New Player's Guide for Under a False Sky (134 page pdf)

[Mattachine]

I have written a book for my own homebrew campaign world, Under a False Sky.

Overview: This game world features a low-magic, low-wealth, generally human setting, taking place on a demiplane. Iron Heroes heavily influenced my development of this book. The guide focuses on episodic campaigns (rather than long adventures), with low-fantasy heroes struggling for existence against the slaadi and the mysterious Faceless, occasionally helped by the enigmatic Gith.

New Rules:
*Alternate encumbrance/armor penalties for a grittier campaign, where walking around like a metal tank has a price to pay.
*Low-wealth rules
*Hero Points: Meant to supplement a campaign with little or no magic items, this mechanic is like very powerful action points. They also function as a reward for excellent roleplay. A hero point allows a hero to accomplish an amazing success, a miraculous survival, or an incredible stunt
* Human character creation with a background and traits system, to make more variety for a human-only game.
* Feats, paragon paths, and epic destinies to support these new rules

New Classes:
* five new classes, fully-fleshed out for levels 1-30
* Skirmisher, a martial melee controller
* Alchemist, a ranged controller with a new power source (alchemical)
* Brute, a bare-fisted martial melee defender
* Psywarrior, a psiblade-wielding psionic melee/ranged striker
* Champion, an aura-using martial leader
* Each class has paragon paths, epic destinies, and feats
* Full support for multiclassing and hybrid classing

Feel free to download my book. I welcome commentary.

Thanks!

P.S. I apologize for the somewhat basic format of my pdf. If you are interested, I can send you the original Word document. Send a PM.

 

[Mattachine]

The new classes, though written for this campaign world, are usable in most D&D 4e games.

 

[Mattachine]

I see some folks have downloaded the book. Any thoughts? Comments? Questions?

Tanks!

 

[TarionzCousin]

I don't know when I'll have the time to read it, but at a glance I like the idea of a demiplane with slaadi, gith, and others.

 

[Mattachine]

Yay! Looks like over 50 downloads now.

 

[Pentius]

I've downloaded it, I haven't had time to read it.

I'll be honest, so far I'm mainly interested in your format, and how I could also make good looking pdfs, than the content within. However, I will be giving it a good read, have no doubt.

 

[Mattachine]

The pdf isn't perfect. Switching from Word to pdf introduced a couple minor formatting errors around pagination. I can provide the document on Word, as well. If you're interested, send me a PM.

The Word will let you see how I did the formatting.

 

[TwoSix]

In the middle of reading, but I wanted to congratulate you on a very well-done piece of work.

Loving the alchemist, the preparations remind me of the executioner's poisons, but the recharge rules are really cool.

Edit: Alchemist daily powers. Not a fan of the the build riders on the dailies. Aren't you supposed to use your dailies to customize yourself? Adding riders limits the amounts of customization, I feel.

Edit2: You don't mention Essential classes anywhere, at least that I've seen. With the lack of Encounter and Daily options, Brute might benefit from an Essentials style design.

Edit3: Dual blades (psywarrior) seems like an augmentable Twin Strike. Do we need another Twin Strike? For the love of the Founder, let's not.

Edit4: I love how the psionic utilities for psywarrior are all at-will. That's a nice touch.

Edit5: Psywarrior and Champion could really benefit from a Essentials format. Certain Strike would be a strong candidate to act more like an Essentials encounter feature.

Edit6: Stripping out the few fluff-based feats (like the Faceless or slaad feats), this is an excellent ruleset for any low-magic, more sword-and-sorcery type game. I really like the advice on keeping Epic Destinies from being quite so gonzo. And the pricing rules make a lot of sense.

Edit7: Let me go class-by-class.

Skirmisher: I'd have to go through the powers one-by-one to identify any problems, although I'm not seeing any right now. Rapid Strike and Impact Strike don't have a secondary stat association (in terms of having an effect modified by those stats), although the builds they are associated with seem to. Is that intentional?

Alchemist: Love the whole concept of the class, especially the preparation aspect. Some of the powers are pretty funny, as well. As I mentioned before, not a fan of the riders on dailies. I've also never been a fan of builds with no secondary stat (mystic chemist), I personally would make it Cha based, or (Dex and Wis, like resourceful warlords are Int and Cha), but that's a personal preference.

Brute: Like the concept, although I think a more streamlined approach would be better. I'd model closer to the Knight from HotFK. The forced movement reducer for Immovable seems too strong, it's near immunity to most forced movement by Paragon. That may be what you want, but I'd argue against it. Especially since Tough Customer is near identical to Defender Aura, I'd never take the other build, since forced movement is the bane of Defender Aura.

Psywarrior. I really like the class. The higher level at-wills are the weakest part of the other psionic classes, so making several at-wills with leveling augmentations is a great idea. Another class that could use an Essentials approach.

 

[Mattachine]

Thanks for the commentary--this is exactly the sort of thing I am looking for, too.

Edit1: The alchemist gets to choose encounter powers during every short rest, so the dailies really are the customization. On the other hand, there are significant benefits to taking the daily that goes with your alchemical specialty. On the third hand, those bonuses aren't that big.
Idea: what about adding some more dailies to choose from that don't have specialty riders?

Edit2: The Brute and the Champion are basically Essentials classes. The way the powers automatically scale with level, and the fewer powers to choose from, are borrowed directly from Essentials.

Edit3: Dual blades augments have significant effects, such as making the power Melee 5. I couldn't think of something much more creative for the standard dual blade attack. Any ideas?

Edit4: Tanks!

Edit5: Psywarrior uses power points, so I don't know if it would mesh well with Essentials-style. I definitely wanted a psionic striker that used power points, too. As for the Champion, Certain Strike scales with level--so, do you just mean doing the format differently?

Edit6: Tanks!

Edit7:
Skirmisher: Rapid strike relies on Int, and Impact strike on Wis. I mentioned it in the builds, and powers use those stats starting at level 3

Alchemist: I see what you are saying about daily riders, as I noted above. I could write some more powers, or simply allow some of the added bonuses to tie in to an ability score, without the class feature. Maybe you are right about the mystic, as well (using two secondary stats).

Brute: I was not sure about the immovable class feature. Maybe just a fixed reduction in forced movement?

Psywarrior: I am not very familiar with Essentials (I have only looked online a bit and browsed a book briefly)--how would that book handle power points?

 

[Pentius]

Alright, I've had a chance to give this a read, though I'll probably read it again later.

Something that really stood out to me while reading this is that everything in Under a False Sky, from character traits to power sources to playstyles, falls into one of two categories. First is In The Box. The Land is In The Box, literally. Martial and Psionic characters are In The Box. Personal Scope campaigns and Grey Morality are In The Box. In The Box is where the game is intended to take place. Outside The Box are the Gith, the Slaadi, the Faceless, Magic, Clear Morality and of course, the literal world outside The Land. Things Outside The Box are meant as rare at best, villains-only or not included at all at worst.

This dichotomy, in and of itself, is fine. It's good that you've clearly communicated what a good Under a False Sky campaign would look like. The problem is that while you've done a good job of telling us what fun things do not belong In The Box, you could do a much better job getting the reader pumped up about all the cool things that are In The Box. There are a lot of allusions and vague references where I think that concrete examples would be much better.

For example, you named one city, Serras, and it's supposed to be pretty important(being the only named city tells the reader "Hey, this is important. Other stuff? Not so much). But I can't think of what the King's name is. Was it in there, and I missed it? I understand that the nobility are supposed to be not terribly benevolent. Expand on that, and you paint a clearer picture of life as a Serran. Are the nobles callously detached from the citizenry, caring only for their luxuries and personal power? Are they corrupted by the Faceless as to be working toward more sinister goals? How does this affect the outlying towns and villages? When a commoner sees a Royal Soldier, is he comforted, or afraid?

Another place that could be expanded on: psionics. Tell the reader all about psionics. You hint at schools of meditants exploring this new power. That's a great way to get a reader pumped up to play one, but then the description pretty much stops there. One place you've done well in providing things to be excited about is with the classes. Use them more. Maybe there are a few prominent meditant schools. One values energy used directly, and produces more Psions and Psywarriors. Another values psionics used to bolster existing human strengths, and produces more Monks and Ardents. You mentioned that most prominent meditants end up serving the royalty. It leaves the door open for you to put in a school or two serving the King, and another, secret school that operates independently.

Basically, there's too much telling for not enough showing. Laying out some examples of towns, schools or persons gives the reader a clear idea of what they can expect from the world, as well as inspiration for their own characters and adventures.