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Yeah, I think you'll have a lot of people on board at "makes the game a little more like Darkest Dungeon" so really the rest is just making it good mechanically. Also you can name the new abilities stuff like The Abyss Is Made Manifest.
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Jun 20, 2017 23:58
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Darkest Dungeon is on sale today for  so I'm downloading it now to see what's up.
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Jun 21, 2017 00:00
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Serf posted:Darkest Dungeon is on sale today for I think you will get your $10 worth.
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Jun 21, 2017 00:04
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That system reminded me a little bit of the one used in Expeditions: Viking. You travel on an overland map between points of interest (settlements, ruins etc) but as you travel you build up fatigue, which can eventually cripple characters in combat. Dotted around the map are special POI's that represent camping spots, and once you've cleared out any vagrants/bandits/wild animals that may be squatting there you can set up camp. Each character then gets four 'timeslots' to assign to different tasks, two of which (one with a special perk) must be assigned to resting to get rid of fatigue. Then there's a solid list of activities that can be undertaken in the remaining slots, such as guarding (prevents negative events such as minor theft), hunting (aquire meat), preserving (turn meat into longer-lasting rations), cooking (chance for 'well-fed' buff), scouting (try to find mini-POI around the camp site containing resources), witchcraft (turning herbs into medical supplies), healing (use medical supplies to remove injuries/debuffs), and tinkering/crafting (create potions, items, weapons and armor). The different camp sites also have different stats for abundance of food (influences hunting), security (influences guarding) and quality (high quality shelter might give 'well-rested' buff, normally camping in a site will slowly degrade the quality but if you set aside a slot for cleaning in the morning you actually buff the quality). Likely too fiddly for a tabletop game, but might be an interesting source of inspiration for a homebrew camping system.
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Jun 21, 2017 00:11
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I haven't played Expeditions: Vikings yet, but I have dabbled in it's predecessor, Conquistador, which had a similar system (but it sounds like they approved on it. Basically in Conquistador every night you gave assigned someone to contribute to 1 of several roles, totaling their contribution (different people were good at different things) for a total value. It was something like guarding, scouting, hunting, and then other tasks you only did as needed, which was healing wounded characters, processing raw meat into long term supplies, and processing gathered herbs into long term medicine. What was bad about it was that there weren't many choices (sounds like they improved on that in Vikings), but what was good was that, while every class clearly had the thing they were best at, changing circumstances (both in terms of what you needed in the short term vs how hard/easy certain roles are based on your geography) would see you changing up jobs beyond the obvious best choice for each party member. Like maybe if you have a lot of meat to process, you leave only the best guards in that role while everyone else drops what they're doing to process meat. Anyway, I've been thinking more about the rest system, in particular about wanting to make heal rate at rest automatic (as in RAW), stop the complexity of long/vs short rest actions, and also expand the options to cover different aspects of the rest (since it was feeling like the skills were going in different directions). First of all, assume all rules are as written (pointing that out since I was working off of some rule changes the last time I posted my ideas). Second of all, in this revision the night's rest is divided up into 3 stages / catagories: Security, Recovery, and Preparation. There is one universal action for each of the three, but also a path specific action for each (novice path has one special action for all 3, expert and master paths would probably only add one). Each rest, the player can choose one of their path's special actions, the other two stages are then occupied with the universal action. So while there's now 3 rest powers per path, the players are actually only making one choice (what path power they want to use). So, that said, the different actions are: Security - Keeping safe throughout the night Universal - Stand Watch. The PC with the best perception among those standing watch rolls their Per against the Stealth of whatever enemy may try to sneak up on the party. +1b per other character standing watch. Magician - Sunwise Circle - Allows the caster to ward the campsite, allowing the caster to, at the start of enemy camp attack, automatically target an enemy with one spell cast from their remaining castings that night (or a 0 level spell if no castings remain). Priest: Sanctuary - Bars undead from crossing a threshold. Priest rolls contested will vs each undead, they cannot enter the camp until they pass. Rogue - Tripwire - Automatically prevents surprise (corporeal creatures snag lines, spooky monsters made of mist jingle little bells, etc). The Rogue makes an Agi challenge when using trip wire, success allows them to automatically knock one enemy prone at the start of combat. Warrior - Tireless Vigil - Allows the warrior to spend all night in his armor (normally any character fighting in the night doesn't have it on). Str challenge allows the Warrior to surge forward at the start of combat, getting 1 free attack before the fight starts. Recovery - Rest and recuperation from the day's travails(remember, normal Heal Rate applies each rest.) Universal- Soothe - remove 1 insanity from yourself or an ally. Magician - Meditate - Removes 1 Corruption received that day (if any). If the Magician passes a Int challenge, they gain an extra level 0 casting tomorrow. Priest - Holy Recitation - Heal all for 2 insanity. If the Priest passes a Wil challenge, the party gains +1b on checks against insanity tomorrow. Rogue - Gallows Humor - [I need ideas here. I don't want to over-reference insanity but I'm kind of thinking something like +1 damage for one scene tomorrow, and any other PC that agrees to take 1 insanity from Gallows Humor will also get the +1 damage bonus?) Warrior - Revel. Heal another 1/2 HR. The warrior may test Str, if they pass they get +1 str for one scene tomorrow. Preparation - Anticipating the challenges to come Universal - Practice - +1 to one attribute for one scene tomorrow. Magician - Tutelage - Generate 1 casting of a 0 level spell you know, for one PC, usable tomorrow. If the Magician passes an Int roll, the spell is cast with a +1b (or other minor bonus if the spell does not involve a roll, GM's choice). Priest - Exhort the Faithful - For 1 scene tomorrow, party ignores the frightening quality from enemies. It the priest passes a Wil roll, every PCs first attack that scene is made with +1b. Rogue - Coach - For 1 scene, the Party may use the rogues attribute for a certain challenge (choose the challenge when invoked in that scene, and choose one challenge type for the entire party). If the rogue passes their check for that challenge in that scene, all other party members make the roll with +1b. Warrior - Spar - Give all other party members +1 Def. If the warrior can make a successful attack roll against one PC while sparring, that party member may ignore one weapon attack tomorrow. Some of these seem better than others, and some of them are quite specific in their use. However, because each player really only have to decide which of their 3 path powers they want to invoke, and then the universal actions "fill in" the other two rest stages, these choices don't necessarily need to feel balanced in-and-of-themselves. For example, Priests may only consider Sanctuary when they know or suspect undead are around, they may only use recitation when the party is in a very bad state mentally, and all other times they'll go for Exhort the Faithful, and I think that's O.K. - the first two powers will be there for the rarer time that the Priest says "you know, actually, I have just the thing for this". Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 03:22
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A tiny bit of a double post but I don't want to just slip this into an Edit of what is already a very long previous post: I'll probably just make 1 more rest action for each of the (12?) Expert paths, and then rather than actually create rest actions for every master path (loving lol there's like 64 or something) I'll just work with the player to have it modify one of that characters 7 existing rest actions. For example, maybe Dreadnought (that's a master class about wearing armor right?) would say: You always wear your armor during a night attack, and if you use Tireless Vigil you also get +1 def that fight). Also, these path rest actions would probably improve at higher levels ( I think it'd be 5 and 8?) Like the spell slot gained from Mediate could go to 1st and then 2nd, And Mediate could go to "ignore horrifying as well" and "for that scene you cause fright against frightful creatures".
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Jun 21, 2017 03:42
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The problem with making SotDL more like DD would be that DD is entirely dungeon crawling, with rules/emphasis on cutting it as close as possible to maximize returns/gains. You could run a game or two like that, sure, but an entire campaign? Also, from my limited experience with the system, I'd say that either you don't touch expected healing, Insanity or Corruption, or you do a full re-write of the systems to avoid wonky-ness. F.ex. Insanity, I expect on higher levels as there becomes less 'bandits and wild animals' enemies and more 'demons and other horrible things' enemies there might be a bigger potential for Insanity, but at Starting/Low levels it seems to be a couple of potential points per adventure, and there's already a problem in the game that if the party has access to Life spells Insanity is pretty much de-fanged. You'd either have to add significantly more potential points of Insanity per adventure, or buff the current sources significantly for the mechanic to have any sort of impact when you can reduce it per rest. Same with Corruption, unless things really take a turn or you're playing 'evil' characters you could go through an entire campaign and not pick up Corruption points.
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Jun 21, 2017 10:46
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Jack B Nimble posted:First of all, assume all rules are as written (pointing that out since I was working off of some rule changes the last time I posted my ideas). Second of all, in this revision the night's rest is divided up into 3 stages / catagories: Security, Recovery, and Preparation. There is one universal action for each of the three, but also a path specific action for each (novice path has one special action for all 3, expert and master paths would probably only add one). Each rest, the player can choose one of their path's special actions, the other two stages are then occupied with the universal action. So while there's now 3 rest powers per path, the players are actually only making one choice (what path power they want to use). I think this is a solid idea, but the complexity and usefulness of it might be getting away from you a bit. You could easily simplify it down to just a single rest action. I like the idea of each Novice Path having specific actions they can do, but this is beginning to seem a little too complex for SotDL. Tracking and resolving all these modifiers and bonuses could add a lot of overhead to running the game. I do have a few thoughts on some of the actions that you may find helpful: Jack B Nimble posted:Security - Keeping safe throughout the night Security as an idea is a big sticking point for me on all this. If the GM decides to throw a fight at the players during their rest, the rest is wasted. Unless you get those 8 hours of uninterrupted rest, you get nothing. This is, to me, deeply unfun and does little besides bog the game down. Security makes things easier in the event that the GM decides to have an encounter during a rest period, but it still doesn't negate the fact that your rest is wasted, and you've probably taken more Damage and wasted more resources and are even more in need of a rest now. As a GM, I've used the threat of an ambush while sleeping as a flavorful element, but never followed through on the idea, and unless the players are flagrantly asking for it (camping in the middle of a monster-infested dungeon etc), there's no situation in which I would waste more time with an ambush. Jack B Nimble posted:Recovery - Rest and recuperation from the day's travails(remember, normal Heal Rate applies each rest.) These are mostly good, but you may still be overestimating how often Corruption comes up and how deleterious the effects of Insanity are. In practice, Corruption and Insanity are not that bad (although Corruption explicitly calls for a character to commit acts of uncontested good to be cleansed, so getting rid of it shouldn't be easy). I would focus the Recovery actions on healing things like Afflictions and letting a player heal another increment of the Healing Rate. As noted, combat SotDL is pretty deadly, and giving players an opportunity to heal more is going to almost always be useful. Consider things like giving a small bonus to Health for the next day or adding a point or two to their Healing Rate to make their in-combat recovery actions a little better. Jack B Nimble posted:Preparation - Anticipating the challenges to come I'm a fan of all these actions. It seems like you want to run a game with more frightening/horrifying creatures, in which case the Priest action is very good. The rest seem universally useful, and therefore it creates an interesting choice to make between that +1 Attribute and other useful stuff like granting spells and sparring. I have no critiques of these really, they're all cohesive and solidly useful. Overall, my recommendations would be to reconsider the Security actions and the usefulness of effects that remove Insanity and Corruption. Some counterpoints to myself: -I'm a pretty big carebear of a GM, so maybe others will ambush resting PCs more regularly? I'd like to hear other people's experiences on this, as I'd consider this sorta thing GM dickery, but I'm biased. -If you are planning on running a more horror-oriented game where Insanity will be a bigger issue, the actions that resist/remove it become more useful, so feel free to ignore me on that one if that's your plan.
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Jun 21, 2017 12:52
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Antilles posted:The problem with making SotDL more like DD would be that DD is entirely dungeon crawling, with rules/emphasis on cutting it as close as possible to maximize returns/gains. You could run a game or two like that, sure, but an entire campaign? I'm starting to think you (and everyone else) is right about that, and I think I can lose most of the insanity and corruption references easily enough. Really, even meditate was just more "you can get an extra spell, but also if you found that old scary book nows the time to read it" which is too situational. Regardless of whether or not I could tweak insanity/corruption rates, the bigger question is: do I really want to create a new rest system...then have a big part of it's purpose be to deal with the increased insanity and corruption I'm shoveling onto you? I think more healing is a mechanic I can work around, though. So I'll take another look at the Recovery options. Serf posted:I think this is a solid idea, but the complexity and usefulness of it might be getting away from you a bit. You could easily simplify it down to just a single rest action. In some ways it is one rest action (because you only choose one) but I see your point; I probably need to make sure each "universal" rest action is automatic so there's nothing to resolve with them. Serf posted:Security as an idea is a big sticking point for me on all this. If the GM decides to throw a fight at the players during their rest, the rest is wasted. Unless you get those 8 hours of uninterrupted rest, you get nothing. I read this in the book and then forgot about it; I'd probably just say "rests last 8 hours, if you're attacked at night you fight as you were the day before and then take your rest as normal". Regarding attacking the players at all, what can I say, my gaming group considers that normal (not all the time, probably not even commonly, but certainly not unexpected). However, a bigger problem is that a player who declares their use of a special security action will waste their rest action if they're not attacked. Since attacking the camp is, like in your game, more a threat than a nightly occurrence, it's silly to expect players to sacrifice something good to protect against it. I mean, even if they did they're going to get frustrated when I say "Ok, the Rogue uses trip wires....there are no fights that night! Lets move on to how much awesome drinking that warrior did." Really, I could probably either 1) leave the "stand watch" action as-is, and just make the active parts of the other actions take place every camp fight. That way no one wastes any resources preparing for an attack that might not come or really 2) just drop security all together, probably switch the rest system to over to worrying about whether you choose your special Recovery and Preparation action. These are mostly good, but you may still be overestimating how often Corruption comes up and how deleterious the effects of Insanity are. In practice, Corruption and Insanity are not that bad (although Corruption explicitly calls for a character to commit acts of uncontested good to be cleansed, so getting rid of it shouldn't be easy). I would focus the Recovery actions on healing things like Afflictions and letting a player heal another increment of the Healing Rate. As noted, combat SotDL is pretty deadly, and giving players an opportunity to heal more is going to almost always be useful. Consider things like giving a small bonus to Health for the next day or adding a point or two to their Healing Rate to make their in-combat recovery actions a little better. Serf posted:Overall, my recommendations would be to reconsider the Security actions and the usefulness of effects that remove Insanity and Corruption. So I largely ditch insanity/make anything I want to happen an automatic benefit because who wants to choose that each night. I'll probably make all the recovery powers "things that specifically buff you, because you're better rested or something", whereas all the Perpetration powers are "you're taking time out to improve the group".Then I change Soothe to Wound Care: +1 HR, rewrite some or all of the recovery options, and then make the nightly rest a choice of one of those 4 options per PC (2 universal, 2 path). Also, when I combine them all into one pile I can stop worrying about how Practice buffs you while every other "preparation" power buffs the party. So a Rogue could choose: Wound Care (if things have gone very badly and they need the extra healing) Gallows Humor (if they want more personal damage) Coach (if they're worried about the group having to pass some challenge) or Practice (if they want a non combat buff for themselves). Hmn, honestly I need to see if I can make all the "recovery" options (most of which need a rewrite if I'm going to stop referencing insanity and corruption) compelling enough to compete with the "preparation" options, which I agree seem the best/most interesting. Like, if I was a mage I'd want to use tutelage every time, even above and beyond giving myself a spell. Especially if another player and I got used to them having a spell, and then one night I was like "sorry bro gotta look out for #1". I wonder if it would be so bad to just boil it all down to: here's your preparations bonuses, it's stuff your character did over night. But then there are no choices being made? Or is the resolution of the preparation mechanic itself enough interesting choices? Edit - I just realized the answer is that the Preparation powers are so much more interactive than the others. Like, Spar vs Revel is a really different design. Revel should be something like: You convince the whole party to a raucous drinking session. Everyone gets X bonus for tomorrow, and whoever wins the drinking match by rolling Str gets Y bonus. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 13:49
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I'm not keen on things like Revel and Gallows Humour being tied to novice paths - the paths are very broad and those specific moves feel tied to a specific personality type. Maybe players could choose some of their moves are rather than them being class linked?
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Jun 21, 2017 16:33
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You're right, novice path rest actions should be both broad and fundamental, whereas expert path rest actions should be more specific in both thier effect and fluff. All priests might give mortals the mental strength to face fearful creatures, but the paladin should have something befffiting thier high moral code, vs the druid doing something with nature, etc.
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Jun 21, 2017 17:34
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Maybe add some crafting during camping, using the Forbidden Rules stuff? Obv. no hammering out a suite of plate armor in a night, but stuff like whipping up a healing potion or two, or cooking up a particularly fortifying meal that f.ex. gives a boon to challenges to resist fatigue? Likewise, if a PC's got the correct Professions they can try foraging around the campsite for useful plants/herbs, or try to gather some food?
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Jun 21, 2017 21:39
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Antilles posted:Maybe add some crafting during camping, using the Forbidden Rules stuff? Obv. no hammering out a suite of plate armor in a night, but stuff like whipping up a healing potion or two, or cooking up a particularly fortifying meal that f.ex. gives a boon to challenges to resist fatigue? Likewise, if a PC's got the correct Professions they can try foraging around the campsite for useful plants/herbs, or try to gather some food? Oh this is actually a smart turn. Don't tie it to paths, tie it to professions. So just think up general ideas (like cooking, foraging, security, gear maintenance, study, medicine) and assign it to applicable professions, and the more professions with that overlap or the stronger the justification the bigger the bonus or pay off. This makes professions even more valuable. Does run a little counter to Jack's original vision/minigame since it's more abstract and less discrete powers/roles, but I think can do a great job of showing how 2 priests or wizards can be very different, and avoids you having to come up with abilities for every path.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:35
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No I like it. One thing I know I want do in the game is actually have the players pick thier profession during what my gaming group has always called BGPs, between game points, basically abstractions of what the character is up to, long term, between the adventures. I mean they'll still mostly get professions when and how the game says, but this way I can make a list of jobs, sort of like what you could find in the ff tactics pubs, and they'll give a proffession, a major bonus, and a minor bonus. Like: Shipmate on a trading vessel to city x. Gives profession sailor (or whatever) Major Bonus: traveled to x (major bonuses will be custom bonuses they can remind me of when they think it's appropriate) Minor bonus: money (minor bonuses will be of a list of universal things) Then, ill probably have very short mini adventures of one scene per job, with the PC who took the job playing that character, and everyone else playing Npcs. This way i can quickly bring to life both the thing the PC has been doing for months and the people they've met. Doing the single scene of each players BGP would be one gaming session, and give a real sense of time and place to the game. The actual adventures are going to be singular crisseses that draw all the Pcs together again. So yes, I'm pumped for professions and would love a way to expand thier use.
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Jun 21, 2017 23:27
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I ran A Year Without Rain last night for some goons, and I've got a trip report: The players caught on to the mystery pretty quickly, and found their way to the well before long. On the first day they went ahead and descended into the well and into the ruins. Per the adventure, the strongest character was given a suit of mail armor by the blacksmith, but here's the thing: mail armor requires a Strength of 13 or it fucks you on Strength and Agility rolls, and I don't think the 15 Defense is worth the tradeoff. A much more reasonable option would be to give the character and brigandine instead, which is Defense 13 but only requires 11 Strength. The characters explored the ruins, using waterskeins to avoid the heat penalties to Health (which are really nasty), and managed to disarm the blade trap in the first hallway (the adventure doesn't specify that you can do this, but c'mon), and killed the large spider in the next room. After that they fought the animated corpses in the bottom room, which was a pretty good fight. Animated corpses are a great enemy for 0-level groups as they aren't too tough and go down pretty quick. Also, one player hit on the idea of attacking with their torch against the very dry corpses, and that was really clever so I added 1d6 of fire damage to those attacks. After that the players entered the blasted chamber and were attacked by the Laugher in the Well. Per the book, the medium construct in the room should've attacked, but instead I just had it reveal itself and observe. The characters mostly chipped away at the Laugher while her attacks were horribly devastating. I don't think she missed a single attack. One player managed to tame the construct and got it to fight with them, but the Laugher still ended up killing 2 PCs before she finally died. By that point we were out of time, and the players never dealt with the ghoul or the two tiny demons. Thoughts: 0-level adventures are rough. The large spider and animated corpse fights went well because they were reasonably tuned. But the Laugher had a Defense of 17(!!) at level-0, had a +6 and 1 boon to hit, and dealt 2d6 damage per hit. If she ever incapacitated a character they died instantly, which got one character. The other took 11 damage from her in one hit and died instantly as well. I'm gonna go ahead and say she was too tough. Reduce her Defense to something reasonable like 14 or 15, take away her boon to hit and reduce her damage to 1d6 and she would be way more appropriate for characters who have no abilities yet. Also, ghouls are not appropriate 0-level adversaries, and tiny demons can also wreck people. The characters could have left the well, and I allowed for the Regroup rule from Forbidden Rules, and each character had a healing potion as well, but even with all that things are really tough. I feel like SotDL would work better either as a funnel system like Dungeon Crawl Classics, and you just have each player roll up 3 PCs and if one dies, then it's not a big deal, or if you take time to tone down the pre-written adventures. Most of them were not written by Schwalb, and were written really early on in the game's lifetime, so I feel like most of them are overtuned. It's taken me 4 adventures to really get a handle on what I think can be done to fix them, and in most cases it involves trading down monsters for weaker versions, or just straight tweaking their stats. Also, the surrounding rule is a great one to use for 0-level adventures, as that boon can be clutch Last night one of our players, poster Astro Ambulance, came up with a great idea for tracking fast/slow turns in Roll20: at the start of each round when choosing which kind of turn you'll be taking, use can use the decals to indicate your chosen turn. Red = fast, blue = slow. When you are finished with your turn, you remove the decal, and when there are no more decals remaining, the round ends. Next week I'll be running a sequel-ish game to my first one-shot, and I'm also considering adding a Saturday game because I really love running SotDL. If anyone's interested in that, I'll be posting details on the Discord.
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Jun 23, 2017 16:10
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Nice write up! I think you're right about a a "funnel system" for more PCs. The one free adventure I read built in generic ish premades that would come in as needed, but a game setting built around the idea of the players being part of a larger organization would probably help with explaining why more PCs keep showing up, particularly at higher level.
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Jun 23, 2017 16:52
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How does one go about making a monk in SotDL? I've poured over some stuff but nothing jumped out at me as being implicitly focused on unarmed fighting.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:09
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Makaris posted:How does one go about making a monk in SotDL? I've poured over some stuff but nothing jumped out at me as being implicitly focused on unarmed fighting. Adept expert path and Martial Artist master path, both of which are in the Demon Lord's Companion.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:15
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There's a couple options for building unarmed guy in the Demon Lord's companion and a third in A Glorious Death, which is the big (small) book about playing giant blue vikings, the Jotun. The options in the Companion are probably more monklike, while the ones in Glorious Death are about being huge meaning you have huge fists with which to hit harder.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:15
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unseenlibrarian posted:There's a couple options for building unarmed guy in the Demon Lord's companion and a third in A Glorious Death, which is the big (small) book about playing giant blue vikings, the Jotun. The options in the Companion are probably more monklike, while the ones in Glorious Death are about being huge meaning you have huge fists with which to hit harder. Bear in mind that the one in Glorious Death is very dependent on being a larger size than your enemy, so unless you're a Jotun you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot by taking it.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:18
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Jack B Nimble posted:Nice write up! I think you're right about a a "funnel system" for more PCs. Your last point is exactly why I framed my campaign around my players being part of a mercenary group. Nobody's going to bat an eye when someone new steps forward after their predecessor catches an axe with their face.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:25
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Makaris posted:How does one go about making a monk in SotDL? I've poured over some stuff but nothing jumped out at me as being implicitly focused on unarmed fighting. Well, the warrior by itself can be a good starting point. Unarmed strikes still count as weapons, so they benefit from the Warrior's abilities. After that, the Fighter is still good (especially if you have Paths of Battle and can use the updated version). At Master, there's the Brute, or maybe the Mage-Knight if you want to reflavor the spells as monkish stuff. Weapon Master could also work, just by picking your fists as your favored weapon. But as mentioned above the good stuff is in the Companion. The Mystic is tailor-made for Iron Fist shenanigans, the the Martial Artist just completes it. Mystic/Martial Artist is also very dependent on not wearing armor, for that classic monk feel.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:29
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Sorry yeah, it's mystic not adept. My bad.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:33
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FunkMonkey posted:Sorry yeah, it's mystic not adept. My bad. Normally I would go Priest > Mystic > Martial Artist but Adept would actually make a really good Novice Path for that build too. You give up the Priest's heal for Spell Fighting at level 8, which would let you cast and punch at the same time.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:50
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Serf posted:Normally I would go Priest > Mystic > Martial Artist but Adept would actually make a really good Novice Path for that build too. You give up the Priest's heal for Spell Fighting at level 8, which would let you cast and punch at the same time. Maybe if you really focused on battle magic that would be wise. I would personally pick warrior for novice for the extra health and damage boost to what would otherwise be a pathetic 1 damage with unarmed until you hit rank 3. You'd be a serious liability at novice assuming you really committed to the monk theme. Edit: furthermore unless you picked Dark Gods you wouldn't get much viable close combat magic as a priest in any case. Buck Wildman fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 18:21
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You could also start out with Rogue to get +1d6 once per turn from Trickery, then pick up magic as a Roguery Talent. Or just use a staff (1d6+1, finesse) until you hit Mystic. Seems perfectly in-theme for a monk to me.
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Jun 23, 2017 19:36
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Emy posted:You could also start out with Rogue to get +1d6 once per turn from Trickery, then pick up magic as a Roguery Talent. A weapon of course would solve the issue - it depends on whether he really wants to be a punchmaster right out of the gate. Rogue could be viable, if a little riskier - with some lucky rolls exploit opportunity could be a brutal skill combined with Mystic's chi skills.
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Jun 23, 2017 19:47
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FunkMonkey posted:A weapon of course would solve the issue - it depends on whether he really wants to be a punchmaster right out of the gate. Rogue could be viable, if a little riskier - with some lucky rolls exploit opportunity could be a brutal skill combined with Mystic's chi skills. Rogue (like Adept) also gives you the flexibility to pick your own magical paths, which opens up better combinations- in addition to Battle magic and Rune magic, Primal has some extremely good buffs for punchmastering (one of the level 0 spells is +1d6 unarmed damage and a speed buff, Also note that this means that some of the other priest traditions may be more viable for this than you think (Old Gods and such). And in addition to the Dark Gods, Old Man Winter and both of the Dwarven options (Dwarven Ancestors and Honored Dead) offer battle magic, though you'd probably need to be a weird character or a reflavored human/goblin ancestor cultist as being a dwarf is kind of a non-starter due to their agility situation. LGD fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 22:56
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I totally forgot about primal magic god drat.
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Jun 23, 2017 23:24
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The only really bad part about the Rogue build is that you only can get a maximum of 5 spells/choices, which limits the potential of Rogue/Mystic/Martial Artist somewhat- being able to fit in Arcana for Arcane Armor and Harness Magic would be really nice to enable capping/near-capping your defense value at 25 and getting more casts of your low level Primal buffs would be awesome (you can take Arcana but Harness Magic isn't worth it if you only have Primal Magic spells to use with the power points [Battle having many more spammable spells] and the rest of the tradition doesn't really have much synergy). You'd still be pretty strong the whole way, and if given a moment of time or an Exploit Opportunity to self-buff with Primal spells, you'd be able to sustainably nuke a big bad for like 10-12d6 damage per round by sticking your boot in their face while having fairly robust defenses and excellent mobility. Potentially ends up a little light on self-generated boons though, since neither Mystic or Martial Artist give you any.
LGD fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jun 24, 2017 |
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Jun 24, 2017 00:55
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Got a rules technical question: Just hit level 4 as an orc, and per the rules I get a choice quote:Level 4 Expert Orc If I choose to learn a spell instead of taking the Rising Fury ability (mind you I have no career paths that give me access to spell usage), I would only be able to choose a level 0 spell, correct? Does that also mean that I learn the tradition associated with the spell? Let's say I'm actually a sorcerer and I get to choose a spell. Does it have to be a part of the traditions I chose previously? Or do I have free reign to choose any spell that matches my power level?
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Jun 26, 2017 06:31
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You can only learn spells of traditions you know.
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Jun 26, 2017 06:35
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So since I'm pure melee/non magic (since I'm a warrior -> knight), that means I can't pick up a spell even though the text gives me the option from an ancestry standpoint?
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Jun 26, 2017 06:55
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Pastry Mistakes posted:So since I'm pure melee/non magic (since I'm a warrior -> knight), that means I can't pick up a spell even though the text gives me the option from an ancestry standpoint? Correct. If you haven't discovered any traditions you can't learn any spells.
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Jun 26, 2017 07:13
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I hadn't thought about it before, but it would be cool as a variant rule to let a player pick up a rank-0 spell with 1 casting with that level 4 feature.
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Jun 26, 2017 11:33
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Serf posted:I hadn't thought about it before, but it would be cool as a variant rule to let a player pick up a rank-0 spell with 1 casting with that level 4 feature. You could probably do a decent "high-magic" setting by giving everyone a free Tradition at level 0, and +1 Power at level 4 or 5.
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Jun 26, 2017 11:44
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Pastry Mistakes posted:So since I'm pure melee/non magic (since I'm a warrior -> knight), that means I can't pick up a spell even though the text gives me the option from an ancestry standpoint?
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Jun 26, 2017 12:38
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The RAW has already been answered, and it's absolutely the right answer to a question about how the power works. That said, if you wanted the spell, you could talk to your GM and maybe there's a tradition you could pull a rank 0 from, something your character has dealt with in game; ex: you probably have party members who could have been/could begin to teach you the beginnings of one of their traditions, or you could seek out some friendly NPC spell caster you've helped before. But then you may develop some in-setting relationship to that religion, or school/group of casters, since you're learning a portion of their ways. Or perhaps you still don't follow their beliefs personally but have demonstrated to your party member both your own personal good intentions and show at least a respect for his beliefs and an acknowledgement of his power. So yeah, if you want to do it, and you and your GM/Party can agree on an interesting way to do it that builds on your particular campaign, go for it. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Jun 26, 2017 |
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Jun 26, 2017 13:46
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It would be helpful if there as a little parenthetical that told you that you can't learn spells unless you know a Tradition included in the level 4 sections. Once you flip down to the magic section you find out that this is the case, but just going through the book at first you would think that every kind of Ancestry offers the ability to learn a spell at level 4. That said, I think I would totally allow a character a rank-0 spell of their choice with 1 casting (depending on the setting, really) but that's obviously not how the rules are intended to work.
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Jun 26, 2017 13:53
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Yeah, don't forget this is a setting where magic's a bit... weird. Just being the target of a spell, or even near a spell being cast, can be enough to awaken magic in you. So if a player wanted to use his level 4 to f.ex. make a specific spell he's cast from incantations a couple times 'stick' I'd be fine with it. Not least because 1/rest rank 0 spell is kinda... well, naff compared to most level 4 ancestry talents.
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Jun 26, 2017 13:55
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