User:IGTN/Plan notes

=Libram Series= Need a series title. On my computer, the folder is labelled "neo-tomes", but a lot of other rewrites have earned popularity in the Tome community between when I wrote them and when I posted them, so it's maybe a fork on the Tome project more than an extension.

The series is now called the Libram series, and the books are named accordingly. The Book of Elements is also part of this series. Renaming it to Elemental Libram would fit the series but also be a lot of work.

General Notes
Convert to Tome of Prowess and maybe to TOTOM when they're finished. Probably build Wilds on top of them and write a conversion manual for Elements. If the main books aren't based on TOTOM, write a compatibility manual anyway.

Like the original Tome series, this is aimed at Wizard-level games. The power level target has people being able to do mythological feats below 20th level. The Elemental Libram has 19th level characters, given enough time, being able to create universes; given a supply of Raw Chaos, it can be done at lower levels. This will be continues, with characters in the low to mid teen levels being able to dramatically reshape landmasses. An explanation of how dungeons for those characters can possibly work will be put in eventually.

Feral Libram
All the nature stuff. Rants include what wilderness is and what tameness and tameability are as general philosophy, and a whole mess of geography, with options for how to do a world's geography (ties in to world-building). The alignment system rewrite proceeds with the philosophies of the planes of Chaos. Also includes magical flora and fauna, magical ecosystems, and wilderness adventuring. Solves the issue of how the underdark isn't flooded.

Also includes chapters on Fey, Dragons, Giants, Weres, and Beasts. Each chapter includes a PC race and classes similar to the Tome of Fiends classes, although not exact and maybe not three of them. Fey, for instance, might have a Fey Noble analogous to the True Fiend, a magic fey spherecaster, a fey trickster not analogous to any fiend class, and maybe a fomorian analogous to the fiendish brute. These four classes might get combined into fewer in any number of ways. Beasts would include ways for building your unicorn cohort as a PC. Werethings would allow you to play werewolves and werebears in a level-appropriate manner.

More conventional characters get rewrites of the Druid and Ranger classes, plus a bonus shapeshifter class and maybe something thrown in for the barbarians. The relation between druidism and nature gets explored heavily. The Horizon Walker gets rewritten.

The Green's In Style section would include, in addition to wilderness feats and uses for magic gems, a Terrain Spheres system where the spheres a character can gain access to depends on where they live. This is appropriate primarily for fey and dragons, so an island faerie and an island dragon might have similar powers, but a mountain dragon would have different powers. Whether these spheres will be open to Fiends and Elementals is currently an open question, but I'm leaning toward "yes".

Also, the rules on lighting, weather, and environmental conditions get reviewed, with an option for more rigorous rules to plug in to spells. Falling damage gets rewritten to make it more cinematic. Terrain effects on combat get rewritten so that a few terrain pieces can reshape a battlefield.

Civil Libram
A counterpart to the Feral Libram, this book covers what happens when you get a bunch of people together and organize them. Social rules get looked at heavily, including the Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Gather Information skills (if the Tome of Prowess is not satisfactory). It covers classes like the Paladin and Swashbuckler. Bonus classes will include an Inquisitor, which works like a Paladin who gets away with things, a class based around using the social revision, tentatively titled the Courtier, and a class who draws it power from organizing others.

The book will also have several chapters of ranting, including discussions on what civilization is, a long discussion of what morality means in a civilized context, why it pays to be evil in civilization, and alignments of the Planes of Law; rants about different government systems, discussion of how the things that cities consume gets in and the things cities produce get out, solutions to the problem where high-level characters can annihilate civilization at little cost to themselves. Urban adventures will also be covered, including planar urban adventures.

Minigames on the scale of Sim City and Civilization (although probably over a shorter time scale) will be introduced. Some discussion of Constructs will be given, or a suitable outside fix will be suggested. Magic unique to civilization will be discussed, and a reason for graveyards to even exist in a world with evil necromancers will be suggested. Magic items will get touched upon, again, if previous work proves unsatisfactory.

The Feats of Civilization section will cover uses for Concentration, in addition to everything else it needs to cover.

Astral Libram
The final book in the series, the Astral Libram addresses everything else, primarily the Astral Plane, the Upper Planes and Cordant Planes, the Far Realm, and Dreamland. Every plane that wasn't previously issued a philosophy will be. Celestial classes analogous to the Fiendish classes will be included, along with spheres and feats for them. For pun-related reasons, the Bard rewrite goes here and not in the Civil Libram. Exemplary of alternate philosophies similar to the Paladin also get written.

Divinity gets rewritten for the Astral Libram, in several ways. In one tack (dubbed Crawl-Style in my notes), anyone can have a patron deity that grants powers to anyone sufficiently pious with enough ranks in the appropriate skill, probably Thaumaturgy; the Cleric class is eliminated. In another approach, divinity is eliminated as a discrete status. Instead, various stereotypical divine powers get opened up so that anyone high enough level can take them as feats or class features. Prestige classes that make you able to judge the dead and feats that let you hear your name where-ever it's said are included for this tack. A third way where deities are just ideas, but ideas that have power, will also be covered. The implications of the Crawl approach on the other two will also be discussed.

Tacked-on subsystems with nowhere else to go will be examined here. These include Blue Magic, Weeaboo Fightan' Magic (which might be moved up to Civilization), Pact Magic, and Truenaming.

Prestige classes will include the Ur-Priest, and a new take on the Wizard. The Ur-Priest will be fairly stereotypical, with the ability to use unearned divine powers. The Wizard will study a wide variety of different kinds of magic and learn to combine them by casting out of a spellbook.

Time and the Future get examined here. This includes future-prediction, time travel, and planes with alternate timestreams. A future-predicting class may be included, and sense will be made of the action rules.

Environments of the other planes will be discussed, although possibly in less depth than the Elements were. High Adventure sections will be included for many of them.