Designing A Skyrim Style Campaign – Side Bar: PC & NPC Classes

Designing A Skyrim Style Campaign – Side Bar: PC & NPC Classes

We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming to talk about an important issue, Puppies.

 

Puppies are awesome, they are cute and cuddly. You should have a puppy. If you don’t like puppies, then there is something earnestly wrong with you, even the Grinch has a dog.

PC & NPC Classes

Just Kidding!

What I want to talk about is the issue of converting Skyrim PC & NPC Classes into Adventuring Conquer King Classes has to be addressed before I can really proceed to the next step in the world building. This of course is going to lead to the first question.

“Hey, Skyrim does not use a class system, how do you plan on doing this?”

If you have ever played Skyrim, you will know this already, but for those who have not a little insight.

Skyrim does not have a dedicated Class System. Instead you have a PC with a list of skills that level up as you use them. Your character level is based on the level of your combined skills.

Depending on what you focus on doing, every hero is going to be a little different. There is however built into the game a very subtle class designation system and then there are the story line classes.

In the very beginning of Skyrim as you are traveling to the first settlement you will come across three standing stone designated as the Mage, Thief and Warrior stones. Activating any one of these stones, you can only have one active at any time unless you have a special magic item, will grant you an experience gained bonus on a certain set of skills. In fact there are a number of these standing stone and they act like class guides, increasing your experience in a few areas.

Standing Stone	Affect in Skyrim	Corresponding ACK Class
The Warrior Stone	Combat skills increase 20% faster.	Fighter
The Thief Stone	Stealth skills increase 20% faster.	Thief
The Mage Stone	Magic skills increase 20% faster.	Mage
The Lover Stone	All skills increase 15% faster.	None
The Apprentice Stone	Recover Magicka twice as fast; twice as vulnerable to magicka damage.	Mage
The Atronach Stone	50 extra Points of Magicka, 50% Absorb spells, -50% Magicka regen.	None
The Lady Stone	Regenerate Health and Stamina 25% Faster.	None
The Lord Stone	50 points of damage resistance, 25% magic resistance.	None
The Ritual Stone	Raises all the dead around you to fight for you once per day.	Warlock or Cleric
The Serpent Stone	Paralyze the target for 5 seconds, and do 25 points of poison damage once per day.	Assassin
The Shadow Stone	Invisibility for 60 seconds once per day.	Assassin or Thief
The Steed Stone	Carry weight +100, equipped armor has no weight and causes no movement penalty.	None
The Tower Stone	Unlock any expert level lock (or lower) once per day.	Thief

So we got 4 of 4 of the Core Classes, 1 of the Campaign Classes from the Core ACK Rulebook. We also have 1 New Character Classes from the ACK Companion Book. In the Skyrim Setting there are also several factions dedicated to a certain archetype.

Faction	Corresponding ACK Class
Bard’s College	Bards
Blades	Fighters
Greybeards	Mystics (?)
College of Winterhold	Mages & Explorers
The Companions	Fighters
Dark Brotherhood	Assassins
Thieves Guild	Thieves
Dawnguard	Clerics & Paladins

So we now have all four of the Core Classes, three of the four Campaign Classes from the Core ACK Rulebook. We also have two of the new character classes from the ACK Companion Book. In addition, the Elven Spellsword & Nightblade would fit in perfectly. The Elven Ranger, Courtier and Enchanter also work well. The Dwarven Vaultguard and Craftpriest have no corresponding classes in Skyrim, since dwarves are extinct there, but they fit well in the world. The Dwarven Machinist is the perfect fit for Skyrim. The Dwarves love their machines. For the Orcs, the Barbarian and Shaman class is perfect as is. Witches also fit very well.

The one problem I see is how different priests in Skyrim are, from clerics in ACK or D&D for that matter. This has to do with how magic is treated in Skyrim which has some differences from traditional D&D Magic. This is going to be addressed in a different sidebar.

In regards to NPC Classes there are a few and they correspond with ACK specialists like blacksmiths, apothecaries, mercenaries, miners, lumberjacks, soldiers, cultists, etc. 

So for this campaign, I can used almost all of the classes from the ACK Core book except the Bladedancer, about half a dozen from the ACK Companion Book. 

The Mage and the Cleric are the two classes that will need some modification. I will discuss that in my Magic Sidebar.