TES DnD style

[Blackhawk748]

Ive been thinking about this for awhile now, and im curious how the playground would do this. Firstly i think that it would probably be an E8 game, and some spells would have to be banned (Fly being the first one i can think of) Also what classes would be available?

FYI lets assume Oblivion time period, as then we dont need to figure out Thu'um.

[kardar233]

Well, you're going to have to decide whether your characters are Shezzarine or not. If they are, then 20th level is a pretty good benchmark of the maximum witnessed power of any of the player characters, Whitestrake, Wulfharth or Talos (except when he was wielding his reality-rewriting giant war robot). If not, E8 seems like an accurate cap for magic; only Archmages and such seem to exceed 3rd-level spells.

I think that all the core book classes have their place in TES. I'd encourage multiclassing as most of the characters in the games blend at least two of combat/magic/thievery.

Whether Fly is banned or not depends on your time period and location. Levitation (which has the effect of Fly) was banned in the Levitation Act of Third Era 421 (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Levitation_Act) (six years before Morrowind and twelve before Oblivion) except in Morrowind which (being an Imperial ally) is allowed to retain its own laws. After the Levitation act it's still possible to levitate but it's a) illegal and b) difficult to find a teacher for. By the time of Skyrim Levitation lore is pretty much lost.

[TandemChelipeds]

Well, you're going to have to decide whether your characters are Shezzarine or not. If they are, then 20th level is a pretty good benchmark of the maximum witnessed power of any of the player characters, Whitestrake, Wulfharth or Talos (except when he was wielding his reality-rewriting giant war robot). If not, E8 seems like an accurate cap for magic; only Archmages and such seem to exceed 3rd-level spells.

I think that all the core book classes have their place in TES. I'd encourage multiclassing as most of the characters in the games blend at least two of combat/magic/thievery.

Whether Fly is banned or not depends on your time period and location. Levitation (which has the effect of Fly) was banned in the Levitation Act of Third Era 421 (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Levitation_Act) (six years before Morrowind and twelve before Oblivion) except in Morrowind which (being an Imperial ally) is allowed to retain its own laws. After the Levitation act it's still possible to levitate but it's a) illegal and b) difficult to find a teacher for. By the time of Skyrim Levitation lore is pretty much lost.

Gestalt sounds accurate for the kind of cross-classing common in TES. You'd have to write up custom races, but it shouldn't be hard at all. Of course, the mechanics would in some ways be radically different from the games, but you could run it and it would recognizably be the same setting. After all, there were drastic mechanical changes between the computer games, so clearly the mechanics aren't all that innate to the setting; besides, in Arena it was an adaptation of a homebrew DnD setting anyway. I'm thinking it might be necessary either to axe the alignments altogether or to reduce it to the law/chaos axis, on account of the moral ambiguity surrounding the aedra and daedra; we can say for certain that the aedra are lawful and the daedra(for the most part) are chaotic, but their followers, as a rule, are very unreliable narrators. We'd also have to write up some custom monsters and outsiders to replace the standard DnD outsiders, but that part honestly sounds like fun.

[Bloody Peasant!]

Most things would be pretty easy to figure out, with the exception of magic/enchanting/alchemy. You have a lot to work with here- I think Daggerfall had the best enchanting system, Morrowind had the best magic system, and Skyrim had the best alchemy system, personally, but it would be tough translating that into D&D terms. The question of whether or not you should include spellmaking and to what extent you're going to restrict it is fairly critical. Morrowind's spellmaking system may have been fun as hell but it was also very easy to break, so if you do spellmaking you might want to stick to Oblivion's restrictions.

[Gemini476]

The Unofficial The Elder Scrolls RPG looked pretty neat last time I looked at it, but whatever.

If you're determined to run it in 3.5 you'll probably want something like E8/6, infinite Gestalt (so once you reach the level limit you can just level up in an infinite number of gestalted classes), some kind of spell-point system (maybe just psionics), and probably a bunch of other things I'm forgetting.
Oh yeah, the Ansei are totally Swordsages and Thu'um are honestly not that much of an issue but you could probably kludge some homebrew together for it. Words of Power seems tempting.

Races are three types of Human, three types of Elf, Orc, Half-Elf, Lizard-man and dozens of types of cat-people. And that's just sticking to the more popular races on Tamriel, and ignoring stuff like the ape-men and slug-men and sea elves and... Whatever.

...Actually, cludging together some kind of Words of Power+spell points thing might be pretty neat and fitting for how spells work. And making it so that you need to either find scrolls/spellbooks or actively research.

I think the biggest issue, besides hammering a point-buy system into a level+class mold, might be that melee is pretty darn strong in TES and in some cases (Skyrim, for instance) probably just outright better than magic.
That is not really the case when talking about Dungeons & Dragons 3.5th Edition.

[Bloody Peasant!]

I think the biggest issue, besides hammering a point-buy system into a level+class mold, might be that melee is pretty darn strong in TES and in some cases (Skyrim, for instance) probably just outright better than magic.
That is not really the case when talking about Dungeons & Dragons 3.5th Edition.

IDK, in Morrowind magic is pretty much outright superior to melee- though usually only if enchanting and/or alchemy is exploited.

[Honest Tiefling]

I would argue, but I fear I would only embarrass myself. It might be better to ask not how does one do certain mechanics, but what about the Elder Scrolls make it feel like the Elder Scrolls? As in, the guilds, certain classes, races, etc. And then go from there because I am morally opposed to doing more work then necessary, so I would just convert what is needed.

You can probably skip the conversation pie, for instance.

[Bloody Peasant!]

I would argue, but I fear I would only embarrass myself. It might be better to ask not how does one do certain mechanics, but what about the Elder Scrolls make it feel like the Elder Scrolls? As in, the guilds, certain classes, races, etc. And then go from there because I am morally opposed to doing more work then necessary, so I would just convert what is needed.

You can probably skip the conversation pie, for instance.

Hee hee oh god I remember that. Oh Oblivion your attempts at realism were so completely adorable.

[Blackhawk748]

You can probably skip the conversation pie, for instance.

Oh god i hated that thing.

As for alchemy, ive got a lot of work to make that useful in DnD, maybe make Brew Potion takeable by non mages? Probably assemble a list of potions that can be made depending on your ranks in Alchemy. I actually like this idea.

[Gemini476]

Come to think of it, how magic in TES works is kind of... different when compared to standard D&D fare.

Everyone can cast spells, for instance. It's just that some are better at it than others, since they all require skill checks for their respective discipline and use up magicka. And stronger spells are more difficult to cast and require more magicka.

And magicka recharges... well, after a night's sleep I suppose if you don't want the fiddlyness of gradual recharge over time.

So take a Truenamer, a Psion, and a Wordcaster and shove 'em all together. That's your magic system. The only restrictions on what spells you can learn are their DCs and MP costs, and all class levels in "Wizard" or whatever do is give you bonuses to those skills and generally make it easier to cast stuff.

That actually sounds like it could be a pretty interesting homebrewed magic system. I'll have to remember this post.

[torrasque666]

Come to think of it, how magic in TES works is kind of... different when compared to standard D&D fare.

Everyone can cast spells, for instance. It's just that some are better at it than others, since they all require skill checks for their respective discipline and use up magicka. And stronger spells are more difficult to cast and require more magicka.

And magicka recharges... well, after a night's sleep I suppose if you don't want the fiddlyness of gradual recharge over time.

So take a Truenamer, a Psion, and a Wordcaster and shove 'em all together. That's your magic system. The only restrictions on what spells you can learn are their DCs and MP costs, and all class levels in "Wizard" or whatever do is give you bonuses to those skills and generally make it easier to cast stuff.

That actually sounds like it could be a pretty interesting homebrewed magic system. I'll have to remember this post.

Hmmm.... would you make new skills for each spell school or use existing ones? Because I don't think just using Spellcraft as a general one would work, at least not to represent the fact that in the TES games different schools of magic use different skills.

And to simulate the fact that frequently its some sort of spellsword that most players end up becoming, would something like the following sound good?

To learn any spell, must make a Spellcraft and (magic school) skill check, DC = 15+Spell Level spellcraft DC 15+2x spell level(magic)
To Cast a spell its (magic school) skill check DC 10+2xSpell level
no spells available above a certain spell level
always a standard action, can be hurried with -10 modifier for swift action
Cost of Spell Points = spell level
Use Spell Points/Power Points system variant instead of spells per day


Does that sound like a decent way to replicate TES-style magic? At least, Morrowind magic? When it had a failure chance?

[Gemini476]

Hmmm.... would you make new skills for each spell school or use existing ones? Because I don't think just using Spellcraft as a general one would work, at least not to represent the fact that in the TES games different schools of magic use different skills.

And to simulate the fact that frequently its some sort of spellsword that most players end up becoming, would something like the following sound good?

To learn any spell, must make a Spellcraft and (magic school) skill check, DC = 15+Spell Level spellcraft DC 15+2x spell level(magic)
To Cast a spell its (magic school) skill check DC 10+2xSpell level
no spells available above a certain spell level
always a standard action, can be hurried with -10 modifier for swift action
Cost of Spell Points = spell level
Use Spell Points/Power Points system variant instead of spells per day


Does that sound like a decent way to replicate TES-style magic? At least, Morrowind magic? When it had a failure chance?

I'd avoid using existing skills simply because skill optimization is a thing. DC=10+2*Spell level might work out, though.

Learning spells doesn't require a check, but casting them and such do - come to think of it, you could skip spell levels completely and just have the various effects add to the DC and cost instead. Like, Big Fire Damage might be +1DC and +2MP and Huge Sphere Area is +5DC and +10MP, so making Super Fireball would be +6DC +12MP or something like that.
You'll need a whole lot of homebrewing and math to make sure that it's alright, but yeah. Words of Power seems like a good place to start looking, although looking at how it worked in Morrowind (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Spell_Effects) could also be a good place for inspiration.

Restricting spell access to people of a certain level is as simple as making the spell require a whole bunch of MP that people generally aren't going to get without class levels. Just as an example, even if you had a Psion 1 who knew Alter Reality (and relaxed the ML limit) they couldn't manifest it because you only have like four PP.

Sorry if I'm rambling a bit, I'm kind of tired.

[ThisIsZen]

Running TES in D&D only works if you're staying in the mundane end of the pool as far as 'metaphysical lore' goes. Sure, a level 20 Wizard can alter reality pretty well... but once you get into CHIM, the Aedra and Daedra as more than just god/devil proxies, the shape of the Wheel, the nature of the Towers, etc. etc... it's not the same kind of reality-altering. A Level 20 Wizard can cast Wish, sure, at a cost. A CHIMster is a lucid dreamer and the dream is reality.

That said, I'd say 99% of people who wanna game in Tamriel don't wanna go in that direction with it, or are happy to leave the metaphysics to supplemental materials rather than making them central, to which I'd echo others and say E8 would probably work well.

But the moment someone reads the Sermons and decides to reach Heaven by violence, switch to Exalted, just trust me on that one.

[Gemini476]

Running TES in D&D only works if you're staying in the mundane end of the pool as far as 'metaphysical lore' goes. Sure, a level 20 Wizard can alter reality pretty well... but once you get into CHIM, the Aedra and Daedra as more than just god/devil proxies, the shape of the Wheel, the nature of the Towers, etc. etc... it's not the same kind of reality-altering. A Level 20 Wizard can cast Wish, sure, at a cost. A CHIMster is a lucid dreamer and the dream is reality.

That said, I'd say 99% of people who wanna game in Tamriel don't wanna go in that direction with it, or are happy to leave the metaphysics to supplemental materials rather than making them central, to which I'd echo others and say E8 would probably work well.

But the moment someone reads the Sermons and decides to reach Heaven by violence, switch to Exalted, just trust me on that one.

I dunno about Exalted. Personally I'd go more for something like Nobilis. The more free-form mechanics fit going around singing CHIM CHIM cher-ee better, although Exalted maybe works better for actual high-level combat like the Battle of Red Mountain or whatnot. I say maybe because Exalted's system is honestly not that great at what it's trying to do (even with the Scroll of Errata!), although hopefully 3E will change that.

[ThisIsZen]

Actually yeah, good point. Probably better to just switch to a diceless narrative game at that point.

Though I wonder what a game like that would even look like. The fluff gets strange enough when each story has only one author.

[Gemini476]

Actually yeah, good point. Probably better to just switch to a diceless narrative game at that point.

Though I wonder what a game like that would even look like. The fluff gets strange enough when each story has only one author.

Nobilis, like I said. The focus is less on you warping reality (since your opponent can just warp it right back at you) and more on manipulating your mortals to fight against their mortals and plotting to undermine your opponent's support and power. Although you can still use your powers to accomplish those goals in subtle ways.

So Tiber Septim vs. Vivec, basically.

[Gullintanni]

Ive been thinking about this for awhile now, and im curious how the playground would do this. Firstly i think that it would probably be an E8 game, and some spells would have to be banned (Fly being the first one i can think of) Also what classes would be available?

FYI lets assume Oblivion time period, as then we dont need to figure out Thu'um.

I feel like if you're interested in jumping to Skyrim, a refluffed Dragonfire Adept would give you that Thu'um look and feel. Especially with Metabreath feats being a thing.

[Blackhawk748]

You know i was actually thinking of a Skill based magic system awhile back. I happened to see one that was just executed horribly and i kinda wanted to try to fix it. Adding Spell Points to the mix might work.

Or i could just use Midnight's rules for Magic as to be good at it you need to invest feats and they also use a "Spell Point" system. Though Midnight is much lower magic so i may need to fiddle with how many points the Channeler would get. (thats their caster) The plus side of this is that anyone can cast a few spells, they just need to invest feats to do it. And feats arent exactly lacking in E8.

[Larkas]

Actually, EVERYTHING in Skyrim is skill-based, not just casting.

I guess that some spell point variant added on top of Words of Power (modified or not) would be enough to cover the flavor of the world.

If you want to go skill based, though... Well, be prepared to dig deeper. Do away with all of D&D's skills, and make a skill for EVERYTHING. From Alteration to Block to Smithing. They won't be used for skill checks but as a bonus for damage/effects/AC/etc.

If you want to go even deeper, do away with the concept of classes and traditional levels completely. Every X amounts of XP, you gain a skill rank to spend. When you accumulate 10 rank ups, you get a "level up", and you get to choose one (if Skyrim-like) or a few (if Morrowind-like) stats to add a bonus to. If those stats are simple (Morrowind) or complex (Skyrim), it's up to preference, really.

If you want to get to the bottom of things, each rank up costs more XP than the last, and you cap at 100 ranks/levels. Also, XP is skill-specific.

Difficult? Maybe. But certainly feasible. The advantage of trying to adapt CRPGs for table use is that the mechanics of most are more or less well documented and simple. If that's worth the effort, though, it's mostly up to you.

[kardar233]

I dunno about Exalted. Personally I'd go more for something like Nobilis. The more free-form mechanics fit going around singing CHIM CHIM cher-ee better, although Exalted maybe works better for actual high-level combat like the Battle of Red Mountain or whatnot. I say maybe because Exalted's system is honestly not that great at what it's trying to do (even with the Scroll of Errata!), although hopefully 3E will change that.

With the exception of the potential Dragon Break during that time I think the Battle of Red Mountain could be adequately modelled with 3.5. Nerevar and co. are great heroes but they don't do anything that would constitute Exalted-level badassery, and the stuff that makes the crazy stuff happen are artifacts like the Heart of Lorkhan and Numidium (which, strictly speaking, isn't an artifact, it's just powered by one).

~EDIT~ CHIM itself doesn't actually grant phenomenal cosmic power; it's the understanding and acceptance of your own nonexistence and your place in the narrative of the Godhead. All the feats of incredible power that CHIM-aware individuals accomplish were done by harnessing outside power, whether through the Shezzarines, the Heart, or a Tower. That's why I wouldn't play CHIM-level with Nobilis; those individuals aren't Nobles, they're restrained by the narrative they have to accomplish and by their own physical form; only with Amaranth can they surpass that.

~EDIT2~ I'm impressed that UESP has finally picked up on some of the deep lore. About time.