Grim Tales? Anyone? Bueller?

[Wulf Ratbane]

What is the next product is the line?

Slavelords of Cydonia-- an adventure sourcebook containing a complete epic adventure (1st - 20th) and a bunch of new rules to support it (Cydonian tech, mass combat, new creatures, etc.) You could almost think of it as the first "campaign setting" for Grim Tales.

This is as good a place to ask the question as anywhere:

Would folks prefer a 27.95 softcover or 34.95 hardcover? The equation is almost a wash for me, as the publisher, so it really comes down to the preference of the buying public.

Me, I just like the feel of a hardcover-- what say you?

Wulf

 

[DanMcS]

Chapter Four: Talents
I added the concept of "Advanced Talents" that require you to be at least 3rd level in a class before you can take them. A lot of the talent trees that were "stackable" (Melee Smash, Damage Reduction) were just condensed into a single talent.

Not sure I followed that one. It's a single talent that can be taken more than once?

New talent trees culled from the core D&D classes-- provided they were sufficiently low-magic. You will see sneak attack and favored enemy. You won't see most of the funky monk juju. I did my best to put the class abilities into the proper d20M class counterparts, though I am sure there is room for dissent, here. For example, some folks would rather have seen Sneak Attack in the Fast trees, rather than the Smart trees.

And, SOLD. I put some time into this kind of feat-tree construction myself a couple weeks ago, and if it's done for me, it will be mine. Come to think of it, the sneak attack feats were based on Int in mine, too.

Ah, who am I kidding. I was going to buy this book tomorrow when we play at the game store anyway, but now I'm going hunting for it after work today. Actually, 9 hours on tuesday, 7.5 on wednesday, I can knock off a half hour early today and beat the traffic...

 

[BryonD]

Would folks prefer a 27.95 softcover or 34.95 hardcover? The equation is almost a wash for me, as the publisher, so it really comes down to the preference of the buying public.

Me, I just like the feel of a hardcover-- what say you?

Wulf

Thanks for the answer.

At that price level I prefer to spend a little more for hardback.

 

[Tellerve]

I'd go hardcover at that price.

As for questions, how about GT working into something like Blood and Fists which I just purchased? Would the advanced classes be a bit too beefy for classes that at 20th level only have a +9 to saves?

Sounds great though otherwise...oohh so much good stuff coming out!

Tellerve

 

[Breakdaddy]

Wulf, I prefer hardcover any day. I bought a copy of GT online the other day, now just waiting til it arrives, wooohooooo!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Not sure I followed that one. It's a single talent that can be taken more than once?

Well, first of all, I should have separated that sentence from the prior sentence about advanced talents. The two concepts are not related.

Now, in regards to stackable talents, instead of having three talents:

Melee Smash +1
Melee Smash +2
Melee Smash +3

...you have a single talent, called Melee Smash, that is "stackable." Take it once for +1. Twice for +2. Again for +3. (Again for +4? Why not? Hell, if a player wanted to go to 20th level with Melee Smash +10, I'd gladly let him.)

But the point of collapsing such trees was simply to avoid having to reprint Melee Smash three times in the book and pretend it's three different talents in a "tree." It's not. It's a single stackable talent.

In the Talent chart there are little arrow icons to denote heirarchical talents (ie, what's the prereq) and there is a little "plus" icon that follows all of the stackable talents.

There aren't that many stackable talents. If you think about it you can figure out what they are: Melee Smash, Improved Effort, Damage Reduction, Sneak Attack, Trap Sense... A few others.

How about GT working into something like Blood and Fists which I just purchased? Would the advanced classes be a bit too beefy for classes that at 20th level only have a +9 to saves?

Grim Tales has no prestige classes and no advanced classes. (A few of the class abilities from d20M advanced classes became talent trees, actually-- such as Living Weapon.)

Now, I must admit I have not seen any of Vigilance's stuff (heresy, I know) but there is nothing in GT to prevent you from mixing and matching pretty much any d20 material you want to use. If your player wanted to multiclass into Ranger, you could just let him do it-- the only loss would be the flexibility of the feats, talents, and skills of the core GT classes.

Unless the skills, feats, talents, or classes you want to integrate grind up against some of the more major reconstructions of GT, you'll be fine. I can't think of very many things that would conflict with the major exception of spellcasting; and some feats or class abilities that went from "X times per day" to "Spend an action point..." (But even those are easily integrated.)

Wulf

 

[Psion]

Sub Skill Synergy: I think most folks haven't noticed this because they already think they know what they're going to see in this chapter!

I noticed.

Just wasn't a big ticket item for me.

A quick quip about the insanity/horror rules. At first I thought that it came across a little weak. A character with a good Charisma seems immune to most horror.

But I have to admit is has a couple of selling points in its favor.

• First, its another reason to keep charisma from being a dump stat.
• Second, if you contrast it with the CoC games (BRP and d20 use essentially identical sanity mechanics), it seems like the GT system actually approximates lovecraft better. Not all of HPLs protagonists who were exposed to the depths of the secrets of the universe turned into gibbering madmen.
• Finally, I like the "when they do go, they go big" aspect of it.

I am already thinking of house rule tweaks to this, of course. I already discussed with you in another thread how I use 10 + Con bonus as my MDT instead of just straight up con. I think if I made 10+cha bonus my "madness threshold", that would solve some of my concerns there.

Also, it seems like it would work well if the GM just assigned a certain number of dice to strange sightings instead of going by the strict book guidelines for creatures.

Or, similar to the way you vary the type of dice for spell burn in the game, you could vary the size of dice you roll for insanity if you want it to show up more often.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Or, similar to the way you vary the type of dice for spell burn in the game, you could vary the size of dice you roll for insanity if you want it to show up more often.

That's a great idea, I wish I'd thought of that. It's a very quick fix.

In my mind, this is best solved with situational modifiers-- bonuses for creature type, of course, being the main one (+1d6 for all Undead); but also don't overlook "First time the PCs have encountered this creature" and "Particularly horrific scene." A +3 bonus to the roll is in some ways better and more reliable than an extra die.

There is absolutely a danger that when the GM whips out the Horrific encounter, he'll roll low and it will fizzle-- and that sucks for the GM.

But on the other hand, there's also real danger that a bad Horror check all around the table will spell TPK-- if the party loses 2 out of 4 members, the EL just "doubled" (+2 actually, but we'll leave that for the other thread)-- at any rate the encounter just went from moderate to difficult, or difficult to deadly-- and that sucks for the players. (And I probably could have noted in the book that including a Horror check with the EL probably bumps it up by +1.)

(EDIT: Side note here. I really am a sick bastard-- because the way Charisma is tied into your resistance to Horror, the two guys that ran are probably the fighters, leaving the poor "face man" to stand alone. That just makes me giggle.)

For this reason, I not-so-humbly submit that the best part of the Horror rules is the Fight or Flight meta-mechanic-- or as I like to call it, "Scoob and the Gang." This is actually a pretty important part of the entire mechanic, as in many cases it's better for the party to run away for a couple of rounds and then regroup (without further effects, you'll note) than risk the Horror check itself. Because the Horror check can be so widely variable, it's almost like playing russian roulette: the DM rolls low and everybody gets off easy, or the DM rolls high and the really hits the fan.

Wulf

 

[barsoomcore]

This sounds AWESOME. I'm waiting on cash flow to pick it up, I'm afraid but it sounds like everything I want, nothing I don't. Sweet.

 

[Psion]

I missed that creatures add their charisma modifier to the horror threshold check. That makes it a bit more scary than I first anticipated.