Since there were no requirements to exactly which M&M game your hero is supposed to belong, I'm choosing VII. Don't know a thing about X and, despite all the praise, it might still be decline, whereas VII is old and trustworthy and, which goes without discussion, has better visual style and setting anyhow.
Therefore, lady and gentlemen, please welcome Korbac, the beastly hair metal demigod of Antagarich:
(I totally overlorded my beautiful girlfriend into making this one in adobe illustrator)
Beastmaster: light of foot yet stalwart as the grip of the mires, beastmasters spend their lives away from the pleasantries of civilization, constantly testing themselves by stalking most dangerous preys they can find. However, it is not the victory of man-made arms that they seek but the triumph of their pure, almost primordial will over bloodthirsty resolve of the wilds. It is the breaking and taming the mighty predator that brings content to beasmaster's weary heart, not the mere act of slaughter. Only when they sense the smell of great peril to come in the wind, only then beastmasters grudgingly return back to the cities that birthed them, knowing that even the most pathetic animal will defend its lair to the death.
Starting HPs: 40
Starting MPs: 0
HP progression: 5 per level for the base class, 7 per level for the first promotion, 9 per level for the second promotion.
MP progression: 0 for base class and all promotions.
Starting skills:
Whip and
Wild Will.
Whip: is a special weapon. Unlike all other weapons, it is wielded in your character's shield hand and only in their shield hand, meaning that it allows them to dual-wield from the very beginning of the game. However, it is rather difficult to use in the real combat and thus slow (100 recovery time) and while its stings are rather painful, they don't deal much damage to your foes (1d2 base damage). As all other weapons, higher quality whips are available - five tiers of them, +1/+3/+5/+6/+8. They also can be enchanted just like your average weapon and there's even artifact and relic versions available. And having a whip as a character's starting skill also puts basic club into his inventory, so he's not left without a weapon for his main hand.
Whip skill effects are these:
Basic - skill reduces recovery time (allowing you to strike faster).
Expert - skill gives you a chance (equal to the skill) to disarm your enemy, halving their attack bonus for the next 3 turns.
Master - skill gives you a chance (equal to the skill) to trip your enemy, making them miss their next turn.
Grand Master - double all the previous bonuses.
Apart from beastmasters (who obviously can GM it), whip skill is available to the Rangers (expert for the ranger lords, master for the bounty hunters) and Villains (dark path promotion of paladins - heroes are too honorable to use a weapon like that).
As I've mentioned before, artifact and relic whips are available.
Artifact -
Hydra - +9 whip, +25 Endurance, Regeneration, +9 Whip skill. A beautiful whip made from the cured hydra leather, the end of each of its nine tails sewn to resemble the head of the mighty beast. Not only it conveys some of the hydra's health and resilience to its owner, its tails often begin to move on their own, striking their mark in the multi-directional, almost inescapable patterns.
Relic -
Agar's Silver Tongue - +11 whip, swift, 10-30 electrical damage, -30 to all primary stats, Dark. This elegant, chain-like weapon made from the silvery metal of plainly pre-Silence origins, used to belong to the infamous mad experimenter Agar and was, in fact, his favorite means to convey orders to his unruly, often mindless or mad creations. It wasn't very successful at that, but Agar used to say that the part of the conversation he loved the most was the sound of his cracking voice. Presumably, it was lost during his fastidious escape from castle Kriegspire. It is a weapon of astonishing power, however, it seems to bear an strong imprint of Agar's general ineptitude, not to mention that many will get disgusted by its morbid origin.
Wild Will is a magic-like skill (in fact, it operates per magic mechanics and even has its own section in the spell book), however, its "spells" cost no mana and are instead limited by uses per day. Wild Will represents beastmaster's ability to communicate and interact with many wild beasts. It consists of the following tiers:
Basic: gives access to Tame ability.
Expert: gives access to Calm ability.
Master: gives access to Intimidate ability.
Grand Master: gives access to Enrabid ability.
Now let's review the abilities themselves.
Tame is beastmaster's quintessential, name-giving ability. It allows him to gain control of opposing beasts, enlisting them as a sort of hirelings. This ability has many limitations, obviously.
First, on any skill-tier level, it can be used only once per day.
Second, there's a limit of one tamed beast per Wild Will character, so if you want to tame a new beast, first you'll need to dismiss the previous one (the same way you do it with normal hirelings).
Third, taming the beast gives you neither experience nor gold reward for it.
Fourth, you'll need to meet its requirements. Common requirement is having effective Wild Will skill as high as the target beast's level. Wild Will training comes into effect here - on basic level your skill is counted as is, on expert it is doubled, on master - tripled, grand masters enjoy the quintuple effect. So to tame a level 80 ancient behemoth you'll need either basic skill level of 80 (which is impossible as skills are capped at 60), expert skill level of 40 (possible, but requires full dedication and long grinding), master skill level of 27 (possible in the normal playthrough, but requires dedication) or grand master skill 16 (requires a bit of dedication or some helping items/hirelings - at the very least, there will be farmers and animal handlers, giving +2 and +4 correspondingly, and a whip-specific enchantment that will add +3 to the wild will).
Some beasts will have additional requirements, each specific to the beast. Some will require you to be charismatic enough, other won't follow a dullard, or you may need to be beefed up enough to impress them, lastly, some will be picky to your alignment - unicorns won't hang around dark party whereas medusae and beholders won't be available to the light sided one (if those look like a strange choice of a beast to you, wait until you see BMs dark promotion). All of those requirements will be hidden from the player, hinted only by the in-game tips via notes or NPC conversations.
Beast themselves act as the extra hirelings and will have different kinds of bonuses, depending on the nature of the beast. It can be a static bonus to an entire party - rats won't be too useful in combat, but they'll sense hidden rooms and places, boosting your party's perception skill. Dragonflies will scout the surrounding areas while you'll travel, cutting the journey time. It can also be a use at will, one per day special ability - for example, rocs will be able to lift an entire party into the air, effectively casting a Fly spell (which length will depend on the bird's tier). I.e., the normal hireling stuff.
One exceptional ability here will be synchronous attack with the beastmaster himself. With such beasts, whenever beastmaster himself will attack an enemy, there will be a chance (once again, different for each kind of beasts - there will be eager ones, they will be fat asses) that the beast will attack, sometimes dealing plain damage, sometimes using some kind of fitting debuff.
All beasts will have one or two abilities, depending on the nature of the beast. Also, passive bonuses from the same beasts don't stack. Finally, the last limitation here is that you become responsible, forever (well, until you dismiss them), for what you have tamed, meaning that you must feed your beasts. The food costs of your rest increases by the amount based on the size of your beast (from 1 to 5 - from rat to behemoth-sized serving) and their total number. So if you wanna rock a party of four behemoths, be prepared to spend 21+ food per night of rest. Tavern rest also becomes more expensive. Yeah, behemoths are hard to afford in the current economy.
Calm: it works like a Charm spell, only for beasts, making them friendly until you leave the area or it runs out. Your skill tier affects their duration (3 mins/10 mins/one hour) per skill point and the amount of uses per day (one use/two uses/three uses)
Intimidate: it works like a Slow spell, reducing recovery time of your enemies, only affecting all beasts in sight. Your skill tier affects the quality of the slow (master gives you mass expert slow, GM gives you mass master slow) and the amount of uses per day (two uses/three uses)
Enrabid: works like a master Berserk spell affecting beasts only, causing them to attack their surrounding foes. It's available three times per day and is as good as it gets.
Apart from beastmasters, Wild Will is also available to rangers (ranger lords can master it, bounty hunters can only expert) and arch druids (arch druids can learn and expert it, it's not available to the warlocks as they already have a familiar).
Beast master's starting skill for choice:
Dodge, Leather, Bow, Axe, Spear, Mace, ID monster, Armsmaster, Body Building.
Beast master's available skill tiers:
Magic - none.
Sword - expert.
Axe - expert*.
Staff - expert.
Spear - expert*.
Dagger - expert.
Bow - expert.
Mace - expert*.
Unarmed - expert.
Whip - GM.
Dodge - master*.
Leather - expert.
Chain - N/A.
Plate - N/A*.
Disarm Trap - N/A.
Perception - master.
Merchant - N/A.
Learning - expert*.
Meditation - N/A.
Body Building - expert*.
ID item - N/A.
Repair - expert.
ID monster - master.
Armsmaster - expert.
Stealing - N/A.
Alchemy - expert.
For the * marked skills - they can go higher depending on your party's alignment and beastmaster's promotion. His first promotion is
Beastlord. If he stays on the light side, he follows his course, becoming a
Beastking, upholding his ideals of being nimble and quick yet also deep and pondering, and gaining access to GM dodge, master spear and master learning. If he falls to the dark path, however, he deserts into the rank of the
Overlords of Nighon, choosing to use the brute power and anger as his guides. He can learn and master plate armour (but not chain), master body building, master axe and master mace weapons. And, as I've mentioned before, different beasts are available to Overlords.
Finally, the addition of beastmaster class calls for addition of the lizardmen race to the game - their strong stats are speed (snake reflexes, stuff like that) and endurance (in M&M VIII, GM of regeneration was a lizardmen, also, it's all to represent the 0 4 1 1 nature of beast masters), their weak stats are intelligence (in VIII, their civilization was hardly advanced) and luck (all kind of crap seems to happen with them on a constant basis). They start with 5 points of resistance to water and body magic (tough life in the swamps).
) spelling mistakes which are exactly like real corporate PP slides.
Great stuff.
