Need help Brainstorming Ideas for an Upcoming Night Angel Campaign

[Morbis Meh]

Hello Playgrounders,

I have been tasked with running a dark, grungy city based campaign for my friends in the near future. I will admit that I generally prefer playing over DMing but I will do so for my friends because no one else is stepping up. So this will be mostly homebrew encounterwise but I am using the Night Angel Trilogy as my setting (3.PF) since it usually takes place in a city and fits the other qualifications requested. So, right now i need a wee bit of help getting things off of the ground, I am going to restrict classes to tier 3 and below and somewhat limit magical items (my players want this oddly enough and I am more of the buddy DM). What I am basically asking help for is what classes should I restrict players to, for game balance and theme appropriateness. This is a list of what I have figured on my own and any advice you can offer will be appreciated. Note that I will accept homebrew suggestions that fit.

Cenaria
Wet boys: These are basically the bread and butter class of the series, magically enhanced assassins that manifest Talent in different ways. To allow a degree of difference between wetboys (in case more than one person wants to play as one)

Path of Strength: Psychic Warrior(Will increase skills/lvl)- These guys are generally great self buffers and have lovely beat em up potential

Path of Dexterity: Swordsage- These guys were born to be wetboys enough said

Path of the Mind: Factotums- These guys are great jack of all trades that use their vast mental talent to overcome almost any obstacle!

Path of Glamour: Beguiler or Bard- Can't decide between the two but I am leaning more heavily towards beguiler since they usually work alone...

Path of Fear: Hexblade (Fixed Version of course!)- Why not have an intimitank thrown into a dark campaign?

Other classes allowed in Cenaria: Anything on the mundane side other than Paladin (which can be used and will be fixed) I will generally discourage fighters and monks but if people have their heart set on them then I will put some effort into fixing them.

Ceura

So i am being restrictive for other countries, usually allowing for only one or two classes as options but feel free to make suggestions... Anyway these guys are hands down Warblades, the entire country. Normally they would need a good reason to be in Cenaria but I will be flexible in character creation if my PC's want to have certain fluff.

Khalidor
I may not allow PC's to play as a khalidorian since they are the antagonists of the story but I can be convince via Fluff if need be.

These guys can have whatever main class they want but the unique class are Meisters and Vurd Meisters that use Vir to do dark dark magic

Meisters: Dread Necro or Warlock: I will allow either or for the lower end guys if there are any warlock fixes that would be lovely.

Vurd Meisters:The more powerful of the two, I think I would gestalt the warlock and dread necro for these bad boys....

Friaku
These guys are describes as beserkers... so I think I will make them just that: Barbarians! I will use the PF class for these guys since it adds a little more variety

Ymmur

Described as being wicked archers that fight for a cause instead of money so I will look into archery classes (most notable Zen archer monks from PF) so if anyone has good homebrew let me know... I have heard of Archery based schools for blade magic...

Ossen
The Chantry is the big one here so if anyone wants to play as a female magae then this is where they be from or at least studied under...
This is one of the classes i could use help with since I do not have a clue... I need it to be flavourful but not as powerful as tier so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Modai
The mage school is the big one here so I will separate them into their three schools:

Red: These guys are definitely Warmages... I will even give energy substitution fire as a free feat since these guys specialize in it.

Green: These guys are healers... I don't really want them used since it was requested to limit healing in this game and I hate the healer class... Suggestions would be appreicated, maybe a life Oracle with a slightly restricted spell list?

Blue: These guys are know as the creators... I have no idea what to do with these guys since an Artificer is the most likely class and their are banned since they are broken lol So help would be good maybe a restricted tranmutation/conjuration class would work here but nothing too abusive since they are the hands down best schools for spells.



This is what I got so any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[Azoth]

First step is a shameless self plug for a Wetboy Base Class. I went with Psionics since you can scale it more easily and it shows how much 'effort' they put into using the ability. Such as Durzo enhancing himself, Kylar shielding himself, wetboy's healing their own wounds.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=251547

As for the Blue school, maybe make them modified versions of specialists or limit their spell lists. Remember all the schools are taught with a limited knowledge. There haven't been any truly powerful mages in almost 700 years by series start. Acaleus Thorne has been most reputable one in most known legends under his different aliases. So you can rightly and freely limit spell access to fit.

The chantry seem a bit like clerics minus the most awesome buffs and domains...so maybe modified favored souls. Most of their magic is defensive and healing in nature. The only reall offensive ability shown before they trained with Vi to stop Khalidor was a bolt of energy to kill a horse, and the chains that were used in an attempt to bind Kylar when he thought the speaker had Retribution.

I have to advise against Dread Necro for Meisters and Vurdmeisters. The ability to control and create undead was something only Vurdmeisters of the Twelth Shura and the God King could do. Even then, beyond the most basic of Krull not even a Vurdmeister could safely control them. Just a general nearly overtook Dorian Ursuul when he raised it.

Also...most Talented indiviuals in Midcryu fall into a hard place. They know what they know, can learn new magic through training, but use what they know freely until they run out of juice. So they learn like a wizard, but cast like a sorcerer. They also can recover energy in their Glor'vyrden by exposure to sunlight or fire. If I remember right Toffusin could directly convert sunlight into energy so he wouldn't expend his own. Granted it didn't work well, but it let him kill 3 meisters with little sparks of energy.

Other advice I can offer, is to design the Kakari using the item familiar and ancenstrial relic combined. That is how I as a player and as a DM have had the easiest time duplicating them. The new abilities they gain when you level are reprisentation of the bonding process and personal experimentation to find out what it can do. As for Curoch and Iures...well good luck there.

[Morbis Meh]

Thanks for the suggestion but I myself am going to limit the amount of homebrew I have to do for classes hence why I would prefer suggestions of actual 3.5 classes to fit the bill. As for the Vurd Meisters, i will probably reserve them as villains and to be honest I am more molding the setting to 3.5 than trying to fit the system to the setting. Otherwise i would have to make a completely new system and I sure as heck don't want to do that. I also want to have a diverse group hence why i am allowing the different classes for different aspects of wetboys since they are the big focus of the series. In response to teh Ka'Kari's I doubt I am even going to use them, the blue and red ones are in almost to reach places or are destroyed. The black one is in possession by Kylar, the white one is in possession by a important figure (can't spoil it for everyone)

[Catszeid]

You could think of the kakaris as psychic skins(I think that's what they are called). Been a while since ive read them so I have to reread them. :smallsmile:

[Morbis Meh]

You could think of the kakaris as psychic skins(I think that's what they are called). Been a while since ive read them so I have to reread them. :smallsmile:

It's more along the lines that I don't want to dole them out since they are potentially game breaking for one and secondly there are not enough to go around for the entire group this it isn't really fair (3 of the 6 are accounted for and i will probably have a group of 5)

The help I want is just class suggestions to fit the roles I mentioned previously, thanks!

[Invader]

Might get better responses in the homebrew forum. :smallwink:

[Morbis Meh]

Might get better responses in the homebrew forum. :smallwink:

I wanted to try legitamite 3.5 sources first before going down the path of homebrew since it is a mixed bag...