nuba km said:
Telsa7Volt said:
I am playing 4th edition. they are a group of monk like people who believe immortality can be achieved by a true balance between nature, mind and body between all people. they from their powers drawn from scrolls from an ancient civilisation they also have secret vaults with extremely powerful scrolls in them that only masters of the three pieces of immortality should learn. so (class name) people dent to be very relaxed and in control of their emotions. in the party they would fight multiple enemies at a time or take down strong enemies depending on the skills you pick. a level twenty would vary between your specialisation, of body and mind would avoid every attack an enemy throws at them and counters it, of the storm would be serounded in their chosen element to fight entire armies and of earth and steel would take beating from all sides without flinching and take down one enemy at time in the blink of an eye.
So, God class?
Really, you need to put things into perspective here. Dodging things in mail armour? Yeah, that's a real pipe dream. Martial artists use less armour in a trade off for more mobility. They can perform all those crazy flips because they have nothing but their own body weight weighing them down. You're effectively saying your class can do both? That's sort of imbalanced, dude.
The second problem is the fact that your Power Source is from three branches within D&D. Having someone who has Martial, Nature and Arcane as their Power Source sure sounds awesome, but that's because it's unbalanced.
The third issue is that this can already be achieved gameplay wise. The great thing about 4.0 is that it leaves zero restriction roleplaying wise so you can make anyone be anything with their personality, backstory, etc etc. This means that, feasibly, I could just get a Sorcerer, take the multi-class feat into Monk or Fighter and call it a day. Bam! I just made your class with existing classes.
Then we get to the less than awesome mechanic: the dice damage. 1d8 + 1d4 = 2-12 + strength damage at level one with a basic attack. Overpowered. There is no weapon in this book that does that kind of damage as a one handed weapon. Plain and simple, this is overpowered. Even looking at the Monk class, he gets 1d8
only, but does also get a +3 proficiency bonus. This is, however, one of his class features and only effectively gives him a longsword as long as he's unarmed. It cannot, however, gain magical properties like a regular weapon.
The other thing I want to touch on is that there are ten element types in D&D 4.0: acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant and thunder.You have a six sided die. Did you choose to exclude some? If so, why? This could potentially make the character class effectively weaker in some areas against, say, that Sorcerer/Monk hybrid I suggested. While this could be a pivitol point in where you say "well, that's the balance for his other abilities" this is not. He can still achieve more than one role as well as a main character (through concept) so that still makes it potentially overpowered.
All that being said, here's my suggestion: take your time! Think about your class. Go through your Player's Handbook one section at a time and figure it out. What's my class's primary role? Does he run around and deal damage to everyone? Does he absorb a lot of damage and protect people? What are his secondary roles? What does he branch into as sub roles? Is there a little bit of healing under that tank? Is there some party buffs underneath his damage?
The other thing you need to consider is balance. Yes, everyone loves to just imagine this nimble fighter that hops around in heavy armour, using two great wepaons and firing magic beams from his eyes, but realistically your class can't do everything. They need a strength and a weakness. Otherwise, what's the point of traveling with a party? If your class could do everything perfectly, it wouldn't need three to four other people backing it up. If you're wearing armour, armour checks start to go down. You even get speed decreases for heavier armour (which you're suggesting) which is the exact opposite of mobile and dodgy.
Overall, I'm not sure this would be a great idea for a base class. However, I think this would be an
awesome idea for a Paragon class, specifically under monk. At best we have the Radiant Sun class which just bolsters you with Radiant damage. I want to see some of the really cool stuff from 3.5 brought back over with the cryokinetic and pyrokinetic. This seems like it'd be a neat twist with the monk being able to effectivly change his element damage type with extra damage from his fists (say, between acid, fire, ice and lightning, as they're the traditional D&D stand-ins for earth, fire [duh], water and air?) and get a few neat encounter and dailys. You might want to consider that instead.
However, don't let this discourage you if you're
really dedicated to making a base class. I would say, though, to take your time, get at least an adventure or two under your belt to get a feel for the mechanics and system and get
lots of feedback from many different players from many different campaigns (not just the dudes around your table) before you consider it complete.
EDIT: Switched around a few paragraphs to make the post flow better.