Help building an interesting class in Herolab

[Asandir]

I have been fooling with entering a class in Herolab, mostly for my own amusement and partly because I intend to use it in my game, but it has some interesting class features and not sure how to build them.

This is the Maestro Base Class from Interjection Games.

The Maestro is a spellcaster that has a defined list of spells, gets spells known and based on high Charisma score gets additional spells known per day. They can cast each spell they know one time per day.

Second, the class has Scores that produce effects. Scores are pieces of music strung together to achieve an effect. They consist of Intros, Outros and Melodies. Each score consists of 1 intro, 1 outro and 1 or more Melodies.

Thirdly, they also get Refrains, which are essentially Melodies that can be substituted into an ongoing score to replace one or more melodies in the ongoing score that the character is conducting.

In many respects, my thoughts on the Scores, function much like Word Casting, where you have a Meta Word, a Target Word and an Effect Word. The problem, I think is that as far as I can tell, you can't have a mixed model on the class, that is both functioning as a word caster and as a regular spell caster.

Any thoughts from anyone out there on suggestions for building this class?

Thanks.

[Aaron]

I'd create a configurable for the Scores

[Asandir]

Ok, time for some more dumb questions. I've created a configurable, but I have a few questions. First time I have done that, so interesting and I learned something. So how is this different than using the primary, secondary, tertiary etc. setup on the class table?

So, let me further clarify on the Maestro's abilities. At first level they get access to 3 Intros or Outros, and 1 + Intelligence Modifier number of Melodies.

These then added together to form a score. At first level, for example the character gets 2 scores. Additionally, the character can only add one melody to a score. So each score is the combination of 1 intro, 1 outro and a number of melodies depending upon level that makes up the scores that the character can Perform (conduct).

Does the configurable allow you to say I want this Intro, this Outro and this/these melodies to make up this score? It ends up looking very similar to what the Word Casting does with the Meta, target and effect words.

So text from the Scores portion of the document:
A score is a piece of music containing an intro, an outro,
and a number of melodies. Intros, outros, and melodies
are drawn from the maestro's composition book. A
maestro begins play with two scores, plus additional
scores equal to his Intelligence modifier / 3, rounded
down, minimum 0. Each score must contain a single
intro, a single outro, and a single melody. At 3rd level and
every five levels thereafter, a maestro's mastery over
music allows him to prepare scores with an additional
melody.

Text from the Compositions section:
A maestro begins play with a composition book
containing 3 of any combination of intros and outros.
Further, a maestro's composition book also begins play
with melodies equal to 1 + the maestro's Intelligence
modifier, minimum 1. At each new maestro level, a
maestro gains one intro or outro for which he meets all of
the prerequisites, as well as one melody for which he
meets all of the prerequisites.

This is what I am trying to accomplish. So am I on the right track with this?

Oh and as I mentioned above, they do get regular spells as well.

Thanks.

[Aaron]

The reason why I recommend the configurable is because classes have a total of 5 tables which can hold custom special abilities. If you're going to devote 3 to Intros, Outros, and Melodies, and then if you want to use those to build 2 scores each of those would take up their own table, and you'd be out of tables. Any future archetypes or whatever of this class would have nowhere to put their own custom specials.

Configurables have 7 tables however, which would allow you to use the first 3 for picking the components, and then the remaining 4 to make "favorite" scores. Plus, you'd still have the class tables free for future use.