C.u.t.e. I I I

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

In Which
Children Undergo True Epihanies

When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
Thought like a child, felt like a child,
Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11

Why?
A Child

This is the new hub thread for Project C.U.T.E., which is, in turn, dedicated to creating a role-playing game, setting, mechanics, and all, which simulates the experiences of 'pretend'. Sticks are swords, your teddy bear really is alive and really does love you, and the shadows in your closet really do conceal something just awful.

Introduction

Why start it up again?
Project C.U.T.E. began on the twenty-first of june, 2006, and ran for twenty-eight pages.
I begin with these bare facts because I have no wish to instill a sense of granduer or accomplishment; humility is more to the point, and more accurate besides. Nonetheless; the project itself fired a few minds, inspired a few spirits, and brought some degree of happiness or amusement to, I would hope, many.

If the question is, 'why begin again', then the answer is not that I want to revisit an old thread. The answer is that I want to return to an old- a very old- idea.

Nearly every role-playing game has, at one point or another, made the comparison between children's pretending and its own, more codified means of creating imaginary characters. The truth or fiction of this analogy is outside my province, but I will say that in many respects the games we create and play don't, and can't, recapture the soaring freedom of the ever-changing, potent flights of fancy we possessed in youth.
But I believed then and I believe now that we should try. That's why Project CUTE is back online.

Why a game about kids?
This is a question with more answers, and better ones.
First, we were all kids once, and the confusion, the promise, and the hope of childhood is something that has value even when its truth has passed.
Second, the experience of childhood is such that perhaps no other time in a person's life is the act of playing a role such a wondrous thing.

Childhood has an intellectual and emotional honesty that edges into brutality; adults will say 'kids can be so cruel' and leave it at that, but this does childhood a disservice. Nothing a child even percieves is trivial; each aspect of their carefully tailored world is thick with meaning and emotion. The seachanges of friendship into enmity, joy into sorrow or anger, are so rapid in childhood as to approach madness- but the resilient soul of a child contains these changes and grows apace. The moral universe of a child is at once pointed, and simple; it brooks little obfuscation but has few shades.
Childhood is, in a word, an intense time to be alive, and tapping into this intensity is the goal of this project.

What about the old material?
Depending on the direction of the project (and see below for some details on that), the old material may be imported wholesale, or may be converted in some way; there's really no telling. Rest assured, however, that the work of the many, many people who left us a class, a magic item, or a feat, or a combat action to hide under the sheets, won't be forgotten. I couldn't- could you?

What's this about direction?
After giving the matter a considerable amount of thought, I've decided to remove C.U.T.E. from the 3.5 edition D&D ruleset, as it stands today. I will be listening to appeals of this decision, but the primary thrust of my work on the project will be in keeping with it.

The new system- which I am almost sure would be your next question- will be a, please note, modified version of the Fourth edition rules. I am aware that there is a certain amount of vitriol still attracted by 4e, but as this project is creating all new, all-original content, here is our chance to fix those problems we percieve with the system.
I stand by my choice of 4e for reasons of mathematical and mechanical soundness; it's not a perfect system, but it is a solid foundation. I loved 3.5 and I continue to do so, but moving forward and imagining new things in new ways is what CUTE should be about.



Guideposts of Design

D&D, and many other systems, have elected of late to include, along with notes as to their specific rationales for choices made during development, more general 'guideposts': principles that guide all decisions made during the design process, and that shape the final product, sometimes in unexpected ways. Since I like the conciet, I've elected to provide such 'Guideposts' for C.U.T.E., as follows.

Imagination:
CUTE content is creative, and rewards creativity. No concept should be too outre, no combination too bizzare, no action too illogical, to break the will of the system or its designers. Children are bizzare and illogical too, but their world is vibrant and alive because of imagination. CUTE is a game about imagination, and imaginative and varied solutions are what it should reward.

Honesty:
As I've mentioned, childhood is a time when 'brutally honest' just doesn't cut it when it comes to a view of the universe. While children decieve (readily and often without guilt), their intellectual rigor and willingness to face unblinking eye of infinite darkness surpasses the greatest mature hero at times. The project will not shy away from darkness for the sake of adorability, will not shrink from horror for the sake of tone; but, on the same coin, we will not deny joy and light where it can be found, we will not denigrate goodness and virtue for the sake of literary conflict. CUTE's view of its universe is, like a child's, not a literary or an affected view, but an honest, penetrating one.

Choice:
When a child, we are confronted with choices; the game we produce should reflect, reward, and require choice on the part of the player. The system should provide a context for decisions about who we are, and who we wish to be, as well as providing interesting choices in-character, and allowing players to make their own way in their own world.



Links to Previous Threads
Here's our archives; be forewarned, ladies and gentlemen, that many of the links therein are no longer functional. The process of retrieving old content will be a lengthy one, but is already in progress.


Project C.U.T.E. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10481&page=28): The Original.
C.U.T.E. II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10209): The Sequel.


Anyone who is able to provide a working link to the CUTE compendium and the class evaluation threads would be a huge help, and thanks in advance.



New Content
This is where you come in, everybody. I hope to fill this with links soon!


All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.
T.E. Lawrence

So long, dad! I'm off to check my tiger trap!
-Calvin

[AstralFire]

Er... I don't actually get what this -is-...?

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Er... I don't actually get what this -is-...?

Clarified for you. ^^;

[Vaynor]

Yay! I need to make some more Pillow Warrior stuff now.

Edit: Someone needs to undergo the task of recompiling all of the old material into a new list. Hmm.

Edit: Oh, 4e. Nevermind. :smallfrown:

[AstralFire]

Clarified for you. ^^;

Ah! Cool, sounds like it could be fun. It's certainly creative.

Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to familiarize myself significantly with 4E, so I don't think I can participate much.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Ah! Cool, sounds like it could be fun. It's certainly creative.

Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to familiarize myself significantly with 4E, so I don't think I can participate much.

That's actually my personal project; condensing the mechanics I'm stealing from that system into an easy-to-skim form so people won't need to know the new edition to participate in CUTE.

But keep in mind many of the old contributors didn't do stats of any kind at all- just posted ideas. You're welcome and encouraged to do the same.

[dyslexicfaser]

Pretty interesting idea.

It's too bad 'Storybook Hero' is a dead link, I liked he sound of it.

Your quote makes me want to make a 'Calvin' class. Someone who can change the rules just by wanting it hard enough ("Well, I say we're playing pirates now."). Or, alternatively, a 'Calvinball' sort of thing ("I declare this an anti-magic area!" "Ah, but it's Tuesday, and on Tuesdays this whole field is an Opposite Zone!")

I just don't know how to model it in 4E. Yet.

[Yuki Akuma]

Why'd you have to post this while I was asleep? *siiigh*

Glad it's back. :smallbiggrin:

So, are we still going with the "Land of Imagination" setting idea?

So, just a list of the classes we came up with...

The Whiner - He's more or less a bard without the spells, right? - Leader?
The Dreamer - She had healing abilities, as well as an "imaginary friend". I can't remember much about her. And I made her... - Probably Leader
The Darling - A sort of social interactions centric rogue. She had a "spite" attack which let her do more damage to people giving into her wiles. - Striker
The Storybook Hero - I think was a warrior-type with imagination-based powers? - Defender
The Animal Lover - A sort of ranger/druid thing with a love of animals. - Striker?
Panlid Champion - I... don't remember. I know there was something about using improvised items, but then, I thought all classes could do that? - Defender?
Mama's Boy - A Cloistered Cleric, more or less. - Leader
Scaredycat - A rougish sort who specialises in detecting (and avoiding) danger. - ... I have no clue.
Quiet Reader - One half of the "stories are magical" duo. A very bookish sort who turned out to be very Warlock-y. - Striker or Controller
Storyteller - The other "stories are magical" duo. A sort of wizard/bard mix. - Controller

Whew! Anything I'm missing?

[Elrosth]

Hellz, yes! Its back!

Any thoughts on where we should start? I think we should start either talking about the system's new mechanics and how a class might be built, or just pick a class and start there, fleshing out the system with that as a test.

[Yuki Akuma]

As this is 4e now...

What are we going to do with power sources? Make them all Imagination? Make subsets of imagination, like Stories, Games, Lessons, and so on?

[Mephibosheth]

Open (if you dare) the spoiler for links to previously unlinked C.U.T.E. threads! Muahahahaha!


Compendiums
Completed Content - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10307
C.U.T.E. Compendium - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10716
Note: Many many obsolete links are contained herein


Evaluation
Evaluation Methodology - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10415
The Prodigy - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28001
The Dreamer - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10421
The Animal Lover - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10229
The Panlid Champion - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10259
The Darling - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10317
The Storybook Hero - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10345
As to the new system, I haven't had a chance to play or homebrew in 4e yet, but I'll crack open the books again and try to familiarize myself enough to contribute. I've been around C.U.T.E. from the beginning and feel like I have a pretty good handle on the way the project's developed.

In terms of how to progress, it might be helpful to pin down the details of how the imaginal plane and the material plane work and interact before we launch into class design. I remember this became a big sticking point in the previous attempts, merely because we didn't know when class powers might work and when they shouldn't. If we can pin down these broader, setting-level issues, the classes might be easier to outline. Just a suggestion.

Yay! C.U.T.E.'s back! Glad I kept this stick sword and pot helmet handy, just in case! *brandishes fake weapons, laughs gleefully, inexplicably looses two front teeth*

Mephibosheth

[Yuki Akuma]

Perhaps we need some new descriptors for powers. Say, Real, for powers that work in the real world, Quasi-real, for powers that only work in the Imaginal but, if used in "shallow" areas, can have real effects, and Unreal, which only work in the Imaginal and don't effect anything that isn't in the Imaginal?

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Well, here was my core concept for determining how the Imaginal plane works: a concept called Immersion.

Both characters and the campaign as a whole have an immersion rating.

A character's immersion rating is equal to their level, but they can also gain immersion, via, for instance, monster attacks, or by acts that particularly bring them out of touch with reality; a character's immersion rating resets to their level after an extended rest.

A campaign's immersion rating is equal to the player's average level + 1/5 their gained immersion, rounding up.

Monsters and even areas also have an immersion rating.

Players can only deal 'lethal' damage to creatures whose immersion rating is equal to their own, or (lesser? I think is what I mean)- that is, characters have to be 'deep enough' in their imaginations to be as immersed or more immersed than the monster under the bed before they can vanquish it for real.
However, the process also works in reverse; monsters can't do anything more than make kids faint if the kids don't have an immersion rating as high as their own.

Kids can't even percieve creatures or aspects of zones that have an immersion rating 2x their own, though they can be affected by them environmentally; if a pixie starts a fire, an un-immersed kid can still be burned.
Area affects at higher immersion have effects on reality; direct effects and attacks don't.

The nonhuman races- dolls, taking animals, spirits, etc.- have a minimum immmersion rating. They can be played at first level, but the other characters might not be able to see them at first- they'd be an invisible helping hand until immersion got up to the point where they were visible. On the other hand, characters just might not see them attack or use powers- they'd appear to be an inanimate teddy.

A character can spend either base immersion or gained immersion out-of-combat, as a sort of ritual, to alter reality; for instance, they can determine that a door is unlocked before they try it, or that the weather will be sunny when they open their eyes, or that they have a small concealable item in their pocket; a favorable circumstance, in short.
These changes have 2x the cost when a creature is involved, and creatures with an intelligence score can oppose them with their own immersion pools.
Further, changes that contradict things actually observed- for instance, if the child knows the door is locked but wants to believe it isn't- have 2x the cost.

Immersion can also be used in combat, as a standard action, to grant a +1 bonus to defense for every 5 points spent, or increase attack and damage at the same 1/5 ratio for the encounter; or prevent a monster's power from recharging for 10 points; or ensure an automatic success or failure on a save vs. ongoing damage for 10.

Characters reduced to zero immersion, however, lose all their class abilities and can't percieve anything with immersion ratings higher than one.

Monster immersion ratings are related to role; solo and elite monsters have immersion ratings equal to their CR (and thus deal lethal damage to opponents of their level), while ordinary monsters have immersion ratings equal to CR-2.

Areas, as mentioned, also have immersion ratings, and can use their immersion pool to oppose attempts to change reality if the DM so chooses- the DM also determines how much resistance there is. Areas have an immersion pool of 2x their immersion rating, but it never regenerates. On the other hand, reality cannot be changed once an area can no longer oppose it; reality becomes fixed there.
If the player wins this opposed roll, they change reality the way they wish it to change.
If the DM/area wins, reality changes in an oppositional way; things become harder for the players, triggering a 'trap' or 'obstacle'.
If the player wins, but their opposed roll's result was two times the area's result, there's an 'overload' sort of condition, and an exaggerated, undesired version of their intention results- instead of being unlocked, the door falls off its hinges.

Note that 'lethal' is above in quotes for a reason; the vast, vast majority of monsters never kill children (that is, players). Varied victory conditions can result, like memory loss, personality changes, trauma (emotional or physical), reduced or increased base immersion, curses (both the D&D -1 to X and the more traditional "you must always tell the truth etc.").

Some powers may allow players to inflict these 'victory conditions' themselves.

My vision for what happens when a character reaches maximum immersion- that is, their base immersion is 30- is that they dissappear into the imaginal realm. The seduction of imagination allows or forces them to abandon reality itself, and they become things for future characters to encounter. At least one epic destiny should probably reject this fate, but the majority should embrace it; it feels like the natural conclusion to me.

Campaign immersion, since I haven't explained it, determines the maximum CR of monsters, primarily, as well as the maximum immersion rating of areas.

Rather than granting treasure or having an 'imbue' skill, characters gain package of 'belief points' as their adventures make them more confident that yes, that stick can act as a sword. Each belief points corresponds to X amount of GP or X number of item levels, and it can be spent to enhance any item the character chooses, although each item can only have one enhancement at a given time.

Immersion, besides being a characters statistic, is also a power keyword; some powers only work at/above a given immersion, others can affect the use of immersion or immersion ratings, others might grant characters the ability to use immersion more quickly or in a new way.

Under my conception, this is the new unifying mechanic that explains how imagination and reality interact.

Thoughts?

ALso; I'd like to drop Panlid Champion. I'm out of love with it.

To summarize immersion relationships; lower immersion creatures etc. are 'real' and can be affected by powers...actually, hm, add this: creatures whose immersion is 1/2 the player's current immersion are as immune to lethality as those with immersion ratings greater than his.

This way, creatures that are as deep in as the character can be hit, creatures almost as deep are the same, things way back up there in real reality are immune- to them, you aren't real- and things way down deep aren't real to you yet. Bam.

I'm in favor of sub-sources under the imagination mantle, as described; stories, etc.

'Calvinball' is probably precisely how rituals work; rituals and counter-rituals (you haven't touched eleventh base), and counter-counter-rituals (you're out, give me a dollar).

[Yuki Akuma]

...Damn, Shiny.

Yes, I like that. How do "Belief" points work? Are they tied to Immersion, or something else?

As for power sources!

Fiction - the power of fictional stores, from books, films or TV. Powers based on the Fiction power source are called "Stories".

(This power source is for Storytellers and Quiet Readers.)

Rolemodel - the power of beings greater than - or simply different to - children, granting them powers based on imitation. Powers based on the Rolemodel power source are called Lessons.

(Mama's Boys, Animal Lovers and any other 'divine' classes use this.)

Play - raw imagination, inspiration and improvisation. Children with the strongest link with the raw Imaginal use this power source. Powers based on the Play power source are called "Imaginings".

(Dreamers, Storybook Heroes and others.)

Reality - powers based in reality, or at least what children assume to actually be reality. Powers that use the Reality power source are called "Acts".

(Not too sure about the last one, especially for the names of powers. I thought Whiners, Darlings, and possibly Scaredycats would use the Reality power source.)

[Mephibosheth]

In general, I really like Shiny's immersion mechanic. It's pretty simple and could be really helpful in adjudicating transitions between the real and imaginal, especially in the imaginal borderlands where encounters with everyday things can be common. I do have a couple of questions and comments.

First, does moving deeper into the imaginal plane require higher levels of immersion? If so, how do you deal with low-level (and thus, low immersion) characters in the deep imaginal plane? We've already established that moving deeper into the imaginal plane doesn't necessarily correlate with more powerful encounters or higher level characters, so it wouldn't make sense to tie depth in the plane to the character's immersion level. Or is it possible to "gain" temporary immersion to move deeper (perhaps via contact with a transition zone that grants enough immersion to move deeper). Or am I over-thinking this whole thing?

Second, I'm a little concerned about area-of-effect attacks and secondary effects of higher immersion creatures affecting those without. If that were true, wouldn't there be parents injured by pixies all over the place? I would say that un-immersed entities (parents, older kids, kids who've moved out of the imaginal plane, etc) should be unaffected by things with higher immersion ratings, simply because those things are ultimately unreal.

Third (and somewhat following from the above), is there going to be a way to deal with temporary changes in immersion, especially insofar as parents and the real world affect kids' imaginary lives? You might be far immersed in the imaginal plane when the light's out and the Monster Under the Bed is creeping up, but the minute Mom comes in to turn on the light, everything changes and you're jerked back out of the imaginal plane. How does immersion deal with that?

Otherwise, I love it. It will take some difficult work to make everything add up properly (I'm envisioning lots of tables for how immersion rating affects locations and creatures, and some difficult work with belief points), but it seems like it'll be worth it.

And I'm fine with dropping the panlid champion.

Mephibosheth

[ninja_penguin]

1. This stuff seems pretty neat and charming.




So, just a list of the classes we came up with...

The Whiner - He's more or less a bard without the spells, right? - Leader?

The Darling - A sort of social interactions centric rogue. She had a "spite" attack which let her do more damage to people giving into her wiles. - Striker

Scaredycat - A rougish sort who specialises in detecting (and avoiding) danger. - ... I have no clue.


2. I've done some DM'ing and unposted homebrewing stuff for 4e, so just some thoughts. I've generally thought that a lot of the classes tend to bleed into a secondary role a little bit. For example, the fighter drifts into striker territory, the Paladin drifts into leader territory, and the Warlock drifts into controller territory (disclaimer: partially my opinions, partially gathered from others). So sometimes you can think about what else they can do, when determining their abilites.

I haven't read the previous C.U.T.E stuff, so if this is totally wrong or off-base, feel free to disregard it:

The whiner: I also can imagine this one being able to mark or daze creatures at range through his constant complaining. Probably targets will defense a lot.

The darling: Could probably drift into controller territory, too. Maybe some daily dazing/dominates/weakens/whathaveyou.

Scardeycat: I have this mental image of a controller/leader whose abilities function around sliding and shifting allies and enemies, in both the 'oh god, have to get away' and the 'quick, get between me and the scary thing!'.

Also, possible suggestion for an epic destiny: growing up to be a parent that still remembers.

[Vadin]

Wha...what? What do I see here? Shiny? And CUTE? The project that got me interested in setting and concept design (I used to be randomman413)? Wow...it's been quite awhile. And 4e? Vadin approves, sir. Count me in.

Immersion ratings- very nice. Conceptually, in terms of finding 4e parallels, immersion points are like a combination of action points and healing surges? Powers and class features let you do different things with them, but there are a few universal abilities?

On the topic of healing surges, those remain, yes? If any adventurers should be able to magically get back health for no real explainable reason, it should be children. It's like they're made of rubber or something.

And, a topic that hasn't really been broached yet (and can probably wait until after classes are at least started), paragon paths- related to classes or not? In looking at homebrewed stuff, I've found that I really like the universal paragon paths (those that only require a certain feat that anyone can obtain and a certain trained skill) much more than class specific paths. Power source specific paragon paths work too.

Some ideas for paragon paths
Imagineer- Summons creatures and uses his imagination to alter the world around him, both on the real and imaginal plane. (Summoning and area effects, with the ability to use imagination to affect the material plane)

Copycat- In acting like the Monster Under The Bed and the Tooth Fairy, the copycat takes on some of their aspects and abilities. (Striker? Also either with a selection of powers or the ability to take powers from monsters (ala Blue Mage))

Leader- Just what it sounds like. Even though he isn't any older (he might even be a little younger), this kid knows how to take control and act like a grown-up when the grown-ups aren't around. (Obviously, a leader. Anti-magic and buffing abilities. Less positional battlefield control, more changing how the monsters can act)

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

/Yuki::

Belief replaces conventional 'treasure', since gold pieces don't make much sense for children- instead they can imbue ordinary items with belief to have the function ordinary magic items would, or to grant themselves services etc.

Your subsidiary power sources look good- no real problems there, though I'm not sure about the names, which seems to be an unsurety you share.

/Meph::

Way to mind-read; I was considering this very thing/these very things.

I'd say that low-immersion characters in high-immersion zones sort of gradually come 'into phase' with the zone, in the following way: interacting with a zone whose immersion rating is higher than your own grants you temporary immersion (that is, immersion above your base value)- sort of like your 'transition zone' idea.

As an example, let's say little Timmy enters a fairy ring with his teddy, Mr. Stuffs, at immersion 5 (Timmy's about halfway through his first tier, and brave). What he doesn't know is that the ring is linked to the court of an Erkling and has immersion rating 10- so he doesn't feel any qualms about stepping into it and fiddling with some mushrooms that sing when touched. Doing so (and thus interacting with the zone) grants Timmy a point of temporary immersion every minute he remains in the zone, until he reaches immersion 10- and the Erkling's guards suddenly dismiss their tarnhelms to ask what he's doing there.

Thus, low-immersion characters essentially become more immersed the longer they remain in high-immersion zones, but the immersion is 'artificial', based on their circumstances and not their deep-seated belief or being, and thus, after an extended rest, they won't be able to percieve them the same way.

Keep in mind that a zone's immersion rating determines maximum monster CR, not minimum, so the DM is still free to tailor encounters to the party's level; but since 4e has recourse for encounters fairly far above the party's CL, having high-immersion (thus highly imaginative) zones in low-immersion (thus low-level) games is very possible.

Hmmm, you have a point; let's say that creatures with immersion 0 are completely immune to anything done by those with higher ratings; all adults are automatically immersion 0, as are some rare children. Creatures with immersions of 1 or more are affected by creatures insofar as they can percieve them, subject to the rules regarding lethality and immersion.

I think 'ultimately unreal' is debatable; I'd like to go for more of a 'quantum reality' thing where whether fairies really exist, and are just out of phase, or don't exist, is ambiguous.

In addition to circumstances that cause you to gain immersion, there are circumstances that cause you to lose immersion; that's one of the reasons I went with a dynamic immersion mechanic rather than a static rating equal to your level.

As an example of gaining and losing immersion, little Suzy, just starting her career at level 3 (and immersion 3), awakes from unsteady dreams to find her closet open. Confronted with an object of fear, she populates the darkness with horrors, gaining one point of immersion. Making her way to the floor, she ties her jump-rope to the bed and her waist, and enters the closet, toy hammer in hand. The closet is an immersion 5 zone; after a few moments therein, Suzy gains an additional point of immersion and the deathwatches (supernaturally agressive beetles, and things Suzy is afraid of) attack from behind. She shrieks fit to raise all hell, but begins whaling on the creatures.

Alerted by the shriek, Suzy's mother springs into action, coming into the room and turning on the light; the prescence of a parent drops Suzy back to her base immersion rating of 3, and 'reveals' the beetles as harmless dust bunnies. After getting her untied, mum tucks Suzy in and carefully props something heavy against the closet door, being an understanding type, and does her the courtesy of looking under the bed and everywhere else monsters might hide, dropping Suzy's immersion below her base, to immersion 1. Suzy is thus able to sleep untroubled by the window whisperer (an immersion 3 annoyance she might otherwise have faced), until she wakes up- given an extended rest, her immersion resets to 3, and the next night she may be troubled by an almost imperceptible voice.

Dynamic Immersion is designed explicitly to model swift, frequent changes in what is real and what isn't; whether by choice or circumstance, children can change their own reality very quickly.

/Ninja::
Thanks for the vote of confidence.

I agree with your assessment of class roles; they're more guidelines than actual rules, as one might say.

I like that idea for an epic destiny- it's solid, and fits a niche I had planned out.

Those could be some decent conceptions for the new iterations of those classes; I'll consider, and I like.

/Vadin::
Glad to have you on board, chum.

That's correct, for the example you gave; they're universally available but the way different classes interact with them can be different, sometimes very.

Healing surges are absolutely still in, and for just the reason you've named.

I'd like to create at least two paragon paths for each class that are class-specific, and one (or two) that are not; for instance, a Darling could have 'Sugar Savant' and 'Spice Savant' as their class-specific paths, and 'Wheedler' requiring training in bluff and the sad puppy face feat.

Imagineer might be a little too powerful, really, as I see it now; summoning is something I'd like to see, but I'm not sure in what form.

Copycat might be a good basis for an idea I'm batting for a class based on the old 'Guardian Bearer'/Kid-with-a-teddy concept we've had since the start.

And 'Bossy' might be an interesting paragon path for Momma's Boy or one of the other 'mentored' classes, though I'm not sure how well it works as a class.


To all
Some questions to consider:
What previously created aspects and items are iconic of the system itself, as opposed to just 'good ideas', and why?

What holes still need to filled, mechanically and fluff-wise, with classes or other material?

What should absolutely not be a part of C.U.T.E., if anything, and why?

What should the default setting for C.U.T.E. be? Why?

My take on the last is actually a few different ones, as follows:

Under the Bed, Into the Woods: The default setting, an approximately modern, loosely-defined slice-of-life drama. Light on folkloric elements, long on 'I tried to do this when I was a kid' and self-created beliefs or legends; The Krampus is unlikely to show up, but 'Scumbly-Scuzzy-Joe', a hobo you saw once that you think is a vampire, might.
Prepatory: A WWII-era british setting with a victorian sensibility, set in august 1940, at a prepatory school in London. Children escape the horrors of war (and uniforms) to adventure in the school's corridors or abandoned houses, streets, and even sewers without. Long on interpersonal and intraparty conflict, with a 'belly of the beast' monster focus where derelicts and war profiteers become something more sinister when the shadows grow long.
Chicken-leg House: Eastern european poorly-defined semi-ancient setting, with by far the biggest focus on actual world folklore; mothers and fathers tell their children not to go out after dark with good reason, and terrible things lurk in the shadows of a still-young world for the unwary. By far the most lethal setting in CUTE, and featuring the Baba Yaga in a starring role.


Of course, any of the elements that define any of the above could be mixed into the others; I just think these three ideas cover our niches, more or less.
Thoughts? Comments? Ideas?

[Yuki Akuma]

Ah, okay. So Belief is just currency? That works fine.

I don't like the idea of high-immersion creatures being totally unable to affect 0-immersion creatures like adults. Some children powers would probably work fine on adults, given the right situation. Not the imagination-based ones, of course, but... other ones, like "Sad Puppy Face" or something.

An idea for the Dreamer: how about class features/powers that cost Immersion to use, and also a way to recover/exceed her base Immersion rapidly, so she doesn't 'run out' of Immersion during an adventure?

Also, my favourite setting? "Under the Bed" or whatever you want to call it. I dunno, I'm just inspired too much by Rugrats, Calvin and Hobbes, Ozy and Millie, and other stuff...

Not that I don't like historical settings, but I'm just better with modern ones.

[LastoftheSummer]

Interesting, If I may ask a few questions,

If you go with a more modern setting, will you include no-human races? I like the idea of a boarding school with gnomes, dwarfs, warforged, etc.
How will time/aging be handled? if at all?
How much do you intend to homebrew and how much will be converted from 4th edition or elsewhere?
How will pets/stuffed animals/imaginary friends be handled?


Edit: I have some 4th ed material and would be willing to convert some stuff as needed

[Fax Celestis]

Tangental note: My "main beef" with 4e, at this point, is one thing: I can't slog through the material in order to learn it. Reading it makes my eyes bleed.

[Yuki Akuma]

Tangental note: My "main beef" with 4e, at this point, is one thing: I can't slog through the material in order to learn it. Reading it makes my eyes bleed.

Oh well. Sorry we won't have you aboard?

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

/Yuki::
Essentially, although I see things like 'access' and 'services' playing a bigger role here than elsewhere. Belief might also be used to buy 'status' with a given group, say.

Well, we could easily add a power keyword- 'actual'- for things that would, logically, effect the real world, like interaction-based powers, or subtler effects. And some creatures might well be able to effect the world- it could explain the concept of, say, Gremlins. There literally are gremlins. :P

That's an interesting idea re: dreamer. Happy thoughts could act to recover immersion, say, and then immersion could be used to recover health, rather than Happy Thoughts being a direct-healing at-will.

I thought it might be, and that is the default for a reason. C&H are our forefathers in this noble endeavor.

/Last::
Fantasy CUTE is a different story, I think; it's possible, but I'm not making it primary. The present way of handling races is, in my conception, modular; things like 'brain' or 'fat' granting ability bonus packages, skills, and powers.

There are alternate, higher-immersion races based on things you'd find in stories, like porcelain dolls that walk and talk, animals that wear waistcoats, or spirits that watch over children. But gnomes? Not so sure.

Time is handled more or less as a 'neverwhen', as far as I can think now; I don't see a reason to worry about kids growing up over the course of their adventuring career. It seems like an unnecessary wrinkle.

The base mechanics will likely be converted. The applications- that is, the feats, possibly even the skills, and definitely, of course, the powers- will be homebrewed, as will races, paragon paths, etc.
Some mechanics- like a social combat system- may be added, and some mechanics like immersion that are already added are new, of course.

In various ways. There may be a class based on this, there will almost certainly be items based on this; summoning may be handled this way. Mounts could easily be dogs or even ponies- kids love ponies, in concept if not in practice.

/Fax::

I'd be happy to give an executive summary of the pieces you actually need to know, if you like. And that's mostly generalities.

Also, I don't think Fax said he wasn't onboard.

[ninja_penguin]

haven't had time to read the previous C.U.T.E threads due to time constraints. I'll just be tossing out ideas, and I'll read back on stuff (if required) sometime next week, after my projects are done.

Also, I thought I had an answer for the first question, but blanked.




What holes still need to filled, mechanically and fluff-wise, with classes or other material?


Fluff, fluff-wise. (lame joke, sorry) How do stuffed animals and cherished dolls function in the world, and how do they work? Some classes could be designed to work with some sort of companion, but I think that should be considered. In some cases I think that they can just be snarky/supportive companions as needed, but if they mechanically do anything, you should think about it. Also, racially, what exists (this applies more to the 'Under the bed, into the woods' setting, and maybe a little less so to 'Prepatory') in regards to stuffed animals, bean bag animals, and dolls? Do they spring up to larger size when immersion kicks in, or do they just animate themselves, staying the same size?

I'm also a little bit fuzzy on the immersion/belief concept, but that's just because I don't have time for a very detailed read. I do think that an expy/port of channel divinity could become 'Channel imagination', with similar kinds of effects, and some powers for some the 'divine' classes.

Also, I've found action points and milestones to be pretty useful in 4e. just change them to 'awesome points', or some similar analogue.

Also, I think an important thing for making the classes is to try and balance the numbers of 'primary' roles (i.e. what they're identified as, and not what they bleed into), and make sure that each type offers something different enough to make it interesting.



What should absolutely not be a part of C.U.T.E., if anything, and why?

In the 'Under the Bed' setting, death. Seems thematically inappropriate to me. I also see the 'Under the Bed' setting as the most light, and least harmful. The other two settings (to me) seem like you can't just flick on the lights when things go bump in the night, or you might wish you hadn't.

I've also considered the length of ritual casting in 4e to be ludicrous. I've already homeruled in our group that ritual caster can cast rituals of particular categories (exploration so far, maybe more as I look at them closer) as a full round action instead, as most of the are either:

1. A single round/very short duration, and it's not worth waiting around ten minutes for.
2. Last 24 hours, so it's the same as if they'd just cast it in the morning to begin with.


What should the default setting for C.U.T.E. be? Why?



Personally, I lean towards the 'Under the bed, into the woods' and 'Prepatory' styles. I like the slightly lighter backgrounds, and I guess that the 'Prepatory' reminds me of a darker version of 'The Lion, The witch, and The Wardrobe'.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Nothing's ever required; we're easy-going chaps.

As to Fluff Fluff:

I'm considering a 'Bearer of the Guardian' as Play Striker- they have a horde of stuffed animals or dolls they can fling into position and use to launch attacks; many of their powers are delayed-action 'now that we're all in position...' flanking maneuvers.
One category of items players can likely recieve using belief are 'companions', which can be animal, spirit, or object in nature, and which all have two basal functions- sage advice, and a boost to certain skill usages. This is the snarky/supportive stuffed animal that doesn't act in combat.
Racially, the assumption is that their exact properties are likely a function of immersion; as high-immersion races, they have variable appearance. The current ones I'm considering are 'toadhallers', that is, clothed, talking animals; 'porcelains', a generic term for dolls made of any material; and 'fluffs', a generic term for all stuffed or bean 'animal' toys or soft, cuddly toys. At low immersion, the two 'toy' races are animated but still size small (which, since kids are the rubric and thus 'medium', is very small); at high immersion they are child-sized.


Immersion is basically the core concept for the project, influencing almost every aspect of the system. I'd give it a close read.

Belief is just GP by another name and with a shift in focus.

Action points and milestones are likely to be kept and I doubt I'll even change the names. Giving a little 'extra push' is very kid, to me.

I don't think- at least, hopefully- we'll have a problem with interesting and varied classes.

I agree on the subject of death in 'Under the Bed'.

Some rituals will likely stay lengthy, but others will be more spontaneous; and there will likely be ways and means (specific sites, immersion usages) to reduce casting time for certain utility rituals.

Also, I should note that the number of attack powers each class possesses is likely to be reduced, and the number of utility powers increased, so the need for rituals may be somewhat less.

Prepatory is darker, yes; keep in mind, if you know your history, it's set exactly one month before the beginning of The Blitz- so if the characters haven't sublimed, there's a good chance they'll die in the bombing. Tres dark.

[Yuki Akuma]

I see absolutely no reason why "Under the Bed, Into the Woods" can't be dark.

The real world isn't all light and fluffy. And in a world where the monsters out of a child's imagination can come to life and try to eat him, I don't see how a child couldn't ever die.

There might be 'levels' of death, involving either being thrown out of the imaginal (and having your Immersion reduced to 0), slipping into a coma, and 'real' death (which can still be reversed by high-Immersion powers and rituals)...

Sure, the "Under the Bed" part could simply be ended with a parent coming into the room, but not all adventures would be like that. The setting could easily involve children exploring some abandoned building or whatever, with no hope for Parental/Divine Intervention.

I also don't see the point of setting "Prepatory" "exactly one month before the Blitz". Why? Can't you just say "at some point leading up to, during or directly following the Blitz", and actually leave it up to GMs to decide for themselves whether or not they want to deal with characters all dying due to bombs falling into their bedrooms?

[Human Paragon 3]

Hey guys. I've been lurking on the thread for a while, and probably will continue to do so. Had a few thoughts though.

The first involves Pan's Labrynth. I think that text is pretty valuable as far as it relates to your enterprise here. There's a direct analogy to the Prepatory setting, of course, where 'real life' and the imagined world overlap and influence eachother, and where you're never sure which reality is actually worse. At the very least, I think it's a plausable DMing style that can be applied to running CUTE.

The second has to do with character death. I think it should be rare, but possible, and fall into a few differant catagories. The trigger for death could be the same as normal 4e, that is, falling to your negative blodied value (or it could be different, or there could be multiple ways for it to happen, like jumping into a bottomless pit or something). I think, however, that the circumstances should dictate one of three outcomes.

1: Character Death leads to permanant expulsion from the Imaginal. That is, what happens in the game (or sometimes real life) is so traumatizing to the child that s/he can no longer enjoy play. Their immersion becomes 0 permanantly. Essentially, this is the end of innocence. Powerful rituals could re-immerse them.

2: Character Death leads to permanant immersion. The child becomes part of the Imaginal and can no longer perceive the actual. Even when parents turn the light on, yell at the child or even touch him/her, the kid can't come back. He's lost to the world. The other kids might be able to interact with the lost child in the Imaginal, but s/he is no longer playable. They'd be an NPC for all practical purposes.

3: Charater Death leads to death in the real world. This should only happen in especially dangerous situations, where the children are both highly immersed and in a dangerous analog in the real world (in an abandoned factory, a rock quarry, lost in the city, playing on the highway, in the Red Zone in Iraq etc.). The child dies, and all other kids nearby have their immersion dropped until they can perceive the real world analog that killed the kid. Sometimes this can be teamed up with option 2 (like in Pan's Labrynth). No magic can restore the kid to life, although in some cases he can still be interacted with in the Imaginal.

/thoughts

[Yuki Akuma]

I think we're working under the assumption that "Imagined Things Are Real, For A Give Value Of Real". So, I don't see why very, veyr powerful (21st level+ stuff) Rituals couldn't bring back a child from True Death, although they may not come back in the same body as they left in (they could come back as a stuffed toy, say).

Unless we're going to let the Imaginal actually have an effect on the real world, adults included, but if we do that should still be really powerful and really rare.

When building the 'real world' setting, we might not want to make it exactly like real life in that case, however, as a world where imaginary things can affect reality would be a little different, even if only the children are aware of it.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

I think there's a difference between 'darkness' and physical, mortal death; my remarks on the subject were a bit short, so I'll clarify.

I think 'Under the Bed' can be a very dark setting for players or a DM who want it to be- if you recall, one of our design goals is 'intellectual honesty'.
If it makes sense for the teddy bear people in the stuffing well to eat each other to survive, an adult might make up something to explain why they don't. A child will accept that they do.

Also, time in CUTE passes at exactly the rate the DM chooses to have it pass; it may flow differently in segments of the imaginal. DMs can still choose to have the blitz happen in their campaign, or not; the atmosphere of impending doom all unknown to the characters is what matters.

I do love me some Pan's Labyrinth, clearly.

At any rate, I am in favor of multiple 'victory conditions'.
Juris, you've got some interesting ideas there; I'll include them in the following list.

'Death' Conditions

Unconciousness: this is the default condition caused by monsters you aren't immersed enough to get really hit by. When you wake up, it was 'all a dream', though the monster isn't any more vanquished than you and may see it differently.
Immersion Increase or Reduction: this is a 'lethal' condition, that is, it's inflicted by monsters that are as immersed as you. It could, at high levels or in particularly knock-down-drag-out battles, end up with permanent immersion or expulsion, as Juris mentions. However, I'm not sure I agree they're not playable if permanently immersed; it just might be more difficult for them.
Memory Loss or Personality Change: Also 'lethal', and may be coupled with immersion reduction. The child loses some memory or aspect of their personality to a mind-bending monster, and is forever changed as a result. Physically, however, they likely just fall unconcious and awake not knowing their dog's name- or worse, no longer loving their dog.
Physical Trauma: The child is injured, losing the use of a limb, an eye, or some other body part, or being permanently weakened or sickly in general, taking constitution damage or a negative status. This may make them extremely difficult to play, but potent rituals may be able to cure the latter set of conditions- broken arms, however, have to heal on their own.
Emotional Trauma: The child becomes withdrawn or violent, suffering an extreme and near-total personality shift as a response to some horrible event. The specifics of the resultant dementia are up to the player, but it always makes the child almost useless in 'social' situations, and makes life hard for both the character and their friends.
Mechanical Curse: The child takes a -1 or more penalty to a specific action or actions the monster that defeated them particularly focuses on or, alternatively, detests, as a result of some lost fragment of essence. This is likely to disappear over time.
Traditional Curse: The child grows a beard, must count small objects scattered in front of them, becomes a were-creature, must tell the truth, or is disliked by someone who formerly revered them; they suffer a flavorful, complicated curse. The curse can usually be removed via a quest or deeply involved ritual, so this victory condition is usually more of a quest hook than a punishment.
Actual death: Applicable only in the circumstances and under the rules Juris has suggested, I think; and let us keep in mind, some places are wholly imaginal and do not have real-world 'analogs'. Many of the fates above are 'worse than death', but most don't mean the character can never be played again, and I think this is a good idea.


Any thoughts?

I do like the idea of bringing characters back as toys or other nonhuman races, but it'll probably be very high-level; epic tier, even, or whatever our equivalent is called.

I'm pretty much going to stand by 'the imaginal only affects those who can percieve it', which cuts out adults, but very rare and powerful exceptions are within the purview of DM fiat to order.

I also don't think that our 'real world' setting is exactly like our real world; it's more a 'world of imagination' (y'know, like a world of darkness). Its shadows are more inhabited, its toys are brighter-eyed, its sunbeams produce more rainbows and its rainstorms produce more puddles to jump in. It's much like the real world, but it isn't it.

The World of Imagination is the place we would have wanted to grow up in- combined with the place we actually did- and it contains the shadows of the reasons we wanted to grow up, so we wouldn't be scared any more.

[Yuki Akuma]

To put it another way, this World of Imagination is like reality, but moreso; trees are larger and have more footholds, mountains tower over the land, skyscrapers loom overhead, shadows are deeper, rainbows are more distinct and even hills and meadows almost burst with the intensity of their ordinariness.

Does what sound like what you were getting at? :smallbiggrin:

[Human Paragon 3]

What Shiny Said

I'd definately go along with that. Like normal D&D (perhaps moreso) CUTE seems to necessitate a comprehensive list of creative penalties. I think Actual Death should be very rare, a risk that is deliberately created by the DM as a storytelling tool, and a significant event when it does occur. I think you agree with me there. I also think that the possibility of actual death is a necessary component of the game, even though it is a remote possibility. You're so sure 'it could never happen to you,' (and it probably won't), so when it does...

Anyway, it's not to be used lightly.

[Lord_Gareth]

Before I post this, I'd like to state that this isn't an attempt to disparge your work or say that the project is a bad idea; I know what it's like to just WANT to do something (the Paradigm Project, still continuing on Plothook, is one case from my own work). Instead, the following is simply a suggestion that, frankly, would take a lot less time and work.

The Window (http://www.mimgames.com/window/)

The Window, as a system, is nearly perfect for PbP and can fit literally anything you care to put into it. Check it out!

[Yuki Akuma]

Before I post this, I'd like to state that this isn't an attempt to disparge your work or say that the project is a bad idea; I know what it's like to just WANT to do something (the Paradigm Project, still continuing on Plothook, is one case from my own work). Instead, the following is simply a suggestion that, frankly, would take a lot less time and work.

The Window (http://www.mimgames.com/window/)

The Window, as a system, is nearly perfect for PbP and can fit literally anything you care to put into it. Check it out!

This is as much a mental exercise in creativity and game theory than it is about making a playable game.

If we just wanted to play in this setting, we'd play GURPS.

Also, I find "The Window" to be terribly pretentious. >.>

[Lord_Gareth]

Alrighty then! I'm still reading most of it and hurting my brain on it. Quick question - are you basing the rules on D20? If so, for the love of all that is holy, why 4e?

[Mephibosheth]

My take on Shiny's questions, briefly.


What holes still need to filled, mechanically and fluff-wise, with classes or other material?

At this point, I'm mostly concerned with pinning down the exact nature of the imaginal plane. I think that we're almost going to have to start from scratch with classes, monsters, and items, as most of the previous C.U.T.E. content is 3.5 and will require extensive conversion (almost as much work as building from the ground up). I think that if we pin down the nature of the imaginal plane, a lot of other things will fall into place.


What should absolutely not be a part of C.U.T.E., if anything, and why?

I think that pretty much everything can have a place in a C.U.T.E. game. If a kid can imagine it, it should have a place. I do, however, think that real death should be very rare.


What should the default setting for C.U.T.E. be? Why?

I tend to think of modern suburbia as the default setting. Kids have access to a surprising amount of resources, especially as far as media and inspiration for games of pretend are concerned. I think it's a setting that a lot of people can relate to, even if they didn't grow up in the suburbs. There's a lot of precedent in modern media (Rugrats, Calvin & Hobbes, the Goonies, etc.), meaning players will be comfortable with the idea of interactions between the material plane and the imaginal plane. Finally, it has a certain degree of vanilla-ness to it that makes it easy to adapt to any campaign. All you have to do is create a new suburb.

In regards to the debate over character death, I think the primary consequence of "losing" in the imaginal plane should be a temporary expulsion from the plane. It's significant enough to provide a disincentive but it isn't permanent and keeps the somewhat light flavor I'm envisioning for most C.U.T.E. campaigns. For darker campaigns, I'm all for Shiny's list, which looks pretty exhaustive. We need to be clear about when each condition happens, though. But, like all other things, I think that needs to wait until we get the details of the imaginal plane and immersion hammered out.

On that note, I'm currently working on a draft of an imaginal plane/immersion write-up, just so we have something to go off of. Shiny, if you have anything and want me to abandon this pursuit, let me know and I'll happily defer. It'll probably take me a while anyway.

Mephibosheth

[Yuki Akuma]

Alrighty then! I'm still reading most of it and hurting my brain on it. Quick question - are you basing the rules on D20? If so, for the love of all that is holy, why 4e?

Why 4e? Because, unlike some people, we actually seem to realise that 4e is actually one of the most balanced systems out there right now, and totally fails to fall prey to the "Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards" problem.

Seriously, it's great that you have preferences, but we don't care if you hate 4e.

[Mephibosheth]

OK, here's my write-up of the imaginal plane and Shiny's immersion system. I hope I got everything correct. I tried to distill it all into a system that hangs together with the already-established ideas of the imaginal plane from the first thread. Note that I didn't touch the idea of using immersion points to change the imaginal plane. I don't really know how I feel about that, and I felt it more important to finalize how immersion works vis a vis death, damage, and encounters.

So, here it is (spoilered for length)!


The Imaginal Plane

Katie jerked awake, her eyes wide and darting and her head pressed flat against the pillow. She’d heard something coming from under the bed, she knew it. She rose slowly and carefully to her knees and glanced at her older brother, still asleep in his bed only a few feet away.

“Pssss! Joey!” she whispered loudly, hoping to wake him. “I heared something under the bed!”

Joey slowly turned over to look at her. “You heard something? We better check it out. Quick, get your gear.”

The two children scrambled over to their toy box, extracting wooden swords, tiny belts, and pan lid shields before turning back to face Katie’s bed. Katie gulped loudly and Joey set his face in a scowl as they moved slowly forward.

Seeing how nervous his sister was, Joey got down on his knees to look under the bed. “Back me up Katie! I’m going in!” he whispered as he crawled forward, sword first.

“Be careful, Joey. I heared a pretty big noise!” hissed Katie as she followed slowly, her weapon gripped tightly in her hand while her other arm clasped a teddy bear.

The two children looked around under the bed, initially seeing nothing. As they crawled, however, they noticed that the floor under their hands began to feel increasingly soft, and they suddenly found themselves plummeting down a strange pit. They landed with two soft thumps at the bottom, and looked around to find themselves seemingly alone in the midst of a twisted landscape.

Brandishing his sword at the shadows, Joey noticed that the edge gleamed sharply in the dim light. Their faces grim and their weapons at the ready, the two children started off to find their way back to bed.


Overview

The imaginal plane is an infinite landscape of imagination that exists parallel to the material plane. In many places, the two planes seem to merge. In these areas, imaginal terrain overlays the material plane and imaginal creatures stalk the streets and homes of everyday people.

In the imaginal plane, children can be anything and do anything they can imagine, from becoming sword-swinging knights to wielding powerful magic. Their sticks, plastic swords, and slingshots become deadly weapons and blankets and pan lids provide crucial protection. Similarly, the plane is populated by the creatures and characters of legend, story, and a child’s imagination. Teddy bears can talk, monsters lurk under beds and in closets, knights and outlaws and wizards can be found everywhere you look, and there’s always danger from the boogieman, the Erlkönig, and other villains.


Depth and the Imaginal Plane

The imaginal plane can be divided into two general areas: the imaginal borderlands and the deep imaginal plane. As children move into the imaginal plane, they encounter the imaginal borderlands first and only venture into the deep imaginal plane as they become more immersed in their games of pretend. The line between these two areas is often indistinct, but they can have a profound effect on what a child experiences in the imaginal plane.

The imaginal borderlands is the area of the imaginal plane that overlaps the material plane. Often, locations in the imaginal borderlands have the same general terrain as the material plane, with only a few details changing. In other instances, there are significant changes to the material plane, but the terrain of the imaginal borderlands is still tied inextricably to the material plane. Imaginal creatures and characters are present in the imaginal borderlands, but their appearance and actions are more closely tied to reality. For example, the evil witch who appears in the imaginal borderlands probably looks a bit like the creepy old lady down the street.

Children adventuring in the imaginal borderlands are typically less deeply immersed in their games of pretend than those venturing into the deep imaginal plane. It is, however, possible for anyone to venture into the deep imaginal plane, and even the most experienced adventurers with the most vivid imaginations must pass through the imaginal borderlands (at least momentarily) to reach the deep imaginal plane.

In contrast to the imaginal borderlands, the deep imaginal plane is completely divorced from the material plane. The two only interact in certain areas with strong ties to the imagination, and then only via the imaginal borderlands. Closets, scary woods, abandoned houses and castles, and other similar locations can serve as gateways to the deep imaginal plane, but only if a child enters these areas via the imaginal borderlands.

The deep imaginal plane is vast and largely unexplored. Its nature is uncertain, and every child who ventures there has a different experience. It might take the form of a deserted moor or a haunted forest. It might become a bustling city from the past where wizards and knights coexist with everyday folk. It might become a forbidding castle perched high in the mountains where only the brave and foolhardy dare to tread. If it can be imagined, it can be found in the deep imaginal plane.


The Tone of the Imaginal Plane

Because the imaginal plane is inextricably tied to children’s imaginations, an adventure into the plane can take almost any tone. It might be a light-hearted romp to rescue the princess and slay the dragon, or it might be a darker adventure where children risk being drawn into the deep imaginal plane forever. In general, the imaginal borderlands tend to be lighter and less intense than the deep imaginal plane, if only because the safety of the real world is that much closer. However, any child knows that the real world is a dangerous place, and the imaginal borderlands can easily take on a darkness of their own.


Immersion and the Imaginal Plane

Every character or creature (and many locations as well) in the C.U.T.E. setting has an immersion rating, regardless of their participation (or lack thereof) in imaginal adventuring. This immersion rating measures how deeply immersed the character, creature, or location is in the imaginal plane. In general, the base immersion rating for a character is equal to its level. The base immersion rating for a solo or elite monster is equal to its level, while the base immersion rate for an ordinary monster is equal to its level minus 2. Some locations and effects can increase or decrease a character’s immersion rating temporarily. Most adults and some rare children have a base immersion rating of 0 and do not interact with the imaginal plane at all. Similarly, most children and some rare adults have base immersion ratings of at least 1. All creatures in the imaginal plane have base immersion ratings of at least 1, as do many creatures from the real world that occasionally interact with the imaginal plane.

The primary purpose of immersion is to determine how characters and creatures in the imaginal plane interact with each other. The chart below details how creatures and characters of different immersion ratings interact.

{table=head]Immersion Rating|Effect
Character greater than or equal to monster|Character and monster deal normal damage
Character less than monster|Character and monster deal non-lethal damage
Monster's immersion is at least double character's|character cannot perceive or affect the monster, character has concealment with regard to monster
Character's immersion is at least double monster's|monster canot perceive or affect the character, monster has concealment with regard to character
Character's immersion rating is 0|Character cannot affect, perceive, or be affected by the imaginal plane and imaginal creatures[/table]

A character can perceive and interact with any area within the imaginal plane, as long as that area’s immersion rating is no greater than twice the character’s current immersion rating. If a character enters an area with a higher immersion rating, the character gains one point of temporary immersion for every minute she remains in that area, until her current immersion rating is equal to the area’s immersion rating. An area’s immersion rating does not otherwise affect the level of creatures or characters found in that area.

Characters and creatures have a base immersion rating equal to their level. Immersion resets to this base level after an extended rest. Certain effects can temporarily increase or decrease a character’s immersion rating but do not affect her base immersion level. If a character’s immersion rating is reduced to 0, she loses access to all class features and is temporarily shunted out of the imaginal plane (though she can return after an extended rest, when her immersion rating rests to the base level). A character whose base immersion rating reaches 30 disappears into the imaginal plane. The seduction of imagination allows or forces them to abandon reality itself, and they may become things for future characters to encounter.


Gaining and Losing Immersion

As mentioned previously, a number of effects and locations can cause a character’s immersion rating to fluctuate. Certain monsters have attacks that increase or decrease a character’s current immersion rating. Characters wandering in areas of higher immersion gradually increase in immersion to match the area. Certain circumstances can also affect the character’s current immersion rating. DM’s are encouraged to apply circumstance modifiers to immersion ratings as appropriate. The following example illustrates how this might play out.


Little Suzy, just starting her career at level 3 (and immersion 3), awakes from unsteady dreams to find her closet open. Confronted with an object of fear, she populates the darkness with horrors, gaining one point of immersion. Making her way to the floor, she ties her jump-rope to the bed and her waist, and enters the closet, toy hammer in hand. The closet is an immersion 5 zone; after a few moments therein, Suzy gains an additional point of immersion and the deathwatches (supernaturally agressive beetles, and things Suzy is afraid of) attack from behind. She shrieks fit to raise all hell, but begins whaling on the creatures.

Alerted by the shriek, Suzy's mother springs into action, coming into the room and turning on the light; the prescence of a parent drops Suzy back to her base immersion rating of 3, and 'reveals' the beetles as harmless dust bunnies. After getting her untied, mum tucks Suzy in and carefully props something heavy against the closet door, being an understanding type, and does her the courtesy of looking under the bed and everywhere else monsters might hide, dropping Suzy's immersion below her base, to immersion 1. Suzy is thus able to sleep untroubled by the window whisperer (an immersion 3 annoyance she might otherwise have faced), until she wakes up- given an extended rest, her immersion resets to 3, and the next night she may be troubled by an almost imperceptible voice.


Death and the Imaginal Plane
Note: Provisional and mostly based on my opinion, pending group consensus.

Because creatures and characters in the imaginal plane are, in fact, largely imaginary, actual death in the real world seldom results from defeat in the imaginal plane. In fact, most cases of defeat in the imaginal plane simply result in the character being forced back into the real world and unable to return to the imaginal plane until after an extended rest. However, more serious and sinister consequences are possible in the imaginal plane. The following list details the possible outcomes of combat, and when they are appropriately applied. Note that creatures in the imaginal plane usually impose one or more of these consequences when they defeat the characters. What consequence is imposed is listed in the monster's stat block.
Shunted from the Imaginal Plane: The character has her effective immersion rating reduced to 0, is immediately returned to the real world, and is unable to interact with or affect the imaginal plane until after an extended rest. Most monsters, especially those with immersion ratings higher than the character, can inflict this consequence.
Immersion Decrease: The character’s current immersion rating decreases, causing her to become unable to affect or perceive her surroundings and forcing her to move to another area of the imaginal plane until after an extended rest. In some rare circumstances, this could result in permanent expulsion from the imaginal plane.
Memory Loss or Personality Change: This is, in general, considered a ‘lethal’ consequence and may be accompanied by the loss of one or more levels and corresponding immersion reduction. The child loses some memory or aspect of their personality to a mind-bending monster, and is forever changed as a result. Physically, however, they likely just fall unconcious and awake not knowing their dog's name- or worse, no longer loving their dog.
Physical Trauma: The child is injured, losing the use of a limb, an eye, or some other body part, or being permanently weakened or sickly in general, taking constitution damage or a negative status. Some of these effects can be reversed with powerful abilities or rituals, but many must be allowed to heal on their own.
Emotional Trauma: The child becomes withdrawn or violent, suffering an extreme and near-total personality shift as a response to some horrible event. The specifics of the resultant dementia are up to the player, but it always makes the child almost useless in 'social' situations, and makes life hard for both the character and their friends.
Mechanical Curse: The child takes a -1 or more penalty to a specific action or actions the monster that defeated them particularly focuses on or, alternatively, detests, as a result of some lost fragment of essence. This is likely to disappear over time.
Traditional Curse: The child grows a beard, must count small objects scattered in front of them, becomes a were-creature, must tell the truth, or is disliked by someone who formerly revered them; they suffer a flavorful, complicated curse. The curse can usually be removed via a quest or deeply involved ritual, so this victory condition is usually more of a quest hook than a punishment.
Lost in the Imaginal Plane: The character’s base immersion rating increases to 30 and her soul becomes lost forever in the imaginal plane. The character can on longer be controlled, though certain extremely rare rituals can find and return her soul. This consequence is only imposed in certain circumstances, usually involving monsters or enemies with this specific purpose in mind.
Actual Death: The child dies, both in the imaginal plane and on the material plane. This consequence only occurs in extreme circumstances of high immersion, often corresponding with dangerous locations on the material plane. Additionally, all other children who witness the death have their current immersion score reduced to 0, and may suffer permanent immersion reductions. Only the rarest and most powerful magical rituals can return the child to life, though she may be interacted with on some level in the imaginal plane.
Again, this is just a draft. If people like it, great. If not, at least it gets everything in one place and allows us to proceed with a more definite goal in mind, rather than everyone making suggestions without consensus.

Thoughts?

Mephibosheth

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Well, strictly speaking, I care- but I don't agree.
I feel that 4e has a better mathematical underpinning; I've played d20 for a while, it's a very popular system, and while it has flaws, it is sound and interesting. See also my remarks below.

That being said, I will still accept 3.5 CUTE content, I just don't see it as the default assumption anymore.

As to 'The Window', I don't have any truck with that kind of system as more than an intellectual exercise. To me, RPGS are two kinds of game- the explicit game, wherein the characters do things, and the metagame, wherein players exercise creativity in the construction and manipulation of the tools presented to them by the system.
A system without a metagame fails to interest me.

However, the C.U.T.E. project is not about whose system is better than whose, and anyone and everyone is free to take any aspect of the setting, the system, or my principles and idea and adapt it to suit their needs. I am in the pleasure (hardly the business) of being creative and exercising my imagination in the way I want to. I encourage everyone to do the same, and to be civil about it.

Yuki, your description of 'realer than real' sounds like as good an interpretation of The World of Imagination, that is, a real world enhanced by being shaped by childhood expectation, as any.

Juris, you've more or less got it.

Meph, it seems like we're almost entirely on the same page re: first steps, as well as re: character death and default setting.

One clarification as to when which circumstance results from 'death': it's a function of the cause. Each monster, hazard or trap has a new line in their statistics block listing...well, ever played a game of Munchkin (http://www.sjgames.com/munchkin/game/)? Each card has a description of 'Bad Stuff' that happens if you're defeated by the monster, ranging from nothing, to death, to losing your hat. I suggest we adopt this term, since it's the same basic idea.

I don't see why either one of us has to give up on our writeups- I've got something, so do you, let's see you post yours and I'll comment and post what I've got- though a lot of my thoughts on the matter were contained in the 'immersion' introduction post.

EDIT
Quick note: the limit on perception of more immersed creatures also applies to monsters; to a Deathwatch , a level fifteen character [Im 15+] would be effectively invisible until and unless they drop below [Im 10].

Characters can see only dim outlines or creatures whose immersions are lower than half their own, as well- they have concealment, effectively.

This reflects the fact- implicit in my mechanic, but I haven't stated it- that the substance of a character and not just their perception becomes increasingly divorced from reality as they make their way deeper into the Imaginal.

Other than that small addition, looks like great work to me.

To all
What does everyone think about the capability to 'spend' immersion, as per the original post, to alter reality subtly? While most classes will have immersion-related powers, to me, it seems natural to me that [i]all children can alter at least the borderlands through the potence of their belief.

Meph's unsure; what does everyone else think?

[Mephibosheth]

Edited the above to reflect your comments, Shiny.

I want to say that I'm not opposed to the idea of spending immersion to affect the imaginal plane. In fact, I think it makes perfect sense. The character realizes that the world around her is imaginary and that she can affect it with her belief, but doing so makes her realize that she's just pretending and reduces her immersion. What I'm not sure about is what specifically we want to allow.

Another thing I think we need to do (and I tried to do this in my write-up) is distinguish between base immersion and current immersion. Base immersion should remain moderately constant and really only affect whether a character can enter the imaginal plane or not and whether a character is swallowed up by it. Current immersion, on the other hand, should be the rating that affects perceiving and affecting monsters, spending immersion to change the plane, and other things of that nature. It should be possible to raise your current immersion over 30 without being lost in the plane and should be possible for your current immersion to drop to 0 without you being permanently barred from the plane (though you'd have to rest in order to regain the ability to enter).

Finally, I think that we need to be careful about how many daily resources we're making people keep track of. We've already got class powers, healing surges and action points, and now we're adding daily immersion. I'm not saying its a bad idea, but it's something to think about.

Mephibosheth

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

What would be your suggestions for some immersion uses?

Hm....I think you might be right about using base immersion for entry/entrapment requirements. It does make a degree of sense. Consider that adopted.

I'm also in agreement as to using only current immersion for changes, perception, et. al.; consider that adopted.

I think that that's true; but it's a necessary evil and I don't see a why to avoid it.

....unless we use immersion to replace one or more other daily resources, such as action points. Not sure.

[Human Paragon 3]

What if there was a second wind-like power, call it a Revision for now, that everybody can do once per... day, we'll say. Using this ability is a standard action that reduces your immersion by X and has effect Y or Z. Some classes could get increased access to Revision, much like Dwarves can second wind as a swift action and dragonborn get stronger surges. Each class could have a Revision Value just as they have a Healing Surge value, but instead of being based on the HP it would be based on their base Immersion. Some classes could even have Base Immersion +1 or -1 adjustemtns built in, or some feats could grant it.

This setup limits the use of revisions, allows them to be potent, and opens up a little design space. Everybody would have some access to it, some will be better than others.

[Mephibosheth]

What would be your suggestions for some immersion uses?

I like the original idea of being able to spend immersion to gain bonuses to defense, hit, and damage rolls. Maybe being able to gain concealment temporarily by making your body less tangible to imaginal creatures. Those seem pretty basic, and I have no qualms with this sort of bonus.

I think if we're going to allow characters to spend immersion to actually alter their surroundings, it should be pretty expensive and only allow pretty minor alterations. Unlocking or locking a door seems ok. Building a new wall seems somewhat unreasonable. I also think it should take time to alter the environment (i.e. not generally possible in combat). Were I to make a list, I'd probably include things like:
lock or unlock doors
reduce (but not negate) falling damage
gain small bonuses to environment-related skill checks (+2 to Acrobatics checks to escape from restraints by widening them slightly or loosening nots, +2 to Athletics checks to climb a wall by making handholds slightly bigger, etc.)
create/summon small objects, or subtly alter already-existing ones (but only in small ways)
creating small areas of difficult or slippery terrain
Stuff like that. I'm sure there are examples I haven't thought of, but I think it's important that we keep these useful but relatively minor.

Mephibosheth

[Yuki Akuma]

...Sorry. I just get really irked when people use any thread as an excuse to vent their distaste for New Edition Of Roleplaying Game X. It's overdone and getting old.

So, for classes (when we get to classes), are we going to go with the ones I posted earlier, rework them, add more, or what? We should definitely try to come up with two or three classes for each Role, so not every party will be stuck with, say, a Storyteller because there are no other Controllers.

Am I jumping the gun here? I've really contributed all I can to the setting/Immersion thing. Barring possible class features/Powers.

[LastoftheSummer]

I like the original idea of being able to spend immersion to gain bonuses to defense, hit, and damage rolls. Maybe being able to gain concealment temporarily by making your body less tangible to imaginal creatures. Those seem pretty basic, and I have no qualms with this sort of bonus.

I think if we're going to allow characters to spend immersion to actually alter their surroundings, it should be pretty expensive and only allow pretty minor alterations. Unlocking or locking a door seems ok. Building a new wall seems somewhat unreasonable. I also think it should take time to alter the environment (i.e. not generally possible in combat). Were I to make a list, I'd probably include things like:
lock or unlock doors
reduce (but not negate) falling damage
gain small bonuses to environment-related skill checks (+2 to Acrobatics checks to escape from restraints by widening them slightly or loosening nots, +2 to Athletics checks to climb a wall by making handholds slightly bigger, etc.)
create/summon small objects, or subtly alter already-existing ones (but only in small ways)
creating small areas of difficult or slippery terrain
Stuff like that. I'm sure there are examples I haven't thought of, but I think it's important that we keep these useful but relatively minor.

Mephibosheth

I like what you've suggested here but it seems to wander into what I would consider Rituals territory, but as it has already been suggested that rituals could use some tweaking, that might work out quite well.

[Vadin]

1) I make a motion to remove Action points and their current role in the game and replace them with:

2) Some other name for these points that isn't the same is their base immersion rating. I'm still for gradual increase in immersion, but now that I'm actually thinking about it...nevermind. Immersion points (both current and base) are pretty okay. Maybe we clarify things and talk about a character's Immersion Pool (the sum of their current immersion points) and their base immersion rating, instead of just base and current immersion. I believe Shiny had something earlier about a characters immersion rating being their base immersion (typically their level) + 1/5 of their immersion points?

How would immersion points be used in conjucntion with powers? Would they be like spending a healing surge, a required part of the power, or would they be like Power Points in D1's 4e Psion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84590) with additional Action Pointy applications?

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Go-go-shiny-synthesis power!

Also: Yuki, I think the Gaurdian Bearer is shaping up more as a controller than a striker, so we may be good there, but go ahead and put together a listing of open roles/filled roles- it'd be a huge help.


In no particular order, I'd say we should:
1. Adopt Meph's listing (which includes my own) of immersion pool uses for the nonce.

2. Add to the functions served by spending immersion the function of action points, at a 5/1 or other fairly large conversion, to preserve the rate at which AP were previously gained.

3. Allow immersion to act as a 'quick-ritual' in the ways outlined above.

4. To delinieate base immersion from...let's call it 'gained immersion', until somebody gives me a better name- spending gained immersion is 'free' aside from the immersion cost itself. Spending base immersion to achieve the same effects requires spending a healing surge (with no HP benefit).

Base immersion represents your capacity for belief, while gained immersion represents your present investment in an imaginary situation; therefore, if you spend base immersion, you're straining your suspension of disbelief. It's tough stuff.

To clarify one of your points, Vadin, overall Campaign immersion- not character immersion- is equal to base+ 1/5th gained, rounding up.

And to answer your last question, yes, both/either, depending on the class and power.

[Lord_Gareth]

@Shiny - Alrighty - I'll be sure to tell you if I use some of your material. I had a few thoughts, too:

- On the subject of falling, you may have to change the basic rules a bit. Kids can fall certain distances safely that an adult wouldn't even consider, and even when they fall from higher places, they're remarkably bouncy. I fell two stories when I was 7 (I'm 16 now) and the only thing I complained about at the time was a twisted ankle.

- What happens when the imaginal starts affecting adults? Mind you, I'm still unclear as to the exact nature of the imaginal plane, but it has been mentioned that it can affect even those who haven't been immersed enough to see it. What if the monster in the closet goes after someone's mother?

- Are children considered Small when size comes up, such as a really big imaginary monster or when trying to avoid being grabbed by one's parents?

I'll probably pop in with more questions/comments/ideas as I come up with 'em!

EDIT - Umm, let's see, instead of "gained immersion" we could do Excitement...no, that sounds kinda bad. Wow. That is hard to come up with a name for.

[Collin152]

It's back! And it's got a new trick!
Project Cute is ten-times as slick as the last time, last time we saw it, now we can see why we really adore it...

Oh, 4E? I don't know 4E. I don't have money for 4E. I could still contribute my significantly-more-helpful fluff stuff, I guess...

[Vadin]

I'm sure I've been yelled at before for suggesting this, BUT...check the internet. That's where I got my 4e stuff. Before I actually spent money on it, I wanted to know if it was any good, so I downloaded it from Rapidshare. Thouroughly impressed, I proceeded to get my friend to get a copy for himself. Now I'm semi-permanently borrowing his.

Long story short, if you want 4e, check the interwebs. It's all over it.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

I've spent a fair amount of time familiarizing myself with the system, so any questions about it you have, you can ask me. I'll be posting a tutorial with the updated version of the Darling, which is in progress now.

I have a few questions for everybody, however.

Powers
1. Should CUTE characters have the same number of powers as standard 4e classes? More? Fewer? A different mixture?

2. Beyond 'immersion' and 'imaginary/actual', what are some necessary power keywords and their definitions?

3. How should CUTE power listings be organized to facilitate ease of reading? (I personally dislike the level-by-level, table-less standard version, though I got used to it quickly enough).

4. What could be done in terms of organization and presentation to make CUTE character power-sets more 'familiar' and ease the transition for 3.5 players? Of these measures, which are easiest and most straightforward to implement?

[Yuki Akuma]

My take:

1. C.U.T.E. characters should probably have the same name as standard 4e characters, just to make slapping the game over the base system easier. Some classes could do the Wizard thing and collect more powers than normal and pick and choose which to ready each day.

2. Well, assuming 4e doesn't have them, "Summoning" keywords for powers like "Imagination Made Flesh" are a must. :P

3. I don't really dislike 4e's way of doing it, although a table might ease things somewhat.

4. ...I really have no idea. But 4e's standard format is very easy to read anyway.

[Vadin]

3. How should CUTE power listings be organized to facilitate ease of reading? (I personally dislike the level-by-level, table-less standard version, though I got used to it quickly enough).

4. What could be done in terms of organization and presentation to make CUTE character power-sets more 'familiar' and ease the transition for 3.5 players? Of these measures, which are easiest and most straightforward to implement?

In 3.5, wizards and sorcerers use the same spell list. Other caster classes all draw from their own spell lists, with many spells overlapping. In one sense, there was one big Magic Pool that all the arcane and divine classes could access (though each could access different parts). Martial characters could all draw from certain schools. Shadowcasters got their powers from certain paths of spells.

Perhaps (and this is just a thought) it would help ease the transition from 3.5 and familiarize players more quickly with their characters if characters drew powers from universal power sources.

In terms of current 4ed stuff, that would let the rogue, ranger, fighter, and warlord all choose from the same list of exploits. The cleric and paladin would have the same prayers. The wizard and warlock would both cast the same spells.

Too similar? An easy problem to remedy! With such a huge selection of powers for all the classes to choose from now, it isn't that hard to cut a few of them out. Pick one or two powers per level for each class that are 'exclusive'. Any power with the Fighter keyword, for example, could only be used by a fighter, and only wizards can cast spells with the Wizard keyword. Every class could keep their unique at-will abilities, though.

A Whiner and a Darling would both have similar methods of attack, yes? Perhaps not identical, but at the very least similar. The two could then share the Appeal power source (or whatever it's called) powers, save a few unique powers per level for each.

A bit more work? Not really. The same amount of powers would be created for each class regardless, and if players got to know a certain power source, it would be fairly easy for them then to play a similar character of a different class (instead of getting to know the wizard powers really well and then having to look back at the book every five seconds when they play a warlock- or the CUTE parallels, at least).

[Yuki Akuma]

...That's not really a very good idea, considering how 4e classes are classed (if you'll forgive the redundancy) by their role as well as their power source.

Unless you're suggesting that Defenders, Strikers and Leaders should all have the same powers.

[Vadin]

I'm suggesting that yes, hybrid class aren't a bad idea. A class that can act primarily as a striker by virtue of class abilities and serve as a secondary controller for the party- not a bad idea. A leader that also has a few abilities to deal big damage to a single foe- not a bad idea.

Most of the function of role is defined by class abilities (all strikers have an extra damage ability, for example), and I've been running my 4e games with a classless variant where characters have 21 points with which to purchase class abilities (they all have different values), and they can choose powers class abilities in their power source or role freely. That means that divine leaders can choose cleric, paladin, and warlord class abilities, and arcane strikers can choose warlock, rogue, and ranger powers. All in all, it's actually worked out really well, and I think that a similar, simpler, and more structured system would work well for 4e CUTE.

But that's just my two cents, and I can see the logic behind keeping it the same as standard 4e for the sake of most of the players.

[ninja_penguin]

Powers
1. Should CUTE characters have the same number of powers as standard 4e classes? More? Fewer? A different mixture?


I'd suggest building everything analogous to 4e. I think it would be much easier to build to 4e standards, and make modifications from there, rather then vice-versa.



2. Beyond 'immersion' and 'imaginary/actual', what are some necessary power keywords and their definitions?


Damage types, if they exist. Power source keywords. Some other ideas, but I"m too tired to punch them up right now, I'll try to suggest the idea soon.



3. How should CUTE power listings be organized to facilitate ease of reading? (I personally dislike the level-by-level, table-less standard version, though I got used to it quickly enough).


If it's a serious problem, you can probably get away with listing them by type (encounter, daily, utility), and then by level, and I think most people would get that. You might want a table of contents first, so people don't accidentally drift into levels they're not at yet.



4. What could be done in terms of organization and presentation to make CUTE character power-sets more 'familiar' and ease the transition for 3.5 players? Of these measures, which are easiest and most straightforward to implement?

Personally, I think that any sort of guide for converting the theme of your character over to the system helps out a lot. Basically, have a little explanation that says 'If you liked to play a character that did Thing X, try class Y. It does Thing X by [describe class role and features]'. I found a lot of my 3.5 characters that got early retirement have been able to be converted over in concept, if not in mechanic. Also, be open-minded to reflavoring things thematically, but keeping the mechanics the same. I've made some people happy with 4e that way.

Edit- RE: Vadin's bit about class features, and pooled powers.

I think that pooled powers hurts classes in 4e a little bit, for two reasons. One, because I think you might overwhelm people a bit, and make it too easy for people to cover multiple roles at once. Second, for classes where you have class features adding bonuses to various powers (i.e. Tac/Insp Warlords, the various Warlock Pacts, Artful/Brutal Rogues), you either remove those distinctions, or you'll make people drift toward those powers anyway.

[Yuki Akuma]

I'm suggesting that yes, hybrid class aren't a bad idea. A class that can act primarily as a striker by virtue of class abilities and serve as a secondary controller for the party- not a bad idea. A leader that also has a few abilities to deal big damage to a single foe- not a bad idea.

Most of the function of role is defined by class abilities (all strikers have an extra damage ability, for example), and I've been running my 4e games with a classless variant where characters have 21 points with which to purchase class abilities (they all have different values), and they can choose powers class abilities in their power source or role freely. That means that divine leaders can choose cleric, paladin, and warlord class abilities, and arcane strikers can choose warlock, rogue, and ranger powers. All in all, it's actually worked out really well, and I think that a similar, simpler, and more structured system would work well for 4e CUTE.

But that's just my two cents, and I can see the logic behind keeping it the same as standard 4e for the sake of most of the players.

This is not a classless system. This is a system where children get put in little boxes and do their own thing.

Children, much more than adults, tend to gravitate towards cliques and stereotypes. Making all children the same would be counter productive, and we might as well be playing GURPS.

[Vadin]

I think that pooled powers hurts classes in 4e a little bit, for two reasons. One, because I think you might overwhelm people a bit, and make it too easy for people to cover multiple roles at once. Second, for classes where you have class features adding bonuses to various powers (i.e. Tac/Insp Warlords, the various Warlock Pacts, Artful/Brutal Rogues), you either remove those distinctions, or you'll make people drift toward those powers anyway.

Again, we're making the powers for the classes ourselves so we don't have to have powers that have those parts in them.


This is not a classless system. This is a system where children get put in little boxes and do their own thing.

Children, much more than adults, tend to gravitate towards cliques and stereotypes. Making all children the same would be counter productive, and we might as well be playing GURPS.

I understand it isn't a classless system, I was simply stating my personal experience with hybrid roles, not suggesting CUTE be classless.

I understand that they tend to fall into a single certain category whether they like or not, and I wasn't suggesting "making all children the same," I was saying that classes that used a certain power source could draw from the same list of powers. This list would not be the standard size of a single class power list, it is instead quite a bit bigger. Sorcerers and wizards drew their spells from the same spell list (with a few exclusives introduced in later supplements), but not all sorcerers and wizard were exactly the same.

The idea was simply brought up because something similar has worked well for me personally and it would (in my opinion) make the transition from 3.5 to 4e a lot easier for some people and would open up a lot of interesting options to players already familiar with 4e. If the general consensus is that it be kept more like normal 4e (which, I'll freely admit wouldn't be any harder and players wouldn't have to wrap their heads around a concept that apparently isn't too terribly easy to grasp), then I'm all for keeping it the same.


Moving along to new business, which classes do we have in the setting for sure, probably, and maybe? Monsters? Paragon paths? Epic destinies?

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

I feel the function of 'shared powers' is adequately served by immersion uses; and I also felt and feel that the shared Sorc/Wiz spell list is a poor to indifferent design choice. It has little to reccomend it.

Also; for the darling, I'll be including, along with the full power listings by level, a series of quick-reference tables organizing by:
1. Keyword(s)
2. Target(s)
3. Key ability or abilities
4. Damage type(s)
To make it easier to look up a power with a specific criterion in mind. This isn't something anyone else has to do, but I'll be fiddling one up for any other classes we produce for my own use.

Also, a VERY provisional 'Advancement' table for CUTE.

{table="head"]Level|Ability Scores| Features|At-will|Encounter|Daily|Utility| Feats
1 | Per Archetype| Starting Powers; Immersion Pool; Class Features; Archetype Traits. |2 | 1 | 1 |1 |2*
2 | -| Gain one feat, gain starting belief.| 2|1|1|1|3
3 |-| Gain Class Immersion Ritual**, gain one encounter attack power.|2|2|1|1|3
4 | +1 to Two| Gain one feat, gain one utility power| 2|2|1|2|4
5 |-|Gain one daily attack power|2|2|2|2|4
6 |-|Gain one utility power, gain one feat.|2|2|2|3|5
7 |-|Gain one encounter attack power.|2|3|2|3|5
8 | +1 to Two| Gain one feat, gain one immersion ritual.|2|3|2|3|6
9 |-|Gain one daily attack power.|2|3|3|3|6
10 |-|Gain one utility power, gain one feat.|2|3|3|4|7
11 | +1 to all| Deep Dream*** features; gain one Deep Dream encounter attack; gain one feat.|2|4|3|4|8
12 |-|Gain one deep dream utility power; gain one feat.|2|4|3|5|9
13 |-|Replace one encounter attack power.|2|4|3|5|9
14 | +1 to Two|Gain one immersion ritual, gain one feat. |2|4|3|5|10
15 |-|Replace one daily attack power.|2|4|3|5|10
16 |-|Additional deep dream feature; gain one utility power; gain one feat.|2|4|3|6|11
17 |-|Replace one encounter attack power.|2|4|3|6|11
18 | +1 to Two| Gain one feat.|2|4|3|6|12
19 |-|Replace one daily attack power, gain one utility power.|2|4|3|7|12
20 |-|Gain one deep dream daily attack power; gain one feat.|2|4|4|7|13
21 | +1 to All| True dream feature***; gain one feat.|2|4|4|7|14
22 |-|Gain one utility power, gain one feat.|2|4|4|8|15
23 |-|Gain one immersion ritual; replace one encounter attack power.|2|4|4|8|15
24 | +1 to Two| True dream feature; gain one utility power; gain one feat.|2|4|4|9|16
25 |-|Replace one daily attack power.|2|4|4|9|16
26 |-|Gain one true dream utility power; gain one feat.|2|4|4|10|17
27 |-|Replace one encounter attack power.|2|4|4|10|17
28 |+1 to Two| Gain one feat.|2|4|4|10|18
29 |-|Replace one daily attack power.|2|4|4|10|18
30 |-|True dream feature; gain one feat.|2|4|4|10|19
[/table]
*In settings with nonhuman characters, begin with one fewer feats.
** A special class of ritual dealing with the mechanics of immersion. Immersion rituals require spending immersion rather than belief, and do not require a specific feat to use, but are otherwise similar to more 'ordinary' rituals.
*** Provisional name.


Note the addition of immersion rituals to the repertoire of all classes; note also the expanded utility powers; note also that all characters are 'assumed human'.

Thoughts, folks?

[Yuki Akuma]

Which classes are definitely in? Well, which ones were 'core' last time around? The Dreamer, the Storybook Hero... and I think also the Darling?

More utility powers are always good.

But, as long as we're messing with the powers known by level thing, can we make some "Extra Power" feats, for those who'd like to have lots of powers to use at any one time?

[Baxter190]

I don't think we should make C.U.T.E. a classless system, but instead have classes that are similar, i.e. the whiner and and darling, share a number of powers, so that they have a larger power pool to draw from when they chose powers. But yeah, what are the core classes going to be?

[Baxter190]

Sorry for the double post, but, how about these as Base Classes:

Panlid Champion-Would serve as the archtype leader, the person who the kids naturally rally behind. Could See him as a Warlord Analog, most likely a Charismatic Warlord
Storyteller-Obviously a controller. Should probably give it the ability to alter stuff with immersion, though more over by believing thats the way it should be faccording to their books than believing less
The Storybook Hero-The defender of his friends, he believes that he can protect his friends from anything, and uses imagination to come up with ways he can. Most likely a one handed specialized fighter
The Animal Lover-Probably a striker/controller mix, bringing his animal friends into the frey, and becoming more and more feral through abilites that let him imagine himself becoming an animal
The Darling-Of course a striker, probably uses a good amoutn of charisma attacks too.
The Dreamer-A healer and a controller? Could use dreams as a way of healing poeple, and can make enemies fall asleep and suffer nightmares en masse

[CrazyMacGuy]

Well, I have been drawn to the land of the imagination, and now we see how deep the rabbit hole goes...

I was directed toward this interesting little thread by my good friend and mentor Mephibosheth, and will do my best to at least evaluate and create what I can. Currently reading up on things to get a feel... but from what Mephibosheth told me, seems like a pretty sweet idea for a setting/game system.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Panlid champion has been nixed- and I'm...not entirely certain you read the original class.

To answer the query of what I happen to think should be in, and their roles:

Storybook Hero: Fiction/Play Leader
Scaredycat: Real Defender
Darling: Real/Rolemodel Striker
Guardian Bearer: Role-model/Play Controller
Storyteller: Fiction/Real Controller
Quiet Reader: Fiction Striker
Mama's Boy: Role-model/Real defender
Dreamer: Play Leader


Please note this is a compressed listing; this is intentional.
Animal Lover is now a paragon path & build choice for Guardian Bearer.
Whiner is, similarly, folded into Darling.

Also note that some classes have multiple listings for power source; this is also intentional. As a function of build choice, I'm electing to have some classes that can be based on either of two power sources: for instance, the Darling can either be a manipulator on their own terms, or an imitator of adult charlatans.

[Yuki Akuma]

And here I was thinking this was a cooperative project, rather than a "Shiny makes all the decisions" project.

:P

Shouldn't we, you know, come up with these things together?

For example, I, personally, think that having two power sources for a single class goes against the point of having power sources in the first place, and is needlessly complicated. But that could just be me.

I also don't think the Animal Lover should be rolled into the Guardian Bearer, as the Animal Lover was meant to be more of a Striker - like a mini Ranger. But that could just be bias talking.

[newbDM]

Damn, this thread got me a little depressed. :smallfrown:

[Yuki Akuma]

Damn, this thread got me a little depressed. :smallfrown:

Erm, why?

It wasn't my fault, was it? >.>

[Mephibosheth]

Here are my thoughts on classes and roles.

In terms of "core" classes, I think the following should be considered "core." I've also made notes on how I perceive their party roles.
Storybook Hero - Defender (secondary striker) - I've actually been thinking about how to update the storybook hero over the last few days, and I think the original version definitely maps into the defender/striker role moreso than the leader role.
Dreamer - Leader (secondary controller) - Dreamers, from what I remember, seem to be focused on healing abilities, using their vivid imaginations to summon, and other imagination-associated abilities. I would think these characters could easily be the impetus for imaginal adventuring.
Quiet Reader - Controller (secondary striker) - I always invision the quiet reader as being all about subtle and understated control. Lots of mind-affecting powers, ability to alter the battlefield, etc. I could also see them being pretty impressive in nova-esq fits of rage with high damaging daily powers.
Darling - Striker (secondary leader) - If I remember correctly, this was a hybrid bard/rogue-like class. Had a powerful damaging ability and lots of social skills. Seems like a striker/leader to me! Maybe no healing but a few buff-type powers
Storyteller - Striker (secondary controller) - Seems like an ideal match with the wizard or warlock. More overtly powerful compared to the quiet reader's subtlety.
Mama's Boy - Leader (secondary defender) - Pretty much a cleric with a different name and a few unique abilities.
I'm sure there are others, but that seems like a decent list for starters.

Edit: I also agree with Yuki that the Animal Lover should be a "core" class. I just forgot to add it above. I'd say striker/controller focusing on using summoned creatures/friends to control the battlefield. Some buffing abilities as well.

Mephibosheth

[Yuki Akuma]

"Striker" tends to imply high maneuverability, though, and I can't picture a bookish story-lover being particularly mobile.

[Mephibosheth]

"Striker" tends to imply high maneuverability, though, and I can't picture a bookish story-lover being particularly mobile.

Are you refering to the storyteller or quiet reader. I can see your point, especially for the quiet reader. However, I could easily see the storyteller being more bard-like than bookish, telling tall tales and forcing reality to bend to match by the power of his imagination. That sort of character could easily be pretty mobile.

I guess in general I was more refering to capacity to deal damage (DPS, to borrow from MMORPG terminology) than maneuverability per se. I just see storytellers as being the more appropriate class for high damage powers, while the quiet reader is more subtle.

Mephibosheth

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

And here I was thinking this was a cooperative project, rather than a "Shiny makes all the decisions" project.

:P

Shouldn't we, you know, come up with these things together?

For example, I, personally, think that having two power sources for a single class goes against the point of having power sources in the first place, and is needlessly complicated. But that could just be me.

I also don't think the Animal Lover should be rolled into the Guardian Bearer, as the Animal Lover was meant to be more of a Striker - like a mini Ranger. But that could just be bias talking.
I'm only stating my opinions, m'dear.
Besides which, it's actually more of a "Shiny creates a vague sort of shape of what we might should be doing, possibly, and then Meph et al. systemizes it."

I do ideas pretty well, but not perfectly, and details escape me a lot- so don't you go feelin' put out.

Alright, alright- but which power source, then, to cover all the possibilities for what the classes represent?

I just thought two 'I summon creatures and then they do X' classes could be compressed into one as a Controller (Secondary Striker); whether it's animals or toys/imaginary friends, it's the same mechanics.

If you really feel strongly about it, however, we can reverse the primary/secondary to Striker (Secondary Controller), and make 'Stuffed Savant' a paragon path that doesn't like using real animals, or some such.

Meph, you're the expert on storybook hero, and on reflection, the martial abiliites of the class to seem more...defender-y.

Agreed, more or less, on the rest of the classes; exception being Mama's Boy, which I think deserves better than being a cleric rehash. I'd actually like to see some self-focused 'in my wake' buffs that boost allies who emulate the character; and I would also be pretty psyched to see Mama's Boy artifices: they imbue their belt with the mighty power of ol' Pappy's Spankin' Hand, and use it to lay about them in the next battle.

Also; tell me more about what you think the Animal Lover should do, in terms of powers and abilities.

[Yuki Akuma]

I really see the Animal Lover's animal companions being... just that. Animal companions, not summons. As we're moving away from 3.5, we don't need to stick with the balancing act we did there, and can go back to the original variation. :P

I see the Animal Lover as being more of a tag-team between her and her animal friend(s). Very mobile, granting bonuses to movement and flanking maneuvers (so a bit of the Leader about her). As she gains levels she starts to emulate animals more and more, similar to the "Tiger Claw" specialisation for Swordsages.

She'd focus on moving about and dealing devastating amounts of damage, as well as aiding her animal friend(s) (and being aided in return).

Basically, much more like the Wild Child PrC than the actual Animal Lover.

And she'd get All Fours at first level. Maybe make it like the Warlock's pacts, and give her another option or two to cement her fighting style. (Does she want to fight like an animal? Aid her animal friends in combat? That sort of thing.)

I don't see toys being very similar to actual animals, so having the plushie users grow out of the Animal Lover seems wrong.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Hmmm, yes, now that you've explained it more, that doesn't jibe with the functionality of Guardians.

I still like the class, though, so I'll go ahead and shove em' in as a seperate thing, Controller (Secondary Striker) if I can.

I'd say...All Fours for 'fight like an animal', yes; some sort of 'pat the head' style for aiding animals- maybe this lets them 'fight like people' in some way? Not sure what our third style would be- if we even need one.

[Yuki Akuma]

Perhaps we could give certain creatures "Pet" abilities, that can only be used while they're fighting alongside an Animal Lover with the "Pat on the Head" ability? Like the Mount abilities.

We could use a variation for the Guardian Bearer's pets, too.

[Vadin]

If we're assuming that the Animal Lover will always have some sort of animal companion with him, then let us look at it, for the sake of mecahanics, just an extension of his character. If the animal companion will have a "pet" ability that does something for the character, should the Animal Lover have 1 less class ability to balance it with the other classes? This ability would also be variable, of course, because different animals would grant different abilities. I'm not sure the abilities would be like, but if they're fairly significant, that needs to be accounted for.

Also, will animal companions have their own health, or will their health be a part of the Animal Lover's health (for ease of use and reduction of bookeeping)? If their health is a part of the Animal Lover's health, then the Animal Lover should probably have high health, as he'll effectively be in two places at once, which makes him more or less twice as vulnerable. One way to counter this is to do what I've seen a lot of mechanics for 4e familiars do and make the companion take 1/2 damage from attacks. The logic behind it is that the companion actually has its own health pool, but the character taking 1/2 of its damage is reflective of that (and makes it more balanced).

In terms of damage, are we talking about the companion doing huge feats of damage, or throwing around at-will damage attacks and utility sort of effects?

And the Guardian Bearers...Shiny, how are you envisioning them actually using their powers? What sort of things can they accomplish on the battlefield?

[LastoftheSummer]

I can see the pc and the animal sharing all there stats, essentially one character in two different places at once. Two moves per round, shared hp, exp. gain halfed, there abilities require a certain proximity to each other/the target. Primarily a striker, with the ability to be in two places at once the controller potential is easy to see. Paragon paths would allow the PC to gain animal characteristics (ie. furry ears, tail, claws) while there companion might gain the ability to wear clothes, walk upright, use items, speak(to other children)

[Yuki Akuma]

Um. Why not just make it a separate creature? All this "same character in two places" stuff just seems overly complicated.

[LastoftheSummer]

it is a separate creature but controlled by the same player and sharing the same power source and stats for simplicity sake.

[Yuki Akuma]

Nothing about this strikes me as in any way "simple".

[Vadin]

They'd both use the same stats (except maybe for their defenses. The companion's defenses would probably be higher in either Fort or Ref). It's a lot easier to keep track of one character (and some circumstantial defense modifications) than force the player to keep track of two seperate stat blocks and balance that with the rest of the party (are they two characters that count as an extra party member? Is the companion equal in power to the player? Are his powers different?).

It ends up being a lot simpler than coming up with a whole bunch of new stats for everything if the companion is an already factored in part of the Animal Lover's character.

[ninja_penguin]

My thoughts RE: Animal companion.

I think it should definitely be worked out into some sort of mechanical benefit, not as a second character. I think it'd be a logistical nightmare to balance out an expected 2-for-1 deal when it comes to party members vs. characters. Maybe make the animal companion some sort of function similar to ranger quarry/warlock curses. Drum up a couple of categories of animals, and have each one provide some sort of bonus to the player/penalty to the enemy when it is 'marked' (poor word choice here, but I'm having a hard time coming up with an acceptable alternative. I'm referring to it being selected as the target of the class function, not the -2 to attack rolls kind of marks that defenders throw about), and some powers that have an added function if the animal companion is harassing the target. Totally made up on the spot, away from books example:

One-two strike
You knock your opponent off balance, allowing Mr. Bubbles to seize the opportunity
(Keywords go here)
Encounter Standard action

Attack:[Ability] vs [Defense]
Hit: X[W] damage + [ability mod]
Special: If the initial target is also the target of your animal companion, make a secondary attack.
Secondary attack: [Ability] vs [Defense]
Hit: the target is knocked prone, and takes damage equal to your [Not the attack ability] modifier.


Okay, so I'm thinking that for designing the classes, it will be easiest to try and build them in this process.

1. Determine the class' role, and what secondary role it may have (I'm pretty sure that we've done this)
2. Determine the HP, HP per level, surges, and defense bonuses that the class gives.
3. Determine the class features for each class, and determine what sort of general playstyle is encouraged by those features.
4. Think of what concepts you want to enhance with the Paragon/Deep Dreamer paths.
5. Begin work coming up with a giant load of powers, etc. Make sure that you keep your Paragon/Deep dreamer concepts separate, or rework those concepts if you feel that they're too close

So, for classes, we've got (cut and pasted from Mephibosheth):

* Storybook Hero - Defender (secondary striker) - I've actually been thinking about how to update the storybook hero over the last few days, and I think the original version definitely maps into the defender/striker role moreso than the leader role.
* Dreamer - Leader (secondary controller) - Dreamers, from what I remember, seem to be focused on healing abilities, using their vivid imaginations to summon, and other imagination-associated abilities. I would think these characters could easily be the impetus for imaginal adventuring.
* Quiet Reader - Controller (secondary striker) - I always envision the quiet reader as being all about subtle and understated control. Lots of mind-affecting powers, ability to alter the battlefield, etc. I could also see them being pretty impressive in nova-esq fits of rage with high damaging daily powers.
* Darling - Striker (secondary leader) - If I remember correctly, this was a hybrid bard/rogue-like class. Had a powerful damaging ability and lots of social skills. Seems like a striker/leader to me! Maybe no healing but a few buff-type powers
* Storyteller - Striker (secondary controller) - Seems like an ideal match with the wizard or warlock. More overtly powerful compared to the quiet reader's subtlety.
* Mama's Boy - Leader (secondary defender) - Pretty much a cleric with a different name and a few unique abilities.
* Animal Lover - Striker (secondary ?) - Ranger? I'm sort of going to defer to Yuki on this one, he seems to have a more solid idea going on it.

---End Cut and paste---

Should we just try to hammer a few of these into more solid ideas? We don't need to put anything into stone yet, but get some more formed ideas to build from. Does anybody have any classes that they're particularly attached to?

[Mephibosheth]

The storybook hero was sort of my baby from the original project, and I've started looking at the storybook hero from a 4e perspective. The problem is I have no experience actually playing 4e and am only passingly familiar with the new system. Not nearly proficient enough to design anything solid that interacts appropriately with the rest of the content. With this in mind, here are my thoughts on the storybook hero so that someone else more familiar with the system can perhaps translate them into game terms more efficiently than I.

The original storybook hero was something of a martial jack-of-all-trades much like the 3.5 fighter was. He had a wide feat selection based on the heroic archetype he chose. A 3.5 storybook hero could be a skilled archer, a noble knight, a dexterous swashbuckler, or something in between. Since 4e has narrowed the focus of the fighter class, I thought it would be appropriate to do something similar to the storybook hero.

I envision the storybook hero chosing between two or three heroic archetypes at first level, much like the warlock choses between different pacts. The knight archetype would be more straight-forward, focusing on heavy armor and big swords. The swashbuckler archetype would be more mobile and tricky (perhaps adding acrobatics to the list of trained skills) and focused on dexterity. The hunter archetype would be focused on ranged weaponry somehow, with some stealth thrown in for good measure. I envision each archetype would add one skill to the list of trained skills that the storybook hero gets automatically, as well as determining one or more at-will powers and maybe something like the warlock's pact boon. My initial thought is to have some sort of ability for each pact that functions like the fighter's challenge ability but is flavored for each individual archetype (challenge for the knight, goad for the swashbuckler, and maybe something frustration-based for the hunter), but this could change. Finally, certain powers would have bonuses for members of the various archetypes, just like the warlock.

So those are my thoughts on the storybook hero. Anyone want to try actually putting something together, or should I just soldier slowly ahead?

Mephibosheth

[Elrosth]

I have a few hours this afternoon, I might work on the storybook hero. From what I'm seeing, you only need two types (strength and mobility), and they're broken down almost exactly like the rogue class, so I'll start there. The hunter style you had there seems to me to be exactly like the swashbuckler, but for ranged attacks, so I think we just need to provide for ranged abilities, rather than make a new division.

Feel free to add if you think of something else, and I'll have what I come up with in a bit.

[ninja_penguin]

I'd be willing to lay some of the groundwork for things. I've been playing and running 4e a bit, so I at least have a general idea of how things work. I probably don't have the time to devote to the full process due to my expected upcoming coursework, but I can add in things that are modular or smaller. (Read: I don't have time to write up all the powers for each class up to level 30. But I can come up with monsters, paragon paths/Deep Dreamers, and basic stuff like the class features block.)

So, I'd be willing to take a crack at laying the foundations for some classes. I'd like to be faithful to the original material, so I've got a tiny questionnaire for anybody who'd like me to try and whip something up.



(disclaimer: I don't need very detailed responses, just enough to set me on the right direction)
Role Related
1. How does your class accomplish its role? See below for specifics.

1a. Defenders. How do you accomplish this role? Most 4e classes do this by marking, which provides an incentive to attack the defender over other characters, and provides a punishment if they do not. What does your class do to provide an incentive to attack the defender?

1b. Strikers. How do you go about providing more damage then other classes? Is there a signature weapon that is involved with this damage? Does your feature provide any other benefits other then raw damage? How conditional is this damage? How does your class avoid being targeted and/or isolated?

1c. Leaders. How do you provide healing for your comrades? What are other benefits that you provide to the party, either in buffs or positioning? How armored or proficient in weapons do you see the class being?

1d. Controllers. What sort of control do you see the class exerting? Territory control and denial via AoE and zones? Conjurations that harass the foe? Single target debilitation?


Skills and equipment
2. How skilled do you imagine your class to be? What would the average character's skill focuses be on?

3. What do you see as the equipment load-out on your class? How proficient, how much armor, etc. Is there a specific weapon from a group that you'd imagine the class using?

Other
4. What are ways that you would like people to play the class? Think of more then one way, preferably.


---End quiz----

That's all I can think of wanting off of the top of my head. If I need anything else after that, I can always bounce stuff off of you via PM.

[Elrosth]

Alright, here's what I got so far. Thoughts?

Storybook Hero
Role: Leader/Defender (secondary striker)
Power Source: Fiction
Key Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Charisma

Armor Predilections: Cloth, Leather, Hide, Chainmail, Scale; Light Shield, Heavy Shield
Weapon Predilections: Simple Melee, Military Melee, Simple Ranged, Military Ranged
Bonus to Defense: +2 Fortitude (Knight) OR +2 Reflex (Rogue)

HP at 1st Level: 15+Con Score
HP per Level Gained: 6
Healing Surges per Day: 6+Con Mod

Trained Skills: (5 at 1st lvl)
Diplomacy, Heal, Insight, Intimidate, Perception
Athletics, Endurance, Religion(Knight Only)
Acrobatics, Bluff, Stealth, Streetwise(Rogue Only)

Build Options: Knight, Rogue

Class Features:
Archetypes, Inspiring Catchphrase

Archetypes:
Chose one of the following options.
Knight: Once per round, gain a bonus to damage equal to your
Charisma modifier.
Rogue: Gaina bonus to AC equal to your Charisma modifier

Storybook Hero Class Features
Inspiring Catchphrase
Encounter (special) Fiction, Healing
Special: You can use this power twice per encounter, but only once per round. At 16th level, you can use inspiring catchphrase three times per encounter.
Minor Action Close burst 5 (10 at 11th, 15 at 21st)
Target: You or one ally in burst
Effect: The target can spend a healing surge and regain an additional 1d6 hp.
The amount of additional hp regained is 2d6 at 6th lvl, 3d6 at 11th, 4d6 at 16th, 5d6 at 21st, and 6d6 at 26th.

Level 1 At-Wills
Clobber SBH Attack 1
At-Will, Play, Weapon
Standard Action Melee Weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W]+Str mod damage
Miss: Half Str mod damage. If you're wielding a two-handed weapon, you deal damage equal to your Strength modifier.
Knight: Miss: Strength mod damage. If you're wielding a two-handed weapon, you deal damage equal to twice your Strength modifier.

Agile Strike SBH Attack 1
At-Will, Play, Weapon
Standard Action Melee/Ranged Weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs. AC
Hit: 1[W]damage, shift one square.
Rogue: shift one extra square.

Running with Scissors SBH Attack 1
At-Will, Play, Weapon
Standard Action Melee Weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs. Reflex, must move at least one square to reach the target as part of this attack
Hit: 2[W]+Str mod.
Miss: Target may shift one square, and you take damage equal to 1[W].

If My Fist Hits Your Face, Its Your Fault
You continually swing your weapon in front of you. It has to hit at least once, right?
At-Will Play, Weapon
Standard Action Melee/Ranged
Targets: One or two creatures
Attack: Strength vs. AC (melee) OR Dexterity vs. AC (ranged), two attacks.
Hit: 1[W] damage per attack.

Level 1 Encounters
Enemies All Around
At-Will, Play, Weapon
Standard Action Melee Weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength + 1 per enemy adjacent to you vs. AC
Hit: 1[W]+Str mod damage.
Knight: Hit: Deal an extra +1 damage per enemy adjacent to you.
Rogue: Gain +1 AC per enemy adjacent to you against one attack until your next turn.


Level 1 Dailies
Burst of Awesome SBH attack 1
With a quaking shout and dramatic pose, you embolden your friends and weaken your foes.
Daily, Special, Play
Standard Action
Target: Burst 5
Attack: Charisma vs. Will
Hit: Cha modifier damage.
Special: Allies within radius gain a bonus equal to your charisma modifier to one opposed check of their choice in the next round.

Level 2 Utilities

Paragon Paths

[Yuki Akuma]

The Dreamer and Animal Lover are my babies, considering... I came up with them originally. Yeah.

I'm still not entirely sure how they'd work, though. For the Dreamer we'll need to work on the "Immersion" rules a bit more, really. My current ideas involve her being able to recover spent 'Immersion points' (or whatever it's called now) quickly, and use them to fuel her powers. She'd be focused on rearranging the Imaginal landscape (both literally and metaphorically), rewriting the 'story' the way she thinks it should go using the powers of pure creativity and improvisation. This would involve healing, removing penalties from allies, giving penalties to foes... so, something along the lines of a Leader or Controller (with the other as a 'secondary' role).

The Animal Lover, as I've said before, is focused either on fast-paced skirmishing, dishing out a lot of damage to one target before leaping away, or on combined attacks with an animal companion. Definitely a Striker with maybe a bit of Controller or Leader depending on how the animal companion ends up working.

[Baxter190]

We're focusing a lot on the classes you guys already have, but how about some new classes? I have come up with the following:

The Nightmare Kid-You know that kid in the class who's a little shy? The one thats a little...dark? Thats this kid. He could be a kid who has a troubled background that is a little dark such a abusers, or he just stayed up and watched Chucky with his older brother, and just can't comprehend it, so he uses his imagination.

The Bully- The kid who just has to be the boss, who tries to run everything, including your life? The bully is that guy. He has powers to make monsters do what he wants, and can make things change because he doesn't want it to happen, like making a monster not actually hit.

[ninja_penguin]

@ Baxter: I think for the most part that we're just trying to get the things that were from the other version updated into 4e, using thew new immersion mechanics and such. By making them a baseline, I'm pretty sure more stuff will follow. It is significantly easier to get two or three fully formed ideas, and branch off from there, then to try and have 12 half-formed ideas and try and make them mesh.

@ Elrosth, regarding the Storybook Hero:

First off, Are you unsure as to whether you want the storybook hero to be a defender or a leader? You've got them both listed, with a striker secondary. For the sake of my critique, I'm treating the storybook hero as a Leader primary, striker secondary.

Suggested changes

Power source: Possible typo? You list the power source as fiction, but all the powers have the 'play' keyword. trivial.

Weapons and Armor proficiencies: Needs some minor tweaking. However, for clarity's sake, the reasoning will be down at the archetype features.

Bonus to defense: Spread out to be +1 Fort, +1 reflex. Reasoning: Most classes with more then one playstyle tend to spread the defense bonus out like this. I also don't feel good with assigning the class defense from a class feature.

HP: Lower to 12 + Constitution score. Reasoning: 15 + constitution is usually reserved for defenders

HP per level: Lower to 5 Reasoning: Again, 6 per level is designed for primary defenders

Healing surges per day: Raise to 7 plus constitution modifier. Reasoning: boosting to the amount of surges per day given to a primary leader. I feel that numbers should be based off of the primary class role.

Trained skills: Lower to 4, or 3. 4 if religion and nature are optional skills, available solely on archetype choice. 3 if religion and nature are auto-trained by the archetype. Reasoning: 5 skills at level 1 is only given to rangers, and six skills to the rogue. The Storybook hero didn't strike me as a skill monkey.

Archetypes: This is a bit of a long one. Where the bonuses go, and what they do, are perfectly fine. However, when they do it is overpowered, in my opinion. Plusses to anything are precious in 4e. The Knight's archetype bonus effectively doubles his strength modifier in combat; the once per round limitation doesn't make up for the fact that most of the time you'll score a solid hit once per round. This is also where the weapon proficiency of simple melee and military melee becomes a problem; it's easy for a storybook hero to grab a double-handed weapon, and cheese it up with basic melee attack bonuses, and go to town. if you had a STR score of 18, you'd be scoring a minimum of 8 points of damage on an attack, every round. couple that with the [W] size of military melee and double-handed weapons, and he's got the potential for crazy damage output. By comparison, the Paladin's divine strength (add you STR mod to the next attack damage roll), is an encounter power that shuts out the other channel divinity options. Suggestion: Perhaps once per encounter, after hitting with an attack, you can add your STR modifier to the damage roll? Also, perhaps the storybook hero is only proficient in simple ranged and melee, and gains military melee if knight, military ranged if rogue.

Likewise, with every plus being precious, adding in a straight bonus to AC is a bit much. The Rogue's artful dodger feature can get away with this because it's bonus only applies to opportunity attacks. The Storybook hero is only one feat away from plate armor, and the hilariously high AC that a heavy shield and plate armor brings. Potential for cheese here: Heavy armor prohibits adding your Dex or Int mod, and this allows for you to pump the CHA into your AC instead. My DM has privately confided that he hates it when my Paladin marks enemies; he feels like he's wasting attacks trying to hit an AC of 23 at level 4. Imagine if it was 26, with my CHA modifier added! Suggestions: Change the AC bonus to an encounter ability. Once per encounter after being struck by an attack, increase the defense that was targeted by your CHA modifier as an immediate interrupt. Also remove heavy shield proficiency, possibly put armor down to chainmail.

Powers:

Clobber: Reaping strike expy, fine as is, I think.
Agile strike: Looks fine, feels strikery.

Running with scissors: I really like the concept, but think it needs to minor tweaking. 2[w] is rather impressive at the at-will level, normally only at-will upgraded to epic tier deal that much damage. Also becomes exploitable once you get a weapon that you can gain resistance to as an item property. Without said loophole, not sure if it's worth the drawback. Suggestions: Change to 1[W], allow the at-will to be used at the end of a charge. Change the miss effect to: "You take damage equal to your (str? con?) modifier, fall prone, and the target may shift one square.

IMFHYFIYF: No problems with this.

Trivial comment: All of these at wills feel strikery, I don't see any that give me a good feel of a leader role.

Encounter power: Fine by me.

Burst of Awesome: The effect is good and leadery, but needs tweaking. First of all, daily powers are allowed to deal ludicrous amounts of damage. I know it's burst 5, and you probably toned it down for that, but you could probably get away with tossing in a d6 or d8 in there for damage. Second, I don't think there are many opposed rolls that happen in a given turn. Suggestion:Change the effect to "all allies within the burst may add your CHA modifier to one roll on their next turn".


So there you go, I hope I don't give the impression that I'm ripping this apart or anything. I just sat down with the books, compared roles and numbers, and added in some commentary from my personal playing/DMing experiences.

[Elrosth]

I think it would do well to put my entire post in the context that I was mostly trying to put down a framework, and I tend to build flamboyantly in the name of flavor and then slim it down. So yeah, feel free to rip it apart.



First off, Are you unsure as to whether you want the storybook hero to be a defender or a leader? You've got them both listed, with a striker secondary. For the sake of my critique, I'm treating the storybook hero as a Leader primary, striker secondary.

I wasn't sure between the two, and I was using contradicting information from earlier in the thread when I wrote it, so I just put down both for now. After writing what I did so far though, I'm definitely leaning towards exactly that.



Power source: Possible typo? You list the power source as fiction, but all the powers have the 'play' keyword. trivial.


I didn't like that either. I want to do a lot more thematic actions, especially in the encounter/daily abilities, but the ones I had right now just seemed like regular play rather than fiction. I'll either have to re-flavor them, or maybe just make new ones for this class and keep these for another melee. I kinda liked the bully idea that was just mentioned.



Weapons and Armor proficiencies: Needs some minor tweaking. However, for clarity's sake, the reasoning will be down at the archetype features.


Agreed, but as a side note, am I the only one who likes the "Weapon/Armor Predilections" instead of proficiencies? I just thought it was kinda funny, and giving it more of a "I wear this cause its cool" feel than actually having trained in it. If nobody else likes it thats fine.



Bonus to defense: Spread out to be +1 Fort, +1 reflex. Reasoning: Most classes with more then one playstyle tend to spread the defense bonus out like this. I also don't feel good with assigning the class defense from a class feature.

HP: Lower to 12 + Constitution score. Reasoning: 15 + constitution is usually reserved for defenders

HP per level: Lower to 5 Reasoning: Again, 6 per level is designed for primary defenders

Healing surges per day: Raise to 7 plus constitution modifier. Reasoning: boosting to the amount of surges per day given to a primary leader. I feel that numbers should be based off of the primary class role.


Agreed. I have a weird tendency to add crazy amounts of divisions to stuff I build when I first sit down to do it. And, I think I was still imagining mainly a defender towards the beginning, so the top stats slant that way.



Trained skills: Lower to 4, or 3. 4 if religion and nature are optional skills, available solely on archetype choice. 3 if religion and nature are auto-trained by the archetype. Reasoning: 5 skills at level 1 is only given to rangers, and six skills to the rogue. The Storybook hero didn't strike me as a skill monkey.


This one I'm not sure on. I know a knight doesn't need those skills, but I kinda saw the rogue side of it a little stronger on that end. Maybe make it three and give the rogue a couple extra auto-trained ones?



Archetypes: This is a bit of a long one. Where the bonuses go, and what they do, are perfectly fine. However, when they do it is overpowered, in my opinion. Plusses to anything are precious in 4e. The Knight's archetype bonus effectively doubles his strength modifier in combat; the once per round limitation doesn't make up for the fact that most of the time you'll score a solid hit once per round. This is also where the weapon proficiency of simple melee and military melee becomes a problem; it's easy for a storybook hero to grab a double-handed weapon, and cheese it up with basic melee attack bonuses, and go to town. if you had a STR score of 18, you'd be scoring a minimum of 8 points of damage on an attack, every round. couple that with the [W] size of military melee and double-handed weapons, and he's got the potential for crazy damage output. By comparison, the Paladin's divine strength (add you STR mod to the next attack damage roll), is an encounter power that shuts out the other channel divinity options. Suggestion: Perhaps once per encounter, after hitting with an attack, you can add your STR modifier to the damage roll? Also, perhaps the storybook hero is only proficient in simple ranged and melee, and gains military melee if knight, military ranged if rogue.


Back to agreeing with you again. :) Even while I was writing, I was confident it wasn't going to be balanced. I just wanted to throw down something for the feel I was going for. The encounter power route sounds good. Also, I like the proficiency solution, I don't know why I didn't think of that when I was chopping everying else in the stat block in half. :)



Likewise, with every plus being precious, adding in a straight bonus to AC is a bit much. The Rogue's artful dodger feature can get away with this because it's bonus only applies to opportunity attacks. The Storybook hero is only one feat away from plate armor, and the hilariously high AC that a heavy shield and plate armor brings. Potential for cheese here: Heavy armor prohibits adding your Dex or Int mod, and this allows for you to pump the CHA into your AC instead. My DM has privately confided that he hates it when my Paladin marks enemies; he feels like he's wasting attacks trying to hit an AC of 23 at level 4. Imagine if it was 26, with my CHA modifier added! Suggestions: Change the AC bonus to an encounter ability. Once per encounter after being struck by an attack, increase the defense that was targeted by your CHA modifier as an immediate interrupt. Also remove heavy shield proficiency, possibly put armor down to chainmail.


Entirely agree that its overpowered, mostly agree that it should be chopped down. I really want the knight to be able to have nice shiny armor. I guess I'd more go the route of not letting rogues get the heavier armor, and not letting knights pump up their AC with Cha.



Powers:

Clobber: Reaping strike expy, fine as is, I think.
Agile strike: Looks fine, feels strikery.

Running with scissors: I really like the concept, but think it needs to minor tweaking. 2[w] is rather impressive at the at-will level, normally only at-will upgraded to epic tier deal that much damage. Also becomes exploitable once you get a weapon that you can gain resistance to as an item property. Without said loophole, not sure if it's worth the drawback. Suggestions: Change to 1[W], allow the at-will to be used at the end of a charge. Change the miss effect to: "You take damage equal to your (str? con?) modifier, fall prone, and the target may shift one square.


I don't like giving the character damage equal to his own stat, it doesn't make sense to me that a weaker character wouldn't hurt himself as much as a strong character if he tripped. Maybe a static amount? Or a d6 or something? Otherwise, yes, I like that a lot more.



IMFHYFIYF: No problems with this.

Trivial comment: All of these at wills feel strikery, I don't see any that give me a good feel of a leader role.


Yeah, I wasn't getting that either. I was moreso wanting to cover all the bases on the striker side at first, since I squished two of the original roles (swashbuckler and hunter) into one. But yeah, I wanna work on that.



Burst of Awesome: The effect is good and leadery, but needs tweaking. First of all, daily powers are allowed to deal ludicrous amounts of damage. I know it's burst 5, and you probably toned it down for that, but you could probably get away with tossing in a d6 or d8 in there for damage. Second, I don't think there are many opposed rolls that happen in a given turn. Suggestion:Change the effect to "all allies within the burst may add your CHA modifier to one roll on their next turn".


Do you think we should bump that up, or maybe lower the burst radius to like 3 and make it an encounter power?



So there you go, I hope I don't give the impression that I'm ripping this apart or anything. I just sat down with the books, compared roles and numbers, and added in some commentary from my personal playing/DMing experiences.

Thanks, I really appreciate it. Some of it was stuff I would've gotten to if I had worked on it a little more, some of it I just needed fresh eyes on, but all of it was good feedback.

[Yuki Akuma]

Getting some stuff down for the Animal Lover. This might be wrong, but eh.

Animal Lover
Role: Striker (secondary Controller)
Power Source: Role-model
Key Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom

Armour Proficiency: Cloth
Weapon Proficiency: Simple Melee
Bonus to Defense: +2 Reflex

HP at 1st level: 12 + Constitution score
HP per Level Gained: 5
Healing Surges per Level: 6 + Constitution modifier

Trained Skills
Nature; plus two of Acrobatics, Athletics, Perception or Stealth

Build Options: Animal Fighter, Animal Trainer

Class Features: Animal Companion, Role-Model, Tooth 'n Nail

Animal Companion
[No clue at present.]

Role-Model
Choose one of the following as your role-model. You gain a special at-will power, as well as a special option for certain powers with the appropriate keyword.
Animal: You gain the All Fours at-will power. Animal powers focus around skirmishing, dealing lots of damage to single targets before retreating to a safe disance.
Trainer: You gain the Pat On The Head at-will power. Trainer powers focus on working in tandem with your animal companion to distract and disorient foes before going in for the kill.

Tooth 'n Nail
You gain a +3 proficiency bonus to all unarmed melee attacks.

Animal Lover Class Features
All Fours
At-Will, Role-model
Minor Action (Special)
Effect: You add your Dexterity modifier to your speed. However, you may not use your hands for any purpose except attacking unarmed or controlling your pet.
Special: You can get up from prone and onto all fours as part of the same Move action. Ending the effect also requires a Move action.

Pat On The Head
At-Will (special), Role-model
Standard Action Melee
Target: Your animal companion
Effect: Encourages your animal companion to use one of its special "Pet" ability.
Special: Not all "Pet" abilities are also At-Will abilities; your animal companion may only use its "Pet" abilities if it has uses left that encounter.

Level 1 At-Will Powers
Savage Animal Lover Attack (Animal) 1
At-Will, Role-model, Unarmed(*)
Standard Action Melee 'Weapon'
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W]+Str mod damage
Animal: 2[W]+Str mod damage, and you can shift 1 square

One-Two Hit Animal Lover Attack (Trainer) 1
At-Will, Role-model
Standard Action Melee
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs AC, twice
Hit: 1d6 + Wisdom damage per hit
Trainer: If both attacks hit, you gain combat advantage against the target next turn.


Level ? Dailies
Savage Frenzy Animal Lover Attack (Animal) ?
Daily, Role-model, Unarmed
Standard Action Melee
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs AC
Hit: 1[W]+Str modifier, and attack again
Miss: Stop attacking
Animal: You may shift one square after each hit. If your target is out of range after shifting, you may select a new target.

(*) The 'Unarmed' keyword is basically the same as the Weapon keyword, except you can only strike unarmed with the power.

[Mephibosheth]

I haven't really had a chance to completely digest the discussion on the storybook hero, but I did want to make one comment. Elsroth and ninja_penguin seem to be proceeding under the assumption that the storybook hero fills the leader role. However, if we're going by the list I posted earlier (which seems to have general approval) and the original 3.5 version, the storybook hero should be a primary defender. The leader or striker role should be secondary, and I personally think the storybook hero could have a little of each.

Hope that clarifies things a little. I'll try and post some detailed comments later.

Mephibosheth

[ninja_penguin]

I was mostly trying to fit Elsroth's stuff into a specific role, as it was a little bit all over; Leader jumped out at me, mostly because of the Inspiring word analogue. We can probably retool it easy enough. What do you see as being the Storybook hero's secondary focus? Nailing that down will make things easier when thinking up the powers and such.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

With a screeching of brakes, allow me to point out, unsubtly, that utilizing the mechanics of fourth edition does not mean slavishly following its dictates as to what sort of class is and is not present, and does not mean reductive mechanics.

Excessively reductive and/or generic powers are one of the problems with fourth edition CUTE is designed to solve.

Also, and this is one of the very, very few times I'm stating something that is a project directive rather than an opinion, the original creators of a class (or of anything else) have first rights and, to a large degree, veto power. You'd have to have a really good reason.

I would be fine with a higher number of trained skills for each class in CUTE, by the by; and I believe we may need to consider whether our trained skills are the same as the core skills.

[ninja_penguin]

With a screeching of brakes, allow me to point out, unsubtly, that utilizing the mechanics of fourth edition does not mean slavishly following its dictates as to what sort of class is and is not present, and does not mean reductive mechanics.

Excessively reductive and/or generic powers are one of the problems with fourth edition CUTE is designed to solve.

I'm perfectly okay with this, but I want to make sure that we're all on the same page with things, or it could become balance hell trying to scale things against each other. I'm fine with tweaking the power level up higher, and adding in more unique things, but what do we want for a general baseline? I've been using 4e numbers simply for the lack of any other reference point, as I assume that we're going for the similar team balance. Maybe we need to step back from individual classes for a moment, and determine what we want our baseline powers, equipment, stats, and effects to be.




Also, and this is one of the very, very few times I'm stating something that is a project directive rather than an opinion, the original creators of a class (or of anything else) have first rights and, to a large degree, veto power. You'd have to have a really good reason.

Totally fine with this, I hope I haven't been giving the impression that I'm trying to take anybody's idea and run with it. Mephibosheth expressed unfamiliarity with 4e, so Elrosth made an attempt, and I added suggestions to it. I see this working as:

1. Person unfamiliar with mechanics feeds idea
2. People familiar with mechanics make an attempt
3. Person with original idea gets to review and edit/suggest changes if they feel it doesn't work out with their initial feeling.

[Yuki Akuma]

Don't worry, Shiny: the Animal Lover may be somewhat "mundane" at early levels, but the Dreamer's gonna be all about the creative weirdness. :P

Animal Lover will get more fantastic as she gains levels, too, as the further you are into the Imaginal Plane the easier it is to break the laws of physics to suit your whims.

And as for the Storyteller, well... do you think it would fit to take ideas from religion as well as contemporary and classical stories? :D Mainly because "Ragnarok" would be an awesome name for a power.

[Mephibosheth]

Totally fine with this, I hope I haven't been giving the impression that I'm trying to take anybody's idea and run with it. Mephibosheth expressed unfamiliarity with 4e, so Elrosth made an attempt, and I added suggestions to it. I see this working as:

1. Person unfamiliar with mechanics feeds idea
2. People familiar with mechanics make an attempt
3. Person with original idea gets to review and edit/suggest changes if they feel it doesn't work out with their initial feeling.

Just to quickly note, I think that Elsroth and ninja_penguin have been doing a great job and don't have any objections to them trying to put something together. As I said, I'm trying to familiarize myself with the system slowly and will keep commenting but don't feel ready to undertake the entire class construction process. So, go team!

Mephibosheth

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

I don't see why not.

Anyways; what I'm talking about is, don't be afraid to move beyond the typical number of power selections for a class- the Storybook Hero originally had versions based on each ability score and one based on 'floating' bonuses, and that could be kept.

Also, don't be afraid to include effects beyond 'x damage plus y effect'. Terrain alteration, keyword changing, power manipulation, anything goes; I have faith in our collective ability to balance the results.

For instance, for storybook hero:
Seventh Son
Encounter * Play
Standard Action Personal
Maybe it's not your area of expertise, but you're the lucky kind- you're the hero, after all...
Effect: You may choose to alter the key ability of a single attack power you possess for the duration of the encounter. The defense targeted by the power and any other effects do not change.

[Elrosth]

I agree that we could change the skill list, using the old one will probably be cumbersome to what our characters are actually going to be doing. As for the class structure, I'm of the mind that we should apply what we already have on the Storybook Hero to the other main classes, and after that start really rebalancing how our classes work. I fully agree that right now the Storybook Hero doesn't look like we eventually want it to, but I think we're going to be pretty inefficient if we don't start there, since we don't seem to share a concrete baseline to build from. I know it seems like we're confining our ideas, but I think it'd really help once we have that laid out and we can ask exactly how we want it to be different.

Again, just my opinion.

[Alcino]

"I'd like to go for more of a 'quantum reality' thing where whether fairies really exist, and are just out of phase, or don't exist, is ambiguous."

I'm late to the party, but I'd like to join. I had submitted about a dozen spells back in the days of CUTE 1.0.

My experience with 4E: I've pretty much read all of it, especially focusing on the crunch, and created a bunch of new content according to the guidelines. I've also DM'd over 100 hours of 4E campaigns.

My first thoughts about the new CUTE: I keep hearing about immersion, but never about HP... what about combining the two?

(Disclaimer: I really like Gaurd Juris's ideas, though. Dying in the real world sounds quite dramatic.)


Immersion Points as HP

Different classes would have varying IP; certain would be more immersed in general and thus harder to pull back to reality.Temporary HP would be, like, temporary suspension of disbelief instead.

Healing Surges, then, would represent how much a kid can keep "playing" even though he's had bad experiences in this session. The Healing Word-like abilities of the leaders would "encourage" others to stay in the imaginary world instead of giving up and go back to boring reality, abandoning their playgroup.

High-level imaginary monsters can obviously go through kids' HP/IP like through butter... in fluff terms, they would simply be so scary that kids escape back to reality without standing a chance. However, some specific monster powers could have more dangerous effects.

I think treating immersion just like HP does a few things right:
1 - It's a tried-and-true mechanic that everyone is familiar with.
2 - It's simpler than keeping track of HP and immersion at all times.
3 - It fits especially well with the "reality" of kids playing an imaginary game.

Say kids are playing Ghostbusters or something in the basement, with the lights out. One of them could be "attacked" by a ghost (whose existence is ambiguous) and lose IP because he's genuinely scared. At some point during the fight, he might have lost all his IP and start "wanting to stop", rolling "reality saving throws". Unless he's re-immersed by a leader or stabilized by some skill, he's likely to just drop out of the game and go back upstairs to mommy. The rest of the party might then decide to call it a day, having lost a player, and rejoin the dropper to try "convincing him to return" by using a "ritual".

Hey, the more I write, the more I think this would work really well. There would be no hard rules for kid/monster interactibilty, only player choice. Low-level kids, with low IP, will naturally refuse to even think about anything Cthulhu-esque, just like low-level D&D players want nothing to do with the Tarasque.

Also, kids could be naturally resistant to some kinds of attacks, whether intrinsically or through a feature, power or feat, just like normal D&D characters and monsters are resitant to certain damage types.


Adult Involvement

I think adults should be mostly left out of imaginary-land, but not entirely.

They clearly have some power over monsters; for example, monsters-under-the-bed are strictly powerless when there's an adult around. Also, adults have not lost all imagination. They can even join kids in their games, playing along temporarily. They shouldn't be as efficient as kids, though, as their suspension of disbelief is quite low, making them prone to quitting early, and their understanding of imaginary-land is lower, making them have a lesser impact.

They could be minions with one immersion point, meaning they're "just trying out" and can quite well be given "temporary suspension of disbelief". However, their attacks are inefficient and lacking conviction; unable to truly immerse themselves, they also can't be coerced into staying in a game against their will via Healing Word-like powers. No "reality saving throws" either.

Another reason why adults can't be out: while most adults are immunized against most imaginary monsters (such as MutB), some are genuinely scared of ghosts or still have some beliefs associated with childhood. Normally, their limited immersion (and effectiveness) would simply keep them confined to reality whenever they're exposed to something imaginary. Maybe the adults developed this "resistance" by getting to the end of the epic tier.

However, imaginary creatures have an ambiguous existence. Let's use ghosts an an example. Most real-life adults, whether they believe in ghosts or not, have never been influenced by them. If ghosts exist, as I suppose they do in the default CUTE campaign world, most are probably not very convincing and adults can rationalize them easily. Some ghosts are quite active, though, and can terrorize adults in reality once they've exhausted their single IP.

Kids are a different story. Their imagination can empower non-existent creatures into becoming real imaginary threats, but it can also bring ghosts to a level of existence where the children can deal with them with their full range of class powers.

In other words, the kids' immersion allows them to deal with threats they create themselves (like evil teddy bears) as well as ambiguous threats (like ghosts). Adults don't have that luxury.


Power Level

In 4E, custom content can be much easier to do than before, like monsters. Other content, like classes, can be very time-consuming, requiring a big range of powers at many levels.

I've only read the thread diagonally from page 2, so I'd like to know if there's a consensus about PC levels. Here are my thoughts.

Creating 30 class levels is only time-consuming because of the powers. Class features are all granted from level 1. In 4E, the power curve is well ironed-out (whatever that means), so having fewer than 30 levels can reduce the difference between low- and high-level characters and monsters too much. Paragon paths and Epic destinies are fine, though, and I think everyone wants to keep them.

If we're going for 30 levels, we need tons and tons of powers. We also need many rituals, feats and magic items. Powers could be treated 3E-style, meaning most of them are shared between classes, but the fluff could suffer since the CUTE classes are very unique.

Another solution would be 15 levels, the obvious benefit being less work. There would still be three tiers, but the power progression would be different. Kids would not progress that much, statistically speaking, but their low-level powers would stay relevant forever and the high-level ones would be accessed earlier. A less-obvious benefit is that I have no idea how a CUTE campaign could possibly stretch across 30 levels.

While I prefer the 15-level option, especially if we're aiming for more effective powers than Core 4E, 30 levels are viable. Better have tons of material ready, though.

I could always try making an outline of what a 15-level progression would look like.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

That's...actually a very interesting idea.
I'd like some votes on it, but I'm honestly tentatively in favor.

I also think we need to narrow our efforts somewhat; right now we seem to be working at cross-purposes, with a lot of 'here's what we should do' and things getting done on a piecemeal basis.

I'll be putting up an (optional) 'focus of the week/month' heading on the first post, so we can try and get some concensus momentum. I think things will go a lot faster and better if we're all discussing roughly the same thing at roughly the same time.

[LastoftheSummer]

Those familiar with 4E could start stating 30 levels of one class(Storybook Hero seems relatively straight forward) and see what issues/obtacles arise. It could be condensed down into 15 levels later if it becomes more practical and it would give a starting point for those unfamiliar with 4E or CUTE.

[Alcino]

Hmm... I'd like to start working on something concrete, but there's something I'm not sure about.

Here are a few of the 3E spells/powers I had created. All of them would work perfectly as long as they concern... uh... kid vs. kid combat.


Rude Gesture
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-affecting]
Level: 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Visual
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Will negates

The caster makes rude gesture aimed at a particular creature. If the creature can distinguish it, the gesture is automatically recognized as very rude and deserving of retribution, regardless of culture. If the creature then fails its Will save (it can choose to fail it), it becomes enraged (as in the Rage spell) and must attack the caster exclusively.


Comment
I would assume that fairy tale creatures, ghosts and Cthulhu are all affected.


Hard Truth
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Language Dependant, Mind-affecting, Sonic]
Level: 4
Components: V
Casting Time: 1 full-round action
Range: Special (see description)
Duration: Instantaneous (see description)
Saving Throw: Will negates

Hard Truth is a more powerful version of Taboo but is not affected by how much the caster knows his victim. Also, the target creature becomes paralyzed instead of nauseated, their eyes widening and showing a blank gaze.


Comment
I can't imagine ghosts or Cthulhu being affected, although some "innocent" fairy tale creatures could be. Maybe such powers could use a keyword, like "Innocent", and some creatures would be immune to Innocent powers.


I'm Invisible
Illusion (Glamer)
Level: 3
Components: S
Casting Time: Free action
Range: Visual (see description)
Duration: 1 min./level
Saving Throw: Will negates (see description)

At any time, the caster can declare "I'm invisible!" and make a gesture that indicates it. "I'm invisible!" does not have to be heard for the spell to work but is usually said for flavor. If both hands are free and used to make the gesture, the spell automatically succeeds and lasts for the normal duration; else, a saving throw is allowed. The spell ends as soon as the gesture is unmade, no matter the reason.

I'm Invisible can be cast reactively to negate any attack, targeted spell or any other intentional threat on the character, but the source of the threat can make a saving throw (if possible). If the saving throw fails, I'm Invisible works as usual and the source of the threat can replace its lost action with any other one that doesn't threaten the caster. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell automatically fails.

Interestingly enough, I'm Invisible depends entirely on the hand gesture, which is considered two sizes smaller than the caster. Consequently, creatures that can see the caster but cannot distinguish the gesture are unaffected by the spell and perceive the caster normally. This usually happens at considerable range, but a very unperceptive creature could be at close range and fail to notice the gesture. In the cases where simply no one present has noticed the gesture, use the rules for casting I'm Invisible reactively, effectively resetting the duration of the spell. Also, some creatures might have ways to perceive the caster without noticing the gesture.


You Can't See Me
Enchantment (Charm) [Mind-affecting]
Level: 2
Components: V
Casting Time: Free action
Range: Hearing
Target: 1 creature/level
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Will negates

Upon being perceived by a creature, the caster can declare "You can't see me!" as a free action. Targets who fail their saving throw are forced to ignore the caster. While the spell's name implies only sight is impaired, hearing is affected too. And although the caster must be ignored, plausible coincidences are tolerable.

The spell abides by the usual rules for charms, but it also ends if the caster attempts to steal or destroy any of the targets' possessions or other interests.


Comment
Now these two are problematic, as they rely on childhood conventions. How much do imaginary creatures respect the kids' will? If a kid uses the "I'm Invisible" power, would a "real" ghost respect the gesture? Can a kid force a pixie to ignore him with "You Can't See Me"?


I would really like for some powers, even whole classes, to rely on the concept of innocence and childhood conventions.

Kids pretty much enter the imaginary world when immersing themselves, making that world come to life. I also know that immersion allows them to influence that world "magically", affecting Cthulhu (if needed) by the power of their conviction.

Can we agree that kids' immersion makes their own world, with conventions and all, real too?


P.S. Uh... rereading the message, I think I pretty much answered my own question in the paragraph right before I asked it. Still posting the message, though.

[Yuki Akuma]

Immersion as HP? Eeeh... I'm not sure I really like that idea. Especially as it seems to make everything 'pretend', while I thought it was meant to be a little more ambiguous than that.

And I like having thirty levels to play with. >.>

[Belobog]

The only thing I haven't seen addressed yet is what would happen if a monster overrode the parental de-immersion effect, especially in the case of the 'fairy tale' setting. What happens when a monster pulls children into the Imaginal World against their will, so that it may affect them? Fairy tales are rife with these creatures, in part because their existence is assumed to be real rather than the other way around, and the presence of an adult simply isn't enough to pull a child out of that consequence. A good example would be The Erlking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Erlk%C3%B6nig), where a father and child ride through the woods at night, and the child is beset by a spirit. Despite the father's presence and his insistence that there's nothing there, the child can still perceive the spirit, and when it reaches out to touch him, the child dies. Of course, this is a drastic occurrence, but it's just something that hit me when I was reading the rules. I can also see it coming into conflict 'IP as HP'; while it works from a sensible and mechanical standpoint, I can see it cutting down on what's possible with the system. Then again, maybe that's a good thing; if it's a game centered around children, and it turns too dark, the kids wouldn't stay kids for very long.

Still, so far this has been a fantastic read, and I can't wait to see it when everything comes together.

[Alcino]

So... I've read more about immersion and I'm starting to agree that IP = HP won't allow for the planned range ef experiences.


HP Thoughts

I think "HP" should represent a child's commitment to whatever fairy tale he's living. For "Heroic" adventures, which mostly take place in the real world with some imaginary elements, losing all commitment would just shunt him back to reality, as previously suggested.

But deep, deep in imaginary-land, there's no such recourse. The child might have a crisis instead, becoming totally useless and wanting nothing else than to go home.

Commitment Points, CP, could work well, but it would be more elegant if we could find a word that starts with "H" instead.


Out of HP

"One clarification as to when which circumstance results from 'death': it's a function of the cause. Each monster, hazard or trap has a new line in their statistics block listing...well, ever played a game of Munchkin? Each card has a description of 'Bad Stuff' that happens if you're defeated by the monster, ranging from nothing, to death, to losing your hat. I suggest we adopt this term, since it's the same basic idea."

That! I couldn't have said it better. Most bad monsters close to the real world would just kick you back to reality, but evil Erlkonig might drag you deep, where there's no escape.

Actually, I think this would fit well with the concept of tiers. The first tier, Heroic, could be called Make-Believe instead, where kids have simple games that take place in familiar environments. They would start meeting fairy tale creatures but would never be far from their parents. At this point, HP/CP would mostly represent commitment to the make-believe games the kids are playing.

In Epic, though (or whatever other word we could find), the children are adventuring in pure imaginary realms far from reality, and HP/CP would represent their commitment to what they are trying to accomplish, whatever that is. At first, I thought everything would always be ambiguous, but the consensus is clearly that imagination-land exists.

Anyway, I think "death" consequences should be linked to the depth to which kids have entered imagination-land. Two separate depths would be sufficient, but a case could be made for three.

Like usual in 4E's exception-based design, some specific monsters could inflict worse effects than the default "death" consequences.


About Immersion

I don't like the immersion system as I've read it. It works for low immersion, uh... "zones", but accumulating points, comparing them to monsters', resetting them and spending them seems like way too much trouble.

Even worse, it feels needlessly limiting. A DM that needs his players to enter a high-immersion zone can simply expose them to it or have his players affected by a special effect. Seems arbitrary at times.

Maybe it would be better to leave "immersion depth" as a story tool or some kind of indicator ("you are currently at immersion 3") of how deep in imaginary-land you are.


Further Thoughts

After having given it some more thought, I still think that 15 levels are quite enough. We could have 30 levels, but as many people have pointed out about 4E, reading through the PH is a hassle. There are too many powers to abosrb, too many feats to judge, too many magic items to consider.

Many players haven't tried 4E because they're turned off by the sheer amount of content they must come to terms with before playing the game, and power lists for each class take the bulk of that content.

Keeping progression at 15 levels would cut the content to about 2/3 and reduce the power difference between low-level and high-level... kids. Which fits, in my opinion, as kids typically start out quite powerful in their own minds and don't divert that far from that power level. 30 levels are really useful in a D&D game, starting from lowly heroes and ending as demi-gods or something, but kids in fairy tales?

A few things would need to stay in those 15 levels, though. What's necessary is:

Class Builds. Having at least two specialisations in each class is great. Paragon Paths. Same line of thought. The PP should be linked to how kids decide to impose themselves now that they can access the "real" imaginary-land. Epic Destinies. To show how what they learned in their adventures will shape their later adult selves.
With stat growths and feats here and there, obviously. More utility powers?

Anyway, I'll start working on the skeleton of a class. I'm definitely not going with the Storybook Hero. First, he now incorporates too many archetypes and should be split in at least two different classes. Second, even after the split, I could just copy-paste the Fighter with some fluff changes and it would fit right in.

Instead, I'll go for a flavor-heavy custom class.

[Alcino]

Here's a tentative 15-level table.

CHARACTER PROGRESSION
{table=head]Level|Bonus|XP to next|Stats|Features|Feats|Powers|Encounter|Daily|U tility
1st|0|1000|base|class features|1|base|1|1|0
2nd|0|1250|-|-|2|new utility|1|1|1
3rd|+1|1500|-|-|2|new encounter|2|1|1
4th|+1|1750|+1 to two|-|3|new utility|2|1|2
5th|+2|2000|-|-|3|new daily|2|2|2
6th|+2|2500|+1 to all|paragon features|4|new encounter (p)|3|2|2
7th|+2|3000|-|-|5|new utility (p)|3|2|3
8th|+3|3500|-|paragon feature|5|new daily|3|3|3
9th|+3|4000|+1 to two|-|6|new utility|3|3|4
10th|+4|5000|-|-|6|new daily (p)|3|4|4
11th|+4|6000|+1 to all|epic feature|7|new encounter|4|4|4
12th|+4|7000|-|-|8|new utility|4|4|5
13th|+5|8000|-|-|8|replace encounter|4*|4|5
14th|+5|10000|+1 to two|-|9|epic utility|4|4|6
15th|+6|-|-|epic feature|9|replace daily|4|4*|6[/table]

Of note:
The "Bonus" column replaces the Core half-level bonus for balance reasons.
The "XP to next" is unchanged from Core.
3 feats per tier.
Feats that get better at each tier still do.
A new power at every level.
At-Will powers do not gain damage at epic levels.
High Crit weapons only get a bonus critical dice at epic levels.
High-level powers can have effects of the same range as Core but should do damage appropriate to their listed level (i.e. final dailies are not 7W).
The DMG guidelines for monster stats are balanced against this table, but their power effects (other than damage) should scale just as players'.
Item bonuses are unchanged, capping at +3 enhancement.

Keep in mind, the 15-level progression is just a proposition, and my enthusiasm will not diminish if it is rejected.

[blackfox]

YES YES YES! C.U.T.E. is BACK! :smallbiggrin:

We're 4e now, right? Once I actually get the 4e books I will definitely be statting up some amazingly C.U.T.E. monsters.

[Elrosth]

Well, it *was* back...

I like the progression table, even if we have to modify it as we go it's a good baseline at the very least. Anybody have anything else? I know I'm not helping cause I don't have anything either, but I *really* wanna see CUTE continue.

[Uncle Festy]

This looks really awesome. Keep it alive!
I'll try and come up with something to contribute, but I'm not so familiar with 4e…
/relurks

[Vic_Sage]

I just found this thread and absolutely fell in love with the idea of it and wanna help in anyway I can.

A note, on the Guardian Bearer, have any of you played a game called Guilty Gear or Naruto (Don't lynch me) per chance? In that game theres a character called Bridge that fights with a yoyo that turns into a bair she can control on a string and Kankuro fights with a slew of puppets in kind of the same way.

[Yuki Akuma]

Bridget is not a she.

*waiting for Shiny to come back again*

I must say I'm still not thrilled by the 15-level progression table.

[ninja_penguin]

Yeah, as I've gotten more involved with 4e, the 15 level table has grown less and less on me. I'd like to say I could contribute stuff, but I really won't have long-term time to work on stuff until, like, summer. I guess I could grab a concept and work on it over time.

[Elrosth]

So how would you change the progression?

[Uncle Festy]

I must say I'm still not thrilled by the 15-level progression table.

Neither am I.
I feel like that the whole point of this (not that I've been involved long enough to say for sure, but…) is to have kids who are still heroes. Stunting the level progression make it feel… incomplete.

[Yuki Akuma]

So how would you change the progression?

Add 15 more levels.

I think it's a mistake to compare the kids to adult D&D heroes. Most of their adventures take place in a world that is ideally suited to children, giving them as much of an advantage as an adult in a D&D world gets; probably moreso, in fact. So, therefore, I think we shouldn't try to compare the two, and just go with the baseline 30-level progression in fourth edition.

[ninja_penguin]

Right, basically what Yuki said. It's not so much that I think the children are equal to adult adventurers, etc, but that 15 levels feels stunted and too fast.

[Uncle Festy]

*cough*
Bumpitty bump?

[Elrosth]

Badumpa-dump.

[mikeejimbo]

I think that some adults should retain the ability to imagine. Artists and psychotics, perhaps.

[Uncle Festy]

I think that some adults should retain the ability to imagine. Artists and psychotics, perhaps.

Psychos for the win! :smallbiggrin:

[Yuki Akuma]

:smallannoyed: I don't agree with that. There's a difference between having an active imagination and being able to Imagine.

Some adults, sure, but it should be really rare and not related to mental illness.

[Vadin]

:smallannoyed: I don't agree with that. There's a difference between having an active imagination and being able to Imagine.

Some adults, sure, but it should be really rare and not related to mental illness.

By which, I assume, you mean that the rare adult in question may or may not be mentally ill, which may or may not be a result of what he sees when he Imagines? That the two are largely independent of each other, though it is very well possible that the goblins and owlbears and fey and dragons in the Imaginal Plane could very well cause the unprepared adult to go quite completely insane?

[Yuki Akuma]

By which, I assume, you mean that the rare adult in question may or may not be mentally ill, which may or may not be a result of what he sees when he Imagines? That the two are largely independent of each other, though it is very well possible that the goblins and owlbears and fey and dragons in the Imaginal Plane could very well cause the unprepared adult to go quite completely insane?

Yes.

I'd see it as a more... spiritual thing than a mental thing. Don't take this as gospel, though, it's just one guy's opinion.

[ninja_penguin]

Bah, I'd love to continue on this stuff, I love the themes and everything, but I pretty much have no free time until June, at best.

[mikeejimbo]

Yes.

I'd see it as a more... spiritual thing than a mental thing. Don't take this as gospel, though, it's just one guy's opinion.

I meant to imply by 'psychotics' that they are adults who can Imagine and because of that, are labeled as 'psychotic' by other adults. And yes, exceedingly rare it should be, but I don't think out of the question. And mostly limited to NPCs, at that.