And because I've never thought of such a deviation, I've never proposed a new character class ~ though that is a major sport of RPG bloggers everywhere. It isn't possible to go down a long blogroll on a site without finding someone who has recently written about a new character class.
This said, I might have an idea.
I hesitate, of course. I don't want to make this sort of thing a habit. But I suppose once every 40 years is okay ...
I am imagining a character class with no combat ability, no spells, no special physical capabilities, no role-playing or conversational talents ... very little, in fact, that might provide any real help in a fight. And while there would be a facet of the character that would provide some healing benefit, none of that would be magical and virtually none of it would apply to restoring hit points.
There would be very little weapon training, no ability to wear armor and no special powers. The combat table would be the mage's, with comparable weapons, and little else to keep them alive. Experience needed to go up a level would be low, however, perhaps lower than the thief, which would fast-track the sage abilities. Hp, d6 (because I'll give this one small benefit over the mage/illusionist). It would be a tough row to hoe (though a scholar could tell you how to hoe it).
Basically, the other characters would be needed to keep the scholar alive. But in the games I play, that would be seen as a feature, not a bug. A scholar would be a great henchman.
And a very different sort of character. With a different outlook, and different goals. Someone who might step up and do their part in a fight, but wouldn't need to base their character's aspirations on raw physical and mental power.
Might be interesting.
AD&D had an NPC class for that, the sage.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this would be fun to play, tbh.
Very intriguing, and something I've played with within the existing class structures of 5e. I used rogue (thief) and bard as the base for two builds. The characters had little to no interest in engaging in combat, being a merchant and a fop. Unfortunately there's no way they'd work in a standard game so they've remained concepts only.
ReplyDeleteI hope you continue with this line of thinking, I'm interested to see where you go with it.
Do you consider NPC classes an option?
ReplyDeleteFighter is the elite class. It's for players, sure, but it's also for NPCs who have the means to acquire and support training. Man-at-arms would be the appropriate equivalent for an NPC of lower social status.
Laborer. Brigand. Scholar. Artisan. Aristocrat. Could these stand in as NPC-only classes?
That is indeed interesting! And funny you should post that since I just today discovered that Arneson originally wrote the Sage in Blackmoor to be a player character. I would be very interested to see how one such character would function at the table.
ReplyDeleteI'd play it.
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with you, any new character class has to focus on non-combat benefits, as in-combat abilities are pretty well-covered at this point.
Of course, though true of any class, the benefits of knowledge vary wildly from DM to DM. Though with your sage system, which does away with skill checks to instead grant abilities and the ability to just know what you know (which is extremely unusual in RPGs), it works.
As I remember it, the Sage class that emerged was a sometimes spellcaster, or at least the option to shift to one:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Sage_(3.5e_Prestige_Class)
So I don't consider this the same at all.
Jorunkun, perhaps you're not familiar with my sage abilities system.
Ozymandias, I'm definitely interested in keeping the "level" as an educated elite. I'm not interested in giving laborers a "level." Brigands are fighters or men-at-arms, Artisans are a series of secondary skills, Aristocrats shouldn't have a single set of abilities or motivations.
A merchant, say, may have some of the same abilities as a "scholar," but that doesn't make the merchant a level, any more than a cook who has a Bard gastronomist's few cooking abilities make the cook levelled. I have some precise thinking about this; I did not mean to suggest the post would be a way of elevating deliberately non-levelled NPCs into levelled NPCs.
Jorunkun may be referring to the alternate classes or NPC classes that were published in Dragon Magazine. Most of them were poorly considered or half-finished exercises in creativity, but there were a few diamonds in the rough.
ReplyDeleteThere have been a couple of attempts at what you suggest, but they usually heavily rely on languages, minor / major / grand familiarity with areas of sage knowledge, bardic lore skill percentage, and either some oracular abilities or spell casting to increase their overall utility.
Exactly, Baron. And I am definitely thinking of a non-magical, non-imaginary feats class. Some who, with Arthur C. Clarke's blessing, would eventually be able to turn science into magic, but definitely not someone who automatically gained esoteric, fantasy abilities.
ReplyDeleteYou might find the Leyden and Stockholm papyri interesting. There are a number of interesting processes there.
ReplyDeleteMy wife found them foundational for her "Alchemy and Potions" class. She teaches the kids about ancient alchemy as an infant science, the concept of cryptography, using the ancient recipes to make mineral salts, how to make tempera paint from the pigments and egg yolks, and rounds out the term having the kids paint with the materials they made.
All 100% real and reproducible. We haven't tried the making gems section just yet, however.
How would levels in a Scholar class align with "meat damage-as-XP"?
ReplyDeleteXP for a scholar would still have to be achieved through combat. The scholar would still have to get in there and do damage and get hit. Therefore, XP would be gained the same as any other person. The principle would be the same as for any other class: gain XP, gain levels, gain abilities.
ReplyDeleteThis is still a game, and there are still "illogics" we overlook for the sake of that game.
I'd play it.
ReplyDeleteThough I imagine it would make in interesting dynamic where the kind of steward class would be looking forwards to everything between combat and the other players wanting to do everything in combat more...
But it does allow for a LOT of utility in-between and at the beginning of fights. Such as potentially knowing weaknesses, opportunities in towns and wilderness and so on.
I think the mage still has a lot of utility potential as well as combat potential though, so I imagine there would be a lot of adapting to working with those skills.
Would there be any merit to giving such a scholar character some skills to consolidate equipment so as to reduce encumbrance?
ReplyDeleteI'm imagining an analogue to an amateur ultralite hiker in the modern day, who has done a lot of research on how to pack things and what to bring but doesn't actually have hiking experience, when I think of an adventurer-scholar.
Though that might in play feel like too much of a grab-bag of powers, to give them a logistics management tool as well as sage abilities... unless one of the sage abilities already does this, and I've missed it.
Encumberance is based on weight, not package positioning; and the strategy of what to carry and not to carry is a game I think should equally apply to every player.
ReplyDelete