Elves versus Gnomes!

[apoptosis]

Understand you world a little better now and your mechanics.

I see how having two stats would make things difficult and could cause a loss of parity.

I think Int could make things easier for characters.

Of course the Int=Law, CHA=chaos is good as well (I like Int=Law better than Wis=law anyways).

But dont think much of problem either way you do it.

You ever thought of giving psions some healing and not have any elvish (elven?) clerics (just another idea...i throw out lots, so you can thrash any (even publicly ) that you dont like).

I would also describe the elven/gnome societies so the players really get feel for law/chaos in them. Also would describe your world/background in these terms (the elric saga could be good inspiration) to really catch players up in it. One thing you could do that might be odd, but for sorcerers, after time...using sorcery causes strange side effects (chaos related). Green eyes, slight electrical charge...etc.... to put forth the idea that sorcery and chaos are intertwined.

apop

 

[vermicious knid]

In my home-brew campaign I actually use WIS as the key stat for psionics (force of will, perception), INT for arcane magic (mental acuity, creativity), and CHA for divine (force of personality, ability to kiss divine ass). I haven't noticed any problems.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The society thing is the last part I'm finishing, becaue I want a balanced game mechanic first. I was also hoping to have a system where a character could be ported easily from a standard system, so I don't want to get too out of whack.

I'm still thinking about the idea of having Dwarves be Lawful (with Psychic Warrior as their class), Elves be Neutral (with Druid as their class), and Gnomes be Chaotic (with Sorcerer as their class). But for now, it looks like the answer is to have Elves be Lawful (Psions) and Gnomes be Chaotic (Sorcerers), but to have Sorcerers and Bards use INT as their prime stat.

One of the headaches I have with Lawful Elves is how they could end up in Arborea (a CG afterlife). I'm afraid I'll have to rearrange the planes, switching Bytopia and Arborea. Although, your afterlife doesn't HAVE to match your personal philosophy.

 

[apoptosis]

Dont stress too much on the planes unless that will affect the players.

But you could have a CG afterlife. When elves die they are free of the yoke and manacles of their lawful world and experience true freedom (which makes elves in some kind of balance cycle).

vermicious knid - not a bad idea at all (sacred cow killing but that is fine with me). Mine is a little more complicated...magecraft (psions use int for known powers, wis for bonus points and cha for save dc...hurts somewhat but is made up for to signify how difficult and how long it takes to master magecraft).


Spat - sounds like you have a good start there. just curious...what about drow? or do they exist.

also what about humans..do certain cultures have preferences?? or even overwhelming preferences?? (i think it helps flesh out human empires/kingdoms/cultures).

apop

 

[Zirnike]

INT for arcane magic (mental acuity, creativity), and CHA for divine (force of personality, ability to kiss divine ass).

Man, that would make things easier... People in the campaign with my pyro complain that I take too long figuring out saves, etc. because of needing to crossreferance everything. Of course, I like having CON as a primary attribute. I out-HP some of the fighters.

Immunology, taking a name based on cellular mechanics... And I work for Waters Corp.

And no, chaos isn't necessarily a lack of consistancy... Look at quantum mechanics. Totally chaotic... except everything ends up being within statistical limits. You can't tell what any action will be, but you can bet that a bunch of actions will be very close to what you predicted.

Instead of 'Law', think of it as 'Order'. Chaos vs. Order is a better basic opposition, I've always felt.

Anyway... I do think elves tend to be more ordered. I don't have a general 'feel' for gnomes (except for the 'tinker gnome' subset, which is chaotic (sort of... You could argue that they're just really bad at being ordered)).

Now, for the 'channeling' of divine magic... The reason they did it that way is that clerics used to have to take all healing spells. Made them kinda useless, in a lot of ways, you couldn't memorize other useful spells because Cure Serious trumped it. If you eliminate that, you're probably going to have a player trying to come up with a concept that works with the 'healing' domain. Alternatly, you could give out as somewhat more common, wands of cure X wounds...

 

[apoptosis]

Law vs. Chaos...

Cuz of the many permutations of those words and how we could go ad nauseum about them , i think another thread would be better for it....(have doubts about the necessary chaos of quantum mechanics...non empirical causality does not necesarrily equate to chaos to me...but then again scientific chaos and order...start getting very complex as to what is what....i used to do protein binding kinetics and physical biochemistry so have some idea about them).

BTW...what is Waters Corp..?


BTW...why did you pick Gnomes over Dwarves Spat... Just curious as the Dwarf/Elf is usually what is thought of.

apop

 

[Spatzimaus]

"Spat - sounds like you have a good start there. just curious...what about drow? or do they exist.

also what about humans..do certain cultures have preferences?? or even overwhelming preferences?? (i think it helps flesh out human empires/kingdoms/cultures)."

Humans have no "traditional" alignment. Also, they have an ability I refer to as "Thin Blood". Basically, this is what allows them to crossbreed with just about everything. It prohibits them from certain abilities, but on the bright side it prevents certain abilities (like Bane) from being used against them.
Part of the reason I wanted Elves to be Psionic is that it seemed a more natural fit for Drow and Gith, allowing me to come up with a "common ancestor" sort of story there.

Zirnike: Yes, it's more Order than Law, but I was trying to stick as close to book terminology as I could. Having to rename everything to "Protection from Order" and such would be a pain.

I know why they did the channeling thing, I had a Cleric in 2E, and yes, that's exactly what happened. But, I slightly upgraded Druids' healing abilities, and Psions can heal in a pinch (Empathic Transfer + Body Adjustment), and I have Inflict spells giving you half the damage they do in temporary HP (otherwise they sucked as combat spells), and there's a whole line of HP transfer spells (the Blood Bridge line, based on the 2E spell) for Arcane casters... healing is still covered.

In core 3E, a good Cleric of a Fire god was still mostly a healer, with a few fire abilities. This just didn't seem right, so I changed the class to focus more on its domains, which was part of the reason Wizards became redundant. If you still want healing, load up most of your spell slots with heals and then swap them for Fireballs if you need to.

Also, in core 3E a Good cleric was MUCH stronger than an Evil one since you'd have far more reason to swap low-level spells for heals than for inflicts.

Now, I expanded the deities a bit to compensate. Each has 5 or 6 Domains now, and a lot of them have Healing as one option, even some Evil gods. The patron deity of the Orcs, for example, might have Healing as a domain to preserve his "children". But, for style purposes, a Healing spell cast by an Evil Cleric leaves scars, is painful, etc.
There'll also be Prestige Classes for Clerics that add Domains to your list.

 

[Spatzimaus]

"BTW...why did you pick Gnomes over Dwarves Spat... Just curious as the Dwarf/Elf is usually what is thought of."

Because when I removed Wizard, I removed the PHB Favored Class of Gnomes and Elves.

This concept originally started as a way to transfer the Favored Class to something else. I didn't want both to go to Sorcerer, and since I was adding Psion to my standard classes, I figured I'd do one Psion and one Sorcerer. It didn't really start as an Elves versus Gnomes thing, it just ended up like that once I decided that I'd rather not move the other races around too much.

The other races are mostly the same as the PHB, except that Half-Orcs can now take Limited Scent as a Feat (DMG Scent at 1/3 range and DC+5), and I added a custom Half-Ogre (taken from these boards long ago).

 

[Zirnike]

One of my DMs fixed that by allowing good and evil clerics to channel healing, regardless. Line of reasoning is that evil clerics get hurt too.

Waters Corp: we build chromatography equipment. Big in biotech and pharmacutical stuff, as in both groups tend to have labs filled with our stuff. You might have Adulent/HP stuff floating around, instead. Ours is generally better in terms of accuracy, etc., but a bit more tempermental if you're not careful. Perfect for me, as I could care less about ease of use past a certain point if I have access to power.

And Bards have healing because they're more 'designed' to help out others, it seems, than do direct damage...

 

[apoptosis]

ahhh.... We at Abbott use Adulent and HP.

Used HP in my doctoral work.