What would you want in a class guide?

[Rfkannen]

I was thinking of makeing a guide for the warlock, or at least try to. But I Was thinking about it and I came to 2 conclusion, first what that I had no idea how to color text, the second was that I didnt tknow what to put in the guide. So what would you want in a class guide?

[Felvion]

My best advice is you should find some 3.5 succesfull handbooks and you'll get all your answers there.

[huttj509]

For coloring text, [color] tags work. If using the GITP editor, it's the dropdown to the right of "size", with the A in it.

As to what to put in it? Mainly highlight if there's any "trap" options, or feat/races that enable a particular playstyle.

Main thing I look at a handbook for is "what does the class do well, and how do I do that."

[Daishain]

Tip:

Don't just try to tell everyone what you think is best.

Provide good reasoning for your suggestions, and verify that reasoning as much as is feasible.

Overall, your goal is to guide people to good decisions within their own framework of what style they prefer. Not just provide a recipe for 2 or 3 clones that are optimized in your opinion.

[Rfkannen]

My best advice is you should find some 3.5 succesfull handbooks and you'll get all your answers there.

Will do


For coloring text, [color] tags work. If using the GITP editor, it's the dropdown to the right of "size", with the A in it.

As to what to put in it? Mainly highlight if there's any "trap" options, or feat/races that enable a particular playstyle.

Main thing I look at a handbook for is "what does the class do well, and how do I do that."

THANK YOU I was not able to figure that out.


Tip:

Don't just try to tell everyone what you think is best.

Provide good reasoning for your suggestions, and verify that reasoning as much as is feasible.

Overall, your goal is to guide people to good decisions within their own framework of what style they prefer. Not just provide a recipe for 2 or 3 clones that are optimized in your opinion.

So instead of saying; if your going to go pure bladelock build dextarity because it is better

say something along the lines of; Building strength and dexterity both have their merits. The merits of strength is that it gives you a wider degree of weaponry, but in order to maintain a high ac without dexterity you may have to multiclass into a class with heavy armor. Meanwhile with high enough dexterity you can get a large bonus to both dexterity and ac without multiclassing but the variety of weapons that you will actually is rather limited, in fact it is probably a rapier.

on a side note does anyone know if this is true or their are any other arguments about steangth vs dexterity for bladelock?

[pwykersotz]

For colors, use ones that are darker on the grayscale. Bright colors tend to blind.

I personally like:

Terrible
Poor
Average
Good
Awesome

[huttj509]

For colors, use ones that are darker on the grayscale. Bright colors tend to blind.

I personally like:

Terrible
Poor
Average
Good
Awesome

Your Poor and Awesome look rather similar there.

[Cambrian]

Your Poor and Awesome look rather similar there.
That was my thought too.

To me a color scale is intuitive:
Terrible Option (dysfunctional mechanic)
Poor Option (limited use)
Average Option
Good Option (powerful effect)
Great Option (character concept defining)

For me the ideal class guide should explore all the different design space allowed within the class. Rather than pushing a player to one play-style it should try to assist them in building a competent character for the concept they have in mind. So solutions for achieving great effectiveness should be noted, but not the limitation of what the guide covers.

With modular rules it is going to be difficult to make a guide to cover the range of playstyles. It's probably best to just write it and be willing to make notes on things as players give feedback.

[pwykersotz]

Your Poor and Awesome look rather similar there.

Interesting how different people look at color. I see purple and blue as closer than orange and goldenrod. Either way though, darker colors are great for this site because of the lighter background. Just none of this please... :smallsmile:

[MeeposFire]

Thankfully at least currently one of the big pitfalls for many hand books can be avoided. That pitfall is information overload and due to the current lack of optoins that should not be a problem.

For instance I see this a lot in many 3e hand books. Some authors seem to think you need to list over a hundred feats (because technically you could choose any of them) even though you are only going to choose 7 of them. That is insane and makes digging through it more difficult than it needs to be especially since most of them are complete crap options (such as rating each skill boosting feat individually).


One thing that handbook should do is describe any concepts that a particular class can represent very well particularly where it can be used where no other class can really emulate. After that you should show how the class emulates that concept. For instance let us say you want to emulate the 3e soul knife without homebrewing the class. Right now you could use the blade warlock while reflavoring the powers as psionic rather than magic (probably using the old ones so you can telepathy and thralls which fit psionics).

[Inevitability]

My guide uses:

Trap/Terrible
Bad
Average
Good
Awesome

[MeeposFire]

My guide uses:

Trap/Terrible
Bad
Average
Good
Awesome

Ah the Dictum Mordem (probably spelled his name wrong) scale. I am very used to that especially with the 4e handbooks.

[Cambrian]

Interesting how different people look at color. I see purple and blue as closer than orange and goldenrod...
very good point. Thinking about it my suggested method above is likely ambiguous for red-green colorblindness.

On the topic of classifying abilities: what is the best grading system?
Is it best to rate abilities mechanically? How do you account for intangible benefits?
How do you classify a feat like skilled?

For universality it's probably best to rate all abilities from RAW. But it would be worth noting the power if it functioned differently (especially for dysfunction abilities by RAW).

[Inevitability]

Ah the Dictum Mordem (probably spelled his name wrong) scale. I am very used to that especially with the 4e handbooks.

*Dictum Mortuum. But yes, I mainly got it from the 4e handbooks.

Of course, it works a little better with WOTC forums' background than it does here...