[OOC Thread] Pint Sized Sword & Sorcery (House Rules)

[Vargo]

Sounds to me like there's a building inside of a walled compound. At the building, there are bushes in front of windows that enter the "basement" area of the building - am I right?

 

[Lichtenhart]

I saw it about the same way, but I didn't get if you want Mary to wait outside the hedgewall or to stay hidden in the garden..

 

[Fieari]

Okay, that is more or less right. Just got the feeling you may have been thinking the hedges were elsewhere...

 

[Tonguez]

Well, I'll admit that in a perfect world, Garreth would be much more reticent, but the group appears to need a forcefull personality and so he stepped into the role. It's not that he's a great leader, more like the brains behind the scene.

The group itself reacts well to him, again partially in the name of group unity, but also because of unusual circumstances.

Yeah it seems to me that Garreth as 'leader-apparent' has more to do with him being the local boy and familiar with the city than with him being a charismatic personality. All the rest of us are new arrivals and still a bit disorientated (and traumatised) - so even though Garreth is all spotty and his mum dresses him funny, he is still the stable anchor in a sea of childhood insecurities and social dislocation...

 

[Seonaid]

As regards the rules in general, the stat adjustments and pre-classes raise a few issues with me. Nothing bad, just my opinions and or questions. For example, what happens to them as time passes? Do they go away when you gain 1000 xp and gain your class level? Will Garreth suddenly become an 8 int wizard? Or do they stay until the character ages, and if so, when do they go away? When the character hits adult age, or before? What happens to my +4 int, does it suddenly drop one day, or does my score gradually raise according to age/adult age until I reach my base stat level when it stops growing (this seems to make the most sense, but when do I gain my charisma penalty back then?). I realize that your primary goal for this rule set are to create viable rules for playing children, and not neccesarily for playing characters from childhood into adult hood.

Also, the bonuses and penalties can cause wierd comparitive stats where the 18 base int roughhouser child has an int score of 5 while the 10 base int smart child has a 9 int. Your stat bonuses are chosen by the class you want to go into. An elven archer might want to be a fighter, but as a child will have strength and con bonuses. A brilliant general could be a fighter as well, but have a barely sentient intelligence level.

A possible thought I had is to not neccesarily lock children into a class based on their aptitudes. They pick up a class level at 1000xp in whatever class they like. This means instead of needing a child classification for each class, you just have six, one designed around each stat, like the d20 modern classes. Then you have a sort of background chosen for the child's home and family. This would differentiate between the rural, farm boy strong kid, and the urban, street bully strong kid.

At first I wasn't sure how I took it, but if you do the stat increases the way adult characters get stat increases (level-based), that might work well. I like the idea of lack of level, so it couldn't be that exact method, but something related to aging, or "class" changing? Kids go through a lot, especially between the age of our characters and the adult age in D&D. Changing classes frequently wouldn't be out of the question, in those years. For the stats, perhaps if a character changes class, s/he would get X many stat points to add, but based on class. If you go from Roughhouser to Bright, for example, you wouldn't lose the Roughhouser bonuses, but you would only be allowed to add the Bright ones, thus reflecting the change in focus for the child. In order not to penalize or promote characters who don't change classes, you could work out a time-based or event-based system of changing classes. For example, you can only change class after 6 months of in-game time, or you can only change class if X happens to your character. This would allow Garreth to be a crazy-intelligent adult, but that's okay because he is a crazy-intelligent child.

Unfortunately, my method requires some work based on age, because in order to get from an 8-year-old with an average stat of 6 to a 15-year-old with an average stat of 10+, you need to have a lot of stat advancements.

That being said, I think you should drop the idea of XP for child PC's completely. I'm not sure if that would work well with power gamers, but it's kind of silly for a character to accumulate 1000XP and then go back to zero. Particularly since 1000XP for an 8-year-old human is a lot compared to a 23-year-old dwarf. The ages are comparable, but the time difference is not, not in a D&D game. Theoretically, the two will age at a different rate, thus making up for the huge gap in time, but going 7 years (or so) to get to 15 (or so) and going 20 years (or so) to 45 (or so) is a major problem for in-game XP. It's not as big of a deal in a game with adult PC's because adults mature slower than children. Also, most campaigns don't deal with such amounts of time. I guess that's an argument for both sides, though. If you aren't going to get through 5 or more years of in-game time, it doesn't matter. It's the campaigns that go beyond (adult or children PC's) that have a problem with racial age adjustments.

Some random thoughts from someone, again, who is shaky on mechanics.

 

[Vargo]

Sorry I've been away - our cat went into diabetic shock, and we had a wee bit of excitment over that. (Diabetic shock can look like a stroke. We thought he was a goner.) I'm getting caught up, then will post some thoughts.

 

[Vargo]

A thought I had the other day was that every hero seems to have a defining point, when their lives broke from the pack of ords (to rob a TORG term) to run more towards the adventuring side of things.

I'd say this kind of thing tends to happen around puberty, when kids go through a great number of physiological and psychological changes, and become, in some part, adults. (Okay, we'll leave the debate about 35 year old children for another time)

Hence my proposal: Each 100xp gives the character 1 point to bump their stats. This increase cannot be used to exceed the character's "mature" statistics, although I'm not sure if you want to include the "child class" bonus for figuring the adult's final scores.

 

[Seonaid]

I'm glad your cat is okay, Vargo. I think your proposal is interesting regarding the XP. But how would that work with characters who age differently? It still has the problem of making dwarves advance more than humans, for example.

 

[Vargo]

But how would that work with characters who age differently? It still has the problem of making dwarves advance more than humans, for example.

It isn't age-dependant - every 100xp gives you 1 point to place in whatever stat you want. Rather, a better way of looking at it would be:

For every 100xp you trade in, you receive 1 point to place in your stats, to raise them to the "adult" level. They cannot exceed the "adult" level. Once all your stats are at the "adult" level, they cannot be raised any higher. Increasing your stats does not increase your age in any way, shape, or form.

You may also exchange 100xp for 1d(skill points per level/2)+int, up to the maximum allowed for a first level character of the class you have selected.

Once you have bought all your skills and stats to full value, you become a 1st level character in the class you chose.

 

[Seonaid]

Once all your stats are at the "adult" level, they cannot be raised any higher.

Okay, that's a lot clearer. That makes sense, and doesn't violate what I was saying.

You may also exchange 100xp for 1d(skill points per level/2)+int, up to the maximum allowed for a first level character of the class you have selected.

That's a really good idea, allowing for more versatility in character building and growth. As long as it's balanced, that would work well.

Once you have bought all your skills and stats to full value, you become a 1st level character in the class you chose.

I was unclear on this before as well, but didn't say anything: What is "full value"? An average of +0 for stats?