Shattered Kingdoms

I thought I'd try my hand at this, since there's some interest in the concept. My strategy was making shapeshifting a physical combat buff, rather than a true race-change like polymorph.

Comments/changes welcome, but also feel free to add your own class built around shapeshifting. To the extent talking about new classes has a point, it's to develop interesting ideas.

Class: Runemage
Concept: Uses primitive arcane magic, shapeshifts
Hitpoints: Medium
Armor: Cloth
Restrictions: No sprites, elves, deep-elves, or giants.

Skills//Spells:
Amateur: dagger, staff, mace, spear, scrolls, wands // armor, invest weapon*, detect magic, ventriloquate
Novice: dodge, self-defense // detect invis, detect hidden, create water, bolt of force*
Initiate: meditation, trip // invis, infravision, fly, magical vestment
Apprentice: carve rune*, silent casting* // curse, deflection*, shield, sleep
Journeyman: brawling, trance // transform*, water breathing, dispel magic, cancellation
Veteran: second attack, devour* // regeneration*, conjure familiar*, teleport, barrage of force*
Expert: maul*, rescue // enchant rune*, magic circle*
Mentor: third attack, enhanced damage // shadowmeld*
Master: // exploding rune*

Key abilities:
Transform: Change into a monsterous version of yourself. Self-buff with +2 size and usual bonus to strength, dex, and con. Hp and move increased by +100%, along with maximums. Cannot speak, order, hold/wield objects in hands, throw, or cast spells normally. Can use tells. Consumes a rune.

Carve rune: Creates a rune from wood available in forest. These charged items cannot be dropped, put in a container, or given away without being lost. Can only have level/10 runes in inventory. Cannot carve runes while transformed.

Other new skills:
Silent casting: Active skill allows casting of spells while shapeshifted, held, or deafened. Must make skill roll, or spell automatically fails with one round lag. Requires a rune in inventory, but does not consume it.

Devour: While transformed, use a corpse to fully sate hunger. Corpse is not consumed, but must be no more than one size smaller than transformed caster.

Maul: An on-command physical attack while transformed. Does extra damage if invisible or shadowmelded.

Other new spells:
Invest weapon: Similar to weapon malediction, but just does extra damage.

Bolt of force: More powerful magic missle, but chest/body armor helps deflect the essentially physical blow.

Deflection: Self-buff that significantly increases one's dodge rate. Consumes a rune.

Regeneration: Self-buff that greatly increases HP regeneration per tick. Consumes a rune.

Conjure familiar: Provides a bought pet of the imp/mephit type.

Barrage of force: Stronger group version of bolt of force, including full range. Not as fast to cast, though.

Enchant rune: Converts a rune into a hand-held enchanted item. The number of enchants is random but large, with all of the same type. The item cannot be further enchanted by any means.

Counterspell: The next spell cast on the target automatically fails.

Magic circle: Group buff that improves HP/mana/move regeneration, magic protection, and all saves. Individually broken by movement. Consumes a rune.

Shadowmeld: Grants invisibility while in combat for just a few rounds. Caster may still be being attacked, but others may find him hard to target. Also good for extra maul damage.

Exploding rune: Turns a rune into a powerful explosive group attack, possibly knocking people down and lagging them. Because the rune must be thrown at one's enemies, this spell cannot be used when transformed.

Notes: Capable of putting out a lot of damage, but has limited mitigation, and is quite vulnerable to dispel magic/holy word.

At the very least this class seems interesting and I would absolutely love to test drive one. I have to say, no offense to the others, that this is the best idea I've heard for a semi-original class. It is rather balanced. It doesn't break any theme in SK. In fact, it kinda creates a whole new set of RP that you could go through.

My only real problem with it is the race selection. I would actually give it as an option to elves/deep-elves and NOT give it to griffons and centaurs. They are already monsterous enough.

That, and I am not so sure if they need ALL of the wand, stave, scrolls. Maybe two out of the three, but having them all is pretty buff.

Overall I think this is a viable option. I don't see a new class coming for a while, though.

I think it's fairly obvious with all the new classes people are proposing lately that they want more classes on SK. I'd like to see a merchant class but what ever, Dulrik only has so much time on his hands.

Eh, merchant class does not fit well in SK. You would get pked for your stuff way too often.

Unless he edited it, the "staff" referred to in the original post was the weapon type staff, not the magic type staff.

I could only think of Dragon Ball Z when I read this post...

Too true.. I might have read it wrong.

Carve runes is at apprentice, so at apprentice you can have two runes, to a max of ten at GM? Am I doing this math right?

That would mean you could potentially have 10 EXTRA items slots at GM that cannot be damaged save by acid blast. You also only have one spell that makes them useful outside of being enchanted, and that spell basically casts a group flamestrike or fireball?

Why not make carve runes an extension of enchant armor and weapon (like I suggested in the Lord of the Wild thread I posted) and then it would at least be something other people could affect through combat.

As for explosive runes, it fits at the level you put it, but it's a little lax on details. Would you target it at one spot in a group and then it would do damage incrementaly outwards from the target? Or would it just cast fireball on the group? Could you leave it somewhere and if someone else picked it up it would blow up (which I think would be really neat - you could really branch off on this)?

Runes are meant to give one rune for every 10 levels, rounding down. So that would be 5 at GM. There's no point in a restrictive mechanic like this unless it's actually restrictive. Likewise, there are no extra item slots to go with them, nor is there any guarantee of rune safety. And I think you missed several spells that consume a rune, and silent casting that requires one in inventory.

ROFL@anti-personnel mines in sk

Whatever happened to getting boomsticks first?