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update notes

changed death and dying to use wounds, removed critical damage.

updated healing and recovery to reflect removal of critical damage, location damage, and include wounds

removed hit location and critical effects tables, too overwhelming, and would be hard to balance/ easy to abuse.

altered definition of Burning status effect to apply to more damage types than fire/acid

altered definition of dying and stable conditions to make sense without critical damage, and with new wounds

removed materia section from equipment section

removed mention of material qualities from the barter economy section

looking over enchanting now

Item upgrading and materials v.5 Continued

runes are gained by breaking down existing magical items/materials and from the souls of powerful creatures. runes are used in enchanting where they are expended in groups to achieve an effect abstractly described by the runes used, e.g. augment + movement + air = flight, though you could also use body + change +air + movement, or even control + air + movement. Each enchantment has a rune value that indicates the number of runes that must be used to achieve the enchantment but does not have a set formula, and does not require each rune to be unique. Additionally enchantments can be changed after they are created by adding more runes to them, for example changing a fire-protection enchantment into a more potent version by adding more heat runes. Runes from multiple enchantments do not interact, so you cannot get a stronger fire protection enchantment from adding a new enchantment that also uses heat runes.

the tentative list of 22 runes:

air augment body change control creation death decay destruction earth faith growth heat knowledge life light mind movement necromancy restrict sense water

Item upgrading and materials v.5

materials no longer have quality levels, not sure why I thought that might be necessary (it was for crafting / breaking down into materia). how much you have of each is represented by its base currency value as 'units'.

2 units represents 2 gold of the material at that material's base value, so in some locations 2 units of some material may only cost 1G if there's a surplus, or 10G if there's a painful shortage.

materia is being replaced by aspect runes! similar to the runes in mosaic, (/tg/ homebrew) mixed with what I already have as spell aspects. i want to keep the number of runes around 20ish but I want them to cover a lot of concepts so... it might take me a while to work out this list.

changing how health is quantified

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/wounding.html

using an idea from the above in conjunction with what's already in place (a confusing mess) I'll have what is hopefully a picture of what the final system will be.

hitpoints remain as I have them, once reduced to 0 hp additional damage is received as wounds. when major or critical wounds are recieved hit location is rolled and the wound effect table is rolled on using 1d10 for major, and 1d20 for critical wounds.Creatures without fortitude saves do not receive wounds, they simply become broken/unconscious at 0 hp.

to receive wounds a creature must be at 0 hp, when such a creature takes damage from an attack it gains an equal number of minor wounds. The maximum number of minor wounds a creature can have is calculated based on their strength, with a minimum of 1. every time a creature's number of minor wounds exceeds its maximum all the previous minor wounds up to the maximum are removed and a major wound is gained. for all creatures the maximum number of major and critical wounds is three and two respectively. Similar to how major wounds are gained, once the fourth major wound is gained, three major wounds are removed and a critical wound is gained, the third critical wound means that enough damage has accumulated to kill you outright, usually you should have been knocked unconscious already from rolling on the wound effect table, which will frequently drop your condition.

to begin dying you need to be at 0 hp, unconscious and with major or worse wounds, while dying you gain one minor wound per round.

minor 1+STR (not sure about 1 as the min value)

major 000

critical 00

death 0

note to self: recent changes

changed initiative to something manageable: dexterity + misc mods is your initiative, ties are broken by opposed d20 rolls. removed the special standard action to increase initiative.

removed references to per-round initiative checks

removed flat footed condition, as it overlapped too much with surprised

effects from disease and poison now stack, poison clarified that you cannot be afflicted with the same poison more than once at a time; subsequent applications of the same poison refresh its duration.

disadvantaged condition now exists and can be used for all "checks": roll 2d20 take the lower. NOTE: combat advantage exists in place of a general 'advantage' because I want more granularity for most checks, and there won't be a ton of stack-able bonuses that need to be calculated (max +5 from equipment, no numeric skill bonuses from powers).

removed "parry" special combat action because I couldn't figure out how it was useful in the new initiative context, and the actions it used were unclear

removed "touch" attacks, now called unarmed attacks, as there was 90% overlap

removed "adrenaline rush" as it's pretty useless Adrenaline Rush: While in combat, as a minor action during your turn, once per turn, you can lower your condition one step to instantly regain 1d6 hit-points. This cannot remove critical damage or wounds.

hitpoints and critical damage with regard to recovery

short rests and complete rests are the two main types of recovery. short ones heal all hp damage.

however I think i'm going to make critical damage non-persistent, which means it doesn't really "exist" per-say, as it's only used to compare against the critical damage table to determine condition track hits and wounds. After being compared to the table it basically just disappears.

I initially had it persist and halve healing to normal hit points as well as recovery from wounds, but I think that's a little too rough and is going to inspire much more "careful" play than I'm aiming to support with the rules as a whole.

I think having zero hit points as the minimum will serve as a pretty good reminder of how close you are to severe injury and/or death at any given time. Hopefully the clarity of the situation makes decision making easier without limiting available options; my reasoning is that whether to press the attack or fall back will be easier to decide, so you'll spend less time fidgeting with numbers and more time acting in character.

~homu homu~

#hit points #critical damage #resting

Trello

Ahhhh

It took me three hours but I found it again. I'm using Trello as a to-do organizational note taking thing to keep straight what I'm working on, will be working on, and priorities. I forgot the name of the site though, when I recently wanted to find it again, it wasn't bookmarked, I couldn't find it in browser history, Google searching finally brought me to a site where a bunch of people were suggesting tools they use as DMs for campaigns and someone mentioned it. Thank god I recognized the name on sight.

#Trello #tools #off topic

God and Devil

The have got to be numerous deities to support the inevitable variety of beliefs that are present in a fantasy feudal society. Additionally the deities need to be spread a bit around the various planes, as far as their home territory goes, not regarding worship but actual physical space, because while a god has tremendous power and doesn't need to play by most of the rules imposed on mortals, they still need an avatar and a place to call home at least.

Also i'd like for each god to have a portfolio of values that they represent as sort of an easy reference.

All the domains that need to be covered are:

#cosmology #deities #gods #goddess #domains #planes

Item upgrading and materials v.4

Materials have been reduced to

Medicine

Poison

Magical

Economic

Luxury

each of which has six tiers. Materials are primarily used for barter and trade, but can also be used to craft most mundane objects.

Materia is divided into 14 categories with ten qualities each.

Breath

Command

Death

Decay

Drive

Exude

Flow

Grit

Keen

Life

Sheen

Stern

Supple

Support

Each type of Materia is used for different enchantments and as reagents in creating magic items, performing some rituals, as well as in alchemy.

#materials #materia #upgrading #equipment #RPG #veil

milkdice

Item Upgrading and Materials P.3

I’ve been thinking on how to make upgrades for weapons feel more tangible and take some directed effort.

Particularly rather than have specific items needed only for very special high level magic enchantments at DM discretion I’d like to have a slightly more flexible system of material types and…

milkdice

I realized that having an economic category is silly because that’s just trade goods, and I want those to have specific information. Beans being generalized to “tier 1 economic plant” and mithril being “tier 5 economic mineral” is kinda flavorless.

but those would still potentially be materials for upgraded weapons, alchemy, etc. I think I’ll just give trade goods an appropriate material description in addition to the more detailed info? I think additionally the more generic descriptors can be used as trade goods along side the more specific. So I guess I’ll be keeping the economic category after all.

the only real issue I’m having now is the correlation between value and weight. i can’t reasonably connect the two for an item group, so how do we take into account the encumbrance induced by materials?

anyway this is the table I’m thinking would be used to track the amount of materials you have. The issue is that you’d need one table like this for each tier, which takes up a good deal of space. That might be unavoidable if I go ahead with the whole idea of materials anyway though.

argh, looks like I can’t put html tables in text posts… for some reason. So I’m just storing the code after this break

milkdice

MOAR CHANGES

so rather than having generic categories for different types of materials, imma magic it up a bit.

Everything in the world is made of fundamental concepts that can take the semi-physical shape of “Materia”. Any physical object can be converted into its component Materia with the use of a “Meta Forge”.

Meta Forges are different from a mundane forge in that they are a large stone bowl of sorts that is specially constructed and enchanted to ignite a cascade of dissembling upon the Matera placed within, when the appropriate ritual is performed of course (probably a level 2 ritual). the result is that, as long as the particular Meta Forge in use is capable of interacting properly with the given object’s Materia, (not all forges can draw out all Matera, or even all ranks of a single type of Materia) the object is destroyed as the forge separates the Matera that used to compose it, and siphons it into an attached “Source Casket”.

Source Caskets must be used to keep Materia from mixing with other types as well as from reforming into lumps of mundane matter again. A Source Casket can be composed of a number of different types of material, depending on its desired properties (weight, capacity, limited types, limited ranks). The usual appearance is that of a flat, rectangular coffer with a sigil common to all Source Caskets embossed in metal on each face of the Source Casket. Weight is anything from two to thirty pounds.

The ten Materia ranks: E,D,C,B,A,A+,AA,S,S+,SS.

Materia types:

Life, Death, Grit, Keen, Stern, Vigor, Sheen, Flow

Value conversion ratio for materials based on type and rank of Materia resulting from the forging. Table:

#RPG #veil #materials #materia #meta forge #source casket

I've never liked hit points as they've always been

I want something that feels more visceral! I want being "hit" to actually be my character getting physically/mentally/magically STRUCK and I've always been a little off-put how HP is supposed to represent more than just your ability to soak damage, but that is all you can use it for! So hit points are no longer the same abstraction as they generally have been since the inception of tabletop role-playing. In my game, at least. (as an aside, I like D&D next's hit points/hit dice method more than most others but it's still wobbly feeling in my heart when I play using it)

what was once represented by hit points alone is now a combination of hit points, the condition track, vigor, and fate.

hit points are a measure of how many scrapes and bruises you can take before becoming susceptible to limbs coming off. basically, how many times can you be stabbed before you rupture an organ, or struck before your bones shatter, or cut before an artery gets severed and you fall to the ground twitching and spraying out the last of your precious crimson life blood.

the condition track measures how much your fatigue, injuries and some negative conditions effect your abilities in general.

vigor is a measure of the physical energy you have to spare, use beyond which you risk penalties from a lowered condition track due to fatigue.

fate is plot armor, main character points, a deus ex machina button, or otherwise a means by which you can say "screw the rules, I'm a hero, I'm not going to die just because the building collapsed on me!"

#hit points

Classes are harder than I thought

coming up with a class progression is tough.

like, I seriously spent a whole day looking at warriors and came up with about a third of what I need, but I'm not terribly satisfied with it at all. For some reason I thought coming up with class features was going to be the easy part. I desperately want to get into a playtest ready state so that I can see how some of the broader rules and math work out in a real-time group setting.

#complaining #classes #life is haaarrrd

pbsarts

Can Dungeons & Dragons Make You a Confident & Successful Person?

There are some deeply ingrained stereotypes about Dungeons & Dragons, and those stereotypes usually begin and end with people shouting “NERD!!!” But the reality of the D&D universe is a whole lot more complex. Rather than being an escape from reality, D&D is actually a way to enhance some important real life skillz! It’s a chance to learn problem solving, visualization, interaction, organization, people management… the list could go on and on. Plus, there are some very famous non-nerds who have declared an affinity for D&D, so best stop criticizing and join in if you want to be a successful at the game of life. Let us know what sorts of crazy ideas you have, about this episode and otherwise: Tweet at us! @pbsideachannel (yes, the longest twitter username ever) Email us! pbsideachannel [at] gmail [dot] com Hosted by Mike Rugnetta (@mikerugnetta) Made by Kornhaber Brown (http://www.kornhaberbrown.com)

milkdice

I've been slamming my head in a door lately on how to develop improvisation in "Veil"

>>Develop improvisation

...

/facepalm/

but seriously, trying to get the right feel has me sitting for hours and getting nothing done.

#games #Dungeons and Dragons

auras

The current expansive list of magic schools is kind of a pain when it comes to defining auras. I think that there's not really any point having an aura based on the school of magic if there are so many schools to keep straight and just having the school doesn't really tell you much, if anything, about the source of the aura. Most of the time the aura doesn't really matter, as you only care about two things: Is there something magic, and is it dangerous.

magical auras as detected by the detect magic function of an arcana check tell the following things:

school of magic:

duration: temporary or permenant

source: area, object, or creature

ambiguity: each spell has a ambiguity value, the ambiguity of the aura is that base value, plus the caster's character level. The lower the ambiguity, the easier it is to notice the spell's aura, as you make an arcana skill check to detect magical auras, and the amount by which you roll under your arcana score is compared to the ambiguity of the spell auras in your target area, any with lower ambiguity are detected by you.

#detect magic #auras #arcana skill #powers #spells

property

Owning property is awesome, and I think rewards of property are appropriate from lords and kings, rather than what the adventurers might consider an appropriate monetary reward. rather than a giant pile of money, give them land (and some money). Securing and exploring that land can be the next adventure. the players can work on protecting any buildings they begin building. developing an industry to make money off your land, or perhaps just getting your way into high-society to mingle with potential buyers.

A listing of your land includes these values:

name

location

acreage

upkeep (including taxes)

constructions

-name/type

quantity

value

utilities (listed)

staff (listed)

#property #land #building #rewards

Currency and the value of money

I want money to be something the players really have to work for at every turn. But I don't want this to be because there's a bunch of money sinks to deal with. Basically they players should start with almost nothing, and be required to embark on an adventure if for no other reason than to stay fed, maybe hope to one day own a house. (note to self: talk about property next) they should be skilled enough to use plate armor before they can afford it, is one goal. money should have value, is the point. There should be a purpose for bartering and scavenging.

*avoid money sinks and traps.

*money should be tight enough that players barter and scavenge when they can.

the currency itself is going to be a silver standard specie. Copper bits are the most common currency, with a common laborer earning one copper for a day's work. In a large city guild pieces will be more common. They are minted and circulated by the bankers guild. A town guardsman is paid one guild piece for a days work. In cities with a big enough economy Bank Pound Notes may be issued by the bankers guild, allowing merchants to trade large sums of money without needing to transport it. A Bp is worth 50 Gp and consists of a paper slip representing a pound of silver in the care of the bank. A guild royal is gold bullion that may be used in a transaction between fabulously wealthy merchants and nobles or between cities, their main purpose being a store of value however they do not see frequent use as currency.

*cb "bits"

*Gp "Guilders, or Gil" worth 10 bits

*Bp "Pounds" worth 50 Gil, 500 bits

GR "royals" worth 50 pounds, 2,500 gil, 25k bits.

#silver #gold #money #economy #currency #setting

milkdice

item upgrading and materials P.2

I’ve been thinking on how to make upgrades for weapons feel more tangible and take some directed effort.

Particularly rather than have specific items needed only for very special high level magic enchantments at DM discretion I’d like to have a slightly more flexible system of material types and...

milkdice

I realized that having an economic category is silly because that's just trade goods, and I want those to have specific information. Beans being generalized to "tier 1 economic plant" and mithril being "tier 5 economic mineral" is kinda flavorless.

but those would still potentially be materials for upgraded weapons, alchemy, etc. I think I'll just give trade goods an appropriate material description in addition to the more detailed info? I think additionally the more generic descriptors can be used as trade goods along side the more specific. So I guess I'll be keeping the economic category after all.

the only real issue I'm having now is the correlation between value and weight. i can't reasonably connect the two for an item group, so how do we take into account the encumbrance induced by materials?

anyway this is the table I'm thinking would be used to track the amount of materials you have. The issue is that you'd need one table like this for each tier, which takes up a good deal of space. That might be unavoidable if I go ahead with the whole idea of materials anyway though.

argh, looks like I can't put html tables in text posts... for some reason. So I'm just storing the code after this break

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