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Alright, I thought this up this morning using some notes I had for herbalism, got really excited, and cooked up the following concept.
The goal here, much like I did with the Tinker, is to build a totally new system by which a player character gets power and then create a new base class that utilizes that system. In the case of the tinker, the player designs little bundles of power based on a number of "spells" and "casts" the bundles of spells.
The herbalist intends to approach things very differently. The herbalist has four sources of power.
Gathering herbs
Preservation vessels
Cultivation pots
Recipes
Gathering herbs
Every morning, rather than spend an hour meditating for spells, the herbalist goes out to find her plants for the day. The herbalist makes (level +1)/2 rolls on a random table corresponding to her current biome. If in a forest, roll on the forest table. If in a cave, roll on the cave table. This makes the herbalist's power totally random, the exact opposite of prepped spells, and also dependent on where she woke up that morning. The herbalist needs to learn how to live with the power mother nature decides to give her that morning. Will she have a good deal of poisons, status effects, curatives, or buffs? We'll see.
Preservation vessels
Every night, the herbalist's herbs become too wilted or otherwise old to really be of use the next day. If placed in a preservation vessel, however, an herb can carry forward to the next day. The herbalist starts with 2 vessels and eventually gets 6 of them. Up to 4 herbs or 1 fungus of any one type can be stored in a preservation vessel. Preservation vessels are also used to store processed compounds. More on that later.
Cultivation pots
By seeding a cultivation pot with 4 of a particular herb or fungus, she can harvest 1 unit of that plant every day forever. This way, the herbalist's favorite herbs are never totally out of reach. The herbalist starts play with 1 vessel and eventually gets 6 of them.
Recipes
The herbalist learns a number of recipes as she progresses. These allow her to make a Craft (alchemy) check using a specific mixture of herbs, fungi, and other plants. If successful, she makes one unit of a processed compound. These compounds take up preservation vessels, so they reduce the absolute herb count the herbalist has access to, but tend to be very powerful given the prepwork necessary.
Your feelings?
Interesting idea, and one requiring lots of work to make a successful. Random abilities would be fun for some time but they can be very tedious in the long term.
I have a somewhat random sorcerer-type caster done, I'll post it on this board in a few.
Here, have some randomness.
I'm really not sure what I think about that. My first instinct is to cringe. Hard. Putting any doubt as to if the spell itself will work is akin to an ASF chance. I'd much rather make it chaos as to what you know for the day instead.
Failure chance is pretty slim, and it isn't like the caster has no control over the effect.
Also, the class is getting very little. Potentially crippling chaos in spells and an even more limited spell selection (not only in number, but in that certain spells simply can't be used due to the materials requirement), as well as a loss of a bloodline turn into:
4 bonus feats instead of bloodline, but feats must be metamagic and have a huge penalty attached to them. The penalty is evened out in critical moments by the control pool, but the control pool itself is very shallow.
Incredibly limited spell list partly assuaged by some of the class' features, but still very narrow.
The immunity to antimagic effects and the relatively easy way to proc wild magic fields are good ideas. That allows for extra CL, DC, and a fun immunity, thus balancing out 2 sorcerer bonus feats. The rest of the abilities balance out the debilitating aspects of the chaos given to it by itself, but don't exactly grant it any more power.
As it is, the class needs punch equal to about three feats added to it to make it not a net loss in sorcerer power.
Further, the Wild Power ability is always an average +0.5 CL for the caster and NEVER gets better, only more capable of spiking awkwardly.
As it is, chaos can indeed be fun, but the class doesn't have the raw oomph necessary to make anyone other than those desiring chaos for chaos' sake find it to be worth unleashing.
If you think it is weaker than a sorcerer, then...
Well...
Yes, it is. Working as intended. T3 full caster.
Anyway, Boz, if you'd like to keep discussing your sorcerer, direct me to another thread and I'll come on down. I want to keep this one on track given I'm trying to use it to refine an idea that stands to make me a few hundred dollars.
Anywho, here's an early version of some entries in The Herb Log.
The Herb Log
Name (Subtype)
Biome(s)
Recipes
Appearance
Effect:
Rules (Put these in a sidebar or something):
1: When an herb is eaten, chewed, or applied to a wound, it follows the exact same attack of opportunity rules as a potion. When applied to an item, it acts as either an oil or a poison, depending on context. If a poison, it follows the rules for poisons, including accidental poisoning.
2: If an herb is administered to an individual under the effects of various status effects that render the individual unable to act, such as various fear effects, paralysis, and dying, it is assumed that the administering character can get the herb to work.
Baneberry (herb)
Biome(s): Forest
Recipes: Stillheart poison
Appearance: Baneberry sports compound leaves on long stalks, a thin stem, small white flowers, and black berries of about one third of an inch in diameter. It is these berries that contain the greatest concentration of its natural poison.
Effect: One unit of baneberry can be applied to a weapon as though it were a poison. Living creatures dealt damage by a weapon coated in baneberry juice must make a DC 10 + 1/2 herbalist class level + herbalist's Wisdom modifier Fortitude save or be fatigued for 1d4 rounds. If the herbalist is 11th level or higher, the victim is exhausted instead of fatigued.
Common Yarrow (herb)
Biome(s): Forest, Grasslands
Recipes:
Appearance: Common yarrow ranges in height from anywhere between 6 inches and 3 feet. Its leaves are larger the closer to the ground and express varying degrees of hair-like fuzziness. Yarrow flowers are concentrated in bundles at the end of the stem.
Effects: When one unit of common yarrow is applied topically to a wound as a standard action, common yarrow immediately delivers positive energy, healing 1d6 points of damage. Additionally, yarrow continues to slowly deliver residual positive energy, healing an additional 1 point of damage every round for rounds equal to the 1/2 the herbalist's class level, minimum 1. Since undead are powered by negative energy, this spell deals damage to them instead of curing their wounds. There is no saving throw, though applying yarrow to an unwilling creature is a melee touch attack that provokes attacks of opportunity.
If multiple units of common yarrow are used together in a compress, their effects stack, including the healing over time effect.
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And a recipe
Aconite poison
Ingredients: 3 Wolfsbane
Capacity: 3
Effect: Aconite poison is an injury poison with a duration of 1d4 rounds. Each round for the duration of the poison's effect, the victim must make a DC 10 + 1/2 herbalist class level + herbalist's Wisdom modifier Fortitude save or be paralyzed for that round. Whether or not this saving throw is successful, all passive abilities that cause fear effects are impotent the duration of the poison's effect.
The wild mage thread itself is perfectly suitable for discussion.
The most important aspect of your class seem to be the random spell lists, but you haven't posted any yet. I'd love to see the combinations you've envisioned.
Random lists come out last. I need to cook up a good hundred herbs, find a way to scale them all with level, and assign each herb a "point" value. From there, for each biome, I make random d% tables where every result on the table is worth 10 points.
As it is, saw errors with yarrow. Balanced it out to feel like a level 4 spell at max level. What I'm feeling is lots and lots and lots (and LOTS) of low level effects per day with a very limited list of enormously nasty poisons and other refined items for when something simply must die.
Common Yarrow (herb)
Biome(s): Forest, Grasslands
Recipes:
Appearance: Common yarrow ranges in height from anywhere between 6 inches and three feet. Its leaves are larger the closer to the ground and express varying degrees of hair-like fuzziness. Yarrow flowers are concentrated in bundles at the end of the stem.
Effects: When one unit of common yarrow is applied topically to a wound as a standard action, common yarrow immediately delivers positive energy, healing 1d6 points of damage plus an additional 1d6 for every 3 herbalist levels past 1st (max 7d6). Additionally, yarrow continues to slowly deliver residual positive energy, healing an additional 1 point of damage every round for rounds equal to the 1/2 the herbalist's class level, minimum 1. Since undead are powered by negative energy, this herb deals damage to them instead of curing their wounds. There is no saving throw, though applying yarrow to an unwilling creature is a melee touch attack that provokes attacks of opportunity.
If multiple units of common yarrow are used together in a compress, their effects stack, including the healing over time effect.
I feel like you are focusing really heavily on herbs, no duh right? Well here is how it seems to be coming off to me. It makes me thing of an arcance caster that not only has to keep track of spell ingredients but focusing very heavily on how ingredients can differ. For instance a feather of an Osprey has a different effect then a feather of a red-tailed hawk. It seems to me that you are trying to create a totally different system of magic instead of just a new class, like words of power vs normal spells.
A more beneficial way might be to come up with a simple design, which you have with herb gathering. This gives you different sets of "spells" depending on where you are. Maybe having sets of themed "spell lists" associated with different biomes and the herbalist can/must choose a set number of these for the day, somewhere in between preparing spells and spontaniously casting. With a given set of Forest Herbs you can create poisons, healing salves, buffing compounds from a list on the fly but takes equivalent "casting" times.
To my this idea I can get behind. I don't want to keep track/ look up from a list of 100s of herbs every day and having a very slim selection of named herbs irks me as they should be plentyful in types.
Just a suggestion though.
I'll know in a week if the system is enjoyable. As it is, it doesn't yet matter all that much how I organize the power. I just need to build the "spellbook", then build the systems that tap into it.
Further, I'm intending to have a small enough list of herbs that a midlevel herbalist is essentially guaranteed to find certain common herbs out there. It's the weird situational ones you'll have to preserve for other days.
Good point ATGGAATAA - for example: pteridium esculentum (austral bracken) and chaloclaena dubia (soft bracken) IIRC are bracken ferns found on every continent including Antarctica. Gleichenia dicarpa (coral fern) is a little more geospecific, and perhaps not even "bracken". (Gotta love latin nomenclature vs "common names" which are anything but!)
From a layman's point of view there isn't a huge difference between the first two, nor a hugely appreciable difference between the first two and the third. A herbalist might be able to make very different compounds out of all three, or similar compounds regardless of which one of the three they use. Great stuff.
@Interjection Games: Are you looking at "cooking up" a new Base Class, an Alternate Alchemist or just a new herbalism ruleset? If a Base Class, what archetypes do you envision? [EDIT - perhaps I should have read the thread title a little more carefully! ;) Base Class it is, so my last question still stands...]
@Oceanshieldwolf
Well, here's what I'm seeing at a more specific and granular level.
At this point in time, each biome will contain roughly 16 herbs, each assigned a point value. This point value is useful because every result on the "Find Herbs" table is 10 points of herbs. Using this system, players can create tables for outlandish biomes without my help.
The base template for each biome is as follows. Those entries that are completed for the Forest biome are listed next to each category.
1 point each
Healing herb - common yarrow
Niche status buff - venus hair fern
Niche status buff - black alder bark
Poison - baneberry
Poison
Defensive Oil
Skill enhancement
"Smartass" effect - muskroot
Damage - conkers
2 points each
Damage - wild strawberry
Weapon Oil
Defensive Oil - hen of the woods (subverted on this list, is a group buff instead)
Status Causer
4 points each
Poison
Group buff - yellow morels
Special (for fun and unique effects!)
Though they all follow this template, the best tricks available to an herbalist is actually a point of character build, not of dumb luck. As an herbalist progresses, she learns recipes. Some of these are silly, while some are downright deadly. By selecting recipes that use herbs that grow in specific biomes, the herbalist chooses her own "specialty school", as it were.
Aconite poison
Ingredients: 3 of any combination of Baneberry, Pheasant's Eye, and Wolfsbane
Capacity: 3
Effect: Aconite poison is an injury poison with a duration of 1d4 rounds. Each round for the duration of the poison's effect, the victim must make a DC 10 + 1/2 the herbalist's class level + the herbalist's Wisdom modifier Fortitude save or be paralyzed for that round. Whether or not this saving throw is successful, all passive and gaze abilities that cause fear effects do not function for the duration of the poison's effect. This is because the victim is too lethargic to be particularly terrifying.
Calamus oil
Ingredients: 3 Calamus
Capacity: 3
Effect: When sprayed on a willing creature as a standard action, a lovely sweet smell fills the general area. As it turns out, this smell is rather vile to arthropods. Whenever an insect or arachnid of any sort attempts to physically attack a creature sprayed with calamus oil, it must make a DC 10 + 1/2 the herbalist's class level + herbalist's Wisdom modifier Will save. If the save fails, the insect or arachnid can't follow through with the attack, that part of its action is lost, and it can't physically attack the warded creature for the duration of the oil's effect. Given melee touch spells require physical contact, they are treated as physical attacks for the purpose of calamus oil. Calamus oil has a duration of 1 round per herbalist class level.
Regarding archetypes, I'm seeing one that gives away some of its ability to control what herbs it gets each day in exchange for bonus recipe slots, thus giving it the ability to think ahead even further than the standard herbalist. I am also seeing an archetype that gives up its cultivation pots and some of its compress progression for a plant familiar that can be harvested from time to time.
If you'd like an earlier look, I'd be happy to bring you on as a playtester. :)
On a selfish note, this is being made my number 1 priority for the business (apart from one small product I intend to throw out there when sales slow down again) because my larger, brand new system works tend to be the strongest sellers I have. The tinker is responsible for 40% of last month's money, but was only 20% of the output, for example. As it is, development of a strong line of well-designed top shelf products seems to be the best plan I have to sustain myself.
To that end, I'll throw this out there - what sorts of big things would you all like to see? I've got adventures, base classes, and alternate magic item systems all sitting around waiting for their chance.
What next?
Any and all IG, any and all. Sorry I can't be more specific. I think you are doing just fine so far!!!
Thanks for the vote of confidence, my good man. As it is, I'm a little terrified that I can barely scrape up my rent after going full time at this for a solid month. If I can't make $30 a day consistently by the end of June, I'll have to focus more on learning software testing and get a real job before the $10,000 "experimental nest egg" dries up.
Also, here's my first stab at a "4 point" herb. Would you, as a player, be happy if you found this thing?
Yellow Morel (fungus)
Biome(s): Forest, Grasslands
Recipes: Fungal Feast
Appearance: Described by those who hunt them as yellow pine cones with a stalk, yellow morels are a delicacy among mushrooms and are notable for not having a toxic analog, thus making them a safe first mushroom to seek out.
Effect: One unit of yellow morels can be cooked and served to a group numbering up to half the herbalist's class level, rounded up. Cooking yellow morels requires one unit of trail rations or an equivalent amount of fresh produce, as well as 10 minutes of cooking time. Those who consume an herbalist's cooking, a full-round action if simply inhaled, containing yellow morels gain a +1 morale bonus to attack and damage rolls, temporary hit points equal to the herbalist's class level, and a +2 morale bonus to saving throws against non-magical poison. At 10th level and every ten levels thereafter, all granted morale bonuses increase by +1 (max +3 to attack and damage, +4 against poison at level 20). These effects last for eight hours or until the recipient gains the sickened condition.
Also an attempt at a Recipe-less combination mechanic
Groundelder (herb)
Biomes: Grasslands
Recipes:
Appearance: A member of the carrot family, groundelder is characterized by its long, wispy stems and the hemispherical clouds of tiny blooms that dot the uppermost reaches of the plant. It is further distinguished from other wild carrots in that its flowers and leaves resemble that of the elder.
Effects: Groundelder can be used in one of two ways.
1. One unit of groundelder can be used instead of trail rations or generic produce when cooking other plants. If used in this fashion, treat the herbalist's class level as 2 higher for the purpose of determining how many creatures can consume the food, if applicable, and for determining the magnitude of the benefits granted to the consumer.
2. When one unit of groundelder is chewed as a standard action, the chewer gains temporary hit points equal to 5 + half the herbalist's class level, rounded down. These temporary hit points persist for 1 minute.
Another 4 point herb
Hemlock (herb)
Biomes: Grasslands, Wetlands
Appearance: Hemlock grows upwards of eight feel tall and features purple or red streaking on the bottom half of its stalk. The leaves can grow up to over one and a half feet in length and exude an unpleasant odor when crushed.
Effect: One unit of hemlock can be applied to a weapon as though it were a poison. Each round, those dealt damage by a weapon coated in hemlock must make a DC 10 + 1/2 the herbalist's class level + the herbalist's Wisdom modifier Fortitude save or take 1 point of Constitution damage. This poison has no maximum duration; it simply deals Constitution damage every round until the victim makes a successful Fortitude save in two consecutive rounds. At 11th level, hemlock deals 2 points of Constitution damage instead of 1. This increases to 3 at 20th level.
Given its nature, hemlock cannot be placed into a cultivation pot.