Thank you! And yeah I want it to be. Lore. At least some kinda internal logic which can be hard w magic. I like your cooking metaphor too! I was thinking like. Hm. Say "Te" is the syllable for Change. You can say Te by itself, but you need to put a lot of power behind it for it to do anything, and because you are just invoking Change it could do anything. But then lets say that "rea" is the syllable for Self, and that "kre" is the syllable for Bird or Flying or something (unsure how specific I would want these). Then you could say like, Raete Kre! and turn ur damn self into a bird. U got more control and it takes less power, but is also less powerful in that it will Only Work on your and Only work with Bird. That kinda thing. I like the idea of different parts conflicting. Part of the reason I was thinking elements is that thats how I want the alchemy/potion system to work. Each plant or substance is associated with one or two elements, and you can do different operations (like melting or evaporating or subduction) to add or remove or alter these elements (unsure to what extent yet). The elements you use can determine the effect, but too much of one element or conflicting elements or other things that create problems can add chaotic effects. Each element duo would have a chaotic effects list, and 3+ and 4+ and ect potions would share another table. That kinda thing. So I was wondering if my magic should work on the same principle. Arithmancy is like. My fave idea but I am so bad with theoretical math. I do like the idea of it depending on the caster, but not quite to that extent. Like right now I am DMing w a system where everyone has an element and a power, and if you can justify doing A Thing with A Element I let you try. Like one of my players uses "Talk to Everything" to talk to ghosts. Another used the element of Light to change screen displays. And I really like that, but I want this to be a bit more. Formalized. The rolling system I am thinking of is like. Each person has a Spell Dice Pool for each day. Each Spell has a difficulty level, depending on what tool they are using and what they are trying to accomplish, kinda. Each step up in difficulty means you need more successes (I am thinking of a World of Darkness type thing, but unsure if thats exactly what I'll go with). 0 Difficulty things you can just Do, Difficulty idk 10 things you need 10 successes for. When you cast a spell, you decide how many of your Daily Spell Dice you use.
Well I guess that depends on if you want magic in its raw form to work in exactly the same way as magic in its altered form as it presents itself in its conduits (plants and other materials for alchemy). The cool thing is though you don't have to be great at it. You can just say "there is underlying math here that maybe I don't understand but my character does" in the same way that even though I know SHIT about trees and plants and stuff, I can have a druid character roll a nature check and come up with "yeah there's been some over-hunting here by coyotes, and they don't seem like normal ones either". And if you really do want to get a good understanding of everything in it regardless, then there's people on here with doctoral degrees in math, and I'm willing to bet at least one person would be down to help you, if nothing else,find some good resources. Formalized in what way? How do you see it changing? What do these dice actually do? I don't think you said.
Hmmm. I’m not sure thats nessecary but also im the type of person who always wants to go “but whhhhy” and I can’t answer that question for why they’d be different. Thats a good point! I might ask around about that. Like...its gonna be a magic school game. I want it to be a system of magic that makes sense being taught in a formal setting. Part of it is feeling and expression but there are Rules. I dunno. Oh, srry! My current thought is that the dice are d10. You roll for successes, which would be, lets say, a 8 to a 10 on a d10, with a 10 also exploding. So if you have a difficulty 2 spell, you need 2 successes, so you decide to roll 5 out of your pool of 25 dice. None of these number are finalized thats just the idea
Honestly something kinda like the stuff in this post would be cool (not just fertility related stuff tho. Obs.) but I don’t know how to make that into a system
As far as story goes I can't really help you, I s u c k at story. But in terms of mechanics...I think you've got it decently well down. You could think of the spell dice as the power you put into a spell, the more power you use the more likely it will work, but there's less for you to draw on until [event or time elapse eg. day, long rest, etc]. The more practice and experience you get the more power available to you. As for the spell itself, cook it up from the basics that you know and apply your natural element to it, you can make a good argument as to how it would work, you get to try. You can even give things like advantage, say you can reroll x number of your lowest rolls because y situation means you'll have an easier time doing this.
Godddd I need to finish the current one shot I’m running but that sounds so fuuun Like just making the most fairytale world But then again i have a completely dif setting i wanna make Why do i do this
....on the one hand I shouldn’t start dming another game but on the other hand....it sounds so fun.....
....ok so like hypothetically if I were to run a total fairytale game would people be interested? And if they hypothetically were, would they want play by post or roll20? And also just 5e or a different system?
ME ME I VOLUNTEER. As far as mechanics go I like 5e a lot (it's also the only system i know, whoops) and roll20 probably over post. Though discord over roll20 if that's an option because discord is just better.
My pros and cons, btw Play by post Pros: more casual, doesn’t have to have a deticated block of time, have a longer time to formulate replies Cons: easy to forget about/get in anxiety spirals over, I’ve never run one like this, restricted to people who are on kinstugi Roll20 Pros: I have run a few games on roll20 and I know it decently well, can organize stuff, has tools to easily keep track of hp and such, can add visuals, I can invite friends who aren’t on the site Cons: I make everybody in my life mad by carving out another block of tkme deticated to tabletop games, harder to coordinate time I’ve never run a game on discord, so I’d have to look into that, but honestly if we could run it as kinda of a hybrid between play by post elastic reply time and ease of roll20 I’d be all for it
I don't have spoons for another tabletop game rn, but as a third option for yall to consider-- I've been in some games where Events happen real-time (in this case, over roll20), and then forum posts were used for side scenes and character bits between """real"" sessions. Obvs how feasible this is would depend on what kind of plot you want to run, but it's another option.
...Ok so question: I am trying to homebrew a race that is general catchall for "animal peeps". It's going to be modular to some degree, having subraces that are "mammals", "lizards", "fish", ect. Should I keep it to that? Should I further subdivide it into predator and prey species? Should I instead make diff subraces for popular animals (like cats, foxes, wolves, ect) and then have the mammal ect distinctions as well?
A highlight from recent games: Our party’s ranger has recently bought a compass. A solid idea, in theory. The thing is, he’s more of a “natural” navigator. Position of the sun, trail-tracking, instinctual flow of the woods kind of a guy. Not necessarily the smartest cookie but he tries his best. After several minutes of watching him standing at the front of the boat, brow furrowed in contemplation as he twisted the compass this way and that, the rest of the party decided to ask how he was getting on with it. Gorstag shared his very individual take on what the letters stood for: “Nowhere, Somewhere, Elsewhere and Which-Way.” Bless him. He may have thought the compass to be more magical than scientific. He’s since been given an education in polar directions from the higher-INT members of the party!
I've just realized that the two main villainous factions of my campaign each think of the other as delusional, degenerate pretenders to the legacy of the fallen empire they've inherited. That's going to be fun for the PCs to triangulate.
Help I'm playing in a DnD one-shot this weekend and we're all gonna be level 15, allowed to pick race/class from any official book, the artificer unearthed arcana, and Mercer's homebrews I've never played above level 8 before and I'm only really even halfway familiar with the basic stuff? Suddenly theres so much to choose from! I could MULTICLASS! ...but I have no idea where to start or what works well together or what I could play that would still like. Be comprehensible to me. I tend to gravitate towards long-distance spellcasters so I figured this time I would not do that and go for close up, down n dirty instead. Anything that lets me do immense damage with sharp things. Rogues get pretty lethal very quickly, right? Is there anything that'd let me be a close-range excessively violent fighter that would also let me put a high score in Wisdom(/have that make sense)? (It's a Halloween one-shot, the group has done it twice before and both times someone has betrayed them... also my basic character concept does not involve being trusting or happy)
Barbarians are absolutely insane at high level. Also, monks have high wisdom and are similarly wild. They do a bit less burst damage but are much more versatile and have some crazy abilities. Plus, with your ki points you can even buff your damage. PLUS when you're a high level monk, you're never without a weapon. A barbarian, you can take their blade or maul or whatever and absolutely nerf their damage to just about negligable, but a monk? Lose your staff? Your enemies are just catching your hands instead of your stick and you're still doing the same base damage as a battleaxe at level 15.
my irl dnd party rolled new characters for a one shot thing and I was like "oh fun this might temporarily solve the problem that every character except mine is entirely self serving and seems to resent having to be in a party at all.*" so i rolled a cg tortle monk who, while very alarmed at being taken to the vampire murder pit, was friendly and wanted to be friends with the others it was not to be "my character is a high elf who refuses to talk to you because she thinks you're all dirty peasants" "my character doesn't care about the party at all and just wants to leave as soon as possible, and will only respond to you if it furthers that goal" *they also are all pretty evil aligned and my NG paladin is so often the fun stopper whos like "stop antagonizing the friendly npcs" or "hey can we not try to rob the legendary fighter who's 7 levels higher than us with a literal army of warriors who decided to let us live because of an honor pact" which is such a fighty place to be
