tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2634447061487456103.post8290303559707997994..comments2024-03-28T04:41:22.012-04:00Comments on Tales of the Monkey King: Freehold: Rests and WoundsLee Hammockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16760318908502226293noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2634447061487456103.post-9207567300992973892016-03-29T16:26:35.116-04:002016-03-29T16:26:35.116-04:00Yeah, the armor one doesn't work so well with ...Yeah, the armor one doesn't work so well with making a check or save as a team rather than individually. Individual checks does sort of help those characters that rely more on long rests to recover abilities (or at least the arcane ones) since they don't wear much armor, but I really wanted a way for the ranger to give the whole party some love. Maybe a ranger gives the whole group advantage for being in the ranger's favored terrain. I worry though that individual checks would mean some people are raring to go, while others are not, so you have a weird conflict between players...which now that I think about it is the more troublesome result. So I think I would just take the armor thing off, or just say you can't take a long rest in heavy armor. <br /><br />Overall my plan would be to move healing abilities that are currently short rest to long rest and have more of a resource game for healing kits and potions such that they are available in the player run village at some cost or resources or time. I do like the idea of magic healing being a little bad, like it's a short term fix to a long term problem. Maybe magic healing is only temporary hit points? You have to recover the real things naturally (maybe a small number, like your level in hit points, per long rest), or through healing kits. <br /><br />I was thinking of possibly working on a "minion grouping" system where you treat five orcs as being one creature that has the stats of one orc with bonuses to hit, damage, and hit points. It may be a bit odd, but I want to do large unit battles eventually and it would flow more easily into that system. Which would be similar to what you're suggesting, only the fiction is slightly different. <br /><br />Items and treasure will get touched on more in a future post, but initially players are going to be very limited in their gear: only leather, hide, and ring mail initially, weapons limited to simple weapons plus one martial for classes that do martial things, etc. More armor and weapon options would be loot or gained from upgrading your village smithy, woodshop, etc. Also I've got player activated rules for weapon and armor damage where you can damage your gear for rerolls, which should create some gear churn and place more value on those ten axes you took from those bandits. Lee Hammockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16760318908502226293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2634447061487456103.post-22706242166444358762016-03-29T15:39:09.568-04:002016-03-29T15:39:09.568-04:00"Majority of the party is sleeping in medium ..."Majority of the party is sleeping in medium or heavy armor" is a really weird restriction, as the main choice-point there comes at character creation. Medium or heavy armor characters could choose to wear light armor... or they could choose to play Dex builds and wear their normal armor. Because it's "most" of the party, the party composition is the other pressure point, and no individual player has any control over that.<br /><br />Like I mentioned in chat, short rests being unchanged _really_ cranks up the power of Second Wind and a paladin/warlock or cleric/warlock multiclass (any way to get healing moved to the short rest cycle). Life clerics also get a huge boost, but I'm okay with that part.<br /><br />My suggestion for magical healing is that gritty gameplay should push nonmagical healing as the "main" healing. I've always wanted to try making magical healing a little bit bad for you, so that nonmagical healing still has a point as the game proceeds and access to magical healing proliferates. Maybe you can only receive one magical healing effect per short rest, or per long rest, or whatever. There's still a danger of the spellcaster needing to dump all of their slots on healing each party member, but it diminishes as play continues.<br /><br />Thinking about encounter design, I wonder if you might be better off increasing the damage output of NPCs, so that you don't have to run a greater number of NPCs (because greater numbers slow down combat) and, when the PCs are victorious, hand out the NPCs' personal gear. Greater damage from individual attacks also pushes your Wounds system a bit more - a larger number of smaller attacks makes wounds a permanent penalty for a *minor* damage avoidance. <br /><br />If you're going gritty on treasure, looting armor and weapons from a greater number of foes starts to look pretty appealing, but I don't think that's what you want.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13333781524640845035noreply@blogger.com