Visceral Baroque: A System For the Cadaverous Earth

[Steerpike]

Ooh I like the black die/white die thing!  Although partly since I have an inordinate number of red dice and partly because red and black suit CE better than white and black I think I'd make it black/red die.  But great idea, Crow!  Snagged!

[Superfluous Crow]

Feel free :)
I'm still going to use it for my own though i reckon ^^

[LD]

Wow, lots of posts.  Been gone for a short while.

The Losing Cards system is interesting - I think it'd be perfect for a wild west themed game, where the cards mesh thematically with the feel of the setting.  But I'll ponder it more.

No problem. Good luck with the idea you went with.

I adopted the idea from Castle Falkenstein and adapted a version of the system in a LARP wild west game at a convention. It does work, but you need to have the right setting for it.

~LD.

[Steerpike]

So as may be quite obvious I haven't exactly hammered out a lot of rules for Visceral Baroque yet.  I certainly haven't abandoned the idea (earlier Goblin had occupied me; currently grad school and moving across the country have absorbed my attention).  The plan remains the same (scratch build from FATE with souped up combat and a custom magic system).

However, I recently downloaded Iron Heroes for the first time (after Kindling mentioned it) and was struck by this description: [blockquote=Iron Heroes]Civilization is fragile.  It exists in a few shards scattered across the world.  In many areas, barbarism reigns supreme.  Mankind is its own worst enemy, as the few pockets of civilization not only from terrible monsters and humanoid tribes, but from barbarians who would loot, pillage, and slay for their own short term benefit.[/blockquote]This struck me as pretty close to what I`m imagining for CE.

What would people think of this: taking Iron Heroes, throwing in the graft mechanics and some of the Vancian magic from 3.5 with some scratch-built mechanics for nectar, and beefing up the social mechanics to cover the `baroque` aspect of the setting?  Terrible idea or might work well?  I`d been thinking about creating a d20 primer for CE anyway, as an alternative to Visceral Baroque - would Iron Heroes work?  There could still be a smattering of magical items here and there, just no ubiquitous +1 swords and wands, which I don`t envision for CE anyway.  This wouldn`t exclude the possibility of a FATE-based CE system, of course...

[Superfluous Crow]

Oh, yeah, can't believe we haven't mentioned Iron Heroes in this thread. I have the book and it's probably my favorite D20 system. I think CE might work excellently in Iron Heores. Probably also easier than beginning with a FATE conversion.
Iron Heroes is more visceral, which is a plus, it is not designed around magic, which is a plus, it can be easily modified with additional abilities for each class, again a plus and it is potentially awesome (obviously also a plus). Only slight problem is the humano-centric design, but it can be worked round I'm sure.

[Steerpike]

Thanks for the reply, and glad you approve of the idea.  One big plus to at least starting with an Iron Heroes conversion instead of a FATE conversion is that it'll probably require substantially less playtesting, since the basic mechanics have already been thoroughly playtested.  Plus I'm frankly more familiar with d20 anyway so things like race design will be easier.

[Superfluous Crow]

np. And yeah, you might as well start with converting it into a system you're familiar with. Then you can go crazy with FATE later.

[Steerpike]

Based on what Salacious Angel had said about FATE and CE it would be tricky to create a feel of visceral combat in.  Not impossible, perhaps, but difficult; combat might be over quickly and be relatively deadly, but as a result most players would probably avoid combat.  To counteract this I was going to develop more in-depth combat mechanics, but just imagining this process gave me a headache.  I think this a better solution, at least for now.

[Superfluous Crow]

Hmm, I'll have to pick my old copy of the book off the shelf so I can provide some useful help :)

[beejazz]

I don't know... IH seems pretty human centric, pretty combat centric, magic unfriendly and social skills lite. Plus the tactical combat (which might be a non-plus? but not a minus?) and the high survival rate (from the looks of things)... and the classes.

You'll end up having to scratch build magic, work a lot on social, scratch build all your races (which I guess you'll have to do regardless) etc. And powering down the combat / upping the lethality might be a chore.

It has ideas worth pilfering, but I don't know how well it'll fit long term.

My advice is to pick a core mechanic and a method for generating stats (the hard part) and then just hang some cool stuff on it to suit the game.

So for combat, for example, there's no need to go into as much detail as IH does. Just steal the freeform stunt mechanic idea. You don't even have to go about it the way they did... just give some DCs and say how hard they are and let GMs make it up on the fly. Stunts plus crit charts (easier to write than they look) will be more than enough to make combat fast and deadly. Lastly, low to medium hp and wildly variable weapon damage (probably 2-3 dice with the high end being lethal and the low end being a bruise... so there's unpredictable extremes with things weighted in the middle) and you're good.

[Steerpike]

The biggest cons for IH I can see:

- over-long combat/not deadly enough
- insufficient social skills

The magic system (which I'd have to scratch build anyway) I'd probably adapt from a mixture of the arcanist and dnd wizard with some nectar mechanics thrown in.  IH is low magic essentially in the sense that it doesn't want characters as walking mini-marts of magic; it'd be relatively easy to "up the magic" in IH by throwing in a few more magic items (probably predominantly those that don't simply give stat bonuses, more wondrous items or weapons with special abilities) and giving plenty of individuals the spellcasting class.  There aren't a lot of spellcasting types in CE: no clerics, no druid equivalents really, definitely no paladins, no bard-like characters...

The races are not really an issue - it's pretty easy to re-imagine IH with non-human races.  I don't think they really screw with the balance much.

That said, the prospect of a more scratch-built/custom system still holds great appeal, and I'm not throwing it out in favor of IH just yet (if ever).

Insofar as the classes go they're actually an attraction in most senses.  While classless can be fun I'm not steadfastly anti-class; the big deterrent from something like D&D was that I felt the classes didn't fit well with CE.  Rangers, paladins, monks, druids, clerics, and bards all don't fit at all; sorcerers/wizards would need to be tweaked.  That would have left fighter, rogue, and barbarian, and I would have ended up scratch-building classes, which would take forever.  IH's classes, by contrast, are much more nicely suited to the savage/post-apocalyptic world of CE; even the arcanist is closer to a CE witch than some spellcasters.

I'll have to think about this.

[Superfluous Crow]

As far as social skills go, they do have a whole slew of social feats and the thief has many social skills. I don't think they are much worse of as far as social mechanics go compared to many other systems.
If i remember correctly they have Massive Damage rules which come into play fairly often, so it is medium-deadly. Otherwise I'm sure magic and grafts will speed it up nicely.
Buying a race for a background perk and otherwise levelling it out with a disadvantage for each advantage should balance out nicely.  
You could also up the magic by allowing players to pick magical talents as i think i mentioned earlier.
I really like the classes; they actually boost your creativity by letting you envision all the possible things you can create with them, rather than drain it all away by forcing you to put your character in a box like i feel DnD does.

[Steerpike]

Here's a very rough vision of what the Witch class mechanics might look like - let me know if this isn't remotely workable:

Witches learn and cast spells as Wizards do but must make Invocation Checks to power their spells, with DC's equal to 10 + the spell level, using d20 + Intelligence bonus + half the caster's level (rounding down).

Failure results in the spell fizzling.  Failure by more than 5 results in temporary ability damage to Intelligence equal to the level of the spell being cast (plus the spell fizzles).  Failure by more than 10 also results in 1d4 damage per spell level as eldritch forces sear the Witch's body.

Though Witches in the Cadaverous Earth can take Metamagic Feats they can also replicate their effects using a drug called nectar.  While using nectar a Witch can apply a Metamagic effect to any of their spells, but their spells do not use a higher level spell slot; for example, a 3rd level empowered fireball, which would normally use a 5th level slot, would still only use a 3rd level slot.  However, the spell level used to calculate the DC of the Invocation check used to cast the spell is increased '" so the DC to cast the fireball would be 15, not 13.  Thus a nectar-user can cast more powerful spells but at greater risk of madness and damage.  

[Superfluous Crow]

Sounds like a clever way around it. Using a pool of metamagic points depending on the amount of consumed nectar would provide a distinct advantage to the nectar-user.

[Steerpike]

Right - so a small dose might allow for an empowered spell and a stilled spell, or one maximized spell, while a larger dose might allow for several maximized spells or a maximized+empowered spell (I forget, can metamagic be stacked like that?).   Thus the larger the dose the more powerful spells can be cast, but the greater the risk.  A nectar junkie who takes a big dose could start slinging very big spells around (much more powerful than he usually could cast) but if he critically fails his Invocation check he's going to lose a lot of Int and take a fair bit of damage as well.

EDIT: A question I'm pondering - should ghilan have the Undead type?  Would simply adding the Undead type give a race an LA of +1, or higher?  I'm leaning towards no on this point - they might count as Undead for the effect of spells etc but would have far fewer Undead traits...