Explorer, I don't have a better name or description for this


Homebrew and House Rules


***Link to Google Doc, feel free to comment***

This class has been another passion project of mine along with the idea of a martial with access to polymorph spells. I really liked the feedback I got last time and made what I feel is a much, much stronger class because of it. This one is a bit stranger. There are two key themes to being an explorer in a high-magic world: you can travel it in a way that no one else can, and you have full faith in the gear in your pack.

One major part is becoming something like a Horizon Walker, and then pushing beyond the boundaries of mere terrain into a bizarre hyperspace travel inspired a bit by Scott Pilgrim and a bit by The Wheel of Time.

The other major part is using some feats I really like and never, ever see used. Improvised weapons are a lot of fun in my mind, and with inspirations in ranging from Shovel Knight to Dungeon Meshi there are a number of sources that really lean on what fun using just the basic equipment can be in fantasy. I focused on equipment tricks because there is a lot of versatility and promise in the concept that never really delivers. Giving some interesting options in and out of combat should be possible without breaking anything with these feats by controlling the additional prerequisites for their use.

But enough rambling, let me know what you think!


Nice concept, but here's some comments:

First Versatile Profession should only give one Profession skill each time. Choosing two makes this straight up better than Versatile Performance, and the Explorer a better skillmonkey than the Bard, when it has no reason to be.

Second, Market Baron is just bad. Gaining 60% percent more on what you sell means you sell stuff for more than you would spend to buy it. This means you could sell a +5 weapon to one guy, buy a +5 weapon from a different guy and have a net profit. Don't mess with WBL, or at least don't mess with it so much, it breaks the game.
I can understand the part about cheaper magical properties for improvised weapons since you might want a +5 shovel and +4 fishing pole and some +4 forks to throw at people, but I think this would be best as part of Equipment Training, just have Improvised Weapons he uses gain a scaling magical bonus for minutes a day, similar to what paladins can do with Divine Bond, instead of Weapon Training.
Also Market Baron just doesn't mesh with the rest of the flavor for the Explorer. He's a forever wandering traveler, but SOMEHOW he is also a renowned salesmen? What? Also I'm pretty sure if you enchant an improvised weapon with weapon enchantments, it stops being "improvised" and becomes a weapon.

Favored Movement, Terrain mastery and Terrain Dominance all come too soon. You only have one Favored Terrain so you can't actually choose your movement, mastery and dominance. And this keeps going until twelve level. Also Terrain Dominances are too powerful for fourth level, they were designed for tenth level characters.
Suggestion: Give Favored Terrains faster than a Ranger, maybe two at first level and one more at third and every three levels. Bump Terrain Mastery to 4th level and every four levels. That way you'll have a choice of three terrains to to master. Pusho Terrain Domince to 9th or 10th level and every four after. That way you'll have an actual choice of whcich terrain to dominate.

Gear Upgrade just goes from 90 gp to 65,610 gp. Might think of having this increase gradually with levels? Also, a nine-fold increase would be 810gp. 65,610 is a seven hundred and twenty nine-fold increase. And finally, this ability is broken as all hell. Seriously he can produce a headband or belt of +6 to one attribute or +4 to all three, every day he is not adventuring and outfit the party for free.
My recommendation would be to diminish the daily amount a lot, this should be useful to get a potion or scroll or wand with only a few uses left or a cheap one shot item, not to outfit an army in magic weapons and armors in a few days. Also put a sentence saying that after a few hours unused or permanent items just seem to get lost or broken, even if someone was wearing them. Maybe lost in the Pathways or sent back somewhere so other explorers can find them when rummaging.

Exotic Ritual, once again straight up better than what a similar class gets, in this case, the Skalds Spell Keening. Make it a full round action unless the spell has a longer casting time and either restrict the classes it can cast from or limit the spell level to sixth or maybe seventh, to keep it close to the factotum.

Master of All Lands, why does this gives the final favored movement? Why does the explorer gets all favored terrains, all terrain masteries and all terrain dominances but not all favored movements?

Being of All Terrains. Wow, this is broken. You basically gain at least +2 favored enemy against everything, a boatload of spell like abilities, lots of improved senses, movement types, bonuses to a bunch of skills, immunity to fatigue and exhaustion, Fire and Cold Resistance 20, Dr 2/Adamantine, and his attacks count as good, lawful, chaotic, evil, silver and cold iron. This would be broken as a capstone, as a 15th level ability it's just nuts.

What I suggest is:
Being of All Terrains, spend some time to retrain a Favored Movement Terrain Mastery or Terrain Dominance to a different Favored Terrain, this should be as fast or faster than actual retraining rules, maybe even faster if you can get a guide or teacher that also has that favored terrain to tach you.
And keep the progression Favored Movement, Terrain Mastery and Terrain Dominance going instead of stopping at random levels.

Pathways:
The Veil: Why does this create undead? An Su way to cast Resurrection is already good enough, you don't need to turn all the party into undead on top of it.
Wanderlust Pass: What is the action to open the passageway? Geas doesn't have a saving throw but it does have a en minute casting time, if this has a smaller casting time, use a different spell, with a saving throw instead. Also area of effect compulsion has a 90% chance of screwing the party, either allow party members to ignore the effects or give the explorer knowledge of where allies wind up so he can gather them again. Just allies, using this to scatter enemies and then taking them out one by one should necessitate some other way to find them.

Unassuming is cool, but Bliss is awful. He can grant multiple wishes or miracles with a week long ritual, without cost. Wish and Miracle are already broken spells, no need to make the thing even worse. If you're dead set on this capstone add that it can only grant the wish or miracle to one traveler per trip and that it can't grant wishes/miracles to the explorer since he already obtained his bliss.

I'll throw in some Forbidden Path ideas later. Do you mind if some are based on MtG?


This concept reminds me a lot of the

Divine assessor prestige class

and the Dark Delver.


It's really rough, which is why I'm bringing it to people to refine and make something better. It's been a great help with my other homebrew.

- Two professions at a time is my bad. I used to have him get the option less than a bard. There are already more skill options and that is already an upgrade to the bard.
- Market baron is left over from when this was more the "merchant from RE4" and not a true explorer. I agree that divine bond is a better place to go with this... I have some ideas I can work with now.
- I disagree that terrain mastery or dominance is strong enough to justify the ability being balanced for level 10, there are classes in the game who have these abilities way earlier than 10 though 4 might be too early. I also feel the favored movement comes too soon, but I kept the pattern through 20 for no good reason. Your idea to progress favored terrains quickly and then open up more options makes a lot of sense to me, and I have a lot of ideas rattling around my head now that I think fits. I think I am comfortable taking this concept and divorcing it from the Horizon Walker roots.
- Hmmm.... yeah that is an issue, the permanence is a design mistake. These items should only be useful for a short time which is the intent; you have the item you need when you need it and that's it. I need to rewrite this for clarity and balance.
- Exotic ritual is at max a 3/day casting of a level appropriate spell. I don't particularly care that it is stronger than the Skald ability when the Skald is also a 6th level caster with other class abilities on top of it, and this is a single casing of the spell. I like the idea that the ritual takes longer... really it can take even longer than a round. The point is to cast that spell you need without UMD to get past something blocking your exploration. Would making it 1 minute casting (or longer base don spell) and removing it from combat entirely makes more sense for the intent?
- Master of all lands/being of all lands step on each other a lot and jut granting them all at once doesn't make sense. I like the retraining idea, and I think it fits into the "always prepared" class features better than just giving them all away.
- The Veil: What if living creatures sent through it are found dead, and dead creatures are resurrected? I thought the "living returned cursed, dead returned alive" was what made sense but it doesn't need to be so complicated. Making it more "but the money and the person in the weird boat and stuff happens". I'll rewrite this one.
- Wanderlust Pass: I think a save is appropriate. Maybe a successful save means they are fascinated and a failed means they enter the pathway?
- Unassuming is probably my favorite class ability :)
- Bliss is a capstone that allows the free casting of wish that is dripping with GM interventions. As a capstone it's meant to have the travelers with the explorer go on a crazy trip across spacetime and experience the impossible. To put mechanics to that the only thing I can think of is Wish or Miracle. I don't think I need to specify that it can only target one person since the spell specifies that already, though I love not allowing it to target the explorer since he just isn't interested.


OK. Picture two class ability trees in parallel - the terrain focused side of wandering the world and finding the pathways, and the use of mundane equipment instead of traditional weapons and always being prepared with the right gear.

Terrain based features:

1) favored terrain
2) favored terrain
3) terrain ability -> a list of abilities for use in favored terrain, so stronger effects require prerequisites
4) shortcut -> very limited use of pathways available in a favored terrain
5) favored terrain
6) terrain ability
7) shortcut improvement
8) terrain ability
9) favored terrain
10)terrain ability
11)shortcut improvement
12)terrain ability
13)mastery of all lands
14)pathways
15)ability to swap terrain abilities around
16)forbidden path
17)forbidden path
18)forbidden path
19)forbidden path
20)bliss

I need a little more time to toy with the equipment side.


OK, I updated quite a bit.

Any suggestions more than welcomes, same for any suggestions for new abilities!

***Reposting Link***

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