Expert: Difference between revisions
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Cunning and crafty, the expert is a mundane individual whom nonetheless performs great feats, not by force of arms, but rather through their intellect and resourcefulness. | Cunning and crafty, the expert is a mundane individual whom nonetheless performs great feats, not by force of arms, but rather through their intellect and resourcefulness. | ||
* Paths: [[Expert#Artificier|Artificier]] | * Paths: | ||
** [[Expert#Artificier|Artificier]] - Specialist in working with arcane devices. | |||
** [[Expert#Factorum|Factorum]] - Jack of all trades, master of none. | |||
** [[Expert#Rogue|Rogue]] - A consummate locksmith, trap-worker, and ne'er-do-well. | |||
** [[Expert#Tradesperson|Tradesperson]] - Skilled in refining materials to make items. | |||
* Hit Dice: d6 | * Hit Dice: d6 | ||
* Skill Points: 8+Int bonus (x2 at first level) | * Skill Points: 8+Int bonus (x2 at first level) | ||
Latest revision as of 15:03, 17 March 2025
Cunning and crafty, the expert is a mundane individual whom nonetheless performs great feats, not by force of arms, but rather through their intellect and resourcefulness.
- Paths:
- Artificier - Specialist in working with arcane devices.
- Factorum - Jack of all trades, master of none.
- Rogue - A consummate locksmith, trap-worker, and ne'er-do-well.
- Tradesperson - Skilled in refining materials to make items.
- Hit Dice: d6
- Skill Points: 8+Int bonus (x2 at first level)
- Class Skills: Alchemy, Appraise, Balance, Bluff, Carpentry, Culture, Disable Trap, Escape Artist, Heal, Hide, Listen, Lore, Metalsmithing, Occultism, Pick Pocket, Religion, Set Trap, Speak Language, Spot.
- Saves: Reflex high, Fortitude low, Will low
- Attack Bonus: 3/4 progression
- Armour Proficiency: Light, Shields
Paths
Artificier
Original Tabletop source: Eberron Campaign Setting
Please note: The following class write-up is for a class that is in a beta-testing state and is incomplete on Time of Unparalleled Darkness; expect that it will be changed before it is finalized.
In Eberron, magic is almost technology. Spellcasters specialize in certain forms of that technology, while artificers tinker with its fundamental workings. Artificers understand magic on a different level from spellcasters, and do not cast spells as wizards and clerics do. They have an amazing facility with magic items and constructs, and in many ways, they keep the magical world of Eberron running.
Artificers adventure for a variety of reasons. They seek deposits of rare minerals and dragonshards to use in their creations. They search for hidden arcane secrets related to making magic items or constructs. They face danger to acquire money to buy or make magic items. Like any other adventurers, they might also be motivated by a desire to fight evil or gain power, or by any of a host of similar reasons.
As the mists wash many adventurers up onto their shores, so too have Artificers and others from Eberron appeared within the Domain of Dread. While those that survive any length of time learn to hide their affinity for magic in domains like Barovia, or endear themselves to the powers that be, nonetheless enough of them have survived that there is a small niche for such dabblers, especially in Darkon, and Mordentshire.
Roleplaying an Artificer
Artificers are perhaps the ultimate magical dabblers. They can use just about any spell from a wand or scroll, empower ordinary items with temporary magical power, repair damaged constructs (including warforged), alter the function of existing magic items, and craft magic items, constructs, and dragonshard items. They have a limited list of their own spell-like infusions that they can apply to objects, and they can also work with any of the spells on other classes' spell lists. Their magic is neither arcane nor divine, and they are not bound by that classification: Their trade is magic in its most abstract (they might say purest) form.
In practical terms, Artificers are studiers of the arcane whom specialize in magic items specifically, and are well-suited to players whom prefer to craft but not lose out entirely on adventuring traits such as a relatively-decent Base Attack Bonus and saves, compared to the specialist Tradesperson.
Alignment and Religion If artificers have a tendency toward any alignment, it is neutral. They are more interested in their work than in its moral implications. Some artificers create magic items for the common good, while others seek to create items of tremendous destructive power.
Many Eberonnian artificers revere the deity Onatar, Lord of Fire and Forge. Others are too preoccupied with mastering magic - including divine magic - to worry about the gods who may or may not be the source of magic. Of natives, most Artificers whom do ascribe to a religion are associated with the Church of Ezra, Church of the Lawgiver, or the Eternal Order - though most are as irreligious and leaning towards atheistic as the rest of the core. Those whom do work for one of those churches, or another, do so often as armourers, or conservator of holy relics.
Artificers as Adventurers Like wizards, artificers learn their craft through long years of hard study. They share a sense of camaraderie with others who have endured similar training. They view other artificers as either colleagues or rivals. Rivalry may take a friendly form as the artificers try to outdo each other in their creations and accomplishments, or it could turn deadly, with artificers sending construct assassins after each other.
Artificers work best when providing magical support to members of other classes. Though they are quite versatile, their talents lie in enhancing the items - weapons, armor, wands, and other gear - used by all the members of an adventuring party. They think of every party member as components of a machine, encouraging better teamwork within a group and sometimes providing strategy and tactics afforded by their unique mind-set.
In a typical adventuring party, artificers have a range of roles revolving around magic items. They bring an unparalleled flexibility to both using and creating such items. In a party that doesn't include a druid, for example, an artificer can use (or scribe) a scroll of barkskin or wield a staff of the woodlands. Though they can fight reasonably well, few artificers are inclined to engage in front-rank melee combat.
Artificers in Society
Factorum
Original Tabletop source: Dungeonscape
Note: This page represents a class abstract which needs rewritten for the setting's specifics.
Please note: The following class write-up is for a class that is in a beta-testing state and is incomplete on Time of Unparalleled Darkness; expect that it will be changed before it is finalized.
It is foolhardy to explore a dungeon alone. Those who attempt to do so quickly find that they lack the skills needed to get the job done. Sometimes, this can happen in larger parties as well. Enter the factorum, capable of mimicking the abilities of others and filling in when the need is greatest.
After a lifetime of work, few can claim even a fraction of the versatility that the factotum displays every day. Skilled in nearly every art, factotums draw upon their lore to master almost any trade or ability for a brief period of time before other pursuits draw their attention. Whereas bards use their general knowledge to aid others, factotums focus their abilities solely upon themselves. Constantly on the hunt for new abilities and tricks, factotums eventually find the right tool to overcome practically any problem.
However, a factotum cannot go it alone. He relies on sudden flashes of insight gleaned from his studies and the broad array of his experiences. He might not be the best fighter or the mightiest spellcaster in a group, but when the party needs a stout warrior or an arcane spell, the factotum can provide it.
If you like having a trick up your sleeve, or if you want to have an answer to almost any problem, then the factotum is the class for you. Your intellect bolsters your fighting ability, and your basic understanding of divine magic and arcane spells allows you to manipulate magical energy.
You can fill almost any role in the party, but you typically do so only on a temporary basis. If Jozan the cleric suffers a grievous injury, you can provide some healing until he recovers. If mighty Tordek is paralyzed, you can draw your weapon and hold the line for a few rounds. When a troll lurches into view, you can cast an acid spell if Mialee did not prepare one. However, you can pull off such tricks only for a limited time each day. The key to succeeding as a factotum lies in identifying what the group needs at a given moment and filling that need.
As a factotum, you are a jack of all trades. For short periods of time, you can stand in for almost any other member of the party. Your intellect, training, and experiences allow you to bolster your efforts in almost any situation. But your magical abilities are at best limited. You can master potent spells, but your lack of formal training makes it difficult for you to use them more than once each day. Furthermore, your understanding of magic is broad rather than deep.
Intelligence is a factotum's most important ability. Almost everything you do relies upon it. You master so many areas of study because you have the keen mind needed to learn through observation and experience, rather than formal study. When you fight, use a skill, or cast a spell, your Intelligence plays a role in your success. Of course, Dexterity and Strength are useful, too. When you cannot provide a cunning solution to a problem, you can heft an axe or fire a bow as well as a cleric.
Factotums are commonly humans, halflings, and gnomes. Those races are a natural fit because of their inquisitive nature, personal drive, and clever solutions to tough problems. Longer-lived races, such as dwarves and elves, find a factotum's fickle nature to be a poor imitation of the true mastery that can be attained only through centuries of life. Due to their low Intelligence, half-orcs find the factotum class difficult to master, but some manage to make a name for themselves.
Factotums can be of any alignment. Some use their abilities for good, helping people in need and learning from the attendant challenges. Other factotums view the world as a well that is rightfully theirs, and they take what they like from it. Relying upon no one but themselves, these evil factotums steal and cheat to gain power and use their abilities to further their own ends. The majority of factotums fall somewhere between these extremes. They appreciate a stable, benevolent society, but they are too absorbed in travel and study to care much about others.
Factotums usually favor law over chaos; they love to find structure and insight in the topics they study. Chaotic factotums are vagabonds and wanderers who experience life as it comes, believing that whatever topics happen to cross their paths are as good as any other.
Knowledge is everything, and applied knowledge is even better. You adventure out of a sense of curiosity, a desire to pierce the veil of ignorance that shrouds so much of the world. If you hear rumors of an island with beaches of diamonds and mountains of gold, you want to find the island, determine its origin, and learn its secrets. To other adventurers, the entrance to a dungeon is a gateway to treasure and power. To you, it is a promise of secrets waiting in the dungeon's deepest levels.
Think of yourself as an adventuring scholar, an expert who has the right answer at the right time, a seeker who finds the truths hidden in the world. You are the one who notices that an ogre has a long scar along its leg, allowing you to strike the creature where the old wound has not fully healed. You are the one who read a book on the dark arts, allowing you to conjure the spell needed to banish an ice devil. Other adventurers must prepare their abilities and hope they have the right tools to overcome a challenge. You wait for difficulties to present themselves and then decide what talents to employ.
Versatility is the key to your success. In some encounters, you draw your weapon and hold back the enemy. In others, you slip around behind the foe to unleash a potent spell. At other times, you scout ahead, uncover traps, and clear the way for your friends.
Most factotums worship a variety of deities and have holy symbols for every occasion. A typical factotum might offer one prayer to Obad-Hai before venturing into the wilds, and another to Moradin while traveling through an abandoned dwarf mine. Factotums seek a higher understanding of the world than a single deity can offer. Besides, they know enough about divine magic to leach energy from a number of gods. It pays to spread the prayers out.
If a factotum favors one deity, it is usually Boccob, the god of magic and knowledge. But few factotums are religious fanatics. Instead, they see Boccob as the ideal manifestation of their talents, a cunning mastermind who has accumulated boundless knowledge.
A few factotums of non-evil alignment revere Vecna. They see that dread deity as the keeper of knowledge and secrets, and they hope to uncover his most potent mysteries to better master the world. While they might revile Vecna's methods, they respect the knowledge he keeps and the secrecy with which he protects it.
You work well with other classes whose role is clearly defined, such as fighters, barbarians, clerics, sorcerers, and wizards. While you appreciate the dual roles of paladins, druids, bards, and rangers, you often feel frustration at their difficulty in identifying where their skills are needed most. You have the most in common with rogues and wizards, whose reliance on cunning and knowledge is similar to your own.
You are best suited to filling whatever role the party needs, so try not to spend your inspiration points too early in a battle. If the fighter falls to a lucky attack, you will have to take his place and hold back the enemy. If the wizard runs out of spells, your arcane talents will prove crucial. Likewise, save your healing for a critical juncture or until the cleric is down or out of spells.
You have unmatched flexibility in building your talents. You can emphasize one ability or nurse a broad range of abilities. In most cases, feats that consistently improve your talents are better than feats that function only in certain situations. For example, Weapon Focus improves all your attacks, whereas Power Attack provides more limited benefits.
When multiclassing or taking levels in a prestige class, find combinations that broaden your abilities or that increase your flexibility. Bonus feats allow you to improve your combat prowess while retaining much of your flexibility. If your feats make you a more competent warrior, you can spend inspiration points on spells rather than on improving your attack rolls and damage rolls.
The chameleon prestige class (Races of Destiny) deserves special mention. This class allows you to change your focus on a daily basis, making it possible to switch from being a skilled warrior to being a potent spellcaster. This prestige class is a great combination with the factotum class. The chameleon's focus allows you to fill a single role well, and the factotum's inspiration points let you retain the flexibility to heal an ally, make a sneak attack, or deliver a decisive blow. In many ways, chameleons are factotums who specialize in a few narrow fields.
The factotum class gives players a chance to be the archetypal jack of all trades. Inspiration points allow a factotum to excel in a wide variety of situations because he decides which of his capabilities to bolster. While other classes are locked into certain abilities, a factotum has unmatched flexibility.
Factotums are curious, driven, and inquisitive. They adventure not only for gold and glory, but also to uncover lost secrets and expand their lore. They find almost any situation interesting, wanting to learn everything from the intricate social protocols of a royal court to the tactics used by rampaging goblins.
Many factotums become sages and loremasters when they retire. They catalog the lore they uncovered and use it to advise others, particularly adventurers. A retired factotum likely has an archive of maps and charts from his previous exploits, tools that can prove useful for the next generation of explorers.
Factotums rise to become advisors, sages, and experts in a variety of subjects. Alerach Longseeker, for example, is famous for crossing the Barrier Peaks, the Hellfurnaces, and the Yatil Mountains in a series of solo expeditions. Rumors say that he owns the last surviving map of the location of a fabled dungeon of metal corridors high in the Barrier Peaks.
Rather than create their own organizations, factotums tend to join groups founded and run by others. Many thieves' guilds employ a few factotums to handle unexpected dangers on a heist. Some factotums join formal adventuring guilds and companies to find ready allies to help them on their expeditions.
Most commoners have no idea what to make of a factotum's unpredictable skills and abilities. Barbarians, druids, and other folk of the wilderness see factotums as overeducated and overly civilized, but an adventure with one in the wilds quickly dispels that notion. Most adventurers are happy to have a factotum in the party, especially on a dungeon expedition during which traveling back to civilization will be difficult, and determining what dangers lie ahead nearly impossible.
Rogue
Original Tabletop source: Player's Handbook 3.0
Note: This page represents a class abstract which needs rewritten for the setting's specifics.
Rogues share little in common with each other. Some are stealthy thieves. Others are silver-tongued tricksters. Still others are scouts, infiltrators, spies, diplomats, or thugs. What they share is versatility, adaptability, and resourcefulness. In general, rogues are skilled at getting what others don't want them to get: entrance into a locked treasure vault, safe passage past a deadly trap, secret battle plans, a guard's trust, or some random person's pocket money.
Rogues adventure for the same reason they do most things: to get what they can get. Some are after loot; others want experience. Some crave fame; others seek infamy. Quite a few also enjoy a challenge. Figuring out how to thwart a trap or avoid an alarm is great fun for many rogues.
Rogues are highly skilled, and they can concentrate on developing any of several categories of skills. While not equal to members of many other classes in combat, a rogue knows how to hit where it hurts, and she can dish out a lot of damage with a sneak attack. Rogues have a sixth sense when it comes to avoiding danger. Experienced rogues develop mystical powers and skills as they master the arts of stealth, evasion, and sneak attacks. In addition, while not capable of casting spells on their own, rogues can "fake it" well enough to cast spells from scrolls, activate wands, and use just about any other magic item.
Rogues follow opportunity, not ideals. They are more likely to be chaotic than lawful, they are a diverse bunch, so they may be of any alignment.
Although they are not renowned for their piety, most rogues revere Olidammara (god of thieves). Evil rogues might secretly worship Nerull (god of death), or Erythnul (god of slaughter). Since rogues are so diverse, however, many of them worship other deities, or none at all.
Some rogues are officially inducted into an organized fellowship of rogues or "guild of thieves." Some are self taught; others learned their skills from independent mentors. Often, an experienced rogue needs an assistant for scams, second-story jobs, or just for watching her back. She recruits a likely youngster, who then learns the skills of the trade on the job. Eventually, the trainee is ready to move on, perhaps because the mentor has run afoul of the law, or perhaps because the trainee has double-crossed her mentor and needs some "space." Rogues do not see each other as fellows unless they happen to be members of the same guild or students of the same mentor. In fact, rogues trust other rogues less than they trust anyone else. They're no fools.
Adaptable and often unprincipled, humans take to the rogue's life with ease. Halflings, elves, and half-elves also find themselves well suited to the demands of the career. Dwarf and gnome rogues, while less common, are renowned as experts with locks and traps. Half-orc rogues tend toward thuggery. Rogues are common among brutal humanoids, especially goblins and bugbears. Rogues who learn their arts in savage lands, however, generally don't have much experience with complex mechanisms such as traps and locks.
Rogues love and hate working with members of other classes. They excel when protected by warriors and supported by spellcasters. There are plenty of times, however, that they wish everyone else was as quiet, guileful, and patient as they. Rogues are particularly wary of paladins, so they endeavor to prove themselves useful when contact with paladins is unavoidable.
The rogue's role in a group can vary dramatically based on her skill selection - from charismatic con artist to cunning burglar to agile combatant - but most rogues share certain aspects. They aren't capable of prolonged melee combat, so they focus on opportunistic sneak attacks or ranged attacks. The rogue's stealth and her trapfinding ability make her one of the best scouts in the game.
Tradesperson
Original Tabletop source: Dungeon Master's Guide 3.0(where it is called "Expert")
Note: This page represents a class abstract which needs rewritten for the setting's specifics.
Please note: The following class write-up is for a class that is in a beta-testing state and is incomplete on Time of Unparalleled Darkness; expect that it will be changed before it is finalized.
While not adventurers per se, the Expert represents the civilian whom has applied themselves ardently enough to their craft of choice that they can be considered as fine at their craft as a fighter is with their sword, or a wizard is with their spells. They are the smiths, leatherworkers, merchants, and scholars of the world.
Mechanically, an expert trades having any specific class features for both the widest pool of class skills, and a large amount of skill points.
