The Gaming Den

Okay, here's some more about runes:

You can totally buy scrolls of runes which you can copy onto something to give it properties or spell-likes.

Now, it's a bit complicated.

First, the person who knows how the runes work makes the scroll, using a spellcraft check (DC based on the spell level, specifics not worked out). Or you could have a Decipher Rune skill (Other possible names: Runecraft or simply Runic) to deal with that. Whatever. I'm working on Lite right now.

Then the person doing the crafting has to make some kind of craft check to successfully copy them in someway onto the item. And, depending on the runes used, they must be activated (the runes names' said, have blood ran over them, whatever). Some runic sets have specific activations, some have several general methods (Dwarven Crafting Runes: You must at least make an acknowledgement of the dwarven gods. If you make an actual bona-fide offering, they may look with approval on you and make it work a bit better or forgive a minor error or something.)

Anyways, it goes without saying that someone without runes

So, considering anyone who can copy a bunch of symbols correctly (in some cases), runic formulas are often closely guarded. Sometimes they're destroyed after they're used. But you can totally find them as treasure.

And, if they're treasure, I suggest they always be perfectly written down and ready to be used. If you have a few extra testicles, you can even skip having them deciphered.

That's my suggestion, anyway.

Anyway, I'm not sure about the DCs involved, though. Something people could use at relatively low level...Maybe DC 10 as a base, and, oh, I dunno how to scale it. Spell-likes would have a scaling DC in accordance to spell level (except for some crap like Polar Ray) and properties would scale by magnitude.

I'm open to suggestions about the exact specifics of the DCs. On one hand, I want to make them possible to use. On another, it's easy to pump up a skill check. I toyed with the idea of letting people imbue multiple properties at once and the DCs just add, but sufficiently determined skillmongering could easily let you bling out a single item with a ton of low-level properties, often in a day's time.

Even more rune stuff!

Not all runic alphabets can do everything. The celestial alphabets, for example, excluded certain unsavory effects, such as creating undead and draining life. You don't care about this too much in Lite, because the runes are just there for spell-like abilities. But I have to lay groundwork, so...

So Runic alphabets have tags of what they can handle. Some types of tags include...

Alignment: Get spells with that alignment
Energy: Get spells with that energy type
Arcane or Divine
Class spell lists
Pretty much any spell tag, such as mind-affecting or fear
A school of spells

And the way the runic proficiency works is like this:

You can be taught a runic alphabet, you can learn it on your own, or you can try to decipher it from scratch, in order of easiest to hardest DCs.

Gaining proficiency requires a skill check. Or maybe an Int check. Whatever. Point is, you spend some time, you make the check. If you succeed, you gain Basic proficiency in a runic alphabet.

And there's three levels of proficiency: Basic, Advanced, and Expert.

For a rough guide...

Basic: Lets you do spells of level 0-3, and Minor properties.

Advanced: Lets you do spells of 3-6, and Moderate properties.

Expert: Lets you do spells of 7-9, and Major properties.

Going up in your Rune Mastery requires some more time and another skill check. And it require more time because you have to expand your vocabulary and learn the right order or whatever. Since they're pretty much arbitrary symbols this can be a while.

That said, there are codexes and everything which can give you a bonus to picking up runes.

The issue with runes is that they are an advancement scheme that has never been used in D&D. When you learn a rune or set of runes, you add new powers onto your character that can be taught to others for free. The skill check may put some kind of limit on just how much power they will add to a low level character, but it'll also create a huge gap between what a wizard can pull off and what a fighter can pull off.

zeruslord wrote:The issue with runes is that they are an advancement scheme that has never been used in D&D. When you learn a rune or set of runes, you add new powers onto your character that can be taught to others for free. The skill check may put some kind of limit on just how much power they will add to a low level character, but it'll also create a huge gap between what a wizard can pull off and what a fighter can pull off.

Yeah, I know. I'm having to pull some stuff out here. This is the basics of Hardcore as well.

For Soft/Lite, you could just find scrolls around and use those to enchant items. Or be given them as rewards or something. It's only fair to let the PCs play with them, too, so I'd have to have rules on how they're made.

The regulation comes into being when they're an alternate system of magic item creation--since magic items take time now, it takes just as much time to use runes as it would to be doing it in the vein of Craft Magic Arms and Armor, with the spells and stuff.

But here's the nice bit: You don't have to be a caster to use runes. You just need the right skills. You seriously could have an expert. Or a rogue. Or make a Races of War background and start with it start off with it. Or acquire the skill in-game by being taught the basic.

Hardcore is a different story. I'd be throwing around an entirely new resource to management, which could be used by anyone and therefore would be jealously guarded by the religions and the wizards. I'd want to be sure about it before I really tried to use it, although I have the basics in my head now (and partially on here).

As a total aside (unrelated to runes), I really like the symmetry of being able to enchant a blade by carefully crafting it and infusing it with magic over a period of months, or by dipping it in the blood of a freshly slain dragon.

This reinforces the Adventurers Do It Faster™ philosophy, where most wizards grow old slowly and safely accumulating power through research in their towers.

Thank you.

Heh, I'm going on about runes because they're the only new thing I can't completely abstract. I've simplified Craft some (still need to fiddle with creation times for both mundane and magical items), and I've written a few feats.

But the materials and the Drama option are remarkably abstract and boil down to "Rule of Cool". If you want to inscribe prayers on your sword with slightly acidic ink which has your blood mixed with it...That's awesome, and should be encouraged.

If you want to make an evil sword or axe or dagger, you could make an extremely evil sword by bleeding a couple of hundred people dry and using some process to extract the iron from their blood. A magic sacrificial dagger *should* be screaming with the death-pain of the sacrifices after
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That said, I think I need to flesh out the actual runic alphabets and what they're used for. The Dwarven Creation Runes are a big one, but I think I'd like to have a Good/Celestial set, an Evil/Fiendish set, one which is big on blasting/arcane magic, a Necromancy-based set, and...I dunno, one which is powered by a cosmic horror. Or maybe Fey.

I also have an idea that each set has some special properties which are more or less unique, and, usually, are earned in-game. Like Razilic (the Celestial runes) have a minor property in which your dedicate the weapon or armor to fighting or resisting evil and it gets some bonuses against Evil. It's more or less a light version of the SRD Holy Property.

Or, heck, a common version could be Bane (Evil) or Bane (Good) or Bane (Ork) or whatever.

But I'd like there to be some awesome stuff which you could get as a reward, and these super-special properties would almost always entail direct recognition and approval of the forces powering the runes involved, which you can do in-game. If you're an elf and you protect an elf forest from an orc warlord, you may totally gain the attention of the elven gods, who may give the nod for you getting a special elven property on something--maybe lightening your armor, or increasing its AC bonus, or whatever. You may even get it if you aren't an elf.

...And wow, I must like the runes. I mostly came up with that off the top of my head...

That's all well and good, but I'd prefer, for the moment, somewhat tighter Material and Drama options. It's okay if the original seed is the Rule of Cool and the final rules can be boiled down to Rule of Cool, but even if Drama and Materials are world or even campaign specific, I would like to see them fleshed out for one game.

zeruslord wrote:That's all well and good, but I'd prefer, for the moment, somewhat tighter Material and Drama options. It's okay if the original seed is the Rule of Cool and the final rules can be boiled down to Rule of Cool, but even if Drama and Materials are world or even campaign specific, I would like to see them fleshed out for one game.

Well, Drama really does boil down to...drama, of whatever kind. For timing, the simplest is about anniversaries, certain dates on the calender (full moons, solstices, equinoxes, midseason)...But if you want a specific example...

I remember something in Dragonlance which says the Dragonorbs (just your usual artifact-level dragonbait) were forged on the Night of Eye, when all three kinds of magic were at their strongest and the creation was done by wizards of all three kinds--good, neutral, and evil--working together.

So the Dragonlance novels, at least, had a Drama/Timing thing going on with magic and the waxings and wanings of the three moons. And the fact that good, neutral, and evil wizards were all working together for one goal added some extra punch to that, I guess.

How much punch it added, I can't say.

And I really don't want to make a hard-and-fast table of how much a specific kind of Drama speeds things along.

And Materials comes down to pseudoscience, Rule of Cool, and whatever else you want to throw in.

Now, if you want specifics for a specific campaign, I'd be glad to dig up my notes for a setting I was working on, which had things like magical sites of various properties and alignments and something of a mythic backstory.

The sites I remember offhand were...

The Maddening Fields--which three armies went insane and slew each other, almost to a man. To this day, undead will rise from the blood-soaked soil, and the focuses of the Fields are the banners of the armies, of which pieces can be torn off to summon undead. The black soil of the fields are also powerful necromantic foci.

The Garden of the Black Lotus--There was a long, tragic story involved,and this garden, part flower garden and part pond, is now dark and gloomy, and the waters and plants there are poisonously bitter.

Slight tangent maxus, but what sort of item creation limits were you going to build into this? If you had a decent supply of materials, could you just craft away until they were exhausted, whether that got you a single magic sword or fully outfitted an entire army? Or did you want to limit item creation more than that, so that it required something extra (like Drama) that was a much more limited and rationed resource?

If you can gather the materials, you really could make the same kind of weapon over and over again (well, bestow the same properties). If you have the downtime you could make a weapon and armor for everyone.

That's if you have the downtime. Sometimes DnD adventurers have a time table to keep.

As for the limits...I'd say that usually Materials which are common enough that you could have them in bulk amounts are low-grade stuff. They're better than not having them, but they're not going to let you create a kickass sword and shield a day until you've got several units of an army outfitted.

To make things *really* quickly, you need higher-grade materials or you need some serious drama. You could find a ruby which bursts into incandescent heat and have it mounted on your sword to get that property. Your armor could be permeated by shadowstuff when you had to go the Plane of Shadow, giving you a bonus to Hide. You could kill a Gelugon with your axe at the end of a plot arc, which results in your axe getting the Frost property and maybe a couple of [Cold] spell-like abilities.

Mind you, now that I've said that, I need to rework creation times for Minor/Moderate/Major Properties to be a touch more time-consuming. The problem is finding a balance between "giving the party Moderate-level equipment in a week" and "Items take so long to create it's not worth your time to do it."

My issue with downtime and infinite crafting isn't tied to the players, but to retired adventurers, royal retainers, and plain old craftsmen who aren't generally under any time constraints. If it really just takes time and material to do these things, then there isn't a limit on making them for people besides the players, and that has an impact on the rest of the world that needs to be addressed. The trick is going to be balancing creation against those guys, not the players who would just go get it from them or take what the find if crafting is to onerous. Ridiculous craft times can be used to limit the NPC supply side, but that just makes things worse for the players.

I'm all about scaling crap with level, so it seems to me that doing static times for item creation seems silly even if the times were totally reasonable. It should take a level 1 character this side of forever to make a major item (if it's even possible short of serious drama), but there's no reason to hold it back from a level 12 guy for very long if he needs one. You could do something like this...

• Level 1-5 guys can make standard items in standard time. With sufficient drama they can turn those items into minor items.
• Level 6-10 guys can make standard items in half time, minor items in standard time, assuming sufficient special materials. With sufficient drama they can turn minor items into moderate items.
• Level 11-15 guys can make standard items in quarter time, minor items in half time, and moderate items in standard time assuming sufficient materials. With sufficient drama they can turn a moderate item into a major one.
• Level 16-20 guys can make standard items in eight time, minor items in quarter time, moderate items in half time, and major items in standard time assuming sufficient resources. With sufficient drama they can turn a major item into an artifact and fuck around with deities.

... if you wanted people to craft stuff that was level appropriate, and were willing to depend on the scarcity of adequate materials and level-limited item scaling to dissuade auto-crafting for low level associates without making craft times ridiculous.

I mentioned drama in there as well, because it could be a good way to limit people from making items that matter to them all millennium long. If it's written in such a way as to require an adventure, plot fiat, or even spending of a crafting drama point that all characters would get at each level for the purposes of keeping up their items, you could stick players on a fairly strict minimum item schedule while not also opening for NPC floodgates more than desired. Plot fiat could be used to supplement that if required.

The Book of Gears suggested that level-appropriate items (your level, or less than three levels lower) are considered Masterpieces, and you're only allowed to make one every time you gain a level; you can make an infinite number of items four levels lower than you or smaller. That could be a way to do magic crafting that isn't particularly worse on PCs than on tower mages. Maybe allow something like one masterpiece/decade if you don't level, or just slowly level non-adventuring mages like Races of War suggests. Crafting a Masterpiece should require Drama, but the Drama should be easily obtained.

Okay, yeah, go with that.

Okay, looking at this, I need to do some more work...

To-do List:

1) Find some acceptable measure of level-appropriate and crafting times for Minor, Moderate, and Major properties. I was thinking linking them to spell-levels. Minor would be levels 1-3, Moderate 4-6, and Major 7-9. When I say spells levels, I mean the level at which a full caster would be able to do spells of that level.

2) I don't have a clue for the crafting times, because they'd be essentially arbitrary no matter what I did. I could go with my original of 1/10/100 days for properties, and come up with fluff to justify it. I could make them scale less stiffly and come up with fluff to justify that, too. Anyone have any suggestions so it's worth your while to craft things, but not so short that you could make some high-grade items in a hurry?

I'm getting back in a creative mood, and I was thinking about materials:

A good source of Materials should be Spoils.

Now, I'm not talking loot drops or "Collect 3,333 Rat Tails to make your armor awesome!"

But some critter, especially outsiders and elementals, should leave behind stuff you can use as crafting or bartering.

Now, putting creature-appropriate spoils on every enemy in D&D would be a huge task that I have no intention of doing. Instead, it could be handled by some CR/Type guidelines.

Like Earth Elementals fall apart and leave behind dirt and rock which is really great for plants or gardening, and any plant grown in the remains of elemental earth will be at least slightly magic.

Likewise, I'd say Fire Elementals leave behind embers or free-standing flames that can be used as a heat source for a reduction in DC for forging, or could be required for some specific things.

Celestial and/or Fiend body parts left behind (which, yes, there should be if you're going at them with sharp objects) are great for Good or Evil effects (not necessarily respectively. You could soak an axe in demon blood until it becomes evil itself, or maybe do a sort of sympathetic magic/voodoo to make it good against fighting demons. Whatever.) The stronger a critter is, the more potent the spoils should be.

Which, yes, that's really rough, but I'm still working on it.

As an added incentive to work, I'll wikify this and bring it to a wider audience when it's done.

Something I was thinking about.

Evocation is a pain to use in-game because of figuring up the pile of dice it eventually entails. It'd be easier if it were a bit easier to figure (see the Magic Knight/Gish) for more about that.

Evocation also sucks because the pile of dice doesn't work that well for actually killing things.

Therefore, I suggest this:

There are items which help someone handle the raw forces of evocation. They can be a Dresden-style blasting rod, or a gemstone, or anything, really.

Here's some rules:

A focus, for want of a better word, improves the effects of evocation. It can:

-Increase the caster level
-Removes the caster level cap
-Do bonus damage of some kind
-Increase the range by some amount (x1.5, x2, upgrade from Medium to Long, etc)
-Play with the damage dice--increase the die size, or figure up all d6's as if they got a 4. Or, for higher effects, a 5 or even a 6.
-Increase the DCs of effects

Now, there's some ground rules for what something can do:

-These could probably be Minor/Moderate/Major BoG properties--or maybe taking a property gives you a couple of them. Higher properties give more.

-Focuses which work for anything generally have more limited boosts available. So you could totally score a couple of boosts for things. So one could make something which gives boosts to damage, or range, or whatever. Or even two or three of those. However...

-Focuses which are geared to one flavor/energy type get a lot more to play with. A Major Evocation focus geared towards, say, only Fire could seriously score most, if not all, of the bonus themes described above.

So, for example...

Blasting Rod (Minor Evocation Focus)
This rod is a smooth, wooden cylinder, a couple feet long by a couple inches wide, and its surface is carved with some various designs treated with materials to help it channel and conduct raw magic.
Price: 5,000 GP, or fourteen days of woodworking and treating the carvings.
Benefits: This particular model gives an additional +2 to damage per die of the effect used, and multiplies an effects' range by 1.5.

Flamberge (Major Evocation Focus [Fire])
This curving, one-handed red blade glows orange around its edges and has a couple of burrs and curves to its shape to make it resemble a flame. Fire fed through it becomes enormously more intense.
Price: Artifact min character level 10 (as per BoG)
Benefits: Besides being, at base, a +4 longsword, this sword is an amazing boon to anyone who slings fire around. The damage done is as if the dice were at maximum--for example, a Fireball with 10d6 would have 60 damage. It also adds character level to fire damage inflicted, and increases any applicable DCs by 3. As a final bonus, it doubles the range or reach of any [Fire] damage abilities that such applies to.