Requesting a prestige class

[RedstoneOrc]

So I've been trying to design a prc based on the Mistborn trilogy, but with the basic dnd metals for the magic focus (gold, silver, copper, platinum, adamantine, and mithral). I want the prc to use both allomancy and metalmind style "casting" but besides using gold for healing I don't know what I want the metals to do. Though I want some stat boosts in it.

So I will ask the Den what it would like in a mistborn inspired class and try to think on things for it in the mean time.

[CapnTthePirateG]

We have a bunch of questions we need to answer first.

How are we entering this PrC? Would it be better off as a base class?

I see we're semi-sticking to the source material - is this supposed to play in a class with wizards and shit? Mistborn in the source max out at level 5 or so, so what does a high level Mistborn class member do?

Also I submit that metalmind style casting does not work in D&D, because you end up with the problem that elves can seriously spend 100 years storing doom lasers during character creation and then having a huge power reserve to draw on when they feel slightly challenged. Not to mention that the metalmind can convert downtime straight into combat power (if we go by the source material) with absolutely no resource cost at all.

Without more info I don't know what else I can tell you.

[RedstoneOrc]

All good questions and I'll try to answer. I want this to be a prc for martial classes, because I like the option for existing characters to get different and good classes under their belt. I also want the end game to be something like the sliver of the divine emperor from the first book. (which I think was a bit higher than 5th because the near at will superpowers and able to fight a nigh infinite number of people without dying as he claimed).

Metalminds can just be something like divine focuses/magic items that grow stronger as you level. Do it doesn't have to follow the source material to closely in that regard.

On the actual abilities idk. Adamantine should make you tougher, like make you into colossus and smash people, mithral should make really quick like flash and shit, finally gold should heal and maybe some wisdom/protection based affects I don't know what the other metals should do, maybe some other iconic dnd stuff like fireballs and summon dragons or shit.

[Seerow]

So you're aiming for one PRC to cover both Allomancy and Feruchemy? Are you planning on accounting for compounding? Because that seems like it'd end up as a ridiculously powerful class

Anyway, as far as powers people would care about in D&D go, you have:

Pewter: Increase physical abilities. Straightforward and easy.
Tin/Bronze: Increase senses. Bronze is basically detect magic, and you could easily scale it up through blindsight/trueseeing.
Steel/Iron: Telekinesis with metal.
Zinc/Brass: Manipulate Emotions/Domination
Duralumin: Take one of the other effects and crank it up to 11, but lose your reserves.
Nicrocil: Just like Duralumin but for magic other casters are using.
Cadmium: Slow Down Time in a bubble. Situationally useful, probably won't care most of the time but great whenever stall tactics are going to be desirable
Bendalloy: Speed up Time in a bubble.



So we've got 8 potential metals there, which is 2 more than you have listed, but personally I'd add steel to the list. 7 feels like a good number, and we can combine the two boost metals. So you have:

Gold-Empower other metals
Silver-Increase Senses
Copper-Slow Down Time
Platinum-Manipulate Emotions
Steel-Telekinesis
Adamantine-Physical Ability
Mithral-Speed up Time


As for Feruchemy, it's harder to come up with a list of things that will definitely be useful that players will care about. Healing and Stat Boosting are obvious ones, and are probably the easiest to implement. Copper, while not particularly useful in D&D is pretty iconic to the system and I would be sad to see a feruchemist without a coppermind library. So what I'm actually thinking is make each metal a combination of 1 stat and one of the minor feruchemical effects that you normally wouldn't care much about by itself. So you get the library effect of a coppermind, along with an int boost. You get the str effect of Iron, alongside a strength boost. Something like....

Gold-Healing/Recovery
Silver-Wis + Senses
Copper-Int + Lore/Bardic Knowledge style ability
Platinum-Cha + ???
Steel-Str + Weight
Adamantine-Con + Ignore Food/Breathing/Climate
Mithral-Dex + Move Speed


As far as actual implementation, on the Feruchemy side I'd put a hard cap on how much can be stored up in a metalmind. This sets a baseline of how much is available for a typical adventure. Because as written in the books a feruchemist with years of downtime is just going to destroy anything. So I'd make it so every day a Feruchemist isn't doing anything relevant, he can store X amount of his relevant attribute, and if he wants to completely incapacitate himself he can store up to double that amount. They can store up to say 2-3 weeks worth of their attribute in the metalmind at once, maybe scaled with level.

On the Allomancer side, the cap isn't on resource, but on what they can spend at once. A feruchemist can nova the shit out of their resources and be out in a round or two, an alchemist can keep chugging metal all day and keep going. Metal just isn't generally going to be expensive enough to be prohibitive, so instead balance around the idea that your mistborn will have metal available.

The limit then is going to be getting the metal inside him, and only being able to use so much metal at a time. Duralumin is awesome because it lets you nova the metal you have, but that comes at the cost of having to reload the next round. This means you need to avoid free action drinking shenanigans or balance around a mistborn spamming duralumin empowered metals every round of every combat.


Last point is Compounding. It's a thing, and whether you include it or not will make a huge difference in overall power level. It's the difference between Gold being decent, but not great and Gold making you immortal. Or between being a pretty fast ninja feruchemist and running across a continent in an hour. I think it'd be cool to see implemented, but I'm not sure if it could be implemented and balanced.

[Mistborn]

As far as actual implementation, on the Feruchemy side I'd put a hard cap on how much can be stored up in a metalmind. This sets a baseline of how much is available for a typical adventure. Because as written in the books a feruchemist with years of downtime is just going to destroy anything.

In the books how much a piece of metal can store is dependent on it's size so there's precedent for some kind of cap.

[Maxus]

Pewter: Increase physical abilities. Straightforward and easy.
Tin/Bronze: Increase senses. Bronze is basically detect magic, and you could easily scale it up through blindsight/trueseeing.
Steel/Iron: Telekinesis with metal.

I'd like to point out that the metals from the Mistborn trilogy make you into a jedi without the lightsaber, with atium serving as the precognitive reflexes combined with True Strike. The powers themselves aren't that bad, it's the interactions that are a pain to define.

Second, I don't think D&D can handle Feruchemy. Like, at all. It stores up weird things--weight, strength, speed, health, and the only metric we have is a conservation of energy that is very abuseable and requires a lot of book-keeping. -2 Strength for eight hours can give you +2 for eight hours. That's fine enough. and +4 Str for four hours. But what happens after that? Do you go to +6 or +8 for the two hour step? Or if you burn it all in an hour. What does it turn into if you burn it all in a round?

Feruchemy is an awesome narrative power, but its definition is seriously "I give up more power right now to get more power later when I need it" and D&D has problems with that breaking the game in half and a full mistborn-feruchemist compounder becomes God. Or at least the Lord Ruler.

[Maxus]

Edit: Double-post and an 'cannot insert new word' error.

[Emerald]

In case you aren't already aware of it, there's actually a Mistborn RPG out there already that Sanderson helped write and that details the magic system in depth.

The base system is a rules-light-ish game that's nothing like D&D, but its rules about storing and expending allomantic and feruchemical charges, what expending certain amounts of charges can accomplish, the effects of being particularly talented with certain metals and/or becoming an allomantic savant, durations for burning allomantic metals, how much feruchemists can store during downtime, compounding, and so forth could be quite useful as a starting point for your PrC.

The rules would certainly require plenty of adaptation, but since they already address questions like "what does a duralumin-powered tin flare even look like?" or "what if a feruchemist sits there storing attributes for a week?" it's worth a look if you can get your hands on it.

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Regarding the actual mechanics, I like Seerow's ideas, but here are a few proposed modifications:

1) If you want to more easily map the book metals to D&D metals, add in Cold Iron to the list and that gives you 8 metals to work with. Come up with one "pure metal" effect and one "alloyed metal" effect for each metal (either letting people access both to start or making one of the PrC abilities "You can now use alloyed abilities for your metals") and ta-da, there's the nice 16-metal structure we all love.

2) I disagree that most of the feruchemical abilities are minor throwaways that should be folded into other metals. Yes, being able to store nutrients and body heat are pretty underwhelming by themselves, but if you're doing to do things like scale broze's basic detect magic ability up to blindsight, true seeing, and other more powerful magical senses as you level, there's no reason that you couldn't, say, upgrade brass's warmth-storing from ignoring cold weather effects to resisting cold damage to dealing fire damage with a touch, upgrade bendalloy's nutrient-storing from basic sustenance to increasing endurance to changing appearance, and so on.

Maybe it'll turn out that you can't find enough interesting things for each metal to do to give all of them their own progression, but I think it's worth looking into, particularly since generic personal strength/speed/sense enhancements are a dime a dozen in D&D while things like storing identity, making fast/slow time bubbles, and the like are what would best differentiate this PrC from others.

[Josh_Kablack]

1. The fundamental rules of Allomancy and Feruchemistry change between the first and second Mistborn Trilogies. In the first trilogy, Allomancers can either be Mistings (having the power granted by burning one metal) or Mistborn (having the powers granted by burning any of the 16 metals), In the 2nd Trilogy, there are no more Mistborn, and Allomancers only get to burn a single metal. Similarily, in the first trilogy, Sazed can use Ferochemistry to store a wide variety of attributes for later use, but in the 2nd Trilogy, Ferochemists can each only store a single attribute in their metalminds. In the first trilogy, Allomancers cannot also be Feruchemists (with the exception of Book 1's BBEG), but the dynamic duo of the 2nd trilogy and the major villain of book 4 are all Twinborn with access to both an Allomantic and a Ferochemical power. Furthermore, in 2nd Trilogy, Atium and Malatium are no longer available as Allomantic Metals, but have been replaced by Cadmium and Cerrobend. So before you even start, you should decide whether you want a first trilogy style Mistborn PRC who gets 8 powers (plus the ability to discover additional powers through secret metals at high levels) or a set of second trilogy style Twinborn PrCs, each of whom get a pair of broad powers plus compounding effects.

2. The official Mistborn RPG is an insult to RPG design, and Emerald should feel bad for even bringing it up. You could mine it for setting details -- but that seems inferior to just mining the actual novels for such, and also likely irrelevant to designing a single PrC for use in a general D&D game.

3. In the context of D&D, material components are pretty much bullshit. In the novels, aside from Atium scarcity, allomancers running out of metal to burn is pretty rare. It's probably best handled through 3e D&D's general "if you have your spell component pouch, you have the components you need" rule rather than trying to tack on some sort of fuel or exhaustion system. You could maybe tack on something about Flaring rendering an allomancer unable to use that ability again for a specific time period, but that does tend to reinforce the 5 minute workday, so you might be better off leaving Flaring out entirely.

4. Conversely, Ferrochemical storage is rife with design pitfalls. Modeling it too closely on the books where a player character can take penalties now for bonuses later leads to truly screwy pc behaviour, where characters lock themselves in extra-planar pocket spaces until fully charged. Or even worse, have allies attack them with nonlethal weapons to satisfy defense penalties now for defense bonuses later. This is much better handled with an abstract system that provides an all the time bonus and a limited use of other abilities.


****

So going with a PrC using 3.x D&D, you would get a mistborn that looked a bit like an at-will caster (Tome Fire Mage, etc) but had gained access to abilities along a spectrum something like this:

Iron / Steel: Mage Hand, Jump, Levitation, Spider Climb, Telekinesis, etc

Pewter/Tin: Physical Stat Boosts, Virtual Size Increases Perception Skill Boosts, various Detect Spells

Zinc/Brass: Charm Person/Monster, Fascinate, Calm Emotions, Enthrall, Rage, Suggestion, etc.

Copper:Nondetection, Mind Blank
Bronze: Detect Magic, See Invisible, Arcane Sight, True Seeing, etc.

Secret / New Metals: Let the player pick something like a Tome Sphere and tie it to a modern or fantasy metal. You don't have to explicitly define that Malatium gives you Legend Lore if you tie this sort of thing to a pre-existing system.

[name_here]

Tracking metal would be important if you include Duralumin, which burns out the user's entire current supply in one burst. In the books, it can run them out of flasks in a hurry and is probably the only cause of running out of non-Atium metals during anything approaching a typical fight.

You'd basically represent that with a flask count and disabling access to all Duralumin-boosted metals until they down another flask.

[Emerald]

2. The official Mistborn RPG is an insult to RPG design, and Emerald should feel bad for even bringing it up. You could mine it for setting details -- but that seems inferior to just mining the actual novels for such, and also likely irrelevant to designing a single PrC for use in a general D&D game.

You don't get the Mistborn RPG to actually run the game, you get it for the Treatise Metallurgic, since it's a Sanderson-endorsed (and partially -written) guide to "here's how everything works, even the stuff that was glossed over in the original trilogy or hasn't been covered yet in the sequels" that's much easier to reference than searching through the books or reading the very-bare-bones Coppermind wiki. Hence why I suggested reading it over to see how it handles some things and mine it for ideas, not lifting the magic systems wholesale.

3. In the context of D&D, material components are pretty much bullshit. In the novels, aside from Atium scarcity, allomancers running out of metal to burn is pretty rare. It's probably best handled through 3e D&D's general "if you have your spell component pouch, you have the components you need" rule rather than trying to tack on some sort of fuel or exhaustion system. You could maybe tack on something about Flaring rendering an allomancer unable to use that ability again for a specific time period, but that does tend to reinforce the 5 minute workday, so you might be better off leaving Flaring out entirely.

Having limited supplies of metals is important in the books, not because they regularly run out but because they have to pace themselves so they don't run out instead of flaring and duralumin-ing constantly. Being able to expend a power for a short period of time in exchange for a temporary boost does not a 5-minute workday make, and I think the benefits of being able to vary power outputs outweigh the drawbacks of extra resource tracking.

[Josh_Kablack]

Okay, so if you are doing something Mistborn-ish as a prestige Class, it's should have Rogue based prereqs. (Vin and Kelsier were thieves first, and Eland was a Noble first).

A Mistborn PrC grants a whole-lot of abilities. That leads to the issue of balancing the number of abilities against the power of each ability against level-appropriate threats. It also leads to the issue of PCs having to account for all their different abilities - which makes me think that "everything at will" is the only sane option here.

There are 6 basic sets of powers which all Mistborn have, and you get them just for entering the PrC:

Physical Enhancement (pewter)
Enhanced Perception (tin)
Telekinetic Abilities (iron and steel)
Magical Awareness (bronze)
Arcane Obfuscation (copper)
Emotional Manipulation (zinc and brass)

From there it's not too difficult to come up with spells and abilities that fit into each of those categories: Phystical Enhancement includes Expeditious Retreat and the physical stat boosting spells, Enhanced Perception includes Darkvision, bonuses to Spot and Listen, and various monster abilities like Scent and Tremorsense. Telekinetic abilities include Jump and scale up to Telekinesis (although you probably to use the lower level psionic partial versions than the 6th level Wizard spell). Magical Awareness has things like Detect Magic and Arcane Sight. Arcane Obfuscation has Nystul's Magic Aura, Nondetection, False Vision and eventually Mind Blank. Emotional Manipulation has a bunch of Enchantment spells - especially some of the overlooked 3.5 Bard ones.

However, different Mistborn have different levels of proficiency with each of those areas, so I envision a PrC that grants only "basic" ability in each of the six areas, but offers selectable upgrades to each ability with level ups, so that different members of the PrC could upgrade to "Advanced" and "Master" versions of the abilities. Every Mistborn gets basic telekinetic Jump, but Zane's rotation in book 2 is probably Levitation and when Vin figures out the Horseshoe trick and Durluminum boosting jumps, that might as well be Fly.


As another line, new metals are discovered throughout the books and not all Mistborn know of these, so to simulate that within the framework of a single PrC (instead of DM side worldbuilding), the PrC should offer a mechanic to allow players to select powers lists from outside a closed set of class lists. Sphere access really is a natural fit here, and at higher levels the PrC should just give access to a Sphere or two that the player can flavor as having discovered what burning Radium or Titanium or Reardon Metal does.