I can’t remember what the genesis of this class fully was, it’s from the archive. I know it takes its name and runs with it, like most of my Endjinn classes, and is obviously a bit of a play on the movie/icon of the same name. I was ultimately trying to push the Endjinn racial template to its limit in terms of my comfort with damage and armor.
This time you get my notes up front because this one requires explaining.
How much damage bonus is too much? This is a critical question. The ACKs class design system leaves a lot up to a judge to judge, and rightly so. I benchmarked off the beastmen race damage bonuses, seeing this as similar to a Bugbear. This represents my upper limit of damage bonuses I would give in a class, interestingly the level limit kicks in nicely to make it only 1 point higher than a fighter when it reaches max level. Overall though this class does beastly damage, and I didn’t want to shy away from that, but it stands out in a crowd and the judge should factor that into their game (it’s not a balancer, balance is an odd thing, it’s more a factor of what it is).
The Endjinn innate armor and size modifiers all kick in here and I used the rules from bugbears in Axioms 2 to recognise that they don’t wear normal armor. This means that at first level plate is out of reach, even chain is too expensive on average. But at second level watch them rush out and purchase masterwork plate for 890gp (60*4+650) to get an AC around 11 (assuming no shield). That said fighters with shields normally have 10 at the same level (masterwork plate and shield with proficiency, throw in a ring+1 and they are 11). Using the standard 20 autohit rule any armor over 11 “overcaps” your AC anyway so is of little use (ie a 2HD monster hits on 9+ so needs a natural 20 for anything over 11; yes I don’t use 20 as auto hit in my games, I use 18+, more on that in a later post).
Oh, and the rays... I couldn't help it ok! But thematically I build Endjinn as increasing in "divine" or "primordial" power as their racial ranks increase. So in a way it's the representation of that theme for a class such as this, having a high racial point allocation but lacking spellcasting. For all spellcaster "requires hit" attacks I use the AD&D 2ed rule that it ignores all combat modifiers and just requires a fighter base roll to hit against AC, this makes it useful in cluttered melees as it ignores engagement ranged attack lockout.
Overall this class got a decent playtest as a henchman in my first campaign and we had a lot of fun with it. I used it as “treasure” for one of my players quests to uncover the secrets of the Endjinn. They found "Rex" in a stasis tube in a military ruin overrun with Morlocks using this map from Dyson Logos - tombs of the steel makers (the south small room was an elevator shaft that led to the room with the chamber). At the time the group had three Endjinn in it, a soldat, a courtier and a chevalier, the ultimate greeting for a long lost general from the visitor invasion (the other two players were a mage and a gnome warden).
All this said, I would let a player have this as their character, it’s powerful, but it pays for it in XP and level cap. It’s focus on hit points is not something players normally get excited about and it’s focus on combat can work against it outside combat.
Have fun with this one!
Iron Giant
Requirements: STR 9, WIS 9, CON 9
Hit Dice: 1d10
Maximum Level: 11
The fabled iron giants were one of the last molds forged by the creators. Molds of this form no longer exist, but stories about their might and power are still told to this day. The iron molds were built for one purpose, battle. Unlike chevaliers they were not built for civilised battle, but brutal ugly war. Unlike more refined molds their design is oversized, rough and direct in appearance.
Iron giants are brutal in a fight, they excel at it. They trained in the use of all weapons and armor. They may fight wielding a weapon and shield, wielding a two-handed weapon, or wielding a weapon in each hand, as desired. At first level, iron giants hit an unarmored foe (AC 0) with an attack throw of 10+. They advance in attack throws and saving throws by two points every three levels of experience, as fighters.
Iron giants are named after their towering size, this grants them a +2 bonus to damage rolls that stacks with other modifiers. Iron Giants also receive the fighter increase to their base damage roll from successful missile and melee attacks by +1 at 1st level and by an additional +1 at 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th level. These two modifiers are combined in the table below.
Endjinn are intelligent constructs gaining many of the benefits of being a construct while still being treated as a humanoid. Unlike soulless automatons they are still affected by spells that normally affect humanoids such as hold, charm or sleep. But similar to automatons they are immune to poison and disease, including those from magical sources. They are fueled by elemental energies and do not eat, drink or breath. This prevents them gaining any benefit or penalty associated with those actions, for example they cannot drink potions but they can walk underwater and not drown.
There unique physiology requires them to care for their body differently to organic creatures. Even though they do not eat or drink endjinn still require weekly maintenance that they perform on themselves. Each week they must spend an hour performing this maintenance and it consumes a unit of mechanical parts. Failure to perform maintenance follows the same rules as failure to eat but with a cycle time of a week rather than a day. They are unresting and require only four hours of sleep to be rested each night.
Endjinn are able to heal normally from rest and benefit from magical healing effects and spells. However, the Healing proficiency and the related healing equipment have no effect on endjinn. Instead, they may be repaired as automatons with mechanical parts being consumed for every full 10hp recovered or part thereof (p.20 PC). While lacking the engineering knowledge to design and build new automatons, all endjinn are able to repair automatons as mechanists of their level.
Due to their iron body they may deal lethal damage when brawling (see ACKS p. 109). They can punch or kick characters in metal armor without themselves taking damage (as unarmed fighting proficiency, PC).
Iron giants are solid weighing 360 pounds and can carry up to 10 stone without becoming encumbered. When carrying 11-15 stone, their encounter movement rate is reduced to 45’. When carrying 16-20 stone, their encounter movement rate is reduced to 30’. When carrying 21 stone or more, their encounter movement rate is reduced to 15’. An iron giant can carry a maximum of 40 stone, modified by its Strength bonus.
A giants iron plating provides the character with a base unarmored AC of 4 instead of 0. However, they may not wear human-sized armor due to their size, and their base movement rate is only 60’. They must wear custom-made armor designed for their form that has quadruple normal cost and twice the normal encumbrance. Magical armor may be worn normally. Alternatively the rules from Axioms 9 in the article “Hauberks and Hobbits” can be used in place of this armor rule placing them between orcs and bugbears.
Their constructed nature combined with their intimidating presence and armored form makes others truly fearful of them. Iron Giants suffer a -3 penalty to the reactions, loyalty, and morale of humans and demi-humans they interact with. Conversely, they get a +3 bonus to the reactions, loyalty, and morale of endjinn, who revere them as relics of the creators.
Like all Endjinn the iron giants are fueled by primordial energy but, in the iron giants case, they are seething with power. This helps them move their form with relative grace but, starting at 4th level, they can release this seething energy from their eyes, limbs or chest as rays of scorching fire. Once per day the iron giant may fire one ray for every odd level they possess (two arrows at 4th level, three arrows at 5th level, four arrows at 7th level, and so on). Each ray has a range of 30 feet and requires an attack throw to hit for 4d6 damage (no modifiers apply, use base attack throw only)). No saving throw is allowed to avoid this damage. The iron giant may fire all of its scorching rays at one target or distribute them across multiple targets, as desired. At 10th level they may do this twice per day.
Iron giants were built for open conflict and destruction, they are not Endjinns of peace. They exist to protect and destroy, as such they are often kingmakers not kings. At 9th level (colossus), a Iron Giant can serve as the military commander of an Endjinn Forge, granting a +1 bonus to the forge-master's domain morale by their presence. Conversely, due to their warlike nature Iron Giants who establishes an independent Forge have difficulty finding Endjinn who will view them as a leader, and will not attract any followers or peasants by constructing a stronghold.
Iron Giant Proficiency List (31): Alertness, Alien Lore, Berserkergang, Blind Fighting, Climbing, Combat Reflexes, Combat Trickery (disarm, force back, knock down, overrun, sunder), Command, Divine Blessing, Dungeon Bashing, Endurance, Engineering, Fighting Style, Illusion Resistance, Intimidation, Jury Rigging, Laying on Hands, Leadership, Manual of Arms, Military Strategy, Precise Shooting, Running, Sensing Power, Siege Engineering, Skirmishing, Tracking, Weapon Focus.
Class proficiencies at: 1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th.
General proficiencies at: 1st, 5th, 9th.
Giant Swordmaster Template: This pre-generated template represents a giant swordmaster. The template is ready for adventure. However, if your swordsman INT is 13 or greater, you may pick one or more additional general proficiencies before play if you’d like (see Starting Proficiencies in Chapter 4 of ACKS).
Template: Giant swordmaster
Proficiencies: Fighting style (two-handed weapon), Signaling (battlefield)
Starting Equipment: massive two-handed sword, custom-made oversized leather armor, low boots, backpack, tinderbox, 6 torches, mechanical parts (10), 11gp. (5 3/6 st., Move 60’/20’).
Proficiencies: Fighting style (two-handed weapon), Signaling (battlefield)
Starting Equipment: massive two-handed sword, custom-made oversized leather armor, low boots, backpack, tinderbox, 6 torches, mechanical parts (10), 11gp. (5 3/6 st., Move 60’/20’).
Iron Giant Notes
Allocations: HP 0 (3) + FTR 2 + THF 1 + Endjinn 3
Max level: 11
Tradeoff: none
Power (2): +2 damage (very powerful)
Power (1): spell at 4 and 10.
Power (0): large armor
Power (0): from race, two sizes larger weight and carry
Save: Save as fighters (racial fighter bonus says for all purposes)
Magic items: Fighters
Requirements and Prime requisites: Prime requisite using only CON as a fighter. Building on two predecessors requirements (Soldat and Chevalier in this case) are CON, WIS and STR (adding STR for size effect, WIS represents the primordial fury of the rays). Should they be 10, 11 or more? A quirk of this is they can’t boost their strength during creation but they must have 9. The focus here is massive hit points.
Stronghold: use BCK predator variant.
Post 9 hp: as fighter = 2 per level
XP: 0+1,000+200+1,925=3125; Round 7 to 100,000; Post 8 = FTR 120,000 + Endjinn 40,000 = 160,000 per level
Notes: aiming for an indestructible juggernaut. The whole intro is my notes, read that :).
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