Sycarion Diversions

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Category: Electrum Pieces (Page 121 of 156)

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Reclaimed Lands Tweets In Order

March 19, 2011 /

I posted these on Friday while waiting for my ride to some camping, gaming, and hang-out time with my friends. Correction have been made to elucidate certain posts cut short by the 130 character limit (the tag was 10 characters). There are also additions due to my time being cut short. (My ride got there.)

  • Outlining an rpg project for Aug-Sep. The Reclaimed Lands.
  • Colonization spaceship crashes in a Hyborean age world.
  • Colonists are attacked after crash landing. locals consider them demons.
  • Colonists have early advantage, but both sides suffer heavy casualties.
  • A detente is reached. mind magics enable negotiations. all land west of the demarcation line belongs to the aliens.
  • Locals build a huge wall on their side of the line. peace lasts for 200 years.
  • Now the colonists are desperate. they need more space. They have not been able to master sea-craft.
  • The colonists are also suffering from a wasting disease with no cure - even with magic.
  • The locals are battling a demon lord amassing forces in the south.

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  • The colonists have a limited ability to repair their damaged technology.
  • The current generation of colonists (fourth generation to be born on their new homeworld) embrace local culture and magic and seek to travel beyond the wall.
  • Dragons are amongst those rare creatures that fly over the wall into the colonists territory.

Example Kits

March 18, 2011 /

One of the issues with kits was the special ability and hindrance that went with each one. The base class had no explicitly stated hindrances, yet the "flavor" version of the base class had a boon and a bane that somehow balanced out.

One example of this was the swashbuckler kit. The three special bonus were an AC bonus (because he's so hard to hit!), Rogue non-weapon proficiencies at half price, and a +2 adjustment to the reaction roll in some situations. To balance this out was a hindrance that stated that the swashbuckler was a trouble magnet.

The purpose behind the first two bonuses was to force a swashbuckler PC to take unpopular, but genre-correct weapons and non-weapon proficiencies. I understand the rationale, but forcing a character to take weapons feels like the wrong way to go about it.

I would recommend simply that a swashbuckler keeps the weapon specialization (just like any other warrior) but is required to take the tumbling non-weapon proficiency. Then I'd recommend the seafaring, blind fighting and tightrope walking non-weapon proficiencies.

Disguise, forgery and the like sound more like a thief. Instead of creating a kit with a fighter that wants to be a thief-acrobat, I'd create a buccaneer kit for Rogues that provide the appropriate weapons (black powder pistol, sabre, rapier, etc) and the non-weapon proficiencies for being a rope-walking cheat. Specifically, include the gaming, disguise, and forgery non-weapon proficiencies for the buccaneer while including pick pockets, read languages, etc. With the extra non-weapon proficiencies that Rogues get in my retroclone, the buccaneer will have everything he/she needs to sail the seven seas and charm his/her way through settled lands and territories.

The point is that both the swashbuckler kit and the buccaneer kits do not provide special abilities and can be created using the rules of the base class.

Let's take another example, the priest-monk kit.

Making the monk a subset of the priest is interesting. However, I would think that a wizard kit that featured a weapon proficiency in martial arts would be more interesting. Make the somatic components of spells a type of maneuver and there's a lot of interesting stuff you can do without bending the rules.

Honestly, though, I'd make the monk a different class - they would have the martial arts weapon proficiency, but I'd also give them a special ability that provides level-based bonuses to AC. Having a new special ability necessitates the creation of another class, otherwise the balance issues come back with a vengeance.

So what will kits look like? There will be five or six kits of each of the four main classes. The kits may provide a bonus non-wepaon proficiency, but otherwise must follow the rules of creating a character in the man dlass.

Warrior:

cavalier
swashbuckler
wilderness warrior (for all types of terrain, including urban)

More later as time warrants.

Skills and Non-Weapon Proficiencies

March 16, 2011 /

Just to get one thing out of the way. Anyone can attempt any non-weapon proficiency. In my old games, I had a rule that rolling a one on a d6 meant success in anything, usually with detecting secret doors or finding a trap. For my 2e clone, the GM can adopt the same rule, or make it a roll equal to or under 4 on a d20. The latter choice is for folks that must have complete consistency.

I made a minor edit in my previous post. Two of the thieves skills had Intelligence as the attribute instead of Wisdom. Rogues need to have dexterity to be certain, but a wise rogues know when to press his/her luck and when to wait for another day. I wanted more traditional thief skills to reflect Wisdom as a second important attribute for a Rogue.

Before discussing kits, it is important to mention how many proficiencies characters start with, especially in light of the Thief changes. Basically, it's the same as listed in the 2e PHB except that Rogues start with 6 non-weapon proficiencies and gain a new one every three levels. Not only does this put all characters gaining more non-weapon proficiencies at the same time (every three levels) it also emphasizes the idea that a Rogue lives by his skill, not by his sword or by overwhelming magic.

When it comes to rogues, this would appear to make them very powerful at low levels. Really though it allows them to be good at two or three of the eight traditional skills. It will still take until 19th level to be good at all of them.

As far as kits are concerned, I only want them to offer choices as variation of one of the main archetypes. If you are a thief, you can take the traditional package or one of these others based on description. If you want a swashbuckling pirate, he/she can do a couple of the traditional thief skills, boating, tightrope walking, etc. If you want an urban thief, here are the skills for that.

What I do not want is a player looking at the list of all the non-weapon proficiencies and taking four hours to figure out what his character is going to be. More importantly, I don't want the players to have to memorize a bunch of options and rules to be able to play. Presenting them as choices to the player, I leave it to the GM to create his/her own kits.

Next time, I'll list some of the kits for all the classes. After that, it will be time to talk about the two systems of psionics available in 2e.

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