Changes to the Rogue and to Spells

Updated beacon rules posted.  This is version 7.3 and has a bunch of changes.

Quick summary of some changes:

• Add reactions,
• Static weapon damage,
• Dwarves get an initiative penalty, 
• Halflings can't use heavy weapons,
• Added some weapon and armour limits directly to the classes,

OK that last one needs some explanation.  Ten years ago I thought it was cool to allow all classes to use all kinds of armour and weapons and then build in complex feedback systems to balance the classes so you didn't have plate mail enchanters running around waving dual great axes.  So one hand gives and the other takes it away.  Now I think its way better to just limit the classes. Its a lite rules game, so there's no time for this kind of backroom shenanigans.  This stuff should be as clear and simple as possible.  So going forward you will see even more of a shift away from some of the old mechanics to use more streamlined stuff.  Keep this in mind when I redo movement and range in the future.  I'll probably do a whole post on how I think its time to relax some of the design that is there just for compatibility with 'standard' D20 material.  There's just so much out there now its not really needed anymore.  

• Merged the Rogue and the Non-class class,

One of my players in the play-test said, "Rogues should have the most skills".  I thought about that and I decided that they were probably right.  Instead of having the unclassed character option, I should just give rogues more skills that they can spend on doing tricky stuff.  Climbing-  physical skill, sneaking - subterfuge, disarm traps - crafting etc.  This solves a long standing problem of what to do with the horrible "non - classed" class which was always needed but never used.  Merging these two classes means you can now be a sneaky merchant or a backstabbing assassin, or even a tricky sage type pretty easily in the game by choosing a rogue class.  In return I've also changed the equally terrible rogue surprise attack mechanic to be a simple "if you have advantage add your subterfuge to the damage", a blend of 5th edition and Microlight mechanics.  Hopefully this works as well as it looks on paper.   Its too bad really because I had finally resolved to rename the non-classed class to "Journeyman".  This does leave room for a third non magic class.  I was thinking of a ranger type but, Druids might become jealous and recently I had the idea some kind of Tinker might be more appropriate.

• Arcane casters get a new spell every level,
• Reworked a lot of the level 1-3 spells.

The other thing I've decided to do is to rework all the spells and bring skill points into a more prominent role for spell effect.  One of the big changes is that many of the spells with scaling effects are based on caster level and I am working on making these rather be skill based instead.  This means there is actually a reason for a cleric to pump points into Communication and for Enchanters to increase their Subterfuge or Knowledge skills.  I will try to base these changes on the nature of the spells themselves but obviously the classes will have more spells that use their 'primary' skills than others.  All arcane casters will benefit from having higher Knowledge, but Druids will benefit from having higher Survival as well.  I think the effect of this will be casters will be more diverse, even within the same class, and it will really add value to the skills.

There's a bunch of other stuff too.  Yes I am changing a lot more than I intended to change at the beginning of this year.  The old game was pretty crap actually... huzzah!

Looking at magic (again)

I have to admit that magic is a bit of a mess.  I've been looking over the spells and see a lot of fixing needed.  Years ago I made a couple passes through the original Microlite and d20 System Resource Document (SRD) spell lists in order to make things work better with HP based casting, but there is still a lot of spells that are either duplicates or sub-par versions of other spells.  There'e also spells that are too weak or powerful for their level/cost, like Fly is the same level as Illusory Script for example.  I don't take all the blame for this since the source material is pretty wonky as well and some of those old D&D spells are unbalanced with some just not great and others are too good.  That approach can work if you have to pick X spells every morning, but not when you can cast any spells you know if you have enough zap left.

In any case a lot of spells have suffered in translation.  I've been whittling away at fixing these again.  I'll give some examples;  Magic Missile is a first level mage spell and so costs 3 points to cast for 5-8 damage, and you have to roll for it.  In game terms this means its about as good as one sword hit but with a HP cost and I can;t see myself using that spell over a dagger if I was playing a mage.  I think it might work better as a level 0 spell costing 1 hp and doing 1d4 damage.  It's more likely to be used at the lower level BUT at the same time its not going to be like 5th edition 'eldritch bolt' kind of laser blast because it does take 1 HP to cast.  A 3rd or 4th level mage is still going to rip a few of these off now I think. 

I'm also looking for spell 'overlaps' to fix, consider the Enchanter spells Stinking Cloud (lvl 3) vs Rainbow Pattern (lvl4).   These are essentially the same thing but Stinking Cloud is probably better mechanically and in line with other 3rd level spells.  However thematically a stinky cloud is more a Druid kind of thing.   I think its probably better to merge these into one spell, like Glitter Cloud and replace the level 4 spell with something more interesting.  I picked up Modify Memory from the SRD which is actually a really nice fit.  I liked the idea of a druid having a stink effect like a skunk so I made a new stinky spell cantrip for them.  There's a lot more tweaks and pokes I've been making as I have been looking through the spell list correcting some of these issues.

I really wish I could get rid of the level 0/cantrip label and just re-number the spell levels 1-7.  That would be a lot more streamlined, but I don't want to do it because I think it would really break a lot of comparability for new Beacon DMs using d20 source material. So I am leaving it as is for now. 

Read Magic

One of the larger changes is I'm considering is to remove Read Magic as a spell.  This spell is so essential to a arcane caster that it should be a class ability.  Who's not going to take Read Magic?  They take it or they won't be able to learn any new spells or use scrolls?  So its a wasted slot in the list.  One benefit to making it a class ability is that you can let other classes do it too, I was thinking of having rogues be able to read magic scrolls at some point or maybe making it something anyone could do with sufficient communication skill or something.  To be clear, not thinking of extending magic use to other classes, just thinking it might be fun letting a non magic character try casting a hella dangerous-scroll.

 

Spellbooks and Learning Spells

Spell books are needed to keep track of what spells arcane casters have learned.  When casters find new spells they can write them into their books and then those new spells are available to be cast.  So spell books are a way to turn magic into treasure that can be discovered, but also a way to give magic users things to spend treasure on, since they don't buy expensive armour or weapons generally.   It costs magic users time and money to write the spells into their books so this is additional cost to level up vs what a fighter or rogue would need to spend but that's an not necessarily a bad thing.  How else can magic users gain spells?  Presumably by training with a teacher or studying.  Both those options line up with other class training costs and downtime so I don't see a problem there. 

Just from a physical perspective, spell books are hard to manage - how big are they? Can they get wet? Can they be lost or destroyed?  Can they be stashed someplace?  I thought about removing spell books and just abstracting this mechanic, but I think that these are interesting questions that can be handled in game so I'm inclined to keep spell books as they are.

Making potions and scrolls (and magic items):

The other thing I've been pulling my hair out over is players making magical things like potions and scrolls.  I really wanted to have this working since players generally like the idea, hell I like the idea, but part of me just wants to remove this from the game entirely.  The v6 rules have some simple ideas for creating potions and scrolls but its not well balanced and I'm concerned that it puts a huge cost burden on magic users since they are going to be torn between spending cash making potions and scrolls vs. leveling up.  I guess the party could all chip in to make potions or scrolls but that makes it now like buying magic items from a shop with extra steps.

I'm leaning towards dropping this entirely.  There are strange forces out there who can make magic stuff but its not the PCs and that's quite OK by me.   Not having to deal with PCs making these items makes treasure easier, it takes away the problem of balancing magic item creation system against other class spending or trying to figure out why the PCs don't just make dozens of scrolls to get past their HP based spell limits. PCs are there to have adventures, if they wanted to make scrolls or potions they could sit in a tower all day and do that instead, that's a different game.  If you want to run an adventure where players make a magic item you can do it as a one off adventure with all sorts of crazy items to collect and strange challenges to overcome.  Its magic, the rituals might not even work a second time.  I think its all around much better for magic in general to be mysterious and part of the world/campaign and not something codified in the rules.  NPC magic users just don't follow the same rules as PCs and that's OK, in fact its better than OK since it makes them interesting opponents instead of half-assed PCs.  Let those NPCs craft all the goodies and the PCs can find them in dusty old libraries and forgotten tombs.

The only reason I am still considering keeping these things in the game would be to have an excuse for the Crafting skill, and that's kind of a crappy design.  If the Crafting skill needs entirely new mechanics to justify it then its not essential or it isn't balanced with the other skills enough.

Some love for the magic guys

Magic characters (Mage, Enchanter, Druid and the Cleric) will get a skill bump every 4th level, so at 4, 8 and 12.  This ties in better with a 12 level system and really they were not getting much in the way of class skills anyway.  This is also because they get new spell levels on odd levels so this gives them something nice for the even ones.

I'm revising the rule book (and the gm screen) to deal with the level 12 cap and fix some of the text issues and typos.  No crazy dice for bonuses or adding in laser shotguns for now.  I'm going to post that as an update with no major changes.  Hopefully I'll get that out before Nov 1, just in time for Hammercon.

Divine Rituals pt. 2

OK, last post I got the rituals for level 1-3, so today hopefully I can get to level 6.  I guess it's not clear but the casting chance and cost of these rituals would be the same as the spells for that level - rituals that take more than a day would require that cost each day.  If you are performing something like consecration over a weeks time you would probably need someone to share the load vis casting, although I do like the idea of the sleepless fasting cleric muttering prayers in a week long endurance-fest.

I'm not explicitly tyring to make all the rituals equal opportunity and I'm strongly suggesting that GMs add in additional rituals to their campaigns for their evil cultists and dark flower god worshippers to use.

Level 4 - Remove Curse

Range: Touch.
Duration: N/A
Description:  The remove curse ritual takes one hour.  This ritual will remove or block the effects of curses and enchantments on the subject.  It will allow minor cursed objects to cleansed or destroyed and major cursed objects to be safely removed or interred.  Materials required for this spell should be in the 500-1000 sp. range.  Exceptional curses may require additional materials or conditions to be met (or repeated castings of the ritual).

Level 5 - seriously I got nothing, maybe some sort of investment spell for making items?  Is there any divine aspects I'm really missing out on here?  Demons?  Bingo?

Level 6 - Resurrection

Range: Touch.
Duration: N/A.
Description:  This ritual requires at least 3 clerics of the same faith to perform and takes one day to perform for every 10 years since the subject's death.  The subject returns to life fully restored and with full HP.  Some piece of the body must be used to restore it and the target creature must have a soul available and not trapped or otherwise destroyed (or have a soul provided for them...).  The material cost of this ceremony is very great (> 100,000 sp.) and usually not payable in cash - only the most worthy (or heinous) applicants would be considered.

Divine rituals

So since I've pretty much decided I'm going to put divine rituals into my setting, I figured what the hell I'll put them into the Beacon rules as well*.  These rituals are basically spells that a divine caster (read cleric) gets that are not castable in a single round but which add a lot to the class or which replace some spells from the SRD that were removed from Beacon but which would still be useful game abilities.  As mentioned Rituals require more time than a 'spell' and may also require some sort of components or conditions that general spells would not (like requiring a circle of clerics to cast).  Again, I expect people running Beacon games would change these to suit.

There is one divine ritual per spell level (excepting the orisons which are really 'training' spells).  No reason for this except it's nice and neat.  Here's the first three rituals:

Level 1 - Liturgy

Range: Sight and hearing.
Duration: 1 day.
Description: The Liturgy is a religious service performed by an initiated cleric in which blessing and instructions are conferred upon the faithful.  For every 30 minutes spent preaching (max 3 hours) people present at a liturgy will respond favourably to the caster as if he had +1 charisma.  It may also confer the effects of a Bless spell for it's duration and an equal length of time afterwards.

Level 2 - Anoint

Range: Touch.
Duration: Permanent
Description:  Anoint is a 30 minute ritual that allows a divine caster to mark a person as a follower of the faith.  This ritual is used to invest new clerics to the religion as well as protect (or maybe harvest) the souls  of the dying.  Anointing will grant an additional save at +2 against the death effects caused by certain undead or the effects of lycanthropy (or an additional chance for the subject to be effected).  Requires holy/unholy water or oil.

Level 3 - Consecration

Range: Touch and/or area 100 ft. + 10 ft. /level.
Duration: Permanent.
Description:  The Consecration ritual allows a caster to dedicate a building or altar fit to be used in rituals of the faith.   Consecrated areas act as Cause Fear to beings of opposing faiths and also make it difficult (DC +5) for them to cast spells, or resist spells of the consecrated faith.  Consecrated areas are also immune to some arcane effects such as scrying and area effect spells such as Restful Glade or Hallucinatory Terrain.
A consecration ceremony takes at least a full week of uninterrupted prayer and fasting.  An area already consecrated by a rival faith must first be cleansed both physically (by removing offending materials) and spiritually before it can be consecrated in the casters faith - a process that can be time consuming and expensive.

*ok I still reserve the right to change my mind on this.

Level 1

Ya, lots of chatting in the blogs about how level 1 D&D magic users are hard to play and how it's all a meat grinder.  I have no problem with that, I've run monty haul campaigns and cakewalks and they are no fun.  No stakes.  I'd happily play a level 1 magic user as long as the game was fun and the DM was good.  Now since I support this opinion it's impossible for me to act in any other way because this is the internet and everyone has to pick a side.  Well screw that.  Just because I see this as a good thing in OD&D, I don't have to think that that's the only way to play the game.

In Beacon, level 1 isn't nearly as 'hard' as it is in OD&D.  Firstly you get a pile more hit points - Strength score + 1d6 HP to start. Even the weakest possible PC would have 4 hp to start, and the toughest possible dwarven fighter would have 27!  Maybe that's too much, but it sure makes it easier for the players starting out and it means you are most likely going to survive first level unless you are very unlucky or you charge ahead blindly all the time.  And it's not like I didn't kill some PCs in the play test either.  First level Beacon isn't hard, but it's not a cakewalk.

But it's not all about surviving at low levels, it's about getting to do things.  In Beacon you can usually get into a couple fights before you need to flee or heal.  This is by design.  Since fights are quick you can get through a couple fights pretty fast, and you can get into a lot of them in the course of an evening.  Having to stop and rest after each skirmish would slow things down.  Also magic burns hit points.  Forget about casting one spell a day in Beacon, you can cast 4 or 5 pretty handily - you don't even need to pick them out ahead of time.  However even though a first level Beacon 'magic user' can cast way more spells than a D&D magic user, they can also use crossbows or short swords.  Ol' Thedric sure finds his crossbow in a hurry when the goblins come a running.  What I find the most interesting about using HP as spell juice is that players ration their spells, they don't want to be down to 3 or 4 hp - even if that is all they would have in peek condition in D&D.  It's a visceral thing but it works well - it's a metagamey reaction that simulates character tension/motivation, kind of like the fear players get from level stealing undead.

So I'm of the opinion that this Beacon low level game is working - working for me anyway.  The play test we've been running has characters up to level 3 now and despite a couple little grumbles, I think that the characters are pretty capable but not overpowered.  Really it comes down to what you throw at them at first level, and I'd have no problem throwing a half dozen goblins or a couple of giant frogs at them.  I think it's working for the players too, they seem to have enough to do that they aren't pulling 15 minute adventure days - but have also learned that if they don't ration their resources they are not immune to loosing half the party or flirting with a TPK.

So does this mean I'm not old sckool?  Well I think a lot of my game preferences are OSR certified even if I run a d20 system.  I like descriptive actions, random encounters, unbalanced encounters and resource management.  I'll kill your PC, I'll kill them dead.  I just hope I don't loose any readers because I didn't make everything into charts or subscribe to the meat-grinder chargen philosophy.

Magic Missile and other mage spells

OK, I've already talked a bit about Fireball and Lightning Bolt, but  a lot more spells that I thought are kind of wonky when translated from SDR to Beacon.  Number one culprit is the change from spell slots to a point system, which I did keep in mind.  The other thing I'm finding however is that there is also a change because HP are spell points and that changes the cost. No one wants to spend 3 HP to do 1 HP damage to something - it isn't smart.  I already changed the way Cure spells work to address this, but now I'm going to look at a couple of low level Mage spells; Magic Missile and Cone of Cold.

Magic Missile does 1d4+1 and you get one extra missile every 2 levels.  In Beacon this means it's a crap spell for first level casters.  It also scales crappy because at 3HP to cast it is going to be a good spell the higher your level without the extra missiles.  So this ones needs a makeover.  Prestidigitation is garbage because it just replicates the effects of other cantrips like Create Fire and Mage Hand.   A couple more candidates are Cone of Cold and Comprehend Languages.  Cone of Cold does 1d3 points of cold damage - and at 3HP to cast that sucks.  You're better off to use your dagger.  Also since you don't want it to compete with Magic Missile as a simple blast spell it should probably focus on the cold aspect over the ray aspect.  As for Comprehend Languages, well that's a cleric spell really.  Clerics get the communication bonuses in Beacon so why the heck would wizards get this spell - there isn't enough spells to overlap like this anyway.

So here are my changes to mage spells level 0-3:

• Prestidigitation now only deals with smoke and fog.
• Magic Missile now does 4+1d4 damage.  You do not get additional missiles as you level up - you get more HP to cast it more often.
• Cone of Cold is a wave of cold that emanates out from the casters hand and freezes stuff like small puddles or buckets of water.  It is shorter range (25ft+5/level) now than before (sight).  Think of it as a reverse microwave. It now does 1d6 cold damage to living creatures as a byproduct.
• Shocking Grasp deals 2d6 + 1 point/per level electric damage.  More damage upfront because you can cast it a few times.  It also scales a bit because it's hard and dangerous to touch things and those things will get bigger as you do.
• Comprehend Languages is now Decipher and it allows the caster to understand natural written languages only.  It does not translate magic writing but it can be used to figure out things written in code - just add a DC value for coded messages to the casting roll.
• Protection from Missiles now more relevant since now missile weapons hit before spells do in combat.  it does 10 +1 point / caster level.  Which is now enough to stop a few arrows at 3rd level and hopefully a few more as you level up and get into bigger fights.  But its now a personal spell.
• Fireball and Lightning Bolt will do 3d6 +1 per level (8-23 points at level 5, 13-28 at level 10).  That's still a lot, but nothing like doing 3-30 or 10-60 points of damage for 7 casting points from before.  It's also less variable.
• Vampiric Touch does 1d8 +1 per level now.  I also put in wording to specify it can only restore physical fatigue not magic fatigue.

I think that by doing these changes I might actually see more use of the extending/widening spell rules so I might leave them in, but I'm still on the fence about it.  I like the idea of these rules but I'm not sure they are worth the additional complexity.

Preachin'

An interesting comment showed up on the Tao of D&D blog about non-spell cleric powers which immediately brought me to mind of the clerical rituals I want to draft up for my game setting (if not for Beacon proper).  Rituals would be magical effects that would take hours or days instead of one round as a spell would.  They would be used to flesh out the magic system without buggering up combat so much.  I had already thought that one of the rituals should deal with consecration or sanctification - that would be a second or third level ritual.  There should be a ritual for messing with souls (possibly resurrection) and a ritual for imbuing items with magic (hence certain magic items...).  I'd like to find one for each magic level and make them part of church training but very hard to attain (questy).   After reading that discussion, I figured out where to start. The first ritual should be preaching.

Saying a sermon or a mass, and being able to influence players and NPCs should be the first divine 'ritual'.  It's the way the religion is spread and the primary contact between the church and the population at large so it would be taught early.  Anyone can give a speech but for a real fire and brimstone footstomper you would need a invested cleric.  Game-wise, it would be something that the character could do, it would be something the locals would seek out - a service.  It would be something they would do when the townsfolk are bracing for an attack, or for solders before the battle, or for a good harvest, or a wedding, or even before a ship leaves port.  Mechanically it would be some sort of morale boost - I can see it used by NPC priests to whip their minions into a frenzy.  It could also sway opinion towards the players and increase the possibility of henchmen and retainers being retained by a party - and it could influence these retainers during the dungeon crawl.  I can see this as working in conjunction with the cleric's bonus to the communication skill in Beacon to make them the leaders that motivate and muster the troops.  So it would be a low level mass charm - in effect making the audience slightly more disposed towards the cleric and increasing their morale for a short time.  Since it would take an hour or more to perform and be a loud affair I'm not too worried that it would devalue the Enchanter's charm spell.

I probably won't call it preachin' however.

Tweaking the Divine...spells

I'm still on a spell kick and I have an idea to address a couple things three things I've wanted to do for a while.  The first thing came up in game as a discussion on potions of healing and cure light wounds - it seemed a bit cheap force a roll for a Cure Light Wounds potion - I mean you spend over 100gp for one of these it had better do more than heal 1 point of damage on a crappy roll.  The same applies to the spell  - you spend 3 hp to cast a Cure Light Wounds spell and then roll and heal up 1 point - that blows.

Secondly I have been wondering if it is appropriate in a spell point system to have the full list of Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Quite Small But Serious Wounds, Cure Silent But Deadly Wounds...  Really, if you need to cure some wounds cast Cure Light Wounds a couple times - it's not like you have to have them prepared.  Also, I know there are probably folks who will crunch some numbers and figure out which cure spells give you the best ratio per cost and everyone will stop using the others and they will be wasted space in the rule-book.

Thirdly I was thinking that clerics should have some spells to deal with 'spirits'.  I don't know why this is the case, maybe I have something from The Exorcist stuck in my subconsciousness  but I think that it just feels right to have some freaky ass ghost crap going down sometimes instead of having players just chopping up bed sheets.  However in order to do that kind of thing you need to give them tools to deal with it.  The cleric seems a natural fit for this.

Fourthly I have been looking at all the bipolar spells in the rulebook rethinking the idea that good clerics should cast the 'good' version of a spell and bad clerics cast the 'bad' version of it.  I mean really?  Wouldn't a bad cleric want to heal or buff his minions sometimes? It's not like bad creatures use negative hit points or anything.  I know a good cleric wouldn't want to use a Cause Serious Wounds spell on an enemy - but maybe a weak willed or misguided one would do it.  And really what's the difference between that and smashing in their head with your mace?

So I believe I'm going to do the following to deal with these things:

1. Change the wording in the note about reversing spells to make it more clear that this is a setting/character thing and not a 'rule' thing.
2. The Level 1 Cure/Cause Light Wounds will now do 4+1d4 hp damage.
3. The Level 2 Cure/Cause Moderate Wounds is gone to be replaced with Detect Spirits.
4. The Level 3 Cure/Cause Serious Wounds will now do 8+2d8 hp damage.
5. The Level 4 Cure/Cause Critical Wounds is gone to be replaced with Manifest

Detect Spirits (level 2 Divine spell)
Range: 25 ft. + 5 ft. /2 levels.
Duration: Concentration.
Description:  Reveals to the caster the presence of unseen spirits or ghosts and an impression of their nature/intent.  Can be used to determine if a creature or object is possessed.  Cannot be used to detect the presence of normal creatures that are hidden or invisible.

Manifest (level 4 Divine spell)
Range: 25 ft. + 5 ft. /2 levels.
Duration: Concentration + 1 round.
Description:  Causes spirits, or other incorporeal beings of HD lower than the casters level to be made corporeal. Entities possessing objects or creatures will be forced out of them and stunned for 1 round.

At the rate I'm going It will probably be like 900 years before this gets play tested properly but what the hell I think might be cool.

Lesser Seeming

Some Enchanter spells are kind of weak or missing some punch and so I'm going to swap out a couple in order to provide a better experience.  Since there is already Mirror Image at level 1 and Blur at level 2 I really don't think they need another defensive misdirection spell at level 3.  However I really think they need a good spell for disguising things since Disguise Self is pretty limited and Seeming is a level 5 spell.

Displacement:
Range:  Touch.
Duration: 1 turn /level.
Description:  Attacks against the subject miss 50% of the time.

for this:

Lesser Seeming:
Range:  Touch.
Duration: 1 hour.
Description: Visual and audible illusion changes appearance of 1 creature to another creature of at least 50% similar size and shape.  Does not provide any tactile, mobile or ability effects to recipient.

So it provides one hour of video and audio but you can't breath water if you are posing as a mermaid or reach high things if you are seeming to be a giant.  I'm also bumping up Seeming to include the audible components of Lesser Seeming - it is a level 5 spell for goodness sake.

Powerful Spells

Delta, over on his blog is doing some research into spells and their evolution from the old Chainmail to their more current incarnations and this has me thinking that Beacon spells really do need some more tweaking.  I basically did a quick pass through the SRD and tried to standardize things based on one round casting times and adjust some of the more obvious point-slot based adjustments.  I was hoping things would just adjust to their natural levels, however after seeing how effective the Goodberry spell can be when cast multiple times and played smartly - I am now thinking that the magic using classes could have a few real power play tricks to pull out.


Take the two iconic spells Lighting Bolt and Fire Ball for example, both are already waaaay powerful for level 3, and in Beacon, with point based casting, they are even worse than they would be in a spell slot based casting system.  To cast a 3rd level spell you need to be level 5 and you have to spend 7hp, and you might fumble your casting (but not likely with a +5 in addition to your MIND bonus against a DC of 13).  Fireball does 1d6 per caster level so it starts at 5d6 damage for 7hp of fatigue - a very desirable ratio.  The average Mage at level 5 would have some 30hp (possibly 40) so they could lob 3-4 fireballs in a day and therefore do some 15-20 d6 (min 20 / median 70 / max 120) damage in a day (or in a single fight) for only 21-28 hp without much worry.  A 5th level fighter can probably do more over the course of a day, but not in a few rounds, and not without probably taking a pile more damage than that.  And I can see higher level mages would be tossing around gobs of fireball and lightning bolts. And it's not just those two spells - a lot of spells are built assuming that they will only be cast once or twice a day even by high level wizards.

Off the top of my head I think that I could deal with this three ways - I could either lower (half) the level adjustment for damage for these type of spells so they scale up slower, I could simply use fixed damage and assume they will be cast more (such as a 3d6 fireball and lightning bolt), or I could put daily casting limits on some or all spells.   As usual, there are drawbacks to each of these approaches. Daily casting limits is sucky because it's something more to track and it really defeats the point of using points in the first place.  Fixed damage is ok, I don't mind having the 5th level mage tossing a couple fireballs off at 5th level if they are doing 3 d6  each and can see higher level mages whipping fireballs around like gumdrops.  However I can see where limiting the alpha strike on some spells would be problematic (fighting a huge regenerating troll say) so in this case there is a good argument for scaling up the spell damage.  Changing the damage/level ratio is probably the best compromise.

I have a feeling that this issue covers a lot of spells - my hope is that the majority will have obvious levers to pull and that the synergistic surprises will be minimum.  Ack I suppose this means more scouring the documents and play testing required.

Fighting Chaos

In planning an encounter for one of the various sandbox areas around Milham I needed to take a quick look at the Divine spell list to see how players might deal with evil spirits.  Well apparently they really can't given the list of spells I have put together and this kind of pisses me off because I was trying to be careful when crafting the lists.  I did pair out a lot of the D&D alignment mythology type spells like Detect Evil and protection from Evil 10' Radius, and now I appear to be reaping what I sowed because the divine caster doesn't seem to be prepared to deal with the kind of Law vs Chaos war I wanted to portray in this campaign.  I can always throw in more spells from a campaign perspective - indeed this might be the best way of dealing with this sort of thing given that it's the campaign that will determine if clerics are holy defenders of Order or if they are the avatars of a specific god in a milieu of many such gods.  Still it bothers me that divine casters get a create food and water spell and a spell to preserve corpses, but nothing to protect against possession or to ward away spirits.  By the time the 6th level Banishment spell comes around really it's too late to start getting into spirits and stuff - the ship has sailed on being all scary with the bed sheets and moaning noises.  They need something to deal with lower level introductory threats like possessed villagers and ghostly visitors (which would also be much more fun than a big hairy demon anyway IMHO).

The other way I could deal with it would be to  take out some of the cure spells (really with spell points you don't need to have an HP restoring spell for every level) and replace them with a couple spells designed to deal with spirit issues (possession, protection, warding, etc.)  Maybe I can just figure out some spells in game and then decide whether to include them in the magic list or not later.  This also needs to cover some spirit ammo for the BADGUY divine casters too.  That evil witch in the swamp should be able to do something more interesting than spoiling your rations.

Spell DC

During a recent session it became apparent to me that I forgot to include the difficulty ramp for spell casting.  The rules say spell casting is DC 10 and the chance to successfully cast a spell is:

 Roll + Level + MIND bonus >= DC 

Thus a reasonably intelligent caster with a +2 MIND bonus would fail on a 7 at level 1 by level 7 would only fail with a 1 (the D20 5%).  Well this is fine but not really too dramatic and it does not add any provision for the spell level.  I had forgotten my original intent - that the DC would be 10 + spell level.  I graphed this out to see what it would look like for both lowest and highest spells per level:

DC 10 +1 per spell level

Well this is better than maxing out the whole system at 7th level, but clearly the caster level bonus totally overtakes the spell difficulty increase.  There are some options to deal with this so that some tension is kept in the system.  One way would be to increase the DC modifier for spell level or decrease the caster level bonus.  These approaches simply cancel out and create extra math and I don't want to do it though because I really I like the simplicity of +1 per level, however if I were to do it I would change the caster bonus. Folks are used to attack bonus principles and gaining ability when they level. That would look like this:

Caster bonus every second level.

...and that looks like it really punishes casters.  It basically freezes them at a 50% chance for their highest level spells.  Lowest level spells suffer as well - having cantrips fail 10% of the time for a bright level 11 spell caster is not right.  No, not liking this so it looks like we'll stick with the first table.

But that sharp curve needs to be addressed somehow so that the whole mechanic does not become irrelevant, what are some other options?  Well DC is all about Difficulty and what makes spells more difficult to cast?  Complications!  Apparently, the system works after all! First there are the standard complications of changing the spell itself - Extending, Empowering and Widening should all include a DC modifier.  Then there are DC modifiers for environmental conditions - I imagine casting a spell from horseback or in a hurricane (or when falling, or in deep water...) would be more difficult than from a quiet neutral stance. Actually this is good because it rewards the high level caster, letting them become more proficient and allows the GM to adjudicate DC as it was intended - as a difficulty modifier.  I like it - a high level caster can attempt things a low level caster wouldn't - like a fireball while rollerskating.  Also they might be able to cast cantrips while caught in a tornado but just might have some difficulty with that 7th level spell.

Wanted meatshields

While poking around on the internet looking for some ideas or rules and costs of managing hirelings for Beacon, I stumbled across the following great fun thing:  Meatshields! The classic fantasy hireling and henchman generator.

I like this because it generates details of available hirelings including a name and a profession and a little hook or description, and lets you account for advertising and location.  I would totally hire Barus the Man-at-Arms just because he owns his own pair of coconuts.

Beacon Update

The second version of the Beacon PDF is posted.  It includes stuff like a second attack for Hunters, more combat rules, rules for scroll and potion creation, reworked spell lists (to level 5) and a bunch of other stuff.  It should be fully usable now and I plan of using it to play test a bit before making any more major changes.  And don't think it's not tempting to make more major changes.

I left up the first draft for a bit for those of you who like to compare things.

And if you notice any (unintentional) weird crap in there feel free to let me know.

Divine Magic

The Cleric class is one of the most problematic because it has the potential to be very interesting or very uninteresting depending on how it's executed in the setting.  In a detailed in campaign world there is usually a detailed and balanced pantheon of Gods (or whatnot) for clerics to play off of. In a minimalist campaign there usually isn't a lot of thought put into it and generic gods are pulled out.  In both cases there can a be a problem because in the detailed world all these divine entities would require custom versions of the cleric to carry their various philosophies/powers into the world -  something not much supported in the general rules.  In the minimalist campaign the Cleric is simply is the holy magic guy - an armour wearing magic user who heals and touts the laws of a generic god - something which is supported in the rules but can be a drag. The SRD is least helpful in this, as a lot of cleric spells are duplicates of magic user spells anyway - so the perception of  is reinforced. Sure all this can be overcome by good players and GMs in either instance, but I think that the deck is stacked against it.  Ideally a cleric spell list would be a list of spells rituals that derived from their religion and the more religions in the setting the more spells and rituals you would have to deal with.  That's hard on the GM and hard on the players however and I tip my hat to those that can pull it off well.  I can't offer many solutions to this here.  I did have the idea of making the cleric spells over entirely but I am trying to make Beacon as compatible with d20 references as I can so I settled with working over the SRD spells, trying to find ways to highlight the class.  I did put back in a lot of dualism in the spells which I think follows from the older game - I can't recall if there was an actual cause light woulds in old d&d spell lists but it was implied (or imagined) a bad cleric could reverse the cure spells.

In Beacon, Arcane magic is the magic of Words, Divine magic is the magic of Souls.  The spells come from outside the caster and can be channeled by will alone.  Divine magic spells can be made into potions, they can be imbued into objects - but they cannot be written down.   Following from this a cleric can't add spells to their spell book - they either simply know all the spells as a product of their faith or have had religious training to access them.  I am willing to go either way on this - perhaps a mixture of the two if I was running the campaign.

As for the holy avenger role - in D&D the paladin fills that role, something that always bugged me.  I mean isn't the cleric really supposed to be the paladin?  If he wasn't he wouldn't be allowed to wear plate armour and beat the hell out of things- he'd be in the back with the wizards.  They needed a whole other class just because they won't let the poor bastard use sharp objects?

So a Beacon Cleric can use sharp objects (unless his faith prohibits), and can use armour (unless his faith prohibits) and can cast spells (the ones his faith gives him).  He can be the terrible dude in black mail on the black horse with the fiery sword - or he can be the nearsighted monk with surprising strength of will.  Or the swamp witch who prays to the fen spirits to take away your blindness.  Or something else entirely.

What spells can say about the setting.

I hate to harp on these obvious things but going over the spell lists really brings home how the rules, and especially how spells rely on features of the game setting.  For example here's a pretty simple 4th level Cleric spell from Beacon:

Ethereal Ward:
Range:  Radius 25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels.
Duration: 10 min/level.
Area is impassable to Ethereal creatures and effects (including spells such as invisibility and Mage Sight, but not greater invisibility).  When the spell is cast, ethereal creatures already in the area are ejected and Ethereal based spells stop working.

So what does this say about the setting?  Well it says that the Ethereal plane is pretty damn important for magic users since it appears that the invisibility spell utilizes it in some way (It wraps the target in Etherealness to be specific).  So Arcane mages (or at least the high level ones or the sages) are probably pretty somewhat versed in Ethereal lore or mechanics to have come up with something like this.   You may not want to do anything with planes in you game (inner or outer) but there it is in the rules and your players are going to be exposed to it.  They are going to want to know what other Ethereal based spells and creatures are out there.

I put this spell in Beacon to replace the SRD spell Dimensional Anchor because that spell made a whole different assumption about the setting - namely that there are a butt-tonne of creatures called outsiders zipping around all these exotic planes and you might want to nab one of them before they flit off to the Lawful Indifferent Plane of Left-handed Smoke Elementals.  Having a 409 alternate planes might be great for your Pathfinder campaign but I DO NOT WANT.

Ok this is a bit of a straw-man argument because Dimensional Anchor is a pretty nice spell and does not necessitate having a lot of planes of existence - you could just use it for a Demon bashing campaign (I will probably do this actually, just with a different set of spells).  But the basic idea is I'm trying to remove some of the baggage.  That's the other reason I am reworking the spells instead of just using the SRD.  The main reason is just a rebalance because you have more spells per day in Beacon and a lot of SRD spells get pretty powerful if they are usable on demand and aren't taking up a precious spell slot.  Also there is a hell of a lot of overlap in the SRD and that's just lazy.

SO, you might not agree on my idea of a fantasy setting but if you use the Beacon spell lists there will be no adventures to the Lawful Indifferent Plane of Left-handed Smoke Elementals like you get when you use those nasty SRD spells.

I'm a grumpy old man

I got this quasi-spammish email from some folks affiliated with DriveThruRPG:

The Anti-Party

Player Characters are not the only ones who enjoy bonding in groups. Antagonists can do it, too,

These teams are the ultimate enemies to defeat, created as part of the custom design process behind the Coliseum Morpheuon patronage project. Paper Minis: Coliseum Morpheuon brings you two allied groups with complex motivations beyond simple good and evil, with challenging team tactics and intriguing interpersonal dynamics. They are here to equalize and oppose the power of your adventuring group. This product is presented in the Seven Sentence Npc format plus a secret for both teams and each individual. A complex statblock and corresponding paper miniature is provided for each member of the two teams.
The two teams consist of:

The Dirges: a group of nightmarish murderers,

    * Gallows Huge Undead (Augmented Plant); CR 15
    * Frau Kindle Female Human Sorcerer 15; CR 14
    * Mother Female Dread Wraith Sovereign Human Cleric 12; CR 14
    * Pike Male Advanced Troll War Master 9; CR 14
    * Winegrow Sop Male Wyrd Bard 9 Whispering Advisor of the Emperor Dragons 5; CR 13

The Gray Feathers: a group of formerly evil beings struggling to hold on to their redemption

    * Drahka-Kuhl Male Fire Infused Minotaur Druid 12; CR 16
    * Erzebeth Nostrayli, “The Crimson Shadow” Female Vampire Elf Rogue 15; CR 16
    * Koranger Kolyarut Inevitable Bard 6; CR 16
    * Loren Desharn Male Glabrezu-Possessed Human Fighter 10/Paladin 5; CR 16
    * “Rainbow” Unique Entity Medium outsider CR 16

Bonus paper mini: Were-Hellhound!

Now I don't mind getting this cause I did sign up to DriveThruRPG to download some real fun stuff for free (also Laser Ponies for like a buck fifty!) so I can't complain of getting a bit o spam from them.  I also like the idea of someone putting together a party of baddies for an adventure.

But a Female Dread Wraith Sovereign Human Cleric? a Male Wyrd Bard 9 Whispering Advisor of the Emperor Dragons? a Fire Infused Minotaur Druid? Good lord I don't even know what the hell that is and I'm sure I don't approve of having these guys hanging around each other!  I certainly don't want to be running a system where this is the baseline.

Grumpy old man.

Empowerment and Counterspell

I'm choosing to keep the "Empowering" magic rules from Microlite Advanced because I think it's a great way to get magic characters to burn up more HP and get into fun situations.  The rules are:

•     Extending makes a spell last twice as long as it normally would. An Extended spell costs an additional 2 HP.
•     Empowering makes a spell do 50% more damage than it normally would. An Empowered spell costs an additional 4 HP.
•     Widening makes a spell’s area of effect twice as big as it would normally be. A Widened spell costs an additional 6 HP.

 What's not to like about that really?  I think this is like fast-food marketing techniques, getting players to spend a few extra HP to supersize their character's spells.

In addition there was a clever concept from the Microlite forums about something called Counterspell.

The premise behind counterspell is that generally magic duels are trés suck. Unless there is some serious preparation beforehand, the first mage to get off a spell is likely to char the other one into dust, silence them, or turn them into a paramecium. That's pretty boring. It's also a bit crummy because you don't often wake up in the morning expecting to get into a dramatic magic duel and so can't really prepare for it beyond the obvious.  To liven up this DUEL concept, magic users are allowed to attempt to counter spells cast by other magic users before they get cast.  The better you are vs the opponent magic user (levels), and the more effort you spend (HP as fatigue here) the better chance you have to counter their spell.  Falling to your knees in exhaustion after countering that evil mage's fireball before it blasts your half conscious companions off the bridge, now that's more exciting isn't it?

Here's how I wrote it up:

Arcane spell casters have the ability to disrupt other arcane casters by attempting to counter their spell.  Casters can attempt to counter any type of arcane spell, however get a -1 penalty when countering spells from other schools. Counter spell is considered a cantrip or level 0 spell but only counts as a minor action.

The moment that a spell is cast, any caster aware of that (and who has a minor action available) may try to counter the spell. In order to succeed the countering caster must pass a DC 20 + (spell caster's level) Save roll. Before rolling they may choose to use their magical energies to improve their chances of success: for each HP invested by doing so, this Save roll gains +1 bonus. This loss of HP is only healed by resting, as per normal magic rules.

Since Beacon spells take a full action to get off, you can only counter spells if you aren't casting them which makes for some hard decisions.  Also this is something just for the Arcane guys - the divine casters don't get to play.

No Wish Spell

Deal with it.