Base Class Contest Chat Thread V: I Scored at the Top of My Base Class

[Alabenson]

Whoever the ritual is preformed with can be the master. Only one person at a time can be the master. Several class feature will be dependent on proximity to the master. The master will have a unique position of power over the aide, due to the massive penalty the aide takes against them. The class was partly inspired based on serfs, slaves, indentured servants, hirelings, supports(Is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon), bodyguards, squires, maids, butlers, etc.

Yes, allowing for touch spells and aid another was intended, basically the role of familiar. My biggest concern is feats or similar effects that increased effectiveness because of it.

If that's the concern you could change the wording to something along the lines of
As long as the aide is no further than 1/2 their base speed from their master they may be considered adjacent to their master for purposes of *Insert relevant class abilities here*. Furthermore, if the aide is no more than this distance from their master they and their master may share the effects of spells as per the share spells ability of a familiar.

Wording it like that should give you the effects you're looking for while avoiding any of the unforeseen issues you seem to be concerned with.

Out of curiosity, does anyone have any thoughts on the Delver?

[Alabenson]

Looking at the entries, it appears that we now have two completed classes at the moment, so if no one minds I think I'm going to give the contest another 2 week extension.

On a related note, given the limited number of entries we've been having I'd like to ask if anyone has any opinions on the idea of allowing entrants to enter multiple classes in future contests.

[Silva Stormrage]

I tend to like making super in-depth classes with tons of options so I am almost never going to make two entries. Still I am not sure if it would hurt in any real fashion.

[drotwaner]

I'll vote for Arabian Nights

[Alabenson]

Due to hurricane prep interfering with my ability to post, the end of the contest will be postponed until next Friday, unless someone else wants to do it sooner.

[Alabenson]

Alright, the voting thread is now up and running

[Lanth Sor]

I finally have time to throw at this, is it ok if i has the rest of the aide together today?

[khadgar567]

interestingly quality looks like lacking as all four only minecarver kinda feels to scratch some itch but with its slime paws it suddenly lacks the usefulness all in all good concept but lacks oomph to wow me.

[Alabenson]

I finally have time to throw at this, is it ok if i has the rest of the aide together today?

All things considered, I wouldn't hold it against you if you fill in the rest of the class as long as you get it in before voting ends.

[Lanth Sor]

Ok, I'm finished with the update.

[Alabenson]

In the interest of not having Silva disqualified for not voting I'm going to grant a two-week extension to the voting. Beyond that, though, I'm somewhat questioning if we would want to continue the contest in its current form given the lack of response we've had recently.

[noob]

In the interest of not having Silva disqualified for not voting I'm going to grant a two-week extension to the voting. Beyond that, though, I'm somewhat questioning if we would want to continue the contest in its current form given the lack of response we've had recently.

There was at some point a bunch of 5e homebrew contests.
Are they still getting participants?
If they are not here maybe there is not enough playgrounders for making contests regularly.

[Silva Stormrage]

Whoops forgot about the contest. Just voted now .

[Lanth Sor]

I named the class Aide as a subversion of what I meant, as certain topics are not considered PG-13. The class features tell a rather clear story of what the real class name should be. But they are someone who is commonly found in dungeons, whether following adventures, or as unwilling servants often sacrificed to dark gods are dispatched by drow with great regularity.

[Silva Stormrage]

In the interest of not having Silva disqualified for not voting I'm going to grant a two-week extension to the voting. Beyond that, though, I'm somewhat questioning if we would want to continue the contest in its current form given the lack of response we've had recently.

As sad as it is I somewhat agree there needs to be at least somewhat of a change. The last two contests haven't really had much participation and it's not just in the class design. Both contests have had pretty few votes from non contestants either.

I am not really sure what the best solution to this is though. Could some of the people lurking in this thread voice opinions for why they don't vote/participate in the contest? Not enough time? Not much interest in 3.5? Are there almost no lurkers in this thread anymore? Hard to say right now frankly.

[UristMcRandom]

As sad as it is I somewhat agree there needs to be at least somewhat of a change. The last two contests haven't really had much participation and it's not just in the class design. Both contests have had pretty few votes from non contestants either.

I am not really sure what the best solution to this is though. Could some of the people lurking in this thread voice opinions for why they don't vote/participate in the contest? Not enough time? Not much interest in 3.5? Are there almost no lurkers in this thread anymore? Hard to say right now frankly.

The only reason I seldom participate is because the time commitment for designing 3.5e classes is a bit much for my schedule. That's partially why the last two submissions I've attempted have been incomplete. I'm just not very good at coming up with this stuff.

The other thing is that I didn't actually know you could vote if you didn't submit. So there's that, too.

[MoleMage]

For me it's that the time I spend designing homebrew is pretty much entirely consumed by my 5e homebrew these days. When I try to go back to 3.5 I run into trouble with not having the mechanics memorized anymore so I need to look a lot up and adjust my viewpoint and it takes about 3 times as long as making a 5e class because of that.

[Alabenson]

Well, regardless, the winner of this contest was Silva Stormrage and the Mirecarver, followed by myself and the Delver, with third place going to Lanth Sor and the Aide.

Regarding any future contests, does anyone have any suggestions as to how we could coax out some additional participants?

[khadgar567]

Well, regardless, the winner of this contest was Silva Stormrage and the Mirecarver, followed by myself and the Delver, with third place going to Lanth Sor and the Aide.

Regarding any future contests, does anyone have any suggestions as to how we could coax out some additional participants?

time for pathfinder as next contest topic

[UristMcRandom]

time for pathfinder as next contest topic

See, honestly, I disagree. I like the contest as is. Switching rule systems just debases us as one of the last bastions of 3.5e content on this forum.

One thing I've noticed lately is that the contest is seldom easy to find on the main Homebrew forum page, and the chat thread is not much better. Perhaps if we started a new chat thread (so that people don't feel obligated to read 16 pages of post history to catch up), and then tried to post in the chat thread more often to draw folks' attention?

[Silva Stormrage]

See, honestly, I disagree. I like the contest as is. Switching rule systems just debases us as one of the last bastions of 3.5e content on this forum.

One thing I've noticed lately is that the contest is seldom easy to find on the main Homebrew forum page, and the chat thread is not much better. Perhaps if we started a new chat thread (so that people don't feel obligated to read 16 pages of post history to catch up), and then tried to post in the chat thread more often to draw folks' attention?

Agree with this, though not sure it will be enough by itself. If the main issue is time constraints anyway. Still PF is a completely different system to design homebrew for IMO. Different design philopshy and such so we can't even do a contest for a mix of 3.5/PF homebrew.

Still finding the contest and forgetting about it is something that has occurred to me a couple times. Having contestants review other candidate's projects before the deadline could inspire others watching the thread to make some stuff of their own?

We could also see about merging the 3.5 Base Class and PRC Class contests together. PRC's are easier to create but I don't know about who is managing both contests and whether or not that would be a good idea.

[Alabenson]

Agree with this, though not sure it will be enough by itself. If the main issue is time constraints anyway. Still PF is a completely different system to design homebrew for IMO. Different design philopshy and such so we can't even do a contest for a mix of 3.5/PF homebrew.

Still finding the contest and forgetting about it is something that has occurred to me a couple times. Having contestants review other candidate's projects before the deadline could inspire others watching the thread to make some stuff of their own?

We could also see about merging the 3.5 Base Class and PRC Class contests together. PRC's are easier to create but I don't know about who is managing both contests and whether or not that would be a good idea.

I'm going to third nixing the idea of incorporating PF homebrew; while it's a similar system their are enough differences that direct comparisons between different homebrews wouldn't really be viable.

As for the time constraint issue, what I'm thinking is dropping the hard deadline to start with. Instead, the deadline would remain open until at least 4 people have submitted completed entries, with an actual deadline then being announced 2-4 weeks after that to give anyone still working on a project time to finish. Beyond that, I definitely agree that having some way of encouraging feedback for other projects during the contest would be a good thing.

[Morphic tide]

Given the Prestige Class Contest has had to be handed off more than once in the last 5 rounds or so (current one had its deadline in July. Joshua Z was last on on the 15th of this month, so I have no idea what's going on with their life), merging the 3.X contests seems appropriate. Just a "Class Contest", ideally monthly. Maybe go in the vein of the oneoff 5e contest I went into, which had one theme for several kinds of entry. Could start with having a Monster/NPC (Creature Contest?) one, one for list elements like Feats, Spells and such, and one for classes, whether base or prestige, then refine the definition so it's not hugely imbalanced in what's going where.

Does slightly constrain contest theme space, as it has to be something one can make a monster, spell and class around, but it does lower the bar for entering one of them considerably. If overall participation remains low, then the contests could be merged as vote weighting for each of them, so they can be closed at once as long as there's a good participation between them. Or start it off as separately-listed contests that are vote-weighted for the overall contest winner, mentioning the winner of the individual ones similarly to how we do the play-likelyhood and theme-use votes. It also means that the use of contest-specific chat threads, like MoleMage's 5e class contests, is less onerous due to the larger variety of content discussed.

Variant rules being included in the contests would be lovely, probably under the same heading as the list elements, or possibly given its own specific thing for more intensive non-class-specific rule chunks like crafting mechanics. Could have a whole contest about Truenaming and how to fix it without being incompatible with the base Utterances, Feats and Class, or make classes that actually work well with the existing rules, patch it over with a neigh-mandatory prestige class, feat expansions unbuggering it, monsters and NPCs using it to have straightforward CR... Lot of ways one could go about a contest that's explicitly about the existent 3.5 Truenaming.

[Lanth Sor]

On the matter of next competition. My vote is Rage/Anger/Hatred/Spite/Vengeance or simply MAD.

[Gideon Falcon]

I just wish I had polific enough ideas that I could help with this. Some of my favorite Prestige Classes have come from the PrC contest, and that already started pushing daisies months ago. I just can't come up with full enough concepts that quickly for what I'd want out of a Base or Prestige class.

[Alabenson]

I just wish I had polific enough ideas that I could help with this. Some of my favorite Prestige Classes have come from the PrC contest, and that already started pushing daisies months ago. I just can't come up with full enough concepts that quickly for what I'd want out of a Base or Prestige class.

Even if you can't put together a complete idea for the contest you can always comment on submissions and vote during the voting portion.

As for integrating the PrC contest, the big concern I have is the difficulty in comparing different types of submissions and how voting would work in that case.

And, if we're going to start making nominations for the next contest, I'll throw out my suggestions as well;
Arabian Nights
Hope
Shadows / Darkness

[Silva Stormrage]

Even if you can't put together a complete idea for the contest you can always comment on submissions and vote during the voting portion.

As for integrating the PrC contest, the big concern I have is the difficulty in comparing different types of submissions and how voting would work in that case.

And, if we're going to start making nominations for the next contest, I'll throw out my suggestions as well;
Arabian Nights
Hope
Shadows / Darkness

I mean would it be that hard to compare PRCs and Base classes? Essentially each person is already voting for their own reasons in the first place, but if someone was voting based on usability I would think that would be somewhat straight forward. Sure PRCs and Base Classes have different design goals and philosophy but so do full spellcasting base classes compared to pure mundane classes or base classes with massively different intended tiers (1-2 vs 5)

[nxwtypx]

I mean would it be that hard to compare PRCs and Base classes? Essentially each person is already voting for their own reasons in the first place, but if someone was voting based on usability I would think that would be somewhat straight forward. Sure PRCs and Base Classes have different design goals and philosophy but so do full spellcasting base classes compared to pure mundane classes or base classes with massively different intended tiers (1-2 vs 5)

I'd prefer to keep them separate, but if that's the compromise needed to unseize the engine of creation (I'm planning on building a class for our next one I SWEAR), let's merge them.

[UristMcRandom]

I'd prefer to keep them separate, but if that's the compromise needed to unseize the engine of creation (I'm planning on building a class for our next one I SWEAR), let's merge them.

My thoughts exactly.

Also, I'd like to second a contest theme of Shadows / Darkness and propose a theme of Knowledge (including secrets, books, scrolls, science, learning, and anything else you can think of).

[Silva Stormrage]

For the next contest I second knowledge and propose instead of just "Hope" as a theme rather "Emotion" as hope is a bit too limited in my mind.