The Campaign Builder's Guild

Alright, I think I have an idea for the +3 and +4 enhancements, but it may require altering the class a little bit.

Greater Energize Weapon would allow the character to make "thrown weapon" attacks with the weapon, but only launching the energy. This would be a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet and 5 range increments.

Supreme Energize Weapon would give them the ability to, possibly as a move or some sort of action, convert an energized weapon fully into energy. Thus, the attacks would no longer get strength bonus to damage, but they would become touch attacks (and the damage would be entirely energy based).

Alternately, I've been thinking about Brainface's statement that characters with free enhancements typically don't get to apply them to other weapons. This idea I will present works best for air, water, and earth channelers, less for fire:

What if channelers were able to manifest an elemental weapon, such as the Flame Blade spell? OA had variants which were different weapons with other spells (spear of air, staff of water, great club of earth). Then, they would deal additional energy damage with this weapon as they gained levels, and possibly the weapon would gain enhancement levels. This would require me to greatly alter the class, just to tone down it's abilities, since this would be a big boon (like the monk and soul knife, characters would be able to save quite a bit of money on a magic weapon).

The only flaw to this is that I can see physical damage being dealt with water, air, or earth (and thus gaining strength bonus to damage), but fire wouldn't be able to apply strength and it would have to be a touch attack to make sense.

This ability would replace energize hand and energize weapon, as well as energy projection (they'd get the ability to throw/launch it at a certain point, like a soul knife's throw ability). I like the idea behind this, because channelers are suposed to use their element and energy as a weapon, but the complications may be bad. Alternately, air, earth, and water would just have energy weapons (electric, acid, and cold); but the fact that they'd be touch attacks and not physical weapons is disconcerting.

Any ideas?

if you went the oa-conjured-elemental-weapon route, you might could say the fire weapon was a spear of magma, burning wood, molten metal, hot blasts of air, in order to justify physical damage.

I mean, that wouldn't be "pure fire", but "pure water" wouldn't make a heck of a staff, either, if you think about it too hard. (thinking about things too hard is very detrimental to making elemental-based mechanics, imo :))

I still need help ... There's something that just doesn't seem right. I'm worried that I need to re-work the class from the ground up. As it is right now, the class is hardly a warrior at first level; then again, a psychic warrior is hardly a warrior at first level (all they get is one psionic feat, and that's if and only if they have a wisdom of 14+); at least the psychic warrior gets a power too.

So, I'm going to detail the heart of the class again, and maybe it can inspire some ideas from someone (since I think I've exhausted all of mine).

The channeler is supposed to be a mixture of the Barbarian and the Sorcerer. A barbarian is a chaotic warrior who fights with passion rather than training. Barbarians in my setting are called berserkers (because not all of them are "barbaric"), and they have four different choices for their rage (based on the four elements). Fire is burning rage (as the PHB's rage), Earth is defensive stance (as dwarven defender's ability), Air is whirling frenzy (as UA's rage alternative), and Water's is flowing dance (as CW's dervish's dervish dance, though it will be modified heavily). The berserker is explained as someone with the ability to unleash hidden energy within their chosen chakra, augmenting their physical abilities.

A sorcerer is an individual with a mutant chakra, who's missing the opposite chakra, who utilizes this excess energy to power and shape spells.

A channeler is an individual who uses their element as a weapon. They also use the elemental energy within their body to feed their body, slowly shutting down their metabolism. They use their element and energy type both offensively and defensively.

Additionally, I intend for the Channeler to be the opposite of the Monk; think the difference between Jedi and Sith. Monks are attempting to perfect themselves, and some would say so are channelers. A monk seeks perfection through controlling the power they wield, while channelers learn to unleash this energy.

Again, I'm sorry that I'm asking a lot of everyone. This is pretty much the last serious mechanical project for my setting, and I'm only pushing to get it finished soon because once it is finished I will be able to take a break and let it settle so I can reanalyze it with a fresh mind.

Please help.

PS: An idea for the elemental weapon. Fire's has to be fire, but while the other elements make a weapon out of energy, fire just does the "energize hand" ability. This is because fire can't really be shaped into a true weapon, so they just surround their fist in it to deal additional damage when they smack something. Their unarmed strikes would be treated as armed. As they gain levels, and the other elements gain energy damage added to their weapon, the fire channeler's additional fire damage just increases. Though if I were to do something like this, the weapon itself would need to gain enhancement bonuses, similar to the Soul Knife.

I just did some trials for the progression, and it's difficult to space out such abilities without causing many headaches ... nor do I think this fits the flavor of the class 100%.

I am worried that the energy damage added to a weapon which can be enhanced may get out of hands, but then I consider the fighter's weapon specialization; this applies right on top of any weapon too, and I've already shown that weapon specialization is comparable to the Impact enhancement (and the two are able to stack). I also don't want another class that has a magic weapon that grows with them (both my monk and knight do this). But I do want the class to be balanced in early levels.

Am I simply asking too much? Is this class next to impossible to be crafted as a base class? Should I go back to considering my Advanced class system (where the ranger, templar, monk, and channeler are 15 level PrCs that can be entered after 5 character levels in specific classes)?

Sorcerous Mutation: "Air's energy type is electricity, Earth's is acid, Fire's is fire, and Water's is acid." You have water is cold everywhere else.


Maximum Spell Level Known: "...learn 1st-Level spells at 1st level." Don't you mean at 4th Level?

Maybe instead of giving them further Enhancements on just their weapon, what about Swaping Improved Energized Weapon for Energize Armor. Greater E. Weapon would change into Improved E. Weapon. Supreme E. Weapon would turn into Improved E. Armor.

Energized Armor: Energize armor increases the channeler's AC by 1. Any creature attacking a channeler with a melee weapon that is not reach is dealt 1d4 of damage of the channeler's element. This is similar to a piece of armor in Complete Arcane.

Improved E. Armor: AC increased by 2. I don't know what ability to put here.


I don't know if this is what you were looking for, but I felt bad nobody else was responding. Usually I just lurk in the background. Hope this helps, even if it just gets the creative juices flowing. :)

Is the energized armor a armor enhancement? I do like it, and I've considered it a few times. I will think on it, it does seem like the best way to do that's been suggested so far.

And I'll correct those typos.

I'm still working on attempting to rebuild the class conceptually from the ground up. One thing that has been bothering me is that the class seemingly doesn't have an archetype to be built around. I finally realized that it does, in fact, have an archetype: the pyrokineticist.

Oddly enough, I hadn't really thought about it. The archetype of the pyrokineticist is very rare, but it exists none the less. Thus, that is what the channeler is meant to represent in my world, although the archetype is much more common in my world than in fiction.

So, the theme is that they use their element as a weapon. Thus, I'm growing to lean closer and closer to the soul knife set up; giving them their own weapon that grows with them as they level. I'm warry of this, because both my Knight and my Monk have this, but it's seeming to be the best way to do things.

Lastly, as it currently stands, the first level is very ... meh. No ability they have makes them a particularly decent warrior; it isn't until medium and higher levels that they come to their own in combat. This really needs to be fixed. The only way I can think of fixing it is removing the elemental movement abilities and a few others in order to pay for inserting a frenzy or nimbus type ability (probably the nimbus, but it would boost one mental and one physical ability score, based on the element in question). This would help the channeler to actually be a fairly decent warrior, even against creatures normally immune to their energy type.

For channelers who want to move like an elemental, there will just be spells for it. That way I don't have to worry about trying to balance vastly different abilities for a single class.

Does this bring about any ideas from anyone?

Alright, I worked with Nastynate over AIM and together we came up with a few new ideas. I'm going to edit the first post to utilize these new ideas, as the class has undergone some major changes.