Making a balanced Spook class

[CapnOfCapns]

I'm sure there's a class for what I'm looking for, but in case there isn't I've put some thought into making one simply.

What I'm looking for: I'm looking for what you saw in the Seventh Son movie, a person who specializes in dealing with (for lack of a more specific term) monsters from real world mythos, like ogres, trolls, the undead in all flavors, witches, all that fun stuff. Edit: Literally just thought of this, but another name could be Witcher, as in the Witcher series. Minus the mutations, just the actual job he does.

Why not Ranger?: I looked at the ranger, and that's very close to what I'm looking for especially since you can take undead as a favored enemy. But everything else about the class is about nature and I don't feel that's what a Spook should be.

What should a Spook be/do?:
Good Spook
The good Spook should be a hunter of the things that go bump in the night.
The good Spook should be an adviser or teacher, someone who combats ignorance and superstition.
The good Spook should be the bridge between normal people and "monsters" that aren't so monstrous.

Evil Spook
The Evil Spook should be a merciless hunter of anything monstrous.
The Evil Spook should be able to enslave monsters to his will by threat of extinction.
The Evil Spook should be that creepy guy who lives on the outside of town and is really scary to small children. (I ran out of ideas for evil, ok?)

A transcript of my pitch to my DM:
Very close to Ranger, but tweaked to be specifically for (I'm still not sure how to phrase this correctly) monsters, like undead, trolls, ogres, vampires, werewolves, that kind of thing.
[3/5/2015 11:19:44 PM] James Kirk: Take the basic ranger class but get rid of the woodland type stuff to balance out the wider array of stuff the favored enemy would apply to since "monsters" is much broader than the normal ranger favored enemy stuff.
[3/5/2015 11:20:55 PM | Edited 11:21:05 PM] James Kirk: I'd also get rid of the animal companion for the same reason and because there's no reason for a Spook to have an animal companion. A spirit would be interesting though, sort of a floating codex for the Spook.
[3/5/2015 11:22:18 PM] James Kirk: "at 7th level, a ranger may move
through any sort of undergrowth (such as natural thorns, briars, overgrown areas, and similar terrain)" blah blah blah Spook shouldn't be able to do that, but maybe instead give a detect monster ability?
[3/5/2015 11:26:02 PM] James Kirk: For the spells I'd say draw from the paladin list, or the cleric.
[3/5/2015 11:26:34 PM] James Kirk: If we actually go into detail to make this a class we could pick and choose the spells from those lists to make a Spook spell list.

Yes, that is my real name. No, it's not Tyberius. It is however Travis.

Ideas? Thoughts? Has this already been done? If it hasn't, why hasn't it been done?

[Grod_The_Giant]

That's honestly a pretty general job description. Pretty much anyone with good knowledge skills and the Knowledge Devotion feat would do a good job-- ranger, scout, duskblade, factotum, what have you. Pathfinder's Investigator is probably your best bet for a direct Witcher adaptation, if that's what you want-- good martial prowess, skills, and alchemy. The Relentless Investigator archetype gets you some ranger-y stuff to top it off.

[Ashtagon]

DMG 3.5e, pages 175-176.

That's pretty much what you want, right?

[dysike]

Although I didn't see Seventh Son I have read the 13-book long series which it was based on (twice). As a result what I'm about to suggest is based on the books, not the movie but it may still interest you:

Rogue sneak attack abilities since they mainly rely on element of surprise to win
trapmaking and other crafting skills since they use specialized weapons for most types of enemies and mainly use traps to deal with ghosts
a lot of knowledge skills and some variant on bardic knowledge which focuses on creature's weaknesses, the only reason they could ever win
speak with dead and detect magic as an at-will power, essentially what you get from being a seventh son
decent will saving throw, magic is almost entirely mind-effecting in their setting after all
tracking by moonlight, don't know how you would rule this but it's an important one
some form of resistance to being scryed, was why they were able to ambush magic users, pretty important


As I said this is the book's version so it may not be what your looking for but I hope it helps. One notable difference between the books and what you describes is that they were more focused on defense and non-lethal combat methods, ghosts and demons cant be killed, only bound, and witches were still people and therefore John Gregory didn't kill them, he imprisoned them in pits which drained their magic.


An evil spook

In one of the books there was an evil spook and how he essentially worked was he would bind demons and ghosts in the standard spook way but then would force them to do his bidding, he had also gained some magic from making a deal with an old god.

[CapnOfCapns]

Grod_The_Giant I thought the same thing, but I'd prefer a class suited to it. My DM and I are going to make a class I think, but if I need to I'll just go fighter and RP hard as a spook. I also had the thought to multiclass into Cleric after awhile.

Ashtagon Surprisingly accurate actually, and what I'm more or less doing with my DM. I feel like undead is a little too specific though, because what do I do against other enemies? A campaign of nothing but undead would get boring, but I want my class to be relevant. Hence me going for "monsters" in general. Good input though.

dysike In the movie version the older Spook, the guy played by Jeff Bridges, is a murderous jerk. I mean after reading what you said his character makes more sense to me, but without having that knowledge from the books I'd say he just killed the things that actually needed killing, and left the ones who could possibly live in peace alone, not that he trapped everything. I'm planning on making a taciturn but good Spook, but as I'd like this to be a class that my DM and I can keep the notes on and offer to other players (maybe submit it to Wizards? *gasp*) I thought I'd include the evil side of Spooks too.

[dysike]

For starters it sounds like they turned Old mister Gregory into another spook from the series called Bill Arkwright, who is a complete jerk who killed basically anything from the dark.

I had a thought concerning the arming of your spook, the main weapons of the trade were the staff and the chain. For the staff you can just use a quarterstaff with a hidden blade from Complete Scoundrel, maybe with a price increase for the silver alloy, there aren't any rules in D&D that I know of for using a chain but you could probably use the stats for a whip, price it as an alchemical silver spiked chain, and give it the ability to entangle when you hit instead of doing damage.

As for the class abilities it seems kind of tricky since when you see in the books several character who are seventh sons of seventh sons they have a fairly wide variety of skill sets. Maybe instead of having a spook class making it a template would work better since you could have more combative spooks, stealth-based spooks or even magic-users by adding some sort of 'seventh son of a seventh son' template to the character.

[CapnOfCapns]

Maybe. I'm planning on showing this thread to my DM, so treat suggestions as suggestions to him as well.

I'd prefer to keep the weapon specialties of a ranger because I was thinking of having him use a crossbow and throw items at monsters while fighting, or fight with a sword and use items with the off-hand. So basically he'd be Van Helsing. That was actually my thinking I suppose, was more of a Van Helsing character from the movie where he's a hunter of monsters.

The problem with the template is that I'm less interested in the seventh son stuff and more just in the idea of a warrior who specializes in fighting whatever goes bump in the night. I was thinking of in addition to using a crossbow I'd also have a sword for normal fighting and a silver sword for stuff that is hurt by silver, Witcher style. Not as part of the character, just as in game flavor.

[dysike]

As a DM I have had success running the sort of encounters you're talking about. For your DM; essentially you give the party a quest to fight something which is probably slightly too tough for them normally, but you allow them to know what they're fighting ahead of time and allow them access to resources they need to prepare, assuming they know its abilities and weaknesses. So you put them up against a hydra a little too early but you make sure they have access to vials of acid and/or burning oil.

For you I recommend playing as a ranger but maybe you could replace favored enemy with some version of bardic knowledge which is focused on monster lore or however else you want to flavor it.

So that way the group finds out about a monster, you as the party's resident 'expert monster hunter' see what you know about its abilities and/or weaknesses and the group can then arm themselves and devise a strategy to take down something they couldn't beat if the DM just suddenly dropped one on them. I think that creates the Van Helsing type feel you're going for.

Hope this helps.

[Seharvepernfan]

Here you go. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/inquisitor) Just adapt it back to 3.5

[Deadline]

In the D&D Ravenloft setting back in the day, there was a Van Helsing style character, Rudolph Van Richten. He was a thief. So in 3.5 he'd be a Rogue, probably with the penetrating strike alternate class feature and the knowledge devotion feat.

[CapnOfCapns]

Here you go. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/inquisitor) Just adapt it back to 3.5

Well damn if that isn't accurate as all get out. Case closed, we're done here.