Dinosaur Riding Barbarians

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Dinosaur Riding Barbarians

Post by Chamomile »

I really want to play a game where the party is the barbarian crew of a war dinosaur. I like the idea so much that I think I'll see how far through a game design flowchart I can get before I get bored or stuck. While this is obviously a split-off of the "what do we call dinosaurs in fantasyland" thread, it's a giant derail so I've made its own thread.

So for step one we'll call these guys a party because they're barbarians and nothing else sounds right, and for step two:

The Captain provides partywide buffs with his standard actions. This means he wants to be riding a dinosaur, which he can command with his swift action. The archetypal place for this guy is commanding the giant dinosaur at the heart of the party (tyrannosaur, diplodocus, or triceratops would be the default options, depending on your willingness to shovel income into meat for food and whether you want to optimize combat power or carrying capacity). He isn't actually any better at this, though, and considering the giant dinosaur rather overshadows the individual contributions of any one party member realistically I would expect the driver position to rotate. In any case, the Captain works just as well riding a raptor as the giant dinosaur, just so long as he's never forced to pick between fighting back against the bad guys attacking him or continuing to maintain his buffs. Outside of combat, the Captain is a manager and quartermaster. As manager, he makes support NPCs more efficient, and as quartermaster he keeps track of where supplies actually end up and keeps inventory and such, which makes the party as a whole more efficient with supplies and thus makes longer trips possible and shorter trips cheaper.

The Ranger is a longrange spike damage character who can hit targets who are far away for big enough damage to wound raptors or powerful human opposition and kill human grunts dead, but can only irritate giant dinosaurs. Thus, their main role is to snipe the people who ride the dinosaurs, thus turning the unled dinosaurs into as much a danger to their own side as the enemy. The Ranger can either be a raptor archer using speed to pepper enemies to death from a safe distance or a giant dinosaur passenger dedicating his full actions to snipe foes from atop a living tank. Outside of combat, the Ranger has tracking and recon (including stealth) skills, and can make and appraise poisons. Anyone can use poisons, however.

The Beastmaster commands a pack of small dinosaurs, like velociraptors or deinonychus (deinonychii?). These can't keep up with the larger dinosaurs over long distances, so they ride on the giant dinosaur by default. A raptor-mounted Beastmaster has the special ability to command a mount as a free action, so he can command his pack and a raptor or giant dinosaur at the same time so long as he is actually riding that raptor or giant dinosaur. He's also the only character who can do serious damage in melee (having both 2-4 extra attacks from his pack as well as dealing slightly, but noticeably, higher melee damage personally) without being tied to a raptor, which makes him perfect for giant dinosaur boarding actions. Outside of combat, the Beastmaster is good at dinosaur quartermastering, which sort of makes him a Captain but for dinosaurs instead of the party/support NPCs, and a dinosaur appraiser, allowing the party to make more informed decisions at the dinosaur market.

The Shaman is the anti-Captain. He debuffs enemies and runs crowd control with his voodoo hexes. He can also run crowd control by petrifying enemies with fear or causing them to run away. Much like the Captain, he works best either directing the giant dinosaur or riding a raptor. His swift action is wasted as a passenger atop the giant dinosaur. Outside of combat, the Shaman is a face character, and in the shortterm a more effective one than the Dragoon, although the fact that he gets his way by intimidating people and possibly drugging/mesmerizing them into compliance has longterm consequences for your relationship with that village.

The Raptor Knight is had the highest health and DR of any of the classes when mounted upon their trusty raptor. If allowed to set up a charge, they can also do incredible damage, enough to wound or possibly even kill even a giant dinosaur. The enemy giant dinosaur's infantry or raptor cavalry allies are going to disrupt that charge when they can, but the Raptor Knight is heavily armored and even when not charging quite capable of dealing damage enough to hack through them. Once he's cleared away the fodder, he can set up charges that can fell enemy giant dinosaurs. The Raptor Knight pairs well with a diplodocus, whose massive carrying capacity can be used to wear heavy armor, allowing them to wait out attacks from enemy giant dinosaurs while taking minimum damage and waiting for the party to clear out enemy infantry and cavalry so the Raptor Knight can line up a charge. Outside of combat the Raptor Knight is a craftsman and appraiser of worked goods, capable of repairing damaged items without returning to a town to do so and securing a solid deal on weapons, armor, or tools.

The Raptor Dragoon deals more damage than any other character except a charging Raptor Knight, but is relatively fragile himself. His main defense is evasion and speed. What with size penalties, this makes him nearly immune to giant dinosaur attacks, and his damage output is high enough to injure even giant dinosaurs, and most everyone else just dies if they lands a solid blow, which is far from guaranteed as they are not especially accurate against targets smaller than the broad side of a brontosaurus. Or apatosaurus, whatever. This gives him two main battlefield jobs. First, killing enemy knights or other important raptor-mounted foes, and second, assisting the giant dinosaur in killing enemy giant dinosaurs by weakening them with his devastating attacks, preferably before the two relatively slow giant dinosaurs have even reached one another. Outside of combat the Raptor Dragoon is the typical party face, good at bargaining with merchants, hobnobbing with the common folks, and charming those in power.

I'll note for the record here that there's no particular reason outside the convention of the flowchart to fix the out of combat abilities to the combat abilities I've sketched out here. A class/proficiency system in which proficiency is not at all attached to class would also work fine, or a skill system, or a point-buy, or whatever.

So for our three-person parties let's go with:

Team Raptor has the Beastmaster, Raptor Dragoon, and Raptor Knight. The diplodocus is used primarily as a deinonychus carrier, especially for boarding actions, with the Beastmaster dealing a coup de gras directly to the back of the skull of any giant dinosaur that can't be allowed to run rampant and riderless, something which is fortunately not true of their own diplodocus, which will in a worst case scenario run off and have to be chased down by one of the raptor riders after the battle. If the boarding action fails, the Beastmaster can retreat with any surviving minions onto the diplodocus and focus on stomping enemy infantry so that the Knight and Dragoon can bring down the enemy giant dinosaur.

Outside of combat, the Dragoon finds new jobs and the Beastmaster gives them a competitive edge in going long distances or completing jobs on a lower budget. The Knight is going to allow them to find the very best heavy weapons and armor, which is going to make their diplodocus goddamn invincible and increase the Dragoon's ability to make up for their giant dinosaur's lack of offensive capabilities, as well as jacking up the attack power of the Beastmaster and his minions.

Team Scary is the Captain, Shaman, and Ranger. They have no appreciable ability to deal damage to enemy giant dinosaurs. What they do have is really powerful poisons, which they can use to make their triceratops really deadly in battle (the otherwise more powerful tyrannosaurus can't have its bite poisoned). The Captain buffs the Ranger who kills enemy boarders, the Shaman crowd controls their cavalry to prevent the trike from getting lanced to death, and once it's safe to get close the trike kills the enemy giant dinosaur with its poisoned horns and then mops up infantry.

Out of combat, the Shaman's frightful approach to face work means they are probably going to be raiders rather than mercenaries or caravaneers. The Captain's management skills don't stretch as far foodwise as the Beastmaster's because dinosaurs eat way more than people, but they also have to feed only a single herbivore and no raptors, and the Captain's management skills also allow them to afford more hirelings, which makes later expansion easier since smaller herbivores can be managed by hirelings allowing them to carry more stuff. They can also afford some NPC meatshields earlier and in greater numbers, making it less likely an enemy boarding party will be able to get on the trike before it can kill their giant dinosaur.

A standard adventure is going to consist of:

-Downtime stuff using non-combat skills to buy stuff, sell stuff, and get the next job. This should take 20-40 minutes.

-Some amount of overland travel random events that will be resolved with skill rolls or by making decisions between one resource or another, or some combination of the two. This should take somewhere between 10-30 minutes, although it will probably be dispersed between the next few sections.

-A giant dinosaur fight lasting 1-2 hours.

-Some kind of groundbound combat. Your camp is ambushed in the middle of the night and you don't have time to saddle up your giant dinosaur, or you have to leave it behind while investigating a cave or heading up a narrow cliff or something. Typically this will take 15-30 minutes, but it can also go on for 1-2 hours or even multiple sessions if you're having an actual dungeon crawl. I am slightly worried that the Dragoon will be having not as good a time, since he's not very accurate when fighting human-sized opposition, even if he can splatter absolutely anything that he hits. He might need two different modes of attack, one that's really high damage and one that's more balanced between damage and accuracy. But that makes him a Knight with less durability or a Beastmaster with less attack power. The Beastmaster has being king of the boarding action as an important part of his schtick, and a fight without a giant dinosaur is basically an extended boarding action. Halp.

So step four isn't quite working out, but step five would be pretty easy if I can solve that. Characters advance relatively little individually, and instead mostly the party advances through logistics. Putting optional steps (like the After Sundown origin story vs. in media res options) in parentheses, it would go (no dinosaurs)->(mount dinosaurs)->giant dinosaur->caravan of dinosaurs->logistics and dinosaurs.
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Post by Wulfbanes »

This makes me smile.
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Post by hyzmarca »

So something like this but with period appropriate weapons?
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Last edited by hyzmarca on Tue Mar 31, 2015 10:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Orion »

If "passenger on the big dino" is a supported role, it's just weird to me that the Shaman isn't optimized for it. Riding around on top of the big beast chucking curses both fits in to the "glass cannon" gaming tradition, but also lets him keeps lots of ritual components close by, use rare incense to power his magic up, and gives him space to do magic dances in and the ability to be moved around while concentrating too hard on otherworldly forces to walk or ride.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Lots of imagery to draw from when it comes to "mystic shaman priest wizard riding on giant monster"

Image

Going with warhammer imagery it usually goes...

Swift skillful guy: rides a raptor thing
melee assault dude: rides a big muscly monster
Magic guy: rides something with wings or the most mundane mount with a twist (a horse with a horn!)
spiritual icon: rides a big stable platform beast with an altar
artillery: multiple dudes on a big stable platform beast with artillery
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Post by Dean »

Most of your characters seem at least moderately magical which is good because the entire game could work on the pocket-buffer/pet-fighter relationship that the Pathfinder Summoner or D&D Bonded Summoner uses successfully.

I'm not seeing much support for riding flying Dinosaurs, will there be such a thing? Because I'm into that.
Last edited by Dean on Tue Mar 31, 2015 8:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

At higher levels, your dinosaurs can have more feathers.

Eventually, they will be able to fly to other planes.
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Post by Chamomile »

Orion wrote:If "passenger on the big dino" is a supported role, it's just weird to me that the Shaman isn't optimized for it. Riding around on top of the big beast chucking curses both fits in to the "glass cannon" gaming tradition, but also lets him keeps lots of ritual components close by, use rare incense to power his magic up, and gives him space to do magic dances in and the ability to be moved around while concentrating too hard on otherworldly forces to walk or ride.
This is true. The Shaman should be able to benefit from full-round actions like the Ranger, so that he's a more solid choice for giant dinosaur passenger. I think him not being this was out of an idea, scrapped halfway through, to make it easy to play without a giant dinosaur. Since that's outside of the game's main concept, though, I've decided I'm fine with only some classes supporting it, and others not.
OgreBattle wrote:Going with warhammer imagery it usually goes...

Swift skillful guy: rides a raptor thing
melee assault dude: rides a big muscly monster
Magic guy: rides something with wings or the most mundane mount with a twist (a horse with a horn!)
spiritual icon: rides a big stable platform beast with an altar
artillery: multiple dudes on a big stable platform beast with artillery
This assumes everyone always has their own mount, which is not the case of this game concept at all. Rather, it's expected that a large chunk and possibly even all of the party will be riding the same giant dinosaur.
Dean wrote:Most of your characters seem at least moderately magical which is good because the entire game could work on the pocket-buffer/pet-fighter relationship that the Pathfinder Summoner or D&D Bonded Summoner uses successfully.
This isn't really true. The Shaman is the only one with any magical powers at all, and the Captain, Ranger, and Shaman are all unattached to any particular pet. The entire concept is pretty low magic, mostly to keep the focus on dinosaurs, who expire as a meaningful enemy or ally once you reach high- or even mid-level. In D&D terms, a level 8 party having a tyrannosaur pet is a party with one extra member who is only situationally useful, not a party accompanied by a horrifying murder machine that can slaughter any party member not specifically designed to exploit its weaknesses, and even then, the Raptor Dragoon and Raptor Knight need their mounts to compete with tyrannosaurs.

Giving everyone else a few magical trappings wouldn't be a bad idea, and some magical transportation abilities like water-breathing would even be useful and good so that you can do cool things like exploring underwater ruins with a plesiosaur-based caravan, but combat-wise I don't want the party to ever feel like having a perfectly mundane t-rex isn't a big deal.
I'm not seeing much support for riding flying Dinosaurs, will there be such a thing? Because I'm into that.
Yes. I didn't elaborate on different types of mounts or more obscure giant dinosaur types because I was trying to focus on having a workable concept, but a very fragile yet extremely mobile mount is exactly what the Raptor Dragoon wants. The Ranger is also pretty good with it if he's doing a mounted archer schtick, and if you add the Captain (who works as well on the giant dinosaur, a raptor, or a flier) you can have a complete party of three who all ride fliers and either use their giant dinosaur as a carrier or else don't even have one. You could also have aquatic campaigns based around a plesiosaur, just keeping its back above the surface until you can afford the mojo to turn the harness into a living submersible.
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Post by Seerow »

OgreBattle wrote:Lots of imagery to draw from when it comes to "mystic shaman priest wizard riding on giant monster"

Image

Going with warhammer imagery it usually goes...

Swift skillful guy: rides a raptor thing
melee assault dude: rides a big muscly monster
Magic guy: rides something with wings or the most mundane mount with a twist (a horse with a horn!)
spiritual icon: rides a big stable platform beast with an altar
artillery: multiple dudes on a big stable platform beast with artillery
This reminds me of some WoW bosses.
Image
Image
Image
Image
Okay that last one isn't a boss, but a miniature triceratops as a standard mount instead of a giant dinosaur is awesome anyway.
Last edited by Seerow on Tue Mar 31, 2015 11:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Chamomile »

Triceratops is barely in giant dinosaur territory to begin with, its smaller cousins are definitely mount-sized. Chasmosaurus is pretty firmly in mount-sized territory. And related: I think I may use eotriceratops instead of triceratops for the standard ceratopsid giant dinosaur. It's not nearly as well known, but the extra half-meter pushes it more firmly into giant dinosaur territory.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Chamomile wrote:Triceratops is barely in giant dinosaur territory to begin with, its smaller cousins are definitely mount-sized. Chasmosaurus is pretty firmly in mount-sized territory. And related: I think I may use eotriceratops instead of triceratops for the standard ceratopsid giant dinosaur. It's not nearly as well known, but the extra half-meter pushes it more firmly into giant dinosaur territory.
Question: Are you playing a Paleontologist?

If you are, then be as accurate as possible.

If you aren't, then go for name recognition over accuracy. If you need a giant three horned dinosaur then it's a triceritops and no one will complain if it's bigger than it should be.
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Post by Seerow »

hyzmarca wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Triceratops is barely in giant dinosaur territory to begin with, its smaller cousins are definitely mount-sized. Chasmosaurus is pretty firmly in mount-sized territory. And related: I think I may use eotriceratops instead of triceratops for the standard ceratopsid giant dinosaur. It's not nearly as well known, but the extra half-meter pushes it more firmly into giant dinosaur territory.
Question: Are you playing a Paleontologist?

If you are, then be as accurate as possible.

If you aren't, then go for name recognition over accuracy. If you need a giant three horned dinosaur then it's a triceritops and no one will complain if it's bigger than it should be.
Agree. Though going Chasmosaurus for the ridable triceratops seems fine. Sounds cooler than "Cave Triceratops" or whatever a smaller one would be called in D&D.
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Post by hyzmarca »

The one where Ross plays D&D.
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Post by JonSetanta »

I'd prefer this as a Magic card set really.
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Post by Dogbert »

Does it have to be primitive barbarians?
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Post by Dean »

I've always loved this pic
Image
I think the idea needs to either have everyone have their own dinosaur or the non-dino classes need to be doubly badass to make up for it. I don't think having several characters share one dinosaur will work.
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Post by Chamomile »

hyzmarca wrote:Question: Are you playing a Paleontologist?

If you are, then be as accurate as possible.

If you aren't, then go for name recognition over accuracy. If you need a giant three horned dinosaur then it's a triceritops and no one will complain if it's bigger than it should be.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's definitely true that the audience won't care if triceratops gets an extra half-meter or so. On the other hand, I personally think it would be really cool to use actual science as much as possible.
I think the idea needs to either have everyone have their own dinosaur or the non-dino classes need to be doubly badass to make up for it. I don't think having several characters share one dinosaur will work.
Depending on what you mean by "doubly badass," this is already how it works. The giant dinosaur is a shared party asset and is as much a feature of the guys who have their own dinosaurs as the guys who don't. And in fact, there's nothing (other than cost of feed) stopping you from putting everyone on their own dinosaur, much like how the fact that the Tome Knight is really good at having a horse doesn't stop everyone from having a horse.

Which brings up the problem of not being able to take your mount everywhere, and if you have any number of class features tied up with your mount then you are either overpowered when you have it or underpowered when you don't. I don't think this is a particularly big deal for the Raptor Knight because his main mount-based power is specifically for killing giant dinosaurs, something he doesn't have to worry about if the area is so small that even his utahraptor can't fit. The Raptor Dragoon I'm much less certain about, so much so that I'm strongly considering dropping the class, he has too much overlap with the Raptor Knight and the Beastmaster. I just can't figure out anything to replace it with. Assassin, maybe?
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Post by OgreBattle »

Chamomile wrote: I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's definitely true that the audience won't care if triceratops gets an extra half-meter or so. On the other hand, I personally think it would be really cool to use actual science as much as possible.
Stat up a monster manual entry called "Ceratopsid" with ways for them to advance by size. Then mention triceratops, eotriceratops, and so on in the description of what size and how many horns they tend to have. As the name has 'ceratops' in it it's easy to understand what they are.

So your dinosaur categories are...

Tyrannosauroid- Strong jaws made for crushing bones
-Tyrannosaurus rex is the most famous among them

Carnosaurid- Swift jaws made for slashing flesh
-Allosaurus and friends

Maniraptors (or just call em raptors)- Swift running pouncers, iconic ones have sickle claws
-from the large utah raptor to the small velociraptor

Ceratopsid- Beaked, crested, big horns for the iconic ones
-Triceratops is the most well known among them

Anklyosaurid-Armored all over with nasty tail weapons

Hadrosaurid- Duck billed with varying head crests

Sauropod- gigantic with long necks
-Brachiosaurus and friends

Stegasaurid- tiny head, things on back, thagomizer on tail

Pterosaurs- actually-reptiles-but they fly and are cool
-Quetzalcoutlus is the one that's actually big enough to ride, maybe

Mosasaurs- bigass aquatic reptile-whales with almost serpentine bodies


Megaraptor is a tyrannosauroid with big hand claws but it's differnet enough from the t-rex to have its own entry. Oviraptor is its own family but pretty similar to maniraptors stats wise. Then there's those giant clawed non-carnivorious maniraptors.

With the aquatic not-dinosaurs-but-reptiles I'm not sure what the best naming scheme would be for the long necked ones and short big mouthed ones. For me "plesiosaur" recalls the long necked ones specifically and excludes the short necked ones, but technically both of them are plesiosaurs with the long necks being elasmosaurs and the short necked more croc headed ones being pliosaurs.
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Post by Seerow »

Tyrannosauroid- Strong jaws made for crushing bones
-Tyrannosaurus rex is the most famous among them

Carnosaurid- Swift jaws made for slashing flesh
-Allosaurus and friends
So for the uninitiated, what is the practical gameplay difference between these two? They're similar size, similar build, and rely on biting for their attacks. Is there a practical purpose for keeping them separate based on whether their bite tears flesh instead of crushing bones?
Last edited by Seerow on Thu Apr 02, 2015 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Seerow wrote: So for the uninitiated, what is the practical gameplay difference between these two? They're similar size, similar build, and rely on biting for their attacks. Is there a practical purpose for keeping them separate based on whether their bite tears flesh instead of crushing bones?
From what I've read the carnosaurs like allosaurus hunted sauropods, so they would slash em up good and bleed them out 'cause a sauropods bones are really just too big and thick to try and crush. They also have bigger arms that could actually grab things without looking comedic and an overall lighter build.

The t-rex though hunted ceratopsids and ankylosaurs. Triceratops is smaller than most sauropods but also has all them bony parts, fossil evidence also shows...
There is evidence for an aggressive interaction between a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus in the form of partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a Triceratops brow horn and squamosal (a bone of the neck frill); the bitten horn is also broken, with new bone growth after the break. It is not known what the exact nature of the interaction was, though: either animal could have been the aggressor.[13] Since the Triceratops wounds healed, it is most likely that the Triceratops survived the encounter and managed to overcome the Tyrannosaurus. Paleontologist Peter Dodson estimates that in a battle against a bull Triceratops, the Triceratops had the upper hand and would successfully defend itself by inflicting fatal wounds to the Tyrannosaurus using its sharp horns.[14]
So gameplay wise the tyrannosaurs are heavier and made for taking out armored beasts, but the carnosaurs are lighter and possibly more agile. You could also say "t-rex is solitary, but allosaurs commonly travel in sibling or mated pairs".


--

There's also those little dinosaurs that are a prime candidate for a swarming template but their name isn't memorable to me.

I'd rather just say "Microraptor (the crow sized feathered early flier) lives in flocks!" and have them rip stuff up in a swarm. The name microraptor is memorable.
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Post by OgreBattle »

I also highly recommend this documentary on dinosaur fighting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO35IZWEHMo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6FcvBZ13I
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Post by Chamomile »

So I've been thinking about it more and I think I have a solution. The Raptor Dragoon gets folded into the Raptor Knight and the Warlock gets added. The Warlock is a guy who channels demonic power into hellfire for single-target attacks second only to the Ranger, AoE attacks that have ranged crowd-clearing abilities second-to-none, and can cause debuffs (like "you are on fire") that have similar power but much less versatility and discriminate targeting than the Shaman.

Replacing the Raptor Dragoon with the Warlock leaves us with the now misnamed Team Raptor getting more use out of its diplodocus as the Warlock can use it as a platform from whence to cast his most powerful full-round action attacks, softening up enemy giant dinosaur crews for the Beastmaster's eventual boarding action or else the ground troops to help the Raptor Knight keep them at bay. Unlike the Dragoon, the Warlock is fully capable of contributing just as much without stealing someone else's conceptual space.

So now we get to step five and the campaign. We have two caster classes and players of those classes will at some point want to be casting large and powerful spells. The Shaman is going to want to spread the Ten Plagues on Egypt and the Sorcerer will want to call down apocalyptic hellfire (which is also one of the ten plagues, actually) and summon up demons (which is sort of one of the ten plagues) and stuff. This is fine, so long as these earthshaking spells have steep logistics requirements such that casting your Nile-To-Blood spell requires the aid of hundreds or thousands of peasants doing voodoo dances just like the Captain's army needs a levy and the Beastmaster's hundred-strong tamed brachiosaurus herd is going to need handlers and crews.

The Knight gets a knightly order or tradition and the Ranger gets a shadowy cabal of snipers and assassins (I may rename "Ranger" to "Assassin"), small but highly skilled units who can take strategic objectives with little or no damage to that objective and who can operate behind enemy lines indefinitely, but who struggle to hold significant amounts of ground. The Captain and the Beastmaster get sizable armies which can take and hold lots of ground, but which also cause a lot of damage to the ground they're taking and cannot survive very long at all behind enemy lines. The Shaman and the Warlock get support units who have little direct combat capability and must be shielded by other units and which can utterly devastate strategic objectives (especially the Warlock), denying them to both sides without tying up any friendly units in occupying them.

Since character advancement is purely in the form of acquiring more wealth which is then invested into soldiers and backup dancers, you can maintain your position at any point along the advancement scheme from no dinosaurs up to logistics and dinosaurs indefinitely by just pouring your wealth into hookers and blow, vanity projects, charity, or melting it down to have solid gold statues of yourself erected in every city on the continent. Advancement in terms of direct character abilities is mostly horizontal and slows exponentially.

The system used for this is going to need a robust and useful mass combat/logistics and dragons system like what's going on in the ACKS conversion thread, and that as well as the fact that d20 is one of a small handful of systems I'm actually confident working with makes me want to do this in d20 so I can steal as much of the ACKS conversion work as possible. I am open to opinions on what other systems may work better, though.
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Post by 8d8 »

So, this is D&D vikings where your longboats are dinosaurs?
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Post by Chamomile »

It's not really D&D. Characters never get much more powerful than Conan and, as has been discussed before on this forum, Conan is like level 5 in D&D terms. A lot of D&D staples are missing, like the Paladin, Ranger pets, the Monk, the Barbarian (in that everyone is a barbarian, so you can't build a class or character concept off of that), etc. etc. Fantasy races and monsters are absent and they are replaced in the latter case by dinosaurs and in the former case not at all (or maybe with different barbarian tribes, but I'm leaning pretty strong towards just not having races). Spells are not vancian. Magic items may or may not exist, but in any case will certainly not be the focus of your character's wealth like they are in D&D.

It's also not a whole lot like vikings, in that riding around pillaging people is only one of the ways to build up wealth to forge your empire, there is no Christianity to smash up and/or be converted to, far from being frigid the default settings are deserts and tropical rainforests, and Norse mythology and culture don't really feature at all.

If this were marketed as a new edition of or splatbook for D&D, people would quite reasonably be disappointed. If this were marketed as a game about vikings, people would again be quite reasonably disappointed.
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silva
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Post by silva »

I can see a Blades in the Dark hack where you swap competing factions for competing clans, have the crew sheet be your Dino sheet, and have scores be raids. Then in downtime the group is back in the clan for booze and whores to relieve stress, barter for improving their, and planning the next moves to weak rival clans (= more raids) and strenghening your alliances (= meetings), while rising in the tribal ladder until you can claim kingship and unite everyone behind you.

In other words: King of Dragon Dino Pass, the tabletop game.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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