Bad Juju (Ebon Grove) Design Flowsheet

[Orion]

Bad Juju: the Ebon Grove

The Flowsheet:

Step One Name the PCs : Embassy

Step Two: Describe a Six-Person Party

The Western Wizard

The Wizard is a representative of the rulers of the Ebon Grove. She has made pacts with the powers of air which allow her to do minor tricks with wind and fire. Her powerful charms provide access to flight and nuke effects. She is well-educated in history and magic, and has contacts in the wizard order and among powerful spirits.

The Southern Shaman

The Shaman was trained by the clergy of a smalltown cult. He's largely unburdened by pacts, relying on a large set of charms for most tasks. He uses mainly earth and water magic, especially healing and control powers. He's also got decent staff melee and wilderness skills.

The Soldier of the Middle Kingdom

The Soldier has a horse and a sword, and probably some armor. He has no inherent magical abilities, but can detonate charms given to him by others. He can sneak around, lead forces, and intimidate fools.

The Northern Royal

The Oathsworn is a descendant of the Northern Dynasty. His powers come from a variety of pacts with various Fair Ones and other spirits. He uses neither charms nor weapons. His skills include combat against the supernatural, diplomancy, athletics, and superior crafting.

The Wandering Woodsman

The Woodsman has a bow, and a horse. He is friendly with the powers of the woods, and with the barbarian peoples. He has some minor druidy magic.

The Eastern Ambassador

The ambassador is extremely well-educated and charming. He is trained to negotiate with the Fair Ones, the nobility, and so on. Most of his relevance comes from major rituals. He also has substantial wealth and resources.

Step Three: Two Parties

Party One: Soldier, Ambassador, Shaman

This team has a shortage of flashy magic, but is solidly capable of most tasks. Soldier is a combat monster supported by healing and controls form the shaman. Ambassador is the face, shaman handles wilderness skills. Soldier does stealth jobs.

Party Two: Oathsworn, Woodsman, Wizard

All three characters have slid combat, mobility, and stealth abilities. They have a harder time cooperating than team one, and they aren't very subtle, but they get the job done.

Step Four: An Adventure

Plague strikes a nearby town! If something isn't done, your homeland will be deserted and the commerce will dry up. Fortunately, the Goddess of Ice lives on a nearby mountain. You've heard she controls a spring whose waters will heal any ailment. The party saddles up and rides out there. Since the mountain is in land controlled by a rival nation, they get hassled by a border patrol and go convince the local potentate to let them harvest the waters. As they ascend the mountain they fight the Queen's Ice Tiger Guardians, are ambushed by their sorcerous nemesis, and finally gain the peak, where they must cajole the Goddess into giving them the spring water.

Step Five: A Campaign

Step Six: System

Most likely a class-less, skill-based system.

Step Seven: Fill In!

[Absentminded_Wizard]

So you're still going with the D&D paradigm that "fighters" have to depend on the rest of the party for their mojo?

[Heath Robinson]

Assuming mojo doesn't ever really affect the physical world directly, the archetype doesn't actually suffer so long as everything is built to be balanced for the physical damage capabilities of the specialist.

Essentially, so long as the mojoslingers can't kill that bear without a lot more risk than the swordslinger then there's an opening for said swordslinger. In D&D that bear gets fried, or has a heart attack before the fighter gets to hit it with a sharpened piece of steel and there's no real actual cost to the mojoslinger.

[Orion]

The soldier my be dependant on the wizard, but the wizard is also dependant on the soldier.

Firing a charm requires two things: the spells required to activate it, and the skill relevant to the action you're using it for.

Making a charm requires the spells to enchant the item, and the skills to chat up the local gods.

So really, the ideal case is a Soldier/Ambassador/Wizard team working together. Say you want to shoot lightning at people. The wizard find a stick and casts Energy Capacitor on it. The Ambassador uses Negotiate on the local God of Storms. Then the Soldier takes the wand and fires it with his Archery skill.

If characters are working alone? The Wizard can make a lightning wand and use it alone, but he will miss a lot. The soldier can shoot people up with a bow, thought it's less powerful. Neither is as effective as a soldier with a lightning wand.

[zeruslord]

What about vertical integration? If I wanted to, I could build a Lightning Gunner with Energy Capacitor, Negotiate, and Archery and make a lightning wand and use it to the fullest extent.

[Orion]

I don't have a problem with that in the abstract. The archetypes aren't exclusive -- the soldier always can pick up a few spells or whatnot. The trick would be making sure there are sufficiently specialized abilities available to do the vertical thing.

[zeruslord]

The Wizard archetype looks exactly right for most people's images.

The Shaman looks interesting, but he could just as easily be a hedge wizard or similar with a few non-magic skill swaps.

I wouldn't give sneaking to the Soldier, but would probably buff him a bit as a face.

The Oathsworn's abilities are a bit odd - he has superior crafting but doesn't use weapons or armor. Otherwise, he looks interesting.

The Woodsman matches the 3e ranger concept, but I would probably push him a bit towards more wizard-like magic.

The Ambassador seems fine, but either Ambassador or Embassy needs to be renamed. It's like the 4e Leader role, only it seems even more deeply connected. I'd suggest renaming the Embassy to something more magic related, like Circle or Coven.

[Crissa]

Shouldn't this be in the design forum?

-Crissa

[Orion]

You got me on the Oathsworn guy. He was thrown together to get me to six, while I was half asleep. I also added the entire Oath system on the fly, purely to support him.

A related problem: Besides Oaths, Charms, Spells, and Miracles, there's another magic system in the setting, Sorcery. Sorcerers and conventional magic-users don't historically get along very well, so mixed groups aren't necessarily appropriate, although they might be.I didn't include any sorcery-users in the basic six, even though getting to six would have been really easy if I did, because then the presumption would be that every group was mixed.

My current plan is to make the normal magic, collectively called "wizardry" the base game and release a supplement with Sorcerers. Only, I'm not sure whether adding new subsystems and archetypes is even possible without unbalancing things.

[Orion]

One thread seems like plenty:

The Ebony Grove: Arts of Wizardry

You're only human." Everyone deals with this platitude. Some refuse to accept it. In an unfeeling world, even one's best effort doesn't go very far. The most talented and powerful humans can only sway society so far. And in a pre-modern age, without rapid transit and telecommunications, without video recorders, the reach of one man's influence is sadly limited. Some hunger to surpass the limits of human potential. There is a way: The "other world" where spirits reside.

The spirits come in two basic levels: the Kami, who are the thousand little gods who run the world. The Fair Ones, ancient divinities shaped and constrained by the terms of ancient spells and rituals.

There are NO Charles Atlas Superpowers in this game. Nobody is "naturally" hardcore or superhuman. Therefore, *every* PC is going to turn to magic. The types of magic practiced in the setting include:

Spells: Spells are learnable magical abilities which can be performed by humans by themselves. Sounds awesome, right? Not so much. Most spells only effect magical energies and constructs themselves. They can prepare items for enchantment, detect and analyze magic, communicate with spirits, and so on. They cannot lift a pencil.

Miracles: The reason that spells can't effect the physical world is that the physical world is controlled by the spirits. Get the spirits on your side, and the limits of magic expand. After using spells to contact a spirit, you can convince it to work miracles on your behalf. Of course, there's usually a price.

Charms: Charms are the practical basis of a magician's toolkit. A charm is a physical item which contains the promise of a future miracle. One enchants the item, and wheedles a spirit into empowering it -- it can then be redeemed for a miracle at a later date, even by someone other than the maker and outside the spirit's domain.

Pacts: A Charm is a one-shot expression of magic. Sometimes, you need a more dependable effect, or, aren't trained in the spells needed to activate charms. Instead you can make a Pact, granting you a minor, permanent blessing as long as you follow the (often stringent) rules.

The Ivory Tower: Arts of Sorcery
Sorcery: FIXME

[Absentminded_Wizard]

So what's the idea behind sorcery going to be? Do sorcerers bind spirits while "wizards" negotiate with them? Or do sorcerers consort with different, darker spirits?

[Bigode]

My current plan is to make the normal magic, collectively called "wizardry" the base game and release a supplement with Sorcerers. Only, I'm not sure whether adding new subsystems and archetypes is even possible without unbalancing things.

I think there's at least one way to do it: sorcerers doing largely the same stuff as a whole, but having it be divided between individual archetypes differently - could allow lots of distinctions. And there might be other ways.

[Orion]

On Sorcery: All matter in this universe is shapeable by the will. However, the spirits stabilize the matter of their domains, preventing humans from manipulating it directly.

However, there are a few hacks. The God of Iron was killed in the first age, and ever since sorcerers have had control of iron. There are no gods over humanity, so sorcery controls bone and blood. The God of Fire is chained in the sorcerers' basement, which let them control fire. They also control large supplies of obsidian. There are no obsidian gods outside volcanic regions.

So basically, Sorcerers ride around on obsidian horses attended by skeletal servants. Instead of summoning winds and wave with wands, they shoot fire out of swords.

The only trouble is, I haven't figured out what the limitation is on sorcery that makes is sufficiently unpleasant. Blood sacrifices for every spell? Fatigue? Just leave them NPC-only?

[Ice9]

Possibly they fuck things up like Defilers? Because of their comparative inexperience in shaping matter, and often their haste in doing so, their magic has problematic side effects. Like for instance, a Sorcerer pulls an obsidian wolf from the earth to fight off some bandits. But that changes the nature of the stone in the vicinity - now it grows teeth at night and bites people who walk over it.

On a general level, that would mean nobody wants Sorcery happening near their towns, and some people are against it entirely. On a personal level, maybe some of these side effects don't stay where the spell was cast, they follow the caster around. So you made a wall of fire yesterday and now your hands are getting hot, and your gloves are starting to smoke ...

There's also the option that the spirits resent Sorcerers infringing on their turf, and so any character who bargains with spirits will be getting tasks like "go burn down that Sorcerer's house over there", or "poison the next Sorcerer you see". But that won't work if you want the possibility of mixed parties.

[zeruslord]

Sorcery is probably incompatible with Miracles and Pacts, but it should work with Spells and Charms. Sorcery might even be able to produce Charms in its domain. In addition, Sorcery is a route to power without the involvement of the spirits. With their power over flesh and bone, they can not only create undead, but also enhance themselves. On the other hand, the Oathsworn and various other highly pact-based mojo users may have a pact rule or just a religious commandment to kill you dead. Also, the common people believe you are evil, because ancient Sorcerer-Kings were. The biggest thing is going to be the limitations on what they can do.

For the Oathsworn, I would favor them having a single weapon set (no more melee weapons than they may wield at a time and only one ranged weapon) and no armor, or possibly a restriction on metal or means of production.

[Grek]

Spirits hate sorcerers. As a result, if the sorcerer is near a spirit, bad things happen. His milk goes sour, trees try to fall over on him, mudslides knock over statues of him in the town square, wells dry up rivers suddenly get faster and try to drown him, and birds shit on his head when he sits under them. In response, sorcerers burn down forests, dam up rivers and have their minnons sow salt into the fields to drive off the spirits, making anywhere they set up camp into a barren wasteland. All the peasents hate that, because they are trying to hunt/fish/farm those places and the sorcerer just ruined them. Add in the need for fresh flesh and bones for experiments and you have a reign of terror for our heros to overthrow.

EDIT: I should point out that, from the stuff you've posted, it seems to make sense that sourcery should be NPC only.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

So sorcerers have Diplomacy penalties when dealing with most NPCs. How do you mechanically translate the "spirits hate you" factor. Do we roll random chances every so often that spirits are near and decide to screw with the sorcerer?

[Grek]

If you've planned out the villan's base and everything between there and where the PCs start, add in a few challenges that only come up if you offend the spirits.

If you don't have it planned out, but have a random encounter per day system, add an extra encounter resulting from spirits doing something to you that the party has to fight if you've used strong sourcery in the past day.

If you don't have either of those, I think NPC only class would be the best option. I really don't like "roll dice and consult penelty table b" setups.

[zeruslord]

Oh NO! An adventurer with enemies! Stop the presses!

Seriously, adding extra enemies will either get in the way of the story or add more plot hooks. It is in no way a solution to balance problems.

Sorcery is going to be powerful, but it can't let you fly, turn invisible, or build anything not made of obsidian and steel. Essentially, you have minions, summoning, some industrial power, and fire. Everyone using wizardry can run around being batman while you are, at best, a poor man's Iron Man.

[Grek]

Oh NO! An adventurer with enemies! Stop the presses!

Seriously, adding extra enemies will either get in the way of the story or add more plot hooks. It is in no way a solution to balance problems.

Sorcery is going to be powerful, but it can't let you fly, turn invisible, or build anything not made of obsidian and steel. Essentially, you have minions, summoning, some industrial power, and fire. Everyone using wizardry can run around being batman while you are, at best, a poor man's Iron Man.

Since Boolean said sorcery works on flesh and blood, I presume some sort of spell to make you become huge, see with infered vision, jump for miles at a time and rip people in half. Add fireballs and you are basically the Hulk with heat ray vision rather than Iron Man. That doesn't sound too weak, though it could be if they get class skills that aren't good. We'd need to see the class skills.

[Psychic Robot]

Boolean, I don't want to sound like a dick, but could you format your posts with headings and things? (Not all of them, of course; just the ones where you're writing out the system, such as in the first post of this thread.) It makes it easier to sort your ideas. Aside from that, I think you've got a cool idea going here.

I also am incredibly pleased that you are combining flavor and mechanics. D&D, unfortunately, has tried so hard to be something for everything that it is dry in that regard, and tying them together helps give players a lot of inspiration. It also makes the non-combat roles more fun. (Few people play D&D so they can play a diplomat. The ambassador, though, sounds great.)

[Orion]

Boolean, I don't want to sound like a dick, but could you format your posts with headings and things? (Not all of them, of course; just the ones where you're writing out the system, such as in the first post of this thread.) It makes it easier to sort your ideas. Aside from that, I think you've got a cool idea going here.

Noted, beginning to work on it. Getting used to using HTML.

Since Boolean said sorcery works on flesh and blood, I presume some sort of spell to make you become huge, see with infered vision, jump for miles at a time and rip people in half. Add fireballs and you are basically the Hulk with heat ray vision rather than Iron Man. That doesn't sound too weak, though it could be if they get class skills that aren't good. We'd need to see the class skills.

You're extending "control of flesh and blood" a little too far. I should have been more clear. I'm intending to interpret the abilities of sorcerers pretty literally. More exotic magical effects would come from symbolic interpretations of the elements. To address your points one by one:

Infrared vision would probably be pact or charm gained from an earth ro snake spirit, not a sorcery spell. Jumping miles at a time would be more likely as an air effect than a flesh effect. Becoming huge is out of theme for the game, so it isn't available to anyone.

A sorcerer's effects are going to look more like: attack at range by shooting iron/bone/obsidian projectiles. Conjure barriers, create equipment. Create golems and undead minions. Debuff/incapacitate by controlling enemy flesh and blood.

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This raises an interesting points about theme: Here's why I'm leering of "self-buff" effects, and why pacts and minions need to be looked at carefully. I'd like to explain the power scale.

There was some discussion of the 100 orcs scenario recently on the den. Many people felt that moderate-level heroes should be able to hack through 100 orcs fairly trivially. Others felt that 100 dudes is something to run away from no matter how good you are. I want to take a middle ground:

A moderate-advanced, well-prepared group can blow away 100 orcs. The skies open and rain fire, the trees uproot themselves and join the fight, and wounds are patched up by healing water. The PCs should be able to trivially win against 100 orcs in the sense that their chance of losing is negligible.

However at no point should even high-level PCs be able to fight 100 orcs without expending significant resources. Taking on a military force should require expending charms and alliances one would prefer to have conserved. Therefore, the first instinct of even a high-level group when confronted with an army should be to run, fighting only if for some reason necessary.

[Orion]

Sorcery is probably incompatible with Miracles and Pacts, but it should work with Spells and Charms. Sorcery might even be able to produce Charms in its domain.

Sorcerers learn the same spells everyone else does, barring a few which aren't useful to them. They probably don't produce "charms," preferring to produce items of altered properties. Creating a skeletal minion is a lot like creating a Charm of Wind Daggers, in that both can be deployed in one combat for a substantial advantage and a risk of losing a possession.

As for "incompatibiliy," Sorcery itself doesn't include anything analogous to pacts or miracles, but there's probably nothing prohibiting a sorcerer from dabbling in wizardry.

Also, the common people believe you are evil, because ancient Sorcerer-Kings were.

Yes. On the other hand, I don't want to rely on this too heavily for balance, because this doesn't hold for all times and places.

[zeruslord]

Are sorcerers supposed to be canonically evil or is that just the default assumption of NPCs? If they aren't meant to be pure bone-curdling evil, then they need something for out-of-combat challenges beyond undead monstrosities, golems, and fire.

[Orion]

Sorcerers aren't any morally worse than anybody else on the whole. As a political party, the sorcerers made some bad calls a while back which lead to the Ivory Tower being razed and the sorcerers driven into the desert. A certain number of them want revenge, but most just want to get on with things. And the leadership of the Ebon Grove is corruptible as well.