I've started to convert some of the setting background information from AD&D to ACKS. The Badlands material is the main thing I lost, document-wise, in my big hard drive crash last year (or was it the year before? OLLLLDDDDD). Fortunately, I had many of the important docs in PDF on the WIKI site. I was afraid they'd uneditable, being PDF's and all, but found I could copy and paste from them. It takes a little work to re-format the pages before editing, but it proceeds apace.
I've converted the main Religions and Magical Orders over. The religions weren't hard, I just needed to re-define what classes the various clergy belonged to. I decided to take the ACKS Priestess class, and open it to men as well (Priests), and use them for the "Canon Clergy" class I had created for the Badlands AD&D. They are functionally analogous, characters who fight like wizards, but use Cleric spells, and who get cleric spells in greater supply than standard clerics. It was far simpler to just say "Men can be Priestesses" rather than create a new class. Druids, Gothi and Shaman, of the AD&D Badlands, are now just ACKS shaman class examples. The chaos cults now can be led by Warlocks, Chaotic clerics, or some sorts of Witches.
I've converted over some magical orders as well. I dropped the Violet Lotus, since we never used it in the Badlands campaign. The main benefit for joining one of the orders is access to magical libraries and laboratories (which can be a huge deal). It gives some purpose to the Collegiate Wizardry proficiency beyond the occasional reading of glyphs or ciphers.
In the Badlands campaign, I gave each magician who was in one of these orders a minor magic wand, which could shoot the equivalent of a cantrip, a minor damage effect that usually required a to hit roll. I figured that magicians out to be using magic in combat more frequently, and it was more wizard-like to shoot a magic beam than to throw a dart, even if the results were the same. I don't know whether to bother with these items again. I don't really recall the PC's using them all that much in practice, and since we will be starting at 2-3rd level, it's not so crucial to give the wizards a leg up to start.
Sounds good so far, Dave. Just a couple of thoughts/ideas.
ReplyDeleteFirst, dwarven craftpriests. The book seems to imply that they get their divine abilities just from their racial reverance for craftsmanship in general, and the spirits of their artisans in particular. This seems rather odd, but it adds a different layer of roleplaying. Instead of protecting (or enslaving) the innocent and destroying (or enslaving) evil/chaos, the craftpriests are trying to protect, create, uncover, and control great dwarven craft works. It seems odd, but I can see Bor accepting the lawful/neutral portions of this dwarven 'religion'. They're basically friendly towards humans, are extremely hostile to the forces of chaos (at least those trying to destroy their stuff), and are perfectly happy having peaceful humans for neighbors.
That's actually a really good idea of doing something with an otherwise limited proficiency.
Actually Dave, I believe Septimus, and his henchman Mystic Barbara, both used their wand of dinky shots extensively. I find myself rather conflicted on including it or not. On the one hand, low level mages run into the same problems they did before with running out of spells. On the other hand mages have a wider array of spells available to them each day. My suggestion would be to keep it, but make it for the mage class only and reduce it's charges based on the starting character's level. Like make it maybe 50 charges minus 10 per level of the character.
Septimus lived and died by his magic item. As a matter of fact, he paid to get it recharged from his school it was so useful and I had gone through all 100 charges.
ReplyDeleteOf course by then, Septimus could nearly afford a wand of Magic Missiles. However, that was about 4 times the cost I believe and only carried 50 charges.