Troll Lord Games

Hi all

It appears I'll have no more than two, maybe three players in my group. All my modules call for four or more PCs. I need a way to strengthen and/or make the PCs more versatile. I don't want to simply lessen the opposition.

So I tried to figure out the exp costs for abilities, hp, armour allowed, weapons allowed ect... I failed, and failed again.

Has anyone done this? Care to share it?

This would allow us to make interesting classes and still fit the C&C exp charts. Also if we wish to give a class a new ability not covered in the phb we just match it against an all ready established ability and price it accordingly.

I see no reason why a Fighter or a Rogue cant have the track ability, but they should have to pay for it.

Thanks

Serleran did have a Class Deconstruction thingy available. It is pretty good.

Unfortunately, he is now under an NDA because of something working with the Troll Lords, which might be part of the CKG.
_________________
Earned the following:

50 Useless Trivia Points from Serleran

I'm not sure if it's exactly what you are looking for, but you could try adapting D&D's gestalt rules. If you're not familiar, each player selects two classes and takes the best parts of both. You can find the rules on the subject here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/class ... acters.htm

Yes, I did it. No, I can't make it available. I suggest looking at the "melded classes" from Crusader #4 and #5, and seeing if one of those "two classes as one" is a good fit, and there are other multiclass systems in Crusader #4, as well. If none of those are to your liking, look at the free Yggsburgh background skills pdf thing.

If Serleran's suggestions don't work for you, and you want to put some work in.....

Although it's intended for the Rules Cyclopedia, the article below might be a good place for you to start from: http://www.tridrpg.org/characters/newclass.php

Obviously, if you use this article, you'll wind up with some differences between what the article costs things as, and how C&C costs things out. I've got 2 suggestions:

The first (and simplest) would be to work out how each of the four iconic classes (Fighter, Thief, Magic User, Cleric) cost out using Erin's system. If you want to get another one to use as a baseline, go ahead and build the Ranger as well.

Once you've built the C&C classes using Erin's article, compare how the XP requirements look between both Erin's article, and the C&C version. Divide the C&C cost by Erin's cost, and you'll have a number. That number is what you should use to multiply times the XP cost Erin gives, in order to find out what the "actual" cost would be under C&C.

For example, say you build the Fighter using Erin's system, and it works out to 800 XP. You look over at C&C and see that it winds up costing 1000. So you divide your 1000 by 800 and wind up with 1.25 as the answer. Now you can turn around and build whatever Fighter-like classes you want using Erin's system, multiply the end result by 1.25 and you'll know it's roughly at the cost it should be for C&C. Follow C&C's approach to fill in the XP requirements for those levels that don't have anything special being given.

Go ahead and do the same for the remaining 3 classes (4 if you use the Ranger), and you're basically set. Any particular class you want to build/convert is going to fall broadly under one of those types of characters, in terms of it's fighting capability, skills, and casting.

The second possiblity is more involved.

Basically you'll do something similar to the above, only you'll be converting _all_ the C&C classes. Don't bother doing the Perfect Class / C&C XP comparison yet. When you've finished rebuilding them all, you get to make a decision. You can do the XP comparison and division for all the classes, and then apply the most appropriate factor to the new classes you build, or you can average them out, and apply that new averaged factor to _all the classes. The ones you've just rebuilt, as well as the new ones.

The point to averaging the factor and then using that for the old classes as well as the new, is to essentially put everything on the same rough level in terms of cost. It means that the XP level progression charts printed in the books will be off, but it will also mean that your new class (or classes) will be much more likely to be "equally balanced".

If you're looking to go in a different direction, there's a pdf product called Buy the Numbers that is basically a deconstruction/class building type of system for 3.x. You could basically follow the same essential steps I outlined above. Buy the Numbers also provides a cost breakdown of the d20 fantasy classes, and what the "real" XP cost for them would be; as opposed to the single XP track that they all use.

The other alternative system for 3.x to C&C that you could use is the Anime SRD. It's free, unlike Buy the Numbers, and can be downloaded from here: http://www.guardiansorder.com/games/d20/srd/ It provides a breakdown of the d20 fantasy classes as well, although it's not quite as detailed.

Whichever approach you take, there's going to be some work involved.

A pretty big disclaimer: at some point the CKG is going to be published, and at least in theory it should offer a solution (or perhaps more). So doing something like this is going to be a fair amount of work that might be completely invalidated to a greater or lesser degree once it is published. On the other hand, it might be groovy enough for people to use anyway, assuming you put it out for public consumption, or you might prefer your approach to the CKG. Only time will tell.

With the exception of the Deconstruction document that Serl made and subsequently pulled, I haven't seen any system publically put forward specifically for building C&C classes. I've done some rough work on something using Buy the Numbers, but it's not yet in a state where I'd consider making it publically available. Serleran's document, the thing I'm using, what the CKG eventually publishes, the Yggsburgh thing, all of it is based on the what the author feels is "balanced" for the kind of games they like to run. You'll just have to decide what works for you, and take the plunge.

Or go the easy route, and follow Serleran's suggestions.

Simple way to do it, multiclass. Baring that, I'd allow each player to run 2 PCs.

R-
_________________
Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

Thanks for the replies, not what I was hoping for, oh well.

I rarely use modules, mostly just to get ideas for land maps and names of people and places. Or as in this case to introduce players to new systems.

I,ll just go with four classes Warrior, Priest, Rogue, and Mage. Warrior will be Fighter combined with Ranger plus combat sense and horsemanship.

Priest will be Cleric and Druid combined but strongly based on chosen god. Thus depending on chosen god the druids woodsy abilities will change to things more appopriate. Rogue will combine rogue and assasin with combat sense and monks unarmoured defence. Mage will be wizard and illusionist combined. I,ll also create my own Monk, as its always been my favourite class.

Another question, are cleric, wizard, druid, and illusionist spells of the same level equal in strength in C&C? What about in AD&D1sted 2nded, D&D 3.5?

In 1st edition AD&D, magic user spells went to ninth level, but illusionists, clerics, and druids were only able to cast up to seventh level spells. And I don't think there was really any attempt to balance spells of a given spell-level against those from other classes. Since, there were an unequal number of spell levels and classes would level at different rates, access to new levels of spells would vary wildly.

In 3.x D&D and in C&C, it seems as though there has been an effort to balance these things out. Every caster class reaches ninth level spells, and has the same number of spells at a given level. In D&D 3.x, there's been a great effort to keep spells of a given level balanced againt each other. In C&C, however, reaching those levels would take longer for some classes because of the unequal experience/level tables. So even if a wizard gets some of the same spells as an illusionist, he'll end up getting them later, which in a sense makes them weaker, right?

Hmm. Whether spells of a certain level are equal in strength is a difficult question. Although CLW is a 2nd level spell for druids, it is no more powerful than the cleric's 1st level CLW. And comparing a first level spell like entangle against CLW doesn't make a lot of sense. How much bang to the buck do you get for it? How much damage will you avoid taking while a bunch of vines are putting your opponents in the "Cobra Clutch." Is that more or less than a CLW will give you?

EDIT: Sorry for my rambling... Was I even helpful a little bit?

Tank wrote:
In C&C, however, reaching those levels would take longer for some classes because of the unequal experience/level tables. So even if a wizard gets some of the same spells as an illusionist, he'll end up getting them later, which in a sense makes them weaker, right?

To a certain extent you could say that, but there's a couple of ways of looking at it. The first is that the Illusionist is a specialist in terms of what they're casting. So it makes sense that they're going to be doing stuff that generalists wouldn't tackle until later. That's kind of an in-game way of looking at things.

The other way is that if Wizards are able to access the same spell list as the Illusionist has and at the same time, why bother playing an Illusionist? C&C isn't really relying on mechanical differentiation for the classes, unlike D&D 3.x. The different spell list allows for a strong establishment of another spell caster class, without introducing new mechanics.

However, plenty of folks would argue that it doesn't make sense that Illusionists (which could be argued as being a subset of the wizard class) would have invented all these new spells and that wizards wouldn't have developed/copied/stolen at least some of them for themselves.

Or arguing it in a slightly different direction, it makes sense that the wizards have some of the same spells because those were the original "base spells". The early illusionists took these base spells, and reworked them to better suit their specific style of casting, which resulted in a spell that is "easier" or more refined.

Tank wrote:
Hmm. Whether spells of a certain level are equal in strength is a difficult question. Although CLW is a 2nd level spell for druids, it is no more powerful than the cleric's 1st level CLW. And comparing a first level spell like entangle against CLW doesn't make a lot of sense. How much bang to the buck do you get for it? How much damage will you avoid taking while a bunch of vines are putting your opponents in the "Cobra Clutch." Is that more or less than a CLW will give you?

Nope, it's always been a weakness of the classic casting system, that some spells are just flat out better than others. Fireball was always a must-have spell for many people, because it was a serious smackdown spell and was about the only one you got at that level. The problem you've got is how to have spells that are balanced, a variety of spells for players to play with as they level, and spells that are actually useful.

You can't really have all of that, and maintain a system that is easy. The classic casting system of D&D takes a lot of heat from folks, but one thing that many of them forget is that it's an ease of use issue. Just like Hit Points are an abstracted damage model, although I'll always maintain that the existence of Cure Light Wounds means that Hit Points does represent physical damage, and not things like loss of position. X number of spells per day, that increases by Y amount as a caster levels. That's nice and elegant if you're looking for a simple system.

It's certainly possible to revamp the magic system, but doing so really changes the feel of the game. Lots of folks like the fact that the system looks like it did back in the day, "warts" and all. D&D has a bunch of sacred cows, and you've got to be really careful which ones you're going to slaughter. For a product like C&C which currently is strongly tied to emulating a "classic" kind of feel to games for a lot of people, it's shooting themselves in the foot to mess with something like that. Sure, there's other ways of doing spells these days, but D&D _has_ managed to survive for 30 years here, so you want to be careful when you start messing with the core system.

And really, the demand for "balanced" spells is relatively non-existent within D&D. There's only one product really aimed at that for 3.x (I don't really know about 2nd Ed, having refused to buy into the bloat) and that's after some 7 years and a huge number of books from both WotC and others. There's plenty of different funky magic systems, but that's not the same as making internally consistent/balanced spells. Most of them look to the SRD and balance their new stuff against the SRD. At least that way the imbalances are going to be relatively similar, at least in theory. In the case of C&C, I don't think the goal of re-balancing stuff was a priority. Past a certain point "balance" is very subjective, and you're _never_ going to get people to agree 100% that something is balanced. There's always going to be a personal preference for it to slide this way or that. And that's one of the many roles of the DM.