Asteria Rising: Update 1

I've been working on creating a whole new rendition of Dungeons and Dragon's Fifth Edition. Not anything too far afield, but it will have its own unique vibe. The idea started with seeing how the Dungeon Master's Guide provided tables for guns and alien technology. Then I thought, "what if I made a science fiction campaign for my group?"

After that it began to quickly morph into needing to tweak certain skills and abilities, then realizing the classes won't work and having to scrap and create new ones, then having to make new abilities, so on and so on.

Now what I have is a currently 7 page document that is no where near complete that goes into the rules for this new version of D&D I'm making. It also cements a few house rules my team usually uses, while encouraging certain actions more. E.g. my group rarely uses the medicine skill. I've buffed medicine to make it the main form of healing outside of combat, and greatly reduced healing in combat because there is no magic in this science fiction version.

It is still an alpha version [Asteria Rising 0.03]; however, I will post my progress on it to the blog over time. Here is a draft of remade character sheets for the game.

Short Story Out on Amazon

While not related to D&D I did release a 7,000 word short story. It is a fantasy tale based off a book I've been working on. The link to the Amazon Store page is below.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XS7TQPP/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490193968&sr=8-1&keywords=ASIN%3A+B06XS7TQPP

Atypical Characters: Not a Ranger

Playstyle certainly lends to giving a character its own unique features. This posts will discuss the idea of a barbarian class filling in the roll of an amateurish ranger. Ranger's are typically used to fill in both a scouting and ranged damage roll for the party. Barbarians are typically used for raw brawn in melee. This one is more versatile.

Barbarians can have more AC, which comes from a special class feature [Unarmored Defense]. It combines their passive AC (10), with their constitution and dexterity modifiers, only if they have no armor. (Player's Handbook, page 48). The above character has 16 AC for its base, plus two more for its shield. I used the Ability Point Cost table on page 13 in the Player's Handbook to ensure the character had superb dexterity and constitution for level 1.

The Outlander Background was chosen, with only a tad of the wording changed to better fit the character. This is to give a ground for whenever you make a backstory for the character. Generally, a barbarian who "believes" he is the last of his tribe and thus seeks to make their name in a great song of glory.

Playstyle wise, the character is stealthy, very stealthy. Stealth is useful for a party as it allows a character to inch forward and scout a position; however, there is anxiety in this. No matter how high one's stealth skill is, they will eventually fail to roll and be exposed behind enemy lines. Rogue and Rangers will often be endangered by this, due to their proficiencies in lower AC armors. This character doesn't have that problem.

The barbarian has a high stealth skill, yet when he inevitably fails his stealth check the character has a lot of AC and health. Worst case scenario the barbarian had their shield slung to their back, giving them their base 16 AC and will need to take an action to bring it out. The character also has a longsword which is versatile (can be used with one or two hands), so if he can't bust the shield out he will be doing more damage [1d10+strength modifier rather than 1d8+strength modifier]. Not to mention the Rage mechanic. (Player's Handbook, page 48).

Having really high dexterity doesn't just increase the stealth skill and AC, but also ranged damage. This is why I opted to pick a shortbow for the character. He actually has a higher hit chance with the bow, rather than the word. The highest damage the character can do with the bow is 9 [1d6+3 piercing damage], and the highest with the longsword when used with one hand is also 9 [1d8+1]. The fact the bow has and extra +2 to its hit chance means that the barbarian will be doing more damage over time with the bow because his ability to hit is greater.

This means the character can adequately fill out that ranged roll at early levels. A ranger or archery based fighter will eventually outpace this character. Especially if either the ranger or fighter picks their Archery archetypes [giving +2 bonus damage to ranged weapon attacks]. The same could be said about a defense specialized fighter or paladin against the barbarian that continues to not use armor, while those other classes have plate armor.

At level 3 the character will get the Primal Path option. (Player's Handbook, page 49). This will allow the character to become more potent or versatile, depending on what you choose. You can pick the Berserker path, then specialize in melee. This would be best if there are other ranged players in your group. That means this character's early ranged capabilities won't be needed much longer, as the weaker starting of rangers, archery fighters, and mages, are soon to dissipate.

Whether you want to keep specializing in ranged, melee, or other, the path of the Totem Warrior will be useful. Totem warrior focuses on melee as well, yet not in terms of direct damage. For instance, the Bear totem makes you resistant [half damage] from all damage types except for physic. The bear totem aspect described is just for level three, there are two other higher level aspects to it. Same for the wolf (which deals with enhancing your allies) and eagle (which involves quick movement).

If you wanted to keep the above character functioning in a ranged or stealthy manner, using the eagle totem would be best. At third level the eagle totem does this, "While you're raging and aren't wearing heavy armor. other creatures have disadvantage on opportunity attack rolls against you, and you can use the Dash action as a bonus action on your turn. The spirit of the eagle makes you into a predator who can weave through the fray with ease." (Player's Handbook, page 49). That will increase your ability to get into a position to engage in ranged combat. Considering the character's high base AC and health, the barbarian will able to act as a forward shock troop for the party in a fight.

Later on at level 6 with the eagle totem, "You gain the eyesight of an eagle. You can see up to 1 mile away with no difficulty. Able to discern even fine details as though looking at something no more than 100 feet away from you. Additionally, dim light doesn't impose disadvantage on your Wisdom (Perception) checks." (Player's Handbook, page 49). For a scout or ranged character this is very useful. The barbarian wouldn't even need to get nearly as close to the enemy to scout them as other characters would, unless the party was in a really confined space [such as a cave or castle interior].

Finally at 14th level, "While raging, you have a flying speed equal to your current walking speed. This benefit works only in short bursts; you fail if you end your turn in the air and nothing else is holding you aloft." (Player's Handbook, page 49). This one works much like the first, in that it enhances the character's ability to move into a ranged position quicker. Image a fight and you decide to use this skill to get to the top of a tree or structure, well out of melee range from the enemy. On the other hand you could use it to quickly get to the enemy leader and starting fighting them in melee.

In either regard, the character is meant to be an extra stealth character that can switch between ranged or melee seamlessly.

Stress

Last night my usual group ran a D&D session. During it a few arguments happened and I'd like to talk about them. The backstory of the events was that my brother (one of the players) would be starting work as a resident nurse (R.N.) soon, which would ruin our D&D schedule, as such we used his birthday last night (3//8/2017) as an excuse to play D&D.

Something I've never mentioned is that our hosts (the people who play Bruce Nightvale and Sharp) have two children. One of them has a slue of mental disabilities, my brother's (person who plays Father Marks) child has attention deficit disorder (A.D.D.), and his fiancé's (person who plays Olga) daughter has mild A.D.D. and high anxiety.

Our sessions often involve a lot of chaos. For one reason or the other at least one person has to get up and yell at or physically discipline the kids for acting up. Three girls that have mental disorders tend to torment and bully each other constantly. Often times information gets lost or simply forgotten. Now let us add the element of alcohol because we are celebrating a birthday.

In many of these cases I was questioned last night I was wrong. For all my reading of time involving combat I had managed to switched what a Turn (which is one player's actions), and a Round (going around the table completely). I looked in the book to clarify while my drunk brother and soon to be sister-in-law complained to me. Whenever I saw I was wrong I apologized saying you were right to Sharp's player (as we were disclosing the Command spell). MY brother decided to add "I told you, fuck why are we even arguing over this."

All in all the session itself had the players get quite a bit done in terms of social interactions, which is something they were wanting to do more of. The external and internal pressures being placed on me as a DM though had me just say, "Fuck it you kill all three; everyone gets 625 XP. I'm going home."

It was late, the kids were being especially cruel to each other that day, half the party was drunk, my brother was trying to push other stuff to happen because he didn't know when he'd next get to play, and I was quickly becoming fed up with people's attitudes. How do you coup with that, not just as a DM or player but a person?

Whenever it comes to conflict the ideal occurrence is that both parties can take a breath and understand where the other is coming from. In practice that's a load of Orc refuse because the dice roll independent of theory. Sharp had her command spell questioned because she never used it before, and she already asked for the Player's Hand Book to check it to be certain. She managed it well, when I questioned the length of a round Sharp didn't give a snide remark when I admitted being wrong.

Marks on the other hand did. Now we have conflict; talking to Marks would have been fine but he said it on the way to the bathroom, meaning he didn't want to discuss anything. He was frustrated and voiced it because he had liquid courage (Jack Daniels) flowing through him. It's not an excuse, but it is a reason for why. Talking to him afterwards didn't seem to do anything right off the bat either because he felt he wasn't wrong and he even if he was he didn't care how I felt on it. My response was ending the session.

If someone isn't listening to you nor wants to discuss anything with you, don't waste your time. People who think they are absolutely right will never discuss, just condescend you. A discussion means that both people having it accept to one degree or another that they could be wrong and have to tweak their stance if they are wrong. I ended the session because it was late, people were frustrated, I was frustrated, and I saw no reason keep arguing with a drunk.

If there was a better was of handling the situation, I don't know it. Most I had to say afterwards was to discuss with Marks when he was sober again, and tell him bluntly I disliked his attitude. Problems between players and DM/GMs are best dealt with away from the table. Any rivalries outside the game should never enter, nor should rivalries inside the game exit. Remember you're all friends so there will be sessions you are greatly upset with one another. There will be sessions people are just stressed out. There's no formulaic way to handle stress at the table because each situation is unique unto itself. The most you can do is try to be calm when it happens, and discuss your problems before or after the game session.

There's no formulaic way to handle stress at the table because each situation is unique unto itself.

Update 3/3/2017

Greetings everyone, this post will be far more casual than my usual ones. Reason being that I am working on a lot of classes and side projects at the moment. The blog will keep updating at its weekly pace, just for this week you have to deal with this post.

Trying to be efficient, I'm practicing my C# programing skills by making a program that will help with creating stats for a character sheet. It's efficient because one of my classes deals with C#, and once this program I'm practicing with is done I can post it to the this blog for anyone to download and use.

I estimate it is 27% complete: more buttons need to be added, labels, check boxes to mark skill proficiencies, a button to initiate an random number generator for the ability scores, a button to calculate the modifiers, and aesthetics.

I've only spent about two hours working on it today, so hopefully by next week it will be complete.