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Messages - RedWarlock

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81
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 20, 2016, 09:50:27 PM »
So, mostly recovered today, let's see what I can answer.

If I understand correctly - there's offense and support (which is buffing) and the everything else goes into control (like debuff, summon and tactics).
Maybe it's dumbing it down a bit. I'm just tossing it in my head but on paper.

It might help if you define your terms a bit, it feels like we're talking past each-other. That's part of why I detailed out a bit of description for each task. (Somehow the term 'debuff' has slid past me, I couldn't decide whether it described negative effects, like curses/entangles, or effects that negate other effects, as in to 'de-buff'. Control, either way.) Define tactics? That might be more of a support thing, from how it sounds, but I'm not sure. Does it hinder the enemy, or help the ally? Direct effect only. That sets your dividing point.

Also - what is the inclusion and relationship with OOC ruling. Especially social tasks.
'Skills' cover the non-combat portion of the game, and while they feed back into the combat portions, they're not actively used in combat. So, there's no 'hide', 'tumble', 'jump', or 'spot' skills, as these are handled by powers/tricks in combat (like 'Spot' is now a base perception save). Meanwhile, the skills 'Arcana', 'Faith', or 'Leadership' grant access to specific powers to learn. Other skills are things like Negotiation, Armscrafting, Survival, or other 'power-source' style skills Wildlore, Demonology, or Psionics, which are more conditional to the setting being used. (I can try to type out a base Skill list, if you'd like, though there are a lot of if>then subsets. I've got plans for setting flexibility.)

Actual skill usage is a little more freeform, more akin to the 4e Skill Challenge system, or Fate Core. A situation is presented to the party, and they can elect to use their best skills in different ways to overcome the difficulties at hand. Situations where everyone needs to make a good, specific check allow a player with more ranks to share those to the rest of the party.

I would also like to hear about the multiclass system of yours. But maybe that one will have to wait for you to introduce the classes themselves first?

Lastly, I'd like a link to the GitP thread. Just curiosity.

Post #6 in the GitP thread, the last few paragraphs, actually has a decent rundown for the basic structure of levels and XP expenditure. Start about half-way down, "For instance.."

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Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 18, 2016, 11:58:55 PM »

83
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 17, 2016, 03:47:19 PM »
Thanks! I have been here, just absorbed in other aspects of life. My own hosted game died in the summer, and I've been investing myself into this custom homebrew system to start a new game some day. (That, and RL serious relationship and attempting to develop my freelance animation into a full-time-capable career to let me quit my day job.)

84
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 17, 2016, 01:06:29 PM »
Nope, that's control specifically. Support doesn't mean just any 'blocking/aiding' while in combat, it means the actions that are specifically directed towards allies. I actually mention that in the Control entry a post up. "any attack on a minion is an attack not aimed at you" == control.

'Support' is basically the party-healer or 4E-Leader role, but broad enough to intentionally cover a wider variety of concepts that directly help a PC, including gear gifted out-of-combat.

'Control' is doing things that hinder enemies and indirectly help allies in combat. My main change from the 4e concept is decoupling the 'area damage' concept they also used often for 4e controllers.

85
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 16, 2016, 02:55:13 AM »
I am leaning towards a 3-group system (someone on GitP talked me into it) right now, though my current divisions are a little different. It's not too far from offense/defense/control, though I'm sticking closer to my original categorization and sub-tasks.

  • Combat - Merging Striker and some of Tank, Combat covers basic damage-dealing/damage-taking and mobility.
    • Damage Output - Ability to deliver damage, whether by direct attack, spell, or summoned minion attack. Accuracy affects effective damage rating.
    • Health/Survivability - Ability to survive damage. Primarily based in just having decent hit points, also includes mid-combat self-recovery and incoming-damage-negation.
    • Mobility/Range - Ability to reach a target at a distance from one's starting position more easily, combining improved movement rates, spring-attack/shifting movement speeds, and ranged-attack improved distances.
  • Support - As before, improves allies' abilities in combat, through both active additions and passive enhancements/equipment. (So, not just a cleric's healing/buffing, but also an artificer's enchantments done out-of-combat, or even potions.)
    • Boost ally effectiveness - Check bonuses, damage boosts, making existing abilities better.
    • Recover resources - Healing HP and 'injury' conditions, recovering surges, and renewing other class resources. (game is intentionally tuned so alpha-strike-and-heal-up-after doesn't happen and invalidate healing)
    • Grant bonus actions - Grant actual bonus actions (attacks, moves, etc) as well as granting one-time special attacks/effects.
  • Control - As before, controlling enemy actions and effects.
    • Hinder Enemy Movement - Create walls, difficult terrain, other blocking and slowing effects.
    • Waste/Negate Enemy Actions - Personal parry/shield-block, mirror images, summoned/commanded minions as distractions (any attack on a minion is an attack not aimed at you).
    • Cancel enemy effects - Clearing obstacles, breaking walls, plus resistance to magic or anti-magic, and other such things.

86
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 08, 2016, 09:20:57 PM »
These divisions are pure combat. Out-of-combat is handled with a separate system of skills and status effects, without the number-focus.

Different classes contribute bonuses above the base-level contribution per-level overlapping. Basically it's multi-gestalt, using the minimum save/hp-per-level as a baseline.

I'm open to different divisions from the ones I have, but I'm trying to be as power-source neutral as possible, to make it useable in different genres. So 'summoning' wouldn't work, but 'minion control' might, leaving the field wide for magical summons, mechanical constructs, or military leadership. Personally, though, I would say summoning/minions aren't necessarily team-critical the way the base 4 I currently use as a balanced team, though I could consider it. They fit as a striker/controller, extra damage and waste of enemy resources on temporary minions, just in a different form.

87
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: To-hit - Dex instead of Str
« on: January 06, 2016, 05:00:42 PM »
I'm doing it in my rules, but they're a really extensive ruleset. A lot gets shifted around to even out the usage.

Str gets Fort saves (which become more like PF's CMD as a physical stability/grapple save), and adds to move speed. Dex gets deloaded (init and most ranged attacks go to wis). EVERY stat has effects on character choices, not just casters or martials or skillmonkeys. Plus, my ruleset doesn't have stat-replacements so much. AC uses dex and wis together, and DR is also important, given that there are plenty of automatic damage/damage-on-a-miss effects.

88
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 04, 2016, 04:09:00 PM »
Something else for note: This chart is dependent on the non-exclusive nature of the classes and my multiclassing system.

Classes are non-stacking, meaning that when a character is a 5th level Defender, let's say, and adds 2 levels of Skirmisher, they're still all together counted as a 5th level character, until those Skirmisher levels exceed the Defender levels. Overall character strength is rated by their earned XP total, because they could have spread that XP amongst several different classes, or focused onto one single class.

The chart is a guideline for a single-class character of that role, who should be capable of two of the three metrics to be a capable character, and, if focused on that role, capable of all three. A character who has divided themselves a little wider between multiple roles should be able to get at least one from each of their major roles they've built for. Classic archetypes might be built up from multiple classes, however you choose (so like a Warpriest/Paladin-type might be Defender/Healer/Evoker(Radiant), or it could be Skirmisher/Rider/Adept, as more of a mounted aura-granting general). The chart lets you say, "My character can do X, Y, but not Z, so maybe another character can do Z, even though they're mostly focused on A and B from those other classes."

89
Game Design / New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: January 04, 2016, 01:52:47 PM »
So, I'm doing my custom D&D-derived system, which I refer to as the Rule of Three, and I'm creating these numerical guidelines for what each class does in combat. Mostly based on 4e roles, though I shift my definitions a little.

For instance, my core 4 classes are all martial. The Skirmisher is most similar to the 3.5 Barbarian or Scout, damage boosts at the expense of accuracy, movement speed, and the ability to bypass armor-DR-effects. The Leader is a warlord/marshall/White Raven hybrid, who focuses on the morale side of restoration and healing, IE, temporary hit-points, morale boosts to actions, and restoring Surges, a hybrid of 3e Action points and 4e Healing surges. The 'Control' martial is the Brawler, a martial artist who uses trips, shoves, stunning strikes, grappling, and a guard zone ability that treats their space as larger than their original size to control more of the combat field. The 'Tank' martial, the Guardian, is a bodyguard, who uses active-mitigation to defend allies. Guardians can body-block strikes meant for allies, parry melee and eventually ranged attacks, and either do a 'mark' akin to 4e or possibly a more direct taunt ability.
  • Striker - Deals damage over distance
    • Base damage per-round
    • Bonus-action damage
    • Mobility/ranged effects
  • Support - Improves abilities/actions of allies
    • Boost allies' effectiveness
    • Recover resources
    • Grant bonus actions
  • Tank - Blocks attacks against allies/self
    • Deter enemy attacks vs. allies
    • Soak damage
    • Negate attacks
  • Control - Stops enemy activities/actions
    • Hinder enemy movement
    • Burn enemy actions
    • Cancel enemy effects
This is part of where I would like your opinions, I'm trying to create a level-based chart to set guidelines for what three things each of the classes can do. Goals shouldn't overlap between roles (at least not too much) but getting the Control role (which eats up some of the 4e Defender's schtick) to not overlap with the Tank is rather challenging.

Can you guys think of any better job labels between roles?

For each of these, there is a quantifiable number that increases with level. The idea is that the chart sets a standard, both for writing the classes, and for building a character. The columns set expectations of effectiveness. Some numbers can be divided fractionally, usually using three as the base increment (it's sort of thematic to the game, use of 3s repeatedly, so I'm sticking with it).
  • For instance, in terms of modifiers to an action, three boosts equal an auto-success, while three hindrances equal a cancellation.
  • Each character has three main actions (Standard, Move, Verbal), so costing them one action is 1/3 of a whole turn lost, while one extra of those actions is equal to 1/3 of an extra turn granted.
  • Area effects I'm still working on, my leading calculation is that they count as 3x the radius of the circle they effect, (counting from a corner as a round number, while counting from a square out counts as .5) representing the increasing difficulty in getting enemies to bunch up. So a 2x2 space:
    • counts as 3 enemies/allies effected
    • a 10-damage blast would count as 30 damage

90
Off Topic Fun / Re: WTF News stories
« on: April 06, 2015, 12:23:54 AM »
Found one that seems to be a little more supported. Try this one instead:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/free-purvi-patel-prison-and-clear-her-all-charges

91
D&D 5e / Re: Eberron update
« on: February 08, 2015, 01:56:55 AM »
I majorly hope this artificer is a stopgap, and we'll see something fuller with more options for things like construct minions and more diverse role than just wizard-with-sprinkles. I haven't dug into the 5e mechanics for magic items yet, but I'm hoping for something a little more specialized to the Eberron flavor. The 4e artificer had some interesting ideas in terms of unique abilities.

92
D&D 5e / Re: So I was just reading the Monster Manual...
« on: December 15, 2014, 05:42:12 PM »
Most of them probably get easily divided into another category. Just taking a guess:

Titans,
Giant?
Tojanida,
Aberration or Elemental, probably.
Xill,
Aberration or fiend.
Xorn,
Elemental or aberration.
Yeth Hound, Shadow Mastiff, Rakshasa
Probably all fiends.
Rast,
Fiend or aberration.
Ravid, Guardinals
Celestials, likely.
Inevitables
Those were already Constructs, not outsiders..

Aside from the fact that a creature is from an outer plane (which defines 3e extraplanars of any type just as much) what requires an 'Outsider' type for them, that wouldn't be covered under something else?

93
Gaming Advice / Re: 4e Revenant Race Question
« on: October 30, 2014, 11:23:26 AM »
Definitely not. Radiant is a damage keyword. Divine is a power source keyword. All cleric powers are Divine keyworded, but only a few have the Radiant keyword. Plus, there are Radiant arcane spells, I believe, which does not make them Divine. Both are defined in the PHB, and probably in the HoFL/HoFK books. Burden of proof saying 'they are the same' should be on him.

94
Hydras, cats (claw/claw/bite is more than average at their levels), lizardfolk..

95
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: Review: The Path of War
« on: September 20, 2014, 02:53:08 PM »
Thanks for the review, Libertad.  I had heard PoW was in process - so it's good to see it out and finalized.

So it seems that:

Stalker = Swordsage
Warder = Warblade

... but Warlord does not equal Crusader.  At least in terms of flavor & fluff.  Seems they both key off CHA, but Warlord doesn't have much of the Crusader's religious angle to it at all.

Your thoughts on this?
Think of it as more of a conceptual swap between Warblade/Crusader and Warder/Warlord. In this case, it's the heavy armor focus of the Crusader trading for the Cha focus, so we get a mix-and-match, rather than a direct comparison (and I think that was intentional on their part, to seem less like a direct rip-off). There isn't as much religious bent, but I think some of the variants add more paladin-esque flavor. (and I think the general consideration is that the PF paladin isn't as bad off as the 3.5 paladin was, compared to other classes.)

96
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: Rules for element-bending?
« on: September 16, 2014, 01:11:26 PM »
My preferred option would be to look at the Swordsage and maneuvers, like Desert Wind, as a starting point.

I know there's a few different Avatar-d20 systems on the GitP homebrew. Look 'em up.

97
I'm playing in a low-level 3.5 game, and I want to play a druid/warlock. At first I was looking at the Eldritch Disciple, with a swap of the Kn(Religion) and Turn Undead-progression references swapped for Kn(Nature) and Animal Companion progression approved by the DM.

That does cut the usage for Gift of the Divine Patron though. I'm not majorly hurt by its loss specifically, but the lack of anything there does kinda leave a gap in the PrC. Any suggestions, either as fixes or replacements? I'm not getting high enough in Druid to WS, so that's out. I don't need something for nothing, but additional options would be nice.

98
General D&D Discussion / Re: 3.5 Web Enhancements down
« on: August 04, 2014, 11:28:05 AM »
+1 to all of the above.
 :( :)


EDIT
Craiconn found (perhaps) the newest address

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/dnd

They are still under the Wizards Archives URL .... including Rule of the Games.


edit edit
Dude at wotc found this more general page ...
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/features

Looks like this works for ANY old address. Just swap the www. at the front for archive. and the old URL structure will work.

 :clap :bow :jumping

(They DIDN'T screw us all over! Whoo!)

99
I always took hit points as the amount of pain/damage you could take before passing out. Five hit points of damage is always five points, thus why curing means the same, but you yourself can take more of those blows before you fall unconscious due to trauma. When you gain hit points at a new level, they're not being added on the top, but between the 1 and 0 positions.

100
Gaming Advice / Re: How to keep a block of text on same page
« on: June 11, 2014, 03:00:24 PM »
I'm away from my system right now, (at work, where we have real MS office stuff) but I know of a couple different ways. There should be a paragraph format option to either not split paragraphs (meaning you should use linebreaks rather than carriage returns, usually by holding shift+return (or alt+return, forget which) rather than just return, so if you turn on formatting, it uses a curved arrow rather than a paragraph-P symbol), or at the very least you should be able to drop an entire statblock into a 1x1 table cell, which shouldn't split, but will flow across pages when needed.

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