Spellbooks and Schoolgirls d20
Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 3:41 am
I randomly started thinking about a magic school campaign again, and reread the Redhurst OSSR to jog my brain about some of the "DON'T DO THIS" things and "it would be so much better if..." things.
I'm approaching the idea as just a way to present a D&D game centered on being Magic Uni students to my potential players. This isn't for publication, this isn't for sale, it just has to pass the muster of a group that is composed of around two decent but cautious (ie, not super opportunistic asshole) optimizers and two to three newbies/novices with a head for some optimization.
I'm looking at D20 with variations because that's the thing I have the best chance of getting players for. Even if I throw down a 100-page booklet of houserules, as long as there is recognizable D&DNA there, I can people on board.
The first thing I'm looking at is hacking out hit die, because that makes things very weird for school games. Instead, I want to roll with something like the Mutants and Masterminds condition track (under "Conflict"), which, itself, was probably based on a variant rule from Unearthed Arcana. The idea being that you don't have hp, you just have a condition track. When you take damage, you roll a save, if you pass, there's no effect, if you fail by less than ten, you just take a cumulative -1 on further damage resistance checks, if you fail by more than 10, you're dazed until your next round and get that same penalty. The UA version actually breaks that into "cumulative -1/disabled" and M&M has four degrees of failure, but that's the gist at least. This way you can have students that don't have more hit points than the town guard... because no one has hit points. I'd use a Poor/Average/Good base save split based on the HD the class would normally have (d4-6/d8/d10-12), probably using the same scale as BAB, so a level one fighter and a level 2 wizard have the same resilience. I'm also considering giving d12 classes a static bonus on their resilience, and the d4 class a sort of ablative magical defense, meaning that once they are [condition] they take a static -2 penalty on resilience checks, to represent the respective higher and lower resilience compared to other classes.
I'm also at least considering using the Defense variant from UA, since a lot of characters wouldn't be wearing much armor and it'd help a little bit. I might use Defense as the resilience roll stat for above, just to collapse variants together.
As to spellcasting, first of all, I want to use the "spellbooks are scrolls" idea. I don't know if I want them to be single use, or what. Probably not, though, since I'm also looking at rolling to cast successfully.
Casting Spells
The idea is to reinforce the "you're learning to cast spells" thing, so when you first learn a spell, you have to roll an appropriate skill to cast it successfully (Kn.Arcana, Kn.Divine, Kn.Nature, Performance, divvied up logically). The base DC would be something like 15+spell level, and then I'd go ahead and let people try to cast above their level at +5 per spell level above their max. I think that'd really only be an option if you have the spell in written form, and spells below your max spell level would have -5 DC per level, too. Wands are a genre convention in Harry Potter, Little Witch Academia, and a lot of other magic school stuff (because Harry Potter), so to incentivize wand-use, I figure having a wand would give you a +3 bonus to your spell rolls, and might allow you to prep more mastered spells, or something.
Edit: of note- I considered the profusion of rolling this creates. When you have a spell with a To Hit roll, you just make one roll against the higher of the opponent's defense or the spell DC. If using Spell DC successfully casting means you automatically hit. If using the opponent's defense, successfully hitting means you automatically cast the spell. It's a kludge, but it means fewer rolls.
Learning Spells
I know people here hate on "use it to learn it" stuff, but for the given players I have in mind, I think it would work fine. I'm thinking "10-Casting Mod times spell level" successful checks required and a day of class counts as two checks on that track, subject to "it has to be the right class for the spell." I don't know if I'd dictate what spell or not, but I'd probably say "ok, if you spend a day in the Evocation lecture, you get to put two checks into Evocation spells," or something. And for field work, you have to use the spell in an appropriate context, meaning you can't just cast Scorching Ray at a wall twenty times to learn it, you have to go fight shit and use Scorching Ray. Once you've mastered a spell, you don't have to roll to cast it anymore, so long as you're actually high enough level to cast the spell per normal D&D rules. If you're first level and have been casting Scorching Ray from a book and gotten 20 successes, you still have to roll to cast it because you're first-fucking-level.
Spell Resources
Vance can go suck a barrel of cocks. I don't know what the vancian system is good for, but wizard college games aint it. Characters have spell points, they get fatigued when they run through 1/3 of their points (or, rather, I'll give a set threshold based on base spell points so people don't have to do math on the fly, because I know most of my potential players wouldn't write the damned thing down), and exhausted when they've run through 2/3, and they can rest an hour to recover 1/3, another hour for 2/3, and another six hours to go back to full. Classes are structured with this in mind, so that each session of class/lecture/whatthefuckever starts with half an hour of practical work casting spells, then there's two hours of lecture so people can catch their breath and recover most of their SP, and then ends with another half hour of practical work.
That's as far as I've gotten in my figuring. Thoughts? Beyond "Damnit, Prak, you're an idiot, stop trying to use d20 for everything," I mean.
I'm approaching the idea as just a way to present a D&D game centered on being Magic Uni students to my potential players. This isn't for publication, this isn't for sale, it just has to pass the muster of a group that is composed of around two decent but cautious (ie, not super opportunistic asshole) optimizers and two to three newbies/novices with a head for some optimization.
I'm looking at D20 with variations because that's the thing I have the best chance of getting players for. Even if I throw down a 100-page booklet of houserules, as long as there is recognizable D&DNA there, I can people on board.
The first thing I'm looking at is hacking out hit die, because that makes things very weird for school games. Instead, I want to roll with something like the Mutants and Masterminds condition track (under "Conflict"), which, itself, was probably based on a variant rule from Unearthed Arcana. The idea being that you don't have hp, you just have a condition track. When you take damage, you roll a save, if you pass, there's no effect, if you fail by less than ten, you just take a cumulative -1 on further damage resistance checks, if you fail by more than 10, you're dazed until your next round and get that same penalty. The UA version actually breaks that into "cumulative -1/disabled" and M&M has four degrees of failure, but that's the gist at least. This way you can have students that don't have more hit points than the town guard... because no one has hit points. I'd use a Poor/Average/Good base save split based on the HD the class would normally have (d4-6/d8/d10-12), probably using the same scale as BAB, so a level one fighter and a level 2 wizard have the same resilience. I'm also considering giving d12 classes a static bonus on their resilience, and the d4 class a sort of ablative magical defense, meaning that once they are [condition] they take a static -2 penalty on resilience checks, to represent the respective higher and lower resilience compared to other classes.
I'm also at least considering using the Defense variant from UA, since a lot of characters wouldn't be wearing much armor and it'd help a little bit. I might use Defense as the resilience roll stat for above, just to collapse variants together.
As to spellcasting, first of all, I want to use the "spellbooks are scrolls" idea. I don't know if I want them to be single use, or what. Probably not, though, since I'm also looking at rolling to cast successfully.
Casting Spells
The idea is to reinforce the "you're learning to cast spells" thing, so when you first learn a spell, you have to roll an appropriate skill to cast it successfully (Kn.Arcana, Kn.Divine, Kn.Nature, Performance, divvied up logically). The base DC would be something like 15+spell level, and then I'd go ahead and let people try to cast above their level at +5 per spell level above their max. I think that'd really only be an option if you have the spell in written form, and spells below your max spell level would have -5 DC per level, too. Wands are a genre convention in Harry Potter, Little Witch Academia, and a lot of other magic school stuff (because Harry Potter), so to incentivize wand-use, I figure having a wand would give you a +3 bonus to your spell rolls, and might allow you to prep more mastered spells, or something.
Edit: of note- I considered the profusion of rolling this creates. When you have a spell with a To Hit roll, you just make one roll against the higher of the opponent's defense or the spell DC. If using Spell DC successfully casting means you automatically hit. If using the opponent's defense, successfully hitting means you automatically cast the spell. It's a kludge, but it means fewer rolls.
Learning Spells
I know people here hate on "use it to learn it" stuff, but for the given players I have in mind, I think it would work fine. I'm thinking "10-Casting Mod times spell level" successful checks required and a day of class counts as two checks on that track, subject to "it has to be the right class for the spell." I don't know if I'd dictate what spell or not, but I'd probably say "ok, if you spend a day in the Evocation lecture, you get to put two checks into Evocation spells," or something. And for field work, you have to use the spell in an appropriate context, meaning you can't just cast Scorching Ray at a wall twenty times to learn it, you have to go fight shit and use Scorching Ray. Once you've mastered a spell, you don't have to roll to cast it anymore, so long as you're actually high enough level to cast the spell per normal D&D rules. If you're first level and have been casting Scorching Ray from a book and gotten 20 successes, you still have to roll to cast it because you're first-fucking-level.
Spell Resources
Vance can go suck a barrel of cocks. I don't know what the vancian system is good for, but wizard college games aint it. Characters have spell points, they get fatigued when they run through 1/3 of their points (or, rather, I'll give a set threshold based on base spell points so people don't have to do math on the fly, because I know most of my potential players wouldn't write the damned thing down), and exhausted when they've run through 2/3, and they can rest an hour to recover 1/3, another hour for 2/3, and another six hours to go back to full. Classes are structured with this in mind, so that each session of class/lecture/whatthefuckever starts with half an hour of practical work casting spells, then there's two hours of lecture so people can catch their breath and recover most of their SP, and then ends with another half hour of practical work.
That's as far as I've gotten in my figuring. Thoughts? Beyond "Damnit, Prak, you're an idiot, stop trying to use d20 for everything," I mean.