Eric's Homebrew

[EricNoah]

more e-mails

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from Pete:

>As starting areas and terrain go, I'd say Matt is right.
> We should start in a rural area and it should be towards
>the fringes of the civilized world. I'd envision the
>larger cities to be coastal and only a couple of them
>with the rural area inland with more rugged terrain
>beyond that. Rugged could mean mountians, huge swamps,
>jungle, a "grand canyon" of sorts, etc. Of course I
>realize that the "rural" setting is somewhat
>stereotypical, but with the new rules it's probably a
>safer plan to do something more familiar in that respect.
>


Good thoughts. I like the idea of starting away from
civilization.

Ok, let's say the terrain is kind of rugged. How do
people make their living there? I would assume
agriculture and animal husbandry, plus maybe some hunting.
Mining's a possibility.

Speaking of mining, maybe we could start putting together
a "race profile" for the world. What races are present,
that sort of thing. I like the idea of keeping the PC
races human or humanish. I also like the idea of dropping
certain core races. Here's an initial list, totally
mutable...

Humans (possibly multiple varieties -- I'm thinking some
planetouched variants, we should get into how these came
to be, could be related to the whole "resurrection" issue)

Dwarves (could be modified more toward underground life,
maybe most are neutral to evil?)

Gnomes (combines the core gnome with some halfling stuff
and some elf stuff, takes the halfling's role plus twists
it toward nature, druids, fey, etc.)

Something else??

Eric

 

[ForceUser]

Eric,

You ought to consider using the WoT D20 ruleset exclusively. When you make a change as drastic as the healing change (which is cool!), combat becomes a whole other hill of beans. Now, fights are not desired, since refreshment is not immediate. The game becomes less about combat and dungeoncrawling and more about how to stay OUT of fights. I'd anticipate lots of cross-class ranks in Hide, Move Silently, Spot and Listen. Now, this is a great RPG model but one core D&D emulates poorly. Given that you're already enamored of the WOT healing rules, look into stealing the magic system part and parcel. It's great because it's quite flexible for a level-based spell-slot type magic system, and because it demonstrates a fundamental concept of fantasy literature that is conspicuously absent in D&D - that Magic Has Consequences. Also, if you intend to keep magic items on a level consistent with a low-magic setting, you might want to consider using WoT's defense skill model that adds AC to your base character as she levels. It's nice to have if there's no magic armor readily available.

However you decide to go, write a story hour about it! I'd love to read the campaign.

 

[EricNoah]

More thoughts (this went out in an e-mail to my group):

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Ok, I want to first make sure I totally understand the logistics of subdual damage. Here's an example I whipped up. Let me know if it makes sense...

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Subdual Example: Jennina (8th level fighter, 60 hp max) suffers 30 hp damage from a lightning bolt, then takes 40 subdual damage from a waterball. Because her total subdual damage exceeds her current hp total, she falls unconscious. She’s left for dead and allowed to recover. She has a 10% chance each minute to regain consciousness and become “staggered.”

Within a few minutes she succeeds at her roll and regains consciousness. She rests for two hours, regaining 8 subdual points each hour (1 point per character level). By the end of the second hour she’s no longer staggered, but she’s still at 30 hp – and with 24 subdual points still racked up she’s only 6 hp (or 6 subdual points) away from being in trouble again.

Now let’s imagine a situation where there’s a "tend serious wounds" spell that turns her hit point damage into subdual damage. If she’s tended for 20, that means now she’s at 50 hp but has 44 subdual points. She’s still 6 hp (or 6 subdual points) away from being unconscious. But now those 44 subdual points will be removed at a rate of 8 per hour. 6 hours of rest and she’s as good as new -- except she's still short 10 hit points. If she can get a full 24 hours rest, she can gain back 8 hp and be very close to perfect health.

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As I'm researching and exploring I have had some ideas:

1) I would like to consider changing certain kinds of attacks so they do subdual damage by default. Slam attacks, buffets, certain weapons like a club or quarterstaff (maybe any blunt weapon that's smaller than the victim's size category -- so a light mace vs. a human), and maybe even certain energy types (cold and sonic come to mind). This would reduce some of the lethality.

2) I'm not sure how easy/hard it will be to deal with the logistics of subdual damage tracking. When I think of them as "real damage" and "temporary damage" it starts to click a bit. With my monsters I always counted the hp from the left and subdual damage from the right and when they meet, unconsciousness.

3) What do you think of the names tend light wounds, tend moderate wounds, tend serious wounds, tend critical wounds, tend all wounds? The "tending" spells would be swapable like cure spells are for standard clerics.

4) Thinking about druids -- there's a regenerate wounds series of spells in Masters of the Wild -- that might go well as an alternative. Not so hot in the short term but maybe good with a bit of rest (esp when combined with the body's ability to heal its subdual damage at a higher rate). I might look at extending the relatively puny duration and not limit it to wounds suffered since the spell started.

5) Also thinking about necromancy -- spells like death knell and vampiric touch. I think I like them better in this world! You typically have to trade someone else's hit points to get some for yourself. Very evil!

 

[MerakSpielman]

Why not base the religion of your world off of real world Zoroastrianism? So far you have almost a Christian mythos. Zoroastrianism is much more mystical and includes such cool elements as fire worship and perfectly equal "good" and "evil" dieties - with a diety in the middle to boot! Also, the Zoroastrian mythos is what gave rise to the series of legands in the Arabian Nights - prime D&D stuff there, even if you replace the Persian feel for a more classic Euro-D&D theme.

You could make "True Healing" not be the result of Divinity at all - but a recent discovery of a secret "cult" of technologists.

Just some random thoughts. Have fun! I did with my homebrew.

 

[willpax]

One thought about the healing church and power balancing: the nobility would probably strive to put some limitations on this church so that it wouldn't overshadow all else. And it would be good to have a built-in way to discourage players from taking the healing domain short of DM fiat.

Why not have the healing clerics unable to inflict damage on others? If they harm someone else, they must atone for it in some way or lose their healing ability (or at least have all their spells become the more mundane tending spells until some suitable time of penance has passed). Most players won't want to play the pacifist.

In the game world, that would mean that the healing church would depend upon others for military might, facilitating a natural alliance with the nobility that allowed each to play a specialized role.

 

[MerakSpielman]

OR

Maybe true healing has a darker side? Like the only way for true healing to work is to drain the health of another human. The true healing temple could have a number of slaves for this purpose - the injuries of those healed are transfered to a slave. This is kept as secret as possible of course by the True Healers.

So True Healing is actually only the domain of dark necromancy...