[Avatar d20 Project] Bending System and Bending Classes - Thread II

[Pirate_King]

I like the progression, but why cap at -5? I mean, I suppose it kind of makes sense, because you're only going to make a swift action so much easier by spending 3 rounds to do it. but perhaps add a progression between move and standard, since you can make 2 moves per round, and cap out at -6 just for the sake of roundness?

[Eighth_Seraph]

Well, I set the cap at -5 for two reasons:

1) That was the number that Meph used as something he would hesitantly accept, if everyone else was for it; and personally, I agree with him. The smaller bonus on the third length increase makes it barely, if ever, worthwhile to use it, except from ambush, and that's the way it should be.
2) Lots of seeds gain benefits in increments of 5 points, so I would argue that 5 is actually "rounder" than 6 under our system. Of course, lots of other forms get benefits in increments of 2, too, but I'm erring on the weaker side for caution's sake.

[Pirate_King]

I figured it would be fit nicely when used in conjunction with seed mastery, which gives the +4 bonus. I guess it doesn't matter too much

Now that benders can take ranged feats for their blast, should we keep ranged pin a necessary feat to allow that with ice shards? or am I reading things wrong, and only rapid shot can be applied to blasts?

[Ceiling009]

The ranged pin is a feature of ice shards, something like a DC 15? or higher, while ground pin is about 25 or 30. I'm perfectly happy with that, as it's been shown often in the show, though wave or blast/freeze, is more often than ice shards. Personally, I think I would allow rapid shot to work with blasts, but there have been quite a few opponents. And following the feat tree for improved rapid shot is sort of silly, as you basically lose a feat to be marginally better with a bow...just get that -2 penalty removed.

[Pirate_King]

I know it's a feature, but it was added before we decided to allow ranged attack feats for bending blasts. I guess the question would be whether or not we see Katara using the prerequisite feats, or if we need to specify exactly which other ranged attack feats are applicable for all bending blasts. I could imagine earthbenders doing the same thing with sharp rocks (probably more effective than ice), so it would be strange to allow it as a feature for a waterbending seed when an earthbender has to take 3 feats to do the same thing, just because we've only seen waterbenders do it on the show. It's certainly possible, given the precision displayed by the Dai Li.

EDIT:
Although, I guess they pretty much accomplish the same thing with the immobilize seed, it's just a matter of how you flavor the crunch. Sorry for the ruckus

[Eighth_Seraph]

We had already agreed that Rapid Shot applies to blasts, and I assume that, by association, the basic ranged feat tree is fair game, too, if anyone really things they're worthwhile. I don't happen to think so. The whole reason that Meph put the pin function into Ice Shards is so that a waterbender would be able to do that without needing to get the, what, four feats worth of pre-reqs before being able to use Ranged Pin. We ruled that a waterbender just controls the ice more precisely.

Now, this is a bit of a cross-post from the Items and Machinery thread, but it relates to the recent discussion we had on benders and armor proficiency.

New Armors
{table=head]Name|Cost|Armor Bonus|DR Bonus|Max Dex Bonus|Armor Check Penalty|Base Speed (30 ft.)|Weight
Firebending Armor, Light|

200 gp

|

+2

|

2/-

|

+4

|

-2

|

30 ft.

|

20 lbs.

Firebending Armor, Medium |

500 gp

|

+3

|

3/-

|

+3

|

-4

|

20 ft.

|

30 lbs.

[/table]

Firebending Armor
These armors, specifically designed for use by members of the Fire Nation military with the complex motions of firebending in mind, incur their armor check penalty only once, instead of twice as normal for the Firebending skill.

The helmets of these armors are also designed with a place for a facemask to protect the wearer from shrapnel resulting from his own bending, and this mask also grants a +2 to Intimidate checks against civilians.


This way, we've accounted for the firebending army's mooks, as well as adding gear for more elite soldiers, to whom it's worth using a feat for Medium Armor Proficiency. Remember that this is all pre-craftsmanship bonuses. Thoughts?

[Pirate_King]

kinda cool, armor specifically designed with bending in mind. Is there and Earthbending equivalent?

probably my last addition to the ranged feat thing, benders might want to take a look at Zen Archery from complete warrior. Allows use of wisdom bonus instead of dex with ranged attacks, and I think that fits the use of elemental blasts very well.

[Eighth_Seraph]

I seriously think that we should ban Zen Archery from the setting, or every single firebender would take it, and bender MAD suddenly disappears. Let's learn from the mistakes made in making the wizard and avoid that, shall we?

Also, I've been thinking about feats and form combinations, especially with the Waterbender, and I came up with the following:

Specialized Bending (Bending)
Prerequisites: Focused Bending, 9 ranks in the appropriate bending skill
Benefit: Choose a seed that you know. From now on, you no longer pay the +4 DC increase for applying that seed to a bending form. You may not apply this feat to template seeds, and the DC increase from the seed you apply this feat to may never fall below +5.
Normal: The Bending DC of a bending form increases by +4 for every seed used in the form.


I understand that we have to start worrying about balance, so I think we should consider carefully which feats we give a thumbs-up to. I'm going to crunch some numbers and see just how much I can cheese a bending DC down to. I also have couple questions on other feats.

1) Could I apply both Focused Bending and Template Mastery to a template to lower its DC by -10?
2) What ever happened to the Form Mastery feat? I'll replicate it here.

Form Mastery (Bending)
Prerequisites: Wisdom 15, 9 ranks in any bending skill
Benefit: You may choose or create any bending form from seeds you already know. The base DC for this form is lowered by 5. This feat applies to one specific bending form, not any combination of the same seeds.

----------------------------
EDIT: Number crunching complete. I'll use a form near and dear to all of our hearts for my example.

Combustion
Fire Blast + Fire Burst + Explosion = DC 44

Spoiler

Show

I might turn a small portion of Combustion Man's first ambush scene into prose to serve as fluff here; but this will have to suffice for now.

Progression: Phase 1, Phase 2 Phase 3, Phase 4, Phase 5

Focused Bending (Fire Burst) + Specialized Bending (Fire Burst) + Template Mastery (Explosion) + Form Mastery (Combustion) = Base DC 26
This leaves plenty of room for upgrading the bull rush aspect from the Explosion template, or increasing the radius of the form. Maybe something else will come up if we ever find out what Combustion Man's tattoo is all about. Of course, that's all assuming that Specialized Bending and Form Mastery are accepted as feats.

The point of this example is to demonstrate that benders can become very powerful one-trick ponies. Is it overpowered? I want to find out. I'll take this to the arena.

[Ceiling009]

There's a Focused Bending Feat in Meph's site, giving a +3 while using a specific form? I did some crunching with the ranged pin feature of Ice Shards, and it's pretty scary at level 1. Though getting ground pin takes a bit more...

[Sir Shadow]

I don't think it's necessarilly bad for some benders to become "one trick ponies" we see it all the time in the show with people and their "signature moves"

[Pirate_King]

Why is a firebender any more likely to take Zen Archery? All benders have a high wisdom mod, and would benefit from the feat. Also, if you're building with a high dex stat to make up for armor, the bonus is not going to be all that much higher. The loss of a feat for that isn't unbalanced.

[Shades of Gray]

I'll take this to the arena.

Dun Dun Duuun!

The firebenders armor looks good. Maybe you should apply breath of the dragon to the combustion, as he fires it from his head.

[Ceiling009]

The only possible reason for Zen Archery to trump any other feat would be if all benders got Wis to AC. The Airbender might use it, but it's a lot better to probably use either range attack feats, or bender feats to basically optimize a two ability build. Zen Archery might also work with Earthbenders, who if for some reason would rather have no str or dex in their build, would use it instead of str to attack... So a Wis/Con earthbender.

[Eighth_Seraph]

The firebenders armor looks good. Maybe you should apply breath of the dragon to the combustion, as he fires it from his head.

Thanks! I was going to apply Breath of the Dragon, but the +20 to the Firebending check would make the form pretty difficult to perform, and leave very little room for adding bonuses. I'll just handwave it and say that it has something to do with his tattoo.

[Pirate_King]

in light of that, and king bumi's ability to bend when he only had his head mobile, have we added a feat that makes bending a bit more possible with limited mobility?

[Ceiling009]

There's always talks about feats, but what's really interesting is that a lot of these feats, that sort of emulate caster feats, (quickened, still, silent, and so forth) can easily be put into the bending overview. Like Slow Bending, Quick Bending, already should be in the overview, but so should Still bending, (silent doesn't really matter too much), it hasn't been quite introduced yet. It should be looked over in the overview, what possible "feats" from the Metamagic tree could be transformed into parts of the way bending works, as so far, there's an equivalent of Still (King Bumi, Aang, and a few others benders who didn't need a wide range of movement, or complicated movements to bend) that needs to be addressed, we have already addressed Quickened and it's opposite Slowed...

Actually, I think even Enlarged is actually addressed, in terms of bending range, though it might need to more distinct. Widened, as for forms seem to be relevant on the seed, and actually so is Heightened. The only three I could see being real feats, versus something that could be written into the Overview as a set of modifiers, would be Empowered, Extended, and Maximized. But, from what I feel is the overall consensus on things like that is that most would disagree with even allowing those as feats, as to remove possible caster cheese.

Though I would probably make a case for Extended, where it would be a feat that would lower the ever growing check for maintaining a seed; like Armor. Or instead shortening the time needed to maintain a seed like Tentacles.

[Pirate_King]

silent? no bending has verbal components...

but I think still needs a feat, since not everyone can do it, where quickened and slow just make it harder or easier. heightened would just change the effective bending level, and I'm not sure how that would work. Widened (and I think extended) are covered by the seeds they'd work for, generally by beating the DC by x amount. I think empowered and maximized need to be left out, allowing them would make lightning less frightening by comparison, or they need to be as hard to use as lightning.

as for round by round increases, that could be a fair use of a feat...

[Ceiling009]

I think a feat for Still bending would too much... or rather I think a useless feat. Sure, it looks like only some can do it, but at the same time, it could be just explained by rather high DC's. Like, doing some forms without real somatic components, adds as much or more than quickened bending. So, doing something move a rock can be done without any somatic components at something like a DC 20. I mean, we are feat starved, but at the same time our poor little benders don't get that many feats as it is.

[jagadaishio]

There's already a breath template in the firebender class which allows for forms to be executed without somatic components. I'm sure that we could do something similar for the other bending classes.

[Pirate_King]

Okay, this is something that's sort of bugged me for a while. Is there a particular reason water and air benders have more skill points than earth and fire benders? I understand the different class skills, but the skill points gained per level sort of indirectly undermines the supposed equality of the bending arts. No, it doesn't keep those classes from maxing out their bending skill, but it does suggest that fire bending and earth bending are more time consuming, and keep benders from being able to allocate time to learn other skills.

I also just realized that there are no more than 3 posts between each of mine, and I'm probably getting pretty obnoxious. Sorry, I'll try to tone it down a bit.

[Eighth_Seraph]

No worries. That's what happens to me when I suddenly realize that I have no plans on a Saturday, and suddenly start posting like a madman.

Anywho, I've been thinking about Bumi's feat (in the literal sense, not the gaming sense) back in Omashu, along with Azula's little stunt in The Day of Black Sun when Toph had trapped her hands. Seriously, I think that it's better if we make general outlines for increasing Bending DCs depending on degree of immobility.

Remember when the earthbender guide in The Great Divide broke his arms and said "Without my arms, I got no bending!"? That probably means that loss of both your arms is a steep penalty. Like, a -20 penalty. How 'bout this: Loss of one arm is a -5 to bending, since the other can compensate pretty well (getting a deadarm doesn't really hamper me unduly when sparring). Loss of both arms means that complicated motions are out, and a -20 is incurred, along with making certain forms (Lightning, for example) outright impossible. Loss of one leg is a -5, loss of both legs is a -20, since stance is a large part of bending as well. Knocking out one arm and one leg is a -15. If all four limbs are incapicated, you suffer a -50 to bending. Welcome to epic bending, ladies and gentlemen. Try the veal.

[FlyMolo]

No worries. That's what happens to me when I suddenly realize that I have no plans on a Saturday, and suddenly start posting like a madman.

Anywho, I've been thinking about Bumi's feat (in the literal sense, not the gaming sense) back in Omashu, along with Azula's little stunt in The Day of Black Sun when Toph had trapped her hands. Seriously, I think that it's better if we make general outlines for increasing Bending DCs depending on degree of immobility.

Remember when the earthbender guide in The Great Divide broke his arms and said "Without my arms, I got no bending!"? That probably means that loss of both your arms is a steep penalty. Like, a -20 penalty. How 'bout this: Loss of one arm is a -5 to bending, since the other can compensate pretty well (getting a deadarm doesn't really hamper me unduly when sparring). Loss of both arms means that complicated motions are out, and a -20 is incurred, along with making certain forms (Lightning, for example) outright impossible. Loss of one leg is a -5, loss of both legs is a -20, since stance is a large part of bending as well. Knocking out one arm and one leg is a -15. If all four limbs are incapicated, you suffer a -50 to bending. Welcome to epic bending, ladies and gentlemen. Try the veal.

Hey, I had a waterbender 20 who could get a 50, with multiple tries. His taking 20 check was about 53 56, I think. Hooray for me remembering. So with all four legs or arms broken, he could make a water blast 10% of the time. More if it was slowed, but I dunno if we have rules on that now.

Edit: and what about 2 arms and a leg? -25? -30? Both are possible...

[Superglucose]

I think that lack of limb usage penalties should be by seed. Some of the least complicated things (like, say, using a tiny bit off water to cut the chains off your wrists) seems to need very little in the use of the full body, and some forms don't require intricate stances. But then you get into the REAL bending, for instance Blood Bending, where intricate use of the fingers and toes and arms and legs is used. Since the stance seems to be important, there should always BE a penalty, but the penalty to a waterwhip for only having one arm would be very low (since you pretty much use the one arm anyways) while for blood bending or octopus form would be very severe.

[Pirate_King]

well, that's sort of covered with an understanding of how complicated a form is with relation to its DC. Generally, the higher the DC is, the more complex its somatic component, with the exception of Breath of the Dragon. The penalty to water whip with one arm is low if the penalty is significantly greater when both limbs are lost, the 5 to 20 change. If the DC for a seed or form is so high that a -5 penalty to the check makes a big difference, it's because in creating that seed or form has a greater somatic component. A -5 makes the hard things harder, and the simple things a bit inconvenient. A -20 makes almost any bending impossible except at very high levels, as it should. Basically, it's already by seed, because of the way in which the base DC's are increased.

what about those skill points? anyone hearing me on that?

[jagadaishio]

We could just work with a system of % increases in DCs of forms based on the degree of motor incapacitation.

[Ceiling009]

Skill points... skill points... Dunno, I guess that since both earth and fire are extremely martial oriented, they don't use as many skill points? I think all of them should probably get 4 + int. *shrugs*

I do like the percentile idea. maybe from a 10% if you're missing a limb, to maybe 200% if you're basically tied up...?

[Eighth_Seraph]

Try percent increases for all your realism needs! Side effects may include nausea, diarrhea, mood swings, confusion, loss of sanity, and houserules removing percent increases. Percent increases are not for everyone. Ask your doctor before applying them.

Seriously, I think it's best to stick to the simpler systems available to us here. Even though making the difficulty increases for loss of limbs scale by percent does reflect a good aspect of realism here, it also slows down gameplay considerably.

PC: "Argh! I My leg's pinned to the ground. I fire sweep in the general direction of where that last arrow came from. Um...What's 130% of 25?"
DM: "Well, 10% is 2.5, so 30% would be...7.5. 25 + 7.5 = 32.5. Let's round that up to a DC 33."

I would prefer to have flat values added per limb, just to cut out the math for those of us that aren't inclined in that direction. But again, before we flesh out the details of either system, we need to decide which system we want to use.

As for the skill points, I think it has to do with the culture and roles that the benders generally live in. Airbenders tend to branch out more from the little we've seen, with athletics being a large part of their lives; and they are also the semi-rogues among the bending classes. Waterbenders live in tribes and (in the southern tribes, at least; the North seems pretty urbanized) need to have some sort of profession to keep things running. The earthbenders and firebenders we've seen have all pretty much been professional soldiers and warriors. Honestly, I don't care much either way. I understand the reasoning for the difference in skill points, but they're all bending classes, so there's a viable argument that their skill points should be standardized. I'm neutral on this one.

[Pirate_King]

I agree, the DC changes are simple enough, and they make sense. Honestly, I think effects like that should be a DM's call. On a related note, I think Chi Disruption and disrupt bending should be the same feat. Chi disruption supposedly hampers movement, and that's basically what bending is. Other than natural effects of the sun and moon for fire and water benders, how do we see bending disrupted? Eliminating movement. For the Tai Li character build, we're requiring her to take two feats that essentially do the same thing. Can anyone provide examples that would make these two feats different?

[Darkbane]

I don't have screenshots, but in book 2 when the Gaang meet up with Azula, Mai, and Tai Li in Omashu, Tai Li stops Katara from bending while still leaving her with the ability to move.

Still, this is a good point. What should we do to make Chi Disruption viable, since paralyzing limbs impedes bending anyway?

[jagadaishio]

Have we ever decided what the sandbenders are? Earthbenders with a special feat? A special template or prestige class? Or are they their own, fifth variety of bender?