Café de Nuit

^ What the title says.

Rant: what I don't like:

I am getting sick and tired of 3.5's "Monks will suck at feinting because Bluff isn't one of their class skills" and other arbitrary divisions. ("Oh, you want your monk to be able to deal sneak attack damage? Sorry, you have to take a class level in Rogue. OH WAIT MONKS CAN NEVER RETURN TO THE CLASS ONCE THEY LEAVE IT, LOLZ!!!" and other types of designer's-whimsy bollocks.)

The current oversimplified, under-justified commercial foodfight that is 4E has absolutely no interest to me, except what still-pumping organs I can pull out of its splattered, twitching warm corpse to stanch the bleeding mess that is 3.5. (John Stuart Mill would be proud.)

What I want. (What I really, really want)
I'm up for cobbling together a system where combat is very deadly, and where players and DMs both have a lot of freedom building their characters.

Something that has points buy for the various skills (not just starting abilities) and which allows a DM to come up with, say, an enemy that has tiny hit points (so, very few HD) but a massive attack. Or somebody that can use magic while also being quite sturdy in a melee battle.

A major rebalancing of the traditional classes is in order, and I haven't seen many clergymen these days who would be the equivalent in strength to a farmer or other rural dweller. I'd imagine that throughout history this has been the case too. So why do they have HD that are equivalent to rangers, and why can they wear armor that puts them up there with the fighters?

I like the idea of spending XP to make magical items. I'm interested in a system that takes that to the logical extreme. You spend XP for everything that's non-material. Want a new +1 to BAB? Spend an XP amount. Want a feat to get Power Attack? Spend XP. Want a new spell level? Spend XP for that, and then spend XP to get the ability to memorize and cast spells from that level.

This way you'd be able to better balance out PCs and their enemies. If you have 10,000 XP to spend on stats, etc., you know that the DM is probably going to through some creatures he cobbled out of a similar XP amount. As opposed to the guesswork involved in CRs and ECLs.


So, what should I go with?

I've heard good things about the Storyteller system, the World of Darkness system, GURPS, and Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay. I've played a bit of Unknown Armies, and also a bit of Tri-Stat dX. I do not know enough about either of them to reliably go about converting Ravenloft to them. Yet.

I suppose I could go out and buy those rulebooks, but I wanted to float this question by you and see what you have to say.

Ravenloft-and Masque-are more powerful than thier engines. Go for it.

I have either run, played or watched games of Ravenloft or Masque run using:

1) GURPS. Grab a handful of sourcebooks on Ebay and you're pretty much there ruleswise. A bit heavy on crunch-I recommend the Basic Rules and then cherry-pick from the Advanced options.

2) Warhammer FRP 2nd Edition. For a Masque series we just added a few Tech skills, for Ravenloft you're on the money...just tone down the Chaos Mutations thing a bit. First Edition would work also, but you get a less balanced set of starting PCs.

3) Mercenaries Spies & Private Eyes. A Tunnels & Trolls variant heavy on the Skills. Psychic Powers are included in MS&PE-between that and a transplanted Call of Cthulu magic System it ran all right.

4) Amazing Engine. My pride and joy. Get the Rulebook(really thin sucker) and the For Faerie Quenn and Country worldbook for Skills and a fantastic Free-form Magic system. Add Monsters, Mood and stir it up.

5) Beyond the Supernatural. We used the rules just about as is, culling the Magic Spells to about 30% of the list. Psi-Mechanic OCC became the Artificer, the rest of the OCC's ran as is.

I think Unknown Armies is a bit too Humanistic, but it could work-it all depends on how much work you want to do. As for Tri-stat...see if you can find a copy of Heaven & Earth(2nd ed.) from GOO. It's OOP, but Ebay may have a few...go for both the Players book for most of the Rules, turn back the Period a few centuries and you're close(get the Referees book if you have the cash or the opportunity, it's a great game in it's own right).

All just my opinions of course-heck, you could run this baby in the old D6 Star Wars game if you were determined enough, the Setting's the important thing...

Another vote for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. And if you want a point buy system, then get either Hero System or Mutants & Masterminds. I can't speak to the latter from personal experience, but I've suspected that it could handle fantasy pretty welll, and not just super-heroics. What both it and Hero System bring to the table, though, is being able to mix and match your abilities and skills however you like without the confines of a class and its attendant skills and so on.

Which one of these would allow the most flexibility in designing PCs and NPCs?

And ideally bring about a more balanced magic system, none of that Vancean "memorize all your spells in advance and find out that you brought the wrong ones" nonsense.

The combat lethality issue is probably less important. I can mathematically tweak damage and hit points totals as I like, so the emphasis may be less on WFRPG if it still preserves the arbitrary class system from 3.5.

Heck I've just checked on ebay and some of the rulebooks are very fairly priced indeed. I might just have to go ahead and get them.

GURPS has a 4E and a 3E though. The stuff for 3E is a fraction the price of the 4E stuff. Would you suggest I stick with 3E?

Which one of these would allow the most flexibility in designing PCs and NPCs?

I sold my copy on eBay a while back, so I can't check, but I imagine Hero System is the best candidate for that.

Mutants & Masterminds is a runner up to that. The advantage to that is how open-ended it is, while at the same time being pretty familiar. It shares many D20 concepts (Skills, Feats, Fort, Reflex, Will, etc), but it's completely classless, relying on a point buy, instead. You give the PC's a certain number of Power Points and they can use those points to buy stat upgrades, skills, feats, equipment, powers, and so on.

For instance, Feats cost 1 Power Point. You can have any number of them, so long as you have the points to pay for them. So there's no issues with a 3rd-level character only having two Feats or so on. Likewise, you can spend one Power Point and buy four Skill Points. So it's quick and easy to get the skills you want.

Like a point-based game, you can spend points as you get them to increase whatever you like. Whether it be your Skills, get new Feats, improve your attack bonuses, or even boost your stats. You can also set the Power Level of the game however you like. Power Level determines the caps on certain things. For instance, the maximum number of ranks that you can have in a skill is equal to your Power Level + 5. So if you start with Power Level 5 characters, then they can't have more then 10 ranks in skills. That means that you can control the power of the PC's. They still collect power points as XP, and they still spend them if they so choose, but they can't exceed the caps until you decide if you want to increase the Power Level of the campaign or not.

Also, instead of hit points, M&M relies on a Toughness Saving Throw. Depending by how much you fail the roll, that determines the damage you've taken. Here's the chart for Lethal Damage (The game has another chart with Unconscious being the worst state, but being D&D, I assume you're gonna be wanting the lethal damage chart most of the time).

Toughness Saving Throw / Effect
Succeeds / No Effect
Fails / Bruised + Injured
Fails by 5 or more / Stunned + Bruised + Injured
Fails by 10 or more / Staggered + Disabled + Stunned
Fails by 15 or more / Unconscious + Dying

So depending how hard hitting an attack is, and how badly you roll, it's possible for a PC to drop in one hit. You don't have to whittle down their hit points or anything. And of course, you can adjust how easy or hard it is for the defender to be injured (The DC that you got to beat for your Toughness Saving Throw is 15 + attacker's damage bonus. Increase it to 20+ and you make it more lethal. Decrease it to 10+ and you make the PC's more surviveable).

Even without killing, you the above conditions also allow for a lot more variability in fighting form then what you get with hit points. Here're the definitions of the conditions:

Bruised: Each Bruised condition imposes a cumulative -1 penalty on your Toughness Saving Throw against nonlethal damage.
Stunned: For one round, you're unable to take any actions, lose dodge bonus to Defense, and suffer an additional -2 reduction to Defense.
Staggered: You can only take a single standard or move action each round, not both.
Unconscious: You're knocked out and helpless. Further damage is considered lethal.
Injured: Each Injured condition imposes a cumulative -1 penalty on your Toughness Saving Throw against lethal damage.
Disabled: If you make an all-out move, attack, or use any ability requiring physical or mental effort, then your condition reverts to Dying.
Dying: You're near death. You make an immediate check, and another one every hour (DC 10 + 1 for every previous check). If you fail a check then you die. If you succeed by 10 or more or roll a natural 20 then you stabilize and you become Unconscious, instead.

Just a couple examples of the rules set. I suggest checking it out. While the main goal is for super-hero campaigns, it translates easily enough into other kinds of genres, like fantasy. Oh yeah, and you also only need one d20 to play. That's it.

I would have suggested Deliria if you hadn't mentioned the desire to make combat behemoths.

Deliria is a system very well suited for RL, I think, because it allows you to create real people and sets its system up so no matter how experienced a person is, he is ultimately still just one mortal and vulnerable as such.

The magic system is pretty freeform, though it has "schools", those schools merely limit you to the ways you can shape your magic, but don't apply spells - not do they require any kind of memorization. Plus, you can always purchase additional schools if you want to expand your character's knowledge base. Casting feels more in line with a real world approach - spells usually require time to cast, and rituals make them easier to form and control. No fireballs here, but plenty of other interesting things you can do.

The combat system is pretty simple to pick up and there are a few tricks one can use to make it more deadly - such as increasing the damage levels a creature puts out - if you need that.

It's a beautiful system overall ... I'd recommend checking it out for that alone.

Right, I want my Ravenloft to be a setting where PCs want to avoid combat because there's always the risk they can take permanent and lasting damage from it. I need to be able to make "combat behemoths" of the bad guys to ensure that an uppity L9 PC doesn't Power Attack a minion and then Cleave the BBEG, for example.

I'll give it a look.

HuManBing wrote:Right, I want my Ravenloft to be a setting where PCs want to avoid combat because there's always the risk they can take permanent and lasting damage from it. I need to be able to make "combat behemoths" of the bad guys to ensure that an uppity L9 PC doesn't Power Attack a minion and then Cleave the BBEG, for example.

I'm no expert, but that sounds a lot like Warhammer FRPG...

See, my take for Ravenloft has always been different - it isn't a setting where damage and hit die mean everything.

Villains can be weaker than the pcs if they're played intelligently. The very real threat of their own demise makes villains behave differently and actually be thoughtful about how they go about their schemes. It makes them more human and less of a monster at the end of a dungeon. The climax of every adventure doesn't have to be some epic battle.

Consider our own world, Hitler - for all his power - was just a man with the same vulnerabilities as any mortal creature. That didn't make his influence on the world any less significant ... or, John Wayne Gacy, who killed something like thirty young men and boys (they believe - not all the bodies were found) yet didn't have a single supernatural power to his name. So the pcs run in and splatter him against the wall - the adventure is no less finished than it would be if they fought for half an hour and three of them died ... in the end it is the atmosphere of the setting which is important, not how many muscles are piled on the bad guys.

I do agree with you on that issue. That's why my end-of-campaign enemies tend to be liches. The PCs can whack them if they want and feel good about themselves, and the lich can skulk away and disappear forever, or recur up to the DM. The PCs don't even find the phylactery without the DM's implicit say-so.

I like villains that are forced to evolve alongside the PCs. My favorite villain in Ravenloft is Azalin, and I like to play him as a manipulator who has contingencies and plan-Bs set up everywhere. If something falls through, he can acclimatize and compromise. The PCs may break free of his machinations, but that's not the end of it. He's still plotting away, working out how to get his goals met.

To me, the historical lesson we should draw from Hitler is the mundane details of his rule, not the hyperbole of his legacy. He suffered setbacks, faced seemingly insurmountable opposition, and adapted to his situation... and in the end, he somehow managed to prevail upon a population of 60 million rational people to accept a thoroughly irrational philosophy and political system. That, to me, is a much more worthy opponent and fascinating study into human character than just writing him off as an aberration or a one-of-a-kind blip in the collective genetic lottery or social fabric. In terms of a moral to the story, it's a sobering thought that an average, flawed, eccentric, clumsy person like him could have attained so much power.

The Hitlers and Stalins, the Mussolinis and Maos of this world aren't demigods or half-demons. They're people, just like us, and their examples are a chilling example of how we hardly need demons and devils to unleash untold destruction upon our fellow humans.

The Hitlers and Stalins, the Mussolinis and Maos of this world aren't demigods or half-demons. They're people, just like us, and their examples are a chilling example of how we hardly need demons and devils to unleash untold destruction upon our fellow humans.

I believe that's exactly what I was saying, which is why I prefer villains which are more down to earth. Being a history major, I fully recognize just how terrible humans can be to one another, without some mystical otherness to explain it all away. (and how long this thread would become if we started discussing those incodents ... or any similar ... I could talk for .. ever .. about the history so few people are aware of.)

As the quote goes, "Humans are the worse kind of monster, George."

Back to the mechanics discussion, that's what I love about Deliria - even if they choose to take magical skills, the characters still feel more human. Magic user types can still do more than they might in CoC, but casting requires time and preparation. (plus, it has a flavor defined by the trappings and echos which come with evoking mystical energies) A powerful creature, such as a lich, could make itself impervious to physical attacks for hours or as much as a day if it had the time to prepare - but the system places limits which require pcs or villains to think more strategically.

Combat in Deliria can be rather deadly, as damage is not done in hit points, but in levels of injury, (which cause Vitality damage and apply negatives in addition to their other effects) and "crippling" isn't a difficult result to achieve.

Mind you, I'm not trying to sell the book for anything but a love of the system, since the company produced two books and went out of business. (which, while unfortunate, would have troubled me more of they'd shown more concern for their customers.)

Okay, I've got a bid in on ebay for a three-book unit of Amazing Engine. I do remember playing Amazing Engine with a friend when it first came out, roundabout 1992 or so in Britain. Hopefully I'll win that.

I'm also laying out for .pdfs of GURPS and Hero System on Paizo.com. I'd prefer to get the books but my library is not getting any smaller, and given that I'm looking at moving house twice in the next year and a half, I want to try to reduce clutter as much as possible.

That'll be it for the time being. I'll also look into the Tristat dX .pdf I got from my cousin awhile back and see if they have any spell systems.

How good is the World of Darkness system? I've heard that people have tried to run Ravenloft in it and it's quite suitable.

Does it have classes?

Does it have contested rolls instead of absolute rolls?

How does it handle combat and noncombat situations?

I've gotten my hands on a pdf of TriStat dX.

Also I have the 4th Edition of Call of Cthulhu in hard copy form.

And I just got the pdf of the Hero System's core rules.

My ebay copy of Amazing Engine should arrive soon.