Classes

Shadow Light employs a two-part class system. The first part of the class system is a character’s base class. All people in the world of Shadow Light has a Base Class. Adventurers and soldiers would have one of the player character Base Classes while others would have one of the Non-Player Character (NPC) Base Classes. The second part of the class system is the Prestige Class. While a base class will determine much about a character’s play style, the prestige class is where things start to get a bit more specific. While the Fighter base class is well versed in nearly all forms of combat, the Warrior is even more so. Perhaps that same Fighter that grew up being trained to be a knight later discovered they had arcane magical abilities and becomes a Battlemage, or finds power through faith and becomes a Crusader with divine magic.

Player Character Classes
With the two-part class system of Shadow Light there becomes many possibilities for Base and Prestige Class combinations. Each of which will come with different advantages and disadvantages as well as play styles. There are 4 Base Classes: Acolyte, Fighter, Mage, and Scoundrel. Meanwhile, there are 10 Prestige Classes: Barbarian, Battlemage, Channeler, Cleric, Crusader, Inquisitor, Rogue, Shadow, Warrior, and Wizard. Each base class provides four options for a Prestige Class. This allows a total of 16 Base and Prestige Class combination options. Of the four Prestige Class options, one is referred to as a continuation of the Base Class, or continuation class, while the other three are a combination of that Base Class and one of the other three. So even though a Shadow is available to both the Mage and Scoundrel Base Classes, the Mage based character will be better at magic while the Scoundrel based character will excel more at subterfuge. It is important to be aware of what classes the different Races can and cannot be as this may affect your selection. For example, an Ogre cannot be an Acolyte. As a result, they also cannot be any of the Prestige classes available to an Acolyte, even if that same prestige class is available to them under a different base class. Likewise, a Dwarf cannot be a Mage, so they cannot be any of the four Prestige Classes listed as available to any Mages. Make sure to check if your desired race has the desired class available to avoid making an ‘illegal’ character. The table below shows the different classes:

Non-Player Character Classes
Aristocrat

Commoner

Halcyon

Class Comparisons
This section is to give a quick glance at the differences between the different combinations of base and prestige classes. The tables that follow are a 'by the numbers' comparison of each possible class combination. First we will explore the basic information followed by all the disciplines, then finally the skills available to each.

Basics
When reading this chart only the attribute modifiers provided by the base class are highlighted.

Discipline Proficiency
When reading this chart the Weapon and Tactics disciplines are color coded from red (weak) to green (strong).

Skills
When reading the Skills comparison chart, a zero means the class combination is not proficient in that skill, a 1 means they are proficient in that skill through either the Base or Prestige Class, and a 2 means they are proficient in that skill by both the base and prestige classes.