In 3.5, arcane casters could learn spells not on their spell lists, but required roleplay, finding the spells and specially studying them. Strangely, that fact seems to always be missed or forgotten.
Agreed, that's always been how I did it. It seems KF just generalises this to "you can learn any arcane spell you can get your hands on full stop and have no list to begin with", which to be honest I really like. I just wanted to be sure there wasn't a "core list" I was missing or something.
If I recall correctly, in 3.5 it wasn’t only arcane spells. The spell lists were there and dictated what free spells could be learned from leveling, available items, and what could be used without the UMD check, but special study of a spell could get any spell, which makes sense given how bards are arcane yet have healing which is otherwise only on divine lists.
I often feel like an old timer. I started with 3.0, but my first group was all old timers that started in the 70s and 80s. My first GM started before you had basic and advanced dnd. Now everyone plays the game like videogames. And 5e, so many who started with 5e. People on youtube who talk about “when I was a kid” and they are talking about recent things. I watched as old school gameplay went from hard to find to impossible.
I was thinking of an orc arcanist or bard arcanist. Aside from some BG and personality, I haven’t done much with her yet because I thought recruitment had not started yet.
I’ve been waiting for you to open the recruitment for this, and you never mentioned it in the IC thread. Naughty GM! Don’t make me dig out the spray bottle! I will if I have to!
You seem to be taking the "recreate the Game" (like Paizo did with D&D3.0/3.5 for PF1) path using an OGL rather than tweaking it and adding to it (like many 3rd party publishers did with PF1).
Oh my intent is to create my own system entirely from scratch, which I call ART (Advanced Roleplay Toolkit), but Roads and Ruins is a sort of middle ground test bed of the various concepts using the ogl to fill the gaps.
I figure that most people reading my mechanics, myself included, have no idea what most of that specialized math stuff is, and frankly, there really isn’t a need to either. While I like math enough to find it interesting, pretty sure most would run away from any system at first glimpse of such math stuff. Not that I need any explanation of most of it.
Noting the public domain stuff is a good thing to note. It’s playtest material so I don’t mind most of it being open, but I’ll need to scrub setting material from further postings. A great deal of it is already under ogl though, which I’m pretty sure takes precedence, though I should make sure I’ve got the ogl stuff in there somewhere.
As for color of the text body, all good info to keep on mind, thank you.
This is a rough draft of my system, Roads and Ruins. It is heavily modified D20. The final step, removal of classes, is still underway, but I’ve been stalled on that for a bit, thus I present it in it’s current usable form so that all of you can tell me what’s wrong with it, and maybe even spot a few good things too.
A couple aspects are less simple than I’d like, but I want to see them in play before I refine them further.
In any case, I have the mechanics up on Homebrewery, so here are the links,
Older gameplay also relies heavily on the idea that the GM will adjust everything to the players, and on the idea that all roles can be filled in some capacity by any class through wits and clever item use (thus the extensive item list of “useless” items). Mostly that is because nothing was solved purely through a die roll. A healer can be replaced by extra use of potions and wands, traps can be found by careful exploration and use of animals, items, and negotiations with monsters (yes, in the past PCs would not always kill monsters). Offense can be handled by avoiding combat when possible and using tactics, techniques, and items when unavoidable. And so on. Combat as sport may dominate the community now, but combat as war dominated in the early days. The “requirement” of filling all roles in older adventures is more due to the shift in modern sensibilities than due to their designer’s intent.
Check out “Calibrating your Expectations” by Alexandrian. Great article on the topic.
Which topic specifically? That different interpretations of the game are possible?
More like the mechanics can have designs favoring different interpretations, and most notably that modern play and therefore modern opinions, do not jive with dnd 3.5 mechanics.
3.5 was designed very differently from what became the common view and therefore the common opinions.
It is interesting to read because it shows that the mechanics were designed around an old school way of playing that most modern players have no concept of. It also shows a depth of consideration in the design that most are oblivious to.
So whether you ever play with lots of mechanics or not, it is good to read for a better understanding of why 3.x is the way it is, and therefore why much of pf1 is the way it is. You get a better idea of how what paizo goes for is contrary to the original design.
For me, either of those options can be just a gimmick.
To me, a character concept is a rough sketch of who the character is as a person. What is their personality like, their motivations and desires, and their way of approaching situations.
Something simpler such as a race/class combo, a particular mechanic to focus on like being a tripper, or a simple stereotype like a haughty noble, are all just gimmicks.
I would be interested in playing if we would be staying close to an 'old school' interpretation of sorts, but it would seem it is not the case :)
I’m not sure we can say that yet. I tend to use pf1/3.5 style mechanics while focusing on old school style play and thinking. But maybe that’s just me.
A mostly blank sheet. I left a few things filled in as examples, but try it. I have a full skill list somewhere, but I forgot where at the moment as I stopped using it in favor of listing only those with modifiers.
Closing spoiler tags are missing a bracket so it can be copied (hopefully).
What’s with all the race class combos? Doesn’t a character need more than that before even picking race and class?
I find it interesting how race/class combos is what most people call out for a character. I need a concept first, so I can pick a race and class that fit.
What many players forget these days are hirelings and animals. I have a dog on some characters just for carrying extra gear. In times past, players would have dozens of hirelings, the 2e dnd dmg even mentions parties with more than 100 members, because that was a thing.
The way I see, if you’re not reworking every encounter to your group, you’re hurting the game. That said, “combat as sport” is much harder and more involved to get things reworked well. One reason why I dislike “combat as sport.”
I respectfully disagree.
We have many rule books and setting books to allow us to create our own campaigns, but many of us just don't have the time to do so and this is where a published adventure/AP comes in. These specific products are designed to be run as written precisely to let GMs with little time to also have fun.
Reworking every encounter to a group should not be required. Yes, you can tweak a couple things to take advantage of a hook to better engage your players, but not doing so for sure isn't "hurting the game" and I completely disagree with any idea that comes close to "having a right way to play".
This is wrong on so many levels. For example, it does not take any additional time what so ever, in fact, using an AP takes more time.
But I’ll need to come back later to give a proper response.
The way I see, if you’re not reworking every encounter to your group, you’re hurting the game. That said, “combat as sport” is much harder and more involved to get things reworked well. One reason why I dislike “combat as sport.”
Gestalt is basically old school version of multiclassing (minus the reduction in progression speed). It grants greater flexibility, but not really greater numerical power. Not really sure how mythic compares as I’ve never got to play it, but most of what I hear about it implies it just gives bigger numbers, which would be far more powerful and less interesting than gestalt.
Personally, I never liked the whole code thing for paladins. Captain America is the ideal paladin template in my mind. He has a code but doesn’t. What he really has is integrity. That is what makes a paladin in my mind. Not the armor nor the class features, though fearless is a natural result of the paladin mindset, no thought for themselves for any fear effects to play on.
Having a caveat of being able to destroy “truly dangerous” knowledge undermines the whole “preserve knowledge” thing, as it doesn’t take much to argue that any knowledge is dangerous. One of the lawyers from the founding of the US noted that he could take a single sentence from the most righteous of men and turn it into no less than seven different reasons to execute him. It is one of the reason last the bill of rights has so many protections against persecution. Same applies here and to anything that you want to preserve. There needs to be a blanket statement or a very undeniable line, otherwise it can be perverted into a tool to destroy what it was intended to protect.
I agree with Azothath. I think Kirth has done an amazing job, thus I keep an eye on his progress, but he, like the big companies, goes in a completely different direction from how I like to play.
Therefore, I can’t call it “bug fixed” everything, but rather I just call it “heavily modified.”
"Today, Kerekov and Meena returned from dealing with the cultists and they brought me a most interesting egg. They claim the cultists were performing a ritual on it, though the ritual was interrupted, it seems to have left an effect on the egg. It is, or was, a kobold egg, though now it has several arcane marks which seem to have been aimed at containing whatever the ritual was doing. I put the sketches and details in portrait book 475, pages 34-39. when I cast Detect Alignment on the egg, the results are inconclusive. I will let it hatch and see what the results are."
"The egg hatched today, and the creature that came out was questionably a kobold. It has clear traces of devilish influence in it's form, like a teifling but of a kobold. I have detected no alignment from the creature, not even the traces from the ritual anymore. The Firescale elders decided not to take the creature in, but they did give me some information on raising kobolds. I have decided to keep it around. Safer than summoning an imp, and potentially more useful than Sam, at least in keeping the lab clean. I am unsure what to name it just yet."
"Cinder is growing quite wonderfully. She is already very helpful around here, and has a talent for the arcane arts and may just be my most promising apprentice ever. Her demeanor is the complete opposite of her appearance, though Meena seems intent on turning her into another cynic."
This discussion did give me an idea for a new basic roll mechanic, instead of just comparing straight linear values, roll 3d6 and then set the DC to 10 or 11 (for "beat" or "meet or beat") then add a scaling value to the DC based on the difference in bonuses, so for example, when AC (not including the base 10) is only a couple points different from the attack bonus, you modify the roll DC by that difference, but when the difference gets larger, like 9 or 10 points difference, the actual adjustment to the roll DC is much less. Eventually, when the difference gets too big, a few extra points stop mattering. Might encourage more balanced builds rather than just stacking a particular strategy to insane heights.
Pair this with a similar concept on dmg, where the higher damage is vs resistance/DR or whatever, the actual dmg to HP likewise scales, so as the damage dealt gets higher you get less of a return on the number of HP the target loses.
I'll have to flesh the idea out, but it might prevent rocket tag if done right.
character concept: Cinder is inquisitive and insightful, except when it comes to people, which she has not had all that much contact with. Except for a few friends and colleagues of the wizard that raised her, she has been pretty isolated from outside society. She has a strong sense of morality, and the stubbornness to stick to it. She is now old enough and capable enough to fend for herself. She has always had occasional dreams of a place with evil boiling over, and she feels that it relates to her destiny. Her guardian encouraged her to go find her destiny, but had her train and wait until she reached 30. And she did, so upon reaching 30, she said goodbye and left to go find her destiny..
Kenabres is the city closest to where she grew up, and the place she keeps hearing about as a focal point for all the stories of the worldwound, so she starts there.
Build sketch: Arcanist with a few levels of paladin (probably 15/5 but I tend to grow characters organically after creation) Shadowdancer for the eventual prestige class. Will be using quick study and grabbing every scroll she can to have a broad repertoire of spells and the ability to quickly get the ones she needs for any given situation. She has some combat ability, able to use combat spells but not relying on them. She will also have some minor magic creation ability,mostly to create single use spell-in-a-box items (scrolls and potions basically but in different forms like bracelets, totems, etc) but a few that can cast a spell per day might be made, depending on how things go.
I absolutely agree with Veniir, except in one aspect. For a GM who trying to become more experienced and learn to recognize how these mechanics are broken, limiting the field of options does make it easier for them to start to see the real root problem when their players break things.
Also, ideally a GM should aim to use rulings, tactics, and environment to balance things rather than just boost stats. Boosting stats to balance things is the lazy approach. I'd challenge any such GM to run a campaign and make their encounters challenging without ever boosting stats and also by only using enemies of lower power than the APL, even in the boss fights. If they manage to actually make the players feel like they barely survived, then they can call themselves a good GM.
I am very interested. Not sure yet if I want Kobold or tiefling. They are two of my three favorite races.
I am thinking tiefling (cosmetically they are a tiefling of a kobold, with how tiefling works that means tiefling stats and small size). She has dreams of the invasion, which has drawn her there as she sees it as her destiny. She was tainted by an evil cult as an egg, and thankfully the group of adventurers that stopped the cult took her egg to a wizard, where she ended up growing up. The taint having made her particularly tough and scary looking.
I'm thinking an eldritch knight / mystic theurge conceptually. Probably start with arcanist and paladin. Prestige will likely be shadowdancer.
. One doesn't go to the game looking to play conan, but rather they go to the game to see what they get and what they can build from what is handed to them.
yeah, I think you are wrong here, and I'm pretty sure that you are not understanding that most people prefer systems in which they can control the outcome. Most people come up with a concept first and then build the character to fit, not get random stats and see what they can do with it. Point buy has become the preferred system because people want to play their concept, not what the dice gods allow them to.
I never said the style I want is a contender for the most popular. Most writers are of the architect type. Thus "most people" is irrelevant here.
I know the style I'm supporting is a minority, but it's a style that deserves to exist and deserves recognition, especially as it's much closer to the original "play the game" styles compared to the modern "play the mechanics" styles.
Just because the latter are by far more common doesn't mean we should focus on them to the exclusion of all else.
Your discussion of how bad stats leads to players killing off their characters because they are "bad" characters. That is built entirely on the fundamental mindset of "playing the mechanics." People who "play the game" don't do that, because it misses the entire point of "playing the game." Those "bad" characters are not bad characters to players of a different mindset.
I disagree, and so does the mechanics of the game. your suggestion of playing the numbers as dealt to you forces people to not play the character they want (I wanted to play Conan, but my rolls gave me an 8 STR, so no way I can play Conan now (non min/max system)). yet, the mechanics of the game allow players to play what they want (Man, I really want to play Conan, I'm going to spend more point on STR, let's say a 17, so I can start pretty strong (what you consider a min/max system).
Still missing the difference. One doesn't go to the game looking to play conan, but rather they go to the game to see what they get and what they can build from what is handed to them. Like an artist taking an existing picture and merely modifying it, building on what is given rather than dictating the end result from the beginning.
If you watch Brandon Sanderson's lectures on writing, one if the things that gets brought is the two types of writers, one type that explores and writes to discover what happens next vs the other kind of writer that writes for a specific outcome. Architects vs explorers. The difference here is similar, you are like an architect of sorts, you create characters from an end idea that you build with the mechanics, while I'm an explorer taking random bits as inspiration and building what I can from them.
You can see this in my comment of using the dice representing different stats as inspiration for description of outcome. Taking inspiration from what is given rather than dictating from whole cloth.
Mindset makes a very big difference in the experience of the game. Truly massive. I'd say the difference mindset has on the experience of the game is larger than the difference achieved by switching from d20 to palladium or shadowrun or whatever.
Your mindset clearly looks at dice as unfair, as demonstrated by your reference to better ways of generating stats that are fair. But have you sat down and questioned why you think rolling is worse?
Now to be fair in return, what I've been calling the modern way of playing has been around almost from the beginning. Gygax seemed to have a great distaste for it when he talks about "playing the game" vs "playing the mechanics." Now I have no problem with players being on either side of that distinction, but I've been bothered greatly by the fact that "playing the mechanics" not only seems to be the only kind of player out there these days, but it seems like "playing the mechanics" type players seem to have a fundamental problem understanding "playing the game" type play.
Your discussion of how bad stats leads to players killing off their characters because they are "bad" characters. That is built entirely on the fundamental mindset of "playing the mechanics." People who "play the game" don't do that, because it misses the entire point of "playing the game." Those "bad" characters are not bad characters to players of a different mindset.
I'm not making mechanics to play like modern play but with altered mechanics. I'm looking to support a fundamentally different mindset. So different that even how you judge good characters from bad is wildly different.
I'm just having a massive amount of trouble communicating the difference.
