Customize player character classes to world-build & share lore

Transcript

The standard classes that you find in the white box or in BX or in your ye old version of D&D are generally supremely generic and a hodgepodge of different ideas, different tropes, things pulled from different fictional sources. And they're all just sort of mashed together. They form interesting and useful archetypes. But as you may have noticed, particularly with the cleric, that they don't necessarily fit a single vision.

Of course, they're useful on their own. People have been playing them for years, continue to play them. But I think they're also useful because they can serve as templates for you to customize to match your setting. There are a couple of reasons why you may want to do that. One, you may just want to clean them up a bit. As I said, the cleric, for example, is supremely generic and a hodgepodge. They've got some features that come from kind of a horror film background with the turning of dead. They've got a little bit of Templar knight in them with the heavy armor. They've got some of the classic Friar type of character with the prohibition to use swords. Though I don't know if that's even correct since Friar Tuck in the Robin Hood tales, for example, is an expert swordsman. But still just in general, the non-edged weapon use. And they get some nifty spells.

You may think of that and say, well, that's not really my vision of clerics, at least not in this setting. And what really is a cleric anyway? It's not quite a priest. It's not quite a Templar. Or at least once the paladin comes out, you kind of have the paladin sword of Templar versus what the cleric is. Kind of what is it? Fighters are also extraordinarily generic. Part of that is their strength. They can basically use anything in terms of weapons of armor, but they also can feel a little bit flavorless.

Thieves can feel a little bit the same way. Are they burglars? Are they bandits? Are they both? Kind of what are they? And then wizards also, If you, in your mind picture Merlin, then maybe the classic magic user fits pretty well. Or of course, the characters from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. But if your flavor tends towards something else, then the wizard, as it stands, the magic user might need a little bit of tweaking.

By customizing a class, you can really embed some of your world building That often can be a struggle to communicate to the players in a way that doesn't feel like you're just dumping a whole bunch of information onto them. You can add this stuff into the class. It gives it a uniqueness. It gives it a flavor. And it also lets you sneak in some of that world building information that you may want your players to know, hope they'd like to know, or maybe need to know. And you can embed it in their class, so it's right there from the jump.

For this video, I am going to go through an example. I've been working on a little micro setting. Maybe I'll call it a little adventure. But the adventure concerns, in part, a religious order. It's a priory. I could just use the classic cleric for the NPCs. It doesn't really matter. But it occurred to me that if someone were to take the setting or maybe if I were to take this little micro setting and start new characters there, maybe one of them would want to be a cleric. And maybe it might make sense if they're going to play a cleric and they're going to be from this little region that I'm fleshing out that the nearest source of clerics is this priory. So could I take the generic cleric and turn it into something that maybe fits my setting a little bit more? Maybe is able to communicate a few things about the setting a bit and at least embed that player character in the world in the way that just having a generic cleric show up doesn't. So let's just go through that and see where we get to.

So here's the general process.

Start with your standard class templates. In my case, I'm going off of a basic expert or OSE base. Use those standard classes as your templates. So we're going to take in my case, we're going to take the cleric class and see if we want to tweak it a bit.

We can mix and match features. The whole point is to customize the class so we don't need to feel limited to things that are only we don't need to feel limited by what only clerics have. We don't need to feel limited by what's in the class as it stands. We could grab things from other classes. We can grab things from monsters. We can really grab anything we want. Of course, the only limits are imagination. I'm not going to be doing anything really wild and crazy with this one, but we could do that if we want.

We're going to want to balance it as appropriate, but we're not going to get caught up into it. I know that anything I make here or anything that I made for this, it's considered in beta. We'll test it as we go. If we need to tweak it, we can tweak it. I'm not going to worry too much about it. The more wild and crazy you get, the more you probably need to think about balance. In my case, I'm just trying to give a little bit, take a little bit. So I feel like it's going to come out as a net zero. Some folks may look at it and say, oh, they're more powerful than the cleric or other folks might say, oh, they're weaker.

I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's for your game. What folks on the Internet or folks outside think doesn't matter at all. It's all about you and your table. Of course, if I got to publish this and send it out, then maybe that becomes a concern, but even then probably not. So let's go.

We're going to start with a generic cleric. And I went and I basically just pulled all the information from a combination of BX and OSCE. I think I took experience point values fromOSE because I think they're a little bit cleaner than what's in BX, but it doesn't matter. We have some level titles. Obviously, the levels, their experience points, their hit dice. From Acolyte to matriarch or patriarch, we've got their spells. See here, the classic cleric spell progression. And then we have their spell list. I'm not going to read through them all. You can look them up if you'd like. And we also then have their turn undead table.

The one thing I did here is in BX, they give you particular creatures. But if you look at it pretty closely, the creatures follow an HD progression. So I just put the HD progression in there. Skeletons, for example, are 1 HD or sorry, yeah, skeletons are 1 HD. Zombies are 2 HD. I think you then get ghouls, ghasts. There's a couple of creatures that don't fit quite as cleanly, but they have asterixes. And if you just round up, say, take the five asterisk or five double asterisk, I think, specter, but I could be misremembering. Then that kind of bumps it up to six or six to seven. And then I think eight is basically the middle range for a vampire. Basically eight HD. I just kind of went with that just to keep it simpler and frankly, just so that the table didn't extend too far.

Going through the process now for my particular use case. Features or abilities? All right. I wanted to add an ability. The cleric for this order, this well, I should say first, this particular religious sect worships a god of sort of justice. And part of that vision to me was a little bit of sort of clear sight, clear seeing. So I decided to give them special ability to be a little bit better at potentially seeing through illusions. I essentially took the elves secret door detection and I made it about illusions instead. If they're within 30 feet of illusion, they get that kind of roll like you might give an elf around secret doors a roll. If they make the roll, they get a sense that something is not right.

Do we want to modify any abilities? So yes, I did. So I tweaked part of this is just I wanted to sort of neaten up tidy up a bit and make give it a little bit of a more uniform advancement for the game. For turn on dead progression. I also added outsiders as potential targets, which I think is something that in the white box, so I might be mistaken has. But in this case, we're adding outsiders. This would be extra planar creatures. So your elementals and if you have demons or those kinds of those kinds of things, extra planar creatures, creatures who are not native to the whatever the prime material plane or whatever area world you're in. It their ability extends to them as well as undead. Obviously, if you're playing in a game where this is going to happen a lot, then this is extremely powerful. It might be a edge case in other campaigns. Part of the lore for this order is that they were involved in a war against the demon. So I felt it appropriate that they had some ability against demons in their ilk, at least as far as being able to banish them back to whence they came.

I did tweak the spell progression. It's not going to be super noticeable, but I gave them a small first level and I just sort of moved things around a bit. Just it's a little bit of a smoother progression. They actually get some spell levels earlier than the regular cleric. But at the end of the day, if you get all the way the end, they actually have a few less spells than the cleric. I'm not going to go through it point by point. I will show the chart when we get there.

I tweaked the spell list. I removed some of the cleric spells and I added some magic. I added some of the other spells. And the reason is that the order to which this cleric belongs was based around venerating a hero who was a wizard. So it felt appropriate to me that this particular order would have some wizard spells mixed in with their cleric spells. So now we'll go through the class. So it's called a fellow of Edros. Edros is the name of the deity. And then you were a canon of the order of St. Richard. St. Richard is this venerated wizard character.

Edros is most often depicted and symbolized as a fierce hound with a sword in its mouth. After a war against the demon lord, Onwendithys, was won at great cost. The order of St. Richard was formed to honor the wizard witred who had proved decisive in the final battle. As a fellow of Edros, your mission is to embody the virtues of justice, show strength, humility, and compassion, and spread the gospel of Edros through word and deed. As long as you remain in good standing, you may call upon the hospitality of any Priory or abbey of the order. To remain in good standing, you must present yourself at any abbey or priory in whose domain you arrive and accept any duties required by fellows of superior rank. As a member of the order of St. Richard, as long as you remain in good standing, you receive plus two to any reaction rolls from other members of the order.

Whereas the other first level characters need to find a place to sleep for the night and pay for meals, the the canon, the player playing this class, can go to the Priory and in my setting there is one, and sleep there, eat there free of charge. So a little bit of a perk, but they also have that responsibility. They have to make themselves available to be basically given things to do by their superiors. Whether this happens a lot or a little, it's really up to the jam, but it's a way to inject adventure into places. Hey, there's a Priory. I need to go there and I need to present myself and then there's something going on and they ask me to look into it. I have to do that. So it's a nice thing on a meta level for an ability for you as the GM to kind of inject things into your sandbox or your adventure or whatever. What's going on at the Priory or what's going on at the Priory that needs addressing, they may very well make that the responsibility of this character to go and deal with in some way. But you also don't have to use it. It could be nothing going on, in which case, great. This character can go and do what they will.

They do have the special ability to mention before, if there were 30 feet of an illusion, they might detect the effect on a roll of one or two and six. This goes back, in my mind anyway, to the idea of this clear vision, this idea of justice and seeing sort of truth. Maybe I should make that clear in my write-up in the background of this class, which I could. This is really just a draft, but that's the thought process. I just thought it was kind of a neat thing to give them. As a restriction, they have to be lawful. This isn't a generic cleric, so I don't have to be, "Oh, what if they're neutral? What if they're chaotic?" No, this is specific, so I'm going to be specific. They are lawful. They've also lost the ability to wear heavy armor. This is part of a balancing mechanism. I could probably come up with a fictional justification. In this case, I'm not. Yeah, they can't wear heavy armor. They can still wear chain and similar. They can still use shields, but no plate mail. Sorry.

I went through and changed the titles. Some of the titles overlap, and there are a couple that might be in a different order. But I tried to go and find sources of things to get some different names for orders, so I tried to have these basically go in ascending order of responsibility. Sometimes with some of the titles with the old classes, they're a lot of fun, but a lot of them don't make a lot of sense, and a lot of them are really just synonyms for another. They're just in different cultures. I tried to essentially create one that I hope is kind of sensible that makes sense if you read it. So you start as an adherent. You become an acolyte at second level. Third level, you become a preacher. Fourth level, you become a friar. Fifth level, a deacon. Sixth level, an elder. Seventh level, a guardian. Eighth level, a subprior or subpriorous.

Fifth level, you become a prior or a priorous. However, I did put some footnotes in here, which will probably be at the end of the document, but basically for the ones that are footnoted, there is a domain responsibility that you have to take on. So to become a prior or priorous, you must be given responsibility for a prior or you must found one. Same thing for an abbot or abess. You must found an abbey or be given an abbey. And then above those, you have the prior or priorous general and archimandrite, which I just love that term, a hegumen or hegumenia. And then finally, matriarch or patriarch. I couldn't think of a better term, at least not yet. It'd be cool to think about a real custom term that is the head of the fellows of Edros. If I think of one, I'll add it in. But for right now, I just kept matriarch or patriarch. The title is supremely generic for the generic cleric because it could apply to anything. In my case, I just haven't thought of one yet. But if I can think of one, I will put it in there because we get to be specific. We get to think about our setting and what words or phrases in our world for the head of the Catholic Church. We use the pope with this idea of the sort of fatherhood. In another setting, maybe there's a different term. Maybe we would have some kind of emperor or empress or with something at the end of it, you know, emperor of Edros. I don't know. Archon of Edros. I don't know. I just left it as is.

So here's my spell progression, which I just shifted things around a bit. So they get, they get basically get a new level of spell each level until fifth. So first level, they get a first level spell. Second level, they get one second level spell, so on and so forth. And then I just sort of just changed. I just wanted to neaten up, tidy up, just make it a little bit more consistent sort of spell. So, you know, they get through, you know, you see on level one, it goes in threes and then threes and then threes. And I just kept that all the way down. So every fourth level, they get another spell. So one, the third level, that's one first level spell, fourth of sixth, two, then seven, you know, nine, three, and so on. And I just kept that for all the levels. So if you look at the bottom here, level 14, their, their, their number of spells is five, five, four, four, four. If we go back up to the other, the original cleric, it's six, five, five, five, four. So they lose some spells. But you notice here, we lose some of this stair stepping. So they actually get better, or they get more spells at more levels, at least intro to those spells, or their first spells. But then at the end, they have less spells overall. Given how few characters make it up to that level, it's probably a net win in terms of we were just looking at which one is, quote unquote, better. For this version of the cleric, and I might adapt this and just use that for all clerics going forward, if that were important to me. I just decided to do it because I looked at it and I thought, hmm, you know, I do appreciate how for a player when you're leveling up to get kind of new stuff, and it's nice as you're going up levels one, I just like the fact that level one, they have a single spell, it'll probably be cure light wounds. So it's not exactly a grandizing spell, but it's a very helpful spell. And I don't mind them getting that at first level. I understand why they didn't because it's kind of a step down from the wizard who was the spell casting specialist, but I just like to give clerics a spell at first level,

In their spell list, I didn't change too much, but they get shield from the wizard spell list. Let's see what other ones that I add into the with a spell does knock. I think is from the wizard spell list. I think is from the wizard spell list. Lightning Bolt is from the wizard spell list. Confusion is from the wizard spell list. And then I gave them at the end. Think wizard. I from the wizard spell list. And then I gave them some actually some six level wizard spells in their fifth level spell. So they get control weather and reincarnation, but they lost raisin dead. The idea being that raising the dead wasn't a thing the god favors. However, reincarnation-- particularly if I go down this path, I might amend the spell a bit. I think with that one, because they're taking on a new shape, and I might work it. So it's a little bit differently. It looks and feels different than the magic user version. And then also the idea that. There's some kind of maybe exchange or some kind of process where in which the spirit or the soul ever departed is, judged or allowed or some other way where there's this kind of divine connection this divine process happening and then into something new as opposed to just raising the debt. It's kind of what I was thinking about. It doesn't really matter if you might disagree with me and say, oh, that doesn't make any sense. That's bunk. Doesn't matter. This is for me.

But I was thinking down the line, hey, I could rewrite that spell a little bit to make it to bring even more of that flavor that I want in there. And then I updated turn on dead to be turned on dead and also banish outsiders. I did change things a little bit, so they get up to nine hit dice, which I could transfer this to all their clerics as well. But what I also added is that the progression is a little bit slower. The numbers don't change. But what happens is in the classic cleric undead, once you get past seven, they just go to T for turn and then D for destroy. I have two more levels, so they don't get to banish things undead specifically quite as easily because they'll still have to make rolls. They don't get the auto turn and destroy until later. So whereas a normal cleric will turn automatically turned skeletons at second level, this cleric still has to roll and they're still going to have to roll until fourth level, in which they'll start turning automatically and then destroying automatically at level six. So the progression is a little bit different. They do get access to one higher, I guess, level, if you will, of that. I could add that extra level to normal clerics. I'm not sure. I think the only reason why it's not in expert or basic is because there weren't any creatures that fit that bill. Whereas later on, maybe it makes sense to add more hit dice. And you can always add more. I don't think particularly that it's really that the ability stops. It's just so much that that's the only monsters creatures you have. So we could probably just keep adding on to this until we get to some level where even at 14, you don't even get to turn it. But I just added an extra level of hit dice.

And then there are my footnotes about establishing a priory, establishing an abbey, and then, hey, there's, oh yeah, and there's, I didn't mention this. When you become a, you can't become a matriarch or patriarch just on your own. You have to be elected by the collective body of the Hegumin and Heguminas, if any. We just saw this with the Catholic Church electing a new Pope and I inserted that same thing. If this has existed, this is not a new idea. I believe druids. At some point, there's only one arch druid and you have to challenge the arch druid to take over. Similar idea. So if you get to the point where you're going to become the matriarch or patriarch, which I will try to change the label of to something that better fits, you have to get elected first.

That's a problem that who knows how many people will even get to that point. You know, that's a problem I think that most folks will be okay to take on because the chances of them getting to that point, not high. Not high. So it's kind of there, but it's something to keep in the back of your mind. And it's a little bit more setting, a little bit more lore about how things work, adding a little bit of process. I always like adding some of those fictional things you have to do. Right? You can't just become a prioress. I actually made this label that there is actually responsibility that goes with that. To become a priore or prioress, you actually have to become a priore or prioress, which means you have to run a priore. So if you get to level nine and you don't get interested in that, that well, you got to kind of do that. Now, if somebody said, hey, I'm level nine and I don't want to do that, is there something else I can do? I would probably come up with something which kind of ties in with my previous video about making a custom class saying, yeah, we can make an offshoot that a prestige class, if you will, that does something else because there probably is still need for high level knights or defenders. And maybe they'll have some other responsibilities, but they won't have that particular one, that particular authority they'll never have. But of course, I don't need to worry about that now. I'll worry about that if and when somebody takes this class, gets all the way to level nine or about to breach level nine and then has an issue with that or it doesn't fit what they want to do. And then we'll cross that bridge when they get to

So that's my example of a custom class. I'd love to hear about custom classes if you've made them. Just do it by feel. Have ideas, run with them. If you need to balance them later, if it got into play and it felt like some of the advantages of giving my version of this cleric were overwhelming, I could always tweak the XP requirements. I can always tone things down a bit. I'm not doing that at the moment, but we can see. I don't need to figure all that stuff out before it comes to the table. We can just play through it and see how it goes. I get to give at least one potential player some extra lore and insight in the world, which I think they will be interested in because it does impact them in a real way in the game. It's not just stuff to know in the background. This is telling them about their responsibilities and their priorities and they get a little perk out of it. So it's meaningful to them, but I get to spread some of that world information to that player. They're going to know a few things about the world that maybe other players don't know that they can share with them. And hopefully it will be interesting to them because this is something they're actually going to be playing as opposed to just information that tends to be passive.

If I had the chance and the opportunity, I'll make custom classes for everybody in this region to reflect specific versions of those fighters and thieves and wizards. And then each player could get a little piece of the world that's a little bit different than what other pieces other players are getting. And again, because it's player facing, I hope that they'll be more invested in it. And by tuning them, by tuning the class in light of this lore, it's active. It's something that is impactful. And we can do that through our classes. And I don't think it's a super hard thing to do. I don't think it even has to be a really time consuming thing to do. The most time it took for me was just formatting the tables. If I was doing this on a piece of paper, I could have been done with this really fast. I had to kind of relearn some markdown, copying, pasting table data and doing that as a chore. If I was just writing this out, long hand, maybe an hour or so, but some of that is just inspiration is looking things up. You're done. Do that three or four times and you're finished. If you don't have anything, for example, in my little micro setting, maybe fighters are just fighters. I don't have anything particular to give them or thieves are just thieves. And I don't have to do it. But I think if you invest some of your prep into this, I think it will give you the return on investment.

Let me know what you think. Game on, everybody. Talk to you later. Bye now.