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AMFV
2016-02-12, 12:12 PM
There was a similar thread to this one in the regular gaming forum. In any case what do you guys think the most interesting classes you've seen in a roleplaying system are, either in terms of mechanics or concept.

I'm partial to the Shadow Sun Ninja in terms of concept (from 3.5), definitely an interesting idea, and a very unique take on undead type melee characters which is a thing you rarely see. Some of the Kits from AD&D are also pretty intriguing as well. Mechanics-wise, I'm not sure myself, but I'm definitely excited to hear what you guys like.

CharonsHelper
2016-02-12, 12:30 PM
I thought that the spellthief from 3.5 was an interesting concept. It didn't actually work well though.

The idea would work in a different system where everyone who isn't a mook is a caster of some sort, but in D&D their abilities come up too infrequently to really be worth it.

AMFV
2016-02-12, 12:34 PM
I thought that the spellthief from 3.5 was an interesting concept. It didn't actually work well though.

The idea would work in a different system where everyone who isn't a mook is a caster of some sort, but in D&D their abilities come up too infrequently to really be worth it.

You could probably make something like it work, if you expanded abilities considerably. Sort of a Final Fantasy type Blue Mage, although typically those haven't been easy to port onto table-top type systems.

CharonsHelper
2016-02-12, 12:45 PM
Sort of a Final Fantasy type Blue Mage, although typically those haven't been easy to port onto table-top type systems.

Yes - they're too dependent upon the campaign that you're playing for tabletop. If you are up against lots of casters they're pretty sweet, but if the GM prefers monsters then they have a tough time getting a decent pool of spells etc.

Douche
2016-02-12, 02:07 PM
One time I was doing a murder mystery roleplay. One guy was using a druid to roleplay as cat (roleplaying a roleplayer? This is too meta). I was the murderer. Cat guy saw me murdering someone in the tavern, didn't think I had to worry about it cuz he was just a cat. He starts following me around, meowing loudly, so I had him follow me back into the tavern and murdered him as well. Then I yelled out "Oh my god, what kind of sicko would murder a cat?!?" and a bunch of people came running. I murdered them too.

Anyway, I won that murder mystery. I left so many red herrings and stuff, but I also made it pretty obvious it was me at times (like yelling out the cat thing)

This is totally irrelevant to the topic, but that's what it made me think of.

AMFV
2016-02-12, 02:09 PM
One time I was doing a murder mystery roleplay. One guy was using a druid to roleplay as cat (roleplaying a roleplayer? This is too meta). I was the murderer. Cat guy saw me murdering someone in the tavern, didn't think I had to worry about it cuz he was just a cat. He starts following me around, meowing loudly, so I had him follow me back into the tavern and murdered him as well. Then I yelled out "Oh my god, what kind of sicko would murder a cat?!?" and a bunch of people came running. I murdered them too.

Anyway, I won that murder mystery. I left so many red herrings and stuff, but I also made it pretty obvious it was me at times (like yelling out the cat thing)

This is totally irrelevant to the topic, but that's what it made me think of.

Well if Elf can be a class, then Cat definitely can.

Although I think that Elf counts as well, as one of the particularly weird options.

ElFi
2016-02-12, 02:34 PM
The Alchemist class from Pathfinder is pretty interesting purely because of the "bottled magic" idea that serves as the class' cornerstone. The Reanimator archetype for said class is even weirder, since they basically bottle up creatures before plopping them out later as loyal minions (as the summon nature's ally spell of appropriate level). I also like the class for its versatility, since it can act as a healer, buffer, tank, or anywhere in-between.

There may or may not be a counterpart for this class in D&D, but I haven't seen one. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Jay R
2016-02-12, 05:53 PM
The original Chivalry and Sorcery had many varieties of wizard. The Magick Square Magician looked like it would be fun (He was basically a numerologist), but in practice it was just a wizard with a funny-looking amulet.

But there were some very interesting ideas in the mundane classes. A Thief got more points for stealing gold than for killing monsters for it. A Knight got only half points for killing an enemies; he got full points for vanquishing it without killing it. He also got points for jousts, tournaments, etc. He got specific points for heroic deeds in a war - first in the breach, etc. A Knight also collected "Honour Points." And an action was worth triple the Honour Points if he did it in the name of a high-born lady. Rescuing noble ladies was worth more than rescuing the average damsel in distress.

CharonsHelper
2016-02-12, 06:05 PM
Rescuing noble ladies was worth more than rescuing the average damsel in distress.

Aren't damsels inherently highborn ladies? I thought that the lowborn ones were wenches. :P

sky red hunter
2016-02-13, 05:50 AM
while not a 'true' class, i'v been playing a multiclass duergar monk/barbarian, i know its not an optimal build but its been great fun to play

First my reasoning: i'm the last in the line of my clan, we have battled an hereditary madness for centuries ( barbarian rage ) that pushes us to seek out a glorious death in battle. We have been battling this using meditative techniques ( monk ) to suppress the madness and channel it safely in combat.

The setting: Out of the Abyss campaign, not needing weapons is very handy here, having escaped the prison we found ourselves in a pirate cove with none other than Mistress Ilvara and her cohorts!! failing to slip away ( thanks to a mad dwarf obsessed with a boat ) we ended up surounded, i had already enlarged and she approached me near our boat so i grappled her.....and dived into the water. I spent the next six turns swimming deeper and head butting and punching her until she died and i tore her head off ( I was level 3 and her magical abilities were all shut down with been grappled and in the water ) i later shoved a crystal in her dead head mouth and crit failed at throwing it at her lover on the boat and got caught after it blew up in my face. Mistress Ilvara now needs greater restoration as she has no head :)

I just keep seeing posts about optimal builds to play the system, personally i think a nice character idea and a little backstory to explain your choices always wins out and makes for more interesting multiclass types. That having been said, i also run a half-orc fighter that after killing one wyvern with the rest of the party, managed to wrestle its mate into submission by himself and now rides it around (level 4 fighter) but thats another story for another time....

Jay R
2016-02-13, 08:45 AM
Aren't damsels inherently highborn ladies? I thought that the lowborn ones were wenches. :P

There are almost no words in the English language that have only one shade of meaning. In some contexts a damsel is high-born, in others it just means an unmarried young woman, if you're being deliberately vague, or a virgin if you aren't.

Similarly, the word "wench" rarely refers to just any low-born young woman. It usually carries the meaning of either tavern serving girl, sometimes with an implication of a possible prostitute.

But the rules I'm citing used the word "damsel" as I reported it:


"Rescuing a noble damsel in distress": 100 points x Experience Level + 50 + 1-50 Honour Points

"Rescuing a damsel in distress" who is not of noble rank: 20 points x Experience Level + 25 Honour Points

digiman619
2016-02-15, 02:55 PM
Back in 3.5, my personal pick for "most interesting class that I don't want to play" was soulknife. I loved X-Men as a kid, and the second I saw the class I thought of Psylocke. Thankfully DSP made it feasible to play.

Velaryon
2016-02-16, 03:16 AM
The Alchemist class from Pathfinder is pretty interesting purely because of the "bottled magic" idea that serves as the class' cornerstone. The Reanimator archetype for said class is even weirder, since they basically bottle up creatures before plopping them out later as loyal minions (as the summon nature's ally spell of appropriate level). I also like the class for its versatility, since it can act as a healer, buffer, tank, or anywhere in-between.

There may or may not be a counterpart for this class in D&D, but I haven't seen one. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Wait... you can play a Pokemon trainer in Pathfinder?!?! I need to look at that class more carefully!

goto124
2016-02-16, 04:49 AM
Velaryon, you made me laugh out loud, for real.

Quertus
2016-02-16, 08:59 AM
The mage "class" in WoD, where your power is to literally bend reality to your will, seems pretty cool.

Anything that produces undead (or possibly, to a lesser degree, permanent, low-cost animated objects) is going to draw my attention in any system.

I also like the idea of classes based on shape shifting (but not 3.x druid's more limited animal forms) or "using magic to fight better" (think shadow run's physical adept), although I almost never actually play such classes.

The idea of stealing its power from the gods is what initially drew me to the 3.x ur-priest. Similarly, illithid savant's skill-copying powers reminded me of one of my old characters - one of my favorite old characters, in fact. As a psychic vampire who was also a vampire psychic, he could copy the memories, skills, etc of anyone he encountered. Like the illithid savant, though, this generally only occurred while he was eating them to death (darn blood pool costs), so the fact that it was technically "copy" rather than "steal" is moot to both. For added LOLs, the fact that illithid savant can also steal class features jives with my character's history that an arch mage just "gave" him all his casting power in gratitude for saving his enclave (no eating involved, but I think the arch mage was dieing anyway, so same difference). So, yeah, I played an illithid savant, "refluffed" (prefluffed?) as a psychic vampire, a decade or so before they were published. They were as fun then as they are now. Makes me wonder whether the person who made that system went on to work for WotC...

Comet
2016-02-16, 10:01 AM
A couple fun ones:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has the Knights of Science. They're like paladins, except that their powers don't come from gods or goodness. Their power comes from being right and knowing that they are right. As soon as they hear someone tell them that they might have to rethink anything, anything at all, they're probably going to crash hard and lose their might. They cannot learn from their mistakes, change their opinion on any subject or admit to themselves that they might be physically capable of being wrong. Two Knights of Science running into each other after years of wandering apart will end in either a quick separation or a silent duel to the death since both of them fear that the other might bring them down.

A Red and Pleasant Land has the Alice (or the Alistair or the Fool). They start out as discount rogues, with weak abilities and not a lot of skills. Each time they level up they gain a random benefit on a d100 table, which might be a boost in skills, fighting ability, knowledge, inherited money from a distant relative etc. Also, once every real-time hour, they can shout out something like "I have no idea how we're going to get out of this mess!" in a tough situation and gain a randomized benefit that might or might not be enough to save the Alice from that particular situation. These include secret doors appearing from thin air, useful items suddenly finding their way into the Alice's bag and friendly creatures or persons showing up to bail the Alice out of trouble.

choryukami
2016-02-16, 10:27 AM
I thought that the spellthief from 3.5 was an interesting concept. It didn't actually work well though.

The idea would work in a different system where everyone who isn't a mook is a caster of some sort, but in D&D their abilities come up too infrequently to really be worth it.

See, the way you do Spellthief is just to level a Rogue/Wizard/Unseen Seer and take a level of Spellthief and take the Master Spellthief feat from the WoTC site.

AMFV
2016-02-16, 10:35 AM
The Knight of Science is pretty interesting. I'll have to give that system a more thorough look. The Alice also. I wish there were more things with unique mechanics in a class system. I feel like too many classes are just piles of bonuses, so you don't get a different feel for playing each one.

Telok
2016-02-16, 01:28 PM
While probably not a proper class in an older version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay there was a supplement of something like 10,000 random mutations. Get yourself a bit of warpstone, call yourself a chaos knight, and hope for the roll that replaced one of your arms with a WH50K lascannon.

ElFi
2016-02-16, 01:44 PM
Wait... you can play a Pokemon trainer in Pathfinder?!?! I need to look at that class more carefully!

The archetype itself can be found in PF's Ultimate Magic expansion, if you're curious. And it isn't exactly a Pokémon trainer, in practice all it does is add the summon nature's ally line to the Alchemist's spell list. There's no capturing of creatures prior to releasing them, you can prepare the spell just like you can any other Alchemist's extract, with the flavor that you're taking pre-preserved creatures and popping them out when you need 'em.

If you're looking for something closer to an actual Mons trainer, I'd suggest the Broodmaster archetype for Summoners from the same expansion, which gives you access to a "brood" of weaker Eidolons instead of the standard one the class gets. (I like the creativity of the Summoner class but not the concept, I feel like it tries too hard to do too much at once.)