Well, seeing as how I've now released the first book it is time I start getting the sequel finished for publication.
As of this moment, about perhaps 10% of the second book is done. I've had the outline for all the books in the series planned for many years, so it's just a matter of actually writing down what is in my head, as the characters speak and the events unfold before me. My writing process is less, "What I want to see" and more "What comes out of me as I write". The first draft is always a big splurge of action and adventure, and then I go back later and fill in the gaps with conversations and discussions and details to the scenery. And editing, oh lots of editing. Sometimes even a few character and location name changes as I change my mind about what they ought to be called.
I can tell you this much about the next part of Gestalt's story; it'll actually be two books, and one of them won't necessarily be about Gestalt. One of them will follow an adventure Zaria goes on. Sort of.
It's hard to explain without revealing an important subplot from the next book, so I'll just talk about it: the second book, Pandemonia Chronicles: EVE, is going to focus strongly on the demon world. If you read the book to the end you'll know that some of the demon lords are not pleased about the idea of a human being their king, even if he is possessed by Anu Malsumis. Some demons actually believe they don't need the Demon King anymore, as they've got along quite well without him for many centuries.
So there will be a plot to usurp the throne coming at Gestalt from several directions. I don't anticipate events unfolding into a civil war (that would be very bad, as it would make Pandemonia susceptible to invasion from the Gluskab Empire, and nobody wants that -- also, with Anu's powers Gestalt can become ridiculously powerful, so directly trying to kill him isn't the most healthiest tactic. The conspirators need to be more subtle) but there will be blood!
One of these attempts will seek to isolate Gestalt from his friends. In particular, efforts will be made to get rid of Zaria, who some may rightfully view as a stabilizing pillar for Gestalt's moral compass. Surely without her love and support Gestalt would have given up resisting Anu early on, and that fact will be taken advantage of.
Zaria will be tricked into doing something she believes will allow her to get closer to Gestalt and help him, when in reality this act will cause her to be cursed into a deep slumber, Sleeping Beauty style. However, unlike the fairy tail Zaria will have no pleasant sleep -- the curse will make her live out her deepest and darkest fears, and chief among those fears is Gestalt going dark side. So while the subplot of Zaria being cursed and then that curse being broken may only consume a few chapters of the second book, I will be writing another "side-story" called "Pandemonia Chronicles: The Nightmare of Zaria" that will detail what transpired in Zaria's nightmare and how that experience has affected not only the way she views herself but her relationship with Gestalt. The book will end with her curse being broken, and how the experience has changed her will be reflected in the latter chapters of EVE.
You may wonder why I am doing it this way. The main reason is because I want to further explore the themes of good and evil. Most fiction focuses greatly on how the hero may be tempted to do great evil but always chooses the side of right. I don't think people are built that way. I think it is very possible that someone who is trying to do good can give in to their baser instincts, justifying what they are doing in any way they can. Gestalt, who is basically possessed by a manipulative psychopath (Anu Malsumis) who can hear all his thoughts and know all his secrets, constantly teeters on the edge. Every crisis he finds himself in, he ends up turning to the Demon King for help and guidance. And though Gestalt is not stupid and knows the Demon King has his own ambitions, Gestalt reluctantly listens some of the time. Having a charismatic but bad friend who is constantly giving bad advice is one way a person can go dark side.
In a way, Anu is The One Ring from The Lord of the Rings, if we could hear what The One Ring is saying to Frodo and Golum, and if it could actually give them a substantial amount of Sauron's power.
The second reason is because Zaria is capable of more growth. She's had a little during the events of DAWN, but she requires more. I dislike the idea of separating her from Gestalt so she can go off on her own adventure that runs parallel to Gestalt's; that doesn't seem a natural progression of the story to me. She's already had to stay home as he went off to war, which isn't ideal but makes more sense than someone with little to no combat experience going off into battle just because it'll make her look like a stronger female character. She is strong, but she is strong in her own way, and that will come out as she must face her fears in her nightmare of what will happen if Gestalt goes dark side and she is unable to save him.
Then, the curse having been broken, so can return to the "real world" with the newly obtained knowledge about herself and be a more compelling character than she currently is.
As for Gestalt, he will start having his own share of dreams-- flashbacks from Anu's past. He will be informed that his heavy usage of Anu's power from the prior book has hastened the fusion of their souls. Anu is delighted, because he believes he can become the dominant personality if the circumstances are in his favor. Gestalt will attempt to not rely on Anu's power and learn more about the depths of elemental magic, but certain circumstances (such as Zaria being cursed) will force him to make a hard decision between increasing the bond between Anu and himself, or turning a blind eye to those who need help that cannot easily be obtained without the use of Anu's godly powers and knowledge.
So, the plan is for two books to be released at the same time. If you enjoyed the first one, I think you'll love the next two!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Abstract Movement, Formations and Teams in Radiant Fantasia
The Radiant Fantasia system has seen a lot of changes as I've refined the system. It's probably not obvious but it's built from the OGL, meaning it originally was D&D 3rd edition. It bears little resemblance to 3rd edition now.
One of the first changes I made to the system was moving the measurements from feet to meters and pounds to kilograms. I spent a great deal of time making that conversion, because I felt it'd make the game more accessible to a world-wide audience.
However one day I decided that I really didn't want my game to be something people needed to have large maps and miniature figurines to play. I wanted it to be possible to play the game mostly in your imagination. 4th Edition plays a lot more like chess and demands use of minis, as the mechanics rely heavily on being able to move and push characters between spaces, or have abilities affect others within a certain number of spaces. I think that detracts from immersion into the narrative, and you feel more like playing a board game than a roleplaying game.
The reason to not require miniature play is straightforward- miniatures cost money, which can be discouraging to new gamers. They also require the GM to prepare maps for the minis to run around on. I think this makes a game harder for new players to get into, and new GMs especially. As I've written before, I want Radiant Fantasia to be a system people can play without having ever played another tabletop RPG before and no one to instruct them on how to play. One of the biggest problems with tabletop RPG design is the designers assume someone more experienced will teach new players how to play. It wasn't always like that -- it was possible for children to buy the Basic D&D boxset and figure out how to play themselves. That is the kind of gameplay I want to revive.
One of the systems I've liked a lot is Mutants and Masterminds. Because the game has to accommodate characters like The Flash and Super-Man, movement is a lot more abstract. I went further than M&M does (it still clings to a detailed system of measurement) and simplified my movement categories into Short Range, Medium Range and Long Range. Attack range also works that way.
Short Range is essentially the max movement an average human can walk in one round of time (a minute).
Medium Range is the max movement an average human can run in one round of time.
Long Range is the max amount of distance the average human can see.
This means characters like unicorns can cover more ground when they walk and run than humans can; Unicorns, when transformed in their natural horse-like form, can walk at Medium Range and run at Long Range, as can all other types of mountable characters in the game.
This does lead to one problem though, which became apparent to me while playing Mutants & Masterminds: how to strategically form a party.
Basically, it's hard to have tanks when there is no clear understanding of where the front lines are.
So drawing experience from computer RPGs, I came up with the concept of formations. I think it still needs some refinement, but the following pages should demonstrate it allows the tactical depth of 4th edition without necessarily needing a bunch of minis and complicated maps.
---------------------
Formations
A Formation is the tactical arrangement of characters on the battlefield. Formations are an abstract concept; characters in a formation are not necessarily standing in a fixed location. Characters might be moving in a formation, perhaps even on mounts or vehicles.
There are three rows in every formation; front, middle and rear.
The most characters that can occupy a row are three, meaning a formation can have a total of six characters.
Characters occupying a row directly in front of other characters provide cover to characters behind them. When a character is providing cover to another character, the covered character cannot be attacked by weapons with a Reach of 1.
However, a melee weapon with a Reach of 2 can attack the front and middle row with one attack, even if a character is providing cover to the middle row. A weapon with a reach of 3 can attack all rows.
Ranged weapons are different. For example, bows can attack any character in the formation regardless of their row or who is in front of them. Spells, like ranged weapons, may target any character in a formation regardless of row.
Some debuffs, such as confusion, force a character to temporarily fall out of a formation, making themselves an easier target for opponents.
Ideally, defense oriented characters should occupy rows in front of less defensive characters.
Flying formations: Normally, if a character is flying then they are considered to occupy a separate formation than characters on the ground. This means that if some characters are flying and others are not, the party is divided into two formations.
However, characters that are merely floating above the ground are still considered to be occupying a ground formation and can be arranged in rows in front of other characters to provide cover.
Attack from the rear: If a formation is caught by surprise, the attackers may choose to strike the rear of that formation. This means all characters who would be in the back row are now front row and all characters in the front row are now back row. Middle row characters remain middle row.
On the surprised formation‘s next turn, the characters can move between rows to restore their normal positions.
Multiple player formations: It is possible for players to divide their forces into two or more formations. This is done to support more than 6 players or (more commonly) to allow NPCs to battle alongside PCs (such as when a Noble has NPC servants and followers).
-------------------
Characters are able to change what position they are in a formation by using a Move action. Like D&D 3.5 they have full round actions, attack (standard) actions and movement actions each round. However, they also have what I call a 'reaction', and these power very specific abilities or use of abilities. For example, as a reaction a warrior who is shield oriented might be able to interject himself between another character adjutant to himself in the formation to defend that character from injury. A character can only use 1 reaction command per round, so they should think carefully and pay attention to the battle even when it isn't their turn (reactions are implemented largely to make combat less passive than it currently is in many tabletop RPG systems, where you attack and then someone else attacks. Here you have ways to defend yourself or take advantage of poor choices the enemy makes, even when not your turn. And it's way easier to understand than attacks of opportunity in D&D 3.5, because reactions are tied to specific abilities a character can use, rather than "if you do X, characters who can do the pretty obscure A,B, C or D might hurt you. With my reaction system, it is, "if an enemy does X to you or a fellow party member, you can attempt to do Y to intercept X).
In addition to this, Radiant Fantasia has a subsystem called Teamwork.
---------------
The Teamwork system allows the GM to reward players for cooperative play and good roleplaying.
The player character‘s party is treated as a character (called the Team) that can level up and earn bonuses.
The Teamwork bonuses are rewards for good roleplaying bestowed by the GM.
Team Experience Points and Team Leveling
Leveling up the Team requires Team Experience Points (T.XP).
Activities which award T.XP include the following things,
-Completing a quest.
-Defeating a difficult boss NPC.
-All team members surviving a session of play.
-Team members engaging in good roleplaying.
The GM has sole discretion on how much T.XP to award and when to do so. The following chart gives a general idea of how much T.XP to award per task.
Team XP Reward Examples
Difficulty (DC) Proposed T.XP Reward
Very easy task 0 T.XP
Easy task 5 T.XP
Average task 50 T.XP
Tough task 100 T.XP
Challenging task 500 T.XP
Formidable task 800 T.XP
Heroic task 1,000 T.XP
Nearly impossible task 5,000 T.XP
Each time the Team levels up, it can learn a Team Feat.
Team Points
At the start of every play session, the Team has 5 Team points which can be used to perform special team-related tasks such as Teamwork Attacks or Team Skills. Team points will reset to their max value at the start of each new session, but additional Team points can be awarded to the Team as the GM desires.
Team Feats
As the party levels up, players can vote on what Feats the Team learns.
We Rule
The cost to purchase or construct a Holding for use as a team headquarters or guild hall is halved. This cost reduction can only be applied to one Holding at a time; if the Team wishes to buy or construct a new Holding, they must abandon the previous Holding (or pay the full amount if they wish to keep it).
Treasure Hoard
By spending a Team point, the amount of zenny or treasure the team would gain by looting a defeated enemy (or their treasure hoard) is doubled.
Rumor Research
All members of the Team receive a +1 aptitude bonus to Investigate and Charm checks made for searching or gathering information.
Cheat Death
At the cost of 1 Team point when all Team members have died, the Team can avoid death. By invoking this ability, all members survive their deaths and are restored to 1 Wound point but have no Vitality points.
Glory of Battle
At the cost of 1 Team point, all Team members receive a +2 bonus to Accuracy rolls used to perform a Teamwork Attack for the rest of the encounter.
Emergency Retreat
At the cost of 1 Team point, all Team members successfully flee from hostile characters and retreat to a safe location.
Unionized
All team members receive a +1 aptitude bonus to Craft checks.
Circle Wagons
If ambushed while resting, team members will not be caught off-guard.
Slumber Party
All team members require only half the usual amount of rest.
Fearsome Roster
At the cost of 1 Team point, all Team members can perform a Charm check to intimidate a single foe, combining the results of each Team member‘s individual skill checks into one. This ability can be used against multiple foes at once but for every additional enemy targeted, they must spend 1 Team point.
Teamwork Attacks
Team members can synchronize their special skill attacks together to perform a powerful blitz attack.
A teamwork attack can be initiated at the start of a round by a character using a free action to request assistance with their team members; the initiator of the teamwork attack is referred to as the 'leader‘.
The leader determines the Initiative for all team members who participate in the attack (meaning all characters involved in the team attack take their turn at the same time the leader does).
After a teamwork attack, all members that participated forfeit their next turn for the next round.
Each invocation of a Teamwork Attack consumes 1 Team point.
Teamwork Assist
By spending 1 Team point, a team member can assist all other party members in their use of General Skills.
This means they can make their skill check apply to every member of their party.
For example, a character with a high skill level in Athletics can use Teamwork Assist to help all their team members swim across treacherous waters.
Teamwork Assist cannot apply to Special Skills like Weapon Techniques or Magic Spells.
Teamwork Movement
Team members have the option of all taking their move action at the same time in order to move the formation to another position. Members that are incapable of moving or decide not to move with the formation will be left behind and break from the formation.
Teamwork Tactical Formations
By spending 1 Team point, team members can organize their formation in a tactical way. While the Team is operating as one of these formations, the team members receive certain benefits.
Box Formation
During this formation all Team members must stand together in a 90 degree angle, like a square. All team members receive a +1 Team bonus to Defense but take a -1 Team penalty to Accuracy rolls.
Wedge Formation
During this formation all Team members organize as a wedge. All team members receive a +1 Team bonus to Accuracy rolls but take a -1 Team penalty to Defense.
Circle Formation
During this formation all Team members surround a formation of opponents. Activating this formation causes the encircled opponents to be flanked.
While circling, neither the player or NPC formations may receive cover—any character may be attacked by any character regardless of their row.
Team Roles
Team Roles are special characteristics which can be assigned to a PC team member. Only one PC team member can be assigned a Role at a time; two characters cannot have the same Role in the Tea
Team Roles may be assigned before a battle but never during one.
Ace
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Accuracy rolls.
Cannonball
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Initiative checks.
Mediator
This character gains a +2 role bonus with all Charm checks, as well as all other skills and/or abilities used while being a diplomat on behalf of the team.
Medic
This character gains a +2 role bonus with all Treat Injury checks, as well as all other skills and/or abilities used to heal team members.
Scout
This character‘s Speed increases by one movement increment.
Striker
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Battle Power.
Wall
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Defense checks.
----------------------
The Teamwork system still needs refinement, but I like the basic framework and feel it has a lot of potential.
Note that with formations, players can still use minis to help them keep track of placement of characters in the formations. Hell, they could use coins or Monopoly tokens, too. Chapstick. Action figures. Whatever they think is best. The point is the minis don't need to directly interact with anything or move around a detailed landscape, like the room of a dungeon. When they make a search they don't need to say, "I search x squares around me" or whatever, they just say, "I search the room." because their search range is now Short Range, and they can walk anywhere in the room.
One of the first changes I made to the system was moving the measurements from feet to meters and pounds to kilograms. I spent a great deal of time making that conversion, because I felt it'd make the game more accessible to a world-wide audience.
However one day I decided that I really didn't want my game to be something people needed to have large maps and miniature figurines to play. I wanted it to be possible to play the game mostly in your imagination. 4th Edition plays a lot more like chess and demands use of minis, as the mechanics rely heavily on being able to move and push characters between spaces, or have abilities affect others within a certain number of spaces. I think that detracts from immersion into the narrative, and you feel more like playing a board game than a roleplaying game.
The reason to not require miniature play is straightforward- miniatures cost money, which can be discouraging to new gamers. They also require the GM to prepare maps for the minis to run around on. I think this makes a game harder for new players to get into, and new GMs especially. As I've written before, I want Radiant Fantasia to be a system people can play without having ever played another tabletop RPG before and no one to instruct them on how to play. One of the biggest problems with tabletop RPG design is the designers assume someone more experienced will teach new players how to play. It wasn't always like that -- it was possible for children to buy the Basic D&D boxset and figure out how to play themselves. That is the kind of gameplay I want to revive.
One of the systems I've liked a lot is Mutants and Masterminds. Because the game has to accommodate characters like The Flash and Super-Man, movement is a lot more abstract. I went further than M&M does (it still clings to a detailed system of measurement) and simplified my movement categories into Short Range, Medium Range and Long Range. Attack range also works that way.
Short Range is essentially the max movement an average human can walk in one round of time (a minute).
Medium Range is the max movement an average human can run in one round of time.
Long Range is the max amount of distance the average human can see.
This means characters like unicorns can cover more ground when they walk and run than humans can; Unicorns, when transformed in their natural horse-like form, can walk at Medium Range and run at Long Range, as can all other types of mountable characters in the game.
This does lead to one problem though, which became apparent to me while playing Mutants & Masterminds: how to strategically form a party.
Basically, it's hard to have tanks when there is no clear understanding of where the front lines are.
So drawing experience from computer RPGs, I came up with the concept of formations. I think it still needs some refinement, but the following pages should demonstrate it allows the tactical depth of 4th edition without necessarily needing a bunch of minis and complicated maps.
---------------------
Formations
A Formation is the tactical arrangement of characters on the battlefield. Formations are an abstract concept; characters in a formation are not necessarily standing in a fixed location. Characters might be moving in a formation, perhaps even on mounts or vehicles.
There are three rows in every formation; front, middle and rear.
The most characters that can occupy a row are three, meaning a formation can have a total of six characters.
Characters occupying a row directly in front of other characters provide cover to characters behind them. When a character is providing cover to another character, the covered character cannot be attacked by weapons with a Reach of 1.
However, a melee weapon with a Reach of 2 can attack the front and middle row with one attack, even if a character is providing cover to the middle row. A weapon with a reach of 3 can attack all rows.
Ranged weapons are different. For example, bows can attack any character in the formation regardless of their row or who is in front of them. Spells, like ranged weapons, may target any character in a formation regardless of row.
Some debuffs, such as confusion, force a character to temporarily fall out of a formation, making themselves an easier target for opponents.
Ideally, defense oriented characters should occupy rows in front of less defensive characters.
Flying formations: Normally, if a character is flying then they are considered to occupy a separate formation than characters on the ground. This means that if some characters are flying and others are not, the party is divided into two formations.
However, characters that are merely floating above the ground are still considered to be occupying a ground formation and can be arranged in rows in front of other characters to provide cover.
Attack from the rear: If a formation is caught by surprise, the attackers may choose to strike the rear of that formation. This means all characters who would be in the back row are now front row and all characters in the front row are now back row. Middle row characters remain middle row.
On the surprised formation‘s next turn, the characters can move between rows to restore their normal positions.
Multiple player formations: It is possible for players to divide their forces into two or more formations. This is done to support more than 6 players or (more commonly) to allow NPCs to battle alongside PCs (such as when a Noble has NPC servants and followers).
-------------------
Characters are able to change what position they are in a formation by using a Move action. Like D&D 3.5 they have full round actions, attack (standard) actions and movement actions each round. However, they also have what I call a 'reaction', and these power very specific abilities or use of abilities. For example, as a reaction a warrior who is shield oriented might be able to interject himself between another character adjutant to himself in the formation to defend that character from injury. A character can only use 1 reaction command per round, so they should think carefully and pay attention to the battle even when it isn't their turn (reactions are implemented largely to make combat less passive than it currently is in many tabletop RPG systems, where you attack and then someone else attacks. Here you have ways to defend yourself or take advantage of poor choices the enemy makes, even when not your turn. And it's way easier to understand than attacks of opportunity in D&D 3.5, because reactions are tied to specific abilities a character can use, rather than "if you do X, characters who can do the pretty obscure A,B, C or D might hurt you. With my reaction system, it is, "if an enemy does X to you or a fellow party member, you can attempt to do Y to intercept X).
In addition to this, Radiant Fantasia has a subsystem called Teamwork.
---------------
The Teamwork system allows the GM to reward players for cooperative play and good roleplaying.
The player character‘s party is treated as a character (called the Team) that can level up and earn bonuses.
The Teamwork bonuses are rewards for good roleplaying bestowed by the GM.
Team Experience Points and Team Leveling
Leveling up the Team requires Team Experience Points (T.XP).
Activities which award T.XP include the following things,
-Completing a quest.
-Defeating a difficult boss NPC.
-All team members surviving a session of play.
-Team members engaging in good roleplaying.
The GM has sole discretion on how much T.XP to award and when to do so. The following chart gives a general idea of how much T.XP to award per task.
Team XP Reward Examples
Difficulty (DC) Proposed T.XP Reward
Very easy task 0 T.XP
Easy task 5 T.XP
Average task 50 T.XP
Tough task 100 T.XP
Challenging task 500 T.XP
Formidable task 800 T.XP
Heroic task 1,000 T.XP
Nearly impossible task 5,000 T.XP
Each time the Team levels up, it can learn a Team Feat.
Team Points
At the start of every play session, the Team has 5 Team points which can be used to perform special team-related tasks such as Teamwork Attacks or Team Skills. Team points will reset to their max value at the start of each new session, but additional Team points can be awarded to the Team as the GM desires.
Team Feats
As the party levels up, players can vote on what Feats the Team learns.
We Rule
The cost to purchase or construct a Holding for use as a team headquarters or guild hall is halved. This cost reduction can only be applied to one Holding at a time; if the Team wishes to buy or construct a new Holding, they must abandon the previous Holding (or pay the full amount if they wish to keep it).
Treasure Hoard
By spending a Team point, the amount of zenny or treasure the team would gain by looting a defeated enemy (or their treasure hoard) is doubled.
Rumor Research
All members of the Team receive a +1 aptitude bonus to Investigate and Charm checks made for searching or gathering information.
Cheat Death
At the cost of 1 Team point when all Team members have died, the Team can avoid death. By invoking this ability, all members survive their deaths and are restored to 1 Wound point but have no Vitality points.
Glory of Battle
At the cost of 1 Team point, all Team members receive a +2 bonus to Accuracy rolls used to perform a Teamwork Attack for the rest of the encounter.
Emergency Retreat
At the cost of 1 Team point, all Team members successfully flee from hostile characters and retreat to a safe location.
Unionized
All team members receive a +1 aptitude bonus to Craft checks.
Circle Wagons
If ambushed while resting, team members will not be caught off-guard.
Slumber Party
All team members require only half the usual amount of rest.
Fearsome Roster
At the cost of 1 Team point, all Team members can perform a Charm check to intimidate a single foe, combining the results of each Team member‘s individual skill checks into one. This ability can be used against multiple foes at once but for every additional enemy targeted, they must spend 1 Team point.
Teamwork Attacks
Team members can synchronize their special skill attacks together to perform a powerful blitz attack.
A teamwork attack can be initiated at the start of a round by a character using a free action to request assistance with their team members; the initiator of the teamwork attack is referred to as the 'leader‘.
The leader determines the Initiative for all team members who participate in the attack (meaning all characters involved in the team attack take their turn at the same time the leader does).
After a teamwork attack, all members that participated forfeit their next turn for the next round.
Each invocation of a Teamwork Attack consumes 1 Team point.
Teamwork Assist
By spending 1 Team point, a team member can assist all other party members in their use of General Skills.
This means they can make their skill check apply to every member of their party.
For example, a character with a high skill level in Athletics can use Teamwork Assist to help all their team members swim across treacherous waters.
Teamwork Assist cannot apply to Special Skills like Weapon Techniques or Magic Spells.
Teamwork Movement
Team members have the option of all taking their move action at the same time in order to move the formation to another position. Members that are incapable of moving or decide not to move with the formation will be left behind and break from the formation.
Teamwork Tactical Formations
By spending 1 Team point, team members can organize their formation in a tactical way. While the Team is operating as one of these formations, the team members receive certain benefits.
Box Formation
During this formation all Team members must stand together in a 90 degree angle, like a square. All team members receive a +1 Team bonus to Defense but take a -1 Team penalty to Accuracy rolls.
Wedge Formation
During this formation all Team members organize as a wedge. All team members receive a +1 Team bonus to Accuracy rolls but take a -1 Team penalty to Defense.
Circle Formation
During this formation all Team members surround a formation of opponents. Activating this formation causes the encircled opponents to be flanked.
While circling, neither the player or NPC formations may receive cover—any character may be attacked by any character regardless of their row.
Team Roles
Team Roles are special characteristics which can be assigned to a PC team member. Only one PC team member can be assigned a Role at a time; two characters cannot have the same Role in the Tea
Team Roles may be assigned before a battle but never during one.
Ace
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Accuracy rolls.
Cannonball
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Initiative checks.
Mediator
This character gains a +2 role bonus with all Charm checks, as well as all other skills and/or abilities used while being a diplomat on behalf of the team.
Medic
This character gains a +2 role bonus with all Treat Injury checks, as well as all other skills and/or abilities used to heal team members.
Scout
This character‘s Speed increases by one movement increment.
Striker
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Battle Power.
Wall
This character gains a +2 role bonus to their Defense checks.
----------------------
The Teamwork system still needs refinement, but I like the basic framework and feel it has a lot of potential.
Note that with formations, players can still use minis to help them keep track of placement of characters in the formations. Hell, they could use coins or Monopoly tokens, too. Chapstick. Action figures. Whatever they think is best. The point is the minis don't need to directly interact with anything or move around a detailed landscape, like the room of a dungeon. When they make a search they don't need to say, "I search x squares around me" or whatever, they just say, "I search the room." because their search range is now Short Range, and they can walk anywhere in the room.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN now available on Amazon Kindle
The first book in my series is now available for download to Kindle. For the next two days, the download is free. After that it is $2.99
Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN - A MG / YA fantasy novel
I have a thread over at Authonomy where I'm sharing my experience with other authors, "My little self-publishing experiment with Kindle Direct".
So far, there has been 72 downloads. It went free at midnight PST, I believe. It's currently 8:39 AM CST.
-crosses fingers that people enjoy it-
Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN - A MG / YA fantasy novel
I have a thread over at Authonomy where I'm sharing my experience with other authors, "My little self-publishing experiment with Kindle Direct".
So far, there has been 72 downloads. It went free at midnight PST, I believe. It's currently 8:39 AM CST.
-crosses fingers that people enjoy it-
Sunday, February 26, 2012
A Tale of Two Gods
I realized tonight that in these posts I've been focusing mostly on mechanics and not much on the narrative elements of the setting that will be used in the game, so let's talk story.
Here are some paragraphs from the core rules that describe the setting of Radiant Fantasia, Samsaria.
------------
What is Samsaria?
Samsaria is the fantasy world featured in the Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN novel. I think you should read that book in order to get an idea of the flavor of Samsaria, but this game book has enough information about Samsaria that you should be completely fine playing Radiant Fantasia without reading Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN.
Where is Samsaria?
Samsaria is a parallel universe to the world that the main character of Pandemonia Chronicles, Gestalt, is from.
(Note: Gestalt is from a world that is very similar to, but not the same as our world. The stories I write take place in a multiverse. Gestalt is actually from a parallel universe to our own where Champoeg, Oregon did not become a ghost town. I grew up in Oregon and a lot of of my fiction takes place in alternate versions of Oregon.)
What lives in Samsaria?
I‘ll admit it.
Samsaria is pretty much filled with every conceivable mythological creature you have ever heard of.
It has Unicorns, Sylphs, Salamanders, Manticores, Goblins, Dryads, Trolls and Dragons, among many others.
Creatures from the myths of non-European cultures appear too: Kitsune fox girls, Tanuki raccoon dogs and water imp Kappas also live in Samsaria.
Samsaria also has creatures that aren‘t from mythology, and instead hail from fantasy fiction: things like Munchkins, Snarks and Cheshire Cats—then it has creatures from American frontier and lumberjack "Fearsome Critter" tall tales‘ like Jackalopes, Cactus Cats, and Hoop Snakes.
Some of the different Human, Elemental and Demon races will be discussed in this book in Chapter Four: Playable Races, and some of the other types can be read about in the free Adventure Module included in the back of this book. I‘m not going to discuss every possible creature that is in Samsaria inside this Core Rulebook—it would pretty much consume the whole book if I did that. But you‘ll get a pretty good idea of what is creeping around by reading these sections.
The default setting for a Radiant Fantasia game takes place thousands of years before the events in the Pandemonia Chronicles novels. Many of the adventures modules take place right before the Great War between Pandemonia and Gluskab.
Sure, tensions between the demons and humans are boiling—Deus is starting to gather her Paladins and Anu is gathering his demons into an army—but the two kingdoms are not yet at war. This means it is possible for elementals, humans and demons to party with one another without any kind of restriction (minor note: during the Great War, demons and humans were hostile to one another and elementals were a neutral third party until the very end where they joined forces with the humans).
Does Samsaria have Gods?
Samsaria has two prime Gods; Anu Malsumis the God of Death and Deus Gluskab the Goddess of Life. These two gods are in constant opposition to one another and wrestle for control over the world.
A Tale of Two Gods
Deus Gluskab‘s role in the world is as a preserver of mortal life and she is responsible for protecting Samsaria from the machinations of those that could ruin the natural harmony of the world, such as Outer Gods and demons. She rules over the Gluskab Empire, the largest human civilization. She has a narcissistic personality and acts as an overzealous mother to the humans of her lands, as they are the only ones that worship her. She offers to make the wishes of her faithful a reality, but only if they prove themselves worthy by obeying her strict laws.
Deus views arcane technology and Elemental Pacts as a threat to her position as a god insofar as if humans had greater prosperity, they would not need her as much. She has convinced her clergy that arcane technology and Elemental Pacts will only cause humanity to destroy itself, and only through her can they gain happiness. She also prefers to work through others and has endowed her Priests and Paladins with her own magical power so they can act in her steed.
In contrast, Anu Malsumis is responsible for harvesting the souls of the deceased and transporting them to the Netherworld to await reincarnation. He is also regarded as the Demon King because of his favoritism toward demons. Compared to Deus, he is usually indifferent when it comes to things like worshiping and technology, although he has a megalomaniacal streak and rarely ever shares his magical power with anyone.
Whereas Deus likes to orchestrate events through her followers, Anu is more direct and prone to personally appearing before those that displease him to deliver them his wrath.
Although it may seem peculiar, the one responsible for the creation of demons is Deus Gluskab, not Anu Malsumis. Using Ancient Magic left behind by the creator-gods who forged Samsaria, Deus attempted to restore life to dead elementals and magical creatures by avoiding the normal cycle of death and reincarnation. However, the magic she used was unnatural to Samsaria and warped the souls, creating a new life in Samsaria known as 'demons'. Realizing her mistake, Deus sought to destroy them but Anu Malsumis, upset that Deus had interfered with his authority over the Netherworld, instead rescued the demons and gave them protection in the part of the world he controls.
Since this event, the kingdoms these gods control have been at odds with one another, gathering military strength and preparing to go to war to settle their differences.
Bear in mind, the souls of the Gods are immortal but their bodies are not. In actuality, the physical bodies they use don‘t belong to them. Deus and Anu‘s true form is incorporeal and they have diminished capacity to use their magic when they lack a physical body to amplify their magical energy. Consequently both gods choose to possess the bodies of the most magically talented race on Samsaria—the Aswang.
As a civilization, the Aswang are generally left alone by Deus and Anu because when their previous bodies die, they possess the body of another Aswang. They perceive any prosperity gained by the Aswang as a good thing for them since it ensures the survival of that race. Originally, the Aswang freely allowed the Gods to possess members of their race and considered it a great honor. However, as the Aswang developed civilization, science and wealth they came to loathe this arrangement. The gods can at any time decide to possess them or their loved ones and use the body for their own purposes—a constant reminder that no matter how greater the Aswang are, they still are not the masters of their own destinies.
Other Deities in Samsaria
Aside from the resident Gods Anu Malsumis and Deus Gluskab, there are two other groups of deities; Elder Gods and Outer Gods.
Elder Gods are deities from a higher plane of existence than Samsaria. Their magic is referred to as Ancient Magic (sometimes called Lost Magic) and it is magic that is too powerful for non-Gods to wield. Legend has it that they fashioned Samsaria with Ancient Magic and then left, leaving Anu and Deus in charge while elementals were left with their duty to protect the Elemental Roads.
If there was a grand purpose in creating Samsaria, no one really knows. Even those who were there when the world was created have little memories of those events and only know what jobs they were entrusted to do. Although capable of using Ancient Magic, even Anu and Deus do not know them all, and are excited when a new spell is discovered in some ruin created before they themselves were born. Even to the gods, the creation of Samsaria is a mystery to explore.
Outer Gods are deities from parallel universes that occasionally attempt to sneak into Samsaria through inter-dimensional portals. The goals of Outer Gods differ and their characteristics depend on what worlds they come from. Some Outer Gods are worshiped by certain creatures in Samsaria.
In Samsaria‘s distant past, a group of Outer Gods calling themselves 'Sinistrals' invaded and attempted to corrupt many of Samsaria‘s residents into an army to invade other worlds. Although they were defeated by a united effort between Anu Malsumis, Deus Gluskab and the Elemental Chiefs, the Sinistrals proved immortal. All that could be done was for the Elemental Roads to be used to seal them in a slumber, but even this magic was not strong enough to fully subdue them.
From the nightmares of the Sinistrals materialized Horrors—terrible creations that are manifestions of the dreams and desires of the Sinistrals, existing simply because the Sinistrals want them to.
Worse, several minor races such as the Reptites and Goblins worship the Sinistrals and actively work to free their masters from their prisons. The Sinistrals use their telepathic abilities to reach out to their followers and actively encourage their hostility toward other races; especially elementals in the hope that the weakening of the elemental population will weaken the power of the Elemental Roads enough for them to break free.
What is Magic?
Magic.
It‘s pretty cool, isn‘t it?
Well, no one can argue the ability to throw fireballs and freeze people in ice isn‘t fantastic, but many people do argue about how exactly magic works.
In Samsaria, the predominant explanation for how magic works is as follows and this is the theory all Elementals believe.
Elemental Magical Theory 101
Magic is a supernatural force that exists naturally in the world, responsible for everything from the changing of the seasons to how much water is in a lake. Magic is, to put it simply, the building block of everything that makes up a world. Magic also allows the normal laws of a world‘s reality to be altered, but doing so requires a very large amount of magical power to be mustered into a single location and directed toward a single purpose.
Not every world has enough magical power to cause changes to its own reality, but it is possible (although normally extremely difficult) to draw on the power of one world and channel it into another world, allowing that world‘s reality to be altered. The world of Samsaria is imbued with an amazingly huge amount of magical power, so the use of magic from other worlds is very rarely performed (except Nocturne Magic, which is almost exclusively used by demons, and the magic of Gods like Anu Malsumis and Deus Gluskab, who draw on the magical power of other worlds almost exclusively).
The flow of magical power throughout Samsaria is directed by the Elemental Roads, which are something like invisible (to humans, anyway) super-dimensional highways where magical power travels throughout the reality of that world. The Elemental Roads are connected to an Elemental Throne that can direct the movement and application of specific incarnations of magical force—such as Fire, Air and Light—and that Throne must be controlled by a powerful elemental in order to safely govern over the use of this incredible power—that individual is the Elemental Chief.
Raw magic has no intelligence of its own—it is just a force of nature. However, elemental beings are creatures whose bodies are complete manifestations of magical power, but they possess a soul and are therefore an intelligent being. The specifics of how elementals came to exist has been lost to history, but elementals regard themselves as creatures who have been charged by the Old Gods with protecting Samsaria by ensuring the Elemental Roads flow smoothly.
Because magic is such an incredible force, trying to use it in its most raw form is highly dangerous because without direction from an intelligent being, this power would manifest itself in unexpected and violent ways. Therefore, it is believed that Spells were created by the Old Gods and put into the hands of caretakers—the Elementals—as a way to access this magic in a relatively stable way.
A spell is not magic—rather, a spell is a key to unlock a specific manifestation of magic in a way that can be controlled by an intelligent being. Think of the raw force of magic as a huge ocean and an Elemental Throne as a dam that holds this ocean of power at bay from flooding the world and wrecking everything. Using this same symbolism, try to think of a magical spell as a key to unlocking a small gate on that damn, allowing a tiny amount of this vast ocean to pour into the world, directed toward a specific destination and purpose.
Wisely, the Old Gods realized allowing spells to be used ad-infinitum could cause havoc across the world, even in the hands of the caretakers. In order to use the keys to this power—the spells—one must know the proper name and incantation for using this key and then offer a portion of their own magical power in exchange for the use. Once done, a pre-programmed incarnation of magical force can be conjured into reality and directed by an intelligent being toward a singular purpose, although with experience one can learn to use one spell to do a wide variety of similarly related things.
Queen Maeve, Chief of Air
King Alberich, Chief of Earth
King Svarog, Chief of Fire
Queen Melusine, Chief of Water
Queen Dawn, Chief of Light
King Loki, Chief of Shadow
Elemental Chiefs are the royalty of elementals, and govern over all other elementals. As elementals are immortal but do not live forever, there have been many Chiefs of each element. However, when a new elemental ascends to a Throne to replace a deceased Chief, that new Chief discards their prior name and takes on the name of the previous Chief—the names of Chiefs are therefore honorifics and a symbol of their power to govern the Elemental Roads.
It is important to know that magic is not ―all-powerful. Although it is a different kind of tool than most, it is still a tool. To cast a magical spell means to access a predefined blueprint, although a talented spellcaster can sometimes tweak this blueprint to produce a similar end-product (this is demonstrated in spells that have multiple uses).
Magic of the Gods
Deities such as Anu Malsumis and Deus Gluskab are capable of magic that is unrestricted by the Elemental Roads, drawing on power from the dimensions they control (the Netherworld and Heaven, respectively). This magic is given shape by their own imaginations. However what spells they are capable of are limited by a shared perception of themselves, so each spell used represents an aspect of how they and others view that god.
Should the deity perish, their personal spells become unusable.
Here are some paragraphs from the core rules that describe the setting of Radiant Fantasia, Samsaria.
------------
What is Samsaria?
Samsaria is the fantasy world featured in the Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN novel. I think you should read that book in order to get an idea of the flavor of Samsaria, but this game book has enough information about Samsaria that you should be completely fine playing Radiant Fantasia without reading Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN.
Where is Samsaria?
Samsaria is a parallel universe to the world that the main character of Pandemonia Chronicles, Gestalt, is from.
(Note: Gestalt is from a world that is very similar to, but not the same as our world. The stories I write take place in a multiverse. Gestalt is actually from a parallel universe to our own where Champoeg, Oregon did not become a ghost town. I grew up in Oregon and a lot of of my fiction takes place in alternate versions of Oregon.)
What lives in Samsaria?
I‘ll admit it.
Samsaria is pretty much filled with every conceivable mythological creature you have ever heard of.
It has Unicorns, Sylphs, Salamanders, Manticores, Goblins, Dryads, Trolls and Dragons, among many others.
Creatures from the myths of non-European cultures appear too: Kitsune fox girls, Tanuki raccoon dogs and water imp Kappas also live in Samsaria.
Samsaria also has creatures that aren‘t from mythology, and instead hail from fantasy fiction: things like Munchkins, Snarks and Cheshire Cats—then it has creatures from American frontier and lumberjack "Fearsome Critter" tall tales‘ like Jackalopes, Cactus Cats, and Hoop Snakes.
Some of the different Human, Elemental and Demon races will be discussed in this book in Chapter Four: Playable Races, and some of the other types can be read about in the free Adventure Module included in the back of this book. I‘m not going to discuss every possible creature that is in Samsaria inside this Core Rulebook—it would pretty much consume the whole book if I did that. But you‘ll get a pretty good idea of what is creeping around by reading these sections.
The default setting for a Radiant Fantasia game takes place thousands of years before the events in the Pandemonia Chronicles novels. Many of the adventures modules take place right before the Great War between Pandemonia and Gluskab.
Sure, tensions between the demons and humans are boiling—Deus is starting to gather her Paladins and Anu is gathering his demons into an army—but the two kingdoms are not yet at war. This means it is possible for elementals, humans and demons to party with one another without any kind of restriction (minor note: during the Great War, demons and humans were hostile to one another and elementals were a neutral third party until the very end where they joined forces with the humans).
Does Samsaria have Gods?
Samsaria has two prime Gods; Anu Malsumis the God of Death and Deus Gluskab the Goddess of Life. These two gods are in constant opposition to one another and wrestle for control over the world.
A Tale of Two Gods
Deus Gluskab‘s role in the world is as a preserver of mortal life and she is responsible for protecting Samsaria from the machinations of those that could ruin the natural harmony of the world, such as Outer Gods and demons. She rules over the Gluskab Empire, the largest human civilization. She has a narcissistic personality and acts as an overzealous mother to the humans of her lands, as they are the only ones that worship her. She offers to make the wishes of her faithful a reality, but only if they prove themselves worthy by obeying her strict laws.
Deus views arcane technology and Elemental Pacts as a threat to her position as a god insofar as if humans had greater prosperity, they would not need her as much. She has convinced her clergy that arcane technology and Elemental Pacts will only cause humanity to destroy itself, and only through her can they gain happiness. She also prefers to work through others and has endowed her Priests and Paladins with her own magical power so they can act in her steed.
In contrast, Anu Malsumis is responsible for harvesting the souls of the deceased and transporting them to the Netherworld to await reincarnation. He is also regarded as the Demon King because of his favoritism toward demons. Compared to Deus, he is usually indifferent when it comes to things like worshiping and technology, although he has a megalomaniacal streak and rarely ever shares his magical power with anyone.
Whereas Deus likes to orchestrate events through her followers, Anu is more direct and prone to personally appearing before those that displease him to deliver them his wrath.
Although it may seem peculiar, the one responsible for the creation of demons is Deus Gluskab, not Anu Malsumis. Using Ancient Magic left behind by the creator-gods who forged Samsaria, Deus attempted to restore life to dead elementals and magical creatures by avoiding the normal cycle of death and reincarnation. However, the magic she used was unnatural to Samsaria and warped the souls, creating a new life in Samsaria known as 'demons'. Realizing her mistake, Deus sought to destroy them but Anu Malsumis, upset that Deus had interfered with his authority over the Netherworld, instead rescued the demons and gave them protection in the part of the world he controls.
Since this event, the kingdoms these gods control have been at odds with one another, gathering military strength and preparing to go to war to settle their differences.
Bear in mind, the souls of the Gods are immortal but their bodies are not. In actuality, the physical bodies they use don‘t belong to them. Deus and Anu‘s true form is incorporeal and they have diminished capacity to use their magic when they lack a physical body to amplify their magical energy. Consequently both gods choose to possess the bodies of the most magically talented race on Samsaria—the Aswang.
As a civilization, the Aswang are generally left alone by Deus and Anu because when their previous bodies die, they possess the body of another Aswang. They perceive any prosperity gained by the Aswang as a good thing for them since it ensures the survival of that race. Originally, the Aswang freely allowed the Gods to possess members of their race and considered it a great honor. However, as the Aswang developed civilization, science and wealth they came to loathe this arrangement. The gods can at any time decide to possess them or their loved ones and use the body for their own purposes—a constant reminder that no matter how greater the Aswang are, they still are not the masters of their own destinies.
Other Deities in Samsaria
Aside from the resident Gods Anu Malsumis and Deus Gluskab, there are two other groups of deities; Elder Gods and Outer Gods.
Elder Gods are deities from a higher plane of existence than Samsaria. Their magic is referred to as Ancient Magic (sometimes called Lost Magic) and it is magic that is too powerful for non-Gods to wield. Legend has it that they fashioned Samsaria with Ancient Magic and then left, leaving Anu and Deus in charge while elementals were left with their duty to protect the Elemental Roads.
If there was a grand purpose in creating Samsaria, no one really knows. Even those who were there when the world was created have little memories of those events and only know what jobs they were entrusted to do. Although capable of using Ancient Magic, even Anu and Deus do not know them all, and are excited when a new spell is discovered in some ruin created before they themselves were born. Even to the gods, the creation of Samsaria is a mystery to explore.
Outer Gods are deities from parallel universes that occasionally attempt to sneak into Samsaria through inter-dimensional portals. The goals of Outer Gods differ and their characteristics depend on what worlds they come from. Some Outer Gods are worshiped by certain creatures in Samsaria.
In Samsaria‘s distant past, a group of Outer Gods calling themselves 'Sinistrals' invaded and attempted to corrupt many of Samsaria‘s residents into an army to invade other worlds. Although they were defeated by a united effort between Anu Malsumis, Deus Gluskab and the Elemental Chiefs, the Sinistrals proved immortal. All that could be done was for the Elemental Roads to be used to seal them in a slumber, but even this magic was not strong enough to fully subdue them.
From the nightmares of the Sinistrals materialized Horrors—terrible creations that are manifestions of the dreams and desires of the Sinistrals, existing simply because the Sinistrals want them to.
Worse, several minor races such as the Reptites and Goblins worship the Sinistrals and actively work to free their masters from their prisons. The Sinistrals use their telepathic abilities to reach out to their followers and actively encourage their hostility toward other races; especially elementals in the hope that the weakening of the elemental population will weaken the power of the Elemental Roads enough for them to break free.
What is Magic?
Magic.
It‘s pretty cool, isn‘t it?
Well, no one can argue the ability to throw fireballs and freeze people in ice isn‘t fantastic, but many people do argue about how exactly magic works.
In Samsaria, the predominant explanation for how magic works is as follows and this is the theory all Elementals believe.
Elemental Magical Theory 101
Magic is a supernatural force that exists naturally in the world, responsible for everything from the changing of the seasons to how much water is in a lake. Magic is, to put it simply, the building block of everything that makes up a world. Magic also allows the normal laws of a world‘s reality to be altered, but doing so requires a very large amount of magical power to be mustered into a single location and directed toward a single purpose.
Not every world has enough magical power to cause changes to its own reality, but it is possible (although normally extremely difficult) to draw on the power of one world and channel it into another world, allowing that world‘s reality to be altered. The world of Samsaria is imbued with an amazingly huge amount of magical power, so the use of magic from other worlds is very rarely performed (except Nocturne Magic, which is almost exclusively used by demons, and the magic of Gods like Anu Malsumis and Deus Gluskab, who draw on the magical power of other worlds almost exclusively).
The flow of magical power throughout Samsaria is directed by the Elemental Roads, which are something like invisible (to humans, anyway) super-dimensional highways where magical power travels throughout the reality of that world. The Elemental Roads are connected to an Elemental Throne that can direct the movement and application of specific incarnations of magical force—such as Fire, Air and Light—and that Throne must be controlled by a powerful elemental in order to safely govern over the use of this incredible power—that individual is the Elemental Chief.
Raw magic has no intelligence of its own—it is just a force of nature. However, elemental beings are creatures whose bodies are complete manifestations of magical power, but they possess a soul and are therefore an intelligent being. The specifics of how elementals came to exist has been lost to history, but elementals regard themselves as creatures who have been charged by the Old Gods with protecting Samsaria by ensuring the Elemental Roads flow smoothly.
Because magic is such an incredible force, trying to use it in its most raw form is highly dangerous because without direction from an intelligent being, this power would manifest itself in unexpected and violent ways. Therefore, it is believed that Spells were created by the Old Gods and put into the hands of caretakers—the Elementals—as a way to access this magic in a relatively stable way.
A spell is not magic—rather, a spell is a key to unlock a specific manifestation of magic in a way that can be controlled by an intelligent being. Think of the raw force of magic as a huge ocean and an Elemental Throne as a dam that holds this ocean of power at bay from flooding the world and wrecking everything. Using this same symbolism, try to think of a magical spell as a key to unlocking a small gate on that damn, allowing a tiny amount of this vast ocean to pour into the world, directed toward a specific destination and purpose.
Wisely, the Old Gods realized allowing spells to be used ad-infinitum could cause havoc across the world, even in the hands of the caretakers. In order to use the keys to this power—the spells—one must know the proper name and incantation for using this key and then offer a portion of their own magical power in exchange for the use. Once done, a pre-programmed incarnation of magical force can be conjured into reality and directed by an intelligent being toward a singular purpose, although with experience one can learn to use one spell to do a wide variety of similarly related things.
Queen Maeve, Chief of Air
King Alberich, Chief of Earth
King Svarog, Chief of Fire
Queen Melusine, Chief of Water
Queen Dawn, Chief of Light
King Loki, Chief of Shadow
Elemental Chiefs are the royalty of elementals, and govern over all other elementals. As elementals are immortal but do not live forever, there have been many Chiefs of each element. However, when a new elemental ascends to a Throne to replace a deceased Chief, that new Chief discards their prior name and takes on the name of the previous Chief—the names of Chiefs are therefore honorifics and a symbol of their power to govern the Elemental Roads.
It is important to know that magic is not ―all-powerful. Although it is a different kind of tool than most, it is still a tool. To cast a magical spell means to access a predefined blueprint, although a talented spellcaster can sometimes tweak this blueprint to produce a similar end-product (this is demonstrated in spells that have multiple uses).
Magic of the Gods
Deities such as Anu Malsumis and Deus Gluskab are capable of magic that is unrestricted by the Elemental Roads, drawing on power from the dimensions they control (the Netherworld and Heaven, respectively). This magic is given shape by their own imaginations. However what spells they are capable of are limited by a shared perception of themselves, so each spell used represents an aspect of how they and others view that god.
Should the deity perish, their personal spells become unusable.
What I think about D&D Next
Some of you may have heard that Wizards of the Coast is developing a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which they are calling D&D Next. For those out of the loop, there's a rundown of all the known information about the system over at EN World.
For those who don't want to read the above link, let me summarize it for you:
The goal for 5th edition is to make a version of D&D that encompasses everything that was good about all the prior editions, with heavy emphasis on the earliest editions. This appears to be a move to tap into the "Old School Roleplaying" movement without actually re-publishing OD&D and AD&D. For example, there is a lot of talk about classes being able to "replace" core class abilities learned at each level from a pool of alternate abilities, which sounds a lot like the class kits from AD&D. They also want to bring back Vancian magic.
I've not played the roughdraft system or seen any concrete mechanics come out, but based on what they have been saying I think 5th edition is going to be a mess. Here's why.
#1: Vancian magic has a fundamental problem; it forces interruptions in the flow of the game after every other battle, or at least every challenging battle. I've mentioned this before in an earlier article.
Abilities that require pausing the flow of the narrative to recharge are not something I'd consider to be wise design choices in a game that is intended for today's gamer audience. D&D was originally successful because it modeled the structure of pulp fiction and epic fantasy novels, but now D&D (or any tabletop game) needs to model the cinematic flow of films and videogames, because that is what the current generation of gamers is most familiar with.
And no matter how skillful Peter Jackson may be, you can't get around the fact the parts of the LOTR movies where Frodo and Sam are sitting around talking are the most boring parts of those movies, and had to be interrupted by removing half of the camping trip moments from the book and flip-flopping the narrative back and forth between following Frodo and Sam, and then following the vastly more interesting stuff the rest of the Fellowship was doing that involved directly fighting the forces of evil in Middle-Earth.
#2: Character kit design is inferior to talent tree design. World of Warcraft is about to switch from its talent system to this, "you can choose from ONE of these three abilities every x levels" design, which comes from AD&D. I do not believe the change will be for the better and predict Blizzard will move back to talent trees.
Here's why: character kits lack the freedom of talent trees. With a talent tree you can go back and select lower-tier abilities after you've reached the end of a branch and got whatever high-tier ability you were after. with a character kit, you can't choose all three options; just one.
For example, let's say Clerics have the option to exchange the level 1 ability Turn Undead for Turn Elemental or Turn Demon, but they cannot choose all three. Then at level 2 they have the option to exchange Smite Undead for Smite Elemental or Smite Demon.
That's character kit design. You can swap out a base ability for alternate ones, but you cannot have all those abilities.
By comparison, talent tree design would award you a talent point at character creation, and each talent costs 1 Talent point to buy. You get another talent point to spend every time you level up. It's a point buy system for abilities. To learn Smite Undead, you'd need to first learn Turn Undead, and the same for the other abilities of similar group. But as you level up, you are free to invest points into Turn Elemental, then learn Smite Elemental, and also invest points into Turn Demon to unlock Smite Demon.
The difference, for those who aren't immediately grasping it, is this
Character Kit = you can have Turn Undead and Smite Elemental, or any other combo of Turn and Smite, but you may only have one Turn and one Smite. Which two you have is decided by level 2.Your character can only Turn one race and Smite one race.
Talent Tree = You can learn them all by level 6, in any order you like, so long as you first learn to Turn the race before you learn how to Smite it.Your character can, if you so wish, learn to Turn and Smite all three races.
So in conclusion, Character Kits are significantly more limiting than Talent Trees are. Talent trees are superior because they offer the player more customization, or at least the feeling of being able to customize their character (in a well designed game featuring talent trees, the designer has already figured out the best ways to build characters using the trees and has designed the game accordingly).
Gameplay is ultimately what choices a player makes during play. When the player feels like they are making their own choices, they feel good about the game. They tend to dislike the feeling they are forced to make choices, especially when the choice doesn't result in something they actually want.
Character kits seem attractive to designers because the system is less complex, but there is a fine line between too complex and too simple. Character kits fall on the "too simple" side of the fence for my taste. Talent trees CAN be too complex, but only when poorly designed to not make it obvious to the player which choices they should make-- this is usually because there are lots of worthless talents (those lacking clear synergy with other abilities, or those which can only work when the player has very specific, not easy to obtain items) in the trees that shouldn't be there in the first place.
#3 Magic items are no longer part of the essential progression mathematics.
I suspect this is an attempt to hitch a ride on the latest fantasy bandwagon, Game of Thrones on HBO, which is based on the Song of Ice and Fire novels, which have a low magic fantasy setting.
Now, trying to tap into the Game of Thrones fanbase is all well and good, but most people wanting to play Game of Thrones in a tabletop RPG are going to play Green Ronin's officially licensed version which has been optimized for play in the Song of Ice and Fire setting. They are not going to play Dungeons & Dragons, where the first image that comes to the general public's mind are fireball throwing wizards dressed like Gandalf -- because, let's face it, that's basically who Elminster (the most publicly visible character in D&D's most popular campaign setting, Forgotten Realms) is.
I also don't see how any version of D&D that doesn't assume player characters have access to magic items is going to co-exist in existing D&D settings players have come to love, like The Forgotten Realms and Ebberon, where magic is as common as candy.
Basically, I have a strong suspicion the 5th edition of D&D is being designed to target an audience that is already satisfied by niche self-published OSR systems; basically, people who have been playing RPGs for 40 something years and are only playing those OSR systems because it reminds them of the versions of D&D they played as children.
This is not to say the 'OSR movement' does not exist. But isn't a very large movement; a "popular" tabletop RPG these days moves only a few thousand books. It's true that Pathfinder (which is basically just D&D 3rd edition with some tweaks) has now outsold 4th Edition D&D but Pathfinder's success is largely due to tapping into disfranchised D&D players who didn't want to jump to 4th Edition five years ago (the moral of the story: support your older editions that still have market segments! Also, abandoning a system when it still had some life left in it wasn't such a grand idea).
Which is another point; they are going after a market of people who are basically in the last years of their lives. I don't say this to be morbid but because it is a fact. Most people who played AD&D were anywhere from 12 to 30 years old. It's been 38 years since AD&D came out. That means they are now anywhere from 50 to 68 years old. The average life expectancy in the US is 78. And it's not like everyone who played AD&D (or any version of D&D) is still playing it. Many have left the hobby due to lack of interest, time constraints or being better fulfilled by MMORPGs.
Normally one does not target a shrinking niche audience, they try to make their product appeal to a younger, growing audience so the business can continue to thrive. This is why the American superhero comic book industry has been falling apart -- they keep writing Superman, Spider-Man and X-Men to appeal to people who have been reading those comics their entire lives, rather than make new comics intended to appeal to fresh audiences. If you want to get into an X-Men comic today you basically need to read several Wikipedia articles just to fully understand what the hell is going on (example: Why does Beast now look like a house cat wearing a business suit??), because the stories have been going on for decades and quite a lot of things have happened to these characters.
This is where the Japanese manga industry has been more intelligent; stories, even in long running shonen series like Dragon Ball (which is similar to the superhero genre), the stories eventually have a conclusion. Then new, fresh characters who go on new adventures get published. Oh, and when characters die they tend (overall) to stay dead, and when revived they do so for relevant plot reasons and not because the publisher decided they want to capitalize on the revival of the character with a new mini-series featuring that character.
Anyway, back to D&D. There is talk of 5th edition being modular so you can add magic items by including a supplement. My question is does that also mean you have to use entirely different monsters with parameters designed to accommodate magic item progression, because the default, "core" rules don't assume magic items when players face monsters?
It doesn't seem that NPC design is going to be scalable either, (ex. monster abilities scale up or down, so you can make a Kobold fighter any level rather than Kobolds always being level 1 enemies), as there is talk about making level 1 monsters still fearsome in large numbers against level 8 players. Which is another thing I think is bad; monsters should scale to the level, rather than keep with this antiquated design philosophy that higher level monsters should be tougher and lower level monsters should be easier. That's not what players and GMs end up doing; GMs throw wave after wave of same level monsters at player parties, which burns them out quickly because same level NPCs are designed to be challenging to defeat. (In Radiant Fantasia NPC levels are designed to be adjusted to the same level as the player characters, and the difficulty depends on the 'rank' of the attributes the NPC has).
So this is what I think about D&D Next. I think they shouldn't do it. They should instead just re-publish OD&D, Basic D&D, AD&D, 3rd, etc as PDFs, along with all the modules for those versions. Then they should create some kind of platform similar to DriveThru RPG that allows people to submit their own modules and supplements as PDFs for sale in to Wizards official D&D shop, and take a small royalty on every sale like DriveThru RPG does. That will allow them to go after the older editions audience they obviously want to get without actually having to produce new material in-house. Then they should get to work on D&D 4.5, because this new version they are working on sounds like it's going to be more like AD&D 3rd edition than a 5th Edition.
Edit: For those wanting more insight into the various editions of D&D and the differences between them, there is an article over at Geeks Dream Girl, "Hopes & Fears for D&D Next", that goes through all the editions and talks about various bad elements they had.
For those who don't want to read the above link, let me summarize it for you:
The goal for 5th edition is to make a version of D&D that encompasses everything that was good about all the prior editions, with heavy emphasis on the earliest editions. This appears to be a move to tap into the "Old School Roleplaying" movement without actually re-publishing OD&D and AD&D. For example, there is a lot of talk about classes being able to "replace" core class abilities learned at each level from a pool of alternate abilities, which sounds a lot like the class kits from AD&D. They also want to bring back Vancian magic.
I've not played the roughdraft system or seen any concrete mechanics come out, but based on what they have been saying I think 5th edition is going to be a mess. Here's why.
#1: Vancian magic has a fundamental problem; it forces interruptions in the flow of the game after every other battle, or at least every challenging battle. I've mentioned this before in an earlier article.
Abilities that require pausing the flow of the narrative to recharge are not something I'd consider to be wise design choices in a game that is intended for today's gamer audience. D&D was originally successful because it modeled the structure of pulp fiction and epic fantasy novels, but now D&D (or any tabletop game) needs to model the cinematic flow of films and videogames, because that is what the current generation of gamers is most familiar with.
And no matter how skillful Peter Jackson may be, you can't get around the fact the parts of the LOTR movies where Frodo and Sam are sitting around talking are the most boring parts of those movies, and had to be interrupted by removing half of the camping trip moments from the book and flip-flopping the narrative back and forth between following Frodo and Sam, and then following the vastly more interesting stuff the rest of the Fellowship was doing that involved directly fighting the forces of evil in Middle-Earth.
#2: Character kit design is inferior to talent tree design. World of Warcraft is about to switch from its talent system to this, "you can choose from ONE of these three abilities every x levels" design, which comes from AD&D. I do not believe the change will be for the better and predict Blizzard will move back to talent trees.
Here's why: character kits lack the freedom of talent trees. With a talent tree you can go back and select lower-tier abilities after you've reached the end of a branch and got whatever high-tier ability you were after. with a character kit, you can't choose all three options; just one.
For example, let's say Clerics have the option to exchange the level 1 ability Turn Undead for Turn Elemental or Turn Demon, but they cannot choose all three. Then at level 2 they have the option to exchange Smite Undead for Smite Elemental or Smite Demon.
That's character kit design. You can swap out a base ability for alternate ones, but you cannot have all those abilities.
By comparison, talent tree design would award you a talent point at character creation, and each talent costs 1 Talent point to buy. You get another talent point to spend every time you level up. It's a point buy system for abilities. To learn Smite Undead, you'd need to first learn Turn Undead, and the same for the other abilities of similar group. But as you level up, you are free to invest points into Turn Elemental, then learn Smite Elemental, and also invest points into Turn Demon to unlock Smite Demon.
The difference, for those who aren't immediately grasping it, is this
Character Kit = you can have Turn Undead and Smite Elemental, or any other combo of Turn and Smite, but you may only have one Turn and one Smite. Which two you have is decided by level 2.Your character can only Turn one race and Smite one race.
Talent Tree = You can learn them all by level 6, in any order you like, so long as you first learn to Turn the race before you learn how to Smite it.Your character can, if you so wish, learn to Turn and Smite all three races.
So in conclusion, Character Kits are significantly more limiting than Talent Trees are. Talent trees are superior because they offer the player more customization, or at least the feeling of being able to customize their character (in a well designed game featuring talent trees, the designer has already figured out the best ways to build characters using the trees and has designed the game accordingly).
Gameplay is ultimately what choices a player makes during play. When the player feels like they are making their own choices, they feel good about the game. They tend to dislike the feeling they are forced to make choices, especially when the choice doesn't result in something they actually want.
Character kits seem attractive to designers because the system is less complex, but there is a fine line between too complex and too simple. Character kits fall on the "too simple" side of the fence for my taste. Talent trees CAN be too complex, but only when poorly designed to not make it obvious to the player which choices they should make-- this is usually because there are lots of worthless talents (those lacking clear synergy with other abilities, or those which can only work when the player has very specific, not easy to obtain items) in the trees that shouldn't be there in the first place.
#3 Magic items are no longer part of the essential progression mathematics.
I suspect this is an attempt to hitch a ride on the latest fantasy bandwagon, Game of Thrones on HBO, which is based on the Song of Ice and Fire novels, which have a low magic fantasy setting.
Now, trying to tap into the Game of Thrones fanbase is all well and good, but most people wanting to play Game of Thrones in a tabletop RPG are going to play Green Ronin's officially licensed version which has been optimized for play in the Song of Ice and Fire setting. They are not going to play Dungeons & Dragons, where the first image that comes to the general public's mind are fireball throwing wizards dressed like Gandalf -- because, let's face it, that's basically who Elminster (the most publicly visible character in D&D's most popular campaign setting, Forgotten Realms) is.
I also don't see how any version of D&D that doesn't assume player characters have access to magic items is going to co-exist in existing D&D settings players have come to love, like The Forgotten Realms and Ebberon, where magic is as common as candy.
Basically, I have a strong suspicion the 5th edition of D&D is being designed to target an audience that is already satisfied by niche self-published OSR systems; basically, people who have been playing RPGs for 40 something years and are only playing those OSR systems because it reminds them of the versions of D&D they played as children.
This is not to say the 'OSR movement' does not exist. But isn't a very large movement; a "popular" tabletop RPG these days moves only a few thousand books. It's true that Pathfinder (which is basically just D&D 3rd edition with some tweaks) has now outsold 4th Edition D&D but Pathfinder's success is largely due to tapping into disfranchised D&D players who didn't want to jump to 4th Edition five years ago (the moral of the story: support your older editions that still have market segments! Also, abandoning a system when it still had some life left in it wasn't such a grand idea).
Which is another point; they are going after a market of people who are basically in the last years of their lives. I don't say this to be morbid but because it is a fact. Most people who played AD&D were anywhere from 12 to 30 years old. It's been 38 years since AD&D came out. That means they are now anywhere from 50 to 68 years old. The average life expectancy in the US is 78. And it's not like everyone who played AD&D (or any version of D&D) is still playing it. Many have left the hobby due to lack of interest, time constraints or being better fulfilled by MMORPGs.
Normally one does not target a shrinking niche audience, they try to make their product appeal to a younger, growing audience so the business can continue to thrive. This is why the American superhero comic book industry has been falling apart -- they keep writing Superman, Spider-Man and X-Men to appeal to people who have been reading those comics their entire lives, rather than make new comics intended to appeal to fresh audiences. If you want to get into an X-Men comic today you basically need to read several Wikipedia articles just to fully understand what the hell is going on (example: Why does Beast now look like a house cat wearing a business suit??), because the stories have been going on for decades and quite a lot of things have happened to these characters.
This is where the Japanese manga industry has been more intelligent; stories, even in long running shonen series like Dragon Ball (which is similar to the superhero genre), the stories eventually have a conclusion. Then new, fresh characters who go on new adventures get published. Oh, and when characters die they tend (overall) to stay dead, and when revived they do so for relevant plot reasons and not because the publisher decided they want to capitalize on the revival of the character with a new mini-series featuring that character.
Anyway, back to D&D. There is talk of 5th edition being modular so you can add magic items by including a supplement. My question is does that also mean you have to use entirely different monsters with parameters designed to accommodate magic item progression, because the default, "core" rules don't assume magic items when players face monsters?
It doesn't seem that NPC design is going to be scalable either, (ex. monster abilities scale up or down, so you can make a Kobold fighter any level rather than Kobolds always being level 1 enemies), as there is talk about making level 1 monsters still fearsome in large numbers against level 8 players. Which is another thing I think is bad; monsters should scale to the level, rather than keep with this antiquated design philosophy that higher level monsters should be tougher and lower level monsters should be easier. That's not what players and GMs end up doing; GMs throw wave after wave of same level monsters at player parties, which burns them out quickly because same level NPCs are designed to be challenging to defeat. (In Radiant Fantasia NPC levels are designed to be adjusted to the same level as the player characters, and the difficulty depends on the 'rank' of the attributes the NPC has).
So this is what I think about D&D Next. I think they shouldn't do it. They should instead just re-publish OD&D, Basic D&D, AD&D, 3rd, etc as PDFs, along with all the modules for those versions. Then they should create some kind of platform similar to DriveThru RPG that allows people to submit their own modules and supplements as PDFs for sale in to Wizards official D&D shop, and take a small royalty on every sale like DriveThru RPG does. That will allow them to go after the older editions audience they obviously want to get without actually having to produce new material in-house. Then they should get to work on D&D 4.5, because this new version they are working on sounds like it's going to be more like AD&D 3rd edition than a 5th Edition.
Edit: For those wanting more insight into the various editions of D&D and the differences between them, there is an article over at Geeks Dream Girl, "Hopes & Fears for D&D Next", that goes through all the editions and talks about various bad elements they had.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Modular Item Generation in Radiant Fantasia
I want to talk a little about item creation in Radiant Fantasia, because I think it's one of the biggest strengths of the system.
In a game like D&D, if the GM or another player wants to have an item that doesn't exist, the parameters of that item basically need to be hand-waved. There is no methodical way to determine how to make new types of items; I mean let's say you want to add black powder hand-cannons to a game that is normally for bows and arrows. How would you do that? You could just say it has the same parameters as a bow, but obviously arrows don't deal as much damage as a hand-cannon blasting rock shrapnel, so how does one mimic the versatility of a hand-cannon in a system that doesn't offer any way to build items from scratch? Better yet, how do you determine the monetary worth of such an item, or the crafting skill level needed to create it?
This is where Radiant Fantasia shines. There is a modular system for GMs to design items that do not exist and have the parameters of the item determine how much it costs and how difficult it is to make, and have this item balanced with existing items already in the core rulebook.
My system is similar in concept and purpose to the "item budget" system used in World of Warcraft but very different in execution since the formulas used in Radiant Fantasia are completely different than in WoW.
The following are excerpts from my core rulebook that talk about item creation.
(Note: This system is NOT to be confused with item crafting, which is the in-game system players will use to enhance items or make items that have been built by the GM or are included in the core rules. The system described below is NOT intended for players to make items with, but to expand the list of items a character can discover or make during play. )
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Weapon Sizes
Weapon Sizes are not the same as object sizes. Instead Weapon Sizes determine how big or small of a character the weapon was built for.
For example, a Medium size Weapon is built for Medium size characters (such as humans); a Diminutive size Weapon is built for Diminutive size characters (such as Pixies; and a Large size Weapon is built for Large size characters (such as Minotaurs).
Weight, Hardness and Durability Adjustments
In the stat blocks for weapons in this book, the Cost, Weight, Hardness and Durability for the item is listed with are Medium size values.
To determine these stats for a weapon built for a character of different size, use the following formulas:
Tiny*: ½ as much Cost, Hardness and Durability; 1/10 the Weight.
*Or smaller than Tiny.
Small: Identical Cost, Hardness and Durability; ½ the Weight.
Large: x2 the Cost, Hardness, Durability and Weight.
Huge: x4 the Cost, Hardness and Durability; x5 the Weight.
Gargantuan: x8 the Cost, Hardness, Durability and Weight.
Colossal: x16 the Cost, Hardness and Durability; x12 the Weight.
Weapon Base Power
A weapon‘s base power is determined by its Weapon Size.
Table X: Weapon Base Power
Size Damage Critical
Tiny 1 12
Small 2 12
Medium 3 12
Large 4 12
Huge 5 12
Gargantuan 6 12
Note that damage can never be lower than 1.
Using weapons meant for other character sizes than your own
A weapon is considered 'light-weight' for a character when it is a size category smaller than the current wielder (example: a human using a weapon created for Small size characters would consider that weapon light-weight). A character wielding a weapon they consider light-weight weapon can use it with one-hand, even if it is normally a two-handed weapon. They can also choose to substitute their Strength score for their Reflexes score when making Accuracy rolls with that weapon and determining Weapon Attack.
A weapon is considered 'heavy-weight' for a character when it is a size category higher than the current wielder (example: a human using a weapon created for Large size characters would consider that weapon heavy-weight). A character wielding a weapon they consider heavy-weight must wield the weapon with two hands and they take a -1 Accuracy roll penalty for every category of size difference above their own.
Unless the character has the Gigantic Weapon feat, a character cannot lift a weapon that is more than one size category larger than they are. Even with the Gigantic Weapon feat, they will take a -2 Accuracy roll penalty with that weapon.
Weapon Damage Types
Every weapon has a certain type of damage it deals. These damage types are,
Bludgeoning damage: This is damage inflicted by smashing, bashing or striking with blunt force to cause trauma and bruising. It is commonly dealt by clubs and staffs.
Piercing damage: This is damaged inflicted by stabbing, thrusting or penetrating with a sharp point. It is commonly dealt by arrows, teeth, knives and spears.
Slashing damage: This is damage inflicted by cutting, chopping or slicing with a sharp edge. It is commonly dealt by swords and claws.
All tools created to be weapons will be capable of dealing at least one of these damage types. Note that many monsters have Damage Reduction against certain damage types
Weapon Class
Weapons have a Class. The Weapon Classes are Melee weapon, Ranged weapon, Natural weapon and Siege weapon. These four classes determine whether certain weapon qualities apply.
Melee Weapons use the character‘s Base Attack Bonus plus Strength score to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Melee weapons are weapons that characters wield. Melee weapons can only be wielded by characters that have opposable thumbs and the correct size.
Axes, Knives, and similar instruments are classified as Melee Weapons.
Ranged Weapons use the character‘s Base Attack Bonus plus Reflexes score to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Melee weapons are weapons that characters wield.
Ranged weapons can only be wielded by characters that have opposable thumbs and the correct size. Bows and Crossbows are classified as ranged weapons.
Natural Weapons can use either Strength or Reflexes (whichever score is higher) to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Natural weapons are something the character was born with or is an integral part of their body—for example, the claws and teeth of a dog are his natural weapons. Usually a character with a natural weapon is considered proficient with it.
Siege Weapons are weapons used to conduct large-scale battles. They can use either Strength or Reflexes (whichever score is higher) to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Siege Weapons are often ship cannons and catapults.
That‘s simple enough to remember, right?
(I sure hope so!)
Weapon Types
All weapons have Weapon Types. Weapon Types classify the weapon into a specific category and determine what kind of feats and abilities will apply to the weapon, along with what Weapon Techniques can be performed with it.
Melee Weapon Types fall under the following categories:
Axes Battle Gloves Bows Claws
Hammers Knives Shields Spears
Staffs Swords Whips Unique
Siege Weapon Types fall under the following categories:
Ballista Cannon Catapult Ram
Unique
All weapons fall under a certain type, even if they have another name.
For example, Gestalt‘s Firebrand from the Pandemonia Chronicles novels is a +3 orichalcum medium long-sword (a sword subtype) with the Flaming enchantment.
What this means is that the Firebrand is a Sword type melee weapon forged out of orichalcum metal and built for Medium size characters, with a magical enhancement that makes its damage aligned with the element of fire.
Weapon Sub-types
Below the Type is a sub-type, which is a kind of template for a weapon. Sub-types are
just as important for weapons as their type is because the sub-type determines the
inherent special qualities of the weapon.
For example, katana is a Sword subtype. It means the weapon deals slashing damage and has the keen quality that increases its critical range by +1.
The sub-type also determines the base Cost of the weapon. The base Cost represents how much the weapon costs to purchase from an NPC merchant if it is made out of the base material (such as iron). The base Cost is calculated based on the type of weapon and what qualities it possesses.
Note: Beyond the weapon subtypes listed in this book, the GM may create new
weapon subtypes at their own discretion. Players wishing to create a new subtype for their character to use may only do so with GM permission. GMs are advised that new weapon subtypes should have a base Cost under 100 zenny; weapons above that value may be too powerful.
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Here I'm going to take a pause. Once the Weapons Class, Type and Sub-type have been determined, you then select the "Qualities" the weapon has. These determine the majority of the parameters, allowing you to add damage and weight and so forth. Some qualities are positive and others are negative. They are intended to be used to model items, like different types of swords or spears. Attached to each Quality is a "zenny value" (the currency of Radiant Fantasia) and a Complex value. These values are added together to determine how much an item is worth and how difficult it is to create it.
I'll list a few Qualities below so you get an idea of how they work, but this list is hardly comprehensive of all the Qualities that exist for weapons (armor, consumable items and equipment have their own unique lists of Qualities relative to the needs to build those kinds of items).
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List of Weapon Qualities
Balanced (+5 zenny) 2 complex
A weapon with this quality is treated as a light-weight weapon for the character size it is created for, even if the weapon isn‘t considered light-weight for the character. However, the weapon cannot be wielded in two-hands for bonus damage.
This quality is useful for a character with the Weapon Finesse feat that allows them to use their Reflexes
score instead of their Strength score for melee Accuracy rolls.
This quality also adds +2 Complexity.
Blade (+1 zenny) 1 complex
A bladed weapon deals slashing damage.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
Blunt (+1 zenny) 1 complex
A blunt weapon deals bludgeoning damage.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
Bomb (+1 zenny) 2 complex
A bomb is a special kind of ranged weapon that can be thrown. Upon impact it will detonate or shatter and deal its damage to the opponent. A bomb has only a single use and after used will be destroyed.
This quality also adds +2 Complexity.
Cavalry (+20 zenny) 5 complex
While mounted, the weapon deals double damage.
If the weapon is considered a melee heavy-weight weapon by the character wielding it, then the weapon
can be wielded with one hand if the character is mounted.
This quality also adds +5 Complexity.
Concealable (+1 zenny) 1 complex
The weapon is easy to hide on the wielder. The owner gains a +1 bonus to Acrobatics checks made to hide this item on their person.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
Team (-3 zenny)
This quality can only be applied to a Siege class weapon. The weapon requires more than one person to operate. Each quality increases the number of individuals required to make
the weapon function.
Hazard (-10 zenny)
A hazardous weapon is as likely to hurt the wielder as it is the opponent. Upon a natural roll of 2, whatever attack the wielder was attempting to perform deals a critical attack to the wielder. The wielder is not allowed any defense or resistance checks against this attack.
Hurl (+10 zenny)
If this quality is found on a ranged weapon such as a bow it increases the Range of the weapon to Long Range.
Hook (+10 zenny) 1 complex
The weapon has an inherent +1 bonus to disarm attempts made with the weapon.
This quality can stack multiple times with itself and each time it increases the disarm bonus by +1.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
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Now let's examine what an item stat block looks like and how to read it.
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Understanding Weapon Stat Blocks
Some weapons have inherent qualities based on their sub-type.
Availability
How available the item is when trying to purchase it from stores, and where it may be found.
Cost
The base Cost of a weapon is how much that weapon is worth if it is purchased from an NPC merchant. The cost is given in zenny. Different subtypes have different costs associated with them based on the value of their inherent qualities.
A weapon must have a cost of at least 1 zenny and may never go below that cost.
Damage Type
The damage type of the weapon is what damage type it deals. Some weapons are capable
of dealing more than one damage type. (See Weapon Damage Types on page x).
Durability
This represents the number of hit points until the weapon is destroyed.
Critical Range
The critical range of a weapon is what number must be naturally rolled on the Accuracy roll to score a critical hit (a natural roll is what your dice rolled before you apply any Accuracy roll bonuses or penalties).
The default critical range for weapons is 12, meaning a character must naturally roll a 12 to score a Critical Hit.
However, some weapons (such as the previously mentioned katana) have special qualities that alter their critical range.
Size
Size is the Weapon Size of the weapon—what size of character it was built to be used by. If it is a natural weapon then its size is the same as the creature it belongs to.
Reach
Reach is only of use to melee weapons. It determines what row of the enemy formation the weapon can make attacks against.
All weapons have a default Reach of 1, which means they can only be used to attack one character in the first row of the enemy formation.
A Reach of 2 means the weapon can attack a character in the first or middle row.
A Reach of 3 means the weapon can attack characters in the front, middle or back row.
Range
Range determines how far the weapon can be thrown or launch projectiles.
Melee weapons are inherently Short Range.
Ranged weapons are inherently Medium Range.
Siege weapons are inherently Short Range.
A weapon subtype can be made to have a lower Range than the inherent Range at no additional cost.
Range will also list the Target type.
Single target means it can only hit one character at a time. All weapons have this
by default.
Line target means it can hit a column of characters at a time.
Group means it can hit an entire formation of characters. This is usually found on bombs.
Hardness
Hardness represents how well the weapon resists damage if it is the subject of a sunder
attack. Hardness reduces the number of Durability points the object takes when damaged.
All items have a default Hardness of 5.
Qualities
This lists the qualities of the weapon that determines the bulk of its parameters.
Weapon Damage
Weapon Damage is how much damage the weapon deals with normal attacks. A weapon‘s base damage is determined by its Weapon Size (see page x). Some weapon subtypes have bonuses to weapon damage based on the Qualities they have.
Weight
Weight determines how heavy the weapon is. Weight is measured in weight units. Some weapon subtypes are heavier than other subtypes.
When listed in a stat block, the weight is calculated for a Medium size character. Melee and Range Weapons have a default base weight of 6 weight units. They may weigh less than that at no additional Cost.
Siege Weapons have a default base weight of 10,000 weight units. They may weigh less than that at no additional Cost.
Complexity
Complexity determines how difficult it is to craft the item. When crafting the Complexity becomes the DC for a successful crafting checking.
Complexity is determined by a variety of factors such as what qualities the item has.
Additional qualities can be added to a weapon by adding Weapon Augments to them. For example, Gestalt‘s Firebrand has the Flaming enchantment. An enchantment is a type of Augment (note: I'll explain these in a different post, but this is part of the item crafting system for players to improve items).
Also, weapons made out of special materials may have additional properties. Augments and special materials dramatically increase the Cost of an item.
---------------------------------
Here are a few sample items. Note the cost of the items are probably a'bit off because I fiddle often with zenny and complexity value of Qualities but have yet to update the value of generated items in the book, since that is time consuming. I intend to update the values before the system is ready for in-depth playtesting.
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Axe, throwing
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Axe Cost: 6 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing Availability: Common
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Range: Medium, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Thrown Reach: 1
Durability: 5
Complexity: 3
Description:
A throwing axe can be accurately thrown up to Medium Range and it can also be used as a melee weapon.
Cavalryman‘s Axe
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Axe Cost: 32 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing and Piercing Availability: Common
Weight: 3 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Cavalry, Pointed, Reach: 1
Weapon Damage II Durability: 5
Complexity: 9
Description:
This is a hatchet-sized axe that resembles a small halberd. It sports a hole in the shaft for a leather strap to be passed around the wrist, assisting in its use while mounted. It‘s designed for use by cavalry. It has a +2 bonus to Weapon Power.
Knuckle duster, pair
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Battle Gloves Cost: 1 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Bludgeoning Availability: Common
Weight: ½ Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blunt Reach: 1
Durability: 5
Complexity: 1
Description:
The knuckle-duster—sometimes called a brass knuckle— is a piece of metal shaped to fit
around the knuckles. Wearing it allows a character to deal lethal damage with unarmed
strikes. Only one glove can be wielded in a hand at a time.
Katar, pair
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Claw Cost: 22 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Piercing or Slashing Availability: Uncommon
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Penetration (piercing), Pointed, Reach: 1
Weapon Damage II Durability: 5
Complexity: 7
Description:
Katars are bladed instruments attached to a frame. The unusual horizontal hand grip allows the triangle-shaped blade to deliver punching-like jabs that tear into organs and penetrate armor. The weapon has a +2 bonus to Weapon Power and can ignore Damage Reduction against piercing attacks. One katar can be worn on each hand.
Nunchakus
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Hammer Cost: 26 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Bludgeoning Availability: Common
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Balanced, Blunt, Double, Reach: 1
Weapon Damage III Durability: 5
Complexity: 11
Description:
Nunchakus are a weapon created by chaining two wooden or metal handles together. It‘s an evolved, more military oriented form of the farming flail. By manipulating the handles so they swing back and forth between the hands, the wielder can surprise enemies by attacking with the weapon from multiple angles. The swinging motion of the handles also serves to amplify the force of the blows.
As a weapon that relies more on grace than strength, they are useful for a character with the Weapon Finesse feat that allows them to use their Reflexes score instead of their Strength score for melee Accuracy rolls.
Nunchakus have a +2 Weapon Power bonus and can be treated as a double weapon.
Tower Shield
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Shield Cost: 64 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing, Bludgeoning Availability: Common
Weight: 20 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 15
Qualities: Blade, Blunt, Cover, Deflection III, Reach: 1
Durable II, Weapon Damage II Durability: 15
Complexity: 17
Description:
This massive shield is nearly as tall as the character it is built for. It gives the wielder a +3 Defense bonus and a +2 bonus to Weapon Power.
As a full round action a tower shield can be used as total cover.
(You will notice that shields are considered a weapon here. This is because in reality shields actually ARE a type of weapon, and metal shields can be used to slash as much as they can be used to bash. Sadly the true offensive abilities of a shield are rarely acknowledged in game systems and other media. I decided I would try to be more accurate. Thus, Radiant Fantasia has Weapon Techniques for shields allowing a wide variety of defensive and offensive abilities to be used that rely on the shield, and they are built as weapons. )
Katana
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Sword Cost: 37 zenny
Critical range: 10-12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Piercing or Slashing Availability: Uncommon
Weight: 2 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Keen II, Pointed, Reach: 1
Penetration (slashing) Weapon Damage I Durability: 5
Complexity: 6
Description:
A katana is an extremely sharp sword that can be wielded with one or two hands. The katana has a critical range of 10-12, a +1 Weapon Power bonus, and can ignore Damage Reduction against slashing damage.
Whip, leather
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Whip Cost: 12 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing Availability: Common
Weight: ½ Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Balanced, Blade, Extend I Reach: 2
Weapon Damage I Durability 5
Complexity: 5
Description:
A leather whip is a weapon with a stiff handle and a flexible tail made of braided leather that is swung at opponents. Although it has no blade, it is capable of causing lacerations due to a knotted throng at the tip and the high velocity the whip swings at. The whip can be used to strike an opponent two rows away. It cannot be double gripped for a damage bonus, but it is perfectly balanced.
This weapon is useful for a character with the Weapon Finesse feat that allows them to use their Reflexes score instead of their Strength score for melee Accuracy rolls.
A leather whip can be made out of special materials such as Tarrasque hide and Dragon hide to gain damage bonuses.
A leather whip has a +1 Weapon Power bonus.
---------------------------------
Anyway, that's probably plenty to give you an idea of how flexible the rules are and how many different types of weapons can be made using them.
Using a modified version of the Weapon rules, other types of items can be made, like armor..........
------------------------------------
Turban
Armor Class / Types: Light; Head Cost: x zenny
Defense: +2
Damage Reduction: -- Availability: Common
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Max. Reflexes Bonus: -- Hardness: 5
Qualities: Deflection II, Weather (hot) I Durability: 5
Complexity: 2
Description:
This special hat keeps the head cozy and safe from desert sun rays. Wearing it gives a +1 aptitude bonus to Physical Resistance checks made against an intensely hot environment.
Cuirass
Armor Class / Types: Heavy; Body Cost: 100 zenny
Defense: +7
Damage Reduction: Bludgeoning, Slashing, Piercing Availability: Common
Weight: 14 Size: Varies
Max. Reflexes Bonus: 4 Hardness: 20
Qualities: Cumber IV, Curved, Deflection VII, Durability: 20
Durable III, Hinder II, Padded, Plated, Complexity: 26
Weighted VII
Description:
Strong armor that protects the front and back of the torso from blows, usually made from
metal or bone.
-----------------------------------------
.....and food, drink and equipment.
------------------------------------------
Meat, Generic Cooked
Edibles Class / Types: Food; Meat Cost: 3 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Meal Points: 1 Hardness: 1
Fluid Points: 0 Longevity: 3 days
Qualities: Yummy III Durability: 1
Complexity: 3
Description:
Unless otherwise mentioned, consuming a piece of cooked meat is worth 3 meal points
and has no food bonus.
Ambrosia
Edibles Class / Types: Drink; Potion Cost: 122 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Meal Points: 0 Hardness: 1
Fluid Points: 0 Longevity: 17 days
Qualities: Miracle IV, Preserved II Durability: 1
Complexity: 26
Description:
A delicious potion, sometimes called the elixir of life. Those who drink it recover 20
Wound points.
Bandages
Equipment Cost: 11 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Qualities: Consumable, Hardness: 1
Cure (Bleeding), Durability: 1
Talent (Treat Injury; Bleeding) I Complexity: 4
Description:
Bandages can be purchased or improvised with a First aid check from available cloth materials. Successfully bandaging a character will stop bleeding effects on a character.
It also gives a +1 equipment bonus to Treat Injury checks made to treat bleeding.
Bag, Large
Equipment Cost: 27 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Qualities: Space XXVI Hardness: 1
Durability: 1
Complexity: 27
Description:
This leather sack can hold up to 27 weight units. For purposes of encumbrance items stored within the bag weigh ½ as much.
Rope, climbing
Equipment Cost: 10 zenny
Weight: 2 Availability: Common
Qualities: Rope I Hardness: 1
Durability: 1
Complexity: 3
Description:
This 60 meter long rope can hold approximately 217 weight units (about the weight of
three human-sized characters). The rope itself weighs 4 weight units. It is useful for
rappelling and climbing.
-------------------------------------
Anyway, the item stat blocks are larger than in D&D 3rd edition, or earlier versions, but they do fit nicely on index cards. I intend to have some applications programmed to make it easier for using the rules to make new items, but I'm not a programmer myself. I've been fine tuning the rules with paper and calculator the old fashioned way, but I'd prefer GMs not need to do that to make new items. Before any in-depth playtesting,
I'll try to have a program made that will make it easier to build items.
In a game like D&D, if the GM or another player wants to have an item that doesn't exist, the parameters of that item basically need to be hand-waved. There is no methodical way to determine how to make new types of items; I mean let's say you want to add black powder hand-cannons to a game that is normally for bows and arrows. How would you do that? You could just say it has the same parameters as a bow, but obviously arrows don't deal as much damage as a hand-cannon blasting rock shrapnel, so how does one mimic the versatility of a hand-cannon in a system that doesn't offer any way to build items from scratch? Better yet, how do you determine the monetary worth of such an item, or the crafting skill level needed to create it?
This is where Radiant Fantasia shines. There is a modular system for GMs to design items that do not exist and have the parameters of the item determine how much it costs and how difficult it is to make, and have this item balanced with existing items already in the core rulebook.
My system is similar in concept and purpose to the "item budget" system used in World of Warcraft but very different in execution since the formulas used in Radiant Fantasia are completely different than in WoW.
The following are excerpts from my core rulebook that talk about item creation.
(Note: This system is NOT to be confused with item crafting, which is the in-game system players will use to enhance items or make items that have been built by the GM or are included in the core rules. The system described below is NOT intended for players to make items with, but to expand the list of items a character can discover or make during play. )
-------------
Weapon Sizes
Weapon Sizes are not the same as object sizes. Instead Weapon Sizes determine how big or small of a character the weapon was built for.
For example, a Medium size Weapon is built for Medium size characters (such as humans); a Diminutive size Weapon is built for Diminutive size characters (such as Pixies; and a Large size Weapon is built for Large size characters (such as Minotaurs).
Weight, Hardness and Durability Adjustments
In the stat blocks for weapons in this book, the Cost, Weight, Hardness and Durability for the item is listed with are Medium size values.
To determine these stats for a weapon built for a character of different size, use the following formulas:
Tiny*: ½ as much Cost, Hardness and Durability; 1/10 the Weight.
*Or smaller than Tiny.
Small: Identical Cost, Hardness and Durability; ½ the Weight.
Large: x2 the Cost, Hardness, Durability and Weight.
Huge: x4 the Cost, Hardness and Durability; x5 the Weight.
Gargantuan: x8 the Cost, Hardness, Durability and Weight.
Colossal: x16 the Cost, Hardness and Durability; x12 the Weight.
Weapon Base Power
A weapon‘s base power is determined by its Weapon Size.
Table X: Weapon Base Power
Size Damage Critical
Tiny 1 12
Small 2 12
Medium 3 12
Large 4 12
Huge 5 12
Gargantuan 6 12
Note that damage can never be lower than 1.
Using weapons meant for other character sizes than your own
A weapon is considered 'light-weight' for a character when it is a size category smaller than the current wielder (example: a human using a weapon created for Small size characters would consider that weapon light-weight). A character wielding a weapon they consider light-weight weapon can use it with one-hand, even if it is normally a two-handed weapon. They can also choose to substitute their Strength score for their Reflexes score when making Accuracy rolls with that weapon and determining Weapon Attack.
A weapon is considered 'heavy-weight' for a character when it is a size category higher than the current wielder (example: a human using a weapon created for Large size characters would consider that weapon heavy-weight). A character wielding a weapon they consider heavy-weight must wield the weapon with two hands and they take a -1 Accuracy roll penalty for every category of size difference above their own.
Unless the character has the Gigantic Weapon feat, a character cannot lift a weapon that is more than one size category larger than they are. Even with the Gigantic Weapon feat, they will take a -2 Accuracy roll penalty with that weapon.
Weapon Damage Types
Every weapon has a certain type of damage it deals. These damage types are,
Bludgeoning damage: This is damage inflicted by smashing, bashing or striking with blunt force to cause trauma and bruising. It is commonly dealt by clubs and staffs.
Piercing damage: This is damaged inflicted by stabbing, thrusting or penetrating with a sharp point. It is commonly dealt by arrows, teeth, knives and spears.
Slashing damage: This is damage inflicted by cutting, chopping or slicing with a sharp edge. It is commonly dealt by swords and claws.
All tools created to be weapons will be capable of dealing at least one of these damage types. Note that many monsters have Damage Reduction against certain damage types
Weapon Class
Weapons have a Class. The Weapon Classes are Melee weapon, Ranged weapon, Natural weapon and Siege weapon. These four classes determine whether certain weapon qualities apply.
Melee Weapons use the character‘s Base Attack Bonus plus Strength score to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Melee weapons are weapons that characters wield. Melee weapons can only be wielded by characters that have opposable thumbs and the correct size.
Axes, Knives, and similar instruments are classified as Melee Weapons.
Ranged Weapons use the character‘s Base Attack Bonus plus Reflexes score to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Melee weapons are weapons that characters wield.
Ranged weapons can only be wielded by characters that have opposable thumbs and the correct size. Bows and Crossbows are classified as ranged weapons.
Natural Weapons can use either Strength or Reflexes (whichever score is higher) to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Natural weapons are something the character was born with or is an integral part of their body—for example, the claws and teeth of a dog are his natural weapons. Usually a character with a natural weapon is considered proficient with it.
Siege Weapons are weapons used to conduct large-scale battles. They can use either Strength or Reflexes (whichever score is higher) to determine the Melee Attack Bonus. Siege Weapons are often ship cannons and catapults.
That‘s simple enough to remember, right?
(I sure hope so!)
Weapon Types
All weapons have Weapon Types. Weapon Types classify the weapon into a specific category and determine what kind of feats and abilities will apply to the weapon, along with what Weapon Techniques can be performed with it.
Melee Weapon Types fall under the following categories:
Axes Battle Gloves Bows Claws
Hammers Knives Shields Spears
Staffs Swords Whips Unique
Siege Weapon Types fall under the following categories:
Ballista Cannon Catapult Ram
Unique
All weapons fall under a certain type, even if they have another name.
For example, Gestalt‘s Firebrand from the Pandemonia Chronicles novels is a +3 orichalcum medium long-sword (a sword subtype) with the Flaming enchantment.
What this means is that the Firebrand is a Sword type melee weapon forged out of orichalcum metal and built for Medium size characters, with a magical enhancement that makes its damage aligned with the element of fire.
Weapon Sub-types
Below the Type is a sub-type, which is a kind of template for a weapon. Sub-types are
just as important for weapons as their type is because the sub-type determines the
inherent special qualities of the weapon.
For example, katana is a Sword subtype. It means the weapon deals slashing damage and has the keen quality that increases its critical range by +1.
The sub-type also determines the base Cost of the weapon. The base Cost represents how much the weapon costs to purchase from an NPC merchant if it is made out of the base material (such as iron). The base Cost is calculated based on the type of weapon and what qualities it possesses.
Note: Beyond the weapon subtypes listed in this book, the GM may create new
weapon subtypes at their own discretion. Players wishing to create a new subtype for their character to use may only do so with GM permission. GMs are advised that new weapon subtypes should have a base Cost under 100 zenny; weapons above that value may be too powerful.
--------------------
Here I'm going to take a pause. Once the Weapons Class, Type and Sub-type have been determined, you then select the "Qualities" the weapon has. These determine the majority of the parameters, allowing you to add damage and weight and so forth. Some qualities are positive and others are negative. They are intended to be used to model items, like different types of swords or spears. Attached to each Quality is a "zenny value" (the currency of Radiant Fantasia) and a Complex value. These values are added together to determine how much an item is worth and how difficult it is to create it.
I'll list a few Qualities below so you get an idea of how they work, but this list is hardly comprehensive of all the Qualities that exist for weapons (armor, consumable items and equipment have their own unique lists of Qualities relative to the needs to build those kinds of items).
-----------------------
List of Weapon Qualities
Balanced (+5 zenny) 2 complex
A weapon with this quality is treated as a light-weight weapon for the character size it is created for, even if the weapon isn‘t considered light-weight for the character. However, the weapon cannot be wielded in two-hands for bonus damage.
This quality is useful for a character with the Weapon Finesse feat that allows them to use their Reflexes
score instead of their Strength score for melee Accuracy rolls.
This quality also adds +2 Complexity.
Blade (+1 zenny) 1 complex
A bladed weapon deals slashing damage.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
Blunt (+1 zenny) 1 complex
A blunt weapon deals bludgeoning damage.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
Bomb (+1 zenny) 2 complex
A bomb is a special kind of ranged weapon that can be thrown. Upon impact it will detonate or shatter and deal its damage to the opponent. A bomb has only a single use and after used will be destroyed.
This quality also adds +2 Complexity.
Cavalry (+20 zenny) 5 complex
While mounted, the weapon deals double damage.
If the weapon is considered a melee heavy-weight weapon by the character wielding it, then the weapon
can be wielded with one hand if the character is mounted.
This quality also adds +5 Complexity.
Concealable (+1 zenny) 1 complex
The weapon is easy to hide on the wielder. The owner gains a +1 bonus to Acrobatics checks made to hide this item on their person.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
Team (-3 zenny)
This quality can only be applied to a Siege class weapon. The weapon requires more than one person to operate. Each quality increases the number of individuals required to make
the weapon function.
Hazard (-10 zenny)
A hazardous weapon is as likely to hurt the wielder as it is the opponent. Upon a natural roll of 2, whatever attack the wielder was attempting to perform deals a critical attack to the wielder. The wielder is not allowed any defense or resistance checks against this attack.
Hurl (+10 zenny)
If this quality is found on a ranged weapon such as a bow it increases the Range of the weapon to Long Range.
Hook (+10 zenny) 1 complex
The weapon has an inherent +1 bonus to disarm attempts made with the weapon.
This quality can stack multiple times with itself and each time it increases the disarm bonus by +1.
This quality also adds +1 Complexity.
---------------
Now let's examine what an item stat block looks like and how to read it.
----------------
Understanding Weapon Stat Blocks
Some weapons have inherent qualities based on their sub-type.
Availability
How available the item is when trying to purchase it from stores, and where it may be found.
Cost
The base Cost of a weapon is how much that weapon is worth if it is purchased from an NPC merchant. The cost is given in zenny. Different subtypes have different costs associated with them based on the value of their inherent qualities.
A weapon must have a cost of at least 1 zenny and may never go below that cost.
Damage Type
The damage type of the weapon is what damage type it deals. Some weapons are capable
of dealing more than one damage type. (See Weapon Damage Types on page x).
Durability
This represents the number of hit points until the weapon is destroyed.
Critical Range
The critical range of a weapon is what number must be naturally rolled on the Accuracy roll to score a critical hit (a natural roll is what your dice rolled before you apply any Accuracy roll bonuses or penalties).
The default critical range for weapons is 12, meaning a character must naturally roll a 12 to score a Critical Hit.
However, some weapons (such as the previously mentioned katana) have special qualities that alter their critical range.
Size
Size is the Weapon Size of the weapon—what size of character it was built to be used by. If it is a natural weapon then its size is the same as the creature it belongs to.
Reach
Reach is only of use to melee weapons. It determines what row of the enemy formation the weapon can make attacks against.
All weapons have a default Reach of 1, which means they can only be used to attack one character in the first row of the enemy formation.
A Reach of 2 means the weapon can attack a character in the first or middle row.
A Reach of 3 means the weapon can attack characters in the front, middle or back row.
Range
Range determines how far the weapon can be thrown or launch projectiles.
Melee weapons are inherently Short Range.
Ranged weapons are inherently Medium Range.
Siege weapons are inherently Short Range.
A weapon subtype can be made to have a lower Range than the inherent Range at no additional cost.
Range will also list the Target type.
Single target means it can only hit one character at a time. All weapons have this
by default.
Line target means it can hit a column of characters at a time.
Group means it can hit an entire formation of characters. This is usually found on bombs.
Hardness
Hardness represents how well the weapon resists damage if it is the subject of a sunder
attack. Hardness reduces the number of Durability points the object takes when damaged.
All items have a default Hardness of 5.
Qualities
This lists the qualities of the weapon that determines the bulk of its parameters.
Weapon Damage
Weapon Damage is how much damage the weapon deals with normal attacks. A weapon‘s base damage is determined by its Weapon Size (see page x). Some weapon subtypes have bonuses to weapon damage based on the Qualities they have.
Weight
Weight determines how heavy the weapon is. Weight is measured in weight units. Some weapon subtypes are heavier than other subtypes.
When listed in a stat block, the weight is calculated for a Medium size character. Melee and Range Weapons have a default base weight of 6 weight units. They may weigh less than that at no additional Cost.
Siege Weapons have a default base weight of 10,000 weight units. They may weigh less than that at no additional Cost.
Complexity
Complexity determines how difficult it is to craft the item. When crafting the Complexity becomes the DC for a successful crafting checking.
Complexity is determined by a variety of factors such as what qualities the item has.
Additional qualities can be added to a weapon by adding Weapon Augments to them. For example, Gestalt‘s Firebrand has the Flaming enchantment. An enchantment is a type of Augment (note: I'll explain these in a different post, but this is part of the item crafting system for players to improve items).
Also, weapons made out of special materials may have additional properties. Augments and special materials dramatically increase the Cost of an item.
---------------------------------
Here are a few sample items. Note the cost of the items are probably a'bit off because I fiddle often with zenny and complexity value of Qualities but have yet to update the value of generated items in the book, since that is time consuming. I intend to update the values before the system is ready for in-depth playtesting.
---------------------------------
Axe, throwing
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Axe Cost: 6 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing Availability: Common
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Range: Medium, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Thrown Reach: 1
Durability: 5
Complexity: 3
Description:
A throwing axe can be accurately thrown up to Medium Range and it can also be used as a melee weapon.
Cavalryman‘s Axe
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Axe Cost: 32 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing and Piercing Availability: Common
Weight: 3 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Cavalry, Pointed, Reach: 1
Weapon Damage II Durability: 5
Complexity: 9
Description:
This is a hatchet-sized axe that resembles a small halberd. It sports a hole in the shaft for a leather strap to be passed around the wrist, assisting in its use while mounted. It‘s designed for use by cavalry. It has a +2 bonus to Weapon Power.
Knuckle duster, pair
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Battle Gloves Cost: 1 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Bludgeoning Availability: Common
Weight: ½ Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blunt Reach: 1
Durability: 5
Complexity: 1
Description:
The knuckle-duster—sometimes called a brass knuckle— is a piece of metal shaped to fit
around the knuckles. Wearing it allows a character to deal lethal damage with unarmed
strikes. Only one glove can be wielded in a hand at a time.
Katar, pair
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Claw Cost: 22 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Piercing or Slashing Availability: Uncommon
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Penetration (piercing), Pointed, Reach: 1
Weapon Damage II Durability: 5
Complexity: 7
Description:
Katars are bladed instruments attached to a frame. The unusual horizontal hand grip allows the triangle-shaped blade to deliver punching-like jabs that tear into organs and penetrate armor. The weapon has a +2 bonus to Weapon Power and can ignore Damage Reduction against piercing attacks. One katar can be worn on each hand.
Nunchakus
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Hammer Cost: 26 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Bludgeoning Availability: Common
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Balanced, Blunt, Double, Reach: 1
Weapon Damage III Durability: 5
Complexity: 11
Description:
Nunchakus are a weapon created by chaining two wooden or metal handles together. It‘s an evolved, more military oriented form of the farming flail. By manipulating the handles so they swing back and forth between the hands, the wielder can surprise enemies by attacking with the weapon from multiple angles. The swinging motion of the handles also serves to amplify the force of the blows.
As a weapon that relies more on grace than strength, they are useful for a character with the Weapon Finesse feat that allows them to use their Reflexes score instead of their Strength score for melee Accuracy rolls.
Nunchakus have a +2 Weapon Power bonus and can be treated as a double weapon.
Tower Shield
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Shield Cost: 64 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing, Bludgeoning Availability: Common
Weight: 20 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 15
Qualities: Blade, Blunt, Cover, Deflection III, Reach: 1
Durable II, Weapon Damage II Durability: 15
Complexity: 17
Description:
This massive shield is nearly as tall as the character it is built for. It gives the wielder a +3 Defense bonus and a +2 bonus to Weapon Power.
As a full round action a tower shield can be used as total cover.
(You will notice that shields are considered a weapon here. This is because in reality shields actually ARE a type of weapon, and metal shields can be used to slash as much as they can be used to bash. Sadly the true offensive abilities of a shield are rarely acknowledged in game systems and other media. I decided I would try to be more accurate. Thus, Radiant Fantasia has Weapon Techniques for shields allowing a wide variety of defensive and offensive abilities to be used that rely on the shield, and they are built as weapons. )
Katana
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Sword Cost: 37 zenny
Critical range: 10-12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Piercing or Slashing Availability: Uncommon
Weight: 2 Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Blade, Keen II, Pointed, Reach: 1
Penetration (slashing) Weapon Damage I Durability: 5
Complexity: 6
Description:
A katana is an extremely sharp sword that can be wielded with one or two hands. The katana has a critical range of 10-12, a +1 Weapon Power bonus, and can ignore Damage Reduction against slashing damage.
Whip, leather
Weapon Class / Types: Melee; Whip Cost: 12 zenny
Critical range: 12 Weapon Damage: Size dependent
Damage Type: Slashing Availability: Common
Weight: ½ Size: Varies
Range: Short, Single Hardness: 5
Qualities: Balanced, Blade, Extend I Reach: 2
Weapon Damage I Durability 5
Complexity: 5
Description:
A leather whip is a weapon with a stiff handle and a flexible tail made of braided leather that is swung at opponents. Although it has no blade, it is capable of causing lacerations due to a knotted throng at the tip and the high velocity the whip swings at. The whip can be used to strike an opponent two rows away. It cannot be double gripped for a damage bonus, but it is perfectly balanced.
This weapon is useful for a character with the Weapon Finesse feat that allows them to use their Reflexes score instead of their Strength score for melee Accuracy rolls.
A leather whip can be made out of special materials such as Tarrasque hide and Dragon hide to gain damage bonuses.
A leather whip has a +1 Weapon Power bonus.
---------------------------------
Anyway, that's probably plenty to give you an idea of how flexible the rules are and how many different types of weapons can be made using them.
Using a modified version of the Weapon rules, other types of items can be made, like armor..........
------------------------------------
Turban
Armor Class / Types: Light; Head Cost: x zenny
Defense: +2
Damage Reduction: -- Availability: Common
Weight: 1 Size: Varies
Max. Reflexes Bonus: -- Hardness: 5
Qualities: Deflection II, Weather (hot) I Durability: 5
Complexity: 2
Description:
This special hat keeps the head cozy and safe from desert sun rays. Wearing it gives a +1 aptitude bonus to Physical Resistance checks made against an intensely hot environment.
Cuirass
Armor Class / Types: Heavy; Body Cost: 100 zenny
Defense: +7
Damage Reduction: Bludgeoning, Slashing, Piercing Availability: Common
Weight: 14 Size: Varies
Max. Reflexes Bonus: 4 Hardness: 20
Qualities: Cumber IV, Curved, Deflection VII, Durability: 20
Durable III, Hinder II, Padded, Plated, Complexity: 26
Weighted VII
Description:
Strong armor that protects the front and back of the torso from blows, usually made from
metal or bone.
-----------------------------------------
.....and food, drink and equipment.
------------------------------------------
Meat, Generic Cooked
Edibles Class / Types: Food; Meat Cost: 3 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Meal Points: 1 Hardness: 1
Fluid Points: 0 Longevity: 3 days
Qualities: Yummy III Durability: 1
Complexity: 3
Description:
Unless otherwise mentioned, consuming a piece of cooked meat is worth 3 meal points
and has no food bonus.
Ambrosia
Edibles Class / Types: Drink; Potion Cost: 122 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Meal Points: 0 Hardness: 1
Fluid Points: 0 Longevity: 17 days
Qualities: Miracle IV, Preserved II Durability: 1
Complexity: 26
Description:
A delicious potion, sometimes called the elixir of life. Those who drink it recover 20
Wound points.
Bandages
Equipment Cost: 11 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Qualities: Consumable, Hardness: 1
Cure (Bleeding), Durability: 1
Talent (Treat Injury; Bleeding) I Complexity: 4
Description:
Bandages can be purchased or improvised with a First aid check from available cloth materials. Successfully bandaging a character will stop bleeding effects on a character.
It also gives a +1 equipment bonus to Treat Injury checks made to treat bleeding.
Bag, Large
Equipment Cost: 27 zenny
Weight: 1 Availability: Common
Qualities: Space XXVI Hardness: 1
Durability: 1
Complexity: 27
Description:
This leather sack can hold up to 27 weight units. For purposes of encumbrance items stored within the bag weigh ½ as much.
Rope, climbing
Equipment Cost: 10 zenny
Weight: 2 Availability: Common
Qualities: Rope I Hardness: 1
Durability: 1
Complexity: 3
Description:
This 60 meter long rope can hold approximately 217 weight units (about the weight of
three human-sized characters). The rope itself weighs 4 weight units. It is useful for
rappelling and climbing.
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Anyway, the item stat blocks are larger than in D&D 3rd edition, or earlier versions, but they do fit nicely on index cards. I intend to have some applications programmed to make it easier for using the rules to make new items, but I'm not a programmer myself. I've been fine tuning the rules with paper and calculator the old fashioned way, but I'd prefer GMs not need to do that to make new items. Before any in-depth playtesting,
I'll try to have a program made that will make it easier to build items.
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