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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class Lightweaver Class Help



Nicrosil
2014-04-03, 03:42 PM
Me and my friends have dual passions for D&D and Brandon Sanderson's works, namely Words of Radiance. We decided it would be fun to try and play as a member of the Knights Radiant. We decided a Lightweaver would be simpler to play. But the problem is, none of us are good at homebrewing :smalltongue:.

So we decided to turn to the good brewers of the Playground.

Here are some characteristics of Lightweavers:
Alchemy: Lightweavers can Soulcast, transmuting items into basic elements.

Illusions: A Lightweaver can cast illusions, shaping light. They can also disguise themselves using this.
Lightweavers can act as the party face, so they should have skills like Bluff, Diplomacy, etc. They are also very artsy, so maybe something like Profession (Artist)?

Spren Companion: In the book, Knights Radiant have a bonded spren. The bond is what gives them their powers, and in most orders, breaking this bond will make their powers dissapear, like a paladin. But, Lightweavers bonds don't really have those restrictions. A Lightweaver's spren looks like a ball of black light, like a 3-D fractal. The spren can't interact with actual matter much; all they can really do gameplay wise is listen and talk.

Stormlight: Okay, here's the tricky bit. To cast illusions and alchemy, they need Stormlight as fuel. During a weekly world-wide storm, Stormlight is captured in gems. One can breathe in Stomlight; while their holding it they have enhanced reflexes, strength,and don't need to breathe. Yeah. Perhaps instead, they can have like a point system, each level gaining more points. They can expend these points to either make an illusion, use alchemy, or give them a buff.

Thank you all so much for reading this; please go ahead and rip apart my stupid idea :smalltongue:

Satyrus
2014-04-03, 06:02 PM
Hi Shovel,

I'm not familiar with Worlds of Radiance but this sounds like an interesting concept and I'm looking to get back into homebrewing so I've got a couple basic questions and then some specific suggestions.

Basic Questions
1. How militant are lightweavers? Are you thinking about a pretty tough character with some added illusion magic, A compromise between steel and magic, or strongest on wits and magic and less about strength?

2. Is there any alignment-type restrictions on lightweavers that you want to play into the flavor? Glancing quickly at what a spren is it seems they could be of all different alignments.

Specific


Alchemy: Lightweavers can Soulcast, transmuting items into basic elements.

This makes it sound like it might replace the eschew materials feat in basically always having basic spell components. I could see this being abused though if taken too far, such as being able to turn iron bars of a prison cell to iron shaving or some such thing. Again, I'm not familiar with the world so I don't really know what form this power takes or its normal extent.


Illusions: A Lightweaver can cast illusions, shaping light. They can also disguise themselves using this.
Lightweavers can act as the party face, so they should have skills like Bluff, Diplomacy, etc. They are also very artsy, so maybe something like Profession (Artist)?

Sounds like maybe give them the Disguise Self spell or something similar as an ability. Probably with restrictions by number per day or maybe on a point system related to Stormlight. The number or extent of the ability to cast illusions could scale up with level. Possibly extending to other individuals at higher levels.

I'm gonna hold off on skills until I know what the lean of this class is (question 1)


Spren Companion: In the book, Knights Radiant have a bonded spren. The bond is what gives them their powers, and in most orders, breaking this bond will make their powers dissapear, like a paladin. But, Lightweavers bonds don't really have those restrictions. A Lightweaver's spren looks like a ball of black light, like a 3-D fractal. The spren can't interact with actual matter much; all they can really do gameplay wise is listen and talk.

This seems like the coolest part of the class to me with a lot of potential for making the class truly unique. What are the normal conditions for the bond? Does it vary a lot between spren?

If there are lots of types of spren bonding with humans they could have a few different sets of abilities. Just some general ideas might be allowing spren's to boost illusion spells you cast, give a bonus against others illusions. Could also maybe use the spren themselves as the capture vessels for the stormlight instead of just gems (it would be a convenient way to increase the total points gathered with leveling by increasing bond/wisdom of the spren instead of gathering more/larger crystals. You could also think about spren's being able, at higher levels, allow some minor plane-shifting since they are not naturally from the main plane apparently.


Stormlight: Okay, here's the tricky bit. To cast illusions and alchemy, they need Stormlight as fuel. During a weekly world-wide storm, Stormlight is captured in gems. One can breathe in Stomlight; while their holding it they have enhanced reflexes, strength,and don't need to breathe. Yeah. Perhaps instead, they can have like a point system, each level gaining more points. They can expend these points to either make an illusion, use alchemy, or give them a buff.

Idea for harvesting stormlight via spren above. For the range of abilities you suggest for 'breathing in Stormlight' maybe those differences could be partially dependent on the type of spren you are bonded to. I'm thinking along the lines of Dragon Shaman's (PHB II) abilities somewhat depending on the totem dragon.

Is this weekly world-wide storm dangerous? Sounds like it should be. What causes the storm? Is it feasible that lightweavers could conjure a miniature version of the storm as they grow in level? Lightning, blinding, dazing, and fog spell-like abilities all come to mind.

Hope that's at least a helpful start for you!

Seerow
2014-04-03, 06:27 PM
Honestly, I love Words of Radiance, but I feel really uncomfortable trying to homebrew anything based on it because the answer to so many questions about the Magic System right now are RAFO. On the other hand the alternative is waiting half a decade for the whole first set of 5 books to be out (by which point I expect most major questions to be answered).


1. How militant are lightweavers? Are you thinking about a pretty tough character with some added illusion magic, A compromise between steel and magic, or strongest on wits and magic and less about strength?


For example, answering this question we have exactly 1 example to go based off of. That particular character isn't particularly militant. She is a scholar, and by the end of the book she really fits more into the spy/subterfuge role (which the illusions clearly help with). On the other hand, like every other Knight Radiant Order, she can infuse herself with stormlight to become stronger, faster, get fast healing; and her spren can totally turn into a sword that cuts through any non-living matter effortlessly and will basically cut through the soul of a living creature. I find it hard to imagine any of the orders not being militant at all.


2. Is there any alignment-type restrictions on lightweavers that you want to play into the flavor? Glancing quickly at what a spren is it seems they could be of all different alignments.


Different orders' spren have different requirements. Honorspren are very picky and can cause problems easily. It seems like it'd be harder to do so as a Lightweaver, but if they have a requirement, it would be tied to lying to yourself (but not lying to anybody else, since Pattern seems to enjoy that). Which is something pretty hard to enforce in a game sense.




This seems like the coolest part of the class to me with a lot of potential for making the class truly unique. What are the normal conditions for the bond? Does it vary a lot between spren?


Here's the basics: There's 10 orders of the Knight's Radiant. Each Order has a different type of spren that bonds with an individual that embodies the traits they represent. Each Order has two different powers, drawn from a list of 10 (so each power is shared with 1 other order). Each one also gets the general capability to use stormlight as I described above.

The Lightweavers spren is a Cryptic. Their two powers are Transformation and Illumination. Any Lightweaver will have the same Spren and powers. Other orders will have a different spren and combination of powers.

Edit: Yeah I keep editing in more. Guess I should have read and responded to everything at once. Oh well.


Is this weekly world-wide storm dangerous? Sounds like it should be. What causes the storm? Is it feasible that lightweavers could conjure a miniature version of the storm as they grow in level? Lightning, blinding, dazing, and fog spell-like abilities all come to mind.


Yes, the Highstorms are very dangerous. They've reshaped the landscape of the world. Most plants and animals as we know them exist only in one small region that's well sheltered by mountains. The majority of the world has plants/animals that have evolved to deal with having a hurricane blow through weekly. Most of the animals are crab-like (the preferred beast of burden is basically a giant crab with a 8ft tall rocklike shell). Most grass retreats into the earth when you walk on it. The equivalent of wheat there grows in big rockbuds, so a farmer's field looks like a bunch of neatly lined up boulders until they break them open in harvest season. Lots of cool stuff going on, it's a very unique ecosystem.

As for what causes the storm, we know per the word of the author that the Highstorms existed before Stormlight did. It was supposedly inspired by the giant neverending storm on Jupiter's surface, so think a natural phenomenon that has shaped the way the world works, that has since been twisted to a supernatural purpose (providing a ready source of magic to those capable of accessing it).

While we don't currently know what a high level Lightweaver is capable of (see: my above comments about not being comfortable homebrewing this due to the lack of info we have), I expect that summoning a storm to be outside of their capabilities. We have seen one group who can do something like summon a Highstorm, and possibly one of the Orders of the Knights Radiant, but that's not something I think the Lightweavers can do.