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Paragon Preview - First Look at next class
🕑 Added 2025-09-01 16:11:25 +0000 UTCToday I have for you preview of the upcoming Paragon Class. This is not a complete draft and should probably not be played. It has not been holistically playtested, and is probably not balanced. It is put together demonstrate what the Paragon will be, and as a framework for me to build and test from. I've been showing drafts of my classes earlier in development these days mostly because there's little reason not to (...since I don't have to explain things to Redditors unless I post it over there...), but keep in mind this class is probably a ways off still, and is planned for development after the Summoner. What we will be seeing is more Active and Mythic Feats, as you can tell be its design it uses them in the way a spellcaster uses spells - they are very heavily integrated into the class design, and they can use a bunch of them. So... what is Paragon?
A More Active Martial. A paragon is sort of like 4e class remade for 5e - almost everything it does is a special move or power. This comes with a drawback - they won't attack as much as a Fighter or more typical Martial.,
Resource Soft Cap. Their resource is called Exertion, which builds up as they use it. Like a Psion with Psionic Mastery, they eventually can use Exertion without generating a stack 1/turn, but they only every get 1 free exertion, because their exertion effects often scale themselves. This means they never really run out of power. But they can also just go over their exertion limit and start generating exhaustion to keep using their abilities.,
Supernatural, but not Magical. One of the main debates of this class is how much it would use spells. As you can see, the ultimately answer was 'not much'. There were drafts that were much more Psion like with alternate spell lists, but the ultimate reason I decided against that was to better integrate it with Active Martial Feats/Mythic Feats, and use it as a chance to expand those systems in ways that would be useful to all martial characters - making them the Wizard of Martials.,
The Martial Psion... but not really. The Paragon's DNA is mostly closely related to the Psion, but it ultimately dropped the more complicated prefix/suffix modifier system. This is because Paragons often use two powers per turn at higher levels, and combining the build-your-power every turn with multiple uses is simply too complicated. They instead get the ability to mix and match powers though, so they are not suffering in terms of total complexity.,
...but also sorta. That said, Paragon class structure is very similar to Psion where their abilities come from their Path of Perfection, not their subclass. Their subclass is the Origin of their powers, which can be any Path of Perfection selected. They also have talents because I'm contractually obligated to put an upgrade system in my classes.,
Unbothered by Mortal Limits. Many martials cannot do things because they aren't considered supernatural - they are constrained (loosely) by the concept of physics. Paragons do not suffer from this. They are more akin to superheroes - they are assumed to be supernatural beings, even if that supernatural power comes from 'they trained too much'.,
The Paragon analog to Disciplines is 'Perfections' - categories of ability that the Paragon has ascended to superhuman levels with. They can come in primary perfections (that come with a Basic Active Ability that can be used without Exertion) and secondary perfections (that only come with normal active abilities and talents). The Paragon subclasses are called Origins, and give them mostly support and utility features to enhance how they use their perfection, but each one comes with a Perfection-agnostic active ability as well. The currently presented ones are Divine (Demigod, Blessing, etc) and Prodigy (Mortal Effort) Once you sign that you've read the disclaimers, here you go:
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-OYTmdt9gIEOv8vRfJUA
(PDF Version attached to post)
For folks that would like to give feedback or discuss it, the best place to do that is the Discord in #kibbles-drafting-room where we talk about the WIP stuff like this.
