The Gaming Den

Okay, first off, some background.

On WotC, some people are making Kingdom Hearts d20. They've statted Heartless such that it reads like this:

STupid rulE wrote:
If you lose the grapple with the 3 combined heartless, you take 1 point of damage to Int, Wis and Cha. If at any time any of these stats drops below 0, you become a heartless permanently

(emphasis mine)

And the most basic Heartless (Shadow) CR 1 has Grapple of +4, combined of +12. You are very unlikely to tie the grapple. (Not to mention, it says to throw at leas 5, at most 9) Granted, you can stop it, by killing one grappling you. If you have a party, this might be good, EXCEPT. They have DR 10/Good. Yes. At level 1.

It should be noted that even the hero's allies never got converted in KH. The only time it happened was when Sora gave Kairi her heart back, but had to take his own to do so. Kairi later restores Sora by protecting him. Yet, Princesses of Heart cannot reverse HC. Way to go!

This in itself FORCES gm's to give everyone a Keyblade (Holy weapon, makes you immune to Heartless Conversion. Or, a Holy weapon. Welcome to broke D&D rules.

It should be noted that becoming a Heartless means you get +2 CR'd templated, but you can still advance in ranks. (Or, alteranivly play a Nobody).
But you also become evil either way, and are essentially NPC'd

Okay, then someone raised a point that made no sense to me "This is not bad game design."

You have become the only one who matters. Despite what CRPG's and BOoks say, that's bad. I don't CARE if Baldur's Gate does that, it IS BAD FOR A GAME. Other people MUST matter or the world would have stopped to exist!

See, in normal D&D, Shadows are a big problem. But they have not taken over the world because people other than the adventurers can deal with them. That's just how it works. The adventurers do not need to fight off EVERY threat to the world ending at 10 o'clock, only one or two.

The issue with heartless is this. This is not possible. There are too many kinds of heartless. ANd not enough people know magic (which bypasses DR). So they will simply over take worlds. And eventually, the numbers grow so large that they WILL WIN. This makes a KH style game impossible.

Some statement wrote:
"But this doesn't happen in Kingdom Hearts!"

And you can't have Monks in Kingdom HEarts. The setting is fvcking irrelevant if the system cannot support it? Get the picture?

To point. If I make a derivative game in another system, an the system tells me it's impossible, the game is in the wrong system. Period. The system dictates waht is possible, without totally rewriting Commoner NPC's, or assuming that there are Other hereos who matter... well, guess what? Catch 22. Also.

VIdeo games are tightly controlled, PnP play isn't. That simple.

Some other statement wrote:
"Nobodies are True Neutral"

YEt they promote the creation of Heartless, fight light and generally abduct people. No. THEY'RE NOT. It doesn't matter what they're goals are. The means they use do not promote the greater good.

---

This entire thing aside. It is possible to run a KH game. BUt everyoen and their mother must have a Holy weapon, and you must do it all in the space ofa week, and the Heartless Conversion must also require a save, too. But that doesn't excuse the fact it is still a bad idea for game design, in any system.

Don't even fucking get me started on the whole Nobody thing.

It's completely dumb that people who lose a part of themselves permanently and irrevocably will somehow stay that way forever when crossed with a universe where things suddenly gain hearts for no reason whatsoever! You know. Like computer programs and puppets.

Also, people usually give the Org13 a lot more sympathy than they really should. 'OMG they don't have emotions blah blah blah how tragic'. No one fucking shed a tear over the Master Control Program, who was accidently coded to be the way he is.

BTW, Roxas and Namine lacked the sociopathic tendencies of the other nobodies when put in the right situation. So they have a point. But not really.

And you can't have Monks in Kingdom HEarts. The setting is fvcking irrelevant if the system cannot support it? Get the picture?

To point. If I make a derivative game in another system, an the system tells me it's impossible, the game is in the wrong system. Period. The system dictates waht is possible, without totally rewriting Commoner NPC's, or assuming that there are Other hereos who matter... well, guess what? Catch 22. Also.

VIdeo games are tightly controlled, PnP play isn't. That simple.

The game itself can't fucking decide just what can beat a heartless. I mean, you have Simba wailing on Heartless Scar and Ariel slapping her way through a ton of things even though people (and the game) say this should be impossible.

Unless you can somehow convince me that Peter Pan can penetrate DR 10/good with a pair of scissors.

I forgot about Namine, but Axel is usually quoted at me as a Good aligned Nobody.

I'd feel sorry for you, but you're looking up Kingdom Hearts d20 on the Wotc Boards.

I was actually trying to find usable Keyblade rules. Yes, it was a mistake. What more annoyed me, was the argument over it.

They fail the first rule of making good coversions of videogames to d20. Don't cram the game into d20, make d20 fit to the setting. Use the base of d20 and build from there it just makes more sense.

Assuming for the moment that I knew what the hell you were talking about, this seems like it involves rules which are more complicated to usethan they need to be.

I'm not just talking about the fact that it apparently means that heartless will slowly conquer the planet with no end in sight, I'm talking about the fact that to do so requires a character to make two opposed rolls a turn for a number of rounds equal to their lowest mental stat. That's like 40 rolls of a d20 per commoner minimum. Holy crap!

Getting "overwhelmed and turned evil" shouldn't happen during combat time with individual opposed rolls, that takes too long to resolve. Instead, players should be looking at a check to see if they are incapacitated by the group of heartless followed by a non-combat time interval of being captured, followed by a Saving Throw to see if you turn evil.

That's just common sense. You don't want to roll 40 dice in a whole evening, it's a pain in the ass.

BTW, what does a Keyblade do? Once I know that, I could whip up some stats in like 20 seconds. But that's just a name to me.

-Username17

The keyblade is an upgradable weapon that is the key to fighting the heartless/nobodies. You can attach various pendants to it to change it's appearance, damage and special abilities.

Most of it's special powers are just there for plot continuation - it can lock and unlock just about any lock, it can close the heart of a world to prevent the heartless getting in, it can lock and unlock passages between worlds.

The keyblade itself can only be wielded by someone with a strong heart, and it itself chooses it's wielder. At least that's the fluff fed to you by the game.

There is also a second keyblade that unlocks peoples hearts, turning them into heartless. It doesn't share any of the abilities of the other one though.

Keyblade is a magical artifiact that chooses one wielder and stays there (excluding when someone else can wield a keyblade, however, they often get a different one. There are 4 known keyblades. King Mickey gets one for being him, apparently, so does Kairi.)

Each Keyblade is changed by the keychains added to it, that is, the keyblade itself only has a few qualties common to it.

1] It returns to the wielder when he holds out his hand. When disarmed, all he has to do is reach out as if grasping it, and it returns
2] It (apparently) cannot be sundered. (Then again, most of hte time, when it was hit, he was blocking with it, so.)
3] It enables Sora (or Roxas) to defeat Noboides or Heartless without using magic, elsewise, he can't hurt them.
4] He can unlock the pathes between places (KH2) or lock the world's heart from being stolen (KH1)
5] He can unlock normal locks with it

The keychains boost either Strength or magic abiliy, but afew grant extra abilities that aside from a few, don't work in normal D&D - Lucky Lucky is Treasure Up, for example. I'm still trying to find a link for them.)

Unless you can somehow convince me that Peter Pan can penetrate DR 10/good with a pair of scissors.

Dude, not only is Peter Pan high enough level to have Leadership and a while troupe of Lost Boys, not only has he conned the DM into letting him have an improved familiar that sheds costly material components, not only does he freakin' have Permenant Fly, not only does he cannonically cast Mass Fly, but the dude freakin has his own demiplane with unique time traits.

Having only seen a few minutes of the game, it is abundantly clear that Heartless is a freakin CR +0 Template that can only be applied to critters 2 or more CR below the PCs and one boss monster per plane. Keyblade is a +whatever magic weapon that upgrades rather than being swapped out and either fulfills the focus requirement of Plane Shift or gives some narrow variant of the Planar Champion's Rip Portal ability that includes Knock at will.

Dude, not only is Peter Pan high enough level to have Leadership and a while troupe of Lost Boys, not only has he conned the DM into letting him have an improved familiar that sheds costly material components, not only does he freakin' have Permenant Fly, not only does he cannonically cast Mass Fly, but the dude freakin has his own demiplane with unique time traits.

Before the stupid 3.5E nerfs, that would've made him a 6th level character.

That's acceptable to me, but if you're trying to convince me that Peter Pan will somehow survive in a world with massive freakin' damage reduction and no sneak attack or magic weapons on his end, you've got another thing coming.

Peter Pan has mad stacks of Sneak Attack, and he has a Prestige Class that gives him some Spell-likes and his own Demi-plane. He's probably like 9th level. He's kind of a tool because he flies and fights with a melee weapon, and also because he tries to get sneak attack by flying out of reach and feinting for one round and then coming down and sneak attacking for massive damage.

For a guy with Leadership and mass fly, he's not much of a team player.

But anyway, the Keyblade thingy appears to have the following powers:

knock
arcane lock
open portal
close portal
It returns to the hand as a free action (called variously "of readiness" or "called" - whatever)

None of that is amazingly impressive. Other than that it's just a magic sword that upgrades over the course of the campaign rather than getting replaced. It's magical, and it sounds like enemies often have DR that is /Magic in that campaign.

-Username17

I'd say it's more the Heartless have Regeneration, rather than DR-- I didn't play the game and only watched some of it; but wasn't the deal with the Keyblade that it was the only thing that could "free their hearts" and thus defeat Heartless for "good"? Judging by how easily they get taken down by... everybody, I'd say DR is probably out of the picture.

And yeah... those rules are really stupid. Ow. :/ I am feeling real physical pain here.

What the fuck is Kingdom Hearts?

Game On,
fbmf

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1166552371[/unixtime]]What the fvck is Kingdom Hearts?

Game On,
fbmf

As near as I can tell, this is the best answer you're gonna get.

It's not work safe, and it's on YouTube, so what are you gonna do.

-Username17

fbmf wrote:What the fvck is Kingdom Hearts?

Game On,
fbmf

It's like Final Fantasy, but with Disney Characters.

Yeah.

Frank, that was the perfect link for the Kingdom Hearts newbie. Awesome.

(Let it be known (in parentheses) that I played all of 20 minutes of Kingdom Hearts and thought it was exactly like that guy was saying, except substituting Soul Caliber 3 for Resident Evil 4.)

From what I can read, they've since changed Heartless Conversion

You now get a Dark Point for losing a grapple, and may make a will save? (I think?) to keep from sliding. And when DP = Heart Points, you become a heartless.

Heart Points are CHA (the score) + Wis Mod + Int Mod. Even more rolling. I don't really want to know.

However, they're having problems with updating the PDF for it, so I'm not _sure_ of anything

---

And evne more idiocy.

Someone told me that losing a HD, some skill points and 1 BAB point is worth it because I get Tiger claw/BIte, +4 STR, +6 DEX, +2 CON, +3 NA, Low-Light or Darkvision, Scent, POunce, IMp. Grab and Rake [Anthro Tiger, SS. +3 LA. Gives 2 HD as part of this, and Monsterous Humanoid SKill Points.]

I'm going "No." and getting called a dork becuase my mind is going "skills? Proficencies? ABILITIES?" (and getting told it's good in a gestalt game. Of course it is. Gestalt is fvcking whitewash to problems like that.)
Correction (people pointed out stuff I forgot in my last post)

Power now and suck later is bad. @.@

The point of the argument was me pondering one of my more outlandish ideas - to play a a tiger monk, even though, in gestalt, that is a bad idea. (It was this or a SS Tiger progression, and they didn't quite understand why I hate anything out of SS, really.)

So, rather, I'd play this:

Tiger(Anthro race) wrote:
Tora-Tachi (Tiger Family)

* Tiger Family members are Monstrous Humanoids.
* Medium; Medium Creatures gain no bonuses
* Tiger Family members move at 40' per round.
* +2 DEX, +2 STR. Tiger Family Members are strong and fast.
* TF members have Darkvision out to 60 feet.
* +2 racial bonus on saving throws against fear
* Tiger Family members are immune to lycanthropy
* +2 racial bonus to Balance, Climb and Jump, Survival
* +4 racial bonus to Hide in tall grass.
* -2 racial penalty to Diplomacy
* Tora-tachi have a claw attack that deals 1d6 damage.
* Automatic Languages: Common, Feline. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Elven, Sylvan, Giant, Goblin, Orc

Hit Die: d8
Skill Points at 1st level: (4+Int)*4
Skill Points: 4+Int
Class Skills: The following are Class Skills of the Tora-Tachi, (and the stat needed for it) is Climb(Str), Jump(Dex), Balance (Dex), Survival (Wis), Hide (Dex), Move Silently (Dex), Knowledge(nature) (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis) [[Note: In my game, this is simply Atheltics.]]

BAB Fort Ref Will Special
+1 +2 +1 +0 Cold Endurance, Tiger Tounge

Tora-Tachi are proficient with all simple and martial weapons, including Claws. They are only proficient with light armors.

Cold Endurance - As the bonus Feat

Tiger Tounge (Sp) - A tora-tachi may talk to tigers, or tiger-like lycanthrpopes in their own tounge as an at will ability.

Claws wrote:
Claws are metal claw like weapons that can be wielded (with people with no claws) as 1d6-1d10 weapons, depending on material, but with claws, add +3 damage and may be enchanted.

It's weaker, but, it actually gives abilities! (It's my first attempt at a serious monster class. I'll be working on a more complex version.)

Of course, I forgot one minor thing. I'm used to GM's who let custom stuff in it's balanced, and works.

EDIT: Merged two posts, cleaned up the stream so it's not quite as jumpy in points, attempted to fix various spelling errors.

Tokorona at this point I'm having a really hard time following all your stream of concsiousness posts.

Ern, fixed that. DEleted my second post, edited it in to my first and cleaned up the flow slightly.

Hey_I_Can_Chan at [unixtime wrote:1166575656[/unixtime]]Frank, that was the perfect link for the Kingdom Hearts newbie. Awesome.

(Let it be known (in parentheses) that I played all of 20 minutes of Kingdom Hearts and thought it was exactly like that guy was saying, except substituting Soul Caliber 3 for Resident Evil 4.)

So it isn't just me ... I spent 30 minutes trying to get off of the island to no avail so I turned the game off and never tried it again.

And this is from a person that liked Final Fantasy X.

edit: And to make my post topic-related, figuring how much I disdain the game, of course I don't know why you'd want to make any concept from the game into d20. YMMV.

Wow. I have never heard of this game, but I looked at the link Frank gave. Does it seriously have Donald Duck in it, or was that just making fun of the game? Either way, it looks awful.


About the "Tiger Family":
1) Tongue, not tounge. I used to spell it that way too, finally managed to consistantly spell it right starting about two years ago.

2) What's with the claw weapon? You're giving a claw natural attack, and then listing a seemingly unrelated manufactured weapon below. This manufactured weapon deals 1d6-1d10 damage, depending on "material," which could either mean source book or what it's forged from. Neither option is encouraging.
There is also something about them being enchantable under certain circumstances, which implies that they aren't enchantable under other conditions, and then indicate that a character dual-wielding them gets +3 damage, or possibly that a character with a claw natural attack gets +3 to damage with the manufactured claws, or maybe with the natural attack as well.

I'd suggest clearing up the terminology a bit, and maybe using less wierd mechanics.

I regret to inform you that it is a real game with Donald Duck in it ...

And Goofy. Mickey Mouse too (although Mickey saves you from bosses, so.. )

As to the claws: I more or less added it on a whim, since you can't enchant natural weapons. I should probably add that as an ability or such. And yes, it was worded really badly.

It means material as what was forged, because, they're naemd, like Iron Claw, Cobalt Claw, so on..