D20 System Games Occult Lore - BOOM!
From: CCAMFIELD Posted on: 10/11/2002 3:27 pm
To: ALL
Message: 96.1
The sound you just heard is the standard D&D magic system being blown out of the water.

I leafed through Occult Lore without really taking anything in last week at the FLGS. Since then I decided for my D&D campaign I would like non-clerical healing (to make religion more ambiguous, and any actual clerics "miracle men" who would attract great attention), and Chris Jones' responses about the herbalism chapter were so terrific I decided to buy the book.

Very very tasty. I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but I anticipate using arcane healing, astrology, herbalism, and maybe elementalism and oneiromancy as well.

From: prophet118 Posted on: 10/11/2002 4:57 pm
To: CCAMFIELD
Message: 96.2
in reply to: 96.1
so... removing non clerical healing?.... that will elad to alot of players griping... it doesnt take a rocket scientist to bandage a wound, and that, in effect is healing... since you are preventing blood loss, thus preventing more hit point loss.......but whatever floats your boat...doesnt really matter to me


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From: CCAMFIELD Posted on: 10/11/2002 10:07 pm
To: prophet118
Message: 96.3
in reply to: 96.2
Brain, brain, where is my brain?

I wrote the exact OPPOSITE of what I meant to say.

I was thinking about axing clerics for the campaign. Arcane healers/alchemists/herbalists would take the role of healers. There would still be priests, but more like real-life priests (the gods are mysterious and don't intervene on a daily basis), rather than clerks of Healers 'R' Us.

From: prophet118 Posted on: 10/12/2002 12:58 pm
To: CCAMFIELD
Message: 96.4
in reply to: 96.3
ok...well taking out healers in that sense (the clerical variety) would be pretty similiar to a Dragonlance style place... or a Dark Sun game.... neither have an over abundance of clerics.....and the ones from dark sun worship the elements...lol.... too bad neither have really been updated to 3rd ed


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From: Mindcrime999 Posted on: 10/18/2002 3:01 pm
To: CCAMFIELD
Message: 96.5
in reply to: 96.1
Chris,

I'm glad I was able to help out. If you've any questions about the herbalism chapter, feel free to ask me here, in email, or in any public forum I haunt (mwah-hah-hah! *ahem* sorry :)

Chris Jones

From: CCAMFIELD Posted on: 10/19/2002 9:24 am
To: Mindcrime999
Message: 96.6
in reply to: 96.5
Heh. Well, I finally got to reading the Botanical appendix and came to, well, I don't want to say a dead stop, but was slowed by the list of herb traits. The alphabetical format doesn't really help a reader quickly understand the relationships between the traits.

So I made myself a PDF document with a table containing the traits and a brief description (couple of words) for each, with 4 columns so that opposing traits are on the same line as each other. I hope that's okay!

I see there is no way to post that here, so I'll put it on my web page. The link should be:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/ccamfield/games/HerbTraits.pdf

Edited 10/19/2002 9:25:06 AM ET by CCAMFIELD
From: Mindcrime999 Posted on: 10/19/2002 10:31 pm
To: CCAMFIELD
Message: 96.7
in reply to: 96.6
That's a very useful chart! I wish I had thought of that :)

When I created the herbalism stuff, my intention was to put together a stat block of 'abilities' similar to the SA or SQ lines in the monster stat blocks. That's why all the trait descriptions are presented up front and in alphabetical order because the critter special abilities in the MM are done the same way. In retrospect, though, I can see how it might be a little confusing.

Plants have so many different biological effects that I wanted to make the system 'open-ended' as well, for expansion. That way, DMs could create new plants for their games and use the traits as a starting point. If they need to create new traits, they can use the original ones as models and then go from there.

Chris

Edited 10/19/2002 10:33:26 PM ET by MINDCRIME999