Here's an idea: Positive/Negative balance casting.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Whenever I have an idea for some homebrew, I like to post a thread asking for comments on the idea itself before taking the time to write up an entire class, magic system, spell line, or whatever I make. I find that when I can get very early feedback, it helps focus my ideas. I also like to work with other people to bounce ideas off each other and iterate.

Everyone has their own things they dislike about vancian casting. Some can't stand arbitrary spell levels, some loathe the imbalance created by spell flexibility, and some don't like prepared spells. But what I don't like about the standard casting mechanic is the "spells per day" system. A caster shouldn't be able to throw out their most powerful, earth-shaking spells all day, every day, but saying "you can cast X spells of this level and Y spells of that level" seems arbitrary. So that leads into what I have here: balance casting.

Enter the Karmacist. The karmacist casts spells from a personal pool of energy, and must always maintain the balance between positive and negative. When using negative energy spells, the karmacist gains positive energy that can be used to fuel positive energy spells. In other words, when the karmacist inflicts negative energy on another, he is really just taking their positive energy into himself, and he can distribute that positive energy later among others.

Now, on to the actual mechanics: a karmacist has a pool of energy from which they cast. Unlike most resources, the amount of energy in a karmacist's energy pool can be either a positive or negative number. Dealing negative energy damage grants a karmacist energy equal to the damage dealt. Likewise, spending positive energy to heal drains a karmacist, decreasing their energy by the amount healed. The maximum amount of energy a karmacist can store is equal to their karmacist level times their Wisdom score (not modifier). At 1st level, a karmacist can spend a standard action to focus energy into a creature, healing or dealing damage equal to [something that scales off Charisma]. As a karmacist levels, they get more ways to move around energy: rays, area-of-effect channeling, and at higher levels, building undead, creating elementals, and performing resurrections.

So, overall, what do you all think? Does the playground like the idea? And would anyone else want to help develop it?

[Xuldarinar]

Its interesting conceptually. One could take the concept and even expand upon it. Cold/Fire casting, Electricity/Acid, Good spells/Evil spells, Lawful spells/Chaotic spells, and so on and so forth. The bottom line is all in the execution and the balancing.

[Steward]

I definitely really like the concept, and I'll be able to talk more about it once I have an example of it in action. My question though is that as far as I know most spells do not explicitly use positive or negative energy. How does this system work? I assume you're going to turn every spell effect that you want to include into one of the two types (positive or negative), but how specifically are going to balance it? I think I really do not

Let's say Karim the Karmacist is at 1st level, with a Wisdom score of 10.

So his max energy is 10, right? So if he wants, he can use a ray to heal his sister Ashley for 10 points, making his karma pool now 0. But you say that the number can be both positive and negative right? Does that mean that, if he needs to, he can keep healing Ashley for more than that, pushing his karma pool below 0, to, say, -5? Or is the limit really 0, and he needs to inflict negative energy damage to push his energy back up to the maximum 10 so that he can keep healing?

I have a feeling I'm butchering this concept. Can you help me visualize it better?

[AttilaTheGeek]

Its interesting conceptually. One could take the concept and even expand upon it. Cold/Fire casting, Electricity/Acid, Good spells/Evil spells, Lawful spells/Chaotic spells, and so on and so forth. The bottom line is all in the execution and the balancing.

Ooh, interesting. Archetypes/ACFs, perhaps?

I definitely really like the concept, and I'll be able to talk more about it once I have an example of it in action. My question though is that as far as I know most spells do not explicitly use positive or negative energy. How does this system work?

I was really worried I didn't make it clear enough, and it looks like I didn't.

I assume you're going to turn every spell effect that you want to include into one of the two types (positive or negative), but how specifically are going to balance it? I think I really do not

That first sentence is basically correct. I can just make a sweeping generalization by saying "all spells on the Cleric spell list that heal are positive spells, and all Cleric spells with the [evil] descriptor that deal damage are negative". But you really do not... understand?

Let's say Karim the Karmacist is at 1st level, with a Wisdom score of 10.

So his max energy is 10, right? So if he wants, he can use a ray to heal his sister Ashley for 10 points, making his karma pool now 0. But you say that the number can be both positive and negative right? Does that mean that, if he needs to, he can keep healing Ashley for more than that, pushing his karma pool below 0, to, say, -5? Or is the limit really 0, and he needs to inflict negative energy damage to push his energy back up to the maximum 10 so that he can keep healing?

His energy can be anywhere from -10 to 10. It should also start at 0, but assuming he starts at 10 energy, he can heal her for 10 hit points and that'll bring him to 0 energy. He could heal her for another 10 hit points, which would bring him to -10 energy.

At that point, he wouldn't have any more energy with which to fuel his healing spells. So he'd need to, say, go up to a goblin and deal it 10 damage. That would grant him 10 energy (putting him at 0), because he's essentially taking the life-force into himself, and he could then spend that 10 energy (going back down to -10) to heal Ashley for another 10 damage.

I have a feeling I'm butchering this concept. Can you help me visualize it better?

You're not, I just couldn't figure out how to explain it well. I imagine it like a number line - remember those from grade school? The karmacist's energy is represented by a point on the line. The point is moved to the right (positive direction) by dealing negative energy damage (expending negative energy), and the point is moved to the left (negative direction) by healing (expending positive energy). Or, if that's a bit too abstract, you can ignore it.

[Steward]

That's perfect. I don't think your original explanation was bad, I was just having trouble visualizing it. The number line idea makes it completely clear to me now, and that was what I was thinking originally.

That first sentence is basically correct. I can just make a sweeping generalization by saying "all spells on the Cleric spell list that heal are positive spells, and all Cleric spells with the [evil] descriptor that deal damage are negative". But you really do not... understand?

I understand the concept, I was just having trouble thinking of how you would slot in spells that aren't either healing or do not have the [evil] descriptor would work. Like Summon Monster V to call a mephit -- positive or negative? Or telekinesis -- positive or negative? What about scrying or teleportation -- positive or negative? I feel like you would have to make many of the classifications somewhat arbitrary, which honestly I would be completely comfortable with since, well, it's not as if their current classifications make too much sense. (For instance, right now sometimes blasting someone with energy is conjuration and other times it's evocation).

[AttilaTheGeek]

That's perfect. I don't think your original explanation was bad, I was just having trouble visualizing it. The number line idea makes it completely clear to me now, and that was what I was thinking originally.

Oh, great! I'm a huge math nerd, and when I begin speaking about anything abstract I tend to elicit blank looks and stares, but it's good to know that the number line is helpful.

I understand the concept, I was just having trouble thinking of how you would slot in spells that aren't either healing or do not have the [evil] descriptor would work. Like Summon Monster V to call a mephit -- positive or negative? Or telekinesis -- positive or negative? What about scrying or teleportation -- positive or negative? I feel like you would have to make many of the classifications somewhat arbitrary, which honestly I would be completely comfortable with since, well, it's not as if their current classifications make too much sense. (For instance, right now sometimes blasting someone with energy is conjuration and other times it's evocation).

Actually, I was thinking of giving either their own spell list, which would just deal with positive/negative energy, but a good bit of it would be taken from the Cleric list. The other thing I was considering was just giving a whole bunch of SLAs. For example, "SLA: transfer positive or negative energy into a target with a touch, healing or dealing damage equal to [something that scales off Charisma], at will". Either way, I remove the arbitrary classification of Telekinesis into either positive or negative by not letting the Karmacist cast Telekenisis at all.

[Day_Dreamer]

I could easily see this being massively, massively abusable. If you were constructing an entirely new system based on this it could be really cool, but there are any number of ways, as I perceive it, this systems could be exploited.

Case A: Karmacist out of combat
After a difficult fight in a forest, most of the party is down to pretty low hp. The Cleric could burn a lot of spells to heal everyone up, or....
the Karmacist heals a person. Then hurts a tree. Then heals again. Repeat.
Similarly, the Karmacist can likely cast any generic utility spells she knows an arbitrary number of times in a row simply by burning their other-karma on something irrelevant and quick.

Case B: Karmacist in combat
Karmacist spends turn 1 on a big damage spell on something!!!!
Karmacist spends turn 2 on a big healing/buff spell on something!!!!
etc.

For this to work, I would recommend considering inverting the way this currently works; dealing damage increases your damage dealing capacity, and healing increases your healing abilities. Your pool would gradually go to 0 over the course of time outside of active spellcasting. Maybe going too far in one direction has negative repercussions; when you are overly negative your spells bleed out a bit into yourself, hurting you. When you are overly positive, your spells bleed out and heal everyone, friend or foe. Or give you cancer.

[Just to Browse]

Case B: Karmacist in combat
Karmacist spends turn 1 on a big damage spell on something!!!!
Karmacist spends turn 2 on a big healing/buff spell on something!!!!
etc.

This is the abuse I see being most problematic. If you're trying to write up a class that requires being flexible in combat, then do it by magnitude (basic math example: deal between 0 and 10 damage + energy, subtract damage dealt from your energy. Max energy is 10).

[Day_Dreamer]

This is the abuse I see being most problematic. If you're trying to write up a class that requires being flexible in combat, then do it by magnitude (basic math example: deal between 0 and 10 damage + energy, subtract damage dealt from your energy. Max energy is 10).

Yeah, a flat "do energy damage/heal" is pretty gamebreaking, conceptually.

concept:

Minor Karmic Rebalance:
Range: Touch
+1/-1 Karma.
If you have positive Karma, gives +1 Karma, otherwise, gives -1.
If you have positive Karma, heals 1d6+Karma (max 5).
Otherwise, deals 1d6-Karma damage (max 5)

[Steward]

I guess the best way to mitigate that without changing the core mechanic would be to have a restricted spell list -- one that is pared down to the point where you can't really 'break the game'.

Either that or you could make it into a spell point system, where certain effects have either different costs or different replenishment amounts.

Or maybe you can have a limitation on how often you can replenish your spell pool or how much of it you can expend at once, but then that just becomes a de facto spell point system or something similar to psionics, which would be OK but it would kind of change the cool concept of having two sources of energy, one of which replenishes the other.

[AttilaTheGeek]

For this to work, I would recommend considering inverting the way this currently works; dealing damage increases your damage dealing capacity, and healing increases your healing abilities.

I thought about this, but since healing in combat is really weak, the karmacist would just do DPS in combat and then heal out of combat. I chose to have it inverted so that one always has to use both energy types.

[Day_Dreamer]

I thought about this, but since healing in combat is really weak, the karmacist would just do DPS in combat and then heal out of combat. I chose to have it inverted so that one always has to use both energy types.

It might be possible to design specifically around the weakness of conventional combat healing. Maybe powerful AOE healing spells that are indiscriminate, healing friend and foe alike?

The way it is currently set up just forces you to alternate between buffs and strikes every turn, which I (I've played a similar roll in another game) ends up feeling a bit meh.

[AttilaTheGeek]

It might be possible to design specifically around the weakness of conventional combat healing. Maybe powerful AOE healing spells that are indiscriminate, healing friend and foe alike?

Yeah. I've always found it arbitrary how energy can somehow distinguish between friend and foe. But perhaps some kind of "efficiency" mechanic is needed, because an aoe that does X damage/healing to Y targets costs X*Y energy, which can get really big, really fast.

The way it is currently set up just forces you to alternate between buffs and strikes every turn, which I (I've played a similar roll in another game) ends up feeling a bit meh.

To a certain extent, I guess, but it shouldn't have to be every turn. Also, not buffing, just healing. Though...maybe buffing. We'll see.

[Day_Dreamer]

Yeah. I've always found it arbitrary how energy can somehow distinguish between friend and foe. But perhaps some kind of "efficiency" mechanic is needed, because an aoe that does X damage/healing to Y targets costs X*Y energy, which can get really big, really fast.



To a certain extent, I guess, but it shouldn't have to be every turn. Also, not buffing, just healing. Though...maybe buffing. We'll see.

You could say, perhaps:
All healing stuff is aoe somehow. Or, more interestingly, all healing stuff becomes AOE if your karma is high enough.
damage stuff is generally more single target. If your karma is low enough, it might become AOE as well. If the AOE is, say, a circle centered on yourself, this could result in an interesting management game of your karma-resources and map positioning.

[Aldreck]

Reading your opening post made me think of the Lifeweaver, a homebrew class that was posted in this forum back in 2010. You might like to check out this thread for inspiration and ideas: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140211

[AttilaTheGeek]

You could say, perhaps:
All healing stuff is aoe somehow. Or, more interestingly, all healing stuff becomes AOE if your karma is high enough.
damage stuff is generally more single target. If your karma is low enough, it might become AOE as well. If the AOE is, say, a circle centered on yourself, this could result in an interesting management game of your karma-resources and map positioning.

I still want to keep the balance between positive and negative karma, though; having healing get better (be aoe) the more you heal (raise your karma) goes against that. At the very least, by low/mid-level there are four main things it needs to be able to do:

• Single-target damage
• Area-of-effect damage.
• Single-target healing.
• Area-of-effect healing.

What if we just say this: Each round, the maximum amount of energy you can channel is equal to [scales off level and CHA]. You can channel all the positive or negative energy to heal or damage a single target, or you can distribute it evenly around an area. For example, if I can channel up to 50 energy each round, I could do 50 damage to one target, or I could choose a certain radius around me that has 5 other creatures in it and heal each of them for 10, or I could choose a larger radius that happens to have 10 creatures in it and damage each of them for 5.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Reading your opening post made me think of the Lifeweaver, a homebrew class that was posted in this forum back in 2010. You might like to check out this thread for inspiration and ideas: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140211

Oh, wow. That's eerily similar to what I'm going for.

I want to avoid using dice, because rolling 10d4 is just inconvenient. It's much faster and easier to compress that to 25. Which, at level 20, is really not a lot. 1d4/two levels averages to 1.125 points per level, but I think a better scaling might be, say, 3 or 4 points per level. I thought about CHA modifier times level, but that would scale too quickly. I want the maximum amount of energy one can store to key off Wisdom, but the amount they can channel should scale off Charisma because it's more flavorful but also to reduce SADness.

[Rainbownaga]

This made me think of the shadowsun ninja from ToB Which had a fairly similar ability.

One question is whether your "positive an negative energy" have . opposite effects on undead. If they do it could cause balance issues both ways- A mixed party could abuse healing, a mix of enemies could allow max strength blasting each round and a run of undead would force them to use shenanigans to remain relevant.

[AttilaTheGeek]

This made me think of the shadowsun ninja from ToB Which had a fairly similar ability.

I'm not familiar with it, but I'll look it up. Edit: That's really cool. I may have to plunder its abilities use it for inspiration.

One question is whether your "positive an negative energy" have . opposite effects on undead. If they do it could cause balance issues both ways- A mixed party could abuse healing, a mix of enemies could allow max strength blasting each round and a run of undead would force them to use shenanigans to remain relevant.

It would seem really arbitrary to say "your energy works just like normal energy, but isn't flipped for undead". I guess I just have to live with the balance problem? I'm not sure how else to fix it.

[Gildedragon]

One could do it following a warlock's eldritch blast progression of damage
Allowing the energy burst to work similar to turn/rebuke as a targeted effect might be neat.

If granting spells, going for something like wizard of the sun and moon and prepping 2 spells in 1 slot might be neat. They have to be opposition spells; either spells that explicitly counter each other or from opposing descriptors: light-darkness, fire-cold, acid-electric, good-evil, law-chaos; as special feat: corrupt/vile-sanctified could be taken be the LN, TN, and CN karmachamaleon

[Saito Takuji]

seems rather hard to balance out but an awesome concept.

One thing that may work is being too far towards one side has detrimental effects of some kind. and to prevent cheesing around this a karmicist would be unable to affect themselves, and mabey even other karmacists, otherwise a whole team of them would just be totally OP.

another thing to look at is how other sources of positive/negative energy works on them, like if they get hit by a cure/inflict spell does it affect thier pools accordingly, in addition to the normal effects.

as for the detrimential effects, i would suggest something simmilar to positive/negativly alligned planes, the problem with this would be finding a way to make this not abuseable, wich may be difficult to work out. alternatley mechanics wise simple damage to the character for holding too much for too long , wich would be lackluster lore wise, but might be easiest to balance out.


ability wise would mostly be spells i would think, along with a maximum ammount of energe that can be channeled in one round for balance issues. mabey an ability to surpass that by taking damage and/or ability score drain/damage, wichever is not permanant.

there would NEED to be some way to prevent the damage a tree(or whatever) to heal the party and X channelign per day is the best I can think off off the top of my head

[AttilaTheGeek]

Okay, here's a completely different idea. What if there are two separate resources, light karma and dark karma. Light karma is used for positive energy, and dark karma for negative energy. The amount of karma of each type one can hold is determined by level, so that powers learned at low-level can still be relevant and useful at high level. For ease of use (counting on a die), I'm imagining each karma goes up to 4 at 1st level, 6 at 4th level, and increases by 2 every four levels after that (8 karma at 8th, 10 karma at 12th, 12 karma at 16th, and a capstone of being able to use a d20 for karma).

The karmacist casts off powers (SLAs), which are usually at-will but may have cooldowns, and powers cost light and/or dark karma. One power (need another name for them) might read like this:

Inflict
Cost: X dark karma (You may pay any amount of dark karma to use this power)
Effect: You channel negative energy into another creature, dealing damage (or healing to an undead) equal to your Charisma modifier plus X times your level.

If powers are all or mostly "augmentable", but with the augment cost built right in, then one can learn a fixed, small number of powers from a very large list and have all of them still be relevant at high level. Having utility powers will also let there be a decent amount of flexibility.

I have a couple mutually exclusive ideas for recovery:

• Each power restores an amount of karma of the other type: Pros: really cool, and allows the same type of shifting between positive/light and negative/dark. Cons: more work at the table, and writing and learning powers takes longer.
• Karma regenerates at a constant rate, determined only by level. Pros: really easy to balance and fine-tune. It's simple, easy to use, and easy to remember. Cons: It's boring, and I wonder if it doesn't seem too "videogamey".
• Shoehorn recovery based off Wisdom in there somewhere. I want Wisdom to affect how often or how many times one can use their abilities, and Charisma to affect how powerful they are, but I'm not sure how to go about the former. Pros: is elegant, makes sense flavorfully, and reduces SAD. Cons: Would be there just for the sake of being there, which is never good.

Feedback on these mechanics? Not so much on the numbers, but mostly how they work and interact.

Edit: changed "positive karma" to "light karma" and "negative karma" to "dark karma".

[drack]

So be undead and heal self&party, or be normal, and heal self/harm enemy?
Only skimmed and blurted what came to mind, but I noticed max 10, I assume this scales with levels so I don't deal 10 to the fighter's 500?
Edit: 20 seems like a kinda low cap too unless I'm missreading(/misskimming? =/) this and these aren't points of damage

[AttilaTheGeek]

I would appreciate reading the entire post, and I don't want to repeat it all here for you, but I guess it's better than nothing.

Under the new system, karma are a finite resource. As a rough guideline, 1 karma corresponds to 1 point of damage or healing per level plus the karmacist's Charisma modifier. That means, at 20th level, you can channel all your dark karma to deal 20 (karma) times 20 (level) damage, or 400 damage/healing. Do note, however, that doing so takes advantage of the capstone (the max at 19th level is 12*19=228) and leaves you very low on resources.

[drack]

Sorry about that, had just been paging through gitp homebrew archive for stuff to use in a game, and it had me in the habit already. As it happens had read the first few posts and skimmed the rest (being one accustomed to it being in the first post). Anywho having read it, I'd say the powers would be neat, though 1/level could be a bit small at times. I'd suggest giving a limited use ability to do more for when it counts, and perhaps as a power allow them to suffuse the area with light/dark so that if they're for instance only healing people stuff will start to die around them and vice verse. (admittedly more a fluff encouragement to find a balance, but oh well.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Your maximum amount of karma (of both types) scales with level, and the amount of damage/healing one point of karma does also scales with level, so the maximum amount of burst energy you can output by completely draining yourself scales with level squared. There already is a "limited use ability to do more for when it counts", and that is just spending more karma on an ability.

[drack]

*re-reads* Nope, I'm just having one of those reading-fail days where I missed the emboldened underlined text.

Sounds pretty nifty, though I had suggested uses/day on the stronger one since normally healer types are bound to start running lower on slots after they keep it up.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Sounds pretty nifty, though I had suggested uses/day on the stronger one since normally healer types are bound to start running lower on slots after they keep it up.

What do you mean by "the stronger one"? I've only mentioned one ability, but its power depends how much karma you spend on it. I stated in the OP that one of my goals was to get away from a largely arbitrary "uses/day" paradigm and move towards a more fluid resource system.

[drack]

well in earnest it comes down to which level of play you're aiming for. When you make a class that can flat out do X every round, then then wherever you set X is the only power level at which the character can be played. This means that in a more optimized game they'll be at a disadvantage, and in a less optimized game they'll have to be stronger. What those levels are relative to is up to you when you make it. Generally at will is a decent bit weaker then uses/day. (Compare warlock and wizard damage outputs for details.) Therefore you're going to want to shoot for the number to be a good breath below what a healer can heal/round. I was suggesting a uses/day so that you could give them the opportunity to match or exceed those numbers a few times as needed simply because people like shining every now and then. That aside I think the class is a cool idea, though it reminds me of the pathfinder cleric in some ways. Personally not much of a warlock lover though so I see it more as a fighter/monk type thing, where you are potentially channeling this through attacks.

Anywho sorry if I was a bit confusing or distracted at parts.

[AttilaTheGeek]

well in earnest it comes down to which level of play you're aiming for. When you make a class that can flat out do X every round, then then wherever you set X is the only power level at which the character can be played. This means that in a more optimized game they'll be at a disadvantage, and in a less optimized game they'll have to be stronger. What those levels are relative to is up to you when you make it.

This is a very good point. I hope to make it accessible to different levels of optimization by offering a wide variety of powers; some will increase numbers (suitable for high-power games), some will give new in-combat options (like area-of-effect channeling, shielding, or summoning), and some will be utility.

Generally at will is a decent bit weaker then uses/day. (Compare warlock and wizard damage outputs for details.) Therefore you're going to want to shoot for the number to be a good breath below what a healer can heal/round. I was suggesting a uses/day so that you could give them the opportunity to match or exceed those numbers a few times as needed simply because people like shining every now and then.

Well, in-combat healing as of now is very weak, and a karmacist who focuses on healing will (should) be a strong healer. Like I said, one can be very temporarily powerful by spending resources quickly, or use weaker (cheaper) powers for a longer amount of time.