Character Type: BLADEPACT

character-type
#1

BLADEPACT
BLADEPACT.png1876x2838 428 KB

Hi :slight_smile: I made this hybrid caster/fighter for fun, feel free to use! I appreciate any thoughts as well

Repository: Character Types
#2

This Type is really cool! I love seeing a badass shield for Starting Loot. I feel like all the Abilities and Loot have nice distinct flavor, they all seem like they would be useful. The Milestones are intense. Holy Shock looks like it would be crazy, I guess it’s pretty situational (you’ve gotta find yourself some EVIL targets :laughing:).

I do wonder and the d4 spells on Imbue Mastery. If you have to Roll to Cast to imbue the spells, that seems like a LOT of prep work for one big hit. Can you load up all the spells at once? My first thought for an alternative Mastery that would be pretty powerful but a little simpler would be, “Spells you Imbue will unleash for the next 1D4 hits”.

I think I have a couple of PCs in my games who could use some of these Milestones. Really nice work!

#3

I’m glad you like it!

I can see how Imbue Mastery activating the spell 1D4 times would be interesting, too! When I thought about it, the intent was that the Bladepact could slowly prepare over multiple rounds, in town, when traveling, exploring, delving, etc, to have a decisive strike available when needed, but it is indeed a bit more complicated and more bookkeeping in general!

I dig your simple approach to it

#4

That’s a good point, it’s nice to have “downtime” actions and abilities to make good use of turns when your character doesn’t have anything pressing to do.

#5

Not sure what World setting this is for, but it smells pretty OP to me.

Anytime you have terms like ‘can never be destroyed’ or adding 2 or more STATS to attacks and effort or having multiple effects triggering at once you’ve, then you’ve entered the OP zone IMO.

When I design game rules I always ask myself, “Is this so loaded with benefits that everyone will want to play it?” If the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘probably’ or ‘why would they play something else?’ I know I’ve crossed the line and need to dial things back.

A good test is to run it against regular character builds in the ICRPG master ed and see how many times the new build wins.

#6

Hey, fair points!

When I thought of this I didn’t think of binding just one item that can’t be destroyed as being too OP.

WYRDBRAND mastery might be considered OP but in my experience character’s don’t tend to take both WIS and INT, and being a a mastery feature, it’s not available from the get go and only attained through extensive play, which has to be rewarding IMO.

Considering this is a melee focused character you could hardly abuse it by dumping all stats into INT and/or WIS, since you’d need STR/DEX up until you get your mastery, and some CON to stay up in the fray.

The basic characters all have features that add to your rolls, such as starting loot (weapon gem), milestone abilities (firebug) and even the fighter’s pit master mastery that is essentially the same feature but STR instead of INT+WIS.

From my experience with the system, it’s also not really about fine tuned balance so pitting one class agaisnt the other doesn’t seem such a fair comparison - but even so, feel free to tone down, modify, or grab anything from this if you think is interesting and maybe play around with it in your games, and let us know if any feature in particular felt too OP!