Trades and Disciplines

Maxwell, from 21st Century D&D commented on my last post about quickly creating NPCs, asking about my breakdown of potential character abilities.

I previously wrote on my frustrations with how classes worked in level-based systems.  My solution was to throw out my previously-held ideas about class and create a new game construct, something I call a trade.

A trade is a grouping of disciplines with which the character gains some skill, along with a particular benefit.  They require a certain number of years to complete and also give the character membership in one of the factions in my world.  They come in two groups:

The core trades, which roughly map to Ranger, Mage, Fighter, and Thief,

Title	Membership or Faith	Benefit	Funds	Time	Disciplines
Hinterlander	Any or none	Have a wilderness hideaway.  Gain 1 ranged weapon and 10 ammunition.	1d3+1 bronze	8	Athlete, Beast-Speaker, Combatant (any), Footpad, Gymnast, Hunter, Tinker, Wrangler
Researcher	Adept’s College or University of Reyjadin	Gain 1 notch in 2 more disciplines.  Gain shard if Mage chosen.	1d3+1 bronze	9	Arcanist or Mage (any), Ascetic, Combatant (Magician), Herbalist, Mechanist, Orator, and Scholar
Soldier	Any Military Group; Pirates of Korg	Gain 1 weapon set (total price less than 2 silver).	1d3+1 bronze	6	Athlete, Beast-Speaker, Combatant (3 different types), and choice between Sailor and Wrangler
Thief	Any Fringe Group; Tarluskani Military	Know a safe place to lay low and a fence in 1d4+1 cities.	3d6+1 bronze	4	Footpad, Gymnast, and two of: Grokist, Mechanist, Mountebank, Pickpocket, and Tinker

and the culture-specific trades, which feature at least one option for every faith tradition in my world.

Title	Membership or Faith	Benefit	Funds	Time	Disciplines
Arbiter	Twin Gods of Left and Right	Can usually detect lies.	1d6+2 bronze	4	Ascetic, Athlete, Grokist, and Thaumaturge
Artist	Brass Orchids, Nithya tribe, Minstrel's Guild.	Gain tools necessary for art form.	1d3+1 bronze	3	Artist, Ascetic, Orator
Conduit	Splendour of Sahargeen	Can talk to trees.	1d6+2 bronze	6	Ascetic, Athlete, Beast-Speaker, Herbalist, Hunter, and Thaumaturge
Druid	Adjraysh	Can contact a specific Sidh.	1d6+2 bronze	5	Ascetic, Beast-Speaker, Herbalist, Orator, and Sorcerer
Monk	The Order	Gain cloak of Tobias and monk's staff.	1d6+2 bronze	5	Ascetic, Grokist, Herbalist, Orator, and Thaumaturge
Muhaddi	Myths of Fiája	Can attract attention with a mystic chant	1d6+2 bronze	3	Ascetic, Orator, and Thaumaturge
Ognemuo	Ancestor Spirits	Can touch spirits.	1d4+1 bronze	4	Ascetic, Combatant (Ognemuo), Grokist, and Herbalist
Priest	Devotees of the One True God	Gain an extra Gift.	1d6+2 bronze	4	Ascetic, Athlete, Orator, and Thaumaturge
Sohei	The Order	Gain an eiku and cloak of Tobias	1d3+1 bronze	4	Ascetic, Athlete, Combatant (Sohei), and Grokist
Thanatphanaios	Ancestor Spirits	Can touch spirits.	1d6+2 bronze	4	Ascetic, Scholar, Orator, and Thaumaturge,

The list of disciplines are as follows:

Aptitude	Disciplines Governed
Strength	Athlete, Combatant, Sailor
Dexterity	Artist, Combatant, Footpad, Gymnast, Pickpocket
Cognition	Arcanist, Artist, Herbalist, Mage, Mechanic, Scholar
Communication	Artist, Beast-Speaker, Mountebank, Orator, Sorcerer
Mindfulness	Ascetic, Grokist, Hunter, Thaumaturge, Tinker, Wrangler

While most of the discipline names are self-evident, a couple hold specific meaning in my world.

Athlete reflects a character's physical endurance and bodily health.  Skilled athletes can fight for longer in combat, take more damage before suffering injuries (the only way to improve health in my game), run and hold their breath longer, and better resist poison and disease.

Combatant is the fighting discipline.  I have a list of 15 or so fighting styles based the different cultures, and each fighting style grants proficiency with several sets of weapons (because learning how to fight with two swords is very different from learning how to fight with one) and a couple of extra abilities based upon the specialties of the fighting style (the Arein Constabulary style can knock people out more easily, for example).  It is also used for defensive purposes as well.

Artist represents a character's skill with a particular artistic medium, incorporating the Bardic Art posts I worked on earlier this summer.

Arcanist is used for ritual magic, a type of magic that uses small fragments of solid magic to power magical ceremonies with specific requirements and limitations.

Mage is used for shard magic, power gained by embedding a large piece of solid magic within the body and harnessing its particular energies.

Beast-Speaker is used to understand and communicate with wild animals.  At high levels the degree of understanding increases such that the character is able to take the form of an animal.

Sorcerer allows the character to use sorcery, the magic of the Sidh which specializes in affecting the mind (illusions, charms, that sort of thing).

Grokist allows the character to understand sapient, sentient creatures.

Thaumaturge allows the character to channel miracles, specific blessings granted by their particular faith (each faith has a different set of 3-5 miracles).

Wrangler governs the taming, training, and riding of mountable animals as well as teaching others how to ride.

Creating NPCs

Because my game uses a central mechanic based on a skill system, creating NPCs out of whole cloth was originally rather challenging as I needed to think through how much training the individual might have received and in what context in order to evaluate what skills they had.  I had a revelation while refining the Bard tables for my world (I'll post the revised tables when I'm done) that I'd like to share here.

As you may recall, my discipline system has 6 tiers of skill: novice, apprentice, journeyman, specialist, master, and grandmaster.  If I were to translate them to a 20-level system, I might do the following: apprentice is 1st level, journeyman 3rd, specialist 7th, master 12th, and grandmaster 18th, and the number of people of each skill level drops dramatically with each tier.

I'm representing that by rolling 5d10 for each discipline (or, if I'm low on time, for clusters of disciplines based on the NPC's trade).  Each 10 rolled increases the tier by one, with a resulting 1/100,000 odds for a grandmaster skill level.

I have a wide list of trades (I've edited the list since I last talked about them) and by placing the NPC into one of them, I can determine their general skill of competency in all the affiliate disciplines of that trade by reducing their tier by one: if I get a Master soldier, then one of their disciplines will be master tier and the rest will be specialist.

This gives me a handful of dice to roll for any character and quickly determine their abilities.  For NPCs that I know will be more powerful, I might raise the base level of their skills to Apprentice and see how much better they are on top of that with the same roll.

Pioneer Companion Clusters

The past couple of posts had lots of ideas but no executions or suggestions.  I lost my internet due to some outside factors, and that gave me time to work without its distractions, and that produced some excellent ideas for handling NPC groups in the context of this expedition.

First, stop thinking of each NPC as an individual entity.  Instead, think of NPC clusters, groups of people who have a pre-existing relationship who are entering into the expedition's company.  The people interested in traveling far away from civilization and probably never seeing it again are of a specific sort, and the list is tailored to groups of that ilk.

1: a fairly self-sufficient or desperate person
2: A pair of competent individuals, or two folk drawn together by circumstance and seeking out of their particular situation.
3+: Family groups, seeking a better life elsewhere.

I'll further detail the different clusters for each size, but I wanted to present some cluster interaction rules which might be useful outside of this context.

Roll Charisma for each cluster, representing how sociable and likeable the group is as a whole.  Add the number of children in the cluster to the final result, and then determine the resulting score modifier.  Double it to determine the number of strong feelings the cluster engenders from other clusters.  Then, roll a d20 against the cluster's Charisma to determine whether the feeling is positive or negative (rolling over for negative, rolling under for positive), with the recipients determined randomly.

For example, a family of 3 (two parents, 1 kid) rolls a Charisma score of 16.  We add 1 for the kid, which is 17.  In LotFP, this gives a modifier of +2, so the family inspires strong feelings from 4 other clusters of NPCs.  Rolling the d20, we get 3, 5, 19, and 12.  We interpret this to mean that 3 other clusters view the family well, but another cluster views the family poorly.

The party is also a cluster, and for the purposes of this relationship web, use the median value of all the characters' Charisma scores.  Clusters that like, or feel neutral about, the party are under their control, as long as they act in good faith and are competent leaders.  Clusters that dislike the party are under the DM's control - not to become enemies of the party (all involved recognize that the success of the whole venture requires cooperation between the different groups), but they will grumble and look to take control of the group away from the party, if possible.  By making a meaningful, personal sacrifice, the party can attempt to change the opinion of a cluster that dislikes them.  After making the sacrifice, the character involved can make a Charisma check to influence them.

This might play out in any number of ways - a family might be quite nice, but they have a brat of a child who is insufferable and obnoxious.  Perhaps there is a very competent ranger in the company, but her brother is a drunken lout who can't do much of anything, forcing the ranger to spend most of her time helping him out.  Either way, that one person makes it hard to appreciate the cluster's company.

While clusters are happy to separate as needed for short-term tasks (the group needs to clear a tree from the trail, for example), for long-term or obviously dangerous tasks, roll a d4.  If the result is higher than the number of people in the cluster, someone from it will volunteer for the task.

Lastly, here's a table documenting the different types of clusters that can be recruited for the expedition.  The levels listed are a guideline.  As you can see, most of the people on  this trip have few skills (the families are likely all farming stock, and so would be knowledgeable about plants, planting, housekeeping skills, etc.

Size	Category	Level	Description
1	Ranger	2d3	Hunter, explorer, trapper
1	Criminal	1d2-1	Seeking new life or escaping old crimes
1	Former Soldier	Ftr 2d4	Retired, looking for quiet place to die
1	Non-inheriting child	0	Lacking trade or prospects
2	Professional Partnership	varies	Pair of hunters or master and disciple
2	Siblings by blood	0	Might have tradeskills
2	Odd Couple	0	Unusual pair, united by circumstances - 2 criminals, 2 ex-soldiers, something else
2	Romantic couple	0	Want to start a family
3	Family	0	2 parents, 1 child
3	Family	0	1 parent, 2 children
3	Family	0	2 parents, 1 grandparent
4	Family	0	2 parents, 1 child, 1 grandparent
4	Family	0	2 parents, 2 children
4	Family	0	1 parent, 3 children
5	Family	0	2 parents, 3 children
5	Family	0	1 parent, 4 children