|
See, this is why I don't like dinosaurs in D&D, nor will I play Dino Crisis. I don't want to kill dinosaurs.
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 16:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:52 |
|
|
Night10194 posted:Everyone needs more cute baby monsters goddamnit. Here you go.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 16:17
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Reign. But then, Reign doesn't have D&D wizards. Really, in a D&D 3e setting, it makes no sense to have an army if you could just train a cadre of spellcasters. I think it'd come down to how easily you can train someone to be a wizard. is magic something that anyone can figure out on their own, from first principles, provided they're persistent enough? does it involve some kind of innate On/Off switch, like midichlorians, where only specific people can ever learn magic in the first place? how easily accessible are spell tomes / scrolls, and how willing are other wizards to share what they know? assuming that magic isn't something just anyone can learn by trying hard enough, and that there's a fairly high barrier to entry even for a potential student/adept, I think conventional armies would still see use. Either because there's no guarantee that your nation will be able to field many/any wizards, or because they're extremely high-value ordinances and you don't risk busting them out to put down some random peasant rebellion, on the off-chance that they catch an unlucky crit and get dropped. now, D&D 3E clerics are an entirely different issue, because they're just as (potentially) deadly as a wizard and pretty much anyone can learn to be one, provided they pass the most basic attribute minimums (11+ Wisdom). a RAW-physics-as-reality D&D 3E setting would still probably have fairly few arcane casters, but clerics would be nearly dime-a-dozen and you'd have a significant portion of your army comprised of clerics because why not, a 1st level cleric is nearly as good at martial combat as a 1st level fighter, plus they get divine spells that require next to zero effort to maintain. as long as you align your monarchy with whomever is currently the most popular deity, you've got a basically endless supply of Fighters But Better In Every Way That Matters.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 17:01
|
|
|
I think most D&D settings default to having Wizardry be something you learn either from apprenticeship or going to a wizard college. (Like law. Wizards are lawyers.) That gets me thinking. The first D&D I ever played was actually the AD&D Pool of Radiance videogame. In that game, only wizards can learn spells because only they can cast read magic, which you need to read whatever mystical language spells are written in. But how did they learn read magic? They must be born wizards, or else learning read magic is an arduous process. The Guardians of the Flame series, which AFAIK is the first "D&D players get transported into D&D land" work, made read magic something you're either born with or not.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 17:07
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I think most D&D settings default to having Wizardry be something you learn either from apprenticeship or going to a wizard college. (Like law. Wizards are lawyers.) Fancy gowns, special language full of latin and psuedo-latin terms, obsessed with ritualistic performances of specific gestures and phrases at specific times, and able to define reality along subjective and arbitrary terms if they're good enough? Yep. It all checks out.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 17:10
|
|
|
Not to derail too hard (too late) but the Craft Sequence books by Max Gladstone are literally about wizard lawyers and the ones I've read have been pretty good.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 17:12
|
|
|
That was actually one of the things in Ironclaw: Magic, even 'divine' magic, just required you to find a tutor and know how to read. The printing press and subsequent rise in literacy was proliferating magic just as the gun was changing warfare.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 17:12
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:The Guardians of the Flame series, which AFAIK is the first "D&D players get transported into D&D land" work Quag Keep by Andre Norton.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 17:39
|
|
|
Reign's magic premise was that anyone can learn a low level spell with enough time, and lots of people know a cantrip or two. If you wanted to get deep into magic, though, you had to either learn a spell to link you to a particular school's magical ability, or horribly mutate yourself in some way, like turning into a centaur or turning your bones into iron, which has the side effect of locking you out of any other school of magic. It makes the mages of the more overt schools very, very easy to point out and target in a fight compared to common foot soldiers, in addition to how such mutations would affect your day to day life. Hope your fire-bleeding flame dancer doesn't get a paper cut! I really appreciate how much Stolze thinks about the logical extensions of magic systems he builds. Too much fantasy ignores the effect its own magic would have on its setting. That said, I could see a PDQ or other light system game of wizards arguing codified physical laws like lawyers in battle. Counterspelling through citing case law would be fun at the table.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 18:05
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Fancy gowns, special language full of latin and psuedo-latin terms, obsessed with ritualistic performances of specific gestures and phrases at specific times, and able to define reality along subjective and arbitrary terms if they're good enough?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 18:11
|
|
|
I've always wanted to have a setting where this worked backwards and wizards were the type of people who indulged in magical thinking. So you've got warlocks declaring that they are a separate person from the entity that signed their name on the patron contract because look, it's written in all caps, theurgists who argue that gods are a sort of boat, and so on. In said setting, the cabal of wizards who tried to call up demons via Negging (PUA bullshit being another form of magical thinking, obviously) proved not to last very long in the face of actual demons with actual claws and fangs, because trying to convince demons that they want to do your bidding when you insult them just doesn't work well in the face of actual demons.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 18:20
|
|
|
The idea of Counterspelling being a lesson at boot camp is both cool and good.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 18:34
|
|
|
Leraika posted:Not to derail too hard (too late) but the Craft Sequence books by Max Gladstone are literally about wizard lawyers and the ones I've read have been pretty good. I asked Max Gladstone about this a while ago on twitter and apparently the only reason there isn't already a Craft Sequence RPG is no one has figured out a fun, flavorful and relatively fast way to make the magic work.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 18:41
|
|
|
Dallbun posted:
Fresh take: Keep the basic set-up. Have the Rakshasa be condescending to any party members who don't appear at first glance to be powerful. Have him slowly realize that these are, in fact, high level adventurers he doesn't want to gently caress with. Go from him playing cat and mouse to desperately trying to convince the party to just move along, nothing interesting here, sorry you can't stay for the nght, but there's no room...
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 19:13
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:That was actually one of the things in Ironclaw: Magic, even 'divine' magic, just required you to find a tutor and know how to read. The printing press and subsequent rise in literacy was proliferating magic just as the gun was changing warfare. And Eberron has a specific NPC class for the blue-collar magical working class of Khorvaire. Magic is something anyone can learn in school, the PC classes like wizard and sorcerer are just indicative of more intensive studying or natural powers than anything you'd learn in a normal school.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 19:39
|
|
|
Demon_Corsair posted:Thinking about orcs as Roman legions, has any game really thought about what large scale military tactics would look like when mages can drop meteors, poison clouds, or mind control generals? The World's Largest Dungeon had a wonderfully stupid case of this in action. Section B is goblinoid focuses and has the "holy goblin empire", a group of goblins trained to fight by hobgoblin supporters. This is still a dungeon, so the largest rooms are maybe 50 or 60 feet square, most are smaller. The goblins are largely met as random encounters or appear in preset spots in numbers ranging around a dozen. So, in the interest of making them more "military" the writers suggest that when these groups encounter PCs their first action should be to form "ranks", 4 goblins wide and as deep as their numbers allow. This means, when this small group of weak opponents encounters an only slightly smaller group of stronger opponents their first tactic is not "surround and flank" or "retreat and get reinforcements", but rather they waste time moving themselves into an ideal position for AoE bombardment while also nullifying any numerical advantage they had (they were not equipped with ranged or reached weapons, so the back rows basically just sit there). This could work for Pathfinder-style "lol, murdertards" goblins, but there's no indication this is a joke or parody. What's more, it's just one of the incredibly stupid ideas with these goblins. Another is giving them the Improved Sunder feat...and their spears inflict 1d4+1 damage. They couldn't even break their own weapons.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2018 21:11
|
|
|
 BREAD OR STONE – PART 5 gently caress This poo poo I'm Out On maybe the fourth day, it's announced that the LPV have been captured and the tracks have been fixed. Jazmina comes to see the investigators off at the train station. She plans to move to Paris and invites the investigators to visit her, but first she'll have to sort out her father's estate. In accordance with his wishes, she'll be contacting Dr. Radko Jordanov in Sofia to get him to inspect the items recovered from the Crusader's Tomb – the good doctor will have his own role to play when the investigators get to Sofia. As the train pulls out, Jazmina waves goodbye from the platform, but is interrupted when she sees a pack of cops beating a man in front of his wife. After a few days in Vinkovci, the investigators can now see that the man is Croatian and the cops are Serbian. If you're familiar with the history of Yugoslavia, you know that things aren't going to get better from here. Rescuing Jazmina is worth 1D3 SAN, as is finding the body of Dr. Moric. Every cudoviste killed gains them another 1D3. Putting down Belenzada gets them 1D2 SAN, but persuading him to hand over the Mims Sahis gets them 1D4. Destroying the Mims Sahis nets them a further 1D6.  Alternatively… What if the investigators don't destroy the Mims Sahis? They may decide they'd rather hold onto the blade, seeing as it's so useful and clearly related to the Simulacrum in some way. This is a dangerous idea but one the game encourages, even going so far as including a cut-out Mims Sahis to be laminated and handed to the players – a diabolical little trick to make them attach undue significance to the knife. The Mims Sahis is a small black knife of crude design made of a substance that looks like black obsidian. The hilt is wrapped in the leather of a marine animal that no longer exists. It is supernaturally sharp and it never loses its edge. The Voorish never had the opportunity to make more than one. As a weapon, it does a hefty amount of damage for its size (2D4+DB). It ignores any armour its target might be wearing and half of the damage it deals becomes permanent wounds that can never be healed except through magic. As a tool, it is a necessary component to many of the Skinless One's rituals and can allow its user to do new and exciting things with skin. In particular, it's really good at flaying people and can be used to create new relics for the Skinless One, perhaps even a whole new Simulacrum if you put in the time. In addition, it's a battery of magical power, sucking up MAG from its victims and storing up to 25 points inside of itself.  However, it's still an evil artefact, and it was designed first and foremost to cull the human herd. It imbues its wielder with a strange sense of purpose, and using the blade quickly becomes an addiction. It costs its owner 1 Sanity for every week that its owned, as well as 1D3 SAN every time it's used – 'used' is kinda vague here, but I assume it doesn't mean every time it makes a cut, or Belenzada would be totally bonkers. After losing 20 points, the owner of the blade has become ensnared and must make a Hard Power roll if they want to relinquish it. If it drives them all the way down to 0 SAN, they have become a tool of the Skinless One and can no longer be played. The question might arise: can the Mims Sahis damage or destroy the Simulacrum? It can't even leave a dent. However, when someone applies the blade to the Simulacrum, it feels good. Really loving good. The blade glides over the statue's surface smoother than silk, and the wielder gains sudden insight into the art of skin. Applying the Mims Sahis to the Simulacrum gives its user 1D10 points in the skill Art (Skin Human) and costs them the same amount of Sanity. Next time: Belgrade! And racism!
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 00:08
|
|
|
JackMann posted:Fresh take: Keep the basic set-up. Have the Rakshasa be condescending to any party members who don't appear at first glance to be powerful. Have him slowly realize that these are, in fact, high level adventurers he doesn't want to gently caress with. Go from him playing cat and mouse to desperately trying to convince the party to just move along, nothing interesting here, sorry you can't stay for the nght, but there's no room... This sounds hilarious, especially since the rakshasa didn't even prepare any actual dinner.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 01:41
|
|
|
Best mages are WHFb/rpg makes, since they can explode. All mages should have a chance of horrible fuckups. The second best are from Dominions, since they get fatigued from casting spells and can pass out/die... if cavalry or fliers aimed at your back lines don't get to them first!
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 06:27
|
|
|
i'm not sure how serious you are but no, "insane power but you have a random chance of arbitrarily exploding" is an awful mechanic
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 06:39
|
|
|
It isn't a good mechanic, no. It is extremely rare to really do serious harm by a miscast, though. In Fantasy, anyway. They made it significantly more dangerous in 40kRP. Also significantly more dangerous TO YOUR PARTY, not just your individual PC. Ask the average DH1e party how well they can survive surprise Unbound Demonhost where their Psyker used to be! For instance, my personal group has 2 mages who use their magic all the time. They get the occasional 'I got doubles and something spooky happened or I suffered a minor setback' problems, but getting triples is impossible until you have 3 Mag (unless using Dark Magic), unlikely even when you do, and quadruples on 4d10 is almost never going to come up, and that's the only table that can actually turbofuck you (and even then you can still spend Fate). Night10194 fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Jan 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 06:50
|
|
|
I've been reading the new Revised Stars Without Numbers, and may be posting it because it has a LOT of really rad ideas inside, but I like how the Psionics chapters have little asides about the use and practicality of each type of Psychics. Biopsionics: Everyone freaking LOVES them, and you can explicitly make tons of cash just hiring yourself out to local hospitals for a few hours a week, because instant healing is worth gobs of cash. Metapsionics: Super rare, but if you act as a Psionic tutor for hire you can make money hand over fist, also popular as anti-Psychic bodyguards and mercenaries. Precognition: Actually useless! Precogs can't get the full context of what they see, and they can misinterpret stuff due to personal biases so most people find them creepy and useless, only hired by the foolish or desperate. Telekinesis: Also useless in polite society! So what you can lift a car with your brain, we have forklifts that can do that for cheaper and easier. Telepaths: Either mental spies for private organizations and governments, or gently caress you your powers are worthless. Using them is basically a crime everywhere and people hate and fear them. It technically would be incredibly useful for diplomacy or therapy, but it's too creepy for most people to give it a chance. Teleporters: Either government agents or highly paid mercenaries. Some are criminals, but because of how teleportation works this earns you an instant death-sentence or a surgically implanted bomb. Since the setting is by default a world that has basically moved on from and rejected relying on psychics in any way, this all fits and leaves your character mostly taking career paths that fit dashing adventurer types.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 06:57
|
|
|
What's also good about Warhammer magic is that the more powerful spells will either make peasants think you're a demon and get witch hunters coming after you, or be sensed by a bunch of other wizards from your college who will come and ask why it was necessary to blow up a square mile of forest, again.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:02
|
|
|
Why arbitrarily? You should have more chance of exploding the more power you want to use. It's all a matter of getting the numbers right and I like the idea conceptually. Much better than dealing with Vancian magic, mana points and whatever. What does Shadow of Demon Lord do to limit mages? E: Bright wizards don't feel like the sort of folk that would question the necessity of blowing something up. Blowing something up is its own reward.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:03
|
|
|
White Coke posted:What's also good about Warhammer magic is that the more powerful spells will either make peasants think you're a demon and get witch hunters coming after you, or be sensed by a bunch of other wizards from your college who will come and ask why it was necessary to blow up a square mile of forest, again. With the added implication that if you had a good reason people will just go 'Oh, yeah, saving the world, carry on.' E: There's generally a lot less outright hatred of wizards in WHF compared to Psykers in 40k. When we get to Realms of Sorcery they do a great job of fleshing out the relationship between the colleges and the Empire and how it is to go to a more grounded wizard college that leaves you with crippling student loans. Suffice to say the various colleges all have an interest in not scaring the public since they're trying to convince people they're helpful, under control, and able to police themselves (in hope of no longer having to show their licenses to every Hunter in the Empire on every meeting with any of them.) Night10194 fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Jan 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:04
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:i'm not sure how serious you are but no, "insane power but you have a random chance of arbitrarily exploding" is an awful mechanic
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:24
|
|
|
JcDent posted:Why arbitrarily? You should have more chance of exploding the more power you want to use. It's all a matter of getting the numbers right and I like the idea conceptually. Much better than dealing with Vancian magic, mana points and whatever.reward. Conceptually, but nobody likes to have a character that could suddenly turn into a pair of smothering pointy-toed shoes due to an unlucky dice roll, it may fit in-world, but for a player, especially if the player has a tendency to be really unlucky with dice - they'll be sitting out and rolling up a new character while everyone else has fun. And with the 40K example, not only does it screw over the player by pure luck, it can often end up in TPKs, which breeds resentment towards the player for having the temerity for being unlucky while the table has to make new characters.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:24
|
|
|
Yeah, if you roll particularly badly in WH40K your head explodes as A bloodthirster of Khorne erupts out of your skull, eager to wreak havok on the stupid Psyker who dares be smart rather than stronk.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:31
|
|
|
I mean there's a whole lot of things at work here, it'd take a while to unpack. Randomness sucks in general because it's less interesting than player agency. Extremely strong negative effects with very small chances of occurring suck even more because given how human psychology works no one really ever expects it to happen and they'll almost inevitably be mad or disappointed when it does. Powers so strong that you have to balance them with "eventually you'll have to tear up your character sheet" are more often than not simply too strong in the first place. (And if they aren't, then there's even less justification for the "tear up your character sheet" part!) A better way to handle it* is how Going Loud works in Demon: you get ultimate power for a brief, temporary moment and you consent to paying the cost (which basically amounts to losing a major asset from your character sheet and also narratively giving the GM permission to throw ten kinds of hell at you). Everyone can do it, it's a dependable tit-for-tat arrangement, and it conveys a thematic sense of desperation much better than "eventually this will kill you, maybe, whenever the dice feel like it." * in a game that isn't Paranoia or something else where the point is to abuse the players and laugh at their struggles anyways
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:35
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:
I am the person the RNG takes the time out of their day to personally poo poo on when I game. In my last game, the only time my character ever hit anything was when the GM took over for me when I had to go to work. So I admit, my lousy luck with dice makes me instantly hate any 'roll this, and you're dead, no save, no grace' mechanics like that in games outside of Paranoia or intentionally highly lethal but easy chargen. Going Loud is a pretty good way to do the power-at-price.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:44
|
|
|
Going Loud works because Demon is a spy game, and you're doing it the same way a spy does it when he pulls the assault rifles and grenades and body armor out to blast through the cops with handguns.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 07:59
|
|
|
 BOOK FOUR: Magnetism Or Useless Elven Mind Bullshit A Really Brief History of Magic So there were many ~wonderful empires~ of magicians and demonologists and necromancers in Times Of Old back when magic flowed like lava out a volcano. Then the forces of Order started hooting and hollering about how magic is a tool of Entropy and invented organized religions and started clobbering people they disliked. Heresy, Emprah, etc. The sole exception is the use of hermetic magic because it involves grabbing the aether of the universe and twisting it…solely because Simon Paul, one of the Voices of the Archons of the Aluminat knew how to use it and renounced its use until a bunch of cardinals decided no it’s okay. So people who want to use hermetic magic are allowed to pay indulgences to use it and this creates the first Orders which oversees magic use and punishes bad mages.  the first paragraph is full of liiiiiiiiiies Then religious schisms in the Aluminat happen and then so does the Thirty Years War wherein the forces of Entropy work overtime to tempt people and spread magic harder than they did during the Black Plague. On top of that the church gets in trouble for Indulgences and ultimately the first Consortium of Hermetic Guilds is made from existing orders working together.  So yeah magic is still heavily oppressed and monitored, especially if you learn Forbidden Arts such as necromancy or demonology. However, despite the oppression of Not Fully Evil Magics, it’s still accepted. Magnetic abilities are a fact of life, conjurors can practice their craft if they’re licensed and so are runesmiths. Once more, the main types of magic are:
Your Quintessence is 6 points per point of Resolve and that’s what you need to cast. You roll Relevant Attribute+Magic Skill and generally need two successes to cast a spell. On top of that each spell has a Difficulty rating where you must roll black dice equal to the Difficulty. Any black successes left after gobbling the roll successes deal 1 health pip of damage to the caster. Reminder: three dice in a pool can automatically be turned into a single success. If you want to just fire off a spell with 0 Difficulty and no roll, you better have at least 6 dice in that pool. But don’t focus on building too big of a pool! You should be well-rounded instead of specialized! The Quintessence cost depends on the magic. Everything that isn’t Conjuring or Magnetism just has a set cost. All Magnetic spells are 2 Quint a pop and Conjuration has two costs: the cost of the crafting ritual and the cost of the activation. If you run out of Quintessence, you can power your spells with lethal loss of health pips. The amount of time it takes to cast a spell is rounds equal to Cost-1. You have to make Concentration rolls if you're interrupted while casting a spell, etc. etc. Standard D&Dish stuff. If you want to defend yourself you have to use half of your dice pool for the spell and halve the pool for your Concentration roll. And of course if you fail the roll, you lose the Quintessence or health sunk into casting the spell and nothing happens. Quintessence at least regenerates at a reasonable rate: sleep to get it all back, regain 1 pip for 2 hours of inactive rest or 4 hours of activity or you can force regeneration with a Resolve+Concentration roll that takes 1 hour and gives 1 Quint per success. Anyway that's enough brass tacks let's bring on the magic.  MAGNETISM Magnetism is the most recently name for psychic powers, coined by Franz Mesmer who was in fact an Eldren. Generally speaking all Eldren know some Magnetic powers and they're uncommon but possible in other subspecies. Non-Eldren who know Magnetism tend to be alienists who use their powers to help their patients. Either way, all folks with Magnetism tend to have powers from birth and tend to have just one or two powers. They can control them to certain extents depending on what they know how to do but a lack of finesse tends to be the downside of Magnetism. The upside is that because you're a natural conduit for aether, they're easier to use and it's easier to gauge distance and range. Clairvoyance You know what Clairvoyance is, you're reading this thread. The law of England is trying to figure out where clairvoyants fit in with society and justice but most make a normal living or go for the fortune teller angle. To most people, being clairvoyant isn't much different than normal, you just have a different sense you have. I'll be including the difficulties for the powers.
Spiritualism Spiritualists/mediums have a direct connection to the spirit world and the aether of ghosts...and also demons. Foul Failures when using Spiritualist abilities result in demonic possession or being ridden by a ghost that will automatically end when the power ends. The best way to avoid this is to do this in groups where you all hold hands because each person in the séance adds +1 Resolve to resist possession.
Goeticism As previously mentioned, the existence of Goeticism is highly contentious within the church and other major religions. They firmly believe that Goeticism is not a form of Magnetism and magic but a blessing bestowed by the Host of Heavens upon a mortal servant that allows them to wield miracles. Fundamentally Goeticism lets you talk to the angels and archons by putting you in tune with their aetheric frequencies. This tends to manifest around puberty in whoever and this tends to be a Come To Jesus moment where they turn to the church or whatever organized religion they dig. All Goetic spells are just a flat Presence+Goeticism roll to speak to the angels and beg for help. The major benefit is that Goetic spellcasters aren't limited to one or two spells. The major downside isGM DICKERY. quote:As they cannot call on their power that often, goeticists aren't limited to one or two specific abilities, but can make use of any of the abilities listed for goeticism. However, they don’t have access to them all of the time. When the goeticist buys goetic abilities with the Goeticism Talent, she doesn’t get to decide what they are. Instead, the Gamesmaster decides which goetic abilities the adventurer actually has at the start of a session, but doesn’t tell the player what has been chosen. Plus there's the fact that a Goetic spellcaster has to follow the same kind of rules a Cleric theoretically follows (sans "have a holy symbol" with you to cast through). Failure to get a single success when praying to cast a spell (before black dice eat failure or there's a foul failure) results in your prayer being ignored and your faith being shaken. The results of having your faith shaken include (but are not limited to, depending on how the GM feels you need to redeem yourself or comes up with something they want to use):
So what Goetic spells are there?
This is the first installment of magical categories. I will be taking these group-by-group for easier digestion. They don't get better. Buckle the gently caress up. NEXT TIME: Empirical Thaumaturgy/Hermetic magic. Hermetic magic is way more offense-oriented and generally useful than Magnetism is. It is also...better but it begins the annoying trend of "you're allowed to do stuff but you're not allowed to do cool stuff".
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 08:01
|
|
|
JcDent posted:
It’s vancian but pared back a lot compared to dnd, plus stunts are simpler
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 08:38
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:Going Loud works because Demon is a spy game, and you're doing it the same way a spy does it when he pulls the assault rifles and grenades and body armor out to blast through the cops with handguns. I think that conceptually it could be made to work in any sort of setting or most games, largely you just need to change what the player sacrifices and how it's fluffed. Maybe you long-term(or even permanently) burn out some points in a stat after the roll, in exchange for doubling it for the roll, or if there's a miscast table, you go: "I'll take +2 WIZARD POINTS in exchange for rolling twice on the WIZARD FUCKUP table or rolling once on the WIZARD FUCKUP X2 table." It changes it from "you are permanently powerful and permanently at risk of exploding" to "you are permanently as strong as everyone else(or perhaps a bit weaker), but you can elect to take an extra risk or burn a scarce/limited resource in exchange for a big punch now."
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 09:47
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:It changes it from "you are permanently powerful and permanently at risk of exploding" to "you are permanently as strong as everyone else(or perhaps a bit weaker), but you can elect to take an extra risk or burn a scarce/limited resource in exchange for a big punch now." This can be rather neatly generalized to work on mundane actions too: get +2 to your punching strength by rolling for muscle injury!
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 10:52
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:The idea of Counterspelling being a lesson at boot camp is both cool and good. In Dragons of Babel and Iron Dragon's Daughter, everyone with money knows the first thing you do when a wizened old hag screams a prophecy at you is to consult your lawyer. If he doesn't know how to handle being fated to topple your family's grandest tower in the year of waning sunlight, he can refer you to someone who can. Worst case, you can always sue.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 11:00
|
|
|
JcDent posted:What does Shadow of Demon Lord do to limit mages? I guess this should be a reminder to me to finish my F&F of the game because magic is the next section. But in a nutshell, the game limits magic through giving casters small numbers of spells and giving those spells strict mechanical limits that don't allow them to have an inordinate impact on the narrative. 5th-level spells are powerful, but are almost all combat spells, and you will almost always only get one of them with one casting per rest. The vast majority of spells require a roll, and your castings of higher-level spells are pretty restricted. There's no "I win" spells, and you'll never be as consistent a damage dealer as a martial character. Most all-magic builds are about the gimmick your Path gives you. For instance, the Sorcerer is all about exploding with power after juicing themselves up, so you want to get in close to the fight and push that damage into your enemies. So one potential route there would be to specialize in Destruction magic (damage spells that cause you harm in the process) and picking up the Destroyer Master Path, which gives you even more self-explody power that you can form into beams. But for instance the top-level Destruction spell is Disintegrate, which deals 6 damage to the caster in exchange for making a Will attack against a target's Agility. If you succeed, they take 9d6 damage and are killed instantly if that attack incapacitates them (when damage equals total health). That's pretty strong, sure. But let's say you're fighting a Master-level enemy like the typical Dragon. They have 160 Health, an Agility of 13, and Spell Defense, which causes spells attacking them to deal half damage, and attackers take 1 bane to spell attacks. Attacking Agility is way better than attacking Defense (dragons have 23 Defense), but that attack roll is gonna have 1 bane to it. So if you pump your Will up as much as you can, you might have like a +5 to the roll, but that bane is -1d6. That can be mitigated by using your Sorcerer talent to take on strain and give yourself a boon, but that puts you at risk of exploding (not all bad if you're in close with the dragon). So your damage is gonna top out at 27 (half because of the Spell Defense trait), but that's super rare. Using Spell Recovery from the Magician you could potentially use Disintegrate 3 times in a day, but the self-damage will quickly outpace the healing and even then you're not going to take down the dragon by yourself. By comparison, in one Master-level playtest I ran, the fighter character was doing between 5d6 and 8d6 damage per swing, and the technomancer summoned an Iron Man suit that let them swing twice per round for 2d6+1. Both of those would not be halved by the dragon's Spell Defense, and have a lot more mileage than a level 5 spell. Of course this Magician/Sorcerer/Destroyer isn't going to be totally useless in a dragon fight either. They have other spells, and even though Spell Defense will halve their damage, they can still contribute meaningfully. The game rewards specialization with more powerful spells, but diversifying a bit can also give you more options when fighting badass enemies like a dragon. Lots of enemies have Spell Defense, so straight-up damage isn't going to work, and the bane to spell attack rolls can really dampen casters' effectiveness.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 13:07
|
|
|
Among the infinite levels of the Abyss is one composed entirely of The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 68: The Deck of Sphinxes, Tag Sales, and Tanar’ri 383: Choices The PCs are strolling through the forest and run into a criosphinx. It demands that they pay 100 gp per person as a toll, OR correctly answer a riddle! Or all die. It makes it very clear that it would prefer the gold over the other options, and will even take other forms of payment. However, it will reluctantly let them challenge the riddle if they insist. The riddle is: “I am the power of life, the source of all emotion, and yet I sit trapped in a cage of white. What am I?” They have three minutes to answer. Not that hard, even though the sphinx refuses to repeat it or give hints. It will look very disappointed if they answer “a heart,” but let them go on. I like the how the sphinx clearly doesn’t like the riddle game, but keeps it up out of… a sense of obligation? A fundamental racial imperative? Keep. P.S. The sphinx isn’t listed as having any treasure. I like to think that’s because it's never actually successfully exacted a toll before. 384: Estate Sale At the “modestly palatial” home of an adventurer who died recently, there’s an, uh, estate sale going on. There are even signs around town advertising it. Lots of adventurer-types there: only about a fourth of the folks there ”look like they work at a job for a living.” There are magical items on auction, proceeds going to charity. The DM is told pretty much to decide what’s on sale and what it goes for, but the prices should be very high since it’s magic items with no danger involved. Although silly, this fits with a certain type of campaign world. My only qualm is that the DM would have to do prep work, or just improv a lot of things very quickly. It’s screaming out for some random tables about what strange things are on offer and what weird personalities are attending. Still, keep. Can always send it back if the DM's not up to the task when it's drawn. 385: The Hunter “There’s a molydeus on the Prime Material Plane that is here chasing a renegade tanar’ri.” Straight and to the point. Not trying to hide its nature or purpose, it contacts the PCs, interrogates them, accuses them of withholding info, tries to polymorph one into a sheep to demonstrate its power, and finally attacks them all “to prevent its target from knowing of the hunter’s existence on the Prime Material Plane.” What? ...Look, I know it’s Chaotic Evil, but I’m checking the Monstrous Manual and these things have “high to exceptional” intelligence. Is this one just insane, or what? Did it get fed false information? Have the PCs had contact with demons before that would make this insane suspicion justified? Something like this could be cool as part of some ongoing plotline stemming from the PCs dealing with demons. As a random encounter, it’s just... random. And to top it off, as written, there’s no room for PC negotiation or cleverness. Pass. 386: Covenants Deep in a dungeon, the PCs run into a balor in search of followers on the Material Plane. It’s ready to bargain - it’ll do them each a great service (“up to the power level of a full wish spell") in exchange for worship and future sacrifices. It warns them that “no” is not an option (indeed, it’ll even use suggestion to push reticent members), and that it’s going to be really cheesed if it has to drag itself back to the Prime to punish anyone who doesn’t hold up their end of the deal. Definitely intriguing - this might produce some fun plot threads. Keep. Dallbun fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jan 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 14:13
|
|
|
Mystic Mongol posted:It turned them green. Prism posted:Not a roc, but I should have linked it when baby owlbears came up. They just got mentioned again so dammit I'm counting it. Tuxedo Catfish posted:i'm not sure how serious you are but no, "insane power but you have a random chance of arbitrarily exploding" is an awful mechanic
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 16:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:52 |
|
|
JackMann posted:I saved up my Cheese Dudes cereal box tops and turned them in for a mention on System Mastery! They plugged my blog! These are really good.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 16:41
|
|
