Class Discussions

From Question about “class balance”:
Veketshian: I’m curious about what makes a class in OD&D and, by extension, ACKS, “balanced and playable”, if this is even a concern of classes. I’ve only ever really seen arguments occur regarding 3.X material, and they were always phrased in comparison to other PCs rather than the monsters even though PvP is generally not an option. I know that if someone posted a homebrew of a best base attack bonus with sneak attack on the Paizo forums, they’d call it overpowered, yet the assassin in ACKS is pretty much that. Is “class balance” a primary motivator for constructing classes, or are there other goals in mind?
Blizack: I remember plenty of arguments about class balance in the AD&D 2nd edition days. I can’t really speak to anything before that.
Veketshian: Would those arguments be in about the same vein of “X class is overpowered compared to Y and Z classes”, or did they argue about class balance in a different fashion?
Blizack: Mostly stuff like you describe (i.e. “fighters are lame compared to rangers” and the like).
Slycne: I was apart of the 101 session campaign that led/morphed into ACKS, so I can shine some light on the situation.
Despite classes running the gambit from being widely varied to some sharing many features, it felt like everyone could find or carve a niche for themselves with a combination of play style, proficiencies, spells and/or items. So no one class felt like it was completely dominating all the time.
I can’t directly speak to what the precise goals were, but mechanics like cleaving and fighter damage bonus defiantly helped the fighter related classes feel like more than simply damage sponges at higher levels (a complaint often brought up against D&D & kin with regards to fighters vs magic-users).
Alex: I think Justin Alexander wrote an excellent essay on class balance:
http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/balance-types.html
Using his parlance, ACKS could be described as using a mix of Concept, Naturalistic and Spotlight balance. Naturalistic Balance appears because of the high death rate of low level characters (and characters in general), and the way XP is earned only for surviving adventures and getting back to town with XP. A lot of naturalistic balance is built into the setting assumptions. Spotlight Balance is a result of the fact that different aspects of the game (exploration, diplomacy, combat) favor different character choices.
ACKS also uses what I’d call “longitudinal concept balance” or balance over time. Character classes which are very diverse have high XP requirements and level caps. Such characters advance slower, and are thus less likely to survive past the critical level 1-level 2 thresholds, and they cap out sooner, so they don’t dominate the end game.
We did make some effort to correct some concept imbalance we saw with regard to the general power of fighting-men v. spellcasting, which we think the weapon damage bonus and cleaving has accounted for.
Alex: With regard specifically to the assassin, they are definitely a fun and cool character class. I can understand why a 3x/4e player might think they were over-powered. But:

  1. The combination of lighter armor and fewer hit points gives them far less staying power than a comparable fighter. An assassin can wear heavier armor, but then he’s simply a fighter with fewer hit points.
  2. The assassin endgame is a hideout, not a stronghold. This results in a very different character arc over the course of a campaign.
    Veketshian: Thanks for the insight. I really appreciate it, and I think it helps me understand the attributes of a class. The hideout instead of a stronghold point really clarifies it.

From Economic pathways for different classes:
Tavis: In some of the publicity stuff I’ve been doing, a continual process of figuring out what’s cool about ACKS and how to crystallize it for others, I’ve found myself talking about a particular class-related path I find really compelling:
ACKS builds on the foundation of its predecessors by providing an integrated economic framework that seamlessly handles the transition from finding your first scroll in a dungeon and scribing it into your spellbook, to planning the caravan routes that will keep you supplied with the exotic beast parts that make your inks, to building a dungeon of your own beneath your wizards’ tower so you can harvest ritual components from the resident monsters."
This progression of activities for wizards I think is really awesome, both because it has something for wizards to be investing gold in at every “tier” of play, and because it gives the rest of the party ways to get involved - not just helping the wizard get gold (although GP and economics is a great focus precisely because it is universal and concrete) but also seeking scrolls as treasure, guiding the caravans, manning the tower and scouring out the dungeon, etc.
It gets me thinking about how this plays out for other classes. Thieves’ progression toward starting a thieves’ guild is obvious, as is fighters’ progression toward a stronghold.
Some questions:

  • Are there enough inter-related activities along these pathways? Do we need to provide more lower-level stuff that’s part of a fighter or thief’s journey?
  • I’m thinking that for a cleric, the path to a church would involve tracking worshippers. Should we have rules for how expenditure into making converts translates into gaining faithful adherents, with modifiers similar to the trade demands table?
  • Should there be a pathway for each class, or is the general fighter/thief/magic-user/cleric breakdown archetypical enough that most characters will tend to pursue activities along one or the other pathway? (I like the theory that nonhuman classes would have separate pathways, but am having a hard time visualizing how their activities would be different.)
    Beedo:Tavis - I think the 4 main economic paths should work for any class permutations. I’ll go through and re-read to get a stronger opinion on how the approaches are set up right now. My general take is that Magic Users spend the most along the way (transcribing spells, maintaining books and libraries) and it sounds like they have significant construction for their tower and dungeon, without a corresponding income from taxes. Many times they have to get subsidized along the way by other players. I’ll look at it all some more this evening.
    I did have some other observations for the campaign/economics section - maybe I missed these:
    Regarding demographics, was there anything on a percentage of leveled/classed characters? Ie, how many clerics and magic-users per 1,000 people?
    How does magic change the default world? How much does it cost to have spells performed by an NPC spell caster? (I do realize some of the practical effects of magic on battlefield strategy are coming in the mass combat book- wahoo).
    Still thinking through the implications of the “carouse to pass on XP to your next character” rule. It goes to the question, if 80% of XP comes from treasure, how to keep adventuring from destroying the economy? Most name level guys will have a half million GP. The XP for Inheritance rule is a metagame approach to drain the coffers, and fits a Swords & Sorcery vibe. Glad to see no ‘training rules’.

Ahstrongmorse: I’m very interested in seeing the development of these economic pathways. Currently, I’m concerned that wizards have a pathway all the way up, but that the other classes basically have their path start at level 9. The wizard’s path goes:
Low-level: copying spells into spellbook; Mid-level: getting rare components through trade; high-level (9+): building your own sanctum and dungeon to “farm” components.
But the fighter/cleric and thief economic paths go:
Low-level: almost nothing; Mid-level: almost nothing; high-level (9+): building and developing your stronghold/hideout
You could say that low-level character buy equipment and go on adventures, but that’s not really a distinct part of their path.
There may be an implied path for fighters and clerics:
Low-level: fight on your own as part (but not really leader) of a small group; mid-level: lead several of your retainers; possibly fight as a hero/knight accompanying someone else’s army in the service of a lord or a high priest; beginning high-level: building and developing your domain, with your own small army and some trusted retainers to support you; later high-level: building your realm, with your former retainers now your vassals ruling domains of their own, and leading large armies that include small armies led by your vassals
I can also see an even weaker implied path for thieves, following a similar pattern–it’s weaker because the hideout rules don’t currently directly support the idea of a boss of bosses. You can set up as a capo with your own hideout and a crew that works for you, but the rules don’t directly address how to move up to the stage where a thief is acting as an overall boss, with several subordinate capos who each have their own hideouts and crews. Without that addition, the later high-level thief path is only implied. Presumably, by the time that fighters are trying to become god-emperor of the world (i.e. 14th level), a thief should be trying to become the master thief who runs the world-spanning underworld, with a branch in every city worth the name, the ability to destabilize or topple kingdoms from within, and periodic gang wars to prevent independent syndicates from starting up… but the rules don’t as yet detail that, in the way that they do cover turning a small domain in the wilderness into a world-spanning realm of thousands of domains with a large hierarchy of vassals.
Expanding and making more explicit these paths would be great. It also leverages the game’s competitive advantage–what makes ACK interesting to me is domains and realms, hideouts and economics and trade. To the extent that that mostly waits until 9th level, except for the occasional character who jumps the gun without direct mechanical benefits, it makes the game less interesting. I’d love to see, e.g., rules for developing religious followers, both in terms of numbers and devotion. Ideally, like with the thief hijinks rules, that would provide hooks for lots of adventures (“Conflict with established authority: some of your followers have been declared heretics and rounded up by the established religious authorities in the area. What do you do?” “Strange religious beliefs develop among some of your followers; how do you react?”)
On the topic of separate paths: the non-human paths currently seem kinda boring. “It’s like you’re a fighter with a stronghold, but your followers are all dwarves instead of humans!” Ummm… yay. That feels really special. The big 4 (almost big 3, because currently the cleric path and the fighter path are mostly only cosmetically different) are basically archetypical enough that non-humans can be shoehorned into them without much trouble, but things that make them feel different or cool would be awesome.
Jedo: The Rules Cyclopedia basically had demihumans establish a homestead, and their relations / clan shows up and moves in. There is something to that idea that fits with race-as-class, where demihumans are an alien culture, and to outsiders (humans) they all kind inscrutable. (I been rationalizing the race-as-class thing as more a function of the human’s ignorance about the other races. ‘All dwarves look alike’ kind of thing.)
So in that vein, the I like the idea that the game implies that demihumans have a whole different set of cultural obligations going on that they have to deal with in their economic paths. Like a Dwarves are ‘bondsmen’ to their dwarven liege, and before they can gain their freedom, they must accomplish 7 great tasks, (like smith a magic battle axe that is deemed sufficiently worthy, or lead an expedition into the abandoned dwarven cities under the mountains, etc.) The successful accomplishment of these tasks could fill the midlevel range, so when the get to their level cap, they are ready to establish a new mine or workshop as a free dwarf.
The elves would have their own ‘elven thing’ that would determine their economic path. The notion that demihumans are more tied to their clan then humans are is an interesting one- it implies that human society is more fractious, and focused on political ties.
For Thieves and Fighters, their path seems pretty straightforward. but the Cleric is an odd one, because (Based on the description of the petty squabbling gods in the setting) how much esteem their god holds them is the thing they are building up, not money or military might. And indeed if more worshippers the Cleric brings to the god increases that god’s power, then whatever activity gets worshipers will be the one rewarded. The only thing, is that for a lawful nature god, or a chaotic god of assassins, the activity will vary a lot. For one building a beautiful cathedral would be the best route, while for the other establishing a secretive assassin cult would be best.
I kind of like the idea that it is open to the player as to what is the best route to gain their god’s favor. And the DM can decide how the god is liking or disliking what the cleric is doing.
Alex: Regarding demographics, was there anything on a percentage of leveled/classed characters? Ie, how many clerics and magic-users per 1,000 people?
ALEX: Currently this information is calculated using an Excel spreadsheet. I’m still trying to decide what the best way to convey it is - a simple chart at some size of population, a web tool, etc.
How does magic change the default world? How much does it cost to have spells performed by an NPC spell caster? (I do realize some of the practical effects of magic on battlefield strategy are coming in the mass combat book- wahoo).
ALEX: Cost and availability of spells is listed in the Hirelings section of v16 of the rules (the latest download). It costs 500gp to get a Restore Life & Limb spell, with about a 50% chance of such a spell being available in a Class III market.
ALEX: I think the largest changes between a historical world and a magical world would be in war and in healthcare. War I’ve already discussed - I think it would be more Napoleonic. Healthcare would, specifically, see wealthy families enjoy far less infant and child mortality, and reduced death from accidents and disease. I estimate that life expectancy at birth would increase from a historical 30 years to a magical 45 years or more and life expectancy of wealthy adults would approach modern levels.
Still thinking through the implications of the “carouse to pass on XP to your next character” rule. It goes to the question, if 80% of XP comes from treasure, how to keep adventuring from destroying the economy? Most name level guys will have a half million GP. The XP for Inheritance rule is a metagame approach to drain the coffers, and fits a Swords & Sorcery vibe. Glad to see no ‘training rules’.
ALEX: Adventuring won’t destroy the economy. It’s likely to be considered part of the economy, in the same way that raiding and looting always has been. Consider that most historical empires were based on looting. The Roman Empire had a constant influx of cash from conquest, invasion, and tribute from its neighbors. So did the Mongol Empire, Alexandrian Empire, and so on. To put things in perspective, when Alexander the Great conquered the city of Susa, the treasure hoard was (ACKS-equivalent) 54,000,000gp and 240,000,000sp. The net worth of the Auran Emperor is about 150,000,000gp.
ALEX: That said, money buys power. An adventurer who has become as wealthy as a duke will probably be a duke – or at least have the temporal power of one.
Alex: There may be an implied path for fighters and clerics:
Low-level: fight on your own as part (but not really leader) of a small group; mid-level: lead several of your retainers; possibly fight as a hero/knight accompanying someone else’s army in the service of a lord or a high priest; beginning high-level: building and developing your domain, with your own small army and some trusted retainers to support you; later high-level: building your realm, with your former retainers now your vassals ruling domains of their own, and leading large armies that include small armies led by your vassals
ALEX: The Fighter/Cleric path is exactly as you have described. (I don’t think it’s any less explicit (or more implicit) than the Mage path, though. I think the Mage path is just more familiar because it shows up in other RPGs.) I envision mid-level Fighters having bands of retainers and mercenaries who support their personal heroics. Robin Hood & the Merry Men, Achilles & the Myrmidons, Beowulf & the Geats, etc.
I can also see an even weaker implied path for thieves, following a similar pattern–it’s weaker because the hideout rules don’t currently directly support the idea of a boss of bosses. You can set up as a capo with your own hideout and a crew that works for you, but the rules don’t directly address how to move up to the stage where a thief is acting as an overall boss, with several subordinate capos who each have their own hideouts and crews. Without that addition, the later high-level thief path is only implied. Presumably, by the time that fighters are trying to become god-emperor of the world (i.e. 14th level), a thief should be trying to become the master thief who runs the world-spanning underworld, with a branch in every city worth the name, the ability to destabilize or topple kingdoms from within, and periodic gang wars to prevent independent syndicates from starting up… but the rules don’t as yet detail that, in the way that they do cover turning a small domain in the wilderness into a world-spanning realm of thousands of domains with a large hierarchy of vassals.
ALEX: I agree here. You are entirely correct that we need to further flesh out these rules. It’s not written down in ACKS, but in the Auran Empire campaign, Thieves gained an additional 1d6 followers every level, among other things.
ALEX: I will take a second look overall at ways we can make the paths more explicit and perhaps mechanically represented at lower level.
Blizack: I hadn’t realized v16 was available for download. I was still laboring under the impression that v13 was the latest version!


From The Revised Bladedancer:
Alex: There was overwhelming support for reverting the Bladedancer to my original conception of a lightly-armored fighter, so I’ve done so. Below are the revised rules. As an executive summary, they trade down from platemail to leather in exchange for an initiative and AC bonus.


Bladedancers are skilled combatants. At first level, bladedancers hit an unarmored foe (AC 0) with an attack throw of 10+. They advance like clerics in attack throws and saving throws, by two points every four levels of experience. By religious doctrine, bladedancers are forbidden from debasing themselves with the fighting implements of the peasantry, or dishonorably firing missiles from a distance. A bladedancer may only use piercing and slashing melee weapons, such as daggers, swords, spears, and polearms. This eliminates weapons such as clubs, maces, and warhammers, as well as bows, slings, and crossbows. A bladedancer may dual wield a weapon in each hand, or fight with a two-handed weapon, but may not resort to shields. Bladedancers are only trained to fight in leather or lighter armor. However, they gain a +1 bonus to initiative and a +1 bonus to Armor Class if able to move freely. At level 7, the AC bonus increases to +2, and at level 13 the AC bonus increases to +3.


Let me know what you think. Also, should it stack with Swashbuckler proficiency? A bladedancer in leather armor with the Swashbuckler proficiency could have AC4 (2 leather + class bonus + swashbuckler bonus), comparable to chain, reaching AC6 (platemail) at level 7, and eventually at level 13 improving to AC8 (2 leather + 3 class bonus + 3 swashbuckler bonus), or better than non-magical plate.
Other ideas would be to trade heavier armor in favor of weapon finesse or skirmishing.
Blizack: The only thing I would change is the phrasing of “A bladedancer may dual wield a weapon in each hand” to say “A bladedancer may wield a weapon in each hand”. Dual wielding in each hand makes it sound like they can hold two weapons in each hand, which would be a bit silly.
Stacking with Swashbuckler doesn’t seem too broken to me, but I’m often a poor judge of such things.
Ahstrongmorse: To my mind, the question on Swashbuckler balance is whether comparable options exist for heavy fighters. The best that I can find is the sword and board fighting style, which only gives a +1 (and means that you can’t use an offensive fighting style in that round). I might consider adding a Defensive Fighting proficiency; something like “when wearing heavy armor and using a shield, you get a +1 to AC, increasing to +2 at level 7, and +3 at level 13.” That means that pretty much the hardest to hit characters will be the platemail/shield/Defensive Fighting specialists–which is as it should be. The only problem I see is stacking that with the Fighting style, so maybe the answer is to make the weapon and shield fighting style scale with level? If it scaled with level, then the defensive heavy fighter specialists will have the best AC. My guess is that weapon and sword is typically underpowered at high levels–chop till you stop strongly favors offense–so that’s probably okay on a relative balance basis. Obviously, stress testing this with actual play is necessary to be sure.


A few of you have mentioned how much you enjoyed the rules for how mages’ desire to conduct magical research created a nee for monster parts, which led them to create dungeons. But you pointed out that clerics lack similar incentives to do clerical things, such as build temples or gather faithful. Below I present new rules that should appear in v17 of ACKS. Please let me know what you think.


Spiritual Essence
When a divine spellcaster creates a magic item to further the goals of his patron deity, he may substitute an equivalent value of spiritual essence for some or all of the special components required for the item. Spiritual essence is drawn from the faith of the divine spellcaster’s congregants. Every fifty congregants can yield up to 10 XP worth of spiritual essence per week of faithful worship.
Spiritual essence is ephemeral. It is only accumulated while the divine spellcaster is actively creating a magic item. If not enough spiritual essence is accumulated while the item is being created, the divine spellcaster must either use special components to finish the item, or delay the completion of the item until he has accumulated enough spiritual essence. Any spiritual essence remaining when the item is created is lost.
To qualify as congregants, characters must be of the same alignment as the divine spellcaster, worship his deity, and consider the divine spellcaster to be their spiritual advisor. A divine spellcaster’s party members, retainers and followers usually form the core of his congregants. Divine spellcasters can recruit additional congregants by dispatching missionaries, constructing temples, and performing charitable deeds. Each month, the GM should total the gold piece value of all spells charitably cast on behalf of peasants (use the costs for spells from the Spell Availability by Market Table in the Hirelings, Retainers, Specialists and Mercenaries section). To this amount, add the gp value of any hirelings deployed as missionaries and the GP value of any religious structures erected. For every 1,000gp so expended, the divine spellcaster gains a number of congregants equal to 1d10 + CHA bonus.
More established divine spellcasters can amass congregants by assuming rulership of a domain, or becoming the spiritual advisor of a domain ruler. A domain ruler can simply command his subjects to worship his god, creating vast congregations within his domain. Of course, not every subject in a domain will faithfully worship on command – the domain’s morale will make a large difference. A ruler who asks his subjects to worship a god foreign to them will suffer large penalties to domain morale, so most divine spellcasters will seek to establish long-term relationships with rulers and subjects familiar with his deity. The Domain Worship table lists the value of spiritual essence a ruler can extract from the peasant families in his domain. To become the spiritual advisor of a domain ruler, the divine spellcaster will generally have to be the highest level divine spellcaster with whom the ruler has Friendly relations (as per the Monster Reaction Table). For rules on establishing domains, led strip lighting outdoor
Flexible LED Strip
led strip peasant families, and domain morale, see Strongholds and Domains later in this section.
EXAMPLE: Balbus, a 9th level Cleric of Ammonar, rules Ammantavus, a domain of 2,500 peasant families (12,500 people) with a domain morale score of 0. Each week, Balbus gains 4xp worth of spiritual essence per 10 families (50 people), or 1,000xp value total, from his domain. If Balbus’s subjects were more loyal to him, he could gain much more spiritual essence from his domain.

chuckle Clever Spammer is Clever.
Clerics creating LED Strips from divine prayer…
Someone do the honours to delete this?