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#1 dieffenbachj Jan 17, 2011 15:44:25

In another thread on the Eberron forum, I posted a bunch of house rules I wrote up for the Dragonmarks and Magewrights and things. I was interested in seeing some input but that forum tends to be a ghost town sometimes, and I ended up with one person who liked it and one person who didn't like it for equally indiscernible reasons =P So, I figured I'd move the dragonmark mods over here, see if I can get any input. [Linky]  I'll write up a quick walk through of things, just to orient any commenters I might get. First off, I'm running an Essentials Eberron game. The first change I had to make was modify the Aberrant Dragonmarks, which used to permanently (ish) curse a target when they get hit by a daily; not all Essentials characters have dailies, so I reduced it to a mere "on a hit/until end of next turn." The Dragonmarks themselves have received very few changes to their core rules. The biggest change (and a return to form) was inserting 3.5 Prerequisite lines for each feat--basically I did this because in Eberron, having a mark your race isn't supposed to have, or having an Aberrant mark, is a Big Freaking Deal and is liable to get you shot. It's not exactly fair to allow new players to the setting take a mark without realizing its significance. Finally, there are my big changes: first off, I jacked the Wild Talent system from Dark Sun and modified it to be magical instead of psionic, with a different array of powers more utilitarian and less exotic. Players can receive one for free if they have a high enough Intelligence score (13), and/oor they can get three bonus ones if they take the Magewright feat. The reason was, in Eberron a very large portion of the population is educated in at least a few magical spells to augment their manual labors and artisan work--in Eberron, there are more Magewrights than there are Experts (if you're familiar with 3.5 NPC classes). Giving each player, even the martial ones, a single cantrip seemed to greatly accentuate the flavor of the setting. Then, I decided that each Dragonmark (Aberrant or not) should have its own cantrip, too--I found that too often, I would have Dragonmarked party members and they would not feel like masters of their particular industry. A halfling with the Mark of Hospitality may as well have just taken some feats that buff his healing and Ritual Caster, not terribly unique. Aberrant marks were even worse, since their abilities only triggered once per daily power (and only on a hit), so they very rarely felt like they were unique and special due to their Marks. Now, someone with the Mark of Contagion has the ability to turn plants to dead mush with a glance, rust iron, decay plastic (good for the environment!) and so on. Doesn't change their combat abilities, but makes their noncombat abilities much more flavorful in the "I'm marked with the power of decay! Yayyy!" Finally, I wrote up two extra Aberrant dragonmarks, Seduction and Annihilation. Both are similar enough to the other Aberrant marks I'm not really concerned about their balance. * * * * The big issue I have is balancing the cantrips. Basically, my mental formula was "has to be slightly worse than a wizard cantrip, but faster to cast. Has to be more or less at-will." So ignite, for instance (Mark of Annihilation) is simply a worse prestidigitation (since it doesn't have prestidigitation's full range of effects, only one of them, catching things on fire) with a better range and casting time. That's all well and good for most of them--the generic cantrips that anyone can have, I'm not worried about because they are either ripped from Dark Sun or I'm confident they're balanced. It's the ones associated with dragonmarks that get a little edgier... and I'll tell you why: because Dragonmark feats can suck sometimes. Take the Mark of Sentinel. It's a fairly useless feat, giving you three rituals (not terribly exciting ones either), and it's only useful for defenders (allowing you to shift 1 square when an adjacent enemy provokes an opportunity attack) and not even very useful with that, either. So, I gave them sentinel's shield, which is capable of granting a bunch of temp hp to one ally at a time. Much more powerful than, say, 'light' or 'ghost sound', but it balances how bad the feat is otherwise. EDIT: And it's important that each dragonmark be somewhat useful to everyone, and at least a little desirable regardless of class, simply because it's not just a combat feat: it's also a roleplaying feat. If I want to be a human wizard from the House of Sentinel, I shouldn't be punished because I took a roleplaying feat that is 100% useless to me (since I get rituals as a wizard and I don't do opportunity attacks..). The House of Healing mark, for instance, absolutely useless except to Leaders. So, I buffed it so that even if you're not a Leader, you can still use its magic to enhance the healing magics of leaders around you. Suddenly, it's a feat I can take as, say, a Halfling Fighter in the House of Healing. * * * * That's my opinion though. I need to get some outside opinions on whether these changes are balanced or not, and specifically whether the feats I tried to power up with better cantrips are too powerful now. I think it greatly adds to the flavor of the game, and since cantrips aren't really that useful outside of roleplaying or puzzle-solving (which I encourage players to be creative with anyway) it's not that unbalancing. But I would be interested in the public's opinion, as well.