Fantasy Archtypes

[Zelkon]

So, I'm planning on making a system that allows a lot of customization, where each level, you choose to advance your current archetype or choose another. In a way, it's a lot like 3.5 multiclassing if all the classes tapped off at five levels. Pretty much, instead of levels, you choose an archetype whenever you advance. Another assumption is that, in this world, magic is common, and therefore its easy for anyone to pick up a cantrip or two. So, the point of this thread is to make sure all the fantasy archetypes are covered. I've created a list, along with a short description of what they do. It's basically a heartbreaker that's made to be able to replicate almost any fantasy character. Here is what I've come up with so far:

Martial Artist
Unarmed fighting, Meditative powers, unnatural resiliance, super focus.
Knight
Squire, decent weapon proficiancies. good armor, valor. High social. Contacts.
Shapechanger
Versitle at-will power, big awesome stuff on a resource pool.
Rider
Magic mount, moderate weapon proficiancies, moderate armor, lots of riding tricks.
Ranger
Super minor changeble wilderness sout pet, good weapons, decent armor, wilderness tracking and stuff. VERY minor spells. Good senses.
Pet
Has an awesome pet thing that becomes powerful and magical.
Holy Warrior
Smite ability, minor magic, healing, decent defending, good weapons, good armor.
Scoundrel
Moderate thievery, good stealth, high accuracy, moderate weapons, moderate armor. Minor invisibility, illusion and teleportation magic. Above average social.
good mobility. Contacts.
Thief
Great thievery, good senses, high accuracy but low damage, low weapons, moderate armor. Minor invisibility magic. Good social. Above-average mobility. Contacts.
Druid
Minor pet, good nature magic, highly limited shapchanging (animal of choice). Decent armor
Priest
Great healing/buffing, divination, good social.
Wizard
Powerful magic in many areas, terrible everything else. Limited at-will. Minor pet. Great knowledge, bad social.
Mage
Powerful at-will control, minor pet, some limited use. Good knowledge.
Warlord
Some followers, minor buffing, decent healing, tactical movement, action granting. Good weapons and armor. Contacts.
King
Lots of followers, great knowledge, minor buffing, VERY minor healing. Can call in aids in many situations. Great resources. Bad weapons, decent armor. Great social.
Tinkerer
Contraptions, great thevery, some knowledge.
Fighter
Great armor, weapons, high accuracy/damage, heroism, can gain some followers at high level. Above-average HP. Good social, no below average skills. No magic. Above-average defending.
Defender
Great defending, great armor, good weapons, Great HP
Necromancer
Decent pet, good magic, good debufing, good minion making.
Joker
Good illusion magic, social skills, decent thevery, decent buff/debuff, minor battlefield control.
Storyteller
Decent buffing, good scrying/divination, great social, decent weapons/armor, tactical and battlefield control. Narritive prowess. Great knowledge.
Bard
Good buffing, decent scying/divination and illusion, best social, above-average weapons/armor. Good tactics, singing magic. Good knowledge.
Swashbuckler
Good weapons, decent armor, good social, astounding mobility, great accuracy.
Archer
Good range weapons, decent armor, good mobility, high damage, special arrows.
Adventurerer
Luck, good weapons and armor, thevery, knowledge, minor magic of all kinds. Contacts. Above-average social. Ability to mimic other’s abilities.
Barbarian
High mobility, minor nature pets, high damage, good weapons, midium armor, great mobility, special rages.
Warlock
High damage magic, high mobility/teleportation, dirty tricks, good thevery, good pet.
Summoner
Great pet with the ability to change sort of like a shapechanger, minion creator.
Gish
Good weapons and armor, good magic, ability to imbue sword with magic.
Psion
Telekinesis-based magic. Fatigue-less, resource based. Great battlefield control.
Assassin
High accuracy, high damage, great stealth, invisibility, illusion, teleportation magic. Good thievery.
Surgeon
Good healing, good buffing, good thievery, augment characters.
Aristocrat
Some followers. High resources, high knowledge, decent weapons and armor, great social.
Invoker
High powered divine magic, good divination, good healing, great control.

[Gildedragon]

Got a lot of "pets" outside of the pet archetype. Makes me wonder if you're not better off dropping those and adding it as a feat-like thing that can be picked up.
If you are keeping the pet archetype: sentient item companion or tutelary spirit is something that you ought to consider.

Straight up "Scholar" is missing, as is some sort of spiritist: someone who can commune with the dead or nature entities.

You have a lot if repeating factors. It might be useful to, rather than blitz out all the archetypes you want filled a priori you figure out which mechanics you want and then work on the values of each class regarding that.

[eftexar]

I'm not sure how specific or broad archetypes you are shooting for, so I'll just throw out a list of anything I can think of that you don't have.

Witch, Alchemist, Charlatan, Pirate, Ninja, Planeswalker, Far Realms, Cultist/Demonologist, Spellblade, Medic, Shaman/Voodoo, Elementalist, Shadowcaster, Chronomancer, Detective, Bounty Hunter, Dungeoneer, Dancer, Elocater, Gambler, Librarian, Magic Gunslinger, Tactician, Acrobat, and Pactmaking

[Eldan]

Well, you seem to have your types of magic that not every setting might share. Psions may well be telepaths instead of telekinetes.

Some of your magic classes seem limited in how they cast their magic (mage vs. wizards), while others are limited in what types of spells they get (invoker, druid, priest, summoner, psion, necromancer).

If you want classes for differnet kinds of magic, you seem to be lacking:
Ritualists, Namers, Binders or Houngangs, an elementalist or other energy based caster, an abjurer or other protective caster, an illusionist, an enchanter or hypnotist, an alchemist or transmuter and that's just for magic D&D covers. Otherwise, I can also think of Changeling type pact magic, where you make pacts with landscape features and spirits for help. Runic magic seems absent as well.

If we leave more classical medieval-type fantasy, I can think of more, but here you run into focus problems. Nautical campaigns tend to have captains, navigators and helmsmen, but in any campaign not focused on this, they are absent or a minor skill. In a Steampunk or Victorian campaign, you'd have different kinds of nobles and courtiers, mechanics, inventors, scientists, priests, detectives and underclass types.

Then of course come the players who want to play monsters and non-human creatures. How are those covered?

[Zelkon]

Well, you seem to have your types of magic that not every setting might share. Psions may well be telepaths instead of telekinetes.

Right, yeah. I'll add that.

Some of your magic classes seem limited in how they cast their magic (mage vs. wizards), while others are limited in what types of spells they get (invoker, druid, priest, summoner, psion, necromancer).

They all have a slightly different delivery system, but yeah, that's more or less it.

If you want classes for differnet kinds of magic, you seem to be lacking:
Ritualists, Namers, Binders or Houngangs, an elementalist or other energy based caster, an abjurer or other protective caster, an illusionist, an enchanter or hypnotist, an alchemist or transmuter and that's just for magic D&D covers. Otherwise, I can also think of Changeling type pact magic, where you make pacts with landscape features and spirits for help. Runic magic seems absent as well.

Binders, namers, ritualists, alchemists, and elementalists, will probably make it in, but that's because they have different types of magic altogether. Simply using different schools of magic probably won't be necessary. Necromancer is a class because of it's minionmancing capabilities, and we already have the shapechanger for the transmuter archtype.

If we leave more classical medieval-type fantasy, I can think of more, but here you run into focus problems. Nautical campaigns tend to have captains, navigators and helmsmen, but in any campaign not focused on this, they are absent or a minor skill. In a Steampunk or Victorian campaign, you'd have different kinds of nobles and courtiers, mechanics, inventors, scientists, priests, detectives and underclass types.

Splatbooks (or something like that.?
[/quote]
Then of course come the players who want to play monsters and non-human creatures. How are those covered?[/QUOTE] Those'll probably be handled as races or archetypes, but mostly, it'll be a fluff choice or, like races without LA, not allowed.

I'm not sure how specific or broad archetypes you are shooting for, so I'll just throw out a list of anything I can think of that you don't have.

Witch, Alchemist, Charlatan, Pirate, Ninja, Planeswalker, Far Realms, Cultist/Demonologist, Spellblade, Medic, Shaman/Voodoo, Elementalist, Shadowcaster, Chronomancer, Detective, Bounty Hunter, Dungeoneer, Dancer, Elocater, Gambler, Librarian, Magic Gunslinger, Tactician, Acrobat, and Pactmaking

Wow, great list! Thanks! Some of them are great, but some are a bit too similar. I think witch/cultist is a part of warlock, medic is part of surgeon, spellblade is part of gish (I might actually change the name to spellblade, pirate is part of swashbuckler, bounty hunter doesn't really have the mechanics to stand on its own, tactician is part of warlord, dancer and acrobat probably don't justify whole archtypes, and librarian will be folded into scholar (see below).

Got a lot of "pets" outside of the pet archetype. Makes me wonder if you're not better off dropping those and adding it as a feat-like thing that can be picked up.
If you are keeping the pet archetype: sentient item companion or tutelary spirit is something that you ought to consider.

I think that's what I was going for: it's kind of an all-purpose pet class. I think I will end up dropping most of the non-pet-class pets, keeping maybe the warlock's. I was on the fence beforehand.
[/quote]
Straight up "Scholar" is missing, as is some sort of spiritist: someone who can commune with the dead or nature entities.[/quote] Will add. Any ideas for how a scholar can be useful in combat?

You have a lot if repeating factors. It might be useful to, rather than blitz out all the archetypes you want filled a priori you figure out which mechanics you want and then work on the values of each class regarding that.

Hmm...I did want it to be very archetype-based, but I'll look into it.

[Grinner]

I can't help but note that you're giving them attributes based on their mechanical effects in D&D as opposed to their fluff. Is this going to be a d20 variant or an original system?

[Eldan]

It sure sounds like a 3.5 variant. Most of the classes and their definitions seem taken straight from it.

[Zelkon]

I can't help but note that you're giving them attributes based on their mechanical effects in D&D as opposed to their fluff. Is this going to be a d20 variant or an original system?

I'm using generic description at the moment. D&D terms are just the ones I'm most familiar with, so that's what came out when I was typing. I was just trying to spell out their niche a bit. I haven't really gotten far enough in the process to decide weather this is a variant, but it might well turn out to be.

[Eldan]

Fair enough. Though I am mainly wondering about one thing:

Spell Schools. They are not a thing in most fiction other than D&D, as far as I'm aware. And yet you take the D&D route with your casters where there are classes such as wizards able to cast almost anything and then a few more specialized casters. Wouldn't it be better, to start over on Magic, and make archetypes for different kinds of magic?

[Zelkon]

Fair enough. Though I am mainly wondering about one thing:

Spell Schools. They are not a thing in most fiction other than D&D, as far as I'm aware. And yet you take the D&D route with your casters where there are classes such as wizards able to cast almost anything and then a few more specialized casters. Wouldn't it be better, to start over on Magic, and make archetypes for different kinds of magic?

Hmm...I disagree. The Wizard himself was meant to be the limited but high powered caster, gaining access to reality warping powers with enough dedication. The mage, however, specializes in more common magic, creating effects right and left. The necromancy isn't even a school of magic in this case; it's a whole different way of using it. The summoner is a lot like the necromancer but with a more dedicated pet. The thing is, the wizard can't summon, he can't necromance, he can't illusion. However, he can teraform, fly, reverse gravity, magic missile, etc. You'll notice that I mention that each class only has five "levels". The point of this being that you mix and match all sorts of classes. So, a build might look like this: Mage 2/Wizard 2/Invoker 1, which would get you some reality warping, some at-will, day-to-day magic, and a touch of awe-inspiring, bring down the roof powers.

[Eldan]

In that case, you are really lacking in mentalists and elemental blasters.

What is the wizard's theme, then? The other casters seem thematically coherent. Necromancers have to do with undead. Summoners summon. What do wizards do, other than warp reality? Because all Magic warps reality, as we understand it.

[zabbarot]

I did something like this with a friend of mine. We came up with 16 archetypes that could be arranged in sets of three to basically make different classes. Just 16 archetypes gave us 560 possible sets of 3. Since your system seems to be designed around combining these archetypes instead of playing any single one it's quite possible that your list could be trimmed down to simper roles. Then some of your archetypes might instead be recreated as combinations of what you have.

For example your warlord might be easily recreated by taking both Fighter and King. Your warlock might be replicated by Wizard/Pet/Thief.

[Zelkon]

I did something like this with a friend of mine. We came up with 16 archetypes that could be arranged in sets of three to basically make different classes. Just 16 archetypes gave us 560 possible sets of 3. Since your system seems to be designed around combining these archetypes instead of playing any single one it's quite possible that your list could be trimmed down to simper roles. Then some of your archetypes might instead be recreated as combinations of what you have.

For example your warlord might be easily recreated by taking both Fighter and King. Your warlock might be replicated by Wizard/Pet/Thief.

Possibly...I don't know about fighter and king=warlord, but there are certainly combos that obsolete some archetypes. However, one does have to consider that to play a warlock in the system right now, you only need to take one "level" in it, while mixing and matching requires the expending of many more resources. It's a fine line between too many and too few.

[Yitzi]

What's the real difference between, say, a knight and a fighter/aristocrat?

A lot of these archetypes are really just hybrids of other archetypes, so you might want to give thought to reducing the number of archetypes and using hybridization to make the others.

[DMMike]

How about this: have an archetype for each simple combination of character features in your system.

The minimum D&D version of this would have three character features: combat, magic, and skills. And your archetypes, less cool names, might be these:
Combat-only
Combat/Magic
Combat/Skills
Magic only
Magic/Skills
Skills only

Sure, you could get more complex. But after, oh, 15 choices, I'd rather just design my character a la carte.

[Philemonite]

I'm doing something similar with my homebrew system.
Class is made by combining three archetypes: Technique (weapon abilities), Magic and Skill (everything else).
6 archetypes for every group makes for a lot of combination.
So, a Paladin is a combination of Shieldbearer Tech, Divine Magic and Prayer Skill.
You might wanna take a look at it.

[Yitzi]

How about this: have an archetype for each simple combination of character features in your system.

The minimum D&D version of this would have three character features: combat, magic, and skills. And your archetypes, less cool names, might be these:
Combat-only
Combat/Magic
Combat/Skills
Magic only
Magic/Skills
Skills only

Sure, you could get more complex. But after, oh, 15 choices, I'd rather just design my character a la carte.

I would propose one variant to your idea: If combining two archetypes, you can have a simple combination, or you can have one subordinate to the other. For example, Combat/Magic could be a battlemage (a caster who knows how to handle themselves in a fight), a versatile character who can use either combat or magic but doesn't combine them, or a Gish. These would be represented respectively as having combat subordinate to magic, as a simple combination, and as having magic subordinate to combat.

[DMMike]

Yitzi: that's a really good idea. In fact, it's the only idea I would incorporate before just throwing my hands up and saying: let's use a point-buy system!

Asteron: my homebrew actually eschews classes (but offers them as an afterthought). In it, you piece together your own class, similar to the way you build your own class in Skyrim. But I took a peek at your homebrew, and I'm digging the three-actions idea, since I have pretty much the same thing. Mine is mostly fleshed out if you want to take a look, and since it's intentionally public-domain, you're welcome to build off it if you want!

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campai...ikis/main-page