Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Of the "classic" four energy types in Pathfinder (fire, ice, electricity, or acid), which one is the least likely to be useless? Building a standard draconic sorcerer and want to know which energy type to pick for my extra damage. Note that the GM has already disallowed the Orc bloodline so that's not on the table.

Also note that this GM is a noob, and I am also rather fond of her so breaking her game over my knee is not the goal.

[name_here]

I would expect you won't see much that resists acid. You could easily go to the volcano fortress or the frozen northlands without the DM deliberately trying to counteract your powerset.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I would expect you won't see much that resists acid. You could easily go to the volcano fortress or the frozen northlands without the DM deliberately trying to counteract your powerset.

True, but acid spells tend to blow, and the elemental spell feat blows as well, so I can see that as a drawback.

[name_here]

There is that. If you can't scrape together a good list of acid spells from the pfsrd, I'd recommend lightning. It's got a reasonable spell list and you still aren't likely to go to the Catacombs Of Elemental Resistance for it.

[Prak]

So, thinking about a kung fu martial arts game using AS' system so I can use these yin yang d6s I got, I looked at the AS powers for things that fit into an asian supernatural martial arts milieu, am I missing anything? Anything that I'm just not aware of popping up in bad kung fu movies, or being attributed to eastern mysticism in other works (like Batman having learned astral projection in Brave and the Bold) and such?

• Mesmerism (maybe?)
• Possession/Soul Investment
• All of Celerity
• All of Clout except Giant Size
• More or less all of Discernment
• ditto Fortitude
• All of Veil
• Lightning Strike
• Water Prison
• Astral Projection
• Dream Vision
• Aura of Decay (maybe?)
• The stuff you get for knowing Names of the Blasphemies at all
• Learn the Heart's Pain
• Bind the Name (if you change it from binding someone to Limbo to binding spirits into objects)
• Fire Walking
• Hand of Flame
• Fire Starter (maybe?)
• Touch of Darkness if you refluff Aggro damage as fucking with people's chi
• Maybe Path of Blood?
• Adaptive Resilience?
• Blind the Senses (fucking with chi, again)
• Cleanse the Body
• Fly
• Purify the Mind
• Telekinesis?

Other than maybe wanting to round out the Bending Arts if I'm allowing Water Prison/Lightning Strike/Hand of Flame, and some kind of Dim Mak punch, what else should such a game have?

[OgreBattle]

Which one lets you surf on your sword?

[Longes]

What are the important things I need to know while making a character for Deadlands (Savage Worlds version)? Specifically, a voodoo priest.

[Prak]

Which one lets you surf on your sword?

Is that an iconic kung fu/eastern martial arts thing? Because while Cuchulain could certainly be called a martial artist, it's a stretch to call him eastern.

[erik]

What are the important things I need to know while making a character for Deadlands (Savage Worlds version)? Specifically, a voodoo priest.

Most of these things are fairly obvious once you get your hands on the rules, but you will need to know them.

Unless your MC lets you start higher than Novice then prepare for mediocrity. The starting bumps either make very pointy characters (somewhere between d6 in all 5 stats or d12,d6,d4,d4,d4) or substandard characters.

One way to get extra build points is as a Veteran of the West. Probably worth it. Has a small chance of ruining your character, but well, then you'll probably die and try again. I recall trying to build Deadlands-SW characters when I first got the book and being frustrated that they offer Novice as the default. That should be an alternative option if you want to play as a shit-farmer.

As a blessed you want to max out your Faith to d12 but don't necessarily need a d12 spirit. At least a d8 to qualify for Voodoo and that is probably enough. Not many spirit skills, whereas agility and smarts have tons of skills and smarts affects ranges on a fair amount of powers.

Since you have a decently high spirit you may want to invest in Guts as well. Odds are it will come in handy.

I don't have specific power recommendations since there's too many different ways to aim to contribute. Anyway, you pick powers from the whole list as needed, so you aren't married to any decisions on powers anyway.

[Prak]

Say you're working on a D&D-esque where magic is supposed to be much more limited in what it can accomplish, and you want people to be swinging weapons around more and casting less, even the nominal spellcasters.

Would you rather see spellcasting times measured in combat actions, or limited to x/round?

As in, should the firemage be limited to one flame orb per round and encouraged to spend the rest of the round swinging his sword because Flame Orb has a casting time of "2 Combat Actions" and he only has 3, or because Flame Orb has a "once/round" tag?

[Grek]

The later. If you use the former, people will finangle things such that their spells go evenly into their combat actions.

[OgreBattle]

Say you're working on a D&D-esque where magic is supposed to be much more limited in what it can accomplish, and you want people to be swinging weapons around more and casting less, even the nominal spellcasters.

Would you rather see spellcasting times measured in combat actions, or limited to x/round?

I'd want to see spells require the 'tapping' of actions. So if a wizard makes a wall of fire he has to spend his next standard action to sustain it. Action economy things

[shinimasu]

So a question on the telekinisis power in After Sundown. So assuming you can pick up a number of objects less than or equal to the weight you would be able to carry if your willpower was your strength score, two things:

- What is the effective range on this. If you can see it you can lift it? Only items in the near range?

- If you have say ten smallish but sharp objects and wish to hurl them all at once at a single target would spray and pay be the appropriate attack roll to make?

[Username17]

Telekinesis in AS goes out to line of sight, but uses normal ranges, so it gets quite difficult to do things that aren't close.

-Username17

[Aryxbez]

Looking for D&D benchmarks for expected/required abilities at certain levels (1-20 if possible). I know there's been a few threads or such on this, but don't remember their exact names.

It's stuff like how having Magic weapon at 3rd, flight at 6th, constant flight at 10th, etc.

[radthemad4]

These come to mind

Every D&D Character Must Be Able to [X] by Around Level [Y]
The Five Cornerstones to Adventuring

[OgreBattle]

Which one lets you surf on your sword?

Is that an iconic kung fu/eastern martial arts thing? Because while Cuchulain could certainly be called a martial artist, it's a stretch to call him eastern.

One of the big RPG hits to come out of Taiwan and spread through China in the 90's was Wuxia themed "Legend of Sword & Fairy" which was adopted into a popular TV drama called "Chinese Paladin"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39h-Y3DyYU

Sword surfing is prominently featured. I'm not sure if they based it on an earlier wuxia novel or just thought the Daikon IV intro was so cool they had to adopt it tho'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeDBIwRe2AE

There's also various movies where warriors can make their swords fly through the air by command.

[Prak]

What are the minimum, maximum, and ideal number of ability/characteristic/whatever scores a game should have?

I started writing Midgard with the assumption of a system very similar to D&D, but Con has become even more useless now that I've decided Concentration isn't a skill. There's still Fort saves, and theoretically HP*, so Constitution would affect those, and it's referenced in the Athletics skill's section on swimming, but I could just as easily roll that all into Strength. Though, of course, doing that makes Str too valuable, given that it's already the key ability for Batter and Brawl (the combat skills) and determines bonus damage on muscle driven weapons.

But basically, Con is looking like even more of a legacy ability score in Midgard than it was in 3.5, and it's making me consider futzing with the ability scores.




*unless I pull up Frank's basic "here's how you design a hit box system" thing and decide to use that

[Schleiermacher]

I'd say min 3, max 9, ideal depends (primarily) on how crunchy a game you're making but it's hard to defend having more than 6. You could take a look at SAME.

[spongeknight]

What are the minimum, maximum, and ideal number of ability/characteristic/whatever scores a game should have?

Depends quite a bit on what your RNG is and what the stats actually do. Are you using a d20? Do stats directly modify rolls, is there a derived statistic from stats that directly modifies rolls, or do they provide a different type of bonus somehow?

[erik]

Well, anywhere between zero and a large number I reckon.
Certainly no less than zero, however.

It pains me that you're doing a 3.x DnD and only now coming to the conclusion that Constitution is maybe not a useful stat. The only reason to keep it in that context is to say "hey, this is a DnD knock-off."

Decide what you want your abilities to do.

Are they combat stats? (like WH40K stats: BS, WS, S, T, W...)
Are they skill stats? (CoC/Unknown Armies... I know that's combat too, but combat is an oversight in those games)
Are they [tag] trees for abilities? (spheres of related powers, because those are more relevant than whether your character can lift 50 lbs vs. 250lbs)

Having them overlap multiple categories (skill and combat) like 3e did is an exercise in futility. Keep your fluff/skills partitioned separately from your combat engine and you save people from having to choose being good at fluff at the expense of being bad at combat. It also saves you from trying to figure out how to make combat abilities relevant to skill pursuits and vice versa.

[Prak]

For Midgard, I'm working from an assumption of things working like d20 until I decide to change them. So skills have been pulled around a bit, but the mechanics are the same with the exception of referring to hard coded success tiers starting at 5, with each tier being 5 points higher.
So, yeah, d20+mods, v. TN, Stats have their valued derived as D&D does it.


I like the idea of resilience being decoupled from strength, so I want to keep Con. To that end, it's sort of become the magic stat. I'm working on a skill-based system (since I'm building this from the ground up and just using D&D as a vague guideline, this is doable), and made Con the key ability for Channeling, Necromancy and Transformation, the idea being that you have to be able to resist the energies involved in the former two, and the third dealing with shapeshifting, and so relying on your own resilience (though this is difficult to justify when you use transformation to transform other things. So I might drop that usage).

So currently Midgards skills look like this-

Str
Athletics (climb, jump, swim)
Batter (melee weapons)
Brawl (unnarmed, natural, improvised)

Dex
Accuracy (ranged weapons)
Bindings (escape and rope work)
Evade (avoiding attacks)
Legerdemain (sleight of hand)
Stealth (Hide, Move Silent)
Tumble (balance, tumble)

Con
Channeling (element spells)
Necromancy
Transformation

Int[/i]
Craft (appraise, craft, knowledge)
Disable
Knowledge (knowledge not focused on made goods)
Alchemy
Runes

Wis
Healing
Perception
Divination

Cha
Handle Animal
Negotiation (diplomacy, sense motive)
Skald (bluff, perform, illusion, charm magic)

If I add one more skill, that would give me 24, which could be divided evenly. This requires I move two skills from Dex and one from Int. Runes could be made a wisdom skill and ruffle absolutely no feathers, since you could easily consider it either a cunning or wisdom thing. If I make escaping bonds a pure dex thing, then I could make binding an int skill, but then I'd need to move another skill out of Int. Knowledge is actually probably the easiest to strike since it can be handled other ways, but then Survival needs a home.
That still leaves me with another skill to move from Dex, which could be Legerdemain, since I think "Pick Pocket" as a skill is a legacy thing too. Without a specific skill, you'd pick pockets with a dex check and stealth and distractions.

So conceivably, I could make the skill list this instead-
Str
Athletics (climb, jump, swim)
Batter (melee weapons)
Brawl (unnarmed, natural, improvised)
[4th skill]

Dex
Accuracy (ranged weapons)
Evade (avoiding attacks)
Stealth
Tumble (balance, tumble)

Con
Channeling (element spells)
Necromancy
Transformation
[4th skill, maybe Survival]

Int[/i]
Craft (appraise, craft, knowledge)
Disable
Alchemy
Binding (rope work, maybe magical binding)

Wis
Healing
Perception
Divination
Runes

Cha
Handle Animal
Negotiation (diplomacy, sense motive)
Skald (bluff, perform, illusion, charm magic)
[4th skill]

leaving me two skills to make up--one for strength, one for con and one for charisma.

Skald could be split into mundane and magical skills, so you'd have Skald (bluff, perform) and Trickery (charms, illusions).

Looking at things, Con, Int, Wis and Cha each have magical uses. This sort of makes me want to make each stat have a specific magic, but that means I'd need to move two from Con and come up with three mundane uses for Con if I'm trying to keep parity.

Concentration could be made a skill once again which would be one, I could maybe see scrapping Fort to make "resist toxins" a con-based skill, but then I should scrap saves completely, combining Reflex into Evade, and having to find something to do with Will that preferably isn't smashing it into Concentration. Which increases Wisdom's count. So I'd probably go with Survival instead.

On the other hand, the two stats that don't have an associated magic in that second list are Str and Dex, the combat stats. So there's a thing. I could artificially inflate Str's skills to hit the four skills count, possibly splitting Grappling off of Brawl, and then I'd have something like this-

Str
Athletics (climb, jump, swim)
Batter (melee weapons)
Brawl (unnarmed, natural, improvised)
Wrestle

Dex
Accuracy (ranged weapons)
Evade (avoiding attacks)
Stealth
Tumble (balance, tumble)

Con
Channeling (element spells)
Necromancy
Survival
Transformation

Int[/i]
Craft (appraise, craft, knowledge)
Disable
Alchemy
Binding (rope work, maybe magical binding)

Wis
Healing
Perception
Divination
Runes

Cha
Handle Animal
Negotiation (diplomacy, sense motive)
Skald (bluff, perform, music magic)
Trickery (Illusion, Charms)

Blue skills are magic or have magic uses. Craft is blue because magical crafting relies on it.

And then my only real issue is that Cha is one down on magic skills compared to the other four magic stats, unless I decide to give Handle Animal or Negotiation magical uses (enchantment is a possibility if I don't make it part of Trickery). If I really wanted to keep the four magic stats even, I could combine Handle Animal and Negotiation, and then come up with some other Cha-based form of magic. Maybe something to do with morale effects.

Knowledge, if not a series of skills, could be handled one of two ways- either every skill has a knowledge function, which can get a bit weird, unless I start tying monster types to specific magic skills, which could work, or I follow AS's Backgrounds model. Either way works fine, though the latter would be jarring to people who think this is "D&D with some changes." So I'd need to stop explaining it that way.

[Prak]

Well, anywhere between zero and a large number I reckon.
Certainly no less than zero, however.

It pains me that you're doing a 3.x DnD and only now coming to the conclusion that Constitution is maybe not a useful stat. The only reason to keep it in that context is to say "hey, this is a DnD knock-off."

Oh, I've known that for a long time. I'm just building Midgard from the assumption that things work like they do in D&D until I change them.

Decide what you want your abilities to do.

Are they combat stats? (like WH40K stats: BS, WS, S, T, W...)
Are they skill stats? (CoC/Unknown Armies... I know that's combat too, but combat is an oversight in those games)
Are they [tag] trees for abilities? (spheres of related powers, because those are more relevant than whether your character can lift 50 lbs vs. 250lbs)

Having them overlap multiple categories (skill and combat) like 3e did is an exercise in futility. Keep your fluff/skills partitioned separately from your combat engine and you save people from having to choose being good at fluff at the expense of being bad at combat. It also saves you from trying to figure out how to make combat abilities relevant to skill pursuits and vice versa.

At the moment, it's a skill based system with unique abilities coming from an essence that describes how dwarfy/elfy/dragony/angry you are.

Skills aren't bought by rank, they're purchased by how much you've trained in them, so you would spend points on saying you're Trained ("rank"=1/4 Char. Level or 1, whichever is greater), Proficient (1/2 Char level or 2), Skilled (char lv or 3) or Focused (char level or 4) in a given skill.

I'm thinking about having skill points purchase weapon proficiencies and spells known as well, but that would be a "1 pt per weapon/spell" thing. Spells might cost 2 points.

When you make your character, you chose a profession, this gives you a handful of skills at Trained or Proficient, so a Woodsman has Accuracy-Trained, Batter-Trained, Craft-Trained, Perception-Trained, Stealth-Trained, Survival-Trained; and a Soldier has Accuracy-Proficient, Batter-Proficient, Brawl-Trained, Evade-Trained, or something along those lines, and it's kind of just accepted that some professions are considered NPC professions because players will typically pick the things that start with higher combat or magic training.

Then you have your type level, usually Humanoid, which gives you a HD and some skill points, probably like 8 or something.

Then you have your first Essence level, which is how Manly/Dwarfy/Elfy/Hobbity you are, and gives you your save bonuses, "class" features, and probably allows you to pick some number of skills from a list to increase a step of training.

Then there should be feats, equipment, and spells.

You gain levels based on how much XP you accumulate, not how much you actually have, so you can spend your xp without slowing your advancement. So far I'm only solidly decided on XP being used in crafting and laying curses, but I'm mulling over players being able to spend XP to buy skill points and ability increases between levels. Barring some problem I'm not seeing because I'm an artist and writer and not a polymath, the only concern there is balancing "permanent boost to a specific skill" with "permanent boost to an ability and all relevant skills" with "semi-permanent boost to either which can be changed when desired with enough downtime." Magic items give XP back when destroyed, but only for the purpose of crafting, curses give xp back when removed, broken, or they've run their course.

The game has only a ten level span, or rather, 9, since your first level just describes what sort of creature you are (humanoid, dragon, undead, etc).

I was thinking about an Epic-esque "Now You Are A God" tier past 10th, but I'm also considering making God just a quality you buy with a lot of XP and then all advancement past 10th is through spending XP, not leveling.

---

If I don't give make Channeling, Necromancy and Transformation Con-based as an excuse to keep it around, and instead use one's level as a measure of their resilience (which D&D does a lot anyway), I would need to find a new home for survival, which isn't really an issue. Honestly "you can survive in the forest" is something that could just be handed out with professions and as part of one's elfishness. And I'm hard-pressed to think of Survival's other uses off the top of my head. Find north? Meh, that could be a pure wisdom thing, or compasses can just be that common. Looking it up, it also lets you get a bonus to fort saves vrs inclement weather, not get lost, predict the weather and track. Of those, the only thing that really stands out is track. Predicting the weather is either a knowledge thing, or a simple divination.

I don't know what to do with tracking. I've definitely seen it come up in D&D, and it will probably come up whether it's part of a skill or not (ie, it doesn't only come up because some people have ranks in it, the game could not include it, and people would still ask to do it).

It could be a part of handle animal, I suppose, but that's a bit of a stretch. The only other thing I can think to do with it is to make it part of the knowledge system--whatever that ends up being.

Beyond wanting to represent resilience, the only other reason I can think to keep Con is to keep the number of abilities divisible by 3, because Norse myth cares a lot about the numbers 3 and 9. This is not a good enough reason to keep con, of course.

So then there's just the question of where to put Channeling, Necromancy and Transformation.

Necromancy deals with negotiating with, talking to, and exerting control over the dead. This puts it in Cha's wheel house pretty solidly.

Channeling is dealing with the power of the elements and transformation is changing physical forms. Neither of those speak to a specific characteristic in and of themselves. I suppose I could fall back on a Mind Over Universe/Wise Communion With the World split, and shove transformation into Wisdom, since it's the "turn into a bear" magic type, and channeling into Int, since it's the fireball magic type. Then again, if I'm calling one magic type "wise communion with the world" there's no reason that couldn't be channeling. I suppose I could combine them into "nature magic" and shove it into will, but saying "Imma turn this stick into a sword!" isn't particularly nature oriented. So I suppose I could take shapeshifting and throwing fire and make them Naturalism, which would actually be a handy place to shove tracking if I wanted, and take "turn this thing into this other thing" and shove it into alchemy/call it transmutation.

So that'd be something like-
Int
Binding
Craft
Disable
Transmutation

Wis
Divination
Healing
Naturalism
Perception
Runes

Cha
Handle Animal
Necromancy
Negotiation
Skald
Trickery

I'm only slightly bothered by Int then only having four skills to Wis and Cha having five. I suppose if that's really bothering me that much, I can take Binding and make it purely about the magical sense and move the boyscouting into it's own skill called Rope or something. Or Rigging, and have it cover juryrigging too (whereas Disable currently handles that).

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Does anyone know where I can buy a catfolk mini that:

-Isn't a catgirl
-Isn't either too anthro or too feral (So not Miqo'Te and not Charr. Somewhere in the middle, like the Khajiit would work).
-Either looks like a spellcaster, or is wearing heavy armor (but not barbaric looking armor).

This is remarkably hard, and I'm wondering if any of you guys has insight that I do not have...

[erik]

Not the best resolution but I'm working from phone