The Trinity Project 6+5+4=3. Tristalt All The Things.

[The Shadowmind]

The objective of this homebrew project, is to try to make tier 3 classes by taking weaker classes, and gestalting them together. These will start as gestalting of 3 classes, then abilities will be charged for synergies.

It was inspired by this post, and the hybrid classes that Pathfinder has. Here are some design philosophies that will be in use:
If you have an abilities you should be able to use them, thus:
If it has half-casting, then it will be upgraded to Duskblade or Bard casting, depending on role. A front-line fighter will have Duskblade spell progression, designed to weave their casting between attacks. Bard progression for those that casting are designed to be more predictive in nature, a well time cast to prevent a battle from ever happening, or one that changes to tides of battle. Divine Mind, and Soulborn will get a similar but different upgrade.

If every semi-optimized character is going to take a ACF or a specific feat, it should already be a part of the class.

Unless it is pair with the monk, a class will only have two good saves, even if normally gestalting them together would produce all good saves.

First up is:

The Spirit Thief. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XQlVsVAY_lJ_BfpFAY6iIcXLtLmQqIfvfTarVKzyoCA/edit?usp=sharing)
Base Classes: Lurk//Hexblade//Spellthief.

[Ranged Ranger]

Very cool project concept.
Your first class looks very interesting. I'm afraid I'm can't really speak to its balance.

[The Shadowmind]

Very cool project concept.
Your first class looks very interesting. I'm afraid I'm can't really speak to its balance.


Too powerful, or simply have no clue where it would land in power ratings?

I could use help with templating abilities.

[Ranged Ranger]

Too powerful, or simply have no clue where it would land in power ratings?

I could use help with templating abilities.

The one I bolded... I'm not that good at determining power levels, esp. when casting/psionics/etc are involved...

[The Shadowmind]

The one I bolded... I'm not that good at determining power levels, esp. when casting/psionics/etc are involved...

Okay, I am about the same, other than I figure most of these will be weaker than a optimized Wizard.
Well I just finished writing up the second one:

The Justicar. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QvgeJvnymZbHltau4AnzO6rvVMuVWU6JysopyPx71gM/edit?usp=sharing)
Base classes: Soul born//Divine Mind//Marshall.
Edit forgot to add class skills. Let me fix that real quick.

[aimlessPolymath]

I'm looking them over now.

It's... odd.

I'm going to set aside the Justicar for a moment, because I don't know anything about the Divine Mind. Focusing on the Spirit Thief:

Practically speaking, this class seems to be tier 3, basically due to the wide variety of things it can do. On the other hand, trying to determine power level is very hard for me, because there are a lot of abilities flying around.

This class, organizationally speaking, is a mess.

There are a total of 6 different abilities gained at level 1, not counting psionics/spellcasting.

It possesses both spellcasting and psionics, casting off of a total of three different lists (Lurk, Hexblade, Sorcerer/Wizard).

One third of the class's features depend on whether it's psionically focused, while another half are activated by spending psionic focus (oh, and you can apply Silent/Still spell or Eschew Materials on spells by spending power points, but unlike metapsionics, it doesn't cost power points to do [oh, and I just noticed that you get virtual Quicken Spell nearly for free at 6th level (but it only works when the first ability you used is a power, not a spell)]). Indentation is all over the place (granted, Google Docs is terrible about this in general).


Edit: While writing this, I noticed you asked for help templating abilities.
Standard templating, as far as I'm concerned, is roughly as follows:

Class Feature Name(type): At Xth level, the CLASSNAME gains the ability to (fluff description) as a (action) (any simple costs). When they do, XXXX.

Additional information

Additional paragraph describing how the ability upgrades numerically over time. This paragraph may be one line.

In general, the organization of effects I write is as follows, usually in separate paragraphs:
-What it is/how you interact with it, including usage limitations and such.
-Mechanical effects. Numbers go here.
-How it changes with level.

So, rewriting Inflict Curse:

Inflict Curse(Su): All Spirit Thieves know how to twist someone's fate as a swift action. When they do, a creature within 30 ft + 10 ft/level must make a Will save or be Cursed for an hour. If they succeed on the save, the Spirit Thief can't use this ability on them for 1d4 rounds. This effect can be removed by remove curse or other abilities that removes curses. For this purpose, the caster level of the effect is that of the Spirit Thief.

While Cursed, a creature takes a -2 penalty to attack and damage rolls, saving throws, and skill and ability checks. Furthermore, even if they would normally be immune to sneak attack damage, the Spirit Thief can still sneak attack them, dealing half the normal sneak attack damage.

At 7th level, the penalty increases to -4. At 19th level, the penalty increases again to -6.


Furthermore, elsewhere in the class, just after the class table, I would put the following line:
Several of the Spirit Thieves' abilities call for saving throws. Unless otherwise noted, the save DC of such abilities is 10 + 1/2 the spellthieves' level + their Charisma bonus.



Don't be afraid to split things into different paragraphs. As long as you bold the heading of each ability, they'll be easily distinguishable, and spreading out blocks of text is really important organizationally. Look at the rogue (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/rogue.htm). I think it's a really good example of organization: every ability past 1st level starts with the level you get it at, there are loads of line breaks so you can parse sentences individually. Let's break down the description of Sneak Attack:

Bold title
One line describing the cool thing you can now do

One sentence describing the condition you need. One sentence describing what you get. One sentence clarifying what you get.

Special case.

Special case.

Special case.


It's really great as an example.


Anyway.
You have a number of things that are subcategories of other things, or defined under general headings like "passive augment" or "active augment" or whatever. For now, I'd delete the headings, and organize things entirely by level for a little bit. This will help you identify when various levels are overloaded, compare the abilities to similar level, and also helps players parse the class- when they want to look up an ability, they can just scroll down until they're at the right level, rather than looking through multiple lists to find the right one.

Given that the classifications have no rules context that can't be put into the actual feature, I don't see a strong reason not to.

[The Shadowmind]

-Snip-


Thanks for all the help so far.
I could increase the number of power points, get rid of the spell-slots, and then let the Spirit Thief learn the Sor/Wiz spells of the Spell thief as a psionic powers like a Spell to Power Erudite. Which would make for a cleaner table, and let me get rid of the Armored mage ability. That reduces the total powers known, but streamlines it some.

[qazzquimby]

Are you aware of this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?234951-Trissociate-3-5-Base-Class-(PEACH))?

[The Shadowmind]

Are you aware of this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?234951-Trissociate-3-5-Base-Class-(PEACH))?

I've seen it. It explores similar, but different design spaces than I am aiming at. These are closer to my aim (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/)