Another Immortals Handbook thread

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Fieari mate!

The GnGr system gives everyone, from the lowliest insect to the mightiest deity, exactly fifteen hitpoints (I've seen some people who like to double it to 30, but the effect is the same, everyone has the same HP) which directly references how injured you are. Every so many points of damage, you start taking negatives to all your rolls (like gaining negative levels). You still have the 10 negative HP before you die.

Then, AC is removed entirely, and replaced with DEFENCE and SOAK. Defense is basically all the "Dodging" style aspects of your AC, like dex bonus, size bonus (or penalty), deflection, shield bonus, and also adds in either your REF save or your BAB, whichever is higher. I suppose it's possible to have a negative defense, but I've never encountered a monster that had one.

Soak is basically all the "absorb hits" aspects of AC, armor bonuses, nat armor, a SIZE BONUS (which outstrips the size penalty to defense, giving an advantage to larger things) and also your constitution bonus is thrown in there. It's possible to have a negative soak, giving anything hitting you a bonus to damage.

Your defense basically acts as AC, and Soak acts as Damage Reduction (which also stacks with DR, of course). One additional factor that makes combat a little more deadly than usual, is that both the attacker and defender roll on each attack. Attack as normal, defender rolls d20 and adds the defense score. For each point higher the attacker rolls than the defender, add one to the damage. So if the defender gets a total of 36, and the attacker gets a total of 48, the attacker adds 12 to damage. Furthermore, if you roll ten or more higher, that's a critical threat (a threat range of 19-20 requires an 8 or higher, 18-20 a 6 or higher, 17-20 a 4 or higher, 16-20 2 or higher, and 15-20 threatens a crit on evey successful hit) and critical hits (if confirmed) can do things like "Bypass Natural Armor" or "Blind Target".

There are a bunch of other little changes that have to take place to the game to make this work, like whenever something refers to a direct HP value (such as the paladin's Lay on Hands ability) divide that value by 3, magic missiles are assumed to auto-crit on every hit, and a couple of other little things, but mostly the rules are these:

1) Fifteen HP for everyone + penalties for damage
2) AC replaced by Defense, which is an opposed roll
3) AC (and part of the old HP) also replaced by Soak, which acts as DR.

With a little practise, I found myself able to use any monster from any source more or less instantly, calculating the def and soak within seconds by glancing at the AC and con value for the critter.

I'm not sure about the 15 hit points for everyone idea. What about a Gargantuan Blubbery Flesh Ooze, shouldn't it have lots of hit points!?

This is why I came up with the idea of Hit Dice by mass. The difficulty in implementing it wholesale (and dropping the bonuses from levelling) is that it has serious repercussions on how the magic system will work on characters.

 

[Fieari]

Slight tangent on the subject of anti-magic...

Ever read a short story called "The Glass Dagger"? The story follows the leader of a terrorist/freedom fighter group who wants to eradicate all magic in the world, because they feel that the wizards are controlling everything. So they built devices that use up all the magic in an area, basically making permanent Anti-Magic Zones.

The story involves one wizard who casts a spell on a glass dagger to make it intangible, and plunges this intangible dagger through the leader of this group's heart, which is harmless unless he ever goes into a magic null zone, at which point the dagger would become real again.

It's a neat story with a bunch of twists, but more to the point, I rather like the idea of Anti-Magic zones not being "Anti-Magic" or magical in themselves, but rather areas that LACK magic.

By the way, I've been seeing a lot of "Extremely High Level" threads popping up recently, and some people have amused themselves by making up characters with hundreds of levels. Whenever I see one of these, I always go to compare it to a critter of yours in the IH of an appropriate CR, and I've noticed that at these levels, will saves and such either make characters 100% immune to magic from a creature, or 100% vulnerable, with no halfway point. Have you given any thought to how to make things more random (so there's a point to rolling that D20 from time to time) at these amazingly high levels?

 

[Fieari]

I'm not sure about the 15 hit points for everyone idea. What about a Gargantuan Blubbery Flesh Ooze, shouldn't it have lots of hit points!?

This is why I came up with the idea of Hit Dice by mass. The difficulty in implementing it wholesale (and dropping the bonuses from levelling) is that it has serious repercussions on how the magic system will work on characters.

Well, the way it handles that, is that HP becomes basically a "life meter". If a creature in regular D&D had 150 hp, then in GnGr, that'd be a bit like having a Soak of about 9ish or so, since a hit of ten damage would do the same amount, percentage wise. But then, larger hits in GnGr do a bit more...

Hm. You've made me think. I wonder if there's an easy way to change the Soak system so that it lowers damage dealt by a percentage instead... perhaps raise the HP number for finer gradiations as well. I might want to run the thought past my group.

 

[Sledge]

The problem with areas of "no magic" implies that magical things are continually drawing in energy. A no magic area would be hard to cast spells in but precast spells are already powered.
The current antimagic system is somewhat undefined. I prefer to think of it as a magical dampening field. This field would be a magical effect. I think I also need to write up rules for magical distortion fields.

 

[Fieari]

Actually, that problem is precicely why I like that system... because it implies that magic things need to constantly be drawing on magic to function. And it also implies that were you able to find a way to bring a SOURCE of magic with you, you'd be able to get magic to work there. Which isn't the way it works regularly, but exploring options like that is what I and my players enjoy doing. Researching the fundamental nature of things like magic and anti-magic can be an enjoyable passtime to some.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Fieari mate!

Slight tangent on the subject of anti-magic...

Ever read a short story called "The Glass Dagger"?

No.

The story follows the leader of a terrorist/freedom fighter group who wants to eradicate all magic in the world, because they feel that the wizards are controlling everything. So they built devices that use up all the magic in an area, basically making permanent Anti-Magic Zones.

The story involves one wizard who casts a spell on a glass dagger to make it intangible, and plunges this intangible dagger through the leader of this group's heart, which is harmless unless he ever goes into a magic null zone, at which point the dagger would become real again.

It's a neat story with a bunch of twists, but more to the point, I rather like the idea of Anti-Magic zones not being "Anti-Magic" or magical in themselves, but rather areas that LACK magic.

By the way, I've been seeing a lot of "Extremely High Level" threads popping up recently, and some people have amused themselves by making up characters with hundreds of levels. Whenever I see one of these, I always go to compare it to a critter of yours in the IH of an appropriate CR, and I've noticed that at these levels, will saves and such either make characters 100% immune to magic from a creature, or 100% vulnerable, with no halfway point. Have you given any thought to how to make things more random (so there's a point to rolling that D20 from time to time) at these amazingly high levels?

I have a number of ideas regarding this, but I haven't, as yet, settled on just one solution.

Can you give some examples of the discrepancies you speak of...that might help me sort the problems out.

One idea is to have divine abilities that grant a being good saves in a single saving throw type.

eg. Divine Fortitude could be taken by a wizard-deity and then they would have Good Fort and Will saves.

This way its much more likely a deity will only fail its saves on a '1', which is the sort of tense, 'Russian Roulette' game we played.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello again!

Well, the way it handles that, is that HP becomes basically a "life meter". If a creature in regular D&D had 150 hp, then in GnGr, that'd be a bit like having a Soak of about 9ish or so, since a hit of ten damage would do the same amount, percentage wise. But then, larger hits in GnGr do a bit more...

So its trying to be more realistic, but in actuality its just as arbitrary.

Also I still fail to see how it handles magic?

Hm. You've made me think. I wonder if there's an easy way to change the Soak system so that it lowers damage dealt by a percentage instead... perhaps raise the HP number for finer gradiations as well. I might want to run the thought past my group.

Determining Hit Dice by mass seems logical to me, then you would use Hit Dice/hit points gained via levels as luck/skill etc..

In certain situations your luck would be of no use, immersion in lava, falling from a great height etc. In these cases you would ignore hit points gained via levels.

Thats how I would handle hit points in 4th Edition.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Sledge matey!

The problem with areas of "no magic" implies that magical things are continually drawing in energy.

Or simply that magic permeates everything, a bit like background radiation, neutrinos etc. Magical effects would simply be concentrations of that 'radiation'.

A no magic area would be hard to cast spells in but precast spells are already powered. The current antimagic system is somewhat undefined. I prefer to think of it as a magical dampening field. This field would be a magical effect. I think I also need to write up rules for magical distortion fields.

Can anti-magic be a magic effect though? Its probably more a philosophical issue than a mechanical one to be fair.

As I mentioned previously, I suggest that anti-magic effects deities and artifacts in the same way that it affects constructs. But if individual DMs don't like this suggestion they are free to make deities arbitrarily immune to anti-magic.

 

[poilbrun]

Or simply that magic permeates everything, a bit like background radiation, neutrinos etc. Magical effects would simply be concentrations of that 'radiation'.

Such an interpretation could explain an upper limit for the effectiveness of an anti-magic spell. If you put a cap to the effectiveness of an anti-magic field (for example, any effect with a CL 5 higher than the the CL of the anti-magic field still works), you can easily explain it: the ability to cast higher level spells is simply the ability to use more magical energy, energy that lower-level casters can't even see. Gaining levels is just gaining the ability to tap more into that magical energy around you. When a spellcaster casts anti-magic field, he actually severs the access to the magical energy he can see around him. Faced with a anti-magic field cast by a 15th level wizard, a 25th level wizard would just say "well, kiddo, you forgot this and that bit" and cast his spell normally.

I hope this makes sense, I'm not sure either when I reread it, even though it's crystal clear in my mind.

 

[historian]

Hey U_K!

Thanks for the feedback.

Off the top of my head I think its something like x1.5 damage dice for each eightfold energy increase.

That would have been my best guess.

I'm planning to follow your lead on antimagic. Basically it will nullify the (sp) and (su) abilities of everything: deities, artifacts, etc. Of course, it will be subject to disjunction if the antimagic originates from magic or a magic-like effect (1% per caster level chance of disjunction). It will, however, be subject to feats and other abilities that specifically bypass it.

As far as the dispelling goes, I think I'm just going to uncap the dispeller's caster level. While this might require upgrading the spell in no way do I think that this new version is more powerful than disjunction.