Kellus
2008-09-17, 01:50 AM
How I Make a Class
I’ve gotten a few questions about how I design a class, so I figured I’d share the process as I create a new one just for the heck of it. Should be fun.
The first thing I consider when making a class is the purpose. Unless the class has a role to fill or an interesting concept (hopefully both), nobody will play it. So to start with, I’m going to list a whole bunch of base classes and the roles they’re supposed to fill-- not neccessarily roles they actually fill, but roles they’re meant to fill.
Barbarian: melee, tank, movement
Bard: arcane, buffer, skillful
Beguiler: arcane, stealth
Cleric: divine, melee, versatility, undead
Duskblade: arcane, melee
Dragonfire Adept: arcane, infinite
Dragon Shaman: buffer, element
Dread Necromancer: arcane, undead
Druid: divine, melee, shapeshifting
Favored Soul: divine, melee
Fighter: melee, ranged
Healer: divine, mounted
Hexblade: arcane, melee
Knight: tank
Marshal: melee, buffer
Monk: mage-killer, melee, unarmed, unarmored, movement
Ninja: precision, stealth, poison, skillful, unarmored
Paladin: melee, tank, divine, mounted
Psion: psionic, versatility
Psychic Warrior: psionic, melee, ranged
Ranger: melee, ranged, stealth, tracker, divine, special enemy
Rogue: precision, stealth, traps, skillful
Samurai: melee
Scout: precision, stealth, tracker, movement, skillful
Shugenja: divine, element
Sorcerer: arcane
Soulknife: melee
Spellthief: mage-killer, precision, stealth, arcane
Spirit Shaman: divine, special enemy
Swashbuckler: precision, melee
Warlock: arcane, infinite
Warmage: arcane
Wilder: psionic
Wizard: arcane, versatility
Wu Jen: arcane, versatility
I think that covers the principal classes and roles. In any case, it’ll serve for these purposes.
So the trick is to either find a unique role that hasn’t been filled yet or a unique combination of roles that hasn’t been put together yet. The roles I’ve picked to use are as follows:
Poison: only one base class uses poison right now; the ninja. Moreover, they don’t even use it very well, since they have to pay gp to use their class features. This is a very poor design; by filling the role they’re meant to fill and by using their special skills, they’re weakening themselves in comparison to the rest of the party. It means these class features won’t see much use and the player will feel penalized for contributing to the party. So this class I’m making is going to have poison use, but it’s also going to be able to create its own poison, probably through some kind of supernatural mechanism.
Unarmed: the only class that fights unarmed as it is is the monk. This is ridiculous, since there are lots of concepts that could include unarmed combat which simply can’t be pulled off as a monk (poor class design aside). Thus, this class will fight using bare hands.
Mage-Killer: the only class right now that can adequately be a deterrent to full spellcasters is the spellthief. The monk, strangely enough, is meant to fill this role, but suffers from so many problems that this aspect is glossed right over. Yet with the overwhelming power of full spellcasters, a class made to fight them specifically is going to definitely have a place in the party.
Tracker: often a glossed-over role, the Track feat and Survival as a class skill can be helpful to any party in out-of-combat navigation. As of right now, only the ranger and the scout are designed to be trackers, and only the ranger gets the feat. Thus, this class will have the feat and the skill. In addition, an oft-overlooked aspect of the survival skill allows you to track by scent. This seems like it would be an interesting addition, since there’s currently no way to get scent aside from a warlock invocation and maybe some spell or other. A scent-based tracker would be interesting, certainly.
So where does this leave us? We have a poison-using, bare-handed, magic-killing, scent-based tracker. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting serious ‘snake’ vibe off of this. Which is cool, because as it is there’s no class that has anything to do with snakes. So let’s take this idea for the time being. The class will focus on a snake theme.
The next things to determine before starting are the attributes of the class. BAB, saves, hit dice, and skill points to start with; class skills can come later.
For BAB, I’m thinking 1/1. This class is meant to fight unarmed, and that means lots of attacks. In addition, they’re made to kill casters, who can generally have very high ACs through spells.
Saves: against spells, Fort and Will are easily the most deadly saves. Taking this as a good Fort and Will and a poor Ref, this gives us the image of a character who spends his time training his body and mind to take magical punishment.
Hit Dice: with full BAB, this guy’s probably going to be in the middle of things. I’m thinking at least d8, probably d10 hit dice.
Skill Points: do I want this class to be particularly skillful? Going with the snake theme, physical skills are certainly going to be important, but with full BAB he shouldn’t need too many skills to be powerful. We’ll hedge our bets and go with 4 + Int for the moment, but this could change once we get a better picture of the class.
Now: we’re working off of an idea of a snake. So now it’s time for brainstorming. What kinds of things do I associate with snakes? Slithering, certainly. Winding, climbing, hissing, venom, snakebites, rattle, contrictors, boa, viper, python, fangs, lithe, scaled, forked tongue, smelling tongue, tail, whip, hanging. These are just some ideas, but they’ll probably be handy when I’m making the class features for the class, since I can draw on them for names and inspiration.
Already I’m thinking of expanding the role of the class; based on a snake, giving it stealth abilities would certainly make sense in the context of the class and fit with the poison theme. Certainly if I’m going to be fighting full spellcasters with it it needs some way to avoid detection. Hide and Move Silently as class skills and probably Camouflage as well would serve very nicely.
Now, we’ve got some supernatural abilities lined up for the class. It seems he’s going to be making poison to use. I might be able to swing this as extraordinary if I went with a guy slowly turning into a snake, but that’s kind of bleh and icky to boot. Supernatural is a much better fit. But supernatural abilities should come from somewhere, certainly. Where could these snake-related abilities come from? Looking down the roster of sources:
Arcane: probably not. There’s already an arcane-poison user, the assassin. Anyhow, it doesn’t make much sense thematically either.
Divine: I could go with a snake-god idea, but honestly that just doesn’t appeal to me.
Psionics: certainly a possibility. For a more ‘nature’ oriented psionic class and especially a psionic base class with stealth that wouldn’t feel just like a psionic rogue (cough lurk cough). But mastery of the mind doesn’t really fit with the theme of a spellcaster-killer with snake powers.
Ancestral: interesting idea. If this class is more of an order or group, then this could make a lot of sense. Ancient snake-based fighting style that’s passed down since time immemorial to fight magic. This would explain a lot of the abilities and also provide a basis for some of the abilities and a start on the rationale behind the class. I like this idea a lot.
Totemic: another distinct possibility. Abilities gained through worship of Snake in general. Dragon Shaman did this through worship of Dragon and not any one dragon. Could work, certainly, but honestly not as interesting as the idea of an order of anti-magic snake warriors.
So the working idea is going to be the class is an initiate of an order of mage-slayers. This ties in with the tracking ideas already thought of, with the order teaching the initiate snake-based ways of hunting down vigilante magicians.
In order to start work on the class features I’ll need something to call the class, so looking back at my brainstorming list I’m going to go with the ‘viper’ as a tentative class name. This will probably change before the end.
We have 20 levels to work with for class features. I hate dead levels, so I definately want to have something at each level. To start with, we need a few things out of the way at 1st level. The class needs to at least be usable to start with, even if it doesn’t have all its snake-based powers. So I’m going to go with Improved Unarmed Strike to start with, and the unarmed strike progression of a monk. Whatever else you want to say about the monk, it can hit unarmed better than most people.
Other basic abilities to toss out there: both Evasion and Mettle, certainly. Something to boost saving throws. Track, probably at level 2 or 3. Later on, spell resistance.
As far as ability scores go, Charisma seems to me to be the key mental stat. It fits the most with the snake theme and the intimidating nature. Dexterity represents a snake’s swiftness, and I’m probably going to have a suite of abilities related to attacks of opportunity. Certainly it’s going to be harder to cast defensively beside a viper. Constitution will probably determine the potency of poison.
Grappling is a good way to immobilize a caster, and works very nicely with a snake theme. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of important abilities if we add in Strength for grappling. So we’ll put in a way to substitute an ability score, probably Dexterity for Strength in grapple checks. Improved Grapple should also be given. Wisdom is important for tracking, but in the interest of reducing MAD Charisma could be worked in if it’s the snake skills used in the tracking. Probably replace the ability modifier for survival checks using Scent. Intelligence also seems to be mostly a dump stat, but being stealthy and all they’ll need a fair number of skill points. So we’ll boost the skill points tentatively up to 6 + Int for now to accomodate the lower Int.
I detest per day abilities. The day is a completely arbitrary unit that the DM has no real way to control, since it’s up to the party to determine how far to go. Per encounter abilities make far more sense. The supernatural abilities of this class will probably have a certain number of uses per encounter. I’m going to go with Cha mod per encounter for now, and lump all of the in-battle supernatural stuff into the same ability, which they can divy up as they like. Certainly poison will be in there. Looking back at my brainstorming, we’ll call this supernatural power ‘snakebite’ for now, for a catch-all name. They should get a bunch of different ways to use snakebite, a new one every few levels.
Just looking class feature-wise, here’s what I’ve got so far in a rough table.
Table: Class Features (Take 1)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (ability I)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent
4|Snakebite (ability II)
5|Mettle
6|Spell resistance?
7|Snakebite (ability III)
8|
9|
10|Snakebite (ability IV)
11|
12|
13|Snakebite (ability V)
14|
15|
16|Snakebite (ability VI)
17|
18|
19|Snakebite (ability VII)
20|[/table]
I decided to give a new use for snakebite every three levels, so they should have lots of options for it. Evasion is at level 2, being the earliest anybody gets it. Mettle, being better, is at level 5.
I want something, though, to boost saves in general. This guy should be as close to untouchable by spells as possible in a class. Scent isn’t much to get at 3rd level, so we’ll stick in paladin-esque Cha-to-saves bonus. It’s later than the paladin gets it, so it shouldn’t be a problem so long as I say it doesn’t stack. ‘Snake’s grace’ sounds good.
Spell Resistance also makes tons of sense. 6th level is probably a good time to start, since it’s just before spellcasters start getting some decent spells. 5 + class level sounds good to start with, and we’ll improve it later on. Every six levels, maybe? That sounds good. An additional +5 spell resistance every six levels.
Do I want improved evasion and (dare I say it) improved mettle? We’ll leave them out for now, but if it looks sparse later on, that would be a heck of a capstone with improved mettle.
The first ability snakebite gives should definitely be poison. Probably a free action to activate it, then have it active for all the attacks in that round. The damage the poison deals we can figure out later.
As for other abilities involving snakebite, pounce seems to make sense. I don’t want to give it by itself, but spending a use of snakebite to be able to charge and attack makes sense. Actually, come to think of it, I think just granting a move action woud be better. Speaking of which, this guy needs to be able to move fast. If he’s going to catch spellcasters, he’ll need speed.
Let’s see the chart!
Table: Class Features (Take 2)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (venom strike)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent, snake’s grace
4|Snakebite (lunge), movement +10ft.
5|Mettle
6|Spell resistance
7|Snakebite (ability III)
8|Movement +20ft.
9|
10|Snakebite (ability IV)
11|
12|Improved spell resistance, movement +30ft.
13|Snakebite (ability V)
14|
15|
16|Snakebite (ability VI), movement +40ft.
17|
18|Greater spell resistance
19|Snakebite (ability VII)
20|Movement +50ft.[/table]
Well, it’s starting to look a bit more fleshed out. The early levels look reasonable, and he should be pretty quick.
Now. Spellcasters should find it hard to cast around this guy. He’s trained to fight and disrupt them. So let’s give him the ability, almost an aura, which makes it harder for spellcasters to cast defensively adjacent to him. Level 8 seems reasonable for this. Let’s say, he adds 1/2 his class level to the Concentration check they need to make. That should give him plenty of incentive to get over to the caster.
I like the movement bonuses, but snakes have other ways of moving too. Climbing, burrowing, swimming, and even gliding. I’m thinking make that into an ability, like ‘snake’s swiftness’ or something, which provides a bunch of options that they can pick from, all related to movement. Much more interesting than a flat increase to land speed. Make the bonuses scale with class levels, and let him get them all by 20th level.
Grappling. We want him to have it fairly early on, so let’s give him Improved Grapple at 6th level. That’s when he gets spell resistance for the first time, but bear in mind that at level 6 that won’t be used very often. Also, it’ll be fairly low at that point (11), so it’ll be nice to get another offensive option too. At that point he’ll also get the ability to substitute Dex for Str in grapples. We’ll wrap them into an ability like ‘coils’ or ‘constriction’ or something like that.
In the same vein, he should have constrict damage. Let’s find an empty level after level 6 to give him constrict damage probably equal to his unarmed damage. Then in the spell-fighting theme, a snakebite ability that drains spell slots could be interesting. Let’s see if we can work that in. Speaking of snakebite, we wanted to work with attacks of opportunity. A snakebite use to make an immediate attack of opportunity makes sense, and it even replicates a spell, snake’s swiftness. As well, Combat Reflexes makes sense too. Let’s see if that could fit anywhere.
Table: Class Features (Take 3)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (venom strike)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent, snake’s grace
4|Snakebite (lunge), swift stride
5|Mettle
6|Constricting coils, spell resistance
7|Snakebite (reflexive strike)
8|Python’s presence, swift stride
9|Combat Reflexes
10|Snakebite (ability IV)
11|Tightening coils
12|Improved spell resistance, swift stride
13|Snakebite (ability V)
14|
15|
16|Snakebite (spelldrain), swift stride
17|
18|Greater spell resistance
19|Snakebite (ability VII)
20|Swift stride[/table]
Swift stride is now an ability which will give a movement-based benefit. Constricting Coils gives Improved Grapple and Dex-for-Str, while Tightening Coils gives constricting damage. Spelldrain will let him drain spell slots, either with a single strike or to someone he’s grappling. Python’s presence lets him distract nearby spellcasters casting defensively.
Rattlesnake. I like the idea of an ability called death rattle. It seems to lend itself to a save-or-die ability, but I don’t particularly like those. Not that it’s neccessarily overpowered (although I feel it is, as well as unfun) but you’ll also inevitably get people saying it’s unbalanced, despite the fact that spellcasters do it all the time. So I’m thinking death rattle could be a sonic-based ability which could deal damage to spellcasters nearby or anybody with spell-like abilities or the like for that matter. It seems like it would work best as a snakebite ability, so we’ll put it in at 19th level and make it really powerful.
Cobras are also cool. Tying in with attacks of opportunity, let’s let him avoid them too. A snakebite ability called ‘cobra dance’ lets him avoid attacks of opportunity until the next turn.
That leaves one snakebite ability. Getting back to poison, an improved venom strike would work, with a better choice for poisons. Maybe paralytic poison and mind-damaging poison for spellcasters.
14, 15, and 17 are empty. Also, I just realized that I never gave him camouflage like I wanted to. 14 is a bit late for it, though, so we’re going to move tightening coils to 14th and give him camo at 11th. That’s about the time that Hide starts to become less effective, so this should give him a boost.
15 and 17. I’ve got Improved Evasion and Improved Mettle that I could stick in there, but I think that’s just going to be too powerful. I could see Improved Evasion, especially since he’s got a poor Reflex save, but Improved Mettle is crazy good. Let’s schedule Improved Evasion for level 15.
Table: Class Features (Take 4)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (venom strike)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent, snake’s grace
4|Snakebite (lunge), swift stride
5|Mettle
6|Constricting coils, spell resistance
7|Snakebite (reflexive strike)
8|Python’s presence, swift stride
9|Combat Reflexes
10|Snakebite (cobra dance)
11|Camouflage
12|Improved spell resistance, swift stride
13|Snakebite (mind venom)
14|Tightening coils
15|Improved evasion
16|Snakebite (spelldrain), swift stride
17|
18|Greater spell resistance
19|Snakebite (death rattle)
20|Swift stride[/table]
Now I’ve got one dead level at 17, and I’m missing a capstone. People will always multiclass to squeeze every last drop out of a build, so you always want to put something great at 20th level. I don’t worry too much about the balance of that ability, because at that point the game is ridiculously crazy and going to end soon anyway.
Level 17. This one’s starting to bug me, because I can’t think of anything appropriate for this late in a build. I want something fairly potent, so I think I’m going to give him a nice edge in grappling: the ability to take 10 on Grapple checks. As far as I know, nobody else can do that, so that should be something to look forward to. In fact, thinking about it now, they could probably use an ability to take 10 on most of their snake-like skills. So let’s say that he gets a combination ability to take 10 on Grapple checks, stealth skills, and maybe Survival checks to track, too. I like the idea of that. I’ll come up with a clever name for it later.
Lastly, a capstone. I want something potent, something to terrify casters. I’m thinking Disjunction. Mr. Mordenkainen’s Disjunction, to be precise. I don’t want it to destroy items and artifacts, because nonspellcasters get the most use out of those. So I’ll make it a 1/encounter ability to radiate a disjunction aura that only targets spell effects. Strip all the buffs off of a caster, and then beat him up. Nice.
Now, a review. No dead levels, and abilities mostly themed around movement, stealth, tracking, poison, and anti-spellcaster tactics. The only thing I’m not happy with are the skill points. This guy seems too focused on combat to be as skilful as a bard. I think I’m going to drop them back down to 4 + Int modifier. I think I’m going to stick with d8 HD as well, since as we all know, the most deadly spells don’t do hp damage.
I think we’re about done! All that’s left is to write up descriptions of the class features and a description of the class. I use a fantastic class table generator, found at
http://pifro.com/dnd/NEW/
It’s really quick and easy to use.
<hr>
Now for some tips on actually writing up the class:
When you’re writing out the abilities, you want the abilities to be clear and concise. It’s fine to talk about what the ability does in terms of fluff, but you also need to be specific about the mechanics of it; what it actually does do in terms of the rules. For an example of what to avoid, see the rouse spell in Player’s Handbook II.
Another thing to keep in mind is to try to emulate a formal layout as much as possible. If you want, grab one of the books and copy each section word for word. It’s little things, but it makes the whole document look much more professional. It can be as small as seperating ‘Skill Points at 1st Level’ and ‘Skill Points at Each Additional Level’, or something as important as actually having a table.
A lot of classes have the abilities written out in one of two ways: they’ll talk about the class in the third person, or they’ll talk about the reader as if he were the character in the class (second person). As in, ‘beginning at 11th level, you gain the ability to eat truffles’ or ‘beginning at 6th level, the astral tapdancer gains the ability to waltz’. Either way is fine, and I always seem to switch back and forth when I’m doing classes. The main thing is, pick one and stick with it for a single class. Don’t go changing tenses in the middle of a write-up.
Next, be familiar with terminology of classes. Recognize the difference between Supernatural and Extraordinary abilities. Copy phrasing in cases such as ‘you may take 10 on (insert skill here) checks even if stress or distraction would normally prevent you from doing so’. If you’re using a class feature that already exists, use the same wording as that one to standardize it.
Once you’re finished writing everything up, put it on the boards with (generally) a P.E.A.C.H. tag on it, asking people to evaluate it honestly. Realistically, the best choice would be to playtest it, but most people won’t want it in a campaign until it’s been playtested, which leads to sort of a vicious cycle. Anyway, you can expect to have people critique it, maybe even quite harshly. Don’t take it personally. Try to explain why you designed it the way you did, and find a solution that satisfies any problem. Remember that it’s not set in stone even when it’s on the boards. Assuming you want it to be the best it can be, make sure to honestly consider any criticism levelled towards it.
Any comments or questions, just let me know!
I’ve gotten a few questions about how I design a class, so I figured I’d share the process as I create a new one just for the heck of it. Should be fun.
The first thing I consider when making a class is the purpose. Unless the class has a role to fill or an interesting concept (hopefully both), nobody will play it. So to start with, I’m going to list a whole bunch of base classes and the roles they’re supposed to fill-- not neccessarily roles they actually fill, but roles they’re meant to fill.
Barbarian: melee, tank, movement
Bard: arcane, buffer, skillful
Beguiler: arcane, stealth
Cleric: divine, melee, versatility, undead
Duskblade: arcane, melee
Dragonfire Adept: arcane, infinite
Dragon Shaman: buffer, element
Dread Necromancer: arcane, undead
Druid: divine, melee, shapeshifting
Favored Soul: divine, melee
Fighter: melee, ranged
Healer: divine, mounted
Hexblade: arcane, melee
Knight: tank
Marshal: melee, buffer
Monk: mage-killer, melee, unarmed, unarmored, movement
Ninja: precision, stealth, poison, skillful, unarmored
Paladin: melee, tank, divine, mounted
Psion: psionic, versatility
Psychic Warrior: psionic, melee, ranged
Ranger: melee, ranged, stealth, tracker, divine, special enemy
Rogue: precision, stealth, traps, skillful
Samurai: melee
Scout: precision, stealth, tracker, movement, skillful
Shugenja: divine, element
Sorcerer: arcane
Soulknife: melee
Spellthief: mage-killer, precision, stealth, arcane
Spirit Shaman: divine, special enemy
Swashbuckler: precision, melee
Warlock: arcane, infinite
Warmage: arcane
Wilder: psionic
Wizard: arcane, versatility
Wu Jen: arcane, versatility
I think that covers the principal classes and roles. In any case, it’ll serve for these purposes.
So the trick is to either find a unique role that hasn’t been filled yet or a unique combination of roles that hasn’t been put together yet. The roles I’ve picked to use are as follows:
Poison: only one base class uses poison right now; the ninja. Moreover, they don’t even use it very well, since they have to pay gp to use their class features. This is a very poor design; by filling the role they’re meant to fill and by using their special skills, they’re weakening themselves in comparison to the rest of the party. It means these class features won’t see much use and the player will feel penalized for contributing to the party. So this class I’m making is going to have poison use, but it’s also going to be able to create its own poison, probably through some kind of supernatural mechanism.
Unarmed: the only class that fights unarmed as it is is the monk. This is ridiculous, since there are lots of concepts that could include unarmed combat which simply can’t be pulled off as a monk (poor class design aside). Thus, this class will fight using bare hands.
Mage-Killer: the only class right now that can adequately be a deterrent to full spellcasters is the spellthief. The monk, strangely enough, is meant to fill this role, but suffers from so many problems that this aspect is glossed right over. Yet with the overwhelming power of full spellcasters, a class made to fight them specifically is going to definitely have a place in the party.
Tracker: often a glossed-over role, the Track feat and Survival as a class skill can be helpful to any party in out-of-combat navigation. As of right now, only the ranger and the scout are designed to be trackers, and only the ranger gets the feat. Thus, this class will have the feat and the skill. In addition, an oft-overlooked aspect of the survival skill allows you to track by scent. This seems like it would be an interesting addition, since there’s currently no way to get scent aside from a warlock invocation and maybe some spell or other. A scent-based tracker would be interesting, certainly.
So where does this leave us? We have a poison-using, bare-handed, magic-killing, scent-based tracker. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting serious ‘snake’ vibe off of this. Which is cool, because as it is there’s no class that has anything to do with snakes. So let’s take this idea for the time being. The class will focus on a snake theme.
The next things to determine before starting are the attributes of the class. BAB, saves, hit dice, and skill points to start with; class skills can come later.
For BAB, I’m thinking 1/1. This class is meant to fight unarmed, and that means lots of attacks. In addition, they’re made to kill casters, who can generally have very high ACs through spells.
Saves: against spells, Fort and Will are easily the most deadly saves. Taking this as a good Fort and Will and a poor Ref, this gives us the image of a character who spends his time training his body and mind to take magical punishment.
Hit Dice: with full BAB, this guy’s probably going to be in the middle of things. I’m thinking at least d8, probably d10 hit dice.
Skill Points: do I want this class to be particularly skillful? Going with the snake theme, physical skills are certainly going to be important, but with full BAB he shouldn’t need too many skills to be powerful. We’ll hedge our bets and go with 4 + Int for the moment, but this could change once we get a better picture of the class.
Now: we’re working off of an idea of a snake. So now it’s time for brainstorming. What kinds of things do I associate with snakes? Slithering, certainly. Winding, climbing, hissing, venom, snakebites, rattle, contrictors, boa, viper, python, fangs, lithe, scaled, forked tongue, smelling tongue, tail, whip, hanging. These are just some ideas, but they’ll probably be handy when I’m making the class features for the class, since I can draw on them for names and inspiration.
Already I’m thinking of expanding the role of the class; based on a snake, giving it stealth abilities would certainly make sense in the context of the class and fit with the poison theme. Certainly if I’m going to be fighting full spellcasters with it it needs some way to avoid detection. Hide and Move Silently as class skills and probably Camouflage as well would serve very nicely.
Now, we’ve got some supernatural abilities lined up for the class. It seems he’s going to be making poison to use. I might be able to swing this as extraordinary if I went with a guy slowly turning into a snake, but that’s kind of bleh and icky to boot. Supernatural is a much better fit. But supernatural abilities should come from somewhere, certainly. Where could these snake-related abilities come from? Looking down the roster of sources:
Arcane: probably not. There’s already an arcane-poison user, the assassin. Anyhow, it doesn’t make much sense thematically either.
Divine: I could go with a snake-god idea, but honestly that just doesn’t appeal to me.
Psionics: certainly a possibility. For a more ‘nature’ oriented psionic class and especially a psionic base class with stealth that wouldn’t feel just like a psionic rogue (cough lurk cough). But mastery of the mind doesn’t really fit with the theme of a spellcaster-killer with snake powers.
Ancestral: interesting idea. If this class is more of an order or group, then this could make a lot of sense. Ancient snake-based fighting style that’s passed down since time immemorial to fight magic. This would explain a lot of the abilities and also provide a basis for some of the abilities and a start on the rationale behind the class. I like this idea a lot.
Totemic: another distinct possibility. Abilities gained through worship of Snake in general. Dragon Shaman did this through worship of Dragon and not any one dragon. Could work, certainly, but honestly not as interesting as the idea of an order of anti-magic snake warriors.
So the working idea is going to be the class is an initiate of an order of mage-slayers. This ties in with the tracking ideas already thought of, with the order teaching the initiate snake-based ways of hunting down vigilante magicians.
In order to start work on the class features I’ll need something to call the class, so looking back at my brainstorming list I’m going to go with the ‘viper’ as a tentative class name. This will probably change before the end.
We have 20 levels to work with for class features. I hate dead levels, so I definately want to have something at each level. To start with, we need a few things out of the way at 1st level. The class needs to at least be usable to start with, even if it doesn’t have all its snake-based powers. So I’m going to go with Improved Unarmed Strike to start with, and the unarmed strike progression of a monk. Whatever else you want to say about the monk, it can hit unarmed better than most people.
Other basic abilities to toss out there: both Evasion and Mettle, certainly. Something to boost saving throws. Track, probably at level 2 or 3. Later on, spell resistance.
As far as ability scores go, Charisma seems to me to be the key mental stat. It fits the most with the snake theme and the intimidating nature. Dexterity represents a snake’s swiftness, and I’m probably going to have a suite of abilities related to attacks of opportunity. Certainly it’s going to be harder to cast defensively beside a viper. Constitution will probably determine the potency of poison.
Grappling is a good way to immobilize a caster, and works very nicely with a snake theme. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of important abilities if we add in Strength for grappling. So we’ll put in a way to substitute an ability score, probably Dexterity for Strength in grapple checks. Improved Grapple should also be given. Wisdom is important for tracking, but in the interest of reducing MAD Charisma could be worked in if it’s the snake skills used in the tracking. Probably replace the ability modifier for survival checks using Scent. Intelligence also seems to be mostly a dump stat, but being stealthy and all they’ll need a fair number of skill points. So we’ll boost the skill points tentatively up to 6 + Int for now to accomodate the lower Int.
I detest per day abilities. The day is a completely arbitrary unit that the DM has no real way to control, since it’s up to the party to determine how far to go. Per encounter abilities make far more sense. The supernatural abilities of this class will probably have a certain number of uses per encounter. I’m going to go with Cha mod per encounter for now, and lump all of the in-battle supernatural stuff into the same ability, which they can divy up as they like. Certainly poison will be in there. Looking back at my brainstorming, we’ll call this supernatural power ‘snakebite’ for now, for a catch-all name. They should get a bunch of different ways to use snakebite, a new one every few levels.
Just looking class feature-wise, here’s what I’ve got so far in a rough table.
Table: Class Features (Take 1)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (ability I)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent
4|Snakebite (ability II)
5|Mettle
6|Spell resistance?
7|Snakebite (ability III)
8|
9|
10|Snakebite (ability IV)
11|
12|
13|Snakebite (ability V)
14|
15|
16|Snakebite (ability VI)
17|
18|
19|Snakebite (ability VII)
20|[/table]
I decided to give a new use for snakebite every three levels, so they should have lots of options for it. Evasion is at level 2, being the earliest anybody gets it. Mettle, being better, is at level 5.
I want something, though, to boost saves in general. This guy should be as close to untouchable by spells as possible in a class. Scent isn’t much to get at 3rd level, so we’ll stick in paladin-esque Cha-to-saves bonus. It’s later than the paladin gets it, so it shouldn’t be a problem so long as I say it doesn’t stack. ‘Snake’s grace’ sounds good.
Spell Resistance also makes tons of sense. 6th level is probably a good time to start, since it’s just before spellcasters start getting some decent spells. 5 + class level sounds good to start with, and we’ll improve it later on. Every six levels, maybe? That sounds good. An additional +5 spell resistance every six levels.
Do I want improved evasion and (dare I say it) improved mettle? We’ll leave them out for now, but if it looks sparse later on, that would be a heck of a capstone with improved mettle.
The first ability snakebite gives should definitely be poison. Probably a free action to activate it, then have it active for all the attacks in that round. The damage the poison deals we can figure out later.
As for other abilities involving snakebite, pounce seems to make sense. I don’t want to give it by itself, but spending a use of snakebite to be able to charge and attack makes sense. Actually, come to think of it, I think just granting a move action woud be better. Speaking of which, this guy needs to be able to move fast. If he’s going to catch spellcasters, he’ll need speed.
Let’s see the chart!
Table: Class Features (Take 2)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (venom strike)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent, snake’s grace
4|Snakebite (lunge), movement +10ft.
5|Mettle
6|Spell resistance
7|Snakebite (ability III)
8|Movement +20ft.
9|
10|Snakebite (ability IV)
11|
12|Improved spell resistance, movement +30ft.
13|Snakebite (ability V)
14|
15|
16|Snakebite (ability VI), movement +40ft.
17|
18|Greater spell resistance
19|Snakebite (ability VII)
20|Movement +50ft.[/table]
Well, it’s starting to look a bit more fleshed out. The early levels look reasonable, and he should be pretty quick.
Now. Spellcasters should find it hard to cast around this guy. He’s trained to fight and disrupt them. So let’s give him the ability, almost an aura, which makes it harder for spellcasters to cast defensively adjacent to him. Level 8 seems reasonable for this. Let’s say, he adds 1/2 his class level to the Concentration check they need to make. That should give him plenty of incentive to get over to the caster.
I like the movement bonuses, but snakes have other ways of moving too. Climbing, burrowing, swimming, and even gliding. I’m thinking make that into an ability, like ‘snake’s swiftness’ or something, which provides a bunch of options that they can pick from, all related to movement. Much more interesting than a flat increase to land speed. Make the bonuses scale with class levels, and let him get them all by 20th level.
Grappling. We want him to have it fairly early on, so let’s give him Improved Grapple at 6th level. That’s when he gets spell resistance for the first time, but bear in mind that at level 6 that won’t be used very often. Also, it’ll be fairly low at that point (11), so it’ll be nice to get another offensive option too. At that point he’ll also get the ability to substitute Dex for Str in grapples. We’ll wrap them into an ability like ‘coils’ or ‘constriction’ or something like that.
In the same vein, he should have constrict damage. Let’s find an empty level after level 6 to give him constrict damage probably equal to his unarmed damage. Then in the spell-fighting theme, a snakebite ability that drains spell slots could be interesting. Let’s see if we can work that in. Speaking of snakebite, we wanted to work with attacks of opportunity. A snakebite use to make an immediate attack of opportunity makes sense, and it even replicates a spell, snake’s swiftness. As well, Combat Reflexes makes sense too. Let’s see if that could fit anywhere.
Table: Class Features (Take 3)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (venom strike)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent, snake’s grace
4|Snakebite (lunge), swift stride
5|Mettle
6|Constricting coils, spell resistance
7|Snakebite (reflexive strike)
8|Python’s presence, swift stride
9|Combat Reflexes
10|Snakebite (ability IV)
11|Tightening coils
12|Improved spell resistance, swift stride
13|Snakebite (ability V)
14|
15|
16|Snakebite (spelldrain), swift stride
17|
18|Greater spell resistance
19|Snakebite (ability VII)
20|Swift stride[/table]
Swift stride is now an ability which will give a movement-based benefit. Constricting Coils gives Improved Grapple and Dex-for-Str, while Tightening Coils gives constricting damage. Spelldrain will let him drain spell slots, either with a single strike or to someone he’s grappling. Python’s presence lets him distract nearby spellcasters casting defensively.
Rattlesnake. I like the idea of an ability called death rattle. It seems to lend itself to a save-or-die ability, but I don’t particularly like those. Not that it’s neccessarily overpowered (although I feel it is, as well as unfun) but you’ll also inevitably get people saying it’s unbalanced, despite the fact that spellcasters do it all the time. So I’m thinking death rattle could be a sonic-based ability which could deal damage to spellcasters nearby or anybody with spell-like abilities or the like for that matter. It seems like it would work best as a snakebite ability, so we’ll put it in at 19th level and make it really powerful.
Cobras are also cool. Tying in with attacks of opportunity, let’s let him avoid them too. A snakebite ability called ‘cobra dance’ lets him avoid attacks of opportunity until the next turn.
That leaves one snakebite ability. Getting back to poison, an improved venom strike would work, with a better choice for poisons. Maybe paralytic poison and mind-damaging poison for spellcasters.
14, 15, and 17 are empty. Also, I just realized that I never gave him camouflage like I wanted to. 14 is a bit late for it, though, so we’re going to move tightening coils to 14th and give him camo at 11th. That’s about the time that Hide starts to become less effective, so this should give him a boost.
15 and 17. I’ve got Improved Evasion and Improved Mettle that I could stick in there, but I think that’s just going to be too powerful. I could see Improved Evasion, especially since he’s got a poor Reflex save, but Improved Mettle is crazy good. Let’s schedule Improved Evasion for level 15.
Table: Class Features (Take 4)
{table=head]Level|Class Feature
1|Improved unarmed strike, snakebite (venom strike)
2|Track, evasion
3|Scent, snake’s grace
4|Snakebite (lunge), swift stride
5|Mettle
6|Constricting coils, spell resistance
7|Snakebite (reflexive strike)
8|Python’s presence, swift stride
9|Combat Reflexes
10|Snakebite (cobra dance)
11|Camouflage
12|Improved spell resistance, swift stride
13|Snakebite (mind venom)
14|Tightening coils
15|Improved evasion
16|Snakebite (spelldrain), swift stride
17|
18|Greater spell resistance
19|Snakebite (death rattle)
20|Swift stride[/table]
Now I’ve got one dead level at 17, and I’m missing a capstone. People will always multiclass to squeeze every last drop out of a build, so you always want to put something great at 20th level. I don’t worry too much about the balance of that ability, because at that point the game is ridiculously crazy and going to end soon anyway.
Level 17. This one’s starting to bug me, because I can’t think of anything appropriate for this late in a build. I want something fairly potent, so I think I’m going to give him a nice edge in grappling: the ability to take 10 on Grapple checks. As far as I know, nobody else can do that, so that should be something to look forward to. In fact, thinking about it now, they could probably use an ability to take 10 on most of their snake-like skills. So let’s say that he gets a combination ability to take 10 on Grapple checks, stealth skills, and maybe Survival checks to track, too. I like the idea of that. I’ll come up with a clever name for it later.
Lastly, a capstone. I want something potent, something to terrify casters. I’m thinking Disjunction. Mr. Mordenkainen’s Disjunction, to be precise. I don’t want it to destroy items and artifacts, because nonspellcasters get the most use out of those. So I’ll make it a 1/encounter ability to radiate a disjunction aura that only targets spell effects. Strip all the buffs off of a caster, and then beat him up. Nice.
Now, a review. No dead levels, and abilities mostly themed around movement, stealth, tracking, poison, and anti-spellcaster tactics. The only thing I’m not happy with are the skill points. This guy seems too focused on combat to be as skilful as a bard. I think I’m going to drop them back down to 4 + Int modifier. I think I’m going to stick with d8 HD as well, since as we all know, the most deadly spells don’t do hp damage.
I think we’re about done! All that’s left is to write up descriptions of the class features and a description of the class. I use a fantastic class table generator, found at
http://pifro.com/dnd/NEW/
It’s really quick and easy to use.
<hr>
Now for some tips on actually writing up the class:
When you’re writing out the abilities, you want the abilities to be clear and concise. It’s fine to talk about what the ability does in terms of fluff, but you also need to be specific about the mechanics of it; what it actually does do in terms of the rules. For an example of what to avoid, see the rouse spell in Player’s Handbook II.
Another thing to keep in mind is to try to emulate a formal layout as much as possible. If you want, grab one of the books and copy each section word for word. It’s little things, but it makes the whole document look much more professional. It can be as small as seperating ‘Skill Points at 1st Level’ and ‘Skill Points at Each Additional Level’, or something as important as actually having a table.
A lot of classes have the abilities written out in one of two ways: they’ll talk about the class in the third person, or they’ll talk about the reader as if he were the character in the class (second person). As in, ‘beginning at 11th level, you gain the ability to eat truffles’ or ‘beginning at 6th level, the astral tapdancer gains the ability to waltz’. Either way is fine, and I always seem to switch back and forth when I’m doing classes. The main thing is, pick one and stick with it for a single class. Don’t go changing tenses in the middle of a write-up.
Next, be familiar with terminology of classes. Recognize the difference between Supernatural and Extraordinary abilities. Copy phrasing in cases such as ‘you may take 10 on (insert skill here) checks even if stress or distraction would normally prevent you from doing so’. If you’re using a class feature that already exists, use the same wording as that one to standardize it.
Once you’re finished writing everything up, put it on the boards with (generally) a P.E.A.C.H. tag on it, asking people to evaluate it honestly. Realistically, the best choice would be to playtest it, but most people won’t want it in a campaign until it’s been playtested, which leads to sort of a vicious cycle. Anyway, you can expect to have people critique it, maybe even quite harshly. Don’t take it personally. Try to explain why you designed it the way you did, and find a solution that satisfies any problem. Remember that it’s not set in stone even when it’s on the boards. Assuming you want it to be the best it can be, make sure to honestly consider any criticism levelled towards it.
Any comments or questions, just let me know!