RangerWickett said:
I really like the horror rules. I want to use it, but so far in my current game I've had no great horror. Thankfully I'll be starting a new game, so I can tweak things a bit.
I don't see why you couldn't just throw a Horror check into your existing game. Treat it as a special ability of a new creature.
I do wish you'd had room for a few examples of the rules in action. It felt like a somewhat sizeable part of the book was redundant if you already had a core d20 rulebook, particularly the skills and some of the feats that are in both D&D and D20M. While I understand you including them for the completeness factor of having everything in one book, I would've rather seen a sample car chase, one or two examples of people going insane, and a couple of sample characters, particularly spellcasters, who are where the rules depart most from D20M.
First, obviously, reprinting a lot of the core rules is the nature of the beast. As sure as the sun rises, if I had not included it, someone would have complained about needing an extra rulebook during play.
Second, you should
read those sections, even if you think you already know what they say. There are subtle changes throughout; in some cases, my own changes, and in other cases a further streamlining of the Modern rules with influences from the updates to 3.5.
Folks should feel free to email me questions and errata. I can't build an FAQ until the Q's are A. F.-- but it is something I am happy to do.
I haven't had a chance to read the book in full, Wulf, but so far I didn't see anything about spells and massive damage. While a high-level melee attack might hit for ~20 points on average, enough for a less-grim character to handle without a Massive Damage Save, a high-level attack spell could easily hit for 40 damage or more. Like I said, I haven't had more than a cursory look at the 'spell burn' rules, but if high-level spells are still around, they end up still being save or die, don't they?
Well, you'll note that the Massive Damage Save is always DC15; the DC is never based on the damage dealt (a variant popular in some circles).
That being the case, there's a couple of things to consider:
1) First, a deadly blow is a deadly blow. 20 points of damage is as likely to bypass most characters' thresholds as 30, 40, or 50. It's funny how
hard it is to spend that feat on Improved Massive Damage Threshold. Lots of heroes walking around with a MDT under 20.
2) Second, if you read the thread above about caster level, I've already mentioned that spells that scale with caster level may be too just too damn good. (i.e, lean towards spells with fixed damage like Ice Storm, not variable damage like Fireball).
3) Third, spells should be deadly. As dangerous as they are to the caster, they need to be worth it when you cast them.
4) Fourth, caster level doesn't improve as quickly as you might think. Try a couple of sample builds through the talent trees. Barring artificial caster level increases (casting times, ley lines, cooperative magic, etc.), the best an adept can do is caster level 9th (funny how that works out) and at that point you've invested 9 of your 10 career talents into spellcasting. That's tough to do. I really don't see folks going through the trouble of trying to build an honest-to-god wizard with the low magic system GT gives them.
5) Fifth and last: Remember the Golden Rule of the Grim Tales spellcasting rules: Don't give the players any spell you don't want them to use. Be downright
stingy with knowledge of magical spells. To a GT hero, magical ability basically doesn't exist. One spell,
just one spell, should make as much difference to a GT hero as it would to a person in the real world who found a spell that actually worked.
If you could turn invisible at will, would you feel empowered, or would you feel embittered that you didn't know 20 other spells?
Spells need to seem
that valuable.
Wulf
