|
I've been searching around and while I have found this I am hoping knows of a more in depth guide to making classes. Thanks in advance!
A few things: don't sweat the balance at higher levels. Post 15, balance is out the window anyways. Keep it reasonable, but don't worry about being full balanced.
Start out trying to make some new archetypes. Remember that the abilities you swap out aren't necessarily supposed to be balanced by the ability you replace it with. It's meant to be balanced as a whole, not necessarily piecemeal.
In general, the bigger the class feature you take away, the more wiggle room you have. Take away Inspire Courage from a bard, and you can generally add quite a bit. Take way the Eidolon, and you have a TON of wiggle room.
|
|
A few things: don't sweat the balance at higher levels. Post 15, balance is out the window anyways. Keep it reasonable, but don't worry about being full balanced.
Start out trying to make some new archetypes. Remember that the abilities you swap out aren't necessarily supposed to be balanced by the ability you replace it with. It's meant to be balanced as a whole, not necessarily piecemeal.
In general, the bigger the class feature you take away, the more wiggle room you have. Take away Inspire Courage from a bard, and you can generally add quite a bit. Take way the Eidolon, and you have a TON of wiggle room.
I started to say "this is for a sci-fi homebrew campaign" (yes I know the plethora out there of sci-fi games but why learn a new system when we can tweak one already known?) but making an archetype for a futuristic soldier based off the fighter class sounds easier then building a whole new class. Thanks! I'm going to go try this approach!
For sci-fi the dragonstar system was a sci-fi upgrade for DND and could work just as easy for pathfinder with only a few conversions as well.
That sounds like something that mixes the gun abilities of the gunslinger with the Resolve of the samurai.
For sci-fi the dragonstar system was a sci-fi upgrade for DND and could work just as easy for pathfinder with only a few conversions as well.Own the Dragonstar books, while I think its got great fluff I never liked the rest of it.
Ah sounds good then definatly look towards archetypes over new classes then makes it go smoother.
Archetypes are definitely the first place to start.
And, from experience building (and re-building) several archetypes and base classes, all I can say as far as "guidelines" are concerned is...look at the other classes. There is no "system" for building a good class. It's all about judging whether something is too powerful/too weak and having an eye for it.
And so far as a "futuristic" campaign goes...there's not much you actually have to do. Most classes will function just as well (with a few tweaks here and there) in a futuristic play-style as they will in a sword-and-sorcery game. Really, it's all in the fluff.
For example, the Alchemist.
The power to re-fluff is a strong ability.
Also, for your consideration:
The engineer, at least, would fit well in a futuristic setting with near-to-zero tweaking.
...Catch Phrase
-Chris
Archetypes are definitely the first place to start.
And, from experience building (and re-building) several archetypes and base classes, all I can say as far as "guidelines" are concerned is...look at the other classes. There is no "system" for building a good class. It's all about judging whether something is too powerful/too weak and having an eye for it.
And so far as a "futuristic" campaign goes...there's not much you actually have to do. Most classes will function just as well (with a few tweaks here and there) in a futuristic play-style as they will in a sword-and-sorcery game. Really, it's all in the fluff.
For example, the Alchemist.
Alchemical bombs become chemical explosives or tech explosives.
Mutagens become nanites or special steroids.
Extracts become devices or injections. The power to re-fluff is a strong ability.
Also, for your consideration:
The engineer, at least, would fit well in a futuristic setting with near-to-zero tweaking.
...Catch Phrase
-Chris
What do you use to lay out your PDFs? I've been reading a lot of them lately!
What do you use to lay out your PDFs? I've been reading a lot of them lately!
That's because I've been posting them a lot, lately ;p. And I just use MS word (2007 edition). It took me a long, long time to figure out how to format things correctly.
I take a lot of layout inspiration from the Paizo books themselves. Dual-columns, the picture in the bottom-right corner, etc.
If you want, I can post some of the word docs so you can see exactly how I do it (I save them all in .doc, not .docx so that anyone can access them).
...Catch Phrase,
-Chris
|
|
Oh wow thanks Chris for the tips. Since I took the approach of re-skinning things and doing an archetype for something just not in Pathfinder this project became a lot easier.
So my Sociology class has me doing a research paper and I chose the topic of Transhuminism. After spending about 4 days thinking on how I could incorporate such humans... I decided to put it on the back burner for now!
One suggestion I can give people... don't try to figure everything out at once!