The King's Rangers! (Reprised)

[mmadsen]

Yes, Mmadsen, well, in my campaign, I don't use Raise Dead, Resurrection, or Reincarnate Spells.

That seems to be a pretty common house rule.

Thus, in the example in the story above, the Vallorean King had used his last Fate Point. Through the timely ministry of the loyal Druids, and through much fervent prayer, the valiant King was able to rally from his wounds and recover! The wounds that the King suffered were thus beyond the ability of normal healing to address.

I guess I'm not sure what the in-game explanation would be.

"The king's wounds are beyond the ability of our magic to heal."
"How? Did the dastards attack him with a poisoned blade?"
"No."
"Dark magic?"
"No, he was cut down on the field of battle."
"Did we not get to his body in time? Did they mutilate his body beyond recognition?"
"No, it's just his time to die. Almost."

In my campaign, I provide all diseases and viruses, and so on, with "levels." They match up a saving throw against the spell level of the healing spell, a roll is made, and the results are compared for the final outcome.

Under the core rules, each disease has a Save DC. I think we can achieve the same effect by having cure spells provide an additional Heal roll (with a bonus of spell level + caster's spell bonus) rather than automatically curing any and all diseases.

I thought of developing this because I don't like the idea of Clerics and such just automatically healing everything in sight, you know? I suppose I'm wierd.

Maybe we're both weird, because I agree completely. I don't like the fact that by-the-book magic prevents scenarios like your Ranger origin story, curses that need a quest to cure, diseases that need a specific cure, etc. A lot of D&D magic kills drama.

Ravenloft is great in this respect. Curses work better if they're applicable, have an escape clause, etc. Detection spells don't work flawlessly. Dark spells have dark consequences.

 

[mmadsen]

Mmadsen, how do you handle diseases?

Well, I just ignore the Remove Disease spell and save that for magical diseases like Mummy Rot (where it allows Fort/Heal rolls).

I also don't like the narrow Ability Drain of most diseases. Anyone with a bad fever knows it's not just a Con Drain or Str Drain or Dex Drain; everything hurts, even thinking. I like to make all diseases drain both Str and Con; other stats might get drained too.

Lastly, I like to combine the idea of Disease and Energy Drain. I've made "negative levels" simply a -2 drain to all Abilities -- but the drain continues, like a disease, until the character Saves twice.

 

[mmadsen]

I love high fantasy, but I also like the grittiness and oppression of the real-world Dark Ages to be an ever-present, if somewhat survivable reality, even for glorious heroes who have gold armor and +5 Holy Avenger Greatswords.

I think that one sentence sums up an important game-design goal: add lots of evocative rewards with cool powers (gold armor and +5 Holy Avenger Greatswords) without adding immunity to (or the ability to bypass) most threats.

Remove Curse and Remove Disease make the game less interesting. There's no clever way to use Remove Curse; there's no puzzle for the caster's player to solve.

 

[mmadsen]

How do you deal with sneak attack progression and uncanny dodge? about how many bonus feats do your expert rogues get? is it similar to a fighter or every level?

Right now, it's every other level, making my variant Rogues less powerful but more flexible than the core Rogue, but I'm consider bumping up the Feats to one per level -- for both Expert/Rogues and Fighters. I really like Feats.

 

[Voadam]

Mmadesen

I thought about doing the same thing so that there could be non sneak attacking skillmen but balancing it was a bit tricky. Do you limit the amount of sneak attack damage that can be aquired by level? How has it worked with your players? Did you make it an alternative core class or use it to replace the core rogue entirely?

 

[mmadsen]

Do you limit the amount of sneak attack damage that can be aquired by level?

It hasn't come up, but you can easily set the Sneak Attack prereqs so the character needs enough ranks in Hide and Move Silently to match a Rogue with that much Sneak Attack damage.