Playing with Fantasy XII

Fantasy RPG thoughts.

• I realized, elves' weights can be, more or less, attributed to them having muscle like a bird, requiring only 25% as much mass to do the same amount of work as human muscle. (An elf otherwise proportioned exactly like a human would be slightly heavier than the rules say, but the difference is probably within the range of variation between human body-types, too.) That would also explain their Constitution penalty—"robust" means both "resilient" and "opposite of gracile", for a reason. A lack of sheer mass can account for a lot of things; that's why even small amounts of alcohol are often fatal for birds, for example.
• Had an interesting idea for my Draconic: have it, in written form and in things like sayings and aphorisms, always be three words long, or in sub-units of three words. There are two reasons for this. One, of course, is thu'umme, which are always three words long (except for "Devour Dragon Soul"—the shout only Miraak can use and only during the boss-fight with him—which is four, Zii los dii du); the other is four-character idioms. China is, after all, also associated with dragons, and given dragons in my setting mostly do their writing by scratching runes into boundary-markers, they would probably develop the same preference for terseness that Classical Chinese has.
  
  Also thought dragons could give two-part names to their wyvaran ("wyrm-kin") servants, which have no ties to either wyverns or kobolds in my setting, but were just made by the dragons based on the model of humanoid races—something between dragon-kin and draconians (I'll acknowledge the 4e/5e "dragonborn" when I get back from my dogsled tour of hell). Wyvaran names derive from the gems listed in Ultimate Equipment, and the precious metals you can make coins from. (Slightly changed my dragons' names so now the third element is types of treasure rather than their energy type. For most purposes, though, they go by an honorific consisting of their energy type and their age-category.)
• Another thought I had for dragons is to give them "teeth" like a placoderm, e.g. Dunkleosteus. See, the reason birds lost their teeth, and replaced them with beaks, is that teeth are heavy. A placoderm does not, exactly, have teeth, but the cutting plates it uses instead make a shape much like the teeth of a carnivorous mammal, and if made of horn (I think those of the actual placoderms were just bone and maybe enamel) would be as light as a beak.
  
  So my dragons have chameleon pupils in eyes otherwise like those of a raptor, placoderm mouths—and the short face that goes with it—and Archaeopteryx wings, except with weird scale-feathers (I'm calling them "plates"). They use their wing-hands for manipulation; their other four feet are, I think, like those of a wolverine or (other) marten, with semi-retractable claws. I kinda wanted them to have a head-shape like a blunt-nosed shark, like tiger or bull sharks, but it would look goofy.
• Was worried that elf swords, being a single leaf, gripped by the stem, would be dangerous to stab with, since you need a guard for that (though a shashka appears not to really need one—it's better for stabbing than most other sabers), and I couldn't think of a cool way to do one. Realized, though, if you put a cloth loop at the top of the hilt, where the guard would go, you can stick one finger through that and it'll keep your hand from sliding too far forward. (I'd already decided they wrap the hilt in cloth, made from the bark of the same tree the blade comes from.)
  
  Decided you maintain an elven, dwarven, or gnomish weapon (which are made from leaves, coralline algae, and fungi, respectively) by rubbing it with a nutrient-rich oil—because they're alive. Among other things, this lets them resist nonmagical rust without any other maintenance, by metabolizing the air away from the metallic portions of the weapon, like how some plants with nitrogen-fixing root nodules have hemoglobin, for keeping oxygen away from their symbiotic cyanobacteria. (Though even if they weren't alive, oiling the weapon regularly would probably prevent rust…)
• I decided not to even have monks; they're possibly the least worthwhile class in the whole history of D&D. If I recall, Gygax admitted they were a mistake all the way back in 1st Edition, that's why they weren't in 2nd. If you were gonna have them, you'd pretty much have to go qinggong, and even then "unchained" only, with the fighter's hit die and attack progression. And really, if you want a barehanded martial artist, why not go with the unarmed fighter archetype? Or, if you like the "disciplined, mystical warrior" aspect, the enlightened paladin archetype from one of the Golarion books?
  
  About the only worthwhile thing monks contribute in Pathfinder (they contribute basically nothing in D&D proper) is the mechanic that makes the ninja rogue-archetype work. Well, and maybe the drunken master archetype from the Advanced Player's Guide and the elemental monk from another Golarion book, but the ability to play a drunken kung-fu practitioner or a bender à la Avatar still isn't worth it. Not least because the Avatar one is already available as the kineticist class from Occult Adventures, in a much more robust form (like the water one being able to armor themselves).
• Speaking of archetypes that don't really justify their parent class's existence, I'm not going to use vigilantes, from Ultimate Intrigue—I've said D&D is "sword and sorcery superheroes" but that's a bit on the nose. Nevertheless, one of its archetypes does something that I respect. Namely, the magical child. It's a vigilante with some nerfed skill-points and fewer armor proficiencies and vigilante talents, in exchange for having a familiar and spellcasting like a summoner (also not using those, too complicated)…and the ability to transform in half the time, using magic. (No word on if they have to say "Htaed htrof sllac ohw eno eht ma i tub gnimrahc dna ylevol" to do it…)
• Since I'm getting rid of monks, I had to redo my giants' names. They had been (I mentioned this before) named after cavalier orders and monk vows, but aside from how I'm getting rid of monks, it never really made much sense for giants to have cavaliers—certainly not so prominently as to name their kids after their orders. (I'm also still not sure which cavalier orders I'm having in my campaign.)
  
  I decided instead that Giantish names would be the various things you can make with the Craft and Artistry skills, plus the four quality-levels you can get locks in (presumably you could list those four levels for every item in the game, rather than only some of them having a common vs. masterwork distinction). I had been thinking of my giants' culture as based on tools and craft for a long time.
• I apparently haven't mentioned it here but I realized, a good "hook" for my orcs and ogres, is to have them live or die by the audacity of their deeds. A chief who can win against overwhelming odds attracts more followers and wives, while one who fails loses them. (He's also likely to get Starscreamed by a follower, who may be one of his sons—that "knock off the old man, have a ready-made harem of all the wives except his own mother" thing I've talked about before.)
  
  Notice I say one who fails, not one who runs away. Every ogre or orc chief has a complex calculus of whether the payoff is worth it, in terms of how it affects him (and indirectly his followers, since you're not a chief without them). Fortunately for everyone concerned, they're also utterly shameless, so they have no qualms running away if they don't like the cost-benefit analysis; both fortunately and unfortunately, though, they're also not very bright, so they may do the calculations wrong and wind up getting killed. But usually only after making a lot of trouble.
  
  The interesting thing about this is it makes the orc penchant for cruelty a side-effect of their pure-ego mindset; they can't resist to gloat and power-trip over captives. (Here too it's fortunate they're not too bright, so they tend to accidentally kill their captives before they can get too creative tormenting them.) Another aspect is females gain prestige by the status of their husband and sons, by bearing sons, and by the status of their daughters' husbands—and each of a chief's wives is constantly backstabbing the others. (Females also gain status by being "wise women".)
• My goblins, on the other hand, are fundamentally "lawful evil" even when individually they may be more neutral or even chaotic evil. A goblin (or hobgoblin, or bugbear) chief, like an ogre chief, is able to attract wives and followers by his deeds, but those deeds are more than just audacious slaughter—actually being able to maintain plans and infrastructure is a big part of them. Of course, so is ritual hunting of intelligent beings (which intelligent beings are not eaten). The wives usually at least tolerate each other, and often regard each other as sisters (if they aren't actually sisters or half-sisters—and they don't have the "Ottoman succession" murderous sibling-rivalries the ogres have).
  
  Thus, I went back to goblins being neutral evil, hobgoblins lawful evil, and bugbears chaotic evil. Or, rather, hobgoblins lawful evil, goblins neutral evil with lawful tendencies, and bugbears neutral evil with chaotic tendencies but dependent on lawful hobgoblin vassals. All three have similar familial arrangements, but goblins are much less ambitious or organized than hobgoblins (because survival is a more pressing concern for a weaker race), whereas bugbears are so strong they attract followers of the other two goblin races, and can completely devote themselves to hunting. Thus, except within their own families, bugbears are "chaotic".