New Savage Worlds Superpower: Talk to Ghosts

This power was missing in the Superhero Companion. Therefore I created a variation on the Interface Power for computers, as effectwise both powers seem to be related.

Talk to Ghosts HOUSERULE

Your character can communicate with ghosts, giving her much greater access to the history of places. She can use a Notice Roll once per place to spot ghosts. (An average location contains d4-2 ghosts.) After noticing a ghost she can use Persuasion to start a conversation. Their Initial Reaction may vary from Hostile to Neutral.

Edge: Full Practitioner of the Art (Savage Synnibarr)

This is for superhero Savage Worlds campaigns that use the rules from Necessary Evil, etc.

It is a variation of Super Sorcery for character that only have a limited spell list.

Practitioner select 6 spells. They cast them using the Spellcasting skill. If they fail the skill roll, they will only be able to use that spell once more that day. If a 1 comes up on the Spellcasting die (not taking into account the Wild Die), this was the last possiblity to cast it at all for that day.
Snake eyes lead to the Magic Misshape table.

After 6 hours of rest spells lost for a day are recovered.

0 hitpoints does not mean instant death in old school

The Labyrinth Lord Flailsnail Google+ Hangout game I took part last week uses the following interesting rule for permanent injuries and mutilation instead of instant death.

Check the table for going down to 0 hitpoints in Trollsmyth's blog!

In the meantime I found a deadlier table on Trollsmyth's blog: Deadlier death and dismemberment table.

Savage Worlds Tricks Fast Fix

While I talked about fixing Savage Worlds Tricks a lot in this blog, I realized that maybe it is not even necessary, if the GM gives out a bennie for every well described trick. My problem with tricks: while they are a great first step to promote unusual combat actions by players - much better than in all older RPGs I know - they still have the problem, that I normal attack can explode ad infinitum and tricks can't.
If the GM gave out a bennie for every well described trick, maybe even if it failed, that would beat the exploding damage of normal attacks.
As a player that would be a great incentive for me. Most of my Savage Worlds GMs weren't that generous though.

Savage Worlds Tricks Deluxe

I talked about Spirit Tricks (and Strength Tricks) in an earlier post. The plan was to get rid of the Taunt and Intimidate skills and allow Spirit Tricks instead. (I would also get rid of Tracking by the way...)

The player could choose of the effect of a Trick should be that of a Trick according to the rulebook or that of a Test of Wills. I would also add the 3rd option to move the opponent 1" in a desired direction (and shake him at the same time on a raise).

One additional option is was considering to give the Trick an area effect on additional raises. At the moment if you go for a simple damage roll, you can always explode your dice and have extreme success. If you go for a trick that is not possible and this stops players from tricks sometimes.
So if you have 2 raises on your Trick roll from the opponents, you give a nonraise trick result to any opponent on a medium burst template centered on the original enemy. 3 raises make this a large burst template and 4 raises finally give a result with a raise in a large burst template.
Obviously this rules have to worked on a little. Otherwise it would make sense to always attack the weakest opponent to trick the strong guy standing next to him.
I assume it would make most sense for the character doing a secons Trick roll and have all opponents in that area roll against this result to see how well they fared. (Comparable to how Sweep is handled.)

Dungeons Dragons Skill Challenge - Revised Narrative System

This looks interesting: a revised narrative Skill Challenge system for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. I wonder if it rewards original narratives by the players. This was my initial unterstanding of what the skill challenge system for D&D4 was supposed to achieve. I have to admit that I never played with the original system though.

Savage Worlds Skill Reduction: Tracking

Tracking should cease being a skill on it's own and instead be part of Survival for wilderness, Streetwise in cities and Investigation for research.
This seems at least to be a convincing setting rule.

Hunter Instincts (Savage Worlds Edge)

The characters Tracking and Survival skills are not connected to Smarts, but to Spirit and can therefore only cost one point per die type to raise until they exceed the character's Spirit stat.

Savage Worlds Spirit Tricks

Redesigning the Savage Worlds Skill System?

After Solomon Kane introduced Strength Tricks, it would make sense to add Spirit Tricks as well. That way you could get rid of Intimidation, a skill that seems not really to be something learned anyways (with the same argument Guts is often removed).
Consequently you could also get rid of Taunt.

Both skills for the test of will mechanic would become trappings for Tricks instead. This actually makes a lot of sense. If you look at the Pirates RPG you will see that many of the examples for Smart tricks (except for the "Look over there!" cliché) don't really fit Smarts anyways.
This means you can choose, if you want to get -2 for the next action of the opponent or +2 for the next action against him. Following the advice for tricks in Whispers from the Pit, I would also allow other characters to use the +2 bonus, if the Trick using player wants. This way non combat characters are even more useful in combat.
I would also make it official that a as a third option you can move the tricked opponent 1' with a success.
You have to choose before doing the trick if you want the +2, -2 or 1'. A raise always adds a shaken condition.

Savage Worlds area effects when not using a battle mat

Zornhau - let's call him the German Savage Worlds Evangelist and see if there is a reaction ;) - presented his way of deciding area effect damage when playing without battle map in the tanelorn.net forum.

Small Burst Template – 1d4+1 targets effected
Medium Burst Template – 1d6+1 targets effected
Large Burst Template – 1d12+1 targets effected
Cone – 1d8+1 targets effected

I guess another way that would scale with the size of the fight would be randomize a hit percentage of potential targets. Obviously you would need to cap that with a certain number.
If you wanted it to be slow and unsavage, you could take in account environment, etc. Fighting in open environment would let you hit less people than inside narrow tunnels.

Update:
Clint (of Necessary Evil fame) gave the following numbers in the Pennicle Forum:

SBT = 1d4
MBT = 2d6
LBT = 3d8
Cone = 2d6*

*Difference between a cone and a MBT could be lessening the chance of hitting an ally in the area.

The look a little bit extreme to me honestly.

D&D-4-like Skill Challenges in Savage Worlds

This is a first sketch how you do skill challenges in Savage Worlds. Definitely worth a test run and could be a better way to handle music performances in The Band.

Depending on how complex the task is, a certain amount of successes is needed. My test run decides difficulties on number of participating characters, but that could be too metagamey.

Easy: [number of participating characters] successes
Normal: [number of participating characters x 1.5] successes
Hard: [number of participating characters] x2 successes

Players in general can choose the skill they want to use by themselves. The GM can veto skill use, that is not described well. But why not using your Knowledge(History) skill to get the band mimic the famous performance of the Sex Pistols in Winterland? ;) Obviously repeating the same shtick over time becomes stale.
Each Raise counts as 1 extra success.

When they got 3 failures, the characters finally lost... (Maybe scale that too?)

Plush, Power, Plunder - Rule notes and House rules

Character Creation

House rule: The player can roll his stats or take 3 on all of them.

Basic Stat x5 = Roll Stat

House Rule: Basic Stat x7 = Roll Stat [Should make beginner characters fail less in One Shot]


Skill Checks

Spending 1 point of Plushdurance adds 2 to the dice result.
Spending 1 Plush Point also add 2. You can only use that in body stuff though.

You are elegant if you are 20 points below the expected roll.

If you are able to pull of a skill use you have to spend the ammount of Plushdurance points written next to it.
You loose half the Plushdurance points, if you fail the roll.


Combat

Highest Courage creature acts first.

1 defense / round.

Distance:
Attacker's (Weapon Damage + Agility Base) - Defender's Strength Base

House Rule: The defender can use his weapon to block and adds it to the his definding score.

Melee:
Attacker's (Weapon Damage + Strength Base) - Defender's (Weapon Damage + Strength Base)
The defender causes damage if the result is negative!

House rule: Disarm: If attacker has no weapon, he is able to grab the opponents weapon if he causes any damage. Both roll strengths as soon as one fails and the other one succeeds in the same round, the winner has the weapon.

Multiple opponents: against the 3rd attacker (and 4th, 5th, etc.) you can't add your weapon damage when checking for damage.


Damage and Regaining Power

If you loose all your Plush Points you are KO for 2d6 minutes. After waking up, you have regained 5 Plush Points.
Further attacks remove 1 Cutie Points. You also loose 1 Cutie Point if go KO 3 times the same day.

Resting 8 hours restores all your Plush Points and your Plushdurance.

Only the Seamstress can restore 1 Cutie Point per treatment.

Treenenwelt for Savage Worlds

Human wish powers

Humans are kind of Neverending Story powered in the Tyrsworld. They can get any wish fulfilled, but loose memories from Earth for it.

So you stat with Earths Memory d12 and Arcane Knowledge: Wishes d4. You use your lower stat for Wish Magic. You can basically do any spell. Your Knowledge level decides which rank of spells you know: d4=Novice; d10=Heroic; d12=Legendary
Every time you roll a 1 on your Spell die, you loose one level of Earths Memory though!!

Revised Savage Worlds Magic

All spells are expanded to 5 levels. If you have the according rank you can cast the new power level.

Spell Novice Seasoned Veteran Heroic Legendary Notes

Boost Trait 1 trait+ fitting skills Lower Trait is seperate power
Bolt 2x2d6 3x2d6 + 1x3d6 2x3d6 3x3d6 too weak on higher levels? Range?

Reprise: The Band - Savage Worlds and drugs

I handled hard drugs in my cyberpunkish game that way, that they would give you bonuses, but once you were on them, forced to buy certain drug-related edges, and skills like Knowledge (Drug scene) when you were leveling up. Somewhat like a drug skill/edge path...
The edges had mainly negative effects, so players really tried to get rid of their addiction as they could not get any positive character development while on it. But going turkey was not easy either...

I looked through my old notes.
Actually it was even simpler than I remembered.

There was this drug that gave you +2 on songwriting (it was a campaign about the PCs having a band in a postapocalyptic city), but as long as you were on it, you had to raise your Knowledge (Drugs) skill every time you leveled up, as this was the main thing on your mind: where to get the drug, when, and from whom...
So people became real pros with the whole drug trade and had to give up other character development. For people with high Smarts it was a little bit better, as they were longer able to raise at least another skill too.
Obviously everyone wanted to kick their drug habit quite early, which could be achieved by a Spirit test, you could try once a week.
But if someone offered you the drug later on, you still needed to pass a Spirit test not to fall back into your old habit. Especially nasty, when you would soon get your next possibilty to level up...

I was inspired by reading "Please kill me", the book on the 70ies NYC punk scene. :-D

As none of my players' characters had the skill before taking the drug or wanted to raise it by him-/herself, I simply ruled that at Knowledge(Drugs) d8, your skin would turn greenish, even greener on d10 and d12, and at Knowledge(Drugs) d12+1 you would be able to buy the edge "Complete Memory" and remember the time before the Orange War (don't ask..).Obviously you could streamline this basic system and make it more elegant, with real paths for different drugs.

Edges to make Savage Worlds more of a D&D 4th rip off

This should add some more features of crowd control and marking in Savage Worlds.

Block the retreat!
Prerequisite: Fighting d8
If an opponent tries to leave melee your character you get an extra +2 against your free attack.
[Old version: your character can adds one extra d6 to damage, if he hits with the free attack.]

Double trickster (I)
Spirit: d6
You are able to use tricks and test of wills against anyone under a small burst template.

Crowd trickster (II)
Prerequiste: Double trickster, Spirit d8
You are able to use tricks and test of wills against anyone under a medium burst template.

Mass trickster (III)
Prerequiste: Crowd trickster, Spirit d10
You are able to use tricks and test of wills against anyone under a large burst template.

Sniper's Mark
Shooting: d8
You aim on a enemy you can attack with Shooting. In case he moves or does any action your next attack against him is +2 (additional to the normal aim bonus), in case you attack anyone else or do any other action instead of moving, you loose the bonus.

Leader of the Brave
Prerequiste: Spirit d10
You can use Leadership-Edges that normally only work with Extras on Wild Cards as well.

Campaign (?) rule: Broken
If you acieve 2 raises on a Test of Will, the opponent flees or gives up.

A narratish challenge system

Inspired by 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, a future challenge system could ask for a certain number of success by the group. A certain number of failures, would let them fail. This numbers don't have to be open to the players.
But instead of only taking into account sucessfull skill checks, there shoule also be a possibilty to manage the clever use of items. Basic manouvres like spillling perfume on a monster are maybe not handled by a skill check (although a trick out of Savage Worlds would work perfectly here), but by loosing of resources. The only question is, how abstract resources should be in this context.
She you literally use perfume from the character sheet, just improvize that this kind of character has perfume along or just tick off one (of for example three) abstract pieces of equipment or - even more abstract - uses of equipment.

Narrative about it is that the players themselves come up with skills to use. What counts is only the number of successes. Most of the rest is decided by the narratively empowered gamers.