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Slank wrote:

If I understand you correctly, and I might not, I just got home from a long day and my brain is a little foggy, that would model how the populace might react if the government pushed too hard in a particular direction, but it doesn't really reflect having a limited available population.

I see more of what you are saying that if there were a more inelastic labor pool, that would mean a cap to what could be built per turn, or at least a rising production cost for each additional building.

You could manage this by ranking building slots per turn, giving some (say 3 out of 5) at no additional cost, then adding a flat or scaling cost for building more than the labor pool normally allows (so building 4 has an increased cost and building 5 has a higher increased cost than building 4).

This could represent the cost of recruiting people from further and further away or of paying higher wages / paying people to keep working when they are already fatigued.

For regional labor pools, you could have repeated use of the highest ranked building slots result in a decrease along the diplomacy track or even turn it around and have neighbors recruiting from your lands which would impose the increased cost on buildings that are otherwise free from the additional cost.

Ex: we build a house, a tavern, and a stable at the listed BP price, but we also want a barracks and a watchtower. the barracks then costs its listed BP price +2 extra BP for it being beyond the normal labor supply. building the watch tower then costs +5 additional BP because we are stretching the labor pool even tighter.

Let's say we can afford this, so we repeat it for four turns in a row, and our comparatively higher wages draws so many workers from a nearby kingdom that they issue an edict banning our kingdom's people from the upcoming fair, lowering them from friendly to indifferent.

A few turns later, they take petty revenge and save all of their BP to spend in one large burst, driving up costs in your kingdom...

That could work...

Hi Slank,

I've modeled the city population of a country as roughly 1/5th of the total population to put it closer inline with middle ages (although with magic, meh, who knows what it should be), so influx in cities comes from the countryside (which reasonably would be already occupied if there was arable land and some semblance of safety).

You could form a system where unrest increases with too much of one kind of development without another to support it, so if economy outpaces stability, the labor pool gets exploited, but if stability outpaces loyalty, people become disaffected.

Something like that?
-Oli

If I understand you correctly, and I might not, I just got home from a long day and my brain is a little foggy, that would model how the populace might react if the government pushed too hard in a particular direction, but it doesn't really reflect having a limited available population.

So I just recently started a deep dive into the kingdom building rules and I found the alternative rules by Legendary Games and I like them, but the issue that is bugging me is the whole system, Legendary Games' rules included, derive population counts from things you have built with no accommodation for actual population growth. It's basically an unrealistically extreme version of "built it and they will come." You could argue that the population growth is from immigration, but what happens to the place the people immigrated from? Over and under population are factors that have major effects on kingdoms throughout history. Where are the restless, hungry mobs who can't find work because of a lack of infrastructure? Where are the noblemen who are complaining that here aren't enough peasants to work their fields? Why does your kingdom always have exactly as many people as it needs? And has anyone come up with a rules system to address this?

Is Neverwhen Technology Guide compatible?

I like your mechfinders system better. Specifically, the way the tech revolution allows multiple pilots to absolutely shatter the action economy without any guidelines for how multiple pilots increases the cr of the encounter, seems... not well thought out. Your system still gives benefits for multiple pilots, but they are limited enough that just having more people in the cockpit doesn't guarantee a win. The only thing I would steel would be the different flavors of power core in tech revolution. The Azlanti power core that can be recharged via spell slots and the Eox power core powered by dying creatures are extremely flavorful and add some extra functionality.

So, the lore about the Pact World's sun is that Efreet and Salamanders periodically spontaniously appear inside the sun, along with fire elementals and plasma oozes. My question is, how do they survive the radiation? Fire elementals and plasma oozes are immune to fire and poison, radiation being a poison effect, but efreet and salamanders are not.

So.... I'm looking to homebrew some damage spells and I'm having trouble sussing out damage benchmarks for spell levels. I originally thought the mind thrust spell would make a good source of benchmarks, but the aoe spells don't follow the same curve. Any assistance would be appreciated.

I'm also working on making scaling damage system similar to Pathfinder's, so the damage benchmarks would be helpful for that.

Any assistance will be appreciated.

I mean, the technology revolution book specifically describes mechs made primarily from trees, so a gelatous cube isn't too big a stretch.

Yeah, when I was working through the numbers in the post you referred to, it occurred to me that the "upgrading" BP cost (the cost per BP to upgrade to the next tier) wouldn't line up with the "construction" BP costs I was providing (the cost per BP to construct a ship of a given tier).

I was thinking of taking this difference into account by requiring ship upgrades to the next tier to first pay to upgrade their current BP to the next tier (paying the difference in construction BP costs) plus the full construction BP cost of the extra BP being added. But that's admittedly a kind of awkward way to go about it. Bundling all of those costs into the price of the new BPs, as you've done, is simpler and more elegant.

Nice!

I actually like your table better. It gives a more linear increase to the BP cost and the handwave for the cost to upgrade tiers is the cost of the upgrades to things like the computer core, structural integrity, power distribution systems, and all the support systems (like cooling systems) for those systems.

If the same theory of using CR X encounter value works for mechs as well, I would think all you need to do is replace BP with MP in the chart above.

The difference is that a starship's tier determine how many build points you have where as for mechs, if I understand it correctly, your number of build points determines what tier of mech you can afford.

Edit: my guess is you would have to design a pc mech, calculate the cr based on the minimum number of pilots, then use that number to determine the mech point cost. Unfortunately I'm not feeling well and my head is fuzzy, so I'm not up to the math right now.

This largely repeats things that have been said before, but to spell it out a little...

There are two natural answers to “How much is 1 BP worth?”, each of which has some drawbacks.

Take 1. The RAW Answer: Credits and RAW are incommensurable. There’s no (official) way to buy or sell ships, or to pay credits for BP upgrades.

CON: This requires players to suspend belief a bit, and potentially requires some awkward hand-waving from the GM with respect to why each attempt by the players to buy/sell ships, pay for upgrades, etc., doesn’t work.

Take 2. The WBL Answer: If you want to allow ships to be bought and sold, in a way that fits smoothly with the WBL assumptions of the game.

Since WBL and BP by tier scale at different rates, you can’t make a BP worth a constant amount of credits and fit with the games WBL assumptions. Instead, the value of a BP needs to scale with the tier of the ship.

We can determine these values as follows. You want a tier X ship to sell for an amount equal to the amount of wealth players are expected to get in a CR X encounter. And items are generally taken to have a value of x10 what you can sell them for. So the value of a tier X ship, and the worth of each BP for a ship of that tier, are:

• Tier 1/3 - 1500 - 50 credits/BP
  
• Tier 1/2 - 2300 - 57.5 credits/BP
  
• Tier 1 - 4600 - 83.6 credits/BP
  
• Tier 2 - 7750 - 103.3 credits/BP
  
• Tier 3 - 11000 - 115.8 credits/BP
  
• Tier 4 - 14000 - 121.8 credits/BP
  
• Tier 5 - 31000 - 229.6 credits/BP
  
• Tier 6 - 39000 - 251.6 credits/BP
  
• Tier 7 - 46000 - 255.6 credits/BP
  
• Tier 8 - 54000 - 263.4 credits/BP
  
• Tier 9 - 100000 - 434.8 credits/BP
  
• Tier 10 - 147000 - 544.4 credits/BP
  
• Tier 11 - 250000 - 806.4 credits/BP
  
• Tier 12 - 340000 - 971.4 credits/BP
  
• Tier 13 - 500000 - 1250 credits/BP
  
• Tier 14 - 770000 - 1711.1 credits/BP
  
• Tier 15 - 1130000 - 2260 credits/BP
  
• Tier 16 - 1780000 - 2966.7 credits/BP
  
• Tier 17 - 2600000 - 3714.3 credits/BP
  
• Tier

...

Can you do a similar breakdown for mech build points?

So..... I am running a game in a modernesq setting and I am planning for a global event that will bestow psychic powers on previously mundane npcs. One that I have in mind is an individual who gets kineticist powers and uses them to try and imitate Superman's comic abilities. I'm thinking aether kineticist for kinetic haul, using kinetic blade to form brass knuckles for super punches,and the flying wild talents for flight. I'm looking for more ideas to flesh out the build. Note that I'm not actually trying to accurately replicate Superman's abilities, just create an npc that can do Superman like things in front of a news camera.

So.... I don't really like the epic level rules in the core rulebook. I looked at D&D 3.5 epic level rules and am not really a fan of those either, so I've been homebrewing my own epic character level rules.

Among other things, I decided that epic level spell slots (ten and up) would appear on a class spell slots table as an extension of the existing table. Full casters were easy, (note that for the purposes of all the math in this post C is the effective class level and S is the spell slot/spell prepared/spell known level you get access to for the first time at that level).

prepared casters are just S=(C+1)/2 or C= S*2-1, after which you gain a new spell slot of that level every other level until you hit four spell slots. For cantrips, start with three, gain one at second class level and you're done.

For spontaneous full casters, S=C/2 or C=S*2. You gain three spell slots of the level you just gained access to at the level you gain access to them and an additional spell slot of that level each level after that up to a maximum of six. For spells known ,S=C/2 or C=S*2. For the purpose of first level spells known, treat it as if you knew one first level spell at level 0. Otherwise you gain one spell known at the level you gain access to that spell level, one more the class level after, and one additional spell known of that level every two class levels after that, to a maximum of five spells known for first and second level spells, four spells known for third, fourth and fifth level spells, and three spells known for higher level spells. For cantrips, start with four at level one, gain another at level two, and an additional one every other level thereafter to a maximum of nine

Among other things, this means prepared full casters get their first 10th level spell slot at 19th level and spontaneous full casters get their first 10th level spell slot at 20th level. Where I've hit a snag is in trying to extrapolate the the half caster's spells known/spell slots table. The level at which you get the first slot of a particular level for prepared half casters is S=(C-S+2)/2 or C= S*2+S-2, the problem is the rate at with you gain new spell slots of that level is inconsistent, and I cant seem to pin a formula to it. Please assist.

So.... I don't really like the epic level rules in the core rulebook. I looked at D&D 3.5 epic level rules and am not really a fan of those either, so I've been homebrewing my own epic character level rules.

Among other things, I decided that epic level spell slots (ten and up) would appear on a class spell slots table as an extension of the existing table. Full casters were easy, (note that for the purposes of all the math in this post C is the effective class level and S is the spell slot you get access to for the first time at that level).

prepared casters are just S=(C+1)/2 or C= S*2-1, after which you gain a new spell slot of that level every other level until you hit four spell slots. For cantrips, start with three, gain one at second class level and you're done.

For spontaneous full casters, S=C/2 or C=S*2. You gain three spell slots of the level you just gained access to at the level you gain access to them and an additional spell slot of that level each level after that up to a maximum of six. For spells known ,S=C/2 or C=S*2. For the purpose of first level spells known, treat it as if you knew one first level spell at level 0. Otherwise you gain one spell known at the level you gain access to that spell level, one more the class level after, and one additional spell known of that level every two class levels after that, to a maximum of five spells known for first and second level spells, four spells known for third, fourth and fifth level spells, and three spells known for higher level spells. For cantrips, start with four at level one, gain another at level two, and an additional one every other level thereafter to a maximum of nine

Among other things, this means prepared full casters get their first 10th level spell slot at 19th level and spontaneous full casters get their first 10th level spell slot at 20th level. Where I've hit a snag is in trying to extrapolate the the half caster's spells known/spell slots table. The level at which you get the first slot of a particular level for prepared half casters is S=(C-S+2)/2 or C= S*2+S-2, the problem is the rate at with you gain new spell slots of that level is inconsistent, and I cant seem to pin a formula to it. Please assist.

So.... me and my group run this a bit differently. Because the size changing ability doesn't specify what it gives, we assumed that you got the size up stat increases from the monster advancement section of the bestiary. It makes the rageshaper a frankly terrifyingly strong bag of massive hit points.... Which handily offsets the lack of DR bypass and low AC. It also makes the frenzy on a failed will save even more problematic.... So basically a fully realized Hulk.

@Slank, the thread died seven years ago and most of the posters aren't around any more. Check dates, y'know?

You saw it. Also I mostly just wanted to post part of the build idea.

So you go Eldritch knight, making sure you midigate the loss of caster levels (there are ways). You cast twilight knife first round and make sure your Mauler Architype familar or another party member is engaged with an enemy within close range. Then next round you cast chill touch with the ranged metamagic feat making it a close range spell. There is a rule in the core rulebook that limits the mele touch attacks you can make in a round due to a spell to six, but it only governs mele touch attacks, not ranged. Chill touch gives you a number of touch attacks equal to your level as a standard action. This means ranged chill touch with twilight knife gives you a number of attacks equal to twice your level, half of which resolve against touch ac and the other half of which flank with your buddy and get sneak attack damage. You're welcome.