Adult: GUCK development forum III

[Sorn]

Before I forget it, DbS... you said that once we get the new thread going, you are going to post the 2.0 version of the core mechanics. Are those finished or is there still some tweaking to be done to arrive at that version?

If they are done, could you please email them over so I can post them on the site?

Also, is that going to be final version? I'd like to start marking off things on the site. Once something is classified as final, I can get started on basic layout to get ready for proofreading.

 

[brevdravis]

Great! Just checking...

Okay, thanks for the update.

I will now shut up until I have something constructive to say...

Stuart

 

[Alzrius]

Alzrius... Morning Sickness can indeed be handled with the Nauseated status condition. However, it is a very nasty status condition, nothing I would want to subject any characters to on a daily basis for several hours. If you look at it, for whatever timeframe we deem morning sickness to last, the mother can only do one thing... take a move action each round, nothing else.

I don't think this is so bad. Most mornings won't be spent in combat, and there are spells which should be able to alleviate this (we should have a few in our own spell selection).

So, if we want to keep morning sickness, I propose the following changes:

1.) reduce the duration to a few minutes instead of 1+ hours as proposed before

Perhaps a larger die roll for the number of minutes? 2d20 maybe?

2.) to keep people from having to roll morning sickness checks every morning, only one save is allowed at the beginning of each stage. Two successful saves in a row indicates no more morning sickness.

Meaning that its not too uncommon for some pregnant women to experience no morning sickness at all? (they made their first two saves)

On to Mother-Embryo for spells, etc. See above for werd side effects, but in general, I think we will need to consider the two of them as one entity for several reasons.

Okay, a miscommunication occured here. I do not think that the unborn child deserves stats on its own. That's a horrible idea.

What I meant is that certain spells used on/by the pregnant mother have effects that show when the baby is born. For example, a mother that uses/is affected by too many spells with the Evil descriptor may give birth to a child with the Half-Fiendish template, since Evil energies were affecting the gestating child. Things like that.

 

[Sorn]

Nice ideas re: morning sickness.

Spells are definitely one way of handling it, herbal concoctions or straight-up alchemy might be another way. e

2d20 minutes could be a viable solution. Anybody else have any thoughts on this?

Now, the saving throw thing. First off, my research has shown that some women do not experience morning sickness. Secondly, morning sickness will not have static Save DC's. The DC's vary between stages (no save for Stage I, a really high save in Stage II, then peaked until Stage V, and then going down again.).

This means that the majority of women will experience morning sickness up until Stage V. Pregnant adventurers might avoid it altogether due to their high saves, but they are hardly the norm. I have the save progression for morning sickness done already, so I'll put it up for a vote whether to include it or not.

Okay, a miscommunication occured here. I do not think that the unborn child deserves stats on its own. That's a horrible idea.

Ok, I see what you mean now, and I couldn't agree more about the fetus stats..

What I meant is that certain spells used on/by the pregnant mother have effects that show when the baby is born. For example, a mother that uses/is affected by too many spells with the Evil descriptor may give birth to a child with the Half-Fiendish template, since Evil energies were affecting the gestating child. Things like that.

I agree. However, this could turn into a nightmare. There are two options of handling this.

1.) You make a check of some sort every time the character is using/affected by certain spells. This is the straightforward way of handing things. The problem is that such mutations don't just happen from one exposure, so the chance for an effect on the child has to be somewhat remote. We could do it as a "natural 1" on the saving throw, but that's still a 5% chance everytime someone does something evil to ya. Maybe do a confirmation roll. For example, if a natural 1 is rolled on a save against a spell with the Evil descriptor, make another roll - if that is a natural 1 as well, there's side effects. That makes the whole mutation thing a 1-in-400 chance.

2.) The book-keeping intensive way. We come up with a nice table with mods for the various things that could happen over the course of pregnancy. Just before childbirth, you tally up and make your rolls. However, this means that both player and GM need to keep very detailed notes on what the character has used/was affected by over the course of up to 18 months. Doesn't really strike me a feasible.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[Death By Surfeit]

Just a filler post - I'll have more for you shortly. Sorn, you requested a child stat variation table, so I'll unabashedly rip one from the DbS conversion and post it here. Basic score for each attribute is the average of the parents', with a 50% chance each to round up or down.

Table X-XX: Attribute Variation
d20 Roll / Variation
1 / -4
2-3 / -2
4-6 / -1
7-14 / 0
15-17 / 1
18-19 / 2
20 / 4

I'll have the full rules for modifying statistics for children posted with my next major post.

Cheers,

DbS

Edit: Oh, and I thought we had agreed to avoid making rules for morning sickness, as it is a transient and relatively ineffectual effect (?). A simple note under pregnancy stating that a person may experience nausea should suffice.

 

[Sorn]

Well, I am not sure I really like the idea of simply averaging the parents' stats with some small adjustments. While it makes sense from a simplistic genetics viewpoint, it has a few problems.

Imagine the child of two very average commoners becoming a supermodel with an 18 Cha. Looking at the interim table, the highest the kid could hope for is a Cha of 14. This goes for any child of average people who becomes an adventurer (who generally have exceptional stats that often exceed 14's).

Children of adventurers present another problem. Adventurers have high stats overall, but some of that is stat increase through level-up. IMO, their starting stats are the genetic part, but the level-up (or other increases) are gained through training and experience, and should hence not affect the child's stats.

Maybe I am just being difficult here...

Morning Sickness: some people seem to want it, others don't. I am somewhere in the middle, leaning towards the simpler approach. Probably easier to just mention it and leave it at that. I'll make sure to include the information I posted earlier (when, how long, etc.), but leave most rules references out and simply have the GM decide how she wants to handle it.

 

[Alzrius]

I thought we had agreed to avoid making rules for morning sickness, as it is a transient and relatively ineffectual effect (?). A simple note under pregnancy stating that a person may experience nausea should suffice.

I disagree. Just saying that leaves all sorts of problems open...some people will read that nausea as just being flavor text, others will insist that it's the Nauseated status condition, etc. Besides, I agreed to nothing.

My reasoning for including this remains unchanged: there is a difference between simplifying, and just glossing things over. The mechanics of things should be simple, but that doesn't mean that we should just overlook things that play a factor.

Originally posted by Sorn
this could turn into a nightmare. There are two options of handling this.

1.) You make a check of some sort every time the character is using/affected by certain spells. This is the straightforward way of handing things. The problem is that such mutations don't just happen from one exposure, so the chance for an effect on the child has to be somewhat remote. We could do it as a "natural 1" on the saving throw, but that's still a 5% chance everytime someone does something evil to ya. Maybe do a confirmation roll. For example, if a natural 1 is rolled on a save against a spell with the Evil descriptor, make another roll - if that is a natural 1 as well, there's side effects. That makes the whole mutation thing a 1-in-400 chance.

Why not just roll percentile dice? Just because its the d20 system doesn't mean we can't use anything but a d20. One percent per use seems okay - i.e. every time the mother uses and/or is affected by an Evil spell, there is a cumulative 1% chance that the baby is born Half-Fiendish.

Obviously, this is a major simplification of the process, and leaves a lot to still be fleshed out, but that's basically how I see it being handled well.

 

[Sorn]

You made a good case for morning sickness... as I said, it's not all that important to me, so whatever the majority votes will be fine by me.

Percentile idea sounds good. I'd suggest we limit this to spell descriptors and a few select spells that don't have descriptors but come into play frequently. I want to avoid pages upon pages of tables and references.

Alzrius, feel like coming up with a writeup of that section?

 

[Alzrius]

Percentile idea sounds good. I'd suggest we limit this to spell descriptors and a few select spells that don't have descriptors but come into play frequently. I want to avoid pages upon pages of tables and references.

Alzrius, feel like coming up with a writeup of that section?

I'd love to! Though I promise nothing about what I limit myself to.

Slightly more seriously though, while I would like to do that section, it may be a little while before I can even start. My flight taking me back home (to America, from here in Japan) is in less than 36 hours, and I'm scrambling around trying to get everything together (and yet, somehow, I'm killing time here). Once I arrive, then I get home, reacquaint myself with friends and family, unpack, relax...and then go to GenCon...plus we've been having computer difficulties at home lately...

Yeah, this might take more than a few days to post something here. Sorry, I would do it sooner if I could. This just isn't a good time for me to begin projects.

 

[Sorn]

I'd love to! Though I promise nothing about what I limit myself to.

Go right for it. However, bear in mind that even with magic, mutation on that scale should be a fairly rare event. Also don't forget to include effects of Good spells and maybe general Transmutation spells. And if you really feel ambitious, effects of alcohol.

Since we only have a handful of pages for pregnancy, don't go too overboard either. IMO, if the "mutation" rules are a lot bigger than the current pregnancy chapter, it'll look like bad design. It's like having 20 pages on how spells work, followed by a list of 5 spells.

As for when it's done... take your time (within reason of course). This is something that can be added to the pregnancy chapter later on. I don't think it'll affect anything else in the GUCK, unless we want to introduce a spell or magic item that prevents/induces a random effect from your section. (e.g. Detect Birth Defect, Protection from Birth Defect, Cure Birth Defect). Those would definitely be very specialized, so there shouldn't be any overarcing compatability issues with other chapters.