So after doing a great many thing I have come to the realization that I like reverse engineering the systems in Pathfinder to make new and, potentially, interesting ways of play.
Here is the idea, I want to find out what is needed to balance XP and Gold into a single currency. The reason is some classes get more benefit out of gear than other classes, especially at lower levels, and I want to allow them to capitalize on those benefits. I also intend on doing a Demon's Souls themed campaign soon, though the story will probably be changed quite a bit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So,
Goal 1: Find a single currency that can be used for XP and Gold at every level. I would like to be able to turn this stuff into either Gold or Silver instead of having one be 1.25432 this or that since that would just make the game into non-stop math every time someone wants to buy anything or level up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Goal 2: Decide how to do things to make the various classes viability to the maximum that it can go.
Solution A) I am thinking of making it so any armor/Natural Armor, and Shield bonus the player has is instead Damage Reduction, with the special that after the shield bonus the target takes at least 1 damage. Therefore all attacks target touch. So if Joe has a Tower Shield, and Full Plate, and gets hit for 6 damage, 6-4=2, 9-2=-8, but since the damage went past the tower shield Joe takes 1 damage.
Solution B) The alternative is to make it so that DR from Armor influcts Non-lethal damage. Therefore if Joe is wearing fullplate, and holding a towershield (4+9=13) and gets hit for 6 damage, he takes 6 nonlethal damage instead. The former makes it more important to get class levels early, while the latter makes it so that class levels are important since you need HP.
Goal 3: Decide how HP and being in "Living" and "Ghost" form works. I don't want to give everyone who died a boost to power by giving them all the ghost template. Instead I am leaning towards all "living" characters having Double their normal HP while alive, and just being at full HP when in "ghost" form.
So
"Living" Double HP.
"Ghost" Regular HP.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Enemies are designed to be fought by a single character. This expands to number of enemies multiplied by number of PCs. The CR rating for the average enemy is 4 levels below the current level. The current level is based on what the character's level would be if all "souls" were split to be around what they would be if the player was playing through the game with a standard XP and gold system. Once I figure out the relationship to gold VS XP this will be solidifed.
So basically the CR for a monster for a single level 5 equivalent character would be CR 1 monster (CR 5(Monster CR) - 4(Single character, all CRs are based on a party of 4 characters) = Average CR for a single character.
So, to reiterate the above: For a single level 5 equivalent character, there is 1 monster, for two of the former, there are 2 of the latter.
If the encounter is "hard" (CR+1) then two slightly weaker enemies are there instead. If the encounter is "Very hard" (CR+2) then two of the normal enemies are there. If "Epic" (CR+3) then there are 3 normal enemies.
This multiplication allows for encounters to scale with number of players. An Epic encounter for a single character will be 3-4 monsters depending on if it is a weak or average monster. Each additional player multiplies that 3-4 by the number of players. Therefore a group of 4 players could be facing an epic horde of 4 - 16 monsters.
The benefit to this is it makes Evokers more viable, but it also makes fighters who concentrate on cleaving more viable as well.
Every "level" is pre-made to be taken on at a certain level. This does not change, but instead, since enemies are leveled for that specific level, it makes it so the players should be able to get a feel for how dangerous a level is by the initial weak enemies they face.
How Bosses work: "Boss" encounters are all CR APL+3. The difference between "boss" encounters and "regular" encounters is the amount of tactics used. Bosses know the player characters are coming, and they have prepared for it. All Boss encounters take place in an arena, instead of on the dungeon map. This makes them more dangerous since running away is less of an option. This is subject to change as I playtest this system, but it should work quite well. Mix the number of enemies with the Damage reduction system and the enemies can be quite dangerous in large numbers, even if they are doomed to be cut down easily.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, what this does:
1) Casters and Gishes are even more viable since DR does not stop magic. Running into a super-heavy armored enemy just means out-pace and nuke till he dies. You know, strategy.
2) Medium BAB characters instantly become much better at hitting the enemy, due to all attacks being against Touch.
3) Full BAB characters are almost certain to hit something if they try. Thereby allowing them to focus on Power attacking, cleaving, and just in general doing as massive of damage per attack as possible.
4) Sneak Attack becomes a viable means of defeating Damage Reduction with enough levels.
5) Honestly ranged attacks suffer the most here, since 1d8 or 1d10 + any specials will not be able to do much against a guy in Full plate with a Tower shield, but then again that is why people wore full plate and tower shields in the first place.
6) Dying is not penalized as much. The character drops all "souls" that are carried at death, and must get back to where he died to pick up his souls. This turns into a net-benefit because of respawning enemies. If the party has to fight through the bad guys again then they get more XP. However, if a character dies again then all souls lost originally are lost forever. So, don't die twice in a row, play it safe.
So, my question here is:
What do you think?
Has anyone found out the correlation between Gold and XP/level?
Any advice for me on my hunt for figuring this system out?
I took, and averaged all the gold that is required to achieve each new level in the game, and I have found the following ratios of gold needed to reach next level.
1 > 2______Starting gold varies by level, so ignored.
2 > 3______1.5
3 > 4______1.3
4 > 5______1.3
5 > 6______1.45
6 > 7______1.6
7 > 8______1.68
8 > 9______1.846
9 > 10_____1.875
10 > 11____2.5
11 > 12____2.5
12 > 13____2.96875
13 > 14____2.8
14 > 15____3.45
15 > 16____3.4
16 > 17____4.3157
17 > 18____4.99
18 > 19____4.8
19 > 20____5.38
Averaged these values give 2.92.
Thereby each "soul" is worth 1 gold, or 3 experience. Items worth less than 1 gold are valueless. "Silver" is averaged up or down using basic rounding rules.
I also doubt that the increase of .1xp per "soul" will cause problems, and therefore until it is play tested no one knows.
When enemies die everyone gets a division of all the "souls" carried by the monster. Since I created a "point" system to calculate the amount of XP needed to level up I will be referencing that. This is provided below:
There are 31 "Points" in a level.
Here is the point scale of what each CR, relative to the APL(x). This scale is designed for a party of 4 characters. Subtract 4 from each CR for a single character.
CR(x-4): = .3~
CR(x-3): = .5
CR(x-1): = 1
CR(x): = 2
CR(x+1): = 3
CR(x+2): = 4
CR(x+3): = 6
Since XP and Gold are the same now, monsters give more when defeated, and since any kind of encounter gives souls, traps and social interactions give souls as well.
Since there are 31 CR APL-1 encounters in a level we can use the "1 souls = 3 xp" to reverse engineer the XP system so we can add gold "1 soul = 1 gold" to the system to get our total needed budget of souls per CR. The nice part about this is we can use the system above to then take that amount and multiply it by the above to give relatively accurate XP values in the event that we go below CR1, but only so far.
Souls by level (required XP to level + gold to next level's starting gold)
___________Souls as XP___Souls as Gold___Total____Souls per "point"(CR-1)
1 > 2______667__________1000__________1667_____54
2 > 3______1000_________2000__________3000_____97
3 > 4______1334_________3000__________4334_____140
4 > 5______2000_________4500__________6500_____210
5 > 6______2667_________5500__________8167_____264
6 > 7______4000_________7500__________11500____371
7 > 8______5334_________9500__________14834____479
8 > 9______8000_________13000_________21000____678
9 > 10_____10000________16000_________26000____839
10 > 11____16667________20000_________36667____1183
11 > 12____21667________26000_________47667____1538
12 > 13____31667________32000_________63667____2054
13 > 14____43334________45000_________88334____2850
14 > 15____63334________55000_________118334___3918
15 > 16____85000________75000_________160000___5162
16 > 17____136667_______95000_________231667___7474
17 > 18____199667_______120000________319667___10312
18 > 19____250000_______155000________405000___13065
19 > 20____350000_______195000________545000___17581
I want to clarify the intention of this system is to allow players to decide if they want to improve their items or their levels. This is not, by any means, a balanced system since the total "souls" gained from a level 1 area allows someone to become a level 4 with pretty much no equipment. For some classes, such as Wizards or Sorcerers this is fine, while a fighter who stacks nothing but levels is probably going to get annihilated on the front lines.
On the other hand since all attacks are VS touch a ranged character might want to focus on items to boost weapon damage, or add in elemental attacks early with weapon enchanting.
This emphasizes the player's choice, instead of it being linear the player has more choice in design.
Sounds interesting, I personally love the souls series, and have been thinking about doing something akin to it in pathfinders, But I can clearly see that you have taken it up a notch.
How will you handle crafting/selling? And if all attacks are rolled against touch, will not that give a huge bonus to Rogues/monks/other classes whit To hit problems, balancing thoughts on that?
Ye old magic shop, how will that function, within the world of Pathsouls?
Thanks Belzurigoz,
I am thinking that most Wizards, who require no gear for the most part, will drop all their souls into levels so they can cast more and higher level spells. At a certain level it will be cheaper to start stacking enchantments on weapons to increase damage per round.
To more directly answer your question, all attacks being Touch attacks gives a buff to hit to the Medium and Full BAB classes to hit, however since Armor gives damage reduction that is a massive nerf to all physical damage dealing classes. The class that benefits the most is the rogue, since it does sneak attack damage. Any class that can turn all its damage into non-physical damage will benefit the most. E.G. the Wizard, which doesn't benefit at all from the change.
Half of me wants to just ban all crafting from the design, since I am the only person who has ever dropped a feat into it.
To cover crafting I would recommend just using the 1 soul per 1 gold, 1 soul per 3 XP to cover the costs of crafting as well. My expertise is not the greatest when it comes to crafting.
Due to my realization that players can be extraordinarily greedy I am striking the "all enemies respawn" rule. Instead, when characters die they do not lose anything, and none of the enemies respawn.
This is half from the fact that in a game as fast as Demon's Souls combat takes seconds most of the time, while combat in Pathfinder takes minutes, to hours if we are unlucky.
To answer the last of your question about how the magic shop would work, most of the time since my players tend to favor dungeon crawls over open RP, and when open RP begins they spend it running around cities trying to help the guard, I tend to just make all items available from the start.
The exception being a No item over 50% of your maximum gold for this level's starting gold. Thereby ensuring that at level 2 no one will have a +1 weapon, but possibly a +1 armor and a +1 shield.
I might implement something along the lines of a "maximum achievable level" relative to the current dungeon level, but in the end the easiest way to enable this is to allow it to happen organically.
Part of Demon's/Dark Souls was grinding. However, my party of armed to the teeth murder machines walking into the CR1 area because they want to stock up on healing potions isn't going to be productive for allowing future areas to thoroughly threaten the party.
I expect the majority of players using this system will get a few levels to get to the key points of their builds, and then proceed to stock up on gear. Since leveling up early is so easy, and effective, the pure casters will gain power faster than the fighters, but the fighters will spend more time alive.
New rule to make non-casters more viable:
No resting in dungeons.
That is right, each dungeon prevents characters from resting. Once the heroes go into a dungeon they have to take on the entire dungeon without resting. To rest they have to go back to the nexus equivalent central area.
As per Demon's Souls, levels will be divided into 3 parts, each part is intended to be taken on by its self. So the PCs are allowed to rest every 1/3 levels, and each division has a CR+3 boss in it.
What I might do is take various levels and make the different parts different levels.
World 1-1 might be a different level than 1-2, and the logical progression inside of 1-1 might be for the players to travel to 3-1, and then to 3-2. I want to mix it up, and seeing how I have found maps of all of the areas of Boletaria it is possible that I might be able to do just that.
I can see it now, the PCs go from 1-1 to 1-2 and realize "Holy s~+~e, this place is dangerous" because it is 3 levels higher than them, and the monsters that were coming in 4s and 8s, and now coming in 12s and 16s.
Hm...what about the estus flask mechanic? Limiting the healing outside of healing able classes will give those a rise in priority/importence, and also play whit mechanic of Estus prohibited areas.
Thanks for the replies Elosandi and Belzurigoz,
Why I say ranged attackers will suffer the most from the DR is that the character has to get Clustered Shots before being effective against heavily armored opponents. This does balance out how much damage ranged attacks can do, I am thinking that it will be mostly useful against boss monsters.
I will not be including Estus Flasks as a base mechanic, but instead healing potions are purchasable. The reason being that giving everyone in the party 5 healing potions every time they rest will make them invincible. This will also encourage sloppy play, and down-right foolish tactics.
While the power of all characters is tied to class levels, some classes gain more benefit than others per level, while others gain the benefit from the feats gained at the appropriate levels. While I want to say starting at level 2 "souls" so there can be a lot of variance between the characters, I also realize that there is also the possibility that by doing so the players will become too powerful for their opponents to threaten.
The primary intent is to allow casters to maximize casting capabilities, like how one could focus entirely on spells in Demon's/Dark Souls, while allowing classes that need to be able to take hits to purchase gear to do so.
The reason I say I want to let this evolve organically is that experience slowly loses value to gold the higher the level. For instance if I take level 20 XP and level 20 GP and compare them I end up with the result of every 1 GP should equal 12 XP.
This is the result of the diminishing returns of XP beyond level 14. It is actually a good think to rush to level 14, however by doing so a player will have a lot of HP but not the gear to back it up.
However if someone pours all of their souls into levels alone then at CR10 monsters they will reach the point of diminishing returns (level 14). While this may be an issue for some players, I find it to be a choice. More power from levels, or more ability to defend or deal damage. It all depends on the focus of the class, build, and play style. Pure casters will be more powerful glass cannons, while fighters who want to play super-tanks will get a few levels to secure important feats, and then dump everything into gold to make themselves neigh on invincible against physical damage.
Still, this does serve to make evokers more useful in pathfinder than they currently are.
What do you guys think about the DR.
Should it turn lethal damage into non-lethal, or should it just do 1 damage if not defeated. I want it to do at least something since otherwise if someone shows up in full-plate they can essentially solo the first couple of levels buy just standing there, being surrounded, being pounded on, and never taking damage from the 1d6+1 enemies that are so common at low levels.
So while I was out getting a drink and smoking a cig I thought of something.
Since players are substantially more powerful while in "human" for VS "ghost" form due to the increased HP I was thinking of implementing "Black Phantoms".
In essence a "Black Phantom" is a monster from the next section of a world.
Since the worlds are built in a World X, Area Y set-up, E.G. 1-1, and the difference between 1-1 and 1-2 can be 1 or more levels, then it makes sense to have monsters from 1-2 have "Black phantom appearances" in previous levels.
However to ensure that the number of "souls" a player has never exceeds the intended number any monsters defeated as "black phantoms" are defeated in their home worlds as well.
Black Phantoms are always CR +3 for the worlds they are from, hence meaning that they will likely be +4 for the world they appear as black phantoms in.
I am thinking that DR from armor will instead turn lethal damage it prevents into non-lethal to help balance things out. Thereby if a player is in "human" form they are taking 1/4 damage on attacks that do not get through DR, as opposed to only 1/2 damage from Non-lethal. Thereby allowing players to be outrageously over-powered. These black phantoms will, in essence, be thresh hold guardians for players who are in human form, and will not show up in the games of players who are in "ghost" form.
My experience with players is that they have major problems keeping track of "non-lethal" damage. Therefore, I am adding the following rule for this system:
A) 1 point of non-lethal damage is .5 lethal damage, and stacks with pre-existing lethal damage.
B) At Half HP a character is Staggered per non-lethal rules even if he has not taken non-lethal damage. Half of this is to simulate the idea shock beginning to take hold, but the other half is to take into account this new system of non-lethal damage. Furthermore this emphasizes the importance of healing.
This happens for all characters and enemies, with the exception of single bosses for whom economy of action is direly important.
So, what does this account to? The front like tanks will want to take more Constitution to ensure they don't get staggered. The healers will want to ensure that the tanks stay above 50% hp. The DPR casters can essentially nuke enemies until they stagger and then allow the other characters to clean it up.
What this also means is that fights tend to go one way or the other. Considering monsters come in hordes this change should--keyword, should--favor the players since the monsters will have less hit-points, therefore staggering faster.
This also is a massive buff to offensive casters since damage = crippling status effect.
Thoughts?
My original idea for the 1/2 health event was fatigue to simulate the battle, but then I saw that staggering is what happens when someone takes their HP in non-lethal.
One of the complaints I always hear from offensive arcane casters is that they feel useless if they are evokers. Sure, they can obliterate a few encounters single handed, but after that they are just a commoner with cantrips, and lots of knowledge skills.
I want to play with the idea of buffing evocation to make it more powerful than it normally is. Making all attacks be VS DR is a buff to everyone. Making all DR simply turn lethal damage into non-lethal is another buff since otherwise the two-weapon fighter wouldn't be able to do anything if he couldn't get through the DR. The them doing half damage up to the DR is more of a meeting the player half way even though by doing so it massively nerfs armor.
Two-Weapon fighting is all about getting as many attacks out there as possible, and hopefully doing as much damage as possible. As far as I can remember the more efficient weapon builds with a TWF is to load them up with bonus 1d6 on hit enchantments, give them all the same command word, and then go to town hoping you hit as much as possible. All in all I have always found Two Weapon Fighters to be the less effective build than something like Rogues, who are built to be two-weapon fighters.
Rogues have the advantage over fighters when it comes to dealing damage due to sneak attack. Since everything is VS touch with armor/Shield acting as damage reduction there is the case of rogues simply being better than fighters/rangers who go the two weapon route. I cannot even say the fighter would be more versatile than a rogue since rogues can get combat feats every level like fighters, or take special tricks to do a large array of things. Give them a ring of invisibility and they have a guaranteed full attack of sneak attacks against a non-moving target. The fighter can get more specialized feats, but in the realm of TWF the rogue is superior in terms of what can be done to my knowledge. I am certain that since you have brought it up that you know more than I on this subject, and therefore I am certain that you know someway to make the fighter outclass the rogue.
Instead of staggered lets make it Fatigued instead. It does mean that at 1/2 hp the target gets -1 ATK/DMG, and -1 AC, but the target does get to make full round actions without making a houseruled condition to simulate having full HP in non-lethal damage.
What are your thoughts?
After I finish this Shakespeare paper I'll probably dump a lot of time into a revision post to reflect what has changed with our group brainstorming.
Souls would be simple, Just cut EXP into GP and raise the price of everything By 10x, 20x for masterwork, mithril, etc.
You want Ghost form to have 50% Hp, not for the living to have double.
Since Death isn't "Real Death" REALLY ramp up the encounters difficulty to make it a challenge to progress. Either Double/Triple the creatures or use creatures of up to 3-4 CR's above the parties level.
Make it so that Souls are lost upon death, Yet the same encounters will tend to respawn every time they reach a "Bonfire" or town, to spend their souls or to have to the firekeeper reset the state of souls in the area to get back their dead companions souls. (At the bonfire they rested at before they died of course, backtracking ftw) This would allow for challenging fights that require thought and skill, along with the standard trial and error, to progress to the next "Checkpoint" If they fail, they must redo all they have suffered through.
Spell casters only get HALF of the spells they normally get, but they get to prepare instantly every time they reach a "Bonfire" or whatever else.
If you wish to integrate permanent hollowing, allow for each death while in soul form to give a negative level to the player. These negative levels are removed when they become Fully human again. If they get negative levels equal to that of their character level, they are to become permanently hollow, maddened and forever anchored to the exact spot where they were last slain, attacking even their former companions each time they happen to pass by. There is no way to remove permanent hollowing.
I would personally go with the Dark Souls approach to this game as far as restoring humanity, WITH humanity items. This way it strains the players morality to kill people to steal their humanity.
Use Resurrection spells, "Rings of Sacrifice", and the like to allow for bringing back characters in the state they were before they were slain in that one instance.
Thanks Squidaga,
The only major issue I see with that is that HP is already valuable in Pathfinder. I could use this rule for D&D 4.0 where everyone is made of reinforced steel, but here a bad hit can kill a character.
In Demon's/Dark Souls the enemies are not all that dangerous compared to the hero, but encounters are designed around the premise that someone who just runs in blindly will probably just flat-out die. Foolish play should be punished, while smart play should be rewarded, always.
What I am thinking is that the heroes only get to keep the souls if they defeat the boss, since the arch stone at the beginning gets sealed by the boss after the first monster kill. Resting brings to bare all the enemies, or the boss teleports the heroes into the boss area. This means that there are two options: Total Party Wipe Out, or victory.
Whenever a monster in the boss's domain dies the monster's souls are pulled into the boss. To get these souls the players must defeat the boss.
Since I have maps of the areas of Demon's Souls it is what I am going for when it comes to theme.
Lets go over some of the reasoning for the above content.
Being in "Human" form gives double HP, while being in "ghost" form gives regular HP.
Players like progression. Death should feel like a penalty, but in reality it only brings the heroes down to earth. If players are forced to regrind through fights they have already defeated things will become tedious. In the actual games fights take seconds. In Pathfinder fights take minutes to hours. I want to be revealing the map little as little, and the players experiencing choices as they go.
I am half tempted to have it as Dying in human form makes the character a Ghost, dying in Ghost form makes the character gain despair (negative levels), and when the character's negative levels equals his hit-dice he refuses to leave the nexus. Defeating a boss removes all Despair points on a character, and restores him to Human form.
Due to Black Phantoms ambushing heroes when they are in human form there is substantial danger in each level where the players a alive. Black Phantoms are player killers. This is their intended purpose in both the Souls games, and here in Pathsouls, as someone called it.
I want the system to be user friendly, because it takes a lot of time to do this. I want to encourage RP, but at the same time emphasize combat and tactics. The Party should feel threatened every time they go outside the Nexus, but no so thoroughly threatened they they never leave.
|
Just teasing, don't take it seriously: Devil May Cry did it first. :p (Both the XP/currency system, and calling it souls)
Okay, now that that's out of the way, time for something more productive. I'm pretty sure I remember multiple instances of some sort of exchange rate between XP and gold in various parts of the Pathfinder system. I'm even more certain that this appeared in D&D 3.5e. While I can't remember exactly what the exchange rate was, it was a few hundred. 300-500, I believe. And probably varied a bit from place to place.
This would probably solve that problem you mentioned earlier about being able to get 4 levels very easily if you didn't bother with equipment, since equipment would be much cheaper than levels.
So just to continue amusing myself with this system, here is the revision.
Player characters have two forms: Human and Ghost form.
Human Form:
Double HP
If killed auto-revives into Ghost form.
Black Phantoms (CR +4) invade from the next level area.
Ghost Form:
Normal HP
If killed auto-revives with a negative level called "Despair". Despair cannot be removed by any player spells or abilities.
Killing a boss revives the character to human form and removes all despair.
Gold and XP are rolled into one currency called "Souls." 1 soul is worth 3 XP or 1 gold.
Items worth less than 1 gold can be acquired for free after a boss is defeated, but are valueless.
All attacks resolve against Touch attacks, and All armor is Damage reduction. The short hand of getting these is
AC = Touch
DR = Flat footed - 10
Damage reduction turns lethal damage into non-lethal damage. This makes it so characters who do a lot of weak attacks are still viable. Rules for non-lethal damage and staggering still apply. Whenever a character takes lethal damage the character takes an equal amount of non-lethal damage. So if a character with DR10 gets hit for 11 damage he takes 11 non-lethal damage, and 1 lethal damage.
Encounters, with the exception of bosses, are built using the following table.
There are 31 points per soul level, and since monster levels are dependent on the party size these wont change depending on the number of players.
CR(x-4): = .3~
CR(x-3): = .5
CR(x-1): = 1
CR(x): = 2
CR(x+1): = 3
CR(x+2): = 4
CR(x+3): = 6
X = average soul level. In essence, APL if this was using the XP/gold system.
Encounter______party of 4______Max individual monster CR per character
Easy___________X-1_____________X-5
Average________X_______________X-4
Hard___________X+1_____________X-3
Very Hard_______X+2_____________X-2
Epic___________X+3_____________X-1
Souls by level (required XP to level + gold to next level's starting gold)
___________Souls as XP___Souls as Gold___Total____Souls per "point"(CR-1)
1 > 2______667__________1000__________1667_____54
2 > 3______1000_________2000__________3000_____97
3 > 4______1334_________3000__________4334_____140
4 > 5______2000_________4500__________6500_____210
5 > 6______2667_________5500__________8167_____264
6 > 7______4000_________7500__________11500____371
7 > 8______5334_________9500__________14834____479
8 > 9______8000_________13000_________21000____678
9 > 10_____10000________16000_________26000____839
10 > 11____16667________20000_________36667____1183
11 > 12____21667________26000_________47667____1538
12 > 13____31667________32000_________63667____2054
13 > 14____43334________45000_________88334____2850
14 > 15____63334________55000_________118334___3918
15 > 16____85000________75000_________160000___5162
16 > 17____136667_______95000_________231667___7474
17 > 18____199667_______120000________319667___10312
18 > 19____250000_______155000________405000___13065
19 > 20____350000_______195000________545000___17581
With the above try to ensure that all non-boss/mini-boss encounters are designed with a single character in mind. This does two things: If the players split up they take on encounters by themselves. Two it allows encounters to be modular. This works because attacks are resolved around Touch Attack. For this reason weaker enemies can still be dangerous in large numbers.
Souls of the dead are collected by the Boss of a given area. Therefore the only way to get the souls from a level is to defeat the boss of an area. If the heroes are all killed, and therefore booted to the nexus they receive no Souls. If no characters are in an area the area resets if the boss is still alive. Once a boss is killed the monsters in an area no longer re-spawn.
Once every 1/3 of a level a bond-fire lights after an encounter. This prevents the boss from scrying on the characters, and therefore allows them to take a full 8-hour rest. Bond-fires are single use per bond-fire, and must be rested at when they appear. There is no reward for skipping them.
If the heroes attempt to rest in a level, and are not at a usable bond-fire the boss of the area sends his minions from the entire level to ambush them. The following massive encounter is most likely going to kill the heroes, and boot them to the nexus. However, there is the small chance that they could survive the encounter. If the heroes have killed everything in the level, and then try to rest before the boss, the boss teleports them into his arena. While the bosses are completely evil, they do at least wait for the heroes to realize what has happened, and prepare themselves as though they had willingly entered the boss-room.
Not every NPC/Monster in the game is hostile to the heroes. Some of them will join forces with the PCs for a time, or help them with a boss battle. These NPCs tend to be linked to their worlds. These NPCs tend to level up to match the CR of each new part of a level. For instance an ally in 1-1 will be a different level in 1-1 than he is in 1-2, or 1-3. NPCs never help PCs against world bosses, such at in 1-4, 2-3, 3-3, 4-3, or 5-3.
Boss and Mini-boss encounters are designed with 3 ideas in mind: Horde, Singular, Duo.
Horde: Hordes have two main parts: Leaders, and Followers.
______Followers gain the unconscious condition at 0 hp, but never fully die until the leaders are killed. Any healing done to a Follower by a Leader will revive the follower.
______Leaders often heal and buff Followers. If a leader heals an unconscious follower the follower will revive. Leaders cannot revive once killed, regardless of other leaders. In special cases leaders can have other leaders as followers. Sometimes the leaders are much more powerful than the followers, and in these cases the followers are there for auxiliary reasons such as weakening the heroes.
Duo: Duos are encounters where two monsters join forces to defeat the heroes. Man-eater is a Duo encounter. There are often conditions for the secondary enemy to come into the fight, but once it does it does not leave until the fight is resolved. These two monsters are often powerful. Often immune to conditions that prevent them from taking actions. Immune to Grapple.
Singular: Singular enemies are extremely powerful enemies who are there to do one thing: Kill their enemies as fast as possible. Immune to conditions that prevent them from taking actions. Immune to Grapple. These start with a number of hero points equal to their CR, and can use a single hero point to take an additional action each round.
Many bosses are NPCs or monsters.
In Demon's Souls there are a ton of areas. Instead of having each world be a level, each area inside a world is a level.
[ Boletarian Palace ]
1-1 : Boletarian Palace__________Boss: Horde
1-2 : Phalanx Archstone__________Boss: Horde
1-3 : Tower Knight Archstone_____Boss: Singular
1-4 : Penetrator Archstone_______Boss: Singular (Final Boss) Probably the Mithral Wizard with an advanced template.
[ Stonefang Tunnel ]
2-1 : Stonefang Tunnel___________Boss: Singular
2-2 : Armor Spider Archstone_____Boss: Singular
2-3 : Flamelurker Archstone______Boss: Singular
[ Tower of Latria ]
3-1 : Tower of Latria____________Boss: Horde
3-2 : Fool's Idol Archstone______Boss: Duo
3-3 : Maneater Archstone_________Boss: Singular
[ Shrine of Storms ]
4-1 : Shrine of Storms___________Boss: Singular
4-2 : Adjudicator Archstone______Boss: Singular
4-3 : Old Hero Archstone_________Boss: Horde
[ Valley of Defilement ]
5-1 : Valley of Defilement_______Boss: Horde (lots of Leech Swarms)
5-2 : Leechmonger Archstone______Boss: Singular
5-3 : Dirty Colossus Archstone___Boss: Singular
You can find the maps I will be using here:
http://www.geocities.jp/kouryakubo/ds_en/
Kudos to this guy for taking the time to make these. I will probably be spending a great deal of time redesigning these maps to work for Pathfinder. The best part is that I will not be referencing the "Soul" system, meaning that someone can take this, and use it as a mega-adventure.
I don't see where, from the above, you are getting 50% hp from.
In Demon's Souls Ghost form lowers the player's HP to 50% to force the player to evolve new strategies and to play defensively so that when the player is in human form he isn't stupid about it.
I just noticed a fatal flaw in the above design. I had thought that Non-lethal damage had to equal double a target's HP to knock the target out, but instead it is only to exceed the target's current HP. Therefore this system makes Armor worthless. Alas.
Therefore to keep in tune wit the original idea:
DR from Armor cuts the lethal damage in half, up to the amount of DR the armor offers.
If John with DR 4 gets hit by a skeleton for 6 damage, John takes 4 damage (6-4 = 2(Overflow), 4/2 = 2(Damage reduction).
Covenants are a little trickier since they are strongly tied to Multiplayer and certain ones(Forest Hunter,DARKWRAITHS) allow one to just engage in non-penalty trolling while Gravelords ara 'grab a book' types.
If you ever use them, here are some suggestions.
1.Darkwraiths(and those using a cracked orb) can invade alternate worlds but getting killed as a Red Phantom gains you a level of Despair. This prevents non-stop invading. Perhaps have Kaathe demand tribute each time the Red Orb is used (1 point for every 2 times invading).
2.Gravelords can send Black Phantoms into other worlds and get half the amount of souls a slain adventurer has on them if they are killed by the BPs.