Quote from: Spike;436642You posted while i was typing...

Sorry, I'm a bad person..

QuoteI can see how a more codified alignment system would hinder some players, I view the current alignment system as worth less than nothing... leaving it out of the game is an improvement (and honestly, if you would miss the team jerseys then how hard is it to add in a non-system?).  You are right that I cheated on crunch... how can I ask for advice if all I do is provide the framework? Sigh... back to work for me then...

Well, I wasn't so much trying to criticize you, as Alignment in general. Morality is such a fuzzy subject, that I don't think any two gamers are going to agree on what's a good alignment system. Its not clear to me what an alignment system should actually do.

As far as options go, most mechanics you can base off realism (or at least genre conventions) but whether someone likes your take on alignment will immediately depend on lots of subjective factors...original sin (tieflings), whether they want to be mechanically rewarded for being good (which players with destructive tendencies won't want because they'd rather be free to do whatever they please), whether someone philosophically views Good and Evil as oversimplifications, or what-have-you.

So you can make an alignment system that you like, but I don't think its possible to create something most people will agree is a definite improvement.

Sorry, I haven't been able to get the forum to load since yesterday afternoon... on two different computers/operating systems.

Obviously I can't get everyone to agree that any given system is an improvement. Some people LIKE the 'team jersey' idea, and some people want descriptive value systems... totally opposite ideals, really.

I'll back track a bit and do at least a few sample alignments and stress that for most characters they are completely optional, and for all of them they should be completely optional beyond the lowest, simplest of ranks. The idea is to provide a system that rewards effort but does not penalize opting out...

Which will do nothing against the 'squeeze every ounce of optimization' crowd (see also: The Gaming Den)...who will complain that if you don't maximize alignment, you are punishing the other players... :rolleyes:

Getting back to the Alignments in Pika D20, after a break to participate in standard Internet Debates over Nothing... (which, honestly, should totally be a TV show. We can get a wacky neighbor and make a mint!)... its time to get back to work.

Now, the big ticket item on the agenda is to 'hard code' a few 'Alignments' so that people can totally evaluate the system as it is intended to be used vs how it actually would work, right?

But before I got there I was struck, in the otherwise pointless debate, but a good idea.  When 'nation building' it is totally possible to use these alignments to determine the core values of the nations.   A nation or region could totally have a strong or weak (or, rarely, a negative) alignment tendency that tells us what the locals actually tend to value.  Few nations will actually have Good or Evil alignments for various reasons (good nations would suggest a nation so prosperous and successful that base survival concerns have largely fallen away, allowing the entire people to adopt more altruistic positions and still surivive, while out and out evil nations will be incoherent messes with few bonds and the enemity of almost everyone around them...).

So, we could say that the Dwarven Domain of Kagazkagrad is strongly Earth aligned and Community Aligned, with a Weak tendancy of Fire.  The Dwarves are very much in tune with the Element of earth, holding it in reverential awe and incorporating it in their religious rituals, and they have a tendancy towards strong familial bonds and, as a people, tend to reject lone wolf behavior. Suggesting a synergy with Earth and Fire, they tend to work forges and consider metal smithing and smelting to be highly honorable professions.  

You could put the exact same alignments for another culture and read them another way.  The People of the Steppes believe that the mountains that surround their home are gods to be propriated, and that their high Chieftan is one with the land, when he is healthy the land is healthy, when he is corrupt, the land turns on the People.   The People of the Steppes live and die in their clans and tribes, and the individual is subordinate to the tribe, the tribe is subordinate to the Clan, and the Clan is subordinate to the People... and outsiders are shunned. The People burn their corpses, and due to the difficulty of making fire on the Steppes (and the danger it holds for them) the 'firebearer', always a virginal woman, is the most holy person in the tribe, though with little political power. Her person is sacrosanct and her words hold the weight of an Elder of the Tribe.  Former Fire-bearers are the mothers of cheiftans.

Characters from either culture are more likely to have an alignment of Earth or Community, with slightly fewer holding an Alignment of Fire, than they are to have other alignments, though of course, they could chose to have any personal alignment.

Now, to the hard part... work.

Good/Light/Holy:  This alignment is the domain of the altruistic, the righteous, the saints.  Good characters dedicate themselves to others before themselves, they are caregivers, healers and protectors of the helpless. At higher ranks, many Good aligned characters become virtual pacifists, preferring to take an injury themselves before harming even the unrighteous. The exception to this rule is always the forces of true evil: Devils, demons and unholy monsters are always valid targets of a Good Character's wrath, though even then the mightiest of them might seek to find a way to redeem  the irredeemable.
Few Gods hold themselves to this standard, those that do are frequently healers and lightbringers among even the Gods.

Rank 1:  Those who swear themselves to Good learn first to soothe others, The character may heal others in a short ritual (five minutes) 1D8 wounds (not vitality/HP) per Rank of Good.  The character may also use this to temporarily alleviate poison and disease (heals the damage only, does not cure). The character can not use this on himself.

Rank 2:  Those who prove their dedication to Good learns to protect others.  As long as the Character is standing between an innocent (non-evil character who is not attacking another?) and one who would do harm to that innocent, the Character gains an Armor DR equal to their rank(twice their rank?) (Armor DR applies to both wound damage and vitality damage). The character may not attack and use this ability, only defend.

Rank 3: Having proven an able defender of others, the character is entrusted to take the fight to the enemies of good.   The Character gains the power of Exorcism: By presenting herself and calling upon the powers of Good, the character may force evil beings away, even harming them in the process.  Every round the character performs this action all Evil creatures who can perceive (See/hear) the Character, must make a Will save or flee. Incorporeal beings take damage even while fleeing unless they leave the material plane. Embodied (including undead, possessing spirits (but not a non-Evil host, and Evil aligned characters) take damage only if they make their save and chose to stay in the effect area.  Those who make their saves may act normally, those who flee may not return to the area for at least a day. (Save DC based off of Ranks of Good. (10+rank+Cha?)

Rank 4:  Those who ascend to this rank of Good have experienced personal sacrifice and been purified by it.   They gain the power of Martyrs Calling: The Character  may, as an action, take the wounds of everyone around them (Radius in Rank meters?) up to Rank in Wounds, onto himself, healing them instantly and restoring a level of fatigue/exhaustion in the process.  

Rank 5: Most of those (all?) that attain this rank have died and chosen to return to life to continue their crusade. They gain the power of Crusader:  When facing Evil creatures, the characters righteous wrath has a demoralizing effect upon them. The character may apply their rank to Evil creatures as a morale penalty to all actions (divided up however the character wishes).


Ugh. That took a lot more words than I intended, so I think I'll leave that one up alone for now while I work on a few more for later.  I've got to get stuff codified so I can shorten the text down... also, of course, I included some flavor text that would probably be left out of the final 'product', in favor of more generic, universal text in the overall chapter or alignment descriptions.

Well, I give up on alignment but...the cultural system giving preferences of main moral attitude is interesting and may work.
Good R1 needs limitation on how often this can be used (rank based?)

innocent as 'non evil character who hasn't harmed others...' can characters tell alignment, or is it enough that they believe a ward is innocent?

Save DC...well Goodness rank may be unrelated to character level so may not be a good basis for DCs. You could handle as an SLA (10+Cha mod + level-equivalent) or supernatural ability (10+Cha mod+1/2 HD).

Not so sure it does... its time consumbing (out of combat only time consumbing) and it only restores Wounds... which means that if you drop because of damage, you still aren't leaping to your feet to fight again just because the good guy went humina humina.

I can extend the time if you are worried that one Good healer can essentially keep an entire city healthy and hearty all by their lonesome... say half and hour?

Sadly, just because you are done with it, doesn't mean I can go back to classes right away. At a minimum I need to lay out a framework for the most likely 'alignments'... certainly the four points of D&D's alignments... One 'Path' is a start, but its not the 'chapter'.

This is just a quick note.  

I'm going to get back into classes briefly here, probably lay out the general outline of the Expert and Fighter classes, then I'll fork those over to their own thread for deeper detail and discussion, as i did with alignment, leaving this thread available for more general discussion and forward momentum.

On abilities: While working on the Alignments, and to a lesser extent the Backgrounds, I noted that characters might wind up collecting a vast array of Abilities, potentially.  Assuming non-exclusivity of alignments, a character could, potentially, have 8-9 abilities from alignments at level 20, 1-2 from backgrounds (if he went for ability providing backgrounds) and, notionally, 20 from his Class.

This could be a real mess in play... to the Exalted extent... not to mention a lot of work to write out.  

Of course, I don't want dead levels either, so I'm sort of hand tied on the 20 from leveling.

The upshot, however, is that passive abilities are mechanically simpler, and ability 'trees' of stacking benefits (like the Spell Power tree from earlier) are really just one progressive ability, much easier to track.

I've been considering that I don't need to write out 'Spell Power' five times, or that even that it be limited to a fixed five abilities per 'tree'.  I AM thinking that, given that characters and monsters should be more fragile, Spell Power should not be 'infinite'... where a character seriously sacrifices flexibility to toss down a Spell Power 20 blast every round, so a cap of 5 sounds good to me.

Just a taste of what I might do for Abilities going forward:

Fighter Ability Tree: Juggernaut (character must wear heavy armor to use abiities?)
1- Gain the ability to wear Heavy Armor/use Tower Shields. Additional picks of this ability add 1 DR to the armor value
2- Indomitable: Add Resistance [Element] 5, stackable (5 stacks in one element equals Immunity, note that I will only have 4 actual elements... for balance may apply to all elements per pick]
3 Skin of Stone: As an Action add Con bonus to DR until next action
4 Banal: Gain Spell resistance equal to 10+Level
5:Juggernaut: As an Action gain CON in temporary wounds + Vitality (note, this is a capstone ability, and should feel suitably epic. Spamming this every round (at the expense of attacking) literally gives the character a 'minimum damage' threshold to even notice attacks.  If already in wounds, you need to do 40 pts to even effect the character meaningfully, after DR)

That was seriously off the top of my head, so I can't claim its perfect.  I sort of want more Attribute and level keying in there... so Indomitable could seriously become 'Gain resistance to [Elemental] Damage (all) equal to level while wearing heavy armor'.

Er... skipping ahead to magic briefly: Four elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water) rather than the seven or so ones now. Sonic damage would still exist in some form, either as an elemental effect or as a non-specific effect.  Elemental damage is not prone to Spell Resistance, but non-Elemental damage isn't subject to resistance.  Some spells would do physical damage, which would hit armor.

So magically speaking, spells have either Arcane/Divine/Nature effects, Elemental Effects or Physical Effects, and the nature of that effect determines the type of defense that applies.  'Force' is gone, Magic Missiles now just do Arcane (or more likely 'magic' damage'), which means they are subject to Spell Resistance.

Fireballs would do Elemental [Fire] damage. hybrid spells like Flame Strike would apply to the caster's choice of resistances? and may have additional effects unique to the spell (like doing extra damage to Undead or what have you...). I may just keep the half and half effect for spells like Flame Strike... so half could be spell resisted and half could be elementally resisted (or immunitized).

Also: Seriously considering that Level 20 spells essentially have one entry of Wish or Miracle... do you really need any other spells at that point?  A nature equivilent escapes me, however.

So, back to classes:

I'm going to shorten this by not typing out a bunch of numbers to start with.

Fighters will have a 1-20 Base Attack bonus and Defense Bonus
Experts will have a 0-15 Base Attack and Defense

Nothing has changed there. Likewise, all classes will have the same balance of Saves and the same base Hit Die, as discussed earlier. I'm actually tempted to make that a D6 to avoid inflation and to give more room to 'expand' it upwards... but for right now we'll just say its the D8 (limiting me to two die increases... I can see three from my house!)

I am also tempted to try and set up a bit more variation in the BAB/DB progression rather than just three simple charts and six charts that only move one way up or down from there.

You may be wondering why I'm covering all this ground over again.

Fine: As it stands this actually makes Fighters look overbalanced, particularly over 'Experts'.  Better numbers doesn't actually count for much on the 'class power scale', especially when you consider I'm taking out iterative attacks, but its still hard to look at the raw numbers and NOT see an imbalance. I'm just thinking that experts better bring the coolness factor to make up for shittier numbers, I guess.

The Fighter:

At home on the battlefield, with a weapon in his hand, the fighter is the master of violence in all its many forms.  Almost every fighter has spent some time in the service of others, as a soldier or a body guard or even as a gladatorial slave. Some are finely trained killing machines, others are driven naturals, heroes born rather than made... but all of them know that the pointy end goes in the other man.  
All fighters are fully proficient with medium armor and shields

Fighters are defined by their primary attribute. It defines their style, their technique, and may even inform their favorite weapons.    Fighters also pick a stance that defines their method.

Strength: A Strong fighter is a brute, favoring heavy armor and heavier weapons. A Brute is almost the quintessential Hero, crushing his enemies with mighty thews.  Strong Fighters gain a +1 to damage with (martial?/strong?) weapons. Heavy armor proficiency

Dexterity: Fast on his feet, hands like lightning, the Duellist prefers to keep mobile, to attack without being attacked. Many prefer ranged weapons, such as bows or thrown daggers. They prefer not to be encumbered by too much armor.  Gain one Ability from the Duellist, Two weapon or Archery Trees.

Constitution: These fighters are implacable enemies that never stop coming, shrugging off damage that would fell a dozen lesser men and pressing on. They never stop, they never rest. Many are heavily scarred veterans, glacial foes that grind their enemies down with sheer relentless will.  They are proficient with Heavy Armor and tower sheilds and have a hit die increase.

Stance: Offensive: The slayer worries most about killing his enemies. He charges forward, attacks fast and defends himself by eliminating his enemies. Slayers may use the Rage tree or... (choices!!! UM!)

Defensive: The Protector is the team player, seeing his job as keeping the other guy occupied until allies take him down, or he makes a mistake that the Protector can capitalize on.   (Tree choices!)

Ranged: It would be a mistake to assume that the fighter who prefers to keep his enemies out of reach is a coward or is any less skilled than his peers. The Archer has done the math and knows that an enemy that can't reach you, can't hurt you... and he's very good at making sure they don't reach him.  Expert archers can thwart their enemies, forcing them to close by painful inches, then moving on before they arrive.  Archers start with the Range tree and the Mobility Tree.



As you can see, I'm still refining the Core concepts. I have the basic form, but the mechanics supporting it are a bit wonky.  

I'll do a full workup of Experts in another post, but I do want to outline the start

Primary stat choices for Experts are Dex, Int and Cha. Note the pattern, each of the other two classes contributes a stat, and one stat neither other core class gets to pick.  Yes, I do feel unreasonably clever for no good reason at all with that...

I like the idea of the three fighter variants (Str/Dex/Con based)...though note depending on how your ability trees work out, which path a character chooses (or gets the best mileage from) may not actually match any particular score ? For example, the HD increase (Con fighter) is something that may be more beneficial to a character with a low Con. Though, OK, the "DR equal to Con" ability at higher level does make Con useful to these guys.
EDIT: looking back over this I noticed you mentioned you wanted more ability/level keying. OK, cool.

On sheer number of abilities...yes I can see characters will end up with a lot of these. And then on top of class, race and Alignment powers you have magical items of course. I don't have any particular advice here - some people may enjoy having several pages of powers (I probably would) - except that you could try to create an easy class that has less abilities to keep track of, for the casual gamer.
Depending on how complex your magic system is the wizard with 'Spell Power X' may be the simplest class, while the barbarian is the most complicated...

It would probably be the height of irony if the Wizard became the Easy Class to play...

Indeed...

Also, another quick thought would be that all the example powers for the Juggernaut tree deal just with HP damage. You could potentially have resilience-type abilities that deal with status effects (paralyzed, nauseated, fatigued, petrified) too. Not that I think a game needs to go overboard with those...

PS pedentry note: I think you mentioned 7 elements (energy types)...I believe there's actually just 5 in standard D20 - fire, electricity, acid, cold and sonic. I guess there's positive, negative and Force too though these aren't technically energy/element types.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;438861Indeed...

Also, another quick thought would be that all the example powers for the Juggernaut tree deal just with HP damage. You could potentially have resilience-type abilities that deal with status effects (paralyzed, nauseated, fatigued, petrified) too. Not that I think a game needs to go overboard with those...

PS pedentry note: I think you mentioned 7 elements (energy types)...I believe there's actually just 5 in standard D20 - fire, electricity, acid, cold and sonic. I guess there's positive, negative and Force too though these aren't technically energy/element types.

I couldn't be assed to actually enumerate them properly.... but yes, those are the ones.  I mean, I could actually just Keep those, save myself some unnecessary work, but damn... acid?  Sonic???

Technically force is an energy type, but it doesn't have resistances against it and a bunch of super-cool rules that make it uber, but not many spells are actually Force spells...

I just like cleaning shit up... though of course, Lightning doesn't actually fit the classic elements obviously (Air element probably...), and leaving it hanging is...well... failure.  

Yeah, I'm gonna need to remember status effects when I do 'resistance' themed trees... and when I make attack trees, I'd guess.

On the Expert Class:

The reason I haven't posted it yet is that I'm struggling to make it gel. The Caster class was the template that I didn't quite live up to for the Fighter, and the Expert is even shakier.

Ideally, you have your two 'picks', attribute and 'technique' based that define your class for you, and those two picks should be synergistic.  The caster was, descriptively, perfect but mechanically lacking. The fighter was a bit better mechanically, but I missed the synergism and some of the descriptiveness.

Right now the Expert looks to be 1 choice set with a second set following the first.

What do I mean?

Simple. Experts rely on knowing how to to do stuff. Thus they pick Dexterity, Intelligence or Charisma as their primary stat.

Simple right? An acrobat-thief would be a Dexterity Expert, Indiana Jones would be an Int Expert and a Noble (or whatever) would be a Cha expert.

The three techniques are a bit unsettled but they keep falling back to refinements of the attributes.

So an Int-Knowledge Expert... is basically a double Int expert.

So. Expert techniques:

I know having a Pet class is totally an Expert 'theme'.   I could reserve it for hybrid classes (Druids/rangers), I suppose.

Knowledge is another one, but like the pet class it would suggest strongly that you should pair it with an attribute (CHA for pets/followers, INT for know)...

... which implies a third technique for physical/dex stuff, like stealth and stealing.

NOT what I want to see at all.

Now, the idea of a 'Criminal' theme for experts can work as a template for how to handle the other two. What do I mean:

Dex-Criminals: Theives and pickpockets, focusing on stealth and light fingers
Int-Criminals: Spies and the like, focusing on forbidden knowledge, and how to gain it
Cha-Criminals: Con artists, expert liars and manipulators.

In short.

Can I replicate that with 'Knowledge' or 'Pets' as a technique/theme?

I think I'll revamp the fighter post later to pull more synergy. I am thinking of applying a 'skill' to each potential set of picks, so Int based casters gain a knowledge skill based off their chosen 'technique'... more thinking... bah.

Maybe you need a second 'axis' apart from Dex/Int/Cha so you get a 'grid' of possible types, as with spellcasters and their arcane/divine/etc, rather than having 'double Int' experts?

Maybe listing out possible expert types and then seeing what logical groups fall out would help -  I can think of
Beastmaster (Pets)
Criminal
Alchemist
Thief-Acrobats
Noble (Star Wars)
Explorer  (Indiana Jones?)
Dungeon Delver
Bard (combo with spellcaster)
Tricksters (Complete Scoundrel - specific skill stunts)
Generic 'expert'
Watch detective...
Spymaster
Combat Trapsmith
MacGyver

Some have specific 'stunts' based off their skills, some are pseudo-spellcasters, some just have raw skill (or lots of raw skills).

One thing I thought was at least interesting (if maybe not useful, sorry!)- Contrast the 'Trickster' and the 'Spymaster' and the trickster has various abilities that are logically related to the skills they have and are a natural outgrowth of them - the Spymaster is kind of the reverse and instead has a given role related strongly to a couple of skills (e.g. Disguise) and develops magical powers that aren't really anything to do with the skills they know but help them in their skill performance - magically avoiding scrying or alignment detection, for example. One is results-focussed while the other is opportunistic.

One is semi-magical and the other wholly ordinary, and they're different levels of specialization in skills as well- or possibly you can differentiate between an Expert that's the ultimate master of a single skill, and the 'Jack of all trades, master of none' who learns several skills but is versatile rather than specialized.