My ECL playtest results

[irdeggman]

All right, I think I figured out how to get the scion class (my proposal) to the link to view stage.

http://www.tuarhievel.org/Scion%20Class%20...r%20Posting.doc

Something to look at concerning ECLs, one the great scion is only a +2 ECL, comparable to the drow. Per savage species they have a listing of things that constitute level adjustments (in brief and only some):

Monster hit dice (each one counts as a level). These are 1d8 so if using the bonus hitpoints for ECL'd scions, for every 4.5 (I believe that is the average roll for 1d8) bonus hitpoints there should be a +1 level adjustment. This is the strictest interpretation.

Pgs 11-16 from Savage Species

Poison - +1 level adjustment unless it affects Con then it is a +2
Spell resistance - +1
Energy resistance - +1 and an additional +1 for every resistance greater than 20.
Skills and feats - 3 or more racial bonuses (skills) yields a +1, 2 or more bonus feats also yields a +1.
Unbalanced ability scores - +1
Damage reduction - +1 (or more)
Fear - +1
Fast Healing - +1, +1 for every 3 hit points healed
Regeneration - +2
Frightful presence - +1

If one analyzes the drow and how the +2 adjustment is arrived at it comes down to 2 things - unbalanced ability scores (+1 level) and spell resistance (+1 level). The ability to cast a few spell like abilities is not considered to be worthy of a level adjustment. This is the reason that the minor scion template doesn't have an ECL adjustment - no bonus hit points and only a few minor spell-like abilities. The blood abilities that are available to those with the great scion template are much more likely to fall into the automatic level adjustment range.

If one looks closely at the level adjustment requirements in savage species (remember it is 3.5 forward compatable) the ECL adjustmens for scion templates are actually low and that is only accounting for the hitpoint bonus.

:)

[ryancaveney]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Gary wrote:

> I think certain blood abilities _should_ have both adventure level
> and domain level effects (maybe they all should for the sake of
> balance and thoroughness

I think they all should, because I almost never play at the adventure
level, and blood abilities are an important bit of BR flavor; I would
like them to play more of a role in my domain-only games.

> though what the domain level effects of Direction Sense might
> be escapes me at the moment...

Here are a few ideas off the top of my head:

Cheaper or faster movement for troops or ships led by the scion

Bonuses to seaworthiness checks for fleets led by the scion

Cheaper building of roads if a Character action taken to direct it

Small bonus to creating trade routes, especially long-distance ones

Ability to "go around" enemy troops with a small force, or prevent
additional units from getting past you

These are listed in order of increasing stretching of the concept IMO, but
all are moderately reasonable and based on the central idea of "the scion
doesn`t get lost": shortcuts are easier to find and use, and going the
wrong way at night or in bad weather isn`t as much of a problem.

> I think there could be some modification to make them more relevant at
> the adventure level. Battlewise might ... allow a character to direct
> others and give them greater than typical bonuses on attacks, AC, etc.

This is a fine idea. Bardic songs and the Bless spell are first-order
approximations to this plan; the various "combat mind" Force abilities
from Star Wars D20 may provide some inspiration as well.

> I would compare having control of provinces or holdings to having a
> high gp worth of items in one`s inventory per 3e`s table on "normal"
> gp values for equipment by character level. Regents have access to
> greater resources and can bypass or alleviate interactions with NPCs
> or other things common to the adventure level in a way beyond that of
> typical D&D adventurers.

This is true; however, I don`t think the full-blown ECL system is the way
to go here.

> bear it in mind as something that effects particular encounters and,
> therefore, factor it into things like ELs and CR awards, but it`s not
> the kind of thing that one needs to "earn" with XP.

Agreed.

> I guess the difference between assigning an ECL and modifying EL/CR
> based on such things is something of a "half dozen of one, six of the
> other" situation to some extent since effectively lowering the amount
> of XP awarded is not much different from raising the amount required
> to level up,

To some extent -- but note that changing XP awards rather than XP spending
gives you greater flexibility. In a system which modifies only CR, you
can give full XP if the regent escapes capture and singlehandedly kills
the baddie with something found in a closet during the escape, but zero if
the regent just stands back and watches a 20th-level lieutenant do the
job. In a system which modifies only XP needed to go up a level, you are
committed to calculating in advance what the average frequency of each
kind of event is going to be, and maintaining that proportion throughout
the character`s existence.

Also, I may be wrong in this, but the way I read the ECL rules is that the
choice is really "six of one, twelve of the other". ISTM that the ECL
thing is a double whammy, which both reduces XP awarded and raises the
amount of XP you need to spend: ECL which is added to your character level
both in getting and spending XP is twice as big a hit as just changing CRs.

In any case, I think the best interpretation of what XP represent is
precisely "how much have you learned from your experiences" -- which leads
me to conclude that for conceptual clarity, all (N)PCs with the same XP
total should have the same total class level, regardless of their species.


Ryan Caveney

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[Azrai]

Originally posted by ryancaveney
I think they all should, because I almost never play at the adventure
level, and blood abilities are an important bit of BR flavor; I would
like them to play more of a role in my domain-only games.

IMO the focus should clearly be on the adventuring side. Blood abilities play only a minor role in domain-only games. Birthright is a roleplaying game in first place,
not a board game. It is maybe impossible to balance the abilities so that they satisfy both adventure and domain games.

[destowe]

I'm at work, goofing off on a coffee break, so here are a few blood abilities that helps on domain level, that I can remember.

BloodMark- minor ability
Divine Aura- the major and great ability

They both give bonuses to CHA based skills. I have seen it used to to get the required DC to make get better results on both the Intrigue and Justice Random Action.

This also helps the success of successfully training units.

If the debate over ranks vs total bonus gets finalized that will make a huge bonus on the Lead skill for morale bonuses.

I see Ghoere taking them both. That +5 right there is enough for a +1 morale bonus.

[ryancaveney]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Azrai wrote:

> Birthright is a roleplaying game in first place, not a board game.

And I think exactly the opposite, so nothing will ever satisfy us both.

> It is maybe impossible to balance the abilities so that they satisfy
> both adventure and domain games.

I am not particularly interested in "balance" -- I am interested in giving
each blood ability *some* effect on the domain scale. If that means I
have to change a couple of minors to greats and vice versa, I will.


Ryan Caveney

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[irdeggman]

Something we all have to recognize and basically agree to is that any rule set is designed to address the "norm" and not the extremes. Ryan runs a domain only (or at least mostly domain based) campaign while Azrai runs an adventure only (or mostly adventure based) campaign. These are 2 extremes. The rules prposed were designed to cover a campaign that has domain and adventure aspects, with roughly equal emphasis on both. If things are written to cover domain-based campaigns then the adventure -based ones will most definitely suffer and vice-versa. IMO the only way to get anything done is to focus on the middle ground and let DMs who run one of the extreme types of campaigns make their house rules to cover their type of campaign. If the middle of the road approach is taken this should "minimize" the changes that either extreme will have to make, but I don't see any way to satisfy all the people. Neither extreme is wrong, but what benefits one side penalizes the other.:)

[kgauck]

I would think that our goal would be a rules set that was just as satisfying
at the extreams (all realm, no realm). In fact, since there is so little
overlap or connection between the realm rules and the setting material, I
would imagine that the only way to produce a good product for the great
middle ground would be to do both well.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

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[geeman]

At 11:09 PM 4/15/2003 +0200, irdeggman wrote:

>Something we all have to recognize and basically agree to is that any rule
>set is designed to address the "norm" and not the extremes. Ryan runs a
>domain only (or at least mostly domain based) campaign while Azrai runs an
>adventure only (or mostly adventure based) campaign. These are 2 extremes.
>[Snip] Neither extreme is wrong, but what benefits one side penalizes the
>other.:)

These may be extremes, but I don`t think they are opposing
extremes. Campaign material could suit either. That would, of course,
require an awful lot of work, but in many ways I think the BR materials
were meant to be used by either of these two styles of play. Adding things
that will aid people who play at the domain level doesn`t diminish the
adventure level aspect of play nor vice versa.

Gary

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[irdeggman]

Actually, Ryan's proposal of "bumping" up the power level of blood abilities to incorporate domain level effects (i.e., making minors majors or greats) would have a drastic effect on Azrai's style of play but making powers of too great a power level for the average adventure-based character to "afford". Now, Ryan didn't really give any examples of this, just what he considered to be more important - the ability of blood abilities to affect domain play vice the relative level of the ability.

Gary's BP based system could easily be adapted to incoporate including domain level effects into the purchasing system - but I'm not that certain there is a big enough demand for this type of application (i.e., all blood abilities have domain level effects).

[ryancaveney]

On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, irdeggman wrote:

> Actually, Ryan`s proposal of "bumping" up the power level of blood
> abilities to incorporate domain level effects (i.e., making minors
> majors or greats) would have a drastic effect on Azrai`s style of
> play but making powers of too great a power level for the average
> adventure-based character to "afford".

Maybe yes, and maybe no -- some might get too cheap! Or, if we were
really clever and careful, no change might be needed. More below.

> Now, Ryan didn`t really give any examples of this, just what he
> considered to be more important - the ability of blood abilities to
> affect domain play vice the relative level of the ability.

The trick is, as usual, that "balance" can only be achieved within some
context, not overall forever. Consider, for example, Heightened Ability.
To an adventurer, whether heightened Dex or heightened Cha is better
depends on class played, and the sort of monsters one meets. To a realm
ruler, however, heightened Cha is rather useful, and heightened Dex is
totally irrelevant. Then there`s Direction Sense vs. Travel -- I`ve made
some suggestions about how to use Direction Sense on the domain level,
since you can lead any number of people by your better route, and after
blazing the trail they could even follow it without you; with Travel,
however, you`re limited to just a handful of people you can bring with
you, so although it`s very powerful for an adventuring party, it is not
much help in ruling a realm.

In order to make the blood abilities be the same relative strength in a
regency campaign as an adventure campaign, you`d need to be very careful
in defining exactly what they could do in each case. For example, to make
Travel worthy of the Great level in a realm-only game, you`d have to make
it be something like the realm-spell version of Teleport, except use
bloodline score to fill in anywhere it wants to see caster or source
level, and maybe play with the RP costs. Some of the restrictions, like
"follow roads" for Brenna and "cross only ocean" for Masela are easy
enough to implement on the province map, but how would Vorynn`s and
Azrai`s time-of-day restrictions work? Or Basaia`s bonfire?

However, if all these details were worked out (which I am nowhere close
to doing completely), I think it is in principle possible to come up with
both realm-scale and adventure-scale definitions of the effects of each
blood ability which have the same relative power ranking on each scale.
If that were done, the minor/major/great classifications could be used
unchanged -- and I think to use them unchanged requires such an effort.
Then again, since I`d have to create domain effects for (nearly) every
blood ability from scratch anyway, that additional constraint doesn`t seem
to make the problem all that much harder. =)


Ryan Caveney

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