Talk to Ashiel About Anything Mark II

[Lemmy]

I'd suggest keeping at least 4 atributtes. 2 physical and 2 mental. I think tthere's value in splitting Int (and certain parts of Wis) and Cha (and other parts of Wis). Specially in RPG's.

[Zilrax]

I'm not sure what the advantage of having an even number is per say at this time. All ability scores are an abstraction as it were and the mental scores never made sense for what they did. Making it MORE abstract if anything alleviates some of the dumb roleplaying constraints people try to inflict on each other by allowing you to say well it's high cus my willpower not cus I'm a genius or it's low cus i'm crass not cus I'm... whatever. Stuff like that.

We'd have to see whether there's enough advantage in SAD on it compared to others to justify splitting it further. If it's purely aesthetic reasoning, I don't really see the need. 3 is aesthetically pleasing in it's own way.

[Ashiel]

I'm not sure what the advantage of having an even number is per say at this time. All ability scores are an abstraction as it were and the mental scores never made sense for what they did. Making it MORE abstract if anything alleviates some of the dumb roleplaying constraints people try to inflict on each other by allowing you to say well it's high cus my willpower not cus I'm a genius or it's low cus i'm crass not cus I'm... whatever. Stuff like that.

We'd have to see whether there's enough advantage in SAD on it compared to others to justify splitting it further. If it's purely aesthetic reasoning, I don't really see the need. 3 is aesthetically pleasing in it's own way.

This is pretty much the reasoning behind it. Mental ability scores have never been particularly good at quantifying anything in the game the way physical ability scores have, and sticklers for "roleplaying your scores" (rather than roleplaying your character) often added a lot of unnecessary baggage or trying to decide what IQ someone with a 30 Intelligence has, and other such nonsense.

The current working mechanics right now has 3 ability scores, and each is tied to one of the primary non-armor defenses (Fortitude, Reflex, and Willpower). How you roleplay your character is largely up to you, as Mind has more of an association with how magically inclined you are rather than how smart, or wise, or charismatic you are. Those are things that are largely relegated to your investment into skills and the way you roleplay your character.

It's also created a situation where there is no real dumpstats, because everyone cares about all three scores, albeit to different degrees (naturally a front-line warrior would prefer to have more Strength, but even the squishy mage might not want to tank it too hard since it's the primary source of their stamina/hit points).

I admit it's a pretty radical move but at the moment it's actually felt pretty good in early playtesting with my tabletop group, and after the initial "wait, there's no Charisma? How do I know how pretty my character is?" jokes it pretty much just ran along business as usual, and because Intelligence isn't a thing anymore your barbarian doesn't have to be a genius to have a lot of "practical" skills (I always thought it was a little strange that a barbarian needed to be good at math to know how to climb, jump, swim, act intimidating, and track dinner in the wild...).

EDIT: A bit more elaboration on the 3-score thing.
1. All ability scores are valuable to all characters. It's a matter of personal preference as to which you will value the most, but it's not like in Pathfinder where scores like Charisma means nothing to like 80% of the characters while being the got-stat for like 10% of the classes and anyone who has studied a tome of get-every-freakin'-thing-to-Charisma optimization.

2. It cuts down on the "need" for trying to have twelve different options for rolling a Diplomacy check with Intelligence or something. I know you know what I'm talking about.

3. Strength and Constitution were essentially rolled into the same stat. While they still modify very little in terms of skills, the stat is good for anyone who wants to have more stamina and does double duty for characters who are going to be in the thick of things (if you're built to go into melee you will also be ready to rumble without being exploded by your enemies because you'll have waaaay more hit points than someone specialized in something else).

4. Agility is pretty much classic Dexterity, though you don't need feats to be able to fight in melee with light weapons and the like so that's a plus I suppose. Agility was always a pretty good ability score for everyone and that's pretty much the same here.

5. Mind is a sort of hybrid of Wisdom and Charisma. It adds into your Willpower defense, and contributes heavily to your magical or non-physical abilities. Generally speaking it tends to make magic things you do better (improving chance to beat your foes defenses, providing more fuel for the dakka, etc), but some non-magic things are keyed off of it as well (such as modifying the duration of certain martial abilities).

[Lemmy]

I just like the idea reflected in Kirthfinder's 4 types of save... Fort and Ref are the same, but Will is split in two, one save based on Wis (usually against illusions, fear and emotion-related effects) and another based on Cha (for most mind-control stuff). I like the idea of attributes allowing to differentiate characters that super smart and thkse that just have really strong ego/force of personality.

Is it necessary? No... But it's pretty cool, IMHO. It was something that I had in mind when creating my "Ultimate Set of House Rules for PFRPG"... Which admittedly, is little more than a compilation of house-rules and ideas from other RPGs... Even some of the (very few) good ideas in PF2.

[Zilrax]

While that does make sense for what it does, I agree that with how the stats were that made more sense, I think that could as easily be handled in this case with some sort of background trait or something that gives a bonus against specific tags like mind affecting or what not. Some sort of starting thing thats more specific for things might wanna emphasize with a char maybe. Or not. I dunno.

[Ashiel]

I just like the idea reflected in Kirthfinder's 4 types of save... Fort and Ref are the same, but Will is split in two, one save based on Wis (usually against illusions, fear and emotion-related effects) and another based on Cha (for most mind-control stuff). I like the idea of attributes allowing to differentiate characters that super smart and thkse that just have really strong ego/force of personality.

Is it necessary? No... But it's pretty cool, IMHO. It was something that I had in mind when creating my "Ultimate Set of House Rules for PFRPG"... Which admittedly, is little more than a compilation of house-rules and ideas from other RPGs... Even some of the (very few) good ideas in PF2.

While that does make sense for what it does, I agree that with how the stats were that made more sense, I think that could as easily be handled in this case with some sort of background trait or something that gives a bonus against specific tags like mind affecting or what not. Some sort of starting thing thats more specific for things might wanna emphasize with a char maybe. Or not. I dunno.

I'll admit that since the three-stat ability score system is pretty radical that I'm still tentative on it myself. Maybe when I've got enough cobbled together that folks can try it, you guys can give me some feedback on it. A big part of the reason I changed it to 3 stats was because the mental scores in traditional d20 already have a ton of overlap, and I really didn't see a clear way to make more than one mental ability score that was appreciated by all characters. I've also had a rather frustrating history with dealing with people (both IRL and online) that attempt to force mental stats to mean hard things that they don't.

For example, in Pathfinder if you want your Paladin to be fresh out of a hillside monastery and not know much about the world, you can give them a lower than average Intelligence score to make it where they can't take-10 and answer common questions, so they instead have to ask other people for the answer. The lower Intelligence in this case represents for the character a poorer general education but isn't supposed to say he or she is actually stupid (they might be a bright eyed soul excited about learning the wonders of the world they were sheltered from at the monastery).

Even the example of two different mental saves has a lot of overlap. I don't really see much difference between resisting magical fear and emotion effects and resisting magical peer pressure (in both cases you're testing to see how strong willed you are). EDIT: It also occurs to me that at that point you essentially have a save that only applies against one form of attack since most mind control is just charm/compulsion stuff regardless of its source (doesn't really matter if it's a charm person or dominate person, a succubi's charm or a vampire's dominate). That sort of seems strange to me in the same way it would feel strange to have a save specifically against [Fire] or [Cold] effects.

Rolling all the mechanical effects of the mentals into a single stat makes it collectively useful for most everyone, and also makes it explicit in what it covers which is mostly magic and special abilities. This means whether you are smart, charming, wise, or just the opposite is based on how you act and what you do, not a number on your sheet. In d20 Legends, there's no invisible penalty for roleplaying (such as feeling pressed to have a high Intelligence score even if it doesn't do much for you because you wanted to play a philosopher barbarian, and if the natural response is that Wisdom or Charisma could be used to emulate philosophy, welcome to my conclusion).

So in d20 Legends, the mechanics are more about do instead of who. It's left up to the player and GMs to describe their characters. If you want a character with high magical power who's kind of dense, you can do that. If you want the proverbial super muggle who doesn't know their way around a cantrip but has a doctorate in the field of physics, you could do that too.

@Zilrax On the subject of traits, I will probably include some options for taking penalties to specialize into something related. Such as options to take a -4 penalty on three Mind-based skills to add a +2 bonus to three Mind-based skills, which would be the route to making a character that's inept at something and their overcompensation elsewhere (such as the aforementioned Paladin who's very bad at Knowledge skills but might be quite gifted at Diplomacy, Medicine, and Sense Motive), because sometimes we don't want our characters to be competent at stuff.

[Lemmy]

I'm not really sure why those 3 attributes are more conductive to "playing q character instead of their stats" than the 4 I mentioned. IME, the kind of player who obsess over their attributes not being a perfect match for the described character will do it even if there's only 2 different attributes ("you can't be naive! You have high MIND!" or "You should be acting like an Ogre! You have high BODY and low MIND!"...

Besides... I do think your attributes should be PART of what defines your character. You don't have to restrict yourself to it, or give them that much weight, but the difference between having Str / Dex 20 and Str / Dex 12 makes enough of a difference in someone's life to subtly influence their personality and tastes.

All that said, I really have no horse in this race. You should make a system thar fills your and your players' needs and wants as gamers, not mine. I just commented on this particular aspect because by coincidence it's something that came up recently when creating and testing my newest set of house-rules with my friends.

It's to be expected that your tastes and mine don't completelty align. The same is true of any 2 people in the world.

[Ashiel]

I'm not really sure why those 3 attributes are more conductive to "playing q character instead of their stats" than the 4 I mentioned. IME, the kind of player who obsess over their attributes not being a perfect match for the described character will do it even if there's only 2 different attributes ("you can't be naive! You have high MIND!" or "You should be acting like an Ogre! You have high BODY and low MIND!"...

Besides... I do think your attributes should be PART of what defines your character. You don't have to restrict yourself to it, or give them that much weight, but the difference between having Str / Dex 20 and Str / Dex 12 makes enough of a difference in someone's life to subtly influence their personality and tastes.

I was mostly commenting on how there was already a ton of overlap with the mental stats, and since the mental stats tried to give fluffy descriptions of what they meant somehow it inevitably led to people insisting they meant things they actually did not quantify in any way, or insisting that there was only one-way to roleplay your scores, and of course having their own idea of what a particular number meant (like those jerks that insisted that if you have an 8 Charisma everyone must always start unfriendly to you and you smell funny or something).

In any case, a lot of that fluffy stuff was cut away and it's very explicit as to what it does. It is then up to the players and GMs to interpret what that means for themselves. I don't suspect that it will completely eliminate asshattery but I do expect it to reduce it significantly.

Also, on the subject of the mental ability scores themselves, I just didn't really see a need. I already divorced skill point acquisition from Intelligence (because it's dumb that you need to be exceptionally smart to get better at climbing, jumping, swimming, and balancing) so there really wasn't anything Intelligence was good for outside of skill modifiers, and Charisma was already in that state. At that point it was just redundant to have more than one, especially since I was trying to leave building character personalities and such to roleplaying rather than saddling them with a "roleplay tax" of having to invest in a useless ability score or two to try to justify that their character is a scientist or something.

All that said, I really have no horse in this race. You should make a system thar fills your and your players' needs and wants as gamers, not mine. I just commented on this particular aspect because by coincidence it's something that came up recently when creating and testing my newest set of house-rules with my friends.

It's to be expected that your tastes and mine don't completelty align. The same is true of any 2 people in the world.

I concur. It's interesting to talk about though, 'cause I respect your thoughts on the matter. I'm not overly familiar with Kirthfinder, but at first glance it sounded like that 4th save was only really useful against one type of attack, and that feels really strange to me given that d20 really succeeded when they pulled away from the old different save for everything of pre-3E.

I mean, I might just be missing something but it kind of sounds like this.

Fortitude: Resists poisons, level drain, environmental effects, death magic, diseases, half a dozen other things.
Reflex: Resists AoE damage, lots of traps, snares like entangle, falling objects, probably lots I'm forgetting.
Will: Resists illusions, fear effects, emotion effects, divination effects, insanity, and probably a lot of stuff I don't remember.
4th saving throw: Resists charms and compulsions...

Did I misunderstand?

[Ashiel]

Besides... I do think your attributes should be PART of what defines your character. You don't have to restrict yourself to it, or give them that much weight, but the difference between having Str / Dex 20 and Str / Dex 12 makes enough of a difference in someone's life to subtly influence their personality and tastes.

Oh, I thought I should mention something about this too actually, more specifically.

I'm a big proponent of show don't tell. I guess it's 'cause I sort of like writing and studying fiction in my spare time. As a result I think it's kind of impossible not to. No amount of roleplaying will allow you to do things you physically cannot do, but it's otherwise up to you to offer narratives for why that's so.

An example would be a friend of mine in my current campaign. His front-line Dex-based warrior has a low Strength score. He's not particularly scrawny in his build but one of his arms was mangled pretty bad in his youth, took a long time to heal up, and he still tends to favor it and it's not as strong as his other arm. That's his explanation for his physical weakness (he's physically handicapped at leveraging it).

But like, nothing forced him to fluff it that way. He just thought it was a neat way of explaining why his physical statistics related to Strength were pretty garbage. He could have just as easily said his character was really scrawny, or was out of shape, or was maybe fat and most of his carrying capacity was taken up by his already enormous girth.

[exelsisxax]

I was always on the team charisma-based save - it always seemed odd that sorcerers, who bend magic itself to their whim through instinct and force of will, just fold like paper to mental effects.

At the same time, I don't know why so many things use a fort save. So many physical effects should be targeting CMD, or combat maneuvers should be fort saves.

I think 4e did it right, in its case, to toss out saves and just use attributes instead. If you have 6 you may as well use them rather than inventing yet more derived attributes.

[Lemmy]

Also, on the subject of the mental ability scores themselves, I just didn't really see a need. I already divorced skill point acquisition from Intelligence (because it's dumb that you need to be exceptionally smart to get better at climbing, jumping, swimming, and balancing) so there really wasn't anything Intelligence was good for outside of skill modifiers, and Charisma was already in that state. At that point it was just redundant to have more than one, especially since I was trying to leave building character personalities and such to roleplaying rather than saddling them with a "roleplay tax" of having to invest in a useless ability score or two to try to justify that their character is a scientist or something.

I think a better idea overall is just make all attributes more useful... One way Kirthfinder does that, is making Cha useful against mind control (which makes perfect sense IMO, in the same way that Str helps you against being grappled). Admittedly, that's much easier said than done. So reducing the number of attributes makes sense... There's value in simplicity, but the same is true for granularity, and increasing one often requires reducing the other, so we have to find a way to balance both aspects. I don't think there's that much of a benefit of having Con separate from Str, for example... And having 3 mental attributes is a bit unnecessary as well, since most mind-related checks could easily be based on "Insight" (Int+Wis) and Ego/Force of Personality/Charm/Some-word-that-sounds-way-better-but-I-can't-think-of (Wis+Cha).

Having 4 savings can be a bit much because point-buy is so limited that you'd inevitably have at least one crappy save (and I don't mean "below average, but actually "Fighter-with-low-Wis" kind of bad). Kirthfinder avoids this by making every saving throw follow the 1/2 level progression, with the character's good ones getting a +2 on top of that. This way he gets Cha to be useful without the problem of crippling characters that want to shy, taciturn and/or introvert. This is a good design IMO.

Like you said... It's indeed really dumb that a Fighter can barely afford to be decent at a single skill role while a Wizard who spends all his time in a library can be an expert climber, swimmer, acrobat, horse-rider, sailor and infiltrator because he's just that smart.

One idea that I have had in mind for freaking years now, but could never really figure out the numbers, was splitting the skill list in three separate lists... Physical/Outdoorsy skills, Intellectual/Finesse skills and Social skills. The first gets extra skill points based on Con (or maybe Str), the second on Int and the third on Cha. That by itself would make Cha super useful, while not making it a necessity for Cha who don't care much about Social skills.

I always wanted to find a good way to implement that... But it always ends up with characters have way too many or way too few skill points per level (even the dumbest, weakest, shyest character could end up with 6 skill points per level, and that's before extra from race, feats or favored class bonus). It's not necessarily a bad thing... But I didn't want the village idiot to have as many skill points as a Ranger.

Fortitude: Resists poisons, level drain, environmental effects, death magic, diseases, half a dozen other things.
Reflex: Resists AoE damage, lots of traps, snares like entangle, falling objects, probably lots I'm forgetting.
Will: Resists illusions, fear effects, emotion effects, divination effects, insanity, and probably a lot of stuff I don't remember.
4th saving throw: Resists charms and compulsions...

Did I misunderstand?

I'm not sure about Divination (I played very little KF, and it was long ago), but it sounds about right. While it may look unbalanced, Charm and Compulsion effects are relatively common and usually REALLY DANGEROUS. So while the saving throw protects against only a few things, those few things are something you definitely want to be protected against.

Oh, I thought I should mention something about this too actually, more specifically.

I'm a big proponent of show don't tell. I guess it's 'cause I sort of like writing and studying fiction in my spare time. As a result I think it's kind of impossible not to. No amount of roleplaying will allow you to do things you physically cannot do, but it's otherwise up to you to offer narratives for why that's so.

An example would be a friend of mine in my current campaign. His front-line Dex-based warrior has a low Strength score. He's not particularly scrawny in his build but one of his arms was mangled pretty bad in his youth, took a long time to heal up, and he still tends to favor it and it's not as strong as his other arm. That's his explanation for his physical weakness (he's physically handicapped at leveraging it).

But like, nothing forced him to fluff it that way. He just thought it was a neat way of explaining why his physical statistics related to Strength were pretty garbage. He could have just as easily said his character was really scrawny, or was out of shape, or was maybe fat and most of his carrying capacity was taken up by his already enormous girth.

Well, yes. That's a clear example of what I said... His attribute do tell something about the character. Just not necessarily that he just doesn't like exercising... But a person with a severe limitation to physical strength will face problems and go through situations that help form who he is. Even in modern society, where for the most part, physical strength is almost irrelevant. He's less likely to become a school bully, maybe he won't be as confident, people may treat him better or worse, he'll enjoy certain benefits that he might not remember are universal, or deal with problems that most people don't even realize exist, he could have his social life limited in certain ways (can't go play football with the guys, for example) and expanded on others (he is really good at online gaming because that doesn't require strong arms), etc...

All of that has influence on a person's mind... So a character's attributes should influence his personality so some degree. Of course, they aren't the only or even necessarily the one of biggest factors in play, but it should be there. And it kinda happens all the time even without players realizing... A Fighter with lowish Int and high Str/Dex is likely to invest his few skill points in things he wants to be good, so that probably means things like Acrobatics, Intimidate, Perception, etc and not many Knowledge checks... Which is also a possible cause and consequence of his choice of training to be Fighter instead of a Wizard... And that tells something about the character, even if the player himself doesn't realize it.

[Lemmy]

I think 4e did it right, in its case, to toss out saves and just use attributes instead. If you have 6 you may as well use them rather than inventing yet more derived attributes.

I think you're mixing up 4e with 5e...

IIRC, 4e still had the three classic saves, but they could be based on different attributes (Str or Con for Fort, Dex or Int for Reflex, and Wis or Cha for Will)... Which I actually like. It was one of the few good changes 4e made, IMO.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, after all... As PF2 can remind us.

[halfeye]

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, after all.

That should be a stopped clock.

A broken clock could still be going around, but for instance losing an hour a day, so it could be correct a lot less than twice a day (and if it was reliably slow by a fixed amount you could work out the time from it none the less with a lot of work, though you probably wouldn't bother if there was a real clock nearby). Even worse would be the case of a clock that still ran, but lost or gained a random but usually significant amount of time every day.

[Lemmy]

Well... A clock that stopped because it's too broken to move is still a broken clock. So I'm still right...

[Ashiel]

I'm not sure about Divination (I played very little KF, and it was long ago), but it sounds about right. While it may look unbalanced, Charm and Compulsion effects are relatively common and usually REALLY DANGEROUS. So while the saving throw protects against only a few things, those few things are something you definitely want to be protected against.

Yeah, that's kind of what I thought. I dunno, it kinda rubs me the wrong way. I'm really not a big fan of "this stat is not useful, but if you don't invest in it you will die" type things. That's basically why Constitution went the way of the dodo as well. It's like, this stat does absolutely nothing except provide more hit points and Fortitude. Has no appreciable skills, little to nothing is keyed off of it for players (monsters at least get better poisons and breath weapons if they have 'em), etc.

Feels a bit like spite to me. "Here's a score that's useless so to justify having it we made new, terrible penalties if you don't, but beyond now having to have this to avoid losing your character, it's still useless".

Seems a bit like the old honey vs vinegar adage.

[Lemmy]

Yeah, that's kind of what I thought. I dunno, it kinda rubs me the wrong way. I'm really not a big fan of "this stat is not useful, but if you don't invest in it you will die" type things. That's basically why Constitution went the way of the dodo as well. It's like, this stat does absolutely nothing except provide more hit points and Fortitude. Has no appreciable skills, little to nothing is keyed off of it for players (monsters at least get better poisons and breath weapons if they have 'em), etc.

Feels a bit like spite to me. "Here's a score that's useless so to justify having it we made new, terrible penalties if you don't, but beyond now having to have this to avoid losing your character, it's still useless".

Seems a bit like the old honey vs vinegar adage.

Well, with all saves following PF's Good Save progression, it's quite possible to "dump" a stat and still have a decent save... just like even low/mediocre Wis Wizard can still have good Will save with little effort... It isn't a death sentence to have low Cha, it just isn't completely free of consequence either.

[Tels]

The only thing I dislike about the three ability system, is the term "mind" as it just doesn't seem to fit. What about using psyche instead?

1. Classical Mythology. A personification of the soul, which in the form of a beautiful girl was loved by Eros.

2. (lowercase) the human soul, spirit, or mind.

3. (lowercase) Psychology, Psychoanalysis. The mental or psychological structure of a person, especially as a motive force.

4. Neoplatonism. The second emanation of the One, regarded as a universal consciousness and as the animating principle of the world.

With the word meaning soul, spirit, or mind, while also meanjng your motivating force, it seems like a good word choice for a term that encompasses your mental faculties and affinity for magic.

I remember reading that small snippet of classes/features going shared a while back and it got me super excited for such a system. We talked about different ways of leveraging talents. While killing off the 6 stat system seems crazy, the way you executed it made it feel like it wasn't so radical at all and worked out just fine. Sticking to a tradition just because it's tradition doesn't mean it's a good thing. No system that I've heard of has ever been able to fix the Charisma as a dump-stat problem for the majority of players, without just giving out more stat points. Making more saves based on stats means players are now punished for not spreading out their stats. You can see this a lot in 5E where every start is also a save of some kind and a lot of players are just, "well, **** it, guess I'm going to fail every one of X saves." In Pathfinder, you can rely on Sorcerers, Wizards, Clerics etc. to not likely be mind controlled, or feebleminded, or possessed, because they all have good Will saves, but not in 5E. This is because the more saves you have, the more weaknesses you have as well.

Weaknesses can be a good thing for s character, at least from a narrative point. But often times, such systems has people bad at everything, and good at only 1 or 2 things. So everything is a weakness.

Honestly, dropping down to 3 stats is a relief to me, because I can't tell you how many times I've hated having to dump one of the mental stats just to shore up one area or another, usually charisma or intelligence. Having only three stats, and divorcing skill points from the mental stats solves that problem, though it does mean I can't pump intelligence for more skills anymore, but it's s good trade-off.

[Bartmanhomer]

Ashiel, I have a few questions to ask you:

1. Do you like Yu-Gi-Oh?

2. Do you like Fan-Fiction stories?

3. Do you watch cartoons/anime?

[Ashiel]

Ashiel, I have a few questions to ask you:

1. Do you like Yu-Gi-Oh?

Manga, Anime, or Card Game?

2. Do you like Fan-Fiction stories?

Some of them.

3. Do you watch cartoons/anime?

Definitely. Though I've been a little bored with the anime I've seen in recent years. I dunno if I'm just getting burnt out and cynical, but most of it feels extremely same-y, like they're just checking off the cast from a list of "types" and rarely deepening the characters much beyond that; or an anime starts out with a really cool premise and really amazing first few episodes and then completely jumps ship a few episodes (Tokyo Ghoul & Blue Exorcist spring to mind).

I'm not sure if the general quality and creativity has gone down, or if perhaps it's just because more anime makes it to the states than the couple decades ago that I started watching anime (and most of that anime was from the 80s and 90s) and so rather than just getting stuff that was considered "worth" porting to the states they'll bring most anything. I'm really not sure, honestly. Maybe it's a mixture of multiple factors.

That said, I utterly adore the Netflix Castlevania series and wish it would never end. Western storytelling + eastern animation = so nice.

[Bartmanhomer]

Manga, Anime, or Card Game?


Some of them.


Definitely. Though I've been a little bored with the anime I've seen in recent years. I dunno if I'm just getting burnt out and cynical, but most of it feels extremely same-y, like they're just checking off the cast from a list of "types" and rarely deepening the characters much beyond that; or an anime starts out with a really cool premise and really amazing first few episodes and then completely jumps ship a few episodes (Tokyo Ghoul & Blue Exorcist spring to mind).

I'm not sure if the general quality and creativity has gone down, or if perhaps it's just because more anime makes it to the states than the couple decades ago that I started watching anime (and most of that anime was from the 80s and 90s) and so rather than just getting stuff that was considered "worth" porting to the states they'll bring most anything. I'm really not sure, honestly. Maybe it's a mixture of multiple factors.

That said, I utterly adore the Netflix Castlevania series and wish it would never end. Western storytelling + eastern animation = so nice.

All of them, Manga, Anime and Card Game.

[Ashiel]

The only thing I dislike about the three ability system, is the term "mind" as it just doesn't seem to fit. What about using psyche instead?



With the word meaning soul, spirit, or mind, while also meanjng your motivating force, it seems like a good word choice for a term that encompasses your mental faculties and affinity for magic.

I like it.

I remember reading that small snippet of classes/features going shared a while back and it got me super excited for such a system. We talked about different ways of leveraging talents.

At the moment, in the current iteration, feats don't even exist anymore. You just have certain talents that fill the roles that they had. So there's a list of "general" talents that give non-archetypal benefits such as improving your saving throws, granting additional hit points, granting more skill points, etc. In a similar vein, there will also be talents for exotic racial and monster abilities, which will for I believe the first time ever allow an in-house (that is core rules) method of making hybrid races (such as elven tieflings or half-dwarf half-haflings) or have things like half-dragons not require templates to produce.

I hope you'll like it. I will try to finalize and upload some of the new material by the end of next week (working on it between work shifts and gaming w/ friends).

While killing off the 6 stat system seems crazy, the way you executed it made it feel like it wasn't so radical at all and worked out just fine. Sticking to a tradition just because it's tradition doesn't mean it's a good thing. No system that I've heard of has ever been able to fix the Charisma as a dump-stat problem for the majority of players, without just giving out more stat points. Making more saves based on stats means players are now punished for not spreading out their stats. You can see this a lot in 5E where every start is also a save of some kind and a lot of players are just, "well, **** it, guess I'm going to fail every one of X saves." In Pathfinder, you can rely on Sorcerers, Wizards, Clerics etc. to not likely be mind controlled, or feebleminded, or possessed, because they all have good Will saves, but not in 5E. This is because the more saves you have, the more weaknesses you have as well.

Weaknesses can be a good thing for s character, at least from a narrative point. But often times, such systems has people bad at everything, and good at only 1 or 2 things. So everything is a weakness.

Honestly, dropping down to 3 stats is a relief to me, because I can't tell you how many times I've hated having to dump one of the mental stats just to shore up one area or another, usually charisma or intelligence. Having only three stats, and divorcing skill points from the mental stats solves that problem, though it does mean I can't pump intelligence for more skills anymore, but it's s good trade-off.

Well, it was something I kind of struggled with long and hard for a while, because you either make the stat necessary to have, or you don't. And if it's necessary it becomes a tax. If it's not, it usually means you can dump it to raise your other stats with no cost. To really make it hit that sweet spot, you really need a stat to offer appreciable benefits that everyone wants but some characters want more than others, and there's a psychological aspect as well. For example, you get "punished" for lowering most stats but you also get "rewarded" for raising most stats, but a stat like Charisma that's generally worthless (barring specific classes or very specific splat-optimization) I usually only see "punishments" for lowering it rather than anything really making it great for everyone.

Like, everyone likes having more hit points. And everyone likes having more AC and Initiative. And everyone likes having more resources to spend on their abilities.

To be honest, the decision to whittle down the 6 stats into 3 actually hit me while I was playing DotA 2 which is a MOBA based off the old Warcraft III game engine (a very RPG-themed wargame). In DotA, every hero has 3 main stats (Strength, Agility, Intelligence) and each of those stats contribute to the character's stats, but are more beneficial to heroes who specialize (spell-based heroes would want more Intelligence while tanks would want more Strength, etc). It was sort of like an epiphany. I realized that really all you needed was something about like that and leave the rest up to roleplaying and personal choice.

When I get done, my hope is to have a system with the richness of d20, and the simplicity of rules-lite systems (like OSRIC or even 5e) where you can hammer out a character in 15 minutes or less and get to roleplaying, while still not having to play mother-may-I with your GM over everything in the world (because I like my players to know they can climb trees, damnit ).

[Ashiel]

All of them, Manga, Anime and Card Game.

Really enjoyed what I saw of the Manga (mostly some issues of the US Shonen Jump) and thought it was a really cool premise. The anime (from what I've seen, haven't watched the whole series) can be kind of amusing and funny in an over the top sort of way. The card game I enjoyed briefly. I started playing it when it first launched and it was a bit too simple when it first launched, really enjoyed it a set or two later (started seeing a lot more creatures with special abilities rather than just being blank number-boxes), and pretty much just stopped playing it immediately after 'cause I wasn't in a position to keep up (social situation at the time meant I really didn't have anyone to play with and I didn't care as much since I was usually GMing D&D instead).

I played a good bit of the gameboy advance game too.

[Zilrax]

Not sure if anyone else can access it but may as well mention it.

The sphere's guys are doing a kickstarter for a full ultimate style hardcover of the spheres of power (not might) book that will have all the expanded stuff centralized. In addition they've a contest going til the 24th on it. A common request has been how to go about making a spheres char and so forth so they're opening it to the public. Make a level 1 and 5 stat block of 1 -3 of the following chars and link it into comment responses to post #6 on the kickstarter that mentions the contest.

The characters are Storm from X-Men, Bakugou from My Hero Academia, and Your Friend's OC, whomever that may be.

[THUNDERJeffro]

Not sure if anyone else can access it but may as well mention it.

The sphere's guys are doing a kickstarter for a full ultimate style hardcover of the spheres of power (not might) book that will have all the expanded stuff centralized. In addition they've a contest going til the 24th on it. A common request has been how to go about making a spheres char and so forth so they're opening it to the public. Make a level 1 and 5 stat block of 1 -3 of the following chars and link it into comment responses to post #6 on the kickstarter that mentions the contest.

The characters are Storm from X-Men, Bakugou from My Hero Academia, and Your Friend's OC, whomever that may be.

Hey, that's funny. I helped make a character for one of my current player who basically gave me just "Storm from X-Men" as a jumping off point. Maybe I'll have to take a look at that.

Also, hello. I don't know if I've ever posted before but I've followed Ashiel for a while.

[Ashiel]

Today at work, I was called a bitch, a real freak, an abomination, a racist, and a betrayer of the "male race", and a number of things not suitable for regurgitation on these boards. By a co-worker no less.

How was your day?

EDIT: Yes, I did point out that "male" isn't a race. Damn if education isn't in the gutter these days.

[Ashiel]

Also, hello. I don't know if I've ever posted before but I've followed Ashiel for a while.

Hello there! Glad to meet ya.

[Zilrax]

Well if you'd stop working at Tumblr maybe this wouldn't happen :p.

Sounds like a real professional. Well hopefully this just ends with someone being at odds, but knowing history uh... Be prepared for the inquisition.

[Ashiel]

Well if you'd stop working at Tumblr maybe this wouldn't happen :p.

You have no idea how much I laughed at this. It's pretty hard to breath now. :v

Sounds like a real professional. Well hopefully this just ends with someone being at odds, but knowing history uh... Be prepared for the inquisition.

Nobody expects the inquisition!

[Zilrax]

Well glad I can help, hehe.

So any further movement on a game happening or too busy for the time being? Don't want to nag but been a bit since word an am curious heh.

[Ashiel]

Well glad I can help, hehe.

So any further movement on a game happening or too busy for the time being? Don't want to nag but been a bit since word an am curious heh.

Well, I've been quite busy lately, but I'm still up for one. I've got a discord where I run some games in a persistent-campaign sort of fashion if anyone's interested. You guys can drop me a PM if you wanna drop by and check things out. I'd drop a link here on the forum directly but that seems like it might be a bad idea to open the server up to the whole internet like that.

The server is pretty casual, and has some pretty heavy adjustments to the core races (most were buffed significantly to make them more attractive next to some of the more exotic things like PRD tieflings and aasimar), and it has things like inherent modifiers baked into the progression of the characters (meaning it doesn't really matter too much if you can planar bind yourself an efreeti since you're getting them anyway), is 15 point buy, and grants some bonus HP to heroic classes based on their highest heroic HD. The campaign does not use traits (you can take the Extra Traits feat if you want traits), doesn't use Hero Points, doesn't use Mythic, and so on. It does however allow Spheres of Might, Spheres of Power, and Psionics.

Some relevant bits.
Character Creation
House Rules
Setting stuff