Responses in bold. As always, I appreciate the feedback, and will do my best to address as much of it as I can.

Quote Originally Posted by Bayonet Priest View Post
I've only had time to skim what you have up so far but here's a few thoughts.

I love the Warlock, I just want to use him as a badguy so badly. The Cleric looks fine too, less martial than the PHB Cleric but not far behind and possibly ahead against his chosen enemies.

Thanks! I'll admit, the warlock's my personal favorite (sometimes I have to check myself with him, and tone him down a little), and I'm happier with the cleric than I am with the original compendium's white mage, which I think always suffered from not having much offensive application.

I know it's just cosmetic but I'm not sure about the Wizard's name. Wizard feels like a name for a generalist type caster and this Wizard is almost entirely about Illusions and Enchantments. Really, with so few archetypes in this set it might pay to have a more generic option for each class. A Wizard who gets a little of everything or a Fighter that isn't pigeonholed into being someone who Rages or someone who is really tanky.

Part of my design philosophy is reducing the versatility of full casters to bring them down a tier or two. I am fairly set in my ways on this decision - too many options on a full caster diminishes the contributions of the rest of the party. The wizard is the hermetic magician, one who deals in subtle charms and sympathetic magic. The classic idea of a "wizard," rather than the D&D version of it. It's certainly the closest thing to a utility caster out of the five, though I have removed certain utility spells for their ability to circumvent problems vastly out of their element (the cleric does not get Find Traps, because that cuts into the rogue's territory; similarly, Comprehend Languages and Tongues undercut the value of knowing multiple languages, so I made a conscious decision to remove them). It's more similar to the beguiler class in terms of spell list, but that's how a lot of wizards are represented in mythology and literature.

As to the fighter comment, the knight is probably closest to the generic D&D fighter, but here's the way I see it: the barbarian is defensive (don't let the name fool you, he could be any street thug or hardy warrior), the knight is defensive (doesn't have to be noble - could be a rank-and-file soldier apt at defending his allies), the monk is mobile (and a little anti-spellcasting), the ranger is... ranged (I wish I had more of an insightful thing to say there, but I do not; it does have a sideline in attacking quickly and finding the weak spot), and the paladin is a buffer/burst damager. The generic abilities are there in the chassis itself, and can be made use of regardless of archetype. I'm open to suggestions, though - what would represent a more generic fighter? Bonus feats? Combat maneuvers?


As for the Fighter stuff, it looks good to me so far. The Fighter chassis especially is very nice. You've built in a few things that feel like ToB maneuvers that seem like they will be a lot of fun in a fight.

Thanks. Melee deserves nice toys too, and another part of my design philosophy is to give non-magical classes meaningful options and ways to use the action economy or combat mechanics in the way that casters can currently. Something other than making the numbers go up (Thanks, Djinn_in_Tonic). It's both the biggest challenge of class design to me (few official sources have experimented with it outside of ToB and I haven't brushed up on a ton of pre-existing homebrew, so I'm kind of groping around blind in some respects) but also the biggest source of satisfaction when it works out (as much as I love playing casters, one of the things that I've loved seeing is how few of them seem to be submitted whenever a PbP game uses my classes).

On another note, I like that most classes have a primary and secondary attribute. Keeps the SAD down on those casters.

Hey, anything that keeps casters from dumping Charisma (in my mind, people used to imposing their will on the universe should have strong personalities) makes sense to me. It's a nice go-to stat for miscellaneous powers, too, but it's thematic too - the wizard's a natural enchanter, the cleric should be used to public speaking, the warlock's has experience wheeling and dealing with powerful entities, the warmage is a battlefield leader. The druid probably has the least overt connection to Charisma, but hey, they used to require 15 Charisma, so... there.

I'll give more feedback later.