[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Edgemaster (Expert)

The Edgemaster is all about style.  This is the Class to get if you want to graduate from “killing things”, to “killing things with flair.”  This is the class of the Gladiator showman, the cocky Wuxia swordsman, or the foppish yet deadly duelist.  It is in the Edgemaster’s flashy displays of dominance that his allies find the courage to redouble their efforts in battle.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Beastmaster (Expert)

There’s something inherently awesome about being the master of a fantastic creature that could easily snap a man in half.  Perhaps it’s another kind of power fantasy, being able to command a wild and “savage” being to the extent that it bows to your every whim.

It’s this kind of power trip that you get with the Fantasy Craft Beastmaster Expert Class.  More than just a survivalist, the Beastmaster specializes in harnessing creatures that would have normally been considered monstrous, guiding them as if they could read his mind.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Alchemist (Expert)

Edward Elric

Alchemy has always held a strange mystique to mankind.  The concept of applying repeatable procedures to create miraculous effects have led hundreds to seeking out rare and strange ingredients to achieve the impossible, whether for material or spiritual gain.  Transmutation was the goal, whether to change base metals to gold, or to make a mortal man into an immortal free of the inevitability of death.

As a character concept, the Alchemist is a fine choice for an Expert Class.  Self-motivated, and ever driven to seek out the obscure and the bizarre in hopes of unlocking yet another piece of the puzzle of their alchemical ambitions, the Alchemist makes for an interesting character concept.  Furthermore, their ability to concoct all sorts of potions, poultices, elixirs and other items for their party help them fulfill a unique niche of buffs.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Soldier

To finish off the week, we discuss the last of the Base Classes from the Fantasy Craft Corebook: the Soldier.

The Soldier represents the last of the 4 basic food groups of dungeon-dwelling monsters: the Fighter.  Fantasy Craft continues to keep their character classes larger than life by making the Soldier Class the ultimate fighting (and killing) machine in the game.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Scout

The tracker, the woodsman, the ranger, the wilderness explorer… all of these are represented by the Scout Class.  The primary characteristic of this character type is the ability to survive in hostile environments.  The Scout is heroic in the sense that they are not cowed by the lack of certain creature comforts, and in fact, revel in the idea that they eke out their next meal by themselves with their own hands.

Scouts are talented, resourceful and capable in even the most taxing of situations, and Fantasy Craft goes on to hammer that point home with this Base Class.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Sage

Today we talk about the Sage.

Believe in me, who believes in you...

Among Fantasy Craft’s classes, the Sage is the epitome of the Jack of all Trades, a wildcard of sorts by virtue of being a master dabbler.  More so than in any other class, the Sage relies on the player to actually take time to read up on the other classes and cherry pick the roles he wants to focus on, while making sure that he’s got something to offer in any situation.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Priest

If one side of the fantasy coin is Magic, then the other side surely has to be Faith.  It might be easy to write off magic from a setting, but it is nearly impossible to create a truly atheistic setting.  Whether the gods are distant and uncaring (like Crom) or meddling and intrusive (like the ones in the Forgotten Realms), mankind has always found ways to create anthropomorphic representations of the divine.

And as with all societies, there is one Class of individuals who specialize in communicating and interacting with the divine.  The Priest is Fantasy Craft’s answer to the cleric, except with a greater focus on the fact that the Priest is an intermediary, whose faith is the wellspring from which he draws the favor of the divine.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Mage

A character from the Grim Grimoire video game

Few things define the Fantasy genre than the presence (or absence) of Magic.  Magic is a wondrous, terrific thing and many a Fantasy world relies on magic for their everyday existence.  Some also have entire governments and nations that bow down to a Magocracy.  It is little wonder then that Fantasy Craft has their own take on the Mage

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Lancer

A mounted warrior must have been a terrifying sight.  Being a city-guy, I’ve not had much experience with horses, but the idea of a heavily armored man bearing down on you on a creature that weighed 1,200 pounds while carrying a wicked reach implement designed to skewer you sounds pretty disturbing.

[Fantasy Craft] Class Act: The Keeper

It has once been said that knowing is half the battle (and the rest of it are Red lasers and Blue lasers).  Ask a Keeper and they might tell you that knowing is the battle.  Keepers are another Specialist class, one that focuses on mastery of knowledge in the form of skills.  Even the Explorer can’t keep up to the sheer number of skill points that the Keeper starts off with.