grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Late 1e - specialization first appeared in the original Unearthed Arcana book.
Dungeons and Dragons Megathread
- Thread starter Havocfett
- Start date
Dakkaface
Extra Shooty Wordsmith
Constitution scores are never triple digits and usually under 20. We only ever used firearms as nonmagical items so they were never further complicated. It is extremely easy to track Con damage separately from HP, but if your party is going all in on guns, then it's actually makes for much speedier combats for anything that isn't supernaturally tough or regenerative. It also makes for extremely good combos with Fort save spells and poisons you otherwise wouldn't use, since it penalizes their saves.
I will concede that there is some extra math in doing Con damage since it also lowers max HP & saves, but my DM for that campaign had a spreadsheet that did the math for him so that wasn't an issue. You just need a monster's hit dice and Con score and you can make a spreadsheet that quickly spits out Fort Save and Max HP penalties for a given damage number. Copy the formula into a few more cells and you can track a whole combat.
Really there's multiple ways to handle firearms and this fix falls firmly on the more deadly 'collapsed lung' side rather than the heroic 'just a flesh wound.' D&D in general lies on the more absurd end of 'just a flesh wound,' to be honest.
It's really not about how much you spend on magic items - it's about explicitly making HP into near-misses, scrapes, and effort expended to not get hit, and turning Con into your actual health score. This is very similar to how Star Wars' d20 split health into Vitality and Wounds, just not creating a new stat for it. It explicitly puts a cap on how tough characters and monsters actually are, and makes it so you can't take a swim in lava just because you killed a bunch of stuff in the Underdark and have 200 HP. If you prefer lower powered campaigns with more lethal stakes and less outright combat, it works very well.
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Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
So, I've got two versions of the same Maneuver to use as a showcase of how I want to handle scaling with the Silverblood Night maneuvers:
Basically, instead of just incrementing the damage, it's incrementing damage scaling and using an on-average better damage type. The third "stage" is 1d10 Acid and 1d3(2 flat?) Con poison per 2 IL, with backlash being a direct fraction of the damage dealt. Not sure whether I want that stuff(the rapidly scaling Con poison) to be 7th and 8th or just 8th, to be honest. Also, these two particular maneuvers skip reloading. Like, you can use them with an unloaded Heavy Crossbow and not need the Rapid Reload feat to pull it as a Standard Action. Good for getting lots of shots out.
Fluff-wise, the Burnsilver concoction is the second because people kept making themselves explode whenever they tried to make it mid-combat.
...Have the 1st level Stance, too:
It's fairly minor self-healing, particularly given all the backlash damage in the Discipline. 1/4 IL per attack isn't much compared to a decent Divine Spirit rotation, and, as the two Strikes I've shown prove, it only mitigates HP costs with that Maneuver bonus. Would it be better to have the restriction be "hit an enemy within 25 ft. of you," so that outranging "smaller" targets(Large with Reach is only 20 ft.) with the ranged support options works out? In general, would this work better as a set of Shadowcasting paths or Invocations, instead of a Martial Discipline? Main reason I went with a Discipline is because they're the main melee + exotics setup I know of that's accepting of deeper shenanigans. Desert Wind is Ki use, after all.
Hardsilver Quickshot
Silverblood Night(Strike)
Level: Crusader 2, ???
Initiation Action: 1 Standard action
Prerequisites: None
Range: Touch
Target: One ranged weapon
Duration: Instantaneous
A drop of treated blood to a speck of hardened silver. A responsive shot to open for a punishing blow
Using the first, and safest, of the Sliverblood concoctions, you create a projectile for a ranged weapon you are wielding in the same motion as readying it to fire, then let loose the stained silver. Make an attack with a ranged weapon you have, without expending a unit of ammunition or needing to load the weapon. This attack deals 1d6 Piercing damage per four Initiator Levels and the target must make a DC 12 + your Dexterity modifer Reflex save or be Flatfooted until the start of your next turn, in addition to the normal effects of an attack with that weapon. Initiating this Maneuver also costs 3 HP
Silverblood Night(Strike)
Level: Crusader 2, ???
Initiation Action: 1 Standard action
Prerequisites: None
Range: Touch
Target: One ranged weapon
Duration: Instantaneous
A drop of treated blood to a speck of hardened silver. A responsive shot to open for a punishing blow
Using the first, and safest, of the Sliverblood concoctions, you create a projectile for a ranged weapon you are wielding in the same motion as readying it to fire, then let loose the stained silver. Make an attack with a ranged weapon you have, without expending a unit of ammunition or needing to load the weapon. This attack deals 1d6 Piercing damage per four Initiator Levels and the target must make a DC 12 + your Dexterity modifer Reflex save or be Flatfooted until the start of your next turn, in addition to the normal effects of an attack with that weapon. Initiating this Maneuver also costs 3 HP
Burnsilver Quickshot
Silverblood Night(Strike)
Level: Crusader 4, ???
Initiation Action: 1 Standard action
Prerequisites: 1 Silverblood Night Maneuver
Range: Touch
Target: One ranged weapon
Duration: Instantaneous
A drop of tinged blood to a speck of burning silver. A hasty shot to open for a vicious blow
Using the second, and simplest, of the Sliverblood concoctions, you create a projectile for a ranged weapon you are wielding in the same motion as readying it to fire, then let loose the unstable silver. Make an attack with a ranged weapon you have, without expending a unit of ammunition or needing to load the weapon. This attack deals 1d8 Fire damage per three Initiator Levels and the target must make a DC 14 + your Dexterity modifer Reflex save or be Flatfooted until the start of your next turn, in addition to the normal effects of an attack with that weapon. Initiating this Maneuver also costs 6 HP and deals 1d6 Fire damage to you.
Silverblood Night(Strike)
Level: Crusader 4, ???
Initiation Action: 1 Standard action
Prerequisites: 1 Silverblood Night Maneuver
Range: Touch
Target: One ranged weapon
Duration: Instantaneous
A drop of tinged blood to a speck of burning silver. A hasty shot to open for a vicious blow
Using the second, and simplest, of the Sliverblood concoctions, you create a projectile for a ranged weapon you are wielding in the same motion as readying it to fire, then let loose the unstable silver. Make an attack with a ranged weapon you have, without expending a unit of ammunition or needing to load the weapon. This attack deals 1d8 Fire damage per three Initiator Levels and the target must make a DC 14 + your Dexterity modifer Reflex save or be Flatfooted until the start of your next turn, in addition to the normal effects of an attack with that weapon. Initiating this Maneuver also costs 6 HP and deals 1d6 Fire damage to you.
Basically, instead of just incrementing the damage, it's incrementing damage scaling and using an on-average better damage type. The third "stage" is 1d10 Acid and 1d3(2 flat?) Con poison per 2 IL, with backlash being a direct fraction of the damage dealt. Not sure whether I want that stuff(the rapidly scaling Con poison) to be 7th and 8th or just 8th, to be honest. Also, these two particular maneuvers skip reloading. Like, you can use them with an unloaded Heavy Crossbow and not need the Rapid Reload feat to pull it as a Standard Action. Good for getting lots of shots out.
Fluff-wise, the Burnsilver concoction is the second because people kept making themselves explode whenever they tried to make it mid-combat.
...Have the 1st level Stance, too:
Adrenal Coagulation
Silverblood Night(Stance)
Level: Crusader 1, ???
Prerequisites: None
Initiation Action: 1 Standard action
Range: Personal
Target: Self
Duration: Stance
Blood flowing slow, heart running fast. Clinging to what would have been knocked out to drag it back in.
While you are in this stance, your blood flows with a mixture that makes wounds bleed slowly, while also holding onto otherwise lost vital energies for moments. Whenever you take HP damage, it is moved to a delayed damage pool with a maximum quantity equal to your ranks in Craft(Alchemy). Damage that would exceed the maximum of the pool, and damage remaining in the pool at the start of your turn, is dealt to your HP. HP restoration can heal damage from the delayed damage pool or normal HP, at your discretion. This Stance stacks with other Delayed Damage pools, such as the Crusader's Steely Resolve class feature.
Additionally, whenever you deal damage with a melee attack, you restore health equal to one-quarter(1/4) of your Initiator Level. If that attack is a Strike from the Silverblood Night discipline, it restores additional health equal to the level of the Maneuver.
Silverblood Night(Stance)
Level: Crusader 1, ???
Prerequisites: None
Initiation Action: 1 Standard action
Range: Personal
Target: Self
Duration: Stance
Blood flowing slow, heart running fast. Clinging to what would have been knocked out to drag it back in.
While you are in this stance, your blood flows with a mixture that makes wounds bleed slowly, while also holding onto otherwise lost vital energies for moments. Whenever you take HP damage, it is moved to a delayed damage pool with a maximum quantity equal to your ranks in Craft(Alchemy). Damage that would exceed the maximum of the pool, and damage remaining in the pool at the start of your turn, is dealt to your HP. HP restoration can heal damage from the delayed damage pool or normal HP, at your discretion. This Stance stacks with other Delayed Damage pools, such as the Crusader's Steely Resolve class feature.
Additionally, whenever you deal damage with a melee attack, you restore health equal to one-quarter(1/4) of your Initiator Level. If that attack is a Strike from the Silverblood Night discipline, it restores additional health equal to the level of the Maneuver.
It's fairly minor self-healing, particularly given all the backlash damage in the Discipline. 1/4 IL per attack isn't much compared to a decent Divine Spirit rotation, and, as the two Strikes I've shown prove, it only mitigates HP costs with that Maneuver bonus. Would it be better to have the restriction be "hit an enemy within 25 ft. of you," so that outranging "smaller" targets(Large with Reach is only 20 ft.) with the ranged support options works out? In general, would this work better as a set of Shadowcasting paths or Invocations, instead of a Martial Discipline? Main reason I went with a Discipline is because they're the main melee + exotics setup I know of that's accepting of deeper shenanigans. Desert Wind is Ki use, after all.
- Location
- Somewhere
I'll note that giving healing abilities without sharply limited uses per day is not generally considered to be good. Martial classes are not intended to be able to function in a party without a divine caster for healing. Removing the need for one of the 4 basic archetypes tends to be the first sign that a build is overpowered.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
No. It has been done in late 3.5. It works. Also, divine casters are more Op than martials, so removing OP classes is in fact good game design.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
...that... I did not think of. You'd really only be able to trigger the situation by burning your Swift Action to change Stance after doing something to inflict self damage, but it's clearly a bug. Acid or Negative Energy is the question for what to convert it to...
Divine Spirit probably has better sustain. Remember, there's health costs. The worst abuse I can think of is a variation the old 3e Whirlwind/Cleave with... some item I can't remember the exact name of. That item generates infinite targets to whack with life drain/whirlwind. This exploit is naturally solved by restricting to getting only as much health as it takes to kill the enemy, recycling the wording from Vampiric Touch to do so.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
Not really, you could get damaged bfore you act and then switch stance with damage in the pool. Just add a line like this: "When you end this stance with damage remaining in the pool, that damage is dealt to you HP." No damage conversion, yoou just take it.
Divine Spirit has better sustain than this discipline so far, you can heal others with Divine Spirit while this one appears to be self-healing only.
- Location
- Somewhere
You mean Devoted Spirit? The Crusader exclusive style? So, another divine class.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
What is a divine class? There are divine casters, but a crusader ain't one.
- Location
- Somewhere
It's more of an archetype thing. To me at least. Healing magic comes from the gods (or from necromancy) The Crusader is basically the wuxia version of the Paladin, so it doesn't mess up the archetype. It's still drawing from the same well.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Well, healing others can work with some of the fluff(life force manipulation via Alchemy is how the life drain and delayed damage work). Probably going to use a make-a-potion Boost to basically store health overflows from the larger life steal instances. Might make a life transfer Boost to be able to shoot people and heal for the difference of the attack damage and the sacrificed health.
Not a caster, though. And it costs very little to get access as another class. Also, Crusader is Divine themed. It does not use an actual Divine power source. Hell, several of the healing Maneuvers are just flat Extraordinary abilities, not even Supernatural, let alone Spell-Like, let alone actually Divine.
...Oh, what about hypermundane Medicine, or arcane potion creation. Or the fact that numerous first-party sources separate Divine power from gods, or even any sort of entity at all and have it purely be about faith(admittedly, it's a little setting dependent). Hell, the Monk has a literally identical self-heal to the Paladin(except scaling with Wis instead of Con, and lacking heal-other options) and Psionics has healing of its own, right in it's initial sourcebook.
Healing has never been the exclusive domain of the Cleric and Paladin in 3.5. Druids are Divine casters with healing access, and they get their power purely from nature, no god required.
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- Somewhere
The gods being a generic term for sources pf divine power, for one. Psionic healing, at least as I recall was extremely limited and worked via granting fast healing and accelerating the body's natural processes. Also, as far as I know pretty much all Devoted Spirit abilities were Supernatural, though I can check. Monk is unusual and always was, because ki is so vaguely defined, but monk had the lowest healing potential out of any of those mentioned, such that it was pretty much never relevant outside of keeping him in the fight for another few rounds as opposed to being able to stay topped off at all times like a constant passive percentage of damage dealt ability would.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
Explain bards, those are arcane. And Druids. Rangers. Any guy with a wand of Cure light wounds. Factotums. Dragons. Spirit shamans. Any wizard with Arcan Domain (healing).
Since the delayed damage pool is integral to the discipline, it might be better to move it from a stance to referencing the class feature from the crusader. Or just make a hunter class and give it 3-4 disciplines connencted to various styles.
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- Location
- Somewhere
I did explain druids and rangers in a prior post. Bards originally were based on druidic traditions, although I'll note that in 2e they couldn't heal and used the wizard spell list. Dragons could always cast divine spells, in 2e they actually had separate sets of spell slots to do it, drawing on the power of the two Archetypes, Bahamut and Tiamat. I don't even know what the fuck a factotum is because the last time I heard that word in reference to d&d it meant "ranking officer in a Sigil faction". And "arcane domains" are something from a book where nothing is canon to any setting ever produced, and is explicitly a "yeah whatever" book with random shit tossed in. Wands are made by people who can cast that spell.
- Location
- Somewhere
I'm double posting because this next thing is in a completely different topic, and here I'm asking a question.
What is the best set of rules for resolving mass combat? I'm planning on setting up a conquest/rulership style campaign, in the vein of Kingmaker but in a homebrew setting. I'm familiar with the pathfinder one, and with the old Battlesystem rules, but I was wondering if anyone had other suggestions.
What is the best set of rules for resolving mass combat? I'm planning on setting up a conquest/rulership style campaign, in the vein of Kingmaker but in a homebrew setting. I'm familiar with the pathfinder one, and with the old Battlesystem rules, but I was wondering if anyone had other suggestions.
- Location
- Michigan
Arcane magic is technically divine, it comes from a god. XD
Information: Okay all you fuckers
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
okay all you fuckers
I've just gone through the thread and grown the threadmark number from 1 to 100, I've threadmarked every piece of homebrew which was not literally unusable or unfinished, and I want you to know it was horrible. That said, this thread has a prodigious amount of homebrew which I think it is important and well to keep track of, for the shared benefit of everyone who post or visit this thread. Therefore, I am willing to make up to two regulars thread collaborators in order to allow them to threadmark posts and to ensure that I or @Havocfett do not have to be tagged every time. The threadmark list is not yet chronological and will be cleaned up further in the coming days, but until then, do enjoy.
Upon request from @Revlid, I have not threadmarked his homebrew as he will assemble his own collection, which I will threadmark when he has done so.
Have a good day.
Upon request from @Revlid, I have not threadmarked his homebrew as he will assemble his own collection, which I will threadmark when he has done so.
Have a good day.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
Only in Frogotten Realms. In Eberron, for example, it's unclear if gods exist. Divine magic still works. In Dark Sun arcane magic eats life.
In reverse order: wands can be made by 2 classes (artificer and warlock) that specifically don't cast divine spells. the factotum is a base class from Dungeonscape. Arcane domain is a feat from Complete Arcane, this lets wizard borrow a spell from a domain 1/day. Like a domain lets a cleric cast a wizard spell, but in reverse. Dragons can (3E) cst both arcane and divine spell as arcane, no gods required. Bards can in 3E heal as arcane casters, but there is a divine adapataion as optional rule, it references the bard's origins as druid derivative.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
I would strongly advise that you don't make the self-inflicted damage of any specific energy type. If you do, players will find a way to avoid taking it by getting resistance or immunity to that energy type and ruin whatever sort of balancing effect that taking the damage was supposed to provide.
Lots to catch up on from the past day or so....
But do the D&D rules provide much support for actually playing characters like that? Fighters have limited or no access to Bluff, Disguise and Stealth skills in most editions, so playing a guile hero like Odysseus doesn't seem very feasible. Want to be a high mobility swordsman like a swashbuckler? I can tell you from experience that it's extremely hard to do without a PrC, because Fighters don't get Tumble. Most of the characters you listed would have to be a rogue or a bard.
D&D has historically been really rigid and closed-minded when it came to making everyone stay in their assigned niche. (And no, I don't consider that a good thing.)
Having to drag around a bunch of NPC sidekicks strikes me as more of a liability than a benefit, at least in your typical campaign where you're part of an adventuring party. Remember the discussion a few pages back about how hard it is to keep a party's horses alive in a mid-level game? A bunch of 1st level warriors would be the same way. Not to mention crowding up the battlemap and slowing down combat by giving the GM way more NPCs to keep track of.
And if it's not a typical campaign and building and army is part of the story... then that's something that anyone can roleplay without needing a specific class ability.
Eh... if I wanted combat to be realistically lethal, I wouldn't be using the D20 system for the campaign. I'd be using Shadowrun or Savage Worlds or White Wolf or FATE or Fading Suns or any of the many, many RPG systems where characters have a damage track that doesn't grow as they advance and getting shot or stabbed remains a serious threat throughout. D20 has a more cinematic approach. The whole point of hit points, in my opinion, is to allow for the "just a flesh wound" trope, where heroes know how to roll with the punches and only ever get bruises and shallow wounds until the end. I prefer to look at hit points that way, as a middle ground between the "I can be full of holes and not even notice" approach that hit points imply and the "vitality point" one.
(The "vitality point" approach, when used with typical D&D rules, creates its own set of problems, in my opinion. If the blow didn't really connect on a non-critical hit, then why does it only take a normal hit and not a crit to poison someone? And if running low on HP is just you exhausting yourself with dodges, then why does it take weeks of rest to recover them without magic?)
And in Dragonlance, where Wizards are explicitly nothing but Speciality Clerics of the Moon Trio.
The Factotum's healing ability takes the form of them praying to a random assortment of deities until something works.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
Given that in pretty much every D&D cosmology there's an entire plane of Positive Energy, which heals people, and nearly every kind of spellcaster has spells that summon things from other planes, I don't see any metaphysical reason that deities would have exclusive control over healing magic.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
That's the proppa orky way.
I could be cheeky and suggest Chainmail, right
?3E has a mass comabt system in Miniatures Handbook, I don't suggest you use it but take a look at it.
5E has an Unearthed Arcana article on mass combat system.
- Location
- Drachyench on Discord
@The Narrator in 2E only Rogues and - to degrees - Bards had access to Stealth (which, at that time, was divided into two different skills of Hiding and Moving Silently) in the PHB, with Rangers also having it but advancing at a static rate per-Level. Bluffing was not a skill whatsoever in the PHB (other books eventually added it, but until then it was basically just "roleplay it and the DM will wing it"), while Disguise belonged to the optional non-Weapon Proficiency system (and by optional I mean so optional that one of the rules for it was "Fuck the class tables write a list of the things your character would plausibily have Proficiency in and give it to them").
2E was huge on the emphasis of roleplaying.
Also re:Specialization (while Fighters only got the 10% EXP bonus with Str), ranged weapons progressed at the same rate of additional attacks and were generally more accurate (+2 to hit occurring at Dex 17-18, Str 18/51+ meaning you had a 1/12 chance of +2 at Chargen with Dex v 1/72 of +2 or better w/ Str; Additionally Specialization in melee gave +1 to hit +2 damage while ranged gave +2 to hit at point blank range (30' bows, 60' crossbows) and let you fire at Initiative "first" if you began the round nocked and drawn / loaded and cocked).
2E was huge on the emphasis of roleplaying.
Also re:Specialization (while Fighters only got the 10% EXP bonus with Str), ranged weapons progressed at the same rate of additional attacks and were generally more accurate (+2 to hit occurring at Dex 17-18, Str 18/51+ meaning you had a 1/12 chance of +2 at Chargen with Dex v 1/72 of +2 or better w/ Str; Additionally Specialization in melee gave +1 to hit +2 damage while ranged gave +2 to hit at point blank range (30' bows, 60' crossbows) and let you fire at Initiative "first" if you began the round nocked and drawn / loaded and cocked).
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
I'm not sure I can recall any instance of somebody actually using the mass combat rules. In my experience, GMs usually handle mass combat by making it a background event rather than trying to play out the whole thing and roll dice, and focusing instead on the small but crucial portion of it that the PCs are participating in.
The only one I can think of that you haven't mentioned already is that Star Wars Saga Edition had a mass combat system where a company-sized infantry unit would be treated as a single, Colossal-sized creature (or was it Colossal {frigate} sized?) on a battle map with a scale similar to that used for space combat (so Colossal was only one square). Units and vehicles would then move around the map and deal damage to each other. The units' combined attacks were considered vehicle scale, I believe. The other details are a bit hazy, but I can look it up when I get home.