Overview: Chaos and Caverns (WiP)

[Lord Raziere]

Hello everyone. I have foolishly decided to embark on a project to make my own version of DnD. I have decided to call it Chaos and Caverns, because why not.

What are the Goals of Chaos and Caverns?

1. To kill sacred cows.
I'm not going to lie: This is going to be a sacred cow slaughterhouse. Alignment, racism, the way many classes work, are going to be axed and many other things are going to be changed. Don't be surprised if I cut out something you like.

2. To balance the classes
You know why. I'm going to try and do it, no matter how futile. What I'm aiming for is to make the classes evocative of certain play styles and archetypes without limiting them too much.

3. To make characters legendary
Another goal of Chaos and Caverns is sort of make each character that plays it legendary to a degree- I'm not interested in making Joe B. Fighter The Normal Guy. If you play a fighter, your playing a monster on the battlefield who wades through the melee and inspires fear in his enemies at low levels, and an unreal freak of nature who can leap mountains and throw people to other planes at high levels.

Goals and Changes I'm planning for in specific:

-No Alignment
-Half Orcs replaced with Orcs
-To change the wizard to be more like a Gandalf-esque character
-change the sorcerer to be evocative of Harry Dresden
-make warforged, goblins, catfolk, drow, genasi, dragonborn, tiefling all core races
-get rid of half-elves
-to make races more like 4e races- no penalty stats so that you can take any class
-To generalize the paladin into a Sorcerous Knight with options to either become a Celestial Knight (divine magic) or an Elemental Knight (arcane magic) and to put the code mechanic into a separate feat where you gain benefits for following the code in situations where it hinders you.
- To generalize the bard into a more general dabbler class, a sort of Folk Hero class that would be really flexible about what it dabbles in. you can still become a bard with it, but you can be other stuff as well.
-to make staffs and wands that shoot elements as normal weapons for spellcasting classes as a sword or axe would be for a mundane class.
-to replace monk with a Martial Artist class, evocative of many manga/anime tropes, and/or wuxia ones.
-to make artificer a core class.
-Wish, limited wish is cut in general, not just from PC's but from everything.
-a general revision of spells
-Introduce "Signature" things that are unique to the character/class and such that cannot be taken away by the DM or whatever.

I'll edit when I can think of more for this

Changes That Are Distant And Probably Won't Happen, But What I Wish For Anyways:
rules for all ages of technology
rules for magitech
making a version of kender people will actually like
working on psionics

In general:
I plan on revising a lot as I learn more about the mechanics and what effects they have on things, but the goals will be the same.

[AuraTwilight]

-Wish, limited wish is cut in general, not just from PC's but from everything.

Aaand that's where I stopped reading. Muh iconic fantasy tropes.

[unbeliever536]

You can drop Wish, etc as specifically castable spells but include them in some kind of "campaign ideas" section in a DMG. Wishes and the like are generally either quest goals or plot kickoffs, not really something the main/player character has free(ish) access to. I'd support a "Ring of Three Wishes" as an artifact, and some encouragement for using artifacts in campaigns.

[Snowyowl]

1. To kill sacred cows.
I'm not going to lie: This is going to be a sacred cow slaughterhouse. Alignment, racism, the way many classes work, are going to be axed and many other things are going to be changed. Don't be surprised if I cut out something you like.
Cool! Though I note you're still keeping classes as a concept - other options do exist. And you haven't mentioned any alteration to basic d20 mechanics, so I assume it's still 1d20 + skill >= DC. More sacred cows are surviving than I expected.


3. To make characters legendary
Another goal of Chaos and Caverns is sort of make each character that plays it legendary to a degree- I'm not interested in making Joe B. Fighter The Normal Guy. If you play a fighter, your playing a monster on the battlefield who wades through the melee and inspires fear in his enemies at low levels, and an unreal freak of nature who can leap mountains and throw people to other planes at high levels.
Bit of a shame to axe low-level games, and lose the slow transformation of an ordinary farmhand into the greatest warrior who ever lived. Still, I can live with that. I only think it's a bit strange to have this as a major design goal - conflating "feels epic" with "high power level" is the logic that brought us two-minute attack animations in Final Fantasy 7. Headbutting mountains in half feels great the first time, but gets repetitive from the second one onward. I suspect you removed Wish and Limited Wish because you know this already.


-Introduce "Signature" things that are unique to the character/class and such that cannot be taken away by the DM or whatever.
Not sure what you mean by this - rule zero will let the DM take them away anyway if he wants. Is this in the vein of the Favoured Weapon feat? A bonus/special effect that only works for one character with one item?

[Lord Raziere]

@ unbeliever: pretty much yeah. plot power only.

@ Snowyowl:
Nope. I cut wish and limited wish because they are too flexible and overpowered. Cutting a mountain in half is fine. being able to do anything to the mountain is bad. One is a single, epic action, the other is omnipotence.

and I know many, many people who would disagree with you on how boring such things get. don't assume that your preference is universal. I find it far more boring the various low fantasy rpg's with very little magic power. so please, don't derail this into some thread over preferences about RPG's. :smallannoyed: I get enough of that.....everyday. I've had enough of that.

[Mighty_Chicken]

- To generalize the bard into a more general dabbler class, a sort of Folk Hero class that would be really flexible about what it dabbles in. you can still become a bard with it, but you can be other stuff as well.

Oh yes. That's something I've been looking around for. Alabenson's Feyblessed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=329798) got a very interesting result in this sense.

[Snowyowl]

and I know many, many people who would disagree with you on how boring such things get. don't assume that your preference is universal.

Fair enough.

What exactly will a Signature thing be?

[Eldan]

Why no penalty stats? That one was always a weird thing to me. The only statistical effect this has is raising the means over all stats between characters. It just makes bonuses mean less and formerly average stats worse.

[unbeliever536]

It means the baseline is higher. If you don't have penalty scores, you have a broader range of "usable" stats. You don't need to get an 18 to play a semi-viable Half-Orc Wizard. Now, even without the penalty, that half orc will never be as good as a grey elf in the same class, and he might excel more in a different class. But he'll be able to function as a Wizard without extraordinary effort.

The problem with penalty stats isn't anything to do with the relative value of the stats; it's about absolute value.

[Lord Raziere]

Fair enough.

What exactly will a Signature thing be?

well, basically it'd something different for each class. like for a wizard, it'd some spell he could cast more often than any other, for a fighter it'd a move he would always be able to do, or legendary weapons that instead of getting replaced by newer items would grow with the characters power.....things like that. y'know, things unique to that character that no one, not even others of the same class, would have.

but then again, that might be an unworkable idea....oh well...

@ unbeliever: basically yes. I'm not a fan of cutting off races from taking certain classes for no reason.

[Eldan]

I don't see it. How are you cut off from anything? With this system, 20 just becomes the new 18. Currently, you have people saying that you can't play a good wizard if you don't have an 18 intelligence. With this adjustment, you'll just have people saying that you shouldn't if you have less than 20. It's just pure inflation and I don't see the point of races without weaknesses.

[unbeliever536]

At higher levels of optimization, sure. But at lower levels, you still can't play [caster x] without at least a 16 in your main stat. If you have a racial penalty, that's unreachable to the point of ridiculousness due to the way stat buying works. Rolling makes it even worse.

[Lord Raziere]

I don't see it. How are you cut off from anything? With this system, 20 just becomes the new 18. Currently, you have people saying that you can't play a good wizard if you don't have an 18 intelligence. With this adjustment, you'll just have people saying that you shouldn't if you have less than 20. It's just pure inflation and I don't see the point of races without weaknesses.

you think I pay attention to high optimization. or like it at all. thats adorable. Not against optimization though. Its impossible to remove it after all. so what I'm going to do instead, is to define what is going to be optimal beforehand, then design the game so that if you want to be optimal, you gotta go with what I want to be optimal.

new rule: max starting stat in anything at character creation is 18.

I don't see the point of races WITH weaknesses so....guess we just have different viewpoints on things.

and why don't they ALREADY say that you can't play a good wizard unless you have 20 intelligence? you can still achieve 20 in the current system, its just very improbable or costly to do so, but it is the most optimal stat, so I don't see what is changed, aside from an annoying limitation to cool character concepts

[Fortuna]

I think what Eldan's getting at is that, mathematically speaking, there is no difference between a weakness and a lack of a strength.

Let's take a really simple example. Say orcs are good at being strong and tough, but bad at being charismatic, while elves are good at being graceful and clever, but bad at being tough, and humans are just okay at everything.

There's no real difference between saying orcs have +2 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Charisma and saying that orcs have +4 Strength, +4 Constitution, +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, and +2 Wisdom, assuming you write the other races in the same way.

Now, that said, making it so no one is specifically bad at anything does narrow the gap between least-optimal and most-optimal. If everyone has +2/+2/+0/+0/+0/+0 instead of +2/+2/+0/+0/+0/-2, then playing an orc sorcerer means you're only two points behind a, I don't know, a nymph sorcerer instead of four. I can see where you'd want to make that design decision. But you should be clear that the difference between a weakness and a lack of strength is defined only by context, and that if nymphs have +4 Charisma and orcs have +0 there's no functional difference compared to nymphs having +2 and orcs -2, with respect to Charisma alone.

[Eldan]

At higher levels of optimization, sure. But at lower levels, you still can't play [caster x] without at least a 16 in your main stat. If you have a racial penalty, that's unreachable to the point of ridiculousness due to the way stat buying works. Rolling makes it even worse.

That's just not true. A 15 in your main casting stat is still entirely sufficient, you get after all five points to put into it. Which means by level 16, you have a 19, allowing you to cast level 9 spells by level 17. That's before getting any items.

If everyone just gets bonuses, bonuses become meaningless. Why not just give everyone +10 to all stats, so no one ever has to look at a low number again?

Let's make an example. Two homebrew systems.

In the first system, you roll 3d6 for stats, stats are between 3 and 18, as they are now in D&D, with 10 being average.

In the second one, you roll 3d6+10 for attributes. Stats are between 13 and 28, with 20 being average.

A 10 in the first system means exactly the same as a 20 in the second system.

That is basically what you are doing here. What's the point of everyone getting some random +2? It's meaningless, statistically and just means the average is a bit higher.

[Lord Raziere]

+2 to certain stats. it may not be different to you, but its different to me. no -2 means I don't have to worry about a bad stat as much, don't have to feel constrained and weak because of it. it doesn't seem raised to me, when your not getting the same stats raised, your getting different ones raised, which is different enough to me.