Now it is time for another post about the mechanics of my system for Gal Hadre. This time we are looking at starting packages.
As I have discussed further, my system does not have full on classes like Dungeons and Dragons or pathfinder. Instead it has what I am calling starting packages, a series of options for skills and feats that give your character some initial focus along with a bit over half a dozen aptitudes which include things like Strength, Knowledge and Magic. Every skill and feat is tied to a pair of aptitudes, for each aptitude you have, the ability is cheaper to purchase with experience. The key thing I wanted from this is flexibility, a single starting package can lead down many roads. Because of this, every character gets some initial experience to spend beyond what is in their starting package to ensure every character is unique. Even a single race and starting package combination could be used by multiple players and have reasonably different characters at the start of a campaign. This also ties into the system not having levels and instead a more smooth advancement system where a character is either gaining something new after every session or saving up for a particularly impressive ability.
First up we have the novice. The novice is the divine magic (prayer) “focused” starting package. But it can just as easily go into a paladin style character as a lightly armoured or even robed priest. They can start with only one prayer or if they choose to focus entirely on their magic up to four prayers immediately. With the flexibility of writing their own prayers, their magic can be focused on healing, undead slaying or general buffing, even knowing a single prayer can provide a buff to a party member at a point in an adventure. Their aptitudes can range from those you expect of a warrior-priest with the emphasis on warrior to a highly social divine loremaster or a mix of some of both. It is even possible to start down the path of dual divine/draconic magic user at character creation if you set things up right through this package. Their heroic actions relate to divine magic in some way.
Second we have the warrior. Which can clearly be built as a fighter style character, but really it is for any character whose primary focus is melee or ranged combat. That includes more savage types like barbarians, archery focused characters, duelists or other lightly armoured fighters. You can easily build weapons experts who can use a variety of tactics and techniques depending on the enemy and situation. Simply switching out the advanced weapon properties you start trained in can lead this starting package in a multitude of directions. You can also go down a series of abilities that feed into being a leader, motivating your comrades and giving them buffs. But this is probably the least flexible starting package as it is focused mostly on one thing. However you still have options for how offensive or defensive you want to be including your choice of more or automatic attacks or great dodges as heroic abilities.
Next we have the vagabond, who specializes in all the skills that town militia don’t approve of. They are designed to send you down the path of skill monkeys, sneaks and nerdowells; whether that be a thief, assassin, fence or a mix of all of them. They win by killing before their foe has a chance to counter-attack or never being detected in the first place. Some of them have a rakish charm that convinces the gullible to simply do what they want. If you want, you can also focus on becoming a sniper with a bow or crossbow. Classic D&D classes you could build from this are clearly rogue, but also skill focused rangers and less magically talented bards. They have a range of heroic abilities to pick from, including probably my favorite one, being able to find a small, inexpensive item in your gear right when you need it, even if you never recorded buying it.
Fourth we have the apprentice, the arcane or dragon magic focused starting package. The easiest way to build them is to focus on dragon magic, either becoming very powerful in a single path of dragon magic or broadening their range and having a spell for every situation. But a powerful mage is not the only option, you can focus on knowledge or languages or be a magically augmented socialite or noble, even a scribe with some minor arcane talent. A hybrid combat and magic character who is magic foremost could be built starting from the apprentice. With the options given by the eight paths of dragon magic, apprentices can quickly branch out into any area you could want a mage to specialize in, from healing or buffing to control and damage dealing. Thanks to the system’s spell creation mechanics you can develop the spells that do exactly what you want. All their heroic abilities focus on improving their spells or detecting those of others.
Last we have the warden, the most recently added starting package. I added it to allow characters that are more nature focused to immediately aim for that rather than having to build from another starting package. Druids, nature focused rangers, some barbarians or even mages can start here. Any character that wants to make an animal companion a key part of their concept could start here. They can easily go down any self-buffing concept you want especially if you have innate path of the manifest beast spells and with enough experience eventually end up able to fully shapeshift into an animal (though this could be done with any starting package that takes up path of the manifest beast). Warden heroic abilities are all nature focused from leaving no tracks, and hiding to improved interactions with animals.
What do you think of the concept of starting package as opposed to full on classes. Which starting package are you interested in? Am I missing any key, classic archetypes that need a starting package that doesn’t currently exist?
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