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Well since my last thread seems to have been deleted**, here's where I'm at now. I finished with Races, Classes, Domains and now I'm on to Dragonmarks, which I've decided rather than being feats, are going to be Traits in my game. There are going to be one for each of Least, Lesser and Greater, which must be taken in order and give increasingly better benefits. I think I'm pushing beyond what Traits are supposed to grant, but I figure since there are setting repercussions/drawbacks I could bend the rules a bit. The idea I'm going with right now is that the Least mark will grant a skill benefit, the Lesser will grant some kind of combat/action bonus, and the Greater will be a spell like ability.
Starting with the skill benefit, here's what I have:
Detection - May always take 10 on Perception checks.
Finding - May always take 10 on Sense Motive checks.
Handling - May always take 10 on Handle Animal & Ride checks.
Healing - May always take 10 on Heal checks.
Hospitality - ??
Making - May always take 10 on Appraise & Craft checks.
Passage - ??
Scribing - May always take 10 on Linguistics checks.
Sentinel - ??
Shadow - May always take 10 on Sleight of Hands & Stealth checks.
Warding - ??
How would this affect the nature of the Dragonmark Dynasties? Would they be able to use their house-specific technology from some sort of lingering magical force of their Least Mark? Or do the movers and shakers of the Dragonmarked houses have to have these traits as NPCs and then be at least level...5? 6? to take the Lesser and Greater marks? How would this affect the Dragonmarked Heir prestige class?
What about Aberrant marks? Do they just grant you the ability to take 10 on a random skill check?
In addition, why the change to the Dragonmarks?
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How would this affect the nature of the Dragonmark Dynasties? Would they be able to use their house-specific technology from some sort of lingering magical force of their Least Mark? Or do the movers and shakers of the Dragonmarked houses have to have these traits as NPCs and then be at least level...5? 6? to take the Lesser and Greater marks?
Even the Least mark would still grant the ability to access House specific magic.
How would this affect the Dragonmarked Heir prestige class?
What about Aberrant marks? Do they just grant you the ability to take 10 on a random skill check?
I haven't looked into these options yet.
In addition, why the change to the Dragonmarks?
Mostly because I didn't like the way they worked and I was inspired by what was done with them in 4e and wanted to incorporate that into my conversion. I liked the idea of a flat bonus to begin with and the ability to tap into some magical effects later. Being limited by per day uses of their magic always bugged me about 3.5 Dragonmarks, which is why granting access to Rituals in 4e worked so nicely. I plan on doing something similar with the Greater Marks, allowing use of a spell-like ability, not based per day, but at some cost. Maybe gold, maybe hp, maybe levels of fatigue, I don't know for sure.
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Ok, so I've gone back to spell-like abilities at every tier, but I still would like to make them more useable, so what kind of cost would be fair in exchange for spell use?
Dragonmark Traits - 3 linked traits, must take in order. I'm also going to include some restriction for level, but I dislike the skill ranks method.
Mark - Least/ Lesser/ Greater
Detection - Detect Poison/ Detect Thoughts/ True Seeing
Finding - Sift/ Locate Object/ Locate Creature
Handling - Speak with Animals/ Charm Animal/ Dominate Animal
Healing - Stabilize/ Cure Light Wounds/ Cure Moderate Wounds
Hospitality - Purify Food and Drink/ Create Food and Water/ Secure Shelter
Making - Mending/ Magic Weapon/ Minor Creation
Passage - Know Direction/ Expeditious Retreat/ Dimension Door
Scribing - Message/ Comprehend Languages/ Illusory Script
Sentinel - Resistance/ Alarm/ Shield Other
Shadow - Ghost Sound/ Invisibility/ Shadow Projection
Storm - Alter Winds/ Fog Cloud/ Call Lightning
Warding - Hold Portal/ Arcane Lock/ Glyph of Warding
Thoughts?
I think you're overcomplicating things by trying to make the Spell-like Abilities cost something other than simple uses per day. If you want to remove the skill rank requirement for the feats you could just change it to a simple level requirement instead.
As for providing a flat bonus to begin with, if I recall there is a list of associated skill for each House? (though I may have made this myself I'll need to double check). Why not have the first time you take the Least feat either provide a +2 bonus to one of the associated skills of the house OR make one of the associated skills of the house a permanent class skill for the character. This effectively makes someone who takes the feat either better at what their House is good at, or grants them an intuitive knowledge of how their particular profession works.
Again though why the change to the actual spells, from what I can see you're actually downgrading some of the SLAs provided by the dragonmarks. Are you molding them after the 4e versions rather than the 3.5?
In the Eberron games I've ran, making the marks be a 3/day SLA at your character level being the caster level made them more powerful than in the 3.5 version and without the need to make it "ritual" magic for it to still be useful to players *and* NPCs.
There are numerous ways written into the original version as well to gain increased uses of your dragonmarks. It's like stretching a magical muscle you never knew you had, the more feats that associate using your dragonmark, the more times you can use it per day.
Again if you're planning on making these Traits as well someone would have to take Extra Traits to get all of them, possibly at two different levels. Which becomes rather strong for a Trait.
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I think you're overcomplicating things by trying to make the Spell-like Abilities cost something other than simple uses per day.
Maybe but that's a matter of opinion.
Again though why the change to the actual spells, from what I can see you're actually downgrading some of the SLAs provided by the dragonmarks. Are you molding them after the 4e versions rather than the 3.5?
The originals had skill bonuses as well, plus had variable options. I wanted to make it a single list. Some might be less powerful, but combined with making these traits and changing how often they'll be usable, I'm ok with that.
Again if you're planning on making these Traits as well someone would have to take Extra Traits to get all of them, possibly at two different levels. Which becomes rather strong for a Trait.
I'm not sure what you mean here. The number of traits player's start with is variable, depending on the GM, plus there is the Extra Trait feat, which I would see no reason not to let someone take and then hold on to their second trait until they met the requirements.
My apologies Cracked, if I came off as derisive or antagonistic I did not intend to be. I'll take a proverbial step back to look at what you're going for.
Since you're making them a series of traits I can see the downscaling a little bit, a good call. *thumbs up* And again how many a PC can start with is entirely on the GM.
If you're trying to decide on a method of how often they can be used per day, from the suggestions you've listed above "gold, hp, or levels of fatigue" I believe that HP or Levels of Fatigue would be the right direction to go, making the use of a Dragonmark a much more internal ability rather than needing shiny gold to be able to use the magical tattoo on your skin. It gets tricky at this point, if using a mark costs HP, how much? It would seem a little silly to make it more than what could be healed by the Mark of Healing otherwise why ever use it on yourself? Perhaps something like 1Hp/3HP/5HP for Least/Lesser/Greater?
Levels of Fatigue could work maybe something akin to how a Barbarian suffers Fatigue for a number of rounds or minutes after coming out of a rage? Or a Fort save that increases based on how many times per day a mark is used?
Of the SLA you have listed above the only ones that jump out at me as possibly being rather strong for their level are Dimension Door from Passage and True Seeing from Detection. Perhaps Dimension Step or Clairaudience/voyance instead?
Hope the feed back helps.
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Levels of Fatigue could work maybe something akin to how a Barbarian suffers Fatigue for a number of rounds or minutes after coming out of a rage?
Thanks, I like this idea. So I'm thinking for the duration of Fatigue be 1 round, 5 rounds, 1 minute? Or is that too harsh?
Of the SLA you have listed above the only ones that jump out at me as possibly being rather strong for their level are Dimension Door from Passage and True Seeing from Detection. Perhaps Dimension Step or Clairaudience/voyance instead?
Dimension Door is only a 4th level spell, which is on par with several of the other marks, but what about Spider Climb? I don't want to use Dimension Step as I'd rather stick to official Pathfinder spells.
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance is ok, but what about Arcane Sight?
Oh I like that! Arcane Sight would be really neat for Detection. As for Dimension Door...hmm...
In following the idea of the Mark of Passage being about "Getting places fast, and around obstacles." Instead of Spider Climb my only other suggestion I can think of at the moment would be Phantom Steed.
It can get up to crazy speeds (100ft as a move) and gains abilities like water walk and eventually fly. It can be made for other people as well and lasts hours per level. I think it really enforces the whole Unicorn "safe passage" image of their House as well. The image of the postman on a horse also brings a grin to my face, and powering a lightning rail with "horse power" ba-dum tish.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/phantomSteed.html#phantom-steed
Alternatively Dimension Door is still a really good spell, and using it a lot more frequently has the capacity for abuse but since it ends your turn I can see that as a balancing factor if you would like to keep it.
Edit: In regards to the Fatigue rules, the barbarian version is 2 rounds per round spent in rage...making it a full minute would reduce a lot of the utility for in-combat dragonmarks. If you're going for (and from what I can tell it looks like it lines up this way) 1 Round for Least, 5 Rounds for Lesser, and 1 minute for Greater that could work but having it immediately affect PCs after using the ability still provides a problem. Maybe something like having a delayed onset of a minute or so? Like a kind of magical backlash or the magical "adrenaline" leaving your system.
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Alternatively Dimension Door is still a really good spell, and using it a lot more frequently has the capacity for abuse but since it ends your turn I can see that as a balancing factor if you would like to keep it.
What if we add the restriction of Self-Only to Dimension Door? That'd bring it down a little more too. Haste technically is a lower level spell, but I fear that would be too useful.
I think there needs to be an immediate cost, or it'd be too easy for you to time it so the fatigue only hits you after combat when it basically doesn't matter anymore. What if we lower it to 1,3,5 rounds?
Alternatively Dimension Door is still a really good spell, and using it a lot more frequently has the capacity for abuse but since it ends your turn I can see that as a balancing factor if you would like to keep it.What if we add the restriction of Self-Only to Dimension Door? That'd bring it down a little more too. Haste technically is a lower level spell, but I fear that would be too useful.
I think there needs to be an immediate cost, or it'd be too easy for you to time it so the fatigue only hits you after combat when it basically doesn't matter anymore. What if we lower it to 1,3,5 rounds?
Hmmm...tempting Traits that have associations of wealth/fame as well as good role playing opportunities...magical abilities that can be used multiple times but still have a handicap if used in combat but that could be exciting in itself.
Adding self-only to Dimension Door would be a good balancing factor but I think it would hinder part of the House of Passage's abilities if it couldn't take other people with them (alternatively if you want to have like a Dragonmark Rod or some similar Dragonshard powered item that would allow the Dimension Door to take multiple people that would work).
The 1,3,5 rounds of fatigue would be a really good balancing factor. Have the rounds stack on top of themselves if they repeatedly use their Mark successively as well. A playtest could reveal if this needs anymore tweaking, since I believe fatigue would affect a fighter-y character much more than a spellcaster.
from the PRD as well
Exhausted: An exhausted character moves at half speed, cannot run or charge, and takes a –6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. After 1 hour of complete rest, an exhausted character becomes fatigued. A fatigued character becomes exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause fatigue.
Perhaps if a character uses their mark successively it'll overlap from Fatigue into Exhaustion for an equal amount of time? For example if a character uses his Least mark he becomes Fatigued until his next turn, if on his next turn he uses his Lesser mark he is still only Fatigued (since rounds would not over lap), but if he uses his Lesser again on Round 3 (making it 2 rounds of Fatigue left, then adding another 3 it could become Exhaustion rather than Fatigue for those five remaining rounds?)