Eberron, With a System That Actually Fucking Works

[Avoraciopoctules]

Yeah, it definitely looks to me like you should start off by carefully defining the limits of utility magic, while keeping in mind what stuff is going to be tagged as dragonshard/magitech/dragonmark exclusive.

[MGuy]

Right now, I'm more interested in having something that works rather than stroking my epeen by being horribly unique. I want PCs to be able to fight Daelkyr - CR20 monsters - but by the time they're at 20th level, Daelkyr are a fucking joke, and the setting has shat itself trying to accommodate high-level characters.

So that's what I want to do differently - the ability to in fact punch a Daelkyr in the face and make Dal Quor hide in boxes out of fear, but without the setting breaking in two on the way. Mysteries that mean something instead of casting wish or divination. Make the speciality abilities of Eberron - namely dragonmarks and dragonshards not just be poorly-implemented tacked on additions to the existing 3.5e system. And so on.

What you're asking for is either something that can be done within the confines of the 3rd edition system or is another case of shoehorning fighters into high level shenanigans. If you think that the only problems with Eberron in 3rd edition are that fighters don't get nice things and making the Dragonmarks/shards into something useful I am going to have to disagree.

The fact fighters can't have nice things IS an issue and it DOES affect the setting but even if you GAVE fighters nice things the setting, as Frank points out (and I'd say any setting really) falls apart at high level and you'd honestly, to keep the setting in any kind of recognizable order, would need to heavily rein in the higher power levels to keep things from going topsy turvy. You 'could' try and shirk the duty by saying players can adventure in more exotic locales but at some point a bunch of higher level people ARE going to just stick around and/or be on the material plane. Not all of them are going to be wrapped up in the draconic prophecy or locked away in some dank place. What do you do to keep the place from falling apart?

What DO you want Dragonmarks to be? What about the shards? ETc etc etc. Questions abound.

[vagrant]

It's not about fighters not having nice things, or non-casters not participating - it's about having shit like dragonmarks and dragonshards actually match the fluff mechanically.

They aren't the only issue - but they're a big part of how the setting works, and their 3.5e mechanics do not match the fluff. I hate mechanics not matching fluff, so this is a project to, surprise surprise, invent mechanics that fit Eberron fluff.

[Wiseman]

People have made eberron-based computer games in the past. There's a MMORPG, and at least one real-time strategy game. They might have lootable ideas.

The MMORPG doesn't really have that much, but if you want to draw on it for visual discriptions it might be worth a look.

It's vaguely explained that your character is a veteran of the fantasy WWI or whatever but that really doesn't make much sense when you start at level one (you can start at a higher level if you pay but you can also earn that perk by virtue of having played for a long time anyways). There's no real plot and your character is basically just another murderhobo.

A good number of the quests involve looting exploring ruins that are explained as having been build by giants in the distant past, although it doesn't really have much meaning and is never really explored in depth, even when you do a quest chain called gianthold. What they do try to explain is kind of a jumbled mess and not really understandable unless you already know about ebberon.

The technology and magic are fairly downplayed, as you spend a lot of time in the aforementioned ruins. Though one thing I will point out as liking is using illusions for zoo's and theaters.

Dragonshards are required for crafting like in the game, although you get them as a reward with virtually every quest you do, so this really isn't an issue.

[Don't take this the wrong way, the game's still fun as hell. =)]

[Blicero]

Eberron is fucking awesome, and anyone who sez otherwise can suck a barrel of cocks. etc. etc. etc.

But more seriously, I don't think that you need to write an entirely new system just for Eberron. You don't even your own unique d20 hack. Avo mentioned Legend, and I would second that recommendation. It does dynamic, exciting combat, and its mechanics smoothly integrate magic, technology, and magitek. You can have robots and wand-slingers and all that shit. There are even minigames for investigations, interrogations, chases, and general social combats.

The only problem is that combat mechanics/ability are crazy-crazy divorced from noncombat mechanics (and noncombat abilities basically don't exist). Like, almost as bad as 4E. If you're using the chase rules, you can't use your teleportation abilities. If you're interrogating someone, you don't use your Charm or Confusion ability. Magic items are apparently delivered by the stork.

And that the core rules really do absolutely nothing to suggest or create a coherent setting. There is no economy at all. The mechanics apparently hold only when the PCs are around. Because the devs and their players all fap to rules abstraction.

But the sort of pulpy noiry adventurer-investigator stories you seem to want to tell don't really require a super-coherent Logistics and Dragons setup. Indiana Jones really doesn't give a shit about the price of bread in Berlin. So you could probably take Legend, hack in a modicum of an economy and some basic rules to cover the most egregious holes, and run with it.

[Username17]

Avo mentioned Legend, and I would second that recommendation. It does dynamic, exciting combat, and its mechanics smoothly integrate magic, technology, and magitek.

Last I checked, Legend wasn't so much a "game" as an "idea". In that it was sort of like Fantasycraft - a giant pile of dials and whirls but no meat. No skill system, no monsters to speak of. Just a vague and let's face it: completely empty hope that they could get completely open hybrid multiclassing to work.

-Username17

[Prak]

Frank- They've "finished" the first version of the rules. There are a couple of example monsters, but the rules explicitly say "make monsters like normal characters with these caveats:" It has a skill system, items, etc etc.

There's not a lot of out of combat system, but there is a social minigame, an investigation minigame, etc.

[Username17]

Frank- They've "finished" the first version of the rules. There are a couple of example monsters, but the rules explicitly say "make monsters like normal characters with these caveats:" It has a skill system, items, etc etc.

Wait, that's it? Those example monsters and the "maybe you'd like to fill in three tracks to make a disposable gargoyle exactly like you'd make an actual player character" thing is the whole thing? Fuck that. I thought people were still plugging it because it existed in potentiae and might theoretically stop being vaporware at some point. If it has been declared finished as-is, it's just vaporware and we can all stop pretending to care.


-Username17

[Prak]

There's a reason I put finished in quotation marks. They "officially released" version 1.0. They're working on a Monster Guide now. I agree that it's a pain to stat a bunch of monsters, but the system is nominally finished.

[Avoraciopoctules]

In one optional supplement, the Legend team introduced mook rules. They stressed that mooks should be used rarely, because they were simple and unchallenging compared to real monsters.

Then they released an official adventure, and like half the encounters were mooks only. I think mooks have been integrated into the main rules now.

Right now, the Legend team is focused on writing long articles about how the power of Magical Tea Party can let you pretend your tracks have diferent flavor, and promising that the monster guide will be out "someday" as a different book. I'll quote the 1.0 announcement from June 17.

Lastly, this release represents the first step in a long road ahead of the Rule of Cool team. Our volunteers have hit the ground running on modules and the upcoming Legend Monster Guide, and we remain committed to delivering a high-quality tabletop experience to you and your group.

[Fucks]

vagrant, whhy not convert Eberron to Shadorun (attribute+skill pool system) or FATE (yeah, the cool shit )?

[Whatever]

For what it's worth D&D Online (the "Eberron" MMO) branched out into the Forgotten Realms recently. The characters and mechanics didn't change, they just added a new zone and some lolth+elminster themed quests. Theoretically, you could mine the game for ideas, but it's already set in the wilderness continent Australia expy specifically so that they can avoid messing with any of the "real" Eberron and just make things up as it becomes convenient.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I wonder if there was some cross-pollination between the Living Cloudkill and the fumigant golem in Iron Council ? Is it just that cool of an image that it had to come about?

[vagrant]

vagrant, whhy not convert Eberron to Shadorun (attribute+skill pool system) or FATE (yeah, the cool shit )?

For what it's worth, I took a look at Legend. And...I'm not really impressed and also because I dislike disassociated mechanics. Yeah, Indy might not give a fuck about the economy, but I sure as hell want to cast Charm during an interrogation.

As for why d20 and not SR - I don't want to re-stat the fucking Monster Manual. So whatever comes out should, theoretically, have a fairly straightforward way of converting 3.5e monsters.

[Drachasor]

vagrant, whhy not convert Eberron to Shadorun (attribute+skill pool system) or FATE (yeah, the cool shit )?

Shadowrun rules have generally seemed pretty messy to me.

And FATE, while an interesting system, has quite a lot of flaws. Though I played the Dresden Files RPG which I think probably exaggerated the problems a little -- still, quite a few remain in the base system. It has one of my biggest pet peeves in any system, which is that it is extremely difficult to make a decently rounded character.

[Voss]

For what it's worth D&D Online (the "Eberron" MMO) branched out into the Forgotten Realms recently. The characters and mechanics didn't change, they just added a new zone and some lolth+elminster themed quests. Theoretically, you could mine the game for ideas, but it's already set in the wilderness continent Australia expy specifically so that they can avoid messing with any of the "real" Eberron and just make things up as it becomes convenient.

And here's whats wrong with Eberron. Its so weak as a setting you can just make it part and parcel of the Forgotten Realms and it makes no difference.

[Drachasor]

For what it's worth D&D Online (the "Eberron" MMO) branched out into the Forgotten Realms recently. The characters and mechanics didn't change, they just added a new zone and some lolth+elminster themed quests. Theoretically, you could mine the game for ideas, but it's already set in the wilderness continent Australia expy specifically so that they can avoid messing with any of the "real" Eberron and just make things up as it becomes convenient.

And here's whats wrong with Eberron. Its so weak as a setting you can just make it part and parcel of the Forgotten Realms and it makes no difference.

Hmm, well, I never paid close attention to Eberron, but it does seem to have some neat ideas. It seems halfway designed to just be a setting you steal things from and flesh out yourself anyhow. In that sense it is pretty nice, imho.

[vagrant]

Okay, on to the next part of the whole make a game shtick, which are the mechanics and probably the point of the largest suck that's going to come out of my keyboard.

As I said, I'ma keep d20, because d20+modifier is a decently elegant system that works.

My initial brainstorming came up with a (to me simple) concept. You've got a base class which goes up by level, and these base classes affect only three stats, let's call them Action Points, Hit Points, and Base Attack Bonus. (Not sure what I'm doing with attributes yet.)

Action points are the shit you care about, because they're the universal resource you spend to take actions. For example, shooting a dude with a wand (barring any specialised Wandslinger tricks) cost AP 0. Just like swinging a sword. You can do that shit all day long.

Splitting said wand attack into a twin ray or some other nifty trick costs AP 2. Casting a spell based on level - AP[Level], and so on. AP is what you use to actually use your abilities. We'll keep to-hit as BAB and HP as HP.

What does this look like?

Class	AP	HP	BAB
Warrior	low	high	high
Rogue	medium	low	high
Caster	high	low	low

Notice, though, that those three classes don't actually do anything aside from setting your progression in those three key stats. So where do you get the shit that matters? (Also, notice an issue?)

Templates! What's a template? It's a set of abilities, buffs, etc., each at a rank package, not unlike Dark Heresy. (Except hopefully with less suck.)

Rank 1 of Wandslinger, for example, gives you a Dex boost, the ability to quick-draw wands, and the ability to make called shots with wands. (Or something to that effect, I haven't quite worked it out yet.)

So each template will have 10 ranks. How do you go up ranks, if it's separate from levels? Glad you asked. You classes go up by level. So (once again, for example), level 1 takes 1000 XP to level up. Once you've level up, you now have a pool of 1000 XP to spend on rank upgrades. However, this pool of spendable XP doesn't detract from your overall XP, so going from level 2 to level 3 costs only another additional 1000 XP (1000-2000) instead of having to gain the entire 2000 again.

[vagrant]

This, mind you, is simply rough brainstorming and I can already tell will be somewhat fiddly, so I may just junk it and use something else. The goal is to make the game /relatively/ classless, since people should be able to pick and choose templates however they want.

That might prove to be a bitch to balance, though.

[vagrant]

Right, as a quick side-bar:

Magic. How it work bitch?

Early brainstorming for templates and shit led me to three 'flavours' of magic and three disciplines of non-magic tricks (think ToB style manoeuvres.)

You've got Magic of the Tapestry (arcane magic), Magic of the Gods (divine magic), and Magic of the Mind (psionics, because it's still fucking magic.)

Discipline wise, you've got Disciplines of the Mind, Disciplines of the Flesh, and Disciplines of Steel.

What do those fancy words mean? Basically, they're the spell lists. Not everyone gets those, which means their abilities better be Vajazzle-tastic, or they're going to suck simply because of options.

Now, in 3.5e, we know what magic can't do. There's really not too much. For Eberron to be a coherent setting, though, magic needs to not be that, or no one would have ever invented a flying boat if they can just use circles of teleportation. Spells lists in specific also needs to be shittier than a random dude with a mystical birthmark in that specific field, or the Dragonmarked Houses wouldn't fucking be monopolistic multi-nationals that have lasted for millenia.

Enchanting and magitek need to use dragonshards damn near exclusively, or dragonshards need to be soooo awesome in enchanting and inventing magitek for people to actually want to mount highly dangerous expeditions into Khyber (underdark) and Argonessen (dragon-land). Because those expeditions need to make economic sense, and they would if you make dragonshard utility roughly comparable to real world oil.

[Blicero]

Right now, the Legend team is focused on writing long articles about how the power of Magical Tea Party can let you pretend your tracks have different flavor, and promising that the monster guide will be out "someday" as a different book. I'll quote the 1.0 announcement from June 17.

Heh, the one where you refluff the strength of your barbarian rage as having an actual distinct animal companion was probably the best.

[Parthenon]

This is a bad start to the game. Your game design document has five characters using some variant of magic and one that does... I don't even know what an Extreme Explorer does. Do you? What does it do in combat?

Look, you've said yourself that one of the main features of the setting is barbarian halflings- a melee focused class. Now melee isn't playable or one of the basic arguments for the setting?

And theres a big problem with your example characters in that none have their race stated. One of the points of Eberron was that it has robots, two sorts of shapeshifters and um.. psionics? If you want Eberron then you should make a point of having at least two of the six being new races.

Looking at it again, I think you've got it slightly mixed up. You should be writing up six characters, not six character classes. You want to write up Mialee, Jozan, Krusk et al, not Cleric, Warmage and Artificer

So, for example:

• Damien the Warforged Ambushing Wandslinger
  Damien is a sentient golem who mainly sneaks around doing things meatbags are unable to survive, unwilling to go through or don't have the patience to wait through. They fight using the rechargable wand technology invented during the war, using sniping from a distance, ambushes from close and if surprised can convert a wand to a magical emanation that doubles as a melee weapon.
• Jenny/Gary/Bobby (they're a bit confused) the Changeling Berserker
  Jenny is a shapeshifter who can change their body to look like any humanoid of similar size. Gary uses this to fit in and learn things socially, and to some extent sneak through security. One benefit of the shapeshifting is that their body is better at dealing with and recovering from the Riastrad- the warp-spasms that overcome Berserkers who grow in twisted ways in a fight, shrugging off magic and performing superhuman acts of violence. Bobby used to be part of a front-line group of soldiers during the war.
• Mikael the Elven Artificer
  Mikael creates and otherwise utilises the magitech technology spurred on by the war. He has small golems and robot drones for both spying and fighting. These creations can often help the Artificer get around by either short term flight, creating handholds and steps, or used as demolitions to remove obstacles.
• Josephine the Noble-born ????
  Look- one of the six should be Dragon-Marked. Needs to be really. So, looking at the list of Houses on wikipedia I would... give up and create a whole new set of houses. These are pretty shit.

And you know what? I give up. I have no idea what a Dragon-Marked character does. You have five large sources of power, and you need to work out how different powers fit into each so that one isn't totally overshadowed by another:
[*]Dragonmarks
[*]Magitech
[*]Arcane Magic
[*]Divine Magic
[*]Psionics

What can each do that the others can't? What does each bring to the setting?

[vagrant]

This is a bad start to the game. Your game design document has five characters using some variant of magic and one that does... I don't even know what an Extreme Explorer does. Do you? What does it do in combat?

That's a fair point. I really just envisioned a flask rogue (can throw grenades, fashion traps out of grenades, sneak attack) to be honest, but that concept probably needs reworking.

Look, you've said yourself that one of the main features of the setting is barbarian halflings- a melee focused class. Now melee isn't playable or one of the basic arguments for the setting?

That's something I'm struggling with. On one hand...melee is shit. Eberron is a post-WW1 setting, pretty much, so wands (or guns) are the big kahuna. At the same time, dudes hitting each other with swords are cool, so...I'm not sure. Honestly, using a wand is seriously preferable to using a sword - one of the scenes that sticks out in my head is the one in Indy and the Raiders of the Ark, where some huge bloke is swinging a sword around and Indy just shoots the fucker.

And theres a big problem with your example characters in that none have their race stated. One of the points of Eberron was that it has robots, two sorts of shapeshifters and um.. psionics? If you want Eberron then you should make a point of having at least two of the six being new races.

Actually, that was deliberate. I don't want races to have really specific focuses beyond paragon templates or classes or whatever eventually comes up. So if you want to play a Warforged Wandslinger, you can just do that, and be equally as viable and effective as a halfling wandslinger.

stuff

As to having characters as opposed to character classes - I was working by Frank's examples where he did just stick character concepts down. (Better than myself, but I'm learning.)

The five major sources of shit is something that do need to be distinct. I'm trying to figure how to make that shit distinct and useful, which is one of the points of this rework.

[Username17]

How is anything about Eberron post World War I? Trains and shit are a new fangled thing. It's like post Thirty Years War. If that.

-Username17

[vagrant]

Roughly, I mean. I see as the Industrial Revolution occurred during the Last War, so tech went roughly Standard Medieval Fantasy->Magitek->1910-esque. Guns are shiny and new, trains connect the world. Perhaps Russia in the early 20th century, pre-Bolshevik? There's new tech, but the world is only just to coming to grips with it's civilian applications.