Class Builds Comments

[quote="OutOfManaException"]

Honestly, you can easily break a lot of stuff just playing with the magic system creation rules, even without trying. I managed to make a magic system with some serious power with only a 1,000 xp cost at rank 4.

Hell, I outright ban players from making their own custom classes because it's far too easy to make something suited to a character playstyle without having too much of an XP cost.

[/quote]

Can you share what your magic system was?

[quote="Aryxymaraki"] ......Thinking about Ceremonial Divine honestly just makes me think about enforce a minimum XP cost for any kind of magic...Given that the Axioms 1 table doesn't go below 500 Base XP, I'd be willing to consider that 500 might be the minimum XP value for any type of magic no matter how many drawbacks you give it. (Perhaps the class gets a custom power for each 100 XP below 500 they were or something to compensate.) [/quote]

Hm. Or a minimum XP value for any given class? Thief 3/Divine 1 would hit, what - 1,000XP to level 2? That's a pretty clean number; a third of the monster XP rate, or half a fighter? I'd lean towards evening out the extreme builds, rather than discouraging tight specialities, if a guidance had to be provided.

While checking to see if I understand it, I am getting a different number for Arcane; specifically I’m calculating 562.5 for Ceremonial Arcane here. Is this my error or is it just an understandable side effect of me making you post long strings of numbers late at night?

In my experience, it’s only ever come up with weird magic tricks. (Some of my magic types earlier had too low of an XP cost because I had accidentally given them terrible source factors for spell types that ended up not being on their spell list at all.)

I suspect this is going to fall into the same category of ‘problem’, which can be summarized as ‘there’s a reason these are tools for the Judge and not the players’, but it is something that I stumbled on by accident, which is that a purely ceremonial magic build of a limited magic type (something that isn’t good at everything, and hence has a low base XP cost) like Divine, just tends to be extremely low in cost but can still be quite useful out of combat.

I don’t think the minimum XP issue really comes up outside of magic, because it’s much more difficult to be a useful character class with no combat abilities and no magic. (You could design a merchant/crafter/trader that was some kind of super-Venturer with Thievery4, but when you do that, it’s much more obvious that you are intentionally breaking the system and you can stop yourself; it’s difficult to design that kind of class by accident.)

Probably (a noted Judge v. Player problem). Same thing that puts (parens) around Thievery 4, HD 3+, Fighting 3+.

Punitively rounding the second Ceremonial Divine calculation takes it to 100/200/400/800; which takes a classic Cleric to 1,200XP; or the Priestess to 800XP (or 1000XP with a lower bound rule).

Alternatively, perhaps Healing/Movement/Wall and/or other largely "buff" categories are more useful and deserve less of a discount for Ceremonial; which might also bring up the numbers a bit.

 

Unfortunately, no matter what you do to the source factor costs, it doesn’t affect Divine; Divine has the base source factors for all categories and so has only the base cost.

But we could assume that out; Healing is obviously the most useful trick available to the Divine spell list, so we could pretend that there is no base cost and that the default source factor for healing is 1.5. This would give Divine a difference of 0.5 * 1000 Healing cost = 500 base XP value, which is of course its normal value.

If we then take the 500 XP paid for Healing and multiply it by 0.7, we get 350 as a base XP value, which would cost 1,400 XP for 4 points in it. Which may be too expensive but hey, it’s a number!

Should the ecclesiastic have an XP cost of 1,200 instead of 1,250?

It appears to be Ceremonial Eldritch 3 + Thievery 1, which would be 1,000 + 200.

Also, quick aside on Chosen gifts! RAW it appears to be legal to have a caster level above your actual level by taking Ceremonial Magic or Magical Music repeatedly, which I assume is not intended (but maybe it is, a 16th level ceremonialist could still be pretty useful performing only unknown ceremonies).

Magical Music seems like it would be very difficult to get a lot of spellcasting out of, since you only gain one spell point when you go for SP/repertoire, and the spell point costs scale up. In order to cast a single third level spell once per day, you would need to take the gift five times for caster level plus an additional two times for sp/repertoire (which would give you 3 SP and a total of 1 1st, plus 2 of any level from 1-3 spells in your repertoire with a caster level of 5).

Eldritch Talent, while definitely less versatile, would let you cast a third-level spell once per day at 5th caster level for a single gift. I feel like the added versatility is not worth the extra six gifts; for the same price as one call of the wild bear per day, you could instead have seven bears per day.

(I think ‘SP gained sufficient to cast the spell you added to your repertoire’ might be better; if you took 1 1st, 1 2nd, and 1 3rd level spell, this would give you 6 SP for your seven gifts. This might incentivize learning 6th level spells for the 10 SP gained, but if you are even capable of learning a single 6th level spell, you have already devoted 10 gifts just to caster level plus the one base for 11 gifts; if you learned one spell of each level on the way up it would cost you another 4 gifts, leaving you only able to learn a single 6th level spell at 14th level by investing your very last gift. On the other hand, I have not compared this to the level of effectiveness you can get by investing heavily in Ceremonial Magic, so it might be too good, and also, having typed out the phrase ‘seven bears per day’ above, it makes me think maybe the issue is Eldritch Talent.)

[quote="Aryxymaraki"] Should the ecclesiastic have an XP cost of 1,200 instead of 1,250? It appears to be Ceremonial Eldritch 3 + Thievery 1, which would be 1,000 + 200. [/quote]

There appears to be an unstated rule in ACKS that anytime a class should cost 1,200XP it instead costs 1,250XP.

> Also, quick aside on Chosen gifts! RAW it appears to be legal to have a caster level above your actual level by taking Ceremonial Magic or Magical Music repeatedly, which I assume is not intended (but maybe it is, a 16th level ceremonialist could still be pretty useful performing only unknown ceremonies). Magical Music seems like it would be very difficult to get a lot of spellcasting out of, since you only gain one spell point when you go for SP/repertoire, and the spell point costs scale up. In order to cast a single third level spell once per day, you would need to take the gift five times for caster level plus an additional two times for sp/repertoire (which would give you 3 SP and a total of 1 1st, plus 2 of any level from 1-3 spells in your repertoire with a caster level of 5). Eldritch Talent, while definitely less versatile, would let you cast a third-level spell once per day at 5th caster level for a single gift. I feel like the added versatility is not worth the extra six gifts; for the same price as one call of the wild bear per day, you could instead have seven bears per day. (I think 'SP gained sufficient to cast the spell you added to your repertoire' might be better; if you took 1 1st, 1 2nd, and 1 3rd level spell, this would give you 6 SP for your seven gifts. This might incentivize learning 6th level spells for the 10 SP gained, but if you are even capable of learning a single 6th level spell, you have already devoted 10 gifts just to caster level plus the one base for 11 gifts; if you learned one spell of each level on the way up it would cost you another 4 gifts, leaving you only able to learn a single 6th level spell at 14th level by investing your very last gift. On the other hand, I have not compared this to the level of effectiveness you can get by investing heavily in Ceremonial Magic, so it might be too good, and also, having typed out the phrase 'seven bears per day' above, it makes me think maybe the issue is Eldritch Talent.)

Without a doubt, finding the right balance for the spellcasting options of The Chosen is a toughest problem presented by the class design.

Eldritch Talent cannot, by definition, be the problem, as it is the instantiation of the rules for class powers based on spells from the Player's Companion. Magical Music and Ceremonial Magic need to be balanced against it.

Thoughts:

  • You are not supposed to be able to increase your caster level above your class level, no.
  • I need to update the Eldritch Talent write-up to reflect a limit on selecting spells that are higher than your class level. 
  • I likely need to strengthen Magical Music and Ceremonial Magic as Chosen powers. However, I need to be cautious in doing so as they are also class proficiencies, and ACKS usually equates a class power and  a class proficiency as equivalent.

 

While that’s true it doesn’t mean that near-unrestricted access to it can never be an issue :stuck_out_tongue:

Eldritch Talent does currently require that your class level be at least equal to the spell level, so you can’t have your seven-bear armada until 10th level. I feel like most of the craziest options could probably be curtailed by saying just that you can’t select the same spell more than once.

The Elven Spellsinger appears to be missing a class power; (Elf + Eldritch) 4 + Thievery 1, but only has two custom powers (plus the powers innate to spellsinging, plus the elf powers).

(Unless extemporaneous spellsinging costs another power beyond just spellsinging, which it might, I’m not sure! If it does that’d be their third power and everything would be good.)

Loremaster and occultist have as prime requisites Int and Wis, while the Ceremonial Value says that characters with it should have a prime requisite of Int or Wis. (That said, this might be an intentional choice, which I would not argue against at all, since Int and Wis are both very important for ceremonial classes.)

In more of a ‘wall of text that is contributing to how this thread might be making Alex regret publishing the Player’s Companion’, I am confused by the Thrassian deathchanter.

Based off their racial traits, they are Thrassian 3; they have the AC 4 base, the d4-1 claws/d8-1 bite. Thrassian 3 costs 1,250 points.

They have HD 2 (d8), which costs 1,000.
They have Fighting 2 total; one free point from Thrassian 3 means that they have to pay for Fighting 1. This costs 500 xp.
They only have one point left in their class build (HD 2 + Fighting 1), so they have Eldritch 1. This costs 625.
1250 + 1000 + 500 + 625 = 3,375. They made two fighting tradeoffs (armor unrestricted to broad, weapons unrestricted to broad), so another 300 XP makes that 3,675. But their XP cost is listed as 4,050.

I also can’t figure out their spell point progression (or spell progression in general). The elven spellsinger appears to be ‘enough spell points to cast each of their base repertoire once’, which makes sense to me as a base. The Thrassian deathchanter has more spellpoints than ‘each spell once’. (By +1 at 1st level, +1 at 2nd level, +1 at 3rd level, +2 at 4th, +1 at 5th, +4 at 6th, +5 at 7th, +9 at 8th, +10 at 9th, and +14 at 10th.) They also appear to be Eldritch 1, which is 1/3 level wizard; I’m guessing that the discrepancies between their spell progression and a literal ‘wizard of 1/3 your level’ is due to the prorating of spell levels described at the end? (It looks kind of like 1/2 level rounded up).

Next up; the revised venturer appears to have HD 1, Fighting 1, Thievery 3, with 1250 listed as its cost. They appear to have nine class powers (Mercantile Network, Bargaining, Hear Noise, four bonus languages, Read Languages, Riding/Seafaring, Avoid Getting Lost, Diplomacy, Bribery), plus a tenth spent to get their armor and weaponry both up to Broad (since Fighting 1 normally can’t pick broad in both). Were they supposed to have a d4 Hit Die? (I’m guessing d4 HD since that would make their XP cost correct, but d6 HD/increase XP cost to 1,400/lose five class powers would also be an option.)

Warmistress appears to have fighter damage bonus only on melee and thrown weapons due to the phrasing in Charismatic Ferocity (1 tradeoff). They also trade armor down to leather (2 tradeoffs), weapons down to Broad (1 tradeoff), and cannot use shields (1 tradeoff), for a total of 5 tradeoffs. Their XP cost is as appropriate for 4 tradeoffs (Fighting 2 + HD 1 + Thievery 1 = 1700, plus 600 = 2300). Their actual class powers are 5 at first level + (3/13) + (7/11) = 7 powers, which is appropriate for their four tradeoffs. I think this is more of a ‘charismatic ferocity is worded weird’ issue than an actual math/design error, since Charismatic Ferocity lets you apply Cha mod to damage on melee/thrown weapons; but since missile weapons don’t add a stat to damage, it doesn’t apply there. If the intent is that the fighter damage bonus still applies on missile weapons, but the Cha mod does not, then it’s just confusing phrasing!

Zaharan Sorcerer costs 2,625 XP for level 2, but Zaharan 0 costs 200 XP. Should this be 2,700? (Their max level of 13 suggests (some combination of Eldritch + Zaharan) 4 and no other build points). They also appear to have five custom powers (3 at 1st level, (3/11), (5/9)), while Eldritch 4 gives only four. (They might have traded off their two-handed weapon fighting style for their fifth power, but most of the paths have staff as a weapon and it is not mentioned that they cannot benefit from using it in two hands.)

Loremaster and occultist have as prime requisites Int and Wis, while the Ceremonial Value says that characters with it should have a prime requisite of Int or Wis. (That said, this might be an intentional choice, which I would not argue against at all, since Int and Wis are both very important for ceremonial classes.)

It is intentional. 

Next up; the revised venturer appears to have HD 1, Fighting 1, Thievery 3, with 1250 listed as its cost. They appear to have nine class powers (Mercantile Network, Bargaining, Hear Noise, four bonus languages, Read Languages, Riding/Seafaring, Avoid Getting Lost, Diplomacy, Bribery), plus a tenth spent to get their armor and weaponry both up to Broad (since Fighting 1 normally can't pick broad in both). Were they supposed to have a d4 Hit Die? (I'm guessing d4 HD since that would make their XP cost correct, but d6 HD/increase XP cost to 1,400/lose five class powers would also be an option.)

Venturer:  HD 0, Fighting 1, Thief 3; 10 thief powers. Powers: mercantile network, expert bargainer, hear noise, read languages, avoid getting lost, diplomacy, bribery, armor training, bonus languages, riding or seafaring.  1,250 XP. 

Hit die is incorrect. Thank you for catching the error!

Warmistress appears to have fighter damage bonus only on melee and thrown weapons due to the phrasing in Charismatic Ferocity (1 tradeoff). They also trade armor down to leather (2 tradeoffs), weapons down to Broad (1 tradeoff), and cannot use shields (1 tradeoff), for a total of 5 tradeoffs. Their XP cost is as appropriate for 4 tradeoffs (Fighting 2 + HD 1 + Thievery 1 = 1700, plus 600 = 2300). Their actual class powers are 5 at first level + (3/13) + (7/11) = 7 powers, which is appropriate for their four tradeoffs. I think this is more of a 'charismatic ferocity is worded weird' issue than an actual math/design error, since Charismatic Ferocity lets you apply Cha mod to damage on melee/thrown weapons; but since missile weapons don't add a stat to damage, it doesn't apply there. If the intent is that the fighter damage bonus still applies on missile weapons, but the Cha mod does not, then it's just confusing phrasing!

Warmistress: HD 1, Fighting 2, Thief 1; Damage (1), fighting style (1), armor selection (2), weapon selection (1) traded for 5 class powers (charismatic ferocity, graceful fighting [counts as 2 - one for initiative and one for AC], naturally alluring, weapon finesse); 3 class powers from thief (provoke passions; death-dealing dance at 3rd, 7th and 11th level, zealous followers at 9th level, unconquerable soul at 11th level; calculated as one class power taken at 1st level; one class power traded in for class powers at 3rd and 11th level; one class power traded in for class powers at 7th and 7th level; and one of the class powers at 7th level traded in for class powers at 9th and 13th level)  Result is 6 class powers at 1st level, plus 1 at 3rd, 7th, 9th, and 13th level, plus fighter saving throw progression 5th and 9th level powers. 

As far as the warmistress's fighter damage bonus, normally you can choose EITHER all melee or all missile attacks. I thought it would be interesting to instead say "all one-handed melee an all thrown missile attacks". I then made Charismatic Ferocity parallel with that. You are correct that thrown weapons don't get a damage bonus from STR, but they do from CHA using Charismatic Ferocity. It's a slight conundrum because if I say CHAR FER only applies to one-handed weapons it puts it out of synch with the damage bonus.

The easiest way to solve it is to add a rule to HFH that thrown weapons benefit from STR bonus. Then CHA FER is harmonious. I'd be happy to hear thoughts on the issue of damage bonuses for STR and DEX on thrown and missile weapons.

Looks like I did calculate the XP wrong - 5 class powers x 150 = 750 so it should be 2450. Thanks for catching that. Going through all the classes now and finding lots of XP calculation errors. Could I send you a revised draft to review? Email me if so, Aryx...

 

Email sent, posting for redundancy; I am totally willing to give another review of the revised numbers.

I wrote the death chanter and converted it from standard ACKS to the heroic eldritch casting. The numbers made sense at the time but you folks are more math-y than me. ;-). I'm currently still waiting for power and water to come back post Irma but when things are relatively back to normal I'll look at the numbers and post.

Hey Aryxymaraki,

First of all, thanks for giving this stuff a look over. I went back to my working documents and found my mistake - at the time I was converting this from standard ACKS I went back and forth between a Thrassian 2 build and Thrassian 3 build for the deathchanter and ultimately settled on Thrassian 2. However, most of the numbers except for infravision reflect a Thrassian 3 build (I must have gone back and started changing the numbers back to Thrassian 2 from Thrassian 3 in the document as Infravision is the first of these and then saw a squirrel or got hungry). I'll send Alex a document with the revised numbers.

The build point spread should look like this for the deathchanter:

Thrassian 2 (1000xp), Hit Die 2 (1000xp), Fighter 1 (500xp), Eldritch Sorcery/Spellsinging 2 (1250xp) +300xp for  2 fighter tradoffs (weapon and armor both unrestricted to broad) = 4050xp and 7 BPs which maxes the class out at 10th level.

As for the eldritch casting - I'm confused about how you're getting the spellsinging numbers - with Eldritch 2 the deathchanter is a 1/2 level caster, and I pulled the spellsinging points from the chart on page 93 of the word doc for the heroic companion to get the spellpoints for a half-caster. At Eldritch 1 he'd be casting spells as a 3rd level caster at level 9. I'm only bringing this up to make sure I didn't miss anything, and that this is the correct progression and spellpoints for a half-level spellsinging eldritch lizard of death.

Yup, looks right on your end! I had failed to find that spell point chart and since the abilities described were Thrassian 3 I was confused since it looked like Eldritch 2 but didn’t have the points for it >.>

I still do not entirely understand how that spell point chart was derived but now that I know it exists I can try to puzzle it out and maybe Alex will chime in.

Ah, OK got it. I don't know if it would be good to put the spellpoint chart with all of the spellsinging numbers in the build section as well the spellsinging section or not. Maybe once there's some sort of index it won't be an issue. In any case, thanks again for the catch!

The spell point table is not an error (there might be a typo or something, I didn’t check every single one yet, but systemically, it is not an error).

It was derived by taking the spell points for the base caster (whatever value gets you full casting), which was itself counted up by ‘the amount to cast each spell once’ and then multiplying by the scaling value for that point investment. For example, Arcane 4 is full casting for arcane, so Arcane 4 was calculated by counting up the amount necessary to cast each spell per day once in the mage progression. Arcane 3 gives you casting of a mage equal to 2/3 your level, so Arcane 3 has 66.7% of the spell points of a mage at each level (rounded); a 1st level Arcane 3 has 67% of the spell points of a 1st level mage.

The fact that it’s not always the right amount to cast each of your base spells per day, as a non-full-caster with spell points, is due to rounding artifacts; it’s possible for a spell per day to get rounded down and not be available yet but still gain a fraction of its spell point cost with which to cast lower level spells, particularly with higher level spells (even 33% of a 6th level spell gets you 3 spell points). (Edit: Actually, this also occurs because the spell point gain isn’t directly linear; you tend to gain more spell points at higher levels because higher level spells cost more to cast. So at, for example, half casting, when you go from 10th to 11th level, you personally unlock no new spell levels but gain your fractional spell points based on the mage unlocking 6th level spells.)

I am not certain what my opinion is on this as a mechanic! On the one hand, this is going to give the class more spell points than they would have if they were calculated off their own ‘spells per day once’. On the other hand, it does cost class powers to get, and the flexibility inherent in spell points is less valuable for a partial caster due to both fewer spell points available and fewer spells in repertoire.

I think the only bit of feedback I have that I’m actually confident on is that you probably shouldn’t have spell points listed on the table at a level that you have not yet unlocked spellcasting; just put a 0 or a - in there to reduce confusion (since with zero spells in repertoire you can’t even extemporaneously spellsing).

The easiest way to solve it is to add a rule to HFH that thrown weapons benefit from STR bonus. Then CHA FER is harmonious. I'd be happy to hear thoughts on the issue of damage bonuses for STR and DEX on thrown and missile weapons.

I like this rule modification; I think I'll use it in my games.

Princess of Warriors Memorial Rule (optional): When a character attacks with a thrown weapon, she may add her STR bonus to the damage.

Odysseus Memorial Rule (optional): A longbow, shortbow, or composite bow may be crafted with a high draw-weight. Mechanically, draw-weight is a characteristic rated between 0 and 4.

  • 60 lbs or less: 0
  • 61 lbs to 100 lbs: 1
  • 101 lbs to 140 lbs: 2
  • 141 lbs to 180lbs: 3

The advantage of a high draw-weight is that the arrow carries greater force. When using a bow with a high draw-weight, a character may add his STR bonus to the bow's damage, up to the maximum of the bow's draw-weight characteristic. The disadvantage of a high draw-weight is that the bow is harder to hold stable and the rate of fire is slower. When using a high draw-weight bow, the character's attack throw and number of permitted cleaves is reduced by the bow's draw-weight characteristic.  

EXAMPLE: Odysseus (STR 18, DEX 18) has a high draw-weight bow with a draw-weight characteristic of 3. When Odysseus fires his bow, he deals +3 damage, but suffers a -3 penalty to his attack throw (which is effectively cancelled out by his DEX bonus). When a scrawny local noble (STR 10, DEX 13) attempting to seduce Odysseus's wife attempts to use the great man's bow, he deals +0 damage and suffers a -3 penalty to his attack throw (-2 after DEX). Only the strongest and most dextrous heroes can be accurate with a high draw-weight bow!