Bending Elements In D&D
Sep. 3rd, 2011 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weirdletI am having that strange and terrible urge to GM again. One of my major campaigns is coming to an end, and in the interim there's probably going to be a bunch of things my crew will be trying. I might put in a bid to try running something for them, IF I can come up with enough for folks to actually play with without tearing my hair out.
I really, really want to do a game with the Avatar D20 supplement the good folks of the GitP boards came up with- I don't necessarily want to run an Avatar: the Last Airbender game. So my thoughts are running around the question of what do folks think that a setting with the A:tLA system of 'magic', rather than the classic wizards, druids and clerics, would be like.
My initial thought is that the various types of 'bending are mostly human's magic, but with a couple of other species getting in on the action either as having mimicked it, or having originated it. Possibly non-human types like elves have their own magics, but I'll have to figure out what specific systems I want to include, so that things don't get too wildly out of whack (although high-level anything in a d20 system is going to be screwy any way you look at it). I like the idea of combat being more about the different moves you can do, physically or elementally, rather than straight-up fire and forget arcana.
As for the setting itself- I'm thinking that this might be taking place in a small sea, in a place where there are a lot of large islands kind of near to each other, so that boat travel is frequent but you can also fetch up on a shore where you could go for a few days without seeing water on the other side, and possibly find the edges of some larger continents where civilization's grown up. I'm seeing the elves as fairly reclusive on their particular islands, but the lower classes among them are known to show up outside their shores, fishing and trading.
Another big thing to think about- what are the problems that the adventurers are going to encounter? Things like dragons and zombies are very very classic D&D, but they aren't going to fit without some serious adjustment- like if zombies are just corpses being blood-bent by a master witch. You know, that could be an interesting thing, because as is, blood-bending is basically epic tier- it would be much easier to puppeteer a dead thing by its liquids than a live one.
I really, really want to do a game with the Avatar D20 supplement the good folks of the GitP boards came up with- I don't necessarily want to run an Avatar: the Last Airbender game. So my thoughts are running around the question of what do folks think that a setting with the A:tLA system of 'magic', rather than the classic wizards, druids and clerics, would be like.
My initial thought is that the various types of 'bending are mostly human's magic, but with a couple of other species getting in on the action either as having mimicked it, or having originated it. Possibly non-human types like elves have their own magics, but I'll have to figure out what specific systems I want to include, so that things don't get too wildly out of whack (although high-level anything in a d20 system is going to be screwy any way you look at it). I like the idea of combat being more about the different moves you can do, physically or elementally, rather than straight-up fire and forget arcana.
As for the setting itself- I'm thinking that this might be taking place in a small sea, in a place where there are a lot of large islands kind of near to each other, so that boat travel is frequent but you can also fetch up on a shore where you could go for a few days without seeing water on the other side, and possibly find the edges of some larger continents where civilization's grown up. I'm seeing the elves as fairly reclusive on their particular islands, but the lower classes among them are known to show up outside their shores, fishing and trading.
Another big thing to think about- what are the problems that the adventurers are going to encounter? Things like dragons and zombies are very very classic D&D, but they aren't going to fit without some serious adjustment- like if zombies are just corpses being blood-bent by a master witch. You know, that could be an interesting thing, because as is, blood-bending is basically epic tier- it would be much easier to puppeteer a dead thing by its liquids than a live one.
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Date: 2011-09-05 08:30 pm (UTC)I figure the peasants are more half-elven than anything, and that the farther you are from the capital, or the more you associate with the mortal types, the shorter your lifespan is, sort of borrowing from Dragon Age where elves were once immortal, but adapt so easily that being around the 'shemlen' or 'quick-children' brought them to age and die.
Ooh- now there *is* a thought. Halflings and half-elves are the peasants, but there are elven nobles to oversee things, at what is basically a punishment post out in the world. Rome, Greece, Japan, China- every big civilization had a tendency to see being away from the heart of their own culture as a punishment.
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Date: 2011-09-05 09:10 pm (UTC)Now I can not unsee the elves as a pointy eared version of the Crane Clan from L5R
"Ooh- now there *is* a thought. Halflings and half-elves are the peasants, but there are elven nobles to oversee things, at what is basically a punishment post out in the world. Rome, Greece, Japan, China- every big civilization had a tendency to see being away from the heart of their own culture as a punishment."
Sounds like a good idea.
B.T.W. if you did not know it so has Dragon #289 rules for wuxia ninjas
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Date: 2011-09-05 10:41 pm (UTC)Humm, the later is actually a good idea, the elves could be like Piandao, Mai and Ty Lee so skilled that they don’t need bending to be a high level threat.
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Date: 2011-09-05 11:13 pm (UTC)Hm. Bards. Their abilities are spell-like- I'm not sure they'd fit in. Better for rogues to take up the role of flim-flammery when needed.
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Date: 2011-10-02 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-02 10:52 pm (UTC)