grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

You just beat me to creating a topic. :D

Mind you, I have a homebrew D&D setting where I found a niche for all three.

It gets weird: It's sort-of Spelljammer, but only one star system is detailed so far. The inner planets and moons are where humans, elves, and dwarves come from, while two of the moons of one outer planet have goblins and orcs respectively. Outer-system races use psionics while inner-system races use regular arcane magic. Wizards were the dominant sort of magic-users for thousands of years, but very recently, sorcerers have started to pop up in relatively large numbers, causing a huge economic and for-lack-of-a-better-word "technological" boom. (One mirrored in the outer system as the number of psions increases. And orcs have gunpowder. But I digress...)

The schtick with sorcerers in the setting is as so: sorcerers don't learn magic so much as record it and play it back at will - and they can only do from between another magic user and the target of that user's spell, biasing their spell selection a bit. Wizards are less than universally inclined to give away their better spells, and that goes double for newly-invented spells. On the other hand, something very much resembling "industry" exists with packs of sorcerers running around casting "unseen servant" and the like. Magical items are 1/10th standard cost (if you are using D&D - I've vacillated between BESM and Cinematic Unisystem), though simple spells made permanent on an item get used much more often. The previously-medieval societies now have growing middle classes who can afford cheap conveniences made from low-level magic. ("Prestidigitation", "Light", and "Unseen Servant" go a long way in that regard.)

Thanks! Well, to be honest, I pretty much only kept two concepts from Spelljammer - flying ships can go into space, and they don't have to be remotely airtight to be habitable because envelopes of air form around most objects in the void between worlds. The particular atrocities against physics involved ("air sticks to stuff" and "gravity actually only comes from one mineral", among others) are entirely my own creation. ;)

Just to pain readers, one setting detail: I ditched the rivers of phlogiston that crystal spheres (holding star systems) bobbed around in. It's just stars in space. The best way to travel between stars is to find a shortcut in space that an impatient dragon made between systems. This is a bit tricky because dragons are scarce. In fact, in the initial system of the setting, they're thought to just be old legends - until one is found sleeping on a comet. Before leaving for parts unknown, that entity explains that, if you know how to look, there's a huge network of these...wyrmholes.

I call the whole thing "Transhumanoid WildSpace", since it steals rather a few ideas and a lot of the style from Transhuman Space.

For some reason, over the last 3 years or so, I've come up with a lot of settings that are basically "hideously mutant D&D". Previously, I usually did SF and modern-covert-fantasy/horror settings.

One of the other two that's worth sharing (and that actually has a name) is "World Without Fire". The premise came from a misunderstanding. A friend was telling me that the premise for his fantasy setting was "Prometheus gave man magic instead of fire." My eyes lit up and I said, "So, it's all paleolithic?" It wasn't...but I just had to do that. So, it's a D&D setting where none of the races harnessed fire because fire is an uncontrollable force, like lightning. If a modern-day Boy Scout somehow arrived there and tried to make a campfire, that fire would soon get angry, get loose, and spread dangerously.

Magic and divine favor let wizards and clerics harness fire, but neither group is very large. As a result, the highest civilizations are at the early edge of history, while much of the known world remains in deep primitivity. Megafauna like woolly rhinos and mammoths roam colder regions, and big cats are a real danger.

(And I'll tell you, researching what sort of technology and food-preparation and other things are possible - and plausible to develop - without fire is hard!)

And I'll let other people post comments now, I think. ;)

Ranger was pretty neat in 2nd ed, and it's pretty sad that 3.0 made the Ranger basically bite it...until 3.5, where now Ranger is actually good again.

When I wanted to be obnoxious and want to play a two-weapon guy in 3.0 I'd beg my DM for one level of Ranger. Because 3.0 Ranger got Ambidexterity, Two-Weapon Fighting and Track at first level, meaning that as a Human you'd have a total of five feats at first level...better than Fighter and ready to rock out. We ended up house-ruling out Ranger and coming up with our own variant...although I did discover that you can accomplish basically what Ranger is by multiclassing Rogue/Druid.
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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

The problem with the Paladin is that they cap out at about 10th or 11th level (ooh, Remove Disease and shitty spell casting, whoo!)and there aren't that many PrCs to go with for them. Okay, at least not that many interesting PrCs. In Unearthed Arcana there's actually a variant Paladin as a prestige class, and I was playing one in a buddy's campaign...pretty cool. Basically you go Fighter/Cleric and then the PrC advances you at +1 caster level every other level, with the other paladin benefits spliced in. You end up at about where you'd be just taking Paladin, but you have a lot more in the way of spell selection and you've got domains (which rock if you pick them well). We were playing in Forgotten Realms (sort of) so I went with Tyr and had Retribution and something else cool...not War, I think I took Knowledge and Retribution. Something like that.

I think Ranger is a fine base class with the 3.5 revamp, it's not front-loaded anymore, it has its own flavor, and now that the goddamned Favord Soul class has Monk saves, the only unique save package in the game (good Reflex & Fort). You can be better with weapons as a Fighter, no doubt, but your skill selection is for shit. Overall, I like 3.5 Ranger and 3.5 Bard...I'm FINALLY playing a Bard, I've been in need of the opportunity for ages. I'm thinking of multi-classing Barbarian for RP reasons, and then going to some weird prestige class depending on what I find in old copies of Dragon magazine.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

"Conan, what is good?"

Conan started strumming...

Well, it doesn't call for it, but I'm thinking it's one possible option for the character. The basic outline of the world is that up until recently we were all villagers in this village where it never rained and we relied on a caravan of gnomes for our water. The gnomes would show up ever 90 days, but they disguised themselves to look like 8-10 feet tall and scary. In addition, at the age of 18 or 19 every villager was tattooed with some kind of magic to make them complacent. Well, recently a weird black plague came to the village and killed everyone with the tattoo except for the PCs and a few others. Most of the PCs were simply too young to have tattoos, I happened to play a very beautiful fiddle dirge one night and then have the overwhelming desire to cut my tattoo from myself. The other adults who survived also cut theirs before being infected, so the plague and the tattoos are connected somehow. We don't know too much else about the world yet, and the PCs are in the process of discovering their latent abilities. We started at level 1.

My character is 37 years old, and everything he's known his entire life is destroyed. His wife, his friends, his home. It's the kind of thing that's enough to drive a man to pure, incoherent rage. In fact, in the last couple of combats he's used Inspire Courage (a bardic music ability) by using Perform(Oratory) and shouting curses. I figure that Barbarian might be an interesting place to take him in concert with Bard, depending on what I can come up with character wise. I see a few paths open at the moment.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Oh yes, Bardbarian is what I call the idea among friends. And the flavor I'm going for is sort of Celtic Skald-ish.

I've also always wanted to play Monkadin (Monk/Paladin) but I've yet to find a sufficiently lenient DM as both are subject to multi-classing restrictions (which I think is sort of teh gayx0rz, but whatever).

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Your bardbarian makes me think of Fritz Leiber's Fafrd. In his origin story, he was a trained skald.

I understand the multiclass limitations on paladins and monks; the reason would be that both classes are so much about discipline and focus on the path of enlightenment (tm) that there's no room for another class. I could maybe be swayed by a particularly impassioned argument to split either monk or paladin with something else (like magic user, if the paladin follows a god of magic, or whatever) but I don't think I'd buy monk and paladin together. I know a guy who played a paladin/samurai, but I wasn't in that game, I don't know how it worked out.

Heh, I had a dwarven monk. His gimmick (aside from being a dwarven monk): he had a Scottish accent (named him 'Stumpy McCleod'). He was an Oriental Adventures monk, and a weaponless-combat killing machine. Unfortunately, it turned out the DM had a 'concept' he wanted to follow, which was 1) turn all the PCs into undead, 2) as they advance in levels, give them the powers/mannerisms of similar level undead. This was fine for the batshit-chaotic halfling wild mage; less so for the monk and the human cleric of a nature god. The concept itself was interesting, and I wouldn't have minded being railroaded into it so much if I'd gotten some hints ahead of time to build some... moral flexibility into the character.

Aren't stats assigned based on point total in 3.5, rather than rolled? Is it possible to build a character with requisite stats for Monk and Pally at 1st level?

Timo scritto:

a D&D game is a collaborative effort between players and DM.

You know, that's a fine point, and one that I think a lot of people don't really consider.

Meh, you win when everybody has a good time. And when you finally gain enough experience to really whup up on some fools.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

That's awesome! WotC deserves some cash, although there is the hypertext d20 SRD for 3.5 too, it's handy when I need to search for something and I don't have my PhB around.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Guys, when I get home, I'm taking all this to my Baton Rouge group of D&D people.
They would eat this up like delicious brautworst...
Thanks :D

I think part of that was Wizards wanting to keep making money, and part of it was Hasbro buying Wizards.

That said, the formula for D&D advancement in 3.0/3.5 is pretty simple (and it's the same for every class). You start at 0XP and first level, to get to the next level you need 1,000 times your current level in XP. So the first part goes something like this:

1st: 0 XP
2nd: 1,000 XP
3rd: 3,000 XP
4th: 6,000 XP
5th: 10,000 XP
6th: 15,000 XP

And so on. I think you could write it out as XP=SUM(1 to n) of (n-1)*1000.

It's damn sad that I have this committed to memory.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Actually, I'm now pondering yet another setting mutation/justification: maybe wizards are the only ones who can either devise and learn spells. Sorcerers, on the other hand, are given spells through some permanent process. Maybe they're people with latent magical ability, but not enough of it to let them prepare and cast spells. So, they do something like hire a wizard to tattoo magical symbols on them to let them channel their will in pre-set forms. The use of "read magic" for sorcerers would be...to figure out what the other guy's tattoos let him do.

If you presume that a sufficiently well-made magical tattoo could give nearly anyone the ability to use some spells (ie, that everyone has magical talent to some degree), you could have civilizations or species that differ significantly in how many people have such tattoos. Switch the elven preferred class to sorcerer and say nearly every elf has a couple of handy spells (prestidigitation being the king of low-level spells for any walk of life). Humans, on the other hand, usually have fewer and less-skilled tattooist-wizards, making sorcerers rare (and usually adventurers or military).

I've toyed with the idea of making magic for sorcerers Con based. The premise being that untrained magical power takes a toll on one's physical body, and that you've got to have some stamina to put up with it. The disadvantage is how do you divvy up their skills to make that make sense, and how do you further differentiate them from Wizards in terms of their selection. I kind of like the idea of spell points the way psions have power points. Psions are Int-based in 3.5, but you can see where I'm going with the idea. That way a sorcerer doesn't have X spells of X level to cast, but a total of Y spell-levels that can be cast per day, want to blow them all on your best stuff twice? Okay. Want to use a metric ton of small stuff? That's cool too. Maybe give them Spell Thematic from Forgotten Realms for free, something like that. And maybe give them a skill list more like a Ranger's or Barbarian's than a Wizard's.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Alternately, you could go the Ars Magica route and make casting spells a strenuous action for them (and the more so the higher the level of the spell). I'm utterly blanking on how current D&D handles strain and fatigue, but that might or might not be simpler or more interesting than a straight points system.

Probably my high point as a DM used a highly tweaked AD&D system with magic inspired by Ars Magika.

The concept was that there were 'ley lines' criss-crossing the globe. Spell casters, through roleplay, basically got 'detect magic' as the ability to see the lines. There were colors for types of magical influence, you know: silver = spirit, one color for each classic element, one for decay, one for mind, and so forth.

I let them roleplay through the creation of thier first spells and allowed them to choose an affinity - a color of choice. Spell effects were derived from D&D spells by level, with a weak version, standard version, and strong version available - depending on how close to a line or nexus you were. It sounds complicated, but it really was just a box of crayolas.

Magic weapons were magic because they could 'conduct' ley of certain kinds.

My first mage was a guy who wanted to burn everything down, not a strong role player. I made him play through his first spell. He wanted it to be called Magma Vomit or some such - and it came out Warm Dart. It was beautiful. They kept spell books and the like. We had a lot of fun there for a while, and I thought I'd write some fiction based on the way it played out some day. Never got around to it, and came to the realization that I can't write fiction anyway.

Ahh the good ol days.

I'm not that familiar with other RPG systems, so I actually really like D&D a lot out of sheer familiarity. I think stats are fine, but a lot of people who play D&D only pay attention to the combat system and lose site of how stats influence character description and RPing. Anyway, I'm going to hack together my Con-sorcerer and post it later. I have homework to do and I kind of feel like shit at the moment, so I'll have to discuss y'all's other points later.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Here's a draft of my alternate sorcerer [PDF].

EDIT: The verdict from my D&D group is that the class skills need reworking and the light armor proficiency has to go.

EDIT II: Done. Draft II has been uploaded.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Well, Sorcerers can't get Fireball until 6th level (they get new spells at 2x the spell's level, Wizards get them at 2xLevel-1). The issue with save or take subdual is that it's not going to scale well. A first level Sorcerer is going to fail a DC 11 or DC 10 fort save pretty often, probably close to 40% of the time, even if Con is his or her second best stat. So you're going to have a lot of sorcerers casting one spell and falling unconscious. Max HP for a first level sorcerer? Probably in the neighborhood of 11 (That's with +4 Con and Toughness), more likely 6 or 7. Even one or two subdual is dangerous at that point, because one other attack will knock you down below zero, and sorcerers don't know enough spells to waste them on Shield and Mage Armor. At higher levels it becomes almost pointless, because even with d4 HP, you're looking at 34+9d4 (assuming a +3 Con) at 10th level, which works out to 56 on average. Not great, but still enough where even 4-5 subdual every round isn't going to be that major a concern. And your save has gone up enough where you'll make DC 14 or 15 probably 70% of the time (because at least somebody can cast Resistance, Greater or you have a cloak by then).

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

I dunno, I'd rather take subdual than take any ability penalty (and it's important that it be a penalty rather than damage), especially to Dex or Str (even as a sorcerer). Dex is important for AC and once you reach 0 Dex you're immobile. Same with Str, and figuring that Str is going to be a relative dump-stat for a spell caster you might be looking at "crap, I'm helpless" even faster than usual at low levels.* I think the subdual idea has some potential, but it'll be tricky to work out. As a general rule I hate, bloody hate, things like "Magical bonuses cannot be applied to this thing...because the DM says so". I think that's a cheap way into game balance that doesn't take into account that higher level characters should have an easier time accomplishing things. I had a DM once who scaled up DCs as we leveled so my 17th level Rogue with a 22 Dex, skill focus, masterwork tools, and maxed Disable Device (+31) still failed as often as he did when he was third level, and fucking everything was trapped. I hate that kind of stuff, because a character with that kind of bonus should have a pretty easy time with most traps (DC for magical traps is 25+spell level, rolling a 1 with a +31 gives you 32, which will disarm magical traps 7th level or lower...taking 10 disables FUCKING EVERYTHING because if you can put 17th-level spells or greater into a trap I want no part of your stronghold). By the same token, I don't like having player powers gimped for some reason that basically amounts to the DM not wanting to work on coming up with a better solution. It's a personal peeve.

That said, I think you could come up with a save similar to something like Dismissal where it's like 10+Spell Level+Primary Stat - Con or something (Dismissal's save is Will, but the save is weird: The outsider you're trying to dismiss must make a will save and takes a penalty equal to your caster level, but gets a bonus equal to its HD). You could make the progression something like how the disease mechanic works, where if you fail three saves in a row you become fatigued, then your next strenuous action will make you exhausted (IIRC the mechanic correctly, I think that's how it works anyway). There might be some kind of model in Complete Arcane or the FRCS to base this on, I'm thinking of the Wild Mage PrC specifically.

*First D&D character I ever played was an Elf wizard with a 10 con, knocked unconscious in every combat up until 6th level. He got Fireballed to death at 7th. Had a good run, failed his reflex save.
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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Taking out the "no-magical bonuses" bit does make it harder to scale with level, which might make it useful to do something mathematically weird (but at least having a precedent in the rules somewhere) like I mentioned.

I'm also not sure you need the special rules for Arcane Exertion penalties, if you look up the regular rules on what happens when you're reduced to effectively zero in a stat, it's pretty brutal. I might change that bit so that the Arcane Exertion penalty cannot reduce any stat below 1, that way you don't run into conflicts with the DMG rules on the subject. A 1 Dex and 1 Str would probably reduce a character's speed below half, depending on how badly encumbered the character was to start with and the AC is going to get clobbered.

I'm not sure just adding all that to the Sorcerer class really does much other than make them worse than they already are. I think you'd need to also give them some additional flexibility through spell points or the like, which could be pretty easily modeled off of the Psion (which is sort of what I did in the class I posted above) and would give them a lot more choice over what they cast in exchange for getting tired all the time.

EDIT: I should note that avoiding front or end loading of classes is one of the central difficulties of getting something right in d20, as is properly scaling abilities and difficulties with level. Look at the 3.0 Ranger and 3.0 Bard as compared to the 3.5 versions of each for a good less in "How To Get It Wrong" in 3.0 and "How To Do It Right" in 3.5. 3.0 Ranger was a straight better two-weapon fighter than a Fighter, and you only needed one level to get: Track, Ambidexterity & Two-Weapon Fighting. If you're human you'll have 5 feats at first level, then just go Fighter because 3.0 Ranger got bunk after first. Same with Bard, in 3.0 the Bardic Music was only based on ranks in Perform and their spell casting was weaker, so you take one level of Bard at 1st and then go Rogue, now you're a Rogue with Bardic music that's just as good as a straight Bard of your level. They fixed both those in 3.5.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

That makes them more like the Warlock class from Complete Arcane. I think you really have to cripple their know powers if they don't have limits on how many they can cast per day. You might check out the Warlock if that's the direction you want to go.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Incidentally, I'll note that you've got me wondering whether I should just get the 3.5 corebooks, when I already have pretty much every 3.0 core book. :) Not that I ever get to play D&D - or even game much at all, aside from WoW - lately. I think I need to nag the likely members of my WoW crew for an old-school game, once again. Three of us already want to play Capes via Skype, but haven't been able to schedule it since one of us is doing a temporary med-school-related stint in Newfoundland and won't have time to get online. (Capes is a GM-less game, but you need more than two people.)

I flipped through Complete Arcane in the store. The Warlock didn't quite seem to be what I wanted. I still need to crunch numbers on how the "Tattoo Sorceror" works out in terms of min/max/average spells per day and such...

That is so tight I can't even describe its tightness in words.

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"Elevating" the discourse since 1982

Chaotic good? More like Chaotic Awesome!

Dang, uber-bard! :D

I like the sound of the campaign setup.

OK, that feat is actually pretty stylish.

Well, Aelvar is no more. My group just got fired from that guy's campaign. I mean, we completed like the first part of it and he sent this email all, "Well, I guess this was my last game with you guys, see you 'round!" Which, whatever, but it was just weird. Oh well, that game was getting lame anyway, the players weren't much of a causal force in the world and I think the DM was getting bored of running it.

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2C₂H₅OH(l) + C₆H₁₂O₆(s)+3H₂O(l) = CRAZY DELICIOUS!