Magitech Rules

[virgil]

Magitech crafted on the Giant forums. It looks bloody fascinating, but it's seemingly large enough that I think you'd be better off with a setting built around it and without the primary casters clogging things up. Abuses, I have no idea, as I haven't had a chance to absorb much; but there is the real potential that there wasn't any balance in mind for the design.

And apparently the maker made an entire forum dedicated to it here

[Kellus]

Hey, this is really exciting to see linked to here! I love these forums, and a bunch of the inspirations for the system came from some of the fascinating threads on this board about magical engineering and practical applications of spells; I'd love to hear what you all have to say about it! There are definitely problems with the system, and still a bunch of exploits that need to be written out, but that's sort of a given with the nature of the project. I'm not actively working on it right now because real life shit, but when I have time (ie: semester break) I've got a backlog of things to get started on. In the meantime though, it'd be awesome to get some feedback from people who actually know what they're talking about.

My apologies for posting it all on giantitp, stuff just gets more eyes there, even though the signal to noise is depressingly bad.

[Korgan0]

Just a few thoughts: Grammatrists in general seem pretty iffy in combats that don't occur in very specific settings with a great deal of advance planning. Eldritch blast, even as an attack action, is pretty weaksauce. Arcanodynamics can at least give you some damage with a gold input, but a few d6 per round post seventh level is going to be pretty negligible. Conversely, if you hook yourself up to a lightning rod in the middle of a storm you could do respectable damage, but that's a very particular circumstance. Similarly, none of the other grammatical disciplines can really do that much in combat, with the (mediocre and one-dimensional) exception of Imachination. Even then, you're just going to be doing battlefield control with illusions. You might have managed to put together a coherent set of rules for illusions, however, which would be a hell of an achievement.

As a stopgap, you could have the various principles stick some kind of rider onto the eldritch blast, or make it a d6/level. Even given that, spamming your blast and occasionally invoking principles isn't going to be to interesting in the majority of combats.

Converesely, you have managed to construct an internally consistent and plausible method by which you could construct a large number of magitech devices and have a diverse set of magitech devices, which is very impressive.

Given just how powerful a lot of the prestige classes are, you're basically making it required for Grammatrists to prestige. If that's what you want, then I guess that's fine, but you're basically making it impractical for people to just be pure Grammatrists.

A few minor notes: The shadowright's Orange Originality seems like a debuff, honestly, unless you make it optional, which it doesn't appear to be. Also, Apocalypse Pie should be far more clear as to what gets ended, and given that it's a double-edged sword 1d6 per condition is ridiculous. Having the apogineer's stylings only activate in biomes renders them incredibly impractical, since PC's aren't going to be permanently in wildfires or earthquakes or what have you.

I'll have more later.

[Blicero]

Given just how powerful a lot of the prestige classes are, you're basically making it required for Grammatrists to prestige. If that's what you want, then I guess that's fine, but you're basically making it impractical for people to just be pure Grammatrists.

Another question people might ask, is, "why are these classes so awesome?". It's absolutely true that most of these represent a straight-up power-up for the gramarist. It's sort of like the basic wizard class. A very simple core class, with a lot of possible options to branch out into. These prestige classes might feel busy, but all it is is giving gramarists interesting things to do while still giving them new directions for their gramarie, too.

So it seems like it is meant to be impractical for Named Characters to be pure Grammarists. I guess. I question then the wisdom of having a reasonably nifty 20th level capstone ability given that it is even less likely to see use than most 20th level abilities. Or even having Grammarist levels past 7, which is when you seem to qualify for the PrCs. But wha'evz, I guess.

To Kellus (if you're going to check this thread at all): Does the 40-page thread contain a fair amount of balance analysis? Are there any interesting playtest reports in it that you remember offhand?

Skimming through the writeup, I'm certainly intrigued. This is an impressive undertaking. The abilities look pleasingly openended, and the flavor totally reminds me of Arcanum. I do wonder, though, how impressive the feats of a Grammarist would be in comparison to a wizard or druid, though. Or even a rogue. Were you aiming for a specific balance level at all?

And I of course mourn that there is only one new base class. I suppose it would be possible for there to be maybe two grammarists in the same party without too much overlap? Just in terms of the number of principles per grade, three grammarists might be pushing it.

[Korgan0]

In terms of raw combat effectiveness, barring very specific circumstances, it seems that the average grammarist has in-combat capabilities inferior to that of a vanilla 3.5 warlock. Some principles may be useful in certain specific circumstances, but it seems that mostly (without a gold input or something equally plentiful) they'll be stuck spamming an eldritch blast.

[Blicero]

That was the impression I got as well. But, given enough time and cleverness, it seems that you could totally make a weapon at least as powerful as, if not more so than a potent spell from a wiz/dru/clr person. So it seems like nailing down a power level for this class is going to be really kind of difficult.

I also worry that the various subsystems this class introduces are way too complicated to introduce in a non-PbP game. Or at least to come up with things to do on the fly. Most of your time playing a Grammarist is going spent out-of-game thinking of clever ways to combine your principles. Then you walk into the session and tell everyone you're going to build a death ray or something.

[Grek]

This seems like it would be really really fun for a PbP world-building game. Maybe not so much for your usual dungeon crawl, though.

It would benefit greatly from adding in a bunch of "up to" clauses, such as turning

Durability: The hit points per inch of thickness of the target are increased or decreased by half your Diplomacy result (minimum 1 hit point per inch).

to

Durability: The hit points per inch of thickness of the target are increased or decreased by up to half your Diplomacy result (minimum 1 hit point per inch).

So that you can choose to design things that aren't as absolutely extreme as you can possibly make them.

[Red_Rob]

Kellus stated that he designed these classes as he was "tired of everything being about micromanaged combat all the time", which does show in the Gramarie abilities. Whilst they have plenty of applications in the world and to solve unusual problems it seems like it would be really easy to make a Gramarist that had difficulty contributing much at all in combat encounters until around level 7-9. Given how combat focussed D&D tends to be I'd be very wary of designing a class like that.

As a stopgap, you could have the various principles stick some kind of rider onto the eldritch blast, or make it a d6/level. Even given that, spamming your blast and occasionally invoking principles isn't going to be to interesting in the majority of combats.

I like the idea of Principles changing your Eldritch blast. Perhaps if each of the 101 Principles allowed you to modify your Eldritch Blast in some way, but you could only use one modification at a time, to add in some tactical choices in combat?

I get that this class focusses on worldbuilding and clever applications of open ended abilities rather than "blasting doods", but combat does happen in D&D an awful lot. The primary casters get noncombat abilities in addition to having combat options, which is part of what makes them fun to play. I'd consider beefing up this aspect of the class as currently I don't see this passing the SGT up to about level 5 at all.

The other thing about this subsystem is it seems it needs a DM interested in running it and at least one player interested in using it, which is quite a big ask for such a lengthy homebrew system. I know my players would take one look at this and think "wha...?". But, that said, it looks like the perfect thing for a player interested in tinkering and figuring out the perfect combination of powers to do something mind bendingly awesome. Plus it's nice to have some actual rules framework for all the crazy flying islands and magical generators that players end up poking around. I might end up adopting some of this in the background without explicitly telling the players, just so I have an explanation for how these things work if the need arises.

[Blicero]

I wonder if it might not be a bad idea to let the EB be an attack action rather than a standard action. (Although, rereading the text, I don't know if it ever explicitly sez what action type it takes to use EB and eldritch wick.)

You could also make eldritch wick (and thus EB as well) do an amount of damage equal to the grammarist's int mod or half int mod or something. Just to give them a slightly bigger punch at low levels.

A more pressing question: One thing I worry is that Grammarist might be better suited as a cohort class. You just hire one to follow you around and make you things. That could potentially be mitigated by having the things a grammarist makes be more effective in the hands of the grammarist. But that might damage some of the flavor and intent of magitek.

Skimming through the first few pages of the giantitp thread, it sounds like kellus was talking about making some sort of saboteur class that was a bit more adventure-friendly. But since it is not mentioned in the table of contents, I'm assuming that never happened.

[Kellus]

Two more base classes are still on the table, the saboteur for more dungeon-crawlingy adventures and the sapper for mass combat and war adventures.

I really make no bones about it, the system isn't primarily designed for stabbing people in the face and taking their stuff. It's for games that center around creative uses of abilities and open-ended interaction with the world. There's no doubt that using it requires a DM and players very familiar with it, but what I like is how many new avenues of play it opens up no matter how you incorporate it. It's just as valuable as a DM-only world-building tool as it is for players looking to make cool gadgets.

I wanted a system where logistics and dragons could be a valid and fun life choice and have been getting increasingly disgusted with the trends in 4E and Next in this regard.

The biggest things I'm working on in my spare time for it right now are looking for some way to incoporate feats without having it become a straight-up feat tax, the aforementioned two new base classes, making eldrikinetics more viable, and early combat options as discussed in this thread for the base class. I do really like the idea Korgan0 had of rider effects on the EB from principles you know, I can't believe I never thought of that. Blergh, should have posted about this on these boards ages ago.

Also something that's going to be tied up is neutering Silver transformers, since I vastly underestimated just how fucking broken spells are at all. Still looking for a viable replacement energy choice for them, but "life force" is high on the list in the form of hit points.

Thanks for the interest!

EDIT: Herp derp, good call on "up to" and "if desired" clauses for things like hardness and Orange Originality. Definitely what was intended, just misphrased. When I have a bit of spare time I'll comb through it and tidy those up.

[Username17]

I really make no bones about it, the system isn't primarily designed for stabbing people in the face and taking their stuff. It's for games that center around creative uses of abilities and open-ended interaction with the world.

There's really no excuse to have classes that don't do both things. We're not playing GURPS, character classes don't go "over budget" if they have one more ability on their table. Eldritch Wicks are as written basically pointless, but there's no particular reason you couldn't have them do flashes of raw magical power that stun or blind people.

Characters need to have a selection of combat actions that are level appropriate at every level. But this is not actually terribly difficult to arrange. A Save DC of 10 + 1/2 Level + Stat Modifier keeps things more or less on the RNG for as long as D&D makes any sense, and if you're handing out conditions and lost combat rounds that scales pretty well (in a way that arbitrary piles of damage do not).

Making the Gramarist be a character who doesn't weigh down the party with his inability to contribute to combat encounters is not a high bar. You have no particular excuse for not rising to it.

-Username17

[Kellus]

I really make no bones about it, the system isn't primarily designed for stabbing people in the face and taking their stuff. It's for games that center around creative uses of abilities and open-ended interaction with the world.

There's really no excuse to have classes that don't do both things. We're not playing GURPS, character classes don't go "over budget" if they have one more ability on their table. Eldritch Wicks are as written basically pointless, but there's no particular reason you couldn't have them do flashes of raw magical power that stun or blind people.

Characters need to have a selection of combat actions that are level appropriate at every level. But this is not actually terribly difficult to arrange. A Save DC of 10 + 1/2 Level + Stat Modifier keeps things more or less on the RNG for as long as D&D makes any sense, and if you're handing out conditions and lost combat rounds that scales pretty well (in a way that arbitrary piles of damage do not).

Making the Gramarist be a character who doesn't weigh down the party with his inability to contribute to combat encounters is not a high bar. You have no particular excuse for not rising to it.

-Username17

This is a valid argument, but it also kind of isn't. In theory I agree that nobody should ever not have anything interesting to do, but in this case there are some very good reasons to have a gramarist in combat be an actual liability. First, the class has a nearly unprecedented ability aside from absolute first tier rules loophole casters to change the game and provide support for the party outside of combat. There's probably no one better at knot-cutting problems, and changing victory conditions entirely. I don't feel it's entirely unreasonable to actually make someone like that a hindrance in hand-to-hand combat.

More importantly, though, for the kind of game where gramarie is at the forefront I actively want to disincentivize fair fights. In order to contribute, gramarists are forced to find creative solutions to stay relevant in combat, to take the enemy by suprise, lay traps, build weapons, and so on. Giving them equal combat viability to other contributing party members has the dual role of encouraging the kind of games I'm trying to get away from, and also making the other party members feel small in the pants because the gramarist is awesome in combat like them but can also do a whole bunch of cool shit that they can't outside of battle.

Now that being said, I will probably be giving them some more interesting things to do with their EB, both to make the base class more attractive, have a little more variety with builds, and to lessen boredom. But they're never going to be combat superstars, and they're never going to be able able to go toe to toe with any kind of optimized character without a ton of prepwork and engineering beforehand.

"Give me a minute, I'm good. Give me an hour, I'm great. Give me six months, I'm unbeatable."

[ishy]

So your design of the class boils down to: make everyone useless out of combat and in return be useless in combat?

Personally I'd prefer the solution of giving other classes stuff to do out of combat, but ymmv.

[Korgan0]

Yeah, there's an obvious concern here, namely that given the incredibly wide variety of logistics and dragons actions that grammatrists can take, if you have a grammatrist in the party then pretty much all the out-of-combat time is gonna be taken up with making transformers and engines and shit, while the rest of the party sit there with their thumbs up their asses. I'm not really sure how to rectify this without either using a PbP format or just some kind of gentlemen's agreement, which is hardly optional.

[Grek]

Gramarists should probably have access to Craft (alchemy).

---

I'm also in agreement that this class does not do enough combat-wise for the first six levels and not enough in general for the first two. There's very few ways to combine baccalaureate principles into anything combat effective. The best you can do at level 2 is:
-Static Imachination of a wall attached to a rock. You hide behind this until the shouting stops or use it to split groups of enemies.
-Static Imachination attached to a stick to superimpose a giant axe over it. You hit people with the staff and they think it was an axe take non-lethal damage.
-Six Yellow filters shaped roughly like a cube around something you're holding. This keeps metal weapons from hitting you and armoured people from approaching you.
-Silver Input Transformer attached to a Silver Output Transformer that's been configured to cast a 1st level spell. Hand it to a friend and then shoot eldritch blast over their heads every turn to keep it charged.
-Pay someone to do a Magisterial principle for you. Popular choices include: A reverse gravity machine, A talisman of invisibility, A ballistic engine-gun, A Golden Input Transformer attached to a Silver Output with a 2nd level spell that has had Continual Flame cast on it. This probably shouldn't count since anyone can do this, not just gramarists, but eh.

The other 6 disciplines don't get anything like that. ALCH is especially bad, in that it lets you make building materials and that's it. There's nothing interesting you can do with that at low level.

---

Actually, you should probably change how Silver transformers work. 217 gold for a machine that shoots two Scorching Rays per round forever is probably excessive.

[Korgan0]

I haven't looked at biowhatever and grafting in much depth, but it seems that you might be able to get a decent pet in combination with some heuristic circuits.

[Grek]

That only comes online, as with the rest of the cool things you can do, at level 7. Getting a pet that isn't just a weirdly shaped plant requires BIOY 228 (the principle that lets you animate your biostructure so it can move around and do things), and the earliest you can take it is level 7.

[Grek]

Now that I've slept on it for a few days, I'm convinced that the solution to the twin problems of "Gramarists can't do much in combat" and "Gramarists are all alike at low level" is to introduce a specialist baccalaureate level principle for every discipline. Assume all of the following require the 101 from the same field:

Alchemetry: Modern Aclchemetric Fluids: Lets you transmute between Water, Acid, Oil, Salve of Slipperiness, Sovereign Glue and Universal Solvent.
Arcanodynamics: Applied Arcanodynamic: Construct transformers from Iron (absorbs/creates wind) and Stone (absorb/create gravity)
Biollurgy: Basic Bioconstruction: Allows you to turn biostructure into tools, weapons, especially armour with special properties.
Eldrikinetics: Bump ELDK 219 down to Bac; add Miniaturized Motors: Drops the minimum size for your motors from 8 cubic feet to 1 cubic foot and allows you to refine fuel so it weighs less.
Geoccultism: Occult Surveyence: Creates tools for tracking geoccult poles (in general or a specific one), magic auras and Gramarie in general.
Heuristicism: Strange Loops: Allows you to store puissance in a heuristical circuit at the cost of losing 10% of the stored ebbs per round.
Imachination: Projection: Allows you to project the bubble for an imachination up to 10' away from the reference per preparation.
Kaleidomantics: Non-Prismatic Fliters: Allows the creation of White (opaque to light but destroyed by loud sound) and Grey (blocks projectiles, destroyed if struck by non-projectiles)
Yggdratecture: Advances in Apportation: Prepares a spatial reference for apportation; two such references can be caused to switch places by a heuristical circuit.

[Kellus]

Oh, I like this idea a lot. It captures the right mix of open-endedness but also combat-usefulness which is missing at low levels right now. I'll need to think about some of them, but the basic idea is great.

I'm working on eldritch blast boons from principles you know right now, but I think implementing both ideas should go a long way towards making the class more playable at low levels. Thanks!

[fectin]

Some thoughts:
- ALCH 286 has a couple weird bits. 8 cubic feet is presented as a limit, but 5 of the 7 metals are actually limited by weight.
Volume and weight limits also interact a little weirdly with areas like you get with foil. So with, say, 10 mil copper foil, you can transform nearly 10,000 square feet of it.
Mercury is bad for you. It's very bad for you. But it's also very, very slow acting, because you absorb very, very, very little of it. In fact, messing about with quicksilver, it's quite possible that more of it will vaporize from the heat of your hands and be absorbed through your lungs than will go through your skin. It's still possible that same thing will happen, even if you drink the mercury. Elemental mercury is just not that deadly as a liquid (if you can vaporize it, it's a different story). Also, IIRC, it's more like dex damage than str.
- Can you affect quicksilver liquid phase mercury without ALCH 325? The phase change power is also pretty weak; 40C is not a huge swing in phase change temperatures.
- Do radiomantic elements hand out negative levels per item, or just one in any round you touch them? Do they hand out a new one each round? E.g. what happens if you wear a necklace with two sunmetal pendants?
- Do you have to make a space out of cursed lead, or is enclosing enough (e.g. cursed lead foil painted onto walls)? What happens with partially enclosed spaces?
- Quicksilver is a rough name to use, since it also literally and commonly means liquid mercury.
- Phlogiston is actually a radically new capability. There is nothing that I am aware of in DnD that radiates heat long term, especially very high heat. Is there a maximum I can set the temperature at? 1000 is pretty near to magnesium to start with, and magnesium is fairly toasty. Can I turn powdered iron into phlogiston and spread it over a large area?
- Orichalcum is an archaic term for gold. Each "bead" of Orichalcum is a sphere roughly 3 inches in diameter.
- Do materials retain their properties while dissolved in alkahest? Does alakhest e.g. cause negative levels if you dissolve sunmetal in it? Can you dissolve phlogiston, or does it boil off? Can you dissolve moonsilver, sunmetal, and orichalcum to set off an ethereal nuke?

More later. I like this though.

[Grek]

This has seen an update, including new level 1 powers, actual combat viability and a whole new base class. I am intrigued.

Major issues I'm seeing:
-Warmakers have MAD out the butt. They need Wis, Int and Str.
-Grist for the Mill needs an action type, both for collecting the blood and for feeding it into a device.
-[Military Science] tags do not actually exist.
-Still no "up to" and "if desired" clauses. Why?
-IMCH 295 needs save numbers and durations for those conditions.
-Kaleidomantic filters have a minimum width of 1/16th of an inch. Ergo, the maximum length of one is 400 ft per preparation. That's a 2 kilometer rod in a single day's work. Admittedly, I don't know what I'd do with a weightless, 2 kilometer rod that only interacts with minerals, but it probably isn't good.
-By RAW, you are strong enough to lift your own body weight (which you can if you have at least 12 strength), a yellow filter attached to a handle and a pair of metal boots are enough to allow you to hoist yourself into the air. This probably should not happen.
-YGGD 212 is more effective for propelling carts and creating aeroplanes over long distances than ELDK 276, at the low low cost of requiring seatbelts.

[Red_Rob]

-By RAW, you are strong enough to lift your own body weight (which you can if you have at least 12 strength), a yellow filter attached to a handle and a pair of metal boots are enough to allow you to hoist yourself into the air. This probably should not happen.

New class name: Troll Scientist

[virgil]

Has anybody subject these rules to the SGT?

[virgil]

One thing I'm noticing is that it's incredibly hard to gauge this thing on balance. On other forums, all I see is theory craft, essentially ignoring things like component cost (1 cubic foot of silver is ~6500gp); and dominated by people using Doctorate-level principals to literally disintegrate the planet.

Downtime is directly translatable to power in a way I've never seen before; and I have no clue how to make an informed judgement on the output.

[Grek]

One thing I'm noticing is that it's incredibly hard to gauge this thing on balance. On other forums, all I see is theory craft, essentially ignoring things like component cost (1 cubic foot of silver is ~6500gp); and dominated by people using Doctorate-level principals to literally disintegrate the planet.

The idea seems to be that you wouldn't ever buy silver, you'd just buy lead and use alchemetry to turn it into the metal you actually wanted.

Has anybody subject these rules to the SGT?

I'll give it a shot this weekend. Should be hilarious.