Amaril
2013-01-24, 10:57 AM
As the title implies, I'm interested in creating a D&D variant designed to be played in the setting of Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Trilogy. I've never really done any homebrew of the more mechanical elements of the game before, however, so I'm looking for any advice people might be able to give on how I might go about making this idea a reality. Even if you haven't read the novels, your help is welcome in whatever regard you can provide.
Here are some of the ideas I have so far, along with some issues I'd like to resolve:
Character races. The Four Corners of Civilization are inhabited only by humans (and the Fae, but I'd prefer not to make them playable), which, depending on how it's handled, could annoy some players. I have two ideas for how to handle this. First, keep the humans' racial stats identical to those in D&D, which is simplest. Second, implement a system of "backgrounds" as an analogue to races, so that, for example, a native of the Commonwealth might get different innate bonuses and penalties than one of the Edema Ruh. Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this?
Classes. First of all, I'm still not sure whether I want this game to be class-based or skill-based. On the one hand, the setting design of the books supports some classes excellently, such as Arcanists (essentially wizards) or Adem mercenaries (essentially monks). On the other, whenever I try to come up with ideas for classes, it occurs to me that there really aren't very many unique class archetypes that feature in the books, which leads me to think that a skill-based character ability system might be more suitable.
Further, if I end up going the class-based route, I'm not sure whether some classes, like the Adem mercenaries, should be prestige or base options, or even whether to have prestige classes at all. The Adem definitely seem rare and powerful enough to fit as a prestige class, and there are other similar possibilities (like the Amyr), but if I use these as prestige classes, it leaves me with even fewer base classes to work with.
Can anyone offer any guidance regarding how I should handle these problems? Even if you can't, any ideas you think would be good to include in this project would be welcome additions. Thanks everybody :smallsmile:
Here are some of the ideas I have so far, along with some issues I'd like to resolve:
Character races. The Four Corners of Civilization are inhabited only by humans (and the Fae, but I'd prefer not to make them playable), which, depending on how it's handled, could annoy some players. I have two ideas for how to handle this. First, keep the humans' racial stats identical to those in D&D, which is simplest. Second, implement a system of "backgrounds" as an analogue to races, so that, for example, a native of the Commonwealth might get different innate bonuses and penalties than one of the Edema Ruh. Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this?
Classes. First of all, I'm still not sure whether I want this game to be class-based or skill-based. On the one hand, the setting design of the books supports some classes excellently, such as Arcanists (essentially wizards) or Adem mercenaries (essentially monks). On the other, whenever I try to come up with ideas for classes, it occurs to me that there really aren't very many unique class archetypes that feature in the books, which leads me to think that a skill-based character ability system might be more suitable.
Further, if I end up going the class-based route, I'm not sure whether some classes, like the Adem mercenaries, should be prestige or base options, or even whether to have prestige classes at all. The Adem definitely seem rare and powerful enough to fit as a prestige class, and there are other similar possibilities (like the Amyr), but if I use these as prestige classes, it leaves me with even fewer base classes to work with.
Can anyone offer any guidance regarding how I should handle these problems? Even if you can't, any ideas you think would be good to include in this project would be welcome additions. Thanks everybody :smallsmile: