The Infinity Matrix: Classes

 

Classes can color the flavor of a campaign as they bring in a lot of assumptions about how the world works and what the rest of the setting looks like. For The Infinity Matrix I wanted to definitely preserve the sense of science fiction  which means that magic exists but it isn't exactly shared or widespread and deities with an impact on the material plane are few and far between. However a level of mysticism and otherworldly power is a huge part of Pathfinder and more importantly pulp science fiction so I want to fill in the blanks somehow with otherworldly power even if it's not high magic. Normally I would allow all of the Paizo class options and note what third party material can be used but here I find it more useful to just build a class base using nothing but third party classes.

Mundane Classes: Enforcer, Cogitator, Sensitive, Luminary, Tough, and Daredevil from Anachronistic Adventures.

As I mentioned before these classes are basically successors of the d20 modern classes and unsurprisingly they tend to stand up to whatever scifi material I throw at them. Even better, they're more capable of having class features relevant to the basic concepts than say, a Fighter or Rogue. For example; Creating a mecha pilot could go to a lot of classes, even classes that get their own giant robot as a class feature, but just being a pilot is something that can fall onto a Fighter or a Rogue but they have few if any class features to actually make them good at it. Meanwhile having a Devil Dog of just about any class will fill the role nicely. In addition they'll have other class features that stay relevant outside of a cockpit without being loaded with other class features that are too archaic or far outside of their concept. At the same time, simple things like a military grunt gets more versatility  than a fighter by being more capable of dealing with things in ways other than slicing away with a sword.

Bottom line is that the anachronistic classes are an easy fit for characters and concepts that are not wielders of esoteric power or mad scientists. I wanted to say 'unextraordinary' but in Pathfinder that is never true, but there are a lot of concepts for heroes of science fiction that are basically 'normal' compared to the high magic that Pathfinder gets to. The anachronistic classes are the celebrities, the military grunts, the Starfleet officers and any other flavor of  "Badass Normal" that the mundane classes in Pathfinder normally can't do adequately enough.

Psionic Classes:  Aegis, Cryptic, Dread, Marksman, Psion, Psychic Warrior, Soulknife, Tactician, Vitalist, and Wilder from Ultimate Psionics.

If you haven't heard, over on the Paizo forums Dreamscarred Press is testing out a psionic leaning expansion of the Technology Guide. A lot of this testing is focused on getting psionc powered hardsuits and giant robots on the table but there's some other stuff too. I cannot wait for it, but even without that Psionics feel at home in a science fiction or science fantasy setting. Ever since the new psychic classes from Paizo's Occult Adventures was announced there was chatter about the fate of psionics and whether or not the psychic classes were Paizo's take on the concept of psionics, asking what the real difference between the flavor of psionics and psychics. For me, sci-fantasy and science fiction games are kind of the proof that the two are very different (besides the sentiment before Occult Adventures that some held where psionics was too sci-fi in flavor for Pathfinder). Its where psionics feel very much at home, especially with tropes like psionic aliens, comic book space heroes and Star Wars.

On the most basic level this is added in as my 'magic in space but just sci-fi enough that the players will buy it' for this setting but it also serves some balance purposes. With normal Pathfinder magic spells are numerous and have very pervasive effects that draws up questions in a space-faring setting. Psionic effects are way less pervasive and far reaching making the setting much more manageable in terms of making things work the way they do with it's presence. For example; With full blown 9 levels of casting its a bit harder to believe that spaceships being a meaningful mode of interplanetary transportation when interplanetary teleporting is a thing even if it just comes at late levels.

Technomancy Classes:  Cyborg from Rite Publishing,  Machinesmith and Fleshwraith from LPJ Games, Technician from Radiance House, Tinker and Gadgeteer from Interjection Games.

Oh boy, did I go overboard in my search for technomancers and collected quite a few. In some ways I wanted to include technological classes because they don't fit anywhere else thematically but for the most part there are a lot of sci-fi tropes that are hard to balance or impossible to realize when they aren't class features. I have enough to cause some redundancy but each one on the list feels somewhat indispensable.

Out of the bunch the Fleshwraith and Cyborg are the most unique. The Fleshwraith is the only one that leans towards biological technology and the Cyborg is less about being an inventor and more about self modification. Both classes kind of stay in their own niche and expand it the way that the other tech classes don't so they feel very needed to accomplish certain tropes that I anticipate people wanting.

The Technician and Machinesmith step on each other's toes the most. The Technician is more varied at it's base but the Machinesmith catches up with relevant supplements that expands it. The Technician squeaks by a few more concepts, even covering some of the Cyborg's territory, but the Machinesmith is a lot flashier. However if I were forced to choose I would ditch the Technician first simply because it has class features I have to tweak. You see it has class features revolving around 'Gadgets' which are not a part of it's actual class features but thew equivalent of magic items that only can be really used by the Technician's class features or a feat that grants a similar class feature in a diminished capacity. So basically there is a class of items that only the Technician interacts with which makes it not make much sense in a setting where other technomancers exist so I have to house rule that entire chunk of the book out of existence. Its not a difficult tweak but its a tweak nonetheless.

The Tinker and Gadgeteer seem fairly unique in concept but they actually had to compete with rejects and stood their ground due to superior design or more support. The Tinker is a bit less nessesary than the Gadgeteer, as most of it's tropes can be done with the other tech classes while the Gadgeteer tends to fit in it's own niche of being a bridge between mundane and 'science might as well be magic' territory. But the Tinker goes so far and is very varied, especially with all of it's supplements. Although its mostly a pet class at it's base it extends it's reach within the same tropes as the Machinesmith and Technician but can take it further by narrowing itself. For example; with the Machinesmith you can definitely make yourself a large robot suit but the Technician can go full Zordon and hook a party up with a bunch of mecha.

Others: The Host from LJP Games, Moonchild, Starseed, and Untouchable from Zombie Sky Press, Time Warden and Time Thief from Rogue Genius Games.

Some of these came along for the ride due to other content. In the case of the Host it came with the Machinesmith and Fleshwraith but I'm not sore about it because I really like the class and it handles a niche that the others don't. It's a class with an alien symbiote that doubles as a mutant powers class making it incredibly unique. However it does achieve this via eidolon evolutions so the hope to never needing to dig through books to use it is a bit nil, although many of the technological classes have 'gadgets' that function as spells so that was going to happen anyway.

The Moonchild and Starseed do present a problem. They outright have spells, which is something I would have rather avoided, especially for the Moonchild which casts off of the wizard spell list which is the most pervasive list of all. Also one thing I noticed is that most of my listed classes survive long adventuring days fairly easily, something slot casters don't do too well so I didn't want them to drag the whole party down by running out of juice. In comes Spheres of Power once again as an easy patch to keep magic in the game and be able to use these classes without much of a hassle. Although I'm still looking into whether or not to allow the Spheres of Power classes. On one hand I did want magic to still be in the game, even if at a diminished rate but I do need to look for archaic concepts. But there's the fact that through the use of Traditions the magic doesn't even need to be magic all the time. They could be mutant abilities or psionics or something like that. Why I'm going through that work to begin with is that I just wanted to include It Came from the Stars content, including the classes.

The Time Thief  and Time Warden are ones that I gave a lot of thought to. Although time isn't a theme exclusive to science fiction it's a very frequent subject to the point where I really wanted to include them. The Time Warden presents the spell problem again but again Spheres of Power saves the day, although I feel the need to limit it to the Time, Warp, Divination, and Fate spheres with a special tradition just for it.

So those are my picks for this campaign. There are some that didn't make the cut which may seem strange but I have my reasons. The Netjacker and Veloces would have been in there but I wanted to wait until Hypercorp 2099 was fully out before throwing them around, especially since the Tinker does not get that much love at my table so I wanted to give it a chance to shine before introducing a competing tech pet class.

The Classes from Amethyst: Renaissance didn't make it because the Anachronistic classes cover their concepts better than those classes do  and I have an irrational hatred for how the full BAB guys end up with 19 BAB. Its easy enough to tweak but those classes are full of small non standard stuff that rubs me the wrong way. Its a testament for how good Anachronistic Adventures because the classes in Amethyst feel redundant in their own context so including them would just bloat the number of classes without really adding anything.

Unfortunately, another casualty of Anachronistic Adventures is something better built than the Amethyst classes, Necropunk from Little Red Goblin Games. Everything that isn't handled by a more exciting technomancer is pretty handled by Anachronistic classes and since I'm not compelled to use a great chunk of the Necropunk (I'll get to that in a future post) I feel like it would be just adding bloat and redundancy.

I already expressed my opinion about Infinite Futures and while their classes are mostly fine, with a few tweakable problems, they are generally narrow compared to the other stuff I'm allowing. Besides that they bring the baggage of the rest of Infinite Futures which I really don't like.