Point-Buy Class (Legend Variant Rule)

Summary::Change the "skeleton" of a class!

Original

Point-Buy Class
One of the few things I dislike about how Legend is designed is that it still ties itself to 3.5-esque "classes," when the whole point of the character design system is to let you get your ideal combination of content for a given character. This system is a small but substantial fix, balanced by application of SCIENCE!

The core design philosophy here is that all Legend classes are balanced, and they have different allocations of HP, skills, and BAB, therefore there must be some way to codify this balance. Myself and a few other dedicated fans poured over all the classes and worked out what is worth what, handily abstracted into allotments and costs of "points." Enjoy.

Step One
Choose your KOM and KDM. If they both key to the same save, you gain one extra point- note that down or keep it in mind, because it will be useful! (NOTE: Some people say that STR/CON or CON/STR shouldn't get an extra point. I heartily disagree. See why in the following post.)

Step Two
Choose two saves to be your Good saves. The other save is a Poor save. This has no impact on how many points you get, but it is an important choice.

Step Three
Choose three tracks to be your base tracks, or four tracks if you want to be Full Buy-In, by the normal progressions in any order you like. You may not choose Esoterica Radica or Judgement. Those don't want to be messed with, so I for one am not going to mess with them. You may choose a racial track (or more than one!) for this. If you do so, you must decide which, if any, of your "racial" tracks determine your actual race, or if they are all just tracks, no race attached. If you choose a track as a proper racial track, that doesn't mean you have to use the stats in the book, though they might help as a guideline. A racial track doesn't have to set your KAMs, either. If you have a track which sets KOM or KDM, change your KAMs from step one. If this would cause you to begin or cease having two KAMs on the same save, you gain or lose a point, respectively. In other words, no screwing around with KAMs for profit. That said, if a track references an ability but doesn't change a KAM to that ability, feel free to change that ability to your KOM, if offensive, or KDM, if defensive, at your discretion and your GM's. Go ahead, have Smiting keyed to Dexterity. It won't break anything, I promise. (Though you may want to key things like Dervish and Rage's durations to KDM. Use your judgement.) Now, this is important: If you have a track which increases your BAB, such as Just Blade or Incantation, you lose one point. This is not some arbitrary distinction; I worked this out very carefully and then asked the devs about it.

Step Four
We finally get into point allocation. You start with poor BAB, 8 HP per level, and 5 skills. You have three points to begin with, plus or minus any points you've gained or lost in the previous steps. You may allocate points to any of the three factors, at a cost as follows:


 * One skill trained: One point.
 * Two HP per level: One point.
 * Good BAB: Two points.

I suppose you could store up unused points, but, frankly, that would be very silly, as you would then lack anything to do with them.

Step Five
This one is the simplest, and can be either really quick or really fun, if you like that sort of thing. The final step is to name your class whatever you like!

Character generation then proceeds as normal, with the exception that you cannot multiclass. You'd have no reason to, given as you just designed a class which has all the tracks your character wants anyway. To multiclass now would likely be for Shenanigans, which I will not have any part of.

One last thing: You can use Point-Buy Chassis to fiddle with other classes. In essence, just copy the data there to whatever degree and adjust as you see fit according to the guidelines. This is highly recommended for the Sage and Shaman classes, as they are now slightly weaker than other classes, as Shaman's Path and the Sage's KAM variability were the contributing factor in their weakness compared to other classes, and neither of those is actually useful now.