Hey, DM? Aye? I was thinking maybe letting players start with no equipment might be a little unfair. So we let them start with cloth armor (a CMC cloak) and either a dagger or a sling. As was I. They wouldn't have any weapons, but they did plan to go out into the forest They should have some rations. Yeah. Well, I suppose the dagger could be fluffed as a bread knife? The dagger would probably just be a knife. Indeed. It has an extra 5 durability points though. (Those are item hit points.) Seeing as it's both metal, and well made, that makes sense Just because it's actually a knife and not a rock. And the sling has 5 sling pellets. Normally they just use rocks. Then one of the early Alteration spells should be Repair Yep. Sling pellets are made of metal and crafted to fly faster than just rocks. So they get +2 to damage. Rather than +1 like most slings. Damage modifier for ranged weapons is your dexterity. They are also retrevable, 50% of the time, if they don't hit. If they do hit, they are too deformed to fly right again Cloth armor gives +2 armor points to your torso and +1 to legs and/or wings. Yep. Once they hit, they have the same stats as rocks for firing. That is, standard sling stats. Yar and yar Slings don't need to have amunition, there's not a roll for picking up a rock. Loading is a swift action though. With the exception of places there wouldn't rationally be rocks Inside a cottage, for example Yep. Although in a cottage, there would feasibly still be objects that can be slung. Yes, but there would be a roll to find them. They're not obvious I mean,  no house has no round objects. Indeed. Daggers can be found in houses, just get close to a cutlery draw. Maybe we could have different, more rare types of sling pellets. I was thinking that cultists might have cursed ones, that expend the curse on impact Glass pellets (not necesssarily made of glass) are fragile and shatter on impact. Indeed. Cursed ammo does that. Glass pellets therefore cause shards of themselves to get lodged in the target, causing 1d6 continuous damage for 3 rounds. You reroll each round for damage. Or, they could concevably be filled with poison Yep. Same damage, plus poison, but that would be a higher level item Anyway, I have to go do some work. I should be back fairly shortly Pellets filled with acid or a corrosive substance work like glass pellets, but only instead of bits of pellet being lodged in and causing bleeding, it's acidic corrosion causing damage. See you later then. Ok, back We could get extremely rare, hard to make explosive pellets. Yeah, but these kind of thing would be just in the DMG. Don't want players trying to be too smart Definitely. Of course, they can't actually make the things until they have a high enough crafting skill, and of course they won't be able to tell special pellets from regular ones unless they made them. Or by direct experimentation But that wastes them. Yup Also, with all weapons, critically missing gives you a chance to hit yourself. So the more powerful and dangerous your weapon, the more danger you yourself are in. Or dropping the weapon. You can't really stab yourself with a spear Yeah. Some weapons have the Safe rule, so you can't hit yourself on a critfail. But critically miss with an explosive pellet, and you could blow yourself and all your friends to pieces. Yup Also, a note on explosives: and the higher the crit range, the higher the critfail range. Dangerous weapons are dangerous both ways Indeed. Explosives can hit all a target's parts on a direct hit, 4 parts if it's a quarter of the explosion radius away, 3 if it's half the distance away, and 2 if it's 3 quarters out. Also, anyone up to half distance away gets knockback. Also, fire damage, for the purposes of torching timberwolves Normally away from the explosion, but if it's point blank or you're right next to it, it can knock you anywhere decided by a dice roll. Fire damage within three-quarters of the splash. Yeah, the rest is just shockwave Indeed. Ok, so should we have different kinds of poison? Yeah. Nagapon venom, what should that do? I see it as a neurotoxin. It weakens, and fogs the mind I'm thinking different types of Nagapon warriors have different venom. Not a bad idea. The unicorns having a thaumotoxin? Thaumotoxin? It disables magic, and causes damage every time magic is attempted Yeah. Sounds good. I was more thinking along the lines of warriors with different jobs. So, for example, the ones who abduct their slaves have venom that paralyses and knocks out victims. I'm assuming monsters inspired by the Drow keep slaves. It seems very Drow-ish. But yeah, thaumotoxins are good. Perhaps the warrior classes can both constrict and bite. And warriors are bred with different types of venom, to suit their jobs on the battlefield. As I suggested. Perhaps specialist anti-magic forces have Thaumotoxins. Or their artillerist warriors can spit venom. Same type of venom as their foot soldiers, which I'm assuming have fairly generic "kills people" venom. Their assassins have that venom as well, but it's a lot more slow acting, and more subtle, plus it contains a sedative so the victim never notices the bites. Their fangs are thinner as well, so to make the marks nearly invisible. Their venom would cause cardiac arrests after a few hours, to make it look like an accident to the untrained eye. Sound good? I apologise, I had to go do canning things Yeah, I like it. Especally the spitting cobra angle The spider venom acts like an acid, because of how they eat. Scorpion venom is a hemotoxin, it causes massive bleeding. That amounts to stamina loss Maybe the foot soldiers could get that? More bleeding=loss of stamina=easier to fight. Their torturers can produce a neurotoxin that doesn't actuall do that much damage, but the damage it does cause is done directly to the nervous system. Not enough to kill, but when the body's pain receivers get hurt, it's agonizing. Mechanically, it deals san damage rather than health damage, and you resist it with will rather than constitution. Oh, and they can all produce generic continuous damage venom. Plus the constriction. Their weaknesses are that they're more fragile than ponies, and being cold-blooded, they're particularly vulnerable to both heat and cold. Also, they're blinded by bright lights They're cave dwellers, after all; Indeed. Still, they can sense movements in the air or heat patterns or whatever it is snakes do with their tongues. They taste smell. I think you might be thinking about heat sensitive pit vipers I do like that, though Yeah, they can taste smell. And they have a really good sense of taste-smell. They can track by it Actually, let's just say they can sense air disturbances. The smell's for tracking. Suits me. That does give the foals a small advantage. By staying still and using Telekenesis, they can get one or a group off of their tails Their sense of smell is good enough to identify any venoms inside a creature's system, as well as identify a creature's individual smell. However, while they'll know you're in the area, they can't pinpoint your exact location instantly. They need to sniff around first. Also, Telekinesis still causes air disturbances. Yes, but it causees them around the object being manipulated Not around the user True. Distraction Clever. I'm a tatcian, it's what I do Still, a highly trained tracker from their species will know to identify a smell before going after a target. The fact that it's moving just means you should point your nose at it. Indeed. If it smells like your target, go for the kill. Still, it would be enough to distract a noob Indeed. And every species has it's noobs The basic grunts and lowest foot soldiers, as well as any particularly stupid Nagapon, can be confused. Also, any campsite would have smell lingering around it Pinpointing someone in that would be more difficult. It might take a roll Same with tracks. Yup And once Nagapon are locked on to your scent, they'll ignore everything else. Which isn't always a good thing. It leaves them very open to ambush What I meant was when they're after you, they'll keep going after you. They won't just select any other prey. yeah, I know, but that kind of focus tends to induce a bit of tunnel vision That's one of their weaknesses. It won't lead them to follow a pegasus over a cliff, but it might be used to lead them into a pit trap If your footprints didn't go over it, then the smart ones can tell. Yeah, but remember, these are foals. They're light The non-smart ones have less focus, and, again, can only tell you were in the area. True. Full grown nagapon are heavy Depends on the species. The earth pony varant and unicorn variant are pretty heavy Assassins and Sharpshooters are much lighter than the others. Ah, so we're going to further subdivide? Good. Well, they can be born with any race. But , as said, they breed them for certain purposes. Maybe certain breeds can only be of certain races. I like that. Like, Assassins must be Pegasi and Shooters must be Unicorns. But that would imply a way to control breeding. Would it be like a communist birth limit thing, or would there be magic involved? It's genetics. And classism. Every breed thinks themselves superior to everyone else. With one exception. The slaves. There are a class of nagapon who are born to rule. And them. Slaves are always Earth Ponies, Nobles can be any race. In fact, Nobles are Alicorns. And they are extremly rare Yep. Maybe one in ten thousand births Normally, they're religious leaders. But they can also serve as political leaders or military commanders, should the need arise Nobles can be from any breed, they just get elevated by the Alicorns for being particularly good at what they do. Or just for backstabbing their way up. Indeed. Once a member of a breed reaches the top, they're the official noble representative of their breed. Which means it's up to them to politically backstab all the other breeds to put your guys in charge. This constant state of backstabbing and mistrust is encouraged by the high priests. Because if they're fighting amongst themselves, they're not coming after you Exactly. Occasionally, they'll pull some strings secretly for whichever breed's losing, to keep them going. But always with plausable deniability Well, of course. They can never be seen getting their own hands dirty, they're too "holy" for that Exactly. Their priests (read: guys who work for them) get free money from the church, and more influence, in exchange for doing their dirty work. Of course, the slaves can't be elevated politically. Because they're dirty, savage primitives fit only to serve. I don't quite agree with that. A slave with enough gumption, and enough nerve, could always backstab it's way into freedom. And from freedom, even if of the lowest caste, it can make it's way up Precisely why they beat the nerve out of them. Also, Slaves are visibly different from the others. Not just beatings, though. Anyone sees a slave outside of the slave pits, the slaves are tortured then thrown back in. There's also a special will-sapping toxin put into their food Indeed. Which is also used for interrogation So the Torturers are also overseers? Of a sort And even if word should get out that the Alicorns are corrupt, nobody will believe them. They don't bother themselves about what the slaves actually do, so much as they just see to it that they don't get out don't act out* Partially because everybody's corrupt so who really cares, and partially because of their political power. Yeah. Unless, of course, exposing corruption, real or otherwise, would benefit you. But unofficially, the real taboo attached to exposed corruption isn't that you're corrupt, it's that you didn't hide it properly. You're very familar with Drow politics. I read. Anyway, this is all sourcebook stuff, so let's leave it to one side for a while Indeed. What else do we need to get the first two books out of the door? Stats for the monsters. And some more spells. But we can probably publish a demo. We just need some monsters first. And some skill traits. And a character sheet design. And a name. I say our levelling system should work by XP costs. You kill a monster, you get XP, you can spend it. But we also give XP for successfully completing skill challenges. We have costs for increasing skills, and different costs for increasing attributes. At character creation, you have... how many attribute points should we give people? I think a point-buy system might work better than our original attribute generation plans. From there, you have an amount of skill points, and some XP you can spend on traits, more skills, more attributes, or (and this only works at chargen) better equipment. Does that sound like it would work? Sorry, I needed the bathroom I like the point buy system. Have you ever played Nobilis? No, why? And when I say you can get items, I'm not saying you can get a metal full plate. Best armor you can get's probably a bike helmet. You can also get various small forms of transport, or different weapons. I was thinking about something similar to their system. One point gets you one point in a skill, half a point in a trait, or a quarter of a point in a stat Not just a helmet. A safety consious pony might have the other pads as well But I see your point Sounds good. So, for example, at CG you could get, say, a scooter. Yep. Which would only be of use on the paths That lets you travel at double your speed, but using it for four rounds consecutively without two rounds in between costs a stamina point. What with tree roots and rocks and whatnot I guess. Screw that then. You can still get weapons. Or we can imply you brought a scooter, and therefore you were wearing a helmet, which can be used as armor. Expensive to get, though. Yar. I like that better. Yup. The handle could also be used as a bludgeon, in a pinch It's pretty much equivalent to a hide helmet. You can also say you bought a frisbee or something, which now works as a wooden shield with -3 vulnerability. Or you can get crafting ingredients, like glue or bits of string. Yup When I said vulnerability, I meant durability. You could also bring food. I figured Should we introduce a hunger mechanic? I think it should be listed as an optional rule Yeah. In the event that it's not optional, you have hunger points. Eight hours without food = one hunger point 5 hunger points = -2 to str, stamina, will, and int. Your hunger always needs to be equal to or above your stamina. So losing a hunger point decreases your max stamina, to a minimum of zero. With permanently zero stamina, you're permanently exhausted. But that won't matter, since if you don't eat in 8 hours after that you die. What about thirst? Actually, let's just tie thirst in with hunger and call them nutrition points. Of course, that's an entirely optional rule. I like that Yup Although it creates the odd scenario where you're starving to death, but drinking water deals with it. Still, we need it so we're not too complicated. I like complex as in most RTSes. I don't like complex as in Dwarf Fortress. Well, you can survive on water without food for much longer than you can survive on food without water True. I think that drinking water should slow down the process, but not stop it entirely If you have water but not food, it's a day per point, instead of eight hours? I guess. Hey, you're half of this. We want the best product we can get. If you've got ideas, drop them, please. 'Kay then. So, drinking slows down the loss of nutrition points, but eating regains them. I phrased that badly You can choose to buy either some food worth 5 nutrition points, but probably not eaten all at once, and a bottle of water worth 5.. thirst points? I meant to say that I value your ideas, and if you've got any, I'd like to hear them I got your meaning. Ok, good. So, how should we make the thirst points to nutrition loss ratio? something like 1:3 3 hours? 3 days? I'm guessing hours. I'm not sure I'm still trying to make all this work in my head. So, your max hyrdration is 10, your max hunger is 10. Ok, hunger works in eight hour periods. that's the usual time between people eating, barring major exertion. Better than what I thought. So, one hunger point is lost in that time, but three thirst points are in the same time, because you need much more water than you do food Let's bring that up to the bottle of water being 15 thirst points. Yup Also, most of the water in the forest is OK to drink, but the foals don't know that The problem's not the water, but its inhabitants. Exactly And the fact that predators always hang around near water, since then know that their prey will go to the water. That sentence was terribly formatted, my apologies. I understand Watering places are where predators lurk, because everything needs to drink Why go out hunting when you can wait for your meal to come to you Exactly. So, thanks to a combination of shoggoths and predators, lakes and rivers are not your friends. Getting water then running away's probably the best option. Yup Ok, so, next thing. We need to work out the skill trees Where do you want to start? Skill trees work through traits. To get certain traits, you have to have certain other traits, and a high enough skill level. Simple enough, and very workable Let's start with the skill level 1 traits. Thanks. Ok, for the unicorn then level one alteration. Repair? Yep. Level 1 healing's, well, heal. which reparis one point of durability to the item in question Indeed. transportaion 1 is telekenesis which can move any item that the foal could move by hoof or mouth Healing restores 1 hit point to a single body part. Yep. Guardian 1 is Magic Missile. 1d6 damage to one body part. I think (Guardian skill level)d6. So, should casting spells or using other abilities cost stamina? that's a pretty rapid advancement. I think it should be (skill level/3) with a minimum of 1 Skill is, after all, a 1 to 1 conversion for xp points I guess. So how many points should level 1 abilities cost? Honestly, I think they should be 1 point or freebies but the cost goes up exponentally 1 point for heal, repair or magic missile. Telekinesis and glowing are free. Cool.