The other day, Commentor Antoine pointed out that the follower thing doesn't seem to roll clerics. Indeed, there was a flaw in the programming wherein druids and thieves overlapped on the cleric parameters. Anyway, I made a new version that basically just replaces druids with clerics. If it's your thing, by all means, go for it.
Showing posts with label clerics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clerics. Show all posts
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Now with Clerics!
The other day, Commentor Antoine pointed out that the follower thing doesn't seem to roll clerics. Indeed, there was a flaw in the programming wherein druids and thieves overlapped on the cleric parameters. Anyway, I made a new version that basically just replaces druids with clerics. If it's your thing, by all means, go for it.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Men Without Cloth: Non-Holy Clerics
You are not a clergyman. You have no interest in tending the flock for some narcissistic deity, much less converting more sheep to the cause. Despite your divine powers, pious is not a word that applies to you. You don't pay for your miraculous abilities on bended knee.
Forego edged weapons? Bishop Turpin can suck it. No, you come by your powers by other means, and you pay an even darker price than the ritualized humiliation mainstream proselytizers are subjected to.
Rather, you've made a Faustian deal that saved your Aunt Stacy's knitting store from foreclosure and now some pompous, immortal a-hole owns your soul. You know that using the "divine" powers for which you paid so dearly ever-increases your malicious patron's grasp on your being, but you can't check your self-destructive behavior. Or maybe that's his growing influence at work.
Or maybe your grandfather was the byproduct of a tryst between Zeus and a rather adorable parlor maid. Though you've never met Great Granddad and he certainly doesn't know of/care about your mortal existence, you've inherited enough nascent divine favor to crank out the occasional heal wounds or fire storm.
Or you're just a guy who's found a cosmic loophole that's allowed you to hack into the server of the divine realm. You've spliced into Odin's cable box and you're watching ESPN: Old Norse on The All-Father's dime. Maybe one day Asgard's IT staff will secure its wifi and damnation will be served. But, increasingly, you're coming to believe that the gods are just guys like you; guys who've figured out how to hotwire the cosmos to their advantage. Guys who've achieved immortality by convincing the world that they're something special, and who've come to believe in it themselves.
Of course, you can limit yourself to the holier-than-thou, preaching-the-faith-in-exchange-for-cure-light-wounds scene if you want to. And maybe you can justify why your sermonizing n' moralizing minister is wandering through the 5th level of FU2: Asylum of Turgid Munchkins helping a party of infidels murderize a colony of troglodytes and scarf up their treasure--spoiler alert: not likely. But the point is, there are other options besides the worn out catholic-priest-with-a-mace that those TSR beardos foisted on us way back when. Try one on for size.
 |
| Get off your high horse, Turpin. |
Rather, you've made a Faustian deal that saved your Aunt Stacy's knitting store from foreclosure and now some pompous, immortal a-hole owns your soul. You know that using the "divine" powers for which you paid so dearly ever-increases your malicious patron's grasp on your being, but you can't check your self-destructive behavior. Or maybe that's his growing influence at work.
Or maybe your grandfather was the byproduct of a tryst between Zeus and a rather adorable parlor maid. Though you've never met Great Granddad and he certainly doesn't know of/care about your mortal existence, you've inherited enough nascent divine favor to crank out the occasional heal wounds or fire storm.
Or you're just a guy who's found a cosmic loophole that's allowed you to hack into the server of the divine realm. You've spliced into Odin's cable box and you're watching ESPN: Old Norse on The All-Father's dime. Maybe one day Asgard's IT staff will secure its wifi and damnation will be served. But, increasingly, you're coming to believe that the gods are just guys like you; guys who've figured out how to hotwire the cosmos to their advantage. Guys who've achieved immortality by convincing the world that they're something special, and who've come to believe in it themselves.
Of course, you can limit yourself to the holier-than-thou, preaching-the-faith-in-exchange-for-cure-light-wounds scene if you want to. And maybe you can justify why your sermonizing n' moralizing minister is wandering through the 5th level of FU2: Asylum of Turgid Munchkins helping a party of infidels murderize a colony of troglodytes and scarf up their treasure--spoiler alert: not likely. But the point is, there are other options besides the worn out catholic-priest-with-a-mace that those TSR beardos foisted on us way back when. Try one on for size.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Cleric Abilities and Disciplines
Clerics have pretty much dropped out of my AD&D game lately; not by fiat mind you, but we've had neither PC nor NPC clerics loitering about for quite some time. That said, I am very open to radical restructuring of the class. Towards that end, recently I was looking at the "Matrix for Clerics Affecting Undead" on page 75 of the ol' DMG which got me thinking if I add some color to it:
... it kinda looks like the Marvel Super Heroes Universal Action Resolution Matrix:
...just expressed a little differently
Which got me to thinking, could the Turn undead ability resolution system be used as a universal Cleric action table? Which is to say, what if cleric spells functioned not like MU spells--i.e. guaranteed success--but more like the turn undead ability, with a chance of outright failure but also a chance of super-extra success?
Back to the Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) table: what do the different colors mean? For turning undead, they could represent the different levels of undead to be turned; but what for spells? Enter this recent post on Magic disciplines by Brendan over at Untimately wherein he basically establishes how shocking grasp could be a prerequisite to learning lightning bolt in a discipline-driven magic system; if I may oversimplify his thesis liberally.
Now what if we did something similar for clerics: stacking related spells into disciplines? All the cure wounds spells, for instance, could be piled into a single discipline. To accommodate the seven spell levels available to clerics, we could expand the 3 degrees of success of MSH--green, yellow, red--to 7 colors.
Here's a rough draft of what the universal cleric ability matrix might look like:
For this prototype, I've kept the original AD&D turning undead granularity intact--odds improve in leaps of 3 (15%), with the same level progressions across the top as on the DMG matrix--but this could easily be modified to suit tastes/statistical appropriateness. It does show that eventually lower level abilities would be automatically successful--can you fumble at turning undead?
As an example of how a cleric ability might work: Rhonda the Rogue (apprentice) has contracted a bad case of rot grub, and her good friend Arnie the Acolyte (1st level cleric) is hoping to save his comrade-in-arms. Cure Disease is the poor slob's only chance, but that's a 3rd level spell, available to 5th level clerics or higher. But with this table, third level abilities are represented by the light red band of color. Cross reference the table and we see that a first level cleric with knowledge of the sacred discipline of Curatives would need to roll a 20 to achieve success with a (light) red ability--I gotta' change those colors. That only gives Arnie a 5% chance to save Rhonda's bacon; not great odds but still a better chance than the 0% chance the ol' spell system gives him.
At the other end, if Arnie were trying to use his healing ability to mend Gordie the Gallant's light wounds, he would have only a 55% chance of success; a marked depreciation from the 100% chance even 1st level AD&D clerics are used to.
Or, alternatively, you could eliminate the entire line of sequential hit-point restoration spells. Instead, a cleric would just roll a d20 against his or her Healing ability and the color associated with is or her result would determine how many or what sized dice of healing were achieved. Say, green scores you heal a d6 worth of HPs, yellow 2d6, etc.
One problem that this table presents is that it no longer works for its original purpose: Turning Undead. Seeing as there are 13 levels of undead to turn as opposed to only 7 levels of spell ability, determining affect on undead would result, I think, in an overly prissy-looking matrix.
Another problem: How do I finagle it to handle thief abilities too?
... it kinda looks like the Marvel Super Heroes Universal Action Resolution Matrix:
Which got me to thinking, could the Turn undead ability resolution system be used as a universal Cleric action table? Which is to say, what if cleric spells functioned not like MU spells--i.e. guaranteed success--but more like the turn undead ability, with a chance of outright failure but also a chance of super-extra success?
Back to the Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) table: what do the different colors mean? For turning undead, they could represent the different levels of undead to be turned; but what for spells? Enter this recent post on Magic disciplines by Brendan over at Untimately wherein he basically establishes how shocking grasp could be a prerequisite to learning lightning bolt in a discipline-driven magic system; if I may oversimplify his thesis liberally.
Now what if we did something similar for clerics: stacking related spells into disciplines? All the cure wounds spells, for instance, could be piled into a single discipline. To accommodate the seven spell levels available to clerics, we could expand the 3 degrees of success of MSH--green, yellow, red--to 7 colors.
Here's a rough draft of what the universal cleric ability matrix might look like:
For this prototype, I've kept the original AD&D turning undead granularity intact--odds improve in leaps of 3 (15%), with the same level progressions across the top as on the DMG matrix--but this could easily be modified to suit tastes/statistical appropriateness. It does show that eventually lower level abilities would be automatically successful--can you fumble at turning undead?
As an example of how a cleric ability might work: Rhonda the Rogue (apprentice) has contracted a bad case of rot grub, and her good friend Arnie the Acolyte (1st level cleric) is hoping to save his comrade-in-arms. Cure Disease is the poor slob's only chance, but that's a 3rd level spell, available to 5th level clerics or higher. But with this table, third level abilities are represented by the light red band of color. Cross reference the table and we see that a first level cleric with knowledge of the sacred discipline of Curatives would need to roll a 20 to achieve success with a (light) red ability--I gotta' change those colors. That only gives Arnie a 5% chance to save Rhonda's bacon; not great odds but still a better chance than the 0% chance the ol' spell system gives him.
At the other end, if Arnie were trying to use his healing ability to mend Gordie the Gallant's light wounds, he would have only a 55% chance of success; a marked depreciation from the 100% chance even 1st level AD&D clerics are used to.
Or, alternatively, you could eliminate the entire line of sequential hit-point restoration spells. Instead, a cleric would just roll a d20 against his or her Healing ability and the color associated with is or her result would determine how many or what sized dice of healing were achieved. Say, green scores you heal a d6 worth of HPs, yellow 2d6, etc.
One problem that this table presents is that it no longer works for its original purpose: Turning Undead. Seeing as there are 13 levels of undead to turn as opposed to only 7 levels of spell ability, determining affect on undead would result, I think, in an overly prissy-looking matrix.
Another problem: How do I finagle it to handle thief abilities too?
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The Undead Strike Back: Turning Clerics
When a cleric meets an undead creature that is beyond his/her powers to turn/command, then the cleric must roll--on a d20--a number equal to or greater than the Hit Dice of the undead +1/level the cleric is deficient of being able to affect said undead species.
For example, a first level cleric encounters a vampire: HD 9 (I think) and unaffected by clerics less than 6th level,* 9 + (6-1) = 14. Therefore Archie the Acolyte needs to roll a 14 or higher or be turned/commanded by Count D. This Rule also applies to Ponce the Paladin.Me neither.
* Crunchier AD&D folks might notice a discrepancy in these numbers from the AD&D standard--or they might not, I really can't say. If there is a discrepancy it's 'cuz I'm referencing the HackmasterPlayer's Handbook "Table 12K: Turning Undead" for the undead turning probabilities shown here because, well, the Hackmaster books are closer at hand. I mean c'mon--my friggin' AD&D PHB is all the way over there on that bookshelf.
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