Soul Gems and Fancy Weapons (TES)

[Blackhawk748]

Ive been thinking of running an Elder Scrolls game for awhile and as such ive been kicking around various ideas on how to do so. So i started playing Skyrim again to give me some ideas on what i should do, which has me now thinking of Soul Gems.

Now as we all know Soul Gems are a huge thing in TES and as such i cant just have them not be there in game, as that would be weird, but the problem is how do i make them in PF?

Another thing, and unrelated to Soul Gems, is the different types of weapons in TES, Elven, Orcish, Daedric etc. Now as we all know, PF has very little distinction between weapons made of different materials, except for bypassing DR, but in TES these weapons are just better than ones of lesser quality. Now obviously they could just be Masterwork but that feels like a bit of a cop out, so any help on this will be appreciated.

Well thats all i have for right this second, as always thanks in advance for the help.

[Drelua]

Well, Pathfinder already sort of has soul gems, though of course they're not nearly as prominent as they are in TES. Spells like Soul Trap require a gem of sufficient value to hold that specific soul. You could make a much lower level soul trap that only works on non-humanoid targets, and assign a certain value to their souls based on CR. Say, 1-4 is petty, 5-8 is lesser, 9-12 is common, 13-16 is greater and 17+ is grand. Maybe lower the bar on that, I don't know.

For different types of weapons, you could give them an enhancement bonus based on their quality, since TES never really deals with anything like enhancement bonuses, just enchantments. Silver and daedric would also be able to damage incorporeal creatures, so maybe silver should be more expensive. Treat steel as normal, and give iron slightly less hardness and maybe -1 damage.

[Oracle_of_Void]

I have no ideas for the soul gem problem, but perhaps the best way to simulate the weapon materials is this: instead of getting enchantment bonuses to hit and damage through magical means, the items get the same bonus inherently through the material they are made of. For example, a normal iron sword would have +0 while a daedric sword would have +5. Or whatever number you think is best. You can no longer enchant a weapon to hit better/do more damage, just add elemental damage or drain effects or any other effects you want.

Any way, that's my idea for it.

[Blackhawk748]

Well, Pathfinder already sort of has soul gems, though of course they're not nearly as prominent as they are in TES. Spells like Soul Trap require a gem of sufficient value to hold that specific soul. You could make a much lower level soul trap that only works on non-humanoid targets, and assign a certain value to their souls based on CR. Say, 1-4 is petty, 5-8 is lesser, 9-12 is common, 13-16 is greater and 17+ is grand. Maybe lower the bar on that, I don't know.

For different types of weapons, you could give them an enhancement bonus based on their quality, since TES never really deals with anything like enhancement bonuses, just enchantments. Silver and daedric would also be able to damage incorporeal creatures, so maybe silver should be more expensive. Treat steel as normal, and give iron slightly less hardness and maybe -1 damage.

I believe basing it off of CR is probably a good plan, though that will probably require some finagling. As for each type getting an inherent enhancement bonus, that sounds like a good plan.

OK now that we've figured out how Soul Gems work, what are they gonna do? Recharge Wands?

[Drelua]

Well, the most lore-friendly answer would probably be to make soul gems an essential part of crafting, determining the strength of the soul needed based on the value of the item. I'm not sure how exactly to work out how strong of a soul you need for a certain item, but you could probably just use the same distribution to determine the strength of a soul based on CR, from 1-20, to determine the soul needed for an item based on value, from less than 1k up to 200k. I would of course avoid giving all weapons and staves a certain amount of charge, since it's a lot harder to track that sort of thing when you don't have a computer to do it for you.

While we're on the subject, you should probably have staves function as wands, since that's how they work in TES, and I don't think the games ever really have wands.

[Blackhawk748]

While we're on the subject, you should probably have staves function as wands, since that's how they work in TES, and I don't think the games ever really have wands.

This is precisely what i was thinking, though the Staffs in TES do use your spell skill level, so maybe a hybrid of the two. Wands that use your CL or their own whichever is higher.

As to the crafting thing, since PF is so crafting friendly maybe the Soul Gems just give you a scaling bonus on the check made to craft the item?

[Sayt]

Here's an idea: when soultrap+Kill an enemy, the soul gem can be used in crafting, and counts as gp value equal to say, some fraction of the creatures XP value, but only for crafting

[Blackhawk748]

Here's an idea: when soultrap+Kill an enemy, the soul gem can be used in crafting, and counts as gp value equal to say, some fraction of the creatures XP value, but only for crafting

This is something i never would have thought of. Im thinking maybe half the creatures XP value?

[Drelua]

A crafting discount is probably a good idea, though I'd say it's best to base it off of the category the soul falls under, not the XP value of the creature. If the party comes back from a dungeon crawl with a half dozen souls that all come from different creatures, it would be a lot of extra bookkeeping to track the XP values of all the different creatures when it could just be a petty, three lessers and a couple commons, for example. Plus, the games don't really distinguish between the specific creatures' souls once they're captured. Maybe base it off of the average experience value of a creature within the CR range of the soul level. If you go with the numbers I posted earlier, with a lesser soul coming from a CR 5-8 creature, their average XP value is 3000. The exact numbers are going to need some balancing, but you could base it off of that.

[Blackhawk748]

Well to make life easier i have decided that its gonna be E8, so we really only need to deal with CRs 1-12 ish, anything they fight above that will probably be to powerful to soul trap anyway. Im figuring petty will be CR 1 and down, Lesser will be 2-4, Common will be 5-7, Greater 8-10, and Grand is 11+. I think this mimics the games decently enough as filling a Grand gem with a Grand soul is really only done fairly late game.