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jmhguy
2016-10-18, 12:29 AM
hi, i want to make a class where you're a student in a school system and i want your opinion on what i should add and adjust.


here is what i made so far https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CcGu7lHpJ-lKPz3BwKKCRS6hhadOLhrFn1rniR0DKHA/edit?usp=sharing

ArcanaGuy
2016-10-18, 07:54 AM
Well, here's the trick: Learning what, exactly? A student in a wizarding school would have very different stats and abilities from a student in a military academy, would have very different stats and abilities from a student in a spy academy.

"A student in a school system" generally translates, in my mind, to 'level 1 to 4 of any class.' - getting you through the Apprentice stages to Journeyman or beyond. The 'Apprentice' pathfinder class is pretty good for a level 1 multiclassed student, too. Level 20 characters are the biggest most world-changing characters there are. I'm not sure you can make a 20-level student progression.

Give us a little more detail than a link to a document with a minimum attack progression and minimal saves, and no abilities, and asking us to make the class for you. What are you trying to do with making a 'student' class?

jmhguy
2016-10-18, 05:22 PM
My apologies,i have a bit of a writer's block with this one.i just can't come up with anything else significant for this one so i asked for help. Anyway, the kind of student is something simple and in general like grade school to high school, nothing to over the top.But if you want to put this class into something more like a magic school or military (like in Weapon and Armour Proficiency "Unless stated otherwise, No Weapons are Permitted." meaning if the school allows students to have weapons for the purpose of education) then you can do so.

again i am sorry that i did not clarify the context of what this is and why it looks incomplete.

Jormengand
2016-10-18, 06:18 PM
Picking up on the "First four levels of any class" idea...


The Student

Students are premature variants of a specific class. Often, a student of a race such as drow (or other races with a level adjustment) will be the same effective character level as a full-fledged member of the same class.

The following general rules apply to students:

Hit Dice: Students get a single hit die, even if they have a negative level. The hit die size is one lower than normal for each level below first they are. For example, a minus-second level wizard has a hit die size of one. The hit die sizes are 1, d2, d3, d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12.
Skills: Students start with the normal skill points that they would get at each level after first, and have twice this many at minus-first level, and three times this many at zero level. They do however have access to the entire class skill list of the class in question.
Class Level: The character's class level is as written on the table.
Level Drain: A character who is drained to level 0 or below dies; they don't turn back into a student.
Weapon and Armour Proficiency: A student is only proficient in simple weapons. If the base creature isn't proficient in simple weapons, the student is proficient in the club, the dagger and the quarterstaff.
Feats: Characters do not usually gain their first feat until first level. Student fighters and student monks do get early bonus feats; human students get an extra feat for being a human.
Class features: When a character reaches first level, they lose all of their student class features, which are replaced with equivalent or inherently better ones. Students cannot multiclass and must take their first real level in the same class in which they took their student levels.

Student Barbarian
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
-2nd+0+1+1+0Tantrum, Illiteracy
-1st+0+1+1+0Rapid Movement
0lvl+0+2+2+0Full Proficiency


Tantrum (Ex)
At minus-second level, the student barbarian can fly into a tantrum once per day, as a rage except that the bonuses are +2 to strength and constitution and +1 to will saves.

Rapid Movement (Ex)
At minus-first level, the student barbarian can move 5 feet faster than normal

Full Proficiency
At zero level, the student barbarian gains proficiency in weapons and armour as a normal barbarian.



Is this something you would be interested in seeing completed? The other option is ome kind of eternal student class, who is always learning new things even when they reach god-tier.

Kaje
2016-10-18, 07:57 PM
Juvenile anger should be called tantrum.

ArcanaGuy
2016-10-21, 06:17 AM
I think Jormengand has a great idea for what you're looking for there. That's some outside of the box thinking.

If that doesn't do what you want - tell us more about what you want to do with this 'student' class. How you want to proceed with it. Is it for a specific campaign you have in mind? Do you have an NPC you want to give this class to? What's the end goal?

Perhaps not a 20-level progression, but a 4-or-5 level progression? Something that lets you specifically qualify for prestige classes - direct from student to prestige? Heck, maybe that's the culminating ability of a level 5 student in the 1-5 class: "Qualifies for any 1 prestige class" Level 1: Pick a prestige class you're training for. At every level, you get one prerequisite, even if it's only 1 automatic skill rank dumped into a requisite skill.

Jormengand
2016-10-21, 10:34 AM
Something that lets you specifically qualify for prestige classes - direct from student to prestige?

That's also a good idea - allowing people to take prestige classes from first level was a thing I tried doing before (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?332782-Base-Prestige-classes-(Arcane-Archer)).

jmhguy
2016-10-24, 03:27 AM
Well, my thought process is for children characters to go on adventures like solving a case on school grounds, looking for urban legends among the town, or something like an anime with a school setting with girls going after their senpai or other such things.Heck i would even want a disney recess theme campaign to be honest. I want to make something so i don't have to slap a Commoner class and call it a day.

EDIT:But ya, 5 or 10 levels seems like a sensible cap for this class

Jormengand
2016-10-24, 07:35 AM
Well, my thought process is for children characters to go on adventures like solving a case on school grounds, looking for urban legends among the town, or something like an anime with a school setting with girls going after their senpai or other such things.Heck i would even want a disney recess theme campaign to be honest. I want to make something so i don't have to slap a Commoner class and call it a day.

EDIT:But ya, 5 or 10 levels seems like a sensible cap for this class

10 levels is way too high. 5 is pushing it.

The thing about levels is that by the time you're about 10th level, it's relatively trivial to even people with NPC class levels to break the universe horribly. For example, the world high jump record is 8 ft. By taking 10, a 9th-level commoner with average strength can, from skill ranks alone, jump 8 feet. In reality, the person who managed that jump was almost certainly a second-level expert with 18 strength, 5 ranks and skill focus, giving him a +12 that allowed him to make that jump once every 20 times. Humans get two feats, meaning that with skill focus jump, acrobatic and 4 ranks, a level 1 character could make that jump. With 5 ranks, a synergy bonus from tumble, acrobatic, and skill focus, a level 2 character could potentially jump 9 feet in the air. Barbarians, with their increased movement speed, get a +4 penalty, and you can take a flaw to take the run feat, meaning that a second-level character could jump 10 feet straight up.

See the problem? While level 1 isn't usually enough to encompass all the things an adult human can do (for example, even assuming I have 18 int, I need to burn one of my feats to give me more than a 65% chance to make up a standard solution of acid, which I technically can't do anyway because I don't cast spells. Also, because of my low strength, I apparently have a non-negligible chance to drown in my local swimming pool if I'm under any kind of duress at all, and while I haven't a clue what my wisdom is, even if that's 18 I still have a chance to fail at basic first aid even though I've been practising since I was five) you're probably all right by level 3, which is where synergy's kicked in, you have 2 more ranks in everything and you can cover yourself with five feats.

People in fantasy settings don't even tend to reach level 10. If you think about what your favourite fantasy character actually does, it's probably not even that impressive in D&D terms. For example, if your character can kill a squad of ordinary people, heal their own and others' injuries and destroy the undead with their mere presence, well done, your character is a fourth-level paladin.

The reason I gave students negative levels? Because they probably aren't even level 1.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-10-24, 02:42 PM
The reason I gave students negative levels? Because they probably aren't even level 1.
This. 3.5 in particular scales insanely. Your passing bet, I think, is to simply run from levels 1-3ish and just assume that the average level in the world is high. Your best bet is to look at other games that don't assume such power, progression, or-- ideally-- both.

jmhguy
2016-10-24, 08:10 PM
Well i'm sorry that i was being unrealistic. and if that is the case i should just scrap this all together. I didn't make this class with munchkining in mind i just want to have something to justify characters without them being run of the mill commoners. but you know what skew it. Just don't bother with this anymore.

Jormengand
2016-10-25, 06:24 AM
No, I'm not even talking about "Munchkining", I'm talking about literally just levelling up your skills normally.

jmhguy
2016-10-25, 07:48 PM
Don't care, it's the way you belittle me with the explanation. I may not be very verse with the technical aspects but i have an imagination that i want to translate it to the game. I am sure you meant well with it, but i don't even think class this is going to work the way you explain things. So i decided to just scrap this all together.

Kamai
2016-10-25, 09:00 PM
While I don't think D&D is the system that you want to run the game that you're proposing, I'm going to assume that you still want to run it in D&D and give some suggestions from there.

1) Look into flaws (although you may have to make some up), and use a harsher conversion of flaws to feats (probably 2 flaws to get 1 feat). Done right, this should make the children much weaker than normal heroes, but still able to do level 1 hero stuff. It may be useful to combine this with a lower point buy for stats.

2) Accept the power level of D&D and keep in mind that the campaign may play closer to Sailor Moon/Power Rangers, where the children have the powers to save the day, but it is as important to try to be as normal as possible when the day doesn't need to be saved.

Amechra
2016-10-25, 09:53 PM
Someone's already done what Jormengand is batting around (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1132.5). It was based around the idea that the "frontloading" of D&D's math makes more sense if you think of 1st level as 4th level.

ArcanaGuy
2016-11-03, 06:21 AM
Been trying to come up with a decent response to this. I know it's been a while - but I really don't think you were being belittled. Folks were trying to teach you, to help you to understand what you were going after. Your proposed solution 'student class' - and your proposed problem 'I want to run a campaign that takes place in school' - do not match each other. A 'student class' would make all the players have the same class, which is ... eh. Very few groups want to all play as the same class. It's also a lot of work to put together enough flexibility to match *all* student archetypes under one class, or to make enough different student classes to be "Jock," "Nerd," "Class Clown," "Popular," etc. It is way more work than what you'd get out of it.

But your idea of running a school game is not a bad idea. In fact, it can be a lot of fun.

I'm going back to what I was mentioning before. "Depends on the student."

Students aren't all the same. one student might be the school jock - fighter or barbarian class. Another student might be the school's magical nerd, sitting in the library all the time. Wizard class. A third student might be the class clown, always pulling pranks and getting in trouble. Bard or rogue class. Then there's the gal who's always popular, and seems to pick things up so easily. Sorcerer class. 'student' isn't a description of abilities, it's a description of where your physical location is: in school. All of the given classes can be applied to school one way or another - given a sufficiently fantastical interpretation of school.

Once you get past the idea that 'student' has to be a class, then you can proceed to look at what all the classes can add to the class.

For instance, the wizard nerd. He's sitting in the library, lonely most of the time, scribing scrolls with supplies the artificing teacher slipped him, and practicing his magic by casting 'Summon Monster 1' to get some astral kitten to appear for six seconds and do something cute so he can take a picture on his smart phone and caption it. Or gets angry at the school bully and casts a silent image of a sign on the bully's back that says "I'm a big jerk." And he's so annoyed because here he's studying all the time just to pull this off, and meanwhile that sorcerer over there just cruises by and everyone just loves her, she never has to study to get good grades in the magic classes... and he'd love it if she would need to study and come over and talk to him to get his help to study, cause he's got a giant crush on her. Welcome to teen angst.

The student story comes in with how you describe the classes - not what class they are.