jacinto classes, encounters, idyll, is this gonna work, new age dnd, skills

deep dungeon fishing

Thinking about ways characters might acquire goods in a D&D campaign with more altruistic assumptions than your standard mercenary fare . Hunting and logging are good possibilities, but I feel like they are pretty easy to model using existing rules (Find A Certain Monster, Go To A Location And Retrieve Object are time honored D&D tasks). 
Fishing, on the other hand, is a little bit harder to model interestingly. I think there’s a lot of potential in making it tense, especially since it is time consuming, but much of D&D games take place with random monster encounters looming over the player’s heads. Anyways, here’s a stab at it.

FISHING

Anyone can fish. For each turn you spend fishing at a regular spot with standard gear, you have a 1 in 6 chance of hooking a fish. Certain spots and certain baits are better than others and afford better odds of catching something. Fishing spots deep in dungeons tend to have rarer and more valuable fish (multiply the dungeon level by the base value of the fish to determine how much gp it is worth). If you take a fish back to town while it’s still fresh, you can tin it, letting you build up a stock of imperishable rations without needing to special order them.

Once you hook a fish, roll 5 six-sided dice and check to see if they match any of the following categories:
Two of a kind: d12 gp, 1 ration
Three of a kind: d20 gp, 2 rations
Four of a kind: d100 gp, 4 rations
Full House: 2d100 gp, 8 rations
Small Straight: d1000 gp, 10 rations, can be used as an alchemical ingredient
Large Straight: a random consumable magic item
All of a Kind: a Speaking Fish, will grant a Limited Wish if you let it go.
 If you rolled one of the above categories, you can immediately reel in and catch a fish of the corresponding size and quality, or you can reroll in hopes of getting a better result and a correspondingly larger fish. However, 
  • the quality of your fishing pole limits the number of rerolls you get before it breaks, and if your final roll when reaching that limits doesn’t result in a catch, your fishing pole breaks.
  • you can only reel in the highest category you’ve gotten this fishing attempt. If you pass up on a Full House, you can’t reel in a Two of a Kind on your next reroll.
A single fishing attempt takes 1 Turn, no matter how many rerolls you use.
 
FISHING POLES  

Bamboo Stick: 3 rolls
Hickory Rod: 4 rolls
Alchemically Treated: 5 rolls
Almighty Dragon Fishing Rod: 6 rolls
Fisher God’s Favorite Rod: 7 rolls

I am always looking for ways to simplify or replace Vancian magic. It is hard to explain, and while I like it quite a bit, it reflects a very particular kind of fantasy that my games very rarely draw on. For Idyllic D&D, I’d want something more like Dianna Wynne Jones’s magic: friendler, more common, more whimsical, less earth-shaking. Loosely based off of this old class.

WITCH
from final fantasy 14
HP, XP, Saving Throws, and Equipment Restrictions as Magic-user.
You have Witchery dice equal to your level. When you cast a spell, you can roll as many as you like; the more dice you roll, the more powerful the spell.
  • For each die that comes up a 6, remove a Witchery die from your dice pool until you take a long rest.
  • Count each die that comes up 1. If the number of 1s exceeds half your level rounded down, the spell goes wrong or fails to take affect.

Spells
You start with 2 spells of your choice and gain another every even level. You can learn more, but must learn them from (rare) books or (grudging) tutors.

Wonderwork
Complete in an instant any task a barehanded person could complete in a number of Turns equal to the number of Witchery dice rolled. Creatures can make a saving throw to resist if the spell affects them.

Creation 
Create objects worth a total of 10 × number of Witchery dice rolled in gold pieces. If you are Lawful, they vanish at midnight. If you are Chaotic, they vanish at noon.

Pyromancy
Ignite, extinguish, or move a flame that fits within a number of cubic feet equal to Dice. If used offensively, damage dealt equals the sum of Witchery Dice rolled, and targets may save for half damage.
Polymorph
Transform into a 1 HD animal for a number of Turns equal to Witchery dice rolled.

Pact
Compels a creature with HD equal to or less than Witchery dice rolled to obey the letter of a promise it is making to you.

Darkness
Extinguish all artificial lights in earshot. Cannot be reignited for a number of Turns equal to Witchery dice rolled.

Anemurgy
Control the direction and intensity of the wind in a mile radius for a number of Turns equal to Witchery dice rolled.
Windwalk
This spell transforms the caster into a whirlwind and transports them a number of miles equal to Witchery dice rolled before transforming them back. 

Ghost Mail 
Deliver an object light enough you can carry it with one hand to a person or place within a number of Miles equal to number of Witchery dice rolled.

Waterbreathing
The caster and everyone they touch at time of casting can breathe underwater for a number of Turns equal to Witchery dice rolled.
jacinto elves, is this gonna work, new age dnd, san serafín, skills

White Box Backgrounds

In an old school game, I don’t think I like thieves as a class. I like the idea of their skillset being accessible to everyone who goes around stealing things out of old tombs. Also,  they feel like a background in the Type V sense, and I really like that aspect of the game. So here are a bunch of Type V style backgrounds for Whitebox, including the thief.

This is based off of the 5MORE system.

When you do something that is difficult, or when failure is both possible and interesting…
Roll 1d6. Add a cumulative +1 to this roll for each of the following:

  • your relevant ability score is 13 or higher
  • your equipment is high quality or particularly effective
  • you are trained in a relevant skill
  • it’s an easy task or the circumstances are favorable.

Get a 5 or higher. Add a cumulative +1 to this target number for each of the following:

  • your relevant ability score is 8 or lower
  • your equipment is shoddy or not made for the job
  • the task requires specialized knowledge you don’t have
  • it’s a difficult task or the circumstances are unfavorable

Thief
Pick 3 skills:

  • Sneak (Dexterity)
  • Sleight of Hand (Dexterity)
  • Pick Locks* (Dexterity)
  • Lie (Charisma)

You take things what aren’t yours. As long as you are in a settlement, you can find a fence who will buy stolen goods. You also always know how to get in touch with the local ruling gang.

Acolyte 
Pick 3 skills:

  • Metaphysics (Intelligence)
  • Dowsing (Wisdom)
  • Medicine* (Intelligence) 
  • Performance: Oratory (Charisma)

Your fellow practitioners are generally well disposed towards you by default, and you can use temples of your religion as a free place to say or a sanctuary (though they won’t put up your friends for free)

Assassin
Pick 3 skills:

  • Disguise (Intelligence)
  • Poison-making* (Intelligence)
  • Sneak (Dexterity) 
  • Athletics (Strength)

Assassins always know where to find clients looking for a murderer for hire.

Scholar
Pick 3 skills:

  • Metaphysics (Intelligence)
  • Medicine* (Intelligence)
  • History (Intelligence)
  • Nature (Intelligence)

You know a Terrible Secret. Figure out what it is with your Referee.

Professional
Pick 3 skills:

  • Tinker* (Intelligence)
  • Profession: Player’s choice [blacksmithing, sculpting, baking, whatever] (Intelligence)
  • Lie (Charisma)
  • Appraise (Intelligence)

While in a settled area, you can earn back your room and board by practicing your profession.

Performer
Pick 3 skills:

  • Lie (Charisma)
  • Performance: Player’s Choice [dancing, singing, flute-playing, whatever] (Charisma)
  • Athletics (Strength)
  • Sleight of Hand (Dexterity)

You know a Terrible Secret. Figure out what it is with your Referee.

Hunter
Pick 3 skills:

  • Sneak (Dexterity)
  • Tinker* (Intelligence)
  • Track (Wisdom)
  • Nature (Intelligence)

By spending a day to hunt and forage, you can find enough food to sustain d3 people for a single day.

(One good thing about how this works is that you can use it for race, too)
Tiger
Pick 3 skills:

  • Sneak (Dexterity)
  • Track (Wisdom)
  • Athletics (Strength)
  • Nature (Intelligence)

You’re literally a tiger. You deal d8 damage with unarmed attacks, you can live off of raw food, and you heal naturally even when sleeping outside or in dungeons. Unfortunately, you have to get armor custom made and it costs twice as much, and people are kind of afraid of you.

Wood Elf
Pick 3 skills:

  • Sneak (Dexterity)
  • History (Intelligence)
  • Dowsing (Wisdom)
  • Nature (Intelligence)

You don’t age.

jacinto LotFP, skills

simple backgrounds

When a character attempts a task that requires specialized knowledge or training (Is this mushroom poisonous? Can I pick that lock? Can I determine if that diamond is enchanted? Can I communicate with that bear?) they must roll a 6+ on a six-sided die. Rolling a natural 1 is always a failure, regardless of any bonuses. This is called a skill roll.

During character creation, players pick a background. It can be from a list offered by the Referee or one they created themselves. When the player is asked to make a skill roll that pertains to their background, they can declare themselves trained in the skill and add half their level to the roll (and all similar rolls in the future). However, their experiences before adventuring are limited–a character can only declare a number of skills equal to half their Intelligence score.

Why is this good?

  1. I don’t like how adventurers are not that good at adventuring. Fighters can’t sneak? Magic-users can’t pick locks? Nobody can fucking climb? This lets tomb robbers be tomb robbers while still allowing thievery to be somebody’s shtick. Drop Thief/Specialist as a class and just offer Burglar as a background.
  2. New school classes like Barbarians and Druids now don’t actually need classes. If you want to be a Bard, just pick it as your background as declare Millinery, Lute Playing, and Adultery as your skills. Druids are Magic-users with Botany, Animal Friendship, and Orienteering.
  3. This lets me have race-not-as-class without much cruft. Anyone with the Elf background can declare themselves trained in Flower Arrangement and Stealth. Drow can declare themselves trained in Poison Making, Echolocation, and Opera. Tieflings can declare Demonology, Hexing, and Pickpocketing.
  4. Spears of the Dawn and Stars Without Number backgrounds are really cool and really useful, but my attempts to write out all of them and then make sure each skill had roughly equal representation across backgrounds was kind of exhausting. This just lets me come up with a list of careers/species for a given region and then let players go nuts figuring out what skills they want. Character creation as world-building without much work.
  5. Making players decide when to spend a skill slot is a fun and slightly cruel minigame.
  6. No giant lists of skills to wade through during character creation.