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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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tarrangar said:
Yeah except that hydroponics still need light, Underdark plants don't, which make them much simpler to grow deep underground.

We have an endless emergency industry, raising large amount of lifestock to sacrifice to Yss, Yss take animal sacrifice, and he reward people who sacrifice to him, so farming way more crops than you need, and raising animals you sell to people wanting to sacrifice to Yss for a boon, is a valid industry, and there will always be a market for more animals to sacrifice.

It's not the industry that's most rewarding, but with good tools and fertile soil, you can get quite a bit above subsistence, seeing as even if it's at a low price, you have buyers for all your surplus crops.

If the Fungus forge accept mundane plants as feed stock for growing things, then selling plants to be used as raw materials in it, will also be an industry we can put surplus people in, as we can always use more plant creatures, if nothing else because they can be used as soldiers on other planes.

So we have some industries people can earn money in, that have no cap on how many workers it can support, Yss is insatiable when it comes to minor sacrifices, and he always reward sacrifice, so dedicating an industry to feeding him so he will give more boons, is a way to get everyone in the Imperium paying jobs, doing something that benefits the Imperium.
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And those are not real ways to advance socially. That's just a nicer sort of subsistence.

The key here isn't feeding or housing people. Is allowing up at least the perception of fairness in the system, of existence of options for them to take.

That's not unlike the government deliberately creating dead-end jobs just to reduce unemployment. It goes nowhere, and in this case, there's actual manual labor involved and you have to live in a rural area and, according to you, many would also live far away from "civilization" in far flung colonies and corners of this and other planes, if not work straigh up in caves.

It's a recipee for social instability.
 
Artemis1992 said:
No reason not to educate the people anyway.
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It was pointed out that it is hard to educate the illiterate, or for that matter the gullible, and people are gullible because they do not have the right mindset to question the reality presented to them. They latch onto what is easy to understand, because life is hard enough, and they are discouraged from asking questions like that anyway.
 
Crake said:
It was pointed out that it is hard to educate the illiterate, or for that matter the gullible, and people are gullible because they do not have the right mindset to question the reality presented to them. They latch onto what is easy to understand, because life is hard enough, and they are discouraged from asking questions like that anyway.
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And education is no guarantee versus gullibility, either. See real-life 'wonder-medicines'.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
- The NA in excess of touch applying as all-stacking DR sounds like a nice idea.
-- Adamantine tips shouldn't halve this. Specialty ammo already exists to penetrate the inherent DR.
- I would add all the magical enhancement bonus to AC on top of touch, so the enhancement value of armour, a Ring of Protection or Amulet of Natural Armour or literal Divine/Profane bonuses help. Also, Force effects.
- It being touch up to five range increments, and normal from there, is a decent rule, as long as the range penalties still apply.
- At very short range, I'd give a penalty to targeting creatures larger than Colossal that's similar to range increments: -2 per size smaller than it. That's to represent the difficulty of swivelling a huge cannon in less than one round to hit a relatively small, moving target. Perhaps an addition -2/-4 if they are flying.

All in all, my concerns lie in that it's fairly trivial to boost up attack rolls, and at times this is the equivalent of shooting a moving hummingbird with a rifle from hundreds of feet away.

It's a conumdrum: the closer the target it, it's obviously easier on you to shoot him, but at the same time, when handling a big weapon like this, there's an issue in simply tracking your target.

This is obviously not a design document, but those are my thoughts on the way we should go about it.
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I'd perhaps add provisions for adamantine. Bonus DR against artillery, and grants full AC agaisnt firearms?
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
- The NA in excess of touch applying as all-stacking DR sounds like a nice idea.
-- Adamantine tips shouldn't halve this. Specialty ammo already exists to penetrate the inherent DR.
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And a Adamantine tip wouldn't penetrate inherent DR, leaving you with reduced, but not pierced DR from AC. This is hardly unbalanced.
TotallyNotEvil said:
I would add all the magical enhancement bonus to AC on top of touch, so the enhancement value of armour, a Ring of Protection or Amulet of Natural Armour or literal Divine/Profane bonuses help. Also, Force effects.
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That makes the whole exercise rather pointless, as you are now letting the most common AC boosters go to AC as normal. Might as well not bother right now.

Also, you are trying to treat Magic Armor as Wings of Cover, which seems very, very strange to me. There are enough spells that raise Touch AC, give Dodge bonuses or similar.
TotallyNotEvil said:
- It being touch up to five range increments, and normal from there, is a decent rule, as long as the range penalties still apply.
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Why? The person doesn't get magically harder to hit 1,000 feet out. It's a very, very strange cutoff that has nothing to do with armor at all.
TotallyNotEvil said:
- At very short range, I'd give a penalty to targeting creatures larger than Colossal that's similar to range increments: -2 per size smaller than it. That's to represent the difficulty of swivelling a huge cannon in less than one round to hit a relatively small, moving target. Perhaps an addition -2/-4 if they are flying.
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:jackiechan:

...

Sorry TNE, but you trying to nerf the cannons into oblivion here. These things are meant to be crewed by low-level muggles and you make it impossible for them to actually hit anything. Might as well scrap the whole idea at this rate, because we are now literally better suited by giving them a enchanted bow.

Edit: Seriously. Tanks and anti-air cannons used to be handcranked in WW2 and the Nazis didn't have any fancy magic to make the whole thing friction-less.

Gun traversal is not a problem.
 
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TotallyNotEvil said:
And those are not real ways to advance socially. That's just a nicer sort of subsistence.

The key here isn't feeding or housing people. Is allowing up at least the perception of fairness in the system, of existence of options for them to take.

That's not unlike the government deliberately creating dead-end jobs just to reduce unemployment. It goes nowhere, and in this case, there's actual manual labor involved and you have to live in a rural area and, according to you, many would also live far away from "civilization" in far flung colonies and corners of this and other planes, if not work straigh up in caves.

It's a recipee for social instability.
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You do have options for advancement, you can save up for studying magic, you can sign up with the Legion, you can save up until you can afford a magic item to improve your farm work, at which point you can use it to increase your profits, so it's not really a dead-end, it's a way to sponsor you while you reach for something better, there's nothing saying you have to remain there forever, it's simply a way for you to earn some money, so you can pay for whatever your real dream is, although if you are the type to enjoy the quiet life like that, you might decide to stay there.

And working in caves might suck, but just because you work in them, don't mean you have to live in them, we can build train networks down to the caves, so cave farming is a day job, and where you actually live is a city on the surface, of course unless you prefer living in your cave.

It's not ideal of course, but it's better than nothing, and it's better than not getting to choose how long you want to live for.

It's not like most of the normal problems with physical labor apply, the access to healing magic, mean that you aren't going to be worn down by it, so it wont reduce your lifespan, or make give you any lasting pains.

With good transportation so you don't have to live in rural areas if you don't want, such jobs would be no worse than factory jobs, and while such jobs aren't great, it's still a lot better than nothing.
 
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Azel said:
:jackiechan:

...

Sorry TNE, but you trying to nerf the cannons into oblivion here. These things are meant to be crewed by low-level muggles and you make it impossible for them to actually hit anything. Might as well scrap the whole idea at this rate, because we are now literally better suited by giving them a enchanted bow.
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I usually try to stay out of discussions like this, but I have to voice my support for this point. The cannons would be far less useful against the things they are actually designed to fight. From what I understand it giving the mundanes a chance against at least mid level monsters is the whole point of cannons. Kind of like WHF where if you have a big enough army you can shoot the daemon.
 
DragonParadox said:
I usually try to stay out of discussions like this, but I have to voice my support for this point. The cannons would be far less useful against the things they are actually designed to fight. From what I understand it giving the mundanes a chance against at least mid level monsters is the whole point of cannons. Kind of like WHF where if you have a big enough army you can shoot the daemon.
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Precisely.

If we add so many modifiers and special rules that anything CR 10+ is de-facto invulnerable to cannons, we could have just spared us the whole song and dance and made some fancy Dragonbone Bows +3 Ranged, Heartseeking. It would be more efficient that way.

To say nothing about our cannons being flat out useless in comparison to fully magical artillery like we looted from the Efreeit.

Edit: Just to be clear on this. They have range-increments, DR and a host of other problems to content with. Efreeti Magic-Guns? None of that. Deal a ton of damage against touch AC.
 
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DragonParadox said:
I usually try to stay out of discussions like this, but I have to voice my support for this point. The cannons would be far less useful against the things they are actually designed to fight. From what I understand it giving the mundanes a chance against at least mid level monsters is the whole point of cannons. Kind of like WHF where if you have a big enough army you can shoot the daemon.
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Kind of why the human empire (see torroar's quest for example) is still around, although it doesn't consist of magical creatures. Kind of why our legions aren't completely meaningless when fighting versus low to lower-mid level monsters.
 
I might as well also weigh in on the force effect discussion too. Let's take an example.
  1. A low level Warrior is trying to murder an equally puny wizard.
  2. He rolls 10 on his modified attack roll, barely enough to hit the not-very-well-coordinated mage
  3. Now if the wizard has Mage Armor what happens in fluff? The sword twists in the hand and is deflected.
  4. What if instead of a sword our friend the wizard got hit in the face with a supersonic projectile? I would say the weak force-field he is sporting that can't even reliably repel swords propelled by human muscle isn't going to do much to save him
In conclusion not all force effects are equal.
 
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People, check this out!
Guest lecturers:
Each week, each guest lecturer rolls a Profession (instructor) or Diplomacy or Bluff check. If they stayed less than a full week but for at least a day, subtract 5 per day of the week where they weren't there. Bonuses that last a short time may not be used. Add a synergy bonus of +2 per 5 ppintspof bonus they have in the other skills listed above, and possibly in any relevant Knowledge skills. Divide the result by 10 (minimum 1). That is the number of spellcasters who level. If possible, spellcasters of the same class (or same source) as the guest lecturer level, but this can vary depending on what is being taught (teaching Alchemy to Sorcerers could allow a Duskblades to make Sorcerers level).
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This is the actual Scholarum rule for guest teachers as it is now.
Just...
Ugh.
I don't know if I should laugh or cry.
I definitely wrote it myself: it has that "ppintspof" typo that my phone's buggy autocorrect routinely produces, it has the kind of weirdly worded mechanics that I love writing (see the way the numbers of days of lecturing affects the final roll), and it's a self-contained (no references to other rules or tables, can be followed step-by-step once a month when needed) complex system with several subsequent rolls that I love designing despite how stupid they are.

So I AM NOT ASKING FOR THE FRONT PAGE TO BE MODIFIED OR FOR ANY RULES TO BE CHANGED.

But gamers of the thread, how would you have changed this? Any wording tips for me?
I still regularly design my own systems for oneshots with friends, and about half of them are this complex or more (the others are extremely simplified stuff for quick games). I have a group that likes detailed rules that don't all have to be learned off by heart, building off a simple base system that's used regularly. The idea being that the "everyday" rolls are simple and intuitive, but that irregular systems (like grappling, resource management for a kingdom, or Warp travel in 40k games) should be complex as long as they can be followed step-by-step by reading the rules on the rare occasions when they come up.
But I still aim to get better at this sort of game design thing.
Any advice?

I'm thinking I should have written it as a maths-style formula.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
It's a recipee for social instability.
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I figured we could address that with delegation, teleportation, and well. Religion.

Yss can hear your prayers from the other end of the universe. When you say them. So...

Keeping a social identity and stability should be doable though it runs into the problem of "there's only so much Viserys to go around".

So am I understanding the issue correctly or?
 
From the front page:
DragonParadox said:
Horio's life would have likely continued apace had he not chanced upon a ancient tome forgotten among one of his patrons library with contained most extraordinary lore. It spoke of power beyond that of clinking coin and sonorous names, of bargains that could be made for far greater stakes than he had ever dared to dream of. Twas then that Horio of Tyrosh discovered that he was not so far removed from the gambler of his youth. He won his prize but would have lost it all but two months later had the scales not been tipped in his scales beyond hope by the hand of agents of the Dragon King.
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Holy shit. This guy died a level 8 spellcaster two months after "winning his prize"?
Does this mean he learned magic and then got 8 levels in 2 months? That must have been some gamble he took to get that power! He probably retrained a few Expert levels into Sorcerer levels, but that's still damn impressive. I can see why he wants a quiet life now!
 
Azel said:
Why? The person doesn't get magically harder to hit 1,000 feet out. It's a very, very strange cutoff that has nothing to do with armor at all.
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So you are saying there should be no range penalties at all?
Azel said:
And a Adamantine tip wouldn't penetrate inherent DR, leaving you with reduced, but not pierced DR from AC. This is hardly unbalanced.
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Unless their DR was already adamantine.

My point with the sky-high natural AC was: what if they are already as tough as adamantine?

At some point, your projectile would need to be adamantine to compete evenly.
Azel said:
Edit: Seriously. Tanks and anti-air cannons used to be handcranked in WW2 and the Nazis didn't have any fancy magic to make the whole thing friction-less.
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Go and try to hit a nimble helicopter with a handcranked cannon, then.
Azel said:
To say nothing about our cannons being flat out useless in comparison to fully magical artillery like we looted from the Efreeit.
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Except for the part where the magical cannons have to get past immunities, resistances, SR and touch AC.

So, if you roll againt flat Touch AC, you are going to have people only missing the Balor on a nat 1.
 
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TalonofAnathrax said:
From the front page:

Holy shit. This guy died a level 8 spellcaster two months after "winning his prize"?
Does this mean he learned magic and then got 8 levels in 2 months? That must have been some gamble he took to get that power! He probably retrained a few Expert levels into Sorcerer levels, but that's still damn impressive. I can see why he wants a quiet life now!
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Most of that was retraining.
 
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