Welcome to the 'Blood of the Gods' board!
This is not just my own playground. I've got webspace of my own I could have easily thrown forum software onto, and I've already got a wiki I've been keeping some of the game data on. It's not just about data storage or publicity. It's about people, and interaction. I need other eyes on this content, people to review, suggest, and critique my work. I would also hope others would take something from the work I do, whether that is inspiration or revulsion, and by putting the work out into the public eye, it makes it available to others for use.
So I'll say up front,
all threads in this forum will be open to comment and critique.Keep an eye on me, keep me on my toes, keep me honest, but don't judge or dismiss a concept before it's fully hatched. I'll be playing around with a lot of ideas, throwing around concepts which might be dropped entirely if I decide they don't contribute to the whole. This is more like the corkboard in the R&D room, with a lot of concepts being tossed around as possible, but nothing discarded as impossible or irrelevant.
So you might be asking, what is this whole thing about, what's his goal?
This started as just my own quick fixes for 3.5, which I referred to as 3.6, 3.9, or a half dozen other concepts.
I started with just making my preferred fixes to 3.5 (all casters as spontaneous rather than prepared, shapeshift druids and cloistered clerics as standard casters on more even footing with favored souls and spirit shamans) then pulling and reworking material altogether(my invoker bard). Favored Souls expanded on the divine gifts aspect by gaining additional powers and passive upgrades, more than just elemental resists and wings, trying to more widely represent a variety of god-concepts. (Eventually THAT was dropped as well, creating the Champion, a Marshal which used the Bard's casting progression and the Cleric list, along with a counterpart Sentinel which did the same with a shapeshift druid in place of the Marshal features.) Rangers got prime animal companions, but that felt too strong (the same problem from the Druid), so I began tweaking in the (new at-the-time) Beastmaster Ranger material from 4e, as well as the 4e ranger's Hunter's Mark (which I still like as a base concept..) to keep it down closer to the output of a single character, as it should've been. Eventually, I wanted to make so many changes, (and my players got tire of the rules changing out from under them) that I decided to put the game on hold, while I reworked the rules into a useable form I was happy about. Meanwhile, we went on to play 4e for a while, then a 3.5 by-the-book campaign.
Now I'm just calling it GodsBlood, after the core concept of the setting I'd been building underneath it.
My end-goal is all of the above concepts, but also something to properly represent the world I want to play in. I'll make a few more posts with specific concepts, but the key elements are this:
- All of the races exist as points on a spectrum between Human (or near-human) and different creatures, mostly animals, derived from the animal spirits which arose as the first of the lesser gods. These lesser gods fed the humans their power, their traits, as a rewards for the worship and loyalty, and they changed, becoming more creature-like. The gods feed on the faith of their following, it maintains their godhood, so that they might war amongst the other gods for supremacy. This kind of transformation can happen in a single character's advancement, so that if you are favored by X, god of the Y, you're going to be looking a lot like one of those Y by the time you gain a few levels.
- There are four main types of magic; divine, primal, arcane, and eldritch. Divine and primal are linked, one coming from the ascended gods (some risen spirits, some ascended mortals, and some older than the world itself), the other coming from the inherent magic of the land and the minor spirits which exist in the coterminous spirit world. Arcane is magic born of knowledge and learning, while eldritch is magic of intent and inborn talent, perhaps from more magical hidden bloodlines.
- No fighters, no monks. Fighter and Monk suffer from basically the same problem inverse from one another. They are loaded concepts. Fighters are Paladins without the Holy, Rangers without the Nature, and so on. There's as much definition of what a fighter ISN'T as there is about what he IS. Fighter doesn't work as a concept in my opinion, so I'm killing it. Instead, we have several *types* of 'Fighter', which is a generic term on par with 'Caster'. (mechanically, its used for 'fighter level' much like 'caster level', literally replacing 'initiator level' in some places.) Monks, on the other hand, have so many different things going for what they try to be. Are they monastery-living holy men? Are they unarmed brawlers? Are they contemplative mystics seeking enlightenment? They can't be everything at once, because to fit all those concepts, but weaken them to not be mary-sue-powerful, you wind up with something so mish-mash piss-poor weak, it looks awfully similar to the 3.5 monk. Instead, Monk is a concept theme which can be added onto any other class via skills, feats, or ACFs. An 'unarmed strike' feat might give you a scaling always-equipped weapon in your own fists, high ranks in Acrobatics and Athletics will grant you a scaling AC bonus and a faster-than-others movement rate, and the various combat maneuvers, including the Parry material, will grant you the defenses an unarmed combatant would need to keep themselves alive. Meanwhile, the rest of your actual class abilities define where you take the concept, so that a holy mystic is entirely different from an unarmed brawler, on the character sheets.
- Everybody's magical. The 4e 30-level/3-tier system is being used here, with certain expectations in mobility, special attacks/magics, and defenses inherent to the system. More to be specified as I figure out the requirements.
I'll be adding more as I go, and probably either requesting a few threads moved in, or reconstitute their core concepts in fresh posts. Next up (probably monday or tuesday) is the current setting details, the gods, and the worldview. I'll be updating this post with links to the major threads. (probably only going to sticky this thread, and let the others descend with activity.)
