|
GrandpaPants posted:It is based on a background that you make up for yourself (with DM approval). So if your background is "Raised by wolves," you might have some equivalent of animal mastery, hunting, and making convincing introspective monologues on the nature of man vs the beast inside. The pdf you get for pre-ordering said they did that for aesthetic reasons and not balance reasons. What I did was decide on an arbitrary number of 8 skills per class, with those less than/more than 8 having to dedicate the extra's to their class. So rogues get 12 background points, but 4 have to be directly related to being a rogue. Fighters get 6 generic anything goes points and 2 more related somehow to being a fighter. It's not a huge deal as most players take background related to class anyway and the amount of points aren't a balance choice. I did find that it made people stop for a second and realize that their backgrounds could relate to things outside their standard class paradigm, which got them thinking a bit more (2 of my players are not very solid out of the box thinkers. The fighter's unique thing was abnormally colored eyes and the rogues was a difficult to remember face, whereas my human wizard was raised by the green dragon in secret and escaped the elf queen's dungeons and the monk is a training dummy from the Order of the Dragon who gained sentience in a freak magical accident and now refuses to wield weapons because of how much they hurt).
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2012 00:18
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 02:27 |
|
|
The other problem with statting out Icons is that players will read them and expect that to be the Icons stats. Some players get very upset when book information is changed, and the Icons are one of those things that HAS to be fluid. For example, I'm running a game with friends that's very ship based so the Orc Lord has moved into the ocean and is admiral of a giant Orc Flotilla, the Lich King is an undead pirate captain who wants complete freedom on the seas and has moved from evil to ambiguous, and I dumped the Crusader as unimportant and replaced him with the High Admiral, the Imperial arm stretching out into the seas to protect the interests of the empire. All of their stats would have to change accordingly, if they existed, and that might cause players to get upset and whiny even though they knew I'd changed some of the roles of the Icons. It's always easier in this sort of situation to put a "if your players fight these things, they will all be unique to the encounter and meet the need of each individual game, and as such can not be given statistics."
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2012 20:54
|
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The Priestess should have more prominent elements of being either a Fool, Cynic, or a Deceiver - i.e. an Icon from a previous age wrapped in a new package designed to do maximum damage. That's an interesting character. A Goddess of Light who really is in it for everybody's benefit, and only has meaningful conflict with her goals from fellow Icons...that's one-dimensional and blah as hell if you ask me (no one did, though). She represents all the good gods, who disagree, squabble, and on occasion doubtlessly fight over their version of the truth. It's also worth stating that the Prince of Shadows once stole halflings from a good gods dream (maybe) so it's entirely possible that he gets up in her head and plays around with the Priestess, too (he wouldn't do that, really). Just remember that she isn't organized and doesn't have a one true way and some of the gods don't like followers of the other gods and she's basically the youngest daughter in a family of 600 trying to explain to daddy what it is everyone else is fighting over.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2012 00:55
|
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:I feel like, for the most part, the ideals and goals for all the gender swapped Icons are still the same as their 'normal' versions, it's just how they go about it is different. The Gambler and the Diabolist still want to amass and spread demonic power, the diabolist through schemes and plans and the Gambler through..gambling and deals. What I don't understand about the Gambler is why give it a gender at all? If it's swapping everything else on the throw of the dice or the according to the whims of fate, why not gender as well? If the gambler cares only for what it can risk and what it can gain, does it need a constant gender? I like the idea of the Rose Princess, but I think it works better as the Shadow... in fact, their Duchess is such a similar concept without the whole princess in need of a night garbage. I get that she's the inverse of the chivalric ideal, but it's just so boring. At least the Duchess uses the image to hide behind... the Princess really is the chick in a castle using her charms. She's also a very negative stereotype, the whole "user of good men" crap. They could have really changed it up if she was naturally alluring and completely honest about her intentions, telling all men that they exist solely to fight for her, and that she's not interested... but even then, she's be reliant on others to do her combat, and I don't care much for that. I think a better gender swap would have been a cold and calculating military commander who thinks in terms of longterm victory and views her soldiers as resources to be spent. It swaps the fiery nature of the Crusader for a cold and calculating one, but doesn't really hurt the central combat and you still have a badass warrior. I like the Dark Mother, but only because when I think of the Dark Mother I don't even see an Orc. I see a roiling plague in mostly human form, spreading spiritual diseases wherever she goes and expanding her brood beyond the green. I know it's not in the write up, and I think they missed an opportunity to have a lord of plagues and the plagued when they replaced the angry warlord. And really, how much more scary would she be when every individual with a cough could be one of her servants in disguise?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2013 01:39
|
|
|
Mr. Lobe posted:Hey I was thinking of a fun idea for a magic item, and I was wondering what you guys thought of it. sounds interesting. The whole "when a 1 is rolled" thing is pretty lame. Maybe instead the demon can still see out of the eye, and sends agents to attempt to recover it. Encounters could stay level appropriate, but basically amount to a bored demon loving with a party because it's like free reality TV, thus giving you the opportunity to make strange and unusual encounters that appear for what seems like no reason, and also make the players paranoid about people always seeming to want the necklace.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2014 05:04
|
|