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qazzquimby
2013-09-29, 12:18 PM
I'm starting a large scale sandbox game where behinds the scenes classes can be as important or more than normal, more direct classes.

Classes like artificers, gramarists, xenosalchemists, divining seers and dedicated leaders and builders.

Does anyone have suggestions to add to this list?
I'm not asking for specifically homebrew, I'd just like to see everything available, from core to splat to forum.

Edit: I hope that was coherent, I'm not getting enough sleep.

Demidos
2013-09-29, 03:00 PM
Machiavellian. Also, this is in the wrong forum, ya should talk with the mods.

qazzquimby
2013-09-29, 03:52 PM
Oh, sorry. This should go under 3.5? Is it possible to close it myself?

Zaydos
2013-09-29, 03:57 PM
I don't know what forum this should go in maybe 3.5 since you want non-homebrew stuff as well, but I made a Courtier class recently to be a dedicated politician and maybe it's what you're looking for. Beyond that I don't really know of any, but I've never looked for such things.

Also not homebrew but there is a Master class for a dedicated craftsman/professional in one of the Dragonlance books for 3.X, think it was the War of the Lance book but you probably ought to check first.

Saidoro
2013-09-29, 06:19 PM
Let's see what I can find in my folders:
The Charlatan (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=201902)
The Spy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136315)
The Machiavellian (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221950)
The Improviser (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255381)
The Sworn (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6468675#post6468675)
The Salvager (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228049)
The Ley Engineer (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=7975.0)
The Machine Mistress (http://www.ruleofcool.com/smf/index.php/topic,730.0.html)
The Ur-Thief (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=276484) This one's my favorite.
The Swarmlord (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=253053)
The Deepcaster (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283372)

Any of those something like what you're looking for?

qazzquimby
2013-09-29, 09:43 PM
You've got yourself some quite impressive folders, thank you very much. Bookmarking :p

Saidoro
2013-09-29, 11:23 PM
At some point I started bookmarking every class I thought I might some day want to play. That was a while ago...

Anyway, post some campaign logs when you get started. I want to see what goes on in a world where a charlatan can trick a sworn into making an ur-thief promise to steal the love a swarmlord's swarm feels for her and using them to fend off the encroaching machine mistress's mechanical armies.

Amechra
2013-09-30, 12:13 AM
This reminds me that I have rewrite the Machiavellian at some point; the class is kinda clunky at the moment...

qazzquimby
2013-09-30, 12:27 AM
This is irrelevant, but probably not worth making a new thread over. I'm thinking of having multiple characters per player, and having them divy the experience between their characters however they like. This is both to fix the problem that most experience comes from combat, and because I love the idea of each player managing a little synergistic crew. How much experience should be sacrificed to create a new character? Do to flexibility and the action economy, two level ones are more powerful than one level two I believe, but this community can probably do a better job than I at balancing this.

Also again, I have no idea if my words make sense outside of my head. Hopefully that made sense.

Lappy9001
2013-09-30, 01:20 PM
It is combat-y because that's what 3.5 does best, but my engineer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114229)homebrew can also work for crafting or other utility stuff depending on the build.

Saidoro
2013-09-30, 05:02 PM
This is irrelevant, but probably not worth making a new thread over. I'm thinking of having multiple characters per player, and having them divy the experience between their characters however they like. This is both to fix the problem that most experience comes from combat, and because I love the idea of each player managing a little synergistic crew. How much experience should be sacrificed to create a new character? Do to flexibility and the action economy, two level ones are more powerful than one level two I believe, but this community can probably do a better job than I at balancing this.
I think the actual number may be less important than the growth rate. And you probably do want it to grow, otherwise everyone will just grab a half-dozen 1st level warforged grammarists at mid levels and make the economy cry. First off I'd use Pathfinder's experience system (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement) over 3.5's. It gives a flat amount of experience per challenge and just has the milestones move at a nonlinear rate rather than adjusting the experience a challenge gives based on the party level like 3.5 does. This prevents weird abuses like having your high-level party give a bunch of awesome gear to a low level party and then have them fight monsters over their CR to generate lots of XP for the high-level party. You don't necessarily need to do anything else pathfinder does on the topic though, like eliminating XP costs for crafting. In fact, I'd suggest you don't if you want players to mostly be on their own since it adds another interesting resource.

Different growth rates will accomplish different things, just choose one that will create the right sort of environment then play around with the numbers a bit. I'm assuming Medium pathfinder growth rate for all my numbers. n=party size, c is a constant.
Cost = c; making the cost constant will make it very cheap and easy for higher level characters to pick up veritable swarms of lower level ones. I don't recommend it because it lends itself to weird tactics, but if this all sounds good to you go for it. I'd put c around 5-7k if I had to use this one.
Cost = c * n; A linear growth rate is pretty similar to a constant one for small party sizes, but makes truly huge hordes a bit impractical. Doesn't do much to limit more moderately sized ones, though. I'd probably set c around 3-4k. That'd basically let you add a party member every few levels until you have as many as you want without interrupting leveling too much.
Cost = c * 2 ^ n; Doubles each time, this would impose a reasonably strong cap on party size, but people would still be able to afford a few non-adventuring lowbies if they wanted them. I'd set c around 3k.
Cost = c * n!; This is the fast one. First companion costs c, next 2c, next 6c, next 24c... Players will have a party size around 3-4 depending on where you set c. They may pick up a few more at high levels but not many. I'd set c at about 2k. The first companion will be really cheap, and to a lesser extent so will the second but they'll climb fast.

Realms of Chaos
2013-09-30, 06:16 PM
How do you intend to abstract actual missions?

Say that someone wants to be a spy or conman or a general in charge of armies. A spellcaster can work on creating a magic item in the time that it takes him/her the time to say "I keep working on my bag of holding".

If someone playing a general wants to lead a siege during the same day, there isn't one or two rolls you can just make for that (to my knowledge). Even most mass combat rules I'm familiar with would reduce it to a lengthy endeavor consisting of dozens of rolls with the elements of tactics and some semblance of "rounds" in play.

What if someone decides they want to spend their turn infiltrating the manner of an enemy? No matter how you look at it, that's far more than one disable device check and one hide check.

The team of wizards in your party (represented by one player) may have to wait literally hours while the team of fighters leads several separate wars and the team of rogues carries out a full days-worth of misconduct multiplied by several party members. And then when the wizard finally does get his turn, he might have nothing more to do than declare what items his team is working on that day.

So yeah, how do you intend to keep downtime stuff relevant when some people will be working together on downtime events with time measured in days while other players will split up their parties to do several different tasks that are measured in rounds?

qazzquimby
2013-09-30, 06:59 PM
@Saidoro, thank you for the helpful and thorough responses, you are very much appreciated. I'm thinking probably c * n. I'm not actually too worried about the idea of a player throwing a mob of level ones at a problem (that would actually be pretty funny provided they didn't do it too often), but this way each character will atleast have some kind of individual purpose and identity, rather than being bought in bulk along with his nameless brethren.

@RoC, I've actually given that problem quite a bit of thought. The game is to be held over play by post, and each day's posting will cover a varying amount of time, decided by popular vote. For the most part people will be controlling characters acting on rounds and characters acting on days, so the players will come to an agreement over the timescale, and no one should be regularly waiting too long. Too decrease the gap between days and rounds more, I'll try to keep most turns as long as they can be without removing player control, and I'm looking for a system to accelerate combat for the same ends, without unbalancing things too far. Lastly, unless there are major issues with this, I could mush time a bit and make small scale actions take two or three times as long on a larger scale. For instance, adventurers muss around exploring a megadungeon for about 10 minutes, but 30 minutes of time pass as far as crafting and things are concerned. Or just make a day 8 hours, but now I'm just making things up.