The Black Company campaign setting made a truly awesome class when they made the Noble. I have tried my best to modernize it in a way that demands the respect it deserved.
Synopsis: The Noble is a medium BaB class that has martial weapon proficiency, heavy armor and shield proficiency, lots of skill bonuses, and bardic performance. No spellcasting though.
Added some feats to the bottom of the document.
A few things that stood out in no order:
1. Resources... level times 5 in silver pieces? You know that at level 20 that amounts to 100 gold, and considerably less at each interval before that. To put it in perspective, wealth by level is 6,000 gold at level 4 when you first get the ability and 880,000 gold when you are 20.
2. I see what you are trying to do with bringing in some flavorful bardic performances from other archetypes, but pretty much all of them come in too late and have to little of an effect. Why would I want to give +2 str/con at level 15 when my Inspire Courage is well beyond that? Idea: To make up for the lack of spells perhaps base everything on Inspire Courage, but have it provide additional effects as you gain levels?
3. Contact: I would provide some guidelines for use in play. How powerful can my contacts be exactly? How far are they really willing to go for me? Also assign a formula for a max loan value I think.
4. The 9th level ability is essentially the feat Dazzling Display. Perhaps grant it, but say X times per day when you use said feat it can provide the additional effects.
5. If you want to give Leadership, I think it should be given earlier as it seems anyone in this for the flavor will want it much earlier and will probably have it by 14 anyway on their own.
6. I like the modular nature of the Focused Education; having build options is always a good thing.
A few things that stood out in no order:
1. Resources... level times 5 in silver pieces? You know that at level 20 that amounts to 100 gold, and considerably less at each interval before that. To put it in perspective, wealth by level is 6,000 gold at level 4 when you first get the ability and 880,000 gold when you are 20.
2. I see what you are trying to do with bringing in some flavorful bardic performances from other archetypes, but pretty much all of them come in too late and have to little of an effect. Why would I want to give +2 str/con at level 15 when my Inspire Courage is well beyond that? Idea: To make up for the lack of spells perhaps base everything on Inspire Courage, but have it provide additional effects as you gain levels?
3. Contact: I would provide some guidelines for use in play. How powerful can my contacts be exactly? How far are they really willing to go for me? Also assign a formula for a max loan value I think.
4. The 9th level ability is essentially the feat Dazzling Display. Perhaps grant it, but say X times per day when you use said feat it can provide the additional effects.
5. If you want to give Leadership, I think it should be given earlier as it seems anyone in this for the flavor will want it much earlier and will probably have it by 14 anyway on their own.
6. I like the modular nature of the Focused Education; having build options is always a good thing.
1. You are right. I should use Noble Scion gold scaling on those levels.
2. That's a cool idea. I will look into when I have more time. Quick idea: Should I just make Virtuoso Perfomance a permanent ability when the Noble gets it?
3. Yeah, it does need more guidelines probably (Contacts will never fight). I think the formula for loans will use the Noble Scion formula too.
4. My only problem with that is that not all Nobles will be weapon/combat Nobles. Perhaps if they take Dazzling Display, the ability is buffed?
5. I actually had Leadership on their Table on level 7, but I forgot to put it in the written out class features. I apologize for my mistake.
6. I am glad you like Focused Education! Would you personally make any changes to it? Or can you think of any category of education I may have missed out on? That was one of the few class features I totally made up (Improved Leadership and Divine Right were also me). A lot of the stuff that this guy can do was written already in the Black Company campaign setting. Putting his Noblesse Oblige abilities on the Bardic Performance track was also my idea.
I buffed up Resources, and gave it a secondary function to be used on town services.
I still don't know what to do with Noblesse Oblige. I lowered the levels on a lot of them, so that the Noble gets them a little earlier. I also gave Virtuoso Obligations a buff when it hits level 18. Should I put in a lower level version of Virtuoso Obligations too? To give them limited double performances early?
I added some guidelines to Contact, but I don't know if they are comprehensive enough.
I allowed their 9th level ability to buff Dazzling Display and Blistering Invective.