Classes

The next chapter of the book discusses classes in Eberron, including the new signature class, the artificer, and a brief discussion on every other class as well. This won't map very well to the Dark Fantasy X rule set that I'm utilizing, but I can still have a discussion about the classes that I have, as well as how to emulate the archetypes of the classes from Eberron using the rules that I have.

At a high level, there are five classes available in Dark Fantasy X, one of which is quite unique and unusual, and the other four of which are heavily customizable and fairly broad in their "archetype emulation" anyway. D&D game theorists kind of posit that there are really four archetypal roles in D&D and D&D-like games, and then there are "blended archetype" classes that straddle two (or occasionally more) archetypes without being super-invested in either. These four archetypes are, to use the old-school terminology, the fighting man, the thief, the magic-user and the cleric or healer. Classes like the ranger, for instance, kind of straddle the fighting-man and the thief, while the bard straddles the thief and the magic-user. And so on and so on. I don't actually believe that the cleric is an archetypal role, really—and because of the way my system works, it's also not necessary from a mechanical perspective; the game can be played completely fine without access to a healer. I also don't have a true dedicated magic-user class, because spellcasting is a skill that anyone can learn and practice on top of their class, and it's a risky venture that many people will not want to do. The "special" class is, on the other hand, almost directly ported over from a Star Wars Remixed version of my rules where it was the Jedi/Sith class. It takes the place of the psion, kinda, but also kinda not. So, as you see, the mapping of Dark Fantasy X classes to D&D classes is not very easy. Let me first talk about my basic classes, and some of the variations that I think are likely, and then I'll go through the D&D classes and talk about how to emulate that archetype if not exactly the class itself. I'll end up reprinting some of my mechanics in order to do this, but it will help me get straight how to align here.

• • Fighter: Fighters add +3 to their Athletics skill, and +1 to all Attack and Damage rolls. This increases to +2 at 4th level, +3 at 8th level.

  • Rogue: Rogues add +3 to their Subterfuge skill, and can (usually) make a Sneak Attack to add their Subterfuge bonus to their attack and damage roll in an attack. This can usually only be done when the opponent is unaware of the location of the rogue, as when the rogue sneaks up on his victim, or when he attacks someone who's already engaged in combat with someone else. If the rogue is clearly seen before a combat starts, this will obviously be problematic, and the rogue will have to attempt to hide or something and then sneak up again on the combat to use this ability. Sneaking is usually done by making a Subterfuge + DEX check opposed by his opponent's own Subterfuge + MND check.

  • Outdoorsman: Many folks make their living in the wilderness. An outdoorsman gains +3 to his Survival skill, and gains a +1 to hit and damage with ranged weapons. They can also gain an animal companion of HD 1 or less. At 4th level, they can upgrade this to an animal companion of HD 2 or less, at 8th level to HD 3. (For an explanation of HD, see below in the Monsters section of this document.) This animal is not just an extension of the character, and although you can usually tell it to do what you want, occasionally the GM will intercede if you're attempting to have the animal do something unreasonable. Note that this doesn't mean that animals can't display loyalty, including risking their lives for their master.

  • Expert: Experts get one Affinity and +3 to their Knowledge skill. An affinity is a broad area of expertise, and any task (subject to GM approval) that falls under the heading of this affinity can be re-rolled if it fails the first time. A number of sample Affinities is listed here: Healing, Craftsmanship, Ride, Investigation, Nobility, Deception, Stealth, Sorcery, Wilderness Survival, Acrobatics. Others could be devised too, but this list already runs the risk of being a bit too specialized—I wouldn't recommend it. At 3rd level, Experts gain another Affinity, and then again at 6th and 9th. Normally, an Expert would take a new Affinity, but if for some reason a player wants to take the same Affinity again (thus giving himself a second chance to re-roll it) then there's no reason not to let him. He's sacrificing the ability to be more flexible to increase his chance of being successful on something that's obviously very important to him. You will notice that there is no Combat Affinity. You can never use an Affinity to re-roll an attack or damage roll. This is true even for spell attack and damage rolls and the Sorcery Affinity. It can, however be used to re-roll the checks to save against Sanity loss (MND damage), or any number of other rolls, but not magical attack or damage rolls. Affinities also can only be used to re-roll rolls that the Expert character with the Affinity makes. They cannot be used to force re-rolls that another character or the GM makes that affect the character with the affinity.

  • Shadow Sword: This is a rare finding in the setting; representing a character who has learned to manifest a magical weapon of psionic power. Because the abilities of the Shadow Sword don’t exactly match up with the major and minor abilities listed above, the Shadow Sword is not a customizable class.

    • Shadow Blade: Gains combat bonus advantages to attack and damage (as per the Fighter class), but only when using a shadow sword; a weapon of pure psionic energy that can be summoned at a moment's notice. (Note that the weapon doesn’t have to be a “sword” and can be represented by any of the weapons listed in the Equipment section below.) Also, any unarmored character with this ability can add ½ of his character level to AC (rounded down.) This is in addition to the ½ level added to AC that all character already have.

    • Psionic Abilities: Shadow swords gain the ability to manifest psionic abilities, as described in the chapter on Magic and Psionics.

The customization options are probably too numerous to spell out all of them here, but I did give a few examples. Let me actually spell them out as if they were classes:

• • Mage: +3 to Knowledge, Animal companion (familiar!) and Sorcery affinity.

  • Sniper: +1 to all Attack and Damage rolls. This increases to +2 at 4th level, +3 at 8th level. Also, an additional +1 to all attacks with Ranged weapons.

  • Duelist: +1 to all Attack and Damage rolls. This increases to +2 at 4th level, +3 at 8th level. Also, an additional +1 to all attacks with Medium weapons.

  • Ranger: +1 to all Attack and Damage rolls. This increases to +2 at 4th level, +3 at 8th level. Also, an animal companion.

  • Witch: The mage gets the Sorcery affinity. He gets the same affinity again at 3rd level and and 6th level and a final time at 9th level. He also gets an animal companion (familiar.)

Playing around with the customization options, you can see how you can make all kinds of different variations, but many of them are more subtly different; a bonus to one skill instead of another, a slightly different affinity, etc. Anyway, let's go through the classes in Chapter 2 of the Campaign Setting book and talk about how I'd envision that archetype being emulated in this system.

• • Artificer: This is a magical class, but one that doesn't actually cast spells; rather, he focuses on making and using magical items. Given the inherent risk in casting spells in the Remixed version of the game, this seems like a reasonable alternative. However, I don't really have any rules for making magical items; in fact, I only added magical items as things that you can find here and there in the game as an afterthought when I first added them. I think Dragonshards are the handwavey solution here; dragonshards can be used to turn items magical, but I probably need to give some actual thought to exactly how this would work. In the meantime, the Mage option above, or even the Expert, could work well here.

  • Barbarian: The Barbarian is a class that serves as an alternative to the Fighter in most respects, but with some different flavor around trying to increase their damage output as well as having a few outdoorsy skills. I would go the route of the Duelist, except with Heavy weapons for one alternative, or the Ranger except swap the animal companion with a +3 to the Survival skill. Either would be a good alternative to the barbarian as written to get pretty close to the same mechanics, more or less.

  • Bard: I have to admit; I've never really understood the appeal or the inclusion of the bard in the game at all. If you want to come up with a bard, you're on your own, I think. I'd simply make an Expert with some performance affinity of some kind, and discretely learn a few spells.

  • Cleric: I've also never understood the appeal of the cleric, as well as feeling like they were included more than any other reason because the way the mechanics have always been structured in D&D, there is no alternative except to have magical healing. Because Dark Fantasy X has "action movie healing" with pretty radical healing opportunities between action scenes, as well as lacking altogether the resource management accounting of D&D or the assumption of doing dungeons, I never felt the need for them at all. There's nothing about the magic system that could possibly emulate cleric magic either. You can always make a character that for roleplaying reasons is religious, but it's not going to be a D&D style cleric. This one just can't be done in this rule system.

  • Druid: I don't have druids either, which are a kind of hybrid of the cleric and the ranger or something. If you wanted to make a druid, I'd probably pick up a Sorcery affinity; either as a one-time offering, or as the Mage where I get it over and over again ever few levels and really buffer myself against magical fail roles. Then either an animal companion, or a +3 Survival, or something else to get the outdoorsy vibe in, and you're good enough to go.

  • Fighter: My fighter is pretty much the same as the fighter, except obviously much more rules-light. There would probably be a relatively large number of fighters in Eberron Remixed, because there are so many veterans from the armed forces that fought in the Last War.

  • Monk: I have no alternative to the monk either, but given that the monk is kinda sorta a hybrid between the fighting-man and the thief archetypes, it could be emulated of sorts by picking and choosing elements from those two classes.

  • Paladin: This is also a fighting-man archetype that is hybridized somewhat with the cleric. Given I have no cleric, there's no reason to hybridize the fighting-man with this archetype. Curiously, if I were to do something at all like the Paladin in my game, it would really probably be more like the Cavalier from Pathfinder.

  • Psionic classes: The Shadow sword, being kinda sorta a Jedi, is a hybrid of sorts between the soulblade and the psion. This is as close as I'm going to get.

  • Ranger: The Outdoorsman is already the exact same concept as the ranger, although its implementation is certainly different. As seen above, there's various ways to do it slightly differently. This is kind of the Holy Grail of armchair D&D rules tinkerers. Lots of people love the concept of the ranger, but nobody ever seems to be enamored of the actual execution of the ranger, so alt.rangers have been thick and varied from the very beginning of time, as near as I can tell.

  • Rogue: My own rogue is obviously the exact same concept as the D&D rogue.

  • Sorcerer: The sorcerer is just a different take on the same concept of the magic-user archetype, using spells in a slightly different way. Because I've changed everything about how magic works relative to D&D, it is no longer class-based at all, so there's no such thing as a sorcerer class. I would suggest that the Witch listed above is the best analog, though, if you wanted to try and make one.

  • Wizard: Same as sorcerer, except use the Mage listed above instead of the Witch.