Class Showcase: Cleric & Occultist (2023)

Given that it's nearly Halloween, it seemed like Occultist was an obvious choice for today's post. And since D&D's cleric class famously was based off of the vampire-hunter Van Helsing, that seemed like another solid candidate.

• The Cleric (d4/d10)
• The Occultist (d10)

Like many classes, the Cleric breaks down into essentially a melee subclass (Battle Priest) and a ranged subclass (Invoker). In the 4e paradigm where [role + power source = class], it makes sense to split Invoker off from Cleric; in a paradigm closer to 5e, Invoker just seems like a specialized cleric, with particular spells picked. I chose to give the Cleric class a d10, so that the Invoker could have a few extra reserves to burn for powering their abilities (rather than putting debuffs on themself to power them, as in 4e) -- this is also why the Invoker is one of the first real instances where the newly-defined debilities make an appearance, within a class' features.

Beyond that, I felt like a "healing word"-esque spell and a buff like Bless sort of neatly encapsulates the basic Cleric's toolkit in 5e -- barring specific flavours from domains beyond the obvious divine-ish types.

The Occultist was a class I actually took a long time to settle on a name for. I eventually picked this one after it came up as a class in Darkest Dungeon. In earlier iterations, I had the Animate Dead ability as exclusive to the Necromancer, and the Eldritch Blast ability as exclusive to the Warlock. In the previous iteration, I decided to make both of these abilities available to all Occultists (mainly because they both required a standard action to use) and treated Necromancer and Warlock more as 'roles' rather than distinct subclasses. This lastest version kind of splits the difference; the two aforementioned abilities remain universal, but the curses remain specific to each subclass. The Banishment ability was changed to a controller ability from a Necromancer ability, the Hellish Rebuke ability was changed from a Warlock ability to a striker ability, and Vampiric Touch was added as a support ability.

Generally the ethos in TNP has been to try (as much as possible) to fit the abilities of each class into 3 features, which are sometimes bundles of smaller features -- almost akin to how feats work in 5th Edition D&D. There is some bending of this rule; a class might have one feature and each subclass might have 3 of their own features, in addition to that (such as the Cleric... sort of.) The Occultist essentially has 4 features (one of which has 2 different subsets, depending on subclass) and 3 possible role features, on top of that. In the earliest versions of TNP, the idea was that ALL classes should be able to fit onto one sheet of paper; now, it's usually 3, but some of the simpler classes make in at 2 (with the 1st page essentially being the key, basic statistics for each class loadout.) Hopefully this allows the game to overall strike the right balance between complexity as well as range of character options.

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Check back for the next post on November 10th!

Class Updates: August 21st (2023)

Quick overview:

• Cleric: I would consider to be updated
• Druid: stable, but not complete
• Occultist: work in progress
• Warlord: preliminary work started
• Spellbinder: not started

As mentioned before, figuring out the Disciple class category (Druid, Warlord, Occultist) is going to be a big piece to completing this puzzle. My general intention with the category is to possibly have their "unique thing" be that they can switch their subclass -- possibly requiring a long rest, or spending a reserve, or similar. We'll see if the finalized designs (for the Occultist in particular) make this workable.

Looking back on previous drafts, both the Druid and the Occultist had the option to gain training with either "Influence" (now "Communication") or Subtlety, as a "category upgrade"; this is going to at least be kept as a placeholder form of category upgrade, particularly since the Warlord previously had the option to gain training with one Attribute or one Skillset (abeit as a "class upgrade"). This may ultimately be revised down to a skill rank, rather than skill training.

The other placeholder category upgrade will be the ability to gain an additional power source; currently this can be any power source, but may ultimately be scaled back to "any power source from your class list."

The final (obvious) category upgrade option is to gain additional roles; this is pretty straightforward for the Warlord, and will probably be kept as access to the different animal forms for the Druid, but for the Occultist it will likely require a major class rework. As it stands right now, the structure of the Occultist is effectively a "roles, but no subclasses" setup, which needs to be expanded to include both roles and subclasses. Essentially, the Necromancer and Warlock "roles" will become subclasses, and new role mechanics will need to be layered on in addition.

In case I've forgotten to mention it previously, there was a late substitution on the 3rd slate, whereby the Druid was changed to a d4/d12 class and the Guardian was changed to d4/d6. This worked out a lot better since the Druid was originally built off a d4, and Guardian was built off a d6; essentially, Guardian utilized stacking d6s of extra damage, so converting it to a d12 was actually a bad fit. Conversely, the Druid wasn't built to utilize such a mechanic, so the change to a d12 is a better fit -- if anything, it's somewhat under utilized for the class.

There were some similarities I found while working on the Cleric (d4/d10) and Druid (d4/d12) since their dice are so similar. Mechanics such as the "Druidic Focus" (which previously called for a double roll of "your class die") have mostly been changed to instead roll both class dice; I consider this to be only a "placeholder change," since testing is obviously going to be needed. Another thing is that the Cleric in particular had a lot of utilization of "advantage on base damage" -- a mechanic which was only very recently axed from the designs, precipitating several reworks. So, porting the class from a d8 to d4/d10 (in addition to those reworks) has likewise created a lot of "placeholder changes."

I think I'm going to have a fairly easy time with the Spellbinder, because the basic structure is already in place. Blademasters' unique thing is that they can gain certain features from other classes, and the Sage Domains are already essentially built to be used by multiple classes in the slate; the subclasses for Spellbinder are already formalized, so most of the work will be in format updating, and potentially adding Occultist roles to the list of features that can be borrowed. Being a 2nd slate class, Spellbinder remains using the same, single class die -- so almost nothing should need to change mechanically.

Classes, Now in Session (2018)

So, I didn't finish all of the classes that I wanted to, but I'll update this post with links to them here, as well as in the core rules doc (in the sidebar) as I get them finalized.

• The Druid (d4)
• The Rogue (d6)
• The Cleric (d8)
• The Occultist (d10)
• The Spellbinder (d12)

The first class I got done was the Druid; I think it still needs a few more checks (in terms of math) but I like how well it fit into the new formatting and progression systems, and overall the class is just a lot cleaner now. I'm still a little iffy on breaking the forms into upgrades, but hopefully some testing will give a sense of whether each one is useful enough to justify it.

Next up was the Occultist. It helped that Druid was already out of the way, because the two classes share a "category," and so ended up being structured fairly similarly. One major change was to no longer have Eldritch Blast and Animate Dead as "role features," instead making them part of the core class, and splitting up Banishment, to give each role a more distinctly-flavoured version. Curse was likewise broken up, with the basics of it made into the class' "starting feature."

I then moved on to the Cleric. There were a few more outdated mechanics here than in some of the other classes, and a few more tweaks that needed to be made. Cleric has always been sort of a "vertically integrated" class, but it has enough room for customization, that it can be built in a handful of different ways. I'm particularly happy with some of the changes to Bless and Divine Smite, making the class overall more built around the "double roll" mechanic.

I had a few ideas for the direction I wanted to take with the Assassin, but the Sorcerer is going to be a bigger job to tackle. In terms of the leveling, the foundations are already more or less in place, with the Ranger being part of the same "category" and already having the Sage ready, from the same slate. With the Warlock being less of a distinct class now, that could have some impacts on how Sorcerer is built.

The Spellbinder hopefully should be a quick fix; with most of the action economy stuff and combat math ironed out after the previous playtest, it will likely just be a matter of updating the 4.1 version to the new designs.

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That's all folks! This here blog is on break for summer; expect the next post on July 27th!