Farland's Runelords in DnD?

[Negative Zero]

to our friendly neighbourhood mods: if this should be in the House Rules forum instead, please move it for me (i just thought it'd get more attention over here)

has anyone who's read David Farland's Runelord series tried to implement his endowment mechanic into DnD? i love those books, and i think that it's one of the most original ideas i've seen in fantasy literature. i've kinda been tossing the idea around my head for a lil while now, and i'm curious as to whether anyone else has attempted it.

for those who don't know anything about it, essentially a person can willingly give up one of their attributes to another. attributes like brawn, wit, grace, metabolism, stamina, sight, hearing, smell, glamour, voice can all be surrendered. the person who gives it up, the dedicate, must be cared for by his lord as if the dedicate dies, then the lord loses the attribute. of course this is an over simplification of the idea.

anyone?

~NegZ

 

[Negative Zero]

er ... no one?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Good series but nothing I've tried to do D&D wise. I don't thik that a level based system really handles something like this well although simple magic item use could.

Probably do something like take the bonuses the people have an add them to your stat. 18 bonus equal +4 bonus to you for example.

 

[s/LaSH]

Experience levels don't work properly for this, but who says you want to use those? The nature of endowments is that they're pretty fluid, and in the heat of a war people's vectors and dedicates get slaughtered and renewed all the time off-camera. I'd rule that it's up to the DM to control the endowments of people with plenty of 'em, and use endowments as the new standard for levels, only these levels can be boosted and sucked away far easier than those earned through experience.

It's similar to an idea I'm considering where upgrading a vehicle replaces leveling. Basically, the more endowments you get, the better you become, and mere human experience is useless to you. I have no idea how the endowments would work on a per-level scheme; perhaps every 10 gives you a level, I don't know. I'd suggest an average of +2 to the applicable stat for every endowment earned.

Then, what do the endowments (E) do? They don't work into D&D rules too well. Examples:

Strength: Adds to damage. So if you have 20 EStr, you get +20 to damage. If you have thousands of EStr, like Raj Ahten, you instantly do enough damage on a successful hit to punch through three feet of iron (hardness 10, 30hp per inch of thickness, 33 inches) for every thousand you possess. Stone? Every thousand EStr gives you the ability to punch through over five feet of rock. Now, I don't think even Ahten manifested that level of power; he had trouble against fortifications (especially the second Rune of Devastation; why didn't he just punch the reaver fortress down?). I'm not even going to mention the ridiculous AC you'd need to avoid such blows...
Fix: Increase damage dice instead, and never apply STR bonus to attack rolls. Look in the Monster Manual; it has a table for scaling damage dice. The first 1 EStr, you scale up one; then the next 10; then the next 100, 1000, etc. Still apply your core endowment (your innate Str bonus) to damage, and still use your full effective strength for lifting or bursting doors etc.

Metabolism: Increases your speed in all things, especially combat reflexes and healing potential. I'd say add your EMet bonus to Con. But this in no way allows you to heal realtime like certain characters can, and if you ever gain an experience level with thousands of EMet, you'll gain thousands of hp all in a rush. And it doesn't increase your speed either.
Fix: Nobody with that many endowments is going to be 1st level; they're probably low mid levels (6-10) instead, so the hp jump is more minor. More importantly, the regeneration. I'd give the character damage reduction 1/- for every iteration of EMet (1/- for 1 EMet, 2/- for 10, 3/- for 100 etc.), and give yourself fast healing. If you have endowments, you have fast healing equal to your damage reduction -1. (You still heal overnight.)
Now, the speed issue. I'd just use iterations again, and say you're hasted X times, and each haste means you can do your round again (move your speed, attack, all that), where X is 1 for 1EMet, 2 for 10EMet, etc.

Anyway, that's as far as I want to go today. Does this give anyone ideas? It's just a quick hash, but I think it could work...

 

[Negative Zero]

i hadn't thought of the effects in a level based system ... odd, yes i know. i think that it'd have to be severely limited and not made as prolific as it is in the books. it could be used as a form of magic item, where the costs of the blood metal forcible could count toward a character's limit. (or perhaps half the cost as i imagine that it would be exorbitant.)

as for the Raj Aten not punching down a wall, i think that the (E)STR increase affects mostly muscle and the proportionate increase in the strength of bone isn't enough to allow for that kind of thing. if i remember correctly, in the second book, when King Val Orden formed the serpent loop (or whatever it was called) one of the drawbacks was that he couldn't allow himself to move as fast as he possibly could, because the sudden movement would snap his bones.

now i realise that this compares metabolism and strength, but i'm using it to illustrate how an increase in muscle tension (i.e. STR) isn't without drawbacks. another consideration is that in Farland's world there doesn't seem to be any godly presence as such. the gods in the average DnD world might certainly decide to step in if any mortal amassed as much power as Raj Aten did.

on a much more limited scale, the idea might be doable. yes? no?

~NegZ

 

[Khorod]

Definitely doable. I think to do anything other than base a campaign on it, the blood-metal brands have to be a special magic item, the branding guy has a feat, skill, or spell to use it, and all three characters involved pay an experience cost.

And if there were gods, I'd probably do something like limit it to one brand per point of Constitution.


Also, in designing the rules for metabolism, it is really important to remember that it multiplies the rate of aging. Without that its way overbalanced.

In the books, the guys with metabolism had a multiplier to speed, a bonus to dexterity, and maybe one partial action extra per, um, two 'units' of increased metabolism.

I once reasoned out the bonus to be (ability score-3)/2. So to get a brawn endowment you would go find the woodcutter with an 18 strength, make him bedridden with a 3, at net a +7 bonus to your own strength. Maybe that should be 'divided by 3'. Or maybe it should be dedicate has a score of three, add their ability bonus to your relevant score.

 

[s/LaSH]

The point about being too strong for your own bones is a good one. I suppose there'd have to be some way to penalise warriors of unbalanced aspect; metabolism and strength sort of support each other, and metabolism would probably cause all sorts of problems without a hefty helping of Grace endowments. (That's why I didn't suggest a Dex bonus from Met, although a haste bonus would probably be a good idea. What is it, +2AC per haste?)

These are oriented towards high Runelords. A single endowment character is probably just enjoying the benefits of a magic item, as discussed previously, but to do Raj Ahten you'd want these.

Grace: Buffs up DEX. Don't apply this bonus to missile weapon attacks or initiative checks. Do apply it to AC and all relevant skill checks.
Penalties: None.
Synergy: Metabolism does 1 damage per action for every increment faster you are than your Grace (if you have 1000 Met but only 10 Grace, you take 2hp every time you swing your sword).

Wits: Buffs up WIS. Furthermore, with the incredible power of recall this gives you, you can search locations (with spot or listen) after you've left them; apply the penalties for time under the Track feat or something.
Penalties/Synergies: None, until you lose your dedicates... at which point you take a major hit to memory and skills. Probably an XP drain, too.

 

[Khorod]

Wit also gives you bonuses to all Intelligence based skills, or at least the ability to take 10 or 20 at will. (and in a minute or less)

I believe I idly designed a Runelord PrC once. Its definitely the way to go for that. Total number of endowments you could get was something like level x con modifier. And you got aristocrat type skills and a warriors hd and save.

So a Runelord with an 18 con and 5th level could have 40 Endowment 'units', and anything extra would need the extra magical oomph of a full-blown blood ritual.

When I say units, I mean that the runelords could get a little grace at a time by taking a bunch of normal folk, or a lot of grace from one single sneaky bastard. So the benefit either way is calculated only in terms of how many dedicates you need to protect, feed, and so on.

For some more balance reasons, the dedicates gained as a class ability, as opposed to just magic, should have active loyalty- if they become disillusioned, they transference is negated. That way the core powers of the class requires the players to not ignore his people- he's got to keep them fed pretty nicely, or else. It also explains why Raj Ahtan went out of his way to make his closest dedicates happy, but how he is able to maintain endowments from everyone else even after they realize what happened- they're disillusionment is irrelevant 'cause of the magic.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Check out the magic system in the Shadowforce Archer setting book for Spycraft.

Looks like it would work from what little I know of the Runelords.