The Athik Race
Athiks are an interesting race. Ant like with a semi hive mind yet still completely individual. They’re completely home brewed, with credit for the original idea rightfully going to pyrefiend.
As originally designed, they were a bit underwhelming. A small humanoid with a diminutive-sized bite attack, increased carry capacity, darkvision, 10 ft. race-restricted telepathy, and -2 overall ability modifiers, it worked out to about equivalent to a -1 Level Adjustment or just barely +0, making them a bit worse than any of the base races. Still, they had some very unique and fun features and some really neat fluff that I enjoyed and wanted to use.
With pyrefiend’s permission, I modified them and adapted the fluff to fit better with Aldhaven, retaining as much as I could to maintain their original flavor. You can see the final result here. They’re now monstrous humanoids, have gained some psionic ability, stability like a dwarf, an improvement to increased capacity, and some better defined and renamed abilities.
They’re now right on the verge of being a +1 LA race, but many of their abilities are restrictive enough as to be completely useless unless the rest of the party also play as athiks or otherwise build specifically to make use of them. If the party only has one athik player, the race is a solid +0. If the party is all athiks, it should probably be a +1 LA; however, with all players playing one, applying a level adjustment is pretty meaningless. If there’s only one athik and all other players take the required feats, well, the athik player shouldn’t be penalized for the other players spending their feats to benefit the party. All counted, I believe they still qualify as a +0 LA race.
Designing the Athik Paragon
Creating a paragon class for an athik was a good bit more difficult than I expected. Sure, they have some unique abilities that are easy to progress, but would that be interesting? If you haven’t learned from reading any of my other design notes, I believe that any content needs to be three things: relatively balanced, interesting, and fun to use. While athiks have a number of abilities, which of those lend themselves most towards those goals?
Identifying the Interesting Bits
Okay, so what’s both unique and interesting about the athik? What aspects are fun to play around with? What would be most appropriate to advance to make them the most athiky athik they can be? First off, they’re basically ants, so that should feature prominently in some way. They’re psionic and telepathic, which is key to their nature as an obviously eusocial species. They are also crazy strong for their size.
Designing Overthinking the Class
I envisioned the athik paragon as being the means by which the internal hierarchy of an athik colony is determined. Those that wish to progress in the hierarchy need to take paragon class levels. Levels in other classes can improve an individual’s overall value to the colony but will not affect their rank in the hierarchy.
Workers
The lowest tier of society is comprised of the common Workers. These are your average athiks with no paragon levels. Most athiks fall into this category. Unless and until they gain a paragon level, they will be a worker, regardless of any other deeds or advancement they might achieve.
Soldiers / Supervisors
Soldiers and Supervisors have a single paragon level. They’re bigger, stronger, and tougher than the average athik. This level gives Improved Capacity and Improved Stability which do exactly what it says on the label. They drastically increase carrying capacity and give a bonus to stability. Improved capacity also allows the athik to ignore movement penalties from wearing armor, much like a dwarf.
The difference between a Soldier and a Supervisor is only in what role each plays in athik society. Soldiers focus on the benefits of wearing heavier armor and being more stable in battle, fighting to defend the colony. Supervisors focus on carrying heavier loads and overseeing other workers in a more, well, supervisory role.
Administrators
An athik with two paragon levels is an Administrator. The first tier improved the athik’s physical nature, so I wanted the second tier to improve their mental aspects. An Administrator improves their psionic abilities. They are the leaders of the hive who oversee all of the daily needs and responsibilities and, as such, need greater ability to communicate and direct the colony to achieve its goals.
I had intended to grant improvements to their telepathy and cooperation abilities, but then I remembered that I had already created a feat that did precisely that. Rather than create a duplicate effect or give a similar ability that would stack with the feat, I simply granted them the Athik Telepathy feat at 2nd level. I also gave them a level progression of psion, assuming they already have the class. They’re naturally psionic, and it’s the only psionic class that made thematic sense, particularly for a telepath.
Queens / Princesses
The highest tier is, obviously, the Queen. Princesses, athiks who can form their own colonies but have not yet done so, are also at this tier.
The third level of all paragon classes grants +2 to one ability score and potentially some spell progression. A queen definitely should have spell progression – or equivalent – so I gave an additional level of psion progression here.
Choosing the ability score was a bit more difficult. I wanted the one most appropriate to the race and the hierarchy of the class. The obvious answer was +2 Strength, which fit the race’s ability modifiers and sort of fit the larger size of ant queens; however, this didn’t feel quite right to me. Constitution and Dexterity didn’t really fit either. Either could have been forced in, but they didn’t feel right at all. Strength was right at the top of the list.
I felt like a queen needed an improved mental ability, so either Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. Wisdom or Charisma would have worked to represent an effective leader, but they didn’t fit the race at all. Athiks have a racial penalty to both, so having athik paragon grant a bonus to them wasn’t appropriate. This left Intelligence as the only viable option for a mental ability score.
This brought it down to either Strength or Intelligence. On the one hand, Strength would play to their existing—ahem—strengths. It would further improve what they already have, making their existing perks just that much stronger. Truly, Strength fits very well. However, a queen isn’t a worker, nor is it front line soldier, nor a mere supervisor or even administrator. I eventually decided to go with Intelligence here, because it was transformative rather than supportive, just as becoming a queen is a transformation into a new, better thing, not merely becoming a slightly bigger, stronger worker.