Note: This was originally presented as the "Philocreed Theurge".
When composing this class, I had two goals in mind: create a class based on the theurges of the Draybair Cluster and invent a skill-based magic class without spells.
The word theurge is a term used to describe the mystical warrior philosophers of my Four Winds – One Storm novel series. They were conceptualized for a world without deities, extra planes, or any form of afterlife. Thematically, they are intended to fill the roles of any and all spellcasters, depending on how each individual theurge comes to be.
The word theurge is also already in use for game content created by other designers. And so, to avoid confusion, I am dubbing this class the Existentialist. This new class is presented with deliberate vagueness in theme and flavor, as it is intended to fill the role most desired by the player. Depending on how the player wishes to design their character, the existentialist can function as warrior, mage, skill master, or and combination of these.
The existentialist is a skillcaster, in that their supernatural power is in their skills. By consolidating such power into skills, there is no need to look up complicated spell rules. Many existing spell effects can be duplicated in some way by the existentialist’s empowered skills or maxim powers. In short, this is an alternate magic system in one class.
From Aristotle to Ayn Rand, from Newton to Nietzsche, philosophers appear throughout history with their own modes of thinking and understanding. They have existed in all stages of development and will continue to do so in future stages. It is my hope that this class can be customized to fit any style of campaign and played alongside any other class.
And so, I give you the Existentialist.
Bump
I think I've seen your draft before.
Housekeeping issues:
Augment theurgic weapon weapon is formatted badly.
Transcended skills are sometimes called caster skills.
It needs to be clearer that there's a resource pool called Maxims and a set of talents also called Maxims.
It needs to be clearer that epiphanies are a thing you select, then use 1/day each.
Balance issues:
Ehhh.....the class can invest in being a halfway decent weapon user, with a range of fiddly abilities that do very little. Or it can take Transcended Bluff to no-save Confuse enemies, or Emulate Special Attack and be completely insanely overpowered.
You have a few abilities that are way too good (Transcended Bluff, Emulate Special Attack), a few decent ones, and a lot of "+4 to something nobody cares about after level 3". You need to go through every skill and find out what's appropriate, and what's relevant, at levels 1-20 (maybe do it for levels 1, 6, 10, and 15).
One problem you're going to find is that some skills, such as Climb and Swim, do not have level-15 appropriate abilities in their domain. They barely have level-6 appropriate abilities. I suggest accepting that they're low-level skills, and provide some sort of martial bonus to at higher levels to those who choose them.
I remember seeing this class before, and I still have the same opinion. While I can certainly see you put effort into designing it and I like the idea of a class that gives supernatural skill unlocks, the class strikes me as a mess. The whole class is mostly a bag of talents. You have two talent pools and a huge list of pseudo-skill unlocks that work like talents. There's very little cohesion. Talents should be the icing on the cake, not the entire cake itself. This was one of the biggest criticisms of the vigilante playtest.
Like my criticisms about this class before, the talent pool selection also feels like it lacks refinement. When designing a talent pool, you have to carefully choose the selection. I know the first instinct is to grant every cool ability you can think of, but that's really not a good way go about designing a talent pool. You'll end up with plenty of abilities that don't fit the class and make for busted combinations. As is, it's incredibly easy for a player to twink out a full BAB character that gets infinite healing, at-will flight, the ability to negate all difficult terrain, and a +20 to all knowledge checks -- all at 1st level.
The class features also have numerous issues. The transcendent skill abilities lack a certain level of structure and cohesion. They're just all over the place. Many of them are at-will abilities. Some require you to spend points. Some require you to invest ranks into the skill. Many of them (bizarrely) actually invalidate the skill completely and discourage you from investing more ranks in the skill.
There's also issues with the individual abilities. Here's a few that stuck out to me.
Transcended Craft: You refer to creatures having levels. Not all creatures have levels. You need to use HD or CR instead.
Transcended Craft: A class feature should not let you create permanent magic items for free.
Transcended Fly: I admire you try to balance this ability around levels as many folks simply have homebrew content give at-will flight at 1st level. However, at 5th level, you still effectively have an at-will Overland Flight spell active at all times 4 levels before the spell becomes available.
Transcended Heal: I really hope this thread doesn't break into yet another argument over at-will healing, but this ability is broken. It gives at-will healing (a lot of it, too). It lets you remove negative levels for free two levels before restoration becomes available for clerics -- not a good thing since negative levels are supposed to carry a monetary cost to remove. The same goes for ability drain. Then the ability later gives you the ability to raise the dead for free at-will.
There's also technical problems with the ability. There's no such thing as "lost ability points." The capstone ability should reference raise dead, resurrection, or true resurrection. Otherwise, it raises questions about whether this ability can resurrect undead or partially destroyed bodies.
Transcended Intimidate: Pretty much an at-will shutdown ability. And people complain about the witch's slumber hex!
Transcended Knowledge: At-will +20 to all knowledge checks while you aren't in combat.
Transcended Linguistics: If you can learn any language (even if temporarily) wouldn't that mean there's no reason to invest in this skill?
Transcended Perform: Becomes an at-will stun, stagger, or something else at 5th level. It's also a bit complicated. You could simply say you can use the fascinate bard performance when using Perform.
Transcended Sense Motive: At-will detect thoughts at 10th level.
Casual Viking and Cyrad, thank you for your invaluable feedback. I realize that I still have a long way to go. That said...
-I want the class to be mixed bag with plenty of room for customization, without sacrificing balance.
-Nothing about the class is "at will". The maxim points the class uses for their powers are limited to their key mental ability score + level.
-I want this class to avoid spell referencing all together, with the exception of the major and minor spell maxim powers. It is my goal to not need to write "as per the BLANK spell" when describing a power or ability. All necessary information should be contained in one spot. I know, this may be impossible.
-I will make another pass and refine my next draft based on your much appreciated feedback, and keep it all contained on this thread.
I've just skimmed it, and craft seems way too good to take at first level. It looks very interesting to play, except that something I can't quite put my finger on makes it seem a touch more powerful than is balanced.
Exi
CLASS SKILLS
For a skill monkey, the existentialist has remarkably few skills. I recommend beginning as all classes do - with a core of class skills. Maybe 10 or so? Just leave the list alone and make no mention on transcended skills. Perhaps mention that the class will be allowed to choose additional skills.
TRANSCENDED SKILLS
First you say in the "class skills" section that the skills you choose automatically become transcended skills, but in this section it implies that you can choose any skills. I suggest removing mention of transcended skills from the class skill section completely. Allow the character to choose X additional class skills, and then allow the character to choose which are transcended skills.
THE SKILLS
Some of these have reasonably mundane benefits at 1st level, while others have certifiably "magic" abilities at 1st level. Some encourage spending no skill points on the skill. Some of just absolutely lame completely lame compared to others. The abilities do not all need to be the same, but some should be reigned in. For the sake of the class scaling, my suggestion is that the the skills don't get supercharged until 5th level. Before that, perhaps the maxim points should be used for skills bonus, re-rolls, rolling twice, recreating the time it takes, or something like that. Low level boosts used to avoid completely messing up due to a bad roll. You might also look at the Skill Unlock feats and look at how they will interact with your abilities.
MAXIM POINT POOL
We know what mental ability scores are, but for the purposes of the class feature, they should be defined (Cha, Int, Wis). What happens when the ability scores go up or down? Does the character switch the highest one, or does the character choose a single ability score at 1st level and stick with that? This needs some cleaning up.
I think also the biggest issue with the class is that it doesn't look very fun.
-I want the class to be mixed bag with plenty of room for customization, without sacrificing balance.
That approach causes the class to have a lack of identity and cohesion. You can make highly customizable, versatile classes without making them a mixed bag of ability selections. You can build an alchemist in a variety of ways, and yet extracts and discoveries are the only "choose-your-ability" class features the class has. And the alchemist has unifying themes that keep it all together. The themes and flavor of this class feel really vague and muddied.
-Nothing about the class is "at will". The maxim points the class uses for their powers are limited to their key mental ability score + level.
I didn't see that, but that creates a whole mess of other problems. The abilities aren't clear on duration and action to activate, but seems to imply you can only expend maxims to buff a skill when actually using the skill. This makes it very awkward considering that skills vary on action and when they can be used. Then you got cases like Fly. Technically, you cannot put any ranks into Fly unless you have the ability to fly. So if you have to use a skill to transcend it, it raises the question if you can use Transcended Fly at all. All of it is vague and awkward.
-I want this class to avoid spell referencing all together, with the exception of the major and minor spell maxim powers. It is my goal to not need to write "as per the BLANK spell" when describing a power or ability. All necessary information should be contained in one spot. I know, this may be impossible.
It's commendable to try to create unique effects, but there's many issues with this approach.
1) Many ability rules are encapsulated in benchmark spells. For example, most of the possession rules exist in magic jar (or possession from Occult Adventures). Magical flight is handled in the fly spell. Nearly all of these spells exist in the core rules. Any player or GM with some experience in the game will be familiar with these spells. If not, they can look it up in the CRB. For these spells, it's no different than having the rules for similar abilities in a different section of the book. They establish how similar abilities work.2) If you start making up new ways of how already well established effects work, you might make a mistake and forget to address something. For example, your raise dead ability doesn't address how it interacts with creatures that have been turned undead, unwilling subjects, or subjects whose bodies have been destroyed.
3) If you make up new rules for already well established effects that people are already familiar with, you end up creating more work for them because then they have to read your new abilities and figure out the differences between that and what they already understand.
4) Many of your abilities, especially the passive ones, really aren't that unique. Simply reiterating an existing, already established ability with more ambiguity isn't creative. You're basically reinventing the wheel
It's perfectly fine to make up powers or avoid reiterating spells from more obscure books. But if you have an ability that's basically just SPELL X with less explanation of how it works, then you're not doing anyone a favor.
The skills:
Appraise
The direction with the best potential for financial gain is… weird. Does it always point to Scrooge McDuck's money vault, since that's the most treasure in one place in the world? Does it scale with risk? Is it time-amortized so that something that will take years to acquire will be worth less? This is not a very pleasant ability to drop on the GM's lap.
For determining the skill with the most ranks, how does this resolve ties? This is especially important since many NPCs have full ranks in everything they have any ranks in.
Acrobatics
Falling has some weird rules about taking actions. What happens if the thing you're trying to pass through is too thick? (For example, acrobatics down into the ground.)
Bluff
It says it's a swift action to activate, but you can tell lies. How long does it last? Shouldn't this be mind-effecting? As stated, this is no-save confusion that forces the GM to give enemies max ranks in Sense Motive.
Climb
This is a bit confusing, and should probably have the language tightened up a bit.
Craft
It's a bad design to make an ability useable only once per level. My new item gets broken, and now I have a dead class feature for the next level. The scaling here is terrible, though. At level one, I grab this and spend one hour getting something well past my level. At level 20, I have to give up most of my class feature's use to get something marginally useful. This is, at the very least, missing some important restrictions- what's to stop the character from making a high-level scroll or wand every time they're about to level up, using it, and breaking it to get everything back?
Diplomacy
I get to ignore language requirements when I make people do things? No save if we tell the Paladin to go pray for an hour, leaving us free to commit crimes or whatever? It's not an enchantment or compulsion effect?
Disable Device
This seems to be of limited use when I can already walk through walls at first level.
Disguise
This is missing a lot of context for how it works. If I'm a larger size, do I get reach? If not, do people notice? Can people interact with my now-larger body? Am I still using squeezing rules for my real size? If I successfully disguise myself as an Invisible Stalker, can people see me?
Escape Artist
Again, able to walk through walls/ropes/whatever at first level. The disappearance bit is nice- see the Oracle of Time for something similar.
Fly
As noted, you can't actually take this. Should probably have a duration until level 6, which is the earliest other classes get at-will flight.
Handle Animal
See Diplomacy, except less so.
Heal
"Lost ability points" are not something that really exist in Pathfinder. Go ahead and reference spells on this one for simplicity's sake and for balance.
Intimidate
There are no longer any normal fights after level 10. Expect to face paladins, undead, golems, and other fear-immune creatures exclusively.
Knowledge
I dislike +20 on a knowledge check as an ability, but it's already done in a few places.
Linguistics
Tongues as a class feature. Yay?
Perception
Got to this point without having theurgy referenced, so that's confusing. Should probably be "if you already possess darkvision, its range increased by X" rather than increasing to something, since you don't know the initial range. Does this pinpoint the exact point of magic? You only say about theurgy.
Perform
The rider effects are really imbalanced. Stunned/Dazed is better than anything else, and strictly superior to staggered.
Ride
Giddiyup, giant tortoise!
Sense Motive
You should already tell if somebody is under the influence of super-diplomacy this with regular sense motive DC 25, since it should be an enchantment effect.
Sleight of Hand
"I point, and the gnome goes where I want him to. Therefore, he is manipulable with one hand. I hide him in my dagger sheath." It'll happen, I promise.
Stealth
Hide in plain sight isn't usually available at first level.
Survival
The effects of not using this should probably be clarified- otherwise some people will be concerned about getting hit by five days worth of dehydration or some such thing. What kind of harsh environments does this cover? Are you immune to exploding on the positive energy plane? How's lava?
Swim
"Breathe" water, not "breath". Sorry, pet peeve. The whole bit about seeing five times as well requires looking up some obscure rules, so it's probably not a great thing to include.
Use Magic Device
You should leave out the bit about being used in worlds with traditional magic. A scaling bonus is probably more appropriate than a flat +10.
There's no clear indication of many of these using any sort of resource, and a lot of durations aren't spelled out. Some things scale, while others don't, and power is all over the board. There's also no cohesion- every single thing is based on what the skill normally does without the class bringing anything to it. As the primary class feature, that makes this a very meta class that can't fit into a game well- the class is based around the game mechanics.
Wait a second. You get 4+Int of these at first level? And nearly every ability doesn't scale or scales with skill ranks? This becomes a required one-level dip for every class, and there's little-to-no reason to take more than one level.
Thank you ALL, very very much, for your in depth and insightful feedback. It will help me build a better, more balanced class. I'm going to sit on it for a while more, as it is far from ready to be hatched.
Thank you ALL, very very much, for your in depth and insightful feedback. It will help me build a better, more balanced class. I'm going to sit on it for a while more, as it is far from ready to be hatched.
No problem! Designing classes is really, really hard. It's why I've taken a year working on mine.