Edit: Ew. We're going to have alignment gating on certain things, aren't we? We can't have some evil jerk dual wielding the Fistswordschuks of Ultimate Truth and Justice(tm), can we?Easy way to handle that, if you want to avoid having alignment restrictions.
Make the basic ability itself general. Say it's empowered by your/your patron's ethos/morality, but don't go into detail. In the mechanics, say that it gains an alignment property equal to the user's (so if the user is LG, he can pick something like holy or axiomatic, but not one of the opposed), or extra damage against opposite alignments (so the LG guy can do extra damage against Chaotics or Evils, but not fellow Lawfuls or Goods).
The player/GM can flavor it from there, depending on the bargain they've made, the details of the character's design, and so forth. So the Good guy who grabs the "crystal hand-swords of ethical excellence" is running around with blades made of solidified Justice on his hands, while the mastermind villain riding the skies over his tyrannical kingdom on "wings of pure moral might" is soaring on literal darkness and evil given flesh.
Aye, already had a few abilities written up with that sort of language, though I suppose it can only enhance the product if I refer to them as ranging between "wings of pure moral might" or "wings whose leathery coating is the conjured skin of unborn babies".
Edit: Rewriting all the stuff to match the epiphany in the next post.
I say gate it off the alignment of the being granting it. Demons may sell power a good guy to buy them off, but it is evil power. An angel may have its own reasons for bestowing its good power on an evil person.
Or you go for ultra weird as say the being you get this power from are outside of alignment.
More reasonable would be to make the mechanical effect of generic and then have a requirement of make up your own weird way to describe it, but it must be at least this weird/alien/mutated.
Also why wouldn't an evil being hand out Fistswordschuks of Ultimate Truth and Justice? They are excellent tools of oppression. Also I had every intention of the being I described being evil.
...Or we could work it off of the alignment of the PATRON, given the class isn't sure what it has contacted until it's too late most of the time. It would be amusing to find that a lawful good member of this class ended up getting a lawful evil patron and it takes until level 7 for him to figure this out.
Please forgive my total threadjacking here but there are a lot of these classes which Little Red and other publishers have covered in the past. If nothing else, it can help you see what those publishers did well and where they failed.
Possessed class/symbiotic items
Primal host (Super specifically to possession the Soulbound archetype from Tome of Tomes) is what you are describing down to some of the class features and symbiotic item growth.
Would you happen to have that publicly posted anywhere? I'd like to peel it apart :)
How about a copy cat? X/day emulate a skill, feat, SLA, or spell.
Copy the copy cat!
I'm also looking for a framework to build my favorite martial supers: Spider-Man, Rhino, Kraven, Black Panther, Hawkman, Flash, Fantastic Four, Taskmaster, etc...
I see pieces within the classes but I don't really want to multi-class. I could cherry pick the things I like, but I'm not a great judge of balance...and some of abilities would better serve my wants if they could have more uses. For example: Spider-Man's webs--could be generated by a spell, but I think that really limits all he is able to do with it.
BTW, your Herbalist class is really cool as well as some of your smaller items I've picked up. The Tinker looks amazing, but I'm just not into building robots...yet.
Thanks for looking into this project.
edit: The Primal Host definitely has some good stuff...but I don't see the combo of cool physical powers along with those handful of gadgets/weapons that I really want.
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Please forgive my total threadjacking here but there are a lot of these classes which Little Red and other publishers have covered in the past. If nothing else, it can help you see what those publishers did well and where they failed.
No forgiveness required because there is no offense.
If you did not inform, then I would not have known. This may apply to others also.
Thank you.
A warlock
Interjection did their ethermancer and we did the “invoker” that are very much like a warlock.
The Invoker is one of my favorite third party classes. I always recommend it to people looking for a Pathfinder Warlock.
Oh, almost forgot ... I hate to use the term, but a 'white mage'.
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I'd like to make the request of a bard with higher level spells. In Trailblazer, another d20 3.5 system trying to make the WotC version better, they developed a bard that could use up to 8th level spells, and even wrote down what they'd be. In standard 3.5 there was a prestige class called the Sublime Chord that gave the bard upwards of 9th level spells.
I'm thinking either an archetype, or another prestige class, or even just a new class altogether that did some bard abilities with higher level spells to cast.
That was just an idea for one type of possessed. Basically it had a lot of touch SU that activated randomly when it attacked giving it unique flavor. A different spirit could have more fear based SU, another could manifest the spirit physically and fight along side it, while yet another could have enchantment spells where the spirit tried to control other people. Or... Maybe instead of choosing you unlock different spirits as you leve and can switch between them when you rest. Kind of a chosen possession instead of a forced one.
That was just an idea for one type of possessed. Basically it had a lot of touch SU that activated randomly when it attacked giving it unique flavor. A different spirit could have more fear based SU, another could manifest the spirit physically and fight along side it, while yet another could have enchantment spells where the spirit tried to control other people. Or... Maybe instead of choosing you unlock different spirits as you leve and can switch between them when you rest. Kind of a chosen possession instead of a forced one.
We have an excellent Pact Magic system for that, and so great is my respect for it that I won't even try to make another variant of it.
Looking over what I have for the antimagic class, it's a little too... focused to be a base class, so I'm rewiring it into a prestige class. That should be done by the 3rd.
That is what we decided too. We have 2 prestige because of that. We were able to make the mage hunter an alternate for paladin however.
What about a class that turns the character into a construct by level 20, slowly gaining abilities along the way, brought about like the evolutions of an eidolon, and replacing parts of or adding to the character.
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What about a class that turns the character into a construct by level 20, slowly gaining abilities along the way, brought about like the evolutions of an eidolon, and replacing parts of or adding to the character.
That's exactly what the green star adept prestige class did in 3.5 from Complete Arcane. You slowly become a meteorite construct.
That would be really cool to see as a base class.
I also have the weirdest desire to play a ghost character. That's not so hard with a template, but there's a big difference between having a few ghost abilities and actually developing in it as a class. Hmm...
What about a class that turns the character into a construct by level 20, slowly gaining abilities along the way, brought about like the evolutions of an eidolon, and replacing parts of or adding to the character.
That's the tinker archetype I'll cook up at 250 sales. I produce one expansion every 50, plus other things if I have an epiphany or see a hole :)
That is what we decided too. We have 2 prestige because of that. We were able to make the mage hunter an alternate for paladin however.
Really, now? Well, I did see a way I could make a caster an antimagic caster by building up some sort of "Voidweaving" system. Since it won't step on your toes, I'll put more effort into it. Let me know how big the similar thing is right away next time, mate. That almost killed a very cool class before it started.
Went over some stuff and rethought things.
I think a spell-less or spell-light Sorcerer class would fill in a lot of roles. The idea of bloodlines (a monstrous influence) done outside of the realm of Wizard Clone is capable of producing a lot of design space. It also potentially encompasses concepts like possession, monster classes, slowly turning into a construct ect. Any time a monster could influence you and you get it's physical powers. Since it's not a full caster it would have a greater range of what kind of character it is.
I'm still supportive of a mundane crafting class but replace mundane with 6th level caster. Basically a bard that builds instead of performs and gets influence/inspiration/combat tactics from it's profession. Something
Alright, here's an idea. Rather than a bard, who plays music from the heart, you have an individual who composes music based on fairly rigid internal rules, the classical music composer, or "maestro". This is an Int-based class rather than a Cha-based class and allows for the creation of complex musical "compositions".
All compositions have an intro, an outro, and a body.
The intro plays when the composition is first started.
The outro plays when the composition ceases.
The body plays the entire time.
It is a standard action to start or stop a composition, though certain intros and outros can speed this up. Let's consider a composition.
Intro: 20-foot cone of sonic damage (1d4 per level) from the maestro.
Body 1: All allies within 30 feet deal sonic damage on hit.
Body 2: All allies within 30 feet get +2 competence to hit.
Body 3: All allies within 30 feet have fast healing 1.
Outro: All allies within 30 feet heal 1d8 + maestro's level hit points.
What this means is as a standard action, the maestro blasts out a cone of sound, then grants three beneficial abilities to his party. As a standard action, he can stop the song, granting a mass cure light wounds effect.
At higher levels, the maestro learns refrains. A refrain is an alternate body composition that can be played in lieu of any body in any composition. It is a move action to do so. In other words, it is a single set of ubiquitous powers that the maestro can change to at any time without having to shut down the current song and fire up another one. Very potent. Like compositions, refrains are totally custom-built.
Refrain
Body 1: All allies within 30 feet have resistance 5 all.
Body 2: All allies within 30 feet have fast healing 2.
What this means is that a maestro playing the composition above can swap out its three-line body for this two-line body without stopping the song. Refrains are incredibly powerful for the maestro who needs something to move to in a hurry.
I'd also like to give the class good knowledge skills, 1/2 BAB, good Will, and a very limited spell selection a'la the ranger, paladin, or assassin. Maybe I'll be silly and weird and max it out at 5th level spells just to say I did it.
Waving your hands and making 300 trumpets blare out of nowhere! Ludwig von Beethoven! Johannes Sebastian Bach! Heck, Freddie freaking Mercury! Thoughts?
Here is something that I would love to see.
I love the concept of bards - musicians and minstrels. I loved the old Spellsinger books by Foster.
But I tend to play solo, and the mechanics are very group oriented. I'd love to see a Bard type character (Music themed, performance etc) but that is not a support type character - someone who wouldn't lose a lot of their abilities if they were alone.
Something else that would be cool - we've seen Pathfinder takes on a bunch of older classes that were not open (Pact Magic's Occultist, Warlock takes, the Dilettante (Factotum)). I'd love to see a class/coursebook that would do the Magic of Incarnum. Probably a bigger project than you were looking for, but I'd love it.
Something else that would be cool - we've seen Pathfinder takes on a bunch of older classes that were not open (Pact Magic's Occultist, Warlock takes, the Dilettante (Factotum)). I'd love to see a class/coursebook that would do the Magic of Incarnum. Probably a bigger project than you were looking for, but I'd love it.
I'm actually looking to tackle it, change the flavor, and simplify it to remove some of the more abusive combos for Greg's Kickstarter. I've always loved the concept, but they simply have too many resources.
My key issue is fitting it all in my word limit. I've been trying to build an evocation subsystem that modifies one hardcoded power to allow for more space for fun and weird abilities, but success has been limited and I've been pushed to other classes instead.