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Thread: Skill-based Spellcasting
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2018-11-22, 07:56 AM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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- Oct 2014
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Actually, while I'm on the topic of reincarnation and suchlike...
Based on the character samples above, the casual reader may have gathered that PCs can take up to 3 religious Vows that boost divine spellcasting, and in principle this could be generalised to non-religious motives as well. What I'll probably do is split them up as follows:
- Vows, for the Lawful- specific, conscious commitments to always/never do X or Y- truth, poverty, justice, secrecy, obedience, mortification, etc. Stereotypical paladin material with built-in 'fall' mechanics for gross violations.
- Appetites, for the Chaotic- innate emotional tendencies, such as a thirst for knowledge, beauty, adventure, vengeance, wealth, destruction etc. More flexible than a Vow, but has a random chance to 'kick in' and compel action at the GM's discretion. Some religious cults prize these in stead of Vows.
- Beliefs and Goals- general-purpose 'X is true' or 'must accomplish Y' directives.
- Bonds and Enmities- affection or hatred toward persons, groups, institutions, whole species or life in general- anything beside the self.
Advancing or altering motives also grants Inspiration to the player for later use.
So anyway. What happens when you're dead? Well, without a material underpinning the soul starts to fray around the edges and runs the risk of decohering, unless it can 'pull itself together' sufficiently by consolidating around some strongly held aspect of one's self-image: which is to say, one or more of the character's motives.
Each type of Outsider gets a small feat-chain related to building their image around a particular motive- Bonds for celestials, Enmities for fiends, Vows and Appetites for the denizens of lawful/chaotic planes. Undead are defined by their attachment to a familiar haunt on the material plane, such as their own physical remains, a treasured possession or a ruined home, but run the same risk of decoherence. This is all keyed off the Manifestation skill, which is only available to Outsiders.
Every day you're dead, make a DC 20 Manifestation check, adding your character level and the sum of your motives as a bonus.
- If you succeed, you may optionally convert one character level to an 'Outsider level'- convert any associated skill points to ranks in Manifestation, and/or replace any associated feat with an outsider feat.
- If you fail, you lose one character level. Souls who lose all character levels merge with their plane of residence and are lost. You must take at least one Outsider feat in order to invest in Manifestation or resist decoherence.
The upshot of this is that high-level characters and/or those with strong motives will probably fend off decoherence long enough that they can convert some skills and feats to 'outsider stuff' and attain stability without losing all vestige of their mortal personality. Relatively novice or weak-willed characters are likely to either decohere or will need to sacrifice enough of their skills/feats that little remains of their former identity- they wind up as low-level lemures, lantern archons and the like. At higher DCs, Manifestation checks can also be used to embark on alien planes, possess mortal remains, modify a host body, regenerate a body from scratch or do without one entirely- and the skill also grants the player some latitude over the appearance and attributes of their 'true form'.
Some of the more benign planes and/or their patron deities will send welcoming committees to assist newcomers with their transition, while the lower planes tend to treat fresh souls as livestock for consumption or worse. Monks are better at resisting decoherence, while Animists can seize the chance to reincarnate, and some settings will allow transition between the material plane and afterlives at particular times and places.
So... I do still need to actually draw up the feats in question. But that's the idea.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-11-22, 04:49 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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- Oct 2014
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Ho-kay, traits for Lemures/Undead & Demons below:
Code:OUTSIDERS AND MANIFESTATION The Manifestation skill already, by default, allows for possession, tweaks to a host body, incorporeal forms or bestowal of outsider traits you already possess. Possession Take control of a living or vacant body Sculpt Flesh Make adjustments to your host body- add fangs, wings, blue skin, etc. Bestow Essence Help another with Manifestation checks, bestow one or more of your own traits Spirit Bridge Can cast Conjurations spontaneously
Code:LEMURE TRAITS Lemure [Haunting X] Requirements: You focus on some aspect of the material world to which you were bound by affection or trauma or both- your own physical remains, the place of your death, a treasured possession or a living wrongdoer. This trait may be taken more than once- each time it applies to a different Haunt. You may take the Manifestation skill, and gain a +5 bonus to tests against decoherence. However, if your Haunt is ever physically destroyed, the trait is rendered null and void. All Lemures are vulnerable to light, and take 1 HP per round per character level in damage when exposed to direct sunlight. Corpse Walker Requirements: Lemure, haunting your own corpse. You inhabit and animate your own physical remains, reviving with half your maximum health and no fatigue. No Manifestation check is required (but see below.) You do not suffer pain, hunger, fatigue or sleep, and remain active down to -10 HP. However, your body still decays over time, and the discomfort of inhabiting a putrid corpse clouds your senses, applying penalties to most basic attributes. * Largely intact (1 day or so): -2 to Int/Wis/Cha/Ref, +4 max HP. * Mildly decomposed (1d10 days or so): -4 to Int/Wis/Cha/Ref, -2 max HP, gain DR 2/slashing. * Heavily decomposed (1d100 days or so): -6 to Int/Wis/Cha/Ref, -10 max HP, gain DR 5/blunt. As the dead often lack working lungs and vocal cords, verbal communication with the living is difficult at best, and any non-physical skill checks require a DC 20 Manifestation test to marshal the concentration required. Consumption Requirements: Corpse Walker You may regenerate your body by consuming the flesh and blood of the living. A medium-sized victim will provide meals for 4 consumers, allowing them to regenerate 2 HP per character level and roll back 1 stage of decomposition. Draining a victim's blood in a controlled nonlethal manner inflicts 2d6 injury per meal, but needs some skill and specialised tools to be done safely. Victims must be of the same species as the consumer- you can't use cow's blood to reconstitute a human body. You suffer from hunger as if you were alive- treat this trait as an Appetite, with a DC of 10 per stage of decomposition. Memory of Flesh Requirements: Corpse Walker As long as you are at nearly full HP (i.e, no pain penalties), your body can manifest some of the attributes of life- blood flow, physical warmth, breathing, etc. You can physically pass as alive, and even birth or sire children. You also regain 2 HP per day as long as the normal conditions of living, such as sleep and air, are met. Spectral Image Requirements: Lemure, haunting a physical object, location or other person You gain a +10 bonus to Manifestation within or near your Haunt, appearing as a ghostly image of your former self. However, the absence of a body clouds your senses, and you suffer a -4 penalty to Ref, Int, Wis and Cha. As an incorporeal creature, you cannot interact with physical objects, but also cannot be injured by most physical attacks or spells, and gain basic flight abilities within your haunt. Poltergeist Requirements: Spectral Image You can wield or manipulate physical components of your Haunt as if you possessed your normal Str score. You also gain +2 to Str and a +1 bonus to Marksmanship and Close Combat per 3 character levels. Tenebrous Form Requirements: Spectral Image You may turn invisible at will, gain +3 to Evasion, and gain a +5 bonus, +1 per character level, to resist Divinations revealing your presence or identity. Stubborn Tenant Requirements: Lemure You no longer suffer penalties to mental/physical attributes based on the state (or absence of) your corpse. Any corpse you inhabit no longer decays. You gain a +4 bonus to all tests of Will, including vs. illusion or enchantment. You also gain 10 bonus HP, and DR 1/magic for every character level. Finally, your damage in sunlight is halved. Chilling Aura Requirements: Stubborn Tenant You can feed upon the ambient energy of your surroundings, manifesting as a perceptible chill in the air. This grants a +2 bonus to divination checks to reveal your presence or identity, and regenerates 4 HP per day. You gain a +2 bonus to intimidate the living. You gain a +5 bonus, +1 per character level, to Evocations based on Ice, Void, Darkness or Silence. Grave's Touch Requirements: Stubborn Tenant Successful touch attacks against the living allow you to (pick 1): * (level 2+) deal 1d4 bonus fatigue damage, regain 2 HP * (level 5+) inflict paralysis (treat as DC 20 disease with immediate onset) * (level 8+) bestow one negative level These touch attacks function even when incorporeal. Enemies you slay by touch receive an automatic Bestow Essence check with a +10 bonus.Code:DEMON TRAITS Demon [Enmity against X] Requirements: You fixate on your hatred (Enmity) for a particular person, group, institution, species or life in general- this must be either an existing Motive or replace one. In either case, the rating advances by 2 (to a maximum of 5.) This Enmity can never be replaced or discarded as long as you have the trait, but the trait may be taken more than once to cover multiple Enmities. You may take the Manifestation skill, and gain a +5 bonus to tests for Possession of your chosen enemy. If they ever fall under your permanent control or are otherwise destroyed or negated as a threat, you must make a decoherence test at a -10 penalty, then select another subject. Your hatred may be treated as an Appetite for either Vengeance or Destruction by the GM, with +2 to temptation when provoked- you may also succumb at will. All demons are vulnerable to silver, and take double damage from such weapons. Crushing Will Requirements: Demon, Cha +2, Will +2 or more You gain +1 to Will and Charisma. You gain a +5 bonus, +1 per character level, to intimidate or enchant those who stand in the way of your hatred. Hideous Strength Requirements: Demon, Str +3 or more You gain +2 to Strength, which may exceed normal maximums. While you are provoked by your hatred you gain a +2 bonus, +1 per 3 character levels, to all physical combat tests. The Black Gift Requirements: Demon, Int +3 or more You gain +5 to Manifestation tests to Sculpt Flesh. You gain +5, +1 per character level, to spontaneous casting of Profane magic.
So to give an example of how that might translate into more familiar terms:
Code:Skeleton Warrior (level 1) Lemure [Haunting: own corpse] Corpse Walker 2 extra feats from regular list Ghoul (level 3) Lemure [Haunting: own corpse] Corpse Walker Consumption Stubborn Tenant Grave's Touch Revenant (level 5) Lemure [Haunting: own corpse] Demon [Enmity: former murderer] Corpse Walker Chilling Aura Stubborn Tenant Hideous Strength Vampire (level 7) Lemure [Haunting: own corpse] Corpse Walker Consumption Memory of Flesh Stubborn Tenant Grave's Touch 1 extra feat from regular list
Code:Ghost (level 1) Lemure [Haunting: family home] Spectral Image 2 other feats from regular list Oathbreaker (level 4) Lemure [Haunting: arms & armour] Spectral Image Poltergeist Stubborn Tenant Chilling Aura Haunted House (level 7) Lemure [Haunting: family home] Demon [Enmity: current residents] Spectral Image Poltergeist Tenebrous Form Crushing Will Hideous Strength Lich (level 10) Lemure [Haunting: own corpse] Lemure [Haunting: phylactery] Corpse Walker Stubborn Tenant Chilling Aura 3 extra feats from regular list
I might loosen some of the prerequisites here or provide some extra freebies (ideally building a vampire shouldn't take 6 dedicated feats). Once I flesh out the Fae side of things I should have some templates for Succubi, Asura, Wendigo, Werewolves, et cetera as well.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-11-24, 11:10 PM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
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- Dec 2008
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- Malsheem, Nessus
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
I don't know if "Appetites" is the best term for this. Aside from possible confusion with undead creatures' Consumption, one colloquially hears of an appetite for negative things: a hunger for wealth, a thirst for vengeance, a taste for violence, etc. is more common than a hunger for justice, a thirst for discovery, a taste for love, etc., and an "insatiable appetite" is generally not a good thing.
Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
I'd suggest something more explicitly emotional, like Passion or Zeal. Those are fairly neutral (one can equally have a passion for knowledge or a passion for killing, colloquially speaking), and since you intend for these to be GM compulsions it fits better there too (since you want to pursue your passion when possible, whereas you might put off a hunger pang until later if it's not convenient).
I like that you're providing a nice mechanical explanation for how some characters retain their selves in the afterlife while others don't, with enough wiggle room that a high-level character could simply roll low a bunch of times in a row to end up as a petitioner and a 1st-level character could roll some 20s and stabilize. I assume the motive bonuses are +1/+3/+5 like the divine caster bonuses, such that someone with 3 long-term vows has +15 to this check and is guaranteed to succeed if they're 4th level or higher? I also assume that outsider HD will continue to have 8+Int skill points or thereabouts so a high-level character with low or no motive bonuses can sink 8+Int skill points into Manifestation after a single success (and possibly trade a feat for Skill Focus [Manifestation] or the like) to also have a guaranteed success on further checks?Each type of Outsider gets a small feat-chain related to building their image around a particular motive- Bonds for celestials, Enmities for fiends, Vows and Appetites for the denizens of lawful/chaotic planes. Undead are defined by their attachment to a familiar haunt on the material plane, such as their own physical remains, a treasured possession or a ruined home, but run the same risk of decoherence. This is all keyed off the Manifestation skill, which is only available to Outsiders.
Every day you're dead, make a DC 20 Manifestation check, adding your character level and the sum of your motives as a bonus.
- If you succeed, you may optionally convert one character level to an 'Outsider level'- convert any associated skill points to ranks in Manifestation, and/or replace any associated feat with an outsider feat.
- If you fail, you lose one character level. Souls who lose all character levels merge with their plane of residence and are lost. You must take at least one Outsider feat in order to invest in Manifestation or resist decoherence.
The upshot of this is that high-level characters and/or those with strong motives will probably fend off decoherence long enough that they can convert some skills and feats to 'outsider stuff' and attain stability without losing all vestige of their mortal personality. Relatively novice or weak-willed characters are likely to either decohere or will need to sacrifice enough of their skills/feats that little remains of their former identity- they wind up as low-level lemures, lantern archons and the like. At higher DCs, Manifestation checks can also be used to embark on alien planes, possess mortal remains, modify a host body, regenerate a body from scratch or do without one entirely- and the skill also grants the player some latitude over the appearance and attributes of their 'true form'.
Rather than giving out a bunch of freebie feats, I'd suggest condensing a lot of the basic effects into a few different "starter package" feats, so you can make all sorts of standard undead with just a handful of feats. Something like this: Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
- One mandatory feat for choosing an appearance and basic traits: Flesh Form (rotting corpse, decays over time), Skeletal Form (skeleton, doesn't decay as much but lacks lungs and such), and Spirit Form (incorporeal, doesn't decay at all but hard to interact physically)
- One optional feat to choose how lifelike it is: Memory of Life (like Memory of Flesh) or Embrace of Death (gives you the nice necromantic perks but makes it very hard to seem alive), both of which give the lack-of-degradation benefits of Stubborn Tenant.
- One optional feat to choose kind and degree of dependence: Consumption (as your feat) or Sustenance (regenerate automatically as long as some focus is intact)
So a Skeleton Warrior just has Skeletal Form, a Ghoul has Corpse Form and Consumption (Flesh), a Ghost has Spirit Form and Sustenance (Family Home), a Vampire has Corpse Form, Memory of Life, and Consumption (Blood), a Lich has Spirit Form, Embrace of Death, and Sustenance (Phylactery), and so forth. Just 1-3 feats to create baseline versions of everything, giving you a bunch more feat slots to differentiate your cultured seductive vampires from your rat-controlling savage vampires, your revenants from your mummies, etc.
Also, if you haven't taken a look at Ghostwalk, I'd suggest it. That book has a build-your-own-ghost system by way of special classes (Eidolon and Eidoloncers, for martials and casters, respectively) and feat groups (in six thematic paths: Corrupter, Dominator, Haunt, Poltergeist, Shaper, and Traveler), so it'll probably give you plenty of material for your undead and demon feats.Better to DM in Baator than play in Celestia
You can just call me Dice; that's how I roll.
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2018-11-28, 11:23 AM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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- Oct 2014
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Well... yes and no. There are contexts where you might put off your Appetite for Destruction, for example, if you're attending a royal ball and don't want to wreck the place, or need to show restraint in a duel. Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost
"Instinct" might be a better word, perhaps, given part of the intention here is that these map onto 'animal urges' or other primal survival instincts- my plan at the moment is to have that seque into the various Fae abilities, focused on borrowing animal/plant/elemental traits from wild species.
Pretty much, yeah. Other beliefs and goals will do the same trick of course, and various feats can provide a stabilisation bonus. All characters of a given level have the same number of skill points & feats, though (with some extra at level 1)- there aren't any class/species-specific skill point allowances.I like that you're providing a nice mechanical explanation for how some characters retain their selves in the afterlife while others don't, with enough wiggle room that a high-level character could simply roll low a bunch of times in a row to end up as a petitioner and a 1st-level character could roll some 20s and stabilize. I assume the motive bonuses are +1/+3/+5 like the divine caster bonuses, such that someone with 3 long-term vows has +15 to this check and is guaranteed to succeed if they're 4th level or higher?
Hmm. That makes a certain amount of sense.So a Skeleton Warrior just has Skeletal Form, a Ghoul has Corpse Form and Consumption (Flesh), a Ghost has Spirit Form and Sustenance (Family Home), a Vampire has Corpse Form, Memory of Life, and Consumption (Blood), a Lich has Spirit Form, Embrace of Death, and Sustenance (Phylactery), and so forth. Just 1-3 feats to create baseline versions of everything, giving you a bunch more feat slots to differentiate your cultured seductive vampires from your rat-controlling savage vampires, your revenants from your mummies, etc.
My only quibble would be that I'm a little leery of having 'skeletal form' as a permanent selection- it seems like any corpse that lacks regeneration of some kind is gonna decay to that state eventually, and if you have regeneration abilities you might as well regain flesh?
I'll try and take a look at Ghostwalk once I have the chance.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-11-28, 11:49 AM (ISO 8601)Ettin in the Playground
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- Jun 2015
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Feats can be retrained or replaced. Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
So you could put clauses allowing to replace skeletal form by corpse form when you are targeted by a regeneration spell and other stuff like that(like allowing to gain skeletal form when you have corpse form by a process involving stripping yourself of your flesh and some vague fluff about flesh being able to decay if you are left unfed too)
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2018-11-28, 04:58 PM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Instinct is a good value-neutral term, yeah. Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
Well, there are some undead varieties that are traditionally themed as rotting corpses, which might rot away to a skeletal form but might reasonably regenerate flesh, such as zombies, ghouls, and liches. But then there are some that are definitely themed as skeletal in nature, such that they'd need to be raised from skeletons rather than fleshy corpses (and/or immediately decay down to a skeleton when animated) and for whom regenerating flesh wouldn't really make sense, such as skeletons, death knights, devourers, mohrg, boneclaws, bone nagas, and so forth, and being able to reliably recreate those would be beneficial.Hmm. That makes a certain amount of sense.
My only quibble would be that I'm a little leery of having 'skeletal form' as a permanent selection- it seems like any corpse that lacks regeneration of some kind is gonna decay to that state eventually, and if you have regeneration abilities you might as well regain flesh?Better to DM in Baator than play in Celestia
You can just call me Dice; that's how I roll.
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2018-11-30, 06:48 AM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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- Oct 2014
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
The Lich actually struck me as being one of the odder cases, since they explicitly have full regenerative capabilities but all that gets regenerated is a skeletal frame with some vestiges of flesh. Unless the soul has some specific neurosis which causes it to see itself as naturally decrepit and emaciated? I suppose 'Embrace of Death' might fit the idiom. Hmm. Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost
I have traits for animals/fae nearly done, though they're probably horribly unbalanced and might be streamlined a bit.
Actually, let me just throw out the sketches I have for the lawful/celestial side of things- maybe you'd have some thoughts on gaps I need to cover or where I could merge functionality?
Code:Eidolon [Vow of X] You are bound to the conventions and edicts of a particular social group through a Vow of importance to that group. Vulnerable to agate. First Principles Enshrined sense of honour- cannot willingly break Vow. Immune to persuasion/enchantment that would break Vow. Bonus to preparing/casting spells from the Order domain. Myrmidon Bond Share thoughts/experience/coordination. Compulsory obedience toward superiors/majority. May be taken more than once to increase rank. Unbreakable Word Any agreement you make is supernaturally binding upon both parties. +5 to all dialog checks where you do not lie. Resistant to deceit or illusions. Logos [Natural Law X] You focus upon your knowledge of the universal forces that bind and govern matter and energy- known as Natural Law- and use it to consolidate your own self-image. Vulnerable to either apathy, reverie or rigidity. Logos Pythagorean Requirements: Logos, a crafting or knowledge skill focused on geometry or mathematics Gain a +5 bonus to the skill in question. You may adopt an outer frame or shell modelled on one of the Five Perfect Solids without the need for any Manifestation check. It is ethereal but plainly visible with divination spells. Tesseract Planar Requirements: Logos Pythagorean Can enlarge, reduce, establish a bridge between planes, or trap an enemy. Music of the Spheres Requirements: Logos Pythagorean Bonus to all Universal spells, including spontaneous Telekinesis. Logos Atomist Requirements: Logos, a crafting or knowledge skill focused on medicine or chemistry Gain a +5 bonus to the skill in question. Heal & repair things more easily. Pick 1 trait: Liquid Visage (+1 Cha, +5 to Disguise) Steel Sinews (+3 Str, +5 to grapple techniques) Iron Skin (+3 DR, +3 spell resistance) Item Graft (can't be disarmed, +5 bonus to use) Fast Healing (+2 HP/round, no bleeding) Mana Reserve (+5 spell points, cantrips free) Internal Alchemy Requirements: Logos Atomist Bonus to Transmutations of permanent duration. Gain an additional Atomist trait per 3 levels. Law Of Conservation Requirements: Logos Atomist Bonus to countering Evocations, gain free Ward spell. Can absorb spell points/HP from spells countered. Logos Nous Requirements: Logos, either perception or a knowledge skill Gain a +5 bonus to the skill in question. You have perfect recollection of all witnessed events. Inexorable Conclusion Requirements: Logos Nous Bonus to divination. Make prediction or plan, rewind if failed (mini wish.) Quad Erat Demonstrandum Requirements: Logos Nous Bonus to gathering information or research. Bonus to debate when you provide evidence or ugly truths. No compromise if you win without using lies or threats.Code:Angel [Bond with X] You focus on a powerful Bond. Vulnerable to obsidian. Halo of Protection Bonus to defences, DR, saving throws and counterspells. Bonus to diplomacy. Can always bestow on the target of your Bond. Ethereal Wings Can turn ethereal at will without risk of decoherence. Bonus to divinations/conjurations to/from the home plane of your Bond. Hand of Grace Bonus to spontaneous casting of Holy spells. Gain bonus to bestow essence. Can bestow Halo on one several non-bonded subjects nearby. Maia [Locus X] Bestow material form on a portion of the plane (known as the Locus)- in this way, the plane no longer threatens you with decoherence, and it grows in substance. You cannot leave your Locus, and if it is destroyed, the trait is rendered null and void. Maia are vulnerable to void magic- they can be 'countered' as a spell matching their character level, dealing half their maximum HP in damage. Genius Loci Requires: Maia You may embody within your locus with a Manifestation test, and exit it. Can extend Locus benefits wherever you go within a few feet. Eminent Domain Requires: Genius Loci Expand the area of your Locus. Can be shaped using Crafting skills. You can possess and bestow essence more easily within the Locus. Insular Domain Requires: Genius Loci Turn your Locus into a personal Demiplane with it's own conditions. May optionally bridge to material plane. Genesis Requires: Maia Create minor/ambient life within your Locus, such as edible insects, trees & fruit. Intelligent animals or organisms must take up residence independently. Renewal Requires: Genesis Providing healing or repairs within your Locus. Objects & life that are part of the Locus self-renew. Breath of Life Requires: Genesis Create an intelligent soul within your Locus. Starts off as a level 1 Maia with any other traits/skills you can teach. Ambient Empath Requires: Maia You sense the emotions and intent of others within your Locus. No save is possible, but any pain is felt directly. Window Of Soul Requires: Ambient Empath You can probe thoughts by establishing a mental link with a subject. You also gain control over your Empath ability. Spirit Meld Requires: Ambient Empath Merge willingly with another Maia to gain half their levels and your pick of skills/feats.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-11-30, 02:26 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
...And finally, wilderness and the Fae. Turned out to be rather long, probably still needs fine-tuning.
Code:Animal: Cannot learn or speak true languages. Can communicate with own species in simple terms- stop, come, flee, danger, etc- equivalent to a vocabulary of maybe 5 words per point of Int. Cannot learn Craft or Knowledge skills (unless granted by a trait) or Faith or Arcana. Can only take Skill Focus, Resilience or Weapon Expertise as feats. All animals of a given species have the same attribute array, though you may pick 2 attributes and swap a point from 1 to the other. Natural Weapons: Bite/Claws/Horns/Tentacles/etc. Gain either: 1d6 claw attack x2. 1d8 bite attack with +1 damage and trip. 1d4 constriction, +1 cumulative damage/round. 1d4 bite/sting with 1d6 poison/round (once/day.) 1d8 tail or tentacle slap, improved reach. chemical fog acid spray rapid digestion Does not create Openings like usual unarmed attacks. Natural Armour: Antlers/Frills/Colouration/Fur/Hide/etc. Bonus to certain social skills, as for clothing. Pick 1: +2 to Persuasion/Command, or +5 when herding or courting. +5 to Evasion when hiding or moving silently in habitat. +5 versus Exposure to heat/cold/acid/etc., per habitat. DR +4 for thickened hide. 1d4 bash damage for spiked hide. Limbs & Locomotion [pick type]: Sprinting/Jumping/Climbing/Swimming/etc. +10 to a particular Athletics check. Wings: 40 ft/round fly speed, +/-5 feet per size category. Needs 1/2 as much space to turn around. Animal Senses [pick 2]: Sharp Eyes: +5 to Perception when searching. Wide Eyes: +5 to Perception when surprised. Night Vision: negate up to +10 darkness penalties. Keen Hearing: +3 to Perception, even when asleep. Echolocation: ignore darkness, see through walls (counts x2.) Scent: +5 to Perception when tracking, +2 if asleep. Feelers: +5 to Craft or Perception checks with touch. Bio-Sense: +8 vs. illusion/darkness/camouflage (counts x2.) You can, if desired, select the same perk twice, but no more. Animal Instinct: Pick one: +5 to Knowledge[Terrain] (for habitat only.) +5 to Craft[Building] (for nest only.) +5 to Truth Sense, even vs. humans or other species. Alternate Metabolis: Rapid Metabolism Food requirements increase x4, lifespan halved. +2 to Reflexes, +1 to Int and Cha, +4 to Athletics. Cold-Blooded Food requirements reduced by 90%, lifespan doubled. Exposure DCs for cold weather doubled. Hibernation Enter suspended animation to reduce food/water/air needs x20. Gain +10 bonus vs. exposure to heat & cold. Needs 24 hours. Steady Growth Advance a size category with each age category. Gain +1 to all attributes when doing so, ignore age penalties. Marine or Amphibious Can breathe normally in water. Requires Cold-Blooded. Scent, vision and other senses function normally in water. Amphibious creatures can still operate on land. Marine creatures cannot, but ignore swim penalties. Natural Spell [Usage]: Gain a pool of 5 spell points to expend on a single type of arcane spell from any school beside Necromancy, Transmutation or Thaumaturgy. (Note that an animal's ability to engage in dialog or complex mimicry may be limited.)Code:Plant: Vegetation doesn't usually get up and move about, and it's perceptions of the world are quite slow and limited. As such, their usual array of attributes can be ignored, and they cannot take skills. They don't need eat or sleep in the usual sense, but they do suffer drought or prolongued darkness in a manner similar to starvation, and need air. Gain +10 bonus vs. exposure to heat & cold. New Growth: Convert 1 HP/round to fatigue damage, up to a limit of 10 HP. Gain x2 at level 4, x3 at level 7, and x4 at level 10. Other forms of natural healing are doubled. Bark Skin: Gain +2 DR, or +5 vs. elements other than fire. DR for both increases by +1 at levels 4, 7 and 10. Stillness: Gain +3 to Evasion tests used to hide or move silently. Gains +1 at levels 4, 7 and 10. Can enter dormant state to reduce need for food/water/air x20. Longevity: Age penalties reduced by 1 category, lifespan doubled. Can be taken more than once, effects stack. Entanglement: Gain +5 to grapple or climb checks. Gain a free constriction attack on a successful grapple. Motile Tissues Body can express physical attributes (Str & Ref). Max of +1 per age category. Uproot to gain 5-foot move speed, dealing half max HP in damage. Gain +5 to Close Combat tests. May also take Natural Weapon or Animal Senses traits. Sessile Mind Body can express mental attributes (Int, Wis & Cha). Max of +1 per age category. Gain human-level senses within 15 feet. Can gain skills and feats normally, plus Natural Spell. Steady Growth Advance a size category with each age category. Gain +1 to all attributes when doing so, ignore age penalties.
Code:Infection: Diseases and microbes, for obvious reasons, are not usually played as standalone characters, but giant variants of walking mushrooms, gelatinous oozes, etc. do exist. Amoeboid Form Critical hits impossible, no pain penalties. Gain DR 2/edged, +1 per character level. Successful grapple allows for 'digestion', dealing 1d4 acid damage per round, plus suffocation. Can split into two identical individuals with the same number of total HP at the cost of 1 level of experience. Each is 1 size category smaller than before, adjusting age category accordingly if needed. Rapid Maturity Lifespan halved, grow to maturity in 10d10 days. Regain 2 bonus HP per day, +1 per character level. Acquired Immunity [Element X] Gain +5 DR, +1 per character level, to one of the following: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Acid, Poison, Disease Infectious Gestation [X Vector, Y Development] Vector: Spore, Contact, Sting, Sexual Spore: Infection to anyone within 10 feet who fails a DC 8 Str test. Contact: Infection if a DC 12 + damage Str test is failed. Sting: Automatic infection on a successful sting attack (need natural weapon.) Sexual: Automatic infection after sexual congress. Development: Embryonic: Offspring emerges in 2d10 days, killing the host. Alternating: As Embryonic, but you may choose an alternate form for offspring. Transformative: Host gradually turns- use decoherence based on DC 20 disease per day. Possessive: As Transformative, but treat host using possession rules. Adverse Mutation [Attribute X] This trait has no benefit, and is taken purely as a consequence of bad rolls for mutation. It applies a -1 penalty to a randomly selected attribute. (If Standing is chosen using a d6, pick another yourself.) Steady Growth Advance a size category with each age category. Gain +1 to all attributes when doing so, ignore age penalties.Code:Elemental traits: Stone Form +5 DR\blunt, +2 Str, -2 Ref, 10 bonus HP. Immune to critical hits and pain penalties. Normal weight doubled. Motion halved or reduced by 10 feet, whichever is less. +10 vs. knockback or trip effects, +5 to grapple or charge. Aerial Form Can fly 40 ft/round, bypass physical attacks & barriers. Immune to critical hits and pain penalties. Cannot carry most items. +10 to spontaneous casting of Call Wind or Lightning spells. Infernal Form Deal 1d6 fire damage to opponents in melee, x2 if grappled. Deals 50% damage to carried items, or x2 if flammable. Immune to critical hits and pain penalties. +10 to spontaneous casting of Call Fire or Light spells. Glacial Form +2 DR\blunt, 1d4 ice damage to grappled opponents. Immune to critical hits and pain penalties. Can 'melt' to slip past barriers, dropping items. Only deal 50% physical damage while melted. +10 to spontaneous casting of Call Ice or Void spells. Well of Chaos You suffer +3 to the DC of all Instinct tests. You gain a +5 bonus to all Evocation tests. You gain +10 to casting Transmutations upon yourself only. Inner Furnace [Element X] A particular element runs through your veins and sustains you. You can eventually digest almost any substance, converting it to your native element, thus allowing you eat most substances. In addition, you gain the following benefits: Earth: +2 DR, 50% faster natural healing, 2d4 acid breath weapon. +5 to Instinct: Social or Gluttony test DC Air: Fly speed +10 feet/round, 2d10 lightning breath weapon. +5 to Instinct: Curiosity or Beauty test DC Fire: 2d8 fire breath weapon, add 1 Call Fire modifier for free. +5 to Instinct: Aggression or Lust test DC Ice: 2d6 ice breath weapon, add 1 Call Ice modifier for free. +5 to Instinct: Greed or Fear test DC Breath weapons extend in a 15-foot-cone by default, with the standard reach modifiers for size category, and increase by 1 die per 3 character levels.Code:Fae [Instinct X] You pick an Instinct and use it give you focus. The longer you go without indulging it, the higher the Manifestation DC required to resist decoherence (DC 10 + 1/day without indulgence.) Heart's Desire +5 bonus to Sendings, Illusions and Enchantments related to satisfying your own or another creature's Instinct. Id And Ego Create an alternate physical form that you may bestow a selection of your traits upon. This form emerges either at will or when triggered by your Instinct. Doing so takes 1 round, and requires a will save versus a DC 15 temptation to revert. Primal Legacy [Trait A, Trait B] Obtain random traits from an animal species with the same Instinct, or any vegetable, infection or elemental species. (Pick 3, including Adverse Mutation, then roll to pick x2.) Natural Selection For rolls related to Manifestation or mutation, roll twice and keep best result. Gain +5 bonus to Manifestation checks to Sculpt Flesh. Forth And Multiply A DC 15 Manifestation test allows you to confer a selection of your traits on offspring, creating a stable template for a 'race'. +5 to Bestow Essence on others. Changeling Form On your body's death, a DC 20 Manifestation test allows you to reincarnate in a random body with only 1 lost level of experience (albeit as an infant.)Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-11-30, 03:06 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Yeah, being able to swap traits in and out might make sense as well. It's combining that with natural regeneration that raises some questions. Originally Posted by noob
So, couple of more examples of how the traits above might be packaged into some more familiar configurations (I'll most likely revisit these after I've digested Dice's suggestions- they also eat up way too many feats at the moment.)
Code:Grey Ooze (level 1): Amoeboid Form Natural Weapons [Tentacle] Acquired Immunity [Cold] Animal Senses [Bio-Sense] Werewolf (level 4): Fae [Instinct: Aggression] Id and Ego Natural Weapons [Claw x2] Natural Weapons [Bite] 2 other feats from regular list Succubus (level 6): Fae [Instinct: Lust] Natural Weapons [Claw x2] Heart's Desire Lemure [Haunting: Victim] Memory of Flesh Consumption 1 other feat from regular list Red Dragon (level 8): Natural Weapons [Claw x2] Natural Weapons [Bite] Natural Armour [Thickened Hide] Locomotion [Wings] Steady Growth Cold-Blooded Inner Furnace [Fire] 1 other feat from regular list
Code:Modron (level 1): Eidolon [Vow of Obedience] Myrmidon Bond Logos [Knowledge: Accounting] Logos Pythagorean [Cubic Form] Dryad (level 4): Maia [Locus: Grove] Genesis Ambient Empath Fae [Instinct: Fear] Heart's Desire 1 other feat from regular list Inevitable (level 6): Eidolon [Vow of Justice] Myrmidon Bond Logos [Knowledge: Anatomy] Logos Atomist [Liquid Visage] Internal Alchemy [Iron Body, Item Graft: Morningstar] Internal Alchemy [Fast Healing, Iron Body x2] Logos Nous Planetar (level 8): Angel [Bond: Mortals] Eidolon [Vow of Mercy] Halo of Protection Ethereal Wings Hand of Grace Unbreakable Word 2 other feats from regular list
Code:Elf (level 1) Fae [Instinct: Beauty] Longevity Stillness Animal Senses [Sharp Eyes, Keen Hearing] Dwarf (level 1) Fae [Instinct: Greed] Animal Senses [Night Vision, Feelers] Animal Instinct [Knowledge: Underground] 1 other regular feat of choice Naga (level 4) Fae [Instinct: Gluttony] Animal Senses [Night Vision, Scent] Natural Weapons [Poison bite] Natural Weapons [Constriction] Cold-Blooded Locomotion [Swimming] Weirwood (level 9) Fae [Instinct: Survival] Bark Skin Longevity Steady Growth Sessile Mind 3 other regular feats of choice
Code:Sylph (level 3) Fae [Instinct: Curiosity] Locomotion [Wings] Inner Furnace [Air] 2 other regular feats of choice Red Slaad (level 5) Fae [Instinct: Aggression] Natural Weapon [Claws x2] Natural Weapon [Bite] Locomotion [Jumping] Well of Chaos Infectious Gestation [Contact, Alternating: Blue Slaad] Lament Configuration (level 7) Eidolon [Vow of Secrecy] Logos [Knowledge: The Nine Hells] Logos Pythagorean [Cubic Form] Tesseract Planar Unbreakable Pact Sphere of Summoning 1 other regular feat of choice The Burning Eye (level 10) Demon [Enmity: The Kings of Men] Maia [Locus: The Dark Tower] Genius Loci Eminent Domain x2 Ambient Empath Window of Soul Crushing Will The Dark Flame
Last edited by Lacuna Caster; 2018-11-30 at 07:19 PM.
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2018-11-30, 04:43 PM (ISO 8601)Ettin in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Steady growth seems a bit too much: someone who takes that feat can then get +6 to all mental stats without any penalty to physical stats.
It is a bit too much good as a feat.
I mean it is worth like 2 of the other feats from the list.
maybe you should put most of the stuff from those lists as half feats except for stuff that truly stands out such as steady growth.
(you can make half feats under multiple forms for example it could be "every two feats from a given list you gain a bonus feat" or have
a feat "outsider picks" which allows you to get two picks at once and have most of those former feats becomes outsider picks)Last edited by noob; 2018-11-30 at 04:48 PM.
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2018-11-30, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Yeah, quite possibly. I could just... say that it counts as two feats for simplicity? Originally Posted by noob
Anyway, assuming balance can be ironed out- which is not a small assumption- the overall framework should give some indication of how one could put together a sizeable bestiary from a relatively small selection of building blocks. And... I could probably put together a transmutation school now, leveraging the traits available.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-12-04, 04:33 PM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
I won't go line-by-line, since there's a lot of stuff to cover and most of it is good, but some general thoughts: Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
1) Most of the feats you've come up are fairly targeted and discrete, doing one thing and doing it well, but the various "made of or covered by a certain material" abilities (Logos Atomist, [Elemental] Form, Bark Skin, Amoeboid Form) are a lot more fiddly and conceptually-overlapping. There's little pattern to whether being made of something hard (stone/ice/metal) grants +Str and/or +DR, some scale and some don't, Inner Furnace benefits don't always align with the baseline benefits (e.g. Stone Form and Furnace [Stone] grant DR, Aerial Form and Furnace [Air] grant a fly speed boost, but Glacial Form grants DR and Furnace [Ice] doesn't boost DR), you have an Amoeboid Form for oozes but no Water Form for water elementals but Glacial Form lets you melt and kinda be a water elemental, and so on.
There's nothing inherently wrong with special-casing things like this--you don't want your earth elementals, stone golems, and gargoyles to basically be palette swaps of the same basic "earth-based bruiser" monster, or earth elementals and ice paraelementals to be identical except for damage types, after all--but breaking things down more would require you to write up fewer abilities and would make monsters more modular. For instance:
Code:Amoeboid Form Critical hits impossible, no pain penalties. Gain DR 2/edged, +1 per character level. Successful grapple allows for 'digestion', dealing 1d4 acid damage per round, plus suffocation. Can split into two identical individuals with the same number of total HP at the cost of 1 level of experience. Each is 1 size category smaller than before, adjusting age category accordingly if needed
Code:Glacial Form +2 DR\blunt, 1d4 ice damage to grappled opponents. Immune to critical hits and pain penalties. Can 'melt' to slip past barriers, dropping items. Only deal 50% physical damage while melted. +10 to spontaneous casting of Call Ice or Void spells.
Code:Stone Form +5 DR\blunt, +2 Str, -2 Ref, 10 bonus HP. Immune to critical hits and pain penalties. Normal weight doubled. Motion halved or reduced by 10 feet, whichever is less. +10 vs. knockback or trip effects, +5 to grapple or charge.
All of them share "immune to crits" and "DR against one type," but the amount of DR and whether it scales differs for each. Amoeboid and Glacial Form share "damage during a grapple," but Stone doesn't, when one can certainly justify 1d4 bludgeoning + suffocation for being engulfed and crushed by a stone elemental. Glacial Form lets an ice creature melt to go through small spaces, but Amoeboid Form doesn't let an ooze contort itself to do the same. A Stone creature gains benefits vs. knockback and trip and benefits with grapples, but an un-trippable and pseudopod-equipped Amoeboid creature does not. Lots of tiny differences that can trip you up, lots of things only one gets that others might reasonably want from a conceptual standpoint.
Instead, you could have a generic "Inorganic Form" feat or the like which would grant immunity to crits and pain and then would let you choose a certain number of selections from a menu of elemental-themed abilities like Animal Senses does. These selections would include things like "Amorphous: Can slip through very small spaces" or "Elemental Grasp: 1d4 damage during a grapple" or "Breath Weapon: 2d6 damage with a free Evocation selection applied, both of a matching energy type" or "Exceptionally Stable: Bonuses to resist combat maneuvers" and so forth. You can use that setup to recreate all of the existing Form feats, plus those form feats swapped around (like an ooze that can slip through cracks or a super-tough ice monster), plus other things like a belker with its smoke claws, which wants the "fly through cracks" part of Aerial Form but not the "can't physically interact with things" part and the "resist swords and suffocate people" part of Amoeboid Form but not the "splits like an ooze" part.
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2) Regarding Plants:
Code:Vegetation doesn't usually get up and move about, and it's perceptions of the world are quite slow and limited. As such, their usual array of attributes can be ignored, and they cannot take skills. [...] Motile Tissues Body can express physical attributes (Str & Ref). ... May also take Natural Weapon or Animal Senses traits. Sessile Mind Body can express mental attributes (Int, Wis & Cha). ... Gain human-level senses within 15 feet. Can gain skills and feats normally, plus Natural Spell.
One of the worst design decisions of the 3e monster system was the concept of nonabilities. It might seem intuitive at first to say that incorporeal things have no Str, immobile things have no Dex, unliving things have no Con, and mindless things have no Int, but that leads to a cascade of corner cases (What happens when ghosts want to attack other incorporeal creatures, which they should be able to grab just fine? Can a golem handle more or less complex instructions than a shield guardian, or than a skeleton?) and rules patches (giving constructs and undead too many HD to compensate for lack of Con, then giving constructs but not undead size-based bonus HP, then giving some but not all undead Cha to HP instead of Con; giving immobile creatures Dex -- and then slapping on arbitrary AC bonuses to make things work out right, and having to explain why Dex -- creatures are more mobile than those at Dex 0).
So I think Motile Tissues and Sessile Mind are bad feats to have. First, anything that can attack the PCs but is mindless and usually immobile is more of a trap than a monster, and anything that can talk to the PCs but can't move itself is more of a magic item or wondrous architecture than a creature. Look at the Shrieker; why make a full stat block for a "monster" with three nonabilities and two very low stats when it could be a two-line trap?
Second, most plant monsters you'll want to duplicate (treants, myconids, orcworts, shambling mounds...) are going to have a mind and mobility, so those are just a two-feat tax on all plant monsters, leading to higher minimum HD and less ability diversity. Instead, I'd just have the Plant type be "Caps on stats, normally immobile but can uproot to move slowly" with no special treatment of certain stats or skills to avoid all those issues.
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3) Almost all of your sample monsters have at least one Natural Attack selection, and those that don't either effectively do (the Inevitable's weapon graft), normally come with a specific weapon (Planetars and their greatswords), or is a noncombatant by obligation (the Lament Configuration [great choice, by the way] physically can't) or by personality (the Modron isn't violent).
So rather than requiring 90+% of monsters to take Natural Attack at least once, I'd instead give every monster one natural weapon or appropriate manufactored weapon for free (of a type based on its body plan and fighting style) with the option to take Natural Attack or Item Graft for more, and then have a specific Noncombatant feat that takes away the free weapon and grants some other benefit, say a knowledge and/or social skill bonus since those sorts of monsters are meant to be allies and information sources anyway and it might save a slot on Logos.
Agreed. Turning iron body into "You gain Inorganic Form (Iron)" and alter self into "You can swap out your feats for some monster feats" is a heck of a lot easier to balance and to deal with during play than long special-case spell descriptions or playing mix-and-match with monster stat blocks. Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
EDIT: And I see you've done basically that in your other thread. Off to comment there.Last edited by PairO'Dice Lost; 2018-12-04 at 04:48 PM.
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2018-12-04, 05:25 PM (ISO 8601)Ettin in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
So the epic level commoner from more than half of the capitals of 50000 person could with that feat become 1048576 persons that then could spread and form 20 such capitals?Amoeboid Form
Critical hits impossible, no pain penalties.
Gain DR 2/edged, +1 per character level.
Successful grapple allows for 'digestion', dealing 1d4 acid
damage per round, plus suffocation.
Can split into two identical individuals with the same number
of total HP at the cost of 1 level of experience. Each is 1
size category smaller than before, adjusting age category
accordingly if needed
Furthermore if the origin commoner have that feat which make it grow with age it means that most of the sub commoners will be of adult age(there is no age categories under adult)Last edited by noob; 2018-12-04 at 05:27 PM.
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2018-12-10, 12:09 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
I can't see much to disagree with here- it's definitely an area I'll have to revisit. The stuff with the elementals and inner-furnace-abilities in particular was sorta kludged-together and I should really tease out the separate perks and thematic-progression more thoroughly. Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost
That's hard to argue with as well. I suppose I'm just thinking by habit within a sort of simulationist/evolutionary framework where the ability to move and think independently is something that the organism has to develop on top of their basic competencies, but... if the game is balanced by default around creatures that can already move and think and have manual dexterity for free (i.e, humans), you're right, it is just paying-not-to-suck.One of the worst design decisions of the 3e monster system was the concept of nonabilities... ...look at the Shrieker; why make a full stat block for a "monster" with three nonabilities and two very low stats when it could be a two-line trap?
Second, most plant monsters you'll want to duplicate (treants, myconids, orcworts, shambling mounds...) are going to have a mind and mobility, so those are just a two-feat tax on all plant monsters, leading to higher minimum HD and less ability diversity. Instead, I'd just have the Plant type be "Caps on stats, normally immobile but can uproot to move slowly" with no special treatment of certain stats or skills to avoid all those issues...
...rather than requiring 90+% of monsters to take Natural Attack at least once, I'd instead give every monster one natural weapon or appropriate manufactored weapon for free (of a type based on its body plan and fighting style) with the option to take Natural Attack or Item Graft for more, and then have a specific Noncombatant feat that takes away the free weapon and grants some other benefit...
As it happens, and given you liked my 'puzzle box from hell' example... I was kinda thinking of rejiggering trap mechanics as a kind of 'immobile creature', so I might come back to this when I have crafting rules together.
I love these edge cases! Normal progression caps at level 10, so a maximum of 9 divisions for 512 level-1 'offspring'. And I'll probably add an infant/juvenile category for consistency with, e.g, dragons & treants, but I'd rule that once you hit 'tiny' size further division is impossible. Originally Posted by noob
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2018-12-12, 01:28 PM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
The trick here is that not everything in D&D that's alive (or differently-animated; undead and constructs are people too Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
) is a "creature" mechanically. So you can still think in that evolutionary sort of way--assuming evolution exists in your setting, which is not a given with Obad-Hai and other nature gods running around--but instead of plants going from "plant creature that can't move independently" -> "plant creature that can move independently" by taking a feat, they go from "plant trap that can't move independently" -> "plant creature that can move independently" by changing their mechanical role in the game.
Go for it; there's nothing inherently wrong with immobile creatures-as-traps, as long as there's a benefit to statting them that way. A trap with (pseudo-)intelligence, moving parts, multiple attacks, special weaknesses, etc. can reasonably require a full monster statblock, where a basic "save or X happens" trap really doesn't whether it's a pit trap or a mushroom that's theoretically a creature.As it happens, and given you liked my 'puzzle box from hell' example... I was kinda thinking of rejiggering trap mechanics as a kind of 'immobile creature', so I might come back to this when I have crafting rules together.
Huh. In core 3e you generate random NPCs by figuring out the highest-level NPC of each class and then, for each NPC of level N, adding twice as many at N/2, four times as many at N/4, and so forth. Who knew it was because all NPCs are secretly oozes and "cities" are merely breeding grounds for multiple colonies? Originally Posted by noob
Better to DM in Baator than play in Celestia
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2018-12-17, 05:06 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Well, from my perspective the main benefit is that I can say, e.g, a Level 8 trap should be roughly 'balanced' versus Level 8 adventurers, because they'll both have the same caps on their Marksman/Close Combat/Athletics skills, and I can use feat-slots to add camouflage, mechanical complexity, extra attacks, and so forth. e.g- Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost
The trick here is that not everything in D&D that's alive (or differently-animated; undead and constructs are people too) is a "creature" mechanically... ...there's nothing inherently wrong with immobile creatures-as-traps, as long as there's a benefit to statting them that way. A trap with (pseudo-)intelligence, moving parts, multiple attacks, special weaknesses, etc. can reasonably require a full monster statblock, where a basic "save or X happens" trap really doesn't whether it's a pit trap or a mushroom that's theoretically a creature.
Code:Trap Feats: Pit Trap: 10 feet deep for 1d6 damage, +1 to melee damage, stacks per 10 feet. Crushing Surface: 2d6 crush damage/round, 4-round onset. Damage stacks. Portcullis/Block: 3d6 damage if you're caught, blocks off passage. Drowning/Gas: Fills one 5-ft cube per round. Speed stacks. Projectile/Melee: Allows for up to 10 total points of weapon damage (before stats), stacks. Poisoned: May include poison (or other alchemical product) with up to 50 GP value. Locked Door: Bars entry to area without key unless disarmed or forced. Trick Opening: Attack gains either Trip, Power Strike or Feint. Fast Release: Increases attack-skill by 2 and damage by 1, reduces crush onset by 1. Complexity: Increases disarm DC by 5. Camouflaged: Increases perception DC by 5. Reloading: Returns to initial configuration after 10-round delay (melee/crush only.) Disarm and Perception DC is 10 + (trap level x 2). Construction DC is 10 + (trap-level x 2), and takes the usual crafting time. Traps can only invest skill-ranks in: Close Combat or Marksmanship (for weapon attacks or pit trap) Athletics (to crush or resist forcing attempts)
There's still the problem of appropriate CR, since a trap is typically one-shot and disarmed or bypassed rather than beaten, but it should make an apples-to-apples comparison more straightforward.
On the subject of Crafting skills... I'm trying to satisfy a couple of different design constraints and use-cases at the moment, so maybe you'd have some other thoughts on what to watch out for?
- Use-case-1 is crafting items for personal use (equipment, potions, cloaks, etc.) Obviously enough, this means that tool/outfit bonuses should scale appropriately with skill-level, along with expectable earnings.
- Use-case-2 is providing medical care to expedite recovery from injury, cure poison, restore ability damage, etc. Ideally this should remain useful at higher levels rather than being entirely obviated by magic.
- Use-case-3 is constructing keeps and dungeons, including traps and gates and secret doors, etc. (I'm not sure how regularly adventuring PCs are likely to do this, but it seems like this would be relevant if you get into 1e/2e style property-magnate play at higher levels.)
- Use-case-4 is providing consumable items like food, wine, or perhaps alchemical reagents, which means that per-unit production times need to fit with both market prices for common goods and expectable income based on wealth-by-level. (Some general rules for earning income during downtime should fit that curve, really, though again this seems more like something to fill up skill ranks for civilian NPCs.)
Now, I think I have use-case-1 roughly worked out as follows:
Code:DC for crafting is 15 + (bonus x 5), +5 bonus max. You cannot take 10 or take 20. Crafting time is typically 2 weeks, with an extra 2 weeks for each +1 bonus. Raw materials typically cost 1/3 the base price of an item with no bonus. Interruptions & Concentration: The check needs to be repeated each week, or if you are otherwise substantially interrupted by leaving the workshop for more than a day. You gain a +2 bonus for each week of progress. If you succeed, crafting proceeds as normal. Fail by <= 5: progress is stalled. Fail by <= 10: set back by 1 week, need more raw materials. Fail by > 10: crafting is ruined. Modifiers: Assistants: +2/+4/+6 Facilities: +2/+4/+6 Working quickly: Decrease time by 50%. Suffer a -1 check penalty. Roll twice and keep the worse result. Working carefully: Increase time by 50%. Gain a +3 check bonus. Roll twice and keep better result.Code:Item Values: +0: (up to) 5 GP +1: 20 GP +2: 80 GP +3: 180 GP +4: 320 GP +5: 500 GP Wealth By Level: 1: 100 GP 2: 270 GP 3: 900 GP 4: 2000 GP 5: 3500 GP 6: 6500 GP 7: 12,000 GP 8: 20,000 GP 9: 35,000 GP X: 75,000 GP Typical income per month is ~= 1/30th this value.
So a standard (+0) sword can be made by a level-1 smith with 6 ranks in Craft[Smith] and +4 Int. An epic (+5) sword can be made by a level-10 smith with 20 ranks in Craft[Smith] and +5 Int, assuming they roll a 5 or higher with a +10 bonus from extra time, facilities or assistants.
A +1 sword takes 1 months to make (50% chance), ~= 10 GP/month.
A +3 sword takes 2 months to make (50% chance), ~= 45 GP/month.
A +5 sword takes 3 months to make (50% chance), ~= 135 GP/month.
The problem here is that the level-10 character capable of making a +5 sword won't earn anything like the 2500 GP/month that one might expect from someone of their rank and station. So... I could either say that the WBL for adventurers is severely atypical, or suggest that high-level characters are expected to manage a business, estate or guild with dozens of other members and take a share of their income as revenue? I don't know, what do folks think makes sense?Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-12-18, 04:46 AM (ISO 8601)Ettin in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
So a smith with the best assistants and the best production ground and which is crafting carefully and have +2 int modifier and +3 from skill focus could craft a +5 sword at level 1 if he gets many 20.
On the other hand that smith would be very likely to spoil the materials.
But it means we can start getting access to the best weapons in e1(not that I know people playing in e1).
What are the requirements for taking trap feats?Last edited by noob; 2018-12-18 at 04:50 AM.
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2018-12-18, 05:26 PM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Having "level X" mean the same rough challenge level for both monsters and traps is a good goal, but again, that doesn't mean that statting traps as monsters is the best or easiest way to do that. At the point where traps lack some stats, can't move, have sharp restrictions on available skills, have special lists of feats that only traps can take, are approached in different ways than most encounters, and so forth, there's not much "monster" left in the traps and you don't really gain much by trying to fit them into the monster rules. Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
There's also the important consideration that traps don't scale the same ways monsters do. A low-level trap that fires a dart at one target up to 30 feet away for 1d4 damage (Ref 10 negates) and a high-level trap that fires a disintegration beam at everything in a 30-foot line for 40d6 damage (Fort 30 reduces to 5d6 damage) have very different outcomes if you fall prey to them but are fundamentally the same in that if you find them you can just walk around them (or duck under the firing line or avoid the pressure plate or whatever), as opposed to monster scaling where a high-level monster with a death beam has more ways to find and follow you than a low-level one with a crossbow, is generally tougher so it can use its death beam more often than the other can use its crossbow, and so forth.
Instead, I'd fold all the trap enhancements into the crafting system you're making, both because traps, dungeon sections, and wondrous architecture have a lot in common and because it's entirely possible to enhance a trap with some time, money, and tools, unlike most monsters. "Locked Door" and "Portcullis" make more sense as separate items, rather than as add-ons to another item, trap or no; "Camouflage" and "Poisoned" are things that can be painted onto any surface, not just a trap; "Pit Trap" is something a handful of people with shovels can add in a few hours to weeks depending on depth, and really shouldn't require a feat slot (and thus a higher level) to possess.
A trap's level, then, could be based on its creator's level, or the result of skill checks, or gold invested, or some other benchmark you pick; as long as the end result is "This scything blade trap is 8th level" and you can reason about its challenge level based on that, it doesn't matter whether it's 8th level because it was created by an 8th-level artificer or because its creator rolled a 24 on her Craft check or it cost 8,000 gp or whatever.
There are three basic issue with equipment, healing, and the like as far as skills are concerned:On the subject of Crafting skills... I'm trying to satisfy a couple of different design constraints and use-cases at the moment, so maybe you'd have some other thoughts on what to watch out for?
- Use-case-1 is crafting items for personal use (equipment, potions, cloaks, etc.) Obviously enough, this means that tool/outfit bonuses should scale appropriately with skill-level, along with expectable earnings.
- Use-case-2 is providing medical care to expedite recovery from injury, cure poison, restore ability damage, etc. Ideally this should remain useful at higher levels rather than being entirely obviated by magic.
- Use-case-3 is constructing keeps and dungeons, including traps and gates and secret doors, etc. (I'm not sure how regularly adventuring PCs are likely to do this, but it seems like this would be relevant if you get into 1e/2e style property-magnate play at higher levels.)
- Use-case-4 is providing consumable items like food, wine, or perhaps alchemical reagents, which means that per-unit production times need to fit with both market prices for common goods and expectable income based on wealth-by-level. (Some general rules for earning income during downtime should fit that curve, really, though again this seems more like something to fill up skill ranks for civilian NPCs.)
1) Skills scale linearly with investment but results scale quadratically, exponentially, or otherwise higher-than-linearly. Costs for bonus-granting items scale quadratically with the bonus (or lower in your case, but still supra-linearly), HP scales both with more HD and with higher Con, and so forth. So you need to add a dimension and make things multiplicative; maybe that's the ability to raise the DC to increase the progress like in core 3e, maybe that's a separate set of things you buy alongside skills, whatever.
2) An item's cost is not necessarily proportional to its crafting complexity or time. A trebuchet, a royal carriage, and a wooden shed are all more expensive than a wooden cart, but the trebuchet is more expensive because it's much more complex and requires more skill to craft, a carriage is more expensive because it's more fancy and requires roughly the same amount of skill to craft, and the shed is more expensive because it uses more wood but arguably requires less skill to craft. Similarly, an adamantine sword is more expensive and presumably harder to craft than a steel sword but should take roughly the same amount of time to craft, a small clockwork device will cost much less in materials than a piece of jewelry but take much longer to craft, and so forth. So you need to add another dimension and separate out the cost from the crafting DC and figure out how the two relate; maybe complexity is a skill rank minimum and time is item-specific, maybe complexity is a multiplier on gold cost to determine crafting time, whatever.
3) In general, you want level-appropriate skill checks to do level-appropriate things, and you want lower-level things to be easier/faster/cheaper/etc. If a +1 sword is appropriate at 3rd level and a +3 sword is appropriate at 9th level, you want a 3rd-level crafter to have roughly the same chance of making the +1 sword as a 9th-level crafter does to make the +3 sword, but you want the 9th-level crafter to be able to make bunches of +1 swords for a similar cost in time and gold because he's arming followers or making a living or whatever.
For your use case 1 rules, you've sort of addressed (2) in that you use the base item price rather than the enhanced item price for determining materials costs, and you've sort of addressed (3) with the ability to work quickly, but beyond that you're still looking at a minimum of weeks of work with no way to reduce it beyond that 50% discount, having a +25 bonus vs. DC 20 doesn't really give you anything vs. having a +20 bonus (in both cases you can work quickly and still automatically make the DC, but that's it, no time or cost reductions), and this doesn't take into account any items beyond pure +X items.
Speaking of (1) and (3) the timing here is probably a non-starter:
99% of PCs are not going to have a month of downtime to spend on anything, much less 2 or 3 months. It's tempting for homebrew crafting systems to give "epic" items a long crafting time so they feel like they're "worth it," but in the fiction RPGs are emulating, such legendary items generally either take a short amount of time because the crafter is awesome/they work night and day to speed things up/they use magic/etc. or it takes a long time but the plot stops to let them do it because in single-author fiction you can just do that. In an RPG context, if it's faster for a PC to kill some bad guys, take 500 gp, and buy a +5 sword than it is to craft one himself, he'll probably just do that, at which point investing in crafting skills becomes a trap option, so if you want it not to be a trap option you have to make it work better with PC timescales.So a standard (+0) sword can be made by a level-1 smith with 6 ranks in Craft[Smith] and +4 Int. An epic (+5) sword can be made by a level-10 smith with 20 ranks in Craft[Smith] and +5 Int, assuming they roll a 5 or higher with a +10 bonus from extra time, facilities or assistants.
A +1 sword takes 1 months to make (50% chance), ~= 10 GP/month.
A +3 sword takes 2 months to make (50% chance), ~= 45 GP/month.
A +5 sword takes 3 months to make (50% chance), ~= 135 GP/month.
Ideally, if a standard 1st-level smith can make a standard +0 sword in 2 weeks, an epic 15th-level smith should be able to make an epic +5 sword in 2 weeks as well, and should be able to make a standard +0 sword in, say, 1 day tops. Because really, the standard you care about is not "How long does this +X sword take to forge in a vacuum?" (well, in a smithy, actually) but rather "How long does a level-appropriate sword take to forge for this particular crafter?" and "How long does it take this crafter to make a plain ol' sword so he has a sword at all after he lost his last one?" and "How fast can this crafter pump out multiple swords to arm a militia if he doesn't care about quality?"
Contrast this setup to the core 3e system--which gets a lot of flak, but honestly "make checks to build up progress points and you're done when you meet the quota" works quite nicely, it just requires decoupling cost and complexity and adding in more scaling, as mentioned above. In that, a basic longsword costs 15 gp and a basic 1st-level smith (4 ranks, +0 Int) can craft one in 5 days on average (progress quota of 150 sp, DC 15, gets a check result of 14 with a roll of 10, 14*15=210 sp progress per week), which lines up nicely with the 3-5 days it historically took to forge a sword. It would take him 2 months (just over 8 full weeks) to craft himself a masterwork longsword, though, given its cost of 315 gp (15 gp of which takes him 5 days as above, and 300gp of which takes 7.5 weeks, with a quota of 3000 sp, a Craft DC of 20, and a progress of 20*20=400 sp every week), and that's if he's lucky enough to roll 16 every time because he can't make the DC taking 10. That seems to scale roughly like your system, with shorter times on the low end and longer times later due to differing prices.
But compare that to a more competent 1st-level 3e smith with, say, 4 ranks in Craft, +1 Int, +2 masterwork tools, and Skill Focus (Craft), for a nice even +10 modifier. He can craft a basic sword in 3.5 days, enough for 2 per week, and takes roughly the same time to craft the masterwork sword as the basic smith does but can take 10 and so has no possibility of losing materials or taking longer. Then take a look at a 10th-level master smith with a modifier of +24 (13 ranks, +4 Int, +3 Skill Focus, +2 masterwork tools, +2 Aid Another from an apprentice): he can churn out basic swords at a rate of 5-6 per week by taking the "voluntarily increase the DC by +10" option, and the masterwork sword only takes him 3 weeks because he's just That Darn Awesome.
So I'd definitely suggest either scaling the time required to craft an item to the check result and have more options for speeding things up, or explicitly pegging it to the skill of the crafter (with something like "N weeks per +1 minus X days per rank in Craft" or similar) or the item's cost (like how 3e magic items have a flat 1 day per 1,000gp crafting time, much faster than the mundane crafting rules would allow).
Tying WBL and monthly income--even just for DM-side estimations rather than a hard "if you have ranks in Craft here's what you get for income" rule--is, to be blunt, a terrible idea, for several reasons:The problem here is that the level-10 character capable of making a +5 sword won't earn anything like the 2500 GP/month that one might expect from someone of their rank and station. So... I could either say that the WBL for adventurers is severely atypical, or suggest that high-level characters are expected to manage a business, estate or guild with dozens of other members and take a share of their income as revenue? I don't know, what do folks think makes sense?
1) WBL is just a rule of thumb for creating higher-than-1st-level characters (it's the average value of the average treasure tables for the average set of encounters, minus a percentage for assumed consumables use) not some sort of holy writ to which all organically-leveled adventurers must strictly adhere. Swings in wealth where you e.g. fight a Juiblex cult with lots of treasure-less oozes and demons for a few levels and then slay a dragon and take its hoard and are flush with cash for a few levels are normal and expected.
2) Income and skill level are uncorrelated: Volund the Smith may be capable of easily churning out 5 +5 swords at 500gp a pop, but he's not getting 2,500gp per month in income unless he find 5 buyers for all of those swords in one month, and the same the next month, and the same for every month after that, and going by your existing crafting rules he can't even finish 1 +5 sword in fewer than 3 months. Plus you have things like high-level paladins and low-level nobles, where the paladin wants high-cost gear but has taken a vow of poverty and so is given those items by grateful people he helps and has no income worth mentioning, while the minor noble can have a lavish palace and a treasury full of platinum pieces but also has little income because the taxes he collects roughly balance out with his expenses and he wouldn't use it to buy a +1 sword in any case.
3) Adventuring and holding a job are directly opposed. You only need +5 swords if you're spending your days slaying vampire lords and demon cultists, and if you're doing that you don't have the time to make +5 swords in the first place. If you're not spending your days adventuring, you can make those +5 swords but don't have any minimum gear or wealth requirements you need to meet to not die. Plus, no one but adventurers can afford the small mountain of gold needed to buy a +3 sword because the devs didn't want anyone but mid-level adventurers to be buying them and they wanted low-level adventurers to have to find them as loot.
4) WBL doesn't take into account any expenses: An adventurer doesn't need to buy a smithy, feed his family, repair his anvil and wagon, buy raw materials, pay rent to the local baron, or the like, so he can afford to get his WBL in large chunks while a smith needs a smaller but more reliable income, regardless of his level.
So I'd say any kind of income rules should go under Profession rules or the like and be totally divorced from class, level, or other skills. A smith or alchemist should have an income based on his sustainable output, not the best thing he can craft; a medic or priest should have an income based on his value to the community, not the most HP he can heal at once.Better to DM in Baator than play in Celestia
You can just call me Dice; that's how I roll.
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2018-12-18, 07:26 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
...Okay, that's, uh, quite a bit to digest. I'm probably gonna be busy for the next week or two, so I might not get the time to visit this properly until the new year, but as always I do appreciate the feedback. I would make some general remarks for now:
* The power curve for this system is probably closer to being linear than in regular D&D, so I'm quite happy to ditch the WBL guidelines entirely in favour of something less runaway, though I would suspect that a level-10 noble is statistically likely to be richer than a level-1 noble.
* I don't have any great objection to fixed crafting times if that fits the idiom, but by default I would lean toward a campaign style where significant, potentially months-long downtime does occur (the seasonal/annual cycle from Mouse Guard or Pendragon might be a hybrid example.)
* I'm curious if there are there any plausible adventurer-related considerations for casks of wine of bushels of grain, or should those costs just disappear as rounding errors once you get a level or two under your belt? I'm wondering if the copper-piece cost-listings for mundane starting equipment serve any function if you don't want to play dirt poor village peasants struggling through the winter. (Nothing wrong with that, mind, but it's perhaps not the core focus here.)
In any case, I'm hopeful that once the crafting/knowledge skills are done, I can adapt the rules for tracking/stealth/athletics with relative ease and that'll be it, aside from spit and polish.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-12-26, 09:52 PM (ISO 8601)Dwarf in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
I think a simple DC 10 "To Cast A Spell" skill could work (in D&D5e anyway). I would do it like this...
Take the CASTER'S LEVEL and subtract the LEVEL at which that caster wishes to cast the spell in question at (Casters CANNOT cast at a level higher than they are). You then SUBTRACT this number from the DC of 10. Thus, if a 5th Level caster wanted to cast a Spell at 3rd Level, he would subtract 2 from the DC of 10 giving him an 8+ to succeed in his casting. To his roll he would add his PROFICIENCY BONUS and any BONUS for INT. If that 5th Level caster had a 16 INT and cast his spell with a Bonus Modifier of +3 (INT) and Proficiency Modifier of +3 (5th Level), he would only fail on a roll of 1 or 2. This is not a bad chance of success (90%).
We have been using this for our Wizard's Ritual Casting when in a Dungeon. IF he casts in the quiet and safety of a private secure place, his DC is 5+. If we are outside but not in the vicinity of a potential enemy, his DC is 10+. If we are in an actual dungeon near bad guys, his DC is 15+ to cast a Ritual Spell from his book. This system works just fine after half a dozen sessions of play.
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2018-12-27, 05:28 AM (ISO 8601)Ettin in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
You see the problem is that in dnd 5e either you actually need levels in a caster class to have the right for skill magic or everyone can cast spells without being a caster because it is easy to get an arbitrary proficiency and tons of people max either charisma or wisdom furthermore thanks to bounded accuracy it would end up being "anyone can be a great caster without much focus in it" Originally Posted by olskool
On the other hand if you already played gishes that magically progressed two classes at once before then it fits fine.
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2018-12-28, 01:18 PM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
So, WBL guidelines have an interesting relationship to power curves, because it all depends on how much you can "buy" power. In 1e, PCs generally ended up with a lot more wealth than a 3e character, but could never have more wealth than expected for their level because every 1 gp worth of treasure they successfully acquired turned into 1 XP for that character. Wealth thus tended to be used for buying keeps, hiring armies, and so forth--including running trading caravans and such with the commodities you mention. Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
In 2e they dropped the 1 gp = 1 XP rule, so 2e PCs had comparatively more wealth for their level than in 1e since you didn't automatically level up at a certain amount of gold in your coffers, but like 1e you couldn't really buy magic items or any other direct upgrade to character power, so wealth was still spent on non-direct-personal-power stuff. In 3e, you could buy magic items much more freely, so everyone did that and keeps, armies, and such generally fell by the wayside--and 3e PCs tended to have comparatively less wealth for their level as DMs tended to worry about giving them too much treasure, or they'd give a good amount but PCs would sell it off much more often than they would in AD&D because now they could buy more appropriate treasure with the gold they got back.
Then you take a look at 4e, where PCs tend to be swimming in gold because you can't buy keeps and hirelings and such like in AD&D, and while you can buy magic items like in 3e everyone wants such specific magic items that your 15th-level character might want all 5th-level items and exponential magic item prices means he's just selling off every new item to have a pile of gold to sleep in.
What's the point of all that? Wealth doesn't automatically correlate with power or with level, and the extent that it does depends on what you can do with that wealth for advancement, both vertically and horizontally. No edition of D&D requires a minimum level of wealth for PCs at any given level (even 3e; the math doesn't actually require or assume the Big Six items, everyone just buys them because they're the most obvious and efficient power-up), and different editions of D&D break down in different ways if the PCs come into 1 million gp at 1st level, so it's entirely up to you how you want to deal with wealth. If your game ends up being balanced only at a very specific amount of wealth in the PCs' hands, you'll want hard WBL rules à la 4e; if it ends up being mostly balanced most of the time if things aren't too ridiculous, you'll want WBL guidelines à la 3e; if it ends up being fine no matter how many armies and magic swords the PCs have, you don't need them at all.
If that's the case (and I definitely like that kind of enforced/encouraged downtime; my current 3e campaign has gone on for roughly three in-game years now), you need to write that into the rules, you can't simply assume that most campaigns that will be run that way. Whether it's a hard requirement (seasonal phases like those games or Ars Magica, level-up training times like in AD&D, etc.) or soft incentives (downtime rules that allow all classes to gain power in some way, robust trading/army minigames that work on longer timescales and grant specific power-ups, etc.), you'll want to lay out your expected amounts of downtime and how flexible those amounts are.* I don't have any great objection to fixed crafting times if that fits the idiom, but by default I would lean toward a campaign style where significant, potentially months-long downtime does occur (the seasonal/annual cycle from Mouse Guard or Pendragon might be a hybrid example.)
Making skill-based spellcasting in 5e is generally a bad idea, for a few reasons. Firstly, as noob mentioned, the skill math is quite frankly totally nonfunctional at modeling "an Xth-level character can reliably do this thing, while an [X-N]th level character has a hard time and an [X+N]th character has an easy time." A 20th-level character maxes out at +6 proficiency and +5 stat (barring a magic item that bypasses the stat cap), so a world-famous archmage is still failing the "there are enemies nearby" DC 20% of the time like a chump and it's much worse at the mid levels. Plus, 5e functions primarily on spell level rather than caster level for Pelor-only-knows-why, so there's no reason not to always cast a spell at the minimum possible CL to lower the DC. Originally Posted by olskool
Secondly, 5e has little enough resource management for spells that adding a skill check doesn't get you much. The new spell preparation mechanic means you have tons of spells available and can cast them from lots of slots, so there's no risk of "Oh no, I failed to cast the one fireball I have prepared today!" or the like, and in any case there are already concentration checks to do that when casting in combat. Ritual spells can be cast over and over again, so a failed check just means you need to spend more time, and there are already random encounter checks to mess with casters trying to use ritual spells. The skill check basically comes down to adding an arbitrary 10ish% failure chance for every spell for no reason, and that's really unnecessary.
It may work fine for your group, but it's not good in the general case. And even if it were, the 5e math and 3e math are completely different so that basic structure wouldn't transfer at all to what Lacuna is doing.Better to DM in Baator than play in Celestia
You can just call me Dice; that's how I roll.
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2019-01-19, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
So... belatedly getting into the groove here after some time to digest over the holidays. I'm gonna have to comb over the last few posts again, but let me see if I can summarise the key points that Pair O'Dice was discussing:
* Monsters are quadratic and traps are linear (i.e, single attack, no mobility, etc.) Fair point so far as CR/XP allotments are concerned, I guess. Uh... not sure what the solution is, though I guess I could just draw up a table with typical reflex/disarm DCs, or something.
* An item's raw-material cost might not be dependent on time or complexity, so that should be separate from price factors- Okay, fair point, but the market price of labour generally will scale with time and complexity, so I think that relationship holds.
* High-level crafters should be able to crank out low-level items faster, while the skill places a cap on maximum quality- okay, touched on this earlier, but sounds fine to me.
* PCs are quadratic but skill-results are linear- not sure I understand what you're saying? There's still a sort of expectable enhancement-bonus associated with adventurers of a particular level, right, so should skill-results *not* be linear in that respect?
* Having regular, extensive downtime could be good- sure, I can write that into the 'campaign advice' section or other high-level mechanics.
* On Wealth By Level- I'm aware that WBL is more a set of guidelines than holy writ, but I am trying to set up the system so that it is at least *plausible* that an NPC of such-and-such a level could organically accumulate that degree of wealth by practicing such-and-such a profession on a 9-5 basis for 20 years, or whatever seems apt. Deviations from that norm can be handled accordingly.
* I'm not sure any of this answers my question about mundane item costs?
I'll revisit this over the next couple of days with some new math, and see if I can't start tying up loose ends.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2019-01-22, 06:17 AM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Pretty much, yeah. 3e was on the right track for having basically a build-your-own-trap setup where various factors increased the DCs and costs, it just had a few issues in the implementation details (the biggest one being CRs for spell-based traps). Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
Market price correlates with time and complexity, it's the crafting time that doesn't necessarily correlate. Separating things out so one 10,000gp item might have High complexity and be craftable in 1 week and another might have Low complexity but might take 1 month to craft both helps with verisimilitude (the "Why does an adamantine dagger take the same time and effort to craft as a cottage?" issue) and also you vary time without varying complexity so high-level crafters can do low-level stuff faster without making it easier for low-level crafters to craft higher-level stuff.* An item's raw-material cost might not be dependent on time or complexity, so that should be separate from price factors- Okay, fair point, but the market price of labour generally will scale with time and complexity, so I think that relationship holds.
* High-level crafters should be able to crank out low-level items faster, while the skill places a cap on maximum quality- okay, touched on this earlier, but sounds fine to me.
Basically, the skill modifiers scale roughly linearly with level (1 rank per level, plus whatever per-level miscellaneous bonus expectation you have), but what you want to do with skills scales more.* PCs are quadratic but skill-results are linear- not sure I understand what you're saying? There's still a sort of expectable enhancement-bonus associated with adventurers of a particular level, right, so should skill-results *not* be linear in that respect?
For instance, a common houserule is to let the Heal skill heal hit points. That's great, and helps reduce reliance on divine casters, but when setting DCs you have to keep in mind that a 1st-level healer has somewhere in the range of +4 to +8 Heal (max ranks plus +0 to +4 Wis) and partymates with 6-16 HP (from a wizard with Con 14 to a barbarian with Con 18) while a 10th-level healer has somewhere in the range of +27 to +33 Heal (max ranks plus +0 to +6 Wis plus +4 miscellaneous and let's throw in a +10 competence item just 'cause) but his partymates can reasonably have anywhere from 46 HP (wizard, Con 14, average HP rolls) to 153 HP (barbarian, Con 22 while raging, above-average HP rolls).
If you set HP healed proportional to the DC, something that lets that 1st-level healer heal his partymates to full or near-full HP (e.g. HP healed = check result - 5 or check result/2 or something) is going to be worthless for the 10th-level healer (he can't even heal the frail wizard to 3/4 HP!), while something that works on a proportional level (e.g. DC 20 to heal 1/4 target's HP, DC 25 to heal 1/2 target's HP, etc.) would have to scale fast enough so that healing isn't trivial at higher levels and doesn't render cure X wounds obsolete, but in turn would be useless for low-level characters because they can't hit those DCs reliably.
Same with Craft DCs (3e results are linear check result * DC, crafting costs for high-level items grow exponentially), Knowledge DCs (it's a straight 5-points-per-piece-of-info increase but low-level monsters have 1-2 relevant things to know and high-level monsters have dozens), etc. Note that the problem with 3e Diplomacy is exactly that this isn't taken into account: the DCs are flat to let low-level characters diplomacize people, but the benefits for diplomacizing a great wyrm red dragon and exponentially greater than those for diplomacizing a kobold so the DCs should scale supra-linearly.
Well, the disconnect there is that if anyone could accumulate adventurer-level wealth through just practicing a normal occupation, why would anyone risk their lives adventuring (unless they're really bored and/or suicidal, I suppose)? Anyone approaching that amount of wealth would presumably have to have done some adventuring in their youth, or gotten an amazing commission, or inherited from a rich relative, or something other than working a 9-to-5 for 20 years.* On Wealth By Level- I'm aware that WBL is more a set of guidelines than holy writ, but I am trying to set up the system so that it is at least *plausible* that an NPC of such-and-such a level could organically accumulate that degree of wealth by practicing such-and-such a profession on a 9-5 basis for 20 years, or whatever seems apt. Deviations from that norm can be handled accordingly.
So you probably want to aim for your NPC income levels to only get someone to 1/4 to 1/3 of adventurer WBL, leaving the rest for those extraordinary sources of wealth. Joe Town Blacksmith might be a legendary smith able to craft legendary blades, but unless he forgets Excalibur Jr. for some rich noble the guys who went and plundered a forgotten tomb are going to end up with more gold than he has.
I sort of tangentially addressed it, in that those low-level mundane goods only matter if you make them matter. In some editions and campaigns, mundane items are useful in adventuring all the way up to mid levels thanks to good tactics and a dungeon-based context, and mundane goods are valuable in large quantities because the party is carting around shiploads and caravanloads of wealth already from Greyhawking dungeons; in other editions and campaigns, no one cares about mundane items past 3rd level or so because magical gear obsoletes them, and commodities are purely background flavor.* I'm not sure any of this answers my question about mundane item costs?
If you're aiming for campaigns that involve lots of downtime, chances are those campaigns are going to involve more trade, armies and/or hirelings, realm management, and other "spend time for power" aspects of the game, in which case you might want to make those things more relevant. But, conversely, you might want to abstract things more so individual mercenaries and bushels of wheat never come up. It's entirely up to what you want the game to focus on during downtime and what level of detail you want to deal with.Better to DM in Baator than play in Celestia
You can just call me Dice; that's how I roll.
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2019-01-23, 07:38 PM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Could you elaborate on that a bit? I think the rules I have set up for thaumaturgy already enabled magical traps of varying configurations, but how would you set up CR? Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost
Sure, I think I get the idea.Market price correlates with time and complexity, it's the crafting time that doesn't necessarily correlate. Separating things out so one 10,000gp item might have High complexity and be craftable in 1 week and another might have Low complexity but might take 1 month to craft both helps with verisimilitude (the "Why does an adamantine dagger take the same time and effort to craft as a cottage?" issue) and also you vary time without varying complexity so high-level crafters can do low-level stuff faster without making it easier for low-level crafters to craft higher-level stuff.
Well, one imagines that diplomacy should be an opposed skill check in some sense, so the great wyrm should have enough skill points invested in sense motive or bluff or or intimidate or whatever to up the DC. But I can bear the other points in mind.For instance, a common houserule is to let the Heal skill heal hit points. That's great, and helps reduce reliance on divine casters, but when setting DCs you have to keep in mind that a 1st-level healer has somewhere in the range of +4 to +8 Heal (max ranks plus +0 to +4 Wis) and partymates with 6-16 HP (from a wizard with Con 14 to a barbarian with Con 18) while a 10th-level healer has somewhere in the range of +27 to +33 Heal (max ranks plus +0 to +6 Wis plus +4 miscellaneous and let's throw in a +10 competence item just 'cause) but his partymates can reasonably have anywhere from 46 HP (wizard, Con 14, average HP rolls) to 153 HP (barbarian, Con 22 while raging, above-average HP rolls).
If you set HP healed proportional to the DC, something that lets that 1st-level healer heal his partymates to full or near-full HP (e.g. HP healed = check result - 5 or check result/2 or something) is going to be worthless for the 10th-level healer (he can't even heal the frail wizard to 3/4 HP!), while something that works on a proportional level (e.g. DC 20 to heal 1/4 target's HP, DC 25 to heal 1/2 target's HP, etc.) would have to scale fast enough so that healing isn't trivial at higher levels and doesn't render cure X wounds obsolete, but in turn would be useless for low-level characters because they can't hit those DCs reliably.
Same with Craft DCs (3e results are linear check result * DC, crafting costs for high-level items grow exponentially), Knowledge DCs (it's a straight 5-points-per-piece-of-info increase but low-level monsters have 1-2 relevant things to know and high-level monsters have dozens), etc. Note that the problem with 3e Diplomacy is exactly that this isn't taken into account: the DCs are flat to let low-level characters diplomacize people, but the benefits for diplomacizing a great wyrm red dragon and exponentially greater than those for diplomacizing a kobold so the DCs should scale supra-linearly.
Fair point, I suppose. Means I can scale the target numbers down by maybe a factor of 10, so that might suit the purpose, actually.Well, the disconnect there is that if anyone could accumulate adventurer-level wealth through just practicing a normal occupation, why would anyone risk their lives adventuring (unless they're really bored and/or suicidal, I suppose)?
Oh, mundane items could be useful, certainly, but the relevant constraint here might just be encumbrance rather than pricing. And if you're trading in bulk, I'm not really familiar with any standardised rules for handling that at the appropriate level of abstraction.I sort of tangentially addressed it, in that those low-level mundane goods only matter if you make them matter. In some editions and campaigns, mundane items are useful in adventuring all the way up to mid levels thanks to good tactics and a dungeon-based context, and mundane goods are valuable in large quantities because the party is carting around shiploads and caravanloads of wealth already from Greyhawking dungeons...Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2019-01-24, 03:37 AM (ISO 8601)Titan in the Playground
- Join Date
- Dec 2008
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- Malsheem, Nessus
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Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
I was referring to the fact that they provide a bunch of piecemeal DC and price modifiers for mechanical traps for things like search DC, trigger type, and so forth, but magic traps were just costed by spell level instead of breaking things down the same way (e.g. varying price for single-target vs. AoE spells, or damaging vs. disabling vs. SoD spells, or the like), so you end up with a Poisoned Spike Pit Trap (pressure trigger, manually resettable, easy to save against/avoid/disable for its level, low damage) and a Wail of the Banshee Trap (alarm trigger, auto-resetting, hard to save against/avoid/disable for its level, instant death) both being CR 10 because the mechanical one uses an actual system of more or less well-thought-out calculations to arrive at CR and the magical one is just "CR = spell level + 1." Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster
So I was saying that you probably want to follow a similar approach to that, figuring out CR and price and such based on individual trap details rather than just a generic DC table, but that you'll want to handle spell traps the same way you handle mechanical traps. Which, given the modular spellcasting setup you're using, should hopefully be fairly straightforward.
That's part of it, certainly. But you can't necessarily just make it a straight-up opposed check to do anything, because then you can't have e.g. a commoner petitioning a baron for aid against a goblin attack, because the commoner is 1st-level with no Diplomacy ranks and the noble is 10th level with great Sense Motive and the commoner can't convince the baron of anything he isn't immediately inclined to agree with.Well, one imagines that diplomacy should be an opposed skill check in some sense, so the great wyrm should have enough skill points invested in sense motive or bluff or or intimidate or whatever to up the DC. But I can bear the other points in mind.
That's why I suggested originally that to deal with super-linear scaling you generally want to add a dimension somehow. For crafting, you can address crafting complexity and crafting time separately; for healing, difficulty of healing something and amount/degree healed; for diplomacy, difficulty of convincing someone and, say, how closely the diplomat and/or the deal align with the target's goals. Being able to vary two axes independently like that helps limit the need for ridiculous scaling to achieve both low- and high-level results with the same skills while preventing low-level characters from easily achieving high-level results, and it helps when handling corner cases (e.g. it's really hard for a low-level person to convince the mid-level baron to do something he really doesn't want to do, but a stranger convincing him to do something he's on the fence about or a close friend convincing him to do something he's opposed to is easier).
For that, you'll probably want to look for some third-party books on the topic. There are some that specifically address trade, mercantile expansion, and so on (A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, Strongholds & Followers, etc.), and some OSR books that happen to address it because domain play is big for OSR games (ACKS being the only good one I know of offhand).Oh, mundane items could be useful, certainly, but the relevant constraint here might just be encumbrance rather than pricing. And if you're trading in bulk, I'm not really familiar with any standardised rules for handling that at the appropriate level of abstraction.Better to DM in Baator than play in Celestia
You can just call me Dice; that's how I roll.
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2019-02-03, 09:15 AM (ISO 8601)Ogre in the Playground
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
Re: Skill-based Spellcasting
Thanks for the feedback. Regrettably, it's looking like I'm gonna have to park this project for at least a couple of months, though, so I might not even get the chance to compile the rules properly.
Hope it helps to spark a couple of ideas, though. Ciao for now.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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