Tweaking Classes for Cooler Characters: The Class Mish-Mash Challenge, Part 2

Now this is one lengthy crunchy post, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did writing it. Although I must admit that I’ve never worked so hard for a role playing game before. Monte, Wolfgang and all game designers, developers and writers out there, you have my utmost and eternal respect!

Part 1 can be found here.

Here is a new D&D-compatible 20 level core character class (complete with old school looking tables) that combines the Monster Manual’s Pixie with Monte Cook’s Variant Sorcerer* that appears in the Complete Book of Eldritch Might and the standard D&D 3.5 Sorcerer class. It aims at creating a versatile spellcasting Fey class that hasa strong nature/enchantment flavour.

The class was designed (and is being playtested as the latest incarnation of Lillie since last Friday) by Yan Décarie. The class was developed and written with Philippe-Antoine Ménard (Yeah, that’s my full name).

It is subjected to the OpenGaming Licence and this blog’s Copyright Notice (i.e. you can use it in your game but you need both Monte’s and my permission to do anything more about it. Linking to this post is, of course, all right).

It sounds more serious than it truly is, we’re just a couple of 30-something D&D geeks that have decided to tackle class design and publish it. Enjoy! (I sprinkled Development notes here and there as well as at the end)

The Shaper (We are opened to a more flavorful name!)
(Version 2.0, taking into account comments up to Cayzle’s)

The Shaper is the nurturer of the Faerie’s homelands. They use their magic to help and protect the forests, vales and fields that make the Pixies’ home. However, the wanderlust that strikes all young pixies more often than not leads them to adventuring “Outside”. Those who return are often wiser and usually ready to take the mantle of responsibility historically associated with the Shapers.

Becoming a Shaper requires a level of dedication that few pixie can ever achieve. As the Shaper learns to tame and grow her inner magical powers, they change and become part of the Shaper’s arts (This means we removed all of the pixie’s Spell-like abilities and added the Slow-Spells, see below).

Abilities: Taming the inner powers of the shaper requires a very strong personality, so Charisma is the Shaper’s key ability. Dexterity is also useful to increase reaction times and increasing the chances to successfully deliver ranged attacks and spells.

Race: This class is a racial class based on the Pixie and therefore can only taken by a Pixie character, all racial abilities of the Pixie are already factored in the class and any missing abilities from the Monster Manual is voluntary. (The original idea came to us when we were making our new Monte Cook’s World of Darkness characters which combines class and race into a single character class).

Alignment: Strongly tied to nature and the preservation of life, Shapers are usually of good alignment with chaotic tendencies brought on by the growing inner powers of the class. However, some have been known to become obsessed with that power and may turn to evil. Shapers are almost never lawful, preferring to be free spirits and rejecting constraints in their lives (Yan suggested “Good Only” but I personally am of the “Give me a Chaotic Neutral Paladin damn it!” school… choose what you prefer)

Starting Gold: 3d4X10 gp
Starting Age: 110 +4d6 years (The Monster manual mentions that Sprite are supposedly unaging. In our campaign, I made elves an ex-Fey race so I’d go with aging them both the same)

Hit Dice: d4 (The d4 is used instead of the d6 equivalent of the Sorcerer to compensate the 4 extra hit dice a pixie has with this progression. The d4 progression gives a slight advantage at low level but is a disadvantage on the long run.)

The “Shaper Spells Known” table shows the total number of spells of each level that the shaper knows (regardless of her charisma modifier).

Shaper Spell Known Table


(click on images to enlarge or import in your favorite image viewer)

The Shaper’s class skills (and the key ability for each) are Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Any) (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Knowledge (Nature)(Int), Knowledge (Religion)(Int), Knowledge (Arcana)(Int), Listen (Wis), Perform (Cha), Profession (Any) (Wis), Sleigh of Hands (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis) and Survival (Wis)

Skill Points at 1st Level: (6 + Intelligence modifier) × 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Intelligence modifier

Class Features:

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The Shaper is proficient with all simple weapons and the longbow (Scaled to a Small Size character). They are not proficient with any type of armor, nor with shields. Armor of any type interferes with a shaper’s arcane gestures,which can cause her spells to fail (if those spells have somatic components).

Invisibility: At 1st level, A Shaper can become invisible at will as per the Invisibility Spell and This ability is constant, but the Shaper can suppress as a free action or resume it as a Standard action. This is a Supernatural Ability.

At level 4, the ability can be activated with a Move Equivalent Action.

At level 8, the ability becomes equivalent to the Greater Invisibility spell and can be activated as a free action.

Spells: A Shaper casts arcane spells from the Wizard/Sorcerer spell list (from the Player’s Handbook and any other source approved by the DM) except for spells with the Fire Descriptor and thise of the Necromancy school and as outlined below (See Slow Spells). Her selection of spells is limited. At each level, the shaper gains one or more new spells, as indicated on the “Shaper Spells Known” table.

(The exclusion of Fire and necromancy spells are mostly for flavour reasons as Yan’s character hates fire and sees herself as a guardian of trees and life. But then again, this might not be actually broken to allow (hmmm finger of death?), constructive critics welcome)

A Shaper is limited to casting a certain number of spells from each level per day, but she needs not prepare her spells in advance. The number of spells she can cast per day is improved by her bonus spells, if any. A Shaper may use a higher-level slot to cast a lower-level spell effect if she so chooses. The spell is still treated as its actual level, not as the level of the slot used to cast it.

To learn or cast a spell, a Shaper must have a Charisma score of at least 10 plus the spell’s level. The DC for saving throws against Shaper spells is 10 plus the spell’s level plus the Shaper’s Charisma modifier.

Eschew Material Components: Because Shapers gain their spells from their innate, inborn powers, they have no need to worry about material components. They are, in essence, their own material components. Spells with costly material components require a little extra personal power on the Shaper’s part. She still does not need to obtain the material component, but she must instead pay a price in experience points for casting the spell. The Shaper pays 1/25th of the gold-piece cost of the component in XP (minimum loss of 1 XP). Spells that already require an expenditure of experience points are handled normally. Spells with a focus still require the focus.

Slow Spells (This crunchy placeholder name needs some flavoring-up): The Shaper has access to a list of known spell which represent the versatility of the Pixie’s inner power. Any spell from the druid, bard or sorcerer list can be taken as a slow spell (with the same exceptions as for regular spells). The spell on the slow list have the following characteristics:

• A divine spell becomes an arcane spell when added to the class list.
• A Slow spell takes four times the usual time to cast (ex: instead of a standard action it take 2 full rounds action to cast a slow spell) which can be interrupted as usual.
• Slow spell only uses half a spell slot of the equivalent level when casted
• The spell known on the slow list per level are indicated in the spell known table as the number after the “/” (i.e: -/1 indicates that the Shaper does not know any normal spell in is normal list of this levels but knows a slow one).

Swapping Known Spells (Taken from the 3.5 SRD and made better, because it’s just cool to play): Upon reaching 4th level, and at each Shaper level after that, a Shaper can choose to learn a new spell (Regular or Slow) in place of one she already knows. In effect, the Shaper “loses” the old spell in exchange for the new one. The new spell’s level must be the same level as that of the spell being exchanged, and it must be at least two levels lower than the highest-level sorcerer spell the sorcerer can cast. A Shaper may swap only a single spell at any given level, and must choose whether or not to swap the spell at the same time that he gains new spells known for the level.

Alternatively a shaper can choose to transfer any one known slow spell (regardless of level) unto her normal spell list and replace it with a new slow one, provided the slow spell comes from the wizards/Sorcerer’s spell list (i.e. Druidic or Bardic slow spells can’t be transfered). Once a spell is in the Shaper normal spell list it can no longer be cast as a slow spell and can’t revert to the slow spell list.

Further Design/Development notes:
As mentioned in my 1st tweaking post, I don’t much care for the power creep that appears in this or other class in our current game. But even there, my DMing instincts scream that the Shaper can be broken in a hundred ways by abusive players (Well not so much after the edit). We’ve played with it once (at 8th level) and so far the jury is still out. But it seems cool to play. I was absolutely enchanted about how Yan used his Slow Spells to cast Call lightning (a 1 min/level spell) before a fight and then cast Lesser Restoration (at 12 rounds per casting) in-between fights while the Call lightning’s duration was slowly ticking down.

The Sorcerer’s familiar as well as some of the pixie’s skill bonuses were dropped. Once again more out of preference than out of any actual concern for balance. Also, we chose not to include the sleep/memory loss arrows.

However, as I was writing this today, Yan dropped by and mentioned that the class looks pretty underpowered to be really fun before level 4. At that point, pending a high Charisma score, the character only has access to about 4 slow spells and a few cantrips per day , not very useful in combat. That’s why I moved Greater invisibility, originally at 5th level, down to first. At least, for the 1st three level, the class can act as an invisible flying Archer/Scout (that deals a whopping 1d6-2 damage). Still a threat that many low CR monster’s can’t really deal with.

We both agreed that this is a design flaw that comes with having to sacrifice the equivalent of 4 levels to merge a Pixie into a 20th level spellcasting class.

On this, and anything else, we would gladly ask for your suggestions.

*Variant sorcerer class from The Complete Book of Eldritch Might ©2004, Monte J. Cook. Used with permission. (Thanks Monte!)

** Small size, Low light vision, fly speed 30 (good), Invisibility (Standard Action), speak common and sylvan, slow spell list (Formating a table in a blog is hard!)