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Post by shaungamer on May 23, 2012 22:15:42 GMT -5
Please help us determine a good name for the Stealth ability group which includes:
Simple Lock Picking - Whenever the Hero is attempting to disarm a lock, he may count up to two results of 4 as successes Complex Lock Picking - Whenever the Hero is attempting to disarm a lock he may count up to four results of 4 as successes Advanced Lock Picking - Whenever the Hero is attempting to disarm a lock, 4s, 5s, and 6s count as successes. Prosperous - Whenever the Hero rolls on the Treasure chart, they may make two rolls and choose the one he or she wants. Sneak Attack - The Hero rolls 2 extra dice whenever an attack is made on a Monster that is currently battling another Hero. Stealth - Whenever the Hero is next to an unrevealed room add a -1 to the Awareness roll for the construction phase. Trap Trickster - When a Hero is attempting to disarm a trap, he may count up to two results of 4 as successes Trap Master - When a Hero is attempting to disarm a trap, he may count up to four results of 4 as successes Trap Master Trickster - When a Hero is attempting to disarm a trap, 4s, 5s and 6s count as successes
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Post by kalajel on May 24, 2012 8:01:07 GMT -5
How about some sort of pick pocket ability that allows a character to sacrifice his attacks in order to have a chance of stealing an item or gold from a monster?
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erf_beto
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Post by erf_beto on May 24, 2012 8:07:02 GMT -5
I thought about that kalajel, but I currently don't know how to prevent the player from spamming it and get a lot of gold from a single monster. We could track whether or not that monster has been sacked, but I'm not sure we need another thing to keep track of... Any ideas?
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Post by kalajel on May 24, 2012 8:19:12 GMT -5
The best I can thing of is how Returnergames handled it for the Thief in their Final Fantasy RPG. In an earlier version, each monster has a "drop" entry table showing what could be stolen or dropped after defeat, and the same result could not be rolled more than once for the same monster. For example, adapting this to DP might look a little bit something like that; 2d6 result 2-6 Nothing 7-9 1d6 gold pieces 10-11 Dagger 12 Potion of health
In later version, it was directly based of the Thief's Steal roll and how much he botched/Failed/Succeeded/Aced it...
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erf_beto
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Post by erf_beto on May 24, 2012 11:20:36 GMT -5
Currently, the monster's statblock already show a "gold" entry, so you could steal that - but you'd have to track which monsters you stole from, so you wouldn't get that gold again when you kill it. My first draft of the "Steal" special ability would look like this: Make a DEX check. The target can oppose with a DEF check (this makes it very hard at first levels, but later you could get access to special abilities that grant +1, +2, success on 4s, etc. ). If you succeed, you take the gold from the monster. I suppose if the monsters are asleep, or if you have Stealth, Sneak Attack, etc, you can get a bonus on the DEX check.
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Post by kalajel on May 25, 2012 8:01:25 GMT -5
That's a good draft, but don't monster already drop that gold when defeated? It sort of makes the whole Steal thing a bit redundant when you're already going to get that gold by killing the monster anyway. Perhaps Steal could allow you to gain extra gold in a fight by stealing an amount of extra gold equal to half (or some other value) of the monster's "gold" entry in extra gold oncer per fight per monster?
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erf_beto
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Post by erf_beto on May 25, 2012 9:09:32 GMT -5
Well, stealing is a bit redundant when you are there to kill the monster to take its stuff, so I think it makes sense to get what the monster would give. Not that DP *has* to make sense. It can be useful if the monster is too powerful, but was found sleeping. Also, if players compete for gold, the thief can loot the monsters before the warrior finishes it!
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Post by dan on May 25, 2012 23:34:16 GMT -5
What if the thief had the ability to get an extra gold (or 1d6 gold) from a killed monster...I know that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense on the face of it, but if you think of it as the thief knowing what sorts of things might be valuable that could be pawned later, or just being better able or more willing to very thoroughly search a body, it could kind of make sense; it's not really pickpocketing, but it achieves a similar effect without any additional record keeping
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Post by erf_beto on May 26, 2012 6:05:42 GMT -5
I like it. (but wouldn't that be a WIT type of ability?) Maybe (if) we can have both, and call this Poach or Scrounge.
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Post by kalajel on May 26, 2012 7:48:54 GMT -5
What if the thief had the ability to get an extra gold (or 1d6 gold) from a killed monster...I know that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense on the face of it, but if you think of it as the thief knowing what sorts of things might be valuable that could be pawned later, or just being better able or more willing to very thoroughly search a body, it could kind of make sense; it's not really pickpocketing, but it achieves a similar effect without any additional record keeping Yeah, that was going to be my next suggestion if the whole current system of Steal ended up not working... As for my proposed Steal mechanics being redundant, I guess it's a matter of taste. But seeing it's more inspired by similar videogame RPG mechanics, I can see why some GMs might not feel at easy implementing this in their games...
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erf_beto
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Post by erf_beto on May 26, 2012 12:16:01 GMT -5
Ok, since you've considered the issues (and I can't think of any other), let's write up a Steal special ability! And those who don't like it can just opt to *not* take it, right? Then we could base the amount of gold stolen by the gold the monster would drop AND the number of successes rolled (so a high level thief could steal his target's underwear ) So, how about: make a DEX vs DEF check, get 1d6 gold per success, up to a maximum equal to the monster's drop value? An ability like this can almost double the gold you get from a monster - but also reduces your party "DPS" (damage per second), since the thief could be attacking. I'd add a restriction that monsters don't fall for this trick twice, and can only be stolen once, what do you think?
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Post by kalajel on May 27, 2012 8:15:40 GMT -5
Sounds good, I did a quick check of the published adventures to see how that would fare up and realized very few monsters have over 6 gold. A quick glance of monster's stats and character creation rules shows that you could easily have a starting character roll his 5 or more DEX vs a monster's 2 or 3 DEF... One suggestion would be to perhaps change the amount of gold stolen to 1d3 per success and remove the whole "monsters can only fall for it once" limitation. Another suggestion would be to have monsters resist the whole Steal attempt with WITS instead (as in your character has to somehow distract the monster and hope he doesn't notice you trying to lift his purse) and leave everything else as-is; this would raise the difficulty of pulling this off slightly on most monsters, significantly on a few, and make the attempt easier on a few others (I'm looking at you troll!)... I think it all ends up being a "risk versus rewards" thing with the character learning which monster is it worth to try and Steal and which is better to just attack. For example, if the second option ends up being taken, trolls would be easy to fool and Steal from as they carry a lot of gold and have low WITS, but they're also strong and perhaps it would help the party better if the rogues helped killing the troll more quickly rather than Steal from him...
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Post by erf_beto on May 27, 2012 10:36:00 GMT -5
Resisting the theft with WIT is a good idea (I know I've dismissed it when I suggested Def, but I can't remember why... :-$ )
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Post by dan on May 29, 2012 22:40:36 GMT -5
Having it be a check against a living monster still makes record keeping necessary as it doesn't make sense to be able to do it more than once from a given monster, what I am suggesting is more like looting the body.
I am thinking the thief would be the kind of person more likely to think that someone might have swallowed a gem to hide it and be willing to go in after it. I have read of real life pirates having done that. Alternately, perhaps the thief, in a cutthroat mindset can find value in things others don't see, such as cutting the eyes out of a troll to sell to a wizard for magic components. They could roll DEX vs the monster's DEF to cut them open/cut something out and just get gold for it to simulate the concept (avoiding a situation of having to come up with a mechanic to see if they can actually find a buyer for the weird monster bits). Same mechanic as described above, different explanation and different timing.
This could however lead to a thief looting every single body in an attempt to increase gains however if there was some reason to not always do it, that could be a fix. A penalty for failure could be that you get nothing, but also get covered in monster guts and bile, possibly hurting you or making you stink to high heaven and making you easier to spot/draw attention to you.
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Post by kalajel on May 30, 2012 8:14:50 GMT -5
Having it be a check against a living monster still makes record keeping necessary as it doesn't make sense to be able to do it more than once from a given monster, what I am suggesting is more like looting the body. I am thinking the thief would be the kind of person more likely to think that someone might have swallowed a gem to hide it and be willing to go in after it. I have read of real life pirates having done that. Alternately, perhaps the thief, in a cutthroat mindset can find value in things others don't see, such as cutting the eyes out of a troll to sell to a wizard for magic components. They could roll DEX vs the monster's DEF to cut them open/cut something out and just get gold for it to simulate the concept (avoiding a situation of having to come up with a mechanic to see if they can actually find a buyer for the weird monster bits). Same mechanic as described above, different explanation and different timing. This could however lead to a thief looting every single body in an attempt to increase gains however if there was some reason to not always do it, that could be a fix. A penalty for failure could be that you get nothing, but also get covered in monster guts and bile, possibly hurting you or making you stink to high heaven and making you easier to spot/draw attention to you. Seeing that the "current" Steal mechanics (still very much open to tinkering at this stage) is very much a "risks vs rewards" mechanics, I believe it will take care of keeping record keeping to a minimum by itself. Keep in mind that the character will need to sacrifice an attack to perform it and a quick glance of the various published monsters have showed me quite a few interesting facts; • Monsters on average tend to have a higher WIT than DEF. There are a few exceptions of course. • Weaker monsters tend to have less gold and stronger monsters tend to have more gold. • Most "animal"-type enemies as well as bosses (unless I've missed something here) don't even carry gold at all... Now what does this means? Well right off the bat, we see that there are already quite a few monsters where the character won't even bother using Steal on (most notably animals and bosses). As for other enemies, the character will need to carefully choose when to steal; weak enemies don't pose much threat to the party but don't carry much gold and will most likely die before the character can steal anything, while stronger enemies carry more gold but pose a much bigger threat to the party and will probably require the character to attack it instead of trying to steal from it. Because of this "risk versus rewards" mechanic, I predict that such ability will get used most often when only 1 or 2 enemies are left alive in a room, thus doing a good job of keeping record keeping to a minimum even as written. Your idea, while interesting in it's own regard, seems to be more appropriate for a "Poach" ability used by hunter/ranger-themed characters.
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