I say the more the merrier/it's better to be safe than sorry since you will probably end up dropping, merging, and/or changing some, I think a safe minimum is 30 move ideas. The absolute minimum a class could get away with is 24 moves: 1 race move (barbarian), 3 starting moves (fighter), and 20 advanced moves (10 2-5's, and 10 6-10's). For now, just imagine what sort of shit it can do purely from a story perspective think "it's flesh can harden into steel" without appending "you gain +1 armor". Actually, while you're at it try not to think of them in terms of rules, mechanics, or even really "balance" at this point: you'll get to that next. Yes, even the stuff that you might not be sure what the fuck to do with. Once you have an idea, just start brainstorming shit that you think it can do and write it all down. Of course this is not to say that any old monster is going to work (I haven't found one, yet, but I'm sure they are out there), and some (like The Skeleton) will take more.creative liberties than others.Įxample: For this article I'm just going to go through how we handled The Witch as best I can remember it, which is to say not particularly well, but it's more conventional and recent than The Spider. On the subject of concepts, something else to consider is that while a lot of classes assume you're playing a living, breathing humanoid-like a human, elf, dwarf, etc-that doesn't have to be the case: we've written several undead classes, as well as a fucking giant spider. I've seen a number of pretty poor quality classes, but even if the class is done well chances are it's not going to line up with what you want, especially if it's for a fairly generic concept like a warrior or wizard type. I mean, right now I'm working on a new bard that I feel actually makes sense from a narrative/fiction perspective, I've already made a new wizard for Sundered World, and plan on doing a fighter that is more about fighting styles than just having a nifty weapon. Just because someone was the first to try their hand at something does not mean they did it "the best", or even particularly well at all. First things first, it is totally okay to re-visit a class that's already been done, "official" or otherwise.