It's not outrageous, and considering how much better the Sleep spells are here then in DnD it should be easy enough to accommodate for.

Alright, after this fight, the following change will be implemented. Add the following text to Sleep (and therefore Sleepga by proxy) and Lullaby.

Injured creatures, those with hit point damage (ability score damage or nonlethal does not count), gain a +2 bonus on the save vs. [Sleep/Lullaby].


Let me also say I'm sorry I haven't been able to get a re-print of the PDFs out. Our new medium where we keep all this shit is horrible compared to Wave. I think I'm about to just type all this out on giant in the playground or something like that.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:51, Thu 17 Jan 2013.

I think I lost some original documents to Wave while I was in the military, didn't realize it was going down. I'm pretty sure Annabel has them somewhere should I have need of them though. Most of the stuff I had on my hard drive, I think all I lost was theory crafting and character personality stuff that has mostly changed with time anyways.

Damn you google wave, why did you have to leave me? Now who will I drink with so people don't call me an alcoholic for drinking by myself?

Whoops.

Knowledge (nobility/royalty) should be on the fighter class list (and by extension the paladin list).

Rules Question time!

If Sili sings Lullaby on a creature that's already asleep (but about to wake up) what happens? Does the most recent effect take precedence? Does it have no effect? I'm honestly not sure.

Sili's turn: If Sili can, he'll play a lullaby for #6 on his turn. If it won't have any effect until the creature wakes up, then he'll ready an action to act as soon as it wakes up. It'll wake up this round, and I don't want it to rejoin the fight.

Sili's skill bonus when playing Lullaby is +16, and his Charisma is +3. If you'd like to wait for me to get back on that's fine too.

The problem is that unconscious (sleeping) creatures are immune to sleep.

You can ready an action to make something fall back asleep after it wakes up, yes, but you must ready an action to do it. In this instance, it won't really affect you at all since you'll take your place just above its initiative, where you are anyway.

Please post your action for this round. The car is running and I'm getting ready to step out of the door for the day.

In reference to the OOC thread, there's a gap in black mage 7th and white mage 14th.

I am going to propose this for white mage 14th:



From The Brink (Su)
White wizards are able to pull their allies back from the edge of death in dire situations. Any time an ally would be dead through hit point damage (death effects and constitution drain/damage cannot be countered in this way) the white wizard has one round to be able to target their bodies with a spell from the Healing school to bring them above -10 hit points. If they do so, their ally is counted as having not died.

No matter how much above -1 hit points the white wizard would have healed their ally, their target cannot exceed -1 hit points and are unconscious but stable until further healing is received from some other source. The targeted body must be relatively in tact for From The Brink to function.



Yeah, Raise and Raise II are better options in some situations. Raise/Raise II are 1 Round casting times, though, which means it can take forever to use them. The white wizard themselves might be disabled before they take effect, or a second party member could get trashed in that time--not to mention that you can't take a move action to reposition yourself before starting to cast them (assuming you want to cast another spell on your next turn).

From the Brink also allows you to hit a group of allies with Heal (or Heal II, etc...) in order to heal everyone still alive as well as save the life of a comrade. It's all about action economy.

If you have a knight or a red mage in the party, which is likely, then they can bop the guy that's down with a Cure on their turn and they're back in the fight before Raise would have normally taken effect. Hell, even a master walking around with a potion of Cure in their hand (which is actually pretty likely) can take a 5' step and jam it down their ally's throat.


Arise comes three levels after this, and is a very strong spell that could replace much of the usefulness of this ability. But Arise costs a good bit of MP, and with From the Brink you have the option of healing your whole team as well as saving a guy.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:35, Mon 11 Mar 2013.

This would be hard to say anything on without play testing. I wouldn't mind you giving us each 1 character around those levels and putting us in a situation where we had to do something like this to see how it played out.

My first thought after reading this was treat them as disabled for 1 round if they exceed -1 HP. So one move/standard action and take 1 damage if you use a standard. They are 99% of the time going to be prone so their turn would be wasted on standing up anyways, potentially incurring AoOs.

Like I said though, it might be worth play testing some specific instances of this to decide what the correct power level would be. We don't want to replace the life spells and their effects with a class ability, even if it has a 1 round window of opportunity.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:40, Mon 11 Mar 2013.

Treating them as disabled when they're not in HP range to be so is a little rules heavy I think. It might lead to confusion, and there are abilities/items/features/feats that specifically play into when someone is disabled or staggered that may complicate the situation.


Yeah, the target is unconscious and prone, but you could have just spent 1 MP to save their life with a Cure as opposed to 7 MP with a Raise. It has uses outside of combat, too. A thief could fail in disarming explosives, or a trap could go off, or you could be watching two other people in a fight, or whatever else.

As an extreme example of another out of combat use, having a group of 7 NPC children bystanders that get their shit rocked from a Stone II AoE could be saved with a Heal spell, where you would otherwise have to spend the time and resources to bring them all back to life. This is a harrowing experience for a person, especially a child, and some may not make it back.


Back to the party: remember, you have a little bit of meta knowledge, and unless the party really fucked up the situation in Provoka, you have anywhere from 2-10 Boarding Rings (the ones that let you know your allies condition) for encouraged, literal meta knowledge to know exactly how much healing is required to save your buddy's ass.

Raise takes effect at the start of your next turn, which would then let you cast another healing spell on your ally or whatever else. From The Brink would let you cast a heal now, to save them, then another heal on your next turn. In this sense, the action economy to bring them back to consciousness is exactly the same from the target's standpoint. The only differences is that Raise makes an ally come back in a standing position, because FF is weird that way.

Being prone can super, super suck in a lot of situations, this is true. For some players, though, it's not that big of a detriment. Warp is a way around this, for instance, for red and black wizards. There are items available to thieves/black belts that let you stand up from prone AoO free due to ranks in Tumble. I think only knights are really all that bad off from being prone, but they're the ones with the most defense anyway.


And in D&D there are a lot of situations that are rock, paper, 22 megaton nuclear bomb. One round of saving someone's life might well be enough for the black belt to punch the problem's head in or the red and black mage to blast the thing into bits.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:07, Mon 11 Mar 2013.

In reply to teslas (msg # 177):

How about for BLM an ability that lets you cast a single spell when dropped below 0 HP at level 7?

The difference come when if you are able to bring them above -1 HP. What you have stated is they never rise above -1 HP even if the numbers say they do. What I'm proposing is that if you would theoretically bring them above -1 HP from a spell then it would bring them back as disabled, regardless of whether they were at 0 or 7 HP.

This is very difficult with a cure or heal spell, as people die at negative CON mod in this game (I think?) so it is very likely to heal only half of the negative HP, not to mention if someone is PK'd down to -30 HP. You'd then have to burn a DS Cure II or higher in order to get them back up, and they'd only have a partial action on their turn and be prone.

I think it merits some play testing as it is a complicated, but potentially interesting and useful feature.

The -CON for death instead of -10 is a house-rule for this particular instance of the game. It, along with the armor as damage reduction, are ones that I'm going to suggest to people who play, but neither is inherently part of it.

Other optional things we're using:

Leveling up restores you
Day's element affects magic
Enemies not provided soft cover by allies



I think the ability is not something that you anticipate for levels to come, but is useful in certain contexts. The point was not to give the white wizard some new super awesome toy that they didn't have before, it's just to give them something unique to further aid them in their specialized roll of saving the party's ass.

The idea of having them be disabled for one round is not an awful one. Initially, we had Raise/Raise II do a similar thing, akin to resurrection sickness in FFXI or many other MMO's. We decided against this, just barely. It may even make a return to keep the revolving door of death "tactic" way less viable.

Play testing may prove me wrong, but I foresee very little benefit in this ability. A heal could save you a few MP from a raise, but would never ever affect the flow of battle unless you had 2 white mages or a whm and a devoted rdm healer, perhaps in the rarest circumstance a knight.

If you aren't a WHM, your best option is always to defeat/debilitate the enemy, even through means of provoke. So you revive someone with negative HP. They are still a dead body as far as the battle is concerned. It would take another round of healing to awaken them, and then they would still be prone on that round. If someone is dying they are either retarded is shit is REAL BAD, in which case this ability would most likely be moot. I suppose it could help bad players or exceedingly unfortunate players, but the chances of that character dying immediately once again are pretty high.

The one circumstance I can see this being effective in is where a WHM blankets the party with Heal, raising the character that was just barely killed and using Divine Inspiration to attempt an enchantment to keep them protected from single target attacks. With even just Heal it would last two rounds, so this might actually be a decent tactic. Outside of this I see little tactical use, but I understand what you are going for with this class feature.

There are still holes in white and black mage. To you two people playing them: my apologies. This is my next goal on things to fix.

Was I drunk when I was bitching about the mechanics before? Cause that White Mage ability looks pretty sweet now...

Edit- 6 months ago and posted at 3AM, I guarantee I was.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:40, Tue 10 Sept 2013.

I agree. Not dying is awesome.

Take it from me.

Until you get Arise at 17th level, it's pretty fantastic. Even after you get it, it's great to use during times when you don't feel like paying out the ass to use Arise. It's also great to use with NPCs and the like, should that situation come up.

Also, not having the ally lose all of the buffs you may or may not have put on him is a huge time-saver--especially if it's a fight where one of the Bar-element spells is essentially a must-have.

As you very well know, levels start to come fairly slowly 13th -> 17th, so the time in between is likely actually a bit of a while.

I am strongly considering the following change, due to the decently large difference in power level between 6th and 7th level spells. It's a fairly noticeable departure from standard D&D, but I think it may be for the best.

1: It gives you something to look forward to at higher levels.
2: You still should be all happy about getting your prestige class at 11-13th levels that you don't mind as much.
3: You likely had to skip over a few spells you would have rather not had to skip up to this point. Another two slots to put something there may cut down on some buyer's remorse, subconscious or otherwise.
4: It is the same as sorcerer progression, which is what the mages essentially are beefed up versions of. As an added bonus, you don't suffer at early levels.


The only downside to this that I can see is that it does delay the rate at which you can apply metamagics, though it's not too awfully significant.


White and black mages gain Xth level spells at Yth level:

1st: 1st
2nd: 3rd
3rd: 5th
4th: 7th
5th: 9th
6th: 11th
7th: 14th
8th: 16th
9th: 18th

And just to compare with red mages in case you're curious:
1st: 1st
2nd: 4th
3rd: 7th
4th: 10th
5th: 13th
6th: 16th
(and they could potentially gain select 7th level spells at 18th if they took a bunch of Extra Spell and Red Wizard Paragon)



What do you guys think?
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:20, Wed 11 Sept 2013.

Seems fine, it technically gives you two less 9th level known spell slots but... hell, how many of those would one guy need anyways?

There are only four 9th level spells for both white and black mages, so that's not even a problem.

Huh... I must not have counted those before >.>

So yeah, further reason it looks okay.

I'm fine with it. There are still tons of lower level spells that I want and higher level spells are mo' money.

It is done.

Seems fine, though are you intending there to only ever be 4 9th level spells per class?

Not necessarily, but at the same time I don't have any ideas of what else there may be. Probably something the players find super-super late game that's like super-awesome (the 8th and 9th level spells already are (except Regrowth kinda, but that needs to exist, sorry white mages)).

It may be worth mentioning that you still get six 9th level slots, two at 18, 19, and 20.



As always, if you guys have any suggestions for new spells, let me know. They have to be iconic FF, vital to general gameplay, or very multi-purpose. A maybe-not-bad analogy is to think like you have to draw a whole picture in only 16 colors instead of 16 million (D&D 3.5). What colors/effects do you pick?