User:Bill/Buckle Your Swash!

This game idea is my attempt to make D&D3.5 a more renaissance and less medieval game. I accomplish this with some custom firearms rules that essentially 'nerf' a lot of classes though, so the idea may not generate a lot of interest.

Setting

As long as I was reimagining the core game balance in favor of dex based characters, I decided I'd try my hand at a totally custom world as well. This wasn't really my first try at this sort of thing. I have a degree in sociology and I've previously attempted to apply my knowledge of how cultures interact with themselves and others to game design before. This is, however, the first time I bothered to keep the notes. I haven't really got a name for the world in which this would be set or even any countries yet, but I can slap something together pretty quickly if called to.

Villains and Factions

Heroes are defined by their foes. D&D traditionally organizes itself around tougher and tougher monsters encountered in a dungeon. Sometimes even venturing into the realm of politics. I prefer to flip that around and make politics the core organizational principle and make dungeon crawling an uncommon aspect of the game.

Political Hierarchies

As far as anybody knows the divine right to rule was bestowed upon certain men at the beginning of time. Every faith acknowledges this as fact and the divine right manifests itself in the form of a nimbus of light and a healing touch. Some faiths attribute the divine right to the blessing of the royal family’s progenitor and others believe that the royal family is actually descended from their gods. The truth is unremembered and impossible to determine. The divine right normally passes from father to son,though in some cultures it passes from mother to daughter. Some stories are told of it passing to other family members not directly in the line of succession. There are even rumors of black rites that can be used to force the divine right to pass into specific people.

This makes the setting ripe for political intrigue of a most diabolical nature. Only by controlling the person who possess the mandate of heaven can the obedience of the people be assured. The common people, who believe in the righteousness of their gods, will not normally rebel against their divinely appointed rulers, making coups and other direct routes to power very difficult, if not impossible.

Being an adult king or queen is very dangerous after an heir is born. By killing the adult ruler the divine right will pass to the child and whoever can place themselves in the position of regent will shape the empire until they are of age to take over. Possibly longer if they can cultivate the dependency of the child and shield them from other influences.

Keeping all that in mind imagine a court made up of noble families bound by blood to the ruler, sorcerers, scholars, and clerics, all of whom are vying for influence over the regent or ruler. They conspire against each other at every turn attempting to improve their positions and place themselves to become regent when the king, queen, or current regent finally dies. This will be the political situation in any nation with a ruler sanctioned by divine right. In nations that do not, strength of arms, money, and charisma will also play a role.

Religions

I don’t think a creation myth is really necessary for a RPG. In fact giving away too much of the ancient history will cause the game to be trite and without nuance in my opinion. I would rather do something more like the real world; full of uncertainty and doubt. To that end regardless of the god or pantheon that a cleric, healer, priest, paladin or other divine spell caster may worship, they will in fact be drawing their power from the aligned power source rather than an actual being. So, a cleric of Yama-ruti may make blood sacrifices to an evil deity, but he’s actually drawing his power from plain old evil. If he claims to be speaking with Yama-ruti then he’s probably just crazy. In other words, there are gods but they don’t normally talk to mortals. Nobody knows why. To gain Exalted feats will generally require that a character meet a god.

Every major geographic area will have its own pantheon, as will every race living in that geographic area. So the total number of religions will equal regions multiplied by races. That’s a lot of faiths to keep track of and the further away from home a character is the greater the difficulty will be on any Knowledge Religion rolls.

Interfaith hostility will arise from conflicting views on the nature of the divine right and the purpose of existence. Holy wars may even occur if the anointed leader of the people starts taking his or her faith too seriously.

Atheism, while potentially a viable option among cultures who have no divinely appointed ruler or priests that are able to heal through divine inspiration, is unlikely. There is simply too much evidence of divine will in the world to make it a widespread belief.

Monsters

After establishing the social backdrop of the game, I began going through the list of monster types from the Monster Manual and deciding how I wanted them to be different; essentially working out how the encounters would be different. For the most part, this was an effort to express my personal preferences in the fantasy genre while further differentiating the setting from stock D&D. Several of my decisions will require CRs to be reevaluated, but the gun rules do that as well. What appears below are my notes on monster types.

Aberrations

Aberrations are not as uncommon as in normal D&D. Because undead and summoned beings are rarer and weaker, several schools of magic dedicated to altering living creatures for use in battle have taken their place. Apply the Spellwarped (MM3) template to normal creatures, or customize. Few of these warbeasts should be intelligent.

Animals

Standard.

Construct

Full constructs are not very common. Those that do exist are mostly remnants of ancient civilizations left to guard hidden tombs and temples. This is due to difficulty associated with summoning Outsiders; golems and other constructs are animated by spirits from the elemental plane of earth. Half golems are somewhat easier to create for reasons unknown. Their mental instability makes them risky to employ, but it has been done. The process of creating half-golems has been codified into a number of manuals that include spells that enhance character’s Will save.

Dragons

Dragons are extremely rare and reclusive in general. With few exceptions the entire species is over five hundred years old. The territories of a couple dragons are known and recognized as their own nations by neighboring empires.

Elementals

Extraplanar entities like elementals and outsiders are substantially weakened for unknown reasons. Halve their hit points, natural AC bonus, Strength, and Constitution.

Fey

The Fey are almost always bound to specific locations or objects. They can not willingly leave and they cannot be forcibly removed from the location or object. Any attempt to do so causes them to instantly teleport (as dimension door CL 10) back to the center of their territory or to their object. Destroying the object or sufficiently damaging the location will kill the Fey. If the Fey are aware of how this situation came to be, they are not telling.

Giants

Giants are mostly extinct. The rare representative of the species is most likely to be encountered raiding homesteads, farms, and villages for food. The jotunbrud (half-giants) are descended from several subtypes of half-giants. This is occasionally expressed in unusual abilities.

Humanoids

Standard.

Magical Beasts

Standard.

Monstrous Humanoids

Standard.

Oozes

Standard.

Outsiders

For an unknown reason, creatures possessing the Outsider type are unable to cross onto the material plane unless summoned by a spellcaster native to the material plane. Additionally, being present on the material plane substantially weakens them. Halve their hit points, natural AC bonus, Strength, and Constitution. Several types of Outsider are actively trying to gain access to the material plane in an effort to destroy whatever barrier prevents them from moving freely on or off it. Others are attempting to dominate or gain control of mortal empires in an effort to become gods or for other more sinister reasons.

Plants

Standard.

Undead

Because the divine right may only be held by the living, few powerful undead aspire to greater positions than vizier or regent. Most cultures also practice cremation in an effort to limit potential resources that necromancers could use in a bid for power.

Vermin

Standard.

Characters

This is a D&D 3.5 variant and pretty much anything goes in that regard. I would want to start at either level one or CR3, if the players can decide on a single level adjusted race that the majority of them wish to play. I strongly recommend that player characters are tied together somehow in their backgrounds. Doing so makes things a lot easier for me as DM and helps more clearly define what the introductory series of adventures will be. Due to the custom firearms rules I'm using for this most heavily armored fighters and other brute force types are not recommended though. At the very least, expect to get the hell shot out of you if you go that route.

Rules

Obviously D&D3.5 is the set I'd be most interested in using for this. I could easily apply the setting notes to another set of rules though and I am willing to negotiate. My custom firearms rules follow.

Firearms

In this variant firearms will be widely available. However, I consider the rules presented for period firearms in the DMG to be a poor representation of the weapon. They are both too weak and too expensive. As presented in the DMG they are intended to have minimal impact on the setting, providing flavor without requiring a major shift in the economy or power level of the default setting. And since printing a more effective weapon would have effectively "nerfed" most of the armor in the game and classes that rely upon it to remain viable, it's not surprising that WotC didn't. I will be using the following instead:

Pistol	2d8	18-20	x3	30ft	3lbs	Ballistic	75gp
Musket	2d10	18-20	x3	90ft	10lbs	Ballistic	100gp
Bomb	2d12+10	5ft(r)		10ft	1lb	Fire	75gp
Smoke Bomb	NA		20ft(r)	10ft	1lb	NA	35gp
Powder (15lb)					20lb keg	(1050 shots)	125gp
Powder					2lb powder horn	(140 shots)	18gp
Shot (20)					1lb 20 balls	(no chance to recover)	1gp

Ballistic attacks are a new class of damage I am introducing to D&D3.5. While this damage type appears in D20 Modern, it will be mechanically distinct for purposes of this game. In D20 modern most available armor is designed for use against ballistic attacks, and therefore no special rules are really required.

Ballistic attacks travel at significant velocity, exceeding the speed of sound. Due to this velocity they possess properties allowing them to negate a significant portion of an armor’s defensive value. All attacks inflicting Ballistic damage are considered touch attacks and reduce the effectiveness of non-supernatural damage reduction by 3. This penetrating effect will not reduce the effectiveness of supernatural damage reduction such as that provided by spells, spell like effects, or curses like lycanthropy.

Combat Example

A combat featuring this type of weapon should work like so:

RD 1: Everybody fires their guns, the biggest ugliest and most heavily armored characters taking the most fire. Mooks and weak characters that are hit are incapacitated and dying, aforementioned big ugly armored dudes are hurting because most of their armor was ignored and they just got peppered with half a dozen 2d10 attacks.

RD 2-4: Melee ensues while noncombatants reload in the rear and tend to the wounded. Folks with additional pistols may or may not fire again.

RD 5: Noncombatants unload again on anybody still standing.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Ideally very few combats would last more than ten rounds, though that will depend greatly on how many characters are involved and how many hit points they have.

Untrained characters will require a full minute to reload firearms. Those possessing Exotic Weapon Proficiency Firearms are able to reload in three combat rounds. To reload any faster will require a spell or supernatural ability. Feats will not cut it.

This is consistent with historical accounts of trained British soldiers during the war of independence. A trained man was able to fire three rounds a minute, even with a muzzle loading weapon.

Feats

Many archery feats may be applied to firearms, but please use your common sense when selecting them. The following feats are suggested.

• Able Sniper
• Point Blank Shot
  • Defensive Archery
  • Far Shot
  • Precise Shot
  • Improved Precise Shot
  • Ranged Disarm
  • Ranged Sunder
  • Sharp Shooting
  • Shot on the Run
  • Woodland Archer
• Zen Archery

Who, or What, Has Access?

The following core classes will gain Exotic Weapon Proficiency Firearms at first level:

• Bard
• Rogue
• Scout
• Swashbuckler

Human and Goblin fighters may optionally give up proficiency with heavy armors in exchange for proficiency with firearms.

Only two cultures in this game will have completely embraced firearms.Civilized urban humans and goblinoids living in close proximity to urban humans. Individual representatives of any race may adopt the use of firearms. However, the more mystically inclined a race is the less likely they will be to do so. Additionally Dwarves generally consider the devices to be crude and without art. No NPC Dwarven craftsman will willingly construct such a thing. This bit of background fluff is suggested, but not mandatory.

The stats presented above represent medium sized firearms. Most guns will fall into the small and medium categories. However, like any other weapon a firearm may be made larger or smaller. Such a custom weapon must be made as a masterwork item.

Repeaters?

No. Repeating weapons are beyond the current technological development of the world. However, enchanted firearms and mystical prestige classes that focus onthe use of firearms may circumvent this restriction.

This has some grounding in balance. By introducing firearms that are already more dangerous than most of the standard fighter builds can handle the game is biased towards fighters that can evade getting shot by the first salvo then move in with melee weapons to mop up. By upping the proverbial ante and allowing for widespread use of repeating firearms all melee combat will cease and it'll come down to who can shoot faster and more accurately with out being hit.

That being said, if you want more than a single shot consider carrying a brace of pistols. It worked for Blackbeard.

Armor Cost

The increased commonality of firearms will dramatically reduce the demand for heavy armor, making its appearance much more rare and costly. To reflect this double the base cost of all medium armor and triple that of heavy armor.