Nanoha Project: Aerial Mage

[littha]

Aerial Mage


   
"Zenryoku Zenkai"

-Nanoha Takamachi, Aerial Mage

An areal mage specialises is high speed air to air or air to ground combat. While many mages gain the ability to fly during their careers only an areal mage can be said to have truily specialised in high speed aerial combat.

MAKING AN AERIAL MAGE
Abilities: Constitution and Charisma are your most important stats.
Races: Nearly every Artificial Mage is an aerial mage but there low population means that the majority of aerial mages are human.
Starting Gold: 3d4x10(average gp)
Starting Age: As Sorcerer

Class Skills
The Class Name's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are....
Skill Points at 1st Level: (x + int)x4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: x + int

Hit Dice: d6

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special	Attack Form	Defence Form	Other Form	Focus Points
1st	+0	+2	+0	+2	Focus Magic, Barrier Jacket	1	0	0	2
2nd	+1	+3	+0	+3	-	1	1	0	6
3rd	+2	+4	+1	+3	-	1	1	1	11
4th	+3	+4	+1	+4	-	2	1	1	17
5th	+3	+4	+1	+4	-	2	2	1	25
6th	+4	+5	+2	+5	-	2	2	2	35
7th	+5	+5	+2	+5	-	3	2	2	46
8th	+6/+1	+6	+2	+6	-	3	3	2	58
9th	+6/+1	+6	+3	+6	-	3	3	3	72
10th	+7/+2	+7	+3	+7	Focus Form	4	3	3	88
11th	+8/+3	+7	+3	+7	-	4	4	3	106
12th	+9/+4	+8	+4	+8	-	4	4	4	126
13th	+9/+4	+8	+4	+8	-	5	4	4	147
14th	+10/+5	+9	+4	+9	-	5	5	4	170
15th	+11/+6/+1	+9	+5	+9	-	5	5	5	195
16th	+12/+7/+2	+10	+5	+10	-	6	5	5	221
17th	+12/+7/+2	+10	+5	+10	-	6	6	5	250
18th	+13/+8/+3	+11	+6	+11	-	6	6	6	280
19th	+14/+9/+4	+11	+6	+11	-	7	6	6	311
20th	+15/+10/+5	+12	+6	+12	-	7	7	6	343

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: An aerial mage is proficient with all simple weapons, light armor and Devices.

Barrier Jacket (Su):

Focus Magic (Su): An aerial mage has the innate ability to manipulate their force of personality into a tangible energy, this allows them to cast Magical Techniques by expending this energy.

Focus Form (Sp): At 10th level the Aerial mage can choose one of their Forms to be permanently enhanced. Whenever the aerial mage uses that Form add up all of the FP spent by everyone within 200' during the current encounter and add 1/2 of that to the number FP spent by that form. This additional FP breaks the normal cap of FP equal to your Focus level.
 
PLAYING A CLASS NAME
 Brief description on how to play the class you are designing.
 Combat: Here's a section where you will describe common combat methods for your class. Remember to include information on how your class will use his powers in combat.
 Advancement: This is a section on different options and paths that the class can go down when they advance in power.
 Resources: What resources might a member of this PrC be able to draw on..

CLASS NAME IN THE WORLD
"A quote of somebody else talking about your class!"

-name of quote originator

A brief description of how your class is persevered in the world and how he interacts with the world.
 Daily Life: Some general information about the typical day in the life of your class.
 Notables: Make up some cool information about notable figures in the history of your class. It's best to give a little information from one of the good alignment and evil alignment (unless it's a good or evil only class).
 Organizations: Some information about organizations dedicated to the practice of your class and other organizations which members of your class will be attracted towards.

NPC Reaction
 This is an in detail description of how NPC's would perceive your class and the immediate generalization that people would give of your class.

CLASS NAME IN THE GAME
 This is a good place to provide a quick note on how your class will effect game play statistically.
 Adaptation: This is a place where you put in detail how people can adapt your class into their campaign setting.
 Encounters: This is a place to describe what sort of encounters PC's will have with NPC versions of your class.


EPIC CLASS NAME

Hit Die: dx
Skills Points at Each  Level : x + int
Class Ability
Class Ability.
Bonus Feats: The Epic Class Name gains a Bonus Feat every x levels higher than 20th

[littha]

Shell of a class but needed something so that I could continue working on the forms. Focus Form may end up being way too powerful, the idea was the emulate the Starlight Breaker which would be:

Focus Attack Form
Long Range, Bombardment

It would be expected to deal 1d6 damage/4 FP. About 5d6 at level 20, hopefully the Focus Form would boost that massively.

[Garryl]

If attack forms are standard actions to use, 1d6/4 levels isn't going to cut it, ever. It would only be enough to matter at all (thanks to that range) if it was in place of each attack in a full attack.

Focus Form looks like a ridiculously uncapped version of Circle Magic. Also one with a very unreliable effect. Fighting other Focus Mages makes it way too strong, fighting users of other subsystems makes it only reasonably good (since your own abilities power it up). It's also a lot of bookkeeping in large battles since not only do you have to keep track of how many FP was spent but where it was spent.

[littha]

If attack forms are standard actions to use, 1d6/4 levels isn't going to cut it, ever. It would only be enough to matter at all (thanks to that range) if it was in place of each attack in a full attack.

Don't worry, there will be boosters in there too.

Focus Form looks like a ridiculously uncapped version of Circle Magic. Also one with a very unreliable effect. Fighting other Focus Mages makes it way too strong, fighting users of other subsystems makes it only reasonably good (since your own abilities power it up). It's also a lot of bookkeeping in large battles since not only do you have to keep track of how many FP was spent but where it was spent.

It is rather like Circle magic but the range of effects from these classes will be rather a lot more limited than normal casting. Most you are going to pull out of Focus Form is probably one huge damage blast. I was planning on having it convert PP and spells (on a spell point system). I don't think the tracking would be that difficult but I could increase the area by a ton. Mostly I just don't want it powering up from spells cast hundreds of miles away. I also need a line about it permanently wiping out the FP it collects so you cant fire it repeatedly.

There are two goals for Focus Form:
1. It needs to collect spent spell energy from the environment.
2. It needs to do a boatload of damage. 

It is basically the way of casting one of Nanoha's signature spells in this system.

[Prime32]

So... what did you want to call the subforum for this project?

[littha]

Lol... I didn't even consider a subforum. This just sort of expanded rapidly....

I am sure you could guess what I would call a subforum for this....

[veekie]

Hmm, seems an odd way to differentiate Mage types in the setting.
From what I gather, you start off with the Base Class styles:
-Mid-childan Mage - Energy and ranged attack oriented. Evasion based rather than endurance based. Medium ranged combat
-Mid-childan Summoner - Buff spells mainly, with single powerful minion that they enhance further. Evidence is mixed since sample size is 1(and Caro is lower level than Lutecia).
-New Belkan Mage-Knight - Physical attacks channeling magic(ala duskblade). Tends to tank a bit less than Old Belkan. Technically a Mid-childan variant.
-Old Belkan Mage-Knight - Magic augmented physical attack oriented. Tends to tank over dodging.
-Belkan Summoner - Minion horde summoner, with more transportation spells, but less buffs.
-Belkan Mage - Again, sample size of 2(Hayate and Shamal), but looks like pure heavy artillery or support magic with limited close range options .

From that, it looks like Old Belka is based on very clear caster/melee distinctions, while Midchildan is more mixed specialty.
Air Mage/Barrier Mage, etc seem more like prestige classing from there.

[littha]

Hmm, seems an odd way to differentiate Mage types in the setting.
From what I gather, you start off with the Base Class styles:
-Mid-childan Mage - Energy and ranged attack oriented. Evasion based rather than endurance based. Medium ranged combat
-Mid-childan Summoner - Buff spells mainly, with single powerful minion that they enhance further. Evidence is mixed since sample size is 1(and Caro is lower level than Lutecia).
-New Belkan Mage-Knight - Physical attacks channeling magic(ala duskblade). Tends to tank a bit less than Old Belkan. Technically a Mid-childan variant.
-Old Belkan Mage-Knight - Magic augmented physical attack oriented. Tends to tank over dodging.
-Belkan Summoner - Minion horde summoner, with more transportation spells, but less buffs.
-Belkan Mage - Again, sample size of 2(Hayate and Shamal), but looks like pure heavy artillery or support magic with limited close range options .

From that, it looks like Old Belka is based on very clear caster/melee distinctions, while Midchildan is more mixed specialty.
Air Mage/Barrier Mage, etc seem more like prestige classing from there.

My current planned classes with characters that fit in each are:
Aerial Mage (Nanoha, Fate, Hayate)
Ground Mage (Subaru, Teana)
Guardian Mage (Yuuno, Shamal, Zafira)
Mage Knight (Signum, Vita)
Summoner (Caro, Lutecia)

They are grouped like that for simplicity sake, the combat differences between Caro and Lutecia for example are not worth making a whole class about (If we even had that much information about them). I might put in a feature on the devices for selecting your magic style for some sort of bonus but it doesn't seem to me that your magic style does much to differentiate your abilities.

[veekie]

Hmm, have you been keeping up on Force and ViVid? We do get to know a bunch more about them. Summoner was established to be fairly similar(since Lutecia uses modern/ancient hybrid).

Air/Ground Mage is a power level thing though. Its known that pretty much any A+ mage can fly well enough to use in combat.

[littha]

Haven't been keeping up with force/vivd no. My knowledge only spans the anime series though access to a wiki helps.

Air/Ground Mage is a power level thing though. Its known that pretty much any A+ mage can fly well enough to use in combat.

Makes enough sense but the barrier seems to be AAA+ rather than A+ as Agito is the only sub AAA+ mage that classes as Air and its possible that is a racial thing. Do Teana or Subaru ever actually get to fly?

[veekie]

Well of the Forwards:
-Erio can fly well enough to engage Fate in low-aerial combat in ViVid, though mostly in short-medium bursts.  By Force hes part of an air combat team.
-Caro continues to ride a dragon, but she can levitate now.
-Subaru has Wing Road, which I think lets her go faster than flight would.
-Teana can stay in the air unsupported. But her air-combat capability is mostly 'nuke it from orbit'. No instant movement for her.

Only Erio and Subaru exhibit the aerial speed and maneuverability necessary to fight in the air properly. Teana uses levitation mostly to get into better firing position for Starlight Breaker and Crossfire. Looks like they just don't have the magic output to sustain high speed flight for long.

EDIT: And heres another Mid-style summoner