D20 Black Company conversions/ideas sought

[drothgery]

Agreed the world is extremely humanocentric world. Adding on a fantasy aspect should be a secondary concern though not forgotten in development such that it seems tacked on. Some sort of smooth integration should be sought.

Dealing with the Taken as a template in an interesting thought. It would account for a set of standard abilities common to all of the Taken, but perhaps 2 seperate ones are needed. 1 for the original and another for those the Lady herself creates. As I recall the new taken were far weaker than the original.

Whisper certainly wasn't (quite possibly Whisper was the most powerful of the Taken except for Soulcatcher). I'm not all that convinced that Taking significantly changes a Black Company universe wizard's abilities. Certainly Tobo, the Shadowmasters, many of the Circle of 18, and possibly Bomanz were capable of matching the Taken, and had pretty much the same degree of indestructability.

 

[mmu1]

Defining the power of the Taken is definitely a good first step...

I think the most important thing to realize is that, compared to standard D&D, the overall power level of Black Company magic is very low.

Yes, the Taken are damn near unkillable, but you don't see any of them slinging around Meteor Storms... Some of the most powerful magic mentioned in the books seems to be more on the order of Cloudkill (spreading mists melting flesh).

So when designing the Taken, you'd have to focus on protection much more heavily than offense - but with the stipulation that they need time to get them in place. Croaker and Raven took down Limper thanks to surprise and a magical arrow, after all.


As for other spellcasters - well, they're certainly feared and respected by the common people, but remember the start of Black Company - three company wizards accompanied by a band of veteran fighters with poisoned weapons get their clock cleaned by a single powerful lycanthrope - one of the wizards gets killed in the process.

Basically, for anything but Taken magic, Enchantment and Illusion would be the staple - again, think back to the extremely heavy emphasis on using magic for misdirection rather than direct damage.

As for healing magic - it clearly exists, and helps greatly (Croaker mentions getting One-Eye to help, or that more people could have easily been saved if they had a wizard around on numerous occasions), but it's definitely not the "poof - all better" kind that D&D uses. A switch to Wounds and Vitality Points is definitely in order for the whole system.

 

[hellbender]

I'd love to help with this, man. Drop me an e-mail.

I tried to head up a Black Company d20 project on the boards a while ago, but it fell through. I still have a few contacts, though, if I get involved.

I think the way to go with the Taken is a template. The specifics of that template? Iunno.

But I'll be glad to help!

I believe I was one of the scofflaws involved in that. I do run the BC D20 YahooGroup (not the busiest group out there). I was hoping to toss some ideas around and slap them up onto a website for people to use.


h.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=303884#post303884

Any reason in particular that your link zeroes in on my initial post?

 

[Apok]

Book Spoilers Ahead
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.



One thing I do know, the original Taken (possibly the new ones as well) have Regeneration of some form or fashion. Remember what they had to go through to completely destroy Shifter and Stormbringer (burn 'em and scatter their ashes in different directions). Also, using their True Name negates their magical talent in some way. I'd probably turn Taken into a template of sorts.

 

[Roland Delacroix]

I would suggest d20 Modern for a low-magic setting. The Taken could be Deticated or Intelligent hero's gone into the Mage or Cleric advanced classes. After that they would take 7 levels of their own custom PrC that grants them whatever powers they display. IMO the critical system for D20 Modern and the low magic fits a gritty game better.

 

[Khorod]

I don't really have time to participate in this in any but the most casual of ways. But from my observations of that last BC thread...

the very FIRST thing that MUST be done is get everyone in the core group agreed on what the taken can do, what the template does, and what the taken were like before the template. (And yes, I like the template idea.)

For example, the reasons why the later Taken weren't so powerful... was that because Lady couldn't do the job right, or because the original Taken were some of the most powerful Dark Archmages of all time, and the new ones were just any old 10th level+ spellcaster laying around?

Why were the Taken so indestructable? Was it because the had regeneration? Howler seemed covered with contingencies (frozen in Ice didn't stop him). Or maybe being Taken is just an odd form of Undead?

Once the nature of the condition of Taken is separated out from the spellcasting abilities, its time to correllate them to the abilities of Goblin, One-Eye, Silent, and Blade. Goblin/One-eye were illusionists, with a bit of enchantment. That's clear. But by the same token, those magics seemed to be part of all lower-order magics in the world. So maybe illusion is not a school, but merely a scattering of spells in other schools.

Blade had enough magics for a cantrip, One-eye had enough to cast 5-6th level illusion 8 times per day and live for 200 years, and the Taken had enough to do anything except for physical detonate their surroundings. Fireballs were about the most destructive they could get in a physical sense.

The magic-using classes also seemed fairly hard to progress on. One-eye and Goblin almost never seemed to level as spellcasters, yet they did lots of XP-earning stuff. (Research and item creation feats don't necessarily indicate leveling as a spellcaster.) Given Glen Cook's notion that magic makes you insane (which he said in an interview somewhere), maybe their are points in the Mage class where the character has to decide if he wants to proceed- and pay the price.

Once the magic system & classes have been resolved, it is now possible to figure out all else. But the differences in the magic seem central to the feel of the BC universe- the danger to individual heroes, the gritty violence- these are all house rules to the combat system which follow once you know how tough the toughest people are supposed to be...

 

[Irony]

for the grim and gritty feel, the death from massive damage level should probably be dropped to 20 or 15, a la V for Victory.

 

[Skade]

On the subject of magic. Later in the series when One-Eye makes his spear to kill (?Lisa Bodak? Shifters apprentice who was stuck in Forvalaka shape) it was of a power level that could kill a Taken, even possibly the Lady. One Eye explains that any competent wizard could do that sort of magic, the difference was time. He doesn't explain that much more to me, but the impression I got was that wizards could only channel so much energy at once in a controlled fashion. Powerful wiaards were simply better filters for that energy. Maybe a bettery would be a better example.

 

[hellbender]

I don't really have time to participate in this in any but the most casual of ways. But from my observations of that last BC thread...

the very FIRST thing that MUST be done is get everyone in the core group agreed on what the taken can do, what the template does, and what the taken were like before the template. (And yes, I like the template idea.)

For example, the reasons why the later Taken weren't so powerful... was that because Lady couldn't do the job right, or because the original Taken were some of the most powerful Dark Archmages of all time, and the new ones were just any old 10th level+ spellcaster laying around?

Why were the Taken so indestructable? Was it because the had regeneration? Howler seemed covered with contingencies (frozen in Ice didn't stop him). Or maybe being Taken is just an odd form of Undead?

Once the nature of the condition of Taken is separated out from the spellcasting abilities, its time to correllate them to the abilities of Goblin, One-Eye, Silent, and Blade. Goblin/One-eye were illusionists, with a bit of enchantment. That's clear. But by the same token, those magics seemed to be part of all lower-order magics in the world. So maybe illusion is not a school, but merely a scattering of spells in other schools.

Blade had enough magics for a cantrip, One-eye had enough to cast 5-6th level illusion 8 times per day and live for 200 years, and the Taken had enough to do anything except for physical detonate their surroundings. Fireballs were about the most destructive they could get in a physical sense.

The magic-using classes also seemed fairly hard to progress on. One-eye and Goblin almost never seemed to level as spellcasters, yet they did lots of XP-earning stuff. (Research and item creation feats don't necessarily indicate leveling as a spellcaster.) Given Glen Cook's notion that magic makes you insane (which he said in an interview somewhere), maybe their are points in the Mage class where the character has to decide if he wants to proceed- and pay the price.

Once the magic system & classes have been resolved, it is now possible to figure out all else. But the differences in the magic seem central to the feel of the BC universe- the danger to individual heroes, the gritty violence- these are all house rules to the combat system which follow once you know how tough the toughest people are supposed to be...

I appreciate all of your input (and everyone else's as well), it is a shame that you cannot participate in the project. As far as magic and insanity, I will read more into Cthulhu d2o for some ideas. My only disagreement would be the Taken being able to affect their surroundings, Limper had some way of making those 'killing mounds' that killed masses of enemy troops.


h.