I had help from a gracious native speaker on rpg.net to get the poetical phrasing down better. My initial google translate version was “nordligbjorn” which would have sounded weird to a speaker.
On the Paralysis save… I went with good there because they’r meant to be big and hard to stop and very hard to hold. They just shrug that kind of thing off. Force of nature stuff. I tried to think about which saves would reflect toughness and power and which would reflect agility and maneuverability. Can’t say I succeeded, but that was what I was trying for. Since this is the throw used to resist wrestling and grappling, it would be a weird if a huge bear was easier to wrestle to the ground than a human.
On the Strength thing… mostly, I was thinking “Bears are strong, so high Strength requirement” and also to provide for some rarity. Me, I’d never say NO to somebody who wanted to play a certain kind of character, but some tables like to have some mechanical gate guards restricting access so I figured it would be easy for somebody like me to fudge (roll and assign, drop a score by 2 to add 1 to another) or somebody else to allow on a roll-only basis. I could probably drop the req’s to 10 or 12, and tweak the way bear cover works.
-Ben
I’ve made a few attempts at trying to adapt monstrous playable races to a system that’s compatible with the class-creation rules from the Player’s Companion, and I can make a few observations:
Obviously, d8 hit dice (that’s 2 base point, and 1000xp).
They clearly have at least Fighting 2 (2 base points, 1000xp).
I’d count natural attacks as a fighting style, so (combined with no shields or weapons) you have 1 of 3 styles (two trade-offs, 300xp).
I’d count the multiple attack routine as a very powerful ability: Probably 2 powers + 1/additional attack, so 4 for claw/claw/bite.
I’d count the base damage increase of the claws and bites as a power each for each rank, but since it’s graduated decrease it. So monsters tend to start claws at 1d2 (4 increases), and bite at d6 (3 increases). Probably 3 total powers.
They have no weapons (5 trade-offs), and the lack of missile weapons means no missile damage bonus (1) (6 trade-offs, 900xp).
So, you’ve traded off 8 powers, but incurred 7 so far. They also have swashbuckling baked in, so that’s 8 powers. Your base xp so far is 3200xp.
They have something more-or-less like survival, so that’s an “unpaid” power.
The brute strength bonus is like the melee damage bonus, but with a baseline increase of 2 (2 powers, modeled after fighting styles proficiency). So that’s 3 unpaid powers.
The bears are big, which has some drawbacks but also some benefits. On the whole, I’d count this as 2 custom powers (given the missile shielding): 5 unpaid powers.
The reaction rolls are a wash.
Seeing that you get monstrous ability to attack at level 5+, you might just model this as Fighting 3. That would bump you up to 5 base points, and bump your base xp up to 3700xp and 5 unpaid powers.
If you follow the dwarf pattern of racial power costs, this is close to a 1 base point race allocation, which covers the 5 unpaid powers but bumps your xp cost up to 4100xp and lowers your level limit to 11 (for 6 base points).
So, I don’t think you’re totally out of the ballpark eyeballing it- just slightly low on the base xp.
Addendum: the unified bonus you were talking about would work as the thing I described to model your brute strength bonus- the standard Fighter melee damage bonus for your level + 2.
I’m also treating bonus powers for the class and those for the race as fungible, but if there was another bear class you’d want to separate the two.
That’s pretty sweet - no idea I was that close. I have not seen those class building rules, so I was winging it. I cribbed the XP from the Eleven Spellsword because it was high, and they had lots of stuff they could do (primary magic and primary fighting, plus elf stuff).
I had to give the bears the monster’s 5hd attacking ability because they have no way to wield weapons which can pierce that sort of supernatural defense otherwise, and it seemed fitting.
-B
I’ve always wondered: What happens to the bear when he claws a wight?
At first level they have a significantly better damage output than a fighter. Since a full grown regular bear has 4 HD how about making another step that has the attack series 1D2/1D2/1D4? This makes them an itty bitty more dangerous than 1st level fighters with two handed weapons. Since a bear in armor is fucking awesome and everyone will use it anyway I would give them a D10 HD (just so they feel meatier) and say their skin is a flat +2 to AC and that armor fitted for them always have gaps making it 2/3 as effective (so a bear plate armor gives +4 AC and bear in mail is +3 AC). This way bears can take more hits than humans but won’t have better AC.
The 5 HD ferocity thing was inspired.
I was thinking there’d only be this bear class - I tried to load out their proficiency list so you could customize them a bit. Get performance and magical music to make a singing skald, or pick up some combat oriented ones for a mercenary, or wilderness ones for a scout or hunter type. But at their core, they’re big beasts who can bite through a man’s skull.
-Ben
wilmer- if you bump them up to d10 hit dice, their max level goes down to 10 and their base xp goes up to 4,600xp.
Another thing to take in to account: other classes get +1 damage per STR mod, bears get +1 x 3. I dunno if this is a bad thing but a fix could be like this:
STR
13-15 = 1DX/1DX/1DY+1
16-17 = 1DX+1/1DX+1/1DY
18 = 1DX+1/1DX+1/1DY+1
for symmetry.
On attacking a wight - I hate those guys so much. Probably a Judge’s call. Is the wight’s touch a deliberate act or an involuntary function of their nature? If voluntary, then it’ll be no prob to bite and claw the hell out of them (assuming they have hit 5th level and can even do so), otherwise… yeah, otherwise bear is totally screwed. There’s no percentage in fighting those guys if there’s any way to avoid it. Level draining bastards.
Let me go back and do some revisions on the class. I’ll create a new doc so the old one will be available for comparison, and post when it’s completed.
Thanks all,
-Ben
Wilmer-
I’d want to avoid that kind of bookkeeping: If the multiple attacks seem to exaggerate the benefit of STR, I’d make that ability more expensive.
Charlatan: if you look at that forumula it’s super simple and you only need to look at it once in the characters life time unless STR changes. What it simply says is that the bonus to damage is only counted once per attack routine and that bears with +1 dmg use it for their bite, bears with +2 use +1 for either claw and those with +3 get +1 for both claws and bite.
A simple rule might be “you can only add your STR bonus to one attack in a round”. Meaning, one powerful claw attack, one weaker follow-up, and a regular bite.
-B
That makes it subtly better unless you commit to which attack in the series it is before rolling. Sorry if I’m a pain in the butt but I groove on this concept so much I want it to be perfect!
I think using that d2/d2/d4 starting progression and adding STR once (say, to the first attack that lands in the routine) feels about right.
Say bear (STR 16/+2) and Fighter (STR 16/+2). Both first level, and both have the same chance to hit. Bear rolls three times, fighter once. Give the fighter a weapon inflicting a d8. The fighter is doing 1d8+3 (+2 for STR, +1 for class bonus). Against an unarmored foe, he’s got roughly even odds, same as the bear. His max is 11 points of damage, his minimum is 3. If the bear hits with all attacks, he does a max of 10 (max die rolls and the STR bonus once). But landing all those attacks and rolling best damage on all three rolls is really pretty unlikely. He’s got a much wider range of possible results, and is probably going to do about 5 or 6 points of damage typically. I think the main difference is that he’s got a greater chance to do some damage because of the three attack rolls. The fighter will probably average more when you compare successful hits, but when you factor in the rounds where the fighter totally whiffs, the bear comes out ahead longer term. I don’t want to drill too deep into this though, and start trying to balance DPR and statistics. I think the fighter comes out better at 1st level regardless, because of his armor and weapons. He’ll have a better AC than the bear, and will start with a ranged attack. Things get weirder as the bear gets tougher and bigger and can afford some barding, but at first I don’t think the fighter is going to feel underpowered in comparison.
edit - especially when you compare them both to a Spellsword. That smug jerk has less hit points, but he’s got armor and weapons and magic to throw around.
-B
Hey Ben! waves It is a friendly, polite place around here, made all the more so by your appearance, matey! 
Re. paralysis saves to rule in wrestling, etc: there’s a rule about special maneuvers between opponents of vastly different size or unusual size on p. 110, which sets up those bears nicely without additional save bonuses – but should then probably get a mention in the writeup.
A mention of that rule is in there, but part of the issue conceptually is that the old saving throw categories don’t provide much grip when trying to get a handle on what they mean beyond their specific zone of defense. Why is a magical effect from a wand different from one from a spell? Does the Blast save indicate good reflexes or resilience? I want the bears to be really tough and strong, but which saves would indicate that? I imagined their good paralysis save being the result of their raw power - they’d just plow through efforts to hold them immobile (rather than nimbly evade them). But being large, they’d have a lousy time evading AOE blasty stuff.
Some of the stuff coming out of the 5E design is intriguing to me - a saving throw or defense value for each ability score. That’s easy to grok.
Limits of the medium, I suppose.
-B
The saving throws are abstract, and intentionally so.
For example, consider a character fighting an infectious zombie. If bitten, he must save v. Poison, with a failed save meaning he is infected with zombie-plague. Does a successful save v. poison mean that the character has resisted the infection, or does a successful save mean the character didn’t actually get bitten at all, just banged up/bruised by the impact of the attack? ACKS doesn’t say, and it’s left to the Judge’s interpretation.
In contrast, D&D 3.5 would say that resisting the zombie is either a Fort save or a Reflex save and that’s that. This has the advantage of clarity, but it has the disadvantage in that each saving throw can only be about one factor (toughness or reflexes or whatnot) rather than being multi-factorial.
Something to keep in mind about saves is that when “what do you save against” is unknown, it flows left-to-right. So, for example, blast-spells save v. Blast, not save v. Spell. By the time you get to save v. Spells you are dealing with ONLY spells that are not paralyzing, poison, death, blasts, or petrification, which means basically charms, mind control, and so on.
To answer your other questions:
- A wand is different from a spell because the spell effect is indirect rather than directly from the caster’s will, which makes mental effects easier to resist. (Wands that shoot fireballs are still saves v. Blast, remember).
- Blast is both good reflexes and resilience, as well as (perhaps) luck, favor of the goods, or counter-spells.
- Bears that are tougher and stronger than humans would have across the board better saves than humans against Paralyzation, Poison, and Blast, all other things being equal.
PS It’s very exciting to see you develop your class. Monstrous classes are challenging to design but this seems like it’d be quite fun. It would fit in really well in the Auran Empire’s Jutland campaign area.