d20 what-if - damage and bonus tokens

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:27 am

What if instead of there being Instantaneous damage or bonuses to HP or stats, they'd be Intrinsic (from race, class, level), or Temporary, Permanent (from spells and effects).

That way if you take poison damage to an ability score, it'd sit as a token on your sheet that would have to be repaired later; damage to hitpoints could be listed the same way.

But I don't see any reason for spells and effects to ever change intrinsic values, because those ought to be bought from levels, even for NPCs. No manuals of dexterity or animal enlightenment spells to stack endlessly.

-Crissa

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:33 am

Sure.

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:39 pm

Sounds workable to me...although I'm not sure what the overall benefit is. If you have a spell effect with the [Permanent] tag, isn't that just as good as raising yout [Intrinsic] numbers, at least until you get hit with a dispel?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:37 pm

Well, you could word other spells to remove [permanent] tokens so that you could use buffs that stacked in more complex ways without changing the value on your character sheet.

As it stands in D&D, there are spells that will just rewrite your character sheet for you, giving you a trade-in for straight power.

-Crissa

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:13 pm

Maybe Frank's TNE damage system should use 3 damage levels rather than 4, just so that you can use ice house pieces as damage counters.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:21 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Maybe Frank's TNE damage system should use 3 damage levels rather than 4, just so that you can use ice house pieces as damage counters.

What are "ice house pieces"?

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:07 am

Caedrus wrote:What are "ice house pieces"?

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:20 am

Okay, those look cool.

I assume they're made of ice, or used to make houses? Or you can get 'em at a place called "Ice House"? Some sort of ice cream fast food joint, maybe?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:38 am

Ice House is the name of the game you play with them; but other than that they're a generic game piece that can be used to play many games. If I recall, there's a whole book of games designed for the pieces.

-Crissa

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 4:53 pm

Those do look cool but I see potential stacking disaster from bored players.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:29 pm

I see the possibility for makeshift caltrops.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 12:42 am

They actually make pretty good makeshift miniatures. Plus, as Crissa said, there are a lot of games that use them. Volcano is a lot of fun.