Topic: New professions

[Nders]

This thread is for presenting new professions or ideas for new professions for Rm2 and RMC. Remakes of Rm2 classes for RMC are also very welcome.
Be creative.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

OK, I'll bite.

In this thread, we talked about custom professions and about posting ours on the forums. markc created this thread for RMSS/FRP but advised to open one as needed in each subsection as they are very different in creation and construction.
So, this thread is for custom RM2/C professions!

While I know some disagree with the principle, I personally think having a lot of "professions" at one's (as a GM) disposal makes it easier for one's PCs, especially the beginners. The way I GM it, I ask and help my players with a character concept, then suggest him a profession matching (the most) his character concept. I find it easier for the players to have a base from which to start, rather than to read and choose the "base lists" matching his concept, amidst 1000 spell lists! I think the danger is doing it the other side, to show him all the professions and scare him with how many there are. Of course, one could say that the same could be said about the "1000 spell lists", with the GM not leaving the task of choosing the base lists to the player but doing it himself --but the, he should do so every single time! If a concept is interesting enough as to be reused, wouldn't it be a better idea to save such base lists under some name? Meaning, to create a custom profession.
...and I didn't even consider possible skill cost tweaks.

Anyway, in order not to charge each post too much, I'll post each profession in a different post.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

While the concept of the SL Magician is quite interesting, I've always regretted there wasn't some more specialized variants. Of course, one could suggest using the EC High Elementalist, but, in the end, there's little difference between a High Elementalist of Heat-Fire and one of Plasma-Gravity as they both have, in essence, the same spell lists.
Hence, the creation of new professions, or rather variants of the Magician.

To be honest, that hadn't been that easy a task, due to the fact most spell lists around the same elemental concept were basically all variants of the same. It was from mixing existing lists, looking in miscellaneous RM2 public resources (foremost the RM mailing list, the old city-design project at funet and, lately, the Guild Companion) and with time (i.e. I changed the base lists as I found more suitable ones) that I got variants "complete enough" (i.e. with base lists different enough) for them to be the embodiment of a base "profession concept".

The first variant was based on the concept of a Magician specialized in fire, probably because my player was influenced by AD&D where there were a lot of fire-based spells. I called this profession, the Fire Mage, a pure Essence spellcaster.

--> skill costs: same as Magician,
--> profession bonus: same as Magician,
--> base spell lists:

• Sun's Heart,
• Holy Fires,
• Earthfires,
• Fire Forms, from the RoCoVII (Elementalist base list), with these additional spells:
  • 16) Plasma Cloak I: as Fire Cloak I but causes a plasma CC within a radius of 10'R,
  • 18) Plasma Cloak II: as Fire Cloak II but causes a plasma CC within a radius of 10'R, and acts as a Heatarmor against heat, fire and plasma,
  • 19) Plasma Cloak III: as Fire Cloak III but causes a plasma CC within a radius of 10'R, and acts as a Fire armor against heat, fire and plasma,
• Elemental Summons: Fire, from the RoCoII (Magician base list),
• Elemental Area Attack Law: Heat/Fire, from the EC.

Yes, I intentionally tried not to use the Magician Fire Law. The RoCo1 Mana Fires could have been a good idea, and was used in previous version but removed because it didn't add significant additional spells to the three first, which I added as specific to the Fire Mage, leaving Mana Fires as an Arcane spell list.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

A variant of the Magician specialized in fire having been created, it was only a matter of time before I felt a need for a variant specialized in water. Finding his spell base lists, though, was another story because water or liquid-based lists were really basically all the same! Obviously, I didn't want to end using "generic" elemental lists (such as the EC lists), even if I did so for two of the Fire Mage base spell lists. I got the solution by going outside of the "pure" element of water, by thinking about the meaning of the element of water, instead of focusing on the meaning of the word itself. Then, it dawned on me and everything became easy.
So, behold the Water Mage, a pure Essence spellcaster!

--> skill costs: same as Magician,
--> profession bonus: same as Magician,
--> base spell lists:

• Water Law, from the SL (Magician base),
• Frost Law,
• Ice Forms, from the RoCoVII (Elementalist base), with these additional spells:
  • 6) Ice Tentacles I: as Black Tentacles (RoCoV, p73, #12) but the tentacles are made of ice, thus inflict "A" cold criticals. They attack with a +60 medium grapple, and have 30 hits each,
  • 9) Ice Wall: cf. Ice Law (SL, p83) #8,
  • 12) Ice Tentacles II: as Ice Tentacles I but "B" cold criticals, +80 large grapple, and 40 hits each,
  • 16) Ice Barrier: as Ice Wall but creates a half-sphere if the caster stands on the ground, or a full sphere if he's in the air at at least 20' from the ground, as solid as an Ice Wall. Radius in both case is 20'R,
  • 18) Ice Tentacles III: as Ice Tentacles I but "C" cold criticals, +120 large grapple, and 60 hits each,
• Dark Ways, which is a mix of RoCoII's Dark Law (Necromancer base list) and RoCoVII's Dark Forms (Elementalist base list),
• Darkness, from the SL (Evil Magician base list),
• Moon Mastery, from the RoCoIII (Moon Mage), where I'd suggest to double the multiplier of the "Moon Phase" chart otherwise the list is pretty useless. Indeed, first most spell are only effective at night, when the moon is 'up', and, second, they're at x1 power only 1/4 the time? Give me a break~ By doubling the multiplier, you get spell lists normally effective about half the time, half effective 1/4 the time and twice as effective 1/4 the time, which is better to me.

In the end, I wasn't able not to use the Magician Water Law list but I didn't found any water or liquid manipulating list better than it, so I used it.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

With fire and water out of the hat, having earth, metal and wood was a logical move. Or would be. In effect, I never got use for a Magician variant specialized in earth or metal, so I never really worked about the matter. Wood, on the other hand, was another matter, with a NPC of mine being specialized in it (well, the original idea was more along wind, but since wood and air are just the same...). There again, not only thinking about the meaning of the element rather than the word itself helped me finding the lists, though fan resources were used as well. Since I didn't like the sound of "Wood Mage", nor of "Tree Mage", I ended calling this variant the Forest Mage.

--> skill costs: same as Magician,
--> profession bonus: same as Magician,
--> base spell lists:

• Wood Mastery, which is a mix of RoCoI's Tree Mastery (Druid base list) and RoCoII's Wood Shaping (Arcane),
• Wind Law, from the SL (Magician base),
• Air Forms, from the RoCoVII (Elementalist base), with these additional spells:
  • 16) Aircore I: self, 1 rd/lvl, self. Gives the caster a +10 to his Ag and his Qu modifiers for the duration of this spell,
  • 17) Aircore II: as Aircore I but gives a +20,
  • 18) Aircore III: as Aircore I but gives a +30,
  • 19) Airsoul: self, 1 rd/lvl, self. Gives the caster a +30 to his Ag and his Qu modifiers, and allows him to move up to 5x normal pace on air, as in Air Walk.
    
• Mana Current, from the RoCoV (Arcane), with these additional spells:

• 2) Shock Bolt: 100',
• 7) Shock Ball: as Cold Ball, with electricity CC,

• Cloud Mastery,
• Smoke and Mist.

I have to admit that the two later lists aren't really tied to wood, but I got inspired into using them because air would evoke gas to me, as well as teh wind blowing clouds in the sky. From there, Cloud Mastery became a logical step, and from could to smoke and mist, there was only one more step.

[markc]

 Wow I am surprised about the dark lists in the water caster but I can see how it works. I also like the spell lists and plan to put them into my internet spell list folder.

P.S. You might cant to check out the RMFRP Fire and ICE the Elemental Companion and their new take on elements and specialized elemental casters I think it might be a good add to your RM2/RMC game setting.
MDC

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

Wow I am surprised about the dark lists in the water caster but I can see how it works.

Ooooppppsss... I forgot to tell: I'm Asian therefore more familiar with the Chinese elements than the Western ones. To us, water is "associated with the planet Mercury, the north, winter and cold, darkness, night and the colour black. It is also associated with the moon, which was believed to cause the dew to fall at night. It is also believed to govern the kidneys, ears and bones. The negative emotion associated with water is fear, while the positive emotion is calmness."
Similarly, wood is associated with "springtime, the east, the planet Jupiter, the color green, wind" and thunder (though wiki doesn't mention it --it's the reason why sailorjupiter uses thunder ).

[markc]

OLF;
 Do you have a good reference for Oriental elements and their related areas. IE water, darkness, night, cold etc?
MDC

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

Do you have a good reference for Oriental elements and their related areas. IE water, darkness, night, cold etc?

...yes: my father. ^^;;;;;
Not sure it'd help you much, though.

[thrud]

How about generic professions designed around the different realms?
Combat/Stealth/Mentalism/Channeling/Essence/Arcane
Irregular realms for RMC... or something like it?

[Nders]

Yes Olf I think there are many things in fire and ice you might enjoy.
I think the classes you have built sound reasonable though I do consider the various unofficial lists a wee tad out of touch with the power to level ratio we see in spell law and the various companions.
Great to see the amount of different ideas and classes  

[thrud]

Oups, forgot Discipline should be in there as well.

[Arioch]

Cool, new spell lists! 

I'll add the Necromancer profession (actually, a summoner's variant) I made some time ago for the GC:
http://www.guildcompanion.com/scrolls/2006/sep/necromancer.html

[Nders]

That is great Arioch! But don't you think that you should have posted it in the Rmfrp/Rmss instead of the Rm2/Rmc thread as it is not a Rm2 or Rmc profession you are posting 

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

Now, for something completely different!
Being able to hit your opponent at a distance, while he cannot hit you back, is an effective combat tactics, we've discussed about the matter once already. Despite that, there's no (semi-spell user) profession specialized in any, preferring either melee combat enhancement or elemental, magical, attacks. For my part, I guess that, after watching Desperado , I fell in love with the concept of an expert in thrown weapons. Wanting to create such an expert, I found out the aforementioned points in RM2: you couldn't easily tweak an existing profession to such a concept.
So, I made my own, the Mystic Sniper, a semi-spell user of Essence, though Mentalism would fit him as well!

--> skill costs: same as Beastmaster,
--> special skill costs:

• Thrown weapons 1/3,
• Juggling             1/3,
• Yadomejutsu      1/3,
• Brawling            1/3,
• Runes                14,
• Stargazing       4/12,
• Divination            6,
• Circle lore           10.

--> profession bonuses: +3 to thrown weapons BUT +2 to all other combat skills, +2 to athletic skills, +1 to concentration skills, +1 to general skills, +1 to medical skills, +2 to perception skills, +1 to subterfuge skills.
--> base spell lists:

• Essence's Perception, from the SL (Open Essence),
• Bladerunes, from the RoCoI (Arcane),
• Distractions, from the RoCoI (Nightblade base list),
• Range Weapon Mastery, which is the Weapon Mastery spell list from the SUC with the following spell replacements:
  • 2) Bola,
  • 5) Cabis/hurlbat,
  • 6) Warhammer,
  • 7) Kynac,
  • 8) Javelin,
  • 10) Long kynac,
  • 13) Chegain,
  • 17) Typh.
• Thrown Weapon Mastery,
• Phantom Ways.

Reasoning for the skill costs. There are fundamentally two Essence semi-spellusers: the Warrior-Mage and the Beastmaster. I didn't use the former because his costs were around the fact his spell lists have elemental directed spells, making the latter more appropriate.

Reasoning for the skill tweaks. They are the tweaks used by the Shaikan, the warrior-type specialized in thrown weapons, in the ArmsC, therefore an obvious choice on which to base my Mystic Sniper.

Reasoning for the profession bonuses. They are based on the bonuses of the Shaikan, corrected because the sum of the Shaikan bonuses doesn't equal 10. Notice though the little irregularity the Mystic Sniper has, with his +3 to thrown weapons whereas he only has a +2 to combat skills. My reasoning was that I didn't want to increase his combat bonus to +3 because that would have made him as efficient in general combat than any warrior-type, making him very dangerous (unbalanced?) in combat, but I didn't want to lower his thrown weapon bonus to +2 either, since that would have made him less efficient in his own field than any other warrior-type.

Reasoning for the spell lists.

• A combat-oriented semi-spell user should have a spell list enhancing his combat prowess; since the Mystic Sniper is specialized in thrown weapons, Thrown Weapon Mastery was an obvious choice. However, even with it, the Mystic Sniper has a major default, compared to other fighters: he can easily lose his main weapon. The reason why is obvious, since he throws away his weapon; even with the Thrown Weapon Mastery spell list that allows him to increase his probability to get it back, chances remain high that he loses his main weapon. The answer to that problem is to give him a way to create temporary, one-use weapons. For that, the Weapon Mastery from the SUC was an appropriate answer, concept-wise; tweaking it to make it more range weapons-oriented made it an ideal answer.
• What was next? Well, at any level, a major help in combat is given through the enhancement bonus of used weapons; most fighters probably have their favourite weapon a +something, even if a mere non-magical +5 at low levels. Alas, weapons created through the Range Weapon Mastery spell lists don't have any bonus. I hence wanted a list giving temporary bonuses; permanent enchantments such as the ones given through alchemical, Magus and the like process were obviously useless. Two lists sounded appropriate, RoCoIV's Weapon Alterations and RoCoI's Bladerunes, with the latter a better choice because the bonuses it gives are only effective once, which is exactly what a Mystic Sniper needs.
• Since the Mystic Sniper fights from far away, I gave him Essence's Perception, so that he could spy on his targets from a distance.
• Another consideration I had for him was that, not only does he to see his target from afar, he also needs to be able to keep his distance! Three lists fitted the bill: Lofty Bridge, Highriding and Distractions. I didn't want the former, though, because of the Teleportation spells that are more IMO "travelling" spells than "staying at a distance". So, Distractions it was.
• At last, since a Mystic Sniper biggest asset is to avoid close combat, I estimated his usual tactics would be attacking from a distance, and usually by surprise, hitting from a hidden position then going back into hiding. As such, I wanted for him a spell list uniquely based on dissimulation, concealment, etc. Since no spell list is only focusing about the matter, I created my own, mixing several lists. Of course, since some spells, such as Invisibility, are cancelled as soon as the Mystic Sniper attacks, he still should develop his Stalk/Hide to the highest degree, so that he could attack while being invisible, become visible, hide through normal means long enough to become invisible again, etc. ^_^

Anyway, there. Enjoy!

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

(Water Mage)

• 18) Ice Tentacles III: as Ice Tentacles I but "C" cold criticals, +120 large grapple, and 60 hits each,

That was supposed to be "...+120 huge grapple...", of course.

That is great Arioch! But don't you think that you should have posted it in the Rmfrp/Rmss instead of the Rm2/Rmc thread as it is not a Rm2 or Rmc profession you are posting 

Yep, I think markc's thread feels lonely~

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

I hope I won't remain the only one posting here, but... T_T

The following profession is a bit special, because it's tied to a specific culture. The Hunter-Killer Corps is a special police corps of sort, specialized in hunting down magic-users having been declared "renegades" (criminals if you want) by their country. Hunters-Killers usually work in teams of five, and rarely less than three. There are two kinds of Hunters-Killers: people who wanted to become Hunters-Killers from the start and studied in the Corps' academy, and people who got an education in some other magical fields, then decided to later join the Corps. While the latter can (obviously) be of any RM profession, the former got a similar education, therefore similar abilities: they are of the Hunter-Killer profession described in this post.

Hunters-Killers are semi-users of Essence magic, with a dance-like combat style based on speed, circular moves and sudden strikes. Their magic deals with combat buffering increasing their speed, accuracy, awareness in battle and altering the effect of their strikes (paralysis, sleep, etc.), manipulation of electricity (Hunter-Killers have a plethora of thunder spells), anti-magic spells (since they're supposed to hunt magic-users), tracking spells, mental control/influence, healing, or movement.

--> skill costs:

• For primary costs:
  

  Weapon skills	2/5, 2/7, 3/7, 4, 8, 11
  Manoeuvring in Armour		Magical Skills
  Soft Leather	1/*	Spell Lists	4/*
  Rigid Leather	2/*	Runes	2/5
  Chain	3/*	Attunement	2/6
  Plate	4/*	Channeling	4/*
  		Directed Spells	2/5
  Special Skills		General Skills
  Ambush	3	Climbing	2/8
  Linguistics	1/*	Swimming	2/5
  Adrenal Moves	2/7	Riding	2/5
  Adrenal Defense	20	Disarming Traps	4
  Martial Arts	2/7	Picking Locks	4
  Body Development	2/6	Stalk & Hide	2/5
  		Perception	2/5

• For secondary skills, do as suggested by Nicholas Zoss for his custom Warrior-Mage.
  

  For every 8 DP's (of the Warrior-Mage's costs) it takes to get 2 ranks, subtract one point, rounding up. Make resulting number and formulate a new skill cost. GM whimsy is key here.
  
  Eg. A 2/6 cost would convert to a 1/6 or a 2/5 cost, depending on GM whimsy. A 3/7 skill would give 2/6 cost, or a 1/7 if your GM is kooky.

--> profession bonuses: +2 Combat/Arms, +2 Directed Spells, +1 Basic Spell, +1 Magical, +1 Body Dev, +1 Perception, + 1 Athletic, +1 Academic.

--> mandatory base spell lists:

• Deadly Dance, from the RoCoII (Dervish base list),
• Mana Currents, from the RoCoV (Arcane), with these additional spells:
  • 2) Shock Bolt: 100',
  • 7) Shock Cone: 100', 10'R at end. Use Cold Ball with electrical criticals.
  • 9) Lightning Rage: creates a 10'x5'x60' rectangle of electricity. Use Fire Ball with cone rules and electricity criticals,
  • 10) Lightning Cone: 100', 10'R at end. Use Lightning Ball.
  Yes, there are two spells at level 10 in this variant.
• Trace Law, from the RoCoVII (Closed Essence),
• The Ægis, from the RoCoVII (Witch-Hunter base list), in the order Essence/Mentalism/Channeling instead of Channeling/Essence/Mentalism.

--> optional base spell lists: a Hunter-Killer chooses 2 of these lists as his base lists, and the remaining two become Open Essence to him:

• Mind's Touch, which is the RoCoII's Warrior-Mage's base list, with the Staying and Telekinesis spells replaced, as follows:
  • 1) Mind’s Hand I: cf. Telekinetics (SUC, p128-129) #3.
  • 4) Mind’s Hand II: cf. Telekinetics (SUC, p128-129) #8.
  • 8) Mind’s Hand III: as Mind’s Hand I but affects up to 50 kg/lvl.
  • 13) Mind’s Hand V: cf. Telekinetics (SUC, p128-129) #14.
  • 17) Catch: cf. Telekinetics (SUC, p128-129) #18.
  • 19) Word of Death*:  cf. Spirit Mastery (SL, p78) #19.
  • 20) Mind’s Hand VII: as Mind’s Hand I but affects up to 250 kg/lvl.
  • 25) Phrase*: cf. Spirit Mastery (SL, p78) #25.
• Concussion's Ways, from the SL (Open Channeling),
• Displacing Law, as created by Nicholas Zoss for his custom Warrior-Mage,
• Discharging Ways, from the AlC (Evil Alchemist base list).

Reasoning for the skill costs.

Development costs for the class should be lowered due to a mathematical error. (They regress toward the mean for those who know what I'm talking about.) The creators of the class took two diametrically opposite sets of skill costs, combined them, and halved the resulting numbers. This makes the Warrior-Mage suffer from high costs all around, but especially in the first rank cost, mostly being 2/Xs or 3/Xs. My rule serves to mitigate this first rank cost inflation. However, I make no direct suggestions, because if all a WM's first skill costs were ones and twos bad things would happen. The GM is going to have to decide which first skill costs to decrease on their own. Generally the rapid development costs still are and should be steep. N.B. The only costs for a standard WM that start with 1/X are: Religion, Med. Cleansing. They also have tactics, signalling, direction sense, and animal handling with 1/X costs, but these are very similar to all the other professions' skill costs.

Reasoning for the profession bonuses. +2 to Combat because the Hunter-Killer is a fighting class with directed spells (so the +3 was lowered to +2), others are obvious IMO.

Reasoning for the spell lists.

• A combat-oriented semi-spell user should have a spell list enhancing his combat prowess. In my original idea, I had imagined the Hunter-Killed with a "dance-like combat style based on speed, circular moves and sudden strikes", so the Dervish combat list sounded perfect. One problem may be the many Touch spells but I personally consider the spell to transmit its effect to its user's weapon.
• The Mana Currents was also because of my original concept of the Hunter-Killer, as a thunder-based class.
• Trace Law and The Ægis were pretty obvious lists, considering the class' focus and purpose (hunting down magic-users). I chose the latter over lists such as the Paladin's Spell Breaker or the Closed Essence's because of their spells' duration, which is "C" whereas The Ægis has durations of "1 rd/lvl (C)".
• Making the other 4 lists optional wasn't merely done because I had too many lists appropriate for my class, but mainly because I wanted my Hunters-Killers to act and be foremost efficient as a team. With lists being made optional, that'd push my Hunters-Killers into making teams with people specialized in different combination of the lists. As an example, my NPC test team, the cardinal Birds, is composed of four women, with Ryunel having Mind's Touch and Concussion's Ways and being the team's diplomat, Tornade having Displacing Law and Discharging Ways and being the team's principal fighter, Nora having Concussion's Ways and Displacing Law and being the team's healer, and Merien having Mind's Touch and Discharging Ways and being the team's leader.
• I gave my Hunter-Killer Concussion's Ways because such a profession needs a way to heal himself. The list was preferred over Body Renewal (which is Essence whereas Concussion's Ways is Channeling) because of its spells' range: as a member of a team, a Hunter-Killer needs to be able to heal people other than himself.
• I gave Displacing Law because of the need for a movement list, especially one with teleportation, indispensable to track magic-spell users. I chose this list over Lofty Bridge because it is more unique (Lofty Bridge is Closed Essence, after all) and over Highriding because it was more complete. Thanks to Nicholas Zoss, I didn't even have to do the list mixing myself, as I did for other professions! \o/
• Discharging Ways is going back to the very purpose of the class, once again, with the ability not only to cancel spells, but even magical powers in items. I originally used the Wizard's Spell Dampening base list then decided on this one because I don't use the AlC, save for the Theocratist, so giving this list to the Hunter-Killer made it exclusive to the profession.
• As for Mind's Touch, I did want to give the Hunter-Killer some ways to arrest his target without a recourse to combat, so a mind-influencing spell list sounded a good choice. Why not to choose Spirit Mastery or even Nicholas Zoss' Spirit Law? Well, the former wasn't unique enough for my tastes while the latter has illusion spells I didn't feel right for my class. Replacing the Staying and Telekinesis spells is a recent change, due to our recent discussion about how weak such spells are, compared to all the others.

There, comment, enjoy... and post your own custom professions, please~ m(_ _)m

[Nders]

This is by far the most interesting profession you have yet posted Olf. There does however seem to be the same powerproblem that there was with the first ones you created only with the hunterkiller the costs are also tweaked to an all time low for a semi spell user. Could you try to explain why your classes are so powerful and how pure arms classes fare in your campaigns i.e. if they are compensated in any ways etc. Also I think you are too kind when allowing essence users access to concussion ways as they thereby get aces to actual functional healing which is the one drawback of essence.
Let me just mention that I really like your idea and it seems to me to be a nice piece of work before I go on
Mana currents is an issue to me as well as it is not only SO poorly written and balanced that it is useless as a serious addition to the spell repertoire the attack tables are also full of flaws and typos and thus it was only in use for a few years before it was cast aside. I know this is a lot but could you possible design a new list around the spells you invented yourself without the use of the lightning ball attacktable?

[Nders]

Just read your view on realms in the filling arcane realm anyone thread It explains a lot.

[Arioch]

That is great Arioch! But don't you think that you should have posted it in the Rmfrp/Rmss instead of the Rm2/Rmc thread as it is not a Rm2 or Rmc profession you are posting 

I should pay more attention to where I'm posting: I thougt I was in the rmfrp forum when I posted... and this morning I was looking for this thread in that part of the forums and I couldn't find it, now I see why!