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xBlackWolfx
2013-01-22, 11:54 AM
I have decided that instead of continuing trying to finish my own fantasy rpg, which i havent managed to do for like 6 years now due to indecision (yeah, 6 years and not a damned thing to show for it), which has discouraged me from continuing. Now, I'm just going to go with pathfinder, though with some house rules to fit my setting better (including custom races, and a few minor changes in how wizards work, and perhaps to arcane classes in general).

But my biggest issue is in creating new classes for my setting. Specifically I want two, maybe more. One (which is the most important) is basically a warrior for a nomadic tribe, rather than the armor-bound and disciplined fighters, or animalistic barbarians. The thing I had in mind was a class that used only primitive weapons and armor, and was an expert in surviving in the wild. They excel at surviving in the wilderness, which often entails being particularly good at common enemies found in the wild (mostly animals).

Now that I think about it, that is quite similar to a ranger, minus the fact that my 'tribal warrior' is NOT capable of magic. I never really liked that about rangers, why can they use magic? A survivalist archer makes sense, but why does he get to use druidic magic? The class I want is meant to represent a warrior for a primitive nomadic tribe, not a tree-hugging spiritulist.

In all honest, I'm fairly confident someone has already done this, but I would prefer to have some tips on how to make my own classes. Modifying the already present classes (or simply making new archetypes) seems like a good place to start, though I'm not quite sure how to go about doing that.

Another class which I may or may not add, and technically has already been done, is a steampunk mecha essentially. The steam warriors in the warcraft rpg is pretty much what I'm trying to make, which is why I said its already been done, but sadly I don't have access to those books so I'll probably just have to make my own.

Can anyone offer me any tips? I know most people on this forum are here to make houserules for games rather than creating brand-new rpgs (like I've been), and I've even seen a lot of threads for pathfinder and DnD 3.x (people who houserule DnD3.x could help probably, just be aware that pathfinder classes were buffed quite a bit from their 3.x counterparts), so I'm fairly certain I can get some help here.

Oh and btw, do I use parenthesis too much? I tend to use them a lot in my posts I've noticed (over the past several years), and now I think it might just be confusing and thus is a habit I need to break.

Rogue Shadows
2013-01-22, 01:52 PM
Well, the first and most important thing about Pathfinder is that all classes should generally - and every non-spellcasting class - should get at least one, and often two, abilities per level. You want to avoid dead levels like the plague.

Pathfinder classes also tend to be built around an awful lot of customization - look at, for example, the Rage powers of Barbarians and the talents of Rogues.

However, for your specific design goals, you're probably looking for the Artificer, (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/adamant-entertainment/artificer) Machinesmith, (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/louis-porter-jr-design/machinesmith) Beastmaster (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/tripod-machine/beastmaster), or Hunter (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/tripod-machine/hunter) classes, which were all done by 3rd party publishers for Pathfinder.

xBlackWolfx
2013-01-22, 02:06 PM
The hunter class is ideal, though I am disappointed by the fact that there are no favored class bonuses or archetypes. Eh, the archetypes aren't necessary, and I can probably make up my own favored class bonuses.

And the machinesmith is definitely a cool class, I may find a lot of use for that. Though for the mecha thing, I was more thinking of a vehicle that the creator controls, but I guess the design there will do. Probably a lot more balanced anyway.

Tanuki Tales
2013-01-22, 02:08 PM
Another big design concept with Paizo is that Multiclassing and Dipping are bad.

If you make your class so that it is not attractive to play from level 1 through level 20, you've probably designed it wrong.

xBlackWolfx
2013-01-25, 11:18 AM
Here's another vaguely related question: how to create custom monsters?

I know there's this monster builder thing on the pathfinder srd, but all it seems to do is create custom characters (like bandits and such).

I hear there's a problem in pathfinder of the monsters being underpowered since the classes all got major buffs but the monsters did not. And even if that isnt the case, I have a lot of monsters in mind for my setting that don't appear in the beastiary (mostly dinosaurs, including some odd ones like gigantoraptor, though come to think of it I could probably just make use of the stats for allosaurus or something).

I guess I could use the custom race creater, in a way, but that may not work too well for creating monsters beyond the first few levels.

Isnt there a guide somewhere for making monsters? Why isnt there a point-based system like there is for custom races? Its not enough to deter me from playing it granted, still an awesome game from the looks of it (and i used to play 3.x a lot, so i'm fairly certain i'll enjoy it). Though I would still like to be able to create my own monsters.

Chromascope3D
2013-01-25, 11:31 AM
Now that I think about it, that is quite similar to a ranger, minus the fact that my 'tribal warrior' is NOT capable of magic. I never really liked that about rangers, why can they use magic? A survivalist archer makes sense, but why does he get to use druidic magic? The class I want is meant to represent a warrior for a primitive nomadic tribe, not a tree-hugging spiritualist.

This is always how I've felt about rangers. Have you seen the Skirmisher (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/ranger/archetypes/paizo---ranger-archetypes/skirmisher) archetype from the APG? All it does is replace ranger spells, so you can easily add it to any other archetype.

Rogue Shadows
2013-01-25, 11:43 AM
Isnt there a guide somewhere for making monsters? Why isnt there a point-based system like there is for custom races? Its not enough to deter me from playing it granted, still an awesome game from the looks of it (and i used to play 3.x a lot, so i'm fairly certain i'll enjoy it). Though I would still like to be able to create my own monsters.

It's...not easy to judge how effective or ineffective monster abilities will be in any kind of "point" way, since monster abilities may mesh together in unforseen ways.

As a rough guide, I'd say that for every four HD a monster has, it should pick up a special ability as defined in the Bestiary - something like Improved Grab or the like. But that's just a rough guide, and I have no idea what the resultant CR of the beasty would be.

Tanuki Tales
2013-01-25, 07:50 PM
It's...not easy to judge how effective or ineffective monster abilities will be in any kind of "point" way, since monster abilities may mesh together in unforseen ways.

As a rough guide, I'd say that for every four HD a monster has, it should pick up a special ability as defined in the Bestiary - something like Improved Grab or the like. But that's just a rough guide, and I have no idea what the resultant CR of the beasty would be.

This.

Look at the classic Allip conundrum: The beastie has a CR 3 slapped on it, but it's almost a guaranteed Total Party Kill against a level 3 party.

Rogue Shadows
2013-01-26, 01:15 AM
Look at the classic Allip conundrum: The beastie has a CR 3 slapped on it, but it's almost a guaranteed Total Party Kill against a level 3 party.

As general rules pulled completely out of my ass, assuming you follow my suggestion concerning gaining special abilities:

A creature with HD of Animal or Humanoid has a base CR equal to its HD -1 (these two creature types are notably weaker than the others as base)
A creature with HD of Fey, Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Plant, and Vermin has a base CR equal to its HD +0
A creature with HD of Aberration, Ooze, and Undead has a base CR equal to its base CR +1 (these creatures have numerous benefits coupled with few drawbacks that make them tougher-than-normal opponents)
A creature with HD of Construct, Dragon, or Outsider has a base CR equal to its HD +2 (Undead would be here to but for their vulnerability to turning and lack of Constitution scores, the latter of which hurts their HP, which is the only thing keeping most monsters alive for more than a few rounds. Constructs get bonus HP and all sorts of nifty immunities, so that's where their CR comes in, while dragons get the best possible chassis (full BAB, all good saves, d12 HD, a very good skill selection) plus paralysis and sleep immunity, which is very good, especially at lower levels).
A creature with a base speed of higher than 50 feet (10 squares) in its primary method of movement gets +1 CR
A creature with a base speed of less than 20 feet (4 squares) in its primary method of movement gets -1 CR. A creature that is actually immobile gets -2 CR.
If the creature is Small, it gets +1 CR
If the creature is Tiny, it gets +0 CR. If the creature is Diminutive or Fine, it gets -1 CR (at Tiny and smaller, the drawbacks of being a smaller creature outweigh the benefits, though not by much).
A Large creature gets +1 CR, a Huge creature gets +2 CR, and a Gargantuan or Colossal creature gets +3 CR (the benefits of being Large and larger, notably the STR and CON bonuses, almost always outweigh the drawbacks in terms of combat)
A creature built with the Elite Array for base stats (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) has +1 CR. A creature built with 25 Point Buy for base stats has +2 CR, +1 per 5 points above 25
Incorporeality - either permanent or as an effect it can activate - adds +2 CR
A Final Note: No combination of the above statistics can increase a creature's CR (as determined by creature type) by more than 3. Thus even a 25 point-buy (+2) incorporeal (+2) Gargantuan (+3) creature with a 60 foot base movement speed (+1) still only has a CR equal to its base +3, and not base +8.

Again, these are pulled out of my rear and probably not good for anything but a very, very rough guide.

Tanuki Tales
2013-01-26, 09:25 PM
I'd drop the speed annotations. There's no actual benefit to having a high base speed and any actual detriments of having a low one are practically inconsequential.

raspberrybadger
2013-01-26, 11:55 PM
Depends on the intelligence of the monster. An intelligent monster can often use a high speed to get right in the face of the casters, making things a lot more complicated.

Also, I tend to use a much simpler system. I look at how fast it could kill or at least do semi-permanent harm to a PC. Then I look at it's defences and debuffs to see how fast a party of 4 could kill it. It's CR is 4+whatever level of party it can get a kill on more often than not, or +2 for semi-permanent harm. +3 if it's something like removing limbs or something. I don't run a bunch of numbers so much as eyeball it. Roughly, that means an increase in CR if the thing is hard to kill with weapons or hard to kill with the usual magic at that level, and a bigger increase if both. It also gets an increase in CR if it's got a nasty special attack likely to actually work at that level, or enough damage and attack rating to be a real threat of death by damage. I also tend to give a CR boost for intelligence or reach, because either of those things can often mess up whatever the PCs thought they were going to do to win.