three genders in a wenchcoat

once upon a time when I was dabbling in semipro TTRPG design, I put together a base class for Pathfinder RPG to fill what I saw as a notable void in the archetypes: an arcane guardian. my life took a turn and I wound up sharing it for free; for the curious, the final PF revision is here.

D&D 5e is a lot more flexible in terms of allowing armored wizards out the gate, and between that and a critical shortage of spoons it took me a while to port the class. but toward the end of 2022 it finally happened, with many tweaks since! (the revision number is a date, so you can see when the latest was.)

Iron Mage 5e r20240908 (pdf, CC BY-NC-SA)
currently designed around "legacy" 5e, but an update for the "OneD&D" revision is likely.

• consistently refer to Arcane Conversion damage dice to avoid potential confusion around Necromancer's Conversion damage increase
• changed all "end of its next turn" durations to "beginning of your next turn" for consistency and cleaner bookkeeping
• Evoker's Conversion base damage dice increased by 1d6, to avoid being clearly overshadowed by Necromancer's at 3rd and 4th level¹
• Wyrding (capstone) gained a special interaction with Metafluency to enable a 9th-level Arcane Conversion²

1. still can't out-burst a greatsword paladin lol

2. this was always intended, but got lost in a prior redesign shuffle

once upon a time when I was dabbling in semipro TTRPG design, I put together a base class for Pathfinder RPG to fill what I saw as a notable void in the archetypes: an arcane guardian. my life took a turn and I wound up sharing it for free; for the curious, the final PF revision is here.

D&D 5e is a lot more flexible in terms of allowing armored wizards out the gate, and between that and a critical shortage of spoons it took me a while to port the class. but toward the end of 2022 it finally happened, with many tweaks since! (the revision number is a date, so you can see when the latest was.)

Iron Mage 5e r20240908 (pdf, CC BY-NC-SA)
currently designed around "legacy" 5e, but an update for the "OneD&D" revision is likely.

Had a few friends playtesting this over the last year, did a ton of revisions, updated version at the link above!

Another update, this time patching up some glaring multiclass breakpoints. Biggest changes are bringing prepared spells in line with paladin and artificer (with an accompanying change to 1st level spells known), and swapping the 10th and 11th level class features. 14th and 18th were shored up by shuffling around some extra uses on subclass abilities.

reworks of Abjurer's and Necromancer's Conversion, largely motivated by bookeeping concerns.

once upon a time when I was dabbling in semipro TTRPG design, I put together a base class for Pathfinder RPG to fill what I saw as a notable void in the archetypes: an arcane guardian. my life took a turn and I wound up sharing it for free; for the curious, the final PF revision is here.

D&D 5e is a lot more flexible in terms of allowing armored wizards out the gate, and between that and a critical shortage of spoons it took me a while to port the class. but toward the end of 2022 it finally happened, with many tweaks since! (the revision number is a date, so you can see when the latest was.)

Iron Mage 5e r20240908 (pdf, CC BY-NC-SA)
currently designed around "legacy" 5e, but an update for the "OneD&D" revision is likely.

Had a few friends playtesting this over the last year, did a ton of revisions, updated version at the link above!

Another update, this time patching up some glaring multiclass breakpoints. Biggest changes are bringing prepared spells in line with paladin and artificer (with an accompanying change to 1st level spells known), and swapping the 10th and 11th level class features. 14th and 18th were shored up by shuffling around some extra uses on subclass abilities.

once upon a time when I was dabbling in semipro TTRPG design, I put together a base class for Pathfinder RPG to fill what I saw as a notable void in the archetypes: an arcane guardian. my life took a turn and I wound up sharing it for free; for the curious, the final PF revision is here.

D&D 5e is a lot more flexible in terms of allowing armored wizards out the gate, and between that and a critical shortage of spoons it took me a while to port the class. but toward the end of 2022 it finally happened, with many tweaks since! (the revision number is a date, so you can see when the latest was.)

Iron Mage 5e r20240908 (pdf, CC BY-NC-SA)
currently designed around "legacy" 5e, but an update for the "OneD&D" revision is likely.

Had a few friends playtesting this over the last year, did a ton of revisions, updated version at the link above!