Hello, I been working on a homebrew campaign based on the pathfinder system. My idea is a setting that is constantly ravaged by eldritch storms and frequently random portals appear to random parts of the universe, anyway the end result is something akin to Magical Fallout with a Mad Max vibe. Large contaminated wastelands, strange monsters, harsh and difficult survival and wild magic.
One of the key features is the idea of a sort of contamination that appear everywhere, something like magical radiation. I initially wanted to use the radiation poisoning rules that exist in pathfinder, however this rules are not comprehensive enough, radiation is treated like a one time poison check everyday you are exposed to it. I wanted to create a system in which character get progressively "sicker" by the magical fallout.
The system I created works like this.
Corruption is a magical effect that permeates most of the setting with different grades of intensity. If somewhat follows the rules of cold environment damage in which for each unit of time exposed to the corruption in the environment the characters has to roll a fortitude check that increases for each unit of time the player is exposed to the corruption. If the player fails the check they receive 1d6 points of "corruption damage" this damage is tracked separately and is not hit point damage. It keeps building up until it reaches a threshold. (51-101-151 and 200). When the player reaches the first threshold it rolls in a table of magical mutations, and as they reach higher thresholds they roll in different tables (Low, mid and High corruption).
The mutations are interesting changes that give disadvantages and some of them small advantages usually with drawbacks.
Healing corruption is hard, the idea is that treatment is a costly and a time consuming effort. This with the idea of avoiding the common problem with environmental hazards that become irrelevant fairly quickly as many spells and feats make them trivial.
I decided that mutation can be heal depending of the nature of the affliction because curing the damage will not remove the “mutation” even if you go below the threshold . Some of them are physical, requiring a heal check, some of them are curses requiring remove curse, (I am still thinking of other classifications and treatments). The idea is that the skill check or caster check required is DC 10+1/10 of the current level of corruption the character has.The idea is that the more infected the character is the harder is to remove the affliction.
Now here comes the problem.
How to deal with cured afflictions and re infections?
Let's say the character reaches the 51 threshold and rolls in the affliction table and gets... let's say, a third eye. The player rushes to a healer and it successfully removes the eye with a heal check.
Now the character is sitting in 51 infection but no mutation whatsoever. So, there are two ways to handle it. You could say that now the character is immune to reinfection until it reaches the next threshold (At 101). Or you could say the next time it takes damage a new affliction will appear.
I dislike both approaches, the first one makes it too trivial. Acquiring the next 50 points of infection will take a great deal of time and the player will become effectively immune during that period, and if it gets close to 200 (reaching 200 will kill the character) and reaches all three thresholds and cures the character is now completely immune.
In the other hand acquiring infection is fairly common in this setting so taking damage again is almost certain, therefore making healing kind of irrelevant, because you will end with a mutation no matter what.
So, I am stuck here.
What do you all think? What do you think about the system in general? And what solution can be used for the reinfection problem? Also does anyone forsee any more problems?
Sorry for the long post. And also for my sup par english.
Thanks
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Maybe rather than garunteed mutation from next corruption damage after curing, roll d% to see if mutation happens. If not, increase the %chance the next time they take corruption. Keep inceasing the % each time they avoid mutation until a couple checks before the threshold, then make it 100%. A couple checks later a chain reaction occurs and they get the next threshold mutaion, though skewed to be lesser or worse effects than normal depending how long they bested the d%.
Rather than create an entirely new system for corruption, have you looked at the rules for Corruption already in the game? I've never played with them, but they seem like a pretty solid system for implementing a corruption that you can never quite get away from.
There's a few really fun ones and you could even give each PC a different corruption or create an entirely new one. The progression of your corruption would be linked to being exposed to powerful wild magic although given that it's so common, you might want to have more than three stages. It nicely sidesteps the issues you've pointed out with your own system because gaining mutations is separate from moving towards death. The more mutations you have, the harder it gets to not succumb to the corruption, but they're not directly linked.
Maybe rather than garunteed mutation from next corruption damage after curing, roll d% to see if mutation happens. If not, increase the %chance the next time they take corruption. Keep inceasing the % each time they avoid mutation until a couple checks before the threshold, then make it 100%. A couple checks later a chain reaction occurs and they get the next threshold mutaion, though skewed to be lesser or worse effects than normal depending how long they bested the d%.
Thanks. I like this approach. I think I can even go further than that and say that even if you reach the threshold you are not guaranteed a mutation but you rather roll against a 50% that increases every 10 points you take by a 10%. Once you take a mutation you % lowers to 0% but keeps increasing even if you are not cured. If you are unlucky enough you might end up with more than one mutation at the time. I thanks will tinker further. Any more ideas?
Rather than create an entirely new system for corruption, have you looked at the rules for Corruption already in the game? I've never played with them, but they seem like a pretty solid system for implementing a corruption that you can never quite get away from.
There's a few really fun ones and you could even give each PC a different corruption or create an entirely new one. The progression of your corruption would be linked to being exposed to powerful wild magic although given that it's so common, you might want to have more than three stages. It nicely sidesteps the issues you've pointed out with your own system because gaining mutations is separate from moving towards death. The more mutations you have, the harder it gets to not succumb to the corruption, but they're not directly linked.
Corruption damage is not HP damage is a different pool that builds up. I think it could be called corruption accumulation or something to avoid confusions.
I read the corruption rules, and I think they are great, also the taint system from Heroes of Horror. And I am all in favor of using existing rules first.However the system has a few things against it for me. First is very linked to Evilness, and my idea of this magical corruption is not linked to alignment is just a very awful environmental thing. The second is that I wanted a large enough pool of damage because I want to add all sorts of items, spells and feats that grant some level of corruption damage reduction. (Breathing masks, gloves, filters and alike) This in order to support the Mad Max/Fallout feel. Players will have to wear cumbersome breathing masks and that sort of stuff to mitigate the damage increasing the survival felling.
Lastly this is a thing for all the NPCs and animals and everything. And the corruption system is very linked to all sort of demonic pacts and dark patrons and it will be hard to keep the theme if every guys that sells rope has a secret connection to the deep ones.
Thanks
For what it's worth, take what you like it in the corruption system and don't use other parts. In my Giantslayer campaign, I had a character who wanted to be a Dragon Disciple, so I created a custom "Dragon Soul Corruption" taking relevant mutations with their benefits and drawbacks from the various corruptions that made sense for what I was doing. That player had a custom quest to master the corruption in order to become an actual dragon disciple (whole thing spanned the level prior to him taking a level in the class).
In your campaign, you could just change the criteria for gaining a new manifestation level to be based on the contamination point threshold you've discussed. Pick and reskin various corruptions from all the options to build a table you can draw from when people reach the next level. The nice thing is they've already been sorted in order of relative strength/drawback and in some cases piggyback off one another. Use the ones that make sense and drop the ones that don't to create a sort of custom corruption that works in your world.
As I pointed out to Nixitur, the issue is the pool of damage to be deflected by special items, filters and such will be resourse. Besides I am running a great deal of campaigns both locally and online and I want to avoid special tailoring as much as possible after the initial start up of the campaign setting. However thanks for pointing out the large amount of afflictions in the system that I can incorporate and use as a benchmark for my own.