Classy Classes

Part I

June 27th, 2011

Alex Riggs

Dark Designs Archive

               Hello everyone. As regular readers might not be aware, but newcomers likely expect, this column supposedly has a lot to do with game design. Sometimes that’s true, and I certainly go on from time to time about my thoughts and feelings on esoteric and ephemeral design principles, but overall, not a lot of designing actually gets done in Dark Designs. I thought that today, for a change, I might try doing some hands-on design right here in the article, and walk you folks through the steps that I got through when, say, writing a Races with Class class.

               I specifically think that a Races with Class class is a good place to start, because the way that the classes are built lends itself especially to this sort of thing: for the first half (or so) of the class, there’s not really a whole lot of creative development going on: the class features are all decided for you, and the trick is to make them fit in. It might surprise you to hear it, but making things fit in and working out the structure of a class is a major part of building a class, and, while probably not as important as coming up with ideas for cool class features, it’s not far behind, and a poorly-structured class with really cool features may not even feel as impressive to players and DMs as a well-structured class with little in the way of innovation or creativity.

               Of course, as any of you who happen to be familiar with Races with Class articles are no doubt aware, the second half of the class breaks that mold, when we move beyond what the monster race in question is capable of by default, and into new class features which fit the theme of the monster, but go above and beyond what they’re currently able to do. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

               In the meantime, let’s examine the structure of classes. Our subject today is going to be the kyton (known to many as the chain devil, though in Pathfinder they aren’t technically devils, which is a throwback to Planescape, but that’s neither here nor there). Why the kyton? Well, as a CR 6 outsider they’re in the sweet-sport for a Races with Class article, as they’re going to fall somewhere between eight and ten levels of regular kyton and give us about 10 levels to fill with super-kyton abilities. Additionally, kytons are a pretty flavorful outsider, and I don’t imagine we’ll have much trouble coming up with abilities for the second half of the class, when we get to it. Most importantly, though, I’ve gotten a request to give kytons the Races with Class treatment, and this seems like as good a place as any to do it.

               So, we know we’re working with the kyton. Good. Now what? The next step is to construct a list of everything that being a kyton grants to a player, so we know what we have to distribute, and can get a good idea of how many levels we’re going to want to distribute it over. It might help you to grab a Pathfinder Bestiary to follow along with. By my count, being a kyton grants all of the following:

• Eight outsider hit dice (8d10, perfect attack, two good saves, six skill points per level)
• All benefits and drawbacks of the outsider type, as well as of the evil, lawful, extraplanar, and kyton subtypes. Ultimately, this includes darkvision 60 ft., proficiency with all simple and martial weapons (plus any weapons in its entry), and not needing to eat or sleep.
• +4 natural armor
• Regeneration 2/good weapons and spells or silver weapons
• DR 5/silver or good
• SR 17
• Immunity to cold
• Four attacks with chains (this may get tricky later…)
• The dancing chains ability (this may also get tricky, as far as extra attacks, though the other parts of the ability are harmless enough)
• The unnerving gaze ability (this is less of a big deal)
• The chain armor ability (also not that big a deal)

               The last thing that the kyton grants, and in many Races with Class classes the most important, is a number of ability score bonuses. Reverse-engineering a monster’s ability score bonuses is more of an art than a science, but generally I assume that all monsters start out with the array 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (not necessarily in that order, of course). The Kyton’s ability scores are 15, 17, 14, 11, 12, 12, so, reasonably, we might assume that his overall spread looked something like this:

 

               The amount that the class will be granting can be found under the “Racial Ability Score Adjustments” heading, and it may look a bit unintuitive. I’ll freely admit that there are other interpretations available. For example, the old method of reverse-engineering ability score adjustments (prior to Pathfinder) was to subtract 10-11 from each stat, because back then the default array was 10 or 11 for everything.

               Let me take a moment to explain why I did things the way that I did. The intuitive result would be that the kyton’s highest ability score bonuses would be to its Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, because those are its highest ability scores. Typically speaking, though, a Races with Class class already has to work uphill as far as balancing the class goes, and large doses of ability score bonuses only wind up adding extra levels onto the class, and no one likes that. So I typically assume that those ability scores are high primarily because the monster in question used up the higher numbers in its array on them. Its highest score, then, a Dexterity of 17, was really only a +2 because he put 15 in from his array.

               It’s also important to take into account any bonus ability scores from high hit dice, because those don’t need to be applied here, either. These points I generally try to use to round out odd numbers, rather than to continue to chip away at really high ability scores, though in cases of extreme ability scores I try my best to minimize game-unbalancing stats (like, say, a succubus’ Charisma score).

               The other thing that deserves some mention is the choice of a 10 in Charisma, rather than Wisdom. Both scores are a 12 in the final version, but only one can be a 12 with the array, meaning that one gets a +2 bonus and the other doesn’t. Though I just spent a couple of paragraphs talking about how we’re trying to minimize these bonuses, if we’re only talking about +2, I try to make sure that the bonus makes sense and, if possible, is going to be of at least a little use to the player. All of the kyton’s save DCs for its special abilities are Charisma-based, so it made more sense to put the bonus there, especially considering that those abilities aren’t likely to be game-threatening (at least, not because of the part that allows a save).

               So now that we’ve got that all worked out, we need to look the kyton over and figure out how much all of that, as a package, is really worth. This is also more art than science, though there are a few guidelines. The first thing that strikes me about the kyton is that it’s got eight hit dice, which means we’re looking at at least eight levels, probably more, before we’re done with just the kyton’s basic abilities. I would pretty much never allow a character to get two hit dice in a single level (I’m sure someday I’ll break this rule, and feel really bad about it, but I’ve yet to see a monster I would be comfortable doing so with). The ability score bonuses aren’t terribly impressive, and neither are the benefits of its types and subtypes (with the possible exception of the kyton subtype, which the Pathfinder Bestiary does not contain any information about). The DR and SR aren’t actually very impressive, but just having those is nothing to scoff at, and the regeneration even more so. Unnerving gaze and chain armor don’t impress me much, either, but the number of attacks it gets with those chains (all at full base attack bonus, no less) is very impressive, and, depending on exactly how it works, the dancing chains ability may be even worse.

               Since the description of dancing chains is fairly vague, though, I’m going to take the conservative approach to its combat effectiveness, which will let me shave at least a level off the adjustment. Besides, I can always make up for it with new abilities in the latter half of the class. So, this leaves us looking at somewhere between 9 and 10 levels. Those attacks with the chains have me pretty concerned, so I’m thinking we’ll err on the side of caution and say 10, at least for now.

               The next step is to take all these abilities and stick them into a class table, so we can get an idea of the class’s progression. For now, we’ll just deal with the first 10 levels.

               Of course, by “for now,” what I mean is “two weeks from now,” because that’s all the time we have for today, and next week we’ll be up to our elbows in rogues.