Skyfire
2015-09-03, 10:12 PM
Hello people, I've lurked a bit before but I'm a first time poster and a first time DM. I'm in a group that was brought together by mutual interest of a low fantasy game called Trials of Ascension that was on Kickstarter. Since the DM of the campaign we were in has left due to personal problems, I decided that I'd give it a go. Now I'm not all that experienced in DnD past the knowledge I've gleaned myself and I've heard the others talk about over the past half a year or so with some street-level Shadowrun on the side. This is why me trying to do this is a bit interesting, because the world of ToA is low magic and Pathfinder isn't entirely built for that. Another system would probably be better but I've come to love Pathfinder so I'm trying to make it work. I'm just going to type what I've been coming up with here and ask for any assistance that the generous souls of this forum have to offer. Tips, advice, houserules, just telling me that something is a good/bad idea and why, I'll take it all.
Feel like I should say a couple things about the setting first. As previously mentioned it's a low magic world, though with a few very powerful magicians. There isn't much in the way of miracles except for very special occasions, so most divine magic is out. Recently, following a series of earthquakes, a species of giant armored spiders called the Raknar have discovered the surface and they really like to eat the sentient beings they've found there as it increases their own power. They're about 7' tall and while they aren't especially bright and do not communicate, they are deadly, they can climb, they have DR/Fire, their claws have reach and their bite is poison, they're scary and some of them have begun building hives. I'm not going to be pitting the players against groups of them at first, that's something for them to work up to, but it's a big problem and a few cities/castles have already fallen. The campaign is going to end with a narrow victory, those hives and mega-hives being destroyed, but the players should ultimately play a big role in stopping that narrow victory from being a total defeat. This is assuming that all goes as planned, but... whatever. There's probably going to be a bunch of socio-political stuff going on with everyone suddenly having to get their armies mobilized to fight for their lives, diplomatic relations between nations and species, back-stabbing, the works, so they could end up fighting their fellow man as much as anything else, what the players do will decide how much of that they see and how much is behind the scenes.
So, about trying to balance Pathfinder to work without much magic. I've heard a lot about how without much magic and enchantments, attack will outpace defense, saving rolls will suck, CR and Gold Tables are right out and healing is problematic. In an attempt to mitigate this I'm using Esix rules, detailed here http://esix.pbworks.com/f/E6v041.pdf. Honestly, I was concerned that the players would over-level the story/world I had in mind before it ran its course so this is just as well. That should resolve most of the issues but not all of them. Only being at level 6 their BaB won't be too outrageous, so whatever defense they have should be fine. To make Healing useful without spells and potions I'm planning to use Healing Unchained, spoken of on the bottom of this thing http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/heal which should help assuming that one of them invests in it, if that fails there are hospitals. That seems like it should be enough to me but if I'm wrong please tell me. The only thing I didn't have much of an answer for was lower saving rolls without fugging Cloaks of Resistance for everyone, but I guess I'll just try not to throw a ridiculous number of debilitating effects at the players so long as they do the same.
As far as CR and Gold tables, I think I'll be able to judge what the players are capable of and keep things interesting without accidentally slaughtering them. Gold tables are a bit trickier, but... well, I'll just give them less money and try to give them things other than +5 enchantments to spend it on and if they still end up with too much then that's fine, it's just my first run at this.
Though there aren't much in the way of enchantments aside from some rare magical artifacts around, equipment can still have a small modifier. Masterwork weapons will have +1 to attack, and weapons made by a Legendary smith will have +2 to attack and +1 to damage. Similarly, Masterwork armor will give +1 to AC, and Legendary will have +2 to AC and +1 to DR. These will either be pretty expensive or rarely found.
I'm planning on using some variant of the "Armor as DR" rules. Armor will give half of their AC as DR, rounded down. I'm not sure if this will be in addition to the AC or substituting it, that is to say if something would normally give 5 AC I'm still deciding if that should mean 5 AC and 2 DR, or 3 AC and 2 DR. With no healing that will be usable during battle besides First Aid, I feel like giving the players some DR will help keep them in the fight and giving them some AC will stop them from being demolished if they run into some heavy hitters, but I'm a little unsure on how far to take it.
Something else I want to do is change Intimidation up a bit, since I feel like having more tools isn't a bad thing. I want to let it stack, each stack gives a -2 to d20 rolls, and when it reaches 5 stacks the target panics and runs away for a turn. Since magic is intended to be more difficult (detailed below) I don't think there's going to be too many other ways to make Fear happen. Someone would have to really go out of their way to do that even with feats that let you intimidate when you do non-lethal damage and suchlike so it doesn't seem OP to me, but thoughts? Maybe?
The main issue I'm having is balancing magic. I know some of the badass builds people can make by level 3 because I've seen some of the characters the other players have made. That was using Gestalt rules but it would only take until level 4 or 5 otherwise. In the world of ToA there is magic, but it's not something that anybody can pick up and start slinging around, and spells are supposed to fail and possibly do interesting things when they do. Magic as a whole is ridiculously useful in so many ways and being able to just do it whenever doesn't really fit the setting. I was considering bumping the level of every spell up by 1 (previously I was going to relevel every spell list and move the good ones of each level a bit higher, but that's probably not happening) so they'd all have fewer casts than normal, and also making concentration checks necessary to cast as if they were in combat but maybe with -5 to whatever the DC is if they have ample time to prepare properly. Something I really want to do either way is if a spell fails I'll be taking something from this magic effect generator http://mochakimono.chipx86.com/agen2.html and then rolling 1d3 to decide how many parts of the effect the player has to take (their choice of which), an idea one of the veteran players had which I took to immediately. To make up for this increase in difficulty I'll allow Gestalt rules for the players, so that people who want to play casters can either specialise or branch out and still be useful either way. I don't want to hamper magic too much, I still want it to be a useful tool and I don't want to ban all of the interesting classes Pathfinder has, but I don't want it to stomp over everything either since most other people they meet probably won't have it.
I want to clarify a couple things about the lack of divine magic: big miraculous events can and have happened in the world, there are priests and churches, but every devout follower of a religion doesn't have the ability to heal the sick and smash undead to pieces. These things are only granted to extraordinary individuals in extraordinary circumstances. Really powerful magicians exist in the world as well, but the works they do are used more as tools to move the story along, i.e. one of them historically sets off a Megaspell that levels a Raknar hive.
I might be rambling, so I'm going to cut myself short before I sit here all night doing this, been sitting here doing this for hours because I keep thinking of more stuff to add and as usual this got way longer than I intended. Does anyone have some genius ideas? Has anybody else worked something out that makes all of this simpler? All of the things I've read on the subject are from a few years ago and by them I've gotten closer to what I'm going for, but I would not mind any advice that anyone has for me in the slightest. Even if there's another system I don't know about that still has a detailed combat system, I've looked into a few like Fate and Savage World but while really cool they weren't really my jam.
If all else fails I'll just consider what I've come up with, keep or discard ideas as necessary and ask the players to go easy on the spells.
To sum up-
Dos: Low Fantasy setting, Esix, Healing Unchained, possibly gestalt, possibly restricted magic, some armor as DR
Don'ts: No divine magic, No powerful regular magic
Help?
Feel like I should say a couple things about the setting first. As previously mentioned it's a low magic world, though with a few very powerful magicians. There isn't much in the way of miracles except for very special occasions, so most divine magic is out. Recently, following a series of earthquakes, a species of giant armored spiders called the Raknar have discovered the surface and they really like to eat the sentient beings they've found there as it increases their own power. They're about 7' tall and while they aren't especially bright and do not communicate, they are deadly, they can climb, they have DR/Fire, their claws have reach and their bite is poison, they're scary and some of them have begun building hives. I'm not going to be pitting the players against groups of them at first, that's something for them to work up to, but it's a big problem and a few cities/castles have already fallen. The campaign is going to end with a narrow victory, those hives and mega-hives being destroyed, but the players should ultimately play a big role in stopping that narrow victory from being a total defeat. This is assuming that all goes as planned, but... whatever. There's probably going to be a bunch of socio-political stuff going on with everyone suddenly having to get their armies mobilized to fight for their lives, diplomatic relations between nations and species, back-stabbing, the works, so they could end up fighting their fellow man as much as anything else, what the players do will decide how much of that they see and how much is behind the scenes.
So, about trying to balance Pathfinder to work without much magic. I've heard a lot about how without much magic and enchantments, attack will outpace defense, saving rolls will suck, CR and Gold Tables are right out and healing is problematic. In an attempt to mitigate this I'm using Esix rules, detailed here http://esix.pbworks.com/f/E6v041.pdf. Honestly, I was concerned that the players would over-level the story/world I had in mind before it ran its course so this is just as well. That should resolve most of the issues but not all of them. Only being at level 6 their BaB won't be too outrageous, so whatever defense they have should be fine. To make Healing useful without spells and potions I'm planning to use Healing Unchained, spoken of on the bottom of this thing http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/heal which should help assuming that one of them invests in it, if that fails there are hospitals. That seems like it should be enough to me but if I'm wrong please tell me. The only thing I didn't have much of an answer for was lower saving rolls without fugging Cloaks of Resistance for everyone, but I guess I'll just try not to throw a ridiculous number of debilitating effects at the players so long as they do the same.
As far as CR and Gold tables, I think I'll be able to judge what the players are capable of and keep things interesting without accidentally slaughtering them. Gold tables are a bit trickier, but... well, I'll just give them less money and try to give them things other than +5 enchantments to spend it on and if they still end up with too much then that's fine, it's just my first run at this.
Though there aren't much in the way of enchantments aside from some rare magical artifacts around, equipment can still have a small modifier. Masterwork weapons will have +1 to attack, and weapons made by a Legendary smith will have +2 to attack and +1 to damage. Similarly, Masterwork armor will give +1 to AC, and Legendary will have +2 to AC and +1 to DR. These will either be pretty expensive or rarely found.
I'm planning on using some variant of the "Armor as DR" rules. Armor will give half of their AC as DR, rounded down. I'm not sure if this will be in addition to the AC or substituting it, that is to say if something would normally give 5 AC I'm still deciding if that should mean 5 AC and 2 DR, or 3 AC and 2 DR. With no healing that will be usable during battle besides First Aid, I feel like giving the players some DR will help keep them in the fight and giving them some AC will stop them from being demolished if they run into some heavy hitters, but I'm a little unsure on how far to take it.
Something else I want to do is change Intimidation up a bit, since I feel like having more tools isn't a bad thing. I want to let it stack, each stack gives a -2 to d20 rolls, and when it reaches 5 stacks the target panics and runs away for a turn. Since magic is intended to be more difficult (detailed below) I don't think there's going to be too many other ways to make Fear happen. Someone would have to really go out of their way to do that even with feats that let you intimidate when you do non-lethal damage and suchlike so it doesn't seem OP to me, but thoughts? Maybe?
The main issue I'm having is balancing magic. I know some of the badass builds people can make by level 3 because I've seen some of the characters the other players have made. That was using Gestalt rules but it would only take until level 4 or 5 otherwise. In the world of ToA there is magic, but it's not something that anybody can pick up and start slinging around, and spells are supposed to fail and possibly do interesting things when they do. Magic as a whole is ridiculously useful in so many ways and being able to just do it whenever doesn't really fit the setting. I was considering bumping the level of every spell up by 1 (previously I was going to relevel every spell list and move the good ones of each level a bit higher, but that's probably not happening) so they'd all have fewer casts than normal, and also making concentration checks necessary to cast as if they were in combat but maybe with -5 to whatever the DC is if they have ample time to prepare properly. Something I really want to do either way is if a spell fails I'll be taking something from this magic effect generator http://mochakimono.chipx86.com/agen2.html and then rolling 1d3 to decide how many parts of the effect the player has to take (their choice of which), an idea one of the veteran players had which I took to immediately. To make up for this increase in difficulty I'll allow Gestalt rules for the players, so that people who want to play casters can either specialise or branch out and still be useful either way. I don't want to hamper magic too much, I still want it to be a useful tool and I don't want to ban all of the interesting classes Pathfinder has, but I don't want it to stomp over everything either since most other people they meet probably won't have it.
I want to clarify a couple things about the lack of divine magic: big miraculous events can and have happened in the world, there are priests and churches, but every devout follower of a religion doesn't have the ability to heal the sick and smash undead to pieces. These things are only granted to extraordinary individuals in extraordinary circumstances. Really powerful magicians exist in the world as well, but the works they do are used more as tools to move the story along, i.e. one of them historically sets off a Megaspell that levels a Raknar hive.
I might be rambling, so I'm going to cut myself short before I sit here all night doing this, been sitting here doing this for hours because I keep thinking of more stuff to add and as usual this got way longer than I intended. Does anyone have some genius ideas? Has anybody else worked something out that makes all of this simpler? All of the things I've read on the subject are from a few years ago and by them I've gotten closer to what I'm going for, but I would not mind any advice that anyone has for me in the slightest. Even if there's another system I don't know about that still has a detailed combat system, I've looked into a few like Fate and Savage World but while really cool they weren't really my jam.
If all else fails I'll just consider what I've come up with, keep or discard ideas as necessary and ask the players to go easy on the spells.
To sum up-
Dos: Low Fantasy setting, Esix, Healing Unchained, possibly gestalt, possibly restricted magic, some armor as DR
Don'ts: No divine magic, No powerful regular magic
Help?