A new attempt.
Preview Image:
I've finally got enough material that it's worth putting up for discussion, suggestion, and critique. It's extremely work in progress, I wouldn't even consider it a first draft at this point, it's simply incomplete.
That said, you view or download the PDF in it's current state here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16_wSUE ... sp=sharing
Here is a (rough) outline of what I intend to include in the PDF eventually:
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I) Introduction
-Give a (very) brief history of the tomes
-Purpose of book
-Explain the core mechanic
-Prepare new readers to read the rest of the book
II) Character Creation
-Explain concept of player character briefly
-Explain why it's important to put at least minimal effort into character creation
-Overview of the stages of character creation for beginners (should chapters be rearranged in this order instead of hewing to the traditional RPG book order?)
=Concept
=Class and ability scores
=Race, Culture, Background
=Race has now been divided into two parts, race and culture. Race gives the aspects that are determined by physiology. Culture gives the cultural aspects like weapon proficiencies or certain skill bonuses. Backgrounds are just normal tome style backgrounds, except some of them are cultures now.
=Feats, skills, talents
III) Race, Culture, & Background
-Explain how to read race, culture, and background entries.
-Races: Every character gets a =2 ability score bonus that can be applied to any ability score not already modified by race.
=Aasimar
=Drow
=Dwarf
=Elf
=Gnoll
=Gnome - I never liked gnomes, make them mole people?
=Goblin
=Half-Elf
=Halfling
=Human
=Iron Forged - Warforged with the serial numbers filed off
=Kobold
=Leonin - Lion People
=Lizardfolk
=Minotaur
=Orc - Make them pig people again, no more half orcs.
=Ratfolk - I just like ratfolk
=Sprite - People want a fey and the feytouched is a lame half-race. Write a paragon class that turns them into sprites.
=Tiefling
=Tengu
-Cultures: Most races are presented as having one or more associated cultures. Any character of any race can have any culture, but they get a single bonus talent of their choice if they pick an associated culture. This is to make people feel like they don't have to dumpster dive for the "best" culture for their character, and make it make sense for most characters of a race to be of their normal culture mechanically.
=Right now I'm trying to work with the balance point of a culture being worth =2 to two skills and one or two shitty 3.5 feats. Everything is still a first draft.
-Background: Just tome backgrounds, though some of the original ones will be subsumed by cultures. Some people think moil wrought is "too good" for a background, need to codify what a background is worth.
IV) Classes
-Explain what the types of classes are, even if not presented here, so that new players understand what types of future advancement paths are available.
-Explain how to read a class entry.
-Haven't decided on a class list for the "core" classes yet, and it's not even very important right now. Want to have about 10 core classes.
V) Skills and Talents
-Skills: Probably something similar to Kaeliks skill groups.
-Talents: Talents are going to be things you can spend a single skill point on and just have. At first level all characters get a number of bonus talents equal to their Int mod. They're meant to represent things that are minorly useful but that not every character should have automatically.
=Skills that used to be talents: Appraise, Knowledge, Craft, Perform, Profession, Speak Language, Use Rope
=3.5 Feats that are now talents: I haven't really looked hard honestly, but shit like track or that one that let you use handle animal to train any <3 Int creature.
=Other things that are now talents: Armor Proficiency, Weapon Proficiency, literacy, poison use, trap finding.
VI) Feats
-I know some people have moved away from it, but scaling feats are a big part of what the tome [i]is[/i] to me, so that's what I'm goign with.
-Need a good line of [Magic] feats that scale with spell slots to round out the options.
-Kaeliks errata'd Metamagic
VII) Equipment
-Essentially the equipment chapter as presented in the other Tome PDF (rev 139), but with a few things added
-Put wealth by level here
-explain the pre-wish and post wish economies
-Red Rob's simplified tome armor
-And updated version of my [url=http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=134512#134512]tome weapon sizing[/url]
-Pretty much the SRD mundane equipment
VIII) Combat
-This is esentially done, and will be used mostly as-is from the other Tome PDF since I already put the effort into combining combining it once.
IX) Adventuring
-Most of the SRD adventuring section is probably fine, just errata some stuff
-rewrite the section od damaging objects
X) Leadership & Ownership
-Leadership needs a complete rewrite and its own chapter, it's a constant thorn in the side of d20 adaptions.
-Standardize what sort of directly controlled companions you get into categories.
=You can get one companion (a CR = character level - 2 creature)
=Any additional cohorts get turned into cohorts (some even lesser creature)
-The benefits of leadership need to be more abstract. It's not actually useful to have a table telling you how many 1st level warriors you can call up, what is useful is...
=Knowing how much "work" your followers can put out in a given period of time
=Wheter they make you a profit or cost you upkeep and how.
=what that "work" can be exchanged for. Can they make you items? Can they locate things for you? Can you formulate a plan where they drop in siege engines through portals retroactively by you spending abstract points and saying "I planned this all along"? These things need answers.
XI) Paragon and Prestige classes
-literally just decide on what classes should be here and put them in
XII) Magic
-Just update the SRD magic chapter with errata (kaelik and other) and additions
-Explain how spheres work
XIII) Spells
-Oh boy am I not looking forward to this.
Appendicies
-appendicies will be worked on, if at all, when I feel like the main PDF is done enough to be considered 1.0 complete
A) Monster stuff
i) Base classes designed to be the chassis for monsters, such as the fiendish brute.
-Reduce them to non-type specific classes (eg brute, harrier, skulk, etc) and offer themed packages?
ii) Monstrous feats
iii) Monstrous PrCs
iv) Additional rules dealing with monsters?
B) "Quadratic Warriors and Linear Wizards"
-Because the name amuses me.
i) Base classes that are complicated martial characters with a lot of options.
ii) Base classes that are tightly focused "wizard" type characters such as a fire mage or storm lord (although not thos classes as is)
C) Celestial Codex // Fiend Folder
-expand on the cool outsider player options
D) Book of the Dead
-Here's where tome of necromancy stuff and other things in that vein that didn't make it into the core book would go.
I list what feedback I feel I especially need, but welcome feedback on all aspects of the document.
Chapter I: Introduction
First draft, usable as is.
[*]Feedback Desired: Opinion on wording; is my brief summary of the history of the tomes factually correct?; do my new definition of terms work and not conflict with the established mechanics of 3.5e as presented in the SRD except where they're clearly intended to do so?
Chapter II: Character Creation
First draft.
[*]Feedback Desired: Does this chapter actually present character creation in a manner that a new player will understand it?; Do ability scores actually need their own chapter, or is their inclusion here fine.
Chapter III: Race, Culture, & Background
Incomplete. I have decided to separate races as presented in most d20 games into two parts, race and culture. All races are not yet present, all cultures are not yet present, no backgrounds are present. I need to write or steal physical descriptions for every race. I need to write and expand on the racial backgrounds in interesting ways.
[*]Feedback Desired: Everything. Is the list of races, as presented in the outline above, acceptable?; are you okay with the changes to how characters gain languages at first level?; everything.
Chapter IV: Classes
Example. This was the first part of the PDF that I did, and did so to help me hammer out a consistent style. Visually, it is the most complete section of the PDF.
[*]Feedback Desired: Style.
FAQ:
Some questions I expect people will ask.
Why a PDF?
[*] I want to learn how to design and publish and RPG/RPG Supplement.
[*] I want to be able to have The Tomes printed and bound when I'm done, it deserves it.
[*] I want to supply print ready PDFs to the community so that members, they too deserve it.
Do you plan on including everything Frank & K wrote?
No. I want to edit that material and combine it with community material and my own writing to make a product equivalent to a PHB & DMG. I want to be able to hand this to a new player and have them learn how to play on their own with no special knowledge.
How much of your own material are you writing for this?
Enough to make to complete it and enough to replace the things I hate the most about 3.5. I understand that not everyone will regard everything in this PDF as "canon" for the tomes. I'm fine with that, there is no other way.
Do you need help?
In some ways. I plan to edit everything on my own, I want to maintain control of that aspect. I will, though, gladly accept input and suggestions. I will accept decent art in a similar black-ink engraving style to the images already in the document (You can probably tell some of it is placeholder). I'll accept new community material. Etc.
You've included something I wrote, can I have credit?
Yes, obviously. I'm going to credit all the material I can on a credits page. I may miss credits because of the nebulous nature of how content gets passed around, just let me know.
You've included something I wrote, I want it out!
Sure, not a problem. If I've included something you wrote that isn't purely mechanical rules, and you don't want it in there, let me know and I will take it out.
Are you going to sell this?
I've thought about how I would do that. Would I keep the profit? Could I set it up so there was no profit? What if there was profit and I didn't want to keep it? In the end I decided I wouldn't feel good about doing so because of how much community material it will, invariably, contain. I will eventually have one printed for myself through some print on demand company, it's one of the reasons I'm doing this. Once I have done this successfully, I will post the files necessary for you to do so yourself and a guide on how to do so.
