Classes

Your class is the trade of your adventuring life, the lens through which you meet danger and grow. The Classes compendium holds the full roster, but almost everything hangs on four great groups. Know the group before you know the individual class.

The warriors — the d10

Fighters, rangers, and paladins share the finest hit die, the truest arm, and the deepest well of hit points.

• Fighter — the plain and perfect soldier of fortune. Every weapon, every armour, a specialisation that lets a blade sing three attacks every two rounds. The fighter's strength lies in being able to do almost anything with a weapon and survive anything that comes back.
• Ranger — the hunter of the wilds, d10 hit dice and a knack for tracking and stealth, later dyed with priestly nature magic. When you need someone who can find the enemy, move in silence, and finish it alone in the woods, that is the ranger.
• Paladin — the holy warrior, human by ancient code. Lay-on-of-hands to heal, a holy aura that guards allies, the power to turn the undead, and a purity of purpose that makes them the shining banner of a righteous party. They are demanding to play well; the code is real, and the rewards are meant to justify it.

The priests — the d8

Clerics and druids serve powers higher than themselves, and gain divine magic in return.

• Cleric — the servant of a god and its church. Solid armour, a mace or hammer rather than a blade, healing hands, and the sacred gift of turning the undead. Clerics choose their spells each dawn by prayer from the spheres their deity grants, and can heal the party like no one else.
• Druid — the priest of the deep wild, neutral and elemental. Druids command animal and plant magic, the weather and the elements, and at the heights of their order may shape-shift into beast form. If the forest should have a champion, it is the druid.

The wizards — the d4

Mages and illusionists are the frailest of heroes and the most transformative. Squishy, spell-hungry, and able to rewrite the world.

• Mage — the generalist student of the arcane, a spellbook of slowly accumulated power. Wizards choose their few spells in advance by memorization, and spend them like ammunition; a prepared wizard is a wonder, an unprepared one is a liability. Their spells divide into eight schools of magic.
• Specialist wizards — abjurer, conjurer, diviner, enchanter, evoker, illusionist, necromancer, transmuter. Each devotes itself to one school, gains extra spells and power in that school, and forgoes its opposites. The illusionist is the classic separate craft, but every school has its devotee.
• Illusionist — technically a specialist school in its own right, the master of deception and phantasm, weaving what is not there into something the mind believes.

The rogues — the d6

Thieves and bards live by wit, skill, and nerve rather than the shield wall.

• Thief — the master of stealth and the subtle arts: hiding in shadows, moving silently, opening locks, disarming traps, climbing sheer walls, and sliding a dagger between an unsuspecting foe's ribs for backstabbing damage. A thief is a toolkit of special skills that grow with level, and an attitude.
• Bard — the wandering wordsmith and jack-of-all-trades. Bards sing magic into the world, persuade where others threaten, and dabble in a little of everything — a little fighting, a little thievery, a little druidic magic. If you want to talk your way through the dungeon door, bring a bard.

Beyond the core: kits

The core classes are the trunk; the compendium's many kits are the branches. A kit is a variation that changes how a base class plays — the cavalier and samurai are warriors with codes and mounts, the assassin and bounty hunter are thieves with lethality, the avenger and shaman are priests with a different flame. Each kit lives as its own class entry, built on the same engine. If a core class is close but not quite it, a kit probably is.

What a class gives you

Whatever you choose, the class entry in the compendium tells you exactly what you hold:

• Hit dice and hit points across your levels.
• THAC0 — your combat skill progression, the number you need to hit an unarmoured foe; it falls as you rise.
• Saving throws — your defences against poison, magic, breath, and the rest, listed by level.
• Proficiency slots — how many weapons and non-weapon skills you may learn.
• Prime requisite — the ability score of your calling, the one that earns you bonus experience.
• Special abilities — the gifts your class unfolds as it grows, from turning undead to backstabbing to shape-shifting to a stronghold at name level.

Choose the class whose problems you want to solve — not the one with the nicest numbers. The best character is the one you still want to play at the twentieth session as much as the first.