You know what's missing from standard D&D character sheets? A spot for an animal companion. Even if you don't have a familiar or a magical talking dog or psionic chameleon, there ought to be a place for your donkey or warhorse.
Do class abilities migrate in FLAILSNAILS games? For example, I let a Lamentations of the Flame Princess-derived magic-user fire a bow and wear leather in my Wessex campaign, since Raggi's rules allow that. Should I have enforced the BX rules on that guy? And if not, does that mean my PC gets the funky bonus die from his one level as a DCC warrior and the cleave ability standard to fighters in Outland? I kinda like the idea of adventurers collecting weird abilities based upon where they were when they leveled up, but I don't want things to get out of control either.
I've re-read a bit of Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed the past couple of days. I don't really have any more to add to that. I just think that it was a pretty cool idea. It seemed daunting at the time to replace all the standard 3e classes and races with new ones. Would it be easier for me to pull off today? I dunno.
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Oh, awesome. Thanks a bunch, Jeff.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly would encourage shifting through Flailsnail's games to pick up as many powers as possible.
ReplyDeleteIs getting people to play under more GM's a bad thing?
Re: Flailsnails, Had this problem with saves. Everything was working ok until pf players kept needing to know save DC's.
ReplyDeleteMostly it works best if you just ignore the problems as hard as you can.
Cook's Arcana Unearthed was one of the inspirations for my own Pars Fortuna project.
ReplyDeleteYour game, you set the rules, so it depends on how much rules juggling you can handle. If i was DMing it I'd ban the DCC fighter perks as I couldn't be arsed digging out and using the table, and the fighter using it would show up the un-DCC'd ones in the group, but I'd let the magic user armour and bow ride, as it's easy to do. Might even add a (simple) casting failure dice to even things up again.
ReplyDeleteIf you have the rules of half a dozen OSR retro clones, ODD and BECMI and Holmes all memorised, then good luck to you.
I rather like the maligned purple cover as I do the contents.
ReplyDelete"Do class abilities migrate in FLAILSNAILS games?"
Yeah I have been fretting about this can of worms. I think "within reason" generally I am fine with a character operating under the class abilities and restrictions of their place/system of origin.
However when travelling in the Hill Cantons certain mechanics--saving throws, to hit,etc-- will always be trumped by LL and the HC Compendium.
Otherwise I see the same Big Ball of Pain and Confusion that Barry does.
There is a place for all that other stuff like pets, carts, war eagles, extra-dimensional storage vaults on a character sheet. It's that big box marked "Notes:"
ReplyDeletere: char sheet omission.
ReplyDeleteThat's odd. The ones I use most often (Dyson Logos LL sheets) have room for henchies/pets/mounts.
re: FLAILSNAILS
KISS principle probably applies here.
* Saves should probably work per the GM's game engine of choice. Really there's little enough difference between flavours of D&D (+MF, EPT, etc.) that its probably trivial for players to sub in the most suitable of their listed saves.
* Spell, class abilities, items, etc. should (arguably) be retained between settings. Elric didn't suddenly lose the ability to wear armour when he left the plane of the Young Kingdoms...
"Do class abilities migrate in FLAILSNAILS games?"
ReplyDeleteNot necessary - looking at fantasy literature, a hero often have different moods, abilities and vulnerabilities from story to story.
Conan is quite a different character with different levels of potency from story to story. Sometime's a loinclothed barbarian, sometimes he's an almost-civilised armour-wearing soldier.
Fafhrd and the Mouser take a few stories to settle down to the heroes that you think of.
Game precedent: the OD&D elf which is a wizard one game, but a warrior the next.
That last reply of mine was sent a bit hastily! :-) "sometime's"? *cringe*
ReplyDeleteAdded some of my stuff to OCP.
ReplyDeleteHAY JRIENTS I ARE AM HAVE TAHT CARICATURE SHEET. IT ARE TEH BEST SHEET EVAR!!!1 ARE YOU STILL JRIENTS@GMAIL.COM? YOU CAN HAVE CUZ YOU ARE ONE OF TEHF EW WHO ARE MAN ENUFF TO TAKE SOME TROLE-ING EVEN THO YUO ARE JUST A ROBOT WITH NO NADS (THAHT IS VERY SAD BTW)
ReplyDelete:p
-NUNYA
In addition to classes and races AU/AE has a pretty cool twist on the magic system that allows some interesting flexibility.
ReplyDeleteLove purple cover.
ReplyDeleteI've been handling the class ability thing on a case-y-case basis, and have not really had to deal with too many fringe conditions - the biggest one being a 1e paladin coming into my campaign. Paladins have a lot of fiddlies - I allowed detect evil & lay on hands - did not allow prot evil or +2 all saves.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of saves, I use the system I'm running regardless of the character's native system. Same with stat bonuses - while an 18 strength might mean 18/00 (+3/+6) in 1e D&D-landia, an 18/00 strength means 18 in my world.
Just a comment about the OSR conservation project.
ReplyDeleteWhile explaining the license Pablo said this:
"Media or form: I don't want to limit the project to an Internet page. it would be lovely to have some kind of POD integration. Or torrenting the whole archive. Or getting it on a DVD."
and
"see no problem with companies charging for Linux distributions or printing and selling public domain books. Possibly expecting rpg authors to behave like free software licensors is too much."
Obviously the idea of selling all these works given to him on CD and such has occurred to Pablo. Pretty sure I'm not ok with my work being used that way. Just figured I'd pass along this discussion.
The Miscellaneum of Cinder is one of my favourite OSR products of all time. Over two years later and I still enjoy dipping into it for ideas from time to time. And I love the purple cover!
ReplyDelete