Custom Classes: Building Classes that Fit the Character

When I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons back in high school, I carried my Player's Handbook with my everywhere. My Dungeon Master, who was my closest friend's dad, presented me with a brand new PHB after it had become clear that I was serious about continuing to play, and that book was all that I really paid attention to for quite a while. By the time I was DMing my own homebrew campaigns in college, my friends would play a game with me that went like this: they would throw out a page number or subject, and I would tell them, from memory, which subject or page number corresponded with it. "Deity information," someone might throw out, and I would reply, "pages 106-108." We even got to the point where individual spells and their page numbers became a part of the exercise. It was not a great game, necessarily—saving a few seconds leafing through the index isn't exactly rip-roaring fun—but I felt comforted that I knew the basic info by heart.

As I've said in earlier posts, I'm more interested in role-playing and storytelling than I am in the finer points of running a simulation. I'll admit that I eschew some parts of the rules while playing altogether. I don't make players track the number of arrows they have, for instance. That detail can allow for some hardcore strategizing, but like the human index game, it's not really fun for anyone. The same goes for amounts of water and trail rations while traveling. If it's only a few days between destinations, I'm not inclined to ask players to subtract food from their inventories, or even collect it in the first place. Worrying about these little details works against immersion more often than not. And to those hardcore gamers who might insist that I'm weakening the game, all I can say is this: I hope you've got a great mechanism for tracking your characters' needs to empty their bowels. It would be a shame if you had to make an emergency bathroom break in the middle of a fight.

So why all this talking about rules? What's the point of delving into mechanics if I'm telling you my approach to the game is all about creativity?

Because one of the best ways to engage your players and help them make their characters truly unique is to create custom classes with them.

At some point while developing the early stages of this campaign, it became clear that all three of the early players wanted to multiclass. I know that there are lots of opinions out there about multiclassing, but most everyone agrees that it weakens your character relative their potential sticking to just one class. (I'm not talking about prestige classes, just taking levels in multiple core classes.) I had also asked each of the players what they wanted from the campaign, and everyone said a variation of the same thing: "I want to feel like a badass."

So there was a conflict between the rules—the class features the players wanted would weaken them—and what they wanted from the gameplay—feeling anything but weak. There were lots of potential solutions. The easiest would have been to power down the average level of enemy. I could also have started them at a slightly higher level than initially planned. But when players want to multiclass, it's really just an expression of wanting to create a character that the game doesn't offer on its own. And that's why custom classes were the best solution.

Below, I'll outline the classes I've developed for my party and some notes on what sorts of considerations went into picking their abilities. In a future post, I'll share the full custom classes and the methods I used to create them.

One of my players wanted what essentially amounts to a rogue with magical abilities. I've heard a lot of players wishing for something like this, which is why I imagine Wizards of the Coast developed the "Arcane Trickster" subclass in D&D's 5th edition. But even the Arcane Trickster is largely a rogue with a few cantrips, which is hardly the shadowy sorcerer that players like to imagine. So for Ell, the half-elf anarchist assassin, it was a matter of creating a rogue with enough magical ability to hold her own in a few different circumstances.


I understand the reasons that a stealth expert with powerful spells can unbalance a game. But for Ell as a character in particular, the combination makes perfect sense. Ell is the kind of character who prepares carefully for every situation. She trains her skills, practices close-quarters combat, and reads extensively. Of course it makes sense for her to put time into learning magic as well if it would give her the edge. So to create her custom class, I took about 70% of the perks of being a rogue and about 30% of the abilities granted to wizards and rolled up a class perfect for the thoughtful, cautious type. Wizard was the obvious choice for Ell—she needed to learn magic in the same way she had learned to sneak around undetected. Because the combination made sense for the character, it was only natural to assemble the class this way. And that's the goal with creating a custom class. Finding the unique combination that suits what they do and how they do it.

Consider the way that people learn a trade in real life. Two different writers may have completely different goals, methods, and products. But in a context like D&D, they would share a class. One of those writers may have more in common with a politician while the other is more of an academic, but they still share the classification of writer. Similarly, consider the world of sports. While a massive hockey player and a nimble baseball player would both be considered athletes, they are completely different in their pursuits of their professions. My point is this: the character comes first. If the class system does not accurately describe what they do and how they do it, the character should not be penalized for that. A truly unique character likely has elements of several classes rolled into one. So why not take the time to create an accurate expression of that character?

Joining Ell in the party is a goliath named Gerald. Gerald was born a human, but for reasons unknown to him (and to his player, for the time being), he was imprisoned and transformed into a goliath—a large, hulking humanoid with rocky flesh. When I asked Gerald's player what he wanted to choose for a class, he said he was torn between a barbarian and a spellcaster. This is a huge conflict according to the rules. But what governs Gerald's character is chaos. He has had no control over his past, over his imprisonment, or even over his physical transformation. A barbarian is a fantastic expression of that chaos, but his player wanted Gerald to have access to spells as well. Something about his transformation had endowed magical abilities upon Gerald. And so we created a class which reflected all of this.

Gerald is a combination of about 65% barbarian and 35% sorcerer. His magic, unlike Ell's, is natural. To play to Gerald's unique background and his barbarian combat style, we chose a somewhat strange mechanic for his magic: Gerald can only cast spells while in his barbarian rage. We also adopted the barbarian "Wild Surge" concept from the 5th edition handbook, so that every time Gerald enters rage or uses a magic ability, he has to roll a d100 and abide by the table's result. [I expanded the Wild Surge table with a handful of extra effects to raise its number of effects from 50 to 100—even more chaos to deal with.] The table has some harmless effects, like, "You are surrounded by faint, ethereal music for the next minute." Others aid in combat, like, "You instantly cast magic missile as a 5th-level spell at a target of your choice." Still others hinder Gerald: "For the next 1d6 rounds, you are reduced to first level." And some are downright silly, such as, "For the next 1d4 hours, you are unable to use adjectives." These effects all serve to reinforce the chaos of Gerald's character. His magical abilities are simultaneously strengthened and weakened by the addition of these effects. And of course, none of these effects can occur unless Gerald is enraged, which adds even less control to the situation. As with Ell's, this custom class fits Gerald perfectly. (It might be the case that it fits only Gerald, though that's neither here nor there.)

The third to Ell and Gerald's party is Dez. Dez has a complicated past; she has been an assassin and a cleric, having filled both roles to help advance the interests of her family's kingdom. A combination rogue-assassin is not exactly standard fare in D&D, not least because there are practically no overlapping skills between the two. But again, Dez's character is not beholden to class categories. She has good reason to have spent time and effort honing the skills required to be both a silent killer and a healer / champion of her god (in this case, the Silver Flame deity from the Eberron setting). And so Dez's class is about 60% rogue and 40% cleric, granting her the stealth and infiltration skills necessary for a sneaky bounty hunter and the protection and healing abilities of a cleric. Dez is the kind of character who makes decisions based on her gut feelings, so the strength that both rogues and clerics have for reacting to dangerous situations (be it escaping or healing allies) play perfectly to her personality. 

With Ell and Gerald, the custom classes built on their focus as a character. Ell received the bonuses of a rogue and a wizard where those classes reward players for being proactive. For Gerald, the chaotic elements of a barbarian and a sorcerer combined to grant him more power for rolling with the punches. Ell's roguish abilities grant her increased sneak attack and provide advantages for carefully-selected spells. Meanwhile, for Dez, the focus is reaction. Dez can use the rogue class's advantages to avoid taking damage, which the cleric's concentration on defense aligns with. On the cleric side of things, Dez's background as a healer comes from her attempts to fight a plague affecting her home. But simply healing seems not to have an effect on the sick. So Dez's cleric role helps her in her crusade against the plague while her rogue role helps her in investigating where the mysterious disease is coming from. I'll say it once more: the class suits the character, not the other way around. 

So the heart of custom classes does involve consideration of the rules, but only insofar as it's important to consider what aspects of the class are reflected in the character. On the surface, Dez and Ell are both playing magic-wielding rogues. But their custom classes are actually very different. The value of the classes I worked with the players to make comes from the fact that they uniquely reflect the characters using them. If I have a single mantra about running tabletop games, it's this: make the world for the players and their characters. [That's exactly why I'm running this campaign without a predetermined questline. I'm making everything for the players in response to what they want.]

As I noted above, I'll be posting the details for these custom classes in another article soon. At the time of writing this, I've completed two of the three characters' intro sessions, and the third will be completed in a few days' time. I'll also be posting soon about the value of individual intro sessions, and expect another update soon on the addition of our fourth player and his character. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming!

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