Kaptain_Kantrip said:
Any chance someone could explain the traits, flaws and passions and how they work? Even better, how to translate them into d20 terms?
In adapting traits and passions to D&D, I removed the dice dictating-a-character's-roleplaying aspect present in Pendragon, both becuase my players simply had no interest in trying that out, and because, with chivalry not being as important IMC as it is in a Pendragon Campaign, I wanted the traits to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. YMMV. Anyway, this is what I did:
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Player rolls/sets charisma as normal, but many standard game effects of charisma are ignored. Alignment is scrapped for all non-Outsiders. Instead, things normally governed by Charisma or alignment are handled by this system of Personality traits and Passions, adapted from the Pendragon RPG.
To set personality traits, a player takes 20 points and divides them between each pair of traits. However, the difference between the two values cannot normally be greater than 10 (i.e. One value 15, the other, 5). For each point of Charisma bonus or penalty, that maximum difference is increased or decreased by 2. Thus, someone with a 1 CHA would have all 10s for his personality traits(and will have basically no discernable personality). By contrast, any trait that is 18/2, 19/1, or 20/0 is considered extremely exaggerated – the character may develop a reputation or nickname based upon the trait with the higher value. Having more than a couple of these exaggerated traits may tend to turn a character into a caricature, however.
Passions are similar, but not handled in pairs. One’s CHA score is the maximum starting value for any Passion that a character develops, though a character may choose to set it lower.
Game effects:
Skills involving charisma are now modified by the appropriate personality trait. For example, Disguise is modified by the Deceitful score. Turning Undead is modified by the Hate (Undead) passion
An exaggerated (18-20) score on the Left side of the table will result in increased Enech (This is a measure of honor. See the Celts Historical reference in the conversion library if it gets added again, or my webpage which is apparently down right now - D'oh!), while exaggerated right side scores result in decreased Enech. Which traits fall on which side depend on the character's society. ( In Thuringia (an orcish empire) cruelty is valued more highly than Mercy, so Cruel is on the left side of the table for Thuringian characters. In Kerniw, where rough living conditions make every life valuable, and force neighboring villages to work together closely in order to survive, Mercy is placed on the left side of the chart.)
A score of 18 on a left score score results in +1 Enech; 19 receives +3; 20 receives +5. On a right side score, 18 receives -2; 19 receives -6; 20 receives -10 enech. +10 is the maximum Enech bonus from personality scores; there is no maximum penalty.
Whenever a character’s needs to make a roll that corresponds to a particular trait or passion, the modifier gained from that trait or passion is used, rather than the Character's CHA modifier. For example, Vog (a Half-Orc, CHA 6) has a Loyalty(Cunneda):12. He is charmed and told to attack King Urien of the Cunneda. Rather than an opposed charisma check, which would result in a –2 to Vog’s roll, he uses Loyalty (Cunneda) which results in a +1. If the character has no particularly applicable trait or passion, use the character's CHA modifier instead.
Both Traits and Passions change over the course of the game, as character actions warrant. If someone with Honest 15/Deceitful 5 lies and uses subterfuge consistently over the course of an adventure, Honesty may be lowered by a point, and Deceitful raised by a point, to reflect the drift in personality. If a character with a Loyalty(Cunneda) 8, puts himself at great personal peril to help the tribe, his loyalty would increase.
During an adventure, as the character's actions warrant, the DM directs the players to put hatch marks next to appropriate traits. At the end of an adventure, if there are enough points next to a trait according to the following table, the score changes appropriately. If a character has marks on both sides of a trait pair, subtract the smaller number of marks on one side from the number of marks on the other.
The following table shows the cost (in checkmarcks) to change a score (The number in parentheseis represent movement downward away from 10 - the boards didn't like my original table, which showed this more clearly):
Moving From_____Toward____ Costs # Marks
<10___________10___________1
>10___________10___________1
10___________11 (9)_________1
11 (9)________12 (8)_________2
12 (8)________13 (7)_________3
13 (7)________14 (6)_________4
14 (6)________15 (5)_________5
15 (5)________16 (4)_________6
16 (4)________17 (3)_________8
17 (3)________18 (2)_________10
18 (2)________19 (1)_________13
19 (1)________20____________16
Personality traits cannot rise above 20 or drop below 0. Passions can rise infinitely.
EXAMPLES:
Say you have a player running a Paladin, with a pairing of Merciful 17/Cruel 3. On defeating a group of hobgoblins, a prisoner is taken, and the party is out of danger, and the paladin says "I kill it - he'll probably try to escape anyway." If in the DM’s judgment, the cruelty was particularly out of place, he would also place a mark next to his cruel score.
If being merciful was particularly difficult (if the prisoner had previously killed the character's wife, for example), and he was merciful, you might have him place a mark next to "Merciful." If in this same situation, the paladin kills the hobgoblin, the DM might not place a checkmark next to Cruel, as the action was not particularly out of place.
At the end of the adventure, our paladin, Richard, has three checks next to cruel, and only one next to merciful. Subtracting 1 from 3, leaves two checks next to cruel, dropping his merciful score to 15, and raising his cruel score to 5. He also has, over the past several adventures, amassed 8 marks next to his “Valorous” trait, raising it from 17 to 18, in the process earning +1 Enech and the moniker “Richard Lionheart.” However, should his Merciful score ever drop below 15, he will run afoul of his religious order, and lose his paladin status.