Talk to Ashiel About Anything Mark II

[Lemmy]

EDIT: Also, Lemmy! You like martial bros. What's your thoughts on the previewed mechanics for the D20 Legends Fighter Replacement? It's still a WIP but I think there's enough there to get a feel for the resource management and stuff.

So... I finally read the .pdf. I like it. I reminds me of Bo9S and Path of War...

However, since I still don't have a very profound grasp of your system, I can't comment in much depth... However, I'll say that cooldown reduction abilities always worry me a bit, as they can easily break something. Other than that, I really like the presented abilities. They seem useful and (perhaprs more importantly) fun to use.

[Zilrax]

In an effort to distract myself, and cus Paizo doesn't read their own classes before making stuff I've been trying to make a Sniper. They wrote an encounter with a few sniper assassins who use death attack at range. Problem is Death Attack is melee only. Derp.

Assassinate however is not. So trying to figure if I could. I already figured out how to turn the stealth penalty for sniping into a stealth bonus of all things. I've three obstacles. One, reliably achieving ranged sneak attacks. Two, circumventing Uncanny Dodge. Three, doing this in a manner that doesn't take to level 19 to do it.

So far my best mean to solve #2 is to use Ranged Feint. Course sniping is a fullround so thats an issue. I can use Moonlight Stalker Feint to get Feint as a swift, but that costs 5 feats cus for some reason something that requires darkvision also requires blind-fight on top of combat expertise that I do not want. Then I need Expert Sniper and Master Sniper. Then I need the archery feats like Point, Rapid, Precise, Many, maybe Clustered and Imp precise. So that is 13 feats out of the 10 everyone gets. Meaning I need to get around that.

Unchained Rogues can get Expert and Master sniper for free, and at level 10 can get another feat... Which drops it to level 19. 17 if human... But that means need to get darkvision somehow to use the Moonlight feats and then can't use sniper goggles and then it's a big ol messssss. Hmmm.

Slayers get assassinate and get 3 free feats from Ranger but that still doesn't do it... Nuuuurgh. So many damn feat trees!

[Tels]

In an effort to distract myself, and cus Paizo doesn't read their own classes before making stuff I've been trying to make a Sniper. They wrote an encounter with a few sniper assassins who use death attack at range. Problem is Death Attack is melee only. Derp.

Assassinate however is not. So trying to figure if I could. I already figured out how to turn the stealth penalty for sniping into a stealth bonus of all things. I've three obstacles. One, reliably achieving ranged sneak attacks. Two, circumventing Uncanny Dodge. Three, doing this in a manner that doesn't take to level 19 to do it.

So far my best mean to solve #2 is to use Ranged Feint. Course sniping is a fullround so thats an issue. I can use Moonlight Stalker Feint to get Feint as a swift, but that costs 5 feats cus for some reason something that requires darkvision also requires blind-fight on top of combat expertise that I do not want. Then I need Expert Sniper and Master Sniper. Then I need the archery feats like Point, Rapid, Precise, Many, maybe Clustered and Imp precise. So that is 13 feats out of the 10 everyone gets. Meaning I need to get around that.

Unchained Rogues can get Expert and Master sniper for free, and at level 10 can get another feat... Which drops it to level 19. 17 if human... But that means need to get darkvision somehow to use the Moonlight feats and then can't use sniper goggles and then it's a big ol messssss. Hmmm.

Slayers get assassinate and get 3 free feats from Ranger but that still doesn't do it... Nuuuurgh. So many damn feat trees!

So, some things to help, I think:
Expert Sniper feat: Lowers the penalty hide after sniping by 10.
Kobold Sniper feat: Lowers the penalty to hide after sniping by 10; this can only be taken by Kobolds, or races capable of taking Racial Heritage (Humans, Half-Elves/Orcs, Assimar with Scion of Humanity, or Tieflings with Pass for Human).
Stealthy Sniper advanced Rogue talent: Lowers the penalty to hide after sniping by 10.

Any of the two above will let you keep hiding after sniping as you no longer take a penalty to stealth checks. Your only real issue is if you're playing a Rogue, so you need a way of sneak attacking at longer range. Unfortunately, the only way I know how to do that, is via Sniper Goggles, which are incredibly expensive.

If your GM is wiling to work with you a little, you might go Musket Master Gunslinger, but use a much larger gun with the caveat you need to be prone, or mounted to use it, and then use a normal sized rifle elsewhere. Then, use Vital Strike to basically take really powerful sniper shots from long distance with practically 0 chance of the enemy spotting you (perception penalties over distance and all). Granted, it's no full attack, but once you get high enough to afford the sniper goggles, shooting someone for 6d6/9d6/12d6+static+sneak attack (assuming a large sized musket and progressing Vital Strike) can really hurt a lot. Especially since it's unlikely they will be able to attack you in return.

[Zilrax]

I considered that but not all those feats stack. Some specifically say they lower it TO 10. However...

The skill unlock for Stealth at 5 says it lowers the penalty BY 10. Meaning I only need one feat. As for how I turned it into a bonus...

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/...es/sniping-rtt

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/...niping-greater

I generally assume the gm will NOT work with me because that is my experience in life. But assuming they do, I still can;t use a bigger gun than normal due to hand rules. They FAQ'd the hands rules on that, it;s there to not let you use smaller than normal guns, not there to let you use larger than normal ones.

So bows probably the safest bet. Plus Master Sniper let;s you get two shots out of sniping. wonder if that counts as a full attack... inclined to say no so maybe that saves two feats...

[Ashiel]

I think it's a sign of how desperate I am to have a game that I've not yet dropped this game but I just had this in an ooc post from the gm.

Spoiler

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"now I dun want to hate on you or anything for enjoying yourself with the system Zilrax, but you propably want to ditch the powergaming and focus on creative sollutions a bit more in the long run, because.. thats what'll earn ya the big wins in my games. As hinted earlier, this first one was a test fight at CR 7, usually those screw folks over if you give them only a minor edge (like the terrain) but if any of you had downed it in two rounds with some powerbuilding mechanic I'd have adjusted the campaign (or the character if necessary) Accordingly. You can't tell these things just looking at stats, playstyles apply too, and you retreating to reasess was the most efficent way of dealing with the situation. But! Remember, its an fun campaign, its not all about problem-sollution thinking.

In another campaign of mine I'm fond of using a set of demons, the Seven Sins and each of them has one unique ability that is designed to screw with players the more they try to game the system, until they actually stop and plan on their feet to deal with the character they face, which is made somewhat easy by knowing each sins motif going into things. For example, Pride, my second favourite of the lot, the incarnation of flamboyant overconfidence, she automatically rolls 1 higher than the players, winning initative, any struggles, automatically taking the highest AC and save available, etc, and the way to beat her is not come up with a demon banishing spell or brute-forcing it but
SpoilerShow
To intentionally fail a saving throw and botch their own fight, after which pride will be compelled to fail even harder, her .. pride making her one up the players even there.

Or, I have Wrath,
SpoilerShow
Who is unbeatable unless you surrender the fight."

I am perturbed. And trying to decide how to address this.

For context the cr 7, we're level 7, is a huge earth elemental we are fighting underground. Or were. And I was discussing how to sneak past we'd need flight, but evidently this is power gaming and we need creative solutions to avoiding tremorsense. Whatever that means. Our party is my cleric, a magus with no damage spells, a rakshasa paragon, a two weapon ranger who was captured and an archer ranger who does not have clustered shots. Most of us do next to no damage to it cus dr/- and Earthglide. So I called a retreat and took Dismissal and Ardor's Onslaught instead since we don't have access to mass flying abilities. Which evidently is not creative enough.

Honestly this sounds terrible. A GM criticizing players for not being inventive enough? And his example of "creative solutions" are a set of demons who cannot be defeated outside of a specific predetermined method? That's not creative at all. Not even a teeny, tiny bit. It just means there's a specific one and only way to defeat them, and the GM doesn't understand creativity. It's likewise not an encounter either, it's just a puzzle, since the power of the creature is irrelevant (a commoner could, I dunno, attempt to DROWN HARDER than pride and despite being prideful the demon would try to suicide better?).

Also, for the record, suggesting that someone prideful would attempt to fail harder out of pride is just stupid. Take the most prideful Street Fighter player and place them next to someone else who intentionally fails and you know what? The prideful guy is just going to win faster, because he's got too much pride to lose to such a chump.

The GM also doesn't understand the "system" if he thinks playing the game is "gaming the system". I wonder if he would think casting fireballs at a white dragon is trying "powergaming solutions". Gah, the fact he even tries to invent separations between mechanics based on "powergaming" and "not powergaming" mechanics is...ughhh...

Where do you find these people?

[Ashiel]

So... I finally read the .pdf. I like it. I reminds me of Bo9S and Path of War...

It's supposed to, honestly. Klara's (perhaps unintentionally) nudged me in that direction a few times, and so I decided to build a similar mechanic into the Fighter class, since it works better than trying to tie it to a magic tradition (for a variety of reasons, intuitiveness being among them). It also gives the fighter-type class a unique thing to have that makes them special, rather than just a series of +1s in various situations (aside from bonus feats, 100% of the fighter's class features were just static modifiers). I think this creates a niche for the class (before it was intended as a generic warrior but had nothing to theme-build around a concept or idea with). It's still arguably a fine dipping class (as most everything will be to some degree), but should be viable through end game if you want to take it all the way.

However, since I still don't have a very profound grasp of your system, I can't comment in much depth...

Noted. This is one of the harder bits to get around with previews and such. It's more or less impossible to determine balance without a bunch of other stuff to compare to. Hopefully it'll become easier as more stuff is presented.

However, I'll say that cooldown reduction abilities always worry me a bit, as they can easily break something.

Part of my current brain-map for the class is that it'll be fairly difficult to reduce cooldowns significantly without a pretty significant investment of talents (talents being the resource you buy classes and class features with), which means becoming "more warrior" means using their abilities more frequently. Which incidentally is why most of the cooldown reductions outside of the school stances all require talent investments. I'm going to try to keep an eye on such things.

Other than that, I really like the presented abilities. They seem useful and (perhaps more importantly) fun to use.

Excellent. That part of the mission is accomplished then.

[Zilrax]

Well you know how when you're a paladin and suddenly every single evil horrible thing seems to happen around you wherever you go? Well I think that's like me and dnd.

That said I DO have good experiences with dnd y'know too. Just uh... Most of those are solo games. My Ravenloft one was alright. Not sure I liked how it worked but I never had a problem with it either. And uh... Uh... Yeah rest are solo games. Mind you the first ended with my character as the chronically depressed god of assassins, shadows and self sacrifice. The others kinda ended short but I have fun? And ones ongoing.

Otherwise my experience has generally been not great. But limited access to gms means... Tadah?

[Klara Meison]

It's supposed to, honestly. Klara's (perhaps unintentionally) nudged me in that direction a few times, and so I decided to build a similar mechanic into the Fighter class, since it works better than trying to tie it to a magic tradition (for a variety of reasons, intuitiveness being among them).

It has been pretty intentional.

[DracoknightZero]

---8<---
Where do you find these people?

Ironically the GM in question in his "attempt" (i use that word loosely here) to make the game more "inclined to be inventive" he defeated his own purpose to just have a single solution to the encounters.

What is the difference between "You have to do X to defeat Y" and any of these solutions? The main point of design is to make the solution intuitive, or at least the road to find the solution intuitive. The GMs who fail the most are those who have a "point and click" mentality where picking up a hat at lvl 1 is the holy relic of whats-his-name that is the only way to defeat who-the-hell-cares.

The best way of playing D&D is to have MULTIPLY solutions, and to sow that seed of inventiveness you block only ONE option and that option is the most obvious one, and even so you have to manage to describe the surroundings to the point the players know how to do it.
Room full of burning skeletons? Oh well that fireball wont be as effective now, how about taking out the weak supports for this room? Barricade the door? Use COLD magic? Run away?

*shakes head*

[Ashiel]

The best way of playing D&D is to have MULTIPLY solutions, and to sow that seed of inventiveness you block only ONE option and that option is the most obvious one, and even so you have to manage to describe the surroundings to the point the players know how to do it.
Room full of burning skeletons? Oh well that fireball wont be as effective now, how about taking out the weak supports for this room? Barricade the door? Use COLD magic? Run away?

*shakes head*

I'd also like to note that using Dracoknight's example, the following positive effects have been achieved.

• The players are presented with an obstacle that challenges their methods.
• The players are rewarded if they interact with the environment.
• The players are rewarded for having cold-damage effects if they do.
• The players are rewarded for retreating/fleeing (this is a good thing, more on why below).

Retreating and re-approaching the situation does two things.
1. It establishes through action a recognition that the PCs are not omnipotent and may not be prepared for a situation.
2. It makes it more rewarding when upon regrouping they are able to conquer the challenge, as it demonstrates that their choices (both to retreat and the choice of re-engagement) were good.

Incidentally, you are more likely to instill a positive memory of the encounter that you fled from and came back to overcome, or the encounter where the odds were against you but you used your environment to save the day. Both of these aspects are things that are likely to cement the encounter as a positive memory. Far more so than going through a battle that is just a formality until someone guesses the "correct" way to overcome the obstacle.

Dracroknight's hypothetical encounter is leagues better than the encounter referenced by the GM that Zilrax mentioned, and the pitch was a simple "A room of burning skeletons, door, and some pillars that could be collapsed - deal with it".

[Ashiel]

Please confirm you have read and accepted the site's Terms of Service.

I'm...confirming that with every post I make, since I couldn't post if I did not?

[DracoknightZero]

I'm...confirming that with every post I make, since I couldn't post if I did not?

For some reason i believe that user is a weird form of a Ad-bot... look at that history, the messages repeats itself.

[Ashiel]

For some reason i believe that user is a weird form of a Ad-bot... look at that history, the messages repeats itself.

Ah, interesting. Well, I even answered a bot's post, so let it be said I'm all for trying to be fair.

[Lemmy]

That's how a get Skynet...

[Zilrax]

Yeah that's why we bolted away from the Earth elemental, though some of the martials are upset at being made useless by it. Well it is the sort of thing that kinda counters them hard. Dr 5/- negates a LOT of damage when you do 1d8+4 at best, and when you can't make full attacks on it, and it's meanwhile swinging for most of everyones AC and half their hp pools.

Earth Glides kinda dumb.

[Ashiel]

Yeah that's why we bolted away from the Earth elemental, though some of the martials are upset at being made useless by it. Well it is the sort of thing that kinda counters them hard. Dr 5/- negates a LOT of damage when you do 1d8+4 at best, and when you can't make full attacks on it, and it's meanwhile swinging for most of everyones AC and half their hp pools.

Earth Glides kinda dumb.

Well, your GM might have hated you for "powergaming" but this is one of those places where a few alchemist fires can ruin a monster's day.

[Klara Meison]

What, if any, is your favourite race in Warhammer 40k?

[Zilrax]

It'd need to be a LOT of alchemist fires. And we don;t have anyone with craft alch or access to anywhere to buy anything at the moment. Or I;d definetly do that. Right now I;m planning to Enervation then Dismissal the damn thing. Too bad I can;t animate anything. Lack of bodies aside, I;m only allowed to make sentient undead. So kinda stuck with a dead archetype and a dead domain spell and so forth :p

Pity I can;t animate elementals.

Also, Chaos. Specifically the Chaos Marines sect the Alpha Legion. The Black Ops of the Space Marines, where everyone else was all run by the manual, the Alpha Legion did their own rules. They had two Primarchs, and the primarchs dressed like the common marines. Every marine is named after the head Primarch. They;re known to use spies and eprform memory rewrites on themselves and surgery to be better spies.

They turned Chaos after they received a vision from a chaos priest. In this vision they saw two outcomes. Horus turns traitor, dies, and the universe is consumed by chaos. Or, Horus wins, kills his father, rules, has a change of heart, and then wipes out all of humanity, effectively crippling chaos for good at the cost of their entire race. And so Alpha joined Chaos in order to help Horus win.

Alpha Legion obey no specific chaos god, and they specifically attempt to nurture chaos cults and support them. When the chaos cults get in trouble, Alpha Legion will actually jump in to save them. Alpha Legion have no restricted playbook, they do whatever will win, no matter how unorthodox. Leaders are expected to defer to experts advice in their fields. Alpha legion has no command structure, they are Cell based and each cell is expected to act independently for their overall goal.

They are my favorite thing.

[DracoknightZero]

Speaking of Warhammer 40k... i actually despise the whole setting, every race and every hero in that game is some kind of mary sue and the space marines are just the best, and then you have the grey knight that is even better than that, plus the litterature i have read so far is basically "X item do whatever plot demands" especially considering the strenght of the melta bombs.

Personally i have two armies of the table top: the Tyranids and the Tau. The Tau is pretty clumsy put together lorewise, but i feel that they are the only race in 40k that is not "technologically stagnat" or "dying"... plus it makes for good fun to hear the lore geeks whine about how their precious space marines havent whiped them off the galaxy yet. Gameplay wise i wanted Tyranids to be a full melee setup, but since it was my first army i wasted a lot of cash on a army that doesnt really work, so i went over to Tau as i love the tactical benefits of their crisis suits and made a Farsight Enclave themed army with battle fatigued wash over them: ( Red and Gold army color with a lot of dirt and burns over them )

[Ashiel]

What, if any, is your favourite race in Warhammer 40k?

I don't know much about the background lore concerning Warhammer 40k. When I was a kid I briefly forayed into Warhammer Fantasy but found it prohibitively expensive and so stopped. It's still prohibitively expensive - even moreso than before, unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately, I don't need anything else consuming my time.

However, I've really enjoyed playing Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War and in its various incarnations (particularly with the Apocalypse mod). Using that as a basis, I'd say that the Necrons and Tyranids are probably my favorites. I like the tyranids for a lot of the same reasons I like the Zerg in Starcraft (albeit the Tyranids lack my waifu ), and I really enjoy the necrons because they're basically space liches.

[Zilrax]

I like the Alpha Legion cus they're the only almost sane people in a stupid dimension. They wouldn't end all conflict but they fight not stupid, and while their goal is insanely horrific, and maybe flawed, there's some major sense to it. Chaos exists in this mess primarily because of humanity. Chaos can't feed off Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, or Tau, and there are so few Eldar now that it would basically starve the chaos gods into obscurity for ages.

But honestly Warhammer 40k is a story about villains. Not in the sense of the story follows the villain instead of heroes. No, there are no heroes, everyones a villain. Or was, the Necron rewrite made things weird.

The Imperium is a xenophobic and insanely corrupt (In the usual sense) totalitarian theocratic oligarchy. The Eldar are holier than thou space elves who will destroy entire planets to save three of their own kind. Tyranids are space locusts who are very aware of other sentient life, they just don't care. Orks are a rogue bioweapon following their programming in absence of their creators. Chaos are the only theoretical meritocracy thats open to all but in practice are arbitrary monsters who would see the end of existence. The Tau are absolute collectivists who worship the Greater Good, which includes enslavement, sterilization, re-education camps, forced caste stratification, and it's questionable if even your average Tau has any free will at all or if they're all controlled by their psyker caste. The Necrons WERE a species of soulless life hating machines who sought to reclaim their empire from the biological buuuut, now they're just space mummies with no consistent theme which makes them the one group who are not a monolithic group as some necrons want peace or to be left alone and such and every tombworld is isolated from each other so now they're arguably the one arguably not villains.

[Ashiel]

But honestly Warhammer 40k is a story about villains. Not in the sense of the story follows the villain instead of heroes. No, there are no heroes, everyones a villain. Or was, the Necron rewrite made things weird.

I think this is the biggest reason I've never gotten very far into Warhammer 40k. It's such a bleak universe that it doesn't really interest me a whole lot beyond a setting for things like the Dawn of War video games. I've had a few people ask if I'd be interested in playing the Warhammer 40k RPG, and the answer is largely no. Loosely based on? Maybe. As is? Probably not ever.

I like characters that get to be heroic. Even if they start out as evil, a lot of my characters begin with a dark bent and become "better" as they learn and grow in their journeys. I don't see much in the way of that in Warhammer 40k.

I tend to get bored very quickly of settings where everyone is and there are no good guys. Which I feel I should qualify a bit to avoid confusion (especially in case some of my players find themselves reading the thread). I frequently enjoy settings and run games where there's no universal good/evil, with good and evil existing more or less everywhere. I realize this isn't the always everyone's cup of tea, but I tend to run games where there are exceptions abound. Even the bad guys are often not without some measure of redemption, or good guys with some measure of flaws. I've had games where Paladins fight one another (a bit about that spoiled below), or villains being helpful or even doing things heroic when it suites their needs (such as a villain putting themselves on the line to protect someone they love, or even someone they feel is innocent). I'm generally less interested in games where everyone is bad.

Spoiler: Paladin Thing

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In the last really long campaign I ran for Aratrok and Raital, which included my brother, there was some conflict over the fact my brother's Paladin decided to declare a number of undead characters (vampires specifically) under his protection, which was at odds with the order's policy on undeath. He was challenged by his former superior and the two of them dueled one-another in the middle of the cathedral where their (the vampires') identities were revealed. When the party's Paladin defeated his former superior officer (who ws a bit of a douche sometimes), he healed him and helped him back up, and stood firm on his oath to protect them.

[Klara Meison]

I like the Alpha Legion cus they're the only almost sane people in a stupid dimension. They wouldn't end all conflict but they fight not stupid, and while their goal is insanely horrific, and maybe flawed, there's some major sense to it. Chaos exists in this mess primarily because of humanity. Chaos can't feed off Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, or Tau, and there are so few Eldar now that it would basically starve the chaos gods into obscurity for ages.

But honestly Warhammer 40k is a story about villains. Not in the sense of the story follows the villain instead of heroes. No, there are no heroes, everyones a villain. Or was, the Necron rewrite made things weird.

The Imperium is a xenophobic and insanely corrupt (In the usual sense) totalitarian theocratic oligarchy. The Eldar are holier than thou space elves who will destroy entire planets to save three of their own kind. Tyranids are space locusts who are very aware of other sentient life, they just don't care. Orks are a rogue bioweapon following their programming in absence of their creators. Chaos are the only theoretical meritocracy thats open to all but in practice are arbitrary monsters who would see the end of existence. The Tau are absolute collectivists who worship the Greater Good, which includes enslavement, sterilization, re-education camps, forced caste stratification, and it's questionable if even your average Tau has any free will at all or if they're all controlled by their psyker caste. The Necrons WERE a species of soulless life hating machines who sought to reclaim their empire from the biological buuuut, now they're just space mummies with no consistent theme which makes them the one group who are not a monolithic group as some necrons want peace or to be left alone and such and every tombworld is isolated from each other so now they're arguably the one arguably not villains.

>Tyranids are space locusts who are very aware of other sentient life, they just don't care.

Hey, that's racist. Tyranids do care. They want to help all sentient life become better by becoming a part of the Great Devourer, objectively the best lifeform in all of cosmos.

[Zilrax]

Aka eating them alive because the only sentient part of the Tyranids are the Norn queens and they care about your biomass and nothing else. You're as relevant to them as a blade of grass. If it wasn't for the fact that the Norn Queens constantly argue with each other over what the best tactics for devouring all other life happened I'd say they are just animals. But no, they are very much aware. Hell, the Genestealers design is specifically created to abuse other species sentiency and social behaviours. So the Tyranids have to be aware of other species sentience.

I know, tongue in cheek but yeah. The Tau are the make everyone join us or else group. The Tyranids are we eat everyone else group.

[DracoknightZero]

A story of villian eh? That explains why all of the Ultramarines are so insufferable and cringworthy to read about that i rather poke my eyes out, because they are the chapter that are the so-called "heroes" of any of the written material. And when it comes to Tau, at least the new book its pretty much collectivist and totalitarian... though most of it is just fan conspiracy theories and writers that obviously cant keep themselves consistent with the lore in the Codex. Speaking of writers... NONE of them are consistent between themselves.

In the end i cant take 40k seriously at all, because that universe started as a sci-fi parody, and then it got to its teen-edge years and got "grim-dark" just for the sake of being "dark and serious".

Love the units, but the world is just the ruins of a hundred failed writers.

[Zilrax]

There's individual aspects that are sort of fascinating in 40k. The Orks for example. Yeah they're silly and goofy and have funny cockney accents.

But looking beside that, consider their history. The Orks are a fungus based bioweapon from an long ended war. In the absence of control they obey their programming to fight and kill but they've been forced to adapt to circumstances that was never intended. So they build a culture, one that seems absolutely insane but makes a fair bit amount of sense in their own context. The Orks are made for fighting, it's built into them. They reproduce by fighting, they gain wealth by fighting, they gain status by fighting, they gain physical power by fighting. The idea of not fighting would be like telling someone not to eat. It's a biological absurdity to consider and you'd need to have a real good reason not to do it.

The orks themselves have castes based upon power, as well as racial programming that makes certain groups have inbuilt knowledge on how to do technical things which should be beyond people who do no research. Having a strange group solipsistic power where if enough of them believe something reality shapes to that will and is not Warp based certainly helps make things that should never work work around orks, but given isolated orks revert to purely biological methods for warfare by breeding warbeasts and such as savages, it's clearly not innate normally.

It's an interesting to look at a species that are so silly but have these concepts under the hood. I like looking at certain species and ponder what their biology would inform into a society.

[Kryzbyn]

Happy Thanksgiving!

Also, for Kryzbyn;
Rai said that I could share the necromancer we were revising so here's a link to the still unfinished necromancer (I hadn't had much time to work on it but it's nearly finished). Necromancer Redux.

Here's a sample character: Jin Maslin. She's a gishy necromancer for a game where animating undead is heavily frowned upon, so rather than animating a bunch of undead she mostly fights while dying. She was built according to the campaigns creation standards (so 25pb, 1.5 base HP at 1st level), though I'd personally have preferred to make her on 15pb.

Thank you very much Ash. I've finally had time to look at this, and it looks really cool.
I'm working on a homebrew class for an "action necro" (i love Eddie Izzard), that is a kind of necro-gish. The idea is he (or she) would be focused on necromantic magic, and use spell combat and spell strike with necromancy spells. He will have a reduced spell list, but most (if not all) of the sorc/wiz necromancy spells. He would have a summon undead ability (similar to summoners, but using the summon undead line of spells instead of summon monster; the spells are in a 3rd party book calls 'Summon Undead', go figure) and some darkness stuff.
Was going to start with it just being an archetype, but it's grown into more of a hybrid class of magus and...summoner, kind of...

[Ashiel]

Thank you very much Ash. I've finally had time to look at this, and it looks really cool.
I'm working on a homebrew class for an "action necro" (i love Eddie Izzard), that is a kind of necro-gish. The idea is he (or she) would be focused on necromantic magic, and use spell combat and spell strike with necromancy spells. He will have a reduced spell list, but most (if not all) of the sorc/wiz necromancy spells. He would have a summon undead ability (similar to summoners, but using the summon undead line of spells instead of summon monster; the spells are in a 3rd party book calls 'Summon Undead', go figure) and some darkness stuff.
Was going to start with it just being an archetype, but it's grown into more of a hybrid class of magus and...summoner, kind of...

Glad you like it. It still needs some finishing. The capstones are undecided, and the undead minion hasn't been ironed out either.

In other news, D20 Legends Monster Musings were just posted on the d20 legends thread, discussing some possible simplifications to creature types and subtypes and a new type of monster for those who are looking for a certain epic flair.

[DracoknightZero]

By the way Ash are you going to allow for more "Thematic" variants of classes and abilities? Forexample you would have the Gish character that summon his own magical armor and weapons (Like the Psi variants in PF that makes armor and weapons) and then depending on his specialization this armor could be made out of bone and skulls (Necromancy aspect) or it could be made of elements (Fire, Ice, Lightning) or something like that. Similary a mage can cast a "elemental ball" similar to the fire ball, but his specialization is of wind so this ball would then do Sonic damage.

The point is to allow more elemental/energy versions of the same spell, but keeping the mechanics similar... though you might want to have a few spells redesigned, or even removed due to redundancy and the mismatch of the theme. See "Slay Living" could be easily replaced by a negative energy shocking grasp, unless you want to do the Divine/Arcane energy split where you have Negative/Positive energy split, and Fire/Cold/Earth/Wind on Arcane.

Its all about making the character you want, like taking the "Paladin" (or "Champion" in your case ) chassie and build a "Royal Guard" (Neutral) a "Death Knight" (Evil) or "Paladin" (Good) version of the same class without stupid alignment restrictions.

The only thing this system would restrict would be spell-casters, but i feel their power is just in that they have too much variation as a "Universal" wizard, so letting them having options within their own speciality would be easier to keep them powerful, but not overwhelming.

[Ashiel]

By the way Ash are you going to allow for more "Thematic" variants of classes and abilities? Forexample you would have the Gish character that summon his own magical armor and weapons (Like the Psi variants in PF that makes armor and weapons) and then depending on his specialization this armor could be made out of bone and skulls (Necromancy aspect) or it could be made of elements (Fire, Ice, Lightning) or something like that.

A lot of base abilities should be very easy to fluff. For example, a class feature that let you conjure up weapons & armors would leave their overall description up to the player, so a necromancer who took them might describe them as being made of bone or ectoplasm or something, while another might describe them completely differently, but they'd share similar statistics, with specialization talents further customizing it (so let's say hypothetically we have a mage talent that let you conjure magical arms and armor, you might have a conjurer-focused talent that allows you to make them elemental, while a necromancer-focused one might make the weapon and armor manipulate life energies, while an abjurer-focused talent might focus around anti-magical aspects, etc).

Generally speaking though, I'm trying to keep a lot of the fluff up to the players and GMs building the characters.

Similary a mage can cast a "elemental ball" similar to the fire ball, but his specialization is of wind so this ball would then do Sonic damage.

Admittedly this is less likely to be a thing and I'll explain why. Rather than making the same attacks with different elemental damage, elemental effects are being written to function differently from each other more universally. For example, fire spells can ignite creatures and apply stacks of a "burning" condition that builds up ongoing damage, while cold spells "Chill" targets or even freeze them in place under the right conditions. Without specializations they can initially seem pretty similar (acid causes ongoing acid damage, fire causes ongoing fire damage for example), but each are intended to go into a more unique specialization (acid will be advanced to cause status ailments like sickened, poisons, and reduce AC; fire will have battlefield control applications such as thick smoke, suffocation, and just generally cause a lot of damage by playing with burning stacks).

Which isn't to say that merged elements aren't a possibility. For example, it would be fairly easy to create some talents that let you twist other elements to become dual-elements, such as applying the acid descriptor and corrosive effects to a Water spell, or making a lightning bolt that ignites people, and so forth. I really would like to make a nice minigame out of elemental effects.

The point is to allow more elemental/energy versions of the same spell, but keeping the mechanics similar... though you might want to have a few spells redesigned, or even removed due to redundancy and the mismatch of the theme. See "Slay Living" could be easily replaced by a negative energy shocking grasp, unless you want to do the Divine/Arcane energy split where you have Negative/Positive energy split, and Fire/Cold/Earth/Wind on Arcane.

There's actually no functional difference between arcane/divine in D20 Legends. In fact, you build your own spell list and use the same progression across the board (so while a cleric/wizard/sorcerer/druid would have four different spell lists, caster levels, and spells per day schemes, in D20 Legends you'd just have 1 set of spells per day and spells known that advance with you).

Its all about making the character you want, like taking the "Paladin" (or "Champion" in your case ) chassie and build a "Royal Guard" (Neutral) a "Death Knight" (Evil) or "Paladin" (Good) version of the same class without stupid alignment restrictions.

Yeah, alignment restrictions on classes just won't be a thing honestly.