So here’s the latest revisions to the Dragon Hack class traits, presented in the talent format for the first time. I have a lot of stuff pulling me in various directions right now, so I’m just going to post these and open it up for comments. I’ll be back later this week with another thought for Dragon Hack that I think is pretty cool, but I’d love to get more opinions on. But for now: More talents! Enjoy.
Cleric
Classes: Mage
Requirements: You must have a Willpower of 2 or higher.
Novice: Unlike your arcane kin, you use divine magic and are at home in armor and on the battlefield. When casting spells from the Creation school, you suffer no Spell Strain penalties for wearing armor. Your penalty to cast spells from the Spirit school in armor is reduced by 2. You can choose one additional weapon group at first level, you must choose a weapon favored by your deity.
Journeyman: You have become a master of the healing arts. You gain the Chirurgy talent or advance a level in the talent if you already possess it. When you cast the heal spell, you may add your Willpower to the amount healed.
Master: You can channel the divine energy of your deity as many times per day as your Willpower. Energy channeled in this fashion causes a burst of power that heals allies or causes penetrating damage to undead in a radius equal to double your Willpower in yards. The amount of damage dealt or healed is equal to 2d6 + Magic.
Druid
Classes: Mage
Requirements: You must have a Constitution of 2 or higher.
Novice: You can select one wild animal as a faithful companion, which follows commands and gains benefits as if you possessed the Master level of the Animal Training talent. Druids who already possess this talent do not gain any additional benefits beyond the ability to train animals other than its chosen wild companion. If a druid’s companion dies, she can choose another.
Journeyman: You gain the ability to move through heavy underbrush and brambles with ease. You gain a +2 to ability tests to overcome hazards associated with travel through difficult terrain with a success meaning you take no damage. Enemies trying to track you suffer a penalty to their Perception (Tracking) tests equal to half your level rounded down.
Master: You gain the ability to take animal form. You may change your form into that of a wild animal you’re familiar with as many times per day as your Constitution. The transformation lasts up to a minute per level, and it is a major action to enter or leave the form. While in animal form, you gain the Speed, Defense, Armor Rating, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity and any natural attacks of the creature you transform into, but you retain your Health and other ability scores. You lose the ability to communicate normally while in animal form, but you can communicate with other animals of the same kind naturally. If you show a marked preference for a certain type of animal form, over time wild creatures will associate you with that form and treat you as an animal of that type even when in your original shape.
Sorcerer
Classes: Mage
Requirements: You must have a Communication of 2 or higher.
Novice: You may pick the bloodline that is the source of your power. You gain the Magic focus in the school associated with that bloodline. Because the magic you cast flows in your veins, you can use the Fast Casting stunt for 3 SP.
Journeyman: Your command of the your natural magic abilities continues to improve. You gain additional mana per level equal to your Communication.
Master: You can empower your spells with the magical energy that flows in your blood. You can add 1d6 to the damage of any spell by doubling the mana cost. You can increase the damage of their Arcane Lance by paying 3 Mana.
Wizard
Classes: Mage
Requirements: You must have a Cunning of 2 or higher.
Novice: You learn a number of spells equal to 3 + Cunning at first level, and an additional spell at each level thereafter, which you keep in your spellbook. You can only memorize a number of spells per day equal to the amount gained through your class’s Magic Training ability and level increases, however. You must choose which spells to memorize each morning. Wizards pick a spell school to specialize in as well, gaining the Magic focus talent for the school of their choice.
Journeyman: You gain the talent for the Magic focus you chose at novice, or advance a level in that talent if you already posses it. You also gain a familiar, a magical pet who serves as a loyal companion and enhances your skills and senses and can aid you in magic.
Master: You gain the ability to scribe spells from your spellbook onto scrolls of special magical parchment. Once inscribed in this fashion, the scrolls can be read aloud, unlocking the magic of the spell without the reader having to expend any mana. Inscribing a scroll is an advanced Magic test with a focus appropriate to the spell being inscribed and a success threshold of 15. The target number equal to 9 + the total number of mana points required to cast the spell. For spells with varying mana costs, the number reflects the amount of mana you want the spell to utilize when it’s cast form the scroll. The success threshold rises to 17 for spells that cost five or more mana to cast, and 20 for spells that cost more than 8 mana. Each test represents an hour of research and crafting time. Completing the scroll requires you to cast the spell in question to be captured in the parchment, so after the advanced test is complete you must successfully pass the spell’s casting roll and expend the amount of mana necessary to empower the scroll in order to complete the scroll’s creation. Resisting the effects of a spell cast from a scroll tests against the Spellpower of the wizard who created it.
You can always read the scrolls you inscribe, but reading a scroll inscribed by another Wizard requires a Cunning (Arcane Lore) test with a TN equal to 10 + the level of the Wizard who inscribed the scroll. Inscribing a scroll requires specially prepared parchment and inks and undisturbed solitude. The game master will decide the cost for such things as befits his or her campaign, but they should be suitably expensive.
Example: The wizard Tessarin is hoping to create a scroll of the Levitate spell from his spellbook. Because the spell requires five mana to cast, the success threshold of Tessarin’s attempt is 17, and because Tessarin wants to imbue the spell with an extra 2 mana points so it will last for three rounds, the TN is 16. Tessarin is a sixth level mage with a 5 Magic and the Magic (Spirit) focus, so he adds +7 to his attempts. It takes Tessarin five tests altogether in order to successfully inscribe the scroll to perfection. The second test was unsuccessful, so the Dragon Die result for it doesn’t count. The four successful tests have Dragon Die results of 5, 5, 6, 5. Their total of 21 is greater than the success threshold so after five hours of work Tessarin completes his scrollwork. Now he must cast the spell successfully, expending the mana and passing the casting roll to finish creating the empowered spell scroll. The spell when cast from the scroll has a spellpower of 17, and he can cast it with a major action and no additional tests. If the willy rogue Lyia stole the scroll and wanted to cast it for mischievous ends, she would have to pass a TN 16 Cunning (Arcane Lore) test to be able to puzzle out the phrasings of the magical language.
Nice! Although as usual I have a question! Do you plan to use the DA spell schools, or convert the PF schools (abjuration, conjuration and the like)? I’ve had a quick look at the various ways one could categorize magic. Whilst I like the PF schools, I don’t really like the way that clerics and other magic users have to use lists made up from them. On the other hand the effort required in making up a separate set of spells for clerics, druids etc is a bit daunting. So I was considering having a number of categories for each spell. For example, “Fireball” might be a wizard “evocation”, but also be tagged as being in the “fire” clerical domain. Then in the Novice cleric talent a cleric could cast spells from their “primary” domain with no armour strain, and spells from a secondary domain with strain reduced by 2. Conceivably clerics could take ability focuses and talents similar to the “school” based mage ones, but centred around their domains…
Vaelorn,
Those are good ideas. My plan has been to stick with the schools already present in the Dragon Age game, because otherwise you have to create not only new focuses for the new schools (which isn’t hard) but also new talents for each school as well. If you look at the Game Master’s reference sheet in the back of the Dragon Hack pdf you’ll see that I matched some of the Sorcerer bloodlines to the existing magic schools already. While I fully intend to add a list of spells taken from Pathfinder but converted to Dragon Age, I’m thinking I can just change the spell school of the spells to match those that already exist in DARPG.
I don’t plan on making a separate list of spells for each of the different magic wielding classes, just provide benefits (such as the Cleric’s reduced armor strain with Creation spells) to guide players towards choices where appropriate. But perhaps it makes more sense to strip out the specific spell school for clerics and leave that to a cleric’s domain, (and secondary domain, such as you suggested). If we look at Table 3-6 on page 43 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook (Deities of the Pathfinder Chronicles) each god is represented by an alignment, a portfolio of interests, several domains, and then a favored weapon. We should recreate that table in Dragon Hack, but either trim down the domains or make a second conversion chart that groups associated domains into DARPG spell schools.
So, Air, Earth, Fire, Glory, Strength, Sun, and Weather domains are associated with the Primal school.
Artiface, Community, Good, Healing, Law, Liberation, Nobility, Protection, and Repose domains are associated with the Creation school.
Animal, Charm, Knowledge, Luck, Magic, Plant, Travel, and Trickery domains are associated with the Spirit school.
And finally Chaos, Darkness, Death, Destruction, Evil, Madness, and War domains are associated with the Entropy school.
Those with a Primal domain have the Entropy school as a secondary, Those with Creation have Spirit as secondary, those with Spirit have Creation as secondary, and those with Entropy have Primal as a secondary.
Thus, a cleric of Gorum would suffer no armor penalties when casting spells of the Entropy school, and reduced penalties when casting spells of the Primal school. He also would gain the Heavy Blades weapon group at first level.
What do you think?
We’ll also should modify the Master level cleric power to channel positive energy if the cleric is of the Creation school domains, negative energy if the cleric is of the Entropy school domains, and then let clerics of the Primal and Spirit domains choose which they prefer at that rank, and they have to stick with that choice from then on.
I like it – it would certainly be easier to keep the DA schools and add PF spells to them than recreate a new set, that’s for sure! And it should be quite easy to come up with a similar set of “school to domain” mappings for other settings (such as Eberron), so it would be quite flexible in that respect. Should Clerics suffer penalties when casting spells from “opposed” schools? Obviously they would lose their armour penalty reductions – maybe they should be increased? So the Cleric of Gorum would have double the penalty for casting Spirit spells and +2 when casting Creation spells.
Also, would all mages keep Arcane Lance? I can see that it would be reflavoured for each class – so wizards would have “magic missile”, clerics would have “smite foe” etc. You could go further and change the mechanics slightly – a cleric’s “divine lance” might only affect undead, but might do penetrating damage.
However, this does seem to make all magic using classes a bit like artillery – perhaps they could replace Arcane Lance (and each of the upgrades to it) with a “cantrip” of some sort of equivalent power chosen from a suitable list? This would be in addition to the effects granted by the spell school talents of course.
I think that all classes should keep arcane lance, but we could include a paragraph or two about each player reflavoring the lance to their own personal expectations. Whereas a Wizard might see Arcane lance as a bolt of mystic energy (such as a magic missile) a cleric might see it as a glowing hammer or sword of his or her god smiting a foe. Rather than hardwire that into the rules, though, I’d like to let the individual player model their Arcane Lance how they see fit.
As far as armor penalties, my first thought is that the armor penalties as they exist in DARPG now are enough to keep mages out of armor. (And let’s face it, with rock armor and arcane shield, they don’t need armor eventually). So losing the armor penalty reduction bonus on out-of-school spells would probably keep most clerics from choosing them. A game master could always rule that a cleric’s god would not grant them out of school spells at all, taking them off the table for a player. So again, rather than modify the rules, I think it might be enough to have a quick 2,3 paragraph text box on possible rule interactions with clerics and out-of-school spells and let individual game masters and players decide what’s best for their campaign.
I just remembered the following thread on the GR forums – might be useful in padding out the spell list, and the Animism school could be an interesting way of handling druids and/or rangers…
http://www.greenronin.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8375
Vaelorn,
Good stuff, thanks for the link.