Dinosaur Riding Barbarians
Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 7:51 am
I really want to play a game where the party is the barbarian crew of a war dinosaur. I like the idea so much that I think I'll see how far through a game design flowchart I can get before I get bored or stuck. While this is obviously a split-off of the "what do we call dinosaurs in fantasyland" thread, it's a giant derail so I've made its own thread.
So for step one we'll call these guys a party because they're barbarians and nothing else sounds right, and for step two:
The Captain provides partywide buffs with his standard actions. This means he wants to be riding a dinosaur, which he can command with his swift action. The archetypal place for this guy is commanding the giant dinosaur at the heart of the party (tyrannosaur, diplodocus, or triceratops would be the default options, depending on your willingness to shovel income into meat for food and whether you want to optimize combat power or carrying capacity). He isn't actually any better at this, though, and considering the giant dinosaur rather overshadows the individual contributions of any one party member realistically I would expect the driver position to rotate. In any case, the Captain works just as well riding a raptor as the giant dinosaur, just so long as he's never forced to pick between fighting back against the bad guys attacking him or continuing to maintain his buffs. Outside of combat, the Captain is a manager and quartermaster. As manager, he makes support NPCs more efficient, and as quartermaster he keeps track of where supplies actually end up and keeps inventory and such, which makes the party as a whole more efficient with supplies and thus makes longer trips possible and shorter trips cheaper.
The Ranger is a longrange spike damage character who can hit targets who are far away for big enough damage to wound raptors or powerful human opposition and kill human grunts dead, but can only irritate giant dinosaurs. Thus, their main role is to snipe the people who ride the dinosaurs, thus turning the unled dinosaurs into as much a danger to their own side as the enemy. The Ranger can either be a raptor archer using speed to pepper enemies to death from a safe distance or a giant dinosaur passenger dedicating his full actions to snipe foes from atop a living tank. Outside of combat, the Ranger has tracking and recon (including stealth) skills, and can make and appraise poisons. Anyone can use poisons, however.
The Beastmaster commands a pack of small dinosaurs, like velociraptors or deinonychus (deinonychii?). These can't keep up with the larger dinosaurs over long distances, so they ride on the giant dinosaur by default. A raptor-mounted Beastmaster has the special ability to command a mount as a free action, so he can command his pack and a raptor or giant dinosaur at the same time so long as he is actually riding that raptor or giant dinosaur. He's also the only character who can do serious damage in melee (having both 2-4 extra attacks from his pack as well as dealing slightly, but noticeably, higher melee damage personally) without being tied to a raptor, which makes him perfect for giant dinosaur boarding actions. Outside of combat, the Beastmaster is good at dinosaur quartermastering, which sort of makes him a Captain but for dinosaurs instead of the party/support NPCs, and a dinosaur appraiser, allowing the party to make more informed decisions at the dinosaur market.
The Shaman is the anti-Captain. He debuffs enemies and runs crowd control with his voodoo hexes. He can also run crowd control by petrifying enemies with fear or causing them to run away. Much like the Captain, he works best either directing the giant dinosaur or riding a raptor. His swift action is wasted as a passenger atop the giant dinosaur. Outside of combat, the Shaman is a face character, and in the shortterm a more effective one than the Dragoon, although the fact that he gets his way by intimidating people and possibly drugging/mesmerizing them into compliance has longterm consequences for your relationship with that village.
The Raptor Knight is had the highest health and DR of any of the classes when mounted upon their trusty raptor. If allowed to set up a charge, they can also do incredible damage, enough to wound or possibly even kill even a giant dinosaur. The enemy giant dinosaur's infantry or raptor cavalry allies are going to disrupt that charge when they can, but the Raptor Knight is heavily armored and even when not charging quite capable of dealing damage enough to hack through them. Once he's cleared away the fodder, he can set up charges that can fell enemy giant dinosaurs. The Raptor Knight pairs well with a diplodocus, whose massive carrying capacity can be used to wear heavy armor, allowing them to wait out attacks from enemy giant dinosaurs while taking minimum damage and waiting for the party to clear out enemy infantry and cavalry so the Raptor Knight can line up a charge. Outside of combat the Raptor Knight is a craftsman and appraiser of worked goods, capable of repairing damaged items without returning to a town to do so and securing a solid deal on weapons, armor, or tools.
The Raptor Dragoon deals more damage than any other character except a charging Raptor Knight, but is relatively fragile himself. His main defense is evasion and speed. What with size penalties, this makes him nearly immune to giant dinosaur attacks, and his damage output is high enough to injure even giant dinosaurs, and most everyone else just dies if they lands a solid blow, which is far from guaranteed as they are not especially accurate against targets smaller than the broad side of a brontosaurus. Or apatosaurus, whatever. This gives him two main battlefield jobs. First, killing enemy knights or other important raptor-mounted foes, and second, assisting the giant dinosaur in killing enemy giant dinosaurs by weakening them with his devastating attacks, preferably before the two relatively slow giant dinosaurs have even reached one another. Outside of combat the Raptor Dragoon is the typical party face, good at bargaining with merchants, hobnobbing with the common folks, and charming those in power.
I'll note for the record here that there's no particular reason outside the convention of the flowchart to fix the out of combat abilities to the combat abilities I've sketched out here. A class/proficiency system in which proficiency is not at all attached to class would also work fine, or a skill system, or a point-buy, or whatever.
So for our three-person parties let's go with:
Team Raptor has the Beastmaster, Raptor Dragoon, and Raptor Knight. The diplodocus is used primarily as a deinonychus carrier, especially for boarding actions, with the Beastmaster dealing a coup de gras directly to the back of the skull of any giant dinosaur that can't be allowed to run rampant and riderless, something which is fortunately not true of their own diplodocus, which will in a worst case scenario run off and have to be chased down by one of the raptor riders after the battle. If the boarding action fails, the Beastmaster can retreat with any surviving minions onto the diplodocus and focus on stomping enemy infantry so that the Knight and Dragoon can bring down the enemy giant dinosaur.
Outside of combat, the Dragoon finds new jobs and the Beastmaster gives them a competitive edge in going long distances or completing jobs on a lower budget. The Knight is going to allow them to find the very best heavy weapons and armor, which is going to make their diplodocus goddamn invincible and increase the Dragoon's ability to make up for their giant dinosaur's lack of offensive capabilities, as well as jacking up the attack power of the Beastmaster and his minions.
Team Scary is the Captain, Shaman, and Ranger. They have no appreciable ability to deal damage to enemy giant dinosaurs. What they do have is really powerful poisons, which they can use to make their triceratops really deadly in battle (the otherwise more powerful tyrannosaurus can't have its bite poisoned). The Captain buffs the Ranger who kills enemy boarders, the Shaman crowd controls their cavalry to prevent the trike from getting lanced to death, and once it's safe to get close the trike kills the enemy giant dinosaur with its poisoned horns and then mops up infantry.
Out of combat, the Shaman's frightful approach to face work means they are probably going to be raiders rather than mercenaries or caravaneers. The Captain's management skills don't stretch as far foodwise as the Beastmaster's because dinosaurs eat way more than people, but they also have to feed only a single herbivore and no raptors, and the Captain's management skills also allow them to afford more hirelings, which makes later expansion easier since smaller herbivores can be managed by hirelings allowing them to carry more stuff. They can also afford some NPC meatshields earlier and in greater numbers, making it less likely an enemy boarding party will be able to get on the trike before it can kill their giant dinosaur.
A standard adventure is going to consist of:
-Downtime stuff using non-combat skills to buy stuff, sell stuff, and get the next job. This should take 20-40 minutes.
-Some amount of overland travel random events that will be resolved with skill rolls or by making decisions between one resource or another, or some combination of the two. This should take somewhere between 10-30 minutes, although it will probably be dispersed between the next few sections.
-A giant dinosaur fight lasting 1-2 hours.
-Some kind of groundbound combat. Your camp is ambushed in the middle of the night and you don't have time to saddle up your giant dinosaur, or you have to leave it behind while investigating a cave or heading up a narrow cliff or something. Typically this will take 15-30 minutes, but it can also go on for 1-2 hours or even multiple sessions if you're having an actual dungeon crawl. I am slightly worried that the Dragoon will be having not as good a time, since he's not very accurate when fighting human-sized opposition, even if he can splatter absolutely anything that he hits. He might need two different modes of attack, one that's really high damage and one that's more balanced between damage and accuracy. But that makes him a Knight with less durability or a Beastmaster with less attack power. The Beastmaster has being king of the boarding action as an important part of his schtick, and a fight without a giant dinosaur is basically an extended boarding action. Halp.
So step four isn't quite working out, but step five would be pretty easy if I can solve that. Characters advance relatively little individually, and instead mostly the party advances through logistics. Putting optional steps (like the After Sundown origin story vs. in media res options) in parentheses, it would go (no dinosaurs)->(mount dinosaurs)->giant dinosaur->caravan of dinosaurs->logistics and dinosaurs.
So for step one we'll call these guys a party because they're barbarians and nothing else sounds right, and for step two:
The Captain provides partywide buffs with his standard actions. This means he wants to be riding a dinosaur, which he can command with his swift action. The archetypal place for this guy is commanding the giant dinosaur at the heart of the party (tyrannosaur, diplodocus, or triceratops would be the default options, depending on your willingness to shovel income into meat for food and whether you want to optimize combat power or carrying capacity). He isn't actually any better at this, though, and considering the giant dinosaur rather overshadows the individual contributions of any one party member realistically I would expect the driver position to rotate. In any case, the Captain works just as well riding a raptor as the giant dinosaur, just so long as he's never forced to pick between fighting back against the bad guys attacking him or continuing to maintain his buffs. Outside of combat, the Captain is a manager and quartermaster. As manager, he makes support NPCs more efficient, and as quartermaster he keeps track of where supplies actually end up and keeps inventory and such, which makes the party as a whole more efficient with supplies and thus makes longer trips possible and shorter trips cheaper.
The Ranger is a longrange spike damage character who can hit targets who are far away for big enough damage to wound raptors or powerful human opposition and kill human grunts dead, but can only irritate giant dinosaurs. Thus, their main role is to snipe the people who ride the dinosaurs, thus turning the unled dinosaurs into as much a danger to their own side as the enemy. The Ranger can either be a raptor archer using speed to pepper enemies to death from a safe distance or a giant dinosaur passenger dedicating his full actions to snipe foes from atop a living tank. Outside of combat, the Ranger has tracking and recon (including stealth) skills, and can make and appraise poisons. Anyone can use poisons, however.
The Beastmaster commands a pack of small dinosaurs, like velociraptors or deinonychus (deinonychii?). These can't keep up with the larger dinosaurs over long distances, so they ride on the giant dinosaur by default. A raptor-mounted Beastmaster has the special ability to command a mount as a free action, so he can command his pack and a raptor or giant dinosaur at the same time so long as he is actually riding that raptor or giant dinosaur. He's also the only character who can do serious damage in melee (having both 2-4 extra attacks from his pack as well as dealing slightly, but noticeably, higher melee damage personally) without being tied to a raptor, which makes him perfect for giant dinosaur boarding actions. Outside of combat, the Beastmaster is good at dinosaur quartermastering, which sort of makes him a Captain but for dinosaurs instead of the party/support NPCs, and a dinosaur appraiser, allowing the party to make more informed decisions at the dinosaur market.
The Shaman is the anti-Captain. He debuffs enemies and runs crowd control with his voodoo hexes. He can also run crowd control by petrifying enemies with fear or causing them to run away. Much like the Captain, he works best either directing the giant dinosaur or riding a raptor. His swift action is wasted as a passenger atop the giant dinosaur. Outside of combat, the Shaman is a face character, and in the shortterm a more effective one than the Dragoon, although the fact that he gets his way by intimidating people and possibly drugging/mesmerizing them into compliance has longterm consequences for your relationship with that village.
The Raptor Knight is had the highest health and DR of any of the classes when mounted upon their trusty raptor. If allowed to set up a charge, they can also do incredible damage, enough to wound or possibly even kill even a giant dinosaur. The enemy giant dinosaur's infantry or raptor cavalry allies are going to disrupt that charge when they can, but the Raptor Knight is heavily armored and even when not charging quite capable of dealing damage enough to hack through them. Once he's cleared away the fodder, he can set up charges that can fell enemy giant dinosaurs. The Raptor Knight pairs well with a diplodocus, whose massive carrying capacity can be used to wear heavy armor, allowing them to wait out attacks from enemy giant dinosaurs while taking minimum damage and waiting for the party to clear out enemy infantry and cavalry so the Raptor Knight can line up a charge. Outside of combat the Raptor Knight is a craftsman and appraiser of worked goods, capable of repairing damaged items without returning to a town to do so and securing a solid deal on weapons, armor, or tools.
The Raptor Dragoon deals more damage than any other character except a charging Raptor Knight, but is relatively fragile himself. His main defense is evasion and speed. What with size penalties, this makes him nearly immune to giant dinosaur attacks, and his damage output is high enough to injure even giant dinosaurs, and most everyone else just dies if they lands a solid blow, which is far from guaranteed as they are not especially accurate against targets smaller than the broad side of a brontosaurus. Or apatosaurus, whatever. This gives him two main battlefield jobs. First, killing enemy knights or other important raptor-mounted foes, and second, assisting the giant dinosaur in killing enemy giant dinosaurs by weakening them with his devastating attacks, preferably before the two relatively slow giant dinosaurs have even reached one another. Outside of combat the Raptor Dragoon is the typical party face, good at bargaining with merchants, hobnobbing with the common folks, and charming those in power.
I'll note for the record here that there's no particular reason outside the convention of the flowchart to fix the out of combat abilities to the combat abilities I've sketched out here. A class/proficiency system in which proficiency is not at all attached to class would also work fine, or a skill system, or a point-buy, or whatever.
So for our three-person parties let's go with:
Team Raptor has the Beastmaster, Raptor Dragoon, and Raptor Knight. The diplodocus is used primarily as a deinonychus carrier, especially for boarding actions, with the Beastmaster dealing a coup de gras directly to the back of the skull of any giant dinosaur that can't be allowed to run rampant and riderless, something which is fortunately not true of their own diplodocus, which will in a worst case scenario run off and have to be chased down by one of the raptor riders after the battle. If the boarding action fails, the Beastmaster can retreat with any surviving minions onto the diplodocus and focus on stomping enemy infantry so that the Knight and Dragoon can bring down the enemy giant dinosaur.
Outside of combat, the Dragoon finds new jobs and the Beastmaster gives them a competitive edge in going long distances or completing jobs on a lower budget. The Knight is going to allow them to find the very best heavy weapons and armor, which is going to make their diplodocus goddamn invincible and increase the Dragoon's ability to make up for their giant dinosaur's lack of offensive capabilities, as well as jacking up the attack power of the Beastmaster and his minions.
Team Scary is the Captain, Shaman, and Ranger. They have no appreciable ability to deal damage to enemy giant dinosaurs. What they do have is really powerful poisons, which they can use to make their triceratops really deadly in battle (the otherwise more powerful tyrannosaurus can't have its bite poisoned). The Captain buffs the Ranger who kills enemy boarders, the Shaman crowd controls their cavalry to prevent the trike from getting lanced to death, and once it's safe to get close the trike kills the enemy giant dinosaur with its poisoned horns and then mops up infantry.
Out of combat, the Shaman's frightful approach to face work means they are probably going to be raiders rather than mercenaries or caravaneers. The Captain's management skills don't stretch as far foodwise as the Beastmaster's because dinosaurs eat way more than people, but they also have to feed only a single herbivore and no raptors, and the Captain's management skills also allow them to afford more hirelings, which makes later expansion easier since smaller herbivores can be managed by hirelings allowing them to carry more stuff. They can also afford some NPC meatshields earlier and in greater numbers, making it less likely an enemy boarding party will be able to get on the trike before it can kill their giant dinosaur.
A standard adventure is going to consist of:
-Downtime stuff using non-combat skills to buy stuff, sell stuff, and get the next job. This should take 20-40 minutes.
-Some amount of overland travel random events that will be resolved with skill rolls or by making decisions between one resource or another, or some combination of the two. This should take somewhere between 10-30 minutes, although it will probably be dispersed between the next few sections.
-A giant dinosaur fight lasting 1-2 hours.
-Some kind of groundbound combat. Your camp is ambushed in the middle of the night and you don't have time to saddle up your giant dinosaur, or you have to leave it behind while investigating a cave or heading up a narrow cliff or something. Typically this will take 15-30 minutes, but it can also go on for 1-2 hours or even multiple sessions if you're having an actual dungeon crawl. I am slightly worried that the Dragoon will be having not as good a time, since he's not very accurate when fighting human-sized opposition, even if he can splatter absolutely anything that he hits. He might need two different modes of attack, one that's really high damage and one that's more balanced between damage and accuracy. But that makes him a Knight with less durability or a Beastmaster with less attack power. The Beastmaster has being king of the boarding action as an important part of his schtick, and a fight without a giant dinosaur is basically an extended boarding action. Halp.
So step four isn't quite working out, but step five would be pretty easy if I can solve that. Characters advance relatively little individually, and instead mostly the party advances through logistics. Putting optional steps (like the After Sundown origin story vs. in media res options) in parentheses, it would go (no dinosaurs)->(mount dinosaurs)->giant dinosaur->caravan of dinosaurs->logistics and dinosaurs.