New Class: Wild Caster

Just designed the basic concept behind a new class I'm currently calling Wild Caster. The idea is that they do not learn or memorize spells. Instead, they can attempt to cast any arcane-based spell, with a percentage chance of it either working, casting a random spell from the same school of magic, casting a random spell from a random school, or the energy fizzling entirely.

Actually, now that I think of it, I could add a 5th option: the energy backfires and deals damage to the caster.

At any rate, if I remember correctly this is similar to a concept that I've heard previous gamers express a desire to see implemented. Initial reaction?

Racial Benefits

Prior editions of D&D gave various bonuses to the different races when it came to class. Some classes were even limited to certain races. I have some Combat Proficiencies like that, but so far none of my classes are race-restricted. However, I just recently considered the option of giving a reduced experience cost to certain classes, based on race. At this point I'm not sure how much of a bonus it should be, or if it's even truly desirable as an aspect of the game. I would like to include some sort of technical variance due to race, but I could just include the bonuses based on size and the different types of vision and be done with it. Thoughts?

Neil Gaiman's Contest

Neil Gaiman has been putting together a full-cast audiobook version of American Gods, and is using a web-based contest to get talent for it. Popular vote determines the top twenty, and Mr. Gaiman himself will select from among them.

I've put together my own audition for this, of course, and so I highly encourage everyone to go and vote for me. Each registered user can vote once per day (winkwinknudgenudge).



Thank you.

Just A Father's Pride?

Why is it that a photographer can take a picture of my child, and then demand payment of over $100 for the digital copy and "rights" to print?

Yes, I understand that they need to make money. That's why they charge for the prints on the special glossy paper. Putting a watermark on the digital samples on the website, not even allowing download of lower resolution non-watermarked photos, and charging $120 for a CD with the pictures on it is ridiculous. You took a photo of my child. You should be paying me.

This hospital-associated studio doesn't do free shipping, even on orders of $1000+, and tried to get another couple bucks out of me by stating that their "free gift" still was taxable and put me into the next price bracket for shipping.

In the end, I didn't buy any of their silly packages - just an 8x10 and a 10x13 of the one shot we couldn't bear to pass up. I didn't get their CD, either - that's what my scanner is for. If they hadn't gotten lucky with that one pose, they'd have gotten nothing from me.

A Functional Brain

The world is crazy,
So crazy is normal.
To go with the norm
Is to be insane.
Sanity's rational,
Society's not.
The world's afraid
Of a functional brain.

Death and Dying

I found some RPG discussion forums today, and through them came across someone else's house rules for death and dying here. Essentially, it increases the amount below zero a character's hit points can go to before the character is dead, allows normal healing spells to work on a character that has died within 24 hours of death, and removes the ability to bring the dead back to life beyond that timespan completely.

While I understand not liking the revolving door of death, I'm not sure I'm ready to remove those spells just yet, and I don't know that I like normal curing spells bringing someone back from the dead, even at less than 24 hours, without the formerly-deceased also needing something to restore their mental faculties after their brain has been without oxygenated blood for so long. I dunno, I guess that might fall under the same healing spell.

I do like the idea of changing the amount below zero, though, for much the same reason as the person expresses: it reduces the lethality of a higher-level battle, where any hit sufficient to drop your character to negatives is also likely to kill outright. It also makes characters or NPCs with less than 10 hp a bit more realistic. That goblin with 4 hp and your 20 Con, 3rd level Fighter both need to hit -10 to die?

That said, I think making the "death threshold" equal to the inverse of the maximum hp is a bit much. I'm thinking more like half would be reasonable, and allow a bit more wiggle room without making it nigh-impossible to kill anyone at higher levels.

So, a third level fighter with a max of 30 hp gets dropped to -3 from a nasty critical hit. They make a save to resist falling unconscious. If successful, they are awake but still disabled, so they can't move as quick and anything more strenuous than talking causes them to take a point of damage. Unless they get their wound bound or stabilize on their own, they also take a point of damage each round, and if they do get bound it will reopen and need to be bound/stabilized again if they take any strenuous action. On top of that, any time they take damage, they have to resist passing out again. A couple of rounds resisting oblivion and still trying to fend off the enemy puts the fighter at -15. Unless help arrives swiftly, next round they'll die from blood loss.

This is extremely theatrical, allowing scenes similar to Boromir's last stand. I'll probably end up using it.

Captain, our shields are weakening!

In my present system, armor is capable of being damaged. It doesn't give less protection or fall off unless all of its hit points are gone (Even I knew that would be too much work), but it does have hit points, and its own damage reduction in the form of hardness, based on the thickness and material.

This means, though, that I need to keep track of a slew of different armor classes for the same character. I need to know what is needed to hit them directly, to hit their armor and/or shield if they have one, as well as the difference in their AC if they are surprised and therefore don't get their Dex bonus. If it hits the armor, damage is rolled to see if it gets past the hardness to damage the armor. Same for the shield, if there is one. If it hits the character, then unless it was some force effect that bypasses normal armor, it also might damage the armor.

Now, I could just roll the attack, tell the player what it is, and make them do all the work as to what it hit. Except I like theatrics, and heightening suspense, so instead I keep track of these numbers, make a Perception check for the character, and then tell the player whether their character thinks it will hit or miss. That's their cue to determine what defensive action, if any, they want to take. True, this may mean they waste some resources in defending an attack that would only have hit their armor, or that a failed Perception check could make them think they're safe only to have them take a solid hit. But, that's battle for you.

In an automated game, all this number-crunching would be handled behind the scenes in a matter of seconds, if that. In pen&paper, it's not so easy. Now that I've created this monster of a system, I'm concerned that it will end up being more trouble than it's worth, bogging down combat in a way that isn't fun, rather than adding theatrics and suspense. But removing it means I'll need to rework my armor list to re-balance it, since the hardness and hit points of armor was one of the balancing factors.

Thoughts?

Arcane, Divine, or something else?

Having split all of the available magic into the different schools, regardless of originating class, I realize now that I've blurred the Arcane/Divine division regarding the origin of magic. Some of the schools, like Conjuration and Necromancy, have a very definite Divine feel to them, though most of the benedictions Clerics got are now in Enchantment, and almost all their attack spells got dropped into Evocation.

Transmutation, as a school, has the most spells of any of them, with Evocation in second place, but the most expensive schools (in terms of experience cost for leveling) are Conjuration (because it has both summoning and healing) and Necromancy (because it can allow the caster to build an army of undead). These mostly reflect my preferences, I guess, which I picked up from my mother: I don't like messing with temporary pets/creatures, especially ones that can be changed with every casting. This is why I've replaced pretty much all the Conjurer's Summon Monster/Nature's Ally/whatever spells with one-shot, full-round summoning spells, FFTactics style. The entity bamfs in, does its thing, and bamfs out, end of discussion. Since it's summoning, not creation, this works and allows a Conjurer to summon things that do stuff outside the Conjuration school. Necromancy has a couple of modified spells tossed in to make it more like what it should be, in my opinion, but it's creation and not summoning which means I still have the temporary pet issue.

Back on track: the splitting of the schools means that some of my previous information, such as Arcane Spell Failure, is now either defunct or applies to a lot more than it used to. How do I deal with this?

Next up: Armor deterioration - Is it worth the hassle in a pen & paper venue?