The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'm really only available on Monday this week. After that I'm at work and then on vacation for a week and a half, so the next day I would possibly be available for a game would be on March 12 (and I'm not sure if work will get in the way there either).

So when are we gonna finish up the fight!?! I haven't even been able to set anything on fire yet! lol

Also, confirming it now: I WILL be available for the first session of this game on Wednesday! I'm super excited.

[ic=A Short Accounting of Events]My name is Luxim Wimwick, and I'm the only one who knows about the threat to life as we know it. Yes that does sound overly dramatic. No I'm not kidding. What could I gain from joking about something like that?

How do I know? An angel told me. A Cassisian. Yes one of those little winged helms. What exactly did it tell me? Well, it was a long time ago, so I couldn't tell you the exact words, but I can paraphrase it for you.

"There is an unseen threat to the entire world. The Solasch are invading the minds of everyone they can get alone to infect. They will stop at nothing to secure the body of every living being on this planet. The only way to kill the creatures is with fire and, given my profession, my high level of intelligence, and my unshakable demeanor, I was in a unique position to be able to cure the 'infection'."

Being skeptical of this story at first, I asked the lesser angel many questions for more information. Needless to say I was convinced of the threat by the end of the discussion. So I left my home of 50 years, after purifying my village of the threat there. The infection was quite extensive and, unfortunately, no one could be saved.

Why not? Well, of course because the Solasch cannot be removed from a body they inhabit without killing the body. In fact, due to the nature of the inhabitation, the Solasch effectively kill the consciousness of the person. In order to kill the Solasch, you must kill the body. And since the body isn't holding any remnant of the old person (save their soul), it is really a blessing to burn them to ash. With beautiful, red, flickering fire.

Sorry, I missed that. How did I end up here in the Pit? Well, going around fighting an invisible war against an invading force so insidious that almost no one is even entrusted to fight in it, is sometimes looked upon as a lone man committing criminal acts. So, during a raid on a stronghold of the Solasch I was conducting, I was apprehended by the fiends as I was watching the building burn down to make sure that none of the vile creatures escaped. They had taken the bodies of the town guards and I had to allow them to take me lest I seem like someone who knew what they were doing and not some crazed arsonist.

So, the powers that be have locked me away in this place. However, I'm sure that while I devise a way to escape, I can root out some of the invasion force that has infiltrated this place.

What am I doing with this fire? Well. I've told you my secret. You might talk to the enemy. Or worse, you could

be the enemy trying to discover my true purpose. I can't let you live. You're a security risk. Rustala, the Cassisian, agrees with me in fact. Now hold still and I'll make this as painless as possible...[/ic]

Luxim Wimwick
Level 5 Gnome Alchemist
67 y/o, 3'9" tall, 35 lbs

STR 10 +0
DEX 14 +2
CON 15 +2
INT 18 +4
WIS 12 +1
CHA 12 +1

Max HP: 42  ::  Current HP: 42
BAB +4 ( +3(base) + 1(small); +1 vs reptilian/goblinoids, +1 with thrown splash weapons, +2 ranged weapons, +0 melee weapons)
AC 17 ( 10 + 2(Dex) + 4(Mithril) + 1(Small); +4 vs giants)
CMB +2
CMD 14

Saves:
Fort +6 (+10 (6 base + 4 class skill) vs Poisons)
Ref +6
Will +2

Speed: 25ft.
Carrying Capacity: 33, 34-66, 67-100.

Skills:
Acrobatics 7 (5sp + 2 Dex)
Climb 5 (5sp)
Craft (Alchemy) 18 (5sp + 3 class skill + 4 Int + 2 obsessive racial trait + 2 Master Alchemist + 2 Alchemical Rigging)
Disable Device 10 (5sp + 3 class skill + 2 Dex)
Knowledge (Arcana) 12 (5sp + 3 class skill + 4 Int)
Knowledge (Nature) 12 (5sp + 3 class skill + 4 Int)
Perception 3 (2 racial trait + 1 Wis)
Sleight of Hand 10 (5sp + 3 class skill + 2 Dex)
Spellcraft 12 (5sp + 3 class skill + 4 Int)
Stealth 6 (4 small size + 2 Dex)

Gear: 4248gp spent
Dagger, Flaming – 2302gp; 1d3 damage + 1d6 fire damage, +1 Attack Bonus.
Dagger, Silver (2) – 644gp; 1d3 damage +1 Attack Bonus, Silver.
Chain Shirt, Mithril – 1100gp; +4 AC, Max Dex 6, Armor Check Penalty -0, 10% arcane failure chance.
Alchemical Rigging – 202gp; +2 Craft (alchemy), holds items as a backpack. This is a set of bandoliers that strategically set up the location of all of Luxim's chemicals for his bombs, his premade extracts and mutagens, his mundane alchemical creations, and his daggers. This piece of equipment doubles as storage (as a backpack) and as an alchemists lab.

Racial Traits:

Small – +1 AC and attack rolls, -1 CMB and CMD, +4 Stealth
Slow Speed – 20' base speed
Low-Light Vision – can see 2x as far in the dark as humans
Defensive Training – +4 dodge to AC against Giants
Pyromaniac – the character is treated as 1 level higher when casting spells or throwing bombs that deal fire damage.
Hatred – +1 attacks against humanoid creatures with the reptilian and goblinoid subtypes.
Keen Senses – Gnomes receive +2 to Perception
Obsessive – Gnomes receive a +2 bonus to Craft or Profession skill of their choice.
Weapon Familiarity – Weapons with "gnome" in the name are treated as martial for gnomes.
Languages – Common, Gnome, Sylvan, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, False Celestial[/list]

Class features:

Alchemist Favored Class Option - +1/2 to the number of bombs/day (+2.5 bombs at lvl 5).
Alchemy – Create normal potions, extracts, bombs, and mutagens.
Bomb – 11.5 bombs per day at 3d6+4 fire damage, plus splash damage always equal to 7.
Brew Potion – Can brew potions of any formulae he knows, so long as the formula can be a potion, and his Alchemist level is equal to his caster level. (only up to lvl 3)
Mutagen – Brew 1 mutagen, grants +2 natural armor and +4 to one of the physical ability scores. -2 is applied to corresponding mental ability score.
Throw Anything – You don't suffer any penalties for using an improvised ranged weapon. In addition you gain a +1 bonus to thrown splash weapons and all splash weapons (including splash damage) gain a bonus in damage equal to the Alchemists Int bonus.
Discoveries – Explosive Bomb (All bombs now have a splash radius of 10'), Delayed Bomb (Can place a bomb anywhere and set to detonate in a number of rounds up to the Alchemist's level. If anyone other than the Alchemist attempts to touch or move the bomb, it explodes. If anyone breaks the bomb, it explodes. Anyone standing in the same square as the bomb when it detonates is effected as though the bomb had scored a direct hit. Splash damage as usual.)
Poison Resistance +4 Fort against poisons
Poison Use – Alchemists cannot accidentally poison themselves when applying them to weapons.
Swift Alchemy – Crafting alchemical items takes half the normal time, and poisons can be applied to weapons as a move action.[/list]

Feats:

• Extra Bombs – You can throw 2 additional bombs a day.
• Master Alchemist – You gain a +2 to Craft (Alchemy) checks. When making poisons, you can create a number of doses equal to your Int modifier at a time. These additional doses do not increase the time required, but they do increase the raw material cost. In addition, whenever you make alchemical items or poisons using Craft (alchemy), use the item's gp value as it's sp value when determining your progress.
• Fleet – You base speed is increased by 5' in light or no armor.

Formulae:

• Level 1 – 5/day
  
  • Bomber's Eye – Duration 1 round/lvl; While in effect, increase the range of thrown weapons by 10' and you receive a +1 attack bonus to thrown weapons.
  • Expeditious Retreat – Duration 1 minute/lvl; This spell increases your land speed by 30'.
• Level 2 – 3/day
  
  • Cat's Grace – Duration 1 minute/lvl; Spell grants a +4 bonus to Dex adding the usual benefits to AC, Reflex saves, and other uses of Dex.
  • Fire Breath – Range 15'; Area cone-shaped burst; Duration 1 round/lvl; Saving Throw Reflex, half (DC = 19); You can spew 3 cones of flame during the spell's duration. The first cone deals 4d6 to all creatures in the area, the second deals 2d6, the third deals 1d6. Reflex save halves damage. After the third cone, the spell ends.
  • Resist Energy – Duration 10 minutes/lvl; The subject gains resist energy 10 for the duration of the spell.
• Level 3 – 1/day
  
  • Draconic Reservoir – Duration 10 minutes/lvl; Functions as Protection from Energy, absorbing 6 points of one type of damage (your choice and based on the material components). Each round, as a swift action, the subject can release 1d6 points of absorbed energy and apply it to any melee attack, as if using an acidic, flaming, frost, or shock weapon. The first creature the subject strikes with this attack takes the energy damage in addition to the other consequences of the attack. The subject cannot release more energy than he has absorbed. Once all the energy has been released, the spell ends. Draconic Reservoir does not stack with Resist Energy.
• Level 4 – 1/day
  
  • Detonate – Range 30 ft; Area 30 ft radius, centered on you; Duration 1 round, then instantaneous; Saving Throw Reflex half (DC = 19); One round after you cast the spell, the energy explodes from your body. When this spell creates an explostion of energy, choose one of the energy types (fire). The explosion deals 1d8 points of damage of that energy type per caster level to all creatures and unattended objects within 15 feet and half that amount past 15 feet but within 30. You automatically take half the damage from the explosion with no saving throw but other damage reducing effects can still lessen the damage further.
  • Dragon's Breath – Saving Throw Reflex half (DC = 19); You breath a blast of energy. Creatures in the affected area take 1d6 points of energy damage per caster level. A successful Reflex save results in half damage. The spell's effect and energy type depend on the type of dragon scale used as material component. (Intending to requisition only Gold or Red dragon scales (30 ft cone of fire) and Brass dragon scales (60 ft line of fire)).

Spells: 1 per Day

• Dancing Lights – Range 150 feet (100ft + 10ft/lvl); Duration 1 minute; You create 4 lights that must stay within 10' of each other. They can move 100' per round, but they cannot go more than their range from the caster. They can be distributed in any way (within their range of each other) and can be grouped to create a glowing vaguely humanoid shape.
• Flare – Range 35 feet (25ft + 5ft/2 lvl); Duration instantaneous; Saving Throw Fortitude negates (DC = 19); You create a burst of light. You can cause the light to discharge in front of a single creature and that creature is dazed for 1 minute (unless they save)
• Prestidigitation – see text*
• Produce Flame – Duration 1 minute/lvl; Flames as bright as a torch appear in your open hand. The flames don't harm you or your equipment. The flames provide illumination and can be hurled or used to touch enemies. You can strike an opponent with a melee touch attack dealing fire damage equial to 1d6+5 (+1/lvl, max +5). You can also hurl the flames up to 120 feet as a thrown weapon. This is a ranged touch attack and it deals the same damage as the melee attack. As soon as you throw the flames, a new ball appears in your hand, but the duration decreases by 1 minute. When the duration reaches 0 minutes, the spell ends.

*I don't intend to use Prestidigitation all that often since it's effects are so limited and useless. I will not need the text in combat.[/list]

Would it be possible to play a Gnome Alchemist who is an arsonist? Cuz I would totally be in on this if I could do that. I rarely get to flex my inner "crazy" when playing at normal table top games and this kind of game presents an interesting opportunity to do something more in line with a "Chaotic Asshole" character. lol

Hello, Pyre! Welcome to the boards.

I also started my career in tabletop gaming with DnD (3.5 for me however). However, I always felt that DnD never actually made me feel like I was playing an incredible hero out of a fantasy novel though. I always had to make my GM want to beat me with a hammer because of my convoluted ideas and actions to make the game feel that awesome. I only thank my lucky stars that I roll dice on the high end of the spread more often than not and that my good luck comes out more when I need it.

Quite frankly though, I'm in a very similar boat as Luminous. I really love systems that are character driven and story oriented with lots of stuff that involves character choices and morality. To that end, I'll go one step further and say that, out of the half dozen core systems (d20 in another 6 or 7 forms, WoD d10, Dogs in the Vineyard, Primetime Adventures, etc) I've played with or run games in, I like the FATE system best. It's versatile, character driven, story oriented, and has just the right amount of resource management to make me a happy camper.

That being said, there are plenty of awful derivations of FATE. Burning Wheel is a monstrosity of a system that requires a copy of the rules for every player in order for it to be a playable game (at least before you've dedicated the 500 pages of text to memory). Spirit of the Century is hilarious, but it doesn't have a lot (for me anyway) left after that. The Dresden RPG is a little difficult to play, mechanically speaking, just because there's a lot that's left up to the players and GM to decide (although that's something that I DO actually like, some people don't like having that kind of power over their systems).

Anyway, rambling done. FATE is a great system. I'd use it for almost everything.

None. Begin the Competition!!!

Tales of Symphonia* and Xam'd** are both pretty similar (setting wise) to The Above and you may want to check them out if you want to solidify some visuals for yourself.

As for The Below; it seems to be a bit more nebulous than The Above. Are you kinda thinking a medieval version of The Matrix's surface world? Just sprawling desolation and ruinous buildings / castles / cities?

*a video game about sky pirates in a steampunk setting in which magic is featured
**an anime that heavily features flying steampunk machines and some magic-ish stuff

Quote from: sparkletwistThere are very good in-game reasons why the Lockpicking skill won't generally work to seduce anyone. Considering what picking a lock usually entails, and how that is rather unrelated to most social encounters, it would suggest that the skill would not be particularly useful.

I agree... until you start thinking of the "Lockpicking" skill as being a knowledge as well. The idea is that you have lots of first hand experience and knowledge about picking locks. Utilizing the "Lockpicking is a knowledge" point of view, you could then utilize it in a social situation (To talk about picking locks). Now if an NPC is excited by thieving skills (a character like Parker from Leverage would probably fall into this kind of category), then I see no reason why using your Lockpicking to seduce would not be an appropriate use of the skill.

However, there is no indication that you could potentially use Lockpicking in this manner in most core rule books (probably because it's a VERY situational use of the skill). So, I'm inclined to agree that most of the time the reason you can't use skills for ANYTHING is because of arbitrary rules.

But, I'm also a proponent of breaking the rules when it comes to skill uses. If a player can give me a convincing (or amusing, or cool) reason for why they should be able to use a skill that would not normally be called for in some situation that they now find themselves in, I'll typically allow it (with a potentially slightly higher DC depending on how much more difficult the action will be utilizing the odd skill).

Quote from: sparkletwist<snip> due to the lack of randomness it sometimes feels like it has.

I totally get what you're saying from a stats point of view sparkle, but in practice (or at least my experience), the numbers seem much more varied than they do on paper.

I like that you've decided to follow in Asura's footsteps. I like the system a lot and I think that the system you've outlined for us here is a vast improvement on the system you were using before (as that one felt very slap-dash to me).

Quote from: SteerpikeIf an attacker rolls a 6 to hit, they've scored a critical hit.

You mentioned here that there are critical successes in combat, but you don't mention anything about critical failures. Are you dropping that part of the mechanic?

If "Yes":
Excellent! That'll make everyone feel more awesome.

If "No":
You should probably add in a similar paragraph (or just mash it into the existing 'criticals' paragraph) so that we know what that's going to mean if we fail hard.

In either case:
Just so we're all clear on this, there is a 16.667% chance of a result of a 1 or a 6 on a roll of 1d6. That's a lot higher (more than 3 times more often than on a roll of 1d20) than most people are used to in games (including GM's). I'm not saying that the high rate of criticals is good or bad, but I am saying that it's something to keep in mind as this game continues.

Since you're going in a direction mildly related to FATE, as Asura is inspired heavily by that system, I'd consider using a FATE roll to determine success. It will add that statistically awesome parabolic curve to the results of the rolls in your game. That will help to make sure that:
1) Things your good at you'll be good at most of the time
2) Things you're bad at you'll be bad at most of the time
I propose the FATE roll as opposed to the 1d6 roll since 1d6 will mean that every character (PC or NPC) has almost 17% chance to be pretty good at something you're stats say you're bad at or, more often (as people try to do things they're good at more than things they're bad at), to fail miserably at something that you're stats reflect you as being very good at.

Just my thoughts upon reading the system through. Aside from the criticals thing and my disdain of 1d6 rolls giving too much variance in action outcomes, I am pretty excited about this system as it stands currently and I'm looking forward to how it turns out in the long run.

I decided to copy the list down in a notepad file and save it in my RPG's folder for later use.

I personally tend to like playing characters who are heavy more often than not. Even the light characters I end up playing have some heavy tendencies sometimes (usually in the form of stubborn single mindedness). However, I think that this list will definitely help me characterize my NPC's better in future games.

Awesome find here LC, and thank you for being benevolent enough to share it with us! lol

Consider my foot inserted into my mouth. I will be UNABLE to attend the Gloria irc meeting this coming Monday. Some things that I was unaware of when I said I'd be able to make it to the Monday game, were made apparent to me.

Sorry about the inconvenience; I know how annoying it is when people cancel like this.

Granted. You can only teleport to one location (other than the last location you existed at); a coffin you presume to be buried deep under ground, but where exactly it is... you're not really sure.

I wish there was actually a better mouse trap.

Granted! They benevolently kill every human being on the planet in the process and save money on jetpacks!

I wish there was a way to solve my anger issues without resorting to violence.