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NichG
2011-02-04, 01:17 AM
So I implemented something in a campaign I'm running that was triggered a bit before I was ready for it.

Basically, D&D contains situations in which the numbers become nonsensical or effects amplify energy in ways that don't scale well (e.g. using True Creation to make a black hole). For these situations, I had a hidden ruling that rather than achieve the effect that should normally occur, the energies involved would reveal a new scale of physics (i.e. game mechanics).

The basic idea is that at this new level, the various stats things have collapse into new 'unified' stats that interact differently. Furthermore, these new stats are sometimes more stable, and so stick around after the effect ends. Other times they might decay into something different.

One of the thresholds I had for this was damage done by a single attack (in this case, 500). This was broken by someone using a trick they had to store two rounds of full attacks and release it in a single attack action, which dealt 506 or something like that and brought the new game mechanics in to play.

The problem is, I hadn't finished making the new set of stats and mechanics, so I need some ideas.

One example: the various saving throws become unified into one Chudzpah save, where instead of dodging, surviving, or willpowering through an effect, you just reflect it with sheer power. In addition, the save is rolled on two exploding d10s instead of a d20.

I'm figuring there should be some sort of replacement for hitpoints that can be down-converted meaningfully. Maybe something that works out as a combo of DR and a 25-1 conversion (so any attack that deals less than 25 damage deals none, attacks that deal 25 to 50 deal 1, ...), or something like 7th Sea's flesh wounds/dramatic wounds tracks.

So, any ideas?

Crossblade
2011-02-04, 01:24 AM
Sounds like Dragon Ball Z Ki fluff. Characters take a blast, keep on chugging.
But Monks already use ki, so call these Jiggawatts. :smallcool:

Dusk Eclipse
2011-02-04, 01:26 AM
http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo133/solarlens/catgirls.gif

Now that we have put the meme out of the way.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? I really don't see the need to complicate an already complicated game that much.

Also if you want a more "realistic" way of treating injuries and wounds, and having a crit, lucky hit being a real threat to high level characters I think you should look into the wound and vitality points variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm)

Kuma Kode
2011-02-04, 01:32 AM
Also if you want a more "realistic" way of treating injuries and wounds, and having a crit, lucky hit being a real threat to high level characters I think you should look into the wound and vitality points variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) Vitality and Wound is a great system, but it does some pretty terrible things when you include spells, eldritch blast, and sneak attack. Crits simply become instant death even at low levels from all but unoptimized melee. I only use Vitality and Wound in d20 Modern for that reason.

But yes, I also wonder, what are you trying to achieve? Knowing WHY you're adding another layer will help us help you.

NichG
2011-02-04, 01:40 AM
Believe me when I say that realism is not a goal. This is a campaign where all the characters begin dead and go from there. I'm not introducing this as a balance measure - this is already a fairly high powered campaign, so if someone does 500 damage with a two-round burst, that doesn't bother me at all since the stuff they're fighting has 1500-3000hp and can soak a few of those.

Mostly I'm looking to add a layer of 'huh?! weird!' for the players to figure out. New stuff to explore and new interactions to ponder, that sort of thing. Think of it as introducing a whole slew of new character options mid-game to make the players scramble and re-assess their planned builds. Nothing in the new layer should be a strict nerf, but some of it might be better or worse for some characters so that people can make choices and combine to taste and that sort of thing.

The Rabbler
2011-02-04, 02:27 AM
Mostly I'm looking to add a layer of 'huh?! weird!' for the players to figure out. New stuff to explore and new interactions to ponder, that sort of thing. Think of it as introducing a whole slew of new character options mid-game to make the players scramble and re-assess their planned builds. Nothing in the new layer should be a strict nerf, but some of it might be better or worse for some characters so that people can make choices and combine to taste and that sort of thing.

so after the aforementioned 500 damage cap has been reached repeatedly and the players start to realize that doing hundreds more damage only seems to hurt a little bit more, they start building their characters around smaller, more broken-up chunks of damage? Similarly with spell DCs and skill checks and the like, right?

This sounds like a really interesting mechanic. The only problem I see is that unless you actively tell your players that something special happened (doesn't have to be specific) and unless they know about where the threshold is, they could think of it as plot armor/DM fiat when something weird happens.

If I were to deal 800 damage to a monster (let's say with 800 hp) with my ubercharger and (lets say I knew how much health this monster had) that monster didn't die, I'd feel like a lot of what I did just went to waste because the DM didn't want his monster to die so quickly. But, if say... my blade catches on the fabric of the universe and won't swing as hard as I want it to, and this has happened before, I wouldn't really be surprised and I would try to keep under the magic damage number from then on.

Warning though: the damage cap idea would completely cripple an ubercharger (assuming you mean damage in one round). Damage cap on a single hit move as opposed to in a single round could nerf martial adepts or sneak-attackers or something similar.

I'd try to work these special rules so that they affected magic the most. maybe cause every time stop after the first in a single day to fizzle because time is destabilized from the first one. Or if a damaging AoE spell does enough damage, it leaves behind a crater and changes the geography of the (very) nearby area.

NichG
2011-02-04, 02:56 AM
so after the aforementioned 500 damage cap has been reached repeatedly and the players start to realize that doing hundreds more damage only seems to hurt a little bit more, they start building their characters around smaller, more broken-up chunks of damage? Similarly with spell DCs and skill checks and the like, right?


I hadn't thought about doing it for skill checks and spell DCs, but thats an interesting idea. Spell DCs I know what I'd do with - basically, the spell would develop staged DC effects: lets say the cap is 50 and you cast a DC 70 Flesh to Stone or something. Now you turn to stone if you fail the 50, you take 1d4 Con damage if you hit the 50 but fail the 70, and you take no effect if you hit the 70.



This sounds like a really interesting mechanic. The only problem I see is that unless you actively tell your players that something special happened (doesn't have to be specific) and unless they know about where the threshold is, they could think of it as plot armor/DM fiat when something weird happens.


They're quite aware. When it happened, there was a visual effect and it spontaneously converted one of the enemy's stats to the new system (which in this case was very crippling to it) and which they, er, 'juiced' it for and bottled for experimentation. Turns out they turned a corruption energy into an inversion energy, so they now have a bit of something that inverts any power they put through it.

Also, one of the PCs took a shot to see what it would do to him, and had one of his stats converted (the universal save thing).

They could break the cap by building in clever ways, but what I'm aiming for is so that hitting the cap can be strategically good in some cases and evading it good in others.



Warning though: the damage cap idea would completely cripple an ubercharger (assuming you mean damage in one round). Damage cap on a single hit move as opposed to in a single round could nerf martial adepts or sneak-attackers or something similar.


Its actually per attack, not per round, so its not that bad. Also, it's pretty hard for anything in Bo9S to do 500 in one attack (100 sure, but for 500 you need Avalanche of Blades which is many attacks) and sneak attack doesn't scale up that quickly. The guy pulled who pulled it off gets Dex to damage 1.5 times, has a huge Dex , and effectively combined 10 shots into one attack by charging up.

I'd try to work these special rules so that they affected magic the most. maybe cause every time stop after the first in a single day to fizzle because time is destabilized from the first one. Or if a damaging AoE spell does enough damage, it leaves behind a crater and changes the geography of the (very) nearby area.[/QUOTE]

A weird thing about this campaign is that traditional magic is currently underpowered compared to other options. This is due to a combination of homebrew options, high optimization among the melee and ranged attackers, and low optimization for the magic user. The highest level of spells the party has access to ight now is 4th.

But the new physics definitely would come in cases of TO-level magic abuse, like trying to make antimatter bombs or other silliness.

The Rabbler
2011-02-04, 05:44 PM
Its actually per attack, not per round, so its not that bad. Also, it's pretty hard for anything in Bo9S to do 500 in one attack (100 sure, but for 500 you need Avalanche of Blades which is many attacks) and sneak attack doesn't scale up that quickly. The guy pulled who pulled it off gets Dex to damage 1.5 times, has a huge Dex , and effectively combined 10 shots into one attack by charging up.

diamond nightmare blade. or, Time Stands Still using diamond nightmare blade twice (re-readying the maneuver via PrC class feature) as it's still technically one action.

I get the point, though. It would certainly require some trying to break that cap and 500 damage in a single attack is much harder to achieve than in a round. Well planned, sir.

Kuma Kode
2011-02-04, 06:13 PM
Your world has no craters.

A 10 ft. cube of stone has 1,800 hit points. Assuming an impact from a meteor would be considered a single attack (it's certainly not multiple), the 500 damage cap should technically apply, and the crater, regardless of the meteor's size, should only be a few feet deep.

Are people in this world aware that they have "stats?" Adding in arbitrary caps to things could have some pretty wide-reaching changes to science in general, and how the universe functions.

Otherwise, I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what you're wanting to achieve or why, so I don't know how to help.

ericgrau
2011-02-04, 06:38 PM
Introducing realism has the tendacy to:
a) Be unrealistic.
b) Have a total disregard for game balance.
c) Be unnecessarily complicated

But if you can attach some nice fluff to it and address plausibility, balance and simplicity you might get something fun.

Personally I don't have a problem with loading up on damage from lots of blows from repeated attacks as long as it isn't broken in some other way. But if someone tries infinite or semi-infinite damage stacking I think resorting to the immersion rules makes sense. Morse sense than a player exposing something to more X than total immersion anyway. Another way with spells is to enforce one standard action per thing; i.e. no linking two or more spells to a single trigger.

NichG
2011-02-04, 06:50 PM
I do damage to material sections differently anyhow, so there are still craters. For landscape damage I divide things into 5ft sections and multiply damage based on area affected (difference between damage intensity and total damage). But yes, an asteroid impact would be a reasonable place to go to look for new physics in this world :)

The characters are aware they have certain stats, but not aware of others. All spirits have Mojo (basically each Mojo is 1000 XP) which is an actual building material of the soul - as a spirit you can hold a chunk of it in your hand and put it somewhere to gain power. They also have Ashe, Eternity, Flux, and Gate, which they invest Mojo into by use of particular rituals to manipulate their own spirit (so you can have one unit of Mojo worth of Ashe, etc). Juju is a more fluid quantity that acts sort of like a spell point system for certain effects. They are not explicitly aware of the standard D&D stats, though they might be tangentially aware that they exist (the same way that Cure Minor Wounds can be used to derive the existence of hitpoints).

I guess the most concrete thing I can ask for is, what are some ways to combine and replace bits of existing D&D mechanics such that:

1. There is still some degree of interoperability even if done piecemeal
2. Choosing whether to go with the 'high-energy' mechanics or the 'low-energy' mechanics is a mechanically interesting choice
3. The new mechanics allow certain things to become viable that otherwise would not be, and may suppress certain tricks that are normally ascendant.

I'll use 7th Sea mechanics as an example.

An example of #2: On the high-energy route, your Wis and Int are combined into one stat called Wits, which becomes the average of the two. Wits contributes to anything that either Wis or Int previously contributed to, but things that explicitly increase either Wis or Int, or things that modify Wis or Int checks do not increase Wits. You could make an item that granted a +6 enhancement bonus to Wits, but a +6 Int item would not increase it. So you could make a SAD build, but you'd have to start with a fair investment in Wis and Int to make it pay off - a mechanically interesting choice, perhaps, though I think I need to do better.

An example of #3: The party meets a creature whose hitpoints are on the high-energy route and are replaced with 'Wound checks' and 'Dramatic wounds'. The way these work is, every time you take damage you make a Wound check against your current damage total, and if you fail you take a Dramatic Wound, which you might have 3 or 4 of before you drop. The consequence here is, the big burst damage guy finds that he's less effective than he thought - he should've killed the creature 3 times over with one attack. But the guy who makes 10 separate attacks each at 1/40th of the damage of the big burst damager finds that he is surprisingly effective against the creature (forcing it to reroll its wound check many many times until it fails). It might get annoying if its all the time, but it provides a tactically interesting scenario if the party is aware that the creature is using the alternate mechanics and has some knowledge of what they are.

The Rabbler
2011-02-04, 06:53 PM
Introducing realism has the tendacy to:
a) Be unrealistic.
b) Have a total disregard for game balance.
c) Be unnecessarily complicated

But if you can attach some nice fluff to it and address plausibility, balance and simplicity you might get something fun.

Personally I don't have a problem with loading up on damage from lots of blows from repeated attacks as long as it isn't broken in some other way. But if someone tries infinite or semi-infinite damage stacking I think resorting to the immersion rules makes sense. Morse sense than a player exposing something to more X than total immersion anyway. Another way with spells is to enforce one standard action per thing; i.e. no linking two or more spells to a single trigger.

I don't think this is trying to introduce realism/balance so much as it's trying to add a new element to the game. Imagine that you're casting some SoD with the spell DC pumped up through the stratosphere. Suddenly, as a feature of the world, your spell has an alternate effect if they only make a second, lower save (the threshold save) but not the full save. Power word stun could deal some dex damage in addition to stunning, should the target fail both saves. Maybe Slow could stun for a round if not also saved against (making stuff up, here. not sure if Slow gives a save (probably not, now that I think about it)).

It's adding new stuff to the game for when numbers get higher than they normally (liberal use) should be.