Dungeon Fantasy Companion 3: The Speculation Thread

[Kristoffer]

It is kinda disappointing how much of the Companion appears to be recycled material from pyramid magazines I already own. I hope there will be some actual new content that will justify a pledge for me, although it probably won't ship to Europe...

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by tbone

125- and 62-point characters would be way more welcome. As far as templates go, I don't know what DFRPG might offer that isn't just repeating DF: Henchmen and Delvers to Grow. Adding some new templates would be a start: say, general-purpose town professional (easily adaptable to merchant, craftsman, physician...), general-purpose outdoor worker (adaptable to hunter, fisher, farmer...), etc.

Another way to add value would be, yep, low-powered pregens. Those aren't in Henchmen, so it'd be all new content. And the pregens would be instantly useful as hirelings, bandits, city watchmen, background townies, etc.

If you're not already familiar with it, GURPS Historical Folks has 4e templates for low tech ordinary people. Should convert pretty easily to DFRPG. If we were doing it over again I'd probably go with the Delvers to Grow/Action Specialists model and have a low end template (Smart/Strong/Fast) plus professional lenses.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Infornific

If you're not already familiar with it, GURPS Historical Folks has 4e templates for low tech ordinary people. Should convert pretty easily to DFRPG. If we were doing it over again I'd probably go with the Delvers to Grow/Action Specialists model and have a low end template (Smart/Strong/Fast) plus professional lenses.

That's a heck of a resource; looks good, too. I haven't taken a look at it for a long while, so thanks for the reminder.

As for that Companion 3: Hm, as people are pointing out, it does indeed appear to tackle some topics covered in Pyramid. Which is a legit thing to do (what with DFRPG being its own game, deserving stuff created or revamped expressly for it); the stuff should be great for DFRPG-only newcomers who don't own libraries of Pyramid and GURPS stuff.

As for pleasing us GURPS hands, I'm fully optimistic that any "recycled" material will have enough updating to make it worth a look. We'll see...

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by tbone

That's a heck of a resource; looks good, too. I haven't taken a look at it for a long while, so thanks for the reminder.

As for that Companion 3: Hm, as people are pointing out, it does indeed appear to tackle some topics covered in Pyramid. Which is a legit thing to do (what with DFRPG being its own game, deserving stuff created or revamped expressly for it); the stuff should be great for DFRPG-only newcomers who don't own libraries of Pyramid and GURPS stuff.

As for pleasing us GURPS hands, I'm fully optimistic that any "recycled" material will have enough updating to make it worth a look. We'll see...

It's not just the same topics. We have (poor) photographs of several pages, which are mostly introductory material, and what isn't introductory material was copied directly from pyramid articles with at most minor revisions (individual words are hard to read but it's clear that large chunks of text are identical).

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

I wouldn't mind "at their best when those things are involved", but druids in the DFRPG take it to the point of "so focused as to be borderline irrelevant when they aren't". A Holy Warrior is still a capable fighter when there aren't demons to smite; a Scout is still a deadly archer when there's no wilderness to be an Outdoorsman in; even a Bard can find plenty of uses for his mind-control outside of town. The Druid's spell and ability list, by contrast, seem almost intentionally designed to be useless indoors.

Create Animal is fantastic even indoors. A handful of black bears or grizzly cubs all-out attacking or grappling may not last long, but they're great at attracting monster attention. Swarms of bats or rats are good too. Beast Seeker can get you access to better animals such as karkadanns, chimpanzees, elephants, and mammoths, as long as they exist in the game world.

The combination of Create Animal and Rider Within should not be underestimated in a world where invisible jellies lurk in dungeons just waiting for an unsuspecting fighter to walk into them.

Frostbite, Lightning and Spark Storm are all decent attack spells anywhere. Windstorm does a good job of protecting PCs from stuff like Horde Pygmy blowguns to the face or eyes, and can be usefully stacked with other penalties like Darkness or Pollen Cloud or bad footing or grappling or injury shock or Move and Attack penalties to deny many enemies even the ability to hit random hit locations or the torso.

Resist Lightning is useful both against friendly fire (see: Spark Storm) and several nasty monsters. Ditto Resist Cold.

Not having many animals around when you go in the dungeon is less of an issue if you used Beast Seeker, Beast Summoning, and/or Beast Link to set things up before you went in the dungeon. Works even on giant or dire animals--there's absolutely nothing wrong with being able to summon (via Beast Link) an Acid Spider, Slugbeast, Slorn or Electric Jelly in your hour of need, especially if you have the right advantages to control them when they get there (or at least hide from them or run from them).

And of course there's good old Shape Earth (pit-digging, wall-moving), Seek Earth (a.k.a. Locate Gold), Entombment, and Earthquake.

Druids are not as versatile as wizards but are still far from useless indoors.