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Immutep
2008-12-05, 01:12 PM
I'm wanting to create a new class of barbarian/arcane caster for V3.5 that encompasses some casting capabilities with the barbarian style of combat. The reason being for a tribe of raiding barbarians where the outright sorceror/wizard wouldn't be fierce enough to survive in the specific culture and clerics worship nature and so wouldn't participate in raids against the mainland (borrowing heavily on the viking theme for this tribe) i was thinking of calling the class "War-Mage" and i was thinking of modifying the Hexblade to achieve the desired results.

Here are the changes i was thinking of making:
Alignment can be any non lawful Instead of not Good

Hexblades curse replaced with lesser rage (counts as rage as for barbarian but only adds +2 to Str & Con -2AC Can still cast spells temporary hit points modified accordingly)

Bonus Feats replaced in the following order; 5th level with uncanny dodge 10th level with evasion 15th level improved uncanny dodge (Rogue must be of equal class level or higher to flank) and 20th level with improved evasion.

Greater Hexblades curse will increase Lesser range benefits to +4Str +4Con -2AC.

Aura of Unlucks removed to balance skills/level increased to 4+Int bonus per level (as opposed to 2+Int Bonus/level)

Dire Hexblades Curse increases the Rage bonuses to Str+6 Con+6 -2AC

Also was wanting to tweak the spell lists accordingly, since the War-Mage will be taking on the role of both cleric and arcane caster and the hexblade's spells don't reprisent this very well. Here's what i had in mind:

1st level;
Alarm
Arcane Mark
Augment Familliar
Inflict Minor Wounds
Magic Missile
Detect Magic
Cure Minor Wounds
Divine Favour(?)
Expiditious Retreat
Identify
Light
Magic Weapon
Mount
Detect Evil/Good/Law
Phantom Threat
Prestigitation
Protection from Evil/Good/Law
Read Magic
Sleep
Remove Fear
Undetectable Alignment
Unseen Servant

Will put others up @ a later stage if the general sensus is i'm heading along the right tracks. Opinions/ SUggestions welcome. Cheers!

Tacoma
2008-12-05, 01:22 PM
I don't want to discourage you. But I would just say the members of this tribe do one of two things:

A: They wobble between Barbarian and Sorcerer levels, possibly with some doing Bard instead to act as war-chant epic tale dudes.

B: They have a Prestige Class for which every level gained gives d10 HP and +1/1 attack progression, counts as a level for spontaneous arcane purposes, and counts as a level for barbarian rage purposes. Probably 2 skill pts. Is this balanced? I have no idea.

When it comes down to it, you should be able to express any character concept with some combination of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue with custom feats and possibly prestige classes.

Want a Ranger? Just wobble between Fighter and Cleric, choosing nature spells, and cross-class your stealth. Pick survival and animal type skills.

Bard? Be a Rogue and pick up a level of Wizard every couple levels. Focus on social and Perform skills. Choose illusion and enchantment spells. Try to find magical instruments to play. Pick up a prestige class that lets you sing to give people bonuses.

But you know. People like new classes.

Immutep
2008-12-05, 01:47 PM
I get what you're saying i really do. But since this tribe of raiders are the main "bad guys" in the campaign i'm designing, i wanted to be able to draft the needed points into one class to prevent having to scour through several books/pages to write/play the NPC's. Also, if the abilities are scattered then i have a tendancy to forget them @ key moments. I figured a bit of work at the start would save alot of time in the games.

Stupendous_Man
2008-12-05, 01:51 PM
Runescarred berserker

Tacoma
2008-12-05, 02:02 PM
In this case, whatever you do, I suggest that you create a Level 1 - 20 chart for the barbarians like in the 3E DMG for each class for NPCs encountered. Helps a lot.

Tequila Sunrise
2008-12-05, 02:08 PM
Here are the changes i was thinking of making:
Looks good to me! My only two critisisms are:

1. Alignment restrictions can only get in the way of rping, so I suggest removing it. (And removing all the others, while you're at it.)
2. I don't have my CA nearby, but it appears that they get a familiar since you have Augment Familiar on their spell list. I suggest trading the familiar for some other minor benefit, 'cause they're just not very useful during combat.

TS

PS: Not to single anyone out, but why is it when someone wants a unique character concept twelve people immediately turn up to shout "PRESTIGE CLASS!"? Is it so horrible to want to have a character concept available from level 1?

Person_Man
2008-12-05, 02:40 PM
Take one level of Barbarian for Rage, the Extra Rage feat so you can use it for a total of 4 times per day, and then take levels of Warlock or Hexblade or Paladin of Freedom.

There's also a ton of fast half caster PrC out there. I'm sure there's got to be at least a dozen with a wilderness or barbarian theme to it.

IMO, the only good reason to homebrew something is if you have some creative idea which doesn't exist in the rules. Otherwise, you can almost always accomplish what you want with the existing rules and new fluff.

Stupendous_Man
2008-12-05, 02:45 PM
PS: Not to single anyone out, but why is it when someone wants a unique character concept twelve people immediately turn up to shout "PRESTIGE CLASS!"? Is it so horrible to want to have a character concept available from level 1?

You kids these days and your Blu-Ray discs and your pierced scrotums and your bull frogs and your telekinesis and your Marvel Comics and your YouTube-dot-com and your nuclear physics and your ingrowing toenails and your Gears of War and your Quentin Tarantino and your power steering and your elevators and your illegitimate offspring and your instant gratification...

Bonecrusher Doc
2008-12-05, 04:46 PM
There already is some kind of warmage, in the Miniatures Handbook. Basically lots of offensive spells and he can wear some armor.

When I think of a caster for barbarians, I think of some kind of shaman or adept.

Lemur
2008-12-05, 05:06 PM
PS: Not to single anyone out, but why is it when someone wants a unique character concept twelve people immediately turn up to shout "PRESTIGE CLASS!"? Is it so horrible to want to have a character concept available from level 1?

The Homebrew forum is more appropriate to discuss the creation of a custom class. People on the General RPG forum are likely to respond by suggesting options from existing material. I wouldn't begrudge posters for trying to offer reasonable alternatives, it's just another way of trying to be helpful.

Immutep
2008-12-06, 04:21 PM
The Homebrew forum is more appropriate to discuss the creation of a custom class. People on the General RPG forum are likely to respond by suggesting options from existing material. I wouldn't begrudge posters for trying to offer reasonable alternatives, it's just another way of trying to be helpful.

Didn't notice the homebrew forum (new here!) thanks for the tip. if an administrator read then can they please relocate?

Reasonable alternatives/ helpful criticism is what i'm after here as i've never created a new class before. Somebody posted about shaman like casters, the idea is the tribe will have clerics but they aren't the type who will follow the raiding parties into foreign lands to plunder and pillage. As for paladins, forget it! and whilst i was aware that i could create the desired abilities through multi-multi-classing i wasn't really wanting to do this for NPC's as it will slow down game time and also take longer for me to create the characters. I figured if i get this class right without the need for cross class NPC's then it would be time saving in the long term.

Immutep
2008-12-06, 04:26 PM
There already is some kind of warmage, in the Miniatures Handbook. Basically lots of offensive spells and he can wear some armor.

When I think of a caster for barbarians, I think of some kind of shaman or adept.

Minitures handbook? is this V3.5 compatable? I've only got so far ( and so was limiting campaign to) PHB, MM1, DMG & Complete warrior.

P.s. The dropping of the Familiar sounds like a sound idea, just wasn't sure how to rebalance the class, i was wanting the warmages to be the Character "bad guys" that are a reocurring problem for the Party. Being the principle source of enemy casting at the early levels so it's important that they aren't too weak as well as not too strong (don't want the campaign to end at level five!)

arguskos
2008-12-06, 04:36 PM
Minitures handbook? is this V3.5 compatable? I've only got so far ( and so was limiting campaign to) PHB, MM1, DMG & Complete warrior.

P.s. The dropping of the Familiar sounds like a sound idea, just wasn't sure how to rebalance the class, i was wanting the warmages to be the Character "bad guys" that are a reocurring problem for the Party. Being the principle source of enemy casting at the early levels so it's important that they aren't too weak as well as not too strong (don't want the campaign to end at level five!)
Actually, the Warmage was updated to be 3.5 material in Complete Arcane. If you added the Barbarian's rage to Warmage, it might be what you are looking for (with a MUCH stronger combat focus then you might want).

Just a thought. Looks neat though! :smallwink:

Devils_Advocate
2008-12-06, 08:08 PM
If you want to give these guys a type of relatively minor, hereditary magic, might it be better to make this a racial trait instead of building it into a class? There are several races in 3.5 that gain access to more spell-like abilities, stronger special attacks, and/or ect. as they gain hit dice. You could make them a subrace of humans or orcs or dwarves or whatever instead of their own totally separate race, if you wanted. Just a thought, and something that only really works if you want the whole tribe to have the same abilities, which you might not. (Kobolds, for example, have many sorcerer bloodlines but no special magical abilities shared throughout the race, and there's nothing inappropriate about that.)

Personally, I'd consider just multiclassing Barbarian with Duskblade or Psychic Warrior or something. Giving a bunch of dudes similar builds can give them their own distinct style, too; you don't really need a custom class for that. And you can write down all of their abilities together on one sheet so you don't lose track of them all. Not that there's anything wrong with custom classes, just saying.

Ooh! Speaking of psionics, the Wilder class has a very barbarianesque sort of feel to it. That could work, if you decided to consider going with an existing class. It just needs some de-nerfing. (Suggested changes: They get a new power known every level, they damn well can use Wild Surge in combination with Overchannel, and Psychic Enervation doesn't make you lose power points. (A penalty that goes up with level? What the hell were they thinking?) And Elude Touch should be made less absurd somehow. ...Y'know, maybe just designing a new class would be simpler. :smalltongue:)


Alignment restrictions can only get in the way of rping, so I suggest removing it. (And removing all the others, while you're at it.)
I generally concur, and would like to expand on this by noting that justifiable does not equal good.

Can you make a plausible, consistent setting where all monks must be Lawful? Yeah, probably. Can you make an even better setting by allowing Chaotic monks? More probably. :smallamused:

They got the Beguiler class right. They didn't say "Beguilers can't be Lawful Good ever, so there." They said "You can make a Lawful Good Beguiler if you want to, but he'll be weird." (I'm paraphrasing.)

Of the PHB alignment restrictions, the paladin's and maybe the cleric's make sense. The paladin's makes sense because being a living embodiment of Law and Good is basically what the core paladin is all about. It's a very specific thing, to the point where they should probably be a prestige class (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/prestigiousCharacterClasses.htm#prestigePaladin). (If you require a character to learn the paladin's code and demonstrate dedication to it in-game before taking the class, that probably prevents a lot of paladin-related problems.) You can make a holy warrior class that can be any alignment, and even give it very similar abilities to the 3E PHB paladin, but it won't be the same thing. The core class's ideology is one of its defining traits. Again, it's a level of specific normally reserved for PrCs.

mabriss lethe
2008-12-06, 11:57 PM
One of the things you're going to run into is that a barbarian's rage and a caster's spells are relative incompatable, unless you take that one PrC..Rage mage or something like that? May I offer an alternative?

Multiclass as a Barbarian/Binder. No need to make things up as you go along. Almost all of a binder's magical abilites will continue to function and be usable while raging since vestiges grant supernatural abilities. Binders make rather nice mid-frontline melee combatants anyway. It's also one class that can be customized to fill a variety of functions (a barbarian's rage being one of the few that vestiges don't mimic)

Also from Tome of Magic (the same book with the binder class) is a race that I think would work very well for your barbarian horde. The Karsite. It's like Human Plus. They have all the normal human traits, +2 to cha and con, they gain DR SR and some nice antimagic abilities, but trade it for an inability to ever cast spells (they can, however still use spell like abilities and supernatural abilities.) It's a +2 LA race. They're one of the few LA races that is actually worth the goodies you get in return.

mikeejimbo
2008-12-07, 12:12 AM
When it comes down to it, you should be able to express any character concept with some combination of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue with custom feats and possibly prestige classes.

Want a Ranger? Just wobble between Fighter and Cleric, choosing nature spells, and cross-class your stealth. Pick survival and animal type skills.

Bard? Be a Rogue and pick up a level of Wizard every couple levels. Focus on social and Perform skills. Choose illusion and enchantment spells. Try to find magical instruments to play. Pick up a prestige class that lets you sing to give people bonuses.

But you know. People like new classes.

Actually, you only need THREE classes.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm

Animefunkmaster
2008-12-07, 12:35 AM
When you say barbarian style of combat do you mean: have access to rage? If you don't, then a standard gish/charger will work.

Otherwise the SRD/UA has a druid variant (Druidic Avenger), give up animal companion, gain rage. The only thing worse than a wildshaped bear with animal growth, is the one that rages. Don't like wild shape (or any of it's variants), trade it in for wisdom to unarmored AC. They aren't all worth it, but better than trying to multiclass with barbarian.

Bonecrusher Doc
2008-12-07, 10:07 AM
One of the things you're going to run into is that a barbarian's rage and a caster's spells are relative incompatable, unless you take that one PrC..Rage mage or something like that? May I offer an alternative?

Again from Miniatures Handbook (I don't know if it's in Complete Arcane): Havoc Mage can cast spells while atacking with weapons. Not so sure he would be able to rage and cast spells at the same time though.

Fan
2008-12-07, 10:16 AM
Lots of minatures handbook here, but I'm not a fan of this class.
It does just seem like a sub par rage mage.