2026 Character Creation Challenge – Lalibo the Red Mage

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So I have gone back and forth on posting this character for the longest time. This is the infamous Lalibo from my home game built as a Red Mage custom class. More on the custom class later and why I held out posting anything for both the character and the class. But here he is, the Red Mage I referenced in three or four previous posts: Grim, Billy & Killy the Dwarves, and Alex’s Solo Dungeon.

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Nothing really special to see on the front other than some class abilities. He has Hear Noise as a Thief of equivalent level, he has a bonus +1 to attack and damage with a normal sword (ed. the custom class rules state to use the normal sword if the rapier is not in the game and in B/X it isn’t), and a bonus +1 to Initiative.

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On the back side is where we see Lalibo’s magical ability. As a Red Mage, he has access to healing and boom-boom spells. And he likes collecting Fire Beetle Eyes. Oh, and he’s 8 xp short of gaining a level! That’s some old school hate right there.

So I bet you want to see the class write up. I shall reveal it in time, but there are a couple of things to get out of the way, because some of this might be problematic.

First, I always try to find art that visually represents what I see a creation as, inspiration if you will. I didn’t actually put the pixel art from either the NES game or GBA Dawn of Souls into the following write-up but instead found an awesome piece on Deviant Art. This was about a thousand years ago, but I failed to record whose art it was, and I wasn’t about to try to track it and its creator down to ask if I could use it. So I covered it up with an AI-generated piece that I still think is pretty cool.

So for my first tangent, I do not want to get into a deep discussion about the use of AI, with the exception that I want to state clearly that have never used AI generation in the production of any of my written words. Period. But for art? Yes. Because my art is crap. Since my stuff is free and has a very limited reach, I don’t feel particularly bad. Trust that if I were ever to charge for anything I create, or if my work had a much greater reach, I’d pay a fiver or something to a human being to create something I couldn’t. But for my home game, I shamelessly use other people’s (ed. art) work and put it in MY documents for MY use. But now that I am sharing this work with you, I won’t use any other human’s direct work without approval. Quite frankly, if it got a thousand views, I might pay the fiver even though this blog is not monetized.

Let’s take a look at the write-up and continue the discussion afterwards.

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After that read, what do you think? Does it match the Red Mage/Wizard from the first Final Fantasy? I am not happy with the class as it is. I have a total of three different versions, and I’m not really happy with any of them. So lets dive deep on this one.

First off, yes, I totally copied the trade dress from Moldvay/Cook/Marsh’s B/X Dungeons and Dragons. That’s what I do, and it shows how early I had worked on this class. This is a scan of the sheet that I have in my binder to go with Lalibo. But when I looked for the pdf of it, I don’t even have it on the computer anymore. Sometime in late 2021, I shifted the tables over to Futura to create a B/X and AD&D hybrid. That’s how old this jam is. how time passes. So enough about the style, let’s get into the substance.

I really like the spell list. I think it captures the spells that the Red Mage can cast in either version of the first Final Fantasy games ported over into B/X D&D. Just like in either game, the character must balance which spells they are going to focus on based on the needs of the party. No Cleric? Fine, Red Mage can memorize cure light wounds. No Magic-User, fine, Red Mage can memorize sleep or magic missile. I think I nailed the spell list.

And for combat, the the Red Mage uses the Fighter Attack and Saving Throw charts. But they are limited to one-handed weapons and medium or lighter armour, and no shields–gotta keep the spell casting hand free. Nailed it!

So as the party increases in level, the Red Mage can fill in for, but not quite replace any of the three main classes that it takes its abilities from. So far so good right?

Well, that’s where I feel it went a bit downhill. See I always saw the Red Mage as a bit of a swashbuckler. That’s how I view the Red Mage in every Final Fantasy I game I play. I think I conveyed that with the class’s level titles. They can fight, wear light armour, and cast a versatile though limited list of spells.

I also wanted the class to generally play with a consistent (ed. and maybe even flamboyant) style, so I gave it a bonus with using one-handed swords, and required them to always wear that pimp hat. Truthfully, one of my favourite archetypes is the pirate. So what’s the difference between a pirate who starts a fight with the big boss with a pistol shot, and then closes with a sword and the Red Mage who starts with a magic missile and closes with a sword?

And don’t get me started on Dante from Devil May Cry as an inspiration. If you know, you know. That’s when I added the Thieves’ Hear Noise ability and also the Initiative bonus.

Also for this early version, I made the Prime Requisite Dexterity. Quite frankly, it should be Intelligence if based on the the Red Mage from Final Fantasy or Charisma if more a flamboyant swashbuckler. I think part of it was getting at least just a hint of all four base classes in this one character. I like what I came up with, but by this time, I feel the class was a bit muddied.

Now Lalibo works great for my home game, because whomever is playing is often short on manpower. Having the Jack-of-all-trades character is super beneficial, but I’m not sure it has the same solid space that perhaps a Bard might have. So, I tried creating different versions, but here I am with the first–I am not entirely satisfied.

But I guess what matters is that you’d never know it, because Alex loves it when Lalibo shows up at the tavern, especially with Billy & Killy. During an adventure, Lalibo always has about one moment to shine and be the hero, but really, only one. Even though it might seem otherwise, he doesn’t always take the spotlight. He just always seems to have the answer when needed. Many a stories have been told about Lalibo, if only in my head. ;P

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2026 Character Creation Challenge – Bruce Leeroy Jenkins

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Yeah, I had fun with this one. Buckle in, this is a long post.

This character was played during the days of Covid over Zoom with some of our family friends. It had been awhile since I had played any D&D and wanted to come up with a concept that would be interesting at the table. I also wanted to flex 5e to its limits. I loved playing this character so much, he is the basis for the B/X monk that I have been working on. So take a look at the front. There are a few interesting things.

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The front side of the sheet isn’t all that exciting, but notice that I chose Acolyte for this Monk’s background. Also notice the languages; I chose Sueloise as one of his known languages. If you know, you know. You’ll see on the back how this played out though. You may also notice something special in the Attacks & Spellcasting section. But once you see the what is on the back, you will see what I really like about how I built this character.

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So let’s talk about how Bruce evolved.

Building Bruce was a bit of a challenge, because all I knew was that I wanted some easy ideas to build the concept around. Mechanically, 5e gives us Backgrounds, Races, Classes, and the Initial Feat if human to build a character. I thought I wanted to try a Monk, and once I really decided on that, I knew I wanted to play a monk of the Scarlet Brotherhood. This helped because a few other decisions were then basically automatic. This meant that he would be Human, he would worship Wee-Jas, he would follow an extreme Lawful alignment (ed. ask him how this related to playing Bruce’s Charisma of 8 with a new DM), but most importantly, this would give me a general idea on beliefs and behaviors that I could let naturally evolve through gameplay. Easy and simple ideas so far. But I still had to pick the Background and now an Initial Feat.

So for his Background, I vacillated between Acolyte, Hermit, and Sage, because I wanted to tie this into my choice for the Initial Feat. Hermit would have been the most likely choice for any generic combat feat, perfect for a monk right? But Acolyte and Sage were there for the feat I ended up really wanting, Magic Initiate.

Now I love the idea for this feat for certain campaigns. My experience with 5e was extremely limited and this was to be the first time our family friend DM’d, so I looked at this feat to give my character a lot of versatility. Sure the feat may end up being useless the higher the level of the character, but for a 1st-level character, it is chef’s kiss in my book. And quite frankly, I really didn’t know how far his campaign was going to go. So I wanted options.

But then I struggled with choosing between Arcane or Divine studies. Remember how I talked about versatility? Either way I had two of the most dreaded spells for a new DM in the queue, Thaumaturgy (divine), and Prestidigitation (arcane), for which ever power choice I would make. I eventually made heavy use of the utility spell that I chose, but that’s another story. 🙂 But I struggled with the other spells because I couldn’t quite nail down where this character was coming from. On the Divine side I had Sacred Flame (radiant), and Inflict Wounds (necrotic). On the Arcane side I had Chill Touch (necrotic), Fire Bolt (elemental), Shocking Grasp (elemental), and finally Witch Bolt (elemental). I was leaning strongly towards the Arcane side. It fits doesn’t it, harnessing the power of the elements? I actually had built both characters completely and didn’t choose until the night that play started. I had two character sheets in my hand as we logged onto the Zoom call. And it was here when I finally had to make the decision. So let’s talk about it.

So prior to play I was already set up with this character. I had printed out the first 22 pages of my 2e Scarlet Brotherhood book that covered the basics and then the section on the specialty priests from near the back, so I could easily reference what this character would do in any given social situation. I also printed out two separate Dragon Magazine articles on Wee-Jas, one from 2006 and the other from 1e so mid 80’s or so, so I could reference why he would act in a certain way based on his beliefs. Yes you probably already noticed, I already needed a binder because I already have more sheets than would comfortably fit in a three-prong report folder. For a 1st-level character in a game run by a first-time DM. This doesn’t even count the dozen sheets I take for notes during a session. Sometimes I’m too intense.

So what happened as we logged into the call? I had an epiphany for this character. Think about where the character is right now. He starts as either a temple acolyte or sage’s apprentice. He is trying to understand the world around him. Somehow, someway he ends up training as a monk. I realized that Bruce would tap into Positive Energy to power his Ki. Could he have tapped into Fire to power his Ki instead? Yes. But he tapped into Positive energy. Why? What is anathema to Wee-Jas? Negative energy. So I’ve set up that dichotomy with Bruce. Positive energy suffuses life, Negative energy takes it away. Based on his belief structure, it couldn’t be any other way. He calls on Wee-Jas to blast the badites with her radiant beauty. Because he sees himself as Jassidin, he can remove her beauty with his touch (ed. reverse of Paladin’s laying of hands ability much). He goes thorough the campaign world guided by Wee-Jas’s beliefs on law and order and beauty. So yes, the way I have played Bruce, Paladins are not the only ones to suffer from the Lawful Asshole alignment, but he has an explanation for his abilities are used in play. And we played.

Five levels later, a campaign completed, a brand-new awesome DM born. Bruce is one one my favorite characters ever, and I am glad to have shared him with you.

I’m going to ask any readers to do me a solid here. I have never asked this before of anyone who has found their way to this site. Please show my son’s character some love and read my previous post about his character Grim. I would love for his character to get the most views for this challenge and right now at this time his character has zero views.

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2026 Character Creation Challenge – Grim

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This is is going to be a fun one. Today we have Grim, my son’s custom class character based on a creature he created from Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. I first mentioned Grim in this post from 2021, Alex’s Solo Dungeon. He was also mentioned in the recent post for the Billy & Killy the Dwarves. There is nothing really exceptional on the front.

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At some point Alex had renamed him Death, but I have his name as Grim and you can barely see where he erased the original name. But pay attention to the opposite side, because this is where the character really shines.

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First thing that you might notice is Grim’s normal items. He has 160 Iced Oatmeal Cookies, a frisbee, 92 dog biscuits, poop, and a skull. Okay, we might have had a little fun with the game.

If you look at the Memorized Spells, you’ll see that the Grim functions as a magic-user but doesn’t have any choices, because he only has one spell-like ability per spell-level. He casts the burning hands by swinging his scythe. That’s always cool and a morale buster against <1HD creatures (meaning it forces a check against morale). On the other hand, hold person is used by his 30′ long wraith-like ‘tentacles’.

But check the Other Notes section. Grim also has a tamed wolf. He trained the wolf with both the biscuits and iced oatmeal cookies to perform a few tricks such as ‘bark’, ‘stay’, ‘guard me’, and ‘search’. Also, the wolf now wears plate mail. We didn’t reduce his speed, but are you really going to tell this wolf that he can’t run as fast as he used to? I’m not.

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I’d like to think that this is a fairly accurate picture of his wolf for the style of game we had been playing. Think of it, A dwarf in platemail with an axe, a grim reaper with a scythe that glows purple, behind them a wolf in plate mail and another dwarf in plate mail but wielding a crossbow. Good Times!

Anyway, cheers.

This post is part of the Character Creation Challenge. To learn more, clicky on the following picture.

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2026 Character Creation Challenge – Dacre Scintillius

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Yeah, a simple B/X character. Let’s see how I can screw this up.

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So what is so special about this guy? Read closer and you’ll see that I used an ‘AI’ bot to create him on AJ PIckett’s Discord channel. Prove it you say, ok, since you asked, here is a copy & paste of the chat log for the creation of Dacre.

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Uh huh. Two pages of this?

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So most of the rolls should be apparent, but if not, I’ll tell you what they all were. The d12 roll was for random determination of his first-level spell. The d20 roll was for the bonus language for Intelligence. In my games, all magic-users start with Read Magic regardless of whatever the specific rules say. I also allow free movement of ability score points on a two for one rate. I could have done that with the first set of rolls, but they were already a bit munchkiny. And if you notice, I put them in order, so still kinda building a ‘guts’ character. Now for his rolls, I only wanted to bump the Intelligence up to get the bonus language. (ed. liar! In Lord Vader’s games, higher spell casting ability scores grant bonus spells. The +1 from the new Intelligence will grant one additional first-level spell to cast.) I struggled with taking away from either Constitution or Charisma. I really wanted to keep the Charisma high, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that 1 hit point makes a difference in a B/X game.

Now for the AI bullcrap. My almost last line, ‘!generate and stock a moldvay style dungeon’ of course went unanswered. Some AI. Bet that you can believe that ChatGPT would come up with something no matter how ridiculous. 😛

Anyway, a simple B/X character. Thanks for stopping by. This challenge has been fun so far. Cheers.

2026 Character Creation Challenge – Serena Wanderlust

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So I am moving this one up in the queue because I’m really excited to share this with everyone. Now this character breaks all the rules, but I love it for how adaptable this game can be. Serena started life all the way back in the early days of 3e. I was enamored with the ability for a character to choose their class at every level rise and built this character accordingly.

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And the back side. Nothing really special to see here.

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Now here is where it gets a little deeper. Back in those days, I spent a lot of time working on creating logical and coherent personalities. I would use any and in some cases every tool I had. And I made a worksheet. The first bit is from Gygax’s DMG, the second part from TSR’s The Complete Book of Villains, and finally the last part fits the 7-Sentence NPC structure from Cline’s article in Dragon Magazine #184 from 1992 (I think). More after the picture.

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From these final seven sentences, I really have everything I need to roleplay this character.

But no, I’m not done yet. Now I’ve been homebrewing for decades and when the 2e DMG came out and gave rules for building custom classes, well that was all the invitation I ever needed. But when the 2e Complete Handbook for Thieves came out and introduced me to Lone Wolf Thieves that used those rules, well I jumped on that like a 2-bit…

So here we are in 2026 and I’ve been playing B/X for the past 15 years or so. Serena originally started off as a thief, but slowly gained the ability to use a list of spells at a slower rate than other magic-users. And with the B/X Class Options book I’ve mentioned before, I could now build a class that matched fairly well with my original idea and wouldn’t step on the toes of any other character. And this final page for Serena gives me the framework to fit her non-standard growth. I guess I could have pushed the spells back one level to simulate the later arrival of spells, but oh well.

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Thanks for stopping by. Maybe one of these days I’ll post a stupid, bog standard character.

2026 Character Creation Challenge – Strider

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And here we are today on the 3rd of January and I already fell behind. Oh well, I spent all day yesterday making characters or rebuilding characters for various game systems. If I ever finish and post them is another matter.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my previous post, I often make characters to test my various classes and this was a quick playtest version of my BECMI Style Ranger from a few months ago (ed. yeah, that was posted back in July of 2024). Since I always felt that the 1e Ranger was modeled more on Aragorn than a more generic woodland warrior/survivalist, I figured I’d go whole hog on this one. More after the break.

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So if you check out the back side of the sheet, you might notice somethings. Now back in the day, we never used the level titles. I mean I kinda like the idea of them, but they never got any use. Honestly, it’s one of the things that is really annoying about Shadowdark. Anyway, I thought it would be cute for this character to only refer to himself by his level title.

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Another thing you might notice is that I try and keep notes about what the character has been up to. Strider here is one of the few times I actually ran three characters at one time. He led my son’s new B/X Style Druid (ed. not yet published) and a different character pair into a Random Dungeon called The Deadly Gallery of Cursed Lights.

So a couple of things here. Bob and Brother Awesome are a Fighter & Cleric pair who are part the local campaign area’s Templar analogue. There’s nothing really special except that I always like to build my campaign’s through the characters like that. I probably won’t bother posting their NPC record, but then again, I actually put them on proper character sheets because I liked them a lot in play. we’ll see.

The other thing is that over the past few years, whenever I build a new Random Dungeon, I use a spreadsheet random name generator that i built after being inspired from this blog post: Beyond the Black Gate – Megadungeon Random Area Name Generator. I even posted about all of Al’s megadungeon resources back in 2010 here: Megadungeon Resources at Beyond the Black Gate. This helps me keep these random dungeons separate in my mind and actually help me come up with ideas for any specials that the players might find.

So thanks for stopping by. I have more on the way. Cheers.

2026 Character Creation Challenge – Billy & Killy

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So Welcome to 2026. While going through the blogs that I follow this morning, I saw this https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2026/01/character-creation-challenge-day-1.html. As we all know Timothy has a thing for witches, and he posted a few as part the Character Creation Challenge. I thought this brilliant and figured I’d play along as well. Now I am under no delusions that I will post a character a day, but I thought it might be fun to show some of the mess I have come up with over the years.

Because it has rarely been more than my kids or my wife playing at any given time, I often have to play two characters as DMPCs. I generally create them as a pair that routinely adventure together for various reasons. I even created a random generation spreadsheet to do it for me. I’ve come up with a few interesting ones that maybe I’ll get to showing later. Often times, I create the pairs to cover whatever abilities the group is missing for that day. As such, I often put notes on the character sheets that records with whom they normally adventure, and you’ll notice that later.

So one day after creating a new characters class, the Grim, for my son, we needed to test it out. Now the Grim is basically a grim reaper looking magic-user, so he needed some meat shields. Enter Billy & Killy the Dwarves, platemail armoured and either axe and shield or sword and crossbow wielding vicious little monsters.

So for today’s participation, you get Billy & Killy the Dwarves. I’ll post a little more about them and a little surprise after the first character sheet. Look on their greatness.

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Billy & Killy started off as normal dwarves and after three levels, they play very much differently. As the lone meat shields for what functions as a scythe wielding m-u with burning hands, they often have taken the brunt of attacks against the party. While Billy only uses his axe and shield, Killy has gravitated towards using only his crossbow, which leads to Billy taking the majority of the damage. Let’s just say that they are not on the best of terms with each other. And since my son likes playing his Grim in melee to use his scythe and burning hands, Killy has been happily remaining in the rear and using his crossbow.

But the little surprise, Yep, I made a character sheet for my character pairs. Because I knew I needed a compressed typeface, instead of using the more appropriate Baskerville, I used News Plantin. It has a similar vibe as the Baskerville and I think it looks great.

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And finally, the picture below leads to the blog that I believe hosts/runs the Character Creation Challenge.

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BECMI Psychic Infiltrator

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So Fred did it to me again. Last week he hosted another stream where he worked on building a Shadowdark version of the 5e classes and sub-classes. This time he worked on the Soul Knife. This is one of my favorites of these classes because I think it is one of the most thematically solid. I also love that most of its abilities are not necessarily combat related.

But during the stream, he specifically mentioned me because of all the design work that I’ve done for B/X & BECMI. So here it is, challenge accepted, my BECMI version of the 5e Soul Knife. Clicky the picture for the two-page pdf.

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I went back to the 5e Soul Knife to get an idea of the class’s original intention, and using Fred’s work, built my version out from there. I went a little more into the thief abilities as a base and took out the three that didn’t fit the theme. I kept the Backstab in because I do see that this class could be used as an assassin. I also followed his example and kept his infiltration spell-like abilities and added in a few from 5e.

(Tangent: While I have been working on converting 1e classes to my B/X, BECMI, OSE game, I’ve struggled with the assassin both mechanically and thematically. I think this Psychic Infiltrator class easily takes its lunch.)

One special note though. I have ALWAYS hated that the thief only gets a d4 for hit points. As a constant house rule, they get d6. So I vacillated between d4 and d6 and finally went with the d6. If anyone keeps the d4 for the thief in their game, I’d strongly consider dropping this class’s hit dice to d4.

I really like that in the end both of our classes focus on the infiltration or spying aspect of the game rather than the combat. This class really gets the Exploration column of D&D.

BECMI Battle Cat

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So it’s been awhile. I’ve been constantly working on all sorts of D&D stuff, but not much that I put into a form I can publish. That changed yesterday and this morning. So let me tell a quick story.

Late last night for me, Fred from How to RPG hosted a live stream that showed his thought process on overcoming problems while creating his own work. He chose to build a Shadowdark class specifically for one of his players. It ended up fine, but it was the chat that prompted me to do what I’ve posted today.

You see, I normally follow Fred’s location building live streams, and I always ask for an area for a Battle Cat. You know, like from He-Man. Well Fred doesn’t believe that big cats are strong enough to carry the weight of a human, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I don’t know how many pulp fiction stories and cartoons I’ve seen where big cats are used as mounts. But anyway, in the chat I got too big for my britches and made a comment about playing a Battle Cat in a live-stream and someone called me on it; said they’d like to see it. Well until last night, there were no rules for playing a Battle Cat in D&D. Today, there now are. Clicky on the picture to get the pdf.

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So let’s talk a bit. I get why Fred has a problem with people riding cats. I learned a lot more about big cats than I ever thought I would. I didn’t realize just how small lions and tigers actually were. I think he’s right; great cats in the wild probably would not work as mounts. As the largest big cat, the tiger only gets to around 715 pounds with a shoulder height of 3.5 feet!

But then I started thinking, why not just make them bigger? So I did. But I didn’t think it wise to start the class at that size. So the Battle Cat class starts as a Cub at first level which ends up weighing about 20 pounds and is about one foot tall. And at every level after that, the character physically grows until eventually reaching the size of a standard Tiger at 8th-level weighing 715 pounds and being 3.5 feet tall at the shoulders. Still not quite rideable. But at 9th-level, the Battle Cat becomes a Panther that weighs 900 pounds and has a shoulder height of 4.5 feet. This is the size of a pony. Almost there for a fully armoured human. So finally at 10th-level, the Battle Cat reaches it’s true form at 1,200 pounds with a shoulder height of 5.5 feet. We now have a great cat the size of a small horse! Put in a few rules for barding with saddles, and we now have something we can ride.

A couple more thoughts. Basic D&D has a listing for Great Cats in the monster section, and I used that to plan out the damage and attack routines. I dropped back the number of attacks so as to not outshine any other melee damage dealing class. I also used that writeup to give me some ideas on abilities the Battle Cat might have. I am really happy with what I came up with and hope that someone aside from myself can enjoy this class in their favorite Basic Style RPG. And yes, lions and tigers can still climb trees. Real pictures, not just cartoons and pulp fantasy.

BECMI Ranger and some rambling

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Well here we go. After posting my version of the Barbarian class suitable for play at my table, I couldn’t just stop there. This is my version of the first edition ranger. Using the BX Options Class Builder rules, I created what I think is a very successful ranger class. Click on the picture for the pdf. Many rambling thoughts after the image.

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One of the things I’ve noticed about most of my classes is that they resemble the advanced classes more than anything. The only ones that seem to fit perfectly in my B/X game are the Hedgehog Guardian (Demi-human druid), Gnome Illusionist, Dwarven Templar (Dwarven cleric), Elven Ranger (Elf with druid spells), Halfling Robber (Halfling Thief), and the Ninja Cat. All of these demi-human classes have similar abilities to the ones found in the original rules, so none of them seem overpowered, and in my opinion help define the style of the campaign world at my table.

My mostly completed human classes on the other hand: Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian, Red Wizard, and Hunter (Witcher class), require too many abilities to match previous editions that they seem to be overpowered compared to the original human classes in B/X.

When I look at the human classes in B/X like the Cleric, it has two major Special Abilities: Turn Undead and Clerical Spells. The Magic-User has Spells and Magical Research. The Thief has three: the Thief Abilities, Backstab, delayed Read Languages (which I’d consider fairly minor), and delayed Use Magical Scrolls.

But with my Ranger, which I love anyway, has FIVE Special Abilities compared to the other human classes. I’m not counting the followers because in one way or another pretty much every class gets them. But the Ranger still gets Bonus Damage versus giants and goblinkin, Danger Sense, Tracking, delayed Druid & Magic User Spells, and like the Thief, delayed limited magic item use. Now the Bonus Damage I see as comparable to the Backstab for all the times I’ve seen thieves able to use it in pre-3e games. Tracking would be comparable to the Thief Abilities but not nearly as versatile. Maybe Danger Sense balances it out. I don’t know; it just feels like too much. But what abilities do I take away?

Now one class I shouldn’t have a problem with is my Druid. You would think that a Druid class with two Special Abilities: Wildshape and Druid Spells wouldn’t be a problem. But no, I added just the Pass without Trace and Identify Plants and Animals abilities at third level and even that seems too much. Think of all the abilities I kicked to the curb!

I want to eventually make a B/X Bard, but what abilities stay/go? Bard Influence, Bard Inspiration, Bard Lore, Thief Abilities, Magic-User Spells, Bard Songs.

I also want to make some type of Ki-powered Monk. I love my 5e Monk. And I know the Mystic exists, but it has so many powers that I’m not sure it fits in a B/X style game.

Again this is all in comparison to the B/X or early BECMI human classes. If I could keep the Special Abilities to two or three, then maybe my classes wouldn’t seem so overpowered. But that leaves me at an impasse with a lot of them. What do I take away while still keeping the flavor of the class?

At my table with my kids and friends, I never cared all that much. But posting my classes, I’d like to make sure they are basically balanced with each other. So it might be awhile before I post some of the classes inspired by earlier edition classes. Honestly, while writing this post, I’ve given myself a lot to think about.