PDA

View Full Version : seeking advice on big ridiculous crazy multiple worlds campaign



JennTora
2012-08-14, 01:47 PM
So I just started playing d&d I believe it was sometime last year, since I live in a tabletop rpg dead area. Thing is the campaign's been a multiple worlds thing with a bunch of different stuff that I'm fairly certain wasn't meant to be used together. We've been using slayers d20 along with normal d&d, for instance, which is my main issue because I don't like slayers' spells mainly because they all seem to be divine, And playing a character that's perfectly happy with all their power coming from the BBEG(black magic)/the spirit of the earth(shamanist magic)/the gods(white magic) isn't something that appeals to me for more than a couple of sessions.


My issue here being that I'd like my normal d&d sorcerers and wizards (well actually pathfinder, not everyone's even bothered to convert their 3.5 character's to pathfinder, despite that everyone agrees that it's better, which has caused more balance issues) to be capable of being on par with these weird fake arcane spellcasters that are actually divine spellcasters from slayers.

So I'm wondering if the best solution would be:

1. Making a new prestige class that's balanced with the fake-arcanists from slayers.

2. Making new spells that are equal to the OP slayers spells.

3. Both?

4. Something else?

The guy that wants all this stuff, well we're playing at his house so dumping all the extra stuff isn't really a good option, and having it wouldn't bother me so much if we would just get some simple game balance and internal consistency involved. Not to mention it would be nice to be able to be on equal terms with the party's slayers sorcerer without also being a fake arcane actually divine spellcaster that gets all his power from shabranigdo and his kids.

Or am I missing something that makes them pretty even. Any way I look at it it seems slayers classes are broken in comparison even using pathfinder rules for the non-slayers classes. But if I'm mistaken let me know.

Edit: also we're using besm's dynamic casting deal which I'm happier with now that we all understand it better. We had been using it incorrectly, lol.

JennTora
2012-08-16, 05:38 AM
55 views and no answers on a board where I've seen people answer posts in less than a minute? Did I say something dumb or something?

Kol Korran
2012-08-16, 06:02 AM
55 views and no answers on a board where I've seen people answer posts in less than a minute? Did I say something dumb or something?

Well, people checked this thread due to the title, which suggests a crazy multy world campaign, and yet speaks nothing of it. So it might be bad advertisement. Perhaps change the title to fit the subject more? (Edit the first post)

Also, you're speaking of some system/ subsystem called slayers d20. I would hazard and guess this is a fairly obscure one, since it's the first time i've heard about it on the forums. It could very well be that none or few of the readers of the thread know of these "slayers", and so they can't quite help. Again, I suggest editing the title so it would be clear that you're talking of this system specifically.

Third- you're writing seems to be all over the place. It's not bad, but very hard to understand what you want. It looks as if you're rambling to a friend in your group, and not to people all over the world who don't quite know what this is about.

Lastly- your requests/ solutions seem a bit to vague and large: make a new prestige class? what is it's flavor? concept? requirements? signature powers? spells? um... ok? make some spells? What exactly do you want from us, the forumists?

In short- focus, in title and explaining the situation and your dillema. Might go a long way.

NichG
2012-08-16, 06:32 AM
I really like the Advanced d20 Magic casting system, which Slayers d20 basically uses. If you used that for a D&D caster with D&D spell list, you'd have a lot more versatility than a Slayers caster (its all spontaneous), though they'd have more outright power.

The Slayers d20 book basically out and says 'Yes this stuff is broken, it was broken in the anime that it comes from and this was directly lampshaded there too. The setting is meant to be over the top.' so if it looks OP, then that shouldn't be a surprise.

One funny aspect of Slayers d20 is that Fighters that go Abjurant Champion are much much better casters than any actual casting class in the system (since casting works on Fort saves). You need a level of an Advanced Casting class to get the cool stuff, but thats about it.

If you think the spells are broken, pray that no one ever reads the item creation system carefully. Lets just say, as written you can snap your fingers and create Rings of Universal Elemental Resistance pretty much instantly if you know how to cheese the casting system.

One Slayers option for being your own source of power is to play a half-mazoku. They basically can spontaneously cast any 1st to 3rd level spell without having to know it ahead of time, and its not because they're borrowing power - its their own power shining through. It has a moderate LA, but you're basically paying LA for a racial 'casts like some kind of zany Archivist' ability. It'll be even better if you can convince your DM to allow access to non-Slayers spells this way. You can do a lot of stuff with 'all spells 3rd level and lower' at your fingertips.

Interestingly enough, I actually played in a Slayers d20 campaign where the big reveal was that the Slayers world connected to standard D&D Planescape, and worse, the Slayers stuff only worked on the Slayers world so all us casters had to find new sources of power once we left.

JennTora
2012-08-16, 08:37 AM
Well, people checked this thread due to the title, which suggests a crazy multy world campaign, and yet speaks nothing of it. So it might be bad advertisement. Perhaps change the title to fit the subject more? (Edit the first post)

Also, you're speaking of some system/ subsystem called slayers d20. I would hazard and guess this is a fairly obscure one, since it's the first time i've heard about it on the forums. It could very well be that none or few of the readers of the thread know of these "slayers", and so they can't quite help. Again, I suggest editing the title so it would be clear that you're talking of this system specifically.

Third- you're writing seems to be all over the place. It's not bad, but very hard to understand what you want. It looks as if you're rambling to a friend in your group, and not to people all over the world who don't quite know what this is about.

Lastly- your requests/ solutions seem a bit to vague and large: make a new prestige class? what is it's flavor? concept? requirements? signature powers? spells? um... ok? make some spells? What exactly do you want from us, the forumists?

In short- focus, in title and explaining the situation and your dillema. Might go a long way.

Okay let me start from the beginning, we are in this campaign using the following:

Standard phb and pathfinder(since we discovered pathfinder after the start all agreed we liked it better, but not everyone has wanted to take the time to convert their characters)

Warcraft and wow d20

Slayers d20(based on the slayers anime)

Everquest d20

Assorted crap from the besm books.

The reason that slayers d20 gets the main focus is that Slayers d20 has been the primary problem due to the fact that its spells and spellcasting classes are flat out stated in the book as being horribly broken. It uses a magic system called dynamic spellcasting which normal d&d spells can be translated to which would be awesome if the slayers spells weren't still horribly broken.

the dynamic casting system works as follows:

Make a fortitude save(even though casting is described as a mental action:smallconfused:) against the spells dc. This save partly determines drain damage, which is normally subdual but sometimes isn't.

If the save meets the spell's dc then it is successfully cast, if not then you make a control check. If you fail the control check you don't cast the spell and take double drain. If you fail the control check by 10 or more you're fatigued. If you were already fatigued, you're exhausted, if you were already exhausted then you start taking drain as lethal damage.

Also drain cannot be healed magically, only through normal rest, suggesting that it probably represents a spiritual or mental fatigue, causing it to make even less sense that a fortitude save is used.:smallfrown::smallconfused:

Some of those details may not be completely right as I don't have the book on hand.

Other than that, I've grown to prefer it over the standard casting system. now then, there are three main spellcasting prestige classes in slayers d20 which are:

Sorcerers who call upon dark powers for their magic, primarily mazoku which are a race of demons who want to destroy everything. Their lord, shabranigdo, is sealed away split into seven(now 4) pieces. His power fuels the dragon slave, an absurdly broken spell that deals 2d6 damage per caster level to everything within a 100 foot radius with no maximum damage. It may even be more broken than it sounds because the book fails to clarify whether it allows spell resistance, it's been argued in the group that it doesn't. It's dc is 50 which is the equivalent of a particularly powerful 8th level spell. *facepalm*

Shamans, whose power source is somewhat unclear in the show, but the book says they call on the spirit of the world and the astral plane. They also get a bunch of broken control spells, and the rah tilt which is basically a single target dragon slave.

Clerics/shrine maidens who serve the gods, their spells are mainly protection and healing, white magic, but they can take a feat to learn holy magic, which is powered up white magic which does have a number of offensive spells. Their version of dragon slave is called chaotic disintegrate, which does 1d12 per caster lvl, and half that against lawful creatures.

That's all of them and none are arcane casters, they all seem to be divine casters of some sort. The power source of arcane casters isn't always completely clear, but it's generally some energy that's directly controlled by willpower of the caster, rather than power drawn from some intelligent source that is above the caster, usually I've heard arcane energy described as leftover energy from creation. Though, In wow it's the twisting nether which while not inherently evil is a dangerous and addictive thing. Regardless, my primary issue here is that again there's no true arcane spellcaster here and I don't want to be dependent on mazoku or gods for my spells. Nor did I especially want the half demon or half mazoku template to be honest. So basically I'm not asking for anyone to make anything for me, just looking for suggestions on what I should do.

NichG
2012-08-16, 04:03 PM
If you have Everquest d20 and Warcraft d20 there are some potent magical options in there. I was in a world-spanning campaign of the same sort, and we had a WoW druid with some potent effects. Honestly though, being smart about basic D&D spells will let you do far more than someone who is Slayers focused. Here's a rundown of really awesome spells in Advanced d20 Magic system:

- Guards and Wards. Normally this takes 10 minutes to put up. Now you can oomph it, cast it instantly, and have none of your enemies be able to find you.

- Geas. Broken in Advanced d20 Magic where you can cast it as a standard action.

- Maze. Just pop this all day long and keep the BBEG away.

- Polymorph Any Object. Okay, I just like this spell for versatility.

- Cheesed up metamagicked Enervation, for when you just hate someone. Yes, Ragna Blade is more broken then this, but this comes in at much lower level.

- I'm a fan of in-combat Death Pact. Basically auto-True Resurrection on death, at a cost of 2 points of Con (restorable with Miracle). It gives you hitpoints when everyone else is playing Rocket Tag. Combo it with a Quickened Miracle only if the game is VERY high-powered - its pretty much an unbeatable combo unless someone can kill you two times a round.

So, I've run three campaigns now using Advanced d20 magic rules and I definitely like them more than the standard D&D set, but there were some houserules that were necessary along the way:

- Will save instead of Fort save. Fort save is funny, but you get the Fighter's are Better Wizards issue. Will saves make the optimization a lot more boring (optimizing Fort on a wizard is kinda fun), but it honestly does make more sense.

- Material components added to get a bonus to cast the spell are capped at 50000gp (+53 or so). It sounds like this should never come up, but Advanced d20 Magic makes Wish even cheaper to cast than normal, so once they get Wish they can basically churn out infinite wealth and no practical cost as soon as they can cast it reliably. The basic trick is, use a 20000gp component to get a 25000gp component. The cap may be too high for most people's tastes, but it was a high-powered game. For most games I'd suggest a cap at 5000gp or 10000gp.

- You can't cast a spell whose effective spell level exceeds what a Wizard of your level could cast. This prevents the Lv3 guy from whipping out Wishes using the sorts of ridiculous trickery you can do in this system. It also prevents extreme metamagic abuse (I had a guy doing Incantatrix-level metamagic stuff just through pumping his casting checks and slinging a bunch of metamagics: Quickened Intensified Twinned Repeat Energy Admixed Ra Tilt. Twice a round. Also because he can, Intensified Time Stop and then throw Delay onto the Ra Tilt for something like 20-30 blasts of the spell each round when he got serious.).

- Say No to Advanced d20 Item Crafting Rules. Seriously.

JennTora
2012-08-31, 10:50 PM
Okay makes sense, though honestly power is only one concern. Neither the fluff nor the spell mechanics mesh very well, even converting the d&d spells to dynamic doesn't entirely resolve that since:

In d&d magic is divided into 7 schools, in slayers it's divided into 3 types. As previously stated all slayers magic is divine(sorcery spells are prayers to mazoku, shamanism to the spirit of earth and the astral, white magic to the shinzoku), while d&d magic is divided into arcane and divine. Merging the d&d spells in with the slayers spells results in all magic being divine which is cruddy. Merging slayers spells into d&d spells requires the system to be rebuilt. And I'm not even sure where to begin to figure out how. And saying "slayers sorcerers can only use slayers spells" doesn't really make sense because if a sorcerer can use white magic then why not transmutation? Not to mention that if they really wanted to cast a d&d spell they'd just research one that does exactly the same thing.

On the ridiculously metamagicked ra tilt, what level was he? I'm assuming pretty high because 16d10 drain damage is quite a bit. Or were you using energy points? Because I know quicken spell increases the dc by 15 though I don't how much for the others exactly but that looks like it could be a total dc of 100-130.

Jack of Spades
2012-08-31, 11:12 PM
55 views and no answers on a board where I've seen people answer posts in less than a minute? Did I say something dumb or something?

This board has a pretty high Lurk:Post ratio, so it generally takes a bit for the few dozen people who say things to see your post and think of something meaningful to say. Patience, sir! Patience!

NichG
2012-09-01, 12:48 AM
On the ridiculously metamagicked ra tilt, what level was he? I'm assuming pretty high because 16d10 drain damage is quite a bit. Or were you using energy points? Because I know quicken spell increases the dc by 15 though I don't how much for the others exactly but that looks like it could be a total dc of 100-130.

It really depends how you scale drain once you've left the charts. If its exponential this is a problem, but if you cap out at 16d10 drain its really not too bad. Keep in mind you can take half drain if you beat the check by 10, so thats really just 8*5.5 = 44 drain. Thats not peanuts, but compared to the damage output of that sucker its basically nothing. This was a pretty high level campaign though; it got into epic levels by that point. Using Wish or Miracle instead of actually bothering to know specific spells was more or less a standard practice.

There are other ways to survive that kind of drain if you're clever though. For instance, if you have an Indomitability it'll prevent you from going below 1hp from the drain. A shield golem is another useful trick (this one came up in a Slayers game I played in).