Alternate Magic Campaign: Golden Sun (Dark Sun with major twists)

[muichimotsu]

I'll admit I'm barely familiar with Dark Sun as a setting, but when I brought up the idea in a FB group, someone observed that it was very similar to said world. And in a way, it is. Watching a playthrough of Golden Sun on GBA made me think it could be interesting to try a setting where arcane and divine magic as traditionally done don't exist and the only other form of magic besides the pact concept we see with Warlocks and such is psionics (could be called mysticism or such to push away from the scifi undertone one might get)


In order to make psionics seem more natural in the culture, I'm trying to make some lore that uses the 6 disciplines and applies a metaphor of one of the 6 major damage types/elements, as well as a rough approximation of the 8 arcane magic schools

Clairsentience-Divination, Air Element
Metacreativity-Conjuration/Creation + Necromancy, Positive Energy
Psychometabolism-Transmutation, Earth Element
Psychoportation-Conjuration/Teleportation, Water Element
Telepathy-Enchantment + Illusion, Negative Energy
Psychokinesis-Evocation + Abjuration, Fire Element


Most important for the setting and campaign is compiling a list of psionic base and prestige classes as well as pact magic base and prestige classes. Need to tweak some that have a good fit, like Sha'ir or Oracle, among others that can serve as replacements for Sorcerer/Wizard/Cleric/Druid/etc


Psionic Base Classes
Ardent-Wisdom, Int, Con
Divine Mind-Wis, Str
Psychic Warrior-Str, Wisdom, Dex, Con
Wilder-Charisma, Dex, Str
Psion-Int (Telepath, Kineticist, Seer, Shapter, Egoist, Nomad)
Soulknife-Str, Dex, Con
Lurk-Int, Str, Dex, Con
Psionic Rogue
Psionic Artificer-Charisma, Int, Dex
Erudite-Int

Psionic Prestige Classes
Cryokineticist
Cerebremancer
Elocater
Fist of Zuoken
Illithid Slayer
Metamind
Psion Uncarnate
Pyrokineticist
Thrallherd
War Mind
Anarchic Initiate
Ebon Saint
Ectopic Adept
Flayerspawn Psychic
Illumine Soul
Soulbow
Storm Disciple
Zerth Cenobite
Diamond Dragon
Sangehirn
Meditant
Constructor
Crystal Master
Psychic Weapon Master
Diamond Warrior
Shadow Mind
Arch Psion
Ruby Disciple
Cerebral Assassin
Kineticist (Pyro/Cryo/Electro/Aceto/Sono)
Ballisteer
Chosen of Sardior
Percepient
Planar Vanguard
Psychic Theurge
Body Leech
Crystalsinger
Grim Psion
Dread Champion
Mind Knight


Pact Magic Base Classes
Warlock
Dragonfire Adept
Shadowcaster
Binder
(Spirit Shaman)
(Shair)
(Shaman)
(Oracle)
(Witch)
(Favored Soul)
(Dread Necromancer)
(Mystic)
(Savant)



Pact Magic Prestige Classes
Hellfire Warlock
Anima Mage
Knight of the Sacred Seal
Scion of Dantalion
Tenebrous Apostate
Witch Slayer
Child of Night
Master of Shadow
Noctumancer
Shadowblade
Shadowsmith
Enlightened Spirit
(Eldritch Disciple)
(Eldritch Theurge)
(Pact Bound Adept)

[JustIgnoreMe]

Golden Sun and Dark Sun have virtually nothing in common.

Psionics are integral to Dark Sun, and don't have any sci-fi undertones there.

Dark Sun is Mad Max with psionics added.

Golden Sun is Final Fantasy with pokemon added.

Both technically post-apocalyptic, maybe, but in Golden Sun you never have to worry about how many pints of water you can squeeze from the corpse of that cactus-man you just killed, or how many dollops of honey your beetle will provide today, or whether today's the day the halfling snaps and tries to eat the rest of the party.

[Fizban]

I've often come back to tinkering on concepts for doing Golden Sun via DnD mechanics. The main thing is that, like every direct adaptation, it's never going to work with the "mash all the books together" philosophy- as in, I disagree with your main point about needing a list of all the psionic and pact classes and trying to hammer the existing disciplines into the Golden Sun elements.

Because it's a heck of a lot easier than that.

There are two main classes for the playable characters in Golden Sun: Psychic Warrior, and Psion. Except actually, when you consider how the primary casters aren't that much worse at attacking (mostly limited by weapon proficiencies) and the primary attackers only have slightly less psy points and damage, it's not even those two classes. The protagonists of Golden Sun are either Psions, or Psions with a 1-2 level Fighter dip for proficiencies and hp boosts.

There's no need to involve the existing disciplines at all, because Golden Sun is pretty dang clear on its elements and the available powers. There's very little "non-combat utility" at all, and the elements of those powers are already assigned. The low number of learnable powers combined with the psion's high number of powers known and 3.5 psionics augmentation does present a problem with how you'd run out of new powers to take after so many levels. Fixing this is also easy, as you simply rebuild and assign the damage powers (you're going to have to build a lot of Golden Sun's powers from scratch anyway, not that it's hard) without/with less augmentation so you take the greater versions when you reach higher levels. And you really should be doing that, because much of the charm of Golden Sun is in it's beautifully animated and distinct attack spells even when they all just boil down to damage vs X targets- leaving them all as energy restricted versions of the 3.5 psionic powers completely removes that.

Or go all-in and remove the idea of power lists completely. Golden Sun does have lost powers and powers that some people don't know yet, but those are once again specific utility powers that can often be picked up at effectively no cost by adepts of that element (or are gained free by anyone who equips the widget). There's no reason you can't just give each element a specific list and stop there, the main reasons not to do so are just a couple of wide/focused powers that are different between the attack/psy focused characters.

All that magitech? Yeah, magitech generally has nothing to do with casting- magitech is fancy item creation systems. Monsters and non-adepts? Well non-adepts are completely mundane aside from gear so those class options are obvious, and monsters are monsters so you can use existing or swap out powers or just rely on description to make them match.

Another way to do the classes would be to actually go back and ditch psionics entirely, since the 6/9 level power progression is higher than Golden Sun needs and makes too much of a gap. Its easier to design the golden sun powers as spells that don't have an augmentation system, and there's two existing spell slot classes with only a small gap in their casting power: Adept (how appropriate!) and Bard. Give the Adept full BAB and weapon+armor proficiencies, tweak the skill lists and casting stats as desired (I actually have some generic versions with variable casting stats that affect things) and you're actually better off, since Golden Sun doesn't progress into the sort of magic that DnD places at 7th-9th. (Or if you insist on psionics, use two variations on PsyWar).

What about the Djinni? Well there's two things about those. The first is that most people seem to play Golden Sun wrong (yeah I said it), or at least in Let's Plays I've noticed- constantly leaving their dijinn in standby mode so they can spam the same boring summons and auto-win every time, assuming they don't get dropped before the summons go off or get attacked again before the cooldown is over and they have to constantly reset to standby mode after every single fight. Sure, you're supposed to win every time, it's not a hard game, but like I already said that's boring and annoying. What you're actually supposed to do is leave all your dijin set, increasing your stats (and improving your "class"), while blasting things with the elements they're weak against, occasionally unleashing a dijin for a useful power and then summoning because why not, but most importantly actually using a variety of things because they're there to enjoy you idiots :smallfurious: /Rant

The second, how do you translate that into DnD? Magic items, or rather magic item replacement. Golden Sun does have magic items, but they're just incremental bonuses to jrpg number values in the range of hundreds, with many defined by a single randomly triggered attack (effectively a vorpal or burst ability), a very weak activated ability, or being made out of some nifty element that makes them automatically a powerful item. This is actually a low-magic-item system, with maybe a couple degrees of masterwork, several special materials, and the most powerful of magic weapons have crit or high-roll random activation abilities.

That leaves room for the DnD version of djinni to be the replacement for the flat numerical boosters, then when you unleash them you launch a magic item effect or attack buff while losing the constant bonus (this is multiple mutually exclusive powers for +75% on the lower cost), and then of course the summons. I got a prototype progression on the buff numbers based on 1 dijinn/2 levels, but after that the unleashes and summons are basically up to taste. You can't actually base it on gp, just gotta feel it out in line with the classes and monsters.

But that's not actually what you want- you want to build a setting by choosing a different set of primary classes based on elementaly/sprity/pacty magic, and extrapolate from there. This still has the kitchen sink problem where you're just trying to declare too many things as influential. The general setting of DnD isn't actually influenced by spellcasters other than the fact that they exist and magic items exist and things occasionally happen (mostly around the PCs because plot), with the level demographics in the DMG locking the only major classes to core (unless you modify this) and keeping their numbers and levels down to the point where they're not some major faction but pretty much just a small collection of higher level individuals and about 1-2% of the population in 1st levels (unless you modify it).

Golden Sun implies that before the sealing of alchemy, either everyone or pretty much everyone could use psynergy. The remaining clans with the ability are small and located near the remaining focuses of that power, but the Mars clan still has plenty of adepts, everyone in Vale can use it, and even without pysnergy crystal exposure people can still train themselves to use ki/chi (which may depend on trace exposure, but nothing noticeable until the eruption). . . and it has no serious effect. So either you're in the magitech powered past where everyone is a spellcaster with a bunch of magic items, or you're in the present where casters are just as rare and non-world-altering as they are in standard DnD. The third game takes place during a sudden boom of magic availability, but still doesn't actually change much because it just started and raw pysnergy without the magitech is limited.

So the point is, a big list of classes and prestige classes around the theme doesn't actually make the setting. The setting makes the setting, and unless you modify things to meet a certain goal, none of the nature of those classes will make much of a difference. And since Golden Sun characters don't map directly to DnD classes, it's not going to feel like Golden Sun either. You've made a list, now you need to decide what you actually want to do.

[muichimotsu]

Golden Sun and Dark Sun have virtually nothing in common.

Psionics are integral to Dark Sun, and don't have any sci-fi undertones there.

Dark Sun is Mad Max with psionics added.

Golden Sun is Final Fantasy with pokemon added.

Both technically post-apocalyptic, maybe, but in Golden Sun you never have to worry about how many pints of water you can squeeze from the corpse of that cactus-man you just killed, or how many dollops of honey your beetle will provide today, or whether today's the day the halfling snaps and tries to eat the rest of the party.

It was more meant to be a word pun, though I guess it didn't come across that way.

Having played Golden Sun, I think it's unfair to characterize the Djinn system as Pokemon at all. If anything, I'm reminded of FF8's GF system where you have these things that you can summon, but they also enhance your fighting ability, albeit Djinn change your character class, not that that is usually on a player's mind

[Recherché]

I keep having a vague idea in the back of my head of running Golden Sun using Spheres of Power and Pathfinder. I'd probably be a lot less strict about everything belonging to one of 4 elements though since there's a fair few things in there that don't map neatly. Not exactly sure how I'd run Djinn but my basic idea is as slotless items that you can bond with to gain a small stat boost and either access to a new talent or access to a new sphere if you don't already have anything in that sphere. All options would be preset to the djinn in question, not chosen by the player.

[muichimotsu]

I've often come back to tinkering on concepts for doing Golden Sun via DnD mechanics. The main thing is that, like every direct adaptation, it's never going to work with the "mash all the books together" philosophy- as in, I disagree with your main point about needing a list of all the psionic and pact classes and trying to hammer the existing disciplines into the Golden Sun elements.

Because it's a heck of a lot easier than that.

There are two main classes for the playable characters in Golden Sun: Psychic Warrior, and Psion. Except actually, when you consider how the primary casters aren't that much worse at attacking (mostly limited by weapon proficiencies) and the primary attackers only have slightly less psy points and damage, it's not even those two classes. The protagonists of Golden Sun are either Psions, or Psions with a 1-2 level Fighter dip for proficiencies and hp boosts.

There's no need to involve the existing disciplines at all, because Golden Sun is pretty dang clear on its elements and the available powers. There's very little "non-combat utility" at all, and the elements of those powers are already assigned. The low number of learnable powers combined with the psion's high number of powers known and 3.5 psionics augmentation does present a problem with how you'd run out of new powers to take after so many levels. Fixing this is also easy, as you simply rebuild and assign the damage powers (you're going to have to build a lot of Golden Sun's powers from scratch anyway, not that it's hard) without/with less augmentation so you take the greater versions when you reach higher levels. And you really should be doing that, because much of the charm of Golden Sun is in it's beautifully animated and distinct attack spells even when they all just boil down to damage vs X targets- leaving them all as energy restricted versions of the 3.5 psionic powers completely removes that.

Or go all-in and remove the idea of power lists completely. Golden Sun does have lost powers and powers that some people don't know yet, but those are once again specific utility powers that can often be picked up at effectively no cost by adepts of that element (or are gained free by anyone who equips the widget). There's no reason you can't just give each element a specific list and stop there, the main reasons not to do so are just a couple of wide/focused powers that are different between the attack/psy focused characters.

All that magitech? Yeah, magitech generally has nothing to do with casting- magitech is fancy item creation systems. Monsters and non-adepts? Well non-adepts are completely mundane aside from gear so those class options are obvious, and monsters are monsters so you can use existing or swap out powers or just rely on description to make them match.

Another way to do the classes would be to actually go back and ditch psionics entirely, since the 6/9 level power progression is higher than Golden Sun needs and makes too much of a gap. Its easier to design the golden sun powers as spells that don't have an augmentation system, and there's two existing spell slot classes with only a small gap in their casting power: Adept (how appropriate!) and Bard. Give the Adept full BAB and weapon+armor proficiencies, tweak the skill lists and casting stats as desired (I actually have some generic versions with variable casting stats that affect things) and you're actually better off, since Golden Sun doesn't progress into the sort of magic that DnD places at 7th-9th. (Or if you insist on psionics, use two variations on PsyWar).

What about the Djinni? Well there's two things about those. The first is that most people seem to play Golden Sun wrong (yeah I said it), or at least in Let's Plays I've noticed- constantly leaving their dijinn in standby mode so they can spam the same boring summons and auto-win every time, assuming they don't get dropped before the summons go off or get attacked again before the cooldown is over and they have to constantly reset to standby mode after every single fight. Sure, you're supposed to win every time, it's not a hard game, but like I already said that's boring and annoying. What you're actually supposed to do is leave all your dijin set, increasing your stats (and improving your "class"), while blasting things with the elements they're weak against, occasionally unleashing a dijin for a useful power and then summoning because why not, but most importantly actually using a variety of things because they're there to enjoy you idiots :smallfurious: /Rant

The second, how do you translate that into DnD? Magic items, or rather magic item replacement. Golden Sun does have magic items, but they're just incremental bonuses to jrpg number values in the range of hundreds, with many defined by a single randomly triggered attack (effectively a vorpal or burst ability), a very weak activated ability, or being made out of some nifty element that makes them automatically a powerful item. This is actually a low-magic-item system, with maybe a couple degrees of masterwork, several special materials, and the most powerful of magic weapons have crit or high-roll random activation abilities.

That leaves room for the DnD version of djinni to be the replacement for the flat numerical boosters, then when you unleash them you launch a magic item effect or attack buff while losing the constant bonus (this is multiple mutually exclusive powers for +75% on the lower cost), and then of course the summons. I got a prototype progression on the buff numbers based on 1 dijinn/2 levels, but after that the unleashes and summons are basically up to taste. You can't actually base it on gp, just gotta feel it out in line with the classes and monsters.

But that's not actually what you want- you want to build a setting by choosing a different set of primary classes based on elementaly/sprity/pacty magic, and extrapolate from there. This still has the kitchen sink problem where you're just trying to declare too many things as influential. The general setting of DnD isn't actually influenced by spellcasters other than the fact that they exist and magic items exist and things occasionally happen (mostly around the PCs because plot), with the level demographics in the DMG locking the only major classes to core (unless you modify this) and keeping their numbers and levels down to the point where they're not some major faction but pretty much just a small collection of higher level individuals and about 1-2% of the population in 1st levels (unless you modify it).

Golden Sun implies that before the sealing of alchemy, either everyone or pretty much everyone could use psynergy. The remaining clans with the ability are small and located near the remaining focuses of that power, but the Mars clan still has plenty of adepts, everyone in Vale can use it, and even without pysnergy crystal exposure people can still train themselves to use ki/chi (which may depend on trace exposure, but nothing noticeable until the eruption). . . and it has no serious effect. So either you're in the magitech powered past where everyone is a spellcaster with a bunch of magic items, or you're in the present where casters are just as rare and non-world-altering as they are in standard DnD. The third game takes place during a sudden boom of magic availability, but still doesn't actually change much because it just started and raw pysnergy without the magitech is limited.

So the point is, a big list of classes and prestige classes around the theme doesn't actually make the setting. The setting makes the setting, and unless you modify things to meet a certain goal, none of the nature of those classes will make much of a difference. And since Golden Sun characters don't map directly to DnD classes, it's not going to feel like Golden Sun either. You've made a list, now you need to decide what you actually want to do.

Golden Sun was the inspiration, but yeah, Golden Sun adapted even remotely would be a fundamental restructuring, which isn't what I want to do, except at best in particular classes that work in the traditional arcane/divine casting structure, but would go with something more akin to invocations/etc (Shadowcaster has mysteries, I believe), so that there isn't the concern with managing points if a player doesn't want to, but if they do, then we have arguably a more streamlined system compared to spell slots in 3.5, to say nothing of bonus spells per slot. Powers have their own parallels, like the maximum power level you can learn and such, but it does feel easier even with my somewhat limited understanding of it from only playing a Telepath for one session before that group and I split ways.

What I WANT to do is make a rough setting where such things as Wizards or Clerics, among the other variations that exist, don't have a presence at all because of how casting in general evolved in this continuity. People looked either inwardly to develop the "Mystic" (5E term which worked better to make it seem less sci fi) powers or they looked outward to beings of power and gained specific abilities that were tied to their devotion/contract/etc rather than stuff that would run out of energy. More limited choice, but greater endurance

In terms of making the setting, I feel like the hardest thing would be making it seem natural, that the "psionics" are just the equivalent of arcane magic, called magic by cultures in general and even treated as such so that there isn't the need for psionics and magic to be treated separately (more of a pain than it needs to be). The pact magic could be seen as more akin to divine magic, those that have a special relationship with an entity that grants the power by virtue of the shared agreement. Creating conflicts can still be done with normal monsters and sub in psionic ones for an interesting challenge rather than fundamentally changing how people approach fighting, because even the invocations would apply the same as the psionics for resistance and such. Basically the default rule of psionic magic transparency

It's simplifying things without taking away the essential parts of magic casting in D&D with regards to the typing and how it can enhance characters and roleplaying. An Erudite, Psion or Wilder can all fight in different ways, but you also have Warlock (which I'd use an expanded homebrew that seems fairly good for playtesting anyway), Dragonfire Adept and others like Sha'ir from Al Qadim and Oracle from Pathfinder to serve as divine casters

[Fizban]

What I WANT to do is make a rough setting where such things as Wizards or Clerics, among the other variations that exist, don't have a presence at all because of how casting in general evolved in this continuity. People looked either inwardly to develop the "Mystic" (5E term which worked better to make it seem less sci fi) powers or they looked outward to beings of power and gained specific abilities that were tied to their devotion/contract/etc rather than stuff that would run out of energy. More limited choice, but greater endurance

In terms of making the setting, I feel like the hardest thing would be making it seem natural, that the "psionics" are just the equivalent of arcane magic, called magic by cultures in general and even treated as such so that there isn't the need for psionics and magic to be treated separately (more of a pain than it needs to be). The pact magic could be seen as more akin to divine magic, those that have a special relationship with an entity that grants the power by virtue of the shared agreement.
The only thing you need for a setting without certain classes is to remove those classes. The (well known) problem with substituting psionics for magic is simply that the mechanics are all written as psionics rather than magic, and there's really no way to fix this: either you can get your group on board with ignoring the psionic fluff and play it as magic, or you rewrite the entire system with magic words instead of psionic words (Ernir had such a project a while back, here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?194002-3-5-A-Translation-of-Vancian-Spellcasting-to-Psionic-Mechanics), but it also includes more personalized mechanical changes I don't endorse, the most obvious being the base classes and Fireball at 2nd).


It's simplifying things without taking away the essential parts of magic casting in D&D with regards to the typing and how it can enhance characters and roleplaying. An Erudite, Psion or Wilder can all fight in different ways, but you also have Warlock (which I'd use an expanded homebrew that seems fairly good for playtesting anyway), Dragonfire Adept and others like Sha'ir from Al Qadim and Oracle from Pathfinder to serve as divine casters
There are only two things essential to magic in DnD 3.x: crowd control, and the entire Cleric. The core balance of the game relies upon the Cleric's access to the entire cleric list (and having turn/rebuke at early levels) in order to guarantee that the party can fight and recover against essentially any creature in the game as long as they retreat and pray for spells the next morning: the cleric list has all the status removal, prevention, and silver bullets required, once you hit about 4th level spells. What the cleric lacks until higher levels is effective crowd control, which is what the wizard provides.

Magic items can be made from basically any magic that the DM deems close enough to qualify or just UMD'd by 12th level warlocks, but removing the cleric (and druid to a lesser extent) removes that pillar from the game. You can still play the game without it, obviously, and as before the setting doesn't actually care much about the overall impact of clerics beyond what the DM says they have, but that's pretty much the one thing to worry about when you're removing classes. No cleric in the party means there are monsters against which the party may have no answer, no clerics in the setting means every game has no cleric in the party. If you're cool with that then mechanically you're fine.

Now, if you just want to brainstorm on how to shape the presentation of the setting based on the available magics, I'd say again that you'll need to narrow it down. Standard has clerics, wizards, and druids. Clerics are the de facto major power by being primary organized religion, though with the many gods of the setting there's no reason to assume one god holds all the power. Druids are the non-urban religion, and wizards are the only arcane caster that has a mechanical reason to organize. (And while you're at it you can make any other changes to the standard class demographics you want).

The only psionic class that has a strong reason to organize is the erudite, due to their unlimited powers known, though a case can be made for higher level psions with access to Psychic Reformation congregating to swap powers (unlike sorcerers who have no such mechanical ability outside of Limited Wish shenanigans). Absolutely no pact-ish classes have reason to congregate outside of fluff, since mechanically they can't swap or stockpile class features and there's no mechanical restrictions for entry (there's always the "some ancestor had it" justification, and with thousands of years of humanoids existing alongside magical creatures, everyone will have magic blood and pacts in their ancestry). Shadowcasters are played up like they do with their mystery groupings and fluffy organizations, but mechanically they're just sorcerers with more restrictions.

In order to mechanically justify organizations for people who can't swap or stockpile features, you need to gate features (spells, vestiges, etc) so that some are only known by members of certain groups. In-game this would be the result of them researching new spells/whatever and then not widely sharing the results, but out of game this requires either writing a bunch of stuff just to have it be restricted, or gating off printed material that was previously available just by leveling up. The default way to do this would normally be the fact that the DM is not compelled to allow everything from every book, thus certain spells/whatever outside the PHB aren't automatically available on level up and can be gained only by research or joining an organization that has done the research for you.

The final method would be to enforce training requirements, the optional rules based on previous editions found in the DMG. If leveling up in magic-ness is more of a pain or even requires someone higher level than you without exception, then members of those classes will gather around their highest level exemplars (who gained their levels how?) and naturally form organizations which can impact the world.

Without mechanical justification, anything else is just fluff- no problem with fluff, but 3.5 makes a point of being extremely free with letting anyone take any class they want at any time, choosing from any class features or spells they want at any time, from among whatever the DM is allowing. You can replace the classes associated with organized religion, but other than saying "instead of clerics and druids, organized religion supports X and Y," it's not going to have much of an impact.

There's also just directly brewing or altering whatever you need to make things happen. Instead of just replacing casters, you can completely reassign class demographics, and/or boost the levels so that magic is more common, but the biggest thing to make magic relevant is to add 1st level abilities (preferably at-will) which make the desired impact, or higher level spells that are truly and cheaply permanent. But before that, you need to know what it is you want to happen.


*You haven't actually stated what you want help with, so I'm in general discussion mode. Your list of classes seems complete (with extra pathfinder classes), and I don't know squat about Dark Sun either, so yeah.

I will point out that canonizing the Sha'ir basically does to the sor/wiz list the same thing the Cleric list already has, universal ubiquity among those of the class. Or it would, except Sha'ir actually do have to keep a "spellbook," because they can only call up spells outside their "known" list which they've seen and identified being cast. This means they actually would want to congregate to show off spells, but they're able to share them far, far more easily than wizards. Though since the arcane magical writing rules only reference wizards writing in spellbooks, the Sha'ir are limited to scrolls for stockpiling knowledge, which makes them a bit more fragile in the face of major member deaths. In any case, much like how any cleric spell is available to every cleric of every community of a high enough level, every sor/wiz spell known to the sha'ir organization can be made available to every community with a high enough level sha'ir. Neither list actually has that much of an impact at the setting level, but it's definitely a boost on the community level and an overall increase. And as cha primary casters with diplomacy as a primary skill, they're essentially guaranteed to have as much political power as they want- but much easier to assassinate if they're not ready for it.

[muichimotsu]

The only thing you need for a setting without certain classes is to remove those classes. The (well known) problem with substituting psionics for magic is simply that the mechanics are all written as psionics rather than magic, and there's really no way to fix this: either you can get your group on board with ignoring the psionic fluff and play it as magic, or you rewrite the entire system with magic words instead of psionic words (Ernir had such a project a while back, but it also includes more personalized mechanical changes I don't endorse, the most obvious being the base classes and Fireball at 2nd).


There are only two things essential to magic in DnD 3.x: crowd control, and the entire Cleric. The core balance of the game relies upon the Cleric's access to the entire cleric list (and having turn/rebuke at early levels) in order to guarantee that the party can fight and recover against essentially any creature in the game as long as they retreat and pray for spells the next morning: the cleric list has all the status removal, prevention, and silver bullets required, once you hit about 4th level spells. What the cleric lacks until higher levels is effective crowd control, which is what the wizard provides.

Magic items can be made from basically any magic that the DM deems close enough to qualify or just UMD'd by 12th level warlocks, but removing the cleric (and druid to a lesser extent) removes that pillar from the game. You can still play the game without it, obviously, and as before the setting doesn't actually care much about the overall impact of clerics beyond what the DM says they have, but that's pretty much the one thing to worry about when you're removing classes. No cleric in the party means there are monsters against which the party may have no answer, no clerics in the setting means every game has no cleric in the party. If you're cool with that then mechanically you're fine.

Now, if you just want to brainstorm on how to shape the presentation of the setting based on the available magics, I'd say again that you'll need to narrow it down. Standard has clerics, wizards, and druids. Clerics are the de facto major power by being primary organized religion, though with the many gods of the setting there's no reason to assume one god holds all the power. Druids are the non-urban religion, and wizards are the only arcane caster that has a mechanical reason to organize. (And while you're at it you can make any other changes to the standard class demographics you want).

The only psionic class that has a strong reason to organize is the erudite, due to their unlimited powers known, though a case can be made for higher level psions with access to Psychic Reformation congregating to swap powers (unlike sorcerers who have no such mechanical ability outside of Limited Wish shenanigans). Absolutely no pact-ish classes have reason to congregate outside of fluff, since mechanically they can't swap or stockpile class features and there's no mechanical restrictions for entry (there's always the "some ancestor had it" justification, and with thousands of years of humanoids existing alongside magical creatures, everyone will have magic blood and pacts in their ancestry). Shadowcasters are played up like they do with their mystery groupings and fluffy organizations, but mechanically they're just sorcerers with more restrictions.

In order to mechanically justify organizations for people who can't swap or stockpile features, you need to gate features (spells, vestiges, etc) so that some are only known by members of certain groups. In-game this would be the result of them researching new spells/whatever and then not widely sharing the results, but out of game this requires either writing a bunch of stuff just to have it be restricted, or gating off printed material that was previously available just by leveling up. The default way to do this would normally be the fact that the DM is not compelled to allow everything from every book, thus certain spells/whatever outside the PHB aren't automatically available on level up and can be gained only by research or joining an organization that has done the research for you.

The final method would be to enforce training requirements, the optional rules based on previous editions found in the DMG. If leveling up in magic-ness is more of a pain or even requires someone higher level than you without exception, then members of those classes will gather around their highest level exemplars (who gained their levels how?) and naturally form organizations which can impact the world.

Without mechanical justification, anything else is just fluff- no problem with fluff, but 3.5 makes a point of being extremely free with letting anyone take any class they want at any time, choosing from any class features or spells they want at any time, from among whatever the DM is allowing. You can replace the classes associated with organized religion, but other than saying "instead of clerics and druids, organized religion supports X and Y," it's not going to have much of an impact.

There's also just directly brewing or altering whatever you need to make things happen. Instead of just replacing casters, you can completely reassign class demographics, and/or boost the levels so that magic is more common, but the biggest thing to make magic relevant is to add 1st level abilities (preferably at-will) which make the desired impact, or higher level spells that are truly and cheaply permanent. But before that, you need to know what it is you want to happen.


*You haven't actually stated what you want help with, so I'm in general discussion mode. Your list of classes seems complete (with extra pathfinder classes), and I don't know squat about Dark Sun either, so yeah.

I will point out that canonizing the Sha'ir basically does to the sor/wiz list the same thing the Cleric list already has, universal ubiquity among those of the class. Or it would, except Sha'ir actually do have to keep a "spellbook," because they can only call up spells outside their "known" list which they've seen and identified being cast. This means they actually would want to congregate to show off spells, but they're able to share them far, far more easily than wizards. Though since the arcane magical writing rules only reference wizards writing in spellbooks, the Sha'ir are limited to scrolls for stockpiling knowledge, which makes them a bit more fragile in the face of major member deaths. In any case, much like how any cleric spell is available to every cleric of every community of a high enough level, every sor/wiz spell known to the sha'ir organization can be made available to every community with a high enough level sha'ir. Neither list actually has that much of an impact at the setting level, but it's definitely a boost on the community level and an overall increase. And as cha primary casters with diplomacy as a primary skill, they're essentially guaranteed to have as much political power as they want- but much easier to assassinate if they're not ready for it.

This is all stuff that is very helpful in terms of structuring the setting (though I really should be devoting time to adapting a video game story that I had planned to make time for, but this is also fairly compelling in a way, though I still would have to breach this idea to my 3.5 group, since psions in any sense have barely shown up (we had a Psionic Rogue once, that was about it) and I don't think we've really used invocation classes, though I have a Warlock rolled up if it comes to it (my present PC is an Evocation Specialist Wizard)

You do bring up a very valid point in regards to the cleric/druid both having a spell list that makes their diversity a lot more valuable than with arcane casters. Sha'ir being mechanically similar could be altered in a way that would make them like Clerics in the "arcane" sense, their "gods" being the Genie that give them their spells when they commune with them or such. Having other divine classes to replace the Cleric. Divine Mind is arguably more a Paladin type rather than Cleric, though Divine Mind can somewhat function as a Cleric depending on mantles, but Favored Soul and Oracle. Maybe the Mystic, though if we're talking even tweaking flavor, it's tricky to put it in a way that works like a pact rather than just being a "Psion" that accesses the Cleric list and treat it like a psionic in flavor rather than pact.

I think I'd need some explanation in terms of the swap and stockpiling of class features. With swap, I assume you mean alternate class features, though I could be wrong. And stockpiling is especially unclear, though if we're talking general shared ideals and such, then it is a bit harder to have an organization for many of the divine classes, since they're more individualistic in nature. Shaman from OE, for instance, to say nothing of the Oracle, the Favored Soul, the Mystic.

One thing that I wouldn't mind trying in the setting is that the idea of worship of gods is nonexistent, moreso focused on revering and generally having good relations with outsiders of significant power, using pacts and the like for granting magical ability to those that don't have psionic/magic talent that they can polish through training.

[Florian]

@muichimotsu:

If you don't have a knee-jerk reaction towards Pathfinder, then head over to the PRD and have a loot at the following classes and archetypes:
- Medium
- Occultist (Panoply Savant, Sha´ir)
- Shifter (Elementalist Shifter)

The Medium is a very advanced form of the old Binder and can be a stand-in for any class, any time. Need a cleric? Start channeling the Hierrophant. Need a Necromancer? Start channeling Nex, and so on. Note that you also have a mechanic to add "legendary" variations of spirits later. So that class by itself is very good at modeling dealing with the "Djinn".

The Occultist can be compared to a more well-rounded Shadowcaster of old, slowly unlocking new power and spells known. The Panoply Savant is more about "class roles", allowing a character to also be a "Bard", "Mage" or "Warrior", while the Sha´ir is directly tied to tapping into elemental powers.

The base Shifter class is uninteresting. The Elementalist Shifter does what it says on the tin, a full BAB class that is able to shift into elemental combat forms.

[Fizban]

(No need to quote the whole wall of text, 'specially when there's no posts in-between. There's also an edit button on your own posts).

When I say swap and stockpile class features, I mean changing what you do each day or permanently learning new things with no limit. Any prepared caster swaps out their class features when they change what spells they have prepared (and Spirit Shamans when they change their spells retrieved), while the wizard (and erudite) are capable of stockpiling spells known with the only limit being how much time/money/xp they have- unless the DM institutes more limits than just the "standard" spell copying fee and scroll costs, such as by enforcing the suggestion that casters don't like sharing their high level spells and requiring you to find a caster that will actually scribe and sell you the scroll (or power stone).

Incarnum users and Binders are both class feature swappers, being able to change their soulmelds or binds every day. They also both know their entire lists unless someone researches a new meld/vestige without distributing it, or the DM restricts some (as dicussed above).

Sha'ir are swappers and stockpilers, just like wizards but with different mechanics. They can retrieve any spell they've identified with spellcraft while seeing it cast, so while a sorcerer is limited to only their spells known, a sha'ir can change their spells retrieved each day. Spells known for a sha'ir are more accurately "spells learned without watching someone else which I can also retrieve faster," but the retrieval time is still low enough on other spells that a sha'ir doesn't need any more prep time than a wizard really, often less (except for their tiny domain spell access with takes hours and is terrible). Meanwhile they also stockpile class features by being able to effectively learn any number of spells just by seeing them cast.

Sha'ir with access to an organization which fills up their spells "seen and identified" can be said to be the "clerics" of arcane casting, but that's not a role that the game cares about. The Cleric is the Cleric specifically because of the Cleric spell list. A sha'ir cannot fill that role unless they're allowed to access the whole cleric list. The class description goes on about how its so cool they can use some divine spells, but they only have access to a specific set of domains that includes few divine spells, fewer of which are actually worth using, none of which are the actual necessary divine spells.

Now, just giving them access to both lists wouldn't actually be the end of the world. The game expects two spellcasters, one with the cleric's toolkit and one with crowd control, but as long as there aren't two offensive spellcasters in the party and they have access to those survival spells from somewhere, everything is fine. And since most people don't actually care about limiting the magical offense of the party, it doesn't really matter what spells they have access to. In any case, the spell lists of this class/setting basically just move from hard lists of "you can pick any of these but none of these," to a softer "you can pick anything you want but only up to this many, and after that you can only learn what your organization will teach you." Then you can have any number of organizations with any number of spells among their members: the PCs are allowed to learn anything they can get their eyes on, but are still only guaranteed their base "known" spells from level up and need to choose wisely.

A very interesting difference I didn't fully elaborate on is how sha'ir aren't wizards and must see the spell cast (and identify it with spellcraft). They can't write spellbooks, they can't prepare spells from spellbooks, and possibly they can't even learn by watching people use scrolls if the DM determines that activating a spell completion item isn't close enough to casting the spell (same problem with Runestaves)- and even then they might specifically need an assistant to activate it so they can watch. This means that they have no way of permanently storing spell knowledge, and it must be passed from person to person.

Its also worth noting that they don't need huge organizations. even a small group gets massively more powerful as each extra member is a whole extra spell list the entire group can quickly learn and use. And its a lot easier to steal spell knowledge when all you have to do is see and identify it, so spells won't be super exclusive unless their designers put serious effort into never casting except under strict secrecy, enclosure, and protection from remote viewing magic. On the flip side, the ease of distribution means that if a PC is allowed to research a world changing spell, they can actually start changing the world in a useful time-frame. Even something like "this specific spell counters this specific previously uncurable plague and nothing else" is a pain to share around via normal magical writings, but with sha'ir its easy.

[muichimotsu]

Having Sha'ir use virtually the same rules as the Spirit Shaman with spell retrieval, just using arcane spell list instead of divine spell list (Druid or Cleric) could work in terms of the flavor and lore and certainly simplify things for my players if they were willing to try this (which I'm skeptical about, since we tend to prefer a traditional structure, though my main argument for why it would work is that it simplifies spellcasting and would be an interesting premise)

The divide between arcane and divine spellcasting is one thing, but the idea of psionics being a form of magic as well would need to potentially have a term change. Calling it spiritualism is a bit much, mysticism would confuse the Mystic class from Dragonlance (unless I just want to throw it out as a possible alternate Cleric in this universe)

Having classes that would work as the alternates for what we tend to play is important (Ranger and Druid are definitely common with my group, with occasional variations, like Barbarian, Bard, Paladin and Cleric). No one in the group has played a Fighter or Rogue that I recall. I've done a Monk, Sorcerer, Wizard and Scout, but if we're talking all the base classes, there are a lot we probably don't care for if I asked. We've allowed some variability, but I imagine stuff like Incarnum is out, possibly the Tome of Pact Magic stuff without lots of altering to do (Binder is awesome in concept, but terrible in execution, for instance. Almost works better as an alternate class feature for Warlock with some limitations on # of vestiges, etc). Shadowcaster is something I've barely looked into, but I recall it's similar to a Sorcerer in some manner...maybe not

In my mind, there tend to be 4 class archetypes: adventurer (Dex/Wis and Int focused classes), Warrior (Str and Con focused), Divine (Wis and Cha focused) and Arcane (Int and Cha focused)

If we use that structure, the only difficulty is that Pact magic classes would probably constitute a bigger portion of Divine and Arcane versus the psionic that, while also part of that with Psion, Erudite, Wilder, Ardent and Divine Mind, has stuff like Lurk, Psionic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Soulknife, Marksman, etc. If people wanted to play those classes, but I took away the core ones to some degree, there's that issue of what to replace them with.

Marksman is close to Ranger
Divine Mind is like Paladin from what I looked into
Vitalist works for Cleric thankfully
Spirit Shaman/Shaman could be Druid with some tweaking of the latter
Wilder is obviously Sorcerer parallel
Erudite and Psion can both work for Wizard in a way
Shadowcaster/Sha'ir or Warlock can be Bard, maybe

Stuff like Barbarian, Fighter, Monk and Rogue could still exist, along with Scout, Swashbuckler. Our players do vary in how they play and I can see some trying out these, though that's the thing: learning a new class can be a hassle for any player, I'd imagine, so there's that to consider as well

[muichimotsu]

@muichimotsu:

If you don't have a knee-jerk reaction towards Pathfinder, then head over to the PRD and have a loot at the following classes and archetypes:
- Medium
- Occultist (Panoply Savant, Sha´ir)
- Shifter (Elementalist Shifter)

The Medium is a very advanced form of the old Binder and can be a stand-in for any class, any time. Need a cleric? Start channeling the Hierrophant. Need a Necromancer? Start channeling Nex, and so on. Note that you also have a mechanic to add "legendary" variations of spirits later. So that class by itself is very good at modeling dealing with the "Djinn".

The Occultist can be compared to a more well-rounded Shadowcaster of old, slowly unlocking new power and spells known. The Panoply Savant is more about "class roles", allowing a character to also be a "Bard", "Mage" or "Warrior", while the Sha´ir is directly tied to tapping into elemental powers.

The base Shifter class is uninteresting. The Elementalist Shifter does what it says on the tin, a full BAB class that is able to shift into elemental combat forms.

Those actually would work well: Shifter seems like it could fit for one of my players that enjoys Wildshape, though not sure if that would be compelling on its own. Also might be confusing if someone uses the Shifter race from Eberron. What else could it be called...

So you're saying that one would treat Occultist and Medium, along with other Occult classes as "Pact" Magic? Shifter seems more like a "psionic" notion that'd be linked to specialized Psychometabolism, which could be an interesting lore behind it.

[Fizban]

Having Sha'ir use virtually the same rules as the Spirit Shaman with spell retrieval, just using arcane spell list instead of divine spell list (Druid or Cleric) could work in terms of the flavor and lore and certainly simplify things for my players if they were willing to try this (which I'm skeptical about, since we tend to prefer a traditional structure, though my main argument for why it would work is that it simplifies spellcasting and would be an interesting premise).
Spirit Shaman is kinda simpler, kinda not. It runs into one of the core problems with class feature swappers: a big part of your power is being able to change what you do, but the rest of your build can't change every day, so you have to find your own balance between the two. Spirit Shaman's spells retrieved are pretty crushingly small, so you've got a ton of choices, but only 1-2 you can pick for your top levels: you pick a trick and stick with it all day, and if there's a trick you want to build around its a deep cut in your versatility.

Sha'ir retrieval can be simplified by removing or changing the rolls and time limits involved, but it's ultimately pretty simple: order up a spell that you innately know or have previously identified, get a copy of that spell which you need to use within the next however long (I'd mainly suggest letting them order in batches, say 1/level per trip). They have a tad more innate spells known than sorcerer, and the players only have to track knowledge for spells beyond that which they've actually seen and identified- something I expect most people would be quite jazzed to do.


The divide between arcane and divine spellcasting is one thing, but the idea of psionics being a form of magic as well would need to potentially have a term change. Calling it spiritualism is a bit much, mysticism would confuse the Mystic class from Dragonlance (unless I just want to throw it out as a possible alternate Cleric in this universe)
I mean, "psionics" may sound sci fi, but "psychics" have been around forever, Golden Sun itself is a fairly generic fantasy setting and they call their powers psynergy. The mental arts, the inner eye, the far hand technique, whatever. As part of the same system they still need to be grouped under one name, and once the guys with the big words get together and realize all these schools are compatible with each other, who says they'd pick something so pedestrian? The main casting stat for the two main psionic classes is int after all, I'd expect a more poncy term.


Having classes that would work as the alternates for what we tend to play is important (Ranger and Druid are definitely common with my group, with occasional variations, like Barbarian, Bard, Paladin and Cleric). No one in the group has played a Fighter or Rogue that I recall. I've done a Monk, Sorcerer, Wizard and Scout, but if we're talking all the base classes, there are a lot we probably don't care for if I asked.
You've already got Lurk and Psychic Rogue listed, that's two psionic sneaks, so it sounds like what you actually want is full BAB minor casters, which is Divine Mind- or it would be if they hadn't got confused about weather it was a paladin or bard analogue and managed to make it the worst of both worlds (with 3/4 BAB, 2+int skills, and basically 4th level casting). Full BAB partial casters are quite accessible via PrCs most of the time: War Mind has psionics and maintains full BAB, Psionic Fist has psionics and maintains monk abilities, and Ilithid Slayer is extremely friendly to entering with full BAB 5/Psion 1 for only a single lost BAB.

For other stuff, not so much. A full BAB character can already get one or two least invocations with dips, and their at-will nature means they shouldn't really get them for free, while a full BAB PrC wouldn't need to use the invocation framework (there are a couple hexblade homebrews that switch them over to invocations). Binder's pretty much the same deal, and shadow magic has a slightly casting full BAB PrC, it just sucks at casting even worse compared to a Blackguard than a Shadowcaster does to a wizard. It wouldn't be hard to make a shadow knight PrC or even a whole shadow knight base class though, since the paladin/ranger formula is pretty simple.

Miniatures Handbook has a couple PrCs you might be interested in: Bonded Summoner, an arcane 5/10 casting PrC that gains a buff elemental servant (Master of Shadow is similar and available to non-Shadowcasters), and the Dragon Samurai, a full BAB PrC that's built around "half dragons and [energy] weapons are cool." They get a breath weapon that actually scales decently, but it's only usable 1/day- the idea is that it stacks with a half-dragon's breath weapon so you can use it to make your half-dragon's breath better (and 1/day is a lot easier to track for the simple aim of the minis line), but by ignoring the "still only once per day" line you could use it as a way to progress any breath weapon while maintaining a fighty class.

Dragon Magic also has dragonpacts (and a PrC which focuses on them), which let sorcerers trade some spell slot for a specific list of SLAs by making a pact with a dragon. Of course for ease of use this doesn't actually require finding the dragon or working out an individual pact- you just do a ritual which calls up the dragonpact hotline and then pay the man. The system could be easily expanded to any spellcasting creature or even just any creature, though it should still be limited to classes that already have a lower number of true spells known.


We've allowed some variability, but I imagine stuff like Incarnum is out, possibly the Tome of Pact Magic stuff without lots of altering to do (Binder is awesome in concept, but terrible in execution, for instance. Almost works better as an alternate class feature for Warlock with some limitations on # of vestiges, etc). Shadowcaster is something I've barely looked into, but I recall it's similar to a Sorcerer in some manner...maybe not
I mentioned Incarnum as an example of class feature swapping (and it was on the list of books a guy was looking at in another thread)- though I do find the basic system to be one of the better ways to let people get all supernatural or monster-y without being annoying in so many ways.

Don't know what needs to be altered about Binders- they're underpowered overall, with a few specific abilities to watch out for, and its got just about the purest "make a contract with something for power" mechanics there are.

Shadowcasters are indeed pretty much Sorcerers with a whole bunch of restrictions, the first and most obvious being that you only get one spell known each level, and you can only cast each spell you know once per day (at higher levels you get an extra daily cast for each of your lower tier spells). The spells are grouped into paths that are each three levels tall (1/2/3, 4/5/6, 7/8/9) and one spell wide (so three spells in a path) and you have to take them in order so you can't just cherry pick the best spells whenever you gain access to a new spell level- you can only cherry pick at 1st, 4th, and 7th when you start a new tier (and after that you either follow the path you picked or consign yourself to lower level spells than you're "supposed" to have compared to a traditional caster). There's also a thing where if you spread your spells known among a lot of paths instead of specializing you gain more bonus feats- in theory you'd have a wide variety of effects boosted by lots of free metamagic, but in practice you really want the higher level spells and still get plenty of bonus feats when aiming for them. Oh and they also have split ability casting, and at higher levels they need to sleep less and their lower tier spells become SLAs and then Su abilities.

And of course they use their own spell list, which is very short and specific (the Cityscape web enhancement has a few more). They have access to crowd control so they can fill the arcane slot, but otherwise they're no wizard.


In my mind, there tend to be 4 class archetypes: adventurer (Dex/Wis and Int focused classes), Warrior (Str and Con focused), Divine (Wis and Cha focused) and Arcane (Int and Cha focused)

If we use that structure, the only difficulty is that Pact magic classes would probably constitute a bigger portion of Divine and Arcane versus the psionic that, while also part of that with Psion, Erudite, Wilder, Ardent and Divine Mind, has stuff like Lurk, Psionic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Soulknife, Marksman, etc. If people wanted to play those classes, but I took away the core ones to some degree, there's that issue of what to replace them with.
You've lost me.

There are four class roles, in essence: meatshield, trap guy, crowd control, and Cleric. The abilty score a class uses doesn't matter as long as it can fill one of those roles, though obviously the game massively favors certain scores for certain roles. I think what you're saying is that "pact-ish" classes lack meatshields so a psionic+pact game is low on meatshields if you remove core classes, but there are meatshields in there: PsyWar or Ardent with armor and Vigor have plenty of meat. There aren't any pact-ish meatshields except maybe the Dragon Shaman, which is another class that someone thought was a Bard and thus is worse than it should be. And if your players don't like playing the bland core guys, removing them doesn't restrict your players anyway.

From setting perspective I don't think it ever makes sense to completely remove non-magicals- if you demand everyone have magic, then just give them some magic, like a pool of power points or spell slots which they can't use to cast until they learn to cast, but can use to fuel other things, or bonus feats that must be spent on magic-granting feats. Even in a word where everyone has innate magic (or pacts or magitech or cyberaugs), there's gonna be people who barely have or use any, and if you ever use a bunch of classed NPCs you want simple options.


Marksman is close to Ranger
Divine Mind is like Paladin from what I looked into
Vitalist works for Cleric thankfully
Spirit Shaman/Shaman could be Druid with some tweaking of the latter
Wilder is obviously Sorcerer parallel
Erudite and Psion can both work for Wizard in a way
Shadowcaster/Sha'ir or Warlock can be Bard, maybe
Divine Mind is Paladin with 3/4 BAB, or Bard with 2+int skills and a bad list basically. They have a tiny buff aura and technically go past 4th level powers at super high levels, so someone yanked their chain.

Spirit Shaman literally uses the Druid list and can thus sub as Druid in the "Cleric" role, OA Shaman has most of the spells but is missing a couple critical pieces (but then so does the Druid).

Wilder actually isn't a Sorcerer parallel at all aside from the arbitrary fluff: Sorcerers have basically the same number of spells known as a Psion (around 40), just delayed and shaved off the top levels, and have no ability to massively overcharge their caster level. Wilders get 12 (more like 8 if you're not going all the way to 20th) powers total, in exchange for the ability to rage their caster level way past anything considered "normal"- and with psionics that means they can actually cast augmented powers equivalent to spells beyond their real character level. Sorcerers do not, unless you count Arcane Fusion which isn't quite the same (and in which case you should be adding a lesser version so they don't wait until 10th to have a reason to exist).

Erudite are int wizards, and Sha'ir are cha wizards. Psions are int sorcerers without the extra penalties and access to spells that are often worth more spells in exchange for not having access to the full list of "well just make it a sor/wiz spell" shenanigans (and with their own pile of shenanigans instead).

Neither Shadowcaster, Sha'ir, nor Warlock will fill in for Bard. Bard as a jack of all trades class is pretty much not replicable by any class except bard, nor is bardic music replicable by pretty much any feature other than bardic music. Unless you've got partial casting, 6+int skills, and inspire courage, you aren't replacing a bard. If what you want is partial casting, skills, and 3/4 BAB and light armor, that's PsyRogue and Lurk. If you want inspire courage style buffing then Divine Mind could do it if their aura radius wasn't complete garbage. Binder has a few skill bonuses they can get from different vestiges, but that's highly dependent on level and locks you into that vestige to get those skills.

If you want a non-bard class just to be non-bard, Factotum measures up with the right amount of skills, Arcane Dilletante letting them just pull sor/wiz spells without having to keep a list, and Opportunistic Piety's fluff of praying to whatever god will listen works just fine with nebulous spirits. They lack on mechanical offense or bardic buffing though.

Another possibility is that you want all ability scores/roles to be represented among all "power sources." But the game doesn't have that to begin with so that'd be a specifically new feature you're trying to bake in.


Our players do vary in how they play and I can see some trying out these, though that's the thing: learning a new class can be a hassle for any player, I'd imagine, so there's that to consider as well
The classes that still use traditional spells still use traditional spells, that shouldn't be a major switch, and invocations are just at-will spells- really more just at-will specific effects. Once you've got the basics down, psionics are dead easy (the minimum cost of a power is the same as the level where a wizard or cleric could cast it, and the maximum you can spend on a power is your level [unless you're using an ability that lets you mess with that, Overchannel or Wild Surge]).

[muichimotsu]

Spirit Shaman is kinda simpler, kinda not. It runs into one of the core problems with class feature swappers: a big part of your power is being able to change what you do, but the rest of your build can't change every day, so you have to find your own balance between the two. Spirit Shaman's spells retrieved are pretty crushingly small, so you've got a ton of choices, but only 1-2 you can pick for your top levels: you pick a trick and stick with it all day, and if there's a trick you want to build around its a deep cut in your versatility.

Sha'ir retrieval can be simplified by removing or changing the rolls and time limits involved, but it's ultimately pretty simple: order up a spell that you innately know or have previously identified, get a copy of that spell which you need to use within the next however long (I'd mainly suggest letting them order in batches, say 1/level per trip). They have a tad more innate spells known than sorcerer, and the players only have to track knowledge for spells beyond that which they've actually seen and identified- something I expect most people would be quite jazzed to do.

So instead of limiting the # of spells per day, increase it slightly for balance purposes for Spirit Shaman and use a similar system for Sha'ir in terms of having access to a lot of spells, but needing to be selective per day, like Druid and Cleric already are, arguably



I mean, "psionics" may sound sci fi, but "psychics" have been around forever, Golden Sun itself is a fairly generic fantasy setting and they call their powers psynergy. The mental arts, the inner eye, the far hand technique, whatever. As part of the same system they still need to be grouped under one name, and once the guys with the big words get together and realize all these schools are compatible with each other, who says they'd pick something so pedestrian? The main casting stat for the two main psionic classes is int after all, I'd expect a more poncy term.

If we're talking terms in an overall sense, magic could still work within the transparency rules you find in the SRD




You've already got Lurk and Psychic Rogue listed, that's two psionic sneaks, so it sounds like what you actually want is full BAB minor casters, which is Divine Mind- or it would be if they hadn't got confused about weather it was a paladin or bard analogue and managed to make it the worst of both worlds (with 3/4 BAB, 2+int skills, and basically 4th level casting). Full BAB partial casters are quite accessible via PrCs most of the time: War Mind has psionics and maintains full BAB, Psionic Fist has psionics and maintains monk abilities, and Ilithid Slayer is extremely friendly to entering with full BAB 5/Psion 1 for only a single lost BAB.

For other stuff, not so much. A full BAB character can already get one or two least invocations with dips, and their at-will nature means they shouldn't really get them for free, while a full BAB PrC wouldn't need to use the invocation framework (there are a couple hexblade homebrews that switch them over to invocations). Binder's pretty much the same deal, and shadow magic has a slightly casting full BAB PrC, it just sucks at casting even worse compared to a Blackguard than a Shadowcaster does to a wizard. It wouldn't be hard to make a shadow knight PrC or even a whole shadow knight base class though, since the paladin/ranger formula is pretty simple.

Miniatures Handbook has a couple PrCs you might be interested in: Bonded Summoner, an arcane 5/10 casting PrC that gains a buff elemental servant (Master of Shadow is similar and available to non-Shadowcasters), and the Dragon Samurai, a full BAB PrC that's built around "half dragons and [energy] weapons are cool." They get a breath weapon that actually scales decently, but it's only usable 1/day- the idea is that it stacks with a half-dragon's breath weapon so you can use it to make your half-dragon's breath better (and 1/day is a lot easier to track for the simple aim of the minis line), but by ignoring the "still only once per day" line you could use it as a way to progress any breath weapon while maintaining a fighty class.

Dragon Magic also has dragonpacts (and a PrC which focuses on them), which let sorcerers trade some spell slot for a specific list of SLAs by making a pact with a dragon. Of course for ease of use this doesn't actually require finding the dragon or working out an individual pact- you just do a ritual which calls up the dragonpact hotline and then pay the man. The system could be easily expanded to any spellcasting creature or even just any creature, though it should still be limited to classes that already have a lower number of true spells known.

So in terms of a remote gish in the vein of Ranger or Paladin, it's harder to find a class?

Dragonpact would definitely fit, albeit without Sorcerer, it'd have to be another spontaneous caster type class to fit that, which can be done




Don't know what needs to be altered about Binders- they're underpowered overall, with a few specific abilities to watch out for, and its got just about the purest "make a contract with something for power" mechanics there are.

Shadowcasters are indeed pretty much Sorcerers with a whole bunch of restrictions, the first and most obvious being that you only get one spell known each level, and you can only cast each spell you know once per day (at higher levels you get an extra daily cast for each of your lower tier spells). The spells are grouped into paths that are each three levels tall (1/2/3, 4/5/6, 7/8/9) and one spell wide (so three spells in a path) and you have to take them in order so you can't just cherry pick the best spells whenever you gain access to a new spell level- you can only cherry pick at 1st, 4th, and 7th when you start a new tier (and after that you either follow the path you picked or consign yourself to lower level spells than you're "supposed" to have compared to a traditional caster). There's also a thing where if you spread your spells known among a lot of paths instead of specializing you gain more bonus feats- in theory you'd have a wide variety of effects boosted by lots of free metamagic, but in practice you really want the higher level spells and still get plenty of bonus feats when aiming for them. Oh and they also have split ability casting, and at higher levels they need to sleep less and their lower tier spells become SLAs and then Su abilities.

And of course they use their own spell list, which is very short and specific (the Cityscape web enhancement has a few more). They have access to crowd control so they can fill the arcane slot, but otherwise they're no wizard.

So really, like Spirit Shaman, there'd have to be alterations to improve things so they're not as limited/underpowered by nature. Splitting spell save DC and bonus spells between two stats seems needlessly complicated from a design perspective anyway, so just having Spirit Shaman use Wis and Shadowcaster use, say, Int, would be easier.

Binder would make it so you don't have to commit to one vestige for 24 hours or necessarily have to spend as much time binding to it, though the binding check to make sure it's not a failure would still make sense




There are four class roles, in essence: meatshield, trap guy, crowd control, and Cleric. The abilty score a class uses doesn't matter as long as it can fill one of those roles, though obviously the game massively favors certain scores for certain roles. I think what you're saying is that "pact-ish" classes lack meatshields so a psionic+pact game is low on meatshields if you remove core classes, but there are meatshields in there: PsyWar or Ardent with armor and Vigor have plenty of meat. There aren't any pact-ish meatshields except maybe the Dragon Shaman, which is another class that someone thought was a Bard and thus is worse than it should be. And if your players don't like playing the bland core guys, removing them doesn't restrict your players anyway.

From setting perspective I don't think it ever makes sense to completely remove non-magicals- if you demand everyone have magic, then just give them some magic, like a pool of power points or spell slots which they can't use to cast until they learn to cast, but can use to fuel other things, or bonus feats that must be spent on magic-granting feats. Even in a word where everyone has innate magic (or pacts or magitech or cyberaugs), there's gonna be people who barely have or use any, and if you ever use a bunch of classed NPCs you want simple options.


I'm not taking out all the core classes, just Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer and Wizard from the 11 in PHB


Divine Mind is Paladin with 3/4 BAB, or Bard with 2+int skills and a bad list basically. They have a tiny buff aura and technically go past 4th level powers at super high levels, so someone yanked their chain.

Spirit Shaman literally uses the Druid list and can thus sub as Druid in the "Cleric" role, OA Shaman has most of the spells but is missing a couple critical pieces (but then so does the Druid).

Wilder actually isn't a Sorcerer parallel at all aside from the arbitrary fluff: Sorcerers have basically the same number of spells known as a Psion (around 40), just delayed and shaved off the top levels, and have no ability to massively overcharge their caster level. Wilders get 12 (more like 8 if you're not going all the way to 20th) powers total, in exchange for the ability to rage their caster level way past anything considered "normal"- and with psionics that means they can actually cast augmented powers equivalent to spells beyond their real character level. Sorcerers do not, unless you count Arcane Fusion which isn't quite the same (and in which case you should be adding a lesser version so they don't wait until 10th to have a reason to exist).

Erudite are int wizards, and Sha'ir are cha wizards. Psions are int sorcerers without the extra penalties and access to spells that are often worth more spells in exchange for not having access to the full list of "well just make it a sor/wiz spell" shenanigans (and with their own pile of shenanigans instead).

Neither Shadowcaster, Sha'ir, nor Warlock will fill in for Bard. Bard as a jack of all trades class is pretty much not replicable by any class except bard, nor is bardic music replicable by pretty much any feature other than bardic music. Unless you've got partial casting, 6+int skills, and inspire courage, you aren't replacing a bard. If what you want is partial casting, skills, and 3/4 BAB and light armor, that's PsyRogue and Lurk. If you want inspire courage style buffing then Divine Mind could do it if their aura radius wasn't complete garbage. Binder has a few skill bonuses they can get from different vestiges, but that's highly dependent on level and locks you into that vestige to get those skills.

If you want a non-bard class just to be non-bard, Factotum measures up with the right amount of skills, Arcane Dilletante letting them just pull sor/wiz spells without having to keep a list, and Opportunistic Piety's fluff of praying to whatever god will listen works just fine with nebulous spirits. They lack on mechanical offense or bardic buffing though.


Factotum did occur to me when reading that part of the post for a jack of all trades, since it's hard to find one otherwise


Another possibility is that you want all ability scores/roles to be represented among all "power sources." But the game doesn't have that to begin with so that'd be a specifically new feature you're trying to bake in.

If anything, equal opportunity would be ideal, but design wise, it'd be trickier even if we're fixing some of the errors in design that we see with classes that have lots of potential



The classes that still use traditional spells still use traditional spells, that shouldn't be a major switch, and invocations are just at-will spells- really more just at-will specific effects. Once you've got the basics down, psionics are dead easy (the minimum cost of a power is the same as the level where a wizard or cleric could cast it, and the maximum you can spend on a power is your level [unless you're using an ability that lets you mess with that, Overchannel or Wild Surge]).

It's not as if we don't have some familiarity, albeit the ones that probably know the most are me and the DM for the side campaign, since we've both played psionic types, albeit he was more a Psionic Rogue, I was a Telepath in a separate campaign that would be cool to use again, esp. being a Warforged as well