The blue-folk were created by Nahura the nature goddess. Their names often have the form L'fleur and such. This is actually a contraction of two words in their tongue, like "Little flower" becoming "L'fleur". Their race name should be a contraction of Nahura's Servants or Children of Nahura or something similar.
Language rules: no language skills as such. Instead, you get a skill in a culture. 5 indicates basic knowledge of that culture/area/realm, including the ability to speak their langage haltingly ("Where bathroom?"). 10 indicates better knowledge and you can speak it well, if obviously accented ("Where be bathroom?"). 15 indicates fluency and lots of knowledge ("Where is the bathroom?"). 20+ indicates that you know it like a native ("Hey, man, where's the restroom?").
Free advancement: use a skill significantly during a session, get an XP in it. At the end of a session, you might get a bonus XP or two, but they have to go in separate skills (they can overlap with freebie points, though). 1-5 costs 1 XP each, 6-10 costs 2, 11-15 costs 3, 16-20 costs 4, 21+ costs 5 XP each.
Oceanus/Ocean/The Great Ocean: watery realm inhabited by the Undines. Air and earth only in great bubbles.
Immolatus/The Sea of Fire: eternally flaming realm inhabited by Salamanders. You better have constant fire magic to survive there. A handful of giant balls of earth, but no air or water.
You get your home culture for free at 20.
Kissing someone in combat as an example action. -5/+5 penalty in order to get under their guard and into close combat. Then a -5 attack (should it be -5/+5 as well? Or just a penalty to your action?) to kiss them instead of hitting them. In close combat, long weapons like swords are at -5 and really long weapons like spears are at -10. Getting out of close combat probably requires another -5/+5 manuever to slip away.
Everyone gets 2 standard actions and a free action per combat turn.
Using a D20-ish system instead of a Pendragon-ish one, you roll Stat + Skill + d20 and compare to the difficulty. Every 10 you beat it by is a crit. Beating it by 1-9 is a success, 10-19 a crit, 20-29 a double crit, 30-39 a triple crit, etc. If it doesn't specify otherwise, just multiply your bonus by the number of crits (so if a backstab gave +5 damage on a crit, you'd get +15 damage on a triple crit).
Scoring a crit is generally worth a +5 bonus on a follow-up action. (eg- score a crit on that combat kiss, you might get +5 to a follow-up seduction roll). Note that you have to succeed by 10 to get a +5 bonus. Making crits based on 20 point intervals might be more balanced (certainly lower-powered), but then you have the Tal problem that you can't score a crit (other than a natural 20) if your skill is less than the difficulty.
Similarly, failing by... 20+ is a botch? I might make critical failures fall under a slower rate.
A natural 20 bumps the results of your roll up by 1 step. A natural 1 drops it by a step. Does that eliminate the Tal problem? Hopefully.
The spindly dudes have 4 eyes, in two pairs one above the other. I'm thinking elongated heads, too, like something out of Jorune. Made by the most insane of current deities.
Devil commonly refers to a mad god. Demon refers to their avatara. Fiend refers to the sort of planesfolk that they make. Similarly, on the "folks you like" scale, it's god, angel and planesfolk.
By the costs above, a 5 costs 5 points, a 10 costs 15, a 15 in some skill costs 30, a 20 costs 50.
Non-natives could divide their 20 between their adopted homeland and their race's native home. So a Menagerie native might have 15 Menagerie and 5 Wherever-my-parents-were-from. Yeah, you lose points this way, since a 20 is so much better than a 5, but I'm not sure that's a big deal.
+5/-5 benefits would probably be way too good for a D20 style game. Actually, you'd almost certainly drop the +5/-5 and just make it a +5 OR a -5. There's no sense adjusting both ratings.
Like D20, your skill will be totally eclipsed by the die roll until you get at least 10 ranks in it. Perhaps it should use a 3d6 or 2d10 roll instead. Or a Pendragon-style roll-under. Dunno.
Need a female warrior blue-folk as an example NPC. Always helps to have a babe in the illustrations/background/flavor-fic. Their males are traditionally more artsy and the females more violent, but it's only a tendency.
I hope I can get back to sleep, finally. My muse has lousy timing.
Posted by Kiz at November 18, 2004 04:17 AMCommentsPost a comment