Archetype Rules ?

[Jonathan Needleman]

I'm currently running a campaign and was wondering about the archetype rules.

Rules question for you. When using an archetype do you have to use the entire archetype? Or can you choose what to take and what not to take from the archetype at certain levels? That way you can give up what you want from a class for archetype abilities, but not giving up stuff that fits your characters? Based on what I am reading you have to take the entire archetype and gain all its benefits and lose all the base stuff you normally lose.

If that is the case do you think its broken if I house rule you can take one or two options and only lose base class stuff from those options, but not necessarily get everything?

[Paul Watson]

The rules are you take the whole thing as not everything swaps out something of equal worth so you need to take the whole archetype to avoid really unbalancing combos. At least, that's the theory.

[asthyril]

yes, the archetypes are balanced for the whole, they make some abilities swap out for stronger ones while swapping strong abilities for weaker ones. if you could pick and choose whichever you wanted you would have some very overpowered characters.