Miners and Smiths for Delving Deeper

[talysman]

I once proposed off-loading the dwarf racial abilities to a "miner" class and making dwarves Fighter/Miners, in the same way that elves are Fighter/Magic-Users. I also proposed an alternative "smith" class as an alternative. Since these are both Thief variants and I think they work especially well with the DD approach to thieves and racial multi-classing, I've updated them to make them usable. Here's the Miner; the Smith will be in the next post.

XP/HD: As Thief

Weaponry and Armor: Pickaxe and dagger. Can technically wear any armor, but mining while wearing metal armor slows the miner down to Move 3.

Abilities: Identify and understand features of stone, stonework, ore, and caverns (replaces Thief stealth and subterfuge abilities.) This is a broad ability that includes detection of direction and depth underground, detection of slopes, and detection of new construction. I would make this automatic for mundane applications, but use the standard 3+ on 1d6 roll for magical properties of stone and ore.

Create large traps, buttresses and secret doors (replaces Thief trap, lockpick and pickpocket abilities.) This uses the standard roll, but Miners should also get a warning of an impending cave-in or bridge collapse, which you might want to make automatic.

At 10th level, a Miner Lord can found an underground fortress, attracting 30 to 180 1st level dwarf miners.

[talysman]

The Smith

Based on the fantastic smiths of legend, such as Weylund.

XP/HD: As Thief.

Weaponry and Armor: Hammer and dagger. No armor restrictions, although wearing armor while working at the forge would probably be deadly.

Abilities: Identify, assess value, and understand features of raw or crafted metal (replaces Thief stealth and subterfuge abilities.) Again, this ability would be automatic for most mundane situations, but detecting whether a finely-crafted sword is magical would require a roll of 3+ on 1d6.

Remove or create traps, locks, or small mechanical contrivances, or perform quick repairs on weapons and armor (replaces Thief trap, lockpick and pickpocket abilities.) This uses the standard Thief d6 roll.

At 10th level, make +1 metal magic weapons and armor as Wizard (no additional item powers except for hammers, which are assigned a random spell-like power.)

I call the name level for these variant classes "Miner Lord" and "Smith Lord".

[mgtremaine]

Interesting... Thanks for posting these.

-Mike

[waysoftheearth]

Very cool

The only thing I would add is to comment that "name level" is achieved at 9th level for the standard classes, so I would probably use the same for these guys too.

[talysman]

Oct 18, 2012 16:30:19 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Very cool

The only thing I would add is to comment that "name level" is achieved at 9th level for the standard classes, so I would probably use the same for these guys too.

No biggie. I was going by name level for the Greyhawk Thief and didn't notice the discrepancy.

[ravenheart87]

Cool stuff. I might use them in my campaign, thanks!

[Mike]

Yep, brilliant stuff. Thank you.

[idrahil]

These are cool variants for Dwarf folks. Question though: Why the Thief xp route? Its a very fast track, is that your intent? Do they fight as a thief too?

[talysman]

Oct 23, 2012 7:09:59 GMT -6 idrahil said:

These are cool variants for Dwarf folks. Question though: Why the Thief xp route? Its a very fast track, is that your intent? Do they fight as a thief too?

Yes. They fight and save as a thief. Basically, they *are* thieves, but with thief talents swapped out for similar talents.

Basically, that's my approach to new classes: instead of adding abilities to a base class, I keep the class as close to one of the base classes as possible and just change the "fluff" part of the ability description.

EDIT: I guess I could add a little more explanation of my class philosophy. I interpret the Fighter, Thief, and Magic-User as Combat, Support (non-combat,) and Magic (Clerics are sort of a Semi-Magic class, but let's skip them for now.) If a player wanted to play a different class in my campaign, I'd figure out where the class fits in those three categories and then tweak the abilities of that class to fit the player's concept.