Let’s be honest, I ran a lot of Star Wars d6 back in the day and that’s likely the root cause of my mechanical race obsession.
I need to call out CharlesDM though as one of my first anchors in ACKs for this, all three of the core classes I use were either directly inspired or considered his alternatives (I will link them out as I post them).
Along the way I made several design decisions. The first is that the Endjinn have a divine spark, a soul. Why? Critical is to avoid the infinite replication problem, I don’t like running with the ‘they can’t be built anymore’ excuse. If each needs a soul and souls are limited, then they will not ‘take over the world’. Second is that it allows me to hand wave natural and magical healing into the race, they have a magical soul so this elevates them above a simple machine. Is this natural healing through divine fueled nanobots or the same as repairing a calcium bone break in an organic being? (where does that mineral calcium come from, or the iron lost in the blood?). Ultimately the reason doesn’t matter so much, key for me was avoiding disjointing them from core mechanics/assumptions of the game entirely. I have seen some games do this but i think it gets clunky when it does.
This actually gave rise to their name. To link in the spark I originally saw them as golems, implying an elemental core. Then I lifted it up to a genie, which gave rise to the name. Then I took it even further, but that’s for another post (They are not genies, something else, in a recent game one of my players used a wish to gain an understanding of the origin).
Thematically the Endjinn replace the Elves in this setting. Long lived, enigmatic and alien.
Next was to take sustenance requirements from biological sources out entirely. No eating, drinking or breathing. This takes away most potions (but clever players can design oils, mine are planning to but haven’t yet). No breathing is an interesting bonus, to which I have linked no swimming. Their bodies are not buoyant (there are gaps in their shells) and they sink in water and walk along the bottom. No drinking has a weird social implication, what do they do in a typical D&D tavern? More on this later.
Ultimately they are not biological, so immunity to poison and disease kicks them in early and is a massive bonus for low level games. Even spells like cloudkill will not affect them, and it’s save or die for low level characters (this came up when my players encountered a Serpentile Machine from BCK).
So the most important thing to me is that while they have a divine spark, their bodies are in fact an automaton. Key for my setting is that each of the three core races have some link to the automaton rules. The Endjinn lose the ability to be affected by the healing proficiencies, but gain the ability to be affected by the mechanist repair skill. I even go a step further and give them all the repair skill (but not design and build). This may seem powerful as you can repair a machine in a day, but at low levels it can be costly, and it is slow enough to not be a thing done in a dungeon. In all my 20 sessions to date it has only been used three or four times, mostly for partial heals. The final thing I add is a small weekly maintenance requirement, less than humans, but I found it adds a little character to them. They all can repair and every now and then they settle in for a little maintenance. It also implies a little wear and tear and avoids making them seem unreal.
Rounding out the design process was the integration of metal, hit points, armor and weight. Here I like the approach from CharlesDM linking metal to rating in the race build points, that was brilliant. But I wanted to integrate weight and carry capacity in too, some may see weight as irrelevant, but in a setting with machines carrying passengers it can be a factor. I also read the Eyrie of the Dread Eye adventure with a smile knowing Endjinn may have trouble with some of the weight based traps/cave collapses.
In costing the XP I value the armor as 75 xp per level, recognising its inherent combat utility, ie: its good no matter which class build you put it in.
I will post the racial build now before moving onto the three core classes. The first core class is the Brass Courtier (Diplomat adventurer), this is a bard diplomat class heavily inspired by the Brass Jongleur by CharlesDM. This took me down a French culture path resulting in the Bronze Chevalier, a fighter, half divine caster that one of my players says feels a lot like a noble paladin. Finally I built a very basic class, the Tin Soldat to represent the most basic form and give players who want to play an Endjinn but don’t want a complex class something to play (a basic fighter, almost identical to the Tin Soldier).
There are other classes hinted at in the racial build, but they don’t exist any more in the setting. I will explore them later.
Along the way I made several design decisions. The first is that the Endjinn have a divine spark, a soul. Why? Critical is to avoid the infinite replication problem, I don’t like running with the ‘they can’t be built anymore’ excuse. If each needs a soul and souls are limited, then they will not ‘take over the world’. Second is that it allows me to hand wave natural and magical healing into the race, they have a magical soul so this elevates them above a simple machine. Is this natural healing through divine fueled nanobots or the same as repairing a calcium bone break in an organic being? (where does that mineral calcium come from, or the iron lost in the blood?). Ultimately the reason doesn’t matter so much, key for me was avoiding disjointing them from core mechanics/assumptions of the game entirely. I have seen some games do this but i think it gets clunky when it does.
This actually gave rise to their name. To link in the spark I originally saw them as golems, implying an elemental core. Then I lifted it up to a genie, which gave rise to the name. Then I took it even further, but that’s for another post (They are not genies, something else, in a recent game one of my players used a wish to gain an understanding of the origin).
Thematically the Endjinn replace the Elves in this setting. Long lived, enigmatic and alien.
Next was to take sustenance requirements from biological sources out entirely. No eating, drinking or breathing. This takes away most potions (but clever players can design oils, mine are planning to but haven’t yet). No breathing is an interesting bonus, to which I have linked no swimming. Their bodies are not buoyant (there are gaps in their shells) and they sink in water and walk along the bottom. No drinking has a weird social implication, what do they do in a typical D&D tavern? More on this later.
Ultimately they are not biological, so immunity to poison and disease kicks them in early and is a massive bonus for low level games. Even spells like cloudkill will not affect them, and it’s save or die for low level characters (this came up when my players encountered a Serpentile Machine from BCK).
So the most important thing to me is that while they have a divine spark, their bodies are in fact an automaton. Key for my setting is that each of the three core races have some link to the automaton rules. The Endjinn lose the ability to be affected by the healing proficiencies, but gain the ability to be affected by the mechanist repair skill. I even go a step further and give them all the repair skill (but not design and build). This may seem powerful as you can repair a machine in a day, but at low levels it can be costly, and it is slow enough to not be a thing done in a dungeon. In all my 20 sessions to date it has only been used three or four times, mostly for partial heals. The final thing I add is a small weekly maintenance requirement, less than humans, but I found it adds a little character to them. They all can repair and every now and then they settle in for a little maintenance. It also implies a little wear and tear and avoids making them seem unreal.
Rounding out the design process was the integration of metal, hit points, armor and weight. Here I like the approach from CharlesDM linking metal to rating in the race build points, that was brilliant. But I wanted to integrate weight and carry capacity in too, some may see weight as irrelevant, but in a setting with machines carrying passengers it can be a factor. I also read the Eyrie of the Dread Eye adventure with a smile knowing Endjinn may have trouble with some of the weight based traps/cave collapses.
In costing the XP I value the armor as 75 xp per level, recognising its inherent combat utility, ie: its good no matter which class build you put it in.
I will post the racial build now before moving onto the three core classes. The first core class is the Brass Courtier (Diplomat adventurer), this is a bard diplomat class heavily inspired by the Brass Jongleur by CharlesDM. This took me down a French culture path resulting in the Bronze Chevalier, a fighter, half divine caster that one of my players says feels a lot like a noble paladin. Finally I built a very basic class, the Tin Soldat to represent the most basic form and give players who want to play an Endjinn but don’t want a complex class something to play (a basic fighter, almost identical to the Tin Soldier).
There are other classes hinted at in the racial build, but they don’t exist any more in the setting. I will explore them later.
No comments:
Post a Comment