Classy Classes
Part IV
August 8th, 2011
As longtime (or, really, even short- or medium-time readers, as long as they’re regular) already know, every non-theme week for a while now I’ve been slowly but surely going through the process of creating a Races with Class class, and pointing out little tips and tricks as I go along. Our subject? The kyton. So far, we’ve plotted out the first half of the class, where we cut up Pathfinder’s existing kyton stat-block into itty-bitty bits and arrange them so that they look pretty, and characters theoretically are identical to a kyton by that point in the class’s progression. We’ve also written out about half of those early class features. Now it’s time for the other half (quarter, really, since we’ve only been dealing with half a class).
First, we have the spell resistance.
Spell Resistance (Ex): Beginning at 5th level, a kyton gains an innate resistance to spells. The exact amount of spell resistance increases as the kyton gains levels, as indicated on Table: the Kyton.
Well, they can’t all be exciting to write. Next up is writhing chains, which is the second installment in our three-part breakdown of the dancing chains ability. In case you’ve forgotten, let’s see the original ability and the first installment, influence chains, one more time:
Dancing Chains (Su): A kyton can control up to four chains within 20 feet as a standard action, making the chains dance or move as it wishes. In addition, the kyton can increase these chains’ length by up to 15 feet, and cause them to sprout razor-edged barbs. These chains attack as effectively as the kyton itself. If the chain is in another creature’s possession, the creature can attempt a DC 15 Will save to break the kyton’s power over the chain. If the save is successful, the kyton cannot attempt to control that particular chain again for 24 hours or until the chain leaves the creature’s possession. A kyton can climb chains it controls at its normal speed without making Climb checks. The save DC is Charisma-based.
Influence Chains (Su): A kyton can control any unattended chain within 20 feet as a standard action, making the chain dance or move as he wishes. The chain is too slow and ponderous to make attack rolls or combat maneuver checks, but can otherwise act as the kyton wishes, moving up to 10 feet per round, wrapping itself around stationary or unresisting objects, etc. A kyton can climb a chain it is controlling at its normal speed without making climb checks. The kyton must spend an additional standard action each round to maintain control over the chain.
Basically we have two things to add: the ability to attack with the chains, and the ability to affect chains that are in the possession of other creatures. I want to save the attacking for later, just because it’s the most impressive of the two, but before I do I want to check and see whether the final version (dancing chains) is going to be before, or after, the final version of our other chain (no pun intended) of chain-related class features (greater chain warrior). Why do I care, you ask? Because I want to keep the number of attacks you can get with dancing chains independent of the number of attacks you get with greater chain warrior, in case things inflate out of control in the second half of the class. If dancing chains goes second, I can say “you can make X attacks per round this way,” whereas if it goes before, I suppose I could still just say that, but it would be weird to be able to make more attacks without actually attacking yourself than you can make by, well…attacking. Anyway, things work out the way I want, so I can make a relatively light writhing chains:
Writhing Chains (Su): At 5th level, the kyton’s ability to control chains improves. When using his influence chains class feature, he can now affect chains that are in the possession of other creatures. The creature holding the chain can attempt a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 the kyton’s hit dice + the kyton’s Charisma modifier) to resist this effect. If the save is successful, the kyton cannot attempt to influence that chain for 24 hours, or until it leaves the creature’s possession. If two kytons are both trying to influence the same chains (or the chains are otherwise being influenced, such as by telekinesis, or similar) they must make opposed Charisma checks to determine who has control.
Additionally, the kyton can now cause chains he is influencing to lengthen by up to 15 feet, and sprout wicked barbs. These barbs deal 1d4 points of piercing damage to any creature trying to climb or handle the chains, though the kyton is unaffected.
Ultimately I think the lengthening-and-growing-spiky ability does more good here than it would later, as it makes this ability much more interesting, and helps smooth out the division of the ability.
Next up is improved chain warrior. Though this is listed as a separate class feature, I think I want to add it as an addendum to the previous chain warrior class feature. Let’s bring that up again:
Chain Warrior (Ex): Kytons are the undisputed masters of chain fighting, and are able to make great use of the chains with which they adorn themselves in combat. As a full-round action, the kyton can make two attacks with its chains at its full base attack bonus.
And the new part:
At 6th level, the kyton’s ability to fight with his chains increases further, allowing him to make a total of three attacks with his chains, all at his highest base attack bonus.
I’d really like to tame this ability a little bit, by, say, making the kyton’s attacks not all be at the highest possible attack bonus, in addition to being more numerous than other characters should be getting. But, anything I take away here is only going to mean a bigger leap at 9th level when we do the next part of this ability, which happens to be the next thing on our list. Here’s the final version:
Chain Warrior (Ex): Kytons are the undisputed masters of chain fighting, and are able to make great use of the chains with which they adorn themselves in combat. As a full-round action, the kyton can make two attacks with its chains at its full base attack bonus.
At 6th level, the kyton’s ability to fight with his chains increases further, allowing him to make a total of three attacks with his chains, all at his highest base attack bonus.
At 9th level, the kyton can fight still more furiously with its chains, allowing it to make a total of four attacks at its highest base attack bonus each time it uses this ability.
And that leaves us with just one more class feature to address (well, two, really, but one of them, the ascension, is the same as every other ascension, so it hardly counts).
Dancing Chains (Su): Beginning at 10th level, the kyton can use his influence chains class feature to cause the chains to lash out, attacking his foes. He can make up to four attacks this way each round, and each attack uses his full base attack bonus and Strength modifier (or whichever ability score modifier the kyton normally uses to determine his attack bonuses, such as Dexterity if he has the Weapon Finesse feat), and deal 2d4 points of piercing and bludgeoning damage with a successful hit.
Now, I’m starting to get some slight concerns about the power of this class. I’ve constantly erred on the side of caution when it comes to this ability, and all the boiler plate you see up above is preventing the kyton from enchanting his chains and then gaining their enhancement bonus and extra damage to attack with the dancing chains ability. It still allows him to make four attacks with his full bonus as a standard action, which is what it did before (it may originally have only required one standard action to start, and then continue on its own – it’s a little unclear).
Now, you might be thinking “big deal – that only matters if there are chains in the area.” While that’s true, it’s relatively easy to get chains in an area. All you need to do is throw them, and with a payoff like the above, I know if I had a kyton character I’d carry at least four chains everywhere I went.
It’s possible that this isn’t as bad as it sounds: after all, the kyton loses out on two hit dice, and he doesn’t have much else in the way of offensive abilities…at the same time, though, between regeneration, DR, and AC bonuses he’s pretty well set up defensively. With that in mind, I think I want to make one slight adjustment to a previous class feature, in order to try and balance this class out a little.
Chain Warrior (Ex): Kytons are the undisputed masters of chain fighting, and are able to make great use of the chains with which they adorn themselves in combat. As a full-round action, the kyton can make two attacks with its chains at its full base attack bonus. Each of these attacks uses a different length of chain on the kyton’s body, meaning that if any of its chains have been enchanted as weapons, each such chain is only able to make one of those attacks.
Now, just to be safe, let’s add a little line to the wrapped in chains class feature to deal with the concept of having multiple different chain weapons.
The chains can also be used as a weapon. They deal 2d4 points of damage on a successful hit, have 10 feet of reach, and are treated as one-handed weapons that can be used in conjunction with feats like weapon finesse. The kyton is always proficient with its own chains, and is always considered armed. If he so chooses, the kyton can two-weapon fight using two different lengths of chain, using the normal rules for two-weapon fighting.
The kyton’s chains can be enchanted as normal for weapons and armor. These enchantments are tracked separately, so if a kyton chooses to add a +1 enhancement bonus to his attack and damage rolls, this will not increase his AC. The kyton can choose to enchant a variety of different lengths of chain on his body, to a maximum number of enchanted chains equal to his hit dice.
Finally, we’ll throw on the same ascension feature we do for all RWCs:
Kyton Ascension: Once a kyton reaches 10th level, he has unlocked enough of his inner potential to be able to pursue other interests, if he so chooses. A 10th level kyton may freely multi-class into other classes, and can return to the kyton class later without penalty. Characters with more than 10 levels in kyton represent paragons of the kyton race, who, whether through hard work or an accident of birth, possess abilities in excess of most of their kind.
Now comes the most fun and exciting part of making a Races with Class class: adding new content. We have 10 whole levels of kyton to play with. But rather than just tell you about them, I’ve got a challenge for you: look back over the last few articles dealing with this class, and maybe a few other Dark Designs as well, and then write me with one or two ideas for higher-level class features for the kyton. Most likely we’ll see the DR and regeneration improve, and we’ll probably let the kyton get even more attacks with its chains (for some reason…), but I want to hear about the cool class features you guys can come up with for the rest of it. Send me a line at ariggs@necromancers-online.com. In a future article, I’ll go over some of the suggestions you send, and we’ll put together the rest of the class together.