That High Note’s a Killer
Nice to see that Bard has made the trek across the North Channel from Handbook-World. After all, it’s a sort of homecoming for him. Today’s adventure marks day two of our ongoing trek across Ireland, and I’d like to thank the banshee for putting in a guest appearance. I’m certain that Bard appreciates the tutelage.
It’s a been a little while since we talked shop about experience, leveling up, and earning new powers. Our general XP discussion lives back here, and the concept of the master/apprentice relationship resides in this one. But with our resident horny troubadour cozying up to a tortured spirit, it’s a good time to contemplate monstrous mentors and imitable critters.
This is a fantasy trope where monks tend to shine. Just look at the big list o’ fighting styles in Pathfinder 1e. The crunchy mechanical bits are delicious, but the conceptual main course is right up top in the ability description: “For centuries, great warriors have looked to nature and the multiverse to find inspiration in battle. Countless monastic and contemplative orders have crafted intricate unarmed fighting styles based on the deadliness and grace of natural and supernatural creatures.” Crafting suites of powers based on bulettes and krakens tigers is the name of the game. But even if the cast of Kung-Fu Panda offers the go-to example for the technique, it’s not just limited to martial arts masters.
When it comes time to level up you wizard, it might be worth your while to pause and reflect on the monsters you’ve recently encountered. If you spent the past level teaching a blink dog to sit and stay, maybe she taught you a thing or two as well. If your druid wrestled an alligator in that last swamp adventure, it might be worth pulling out the thematically-appropriate gator form for your next grapple check (or homebrewing a more powerful version for higher level). Fighter got backstabbed? Put a few ranks into stealth and go for your own ambush. Did vampires go for your warlock throat? Let him do the same!
Sure this sort of thing might run counter to optimization. “I don’t have the spare feats / spell slots / free pizzas to bribe my GM! I need to focus on getting my core mechanics online!” Well sure. This biz is a sometimes food, and certainly not a requirement for leveling up. But if you do find yourself wondering which direction to take a PC, it can be a fun way to make your journey through level-up more narratively meaningful. After all, experience points are all about learning from your adventures. This just makes that connection a little more concrete.
Question of the day then! Have you ever encountered a monster, then incorporated its powers into your build? What was the beasty? What was the ability? And did it turn out to be a fun addition to your own arsenal, or a waste of good build points? Whether you absorbed elemental powers from a dragon’s breath or fighting techniques from a tortle, tell us all about it down in the comments!
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It’s nice to see Bard getting some guidance from Banshee, rather than getting beat up or extorted and insulted for a change. ^_^
Hey, getting beat up is a paid service for him.
Yeah, but he’s the one who has to pay – for it to stop.
Don’t worry. Though he may suffer abuse, he can dish it out with the best of em.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/diss
As for learning from enemies… eh.
One time we faced an Illusionist who made liberal use of displacer form and I bought the spell. :-/ Only used it once…
Apart from that, I always try to prepare for specific enemies and general danger. Spell penetration when dealing with a lot of SR, that kind of thing.
Never any room for flavorful spells?
Makes me wonder if you could have “quantity over quality” as an option. Create a type of bard that gets double spells, but has to choose from “the bad options.”
There was room, but the kind of enemies we had required different spells. Only so many slots per day, and all.
I wonder how one justifies various multiclassing or ‘suddenly I can do X’ in some games. A wizard might spend years studying at college to learn the most basic of cantrips, and then some schmuck fighter with 12 int spontaneously skips that hard scholarly work because they killed a bunch of goblins.
Or in the case of Bards, “Toot doot, I cast flute!”. Bard college optional.
Story telling, say your fighter wants to learn magic then maybe the party caster could teach the basics or if none are available self taught or hireing a teacher.
I like what warhammer games have, so when I know what the career advancements my player aim’s for I can drop in aporopriate NPC’s or plot hooks to drive the character developement in appropriate direction.
Or as allways there is the option to handwave things and just play Eye of the tiger and explaining quick training montage
Doesn’t Order of the Stick do this gag?
“It’s just retroactively assumed I’ve been training with V.”
“I’ve never taken you on as an apprentice! Nor would I!”
Something to that effect anyway.
Aye it’s easier to justify with cooperative PCs as ‘trainers’.
Chaos artefacts mostly, the risk of madness and mutations can be worth it, naturally our norse marauder campaing is full of them and the Border princes campaing one of them found a fancy dagger near sacrificial altar and the first time he used it to execute an captured enemy, roll Toughness save, fail, roll for mutation, cue player screaming in fear as we start going through what mutation he rolled.. And once in Only War one of my players decided to go through the battlefield trying to find that really big gun one ork wiped half their support team. He was a noob to 40k and once he found the gun his face was torn with disapointment as I described it with not having a trigger, the barrel was crooked and something else I can’t remember.
And now I remember a Patfinder game in which one of my fellow partymembers did his best to get wererat infection when we encountered those… then proceeded to play skaven rest of the game, of course being halfling(or what ever those were called in pathfinder) made him an easily throwable and grabable buddy for some daredevil acts my barbarian was fond of(yeah I play lot of those).
Heh. I guess wererats kind of teach you “wererat” by default.
I mean it’s not quite the same, but I have a character whose “werewolf” status was actually being partly possessed by a shadow-tainted manticore that he killed and ate. Funnily enough, it wasn’t a ritual or anything, he just doesn’t like to waste things and the corpse was just going to rot there
No accounting for taste I guess. O_O
Way back in a 3.5e game, our GM got a little creative with a Reincarnation spell, resulting in my deceased cleric returning as a were-bear. I don’t think it was actually a bear that killed him, but the NPC druid who cast the spell definitely had one as a companion.
Animal companion or your new love interest? YOU MAKE THE CALL!
I did have a character once upon a time in the 3.5 days who’s whole build was trying to learn the techniques and powers of monsters. It was a third party/homebrew class, mind. The ‘Blue Mage’ class of the Final Fantasy series. Part of the fun of the class is that to learn the technique, you have to actually… survive having it used on you. Getting raised afterward doesn’t count.
Some of the more fun techniques that character survived/received was the Fear Aura of a Death Knight, the Acid Spray of a Digester, and the Captivating Song of a Harpy.
After learning the technique, it’d be assigned a spell level and have to be activated with spell slots, but a lot of the fun was being a mage who intentionally sought out monsters to increase their powers. In-story, “It was fairly obvious to everyone else in the world why this style of magic never caught on, but those who devoted themselves to the path boasted abilities no one else could claim to achieve… those that survived, anyway.”
Well damn. I kind of want to play one of those now.
We are very fond of this trope around this house. Two examples:
For my big half-orc cleric, the road to self-improvement was often more about filling perceived deficits: Mauled by the eight claws of an aurumvorax? Take up two-weapon fighting for extra attacks and use the hide as a Nemean-lion cloak. Felled by arrows? Dip into another class for a couple levels to buff AC and DR. Disarmed in a battle? Dip into Monk for a level to gain even more unarmed attacks and increased bare-handed damage.
My son’s samurai can now double as a shugenja (in a pinch) since devoting a few ranks to Spellcraft and Use Magic Device after a tough module featuring an evil sorcerer and a mad cleric. Said samurai has also incorporated some new Grappling moves after besting a celestial kappa at wrestling in order to force it to stop eating villagers.
Too bad that those style plays poorly with optimizers. Makes me wonder if there’s a way to treat “new techniques” as treasure so that you don’t have to disrupt a build to pull it off.
“Sure this sort of thing might run counter to optimization. “I don’t have the spare feats / spell slots / free pizzas to bribe my GM! I need to focus on getting my core mechanics online!””
One of the many reasons I ‘hate’ D&D. It doesn’t lend itself to organic character growth, in abilities or otherwise. It’s mechanically locked into a strict Class/Level progression.
Even L5R/Seventh Seas, which are Class/Level systems have freedom to grow organically, which is why I prefer them (if I have to play a class/level system that is).
How does [SYSTEM OF CHOICE] do it better?
“[SYSTEM OF CHOICE]” is GURPS.
No levels, no classes (normally though see addendum [1]). You ‘level up’ by spending exp [2] directly on Skills, Attributes, or Abilities or to remove Disadvantages. So if you’re a “fighter” (a character with primarily combat abilities: high Strength, Dexterity, Health, Hit Points, good combat skills, maybe a few Advantages that pertain directly to combat, etc), but you want to start learning magic (usually a fairly costly affair) //and the genre allows it// [3], then you just start putting points in magic Advantages, Powers, Spells, etc (however the genre treatment handles magic, which is a whole mildly complex thing not worth getting into here). Or if you find you need to be more sneaksy, you start buying up the Stealth skill, maybe some Observation or your Perception Attribute (advanced warning and all), or learn that “one magic trick” (usually means dumping a bunch of points into the Invisibility spell, maybe also the Mage Stealth spell (which is a personal ‘Silence”) and being a “Johnny One Spell” [4]).
So “organic growth” is pretty much all that GURPS does, however see addendum [1] for other ways to run and play GURPS, that’s a bit less organic and often refer to as “OSRing GURPS”, or “D&Difying” it, which a lot of ‘diehard’ GURPS fans turn their nose up at, but even if, a certified GURPS Gearhead, have come to find very, very useful, if done without slavish adherence.
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Now as for “level/class” systems that “do it better” (IMO)? See afore mentioned L5R (Legend of the Five Rings) and 7th Seas. They have “classes” in that each character has a ‘school’ from which they derive their Special Abilities (like “Iajutsu Strike”, or “Spells”, or “Divine Magic”, or etc), but all their other skills and abilities come from a ‘pool’ that is freely taken by everyone. So while a “Dragon Clan Inquisitor” might have better access to Special Abilities to make them over-the-top investigators, every can take Investigation skills and be good investigators, it’s just that Dragon Clan investigators tend to be ‘great’.
Levels in L5R/7th Seas are gained by buying the abilities that fill out the level, so in the latest versions of the rules (there’s some variation between editions), in L5R you have spend say 20exp to get to level 2, and exp spent in certain categories counts normally, but exp spent outside those categories counts half. So if your school doesn’t prize Archery, you can still buy it up, but you’re ‘leveling up’ more slowly doing so, which is fine as levels only count for acquiring your special school skills, of which there are six (or was it five? It’s been awhile since I’ve cracked a pdf), one per level. Most groups end up clustered around a few levels, like half the group will be one level, half will be one above. It’s very, very rare that someone ‘languishes’ more than one level behind everyone else, but I’ve certainly done that a few times in different editions while advancing Attributes (called Rings) and Skills that were “outside my schools affinity”. Which is why I consider L5R/7Th Seas to be ‘better” at doing the ‘organic growth’ than D&D.
Though I have to be the only person I know who likes the FFG version of L5R, but then I appreciate the funky dice/narrative system they’ve built, I just can’t get anyone else to run or play it. I think it would make an //incredible// Star Wars system with but a few tweaks (and maybe an awful lot of Special Ability rebuilding, as Shugenja magic looks almost nothing like the force)…
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1 – Some genres use what are called Templates, or Occupational Lenses (which are similar but less restrictive), in that the majority, or all, the initial Character Points (the resource used to purchase starting Attributes, Skills, Advantages, etc) will be spent in very specific builds. And some genre treatments, Dungeon Fantasy in particular (hence the “D&Difying”) also restricts future exp expenditures to Abilities in those Templates.
It’s important to note, when talking GURPS, when I say “genres”, I’m talking about like… mmmm… the very game world, rules tweaks, theme, etc. It’s like the difference between 3.5 D&D and original flavor Pathfinder. Both are D&D, but there are rules differences, world assumption differences, thematic differences. So in GURPS, the “Dungeon Fantasy” genre treatment is all about “recreating” those ‘old school’ D&D games the writer played in the 80s, so a lot of optional rules that make GURPS ‘more realistic’ (more gritty) get tossed in favor of slightly over-the-top ‘monster bashing adventure’, but retains the //standard// GURPS ‘deadliness’, but sets play expectations starting at roughly “4th level D&D”. Starting PCs are ‘buff enough’ but not demigods of destruction. A starting Wizard might have the equivalent of a D&D Fireball spell, but they’re mostly doing utility and buffing spells (in fact they’re more ‘potent’ buffing and carrying the day out of combat, than in it at start).
Inversely, take the GURPS genre treatment “Monster Hunters”; PCs are powerhouses, meant to go toe-to-toe Buffy the Vampire Slayer style… in fact the genre is sometimes referred to as “Buffy and friends”, even though it’s equally aimed at emulating “Monster Hunters International” and “Dresden Files”. What it’s not set up for is say “John Carpenter’s Vampires”, “30 Days of Night”, or “Lost Boys”. Though it could do “Blade” with a few tweaks. But, it’s not strict about “staying within Template” after chargen, that’s not a part of the “genre rules”.
GURPS is a toolset system, it’s not a “finished” system. For that the GM (or genre treatment writer) has to decide what rules they’re using, what worlds they’re playing in, what the //genre treatment// is, even if the GM doesn’t really understand that’s what they’re doing. Granted, a lot of GURPS GMs just grab a world book and go to town, which is fine. But that’s where a lot fo the “GURPS is too complex” comes from IMO, GMs who don’t realize what they’re getting into and how much they will need to do. GURPS isn’t ‘plug and pray’ like D&D.
2 – It’s a “point buy system” for everything. Attributes, Skills, Advantages, etc. I’m sure you’ve played point buy systems before, so I’m not delving any deeper. So you know, that such systems are inherently more geared to “organic growth” than D&D can ever be. Which is my primary complaint and where my “hatred” stems from, it’s so very locked down, which is it’s strength. It makes D&D simple to understand, it’s plug and play in ways most other, ‘non-locked down’, systems aren’t.
3 – As mentioned in [1] above, most GMs who run Dungeon Fantasy will probably stick to the “niche protectionism” of “only buying Abilities from within your Template”. This means Knights (teh heavy-armor fighter type in DF) cannot buy magic spells with exp unless they’re an Elf or Half-elf, as Magery (the “Yer a Wizard Harry” ability) is only available to //Wizards// (and Elves and Halfies), not Knights, not Barbarians, not Druids, not Clerics, etc. So while Scouts (high Dexterity ranged fighters with high Stealth and Perception) can make decent Thieves in a pinch (a lot of trap-finding and stealthing overlap), they will never be as good as a Thief who has a number of special Advantages that make them stealthy, trap-finding, lock/pocket picking //thieves// extraordinaire.
4 – Ahhh, good ole “Johnny One-Skill”. As you probably know, in point-by-systems there is a particular bred of person who will decide to pump one stat, skill, ability “to the moon”. In GURPS this is usually a Skill (because they’re cheaper than Attributes), and such individuals are usually (demeaningly) referred to as “Johnny One-Skill”, because if they have low points (which a lot, I mean a lot, of GURPS GMs prefer, but then those GMs aren’t running Dungeon Fantasy), it takes quite a high percentage of points to really boost a skill to “genre breaking levels” (which is usually what Johnny One-Skill aiming for) and thus they won’t have very many other skills or abilities. In DF, it’s still a decent percentage of points to get a single Skill to those heights, but some Templates are designed around this, the Swashbuckler in particular is meant to take one weapon skill and just “go nuts”. But then in Dungeon Fantasy (which starts at 250 points), being Johnny Rapier isn’t as advantageous as it might be in say “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (which starts at 75-100 points), which is aimed at being a more realistic Renaissanceesque “swords and spying” genre. So while it’s not recommended for say, the Elf Knight, to go all Johnny Invisibility, it’s not as disastrous for the game.
PS: “Thank you for coming to my TED Talk…”
It’s pretty fitting that Bard is studying with Banshee.
As we’ve seen, Bard honours the slain with his dirges.
Traditionally, banshees would wail near the homes of those about to die.
Their respective musics laud in and mourn death; by their powers combined, they could create a mighty harmony for the battlefield.
Wait… When did Bard honor the dead? I’ve written a lot of these things. 🙁
Right here, chief: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/respectful-remembrance
Dammit. That wasn’t even that long ago. I think I’ve caught the old.
One-of-us.
One-of-us.
One-of-us…
So, three times now, my wizard has been accosted by clockwork assassins. However, instead of just destroying them, I’ve been dismantling them- and, during downtime, repairing them. Now, we ready to break into the person who’s been sending these assassins hideout… and I’m bringing all the assassins I’ve repaired as minions.
Heh. I like that necromancers and artificers get a walking record of their past victories.
Oh banshee… I don’t think there’s been a monster in Pathfinder that scarred my party as much as thee.
The main issue I’ve found with trying to copy a monster’s abilities after the fact is that they’re generally a lot better at it than I can build my character to be (or at least within the limits that the GM places on it).
It was a wail of the banshee trap in my group rather than the creature itself. Paladin’s sacrifice to keep the spiritualist alive. This spiritualist, actually: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb89B4BsSYw/
Hmmm the only thing I’ve done that I think counts for this is the homebrew Blue Mage archetype (of my homebrew FF Mime class I made). But I feel like that doesn’t 100% qualify for the purposes of your question as that’s the entire mechanical point of that archetype rather than a spontaneous character based decision.
On the contrary! Blue mage is this trope par excellence.
Have you got a link to the homebrew? It sounds intriguing.
Sure thing! (In fact I have two because GitP went down for a while once upon a time.)
Hope you, or anyone else, finds some entertainment from looking any of it over or even maybe plays around with some of it if they like!
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?568971-Final-Fantasy-Classes-amp-Archetypes
or
https://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=490486
It’s not quite the same thing, but right now I’m in a 5e game based on Magic the Gathering, playing a group of Planeswalkers. Every few levels the GM gives us a new unique power from our planeswalkerness, each one based on an existing MtG card. The only condition is that the card has to come from a set whose plane we’ve visited. So far we’ve got Ravenica, Ikoria, Kaldheim, and Ixalan. It’s making for quite the fun mechanic, even if the GM sometimes regrets giving my monk the ability to punch people who try and attack her. Several enemies have had their days ruined by a Stunning Strike on their own turn.
As opposed to the opposite https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/welcome-your-magic-adventure-dungeons-dragons-2022-05-17
One of my design buddies likes to talk about giving every PC a “unique thing” at the start of a campaign. It might be a magical symbiote living in their head, special tattoo, or connection to a magical font of power. They’re unique, and tend to elevate PCs above “the typical fighter/wizard/etc.”
It seems like planeswalkers would lend themselves well to this style of your-guy-is-actually-special play.
It’s my favourite style, both to play and to run. While being just another adventurer has its appeal, I love stories of larger-than-life adventurers!