Dream alteration

[Rob-hin]

Hey everybody.

I my current quest, my players have to deal a lot with dreams.

In dreams they try to alter their dreams. For instance, if they are in a dream on a green grass field, they can try and change this to a blue grass field. (just to give a strange example)
Also, others can try and do the same. Like an NPC is trying to change the PC's dream into a nightmare.

This give two possibilities:
1- A dice roll to change your own (or someone else's) dream yourself
2- A dice roll to save yourself when someone is altering your dream in any way

For this, I came up with the 'altered will save roll'
1- to change your own dream, you need a will save. How much you try to alter the dream determines the DC to actually do it.
2- ???

I'm not sure about the opposed roll versus someone who is trying to change your dream. The one changing someone's dream will need to roll a normal saving throw like mentioned above in 1-.

Problem is as following:
My players have 2 introvert characters and 2 extravert characters.
The extravert players are more open to the world and can change dreams more easily then the others can.
The introvert players have a better defence against someone trying to change their dream.

The two extravert players have a high will save and the introvert players have a low will save, all due to the classes they are playing.
This way, '1- changing dreams' works well as:
- the players who are good at changing dreams (extravert) have a high will save (thus he can more easily alter dreams)
- the players who are no good at changing dreams (introvert) have a low will save (thus he can less easily alter dreams)

How do I work out 2- the will save vs someone else's will?

[The Great Hairy]

Add a skill - Dream Manipulation. Give the NPCs a rank in this skill, and when they are trying to change the dream of a PC, have a contested skill roll (like Spot/Listen versus Move Silently/Hide).

If the PCs want to develop this skill, they first need a Feat - Lucid Dreaming. They can obtain this Feat for free (i.e./ not as character leveling) through the plot - maybe someone (Obi-Wan/Gandalf style) teaches them?

This might require a little bit of re-numbering for your PCs and NPCs, but it would probably suit your campaign better!

Cheers,
TGHO

[Rob-hin]

Renumbering is no problem, I not yet used it in important situations.

Ok, altering it, how about this:

you are either good or not-good at something:
1. Closed personality vs 2. open personality
1 good at shielding themselves but not good at dream alteration
2. good at dream alteration but not good at shielding themselves

If you are good at something: class skill
If you are bad at something: cross class skill

No modifiers are counted.

I could easily combine this with you skill point idea's.
They went level up last session so I need to balance this quickly.

This quest is intended to end at level 20, the players are currently level 5.

So, yet to be determined:
- max skill points
- dc's

A commoner can't alter his own dreams, unless he rolls very high. So to speak. So a dc should also be high.
Dc minor - 10 example: growing a flower or waking up
Dc small - 15 example: growing a tree or resisting a NPC dc 15
Dc medium - 20 example: changing a forest from one type of trees to another type or resisting a NPC dc 20
Dc large - 30 example: growing a forest or resisting a NPC dc 30
Dc great - 40 example: creating a own dream pocket plane (a very loooooooong proces) or resisting a NPC dc 50

So in the end, a player of level 20 has a 20 bonus. If he wants to create his own pocket plain he will need to take 20. Resulting in a total of 40.

The maximum of skill points is the characters current level.

[The Great Hairy]

Looks good to me so far. Maybe go even further and break the Dream skill up into two sub-skills, Dream Manipulation and Dream Defence? That way you could have people who were strong on "defence" (i.e./ resisting manipulation of their dreams by an outside force) having a separate skill rating to those who were strong on "attack" (i.e./ manipulating other's dreams).

Personally, I'd remove this skill from the leveling skill lists, and state to the players "you must improve this skill through use and roleplaying only. You can not spend leveling skill points on this skill. When you level up, I will tell you how many points you have to spend to increase this skill" and then I'd hand out points based on how the PC used the skill throughout the sessions beforehand. It requires a bit of bookkeeping on your behalf though.

The DCs all look good to me.

Cheers,
TGHO

[Rob-hin]

Good one, I had the same idea about the two skills.

The rp skill points are good too, though I'll probably give them free skill points to start with as we've been playing for a while now.

[The Great Hairy]

Great minds think alike?

Let us know how it goes mate!

Cheers,
TGHO

[Rob-hin]

Last week we had a dream fight.
One character lured the PC's into his dream and they fought.

One character altered things in the dream resulting in my NPC being set on fire. (mucho damage)
Also, with a joint effert, they succeded in 'hold personing' him.

Result: a pretty easy victory...

In other words, the dream altration is too powerfull and I'm strugling to solv this...

Future fights need to be less dependant on dream alteration or it has to be less powerfull.

[The Great Hairy]

How did two PCs end up in the same dream? And was this a major or minor NPC? What was their Dream Defence skill rating? What are the PC's Dream Alteration skill ranks? What DCs did you set for the holding and the flaming?

I think some tweaking may be needed, yes. But new game mechanics always need balancing. It takes a while to get a handle on how things work.

Cheers,
TGHO

[Rob-hin]

They fought a NPC as part of the story:
They are 'dream children', half dream half man. So is the NPC.

There is something amiss with dreams and all, the line between the dream world and the wake world is fading. The NPC was one of the baddies that wanted to breach that wall. They killed him and his essance remaind alive in the dreams of others, waiting to be respawned.

Death in a dream is real death while death of the body does not have to be permanent. (You need others to help you return and only dream children can do this)

Only dream children have the dream alteration and dream defense skills. This NPC lured them into his dream by luring them into his by maiplulation of his dream. He assumed a form of a main character being abducted away and the PC's followed him.

The character have few ranks now, and it must be said that they rolled very high that night. But it gave me food for though about the future.

One of the characters turned the ground soft like sirop, then into oil and finally set it on fire around the NPC. All his actions were DC 20/25 and he made them.

SPOILER:
This quest will near it's end soon (level 7) and the dream and wake world will start fading together. First they will need to solve things here and when that story ends (level 14), they will venture into the real dream plane (like the shadow plane) and take on the Sandman (better name in the works).

But when they reach that time and level they must not be uber powerfull and able to solve everything with dream skills; normal skills/feats/abilities etc should still be very, very important.

[The Great Hairy]

Sounds like the PCs had a lucky dice night - they happen. Maybe tweak some numbers, or use GM's perogative of ignoring results.

The story does sound very cool, mate.

Cheers,
TGHO