My friend is getting ready to start up a new campaign, and we’re all discussing character choices. I’m torn between being a hammer-fighter Thor-wannabe or a firebender, like Zuko from Avatar. The former is easy enough, but I’m having problems with the latter as I have no idea how that would work mechanics-wise.
Benders don’t cast spells in the traditional sense; they perceive and manipulate the flow of elemental energy. So, I guess that would make them draconic spellcasters? That sounds really over-powered right away, except for the fact that firebenders can only control fire, and they can’t do nearly as many neat tricks as say a wizard who specializes in the fire domain.
And, if I wanted to be a firebender like the character Zuko, well he’s also proficient in martial arts like a monk, and stealthy like a rogue. I googled a bit and found a template for 4.0, but sadly I don’t know that system yet. Oh, and speaking of monks, that does raise an important point. In the Avatar universe, firebending almost always has a martial component to it. There are old firebenders, but it’s an intensely physical activity, akin to a martial arts kata or even a dance. A firebender’s power comes not from speaking a few mystic words, but from his breath.
Anyway, the main question is how would you as a DM integrate a bending mechanic. Psionics? It’s not an impossible task but I’m pretty beginner at all things D20 so now I turn to y’all. Got any ideas?
As a DM? Well, shit. I probably wouldn’t allow it in my games. We decided on a game and that game is D&D, not anything else. That being said, if I was somehow convinced… my guess would be through a prestige class. D&D’s mechanics really aren’t suited to something like the concept of bending. Magic in D&D is limited in that everything is a spell or spell-like ability- fire bending for example would have to be accomplished via a list of spell-like abilities the player would have access to (different fire attacks, fire control, etc - it’d be difficult if you came across a situation where you wanted to do something specific with your fire bending that wasn’t covered by the rules and the spells you’d decided on - a DM could just wing it in those situations but I tend to prefer more structured games).
If a player came to me and said that they wanted to design their character around a Bender I’d tell them to multiclass monk and sorcerer or play a bard with a bunch of unarmed combat feats or something. It wouldn’t be a particularly good character mechanically. In D&D you can’t be great at everything. You’re either going to be a balling fighter or caster or you can be middling at both.
You’d have to risk heavy imbalance, not that most homebrew (or hell, official) classes don’t. It seems to me that what you’re going to want to do is give them at-will attack-action equivalent powers that either don’t run out, or have some sort of mild limiting mechanic such as diminishing returns (less powerful the more often you use it, but it goes back to full strength after a certain number of turns). After that you’ll decide what level they can get them, and the selection they have to choose from.
For that, look through the spell-book and pick some spells to scale down. Fireball, but smaller and/or weaker (perhaps the player can choose the tradeoff either at character creation or cast-time), a single target fire spell. Even fire wall. After that, you should have an idea of how to balance your defensive spells (since even Firebenders can block with bending). I imagine it would be a reactive spell, rather than a passive like Mage Armor. That is to say, an attack-equivalent action that for one (or two, if one is completely useless) round will increase AC from a declared direction.
From there, you can add feats at certain levels. One such feat may be lightning, which would be a prerequisite for picking lightning-based spells. Another could be redirect lightning, which could see some out-of-combat uses if you’re lucky (i.e. a shock trap you can’t disarm, go to the air plane, etc).
As for melee… well, if you give them melee they’ll be overpowered as shit, but if you have to, allow them Unarmed Combat and Staff Proficiency, and then give them a Base Attack Bonus somewhere about half (or lower!) or monk, until it feels good enough. I imagine for bending you may want to just skip the attack modifications and just give them free feats like tumble, since even in the show their physical prowess was closer to dodging than hand to hand combat for the most part.
Easy. This screams Warlock, possibly (though not necessarily) Hellfire Warlock or Eldritch Theurge. How much you jazz it up depends on the power level of the game and how complicated a build you want.
This reminds me of Ars Magica and The Dresden Files FATE system…
I will really agree with AClockworkMelon that the concept of bending doesn’t suit D&D well, especially 4E where powers are designed for a certain class mechanic. Multi-classing seems to be the way to go.
Back in some old D&D Dragon magazines, there were some advice on allowing wizards who know Fireball spells to ignite ordinary objects (like a magical match and the like), but I think this will cause havoc in a heavy-rules game.
The main pyromancer feature was being able to burn spell slots to produce fire effects, either directly or by “firelacing” another spell (which adds 1d6 fire damage to the spell for each spell level he burns to lace it).
So, say the pyro wants to burn something, but it’s hard to hit. In fact, he wants to burn it a lot. He sacrifices one of his prepared Fireball spells as a free action, which gives him 3 spell levels to work with. Then he casts Magic Missile, firelacing it with the levels he got from the Fireball. The Magic Missile, which is guaranteed to hit, zips out and deals 1d4+1 force damage +3d6 fire damage.
Or say there’s a magically concealed sniper taking potshots at the team. The pyro could start fireballing random spots and hope to get lucky…or he could sacrifice one of the fireballs to produce a sheet of flame over the whole target area. It will only do 1d6 damage instead of normal fireball damage, but it will reveal the would-be assassin.
Or there’s this steam-powered mechalich with a boiler on his back…
My guy was a sorcerer/psion, which gave me lots of spell slots to burn. I leveraged skills and psion feats to make him tougher and harder to hit. He ended up being a slippery, fire-flinging freerunner, more or less. More Aang than Zuko in combat style. You could probably pull off a sorcerer/monk pyromancer on the same basis. You’d have to think very carefully about your spell selection, because you’ll want spells that can help you survive in close quarters (Cat’s Grace should be handy for a monk). On the other hand, pyromancy lets you convert any of your chosen spells to burnination, so you actually have more flexibility than a vanilla sorcerer.
For firebending or earthbending, what you want is Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. Zuko can be quite easily and straightforwardly statted out as a swordsage, focusing on the Desert Wind discipline. In fact, I’d have to check the dates to be sure, but I suspect that one of the motivations for the book was to provide a way to represent benders in the game. I’m not the biggest fan of ToB, but even I have to admit that it’s exactly what you’re looking for, here.
Air and water aren’t as well represented by Tome of Battle, but they’re not as martial. Personally, if I wanted to homebrew something for those, I’d use psionics as a base.
Well, you can mix in other disciplines, too. And even “weakest ToB offering” is still more powerful than, say, monk (one of the classes the OP is using for a comparison).
In the Pathfinder game (aka D&D 3.75), the recently released book, Ultimate Combat has a bunch of feats that fairly closely model elemental bending - although their version of earth bending involves manipulating acid, instead of moving big blocks of stone around. The other elements are reasonably close. They all presume that you’ve got a few levels in monk.