[HR-Class] Nephani Sea Witch

One of my players came up with an unusual idea for her character. She is a young teenage girl who should have died at sea but washed ashore alive and unharmed six days after the fishing boat she was on sank. As she described the abilities she imagined the character possessing, I pieced together the idea of the Nephani Sea Witches.

The Nephani is the name given to people spared by the most powerful elemental beings in the cosmos in exchange for becoming their servant. The transformation is physical, mental, and spiritual. Those that serve the elemental prince of water called The Elder of the Deep are known as Sea Witches.

Below are links to the PDF that fully describes the class and gives the player everything they need to start playing it. The second link below takes you to a very brief 1 page write-up explaining how I came up with it mechanically.

I hope the PDFs are an okay form for all. They are a spellcasting class and with all the tables involved I thought making it as a PDF would be the simplest way to present the information in a clean manner. The class is done in 8.5" x 5.5" booklet style for fans of tablets and iPads.

Sea Witch Class: http://conan.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/66315298/Nephani-Sea-Witch.pdf
Behind the Curtain: http://conan.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/66315297/Behind-the-Curtain_Nephani-Sea-Witch.pdf

Update: I realized after posting the XP chart was incorrect. It has been fixed and now the PDF should be good to go.

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http://hexesandhenchmen.blogspot.com/2013/05/nephani-sea-witch-custom-class.html

When we were developing the Player's Companion, I wondered if players who were accustomed to 3.5-levels of customization would want to build truly custom classes specifically built around their characters. This class, and Maticore's Windwalker class, are confirmation that's the case!

It's fascinating to see what sort of classes emerge when players can build exactly what they want. It's not to dissimilar to how class-like patterns emerged in 3.5 from repeatable combinations of classes and prestige classes, but it feels like it has more consistency and verisimilitude.

I find the system you came up with works great as the compromise between the 3.5 crunch so many players love and the ease of prep and running that I and so many other GMs find with the Classic edition of the game.

Hey man,

This is awesome! Really flavorful.

One question - I was wondering why you chose to include fire spells on the spell list. It seems like such a water-based theme I could see some unique watery spells in the list replacing spells like Flame Strike.

Cheers.

My experience was similar - the class design rules were easy in the same way that the GM rules are easy.

I decided to include fire spells in the repertoire based around the elemental cycle I had noted at the end where Water dominates Fire, so it could bend fire to its will.

Now the real reason is when I was making her spell list I was on a time crunch and didn’t have any ready-to-go water based/reskinned versions of those spells ready to go so I included them as is. It would be nice at some point to go back and come up with water/sea/storm based variants of them to fit in perfectly with the class idea.

Heh, yeah I get it. There’s a pile of stuff I want to convert over into my campaign.

I really like this, both the crunch and fluff.

Couple of comments:
Since they are divine 4 why don’t they use the witch spell progression?

Detect Invisible at will is worth more than one custom unless you are changing how the detection custom abilities work. Lower level spells take a turn of concentration to use.

Fluff Flame Strike as Lightning Strike or Ice Strike.

Lightning Bolt would not be a 4th level divine spell. I’m not sure that by the book it would even make it in at 5th. Maybe if you capped the damage and decreased range?

Anyway really dig the class and would love to see the earth/fire versions!

Glad you like it. The character concept helped me to start fleshing out the nature of deities and the origins of the world.

I have them as Divine 3, 1 from the ‘race’ and 2 from the base build points. On their spell progression I just smoothed out a few of the rough edges on the chart for the class where it would skip from none of a certain level to 2 of that level when they advance.

On Detect Invisible it cost a custom power slot and worked in with the race as well. I also limited the range of seeing them to 30 feet. Its still potent, but not quite as powerful.

Ideally at some point I should go back and fluff the fire based spells to more water/storm based effects. And your right that Lightning Bolt should be tweaked somewhat from the arcane version. I would prefer to leave it at level 4, but doing so, it might be a good idea to change the damage from 1d6/level to 1d8/2 levels. That might work as a balancing factor.

And again, thanks for your thoughts on it. They are always appreciated.