Custom Classes System

[Malcadon]

Recently, Thoul's Paradise redid Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's system for creating custom character classes, that was published back 1986, in the #109 issue of Dragon magazine. Perdustin did some great work to improve upon Crabaugh's ideas (like braking-up the race abilities, which as really half-ass notes), while also making it more user-friendly (namely setting the HD standard form d3 to d4 (and removing the d3 hit die outright), while adjusting the base Experience Needed scores to account for that, and to change the adjustments form "+10%" to "x.10" which is easier to work with).

Yeah, the system needs work. Crabaugh's system was narrow in scope, and only accounted for the classes form Basic and Expert D&D, without consideration of the classes form AD&D or the Unearthed Arcana. If the Various Abilities and Non-Human Abilities get expanded upon, then it would become a lot more versatile. The spell list is also inflexible with regards to spells per level. It assumes you choose one of eight types of spell progressions (none of them being a Druid), but you may get one or more spells at curtain levels, but nothing on others. You may also have spell-like abilities that it never accounts for. Much work was put into making the core ideas work, so I hopes that it gets expanded upon — be it Perdustin, or anyone else willing to take a crack at it.

What this system does, is that it calculates Experience Needed per level, based on the strengths (HD, to-hit, saves, etc.) and abilities (spells, undead turning, thieves' abilities, etc.) a class has to offer at each level has to offer. Its a bit of work if you're making a bunch of classes, but at the game table, you'll have some really cool classes ready for CharGen. The best part about this, is that the strengths and abilities you get from racial abilities are calculated into what you need to advance — thus, retarding your progression — level caps are no longer needed to enforce a sense game-balance. Since you can stop the calculations at any level, you can freely stop how far a level can progress, or even when the player stops rolling hit dice. Here are the articles:

Customized Classes (part I)
Customized Classes (part II)
Customized Classes (part III)

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So here is something I made for the Nymph class I made not too long ago:

You have to factor in all these these stats:

1.40 Saving Throw Class: Elf
0.40 Hit Die: d6
0.25 Hit Progression: 1 per 4 levels
0.30 Armor Allowed: Leather and shield
0.80 Weapons Allowed: All but crossbows
2.60 Cleric Spell Progreeion: H
0.25 Infrvision
0.30 Immunity: ghoul paralysis and sylvan charm
0.10 Secret Door Detection
0.12 Blinding Beauty
0.10 Spell-like powers: Charm Preson 1/day, Dimension Door 1/day*
0.36 Identify plants & animals, detect bad/poisoned food & water, forest walk and move without trace.
0.03 Extra Languages: Nymph, Satyr, and Elven.
-0.14 Additional Ability Minimum
0.01 @ level 2+: One additional language per level.
1.50 @ level 5: Shapechange 3/day
6.87 Total (+.01 per level after 2)
8.37 Total (with Shapechange at 5th level)

*the list makes no note about additional spells or spell-like ability, so I gave them a 0.05 per spell.

This is the multiplier for a base Experience Needed at level 2, at 500 EXP. So that would mean:

Level - Base Score & Multiplier - Experience Needed (B/X D&D standard)
1 - 0x0 - 0
2 - 500x6.88 - 3,440 (3,500)
3 - 1,000x6.89 - 6,880 (7,000)
4 - 2,000x8.40 - 13,780 (14,000)
5 - 4,000x8.41 - 33,640 (33,750)
6 - 8,000x8.42 - 67,360 (67,500)
7 - 16,000x8.43 - 134,880 (135,000)

"B/X D&D standard" is basically the scores uniformed for the Basic and Expert D&D rules.

Well, that was less that would I originally made, but it is a powerful class that starts equal to a Druid with two extra levels, per level. In this case, much of the stats are equal to a Cleric (or elf, in the case of saves) an equal level, but have the special class benefits of a plus-two Druid.

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And here is my Satyr:

1.30 Saving Throw Class: Fighter
0.80 Hit Die: d8
1.00 Hit Progression: 1 per 2 levels
0.50 Armor Allowed: All
0.85 Weapons Allowed: All
0.85 All racial abilities (estimated value)
0.03 Extra Languages: Satyr, Nymph, and Elven.
-0.07 Additional Ability Minimum
0.24 @ level 4: greater pipe ability
5.26 Total
5.50 Total (at 4th level)

Level - Base Score & Multiplier - Experience Needed (B/X D&D standard)
1 - 0x0 - 0
2 - 500x5.26 - 2,630 (2,750)
3 - 1,000x5.26 - 5,260 (5,500)
4 - 2,000x5.50 - 11,000 (11,000)
5 - 4,000x5.50 - 22,000 (22,000)
6 - 8,000x5.50 - 44,000 (44,000)
7 - 16,000x5.50 - 88,000 (88,000)

That is a little more then my original EXP needed stats, but that is not surprising: this is a fairly power Fighter class. The value of their racial abilities was mostly an estimation, but I feel confident with the results.

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So what do you guys think about the system?

[Agrippa]

I'd say that Crabaugh's system is flawed but well aimed. I like the idea systemized custom class building, including racial classes. I'm using another class building system for a small project, converting Exalted's bloody hands. Maybe even for crafting a class fit for Haakon.

[jdcllns]

I got stuck on the Monk and Ranger. Rangers get Druid and Magic User spells. And Monks are just totally whack. Too many exceptions.