Greywander
2022-05-15, 08:45 PM
I get the most random inspiration sometimes. Anyway, I was thinking about making a class that eventually turns your character into a gargantuan vehicle that the rest of your party can ride, with firepower to match. Likely with three subclasses: a burrowing tank, a submersible battleship, and a flying fortress. Since you'd expect such a vehicle to be much stronger than any of your party members, I'll probably balance it out by making you roughly on par with them when operating independently, but your party members can man turrets and such to bring you to full power. It's an interesting concept I haven't seen explored like this before. There's a lot of potential issues that will need to be worked out, but before I start tackling the exact mechanics, I was wondering about what flavor I should go with.
Currently, I have three potential ideas:
You are a construct built for war (e.g. basically a super warforged). Whatever race you choose is refluffed to just be variations in your design giving you some extra bonuses.
You are a pilot for an evolving mecha. This might involve turning your armor into a massive vehicle and back. So you're not really playing the vehicle so much as the pilot.
You are a spooky ghost that has possessed a warmachine, and are now expanding and improving it. Here, your racial traits make sense because you actually were that race in life.
There might be some leeway for me to leave it open-ended so that you can pick and choose what flavor to use, but I feel like playing as the pilot would necessarily be mechanically different. Namely, in that you should be able to exit the vehicle and walk around as just a normal person. Playing as a sentient vessel sounds more fun to me, though. What are some other ways I could handle it, though?
Edit: It occurs to me that the conceptual basis of this class gets even trickier if multiclassing is on the table. Hmm...
Edit 2: I could have sworn I was posting this in the 5e subforum, but oh well, Homebrew makes sense, too.
Currently, I have three potential ideas:
You are a construct built for war (e.g. basically a super warforged). Whatever race you choose is refluffed to just be variations in your design giving you some extra bonuses.
You are a pilot for an evolving mecha. This might involve turning your armor into a massive vehicle and back. So you're not really playing the vehicle so much as the pilot.
You are a spooky ghost that has possessed a warmachine, and are now expanding and improving it. Here, your racial traits make sense because you actually were that race in life.
There might be some leeway for me to leave it open-ended so that you can pick and choose what flavor to use, but I feel like playing as the pilot would necessarily be mechanically different. Namely, in that you should be able to exit the vehicle and walk around as just a normal person. Playing as a sentient vessel sounds more fun to me, though. What are some other ways I could handle it, though?
Edit: It occurs to me that the conceptual basis of this class gets even trickier if multiclassing is on the table. Hmm...
Edit 2: I could have sworn I was posting this in the 5e subforum, but oh well, Homebrew makes sense, too.