Talk:Fantasy Pregnancy (3.5e Variant Rule)
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Eiji-kun opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4. |
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| Oh jeez, where do I start. The mechanics are both poor and oddly limiting. Like, though I do joke about this, who says elven pregnancies are abnormally longer than a human? What about odd races, or immortal races? And though fatigue is appropriate, I might argue a better status or at least a more detailed status.
And then there's it affecting the father, which others have already addressed. The killer, while not important per se, just kinda is too dumb for words. PCs cannot become pregnant. I am... what? |
PCs can totally get pregnant (and get others pregnant). I even suggested (and linked to) spells designed to make it easy for would-be parents to have children. I’d be happy to make it even easier for them (perhaps by reducing the casting time, lowering the spell levels, or putting them on more spell lists). Just how easy should it be for PCs to get pregnant?
Making long-lived races have longer pregnancies supports a ‘long-lived kindreds have fewer children’ vibe which I find aesthetic. I’ll take your word for this scaling being problematic, but could you tell me what the problem is?
Not sure what you mean by “odd races”. If you mean races without known age of adulthood, then the DM will need to come up with one. Of course, kindreds which can’t have children don’t have ages of adulthood, but they can’t have pregnancy either. (I should revise the stork call spells to reflect this. (Thank you for the catch!))
Is the problem with immortal races the lack of an age of adulthood? If so, the above applies.
While fatigue works well enough for this, I am certainly open to suggestions. Especially since these are rules for magical pregnancy. I do want to give parents reasons to stay home for the pregnancy.
One reason for the father to be fatigued is that it might be the father (or a father) who is pregnant. The stork call spells can, after all, get any gender pregnant. I made both parents fatigued due to the arguments. Who has to stay home for nine months? I estimated a high chance of nasty argument, with lower (but too high) chance of the argument moving to real world politics. I decided to take the hit in plausibility, especially since any usable set of pregnancy rules will be quite unrealistic.
I gather that you have other concerns with this article. Could you share them with me? I can only solve problems that I know about.Ideasmith (talk) 17:07, 5 December 2017 (MST)
- PCs become magically immune to conventional pregnancy and need to use spells for some reason. I don't find this particularly compelling and fairly immersion breaking. Mind you, "how to make babby" probably shouldn't be part of this rule anyway, leave that up to the DM and just cover what amounts to the Pregnancy status effect. To that end that's what this is really, a status effect we're dealing with. It shouldn't effect the father because A) who knows if the father is even there and B) whose to say the father is caring enough to get fatigued and C) the way this is worded brings up some oddities. El Sexino the bard may have left town, but he knows he's in trouble when suddenly on the road he is perma-fatigued. Oops, now he's exhausted, turns out that threesome was a bad idea. And he remains this way for decades because unfortunately one of them was an elf.
- Really, this should only effect the mother. She's the one who has to handle this 24/7 until birth. And in the case of magic, the male carrying is the "mother".
- As far as the scaling of pregnancies goes, I think it's a wide enough issue where giving them a set pregnancy is a bad idea. Dragons come to mind, but I'm certain there are other races pushing tens of thousands of years of lifespan. Its going to be a DM fiat thing regardless, so may as well let the DM determine how long the duration is per race.
- Oh, and apply some means of the end of pregnancy in case of violence and activity. It's grim, but this is also why most creatures stop fighting dragons when pregnant. It can be something simple that amounts of massive damage rule for the baby; in case of damage threshold, save vs complications or death.
- As far as the actual effect, honestly I think that if we do the above we can afford to be more detailed about how one goes about the pregnancy. I recommend splitting it up into three stages of progression since there is a difference between just knocked up and swollen and in labor. The first stage, barely notable with any penalties while the last one should be obvious. I actually recommend encumbrance for the later stages, and instead of fatigue just make the chance of fatigue easier, such as a penalty on saves and checks against it. Also other effects which might apply: weakness to, or randomly occurring sickness (perhaps a check at the start of the day). Needing to refit armor if any. And armor check penalties, as climbing and tumbling is rougher is a baby bump.
- You can top it up with a simplified example of childbirth itself which should probably be Fortitude saves vs various complications, which should be semi-easily resolved with Heal checks. Enough that it's a non-issue with a doctor, but only a small but dangerous chance if you're giving birth in the woods alone. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 21:36, 5 December 2017 (MST)
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Luigifan18 opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4. |
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| What the fuck.
Want to start a family? Too bad, sucks to be you! Go rape an NPC if you want a child! It's just... argh. No. Hell no. |
Where did that come from?
I don’t see how you got “PCs cannot get pregnant.” from “A creature with one or more levels in any PC class cannot become pregnant … without magical assistance …“
I also don’t see how you got “Go rape an NPC if you want a child!” from “A creature with one or more levels in any PC class cannot … get another pregnant … without magical assistance …“
I don’t see how you reached the conclusions you did without assuming both that PC parties don’t have divine magic available and that rape somehow counts as "magical assistance". I really, really, hope you aren’t making those assumptions. (Well, only making the first assumption would merely seem weird and silly.)
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The-Marksman opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4. |
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| So many things wrong with this. While I applaude the effort for both coming up with the idea to make rules for this and the effort to write it, there are just too many things wrong which have already been covered by everyone else. I agree, great idea, poor execution. |
Since the folks complaining about this disagree with each other, claiming that all of them agree with you does not tell me which of their statements you agree with. Saying that someone else speaks for you is cool, but you are supposed to specify whom. Please do so.
- It was kind of a generic agreeing with everyone's sentiments, but if you really want me to be more specific; here goes. Before I start I just want you to know this is going to be really long, and I don't want you to feel that I'm ripping you or the article apart, you're asking for feedback and that's what I'll be doing for you, and I mean the following in the most respectful way it can be interpreted.
- The first thing is your just recently said to Eiji: "PCs can totally get pregnant (and get others pregnant). I even suggested (and linked to) spells designed to make it easy for would-be parents to have children." but in reality, the opening line of your rules state the following: "A creature with one or more levels in any PC class cannot become pregnant, get another pregnant, or their kindred’s equivalent, without magical assistance." That's a direct contradiction. Yes, actually you DID say that PC's cant get pregnant without your spells.
- Rather than making it so that PC's require the use of this spell to even get pregnant (did my characters parents need it?!) it would make this a more compelling option and more flavorful for people who were having trouble conceiving used this as an option or maybe even better, if using this spell granted the baby some bonus after its born because the parents conceived using this spell. Like maybe the baby gets an extra +2 bonus to a stat at birth or some enhanced racial trait, feature or skill bonus. Or, if used to create a half-breed maybe the baby could gain more of its parents base racial traits than a normally conceived creature would gain, like a Half-Elf made by this spell gains a +4 bonus to skill points like its Human parent. Having this fill the niche of helping facilitate an otherwise impossible pregnancy or making the baby stronger than normal would make this a desirable option and more importantly, both more flavorful and logical for it to have a use in a game when otherwise such things generally go unaddressed.
- Speaking of which, as a side note; your rules for your lesser stork spell specify that the spell has to be cast on 2 creatures of the same species. So you're telling me that with that spell an elf and a human cant utilize this spell to produce a half-elf? That's just silly, it lacks utilization of the existing structure of the game. If anything you should be utilizing this rule set your making to make it more viable for 2 beings of odd races to produce a baby when such a thing wouldn't normally be possible. Which you seem to do in the Greater Stork spell, except that you only state it has to be 2 conscious, living, willing creatures. So does this mean a Giant Eagle and a whale could have a baby? and if so, how would that work exactly? I think some inherent restrictions are in order. Possibly make it that they need to be of the same creature base type like just humanoid or have above X Intelligence. This would both prevent the Eagle and Whale from producing a baby AND still allow for an Ogre and a Human to produce a Half-Ogre.
- Second, its silly to have the father be affected for the entire pregnancy that's not how real life works, and forcing that status effect onto the father adds nothing to the flavor or make using this rule any more enjoyable. I saw that above you said to Eiji: "One reason for the father to be fatigued is that it might be the father (or a father) who is pregnant. I made both parents fatigued due to the arguments. Who has to stay home for nine months? I estimated a high chance of nasty argument, with lower (but too high) chance of the argument moving to real world politics. I decided to take the hit in plausibility, especially since any usable set of pregnancy rules will be quite unrealistic." I disagree with this on numerous levels. For starters, the biggest thing here is that your trying to solve a problem that doesn't even exist yet. No one is complaining about real world politics and you trying to preemptively "solve" that problem is making the article suffer for it. You don't solve that perceived problem by having the father take fake and unrealistic penalties that shouldn't exist just to satisfy some perceived inequality. Not to sounds cold, but Its life. That's just how it works. You can solve this "equality" issue by simply stating in the spell description that if the father gets pregnant in the spell casting, than its the father who takes these penalties and not the mother. Those aspects don't need to be gone into in the variant rule set itself. Just state at the beginning that the article is written from the perspective of the mother carrying the child but this may be reversed in some scenarios. Simple as that. How does someone have the right to complain about the rules if you're just trying to make an accurate representation of real life pregnancy? As my father used to tell me. Don't fix what isn't broken.
- Real life pregnancies come in 3 trimesters, why this wasn't used in your rules to break down the status effects and have it build gradually in such a manner is beyond my understanding. During the first trimester some women don't even realize their pregnant because other than a little nausea they are otherwise physically unaffected, this should be reflected in some manner in the rules as well. There are several in game status effects that you would be wise to make use of here, for example nausea and encumberance.
- Starting in the first trimester the father should take a scaling penalty to saves vs fatigue/exhaustion effects through the trimesters and should have to rest for 1 hour longer (per trimester) to remove such effects if he does get them. Mothers should be affected by a % chance EACH DAY to be nauseous. With it starting high during the first few days and the % going down each day until the end of the first trimester. Then she should take a small penalty which increases weekly to everything endurance makes you good at during the second trimester, and then a large penalty to such checks and be encumbered during the third trimester.
- Also when talking about the length of the pregnancy you said "To get the expected duration of pregnancy in days, multiply the kindred’s age of adulthood by 18". So using your rules, in the case of 2 Elves using your spell to get pregnant, if you use the age of Adulthood which is 110 X 18 = 1980 days! That's 5.42 YEARS! Then you said "During the first half of pregnancy, the parents are fatigued. During the second half of pregnancy, the parents are exhausted. This fatigue or exhaustion continues until the end of the pregnancy."So you're telling me that even with the long life span of an Elf, you expect BOTH the parents from this spell to ROLEPLAY their characters as fatigued for next 2.2 GAME YEARS straight! Then play their characters as permanently exhausted for another 2.2 GAME YEARS?! That would suck all the fun out of playing your character if that were the case. Then after that you say "After the baby is born, both parents are exhausted." .. how can that be when they've been exhausted already for the last 2.2 years straight? How is that any different than how they were before? If you elaborate and utilize the basic outline I started for pregnancies above and fluff that out, you could make the parents exhausted after the birth and that would make sense.
- Next lets move on to the Filth fever. You stated in your article: " For each parent and the baby, make the following checks". In the DMG on page 292 there is a table which talks about Filth Fever and it only says "Dire Rats and Otyughs spread it. Those injured while in filthy surroundings might also catch it." So what if my character is married to the princess of the realm and we're at the royal castle. Is that counted as filthy just because I used this spell? Also, why is the father getting Filth Fever? He didn't get injured during the birth, did he? What if he was out of town during the birth, does he contract it while in the local bar 2 towns over? Next, the effects of Filth Fever according to SRD is supposed to just be 1d3 dex and 1d3 con (which happen after 1d3 DAYS to be clear). Instead you make potentially the mother, father AND baby all take 3d6 immediate con damage! That is A LOT! ... like ... A LOT-A LOT ... Are you purposely trying to kill off everyone who to uses this rule set? Yes the checks to avoid it are really really low, but that's not the point. The point is that you made the disease 6 TIMES more deadly than it should be for no reason. The use of Filth Fever would be flavorful if it was applied correctly and took all situations into account.
- Again, I hope you don't feel that I meant any disrespect to you, I applaude the fact that you tackled this subject which is often times something that gets over looked, and having a good set of rules could make role playing this period both enjoyable and flavorful and meaningful. But in its current state this article does not accomplish that. I hope this allows you to rethink this article so I can give it a good rating. The-Marksman (talk) 03:48, 6 December 2017 (MST)
- I had some more thoughts during work today that I wanted to chime in with for you to use. I would continue to build on the 3 trimester rule set that I mentioned before. In the first trimester a mother takes a -2 penalty on all balance, jump climb, swim and tumble checks. This penalty increases to -6 in the second trimester and -10 in the third trimester. Then have a rule where in the first trimester if they're able to spend 10% more on food for a meal (for more portion) than she reduces her penalty on such checks by 2. In the second trimester she must spend 25% more on meals to get the reduction and in the third trimester she must spend 33% more on meals to get the 2 reduction. This effect lasts only until the next meal time and if shes able to spend more on an extra portion again she gains that reduction to these penalties. Also I second Eiji's ideas for death of baby for mass damage and also for special made armor in the third trimester that costs X% more. Also, I would consider out right completely banning tumble in the third trimester. The-Marksman (talk) 15:39, 6 December 2017 (MST)
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Qwertyu63 opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4. |
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| This is something that we need rules for, but the execution is very poor. Right out of the gate it doesn't work. See the in-depth review I will write in a moment. |
I'm not sure, other than for Political Correctness, if there is a reason to have both parents suffer fatigue/exhaustion.
Also, with the Constitution checks for day of birth, does the birth happen on a success or failure?
I like the suggestions to limit this to groups that can handle it. However, the restrictions on PC's getting pregnant or impregnating, these seem like they would be better as guidelines - an even then I'd add the proviso that a player might try to make it happen. Player attempts might be modified by their Constitution and that of their partner. Be Well 02:36, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
- Having both parents suffer pregnancy penalties prevents discussions of who gets stuck with said penalties, which in turn prevents the political arguments such discussions would be all too likely to lead to.
- Birth happens on a success. Thank you for catching that.
- The magical-pregnancy-only rule ducks various issues that are best ducked in an RPG. If you prefer not to duck them, a set of rules for nonmagical pregnancies can be found at http://www.purpleduckgames.com/qhum7.--Ideasmith 01:20, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
My review
"A creature with one or more levels in any PC class cannot become pregnant, get another pregnant, or their kindred’s equivalent, without magical assistance."
Why? This makes no sense.
"Otherwise, characters get pregnant when the GM says so. As a default, assume that a fertile female has about an even chance of becoming pregnant during a time period equal to the length of her pregnancy."
This seems rather useless. Characters already got pregnant when the GM said so. Try making some rules.
"The DM is advised to consider the taste and maturity of the players before relating pregnancy to certain activities that may or may not actually occur in the gameworld."
No comment here, that is reasonable.
"During the first half of pregnancy, the parents are fatigued and have a +1 bonus to diplomacy and gather information checks. During the second half of pregnancy, the parents are exhausted and have a +3 bonus to diplomacy and gather information checks. This fatigue or exhaustion continues until the end of the pregnancy."
Almost none of this makes sense. Sticking fatigue or exhaustion on the mother makes sense, but (speaking from a biological standpoint) putting those on the father makes no sense. Also, what is with the diplomacy and gather information stuff? Seems random to me.
"To get the expected duration of pregnancy in days, multiply the kindred’s age of adulthood 18. Starting 14 days before that, make a daily Constitution check (DC 20, use baby’s Constitution, birth occurs if check succeeds) to determine if birth occurs that day."
I think this needs some editing on the wording. Also, please note that this can lead to an endless pregnancy.
"When birth occurs, check for side effects. For each parent and the baby, make the following checks: The caretaker makes a DC 5 Heal check. This is automatically failed if there is no caretaker. The same caretaker may care for all three, if the parents sufficiently nearby. The parent or baby makes a DC 10 Fortitude check. If either check is failed, Filth Fever is contracted (see Disease Descriptions in the SRD). If both checks are failed, Filth Fever is contracted and 3d6 Constitution damage immediately occurs.
After the baby is born, both parents are exhausted."
Again, these things effecting the dad makes no sense. I would like to point out that the dad might not even be there. He could be off on the other side of the world.
Overall, none of this works. I award you no points. --Qwertyu63 (talk) 18:59, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
- "Why? This makes no sense."
- Because the deities/deity-like beings that place babies choose to place them in that manner. Or whatever else the DM decides. It makes as much sense as D&D rules usually do.
- "This seems rather useless. Characters already got pregnant when the GM said so. Try making some rules."
- I'm not making specific rules for frequency of children or the portions of the economy that don't involve adventurers for what I assume is the same reason the core books duck these issues. DM's who care about these matters either, A: prefer them to vary from gameworld to gameworld or, B: have strong idiosyncratic preferences. So such rules would by "rather useless", as you put it.
- I'm sticking to rules for PC types getting pregnant.
- "No comment here, that is reasonable."
- That sex might not be occurring in a D&D gameworld that has pregnancy? I think so, but ,judging by the rest of your reply, I suspect you missed that.
- "Almost none of this makes sense. Sticking fatigue or exhaustion on the mother makes sense, but (speaking from a biological standpoint) putting those on the father makes no sense."
- From a D&D magical standpoint, when a spell has two targets it affects both the targets.
- "Also, what is with the diplomacy and gather information stuff? Seems random to me."
- I honestly don't remember. I put that in a long time ago. Dropped.
- "I think this needs some editing on the wording."
- Thank you for catching that! Yes, it needs a 'by' after the word 'adulthood'. Fixed.
- "Also, please note that this can lead to an endless pregnancy."
- Thanks again! While some chance of of endless pregnancy is fine, this is whenever the baby has a CON penalty. Not fine. Fixed.
- "Again, these things effecting the dad makes no sense. I would like to point out that the dad might not even be there. He could be off on the other side of the world."
- As might the mom. Either way, the spell creates conduits between the unborn baby and both parents.
- "Overall, none of this works."
- You haven't provided much evidence for that claim. I get the impression that these rules don't fit the fluff you have in mind; I point out the distinction between 'not useful for fluff it wasn't intended to represent' and 'not useful to anyone'.--Ideasmith (talk) 02:49, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
- What fluff is this intended to represent? --50.47.36.22 03:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
- Scroll of Generations, of which this is a part, is intended to encourage and support adventurer downtime and various consequences thereof in a simple, playable, 3.5-consistent, and catgirl-safe manner. I am not insisting on any particular fluff for these mechanics; there are lots of possibilities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ideasmith (talk • contribs) at
- If you're going for catgirl-safety, couldn't you at least choose something that isn't just a cruel mockery of the real-world physics? I'd like a system that involves storks flying babies to people a lot better. --Foxwarrior (talk) 05:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
- You see, before that clarification was added, nothing in the description contradicted the title's assertion that it was describing all pregnancies. --Foxwarrior (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Article / Expectation Mismatch
This is not really about discussing pregnancy within a game of DnD except as it relates to a subset of people, and the title and article format do a poor job of setting that up. The expectations that people would have based on the title certainly aren't met, but there's not much work done to disabuse them of those expectations or set up new ones until you're halfway into the article.
It might benefit from an intro blurb that suggests some fluff while remaining neutral, or moving the links in the introduction to after the rules mechanics. While they are quite relevant in a world where adventurers can't get initiate pregnancy without assistance (because Witcher like training or meddling gods or stork avoidance of people who could murder it or whatever), you don't even find out about that until the rules section. Introducing the idea via text or making that come sooner would help set expectations more effectively. It also seems that a more descriptive title, such Fantasy Pregnancy or Variant Adventurer Pregnancy, might be helpful and prevent some of the knee-jerk reactions by some to the rule presented here.
Presentation aside, I actually like the potential weirdness and implications here, but I haven't reviewed the actual details sufficiently well to feel comfortable reviewing it. - Tarkisflux Talk 22:31, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
- Excellent points, and excellent advice. Thank you. I have already made most of the needed changes.
- Flows a bit better now I think, even if it feels a bit terse for my taste. Renames are handled via page moves. Please be sure to uncheck the redirect options when you do move it to a new name. - Tarkisflux Talk 05:18, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
