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ChudoJogurt
2021-05-31, 06:58 AM
So, the party I currently have is trekking through a desert.
A desert made when a god has died and his blood poured through the land, permanently poisoning it.

And they are not just trekking merrily along, they are going along the river that used to carry said god's blood. It is now dried up, and they think it would be easier to go along that rather than risk getting lost in the desert and that the crusted hard surface of the river will be easier to traverse than the shifting black sands.

Well. I have given them enough ominous warnings, so now it is time to screw with them, and for that, I am making a small sub-system somewhat inspired by the Grimm Hollow Curse system.

This is supposed to be made for the party at a level of ~6, soon to be ~7, about Tier 3.
The idea is to make something interesting that the players can explore and incorporate in their character development if they so wish, but can screw them unrelentingly if they roll poorly and aren't careful.
If anyone can give it a look, say their opinions, note any potential pitfalls or abuses - I'll be eternally grateful.

Terms:
Dead River: A dried-up river of formerly divine blood. It's pretty long (roughly half the length of the Mississippi river, and with almost no branches), and pretty deep (the bottom of the river is about 15 feet lower than the rest of the desert).
Blood Ore: The bottom of the river is crusted with the dried-up blood, that's seeped into the soil, and makes for a scab-like hard substance that is easy to crumble.

Curse Mechanic:
Each curse has a Trigger - an event or action that lets the tainted power of the Dead River enter the character's body.
Once that Trigger event happens, the player rolls DC 18 Fort Save, and on failure, they are afflicted.
If the character has reached the trigger event, the player may decide to voluntarily fail the saving throw.
Once Afflicted, the character continues to roll every day (if they are in the Dead River for at least few hours in the day) or every week (if they are not). On a successful roll, they go down a Stage, if they fail, they go up a Stage. The curse cannot stay on the same level, though.
There are (usually) six stages to the curse. Once the last stage is reached, the character is permanently crippled in some way or turned into some sort of monster, and that is now incurable (unless really potent magics are involved, such as Wish or a Miracle), and in that case, all other Curses he may or may not have are automatically cured. If the character reaches Stage 0 in any Curse, they are cured of it and need not roll for it further.
The Curse effects are cumulative - the character at Stage 3 has all the effects of Stages 1,2 and 3.
At Stages 1 or 2 the Curse can be removed by using Cure Disease or Remove Curse.
Once the Curse reaches Stage 3, it requires Heal, and once it reaches stage 5 only Limited Wish or Miracle can help the afflicted.

Curses:
Curse of the Blood Flood.
Description: The character mixes his blood with the dead god's blood, which now enters his bloodstream, and starts to multiply. It makes him bigger, heavier, more robust, but ultimately it screws up his body to become nothing more than a vessel for the blood.
Trigger: Being reduced to 0hp while in the Dead River.
Stage 1: Gain 2 to Con. The character feels healthier and more energetic, and they immediately gain the appropriate HD hitpoints.
Stage 2: Gain an extra 10hp, but Weight increases by a factor of 1.5. The character becomes permanently flushed with blood, giving him red-tinged skin, and he further puffs out, becoming thicker and bigger.
Stage 3: Add +2 to Con - 2Dex, also suffer extra 1d6 damage from any slashing or piercing attack.
The character's skin is now stretched to the limit by the excess blood in his veins. He finds it harder to move.
Stage 4: Weight increases by a factor of 2. Get fu -2 Dex, - 2Int. Now it is harder to move, harder to think. Excess flesh is developed to contain all that blood, and the character is literally sloshing while he walks around. His skin is now almost translucent, making him crimson-red with all the blood inside of him.
Stage 5: Become Large. Get further - 4 Int, character constantly hungry. He now gets 2d6 extra damage from slashing and piercing attacks.
He keeps growing, and the blood vessels multiply in his skin.
Stage 6: Int drops to 3 if it weren't already.
He's essentially a Blood Hulk now.

Curse of the Exhausted Spellcaster
The character, in his desperation, reaches for the power of the River for his spells, but the bursts of power from the tainted blood irreparably burns him out eventually.
Trigger Event: Run out of Spell Slots in the Dead River.
Stage 1: Once a day When standing in the Dead River, or holding a large chunk of Blood Ore, the character can gain an extra slot, at the cost of another roll.
If the character is a prepared spellcaster, he recalls a spell along with the spell slot.
Stage 2: When preparing spells after resting in the Dead River, the character can prepare an additional spell (has an additional slot) at every level. All spells are at -2 caster levels when cast outside of Dead River.
Stage 3: The character needs to either use a piece of Blood Ore (at least 0.1 pounds) as a non-Eschewable Material Component or sacrifice 3*spell level HP to cast a spell, by letting out his blood, as part of the casting. Unless he is immune to pain, he will need to roll Concentration if he wants to cast on the same turn.
While in the Dead River the character has a pool of "Metamagic levels" equal to his HD. The pool is refreshed whenever he prepares spells or refreshes spell slots. Whenever he applies any Metamagic feat he knows to a spell, he may use his Metamagic levels to offset the increase in spell level.
Stage 4: The character is permanently exhausted of his magical power. He needs to spend at least his HD in spell levels to function when he wakes up/stops trancing, otherwise he is fatigued when wakes up (if he already was fatigued, he becomes exhausted, etc) unless he slept on a bed of Blood Ore or in the Dead River
Stage 5: The character cannot cast spells unless he is in the Dead River.

Festering Blood Rage:
The character's anger is supplanted by the rage of the dead god. Rage, quite literally greater than what a mortal body can handle.
Trigger event: Killing someone while in rage (or just really, really angry) while in the Dead River.
Stage 1: Gain Reckless Rage feat. If you did not have the ability to rage before, you can now rage 1/day
Stage 2: While in Dead River, gain the ability to Frenzy like Frenzied Berserker
Step 3: Whenever the character Rages, instead they Frenzy.
Step 4: When in Rage/Frenzy, the character completely loses their ability to distinguish friends from foes. She will first attack those nearest in front of her, and then just the nearest one. When Frenzying in the Dead River they gain Fast Healing 2.
Step 5: Whenever provoked by an insult, sight of the enemy, or any sort of slight, the character must roll DC 15 Will save to not enter Frenzy, and the DC grows by 1 every time she makes the roll in the same day. The DC is reset whenever she does Frenzy.
Step 6: Whenever provoked, the character enters a Frenzy and simply does not stop. Ever. She dies when her HP reaches the negative of her original maximum hit points.
At the DM's discretion, some combination of magic, roleplay, and Will Saves may bring the character down to Stage 5.

Curse of the Eternal Hunger:
Yeah, it's essentially vampirism. Vampires are cool!
Trigger: the character drinks improperly purified Blood Ore, or eats any food cooked in the Dead River.
Stage 1: The character feels the life that is contained in the death. He experiences hunger for raw meat, and any time he does eat raw, non-dried meat, he heals 1hp and gains 1d8+1 temporary hit points that last 12 hours.
Stage 2: Food that does not contain blood feels disgusting, and food that is not garnished with at least a seasoning of Blood Ore feels bland. The character cannot eat anything that does not contain meat, and if they eat of a still-living thing (which is an Evil act) gains a +2 profane bonus to Strength.
Stage 3: The character gains Feeding Addiction (Blood). They grow long, sharp canines, and gain Blood Drain (ex) as Vampire Spawns. They also gain Light Sensitivity (as Drow).
Stage 4: The character completely loses their ability to restore hit points naturally while not in Dead River or on a bed of Blood Ore. If they are in the Dead River, they gain Fast Healing 2. Whenever in direct sunlight they receive 1d6 damage per round. The damage is a direct result of their curse, and thus cannot be fixed with Resist Elements, element resistance, and the like.
Stage 5: The characters are now unable to consume normal food, or bear the sight of sunlight. Outside of the Dead River, they are destroyed in the sunlight as a vampire would be, falling apart into a crumbling statue of Blood Ore.
While in the Dead River, though, they enjoy some of the vampiric powers: Dominate, Gaseous Form, and Spider Climb, as Vampire Spawn would.
Stage 6: The character turns into a Vampire Spawn, except he is now fully mindless undead, fully subjected to the inscrutable demands of the Dead River. Instead of being bound to a coffin, they are instead bound to the Dead River.

Additional mechanic: Purifying Dead Blood.
If the tainted, half-dried-up dirty remains of god's blood have that much effect, surely the pure thing must have some really powerful effects?
Well, yeah. That's why we have alchemy.

Grabbing few pounds of Blood Ore, a proper alchemical lab, the character can learn ways to extract the pure essence of the dying god from the bedrock of the Dead River.
The result is always a thick blood-like liquid of various levels of purification, and it takes a Craft (alchemy) roll of at least DC 25 to successfully deduce the purification level of the batch.
DC given is for researching the purification process. Once researched, the second batch of the same purification level can be made at - 5DC
Once three batches are successfully made further batches can be made at - 10 DC.
The market value of a dose of purified blood (if there would be a market for such a thing, which there is not, and for the purposes of crafting) is its original DC in gp.

DC 24 or less:
Tainted batch. Drinking it immediately provokes a check for Curse of the Eternal Hunger and all the Curses the character already has.

DC 25: Clean batch: for the next 24 hours the character is considered to be standing in the Dead River, for all Curse-related purposes, including his Curse Progression.

DC 35: Purified batch.
The character receives all the benefits of being in the Dead River, but his Curse progression is unaffected - he still rolls once a week, even if he is currently standing in the Dead River. If the character is afflicted with the Curse of Eternal Hunger, it also satisfies his Feeding Dependency.

DC 45: The perfect batch.
The character can select any Curse he likes, at any level not lower the one he currently has -1 (or in a Curse, he is not afflicted with), and he immediately gets that level of Curse and stays at it for as long as he consumes one dose of Perfect blood a week without any need for further rolls.
If the character is afflicted with the Curse of Eternal Hunger, it also satisfies his Feeding Dependency.

DC 50: Divine Blood.
This can have almost any effect the DM and player deem fit, as long as it relates to blood and bloodiness.
Things like turning into an actually perfect vampire (gaining Vampire Savage class progression or Template) regenerating limbs (as per regeneration), enhancing physical attributes (as if by Wish), gaining Fast Healing (1 per dose, up to 3 maximum), qualifying for Ur-Priest (which I would usually not allow) etc.

So, what do you guys and gals think? Is it OP? Useless? Can it be abused? Is there something inconsistent, unclear, or stupid about this idea or the implementation I tried?

Silva Stormrage
2021-06-05, 06:06 PM
Alright so this seems like an interesting concept, I do enjoy more interesting curse mechanics than are currently in the game. A couple questions.

1) Do the players know which curse they get afflicted with and what the trigger is? Or is it just random?

2) How much information can the players get about the curses or are they left wondering the effects. Would a knowledge religion check give them some information about how the curse progresses?

3) Does triggering the trigger event multiple times cause the character to have to save or go down a stage?



As for balance, Curse of the Exhausted Spellcaster combos EXTREMELY well with things like Acorn of Far travel or just teleporting back to the River every day for the free metamagic. If the character has persist they can go back to the river, persist a whole bunch of things and then go back. The teleporting aspect probably won't be relevant to your party now due to their level but if they get higher and get access to planar binding for one of the many 6 HD outsiders that can teleport other creatures at will (Barlugula, Justice Archon, Etc) this could be incredibly powerful.

Also how easy is Blood Ore to get? It's hard to tell if that material component is super easy to get or incredibly painful.



Festering Blood Rage is the one I can see being the most problematic. Being D&D that trigger event is going to occur super frequently if a barbarian is in the party and they fight enemies. A barbarian can easily kill 5 enemies in a combat encounter meaning they are almost certainly going to fail that saving throw eventually. Plus Frenzy itself triggers upon taking damage, meaning there is a very decently likely hood that during a combat a barbarian party member kills someone, fails a saving throw and then later once they reach stage 2 take damage and kill one of the party members since Frenzy requires them to keep attacking until the frenzy wears off.

I just generally dislike the frenzy mechanic and its the only curse here that has a "Probably will kill a party member" effect on stage 2. I would just have stage 2 boost the effects of rage, so increase the str/con bonus but also increase the AC penalty. That kind of effect rather than rely on Frenzy which could very easily and suddenly cause a TPK.


Overall cool design though.

Phhase
2021-06-18, 01:53 AM
Oh wow. This is REALLY cool. I'm definitely saving and using this, in at least some form in the future.

I think it'd be cool if more refined blood types, or chunks of raw ore, could be used as modifying material components of other spells, or used to enable new blood-magic spells, or a mix-in for potions for interesting effects, as an ingredient for new potions, or hell, even alloying it with materials or weaving it with materials, or using it alone as a weapon/armor material, or what have you. There are so many things you can do! Ore rich with divine essence, however corrupt, has endless uses, especially if it can be purified. You could make a whole THING out of this. Dangerous? Of course. But dangerous in the way uranium is dangerous. Very usefully (Just don't rub it on your face)(or do).

ChudoJogurt
2021-06-18, 05:36 PM
Alright so this seems like an interesting concept, I do enjoy more interesting curse mechanics than are currently in the game. A couple questions.

1) Do the players know which curse they get afflicted with and what the trigger is? Or is it just random?

2) How much information can the players get about the curses or are they left wondering the effects. Would a knowledge religion check give them some information about how the curse progresses?


Definitely not automatically. Potentially maybe with some Knowledge (arcane) and Healing rolls they might establish the general course of the disease and the connection to the Dead River.



3) Does triggering the trigger event multiple times cause the character to have to save or go down a stage?

No, originally if you already have that kind of curse, you're not triggered again. The Blood of the Dead God is already in you, it's not getting that much worse just by adding couple drops more.



As for balance, Curse of the Exhausted Spellcaster combos EXTREMELY well with things like Acorn of Far travel or just teleporting back to the River every day for the free metamagic. If the character has persist they can go back to the river, persist a whole bunch of things and then go back. The teleporting aspect probably won't be relevant to your party now due to their level but if they get higher and get access to planar binding for one of the many 6 HD outsiders that can teleport other creatures at will (Barlugula, Justice Archon, Etc) this could be incredibly powerful.

Hm. I suppose so.
I think I should put a restriction on it - something like HD/2 metamagic levels instead of HD, and no more than HD/5 to any one spell.
Alternatively, one could say that it only affects the spells while the spellcaster in question is in the Dead River.
Or maybe you only get those spells if you slept and prepared spells in the Dead River, as well as stand there.
There are options to fix this, but I don't foresee it being a huge problem for my game.



Also how easy is Blood Ore to get? It's hard to tell if that material component is super easy to get or incredibly painful.

Well, it's a bit ambivalent. By itself, it's just crusted bedrock of the river, so there's miles and miles and miles of the stuff literally lying around.
On the other hand, it's in the middle of the desert, which is kinda not super hospitable to humanoid life, you need to mine it, and in the setting, it's right on the front lines of an advancing army of evil undead, so that presents certain challenges.
So the problem isn't so much the process, as the fact that if you want to get decent amounts of it reliably you kinda need to set up a mobile mining base in the middle of the desert and then defend it, which I think is a good hook for players.
And of course if you manage to mine it all up, then that's it. It's very much non-renewable, unless you somehow kill another god and let him bleed over a millenium.



Festering Blood Rage is the one I can see being the most problematic. Being D&D that trigger event is going to occur super frequently if a barbarian is in the party and they fight enemies. A barbarian can easily kill 5 enemies in a combat encounter meaning they are almost certainly going to fail that saving throw eventually. Plus Frenzy itself triggers upon taking damage, meaning there is a very decently likely hood that during a combat a barbarian party member kills someone, fails a saving throw and then later once they reach stage 2 take damage and kill one of the party members since Frenzy requires them to keep attacking until the frenzy wears off.

I just generally dislike the frenzy mechanic and its the only curse here that has a "Probably will kill a party member" effect on stage 2. I would just have stage 2 boost the effects of rage, so increase the str/con bonus but also increase the AC penalty. That kind of effect rather than rely on Frenzy which could very easily and suddenly cause a TPK.
Overall cool design though.

Hm. Again, true.
I think I would limit the trigger to meaningful encounters and enemies. Killing Goblin #5 should not trigger this check.
Regarding the frenzy.... I think it's fine. At stage 2 the character has a choice of entering Frenzy or Rage, and therefore is responsible for the consequences themselves. By the time they enter Stage 3, the party should be able to anticipate that and start making the accomodations - preparing nonlethal weapons or calming spells.

ChudoJogurt
2021-06-18, 05:44 PM
Oh wow. This is REALLY cool. I'm definitely saving and using this, in at least some form in the future.

I think it'd be cool if more refined blood types, or chunks of raw ore, could be used as modifying material components of other spells, or used to enable new blood-magic spells, or a mix-in for potions for interesting effects, as an ingredient for new potions, or hell, even alloying it with materials or weaving it with materials, or using it alone as a weapon/armor material, or what have you. There are so many things you can do! Ore rich with divine essence, however corrupt, has endless uses, especially if it can be purified. You could make a whole THING out of this. Dangerous? Of course. But dangerous in the way uranium is dangerous. Very usefully (Just don't rub it on your face)(or do).

For sure. There can be a lot of ideas around it, but even better -- you can let make it more player-driven.
MAybe they want to lean more into "addictive" part of it and make blood meth? Maybe the party artificer can purify iron out of dead god's blood and forge it into a blade - cursed yet powerful beyond belief, infused with the very essence of Death and War? Maybe the power of a god has quickening effects, and can be used to animate creatures, with the power and rage of a slain and vengeful divinity?
Maybe imbibing it allows one to assume the vestige of the dead god?
I'd really let players explore and define what this thing can do - but it would always be dangerous, dark and have the potential to twist the character.