The Campaign Builder's Guild

If first part of aligment is Law - Chaos, it would point towards society's perception of such things. I claim that societies are not chaotic (they can not be called societies if they are truly in chaos). Even in anarchy, there is an order of some sort be it only 'might makes it right' or ganging up as a looting groups. Simply, humans don't know how to function in chaos, but they always set up groups and those groups always operate with some social rule-set, often unwritten.

This would suggest that Lawful person would infact follow the rules of society, what ever they might be, while chaotic would discard these rules. This would mean, that in society in anarchy, orderly monk practicing self-meditation is actually a chaotic character, not ready to give in the rules of society.

The second part seems to be more personal part. Good - Evil. It would seem to be as personal choice, but when inspected more closely, it turns out to be reflection towards the same social taboos and rules. Your 'Goodness or Evilness' is always determined by other people and the ruleset they they use, are rules and taboos of the society. You can not be nothing but Good, if you follow the rules and same time you can not be anything that Lawful, while following the rules and vice versa. After all, greed, selfsatisfaction and altruism don't come to play here, only how accurately you match the societies rules and taboos.

Thus I submit that there is only two aligments: Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil and they tell you absolutely nothing about personality until you examine the society that set the rules and guidelines in first place.

I go with history also. If you know where a culture has been, you know where it is heading.

To answer original question:

I use aligment as relativistic tool, always in realtion to main or centeral culture of the campaign. So good is, what is good in terms of main culture and evil is what stands as 'disgusting or wrong'- from that point of view.

Law - chaos axis is more tradition - breaking traditions axis.

It works well enough and doesn't seem to limit my player's motivations or actions, only the means they can choose to fullfill their goals. And they are all experienced players, some even have experience in original D&D.

Quote from: Phoenix KnightIt sounds likes you mean to remove spells per day in favor of risk per spell (I do something similar, so I think that can work)?

The living artifact thing is also a nice addition.

I was thinking about removing the spells per day, but now plan to keep basic system (at least for now). Basic idea behind my thinking was the mana-points and since you could only collect them when something dies, it would mean that wizard would be spending lot of time in slaughter-houses. Thinking the ways wizard would 're-fill' the mana-points mid adventure was enough to make me smile while I scraped the idea.

About the Ki (Chi in Chinese), Life Force and Mana in my setting.

I was thinking it like this:
Mana = Something wizards use. Actually same stuff as Life Force, but spell caster catches it from surroundings and uses it to form a spell effects.
Life Force = External force. This is the uncontrolable life force with will to be alive.
Chi = Life force that gets trapped inside when creature is born. Creature can learn to use it, like monk does, but it is seperated from mana as after birth amount of chi inside creature never changes.

Perhaps some of the gods and demi-gods are in fact same entities, just worshiped under different names in different cultures?

This would reduce the number of actual deities and make them easier to manage.

I have been thinking my worldâ,¬,,¢s (Andi) magic-system and while I like to use basic DnD I have made following additions:

Nature of magic: Life Force or mana.

First there is nature of magic itself in my world. My entire world (a planet) is surrounded with a force that is used by all forms of magic-user from adepts to gods and is called mana by central culture of the campaign. It is the life-force that creates life and is released when living thing dies and wizards and other wizardly magic users use it directly to create any effect they need for the spells.

But this force has a will of its own. While not intelligent, it has a need to be alive and uses any opening to fulfil this need. It normally manages this by entering creatures that are about to be born after which living thing is created and closes up with only small amount of life force trapped inside. Anything that is alive (is able to reproduce and is from this plane of existence) has mana in it. But in order to use magic, magic-user has to let more mana than he was born with into him as a conscious act. And that is like using a blender to mix nitro and glyserin.

Every living creature has heavy protection against external mana after they are born. They also have some internal defences, but these are not nearly as strong as external defences. Wizards (and other non-clerical spell casters) deliberately lower their external defences, let the mana in and use it to create spells. This is dangerous.

If wizardly magic-user has to make a concentration check while casting and fails, he has to make a will save (difficulty based on failed spell level). Failure means those defences go down by single point/level of spell failed. If one wants to rebuild his defences, he has to stay off the magic as the force will slowly radiate away. Reaching 0 will mean that caster is taken over and turns into mana-monster.

Exact design is still unfinished, but basically mana-monster is like The Thing from those movies. Unintelligent, it absorbs living creatures around it into its own body and has a potential to reach a single planet-size creature holding entire Life-Force in single organism. Fortunately while these monsters can be formidable, they are not indestructible.

New Area of Magic: Living Artifacts.

Magic-users have also made breakthroughs in controlling and creating such monsters and mana, the life-force, can be deliberately inserted in creature and these creatures -if properly bind- can be commanded by proper spells.

Uses are multiple as these creatures could be loaded with magic or include fusion to include features of multiple creatures. They are known as â,¬ËLiving Artifactsâ,¬,,¢. Kind of like familiars in steroids or magic version of genetic engineering. Any creature, including human or demi-human, could be used.

Creature used for this purpose loses all mental abilities, skills and feats and so one canâ,¬,,¢t â,¬Ëupgradeâ,¬,,¢ characters with tiger-claws and catâ,¬,,¢s eyes in this style. But you can build an assassin to do your biding by inserting into a human abilities from a tiger and other abilities from a bat. Or magic user can load spells into these creatures. Since actual spell capacity isnâ,¬,,¢t connected to the size of the creature, you could load a fireball into a mouse and let critter loose in your enemyâ,¬,,¢s castle with orders to find him, before this magic smart-weapon goes off. Powerful, granted, but this is high level stuff (not to mention single-shot).

Mechanics:

In order to get Life Force to create Living Artifact, you would have to kill something, store the released mana and insert it into base-creature.

Base-creature should give the basic hit-points and other base characteristics to Living Artifact. If just left as-is it has stats the base-creature, minus mental stats, which it doesnâ,¬,,¢t have, but has to be controlled. Any living creature will do (anything, but undeads, outsiders and constructs could be used), even dragon or magical beast if you manage to get one into a lab and tie it down, but more formidable creature, more mana is needed to turn it into base-creature. Actual balancing of this is far from finished, but Iâ,¬,,¢m thinking about using creature CR as base of both mana gained from its death and mana needed for its turning. You could gain 1/10th of creatureâ,¬,,¢s CR in mana-points when it dies and need 10 times creatureâ,¬,,¢s CR in mana-points to turn it into base-creature.

Other creatures combined to base-creature would cost exactly the same (10 x CR) but you could only choose single stat, trait or ability from the creature to import into base-creature.

Then there are spells. Living Artefacts shouldnâ,¬,,¢t be able to throw spells (as one closes the creature to keep the mana in, there is also no possibility for the creature to collect and use the free flowing mana from environment to cast spells in traditional manner), but you could load spells into the creature to be triggered at command or any given trigger. Iâ,¬,,¢m currently thinking about 10 x Level in mana-points to load a spell, metamagic of course included in that level.

Thought of 1st Draft:

Far from finished system, I like this system more every time I try to polish it. It limits the magic users as they are in danger of turning into DM-controlled monsters if they donâ,¬,,¢t limit their spell throwing and thus only use magic when absolutely needed (no more magic as a tool in everyday tasks, dangers are too great). On the other hand, it also makes magic something to be feared as nobody in his right mind would like to be next of the magician who makes that last crucial mistake.

Not to mention all those dead creatures (or villagers) which wizards use to create Living Artefacts and weird creatures that result from their creations (explains hippogriffs and others kind of neatly). That would make a serious dent into any wizardâ,¬,,¢s social-life and make the torch and pitchfork- mobs more common. But it also gives perks.

And then there are the adventure possibilities. No longer the evil wizards ritually kill those 9th level virgins (no need for virgin, but there are traditions) to open some mysterious gate. Now he is just stacking up mana-points to build up his army of Living Artefacts. True Dr Frankenstein style wizards and artificiers.

Or loose Living Artifacts, slightly failed experiments that produce unexpected side-effects.

I give more details, once I manage to create the spell lists and test a few Living Artifacts to see how hard they are to create/use.

Haven't even decided yet, should Living Artifacts be standard Item Creation or do I want them be a school of magic like necromancy. They are permanent, thus they should be item, but they also are under control, thus they are similar to necromancy.

Iâ,¬,,¢m also tempted to expand this mana into clerical spells in some form and have few ideas that fit into my world (under construction), but I would like to hear opinions about my Life-Force based magic system. Too powerful? Too limiting? Anything else?
 
Any thoughts about entire system or part of it are welcomed.

I feel magic should be dangerous. Dark Art, that when botched would realase deamons of the void to careless caster. Dangerous to soul, corrosive or something along those lines. Anything that would get people to take step back even hearing the word; Magic. As it is now, it is just a tool-kit, used as carelesly as fighter uses his sword.

Imagine a world ruled by intelligent magic items.
Imagine a world where every magic spell would cause a monster to be born as a form of magic backlash.

Quote from: Jürgen HubertWho said that you can't have different elven cultures in your setting? All you have to do is explore different facets of the elves as portrayed in myth and fantasy.

For Urbis, I've got "Elves as Rulers of the Faerie Court", "Elves living on Isolated Islands in the West", "Elves as Stealers of Human Children", and a few honorable mentions of "Elves lording it over Everyone Else".

These are all truly distinct cultures and nations - and yet all are truly elvish.

Do they all have same racial bonuses? Are they all longbowmen? Do they speak same language? Same armour? Can you get same magical items from all cultures? Do all elven cultures manufacture elven boots or armour? If so why? Shouldn't they have different preferences based on the area they live in?

If player makes elven rogue/wizard/whatnot character, how is he able to tell what culture that elf is from? Shouldn't you tweak around the stats and bonuses to reflect the seperation, ie create new races?

Basically I agree with you, there is no need for race of two-headed cat-people, Gato-Ettin or whatever, but what core has wrong is simple assumption that single race would stay the same whereever it lives. This is really bad with elves and dwarves, whose culture is pretty much tied to their race.

Pulling elves out of their woods and putting them into saddle of a some war pony and declaring them nomands while still making them feel close relatives of those few you choose to leave into forrest, now that is a challenge that makes a good setting.

Lets examine the following:

You meet elves at North Continent, where they live at North Woods in their village. You then travel south, across Central Ocean, crossing The Burning Desert, climbing over The High Mountain and enter The Big Jungle.

In the Big Jungle you meet another elven village and meet elves who are just like elves about 5000 miles north. No variation due the fact that there isn't ounce of metal in entire Big Jungle, no changes in costume/weaponry/speech even if they have never met anyone from North Woods. Why is this you ask? Answer: They are elves!

What I am supposed to do with elves, as they clearly are a single culture, not a race? Stuck them in some wooded plot in my world and wall them in?

I rather develop multitude of elven cultures. People will find the familiarity, but same time it is something different, as it isn't enough to say that he is an elf, but one must say he is Hunag-People or Northlander or similar elven culture that defines them.

Imagine world with nothing but shrimp.

More I learn about humanity, more I love my dog.
-Frederik the Great.

Law is very equal affair: Both rich and poor are forbidden to sleep under the bridges or to beg for bread.
-Anatole France

If you first don't succeed, try, try again.
Then stop as there is no need to make compleate idiot out of youself.
-W.C Fields.  

Quote from: Cuirassier CYMRO

Quote from: WormwoodIt is the Norse ideology again. Norses had berserkers, propably going off with Amanita muscaria, ie. fly agaric. One of the symptoms of poisoning by this mushroom is uncontrolable rage, so it isn't so much passion, but psychotic episode.

But this just proves the my point: Barbarian is just Viking cliché, not any primitive warrior.

Actually Berserkers were members of the mythic Vidar cult, who could transform into bears, as opposed to the Uller cult, the Ulfhednir that could transform into wolves.

The Barbarian is more a Howard//Haggard stereotype than anything else.  Reason enough why I dropped the class from my setting.  I made the rage thing a feat chain.

I was talking about closest historical culture. I hope you weren't.

But I like barbarians in my settings. There is room for the 'noble savage' in the class structure and while fighter could fill in, problem is there is no limitations to the fighter and thus he will end up as too weapon-optimised for the role.

I have been toying with a idea of creating three barbarian sub-classes (not prestige, but seperate classes), where one would be good with horses (Mongols), one would have the rage (Norse) and third would be leaning towards ranger as nature based warrior, like plains-tribes in North America (Sioux or Apache warriors).

Quote from: Phoenix KnightSpeaking of barb cliches: Only "barbarians" can go berserk and fight with passion over precision.

It is the Norse ideology again. Norses had berserkers, propably going off with Amanita muscaria, ie. fly agaric. One of the symptoms of poisoning by this mushroom is uncontrolable rage, so it isn't so much passion, but psychotic episode.

But this just proves the my point: Barbarian is just Viking cliché, not any primitive warrior.

Barbarians are always pictured as Norse.

Why not Mongolian horsemen or Zulu impis or Formosan head-hunters? Mongols would make great barbarian tribe, as would Zulus. Of course rage should be played down or replaced with different advantage, depending on culture.