Class Builds Comments

Development and Playtest ACKS Heroic Fantasy Handbook Playtest
1

Is the Beastmaster supposed to have a d6 hit die instead of the listed d8?

Their class build does not seem to work currently, but would be accurate (I think, assuming I counted powers correctly) with a d6 hit die. Currently, they have HD2/Fighting2/Thievery1, but with an XP cost too low for their class points + tradeoffs (ignoring the fact that it’s only possible for demihumans and would reduce their level limit to 12, that build with their 8 tradeoffs would cost 3,400.)

On the other hand, HD1 + Fighting2 + Thievery1 + 8 fighting tradeoffs has a 2,900 XP cost, which is what the beastmaster has.

(I had this whole thing written up about how I couldn’t figure out their build and counting out the ways in which it seemed impossible, but then I decided to subtract out the 1200 XP their fighting tradeoffs cost, and that left 1700, which is exactly what HD1 + Fighting2 + Thievery1 costs.)

(Right now this is only about beastmaster but my plan is to be annoying and check the math/comment on others too if I notice any, and other people are welcome to chime in of course, so I figured I’d make the title more generic than I had originally written.)

2

My notes are:

Beastmaster – HD 1 (500), Fighter 2 (1000), Thief 1 (200); armor selection reduced to none for 4 class powers (+600); weapon selection reduced to narrow for 3 class powers (+450); eliminate shield fighting style for 1 class power (+150); total 11 class powers

So I think you've calculated correctly and I made an error when I wrote up the final version of the class. Great catch!

3

I think the Ceremonial Value (Eldritch) might have very slightly too high an XP cost.

Based on the examples given, a purely ceremonial class value has a Base XP cost of 1/5 the cost they would have for a normal caster. Divine’s normal base XP cost is 500; Ceremonial Divine is 100. Arcane’s is 2500; Ceremonial Arcane is 500.

Eldritch is 2500, and Ceremonial Eldritch is listed as 500. However, Eldritch uses the Improved Spell Progression (as seen in the Nobiran Wizard class), which increases the Base XP by 13.5%. while Ceremonial Eldritch does not (as seen in the Ecclestiastic and Runemaker classes); based purely on source factors this suggests that their Base XP should be 2,200; one fifth of that would be 440, rounded to the nearest divisor of 25 would be 450.

(Of course, you might have calculated it the same way as me and simply rounded it to 500.)

(Also, the spell progression of loremaster/occultist (Ceremonial Eldritch 4), which is Spells x150%, seems to be written as the Improved Spell Progression, which makes the rounding seem inconsistent at a glance, but it is entirely possible that that is an artifact of me not actually having done the math for it yet.)

4

[quote="Aryxymaraki"] I think the Ceremonial Value (Eldritch) might have very slightly too high an XP cost. Based on the examples given, a purely ceremonial class value has a Base XP cost of 1/5 the cost they would have for a normal caster. [/quote]

You are correct Eldritch is built as a 2,200 base cost with an improved spell progression which raises the cost to 2,497xp, rounded to 2,500. 

But there is no formula that ceremonial class value = 1/5 base XP value! The Ceremonial Values formula is much more complex than that. The disutility of being ceremonial strongly depends on the type of magic. A blast-heavy magic type is more impacted by the long casting time and unreliability of ceremonial magic than is a more divination or healing oriented magic. Sorting this out has been a huge headache.

Here's what I settled on:

  1. Calculate the base cost of the magic type, setting its source modifier for blast to 1.25 if less than 1.25
  2. Multiply the base cost by the inferior progression modifier of 0.7
  3. Multiply the total above by 0.33
  4. Round the result to the nearest 50xp

That yields XP totals of 508.2 for Ceremonial (Eldritch), 502.4 for Ceremonial (Arcane) and 115.5 for Ceremonial (Divine), rounded to 500, 500, 100.

I think it's possible that this formula is being too kind to Ceremonial (Divine). An alternative formula is based on multiplying EACH type of spell's base cost, as follows:

  • Base cost 0.33 (500 x 0.33 = 165)
  • Blast 0.2 (blast isn't very useful when cast slowly)
  • Death 0.215 (slightly more useful cermeonially relative to blast because of necromantic spells)
  • Detection 0.4 (detection is relatively useful when cast slowly)
  • Enchantment 0.2 (enchantment is hard to cast slowly as victims tend not to linger around)
  • Healing 0.7 (healing is still very useful after a fight)
  • Illusion 0.33
  • Movement 0.65 (movement very useful as buffs before fights or for long-distance travel)
  • Protection 0.33
  • Summoning 0.6 (long durations make it useful ceremonially)
  • Transmogrification 0.4 (mix of long duration buffs and in-battle magic)
  • Walls 0.7 (building permanent walls very useful ceremonially)

This gives outcomes of 497.5 for Eldritch ceremonial, 497.5 for Arcane ceremonial, and 165 for Divine ceremonial. I could be persuaded that the value of 165 for divine magic is better, yielding 85, 165, 320, 640 as class value costs for Ceremonial Divine 1-4. 

HOWEVER I have not avidly playtested it for breakage based on particular peculiar magic types.

 

5

Ah, excellent! Thanks for clarifying!

(This particularly helps me because I was messing around with creating a ceremonial caster for one of my magic types.)

Thinking about Ceremonial Divine honestly just makes me think about enforce a minimum XP cost for any kind of magic, because at 100 Base Value you could have Ceremonial Divine 4 and have a class that takes 400 XP to level to 2 and can out-of-combat heal reasonably effectively. They’d be able to raise the dead at only 12,800 XP (a Priestess with that much XP would still be level 4). 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.)

6

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.

7

[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?

8

[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.

9

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.)

10

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.

 

11

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!

12

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.)

13

[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.

 

14

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.

15

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.)

16

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.)

17

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.)

18

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...

 

19

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

20

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.