The Gaming Den

Or whatever you'd want to call them.

Basically, I'm wondering about, instead of giving players magic items and gold to spend on them, necessarily, making treasure a meta currency that allows them to buy magic item effects that are just a part of them.

So, as an example, because I'm sure I'm explaining this poorly, instead of putting a "+1 flaming longsword" in the treasure, overcoming the challenge in question gives a character 2000 quirk points that they can spend on "any weapon I wield gains the flaming quality while I wield it"

Is this an interesting idea? Are there glaring flaws?

Edit: oh, if I were to do this, I'd still let people loot notable items that were used by the opposition, like a flaming lance from a salamander. And I'd probably still include *some* magic item treasure. I just think it's more interesting if characters get innate magical effects too. .

In-setting, it would be good to work up a mechanism for why this works. I like the general idea of "The power was in you all along," since it keeps you from just trading up your magic sword whenever you find a better one, but having an in-setting explanation for why you can develop such a power might be interesting.

Aren't magical powers you get to buy when you're given enough points called "Class Features"?

I mean, yes, but these would be separate, ad hoc, and let fighters have nice things.

Ancient History wrote:In-setting, it would be good to work up a mechanism for why this works. I like the general idea of "The power was in you all along," since it keeps you from just trading up your magic sword whenever you find a better one, but having an in-setting explanation for why you can develop such a power might be interesting.

Just thinking while I deliver pizzas today, the first in-universe explanation that comes to mind is "mystic arts," separate from but similar to the spells of arcane and divine spellcasters. Some people learn mystic arts that let them strike truer with weapons or set their weapons alight, others learn mystic arts that let them mimic spell effects more directly, by knitting wounds or conjuring balls of flame or call shadows to them.

And much like leveling up, the easiest way to advance your learning is to get out into the world, kill some ravening monsters and rescue some distressing damsels.

I did sort of the reverse of this once. Using something based off PF's automatic bonus progression optional rule, the enhancement bonus of weapons & armour was based off the character level (that's just how awesome you are) and they could use weapons/armour special abilities with a bonus equal to that number.

Using ABP a 9th level character gets a +2 enhancement bonus. If they found a holy flaming returning dagger they could use it as a +2 holy dagger or as a +2 flaming returning dagger. At 14th level they could pick any 2 of those abilities to use and the dagger would have a +3 enhancement bonus.

"You have 7 Chakra slots to attune to magic items or secret scroll powers" is a straightforward way to do it

Sakura trains and learns hermit jutsu
Sasuke awakens his Sharingan further
Naruto forms a friendship with the monster sealed in him

Hm, I'd want to avoid using anything appropriative like chakras, but it's definitely a good concept overall.

Prak wrote:Hm, I'd want to avoid using anything appropriative like chakras, but it's definitely a good concept overall.

"Aura" is a nifty word to use, like Hikari Sentai Maskman has a qigong chakra power vibe but chose "Aura Power" for a very catchy intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbj2dOTHv-g

For a more Abrahemic theme, Sephirot is the term for the nods of the 'tree of life' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefirot

The catholic Tree of Life was copied from the hebrew tree of life 'cause it looked cool, and that one was copied from Assyrian imagery modern records don't really know much about. So you would be continuing the tradion of using a thing that looks cool to be cool.

It also looks like an RPG skill tree:

I'm Catholic and didn't even know we -had- a Tree of Life, you know... what with us having invented the inquisition and condemned all witchcraft (even if there -is- a subset of "Catholic white magic"), I don't remember having being taught any "Nine Worlds" stuff back in Sunday School.

But then, Catholic faith is the biggest pastiche/longest running game of telephone in history so whatever, I don't discard the possibility.

Raised catholic, I had no idea of catholicism having something like the qa'abalah tree of life, either (though I am aware of "tree of life" being a thing catholicism talks about sometimes, usually tying it to the garden of Eden and the cross).

Anyway, I was honestly just thinking of "soul slots," though "aura slots" would work just as well, too (a quick wiki look tells me that auras are actually a western civ concept, so points there). I'd lean a bit higher on the number of slots, somewhere between the seemingly limited 7 and the perhaps too many 12 of canon D&D.

3.Tome did the "you have 8 location-neutral magic item slots" already, it seems to work well enough in itself and it doesn't seem like it would break the very concept of tabletop RPGs for some characters to have some of those slots permanently full with specific effects.

Last time I remember hearing this sort of thing was along the lines of "If you are a Werewolf that takes up 2 of your magic item slots", presumably you'd be allowing normal magic item effects to be innate as well.

Yeah. Instead of someone having, say, a Bag of Produce Flame, they just have a Produce Flame innate quirk. They're just someone who knows how to conjure flames, rather than being "a guy who found/bought a bag of fire"

Dogbert wrote: But then, Catholic faith is the biggest pastiche/longest running game of telephone in history so whatever, I don't discard the possibility.

Yeah the nifty history of that with the tree of life is summed up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian ... n_Reuchlin

"Among the first to promote aspects of Kabbalah beyond exclusively Jewish circles was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494)[7] a student of Marsilio Ficino at his Florentine Academy. His syncretic world-view combined Platonism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Hermeticism and Kabbalah."

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Chakra means 'wheel' in sanscrit, so you can still get a cool feeling from calling them Aura Wheels, Spirit Wheels, however amount of wheels etc.
Here's a blog about how the old Indian use of 'chakra' was pretty broad and different yogi's had different numbers with different meanings for different practices: https://hareesh.org/blog/2016/2/5/the-r ... he-chakras

Now for your system... are these quirks a measurable scientific/magical quality, or is this purely a gameplay term like "Feats"

If you're creating a separate pool of abilities and a separate pool of points to pay for it, you're just creating a new type of Feat.

Since you're going to find that not all of these abilities are equal, having a fixed number of slots isn't going to work.

In the original Deadlands, when you defeated a major enemy each player rolled and the winner gained a new ability, but it often came with a drawback (even if it was just a physical sign).

If you have a model where players pick a feat every level, and you have a grab-bag of 'adventure appropriate feats' that they can pick up during or after the adventure (say, maximum 1 per character level) so they have one 'general' feat and one 'achievement feat' that could work. I think you can justify anything with 'exposure to phlebotium'. Being hit by a sword of elemental fire might give you the ability to channel a small amount of power from the elemental plane of fire - if you call it a supernatural effect that is suppressed when you're in an antimagic field I don't think anyone will blink at it.

Prak wrote:I mean, yes, but these would be separate, ad hoc, and let fighters have nice things.

Secret Class Feature: artifact sword magic quirks is fine for a single table, so go wild, but it's not a particularly good approach to take if you're trying to make a system for other people to use.

Sounds like the Fallout Perks you could get for doing stuff.
Needs to be done very carefully to be both worth it and not gamebreaking.

Prak wrote:Hm, I'd want to avoid using anything appropriative like chakras, but it's definitely a good concept overall.

Maybe use "anima" instead?

You really don't need to limit slots unless those powers stack or synergize. If you have a ring of firewalking and a ring of waterbreathing taking up the same slot, then you're just going to have a bunch of bullshit bookkeeping with the character swapping rings all the time depending on the environment. It might create some peril if the fight takes place in an underwater volcano, but it's easier just to let them both work at the same time without penalty, since they don't stack or synergize (outside of underwater volcanoes).

You also want a different system for raw damage and defense bonuses vs things that are cool an flavorful. Because if combat relevant bonuses and cool flavor stuff both use up the same slots, then no one will ever take cool flavorful stuff. It's just stupid to do.

Pondering this further

The name for a game’s power system should have some world building

If only YHWH grants power then call them blessings
If power and nature are one and you can learn from a scroll, call it a technique or jutsu

Like in Star Ocean both swordsmen and wizards shoot lightning from their implements as ‘jutsu’ to learn. This would cause rage in a DnD audience where magic and mundane are separate

I like the word "perk". It's pretty neutral, it's not inherently magical (so you can leave the door open to mundane perks), and it implies something small.

I'll disagree with AH -- I don't think you need in-game reasoning for why this happens, just handle the abilities on an ad hoc basis. Walking around in the snow for 2 weeks without dying gives you Cold Endurance, and training with a Salamander weaponmaster gives you the Fire Blade Technique.

Any power that you gain through adventuring should just be a class feature, be that a magic item or strange talent gained by training or supernatural investment. Taking that into consideration, I see no problem to letting Fighters get more magic item slots and spellcasters getting almost none other than it ruins the Diablo-style magic item system (which sucks) and then letting them fill some of those slots with trained abilities, magic items, or weird magic abilities gained from having sex with forest nymphs.

The funniest thing is that when I made a joke class in the Dungenomicon that formalized story rewards as PrC class abilities, I ended up finding out that the Elothar Warrior of Bladereach was actually a popular PrC in people's actual games.

K wrote:Any power that you gain through adventuring should just be a class feature, be that a magic item or strange talent gained by training or supernatural investment.

I'm gonna stop you right there and ask you to elaborate on this because every way I spin it in my head seems really unfun. Just curious what you think this would look like in a game.

We've had a couple discussions (the Fallout comment above jogged my memory) about this and the main takeaway that I got was that specialized perks like "Gnollslayer" and "Born of Fire" are very cool but not if one PC has to kill 1000 gnolls or spend a year in the Valley of Fire.

A thought I had while working on my heartbreaker was not only that these things should be bought with XP instead of a grind, it should be tied to the fluff somehow- either directly by having all the PCs involved in murdering the Gnoll Lord be eligible for the Gnollslayer perk, or the idea I'm using where you pay XP and contribute a juicy tidbit to the lore system. ("It was folly that the God-Kings of old granted upright posture and speech to the beasts, even the lowly hyena. But with the God-Kings dead, who had the last laugh?"

owlassociate wrote:

K wrote:Any power that you gain through adventuring should just be a class feature, be that a magic item or strange talent gained by training or supernatural investment.

I'm gonna stop you right there and ask you to elaborate on this because every way I spin it in my head seems really unfun. Just curious what you think this would look like in a game.

Well, I'd probably give classes more default, circumstantial powers in slots, and then describe the always-useful abilities like core class abilities in terms of different slots, and then let people trade these two types of slots out as story events play out and new options become available.

For example, Fire Resistance is a circumstantial ability and literally may never come up in your whole campaign, so a Ring of Fire Resistance should never replace a slot for a real ability like a Wizard spell slot or Two-weapon Fighting. That being said, it could fill a slot that contained Water Walking or Airship Piloting very easily.