New: Master Ability and Condition Lists

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Regarding Save or Dies:

I think one way to look at the Save or Die problem is the opportunity cost of it succeeding. If the other ways of possibly defeating a foe require multiple rounds (of hacking at it, of casting spells at it, at limiting its ability to move from a damaging area, etc) then a one-round kill shot isn't in line. I think if this problem is addressed, then Save or Dies could possibly have a place in the new edition. If dealing the last hp of damage, or dealing the last wound point was as difficult relative to the opponent as a Save or Die, then I think it could work. The following are some ideas:

Maybe a Save or Die required some other sort of combined team effort. This would work best I think if the teamwork needed was proportional to the threat of the monster.

Some examples:

Versus a significant level appropriate threat:
Save or Die
Name: Exsanguinating Thresher
Prerequisite: Must have at least two opponents flanking the target, and both must have dealt a wound point.
Description: By drawing upon the the inevitable force of your allies attacks, you cause the targets existing wounds to bleed profusely.
Effect: Target must make appropriate save or die.

Versus an Imp:
Save or Die
Name: Evil Eye
Prerequisite: Target must be close enough to see the Evil in your eye. (within 30 feet)
Description: You take upon a horrible visage, and will your target to die.
Effect: Target must make appropriate save or die.

The point is to make the required teamwork and tactics to pull off a save or die scale to the threat of the monster. So versus an Imp that the fighter could take out in one round, the SoD Mage could also take out without any help. Versus a more difficult foe, the more teamwork and tactics are needed.

The difficult part would be to assign values to how much teamwork/tactics/preparation it is worth to kill an opponent that has more hp or wound points left than could be drained by a "finishing move"

Thoughts?

[the_taken]

Since the list I first came up with was inappropriate, it was ignored. Considering that I probably missed a text block, or forgot an important piece of information, I find it totally apropriate. It would have been nice if somebody had told me what I got wrong, though.

I'm trying again, this time simply adding to what's appeared in the wiki. I'm aware that we only X number of castes/classes using a certain pair of ability scores, but I'm producing this stuff ahead of time cause I'm really not that interested in the blank areas.

Pretalokan Abilities 2
Skip-rocks: Attack that ignores cover
Crack Slide: Attack thru tight spaces
Spetsnaz: Attack that is performed in an inconceivable manner
Spinning Stalactite: AoE
Stalagmight: Attack that may increase the user's strength
Cliff Wall Stance: Attack that blocks movement
Pile-on: Attack that is more powerful the more characters are using the same attack on the same opponent
Self-destruct: Powerful attack that kills the user
Areal Momentum: An attack that is more powerful the higher the target's Dex
Perfect Poke: A normally pathetic attack that hits a weak point.
Boy Boy Ballade: Seductive music that charms those it is focused apon
Avalanche Screech: Rocks fall, you die.
Gentle Horn: Song that pacifies animals and beasts while played
Immaculate Chorus: Summons fire spirits to sing and fight for you.

[JonSetanta]

Self-Destruct could just severely wound the user, rather than auto-kill <_<

[Crissa]

I don't like 'attacks ignore cover' because that means if a guy has an ability to waste time giving himself cover - so he can walk through a rain of arrows - the other guy can now just shoot through that other ability without expending anything.

Yes, it's Elite vs Elite, but it means that it negates another ability that wouldn't have been free to begin with.

-Crissa

[Manxome]

As Frank pointed out in another thread with his "Lawn Lass" hero, if you can incapacitate a foe either by dealing damage that does nothing until the target drops dead or by dealing status effects that make the target progressively weaker until it drops, then dealing damage is a loser's game.

I suggest either that you can't drop your opponent permanently out of the fight with only status effects or that wounds are, themselves, a status effect that hinders you before it finally kills you. If you choose the latter, I suggest that the number of status effects required to incapacitate someone is equal to the number of wounds required to do so, and maybe even that status effects count as wounds.


Also, maybe I'm the only one for which this is a problem, but when someone suggests a name for a status effect without explaining it, it's generally not clear to me what it actually does. Some things that status effects might do:

• Change the effective value of any character statistic, or provide numerical bonuses/penalties on certain types of rolls
  
• Alter the resolution of die rolls; e.g. turn all successes into critical successes, or all failures into critical failures
  
• Invoke an instantaneous effect every X rounds (could cause damage-over-time, but also more complicated things like "strike a random bystander with lightning every round")
  
• Change the set of actions you are allowed to perform (either granting new options, like flying, or taking away standard ones, like running)
  
• Change the number of actions you are allowed to perform
  
• Change the information available to you (e.g. blindness, darkvision, amnesia)
  
• Change your decision-making process (e.g. confusion, domination)
  
• Interact with other statuses or abilities (e.g. immunity to fire, double power of your fire attacks, double healing you receive, enemies that you curse also become afraid, abilities that would normally bless you curse you instead, etc.) Note that this category is very broad and complicated, even compared to the ones above.
  => One interesting subcategory is conditional effects, like healing whenever you take damage, or damage whenever you cast a spell, etc.

Those are pretty general; you'd likely want to select certain special cases of the above effects and give them special names so you can explain them to players more easily (and use better shorthand).

You may also want to consider ways in which effects can end or be removed. Time is likely a common one, but you may want effects that end on special conditions (like taking damage) or abilities that remove certain types of effects (which means the effects need to have categories/tags indicating which abilities can remove them).

Some other things that abilities/actions may do, but that would probably not be represented by status effects:

• Damage (or destroy objects that don't take regular "damage," if such exist)
  
• Healing (representing this as negative damage tends to be much less convenient than one would expect)
  
• Movement (knockback, summoning, teleportation)
  
• Create matter (or illusions)

[the_taken]

1203103084[/unixtime]]Self-Destruct could just severely wound the user, rather than auto-kill <_<

It's only a prototype, but sure.

1203120104[/unixtime]]I don't like 'attacks ignore cover' because that means if a guy has an ability to waste time giving himself cover - so he can walk through a rain of arrows - the other guy can now just shoot through that other ability without expending anything.

Yes, it's Elite vs Elite, but it means that it negates another ability that wouldn't have been free to begin with.

-Crissa

Well, I'm only making suggestions. But at this point we don't have an exact idea of what cover is.

[Username17]

Pretaloka abilities are indeed beginning to take form.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Before too much more is done in assigning gadgeteer abilities, I'd like to hear more about what framework their powers will operate under. They'll represent an outlying point on in the map of ability lists, so defining that edge is pretty important.

About a month and a half ago, there was some discussion about what a low level gadgeteer should be able to do. I'd like to see that expanded upon, as right now all we have is names.

This also ties into the still undeclared answer to the 'what should characters of that level be able to do?' question.


There's no shortage of material to steal draw upon. Arcanum offers a lot. Spirit of the Century is worth looking at. Castle Falkenstein has something to offer. Hell, even M:tG and, yes, D&D are worth looking at mechanics-wise. I'm sure you can come up with others, which would be awesome.


Take Batman as an example. I'd like to see the two Gadgeteer trees preconstructed such that you can generate the alternate caste with Ninja+Gadget X (although that might be asking too much).


Let me toss in some flavor junk.

• Power Sources
  
• Steam
  
• Explosives
  
• Clockwork
  
• Electricity
  

• Schools
  
• Chymistry
  
• Horology
  
• Electrology
  
• Engineering (engine works)
  

• Possible simple weapons
  
• Grenades: Smoke, Incendiary, Fragmentation, Toxic smoke, Flash-Bang, Grease, Robot.
  
• Guns: Blunderbuss, Rifle, Derringer, Gatling, Cannon.
  
• Exotic weapons: Flame thrower, Net flinger, Harpoon, Lightning.
  
• Rockets: (See grenades).
  

• Automatons
  
• Scout: Walking, flying, swimming, kamikaze.
  
• Task: Cook, Porter, Repair.
  
• Guard: Bodyguard, Watch-bot.
  
• Vehicle: Iron horse, Horseless carriage.
  

• other junk
  
• Optics
  
• Aeronautics
  
• Caustics
  
• Jet packs
  
• ???
  

Anyway, tl;dr

[Username17]

The current Gadgeteer writeup (in all its minimalism) is Here. And the extremely minimal descriptions of abilities that they draw upon is Here.

Presently my concept for it is that a character gets a power that is "insert power here" and then they can swap it around every adventure or arbitrary laboratory time.

So the ability on your character sheet is something like:

• Wheels and Springs: Various gadgets can be made which take advantage of stored force.

And that will link to a wheels and springs list of stuff you can prepare. The standard Gadgeteer will be a grab bag and get just one or two things off each of the lists, but you could make a gadgeteer variant who just had Steam Core or Gears and Cogs over and over again.

---

For some reason I see alchemy as an Asuralokan thing - possibly because it's more art than science. From a flavor standpoint, I think that mostly Gadgeteers should be building up steam pressure and then firing off steel rods rather than having rockets - largely because it's a lot easier to justify why you might be able to use those every X rounds or every encounter rather than being able to shoot them all off on the first round of the first combat and then not having any more.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

So would you have each gadget power come with the additional ability 'You can prepare one one more gadget'? Or is it tied to level, or the appropriate ability tree? Or something else entirely?
I've been assuming that there is going to be some kind of graph of abilities, where 'Robot' requires 'Gears and Springs' and 'Steam Core', and in turn is a prerequisite (along with 'Helicopter Beanie') for 'Flying Killer Robot' (or whatever), but it's not clear that this is the case either.

And is there any room for 'spontaneous casting' a la Universal Gadget?


As for chemistry, OK, but that does remove 'Bomb' as a basic Artifice ability (along with all other explosives -- including conventional firearms). Electricity is probably still doable, although not as a portable power source.
So basically Gadgeteers fly steam ornithopters, drop clockwork robot bombs, fire potato guns (any maybe clockwork rifles and mass driver cannons), and on occasion build hydroelectric dams for the good of all. That's cool.

[Cielingcat]

I think the main Gadgeteer power source should be clockwork, as most source material relies on clockwork but not steam or chemistry or other stuff, usually. Greek stuff, that robot Frank mentioned, Magic's Artificers...

[Koumei]

1203269911[/unixtime]]
As for chemistry, OK, but that does remove 'Bomb' as a basic Artifice ability (along with all other explosives -- including conventional firearms).

Good. Well, shame about losing bombs, but for reasons I can't explain, but probably relating to ranged combat being intrinsically boring compared to melee, guns can fuck right off.

I could see them having flamethrowers (or, for a steam-powered engine, a valve release that sprays hot steam on enemies), and maybe short-range electric "things". But I don't like guns unless they're automatic rocket-launchers with eagles stamped onto the side.

But for the reason Ceilingcat put forward, I agree that the *majority* of things should rely on clockwork, if only for the power source.

[angelfromanotherpin]

As for chemistry, OK, but that does remove 'Bomb' as a basic Artifice ability (along with all other explosives -- including conventional firearms).

Um, you can have steam-powered bombs, where they just build up pressure until they explode and shower people with shrapnel; just like you can have a pneumatic gatling gun.

[Orion]

So, let's think about how to make conditions playable. That means, we should work on two things: making you know what a condition does without looking it up, and making them all-or-nothing rather than math intensive whenever possible.

For instance, resistant was mentioned earlier as halving the damage of attacks of a certain type. That's fine and playable, but I thought of one I like even better:

Resistant to X: You cannot be wounded by X.

This way, there's no math, you'll never be killed by what you resist, but those abilities can still be useful for their effects.

For Negative conditions, how about a two-part naming system? HTe first word tells you what *causes* the effect -- this is what resistances/immunties/etc. will normally apply to. the second tells you what it *does*

Source:

Poison
Fire
Fear

Effect:


Immobilized (can't move)
Disabled (can't attack)
Paralyzed (immobilized and disabled)
Hindered (- to all rolls)
Weakened (- to wound threshold)

So Black Lotus Extract makes you Poison Weakened, while Darksap makes you Poison Paralyzed. Fire Breath makes you Fire Weakened; Pyrotechnics makes you fire Hindered. Mummies make you Fear Immobilized, while Dragons make you Fear Hindered.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

So, let's think about how to make conditions playable. That means, we should work on two things: making you know what a condition does without looking it up, and making them all-or-nothing rather than math intensive whenever possible.

I think that's a really good idea.
_____________

Now what about durations? I think durations shouldn't be something that lasts a variable amount of time like x/rounds level. Instead they should last the encounter, or until such a time as they are actively stopped by the recipient (like on fire). And possibly 1 round?

[Draco_Argentum]

Does that version of resistant make you too resistant though? Should resist fire = stand in a fire an not die?

[virgil]

All-or-nothing resistance can lead toward the Padded Sumo paradigm at high levels, if I understand it correctly. Has there been a firm decision as to what high level gameplay would look like? Rocket Launcher Tag, Padded Sumo? Or is it looking like it's going towards Super Saiyan Six mode, where the game plays the same as long as you fight stuff at your level, and you get ancillary abilities that influence those below you in various (and likely automatic) fashions?

I do believe Frank mentioned something along the lines of the duration for everything either being one round, every round with a check to remove, until the next sunrise/sunset/midnight/noon, or permanent. Sounds suspiciously 4e-flavoured to me, which makes me hesitant, though I suppose it's 4e's lack of anything but numbers (accountant-style) that's my biggest problem.

I really like the Voltron Micro-Doom Track concept, especially as an alternative to SoD tactics. Might be a bit of a hassle coming up with two dozen or more final results though.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Zombie Horde
With a standard action, a necromancer can call forth from the ground a small army of animated corpses to do her bidding.
Area: One square per level within medium range.
Duration: Until Dismissed.
Effect: Attacks creatures within the area with a lethal grapple (Str) as the necromancer's minion, using the necromancer's attributes. Resists as the necromancer's minion. Uses lifesense to target.
Special: As a move action, the necromancer can move each square of zombies up to 4 squares, so long as they remain within medium range.


Lethal grapple
Tier 1: Slowed
Tier 2: Immobile
Tier 3: Wounded
Tier 4: Dying

Lifesense: Lifesense acts as normal vision, except living creatures are the only sources of illumination (a creature illuminates as a fire of her size).


This is supposed to be a low-level battlefield control staple.

[virgil]

Does your horde have any stats/defenses? They look like something that could/should be attacked & destroyed. It should be targetting the victim's Tenacity, which is based on Strength.

Here are a few abilities of my own, subject to constructive criticism. At the moment, I'm using the following attack type format: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Void with an Physical/Mental division.

Anti-Life Equation (Intelligence, Mental Earth)
You intone a chant that is translated into the mind of your victim as a fundamental proof of the futility of life.
Range: Close
Target: One creature within range
Effect: Attacks their Willpower

• Tier 1: Confused
  Tier 2: Afraid
  Tier 3: Depressed
  Tier 4: Catatonic

Invisible Strike (Intelligence, Physical Water)
Your killing intent strikes strikes as surely as any blade, literally, except one cannot roll back from insight.
Range: Melee
Effect: Attacks Fortitude

• Tier 1: Staggered
  Tier 2: Bruised
  Tier 3: Wounded
  Tier 4: Dying

Phantasmal Forces (Constitution, Mental Air)
Images of warriors and beasts form and strike at the enemy. Though proven to be of meager substance with their attacks, they remain a dangerous distraction.
Area: Small burst within medium range
Target: Targets Insight of all creatures in the area

• Tier 1: Staggered
  Tier 2: Slowed
  Tier 3/4: None

[virgil]

I just realized that we still need to cover resource management and damage recovery/healing, as that would make designing abilities alot easier.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Does your horde have any stats/defenses? They look like something that could/should be attacked & destroyed. It should be targetting the victim's Tenacity, which is based on Strength.

Version 1:
Zombie Horde
With a standard action, a necromancer can call forth from the ground a small army of animated corpses to do her bidding.
Area: One square per level within medium range.
Duration: Until Dismissed.
Effect: Attacks creatures within the area with a lethal grapple (Str vs. Dex) as the necromancer's minion, using the necromancer's attributes. Resists as the necromancer's minion. Uses lifesense to target.
Special: As a move action, the necromancer can move each square of zombies up to 4 squares, so long as they remain within medium range.

Version 2:
Zombie Horde
With a standard action, a necromancer can call forth from the ground a small army of animated corpses to do her bidding.
Area: One square per level within medium range.
Duration: D.
Effect: Fills its area with swarms of animated corpses (Minion, Swarm, Undead, Attack: Lethal Grapple), which are hostile to all creatures except the necromancer. The zombie swarms can be directed to move as a move action.

Lethal grapple (Str vs. Dex)
Tier 1: Slowed
Tier 2: Immobile
Tier 3: Wounded
Tier 4: Dying

Lifesense: Lifesense acts as normal vision, except living creatures are the only sources of illumination (a creature illuminates as a fire of her size).


This is supposed to be a low-level battlefield control staple. I'm assuming that when "minions" are created by a spell, they are always level appropriate to the caster. Undead have a set of automatic abilities, which include Lifesense but not normal senses. Swarms only attack creatures within their areas. If swarms should only be swarms of little things, change it to "mob".

[CatharzGodfoot]

I just realized that we still need to cover resource management and damage recovery/healing, as that would make designing abilities alot easier.

For healing I can see three options. The first is that healing functions as an attack, only it removes conditions of the appropriate tiers (and possibly types).
The second is that in-combat healing capabilities scale with level but are automatic: low level characters remove tier 1 effects in combat; high level characters remove tier 3 effects in combat. You might roll for number of effects removed. Out of combat healing could have greater effects.
The third is to make powerful healing available regardless of level. This encourages characters to keep a small horde of low-level healers, and encourages enemies to take out the healer minions first.


I'm wondering about how to handle 'universal' attacks, and how many attacks we want to make universal. If we go with what 3e sets forth, it's at least 'melee weapon attack', bull rush, feint, grapple, and trip.

They might look something like this:

Bull rush
Attack: Str vs. Str.
Tier 1: Moved 1 square
Tier 2: Moved up to 2 squares, staggered
Tier 3: Moved up to 4 squares
Tier 4: Moved up to 6 squares

Trip
Attack: Dex vs. Dex.
Tier 1: Prone
Tier 2: Staggered?
Tier 3: Bruised?
Tier 4: Wounded?


Balancing movement to status effects in some regard would be necessary.

[Draco_Argentum]

Do we even want tier 3 effects to be removable during combat? It could really make combats last a long time if no attacks can make a CAN bonus stick.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Do we even want tier 3 effects to be removable during combat? It could really make combats last a long time if no attacks can make a CAN bonus stick.

Yeah, you're right. I also shouldn't be using lower-tier effects as higher-tier effects on certain abilities, as that would lead to a bookkeeping nightmare.

[Orion]

How about one "universal" attack for each stat?

STR v STR = Disarm?
DEX v DEX = Trip
CON v CON = Bull Rush
INT v INT = Distract
WIS v WIS = Hide?
CHA v CHA = Intimidate