Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BlackJaw" data-source="post: 377469" data-attributes="member: 888">I'm reading your new version of chapter 5.Right off the bat I'm a little woried about water medium rules.  I think that's a bit more then we want to bite off.  surface vehicles vs underwater.  deapths of vehicles, weapons working underwater, etc.  naval battles and submarines are a bit (not a lot) but a bit off our target here.  Its kind of like when Barsoom wanted to open the scope of our system to all vehicles.  Sure our system could be rigged to do it, and I'm all for it as a "next project" but its just makes this firt one bigger and longer, and more to think about.  I'm already having a hard time definidng things for vacuume vs atmopshere in vehicle construction.  I'd hate to have to define water, vs surface, vs air, vs vacuume.)I think we may want to cut that from the book for now.  Fields of Technology might be a bit more then we want work with through the "bare bones" tech rules for this project.  It looks like you were going for a "schools of magic" compariosn to science, which is a great way of doing tech for a D&D setting (very very cool) but maybe to much of a whole new concept for this project.  I'm thinking about how to work this into the vehicle to design...  hmm more thought needed I think.Magic Potential is a bit confusing at some spots. "You can take 10 on this check by taking more time to cast the spell, just as a sorcerer or bard does when using metamagic feats."  This, to me, at first sounded like a skill check was made when sorcerers use metamagic.  Because that isn't true it confused me fora  moment till I re-read it and figured you mean the time extention for the spell increases in the same way as a sorc/bard with metamagic.  then it brought up the question of what happens when a sorcerer uses metamagic and takes 10.  maybe something like: "You can take 10 on this check, but it takes more time to cast the spell, just as a sorcerer or bard does when using metamagic feats.  Spontanous casters using metamagic in a low magic area do not get double time penalties for taking 10. "???"Furthermore, at progressively lower magic potentials, the effective caster level of spells is decreased: -1 at magic potential 6 or below"  What do you mean by effective caster level of spells?  As in a 10th level wizard casts a spell, but it functions like a 9th level wizard cast it?  OK, so what does this mean: "If this reduces the caster's effective level below the minimum needed to cast a spell, he loses access to that spell slot while in that cosmos."  Now it sounds like spellcasters are losing levels not losing power to their spells.  Is this if a spell is reduced bellow caster level 1?  that means 0 level casters do nothing.  what about those few spells where caster level means nothing?  THEN you go and drop "In a cosmos with a rigid magic potential, spells of a level higher than the potential level don't function at all.  " on top of all these hardships with magic.  I think we need to clean this all up a bit.  This is getting extra complicated for something that has to happen each time a spell is cast, or magic item is used, etc.  AND what about magic items with constant effects, etc.Overall I'm not sure I like the idea that all spellcasting in settings less then 9 need a spellcraft check (it makes sense for spells over the cosmos amount, but if you go into a cosmos 8 envrioment, using a level 1 spell shouldn't require a spellcraft check should it?  on top of all the other penalites above?)The same is true in the tech area.  you have device checks for things in tech 8 and lower.  This gets a little silly to me, as many settings are anti-gun, but don't require special checks for crossbows.  Overall I think checks for this above the tech/magic level of the cosmos are needed (if allowed) but for everything at or bellow it.The anitmagic/anti tech paragraph is a little ODD.  it talks about places where tech/magic does not work, then talks about palaces where tech/magic is "possible, but the inhabitants haven't yet discovered the capacity for it" and this gets confusing.  all that information should be stripped from that paragraph and go into the descriptions of the tech/magic descriptor areas.  (IE: its possible to have tech potential be much higher then the current inhabitants can use should be mentioned in the description of the whole concept, not in the anti-magic section)IDEA: we should really have Psionics listed seperate, as a side bar.  Psionics is not OGC, and the psiHBK does have the "psionics is diffrent" option system.  basicaly the side bar would be a little blurb on how it uses aproxamtly the same system as magic, including max level casting,a nd use of PsiCraft skill checks.Gravity and Environmental Effects sections seem so very very crunchy.  I can see what you are trying to do, but it seems very number and calculation oriented... I think barsoomcore could do some good stuff cleaning this all up (the ideas are fine, but the presentation I think is the problem)  We might want to describe everything in terms of base line humans/etc then include a section at the end on how DMs can declare certian creatures prefered to one enviroment or another.  This whole concept is a little odd, also, if you think about creatures native to cold enviroments, like many cold based monsters in the Core rules, etc.  what about fire/heat resistence magic etc?The 0-gravity rules are great.  Maybe they could be cleaned a bit in wording, but they are great in mechanics and ideas.Slow Suffocation should probably be called "low oxygen" enviroments or something to that effect, and you should mention that the rules apply to being in an area where it is possible to breath (yourn't dying from subdual damage) but not as much as needed.  eventualy you reach a point of suffocation level (no 02 left) and fall into rules similar to drowning... con checks then specific effects.Lets also not forget to make a note that not everything breathes and therefore not everything can drown or suffocate... and that subdual damage from strange enviroments doesn't stop just because the creature is immune to suffocation.  Example: Air Gensi (not an OGC race I'm affraid) don't breath, but they would still take exposure damage from space.  Undead on the other hand, work fine in space/vacuume.AHHH the 12 questions.  These were and are great.  The sidebars are great too.  The plant bodies refrence is cool.  Actually I'd like another "real" example or two in there.  Isn't one of Jupiter's moons made of liquid?we might want to have an apendix to the book with things like your World-Building Bibliography.  A further reading list in general is a cool idea, but we might want to put it at the end of hte book, not the chapter (I suspect you intend it that way, but its just at the end of the document as the document is just one file.)GREAT WORK.</blockquote>

Verification