The Kosher Pickled Punk's Alternate Rules for MotRD

[The Pickled Punk]

As I metioned on the main message board, I recently bought the 3.5 MotRD book, and have found some of the rules wanting. I am attempting to modify some of the rules for my campaign, and would like some feedback.

I'd like to first say that I know that the authors endeavored to convert MotRD to 3.5 as best as possible, and in many ways their work shows in the book. However I disagree with some of the choices they made about certain rules, and other rules make no sense. So I decided to try and make a set of alternate rules, which are presented below.

1) Arcane spellcasters do get bonus spells for a high ability score, INT for Adepts, Metaphysicians and Occultists, and CHA for Charlatans. I see no reason why they shouldn't get these bonus spells, other than the fact that they didn't have them in 2E. Considering that spells take longer to cast, and that their is a chance of failing a DP check, I imagine most PCs will not cast as many spells, but for those Adepts who will, give them bonus spells.

2) The book never says how many languages a PC starts with. In a typical D&D campaign it depends on race, so I decided to base it on nationality. You start speaking your nationality's language(s) plus a number of bonus languages equal to your INT bonus. For example an American with an INT of 14 would start with English, plus two other modern languages. A character from Switzerland, might start with German, French, or Italian, or with the DM's approval could speak any two of the languages. In areas colonized by the Great Powers, such as India, a native PC begins with his native language and the language of the country which colonized the area, plus bonus languages.

3) The Shootist is now called the Marksman. (The title applies to either gender.)

4) The Occultist should gain bonus spells for specializing in a school of magic. He also chooses two (not one) opposing schools, neither of which may be divination (see the PHB p. 57 for details).

5) Parsons may select any religion (not just an ancient one) for the Bonus Skill Focus feat at 3rd level. Parsons are not prohibited from taking combat oriented feats, unless their religion specifically forbids them to.

6) Mystics, mediums and spiritualists should all be able to turn/rebuke undead (depending on alignment). See PHB p. 159. All undead in Gothic Earth get +1 Turn Resistance, as they would in Ravenloft.

7) Criminals (and any Prestige Class with the Trapfinding Special Quality) do get to use Search and Disable Device to find and disable magical traps. However the DC to do so is increased by +20.

Tradesmen: the ability "Related Profession or Craft" makes no sense as written. Instead, Tradesmen gain a Bonus Class Skill at 3rd, 9th and 15th levels. This bonus class skill is considered a class skill in all regards. It reflects areas of expertise the Tradesman has gained through her life experiences.

9) The Performer gets Sleight of Hand as a class skill.

10) Lycanthrope Hunter: the "Special" qualification for this PrC is incredibly vague. For the encounter to qualify, the PC must know the NPC is a lycanthrope, and fought it (but not necessarily defeated it).

11) Undead Hunter: the "Special" qualification for this PrC is incredibly vague. For the encounter to qualify, the PC must know the NPC is undead, and fought it (but not necessarily defeated it). The "Favored Enemy" Special Quality functions exactly as written under the Ranger class in the PHB. This Special Quality does not give the PC knowledge of undead; that knowledge comes from the Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) skill. The PC must still make skill checks to see if he recognizes weaknesses of undead.

12) Academician should be replaced with the Search skill when searching libraries for information.

13) The Connoisseur skill should be a feat, which grants a +2 bonus to Appraise and one Craft skill.

14) The Self-sufficient skill should provide a +2 bonus on First Aid and Survival checks, not Heal and Survivial.

15) Find Familiar feat: no mention is made of the costs involved in using this feat. Each time a familiar is summoned, the PC must spend $50 worth of materials. The familair summoned is a dread familiar; there is no DP check.

16) Bows should not be considered Simple weapons. They should be either Primitive or Exotic Weapons. Crossbows should be simple weapons, except the hand crossbow, which should be Exotic.

17) An Adept who fails to successfully copy a spell into her spellbook, but has successfully classified the spell, may not attempt to copy the spell until they gain a rank in Knowledge (Forbidden Lore).

Any comments?

[tec-goblin]

I agree with all these corrections. But still this book cannot be saved. Check d20 Past (from the d20 modern line) better.

How Athlete can be a basic class? I mean who will take a class which allows him to be an expert in multiple sports? It's extremely niche-oriented.
And the only thing that makes him less powerful than the fighter (he has a lot of skill points) is the fact that he has a limited feat list, so he cannot use othe books like complete warrior. Restricting usability of other books is a bad way to balance things IMO.

Criminal. OMG - the fact that this person would have to make power checks every session isn't enough? It's almost in his nature. Doubling the propability is extremely wrong IMO (in Ravenloft you double the propability for classes that should not make often power checks, like paladins). This class is unplayable (unless GM leaves players roleplay Darklords etc).

The rules about guns aren't good at all. Actually you still have no reason to use a gun instead of a composite longbow in most cases. And the fact that the rules about guns are not listed together with their description is simply hilarious.

Magic. How funny is it to play a l15 wizard who is a complete zero in battle? Anyone having done this in this MotRD please raise your hand. I mean that any player who will play a wizard will be bored to death. What's the purpose of being able to cast meteor swarms with... 9 rounds of casting? And with 9% chance of corruption?
Let me tell to MotRD designers something: corruption works if it is tempting. Corrupting someone for useless powers just leaves you with a wizard who became athlete and only casts identify and magic missile.
Check the mesmerist and the spiritualist from d20 past. Add some corruption and you have the PERFECT Masque casters. The mesmerist has psionic powers (mostly telepathetic), while the spiritualist can make séances to speak with the dead, spiriti projections and other cool things. She only casts spells through scrolls (the whole MotRD thing of researching ancient texts works here perfectly). But each single scroll is valuable - not useless (as useless an improved invisibility with a casting time of 4 rounds can be).

[Joël of the FoS]

I agree with all these corrections. But still this book cannot be saved. Check d20 Past (from the d20 modern line) better.

How Athlete can be a basic class? I mean who will take a class which allows him to be an expert in multiple sports? It's extremely niche-oriented.
And the only thing that makes him less powerful than the fighter (he has a lot of skill points) is the fact that he has a limited feat list, so he cannot use othe books like complete warrior. Restricting usability of other books is a bad way to balance things IMO.

Criminal. OMG - the fact that this person would have to make power checks every session isn't enough? It's almost in his nature. Doubling the propability is extremely wrong IMO (in Ravenloft you double the propability for classes that should not make often power checks, like paladins). This class is unplayable (unless GM leaves players roleplay Darklords etc).

The rules about guns AREN'T GOOD AT ALL. Actually you still have no reason to use a gun instead of a composite longbow in most cases. And the fact that the rules about guns are not listed together with their description is simply hilarious.

Magic. How funny is it to play a l15 wizard who is a complete zero in battle? Anyone having done this in this MotRD please raise your hand. I mean that any player who will play a wizard will be bored to death. What's the purpose of being able to cast meteor swarms with... 9 rounds of casting? And with 9% chance of corruption?
Let me tell to MotRD designers something: corruption works if it is tempting. Corrupting someone for useless powers just leaves you with a wizard who became athlete and only casts identify and magic missile.
Check the mesmerist and the spiritualist from d20 past. Add some corruption and you have the PERFECT Masque casters. The mesmerist has psionic powers (mostly telepathetic), while the spiritualist can make séances to speak with the dead, spiriti projections and other cool things. She only casts spells through scrolls (the whole MotRD thing of researching ancient texts works here perfectly). But each single scroll is valuable - not useless (as useless an improved invisibility with a casting time of 4 rounds can be).

Joël's comment: I have edited your post, tec-goblin, to remove big bad words. Just make sure you use the grandmother rule, OK?

[The Pickled Punk]

I don't know if it's totally unusable. I tried to keep as many things that would keep the flavor of MotRD, and the longer casting times are definitely one of the things from the original boxed set. One thing that might be done to speed up casting would be to allow the Quicken Spell feat (it's not one of the allowed metamagic feats), which would reduce the casting times.

The bit about Criminals, is reminiscent of the lousy rules cooked up for the RL PHB, which had a wizard make a powers check for learning Tenser's Floating Disk.

In the original MotRD boxed set there were rules governing firearms and armor (namely that armor was ineffective against guns), but that is missing from the 3.5 rules. I would recommend the rules for a Defense rating from Unearthed Arcana, as well as the Armor equalling DR. This would justify the lack of armor in the campaign world.

[Quinn]

The rules work well enough for my group thus far, but I don't prepare adventures that are designed to be combat heavy. Most of the spells the medium casts in our game are cast before combat, not during. That said, I probably won't run a Masque game that will advance to the point that the part is casting 9th level spells, as I don't think it fits well with the setting. The powers checks are DM's tools, IMO, and I only use them when I feel it's appropriate. So no Power Checks for casting a Light spell here.

I was actually very underwhelmed by d20 Past as it was merely suggestions for how to put together historical-type campaigns as opposed to providing any real meat in the form of rules, or fluff in the way of setting. Such a small book attempting to do so much, and in the end, it really didn't do the subject matter justice.

[alhoon]

Magic. How funny is it to play a l15 wizard who is a complete zero in battle? Anyone having done this in this MotRD please raise your hand. I mean that any player who will play a wizard will be bored to death. What's the purpose of being able to cast meteor swarms with... 9 rounds of casting? And with 9% chance of corruption?

What? ! ? A lvl 15 wizard => complete Zero?
9 rounds of casting for 9th level spells?

So a 3rd level caster casting a 2nd level spell would need 2 rounds?
Or the CT are slightly longer except in the case of overly drammatic, ultra damaging spells like meteor swarm?
For example does vampiric touch needs 3 rounds of casting?

[The Pickled Punk]

Magic. How funny is it to play a l15 wizard who is a complete zero in battle? Anyone having done this in this MotRD please raise your hand. I mean that any player who will play a wizard will be bored to death. What's the purpose of being able to cast meteor swarms with... 9 rounds of casting? And with 9% chance of corruption?

What? ! ? A lvl 15 wizard => complete Zero?
9 rounds of casting for 9th level spells?

So a 3rd level caster casting a 2nd level spell would need 2 rounds?
Or the CT are slightly longer except in the case of overly drammatic, ultra damaging spells like meteor swarm?
For example does vampiric touch needs 3 rounds of casting?

alhoon, there are no wizards in MotRD. Only Adepts. The one round per spell level ct is to represent the more ritualistic style of Motrd.

[alhoon]

Yes, I know about adepts. But these adepts doesn't sound entertaining to play at all.
Difficult access to magic, no item creation, power checks on every spell => gain nothing out of it.
In Ravenloft, magic is scarce but still as powerful as in every other world. Necromancy is dangerous but powerful tool. Illusion is sky-rocking with the +20% to shadow spells.

Sure, a fireball spell seems a bit out in a MotRD campaign, but a vampiric touch, a bestow curse spell, a finger of death spell etc seem fitting enough.
If the bad necromancer needs 7 full rounds to cast a finger of death spell, the heroes would have cut through his lackeys and bodyguards and right in front of him about 2 -3 rounds before he finishes this . . . ritual.

Exaggerating?

How about this:
If the 7th level enchanter (the one behind the scene) needs 4 full rounds to finish the charm spell he is casting, he would probably have been shot 2 -3 times (breaking the concentration).

My solution: Remember, in 3rd edition spellcasters don't memorize spells. They prepare them.
Increase the preparation time to 5 mins/spell level instead of the usual 1 hour for all the spells.
Spell casters don't need to refresh their prepared rituals for a week (or month) unless they actually cast the prepared spell.

[The Pickled Punk]

Adding to preparation time doesn't have much game effect, compared to the time required to cast spells as written in MotRD. Arcane spellcasters don't generally get off dozens of fireballs, and even magic missle is less often, because it takes a full round to cast. That's the point.

Besides, with the corruption of Magic by RD, casting so many spells is asking for trouble.

[alhoon]

Besides, with the corruption of Magic by RD, casting so many spells is asking for trouble.

Exactly. It is not "dozens of fireballs", it is about having the option to cast a 4th level offensive spell in battle and then cast a 2nd level spell on you (also in battle) and then taking part in the fight.

[The Pickled Punk]

I was referring to the fact that casting any spell calls for a DP check in MotRD.

[artent]

why not fix the problem by upping the potency of magic a bit so as to justify the risk of long casting times and easy corruption. Most spells are too easy to resist as they are now, make base dc's = 15 or 20 + mods. add in the ravlenloft bonus' to evil spells as well.(I think they are there by default though) Now the pc's are going to value that occasional spell by the caster and truely fear that occasional finger of death...knowing that if they can't get past the minions in time they will almost surely die.

[alhoon]

why not fix the problem by upping the potency of magic a bit.

Hmmm. That's interesting.

[The Pickled Punk]

Increasing the spell save DC to 15+spell level, might justify the raising of casting time. It would also help those who use the rules of no bonus spells.

[alhoon]

Enen then however, 4th -5th level spells get the shaft in combat. Also, the 3rd level spells become far less useful. I mean with a 3% PCheck and 3 Full round actions who would cast a hold person in combat even if the DC was 20?

I propose the following:
DC = 15 +spell level +ability modifier
CT = 1 full round/ 2 spell levels +1 full round.
Bonus spells from high abilities apply.

1st = 1 full round
2nd = 2 full round actions
3rd = 2 full rounds
4th = 3 full rounds
5th = 3 full rounds
6th = 4 full rounds
7th = 4 full rounds
8th = 5 full rounds
9th = 5 full rounds

Also the preparation of the spell takes 5 mins/ spell level, so a 7th level caster that spends in a day 1 4th, 2 3rd, 4 2nd level spells has to spend 90 minutes preparing spells instead of just 1 hour.

PS. The chance that this caster has failed at least one power check is 16,7% or about 1/6.
Magic is too risky to be used without a good reason. Making it extremely slow, makes it useless.