"Less Basic RPG", a game based on BFRPG

[Avoraciopoctules]

Also, there has to be a large and nasty cap on how much healing a party can access in a given day, because otherwise it messes with the assumptions of dungeon delving too much.

Should the cap be linear or exponential?

I'm thinking that 50 hit points healed per day sounds nice if linear. That's a couple CLWs from the cleric, a potion or two, and a magic healing fountain's worth at level 1.

Then again, later healing spells do get pretty powerful, but I can't think of a number I'd want to pick as an exponential base. I prefer round numbers, so something that yields those reasonably consistently would be nice.

You could also tie max healing to hit dice or even max hit points. A bit more verisimilitude, but increased complexity.

EDIT: One more thought about linear caps. Just realized you said a large and nasty cap. I'll double my linear proposal to 100 HP of healing per level. If you want a nasty cap, you can have too much magical healing give the subject a fast-acting, magic-resistant form of cancer.

[CatharzGodfoot]

My point is that they're thing you won't use in combat time. Reading a page of arcane text aloud or chugging a potion are probably things best left for when you're not in combat--at least with the way D&D combat works. If you change it enough, YMMV.

What? Of course you use scrolls and potions in combat! All sorts of scrolls and potions are combat appropriate. Recall that in this sort of a setup, scrolls aren't a thing that you can just make yourself all the time. You usually find them and so you just have whatever you have, which is often enough combat spells. Same thing with potions. In general, the game is very against the idea of players being able to make magical items at all because it just hurts the idea of risking your life to find them. Being able to manufacture more consumables is acceptable for high level characters to be able to do because otherwise the world would "run out", so they have to be replaced by something, but for the large majority of a player's life (1st to 10th) they can't make their own, they just have what they have.

I think we're thinking orthogonally here. The ability to make potions or scrolls have nothing at all to do with how they're used.

A potion is still worth risking your life to find if it's a potion of immortality, or regeneration. A scroll is still worth risking your life for if it's a scroll of resurrection, gate, or weather control. And a scroll of 'remove minor bruises' that you can speed read in 6 seconds still isn't worth ricking your life for.

For spell-like items, you already have phallic 'point and shoot' gizmos. These make sense as a vehicle for spells (combat magic). Then you have things which, logically, should take longer to use. Since you already have combat magic covered, you might as well use them as vehicles for rituals.

Heroes' feast is a great big magic tea party that everyone partakes in and then feels better after. You can't even compare it to, say, finger of death. It doesn't matter how many times a day a person uses it, because it already takes an hour (plus 10 minutes ritual prep).

Yeah, I guess. It seems kinda like an opportunity cost issue: What does Heroes's Feast cost you to make you not use it every single day as soon as you're high enough level to cast it at all? I guess it could have a GP cost.

Here's a thought: per-day spell slots are not a way to keep you from using it every single day as soon as you're high enough level!

On that note: Is there a reason that Rituals in general can't just use daily spell slots as one of their limitations?

They could, but at that point making a distinction between rituals and normal spells is completely pointless. If you mean having a system of separate per-day 'ritual slots', then yeah, that would be doable. However, ritual magic often operates on a similar time scale to resting.

Fair enough, although I think the implementation is broken rather than the concept. I could just have easily chosen [major|minor] creation.

I'm going for a "weaker" level of magic in general I guess. The Creation spells and other spells that make things out of nothing in a way that allows for an economy advancement with them are what I'm trying to avoid. Same goes for things like Wall of Stone or Wall of Iron (if they're in at all, they'll simply crumble on their own after a matter of hours).

I see. I think you best bet for creation effects, then, is 'fairy magic': Major creation turns a pumpkin and a couple of mice into horse and carriage--which then turns back into rodent and vegetable components at sunrise.

You can't effectively use detect magic in combat. It takes four rounds before you get all the data you're after. It's seriously either a ritual or should be completely revised as some sort of innate ability that works like arcane sight rather than a spell.

Oh right, I should have mentioned that. BFRPG's version of Detect Magic does function more like Arcane Sight: Magical auras within your vision are simply automatically identified without concentration. None of that "focus and learn more each round" nonsense.

Good to know, although I'd make that an innate ability that some casters just have rather than a spell. And give others (if they exist) the option of ritually detecting magic. I won't argue if you go the other way, though.

*Bamf* powers belong as spells or whatever.
You should seriously consider making teleportation effects integrate into the game system. I'm a fan of the following effects:
[*]*Bamf* teleport: Short distance. Comes in LoS and non-LoS varieties. A combat spell (although things like passwall fit in this category too--force combat bamfs to use LoS if you want to keep the distinction).
[*]LoS/LoE teleport: Basically like having very fast flight. Might be acceptable as a higher level combat movement ability.
[*]Waypoint teleport: You can use a ritual to create a waypoint. There might be restrictions on where or how you make them. When you use waypoint teleportation, you 'zero in' on the arcane signature of any waypoint you know of. You need to know the arcane signature to use a waypoint, either learned by performing a short ritual there or learning it from a book.
[*]Special LoS teleport: You can teleport to anywhere you can see--which includes far-away locales only seen through magic mirrors or with telepathic phantasmal eyeballs.
In all of the ritual forms, transportation takes real time and people at the other end get a clear warning that someone is coming through--whether it's a great big rent in space-time that takes a minute to stabilize or a glittery transport effect that appears before you do.
And don't think in terms of "rounds per level" when you're dealing with rituals--that's combat time, not 'I'm sending my merchant caravan through a planar portal' time.

On Travel In General: Hmm, well everything I described was a spell form (and also a Wizard spell), but was also an instant "now you're there" effect, so that lines up. As for a ritual that's slower to setup and slower to arrive, but can be done more often, that's kinda cool too. Remember though that magic in general shouldn't be a thing you can use super regularly or it modernizes the setting in funny ways. So far, the "default setting" is including a basic theme that there were 3 ages to history: "The Primordial Age" (long long ago), "The Ancient Age" (long ago), and "The Modern Age" (which has lasted for a long time). During the Ancient Age there were two great civilizations (Dragons and Giants), and they did most of the magical work that lives into the modern age. Wizards themselves mostly don't know how to make magic of their own unless they're extremely powerful (11th or more), but they can recover old magic and maintain and activate existing items with much less training (related to the scroll/potion issue above). Even if you for some reason don't want to use the vague default history, the travel assumption is pretty much like in older versions of DnD: that people generally have to walk or sail a very long way for a very long period of time to get to far away places, and that it keeps the important places of the world rather separated from each other.

That said, Waypoint Teleportation is totally cool, and a good explanation of why the major cities are major cities, and why going even a day's walk away from them drops you back into a region of squalor that no one cares to bother with (since it's so much harder to get there than to just go to another waypoint location). Allowing new waypoints or not allows the GM to either encourage the players to setup their own domains and build up civilization, or reinforce the "wonders of ages past" feeling that the waypoints have. Example: In Stargate, the "super advanced" races can build gates to add to the gate network, but the main heros and villans have only "slightly advanced" tech even by the end of the show, so they never really manage to build their own gates, they always have to carry around spare gates if they need them (and occasional gate theft is usually an okay plot too). Connecting the waypoint you're at to a known other waypoint for travel could be an application of Activate Portal (2nd), which lets the majority of the world get about between the major cities relatively easily (3rd level NPCs aren't particularly rare, maybe 1% of the population).

So, yes, the topic of travel magic deserves a little more examination. In terms of teleportation that isn't spell based, that will be system integrated. However, the only creatures that I can imagine being able to teleport-or-anything-like-it naturally (off the top of my head) is the Blink Dog and some of the very high powered outsiders.

On Clerical Travel: Word of Recall (6th) I want to have as an actual spell. It instantly takes you and your party members back to your "home" location, even with 1,001 orcs crash in the dungeon door. Plane Shift (6th) can be a ritual or a spell (I don't care), but it takes you and your group to another plane very inaccurately (4/6 chance to be off target by 2d10 miles in a random direction, otherwise off target by 2d10 feet in a random direction; yay for WH40k scatter die). Being a spell and working instantly would be cool, but being a ritual and being able to be used a little more often at the cost of longer activation time would also work for something like that. It's supposed to allow for Clerical plane travel while still being clearly inferior to a Wizard's Gateway spell.

That all sounds good to me.

I don't really care how long it lasts so long as the cost of use is 'spending the time to use it', 'burning the resources to power it', and 'putting forward the effort to learn it' rather than 'expending an arbitrary per-day power slot'. Making water breath a 10-minute ritual that lasts for an hour or two and has to be performed on land can add some dramatic tension.

But using it as a spell out of a spell slot has a standard action cost, and burns a spell slot. Clerics auto know all 8 cleric spells each level anyways. The part about not working within water is the only part that's different between the spell and the proposed ritual, and there's no reason that the spell can't just have that as requirement to cast it.

There's the part about not working in water (but remember that casting spells can be tough under water too), there's the duration, and there's the cost of resources which could be spent on 'word of doom'. My perspective is that nobody ever prepares waterbreath, so it shouldn't be a spell.

[Lokathor]

Should the cap be linear or exponential?

Ah, well this was mostly only in relation to the concept of at-will spells and such. Healing is normally limited by time (natural healing), item consumables, and spell slots. A direct number like "you can't heal more than 3 itmes your level per day" wasn't really what I had in mind. There's onlt 1st, 4th, and 6th level healing spells, so it's already a little harder to get along than in 3e. The rest was hyperbole. However, the thought about magical cancer from too many spells would be very interesting in the right setting.

I think we're thinking orthogonally here. The ability to make potions or scrolls have nothing at all to do with how they're used.

A potion is still worth risking your life to find if it's a potion of immortality, or regeneration. A scroll is still worth risking your life for if it's a scroll of resurrection, gate, or weather control. And a scroll of 'remove minor bruises' that you can speed read in 6 seconds still isn't worth ricking your life for.

For spell-like items, you already have phallic 'point and shoot' gizmos. These make sense as a vehicle for spells (combat magic). Then you have things which, logically, should take longer to use. Since you already have combat magic covered, you might as well use them as vehicles for rituals.

Well for one, there's an obvious difference between potions and wands (anyone can use a potion). For two, many of these things you're not specifically questing for in the first place, they're just things you find randomly. I would argue that how you get ahold of them does affect their use greatly. You're in no way certain that the things you find will be at all useful to your party right now, or even ever. You're not intentionally ricking your life for anything in particular most of the time. Sometimes you'll have a spare scroll of "resurrection" and it'll be awsome, and sometimes you'll have a spare scroll of "Cure 2 hp" and it'll be almost not worth keeping written down. The fact that you pretty much can't make your own means that you don't have any control over that.

However, I do see your point. Being able to have rituals on scolls is also pretty cool, and fits in with the vague "magic is a lost science" setup. No particular reason that scrolls can't do both.

Here's a thought: per-day spell slots are not a way to keep you from using it every single day as soon as you're high enough level!

Opportunity cost. Using a 6th level slot every day on Heroes' Feast takes away a use of Heal, Restoration, Word of Recall, or Wind Walk, all of which are fairly general spells that you'll want to have in most situations. If you're doing fighting that day, you might want one of those spells instead. If you're not doing fighting that day, then sure have all the minor-but-long-duration combat bonuses that you want. Should you suddenly find yourself in a fight, then that's awesome and great for you.

They could, but at that point making a distinction between rituals and normal spells is completely pointless. If you mean having a system of separate per-day 'ritual slots', then yeah, that would be doable. However, ritual magic often operates on a similar time scale to resting.

I suppose that's all good. I guess the question is now, "What is really a spell you can cast in an instant and what is a ritual you perform with 1+ minute of prep time?" I'll have more spare time for working on this some during today and tomorrow. I'd like clerics to have 8 actual spells per circle, and then the number of rituals doesn't need to be any particular number. Perhaps rituals are even usable by both wizards and clerics. Perhaps they're usable by anyone at all? I think that might be best, unless Heroes and Rogues somehow get some kind of cool and comparable non-combat utility abilities.

I see. I think you best bet for creation effects, then, is 'fairy magic': Major creation turns a pumpkin and a couple of mice into horse and carriage--which then turns back into rodent and vegetable components at sunrise.

Yeah, stuff you can "solve puzzles" with but that can't build you a castle is great. You should really need that 2 or 3 million gold to make a castle (or whatever the cost is, I'm just picking numbers).

Good to know, although I'd make that an innate ability that some casters just have rather than a spell. And give others (if they exist) the option of ritually detecting magic. I won't argue if you go the other way, though.

Hmm, maybe as an ability they activate... Hmm... maybe a limit like Astral Sight has in Earthdawn: take 1 damage each time you activate it. Basically I want them to have it not on more often than they do have it on because otherwise they automatically notice magic items and magic traps and so on.

That all sounds good to me.

I'm also struck with the idea that Rituals could be the way in which wizards are allowed to carefully avoid the "max spells per level" issue. Lots of non-combat things that would be spells against your max spells per level can instead be rituals.

There's the part about not working in water (but remember that casting spells can be tough under water too), there's the duration, and there's the cost of resources which could be spent on 'word of doom'. My perspective is that nobody ever prepares waterbreath, so it shouldn't be a spell.

Well clerics have no attack spells in the first place, and that's quite intentional. Additonally, 3rd circle cleric magic is kinda bland in generla now that I look at it agian, and so that should probably be examined more. However yes, I also see your point here.

Well, people have shown up, I gotta go cook some banana bread.

[Lokathor]

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=s ... MWU1YTJhYQ

New version up with a revised spell list that splits effects into either Ritual or Spell categories. If that looks good then tomorrow I'll probably poke about at pushing all the lists up to at least 8 spells each minimum (and max for clerics).

[Avoraciopoctules]

I see Heroes' Feast is a ritual. So we do want clerics giving more or less perpetual bonuses to their closest assossiates at the highest levels. I suppose it fits, since you hit the level where you can make your own magical gadgets and whizbangs almost immediately afterwards.

[Lokathor]

Well godfoot insisted, and really you can make it a ritual that takes 2 hours to perform (the long feast) and then lasts for 30 minutes. Or some other set of "long setup short duration" thing. Basically, it's a boost to your heroes when you know for sure that you're about to storm the castle. Makes it so that most of the time it's not worth it, but it's still nice to have in the right situation.

You could also just add some arbitrary sentence to the effect of "a creature can benefit from a heroes' feast no more than once per week". Or even both, if the bonuses were quite stellar and you didn't want people blitzkreiging across the countryside attacking one fortification after the next.

[CatharzGodfoot]

This is a stupidly minor thing, but I'd drop wizard sling proficiency. Arcane blast should always work better. I'm also left wondering about weapon ranges and whether you're using damage types.

Wizards should also probably get a ritual every or every odd level. You could also consider throwing in find familiar as a ritual. Especially if there's some way for anyone to use it.

[Lokathor]

Hmm, a limit on rituals known? I was writing with the assumption that each ritual was some sort of book (or other information storage) you collected and each ritual just had a minimum level (/training) to perform it as a means of controlling access. Maybe they'd require other things too, depending on the ritual (items, spells known, timing, etc). Perhaps some rituals might even not require cleric or wizard levels at all (or maybe something like "Wiz3 OR Any7").

As to the blast thing, yeah that's a good point.

As to damage types. Hmm. Bash/Slash/Pierce is a good set of damage types for weapons I guess. I actually can't think of much where they're used in 3e, so I can't really think of why they're kept at all. Skeletons have 5/bashing, but they're really a special case and not worth meddling with the damage type system for. Probably easy to stick to one for each of the 6 elemental planes and then 1 for "other".

[*]Complete Damage Type List: Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid, Radiant, Necrotic, "Un-Typed" ("weapon", "void", "other", etc)

[CatharzGodfoot]

Hmm, a limit on rituals known?

Not what I meant. Just as a wizard has unlimited spells known in theory but limited spells actually in her spell book, so too would knowledge of rituals be limited.

I was writing with the assumption that each ritual was some sort of book (or other information storage) you collected and each ritual just had a minimum level (/training) to perform it as a means of controlling access. Maybe they'd require other things too, depending on the ritual (items, spells known, timing, etc). Perhaps some rituals might even not require cleric or wizard levels at all (or maybe something like "Wiz3 OR Any7").

My original thought was that a magic scroll would contain not only the procedure, but also the magic of the full ritual. This would allow anybody to use it, but only once.

And yeah, anyone with access to ritual magic would probably have something akin to a ritual book (a cleric's prayer book or a wizard's spell book).

As to damage types. Hmm. Bash/Slash/Pierce is a good set of damage types for weapons I guess. I actually can't think of much where they're used in 3e, so I can't really think of why they're kept at all. Skeletons have 5/bashing, but they're really a special case and not worth meddling with the damage type system for. Probably easy to stick to one for each of the 6 elemental planes and then 1 for "other".

[*]Complete Damage Type List: Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid, Radiant, Necrotic, "Un-Typed" ("weapon", "void", "other", etc)

You're right about the distinction between damage types not being hugely important, but at the same time they're the only things keeping axes, swords, and hammers from being absolutely identical.

You could make it so that the distinction is almost completely aesthetic. The only useful distinction between an ax and a sword might be that you can effectively chop down trees and similar things with the ax. In a dungeon crashing game, knowing that a maul is good for crushing stone and an ax is good for taking out chests (and a sword cuts rope pretty well) is useful.

I don't really see the point of acid or radiant damage types (which could both be fire) in a simplified system, though. Especially if you don't even distinguish between smashing something and poking it. "Necrotic" seems like a category for things like disease an poison; "venom" (or "poison") might be more generally useful.

So, as an example, could could just have:
[*]Fire damage, which includes any kind of actual burniniation (even lasers).
[*]Lightning damage, which includes Sith lightning.
[*]Cold damage, which includes a ghost's chill touch.
[*]Poison damage, which includes most poison gases, disease, withering effects that aren't due to cold, and maybe even suffocation.
[*]Wound damage, which includes stabbing, crushing, falling, suffocating, slicing, and all other kinds of nasty mechanical tortures of the flesh.

[Avoraciopoctules]

If we are going to have a damage type array, I think it should be meaningful which type you choose in a fight. I like the idea of fighters carrying several types of weapon to deal with different enemies. And I think that it should be reasonably viable for physical combatants to get access to elemental damage if they make an effort by getting special combat talents, flasks of alchemicals, etc., or luck out and find a magic weapon of some kind.

Battle for Wesnoth comes most readily to mind when I look for a system where attack elements matter. But expressing every creature's weakness/vulnerability to each element as a percentage is probably too much work for too little benefit.

Resistance and vulnerability handled as straight numbers added or subtracted from damage might be a bit more manageable. Perhaps in some cases a minimum level of damage before resistance or vulnerability is applied. Armor conveying specific resistances and vulnerabilities is something I'd like to see. At the very least, lightning blasts should be more effective against most types of metal armor.

-------

As to damage types. Hmm. Bash/Slash/Pierce is a good set of damage types for weapons I guess. I actually can't think of much where they're used in 3e, so I can't really think of why they're kept at all. Skeletons have 5/bashing, but they're really a special case and not worth meddling with the damage type system for. Probably easy to stick to one for each of the 6 elemental planes and then 1 for "other".

[*]Complete Damage Type List: Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid, Radiant, Necrotic, "Un-Typed" ("weapon", "void", "other", etc)

You're right about the distinction between damage types not being hugely important, but at the same time they're the only things keeping axes, swords, and hammers from being absolutely identical.

You could make it so that the distinction is almost completely aesthetic. The only useful distinction between an ax and a sword might be that you can effectively chop down trees and similar things with the ax. In a dungeon crashing game, knowing that a maul is good for crushing stone and an ax is good for taking out chests (and a sword cuts rope pretty well) is useful.

I don't really see the point of acid or radiant damage types (which could both be fire) in a simplified system, though. Especially if you don't even distinguish between smashing something and poking it. "Necrotic" seems like a category for things like disease an poison; "venom" (or "poison") might be more generally useful.

So, as an example, could could just have:
[*]Fire damage, which includes any kind of actual burniniation (even lasers).
[*]Lightning damage, which includes Sith lightning.
[*]Cold damage, which includes a ghost's chill touch.
[*]Poison damage, which includes most poison gases, disease, withering effects that aren't due to cold, and maybe even suffocation.
[*]Wound damage, which includes stabbing, crushing, falling, suffocating, slicing, and all other kinds of nasty mechanical tortures of the flesh.

Necrotic, Radiant, and Acid are things I can definitely see as distinct enough to stick around.

Acid: There are going to be weird blob monsters that melt stuff they touch in dungeons. There are going to be acid pits. There are going to be monsters that live in acid pits, but are vulnerable to a number of conceptually pretty similar attacks. Acid flasks are something adventurers could be expected to use after a certain point.

Necrotic: Necromancers and undead should have their own special energy type for damage. This could be cold, but cold doesn't really cover zombies with a touch that withers living things, bloated corpses exploding and showering areas with both various forms of sickening debris + gas + glowing green / red / black death radiation, and skulls which slowly draw in the life-force of everything nearby. Not all undead with glowing hands of doom should be resistant to cold, either.

Radiant: It's not just lasers. It's holy auras that sear the spirits of the impure. It's when a paladin blesses his sword before hitting something. Healing magic might act as Radiant damage when used on undead.

---------

Heroes and Rogues should be able to use at least some rituals. And at least a few of these should be available fairly early on. I can definitely see justification for more dedicated magic-types to get early access to many rituals, though. Even if rituals are usually found rather than gotten for leveling up, I don't think that all of them should be used once or expended. I can certainly see that for some ritual effects, particularly at lower levels, but an absolute declaration either way feels like a bad idea to me.

---------

Shields feel a bit weak to me, but that's just a gut reaction. I haven't done any serious mechanical analysis.

[CatharzGodfoot]

As to damage types. Hmm. Bash/Slash/Pierce is a good set of damage types for weapons I guess. I actually can't think of much where they're used in 3e, so I can't really think of why they're kept at all. Skeletons have 5/bashing, but they're really a special case and not worth meddling with the damage type system for. Probably easy to stick to one for each of the 6 elemental planes and then 1 for "other".

[*]Complete Damage Type List: Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid, Radiant, Necrotic, "Un-Typed" ("weapon", "void", "other", etc)

You're right about the distinction between damage types not being hugely important, but at the same time they're the only things keeping axes, swords, and hammers from being absolutely identical.

You could make it so that the distinction is almost completely aesthetic. The only useful distinction between an ax and a sword might be that you can effectively chop down trees and similar things with the ax. In a dungeon crashing game, knowing that a maul is good for crushing stone and an ax is good for taking out chests (and a sword cuts rope pretty well) is useful.

I don't really see the point of acid or radiant damage types (which could both be fire) in a simplified system, though. Especially if you don't even distinguish between smashing something and poking it. "Necrotic" seems like a category for things like disease an poison; "venom" (or "poison") might be more generally useful.

So, as an example, could could just have:
[*]Fire damage, which includes any kind of actual burniniation (even lasers).
[*]Lightning damage, which includes Sith lightning.
[*]Cold damage, which includes a ghost's chill touch.
[*]Poison damage, which includes most poison gases, disease, withering effects that aren't due to cold, and maybe even suffocation.
[*]Wound damage, which includes stabbing, crushing, falling, suffocating, slicing, and all other kinds of nasty mechanical tortures of the flesh.

Necrotic, Radiant, and Acid are things I can definitely see as distinct enough to stick around.

Acid: There are going to be weird blob monsters that melt stuff they touch in dungeons. There are going to be acid pits. There are going to be monsters that live in acid pits, but are vulnerable to a number of conceptually pretty similar attacks. Acid flasks are something adventurers could be expected to use after a certain point.

But it could just as easily be poison/venom or fire damage that the blob or acid deals.

Necrotic: Necromancers and undead should have their own special energy type for damage. This could be cold, but cold doesn't really cover zombies with a touch that withers living things, bloated corpses exploding and showering areas with both various forms of sickening debris + gas + glowing green / red / black death radiation, and skulls which slowly draw in the life-force of everything nearby. Not all undead with glowing hands of doom should be resistant to cold, either.

Exploding corpses full of diseased debris should be dealing poison/venom damage. Burning skulls should be doing fire damage.

Radiant: It's not just lasers. It's holy auras that sear the spirits of the impure. It's when a paladin blesses his sword before hitting something. Healing magic might act as Radiant damage when used on undead.

Speaking of killing undead with holy power...

And that which remaineth of the flesh .... shall ye burn with fire.

[Lokathor]

Not what I meant. Just as a wizard has unlimited spells known in theory but limited spells actually in her spell book, so too would knowledge of rituals be limited.

My original thought was that a magic scroll would contain not only the procedure, but also the magic of the full ritual. This would allow anybody to use it, but only once.

And yeah, anyone with access to ritual magic would probably have something akin to a ritual book (a cleric's prayer book or a wizard's spell book).

[*]Potions: A potion is a liquid of some sort that has an immediate effect when drunk by a creature. The effect is magical in nature, and the creature need not have a proper digestive system for the potion to work. Some potions are intended to be applied to the outside of an object, and if drunk they have no effect. These are sometimes referred to as a "phial" or "phials" when they need to be kept distinct from regular potions.
[*]Scrolls: A piece of parchment, vellum, or the like, that is covered in writing. Scrolls contain either the magical energy required to cast a single spell or a single ritual. Using a scroll blanks the scroll, but leaves the scroll itself intact and available for use again. Spell Scrolls work like the normal spell, and at the minimum level to cast the spell contained. Ritual Scrolls allow a ritual to be performed a single time, and any materials normally involved in the ritual were provided when the scroll was created, and so you don't need to provide them yourself (any other requirements still apply).
[*]Wands/Staves/Rods: A stick of various sizes, generally made of wood or metal, when used by a skilled spellcaster these devices allow the casting of one or more spells several times (based on their number of charges). Once empty they become non-magical but are otherwise unaffected.
[*]Tomes: These hefty books come in various sizes and generally weigh about a pound each (sometimes even regardless of their size). Each tome contains the complete instructions to perform a single type of ritual as many times as desired. Rituals are so complex that the user must have their tome with them each time they perform the ritual for refrence during the ritual itself, and loss of the tome prevents the user from performing that ritual again until they recover the lost tome or get a new one.

You're right about the distinction between damage types not being hugely important, but at the same time they're the only things keeping axes, swords, and hammers from being absolutely identical.

You could make it so that the distinction is almost completely aesthetic. The only useful distinction between an ax and a sword might be that you can effectively chop down trees and similar things with the ax. In a dungeon crashing game, knowing that a maul is good for crushing stone and an ax is good for taking out chests (and a sword cuts rope pretty well) is useful.

The distinction is largely asthetic. However, the random treasure charts traditionally give out better swords than anything else, because clerics can't use swords. As you say, an axe is needed to bring down a tree or break chests/doors, and a hammer or pick is needed to take down a stone wall. These are things that adventurers need to do quite often. Swords are cool and all, but they really not designed to be used against anything but enemies.

I don't really see the point of acid or radiant damage types (which could both be fire) in a simplified system, though. Especially if you don't even distinguish between smashing something and poking it. "Necrotic" seems like a category for things like disease an poison; "venom" (or "poison") might be more generally useful.

So, as an example, could could just have:
[*]Fire damage, which includes any kind of actual burniniation (even lasers).
[*]Lightning damage, which includes Sith lightning.
[*]Cold damage, which includes a ghost's chill touch.
[*]Poison damage, which includes most poison gases, disease, withering effects that aren't due to cold, and maybe even suffocation.
[*]Wound damage, which includes stabbing, crushing, falling, suffocating, slicing, and all other kinds of nasty mechanical tortures of the flesh.

A red dragon is immune to fire. A red dragon is not immune to weaponized positive energy and negative energy. Nor is the red dragon immune to a pool of acid. Additionally, things that deal fire damage can generally set things on fire. Things that deal acid/radiant/necrotic damage generally can't set things on fire. There are enough clear differences, I think. Particularly since there are 6 inner elemental planes (fire, air, earth, water, positive, negative), if they each have a damage type associated with them (fire, lightning, acid, cold, radiant, necrotic), I think that that's thematically better and easier for the players to "get". Which isn't to say that the Diablo damage system is impossible to play a game with (because obviously diablo uses it), it's just not really for this game.

If we are going to have a damage type array, I think it should be meaningful which type you choose in a fight. I like the idea of fighters carrying several types of weapon to deal with different enemies. And I think that it should be reasonably viable for physical combatants to get access to elemental damage if they make an effort by getting special combat talents, flasks of alchemicals, etc., or luck out and find a magic weapon of some kind.

Well, flasks of Oil and Acid are easily obtained in most places for a relatively small price. Something like 1gp a flask, more than an arrow but not particularly expensive. Acid is a little rarer, but Oil is available practically everywhere. Additionally, a torch or other blunt weapon can be wrapped in oil soaked cloth and set alight for a short time (swords and axes warp). The other damage types are harder to get ahold of in a steady way.

Resistance and vulnerability handled as straight numbers added or subtracted from damage might be a bit more manageable. Perhaps in some cases a minimum level of damage before resistance or vulnerability is applied. Armor conveying specific resistances and vulnerabilities is something I'd like to see. At the very least, lightning blasts should be more effective against most types of metal armor.

I was thinking "Subtract X from the damage taken each time you take damage from that energy type" and "Add X to the damage each time you take damage from that damage type, but not more than doubling the damage".

Shields feel a bit weak to me, but that's just a gut reaction. I haven't done any serious mechanical analysis.

Yeah, they kinda are at the mundane level. Magical shields help make the decision to use a shield a bigger deal. Maybe shields should be a base of +2 AC? I was thinking about that, but wasn't sure if "Leather + Shield" should be equal to "Chain". I guess that would be the big reason to use shields. Fighters start out with Chain + Shield, and as they get access to plate they can switch to a two-handed weapon and not lose AC of they can just take the extra AC and be even more tough.

[Lokathor]

Shields are now +2 AC.

I adjusted the spell list of the cleric to try to get them up to 6 spells per circle at all circles. In the process, Restoration got moved from 6th down to 4th.

4th circle is still missing 2 spells, while 5th and 6th circle are missing 3 spells each.

Just though I'd post this minor update before I start my weekly DnD game. Next step is to actually write out the spell descriptions for the 1st and 2nd level spells and fill in the Combat section along with any other sections required so that levels 1 through 3 are fully playable.

EDIT: silly me, forgot the new link:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=s ... MWU1YTJhYQ

[TheWorid]

The Fighter abilities do a good job of each being useful in its own right; but I wonder if Steady Strike isn't a bit too good. It seems as though that would be the first choice anyone would make.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Has anything further happened with this project? I'm planning on running a very basic scenario this weekend, and I thought I'd try using LBFRG as a base, but the PDF link seems to be broken.