Insomnia Is The Mother Of Creation

Or something.

I’ve decided that if I’m going to spend time completely wide awake at 4:00 AM, having been that way since 1:00 AM, I might as well make some use of it. The marginally irksome part is that since I still hope to maybe get some sleep, I can’t take any Adderall (yes, I have a prescription), and, frankly, this cuts my productivity down by about 50% or more. Nonetheless, I did get a few things accomplished, or at least thought about. Savages, Ablative items, and pureed ganglia await!

Savage

Those of you who’ve downloaded the Alpha 1.4 (once again, I am talking about Earth Delta, Lizard’s take on Gamma World style mutant adventuring for the Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition rules) of Earth Delta might note the mention of the Savage, a martial Defender class, but not much else besides that. I dislike having only one Defender, the Fighter, for Earth Delta, and I have a strong mental image of the archtypal "Wasteland Warrior", a massive hulk of a person wielding a stop sign or giant maul as a weapon, lightly armored but so tough it barely matters. Of course, turning this idea into mechanics, and making it "Defendery", as opposed to "Strikery", is the hard part. (Attention, folks: Ideas are worthless. No one will steal your ideas, because no one steals that which has no value. Turning an idea into an implementation is what counts, so if your life plan is to have great ideas and have someone else do all the work, please learn the following phrase:"Do you want fries with that?". But I digress.)

The essence of defenders, mechanically, is that they draw attacks away from other people, mostly by making it a very bad idea to not attack the defender. They’re also hard to avoid — this is the so-called "stickiness". For the Savage, I am playing with the idea that he gets stronger when he’s not attacked — the more you ignore him, the harder he hits and the more options open up for him. Basically, the Savage is a defender, within the context of the game world rather than the mechanics, because he doesn’t want anyone else to get to fight. He’s the "You wanna fight? FIGHT ME!" guy. He’s a huge mass of violent energy looking for something to fight, and if you don’t fight him, he just gets madder and madder and keeps pounding on you until you have no choice to notice him… or you’re dead. At the moment, I’m calling this mechanic "Fury". When a marked target makes an attack that does not include the Savage, the Savage gains Fury. What does Fury do?

Ah, that’s what I’m still working on.

The option I’d like, but which is complicated, is to have Fury build, with the ability to produce effects based on how much you’ve got. For example, maybe you add +1d6 damage per point of Fury, or you can Shift up to your Fury as a move action. (Actually, those two ideas sort of imply some builds — you’ve got Smashing Savage, who is a bit of a Striker, and focuses on hitting harder and harder, and the Speedy Savage, who races around the battlefield in a berserk rage.) Obviously, you want a cap of some sort, and some mechanic that expends/reduces fury. A related concept is perhaps to borrow a bit from the Barbarian and have Daily powers called, well, "Furies" — you may need a minimum fury level to trigger them, or maybe they generate more Fury… though the first idea is a bit more appealing to me, it has that whole "Oh, dear, now you’ve done it. Now you’ve made him MAD." vibe, which I like. One weakness I see with this, other than the potential for too much fiddly bean counting, is that if Fury is the main power source, then if the Savage is actually being attacked, he will be weaker than expected because he generates Fury by NOT being attacked! (This is easily solvable with some sort of fury-creation mechanism that could be based on damage, or even seeing an ally get bloodied. ("Hey, how come he’s having all the fun? Raar!"))

The other option is to make it boolean: You’re either Furious or you’re not. In a Furious state, you can do X, Y, and Z, probably based on class features modified by feats.

The other design issue is "How do they mark?" Marking is important for defenders.

I also see the Savage as a bit controller-y. He knocks people around, a lot. He picks people up and throws them. He hits them so hard little mutant canaries dance around their heads. He tears up the local environment.

OK, so much for the Savage. What else am I doing?

Ablative Items

This is one of those cases where I had three or four slightly different special case mechanics, and I figured we just needed a new keyword. I wanted to add a little more uncertainty to 4e. By this I mean, 4e is pretty darn predictable. An effect ends at the end of your next turn, when you save, or at the end of the encounter. When working with consumable items, I came up with the idea of the "Ablative Save". Rather than saving to end a nasty effect, you save to keep a GOOD effect going. Here’s a very typical ablative item:

So what does "Ablative" mean? First, it doesn’t come into play until the item is used. The first time during an encounter that you’re included in an attack which targets Will (and possible Picard and Geordi as well), you get the full benefit of the item. At the end of your next turn, roll an Albative Save. Roll 10+… nothing happens, it keeps working. Roll 1-9… and the item drops down to the next lowest stage. So your Level 10 Focusine, +2 item bonus to Will, becomes Level 5 Focusine, +1 item bonus to Will. Keep doing this every turn, whether or not the item comes into use that round. This models a gradual "wearing off" effect, which works nicely for drugs, ablative armor (hence the name), and so on. Because I do not anticipate a lot of different consumables (and the Ablative property only applies to consumables) being used during a single combat, I do not think this will grossly increase complexity or bookkeeping. You already often have to roll 2 or more saves at the end of your turn. To some extent, this is akin to Save Ends/Aftereffect.

Oh yeah, the Ganglia…