base class. What about fitting the lame 3rd Edition Sorcerer into this role? Unearthed Arcana had alternate class abilities for all of the base classes, and one of them was the Battle Sorcerer - access to fewer spells but combat abilities to compensate. Why not turn the Sorcerer into this variant? I decided on that and thus the Strength/Intelligence-based Sorcerer class was born. Adding bloodline abilities from the Pathfinder RPG alpha release made sense. That rounds out the list, which looks like this now along with the classes primary focus: Strength -- Fighter (combat feats)
Fifteen classes. The new ones (Priest, Lord, Sorcerer, Knight, Warlock, Shaper, and Filch) I think fulfill existing roles and create interesting combinations that would otherwise have required multiclassing for lesser effect. Each class needs to stand on its own, and it also needs to make sense from a multi-class standpoint. So ... too much change? Does this alter what Dungeons & Dragons is on a fundamental level? And is it too hard to implement with existing sourcebooks? Thoughts are appreciated.
Hey fellow Dungeon enthusiasts, Normally I'm a Minnesota man (western suburbs of Minneapolis, to be precise), but I find my feet a itchin' for the road. I'll be taking a trip with a few friends out to the Seattle area on Friday of this week and was wondering if there are any Friendly Local Game Stores in the Seattle area worth checking out. Thanks in advance for any information. "Weird" Dave Olson |
