Talk:Shattered Haven (3.5e Campaign Setting)

Ponderings
So after some discussion, I've got a few choices in the rules that SH would run under. Does anyone have any experience with Dark Heresy? I'm looking for unbiased opinions that can give actual examples from the book rather than hearsay, and things that are fundamentally problems rather than ones that can be HRed away by changing a single sentence. Beyond that, some variants to D&D might include a complete redoing of the Grim-N-Gritty system and rechecking the math, or perhaps Iron Heroes and using some D&D classes on top of it (martial adepts might work--need to check this out). How well would martial adepts work in Iron Heroes? Would they be too strong compared to the other classes presented in that game? More stuff to think about. --Ghostwheel 10:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Some variant of D&D 3.5.
 * Dark Heresy has been suggested.


 * --Insufficient data. Out of cheese error. Redo from start.-- :-p


 * More seriously, I don't even know what sort of feel you're going for with this setting with respect to the players. The world is a shitty place, yes. Does all of the bad stuff get lumped on the players too, or are they somewhat special in the system (background vs foreground basically)? Is it just a struggle to survive, where getting to see another day is the goal? Do they ever win in a meaningful, if only temporary, way? The answers to these questions determine which system you want to use, and I wouldn't offer suggestions for that until you have a direction.


 * Also, is this supposed to be intricately tied to your Grimoire, or just a campaign setting to use however? - Tarkisflux 17:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Yay! Questions! Clarifications! Sounding boards!
 * While the world is an incredibly shitty place it's not absolutely shitty for the players; the setting shouldn't just be a backdrop and ignored until it becomes relevant, rather I want to pound what a shitty place it is with every description. But that's more flavor rather than mechanics, I suppose. A more relevant example is probably something along the lines of Blade Runner, or The Matrix (when outside the Matrix), where the characters are slightly better than everyone else--enough to keep them alive, but never nearly enough to make them cocky enough to think that they could take on two-dozen people on their own.
 * For the first level or two, especially depending on where the characters are in society, it should be a struggle to survive. But by the time they reach level 3-4 they can take care of themselves, though they couldn't face the might of the psychic shock troops single-handedly.
 * I'm very much in favor of players "winning" temporarily--a great ending to finish off a campaign that would fit incredibly well with the setting would probably be the PCs sacrificing themselves to delay some great evil from ruining the world. It's not going to be permanent, and the evil is going to return stronger than ever, but their sacrifice fed the flickering flame of life for a little longer, allowing the next "heroes" (protagonists) to come to be the next ones who will have to try to stop it. It's a futile cycle that embodies the "crapsack world" feel I'm going for, but at the same time it holds something very poignant for me when thinking about it. --Ghostwheel 17:40, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * So, heroes "retire" through sacrifice at the end of every arc?


 * Also, grimoire closely tied in / required: Y/N? - Tarkisflux 17:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * In the ideal, that would probably be the most "epic" way to retire, yes, though there are other ways that are less than awesome. (Dying, being crippled, being thrown away and becoming an alcoholic or druggie, perhaps joining some noble house, the govt, or one of the organizations and being kept around for one's knowledge, etc.) And forgot to respond to the second part--absolutely not, grimoire is completely divorced from this setting. It's meant more for epic-ish combats that go for multiple rounds with characters falling and getting up mid-battle and for dramatic stuff. High fantasy just doesn't fit whatsoever with SH. --Ghostwheel 17:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Then you don't want DH, since people die too randomly in that. You don't even need another system since you want low fantasy with cinematic stuff, but IH or FC would work if you wanted to take a look at them. Regardless of d20 variant, I'd probably just make it an E6 setting where no one gets to play the same characters after the end of an arc. If you want people to lose characters dramatically you should make them lose them no matter what and be up front about it, so that they have the option of going out dramatically without feeling pushed into it. And then every arc ends with "good job taking down the X, now all the reinforcements show up and you will almost certainly lose; you can attempt to fight or flee" (which determines final outcome) or you just write out a death or a capitulation and entrance into the SH power structure. If you really want people to take the dramatically appropriate good guy option instead of slipping out or joining the power structure, then you give them a reason to do that. Like a bonus of some sort on their next character, maybe the next character randomly finds an object of importance (magical or powerful or useful) to the dead hero, or whatever. Then players have an incentive in the form of a common strand between characters and plot arcs to do the things you feel appropriate for the setting. - Tarkisflux 18:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * How well do you think martial adepts would fit into IH? And what's FC? Apart from that, a lot of those ideas seem solid, especially the "connecting" piece that allows you to move down the generations and such. --Ghostwheel 20:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Some things that came up in chat on the channel:
 * Unless there's a TPK, you don't die.
 * Large monsters get +10 HP for every size over medium, small monsters get -5 HP for every size under small.
 * You can take "advantage" of armor up to 2 for every HD you possess. Every HD you possess over that gives you another DR. So someone at level 4 would be able to take full advantage of full plate (8 DR) and would gain 10 DR by level 6, while someone with a chain shirt would have 4 DR by level 2 (same as someone wearing heavy armor), but by level 6 would have 8 total (4 + 4 = 8).
 * DR from multiple sources stacks, but everything but the largest one gets halved. You only need to bypass the "strongest" type to bypass all of them. So an ogre (3 medium armor, 5 natural armor) would have a total of 6 protection (5 + 3/2) and one would need -8 to bypass it completely.
 * Keep dice as damage, lose extra damage from rolling high, keep super-low crit increases, keep con score + HD/BAB to HP.
 * Monsters that are large gain +2 CR, +1 CR for every size larger? Unsure.
 * I think that's about it thus far... --Ghostwheel 21:04, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I haven't taken a very good look at IH so I don't know how well martial adepts would fit in. FC is Fantasy Craft, and I'm not familiar enough with the classes there to say whether martial adepts would be a good fit there either, but FC is very close to 3.5 on the martial side so it probably wouldn't be a stretch.

I'm not really sure what the channel stuff is getting at. Are these Grim and Gritty variants? Why the no death without TPK thing? Is magical healing out? - Tarkisflux 21:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Some of them are; yes, magical healing would be mostly out, and I'd probably use either the reserve HP pool (changed slightly to refresh daily) in IH or healing surges that are not activated during combat for healing since divine casters are rare, and healing would flavorfully be done by "bandaging" or something similar.
 * I'll look through FC again, though I remember glancing through it and not being that impressed; still, I'll take another look and see what comes up.
 * Some of those are GnG variants, others we talked about on the channel--TPK thingy would be due to the deadliness of the combat so that people wouldn't have to constantly remake characters if they die (which should technically be rare at "higher" levels (4-6) but until then...) It also allows for a mechanics similar to the one in Dragon Age/KOTOR/Mass Effect/etc, which I've always been a fan of--while people might go down and stay down, if the party wins the fight overall it "wasn't as bad as it looked" or somesuch.
 * I'd also probably use incantations for "magical" effects that need doing, though they would might have some negative effects (will save vs. losing purity?) and require things like the stars being aligned or the sacrifice of a goat or whatever.
 * Any other clarifications needed on the other stuff? --Ghostwheel 02:07, 22 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Another idea - with the removal of str to damage with one-handed weapons (and only getting 1/2 with two-handers) and a slower curve for DR, perhaps add BAB to damage.
 * Also, Aarnott suggested something interesting--perhaps have static damage for weapons so variability comes from how much higher you hit on a 1:2 basis? Need to do the math on characters level 1-6 to see how it works. By level 6 though you've got +11 or +12 vs. AC 16 often enough, which means you're getting +2 damage often enough, and +7 when rolling high. Might be viable, need to run the numbers. --Ghostwheel 11:36, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think this is going to work, might be better to just go with the Dark Heresy rules. Add in that "it wasn't as bad as it looked" if the whole party doesn't TPK as long as you don't die from an autodie critical hit. --Ghostwheel 19:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry my contributions to this died out. It was one part distraction and one part being lost at what variants you were even trying to use anymore. I still don't know what parts of GnG you want to use, for example, just that there were some you were interested in, but that makes it hard to talk about them.


 * Anyway, moving to a ruleset designed to support grimdark for players might work as a better start, but will probably need to be lightened up a bit to allow the players the sorts of heroics leading up to the final fight that you seemed to want. I'm not familiar enough with DH to know if your TPK rule will sufficiently mitigate circumstances, but you might want to find an alternate solution anyway. The TPK rule works in games where you control multiple people, so you're still doing something if one or two of them go down. It's not awesome in a death heavy game where you only control 1 person, because you can expect to sit a substantial portion of the game out because you were dropped and can't be revived mid combat.


 * If you were using an HP system, I'd suggest using that as a last resort and going with a wound system instead. In such a setup, when people hit 0 they got 50% of their hp back and a debilitating wound of some sort (loss of use of arm / leg / all previously bandaged wounds reopen immediately / whatever) so that they're diminished but not out for the remainder of the scene. You could build on that with stacking limits so that you do eventually take enough damage to fall down and stay there, but that provides the sort of hp flexibility that you need in a game without combat healing. It probably needs to be paired with a method of partially healing these injuries relatively quickly outside of combat as well as out of combat fast-healing or whatever as well just to avoid death spirals in every moderately long dungeon. I don't know DH well enough to suggest if that's a better method of dealing with taking too much damage in a fight than the default. - Tarkisflux 19:43, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Note
Want to add that every game is a different timeline/timestream, and that if they are able to stop the BBEG they might save that timeline even at the cost of their own lives, and when they lose that timeline is doomed. --Ghostwheel 18:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)