[4e] Bio-Chromatic Breath

[Douglas]

Nightblood cost 1,000 breaths to make, not 10,000.

Command Breaking tires the user a lot. I'd suggest representing this by making it cost a healing surge to use.

Is there any particular reason all the heightenings give a penalty to will defense?

There is at least one more power of the tenth heightening that is revealed in the text of the book and is not in the table.

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The tenth heightening grants the ability to Awaken with purely mental commands. It is no longer required to actually speak commands out loud. This ability does require training and practice to use, though, so it should not be an automatic benefit. Maybe make it a feat with the tenth heightening as a prerequisite?

It's more like losing your Magic Items and such.

I'd suggest taking this a bit further. Set a price for breath such that a character who spends practically all of his money on breath instead of magic items will reach the tenth heightening (or whichever you think players should normally max out at) at or slightly below 30th level. Give the 10th heightening a +6 bonus to all non-AC defenses in place of what it has now, and make the bonus type enhancement. Then calculate what level a player who invests everything in breath will get each lower heightening at and give each of them a uniform enhancement bonus to non-AC defenses equal to an appropriate neck slot item for that level.

Edit: I just calculated the table based on the assumption of getting the 10th heightening at level 29 with the total expenditure of a new made-at-level-29 character's standard wealth:

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Each breath costs 200 gp.
1st heightening: level 7, bonus = +2
2nd heightening: level 11-12, bonus = +3
3rd heightening: level 15, bonus = +3
4th heightening: level 16-17, bonus = +4
5th heightening: level 19, bonus = +4
6th heightening: level 20-21, bonus = +4
7th heightening: level 21-22, bonus = +5
8th heightening: level 24, bonus = +5
9th heightening: level 26, bonus = +6
10th heightening: level 29, bonus = +6

That takes care of non-AC defenses. Now we need something to match magic armor's AC bonus. Give the Protect Me awakening, and whatever others seem suitable, a scaling enhancement bonus to AC.

Come up with some awakenings designed to aid the attacks of the user, and give them a scaling enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls.

For designing awakening rituals in general, the Awakened item itself should almost never be destroyed by normal use of the ritual. Protect Me should not destroy the cloak involved. I'd suggest replacing that limitation with making the attack an encounter power, and allow the player to decide when to use it just like with a magic item's power.

That should take care of the basic essentials of what magic items provide, and you can add a bunch of miscellaneous awakening rituals to replace the various special effects a character might get from items.

To deal with the color aspect of awakening costs:
Designate a few categories of colors, such as grey, dull, normal, and bright, and set a cost in surface area per breath for each category. For example, you might say that awakening something with a dull color source drains a square foot of material per breath, normal drains the same area per two breaths, and bright drains the same per three breaths. Grey is the end product of the draining and cannot be used to power any awakening. The actual cost should probably be lower than this example, as Vasher's scarf was enough to pay for 50 breaths worth all by itself.

Most of the time you'd just assume there is enough color in the surroundings to draw on, and the players would drain random bits of scenery to grey. Some places may be deliberately painted a uniform grey specifically to foil awakening, however, and players may want to buy their own sources of color to deal with such situations. Set prices for objects specifically intended to serve as awakening color sources on a per breath equivalent basis so that players can easily do this and judge how much they have. The price should be pretty low, these are mundane disposable items after all.

The tenth heightening's ability to drain objects to white instead of grey should halve the amount required per breath.