Fouredged Sword
2011-08-04, 08:44 AM
this is my first real attempt to document a world building in the forum.
Here we go.
The Savage world -
Alternate and houserule log
Vitality point system for HP
Armor as DR system for Armor / natural armor.
Crafting checks made daily, rather than weekly
I would like to make a world that is a very non traditional DnD game. Think land of the lost / prehestoric adventure. The idea is that the characters are small people, part of a small tribe, in a very big world.
Sorta a mix of Monster hunter Tri and Dnd. Big scary monsters force the players to use planing and careful preperation to take down.
foes are something to be avoided if posible, and all fights are dangerous and hard to recover from. Think one or two encounters with small issues (smaller encounters to be won or avoided with minimum expendeture of resorces) followed by a big hunt, then followed by trying to get the supplies back to the tribe.
The main threats to the group are the following
- Dinosaurs - lots of dinosaurs. Big threatening beasts that hunt the plays whenever they leave the safetly of the tribe. Sleeping outside the tribe is dangerous becuse of the inevitable dinosaur hunting pack unless heavy precautions are taken.
- The Dragons - I will be makeing a homebrew dragon race with scaleing size and HD. These things are born Medium size and just get bigger. No tiny wyrmlings here. Think smart dinosaurs rather than traditional dragons. Several breed specialize in difrent areas, but no crazy color = element stuff. More like a crag dragon liveing in the mountains, and a swamp dragon that hides in the muck. Most will not be able to fly.
- The shadow taint - Undead exist, and are dangerous. Whole tracts of the world are tainted, and storms brew in such areas to spread to other lands. Undead dinosaurs are dangerous and the infection causes desiese and sickness - both very dangerous to a tribe. A taint storm means dangerous hunt and scarce game for a tribe, and many do not survive such an event.
- Other tribes - Competitions is fierce. Failing all else the struggle for food and resorces leads to inevitable conflict.
The People
Rather than a wide diversity of races, the end result of such brutal envorments is that all the sentient humanoids races merged. There is now only one "race" of humanoids as playable characters. They have the following modifiers.
Size - Small - Being small became a survival trait for the people. Being small means that they need less food and space, and are better able to hide is places that larger animals cannot go.
Ability Modifiers - The people tend to be fairly average, but genes from the old races still exist within thier genome. They have no set ability modifiers, but insted recive +2 to any one stat.
Movement - The People are very agile as it is a major survival trait. They have the following movement modes
30ft normal
5 ft climb
15ft swim.
The Climb and Swim speed grant The people the following benifits. They recive +8 to both the climb and swim checks and may choose to take 10 even under duress. The People retain thier dex modifier to AC while climbing.
- Human blooded
The People get one feat that they meet the prerequisits for at forst level in adition to the normal starting feats a character recives.
- Learn this or die
The People count their intelegence modifier as being one higher for determining the skillpoints they recive at all levels.
- Mud Blood
The People count as any race they please when meeting the prerequisits for abilities. They do not gain the abilities of those races, or count as having the abilities that race has, but count as that race for the ability to qualify for prerequisits that require you to specificly be a particular race or set of races, includeing any paragon classes.
- Leasons of the Wild
The People are taught a set of skills as the basics of living. Any of the People who are untrained in these skills are considred not ready for adulthood and are unlikely to be let leave the camp for any reason.
The following skills are always class skills for The People - Survival, Handle animal, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Search, Craft (primitive), and listen.
All of The People gain the track feat and trapfindeing class feature at level one.
Dragons
Dragons are dangerous creatures that are the most pressing danger to any tribe of The People. Dragons have the following basic commonalities, though thier are exceptions. Some of these commonalities differ from the standard dragons of DnD.
Dragons are Teritorial and rarely gather in groups. They are almost excluseivly solitary
Dragons are smart, but inhumanly so. Most are actualy not as smart as most members of The People
Dragons Don't fly. Most dragons are landbound. There are a few noted exceptions to this.
Dragons don't use magic. They Horde magic items, but seem unable to themselves cast magic. It is unknown by the people why dragons are so atracted to magic they cannot use.
Dragons are mean - Dragons hunt the people for sport and kill without need.
Dragons don't talk. Some hunderstand the speach of the People, but they will never comunicate themselves. When comunicateing with eachother they use animal like grunts, snorts, and body launguage. Over distance they roar to send messages and mark teritory.
Physiology - dragons are diverse in thier shape and size. They are universaly rather large, and have the same basic shape.
Dragons can be both quadrapedial or bipedial, but they always have forward leaning bodies, rangeing from a raptor like bipedial form to a hulking solid quadraped. Most dragons are noted to have oposable thumbs on thier forelimbs even if those limbs are normaly used to walk, and all dragons can lift themselves onto thier back legs to manipulate things with thier forlimbs. Many quadrapedial dragons find this unwieldy though and rarely use thier hands.
Dragons are contrary to normal DdD, born live. They are Warm blooded, but do not nurse thier younge. Insted young are raised for a short time off kills shared by the mother before being kicked out of the teritory.
Dragon's eat. Alot. A fully grown dragon is most constrained by food and other dragons. A dragon needs to eat a creature of roughly it's own size every three days. A number of smaller creatures will work if large game cannot be found, but as the dragon grows bigger game big enough to satisfy it in a single meal becomes more and more important. If the dragon does not feed the dragon begins to starve very rapidly.
Dragons avoid this sometimes by going dormant in a safe place and sleeping for weeks at a time. Some species do this oftine, but others are uncomfortable leaving thier teritories unguarded. The more competition there is between dragons the more likely dragons are to stay active.
--more on dragons later
Cosmology
The Savage world is still in flux after a reality shattering event know as the Great Dawn. In truth the universe of the Savage world was caused by one plane of existance crassing into another.
Noone is sure why this even happened, but two realities collided and forced all creatures in the universe to blend with thier rough counterpart from the other. Many things function difrently or not at all.
Extra dimentional spaces no longer work. No spell that relies on extradimentional spaces works.
Spells that summon or call creatures from another plane no longer function. Instead many spells summon creatures from the prime material instead. The effect is the following
- All classes that cast summon monster now cast summon nature's ally. all spells that call a creature only function to call creatures from other places in the prime material and mostly only function on elementals as Celestial and Infernal planes no longer are accesable.
There are reminants of both worlds in the Savage world. There are fragments of lost cities found in the jungle and pictures carved into stone found that show difrent races and creatures that do not exist anymore. Lost artifiacts of metal (a rare substance) are occasionaly found, as well as magic items of great power. Dragons seem to collect in these places and will fight to keep such a place in thier teritory even after letting a rival push them out of other more survival based areas.
More later - Please feel free to post your thought. Also I would like help gathering a list of dinosaurs and the books that have them.
Here we go.
The Savage world -
Alternate and houserule log
Vitality point system for HP
Armor as DR system for Armor / natural armor.
Crafting checks made daily, rather than weekly
I would like to make a world that is a very non traditional DnD game. Think land of the lost / prehestoric adventure. The idea is that the characters are small people, part of a small tribe, in a very big world.
Sorta a mix of Monster hunter Tri and Dnd. Big scary monsters force the players to use planing and careful preperation to take down.
foes are something to be avoided if posible, and all fights are dangerous and hard to recover from. Think one or two encounters with small issues (smaller encounters to be won or avoided with minimum expendeture of resorces) followed by a big hunt, then followed by trying to get the supplies back to the tribe.
The main threats to the group are the following
- Dinosaurs - lots of dinosaurs. Big threatening beasts that hunt the plays whenever they leave the safetly of the tribe. Sleeping outside the tribe is dangerous becuse of the inevitable dinosaur hunting pack unless heavy precautions are taken.
- The Dragons - I will be makeing a homebrew dragon race with scaleing size and HD. These things are born Medium size and just get bigger. No tiny wyrmlings here. Think smart dinosaurs rather than traditional dragons. Several breed specialize in difrent areas, but no crazy color = element stuff. More like a crag dragon liveing in the mountains, and a swamp dragon that hides in the muck. Most will not be able to fly.
- The shadow taint - Undead exist, and are dangerous. Whole tracts of the world are tainted, and storms brew in such areas to spread to other lands. Undead dinosaurs are dangerous and the infection causes desiese and sickness - both very dangerous to a tribe. A taint storm means dangerous hunt and scarce game for a tribe, and many do not survive such an event.
- Other tribes - Competitions is fierce. Failing all else the struggle for food and resorces leads to inevitable conflict.
The People
Rather than a wide diversity of races, the end result of such brutal envorments is that all the sentient humanoids races merged. There is now only one "race" of humanoids as playable characters. They have the following modifiers.
Size - Small - Being small became a survival trait for the people. Being small means that they need less food and space, and are better able to hide is places that larger animals cannot go.
Ability Modifiers - The people tend to be fairly average, but genes from the old races still exist within thier genome. They have no set ability modifiers, but insted recive +2 to any one stat.
Movement - The People are very agile as it is a major survival trait. They have the following movement modes
30ft normal
5 ft climb
15ft swim.
The Climb and Swim speed grant The people the following benifits. They recive +8 to both the climb and swim checks and may choose to take 10 even under duress. The People retain thier dex modifier to AC while climbing.
- Human blooded
The People get one feat that they meet the prerequisits for at forst level in adition to the normal starting feats a character recives.
- Learn this or die
The People count their intelegence modifier as being one higher for determining the skillpoints they recive at all levels.
- Mud Blood
The People count as any race they please when meeting the prerequisits for abilities. They do not gain the abilities of those races, or count as having the abilities that race has, but count as that race for the ability to qualify for prerequisits that require you to specificly be a particular race or set of races, includeing any paragon classes.
- Leasons of the Wild
The People are taught a set of skills as the basics of living. Any of the People who are untrained in these skills are considred not ready for adulthood and are unlikely to be let leave the camp for any reason.
The following skills are always class skills for The People - Survival, Handle animal, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Search, Craft (primitive), and listen.
All of The People gain the track feat and trapfindeing class feature at level one.
Dragons
Dragons are dangerous creatures that are the most pressing danger to any tribe of The People. Dragons have the following basic commonalities, though thier are exceptions. Some of these commonalities differ from the standard dragons of DnD.
Dragons are Teritorial and rarely gather in groups. They are almost excluseivly solitary
Dragons are smart, but inhumanly so. Most are actualy not as smart as most members of The People
Dragons Don't fly. Most dragons are landbound. There are a few noted exceptions to this.
Dragons don't use magic. They Horde magic items, but seem unable to themselves cast magic. It is unknown by the people why dragons are so atracted to magic they cannot use.
Dragons are mean - Dragons hunt the people for sport and kill without need.
Dragons don't talk. Some hunderstand the speach of the People, but they will never comunicate themselves. When comunicateing with eachother they use animal like grunts, snorts, and body launguage. Over distance they roar to send messages and mark teritory.
Physiology - dragons are diverse in thier shape and size. They are universaly rather large, and have the same basic shape.
Dragons can be both quadrapedial or bipedial, but they always have forward leaning bodies, rangeing from a raptor like bipedial form to a hulking solid quadraped. Most dragons are noted to have oposable thumbs on thier forelimbs even if those limbs are normaly used to walk, and all dragons can lift themselves onto thier back legs to manipulate things with thier forlimbs. Many quadrapedial dragons find this unwieldy though and rarely use thier hands.
Dragons are contrary to normal DdD, born live. They are Warm blooded, but do not nurse thier younge. Insted young are raised for a short time off kills shared by the mother before being kicked out of the teritory.
Dragon's eat. Alot. A fully grown dragon is most constrained by food and other dragons. A dragon needs to eat a creature of roughly it's own size every three days. A number of smaller creatures will work if large game cannot be found, but as the dragon grows bigger game big enough to satisfy it in a single meal becomes more and more important. If the dragon does not feed the dragon begins to starve very rapidly.
Dragons avoid this sometimes by going dormant in a safe place and sleeping for weeks at a time. Some species do this oftine, but others are uncomfortable leaving thier teritories unguarded. The more competition there is between dragons the more likely dragons are to stay active.
--more on dragons later
Cosmology
The Savage world is still in flux after a reality shattering event know as the Great Dawn. In truth the universe of the Savage world was caused by one plane of existance crassing into another.
Noone is sure why this even happened, but two realities collided and forced all creatures in the universe to blend with thier rough counterpart from the other. Many things function difrently or not at all.
Extra dimentional spaces no longer work. No spell that relies on extradimentional spaces works.
Spells that summon or call creatures from another plane no longer function. Instead many spells summon creatures from the prime material instead. The effect is the following
- All classes that cast summon monster now cast summon nature's ally. all spells that call a creature only function to call creatures from other places in the prime material and mostly only function on elementals as Celestial and Infernal planes no longer are accesable.
There are reminants of both worlds in the Savage world. There are fragments of lost cities found in the jungle and pictures carved into stone found that show difrent races and creatures that do not exist anymore. Lost artifiacts of metal (a rare substance) are occasionaly found, as well as magic items of great power. Dragons seem to collect in these places and will fight to keep such a place in thier teritory even after letting a rival push them out of other more survival based areas.
More later - Please feel free to post your thought. Also I would like help gathering a list of dinosaurs and the books that have them.