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MonsieurChoc posted:Listening to old System Mastery episodes, I burst out laughing when talking about shitfarmers in the Fantasy Wargaming review. More specifically, this line: I've probably said this before but all I can think of with D&D farmers is all the monsters they'd probably have to deal with, like ankhegs or bulettes. I have to imagine that your average D&D farmer that survived the number of wandering wilderness monsters an encounter chart generates season after season would have to be really capable or be really dead. What I'm saying is that D&D farmers would actually be totally badass.
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Mar 27, 2017 19:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I've probably said this before but all I can think of with D&D farmers is all the monsters they'd probably have to deal with, like ankhegs or bulettes. I have to imagine that your average D&D farmer that survived the number of wandering wilderness monsters an encounter chart generates season after season would have to be really capable or be really dead. Not according to 3.x's Commoner class, unfortunately. It would, however, be amazing to have a scenario where adventurers come across a farming community where they deal with these things on the regular and consequently, they're all fairly high-level Fighters/Rangers. When the players arrive to see if they need help with everything, they just redirect them to all the poo poo chores they'd normally do when extremely bored like "clear out this tribe of bugbears" or other monsters that might be beneath a community of incredibly BAMFs.
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Mar 27, 2017 19:35
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The thing is, I was laughing because shitfarmers doing nothing was totally a major literary genre, albeit for church propaganda purposes.
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Mar 27, 2017 19:35
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LuiCypher posted:Incidentally, few systems do this as well as WHFRP. One of the reasons I love it. Going from a bunch of ratcatchers, college dropouts, and retired soldiers to saving the world is great. Part of the reason it works for that is that you get an advance worth of EXP basically every session. Getting a tangible, permanent buff to your stats, skills, or special abilities every session you make it through is a great way to give a game a sense of progress.
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Mar 27, 2017 19:40
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MonsieurChoc posted:The thing is, I was laughing because shitfarmers doing nothing was totally a major literary genre, albeit for church propaganda purposes.
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Mar 27, 2017 19:49
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Doresh posted:Speaking of System Mastery episodes, I've recently stumbled upon the same typo they mocked in Cyberworld while reading through the Cosmic Handbook for Mutants & Masterminds:
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Mar 27, 2017 19:58
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If you're going to start players off as poo poo-farmers, give them a clear, obvious path to not being poo poo-farmers, and make sure it's baked into the game to make sure lovely or inexperienced GMs don't gently caress it up. So yeah, from what I hear WHFRPG is pretty good at unshitfarming characters.
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Mar 27, 2017 20:12
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A game where the PCs are fantasy farmers, and actually stay farmers, is not a bad idea either. Get outta the way, Dale, I get +4 AC vs. ankhegs! The challenge is that you have to build the game around the threats coming to them rather than vice versa, or the threats literally popping up in their neighbourhood. There aren't a lot of examples to follow, at least not in D&D type games.
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Mar 27, 2017 20:24
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Halloween Jack posted:A game where the PCs are fantasy farmers, and actually stay farmers, is not a bad idea either. Get outta the way, Dale, I get +4 AC vs. ankhegs! Awesome! We levelled up enough that we can trivially dismiss the ankheg infestation in the fields, as well as finally seal up all those kobold holes. Now, we just need to deal with the dire bulettes on the OTHER half of the property.
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Mar 27, 2017 20:30
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MonsieurChoc posted:The thing is, I was laughing because shitfarmers doing nothing was totally a major literary genre, albeit for church propaganda purposes. I understand, I'm just tangenting. What's the genre called, though?
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Mar 27, 2017 20:33
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Roman du terroir, I believe. Like an entire genre of Silas Marner, ugh.
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Mar 27, 2017 20:35
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Halloween Jack posted:Roman du terroir, I believe. Like an entire genre of Silas Marner, ugh. I wanted to make a joke intentionally confusing that genre with things like Catcher in the Rye, Children of the Corn, and The Grapes of Wrath, but it's just not coming together.
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Mar 27, 2017 20:48
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MonsieurChoc posted:The thing is, I was laughing because shitfarmers doing nothing was totally a major literary genre, albeit for church propaganda purposes. On the other hand... 
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Mar 27, 2017 20:53
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 Aethera Campaign Setting Part Three - Classes II Base classes!  Alchemists are common and often well-respected. Some alchemists delve into Progenitor ruins for the secrets of the past, while others look forward and perform their own experiments. Erahthi have a rumor that is always rapidly quashed by the ruling Council: One of the lost Tritarchs originally developed the science of alchemy and was forced into exile for delving too deeply into its secrets. Some versions of the rumor even claim that what he did was create the erahthi race as a whole. Alchemists make good doctors in the Akasaat Wastelands, and of course human bioengineers and aetherite researchers were responsible for the Paragon experiments. Okanta focus heavily on herblore, incorporating giants' alchemy traditions as well. Cavaliers are mostly only prevalent in okanta society. Live mounts are a liability on, say, a spaceship, and their personalities can sort of clash with polite society. Okanta have a lot of cavalier orders, who have their own clannish politics in microcosm. In the Amrita Belt and the Akasaati Wasteland, cavaliers become western-style posses and bounty hunters. And, for a change of pace, some cavaliers bond with a custom-tuned aethership or take a page from the summoner and summon their own mount. Gunslingers. While Aethera uses the "Guns Everywhere" level of technology, that does not mean that gunslingers are everywhere. It's the whole deal that Syndrome was on about in the Incredibles: If guns are simple weapons, anyone can be a gunner. As far as actual gunslingers go, there are some things to note. In the Akasaati Wasteland, it's basically the Wild West with the mysterious gunslinger blowing into town to right wrongs and all that. The erahthi didn't have much exposure until the humans started shooting at them, but they reverse-engineered captured aethertech and began their own experiments resulting in the erahthi thornslinger, who bond with their own living weapon. Inquisitors, as mentioned in the monk and rogue entries, are the most common espionage class. In the arcologies of Akasaat, inquisitors serve as secret police in the fights against both rebel elements and rogue magicians. Erahthi inquisitors tend towards fighting against the zahajin and maintaining the caste system. Okanta, meanwhile, preserve the laws and traditions of their individual clans. Very few infused or phalanx were allowed to become inquisitors, but those who did were the biggest fanatics. Magi were limited to the humans until the Century War, who hired themselves out as mercenaries or hitmen to pay off their enormous student loan debt. Try doing that with a liberal arts degree. During the Century War, many phalanx took to the class, infused focused on psychic magic, and a lot of pyromancers were trained up really fast and thrown at the forest. The erahthi caste system discouraged blended disciplines like the magi, but they've started studying the techniques in the last twenty years. Okanta, however, have much the same problem developing magi as they do with wizards, but they're growing in number, too. Oracles are present despite the lack of deities. Elemental oracles are linked to conjunctions of their corresponding planet, and the song mystery is very common. Phalanx in particular are prone to becoming oracles, and no one knows why. They often specialize in the time, battle, and metal mysteries. Oracles hold highly-honored places in okanta society, and tend to favor the ancestor mystery, although other oracular mysteries on Orbis Aurea include waves, heavens, lore, and nature. Akasaat has a lot of metal and stone oracles, and some soldiers disabled in the Century War began developing oracular powers as some sort of karmic response to their injuries. Oracles are most rare among erahthi, but when they occur they favor life, lore, and wood mysteries. And finally, the infused have their own, never-before-seen mystery: Apocalypse. Summoners seem like sort of an odd choice in a campaign world where you've got no way to contact the Outer Planes, but life, uh, finds a way. Most summoners use aetherite, bringing forth shadows from the past, although some come about through accidental contact with essencite: Aetherite imprinted with the soul of an outsider that died in the Collapse. These essencite eidolons often form themselves based on the unconscious desires of their summoner. Some other summoners just mash a whole bunch of aetherite together and hope to get something usable out. There is surprisingly no word on how any of the cultures view summoners. Vigilantes as an actual job you can go out and have is a relatively recent development. Disguised heroes have existed throughout history, but they've only just started to have a real solid impact on society. Most vigilantes can be found on Complex Four in the Amrita Belt, fighting crime. The only other notable vigilantes are on Akasaat, operating with the vox riders or as Hierarchy agents provocateur. Witches are prevalent and suspicious throughout the Aethera system. The okanta are most accepting of them, but still wary. Human witches are usually unregistered, so hunted down and persecuted. Erahthi see them as linked to the fey and thus their ancient zahajin enemies, and neither infused nor phalanx were originally trained as witches, but some might have picked up some tidbits of forbidden lore here and there. Hybrid classes!  Arcanists (Sorceror/Wizard) are at the forefront of magical innovation. Without moral or ethical constraint, the scientist-magi of Akasaat developed horrible bioweapons, plane-shifting bombs that hurled foes bodily into the Negative Energy Plane, and the Infused. Most of them have been hunted down and murdered, or gone very deep into hiding. The class is rare for infused, developing in phalanx, discouraged in erahthi (the caste thing again), and rare in okanta (The arcane study thing again). However, some okanta arcanists, known as khurushai, are trained from birth to blend witchcraft and martial training to wield black blades that have been passed down through the generations within their clan. Some erahthi veterans still utter curses when they hear the name of the "great" khurushai Darkest Night. Bloodragers (Barbarian/Sorceror) are rare due to the lack of planar influences. No infernal or abyssal bloodlines being sown by horny demons. However, bloodragers do crop up. Among the infused, those displaying the highest levels of anger gained terrifying powers from the Paragon experiments. Dubbed "blue-shifted" due to the azure flames they expressed, they were a terror on and off the battlefield. Many of their development labs did not survive to see them deployed. And the blue-shifted talent is beginning to express itself outside the infused, which worries the surviving scientist-magi greatly. Zahajin bloodragers are common due to fey dalliances among their people. Erahthi bloodragers are vanishingly rare, most of them carefully trained to control their rage. Bloodragers are perhaps more prevalent among the okanta than other arcane casters, the Taur have a significant number of bloodragers, and a hitherto-unknown bloodline developed among the phalanx: The machine bloodline. Most machine-blooded phalanx were lost in the war or vanished after, although in a very Eberron move, one is rumored to be attempting to form a secret army of her kin in order to dominate and destroy humans. Brawlers (Fighter/Monk) are pretty much everywhere except Kir-Sharaat (erahthi are encouraged to become monks instead). The Hierarchy deployed whole regiments of specialized brawlers known as Titans alongside the Paragons, charging in in heavy armor and just being all over recruitment posters. Most Titans, however, were lost in the Taur invasion, being first into the labyrinth-ships and last out. Hunters (Druid/Ranger) are moderately archaic in the technological and urbanized worlds of Aethera, but they still exist, mostly among okanta and on the outskirts of the various civilizations. Investigators (Alchemist/Rogue) are primarily found among humans, and do as investigators do. Amrita in particular is well-suited for private detectives to operate. Psychic investigators also exist, apparently focusing more on combat than pure detectiving. During the Century War, investigators on both sides served as spies and infiltrators, which gives me hilarious mental images of the disguises needed to convert an erahthi into a human or vice versa. Or an erahthi disguising themselves as a potted plant. When the Taur invaded, investigators on both sides made it onto- and back off of- the maze-ships, providing most of what Aethera currently knows about them. "The identical accounts provided by human and erahthi investigators were a major step forward for trust between the two civilizations." Shamans (Oracle/Witch) are the oldest and most widespread magical tradition, being practiced long before alchemist bioengineers began experimenting with life or bards began singing of the Score. Naturally the okanta are still super into it, followed by erahthi. Most city-dwelling humans have stopped following shamanic traditions, but it's still very prevalent in the wastes. Skalds (Barbarian/Bard) are also old and widespread, predating bards and cantors. As expected, okanta very yes, erahthi calm down bro. Human skalds found great glory on the front lines of the war, often attached as support units to Titan Regiments or Thousand Blades Rangers. Infused are really angry in general and make good skalds, phalanx weren't really trained in it. Slayers (Ranger/Rogue) are mostly a product of the Century War. While human assassins and erahthi Reaper-caste endbringers existed, the endless slaughter of war honed their skills to a sharp, bloody edge. Erahthi endbringers are some hot poo poo. Clad in cloaks of belladonna and wielding scythes of deadwood, in the past they served as hunters of marauding beasts and executioners. During the wars with the zahajin and humanity, they committed great acts of genocide and atrocity, often taking to wearing human heads as trophies. Human slayers are said to all descend in blood or spirit from a single ancient master, using garrotes or chains to strangle their victims. Slayers are a bit focused and dishonorable for the okanta, though. Swashbucklers (Fighter/Gunslinger), like investigators, are most common among humanity and in the lawless areas. Rare among the other races and in the war, although a notable pair from the war are Tri-Terra and Sky Blossom, a pair of swashbucklers, one infused, one erahthi. Inseparable lovers by the end of the war, ardent diplomats and liasons today, their romance both celebrated and vilified on both sides. Occult classes!  Kineticists are common and usually raised in the appropriate training when noticed. Their elemental affinities are usually dictated by the planet they're born on, except for Amrita, which is far removed from the elemental radiation of any of the other worlds, but rumors persist of a cadre of void kineticists there. Pyrokineticists are closely watched on Kir-Sharaat, hydrokineticists are welcomed in the Akasaati Wastelands. Infused tend towards telekinesis (aether), and some are angry enough they turn their talents completely towards destruction, being dubbed "aetheric annihilators" by the press. Mediums function slightly differently in Aethera. The Collapse severed the system's connection to the Astral Plane, so mediums draw power either from the Ethereal Plane or echoes of spirits trapped in aetherite. Phalanx and okanta mediums often take up the role of chroniclers and storytellers, humans and infused are varied practitioners, and the erahthi have two distinct practices: One that channels their god-kings, the Tritarchs; and the other a strongly (and oddly) Oriental-themed practice where they channel the kami of Kir-Sharaat, using leaves from the great trees as ofuda. Mesmerists are most common leading cults in the Amrita Belt, but the erahthi have a surprisingly long history of mesmerism as well, most of them serving to keep the caste system unchanging. Okanta have nearly none, viewing the hypnotic powers as conflicting strongly with the cultural appreciation for honorable battle. The Hierarchy of course registers and tracks all the mesemrists they can and kills the ones they can't, using their tame mesmerists to deal with rabble-rousers and malcontents, because the best rebel is a brainwashed rebel. Occultists are a rather academic and cosmopolitan group, studying Progenitor artifacts and psychic relics and sharing their findings with each other. The Enigmatic Order of the Greater Aetheric Mysteries is an almost-secret society that studies aetherite and the memories of the past stored within. Listeners, on the other hand, claim to hear otherworldly voices, whether to warn against calamity or bring it is a matter of debate. Okanta occultists tend to focus on a single ancestral relic of war unless they perform the Quest of Whispers, seeking out all the esoteric knowledge they can and encoding it in the relics they find along the way. Phalanx and infused are both well-suited to becoming occultists, but erahthi are not. Psychics are one of the most common spellcasting traditions in the Aethera system. Erahthi, with their intellectual and philosophical bent, are well-suited to the study of the mind's power, but deployment in the Century War rendered both them and their human counterparts often broken, drug-addled veterans attempting to dull their pain. Psychics are the most common spellcasters among the infused, some of them harnessing their amnesia to pull spells from the aether. Phalanx, however, were only rarely trained in the discipline, due to assumptions about their mental capacity. Okanta are a bit too focused on punching things to have a lot of psychics. Spiritualists focus primarily on those souls who cannot reach the cleansing and rebirth offered by the star Aethera. These phantoms may remain behind for any of a number of reasons, but on Orbis Aurea, that reason is mostly because of the netherite shrouding the planet. Thus, okanta are the most commonly spiritualists, but everyone has their own traditions. Humans are varied, of course, and erahthi spirits mostly hang around on the Ethereal Plane, forming tangled forests of soulstuff that spawn immense creatures known as amerta. Erahthi amerta disciples have learned to harness these amerta and cloak themselves in the ectoplasm of their fallen kin. In the Amrita Belt, the mind-twisting deeps of space have given rise to the void spiritualists, who control gravity and summon a shadow instead of a spiritual phantom. Phalanx attract phantoms occasionally, often thanks to the bond between their own bodies and the aetherite core powering them. Many of them focus on their phantom's past over their own future. And the psychic bond between infused sometimes leads to the creation of phantoms when members of their psychic networks die. Oof, that was long. And next, we have the new archetypes, where practically every one of those classes has at least one! 
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Mar 27, 2017 20:54
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LuiCypher posted:On the other hand... One of my players used that as his character portrait for a Bretonnia game in WHFRP.
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Mar 27, 2017 20:56
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Also, if you need a good reason why the gently caress in God's name the PCs and the village base would be here, in a monster-infested territory, growing a crop when they could be living in a place with way fewer giant monsters: Nobody said that crop had to be for eating.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:06
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Nessus posted:Also, if you need a good reason why the gently caress in God's name the PCs and the village base would be here, in a monster-infested territory, growing a crop when they could be living in a place with way fewer giant monsters: There isn't a less hostile place to go grow crops in.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:07
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Before you disparage shitfarming, let me remind you that melange is basically monster poo poo.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:08
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Zereth posted:Alternate reason: America was founded on drug farming! And religious extremism!
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Mar 27, 2017 21:11
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I'm reminded of the stubborn french farmers in Apocalypse now (redux). Hubert de Marais: The Vietnamese... we worked with them, made something - something out of nothing... We want to stay here because it's ours - it belongs to us. It keeps our family together.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:14
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Honestly you'd think some D&D monsters would have been domesticated for agricultural purposes by now.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:15
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What's the line between "monster" and "animal" to a D&D peasant? I mean, eating lobster used to be practically like eating rats.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:17
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Nessus posted:"Everything sucks and is awful" is a well worn premise in RPGs, "you're drug farmers" is not. e: I guess other people might have also taken all the land and so forth.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:17
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Halloween Jack posted:A game where the PCs are fantasy farmers, and actually stay farmers, is not a bad idea either. Get outta the way, Dale, I get +4 AC vs. ankhegs! A "realistic" D&D setting would be a bit like your typical JRPG world, where certain areas are so full of super monsters that the ordinary citizen must be a complete badass. ZeroCount posted:Honestly you'd think some D&D monsters would have been domesticated for agricultural purposes by now. Bulettes would be awesome to plow the fields and keep the mole population in check.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:28
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Obviously a game about farmers being rad heroes would be amazing. One could easily rewrite D&D to be about that. Druids are animal husbandry experts, bards are local mayors and judges at the country fairs, etc. You'd probably want to make the crops fantastical to justify not packing up and moving on, but an adventure of "old man Huben's prized four ton pumpkin is being raided by local gnolls!" could be fun. Granted it's just the middle part of the WOW Pandaria expansion.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:50
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No discussion of shitfarmers would be complete without this guy from Talislanta: I mean sure, he's got the NPC tag which marks him as not on a par with characters like the Xambrian Witch Hunter, but literal poo poo-farming is pretty much the entire Marukani economy!
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Mar 27, 2017 21:57
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Well, if we never do get that translation of Meikyuu Kingdom I think my first rpg project will be the Stardew D&D RPG.
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Mar 27, 2017 22:07
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Liking this so far. Keep up the good work. Fun read as a fan of 13th Age.
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Mar 27, 2017 23:00
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I can envision a hamlet of the meanest motherfuckin' peasants in WHFRPG. I imagine they're placed somewhere near Mousillon (French vampires), but there's no lord or knight to rule over them. Those who arrive to assert their authority mysteriously disappear, yet the peasants always pay their taxes (and extra) on time and with military precision. One time, a vampire leading a host to Carcasonne decided to stop by the hamlet on the way for a light snack. He arrived to find an empty town, but it was all a ruse. Before he could contemplate his sudden hunger, peasants surrounded him on all sides, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, with every manner of pike and arrow available to them. He barely managed to escape back to Mousillion to tell his tale, whereupon he was immediately executed for incompetence. After all, everybody knows a Brettonian peasant can't obliterate an entire host of undead without being goaded into it by all manner of ranking knights! Meanwhile, the peasants living in this hamlet mysteriously managed to have a bumper crop this year when many fields in Bretonnia fell fallow...
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Mar 27, 2017 23:10
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ZeroCount posted:Honestly you'd think some D&D monsters would have been domesticated for agricultural purposes by now. I seem to remember the 2E AD&D MM specifically state that Ankhegs are good for the local soil.
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Mar 27, 2017 23:19
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should I do fewer of these but longer or what, I feel like I might be spamming up the joint, I dunno. 13th Age part 4: No, Really, It Is Actually A Metaphor For Race Fantasy races in 13th Age work similarly to most D&D games, especially 4th Edition: you get a special racial power (similar to entry-level powers you get from your class), a +2 boost to one of two ability scores, and possibly some minor additional effects. Unlike most D&D clones, the +2 boost isn't as important because your class also gives you +2 to one of its ability scores, and you can't stack the two. So a Half-Orc Fighter can get +2 to STR or DEX from being a half-orc and +2 to STR or CON from being a fighter, but can't stack those boosts for a total of +4 to STR. Racial powers are worth about one standard action per battle under certain conditions per battle. For example, humans reroll initiative and take the best (and get an extra feat to boot), dwarves can use a Recovery (basically Healing Surges from 4e) out of sequence once per battle when they get hit, half-orcs can reroll a to-hit once per battle. Defensive abilities are also common: halflings can force a reroll against them once per battle and apply a penalty to the reroll, gnomes can inflict a -4 to-hit penalty on enemies under certain conditions (and get a weak at-will sound/smell illusion ability). "Smallness" is all but a non-factor: halflings and gnomes use the same gear and weapons as everyone else, and just get a minor AC bonus against opportunity attacks. Most of the races are loosely sketched, and you can really tell which race Tweet and Heinsoo care about - and that race is elves. There are three different kinds of elves - High Elves, Wood Elves, and Dark Elves - plus half-elves, and each of them has a different and unique racial ability and racial ability modifiers. While, for example dwarves get "you know dwarf cliches, use some of them I guess," elves get a page and a half about various story hooks and their splintering politics a description of their ideal society but also how that society is starting to fray at the edges so the image they project may not actually be how they live any more. Despite all this chatter, I have no idea what the difference between a Wood Elf and a High Elf is. They both live in trees, although I guess wood elves live in trees and high elves live in towers in trees? What I do know is that their racial abilities are bullshit. gently caress Elves Two of the three types of proper elves have completely bullshit racial abilities. High elves, once per battle (which is once per five minutes or so in out-of-combat terms), can teleport anywhere they can see as a move action. This doesn't have a range limit, and there's no obvious maximum range. After all the talk about not giving players One Unique Thing that bypasses stories, it seems like a bad idea to give PCs an ability that passes through any opening, over any gap, up or down any structure, etc. There's not even any particular setting justification for it, or any consideration of what it would mean to have a race of teleporting elves in the setting. It was very obviously only considered in terms of its limited combat applications. Wood elves, on the other hand, have Elven Grace. Elven Grace is a combat-only ability and it is just free actions. Every turn, a wood elf rolls a d6 (or a d4 if they take a feat at level 5, which they will absolutely take because who wouldn't). If they roll equal to under the number of turns that have passed this combat (technically the Escalation Die's score but we'll get to that later), they get an extra standard action this combat. They can keep rolling on subsequent turns, they just use a die of a step larger (so a d8, then a d10, etc.). This will generally mean they get 1-2 extra actions that they can use for anything every combat - and generally 2-3 if they take that feat. You want to be a wood elf. Everyone wants to be a wood elf. There is no reason to be anything but a wood elf. Wood elves, besides being OP, get to show off their interaction with the Escalation Die, one of 13th Age's new and shiny mechanics. Half-elves, on the other hand, get to interact with 13A's use of raw d20 scores as an additional random number generator. Once per battle, half-elves can subtract one from the raw result of any d20 roll they make. The main reason you'd want to do this is to take advantage of abilities that trigger when you make an odd or even roll, or abilities that trigger when you get a natural roll of a specific number, such as 13A's dual-wielding rules. (Anyone wielding a weapon in each hand can reroll an attack if they roll a natural 2 - and anyone can do this, it's not a feat or class ability.) This isn't an especially good ability, even for the classes that have roll-based triggers, but it is a design that 13A's developers clearly thought was clever enough to stick with despite its limited utility. Anti-Racist is Code For Anti-Elf Since 13th Age has half-orcs and half-elves, the obvious topic has to be dealt with. Half-orcs aren't the children of mixed marriage or rape; orcs and humans aren't compatible. Rather, half-orcs are stronger and wilder humans, born different from other humans as part of a High Druid plan to counter the "magical infection" that orcs represent. (Orcs were created by elves as part of a long-ago scheme to accomplish an unspecified goal - and while the Elf Queen considers the existence of the orcs her greatest shame, the first Orc Lord helped overthrow the Lich King.) Half-elves can be born to mixed marriages, but also sometimes when elves and humans cohabit peacefully, elf or human couples will have half-elven children and everyone seems more or less okay with that. Half-elves are a clumsy metaphor for real-world racial and cultural integration and I don't know how I feel about that. Using magical racial differentiation with regard to humans and elves is a metaphor for culture rather than genetics is a nice departure from the grim eugenics of most D&D clones. Elves and humans can simply assimilate into each other and forget that there was any difference in the first place, in a reasonable facsimile of real-world integration. Humans who live with elves will have half-elven children, who can in turn have elven children. On the other hand, you still have black-skinned elves who are universally talented at murdering people - the Dark Elf racial ability is Cruel! - and Orcs are magically transmuted to be irredeemable killing machines. On top of all of this, race is only a matter of culture with regard to elves and humans: dwarves, halflings, and gnomes don't fit into this at all. It's just a trace of an evocative idea, not fully realized. We Would Like To Apologize For Including These Options There are four "optional" races, with shorter writeups and sketchier rules. They're framed as optional because three of the four were fairly controversial when they were introduced in official D&D books: Forgeborn are clearly based on Eberron's Warforged living golems, and Dragonics and Tieflings are based on Dragonborn and Tieflings, both of which were controversial when they appeared in the D&D 4e Player's Handbook. Aasimar are the fourth "optional" race, and are included because of the opposite teacup tempest controversy: while the 4e PHB had fiendish Tieflings, it did not include holy Aasimar. The main difference between the optional races and the other races is that the implicit 13th Age world doesn't give them a prominent role, so they're easy to drop if someone is a picky grog. "If a player wants to play one of these races, they should have that right, but not necessarily at the expense of the GM’s vision" stands out as the sort of thing 13A rejects in other areas. It makes sense given how much vocal anger there was about Eberron and the 4e PHB's races, but it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of 13A. For all the furor, they aren't anything special. Dragonics/Dragonspawn are dragon people who have a weak elemental breath weapon (which at least doesn't take up your standard action). Holy Ones/Aasimar are "near human[s]" "touched by the bright gods" and get a weak defensive buff that falls off when they get hit. Forgeborn - aka Dwarf-Forged, because they are dwarf-shaped living golems - get a variation of the dwarf racial ability. Tieflings are "touched by the Diabolist" and get a free-form curse whenever an enemy rolls 5 or less. I guess if you want to run one, you already know what they look like, because none of them get even a cursory physical description! Tieflings and Forgeborn are also a little half-baked, in a way which is also characteristic of 13th Age. Tieflings' racial ability turns any d20 roll against them of 5 or less into a fumble: quote:Start with the other racial once-per-battle abilities as a model of how big an impact this power should have... but feel free to go a little beyond, since the timing of the power is out of the tiefling’s control. This isn't the last "make something up I guess" power in 13th Age, and these powers tend to rub me the wrong way. There's not enough to them to justify the page space spent on them. They don't inspire stories, they don't pose a puzzle, and most of them don't really do anything. (This one stands out because it does have a suggested, defined effect.) They take up defined mechanical space - and column inches - but don't fill that space the way a more realized power does. Contrast with the Forgeborn. Forgeborn are living constructs that don't have to eat or breathe… unless that sounds like a hassle for your game. It's a little underbaked, but there's at least a concession to the fact that Warforged had a lot of rules text and a very alien feel that may not fit into your game, even if you want a stone dwarf golem PC. That said, half of the column on this page is just blank, so they probably could have afforded to spill a little more ink on the consequences of being an inhuman construct and how to properly integrate such a character into your game. We are now on page 75 (of 320) and have finally gotten to character classes. This book's layout is a trainwreck. Next: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 22:47 on May 8, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 00:22
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Every single I Dunno Make Something Up feat or power is something that didn't need to be a feat or power, just a normal function of gameplay with a GM. I *like* 13th Age. It's a better high fantasy d20 if you don't want the prep time and map focus of 4e. But goddamn do I hate when games expect you to take feats to be able to improvise on the fly rather than having a solid 'This is what is worth a feat' mechanic.
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Mar 28, 2017 00:30
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Night10194 posted:Every single I Dunno Make Something Up feat or power is something that didn't need to be a feat or power, just a normal function of gameplay with a GM. Yeah. It's just a bizarre incentive for the DM to screw over people wanting to improvise who didn't take over those feats, or make the guy who took them annoyed it doesn't do anything compared to what other people can do.
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Mar 28, 2017 00:38
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Night10194 posted:Every single I Dunno Make Something Up feat or power is something that didn't need to be a feat or power, just a normal function of gameplay with a GM. One of the examples straight up admits this. "Everyone should be able to do these, but here's a feat you can take if you, uh, want to, I guess."
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Mar 28, 2017 00:40
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megane posted:One of the examples straight up admits this. "Everyone should be able to do these, but here's a feat you can take if you, uh, want to, I guess." Yeah, the language feats, I skipped over that (to cover it later). There's a whole mini-essay on "We think languages are unfun bullshit and you should not pay character resources to learn languages. But, if you must..." and a feat writeup for knowing languages. 13A is practically defined by all of these D&Disms that they reject but feel the need to accommodate. You can see visible scars from various D&D controversies, like the optional races. It's worth mentioning that, besides the language thing, Feats in 13A generally aren't, well, feats. They don't let you Do A Feat of Strength/Skill, thereby implicitly removing the ability to do that thing from everyone else. Rather, they're mostly riders on class abilities. For example, the gnomish racial feat turns their triggered penalty to attack into a triggered penalty to attack and defense. That said, talents and powers do have the same ability space problem most D20 games have with feats. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Mar 28, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 01:01
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13th Age has a lot of weird warts but it has a reasonably solid base on which you can fix things, and do so more easily and consistently than DnD5e, while being overall less crunchy than DND4e. Which are its main selling points, in the end. Dungeon World is probably the best gateway RPG currently in existence but has its own issues, mainly to do with where it keeps DnDisms instead of of doing its own thing - per the designers this is something they acknowledge, but they explicitly wanted to be "old-school DND but with PbtA rules" as opposed to "a proper PbtA take on dungeon-crawling". Godbound is a cool game about playing fighty demigods in the Exalted sense. It's technically OSR but it handles hitpoints totally differently. And all the god-power Gifts are their own system layered on top. You could layer Godbound on top of the base system for 13th Age instead of the base system for old DnD if you wanted, and basically the only thing you would need to change is the HP (because Godbound does it weird) and the fact that Godbound uses descending AC and frequently references 'AC 3'.
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Mar 28, 2017 01:34
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ZeroCount posted:Honestly you'd think some D&D monsters would have been domesticated for agricultural purposes by now. Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog had an entry for catoblepas cheese.
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Mar 28, 2017 01:40
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Cease to Hope posted:Aasimar are the fourth "optional" race, and are included because of the opposite teacup tempest controversy: while the 4e PHB had fiendish Tieflings, it did not include holy Aasimar. I was a bit disappointed when 4e came out and didn't have aasimar as playable races.  But then the PHB 2 had devas and those were way cooler celestial beings
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Mar 28, 2017 03:31
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ZeroCount posted:Honestly you'd think some D&D monsters would have been domesticated for agricultural purposes by now. I've done this in a homebrew setting. Otyughs are living garbage and sewage disposals that eat anything and crap amazing fertilizer for one.
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Mar 28, 2017 03:45
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The best D&D monsters have always been the ones built up around the weird world full of dungeons paradigm it has setup. Gelatinous cubes, otyughs, clockroaches, balhannoth, etc only make sense in the context of a world with plentiful dungeons filled with weird magic stuff, and are all things that would serve a practical purpose if domesticated or bargained with.
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Mar 28, 2017 05:24
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