Geneforge DnD?

[Lauren CW]

Hello all. I am currently running a DnD campaign that draws heavily from Geneforge. I was wondering if anyone had some of those creation loading screens, so I could show the party what some of the enemies they will be facing look like.

I'm fairly they're in the image files for the games, but I don't have access to my computer for a while to grab them. I tried google, but no luck

 

Any help would be much appreciated

[Lauren CW]

Nevermind, I figured out how to find some

[Lord Safey]

I been interested in see this works. I tried once a failed miserably.

[Tracer Bullet]

Of course you failed. I don't see how it's possible.

[Lauren CW]

You dont see how its possible? What sort of problems would you anticipate?

[Tracer Bullet]

Well, for one thing, Shaping just can't be accounted for. How do you add a Vlish to your party? Can you play as a Battle Beta? If so, what stat changes would that make? How do attack techniques tie into Shaping? How do you handle Serviles as a new race? how about Drayks? Drayks are sentient and ought to be viable PCs, but how would you arm or armor a Drayk character? Etc.

[Enraged Slith]

Originally Posted By: The Voice of Atalantë

Well, for one thing, Shaping just can't be accounted for. How do you add a Vlish to your party? Can you play as a Battle Beta? If so, what stat changes would that make? How do attack techniques tie into Shaping? How do you handle Serviles as a new race? how about Drayks? Drayks are sentient and ought to be viable PCs, but how would you arm or armor a Drayk character? Etc.

How is any of this difficult? Imagine it and then put it down on paper for prosperity.

[Lauren CW]

"Well, for one thing, Shaping just can't be accounted for. How do you add a Vlish to your party? Can you play as a Battle Beta? If so, what stat changes would that make? How do attack techniques tie into Shaping? How do you handle Serviles as a new race? how about Drayks? Drayks are sentient and ought to be viable PCs, but how would you arm or armor a Drayk character? Etc"

 

In my campaign, it is not a straight Geneforge dump. I draw heavily on elements from them, and mix and match to create my own world.

In this particular campaign, none of the players are shapers. They're from an oriental setting, who's homeland comes under attack from a mysterious force of outsiders from across the great oceans.

 

Adding a Vlish to the party? Our ranger could attempt to calm and befriend a rogue as an animal companion, although this would be admittedly difficult in the case of higher tier, more intelligent creations.

 

Why would Drayks be viable PCs? Storm titans are sentient, but I'm not letting them run around with one of those either.

 

And in fact, the party has already encountered and battled with a Battle Alpha, leading 4 Cryoas. I gave the Battle Alpha monster stats to suit my purposes as a DM as they became necessary. It's a really easy way to balance things on the go. I'm more interested in the role playing aspect than I am in creating my own gaming engine for pen and paper.

And I would say it's definitely more a question of how would my PLAYERS handle Serviles as a new race.

 

Maybe sometime in the future when they are more familiar with the universe, I would allow them to create and play as shaper classes, at which point I would have to create class progressions. But for now, I think I can handle the game smoothly by keeping it simple

[Alorael at Large]

The idea of making Geneforge-based rules for D&D has come up before. There are many new rules to hammer out, but most amount to monster stats. The real challenge is making a playable shaper class. If you don't want to do that, the rest is mostly flavor.

 

If you do want to play a shaper, you have choices. You can play with summoning spells, or as I suggested before you can play with psionics and summoning to keep the pseudoscientific feeling there. There's still the problem of getting duration and power right: creations are usually permanent in Geneforge, and they're often more potent in battle, especially collectively, than the shaper who leads them. Compare to animal companions and you can see the problem.

 

—Alorael, who really doesn't see any problem if you don't want that. How do you add a vlish to the party? Make stats and figure out how to balance them. What are the stats for a battle beta? You could probably base it on any number of big, tough humanoids. Maybe they're just ogres with another name, or even just big, tough orcs. Drayks are already just small dragons, and those have plenty of stats, rules about armor, and guidelines for mixing with squishier characters. Can you play one? There are rules for it. DMs might object.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Yeah, I think one cardinal rule (at least in any campaign where combat balance matters at all) would be that either all players play Shapers, or none do.

 

Beyond that, the single largest obstacle would be the tendency of large numbers of creations to make combat cumbersome. Larger battles in tabletop RPGs often drag on interminably, and in my experience are rarely fun. I could see a tabletop wargame like Warhammer working well for combat between groups of Shapers. Another option would be to much more strictly limit the number of creations a player could make. This would run up against problems of in-story consistency, since even the 7 creation limit in the Geneforge series is clearly far fewer than an experienced Shaper can create and maintain under direct control.

[Lord Safey]

I tried the psionic route and we broke the game beyond recognition. The DM had to keep ramping up the difficulty to try balance it. At level 3 we were facing a epic level challenge. He allowed the other party members to be Gestalt (and I wasn't) and they still couldn't keep up. Even if we went back and fine tuned the class, its still be horribly overpowered.

 

If I was to do it over, it would be a wizard/sorcerer spell. The spell would conjure a geneforge creature and while the creature would be permanent you would give up the spell slot used to make the creature until you either dismissed(adsorbed) it or it died. The first tier creatures would be second level spells. Shaping would be far to broken to be first level magic (except perhaps the weak worms/crawlers).

 

Might also make a prestige class that is shaper like.

 

Although even this might not be balanced.

[Tirien]

Well, if you could implement penalties for a shaper class, such as the spell levels, (as well as less spell slots), then it could work. Other penalties could include creations going rogue, with the chance of going rogue being higher if you have to many creations. It would take a lot of work to balance it, but a Geneforge DnD would be worth it. Just keep canisters out of it, along with any geneforges. The players would probably fight over them, go canister crazy, and end up killing/getting killed by the party.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I'll buy that, with the proviso that said Shaper class would be a great deal weaker than Shapers in the Geneforge games. This isn't a problem in the sort of campaign that Beer & Motor Oil discusses above, but it would lead to inconsistencies in a world more directly based on Geneforge. In such a world, I still think a Shaper/lifecrafter class could only really be balanced against other Shaper/lifecrafter classes. Which, of course, is what Jeff did.

[Lord Safey]

Spell slots represent the magical might a shaper is capable of. Beyond that I might have the number of creatures a shaper can control some how related to the characters will save modifier.

 

Control of a creature I would prorably make a check when ever a creature is under significant duress (level drain, ability damage/drain, or less then half its hitpoints) a opposed will save against the shaper. If its a magical effect (charm person and the like) that take control of the creature, the shaper would make the save for them. I also give penalties to will saves in general based how many creatures he is controlling.

[Lauren CW]

I very much appreciate all the input here, for future reference it will all be very handy.

 

I was also thinking about the leadership feat, and a way to somehow modify that to represent shaping, like a mix between followers in terms of numbers, and cohorts in terms of the power and amount of creations.

 

In my campaign, I'm not recording individual experience points, but rather awarding levels based on accomplishments. I have already had the leader of one of my factions steal and use a Geneforge, but this is all very secretive. I do NOT plan on them ever using it, but they may learn more about it with some particularly sneaky information gathering. And besides, none of my players are familiar with the universe, so they wouldn't know how to use it. It would be quite funny to see someone dunk their bare hands inside and be burned to cinders though.

 

Canisters, I plan to introduce a sort of taint score to keep track of their aggression, and when they come across them, they'll have to decide what to do about them. I was thinking about, if they use them, not telling them what exactly it did, and just write down who used what canisters in my notes and making appropriate adjustments to their rolls when it comes down to it.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

I tried the psionic route and we broke the game beyond recognition. The DM had to keep ramping up the difficulty to try balance it. At level 3 we were facing a epic level challenge. He allowed the other party members to be Gestalt (and I wasn't) and they still couldn't keep up. Even if we went back and fine tuned the class, its still be horribly overpowered.

Sounds like you weren't actually using standard psionics rules, which I think can bend into something like shaping. If you base a custom class on psionics and it breaks the game, that's hardly psionics' fault.

—Alorael, who could also see making the game's only leveling system canister and Geneforge-based. You'd have to be more lenient with the aggression (and maybe glowing), but it's reasonably consistent with the world.

[Lauren CW]

I would do it only canister based, except that I want to give them the option to NOT use them. But still, they aren't gaining experience, just being awarded levels.

The aggression, I'm gonna have them make will saves whenever appropriate for them

[Tracer Bullet]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

This would run up against problems of in-story consistency, since even the 7 creation limit in the Geneforge series is clearly far fewer than an experienced Shaper can create and maintain under direct control.

This has nothing to do with D&D, but I assumed that the limit of 7 was because you were an adventurer. A sedentary Shaper with vast reserves of essence, too much to travel with, could make more.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

That's probably part of it, but even then there are mobile Shapers who can produce more than that. Alwan and Miranda near the end of G4, for instance.

[Lord Safey]

Custom is a bit strong of a word. The main difference I remeber was we made a custom list for him to choose his powers from.

 

Not say you couldn't do it using psionics just saying it didn't work out for me and if I was to try again I just wouldn't take that route

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: The Voice of Atalantë

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

This would run up against problems of in-story consistency, since even the 7 creation limit in the Geneforge series is clearly far fewer than an experienced Shaper can create and maintain under direct control.

This has nothing to do with D&D, but I assumed that the limit of 7 was because you were an adventurer. A sedentary Shaper with vast reserves of essence, too much to travel with, could make more.

I believe Alwan's head of research in G5 had 46 (high-tier) creations, but then again he would probably be one of the most powerful Shapers in the world not on the council.

A fairly simple mechanic for creation control, to me, would simply be to give up spell slots in exchange for creations. A L1 creation takes up a L1 spell slot, an upgraded L1 (like a cryoa) take up an L2 slot, a L2 creation takes up an L3 slot, and so on, until you reach an upgraded level 5 creation, like an Ur-Drakon or Eyebeast, taking up a epic slot.

You could also do something where you'd roll a d% to check if any creation would go rogue, where the DC would be the sum of all the levels of the creations you controlled minus some constant based on your stats, and if you missed it, a creation would go rogue.

[Tracer Bullet]

Interesting. So certain creations would only be available with class feats?

[Lauren CW]

The party had a fight with Vlish last night. They were moving through the mountains to clear out a pass, and coming down one of the paths were 3 roamers and 2 vlish. The party noticed the lack of any wildlife noise, and knew this was a bad sign. A cleric used spider hand to scout around, and found the baddies closing in. So in one of the narrower parts of the path, they created and raised water, washing away the roamers. The Vlish, I took the liberty of making them float above the water until it subsided.

They had between 80 and 101 hit points. They attacked twice in a round, doing a 16DC+1d20 attack versus will saves. If it succeeded, the attack did 2d8+6 damage and caused them to either run in terror or freeze in place. Each subsequent round, the DC to break the fear effect was reduced by 5.

If forced into Melee, the Vlish would do two tentacle pokes with an attack bonus of +12. Each poke does 1d6+2 damage, and failing a fortitude save of 14DC+1d20, they were poisoned for 2 rounds, taking 1d8 each round.

This seemed to work well. The two Vlish were able to usually keep 3 of the party of 7 feared at a time, which definitely was a hindrance. One or two of the players thought that this was extremely powerful (Those who got feared, mostly >.<) at which point I told them they SHOULD be afraid of Vlish. A swarm of 5 of them could easily wreak havoc if not handled correctly.

 

After killing this patrol, they continued down the path the Vlish and Roamers wandered down, and came upon their first spawner. It spat out a roamer before one of the Clerics had a bright idea to drain the essence from the basin. I made it so that every few rounds the essence would refill the bowl, and they burned 4 spells to keep it empty, while hacking apart the spawner.

 

It took them a little bit to whittle it down, and they were feeling pretty good about themselves. So I told them to see how they felt after they had to take down a spawner that had a Vlish or two defending it. >;D

[Tirien]

This thread makes me wonder if there will ever be a Geneforge based AIMHack.

[Lauren CW]

What is AIMHack?

Like Nethack some way?

I prefer the *Bands.

[Tirien]

Link to AIMHack site. http://www.freewebs.com/ephesos/aimhack.htm

 

When was the last time you checked the General Forum?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

That sounds like it could be pretty neat. I am, as always, curious as to how the rule system would handle shaping.

[Lauren CW]

I haven't checked out General in ages. But now that I've seen that link, I definitely wanna get in on that, yo.

[Tracer Bullet]

Originally Posted By: Beer and Motor Oil

I haven't checked out General in ages. But now that I've seen that link, I definitely wanna get in on that, yo.

Same here, sounds interesting.

[Judanas]

If you are willing to use Pathfinder rather than straight 3.5, then the Summoner class can act sorta like a Shaper. They have a permanent, cusomisable minion creature that does the bulk of the fighting while they summon and buff.

 

However they are limited to one at a time, so you won't have the permanent hosts of creatures.

[Tracer Bullet]

Originally Posted By: Judanas

However they are limited to one at a time, so you won't have the permanent hosts of creatures.

Oh. That's a disappointment.

[Judanas]

The issue really is that's it's really hard to balance a character that can effectively take multiple turns with those that cannot. In addition in a Pen and Paper RPG it is a lot of excess bookwork.

 

Still, with the constant summons varient from Unearthed Arcana to make every time you cast the same summon spell it be the same minion and the summoners normal pet you can get decently close. You act more like a cheating boss fight than a regular shaper though.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Judanas

If you are willing to use Pathfinder rather than straight 3.5, then the Summoner class can act sorta like a Shaper. They have a permanent, cusomisable minion creature that does the bulk of the fighting while they summon and buff.

However they are limited to one at a time, so you won't have the permanent hosts of creatures.

Shamans in 4th edition D&D come pretty close to the mark too, especially if you mostly take powers that allow you to attack through your spirit companion. (And I guess if you wanted to make a melee-based shaping character like a Shock Trooper, you could make a Beastmaster Ranger, except that Beastmaster Rangers, like Shock Troopers, aren't very good.) If you really want to have multiple permanent creations running around at once, there isn't really an easy way to do that, for pretty good logistical reasons.

[Lauren CW]

It occurred to me you could use a system much like that of skill points for creations.

Int modifier x2 per level skill points to be allocated into creation stats like str, dex, con, int. (Pending balance of course)

You'd have to make a scale, but that shouldn't be hard if you keep it simple. 1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5 and such. That way you couldn't bump up too many creations to fast without a high int, and you would have to be a focused character in order to amass any sort of power.

 

I was thinking of turning the shaping disciplines into feats for a different campaign. Each level of fire shaping feat gives +2 (Pending balance) to fire creatures primary stats.

 

I would by far build this scale so disposable creations are better than the leveled up creations.

 

I've been toying with the idea of creating several classes for shaping lately, I'll post them up when I'm done if anyone is interested. Collaboration would be awesome

 

EDIT:

 

Example: Andras has an intelligence of 17. His modifier is +3. It has been at 17 for his first 7 levels.

 

So he would have something like 6x7 skill points for creations. at 8th level, he bumps up his intelligence by one, and he gets 8 skill points as opposed to 6 from now on.

I would make this non-retroactive, so if he drops in intelligence his creations don't have to be re-written for the loss in skill points.

[ShortBus]

Hello everyone. Haven't been on in a while, however in my absence I have been progressively working out kinks and flaws in my GeneForge campaign setting for 3.5 D&D. My old post topic (GeneForge RPG, Converting to 3.5 D&D Standards) has long since died out, however I feel that I have come very close to an (almost) balanced shaper class that can be played within a 3.5 setting. It must be played within a GenForge campaign setting, not simply one out of the PHB in order to be considered balanced, but most campaign settings are like that. Example: Expanded Psionics. Anyways. I have quite a bit of work done on the campaign, some rationally depicted, some still in a working thought process. If anyone wants me to email them any of my work, let me know. I cannot really post it in these forums due to the widespread use of spreadsheets and tables.

[Txgangsta]

By retroactive, you mean something of the sort where the creations aren't altered, but those skill points are borrowed from when he gets more?

[Ishad Nha]

"I cannot really post it in these forums due to the widespread use of spreadsheets and tables."

When I have wanted to do this it has been simple enough:

Get a Freewebs account set up, they are free.

Put all your files to be uploaded in a zip file.

Log in, then go to File Manager and upload the zip file.

Right click the uploaded file and choose "Copy Shortcut".

In the relevant post in this forum, paste the shortcut to provide a link to your zip file.

Note:

The "Create a link to a webpage" button enables you to choose the title of the link.

[Lauren CW]

I would love to take a look at your work.

 

Retroactive meaning that as he gets a higher intelligence, he won't gain more skill points just because of the modifier. Every level he gets after his modifier goes up will add to his skill points, but a character reaching level 10 going from a +3 to a +4 in intelligence isn't going to get 2x4x10 creation points, he's going to get 2x3x9 + 2x4x1.

[ShortBus]

Taking Ishah Nha's advice I have set up a small website, still under construction that currently contains a couple downloads. I've uploaded the classes I've created under the forum pages, and in the download page I've uploaded most of my preliminary work in a single zip file. As I continue with my work I will update my files so keep posted. For anyone who's interested:

 

www.freewebs.com/llamaoflucifer