Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Viktyr Gehrig" data-source="post: 2614963" data-attributes="member: 9249">Yeah. I'm still working this out. Wisdom penalties might fit, but Constitution penalties really don't-- the idea is twisted, horrible, and alien, not sickly and insensible.I might leave mechanical penalties out of it-- except for "opportunity costs" like feat slots and class levels-- and handle everything in terms of interaction penalties and the occasional lynch mob. There's a reason the Elan hide themselves...I must confess I've only seen the movie-- but it's not the sort of creepy I'm looking for. And, really, not the sort of creepy I'm capable of pulling off in-game. I can do Children of the Corn or Pickman's Model-- and Gaslight or Fight Club on a really good day-- but I don't think I can pull off the kind of subtle emotional horror of Solaris.Especially not with four guys that look at a cheesegrater and see a +2 equipment bonus to Intimidate and Gather Information checks.In any case, the area around the gas giant is for more "survival horror"; when the aberration lords induce paranoia and self-doubt, it's usually somewhere else.I'm torn on this one. I think I want at least one nation on each of the "idyllic" planets to maintain a spelljamming fleet, and I want most worlds to engage in some form of trade and politicking, but I'm not sure how busy I want the space between the planets to be.Generally, I'm thinking the five major planetary fleets, plus a handful of much smaller private concerns-- groups like the Tenth Pit or the Pragmatic Order of Thought in the original Spelljammer-- and then the various adventuring vessels, which is the PCs and their rivals.Yeah-- I'm seeing the big artificial trade outpost in this role, as well as major cities on the "idyllic" planets. Most other planets are going to have only small, local ports; they might be used to seeing extraterrestrials, but they're only used to one or two ships' worth at a time, and they might not have seen members of all the spacefaring races.Hmm. I should really do something with this-- either in-game, or in the recent history just before the game starts.I'm really thinking that they've simply never been close-- if they ever really existed at all. I'm intending to be deliberately vague on this issue, since I'm planning on having Clerics and Shugenja and Shamans all in the same setting. Also, if several mutually-exclusive theological and cosmological approaches to divine magic all work, it means I really don't need to provide details for hundreds of local gods.I'm going to do broad brush-strokes on the major religions, maybe even drop a few names of specific gods, for the religions that have them-- and then leave it strictly alone.I'm not even going to think about figuring out where Githyanki Blackguards get their spells from.Hmm. I see Navigation as something that at least one PC per party should have skill in. Otherwise, it'd like going into a dungeon with an NPC Rogue.On the other hand... there could be some major, vital skill or service that a guild has monopoly control over-- probably not something the PCs need, or at least, nothing they need a lot of, but something that all of the big organizations need. They're supposedly apolitical, but none of the political people really believes it.And that's assuming they're not infiltrated by Doppelgangers or Elan.I'll have to think about this.</blockquote>

Verification