Classing Up the Joint: Character Builder

 Something different today, we take a look at class building as that is something I have started experimenting with. OC to come soon^tm?

By Todd Leback

Third Kingdom Games

Premise: If you want to build your own custom classes for Old-School Essentials or any B/X based game then this supplement aims to give you all the tools you need.

What do we get here?

 Over 12 pages we get the maths for how to make new classes with one example for a monstrous class.

 Usability/formatting

 Building classes for OSE and other B/X games is not exactly a science but thanks to a product like this it gets fairly close. Thanks to a mathematical approach and the numbers provided you should be able to make something that is not completely broken.

 It is easy to find what you are looking for thanks to the brief nature of the writing along with the use of paragraphs, bolding and bullet points. Everything is laid out in the right order so you can work through building a character class easily.

 Now the problem with this product is that it lacks a bit in explanation and example for those of us less familiar with the B/X chassis. There are something I am left scratching my head over and I am not sure if it is an issue with OSE or this product. For example the fighter in OSE does not appear to use what this document calls the fighter saving throw matrix. What is up with that?

 There are some other areas I would have liked a bit more guidance on too such as exactly how many special abilities or restrictions you should load up on a class. I am sure you could hunt through the OSE classes to figure this out but it would be nice if this product held your hand a bit more.

 Portability

 Obviously this product is tied to Basic descended games, thankfully there are a lot of them knocking about so you will get a fair amount of use out of it. Nothing in here is specific to any particular setting.

 Recommendation

 Given that this product only costs 50 cents there is little holding me back from recommending it. That being said do be aware you do need familiarity with the system we are working with to really put this to work.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/304557/Classing-Up-The-Joint

 I am going to try to get round to reviewing The Welsh Piper's offering on this topic some time in the near future for comparison.