Gez's Arcane Nifties Gathered

[Terraism]

Gez - I really like the wizard staff information. It's innovative, addresses a standard "venue" of fantasy, and... well, it's really cool. I'm thinkin' that the Sorcerer bloodlines may be a little overpowered, though. Specific examples follow:
Healer/Occultist: Wait - for 100 xp, you gain 8 ranks in a skill? [Whistles.] That seems a bit powerful for the cost.
Natural armor: Say a sorcerer takes the natural armor ability at each level. Given the XP costs (15,600), he's approximately a level behind his compatriots. And he's gained a net +20 natural AC. Seems that +20 AC is certainly worth a single level - moreso, I'd wager.

Still, I like the idea, as well as the implementation - I just think a few of them need some tweaking.

 

[Gez]

I've reduced Nat Armor to a 1, 2, 3, 5 figure.

That said, I'm hesitating between this and a choice-less system (each bloodline has a fixed set of capacities that you get in exchange for XP, and possibly gold expended in materials for the rituals).

 

[Terraism]

The problem I've always had with the sorcerous bloodlines is how blasted many of them there are... I mean, some twenty each of Celestials, Demons/Devils, and Dragons alone. That's sixty different "paths" a sorcerer can take. Something more akin to a generalist wizard and eight subpaths would be more to my liking, I think, but with perhaps restricted spells by type as opposed to school. (Like fire-based sorcerers not being allowed water, or some such.)

Anyway, I think the change to Natural Armor makes it far more playable.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The problem I've always had with the sorcerous bloodlines is how blasted many of them there are...

Same here. Balancewise I think they're fine, but there's just too many to keep track of. The easy way to fix this would be to differentiate by element or alignment, instead of having an explicit list by monster type. After all, I've never heard of several of those dragon types...
For example, let's make a list of subtypes, sort of like the domain system:

4 Elemental types (Air, Fire, Earth, Water)
4 Creature types (Dragon, Fey, Aberration, Outsider)
4 Alignment types (Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic)
2 "Exotic" types (Psionic, Shadow)
(Undead might be a possibility, but how would they breed?)

Okay, so all you have to do is arrange the abilities by these 14 types. For example, Wings might be "Air, Dragon, Fey, Outsider". Anyone with one of those four can take it.
Now, each new Sorcerer picks two of the subtypes to represent his ancestor, even if that ancestor fits into three or more categories. You could say that no one can select opposing alignments, opposing elements, or more than one of the "creature types" (Dragon, Fey, Aberration, Outsider), but other than that, they pick whatever two they want.

So, if I said my ancestor was a Red Dragon, I might pick Fire and Dragon; I could pick Evil instead, but since I can only take 2 I chose the others. I'd be able to select any ability that had either Fire or Dragon on its list; since Wings had Dragon listed, I can select it.
I could have my ancestor be an Illithid, which'd make me pick Psionic and Aberration. A Seelie Fey would give Good and Fey. A gem dragon would be an element, Psionic, and Dragon. A Slaad would be Chaotic and Outsider. An Air Elemental would be Air and Outsider. A devil would be Lawful, Evil, Outsider. And so on down the line. The Sphinx might be Air and Aberration (yes, I know they're Magical Beasts).

The key is you don't need to keep a creature-by-creature list this way. As long as the 14 "domains" are relatively balanced, and everyone is limited to 2, it all works out. If someone wants to play a combination you haven't planned (like Shadow+Good) you can invent a new creature to fit it. And it's a lot easier to make sure no ancestor gets neglected when you only have 14 subtypes to balance.

 

[Terraism]

You guys keep this up, and I'm gonna run out of "yoinks" for the week...

 

[Avatar of the North]

Gez, were you the one that did the domain (cleric) collection thread along time back? If it was or if you know where i can find it that would be great.

 

[Gez]

Good memory, indeed it was me.

Back in the day, it was this:
http://gez117.free.fr/dnd/domaines.html

Rather than maintaining it by hands, I've begun to fill a XML data file with spells and generate with XSL translations several spell lists, this work-in-progress can be found there:
http://gez117.free.fr/dnd/spelllists/domainlist.html

It's far from finished, however, and there are some mark-up errors in the file.

 

[Gez]

Spatzimaus, good suggestion. (However, the sphinxes are rather important in my campaign world, so I'll keep them separate.)

 

[Spatzimaus]

However, the sphinxes are rather important in my campaign world, so I'll keep them separate.

Okay, how about this then, since I feel like brainstorming:

Sort the Aspects into three groups.
5 Creature types (Dragon, Fey, Outsider, Aberration, Mundane)
6 Elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Psionic, Shadow)
5 Alignments (Good, Evil, Chaotic, Lawful, Unaligned)

Mundane means Magical Beast, Beast, Monstrous Humanoid... anything with spell-like abilities is fair game. Maybe find another name, like "Natural". Basically I was going for (non-Aberration) Prime creatures that aren't Dragons or Fey. Most of their abilities would be of the "+Natural Armor/DR/HP/STR/CON" variety.
Unaligned means both True Neutral, and any race that isn't inherently drawn towards any alignment (i.e., "usually neutral" for most PC races). If the race has an alignment subtype like [Evil] or is listed as "always evil" then you should take that alignment instead.

Each Sorcerer picks one Aspect from each group to represent their ancestor, for a total of 3 Aspects per person.
Since everyone is limited to 1 from each group, you only have to balance those within a single group against each other, instead of having to balance all 16. So, the "Creature type" group might be inherently more important than the "Alignment" group. Each Creature choice might give several choices at each rank, while the Alignment ones might give one, but since the player can only choose one ability anyway it's not a problem.

If your ancestor was an Androsphinx, you'd take Mundane, Air, (Chaotic or Good). All varieties of Sphinx would be Mundane+Air, but the alignment would differ. I suppose you could add a sixth Creature group for "Sphinx", but I think you could cover all the related abilities through the Air group.

Anyway, under this modified system, it's easy to figure the groups for each possible ancestor. Take a Doppelganger; it's a Magical Beast, so it gets the "Mundane". It's got mental Spell-Like Abilities, so it gets "Psionic". And it's not biased towards any extreme alignment, so it gets "Unaligned".

There's 150 combinations as I wrote it, so players can mix and match to their hearts' content, but it's not much work for you to keep it all balanced.

 

[Terraism]

I like the change, but I don't see a use in having one type be "unaligned." Should there be any abilities and "unaligned" creature gets that others can't? Without that, I'd say it's a fairly nice start.