Let's make fun of Sig

[Username17]

OK, because it was kind of getting lost in the middle of the Low Magic discussion, here's an entire thread devoted to Sig the Red's treatise on the Fey. It can be found: Here.

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Now that we're on the same page, we can discuss the story and game mechanics openly and honestly. These are two very different discussions which we will be having simultaneously, because there is no such thing as a "right" or "wrong" description of Fey in a story and thus any fluff text is acceptable (at least to somebody). Meanwhile, the game text actually is being judged by an external standard, so we can be quite cruel on this point (and we will be - oh yes!)

Solid examples of this of course is that in D&D, quite surprisingly a "Pixie" is an entire meter tall. All that stuff you may have heard about "pocket pixies" or "tinkerbelling" or whatever is wholly inaccurate as far as official D&D Pixies is concerned, because they are seriously the size of flying hobbits. And while that may well surprise you - and indeed I have yet to meet anyone who thinks "flying hobbit" when I say the word "Pixie", there is nothing actually wrong with using the word that way.

On the other hand, handing out CR 3 creatures with high DC SoDs is bullshit, as is forcing a 12th level character to spend their 12th level feat to fast fog cloud.

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Anyhow. Game mechanics: what's up with that?

The nomenclature is unclear in the feat writeups. At first, when I saw the progressions like this one:

Peaceful Doper: “Sleep” > “Cure Minor Wounds” > “Calm Emotions” > “Cure Light Wounds” > “Restoration, Lesser” > “Cure Moderate Wounds” > “Reincarnation” (as a type of Fey of same level)

I thought it was some sort of feat that gave you spell-likes triggered in some sort of level-appropriate fashion. My natural response was "Sure, but what the hell good is it when you get to high level and even 4th level spell effects can be cast by the cohort of your special mount?" Well it turns out to be less good than that.

Each of those steps along the way is itself a whole feat. Like the thing you only get every third level. I don't even know what's up with that. Cure Moderate Wounds is bullshit when you get it on-time, and apparently I'm being asked if I want to spend six whole feats to cast a craptastic 2nd level Cleric spell that real Clerics only ever cast because they don't have to prepare it ahead of time. The answer, pretty obviously, is "no".

Moving on:

Mystical Tutoring: gain a single Arcane spell of any school except Necromancy, or spell from the Druid or Bard spell lists, as both Spell-Like ability and added to any personal spell lists; maximum spell level is one third of Fey level rounded down; spell must also not involve language, writing, complex material components, or XP cost.

OK class, what's wrong with this?

1. It doesn't scale. A feat you spend in at 5th level grants a 1st level spell (like color spray, and at 25th level it's still granting the same 1st level spell. If you took the same feat at higher level, you'd get a better spell, but it would also go obsolete with frightening speed.
   
   
2. None of the spells it hands out are ever level appropriate no matter what level you take them at. At 6th level you can get a 2nd level spell, or you can take Leadership and get a cohort who can cast 2nd level spells. Heck, at 10th level you can get a 3rd level spell, which the cohort of your cohort could intriguingly also cast.

This thinking permeates the feat options in this set-up, with each mystical option being substantially underpowered for the level you get it at, and substantially over costed for how transiently it des anything useful or matters in any way.

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Now let's talk about stories for a bit. I don't think there should be an Elfin subtype in addition to an Elf subtype. If you're willing to make a bunch of the fey be Goblinoid subtype as part of a "goblins are fairy relatives" thing, you shouldn't go half way on your "elves are fairy relatives too" trip. Don't halvsies it for me - throw down the whole gauntlet.

Also, I flat don't like the "sprites run around as incorporeal globes of light before they go on an asswhupping lynch mob of destruction" thing. It's way too Lantern Archons -> Hound Archons for my liking. Also, incorporeality is totally broken in basic D&D and you shouldn't do it. Even gaseous form is ape shit at low level when these things will be encountered.

For a period of a few hundred years or so one clan might hold sway above any others but suddenly lapse into obscurity or equilibrium.

I don't think this word means what you think it means. "Equilibrium" actually means that change in every direction is equal and thus the overall condition is modelled effectively by a steady-state assumption. If they held sway for a few hundred years and then achieved equilibrium, that would mean that they would be gaining vassals as fast as they lost them - retaining their powers indefinitely. I'm almost positive you meant something else.

Their iron allergy doesn't trigger when wielding or struck by iron weapons, so I'm not sure what it's supposed to be for.

-Username17

[Catharz]

Oh, come on! Everyone knows that the fey live in the sub-quantum foam beneath the Planck constant.

Many diminutive beings are present there--the tykes, the self-transforming machine elves of hyperspace. Are they the children destined to be father to the man? One has the impression of entering into an ecology of souls that lies beyond the portals of what we naively call death. I do not know. Are they the synesthetic embodiment of ourselves as the Other, or of the Other as ourselves? Are they the elves lost to us since the fading of the magic light of childhood? Here is a tremendum barely to be told, an epiphany beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the realm of that which is stranger than we can suppose. here is the mystery, alive, unscathed, still as new for us as when our ancestors lived it fifteen thousand summers ago. The tryptamine entities offer the gift of new language, they sing in pearly voices that rain down as colored petals and flow through the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts as gods would give their children. The sense of emotional connection is terrifying and intense. The Mysteries revealed are real and if ever fully told will leave no stone upon another in the small world we have gone so ill in.

[Cielingcat]

I can't read the mechanics because they're not formatted and I value my eyesight.

[Nereas]

It's not just that they aren't formatted - the whole text seems like a big, stupid, stream of consciousness that really needs editing - the Fey class looks like a writeup of the brainstorming for a Fey class.

[Rob_Knotts]

Silverthrone flashback... need Guinness...

[fbmf]

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Although I am still tempted to edit the thread title, I suppose in light of this...

Must get critique, both good and bad! Virulent, flaming critique drives me to do better the most.
Please spam me. Flame. Call the whole project gay. Anything.

...I am inclined to let it go unless and until it causes a problem. Also, be advised that although Sig requests spamming and flaming, neither will actually be tolerated.
[/TGFBS]

[PhoneLobster]

Despite FBMF calling attention to this.

Call the whole project gay. Anything.

I refuse to call a project about fairies gay.

What would we be calling gay next? Musical theatre?

[shirak]

fbmf, I also wrote a short critique on Sig's project. It's a single post on the Low Magic thread. Mind moving it?

[JonSetanta]

ZOMG my heart pounded when I saw this thread. Fear or anxiety, dunno. Terror? Also might explain the SUDDEN 100 PAGE VIEWS OVERNIGHT ON MY THREAD!
Not so bad dissections, good advice. Mostly. Wouldn't call my text 'stupid' but to each their own opinion.
Thanks to Frank especially for the initiative and time put in >_<

OK, disclaimer: this is not a complete work as most of you may have noticed, and mostly written on nights I can't sleep (painkillers, appendectomy surgery 2 weeks ago, weird dreams.. etc.) which makes for good raw ideas but bad presentation/logical thought. You should all try it sometime.
Get cut open/stuffed together, then insomnia plus drug-induced forced sleep. Interesting imagery to say the least; mostly what started this whole project. To get those fucking fairies out of my head.

Frank is the first to point out the 'stream of consciousness' throughout, which I've been waiting for someone to notice <_<;; since it was written with minor editing and very fast
I'll have to go at the fluff with a butcher knife and drill. Major tufts of fur flyin'.

I'll respond to the issues addressed as best I can.

Pixies: needz moar Tinkerbelling. No joke, D&D Pixies are fucked up. Flying halflings aren't exactly easy to picture with fragile little bug wings, nor are they 'classical' or representative of the old stories and... heh.. fairytales.
TSR and Gygax had some wacky ideas, but I feel it's time for a fresh look.
I ask you, how popular have D&D Fey been over the years? How many players want to encounter D&D Fey, make them PCs, or even see them cluttering up those Monster Manuals with their horrid little SLAs and disgusting LAs.


Don't know exactly what Frank has in mind with the line

On the other hand, handing out CR 3 creatures with high DC SoDs is bullshit, as is forcing a 12th level character to spend their 12th level feat to fast fog cloud.

but if it somehow pertains to my Fey feats and SLAs therein, I'll address that next.

Game Mechanics: pretty much thrown in as afterthought. Bad idea, right? New game mechanics draw more readers than anything else in the Wonderful World of RP Gamers.

I'm not very good with 'statting out' stuff, or with transfering a story concept into numerical/d20 values. Or balancing said values.
I'm also not very concerned about mechanics until the fluff is sorted, but thanks to this forum and these reviews I at least know it is indeed both bad and underpowered.
Fluff comes first, numbers after to support the fluff and make it 'playable'. That's how I roll.
The entire Fey Racial Class and Fey feats section is a draft I plopped in for my teamers in the Feybook project. It's no where near how I want it to be, too much focused on fluff recently.
Nor can I decide how to approach combining the advancement of a collective, protean race with class features.

The feats actually came first, with that weird "name" > "name 2" > "name 3" getup to make for easy category sorting. That will all be plugged into feat templates to save your eyes. Celingcat need not worry for long, and these comments help shape that crap into something better.
Although, Tome of Fiends-type power levels might not be quite what I'm leaning towards, as I wanted everything to be mostly compatible with "Normal D&D" like a quick insert setting option.

Each "name" feat is added as normal by-level or with the racial class bonus feats. The ones far left begin the feat tree, gaining more power as progressing to right. We all know what they do, and the only requirements are being Fey and having all previous feats in a tree, so brevity for the sake of writing drafts should be allowed. Tough it out.

The first writeup for the Fey Racial Class had 2 bonus Fey feats every level. I looked at the feat trees, and wound up going for underpowered. The reason for that is when a Fey begins collecting those feats, they may add them as bonus (from racial class) AND every third level (1,3,6,9,etc).
I guarantee you there are more players crying foul for it being too many, yet here with the F n K School of Thought it's quite the opposite, in most ways for the better.
These Fey don't have level restrictions for the feats and neither does anyone else taking them. A level 3 Sprite can load up on them, focus on a specific tree, and grab.. well.. SLAs. Tons of them.
Maybe I been reading too much Skip Williams.
Or maybe, I saw this as 'too many' because I forgot this is a racial class, which is advanced INSTEAD OF CLASS LEVELS!
So first change will be re-adding more bonus Fey feats, then condensing them for faster advancement, that much I have planned.

As for the Cures specifically, is it OK to have any random Fey grab the healing/buff/combat ability of Warlock and Cleric combined, even to a lesser degree?
The objective was 'roles' and 'niches' rather than 'provide possibilities for CharOp board over in Wizards to max out'. Each tree requires multiple additions to prevent Fey from grabbing one Fey feat every level, and then going all lazy and adding up SLAs without doing anything further. Unless that isn't such a bad idea...
What's your advice, folks?
A single auto-scaling feat for all the feat trees, or condense into a select few feats?

Mystical Tutoring: as I statted out Fey feats, I realized there is no option for individual Fey to throw in those random spells like "Hideous Laughter" (screw you, Tasha). Many Fey in D&D have a few like these, while most still share many abilities. Those odds-and-ends needed a way in, and this is the feat to do it.
The first version read something like "maximum spell level gained as if the Fey were a Bard determining highest level spells", tho I admit it is a poor choice.
Scaling here would be a bad idea, but I figured gaining a single spell as, say, a Wizard's maximum level would go too far, in comparison to normal D&D rules

With all the beef over in Wizards about the Warmage's Advanced Learning or whatever that was.. Extra Spell? Was that it? People insisted a spellcaster can use it to gain ANY spell that met criteria, including other class lists. This was similar, yet much more; you also gain the spell as a spell-like ability, once per round. That kind of thing is unseen, even in House Rules over there in Wizards.
Guess I wanted to avoid that kind of squabbling, but now I realize it's not nearly as bad as I assumed. Hell, it needs to be badder. Much more.

Subtypes: Sorry, didn't mention "elfin" would be synonimous with "elf". Same with anything Goblin(oid).
Exactly what would be the whole gauntlet?
Outright writing "all elves goblins are fey"? I don't want that, any more than implying "all humans are giants" even though they might have similar origins.

Sprites as Glowing Bouncyballs: agreed, incorporeal is wicked. I saw the Lantern Archon and thought "hey D&D has it so early, I'll slap it in here". No relation to Archons, though.
What would be a good alternative, implying that Sprites are between spirit and flesh in a quiescent state, passing through natural objects (trees, soil, water, maybe rock) as if air?
I want the kind of reference to Brian Froud paintings where Fey are glowing explosions of light in their 'true' forms, yet humanoid when 'dealing with us'.
Can the same be achieved without incorporeality, or gaseousness?
How powerful is only moving through natural surroundings in comparison?

Fluff: Looks like I missed that one. Wrong usage, maybe needs more after that sentence or a new word, but the idea is when one clan falls 2 things might happen:
1 - power vacuum, since leader is gone then the clan collapses, then other clans are left to duke it out
2 - resume normal stalemate/balance between all clans in an area

Also, be advised that although Sig requests spamming and flaming, neither will actually be tolerated.

YES disregard what I wrote, it's a figure of speech NOT TO BE TAKING LITERALLY!
Flame as in 'critique blatantly', not trolling or accusing me of being a retarded spudsucker or something similar. Ahem.


EDIT: forgot to mention Iron Allergy.

Their iron allergy doesn't trigger when wielding or struck by iron weapons, so I'm not sure what it's supposed to be for.

It's mostly to prevent Fey from using iron weapons, though thick gloves might help. Being shackled, embedded with an arrow or knife, impaled, or merely touching iron/steel too long does same. The blood is most reason for such allergy, since it determines exactly HOW and WHY mortalized Elves lose that -2 CON, and in similar note how de-Fey'd Elves aren't as 'charming' any more.
Mostly behavior modification and to enforce the rule that "Fey Hate Iron" rather than increase the amount of damage they recieve from it or slap Fey with an arbitrary 'stun' or 'daze' from being hit with it.
It's bad enough that DR/iron is pierced, don't need a double whammy.
But yeah, mostly about the blood.

I refuse to call a project about fairies gay.

What would we be calling gay next? Musical theatre?

Not my personal opinion but unfortunately there have been too many fellow gamers quick to call anything "Fey" as ... well.. yep.
"Haha! Fairies? Sig is a fggot!" which is totally unfounded, inaccurate, and biased against homosexuals.
Including my own girlfriend's jibes.
"You're writing that fey thing again? That's soooo gay. (partially sarcasm, sometimes.. not so much)"
OK that's enough about that, no more mention of what other people think and especially about supposed (untrue) gayness, but the whole point was that many gamers do indeed dislike Fey if not HATE them, and D&D for some reason supports that majority.
That includes Magic cards, D&D, GURPS, Changeling, anything at all. Maybe it's just this area (sure fucking HOPE SO) but I don't let it ruin my own fun.
For example, I got a [counturl=88]Faerie Conclave[/counturl] 10th Edition card out of a booster recently. Was very happy. Behind it was a "Phage the Untouchable", over which I was less enthusiastic.


Something else has been on my mind lately though, having begun some local disability services this week:
As I may have mentioned, I've been told I "have Asperger's Syndrome", or high-functioning autism which in varing degrees affects cognitive functions. One symptom is that although 2 individuals, 1 with "normal type" and 1 with high-functioning autism, may write the same amount in, say, an essay, the latter will achieve much less quality writing and clarity in the same amount of text.
I noticed this conundrum upon beginning this "Fey by Sig" and although I wrote a TON, it doesn't seem very simple to understand, succinct, nor organized.
I've even failed an attempt in English major in a local college recently; that's like a kick in the nuts to someone like me that actually enjoys writing
Well, jsut wanted to share that last bit, in case anyone was curious why "this guy's writing is rambly". I don't blame any 'mental condition', or at least don't like to think that I have one (though apparently I do), just makes me sad to think that I just might not be cognitively capable of completing any work of actual quality.
Any advice on completing writing with inherent difficulties? Or do any other of you 'Aspies' simply not bother.

[Catharz]

Fey are a lot like fiends. They come in all shapes, sizes and levels of intelligence, and they're from a strange alternate dimension.

There's a little bit of flavor difference, but in your write-up surprisingly little. This should perhaps not be surprising, as in real-world mythology the two are often hopelessly entangled.

As you're said you don't care about/aren't good at transforming raw ideas into mechanics, you should seriously consider stealing the mechanics from elsewhere. You can probably see where this is going...


Basic fey SLA feat trees are very similar to fiendish Spheres, the difference being that the feats don't scale. Non-SLA fey feats and [Fiendish] feats are similarly complimentary.



So, my suggestion is that you start by grabbing the True Fiend class and re-tooling it to 'Fey Noble' or something similar, with the two basic ability sets coming from 'Seelie' and 'Unseelie'. The spheres, the DR, everything fits so long as you remove the "evil" and change it to 'morally ambivalent'.

Next is to change the Planar Conduit, with similar Un/Seelie ability sets (more can come later if you wish). Many of the spheres already work beautifully (Bubbles, Slumber, Dominion...actually pretty much all of them). Try writing up a few more, using your SLA trees as a starting point.

Try writing a few [Fey] feats after the [Fiendish] ones. In a lot of cases you can port them with no or very few cosmetic changes (wings, invisibility). More tree-like feats might do better after the [Combat] or [Skill] feat style.

Even the Fiendish Brute class is a good fit for what you're doing.

Finally try writing up a few LA+0 few races, with the power level of PC races rather than NPC ones with LA. See how these can interact with and be advanced by the Fey classes and feats to get the more powerful types you'd like.




You've obviously got a pretty strong idea of what you want the "ecology" and style of the few to be. Sometimes I agree with you, and sometimes I don't, but it's your design so I won't argue.

[Username17]

I'm also not very concerned about mechanics until the fluff is sorted, but thanks to this forum and these reviews I at least know it is indeed both bad and underpowered.

This is a dangerous trap to fall into. As you've noticed, flavor text really just flies by. You can crank it out in no time at all. Rules text, on the other hand takes effort. It takes comparisons to existing rules text for interactivity issues, nomenclature, and balance.

As an example, here's 5 minutes of flavor text that I just cranked out about some random subject. No startup time, no consultation, just five minutes freehand including editting.

The ascendancy of fire.
"We burn you!"

Fire imps comprise a substantial portion of the armies of the Sultan of the Brass City. Not only do they bear the shields and banners of the highest, but they are likewise employed in the armies of all of the lesser houses of Firey Nobility. It is not unusual to see swarms of fire imps ascending from the highest spires of the city being dispatched to the East or West or hurled through the cities many portals to inflict woe upon the armies of the mortals who dare defy the Sultan.

Individually, a Fire Imp is difficult to discern from a mote of flame or a tiny fire elemental, at least at any great distance. A Fire Imp's body forms only a tiny portion of the overall conflagration, being less than 25 centimeters in height and yet standing in the middle of a sphere of flames that is as much as half a meter across. It is for this reason that Fire Imps are often called "Wisps" despite the fact that they bear no relation to their swampy friends.

Which is I think the point you should be working around. Noone is going to gainsay your flavor text because it all comes down to preference. And because it's all about preference its general quality isn't going to be all that important in whether or not it gets used in any particular game. Furthermore, it's not actually any particular effort for anyone to just make up their own flavor text if they think yours sucks or won't work for their campaign. Most people should be able to meet a 20 wpm of editted composition if it's just free-hand fluff text. I apparently do 37.

Mechanics on the other hand, that's hard. When you write it out, people assume that you've put the work into comparing it at multiple levels for balance and checked it thoroughly for rules conflicts. That's often a wholly unwarranted assumption of course - but those are the breaks. Editted game text requires days of planning, rechecking, discussion. You measure that kind of output by the day, not the minute.

So don't think that you can catch the mechanics up at the last minute. You can't. The mechanics will have to go through multiple huge overhauls, but you have to start at the beginning. Get a handle on what you want people to be doing at various levels. What do you want them to be fighting, how do you want them to be fighting?

Although, Tome of Fiends-type power levels might not be quite what I'm leaning towards, as I wanted everything to be mostly compatible with "Normal D&D" like a quick insert setting option.

Tome of Fiends characters pretty much are. While people talk about "Tome Games" as an over-all powerup, that's really just the material in Races of War and Dungeonomicon. Those were the books where we straight up did re-dos on classes that could not pull their weight. The material in Tome of Necromancy and Tome of Fiends actually nerfs things as often as it powers things up.

The classes in Tome of Fiends in particular are kind of underwhelming jack-of-all trades archetypes for the most part. They get level-appropriate stuff most of the time, and you can break the Conduit at high levels with the right selection of stuff (At-will miracle is basically broken even at 19th level because miracle is kind of broken), but it's nothing really Earth shattering. So they probably are where you want to start.

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Think about a game in progress.

• The outpost has about 10 Goblin warriors, they reach for their crossbows... What does the fairy character do when her initiative comes up?
  
  
• The Manticore flies into view and lets out a thunderous roar! What does the fairy character do when her initiative comes up?
  
  
• Amongst the offal and discarded husks of men long dead, a Mind Flayer slithers towards the party, his unseeing eyes eerily reminiscent of the fallen skulls. What does the fairy character do when her initiative comes up?
  
  
• The Fire Giant levels his greatsword at the party, a cocky smile on his cindered face. What does the fairy character do when her initiative comes up?
  
  
• The boards of the ship buckle and shatter one after another. As the vessel sways uncontrollably the massive tentacles of the Kraken come into view! What does the fairy character do when her initiative comes up?
  
  
• Centered between the eyes of the Titanic Toad looms a most fearsome Death Slaad. The Toad begins its lumbering advance, and the Slaad mumbles incoherently. What does the fairy character do when her initiative comes up?
  
  
• Every mirror in the palace shatters at once and the halls ring with tinkling glass and the rattle of a snake's tail. A Marilith slithers into view, her human form a vision of beauty even as the swords she wields are visions of deadly danger. What does the fairy character do when her initiative comes up?

Consider those questions thematically, and then a class progression can be reverse engineered from there.

But don't just go off writing flavor text - that's literally wasted effort.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

Fey are a lot like fiends. They come in all shapes, sizes and levels of intelligence, and they're from a strange alternate dimension.

Pretty much! Although, they tend to resemble 'mundane life' more than monstrosities. I think this thematic standard pushes many gamers against Fey as they want to "stomp and stab the ugly baddies" rather than "slap the pretty chick with pointy ears".

I'll try your advice about retooling Tome class/races and adapting Fiend feats, but I'll want to plug in SLAs myself. They determine function in setting more than any amount of fluff.
I wanted something standardized and unifying like a single Fey racial class, but it seems everything indeed can't fit in just one.
Although I'd never make a "Fey Brute" or similar, a beginning with Sprite racial class levels (yes I do want to stick with the advancement system) and branching into other types. Becoming Elf or Goblinoid replaces the whole shebang, as I would never want either race to have the protean-Fey abilities (disregarding feats and SLAs)

Catharz, care to tell further which points you agree/disagree? Not like an invitation for debate, but my reasons are personal curiosity. I'd like to know what people want out of new Fey material.


Frank: Once again I'm amazed at your insight, however.. uh.. unique your views may come across at times.
From my perspective reading your work it's always good to have such original and at times outlandish new material, but sometimes it seems things go too far. I'm not afraid to speak out when I believe a certain mechanic or even a single SLA might be out of place, but those moments are far and few between, which never ceases to amaze me.
Your experience in these matters is probably genius if genius didn't have such bad connotations sometimes. Maybe 'mad scientist' would be more apt, but ehhh not quite the word... I dunno. Anyways...

Now that I have banged out a lengthy discourse on Fey in general, and read these reviews, it seems time to crack open both the Tome of Fiends and d20 SRD once again.
I plan to use a balance between both F n K work and WOTC, as going too far towards one RPG School of Thought would alienate my work from the either. Or perhaps I would lose both audiences. -_-;

I think I might be writing too fast, both physically and the span between writing/editing/posting. And then re-reading it requires days because apparently if I read the recent Fey flavor text within hours or a day after 'finishing it', it will look good.
But then a week later I read it and cringe. It sucks. It needs trimming. But what to remove? What to leave in?

So from your advice I'll work on mechanics in tandem with flavor, and definitely go slower. With your perspective I understand now that it's more difficult than it looks, since all a reader sees in a feat, class, or race is the end-result and usually can't even imagine the struggle and re-editing required to get that far. Until now I assumed it would be possible with a bangout job but yes reality has hit.

The classes in Tome of Fiends in particular are kind of underwhelming jack-of-all trades archetypes for the most part. They get level-appropriate stuff most of the time, and you can break the Conduit at high levels with the right selection of stuff (At-will miracle is basically broken even at 19th level because miracle is kind of broken), but it's nothing really Earth shattering. So they probably are where you want to start.

They reminded me of Warlocks, really. Not due to the SLAs at-will, which Wizards really should loosen up about, but the versatility at expense of actual roles to fill in, say, a 'standard party'.
Even the Bubbles domain (with its Fireball at L1, which I have thought about recently.. still can't decide if that's balanced or not, given that it's 1d6 at 20' spread once a round; I'd say bump up one spell level unless radius shrinks with caster level down to 5' spread) isn't quite as good as what a Warmage dishes out, and that's sayin something. Yes, Warmage.
For Fey I wanted specific niches filled, like "the Healer" and "the Traveler" and "the Dryad-like one that protects woods" rather than a bunch of random abilities. The elemental forms, the animal shapes, the glamering, it's all roles I've read about or seen and shaped (crudely) into abstractions.

And, it took a good night's rest to formulate this response about the Fey feats sucking so much as far as advancement by using many feats versus taking one/advance SLAs by level:
A low level D&D Sprite, like a Pixie, doesn't have many HD. What, 1?
Yet it has pretty damned good casting abilities.
That's some unusual combination thar. Don't see that every day.
In fact I'd say it's one of the oldest iconic glass cannons.

I wanted to preserve that function of a low-HD Fey loaded with SLAs (for whatever crazy reasons) and the only way I saw of accomplishing such a thing was to provide ways to climb the Fey feat trees WITHOUT depending on level (entirely).
So a L3 Sprite can load up on Fey feats using both bonus and character level feats, and accomplish a select number of tasks decently.
You know, Fey things.
Like hiding or disguising or turning into shiz.

The combat stuff comes later, but I knew there had to be a way to keep HD low (Sprites in D&D usually don't go over 3 HD) yet retain the ability to level and gain bonus Fey feats.

So I put those 2 feats in that shift the balance of HD-to-level, if anyone has noticed.
What's the opinion on that? Scrap it or keep it?

I'll brainstorm some alternatives for the whole Fey racial class over the next week or two, and edit the posts after (or during, if I have more flavor out) this process of revision.
That, and read Tome of Fiends in further detail.
I read it 2-3 times before but skimmed most, focusing on the Fiend racial classes and feats mostly (best part haha) but now seems like I'll have to analyze it in relation to my own material.

I wouldn't consider my 2 weeks of freeform flavor text wasted effort, but perhaps trying to pass it off as actual readable fluff for a netbook was delusional on my part. That I'll admit.
However, I see potential in it, and with the reviews in Feybook forum there will be votes on exactly what gets into the final version.

How would you arrange the dispersion of game rules within flavor text, if at all? What books would be good examples of a decently paced dispersion of mechanics/fluff without boring readers that would favor one or other? Or is there little to no distinction....

I'll consider those encounter situations each in turn, and compare to those of specific class roles. Not as 'fight the monster' but as puzzles to solve.
In time I'll see making game mechanics as a unified process but right now it's difficult not seeing it all as little chunks of schizophrenic rules, all contradicting each other.
Maybe I'm combining too many rules variants, most importantly the "Traditional D&D" and Skip's mistakes (your own bias aside, Frank. I read about the whole debate, and although I agree with you for the most part, I wouldn't exactly do the same to correct such a situation..) and on the other side there's the unique, semi-rogue, unorthodox yet astonishingly refreshing Tome series over here.
I've known D&D (and sadly, AD&D. vomit.) for half my life, so it's weird times discussing in terms of Tome-this and Tome-that, but actually might be better in long run.

I have some serious pondering to do.

[tzor]

1186428868[/unixtime]]Pixies: needz moar Tinkerbelling. No joke, D&D Pixies are fucked up. Flying halflings aren't exactly easy to picture with fragile little bug wings, nor are they 'classical' or representative of the old stories and... heh.. fairytales.

I would point out, having spent a lot of time looking at the classic theme of intelligent rats from Leiber's works, that a lot of tiny creatures have been supersized in 3E.

Dire rats (for example) are close to the border for medium size (4' long and weigh 50#) making them taller and heavier than halflings. (3' tall and 35#) A regular rat is considered tiny (1'-2').

In the real world here are the sizes for rats:
Marsh rice rat: 245mm 9.6"
Norway rat: 400mm 15.7"

The general reason for this is that the rules tend to get "odd" once you get below the 5' square and the 5' reach and the game designers deliberately avoided tiny creatures on purpose.

[JonSetanta]

Damn, that's a mindfuck tzor.
Ever seen marsh rabbits tho? Nasty. Hissing monsters. I never view the fluffy mall-store bunnies the same way again. @_@

True, the bonuses for being human-hand-sized outweigh the fact than a PC Sprite may get lost in someone's pocket.
+4 AC? Hit anything you swing at? Hide +gazillion? Sign right here.
Oh, and your maximum carrying weight is like 1/10th that of a human. You don't care? OK..

I don't agree with Tiny or smaller being 'unbalanced' though, as any Wizard with a toad would then be one of the worst offenders.

[Catharz]

A PC's hit dice should never be lower than her [effective] character level. There are a bunch of reasons for this. The most basic is probably that effective character level is a lie, and is not effective at all. An ECL 20 character can be destroyed by a CL 20 Blasphemy. An ECL 20 character can in some circumstances only be polymorphed into creatures appropriate for level 10 characters.

You already have two ways to manipulate the number of hit points a character has: Hit die size and Constitution. The floor of the max number of HP a character can have at any level is his level. D4 HD, Con of 5, and you're there. IF you really want, you want do that with your pixies (although I would not suggest it).



As for flavor: Your fey all seem to be bloodthirsty and psychopathic. I'd view fey more as 'monsters of society', the result of millennia of treating humans as 'sub human'. Think of Romans, and think of Southern Gents and Ladies. They've also got a very baroque dualistic power structure which (much like those of the Fiends) allows for a huge degree of upward mobility. Combine the courts of Louis the Sun King with something more meritocratic. Now add in the fact that higher ranks are actually almost always directly related to greater personal power, and that the fey really are superior to almost all humans. And they live until killed.

IMO one of the basic requirements of adding the Seelie courts to a campaign is massive pruning. Classic fantasy races simply can't coexist as normal with the court. Elves need to go, unless you do something drastically cosmetic like make them a kingdom of half-human half-fey. Dwarves are Unseelie because (1) they live underground and (2) they aren't pretty enough.

A stronger border needs to be defined between elemental/nature spirits and fey in a normal cosmology. Fey aren't devoted to nature, they simply find it less of an eyesore than human habitations. Are we going to make Dryads fey, or elementals? Nyads? Nixies? Invisible stalkers?
There's plenty of room for cooperation between the Fey and the Nature Spirits, and ancient pacts and cross-pollination are guaranteed. Still, the border has to go somewhere, and if it falls on the far side of fire elementals, that's a major change.

There are a number of other cretures which might reasonably be fey. Lycanthropes, for example, carry all of the basic traits. But then again, they might not be.


I guess my point is that something as complex as fey society can't just be dropped into A. Generic Campaign without being tacked-on and stupid. Imagine if half of all the demons and devils already existed as material-plane creatures and you wanted to set up Baator.

[tzor]

I never said they weren't balanced. They just get "odd."

The first effect of odd is the effect of 0 reach. Aside from the fact that you have to physically enter your opponent's square (even if your opponent is also tiny with 0 reach) you also can never threaten an opponent. Even when you are in the same square. You can't flank either.

They can't even flank each other! (Think about that for a moment.)

Everything tends to scale with size ... except hit points. One level of fighter gives the same bonus to the titan as it does to the tiny. With the one point of minimum damage eventually damage becomes academic, you hit you do 1 point. Of course if you throw in DR - like from wererats - you might as well forget about hitting alltogether.

On the other hand, things normalize somewhat if you give the tiny a reach weapon as now they have 5' reach, can threaten, flank, and get to fit four in a square to attack the enemy.

None of that is in and of itself imbalancing. (In fact I'm quite pleased that it isn't broken.) But it's not something that most designers want to get sidetracked on so they avoid it.

Then again, I've always been fascinated by Leiber's Lankhmar Below, and the Book of Gnomes. Tiny is cool. Honey, I shrunk the adventurers again.

[JonSetanta]

Heh sorry tzor I assumed the gist of your info was a statement about size and balance. Oddness it is, though. I don't even want to think about how simply wrong D&D reach is right now, too much going on (just injured my right hand too, all swollen, hard to... urg... type)

Catharz: About the HD vs. HP, I was trying to simulate the lack of HD for Sprites and smaller Fey by reducing HD. However it didn't work out so well, regarding factors like ECL like you mentioned. It sucks.
I'll lean more to a Tome style Fey racial class or series of classes, and have HD = character level. Smaller Fey will get CON penalties, even though D&D Sprites have ample CON (Grigs have 13. Others like Petal have even more. WHAT THE HELL!)
The net result for D&D is that even though they have 1 to 3 HD, that's as much or more HP than your average human Commoner. -_@

About flavor and fierceness, yes that's right they are portrayed as violent, as opposed to the lackluster and somewhat watered down Fey average that Wizards/TSR/Gygax has provided.
I'm slowly developing a proposal for "Fey Culture" but trying not to get too complex. Yes the Nobles will be more human-like in their deprevations, but in general I want Fey as a whole to 'toughen their image'.
You know, do nasty things just like any other supernatural race, rather than pick flowers and sing (tho they can do that too).
That's some nice ideas. I'll keep that in mind!

For 'cross-polination', I looked through MM1-4 and Fiend Folio and jotted down every monster I saw as 'resembles classical Fey', 'works well with Fey setting', and 'should be Fey'. Then, I made some notes next to each, and abbreviated codes for inclinations towards subtype such as "tend to be Seelie" or "Giant" or "Plant-like".
This is still in revision, adding and removing some, and making it 'look nicer'. Pretty much all my opinion, and as such will be provided as options, monsters generally untouched except for how they are used, for gamers to insert into Fey-settings as they see fit.

Dunno about all Dwarves as Unseelie, but some might be possible. Elves as a whole I wanted to leave seperate from the Fey Sidhe, which are ancestors in this setting but culturally and genetically split from the mortal ones.
Can't quite figure out what Frank meant by "throw the gauntlet" but I assume he meant the same as you, Catharz, in that he wants to see either "all Elves are Fey" or "no Elves are Fey, they are distinctly seperate".
I wanted both, is that confusing? Some are, some aren't. I'm making the Sidhe race now, similar to Elf but not as much diversity other than which Fey feats they take.
Sidhe will be the replacement for Elf, perhaps, and I'll re-edit the fluff to reflect this difference.

In Norse myth, the Vanir and Odin used some form of arcane Lycanthropy to cause one of Loki's children to eat the other as punishment for Baldur's death. They were Loki's sons by a giant, so that was OK by Aesir law
Anyways, Vanir were the first to cause or use Lycan condition. Ever. Other than Loki's wolf-kid Fenrir, I don't see many proto-werewolves in the cycle.
Maybe I can introduce Vanir as some überpowerful Feygods, maybe not; mostly as reason for why these Fey have access to spells like "Bite of the Wolf" and turn into animals much better than Druids or weres could ever hope to.

And about those fiends being mortal; a friend did a campaign like that. He simply cut out the Asmodeus/Baator crap, and had Hell on Planet ___. They were simply powerful monsters like beholder or mind flayer. Worked well. TOO well.
It was goddamned awesome.

[shirak]

Sig, have you read Jim Butcher's Dresden Files? Summer Knight in particular has a lot of info in his world's fairies and they sound awesome. The basis of his vision is that the Summer Court is pro-life (go Ebola, trees in the middle of roads, wolves hunting in villages etc) while the Winter Court is pro-death (Ice Age etc). Life as we know it exists in the fine balance between the Courts. But both Courts are major badasses, with the Queens themselves being some of the most powerful beings in the world, comparable to Archangels, Demon Lords and some of the Old Gods.

[Username17]

If you want a setting where the Vanir are awesome badasses, check out Dominons 3.

It has several Sidhe nations in the various time periods:

• Tir n nOg is an early era nation of Sidhe and Firbolgs. They do Air and Nature magic mostly.
  
• Hellheim is an early era nation of Vanir Death magicians and their Svartalf allies. They do Death, Air, and Earth magic and have human serfs and Valkyr.
  
• Vanheim is an early and mid-era nation of Vanir who, alongside their Dwarven allies rule over a kingdom of humans. They spend a fair amount of time sacrificing human girls to their ancient god, but mostly they do Air and Earth magic as their Blood access is tertiary.
  
• Eriyu A mid-era nation of Melesian humans who have interbred with Firbolgs. They have access to some Firbolg warriors and an occassional Sidhe military advisor. They do Air and Nature magic.
  
• Man is a mid and late era nation of humans who conquered fey lands and won't give them back. They have a generally anti-magical bent but nonetheless employ cu sidhe and barghests as well as unicorns in the defense of the lands that they now own.
  
• Midgaard is a late era nation of human barbarians and werewolves who have enlisted the aid of a diminishing number of Vanir who are sacred to them. They do Astral, Air, and Blood magic.

There are also Pan nations who use Satyr, Centaur, Dryads, and Minotaur but they are explicitly not fairies in that setting.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

shirak: No I haven't read Dresden Files, but after reading a mention on wikipedia to it I checked out the basics and it looks like an interesting series. My local library branch doesn't have it, so looks like I'll have to check out the nearby city branch.
Weird that the Winter Court would favor death.. that's a bit self defeating for nature-beings, no? heh
The seasonal courts is an ancient (tale? myth cycle? connection?) and artist Brian Froud describes the relation of Summer (Seelie) and Winter (Unseelie) briefly, so yeah I do know a lil about that... in a way...
I just wanted to split seasons from the courts, having S/Uns duality penetrating deep into Fey realms where there are no seasons since time simple does not change. Eternal twilight and all that jazz.
Now that you mention Ultimate Fey of sorts, there is something called a leShay in the Epic Crapbook. Some dual-wielding Elf thing, very powerful (in a melee sense) but I didn't see much potential in it as archetype for "Noble", even though it easily wipes the floor with any Tulani Eladrin.

Frank: Interesting! Where do you get this?!? Your personal hard-drive library must be larger than even mine..
On a related note, remember how the Vanir were inducted/absorbed into Asgardian culture?
The fertility of Fey-like Vanir and power of Giantish Aesir must have caused some kind of "hybrid vigor", especially with such deities as Thor. Or.. am I wrong there? Was Thor's mother Vanir or was she a different "Earth goddess"?

Wikipedia says this about Vanir and Elves:

Vanir and Elves

The Eddas possibly identify the Vanir with the elves (Álfar), frequently interchanging "Æsir and Vanir" and "Æsir and Álfar" to mean "all the gods". As both the Vanir and the Álfar appear to be fertility powers, the interchangeability suggest that the Vanir may have been synonymous with the elves.

It may also be that the two names reflected a difference in status where the elves were minor fertility gods whereas the Vanir were major fertility gods. Freyr would thus be a natural Vanir ruler of the elves in Álfheim.

Rather than named Elves explicitly as 'minor nature gods' I'd rather make some sort of intermediary. Maybe an adaptation of the Tulani, as it seems exemplar of many Fey traits (yet it's a Celestial.. go fig)
The Vanir connection between land, sea, fertility, the arts, all things Fey, makes them above and beyond any petty clannish/house squabbles. It's almost as if all Fey would venerate their (also immortal) Vanir Super Elves everywhere, even though they might not actually grant Cleric stuff per se.
More like an Asian ancestral respect and tithing for favors.

[josephbt]

@tzor

hokay, reach weapons double your nat reach. so, unless something's changed, 0 times 2 equals 0. no reach for gremlins and rats.

[tzor]

1186574911[/unixtime]]@tzor

hokay, reach weapons double your nat reach. so, unless something's changed, 0 times 2 equals 0. no reach for gremlins and rats.

I could have sworn that the reach range for a 0 range was 5. I can't seem to find it, so I probably imagined it. Well that fucking sucks. There goes my only idea for a module.

[Fwib]

You could just houserule that tiny(tall) creatures get 5' reach with a reach weapon.

There's a variant rule for that near the bottom of the page here.

[Catharz]

1186578750[/unixtime]]

1186574911[/unixtime]]@tzor

hokay, reach weapons double your nat reach. so, unless something's changed, 0 times 2 equals 0. no reach for gremlins and rats.

I could have sworn that the reach range for a 0 range was 5. I can't seem to find it, so I probably imagined it. Well that fucking sucks. There goes my only idea for a module.

I believe that it worked that way in 3e.

[tzor]

I could houserule anything ... but then I'm not using 100% OGC and thus I could get into hot water by "publising" it. Besides now that I know Skip proposed it as a variant rule I could never use it on principle alone.