Five Moons RPG: Playing With Classes

This is a rough idea of how classes in Five Moons RPG work, how you can customize your class, and how it helps guide your choices if you don’t have a strong idea about what sort of character you want to play.

(The Corebook will actually explain these concepts in more detail and with more examples. Furthermore, this blog presents these explanations with comparisons to D&D/PF terminology, which the Corebook won’t do.)

Building Your Character

Each of the classes in Five Moons RPG is based on a “skeleton” of basic abilities, such as combat prowess, or type of armor and weapon use. In D&D/Pathfinder terms, this is like how cavaliers, fighters, and paladins all have full BAB, light/medium/heavy armor proficiency, and simple/martial weapon proficiency.

Within each class, you can select from a long list of abilities. In D&D/PF terms, this is much like selecting feats and archetypes, except you’re able to pick and choose various class (and archetype) abilities to create your character around your specific concept. For example, if you’re building a melee-oriented martial character in heavy armor, you could choose something like a barbarian’s rage or a ranger’s favored class bonus.

You actually can select abilities that aren’t directly relevant to your class skeleton (for example, a “fighter” could choose to learn a low-level spell, or a “wizard” could choose to learn how to rage), though your character’s use of an unusual ability might not be as efficient or as powerful as one that’s strongly associated with your class.

You’ll also have the option to trade away some of your skeleton’s basic abilities to gain different abilities. In D&D/PF terms, this is like how the barbarian is a full-martial character that doesn’t have heavy armor proficiency, but has other abilities not available to other classes that start with heavy armor proficiency.

Skeleton Concepts

The five general concepts for the class skeletons are: caster, caster/martial, martial, martial/skill, and hybrid/support. (These are not the names the book will use, this is just to explain the focus of each class skeleton.)

Caster: This class skeleton starts with no armor, limited weapons, and a lot of spellcasting ability and other class abilities that augment spellcasting. The D&D/PF sorcerer, witch, and wizard fit into this category.

Martial: This starts with access to the best armor, all types of weapons, and a lot of martial abilities and other class abilities that augment combat and physical efforts. (This skeleton is generally considered less skilled than the martial/skill skeleton, but still has a reasonable access to skills.) The cavalier and fighter fit into this category; the barbarian does, too (although it swaps out its heavy armor prof for other abilities), and so does the ranger (although it swaps out heavy armor proficiency for some spellcasting).

Caster/Martial: This starts with some armor proficiency, some weapon use, and spellcasting that isn’t as good as a full caster skeleton. The cleric*, druid, inquisitor, magus, and oracle fit into this category.

Martial/Skill: This starts with some armor proficiency, some weapon use, and a high amount of skills, plus some abilities that augment martial abilities and skills. (This skeleton is generally considered more skilled than the martial skeleton, but still has a reasonable access to martial abilities.)The monk and rogue fit into this category; some kinds of alchemists and bards would also be appropriate here.

Hybrid/Support: This starts with some armor proficiency, some weapon use, some spellcasting, and other class abilities that support the character and their allies. Your choices determine if the character is more of a caster/support, martial/support, or skill/support character. Depending on those choices, this category includes the alchemist, bard, cavalier, paladin, and ranger.

As you can see, some of the D&D/PF classes fit into multiple categories. This is deliberate, and you’ll have the flexibility to push your character closer to the borderline between categories. For example, if you’re playing a “paladin” caster/martial character, you can focus more on combat abilities like smite (and become more like a pure martial character), or attack or healing spells (and become more like a pure caster character), or auras and defensive spells (and become more like a hybrid/support character). If you want to play a “barbarian,” you could be a berserker (using the martial skeleton and focusing on combat and physical skills), a wilderness guide (using the martial/skill skeleton to put more emphasis on all skills), or a juggernaet (using the martial/caster skeleton to emphasize defensive “spells” and self-heals).

Recommended Choices

With so many options available when you create a character, an inexperienced player is at risk of choice paralysis and can’t decide what sort of character to build. The Five Moons RPG Corebook helps dodge this problem by steering new players through character creation by making suggestions for abilities that would be appropriate for the character. (The Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box did this by giving each of the four classes suggestions for skills, feats, and equipment so you could finish creating the character and start playing.)

These suggestions can only cover a few general character concepts for each skeleton, but are helpful to a new player who doesn’t necessarily know what is a good or bad choice for their character concept. Like most of the game text, each concept is written from a second-person perspective (“You are a blank” instead of “Your character is a blank” or “The fighter is a blank”).

Here are some examples of these concept descriptions (the names are just placeholders):

Aggressive Defender: Your fighting style is a mix of offensive strikes and blocks with your shield. Choose abilities A, B, C, skills, M, N, O, and equipment X, Y, Z.

Iron Monger: You use a huge weapon with two hands to obliterate your enemies and wear heavy armor to protect yourself from incidental harm. Choose abilities A’, B’, C’, skills, M’, N’, O’, and equipment X’, Y’, Z’.

Swashbuckler: You wear light armor to focus on maneuverability, acrobatics, precise attacks, and witty repartee. Choose abilities A”, B”, C”, skills, M”, N”, O”, and equipment X”, Y”, Z”.

 

Altogether, these ideas let you create many different kinds of characters, covering the same sort of game options as archetypes, feat chains, and multiclassing.

If you like this post and where these ideas are going, please check out the kickstarter for my Five Moons RPG.

 

* The D&D/PF cleric is a very powerful class because it has moderate armor, two good saves, average BAB, and full spellcasting. Compared to the fighter, the cleric has slightly worse armor, slightly worse weapons, better saves, slightly worse combat ability, and a huge number of helpful spells that allow it to overcome its relative shortfalls. Compared to the wizard, the cleric has better armor, better weapons, better saves, better combat ability, a huge number of helpful spells, healing spells, and attack spells that are nearly as good as wizard spells. In Five Moons RPG,  clerics are going to be taken down a notch by placing them in the caster/martial category so they’re on par with other classes instead of clearly better.

 

Reminder: If you like reading this blog, I strongly suggest you subscribe to this WordPress blog (by clicking the “Follow” button at the top or bottom of the window), especially if you usually hear about these blogs from a Facebook fan page. Facebook is changing its algorithm for whether or not you get all updates from a page you “like,” which means that you might never be notified of new posts to my Facebook fan page.