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| Rune Master progression; Helping a Rune Master stay near party tempo | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 2 2015, 02:34 AM (1,204 Views) | |
| TorchicCrossing | Apr 2 2015, 02:34 AM Post #1 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Hey all, I'm hopefully going to be starting a new game soon with a few friends, one of whom is really into the Rune Master class. He wants to run a full (or mostly, he's not 100% sure yet) team of Unown Prime, which I'm totally down with because it's flavorful and pretty cool. He also wants to start with the class and an Unown, which I'm okay with in theory but is a bit more of a problem. So with Gather Unown, he can summon an easy-to-catch (hopefully :P) Unown once a week. The problem being that we're using pretty hard-and-fast time progression in game (world map to travel on, squares take X amount of days to go between, random encounters, etc) so getting enough to make a full team, let alone a full team of Primes, seems problematic. My solution, of course, is to put some Unown-inhabited ruins (along with some other main-plothook stuff) somewhere in the world. My gripe with that solution is that it just seems... kind of obvious. Has anyone here played the class/ran a game with the class and has any alternative ways to make Unown available? Similarly, it seems the main flaw of his idea is that he has an entire team of Psychic 'mons, just waiting to get wrecked by a passing Ghost- or Dark-type with decent speed. He accept that this is a flaw of his idea, but personally I don't really want to feel bad every time I use one of those types (or even an attack with one of 'em), plus I want to reward him for playing a fun idea instead of hardcore-munchkining, so I'm trying to think of a way to help him out without things getting crazy. I have a few ideas, but only two are really even remotely feasible: - Type-shifted Unown, obviously. My gripe here is that I'm on the fence about using type-shifting in general, and even if I do it's going to be REALLY rare, so just throwing like 20 type-shifted Unown would necessitate doing something similar for the others, and now regular typing just goes out the window and things get ugly. - This one seems the most promising, but I'm not 100% sure about it: Make the High Ability for Prime Unown Protean instead of Keen Eye. This would give them versatility what with their various types of Hidden Power, and it wouldn't come into play until mid/late game which is when things would likely get the most hairy for him normally, but I'm not sure if it would be too strong. I haven't had anyone use the ability yet, but it seems even better than it is in the games since activating it is optional. Anyone have experience with its use and whether or not it might be OP in this context? tl;dr The Rune Master is a cool class that has a pretty abnormal tempo compared to most others, anyone have tips to help my player make his idea work? |
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| Nekomimi | Apr 2 2015, 02:41 AM Post #2 |
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Trainer Cat
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Give just one to five type-shifted unown(s), of type that does not share weaknesses with psychic. These shifted unowns have to be catched in wild, as all summoned ones will be psychic. Why? Because this way he will have to go around the world to gather team (ghost unown in creepy mansion, fire unown near volcano ect). It could even make some could plot points. Ofc, that's just my idea. |
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| Immortal Dust | Apr 2 2015, 02:49 AM Post #3 |
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Free Action Specialist
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First, I'd love to see your world map and travel rules. That seems pretty useful. If traveling through a world map square takes some number of days, it seems pretty feasible to produce his ability, especially if the party takes occasional breaks to rest. Including the occasional set of ruins is obvious, but sometimes things are obvious for good reasons. If it's anything like the game, those ruins would be there regardless. It then becomes up to the players to visit them or not. I wouldn't worry too hard about getting wrecked by ghost/dark. Between getting a Hidden Power that's super effective against them, Species Savant, and Prime Unown boosts, Unown are pretty able to take care of themselves. Especially if you provide the party with opportunities to get vitamins. Protean isn't really necessary. Rune Master has a feature that provides stab on all instances of Hidden Power. In the campaign I'm running, I decided to make the current champion a Rune Master / Sage / other stuff. With Prime Unown boosting HP, followed by dumping basically all of its stats into HP, leads to some ridiculous damage reduction from the Sage base feature. Hope that helps. |
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| EdroGrimshell | Apr 2 2015, 07:36 AM Post #4 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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A Researcher with the Pokemon Caretaker Research Branch could allow you to breed unown (if you have a ditto) with unique traits. Other ideas are to use the Sage Class and use the blessings offered to protect against super-effective attacks so you can have a bit of a buffer zone where super-effective attacks are effectively neutral instead. This was originally the plan for my own rune master. Another thing for that same rune master, however, was that my GM gave the prime unown different abilities based on what it spelled (mine spelled Urn at the time and got Stockpile and Swallow that could be used as a single target melee move as bonus moves along with water sport). I could recommend the Protean one for a This One's Special pokemon if you use that route. |
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| TorchicCrossing | Apr 2 2015, 01:21 PM Post #5 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Thanks for the tips! Unfortunately I found out today that the player's going to have to drop out of the campaign because life stuff, so it becomes somewhat irrelevant (at least in the short-term). Still some good advice here though, so I appreciate it. @Immortal Dust: I'm still working out the balancing for it, but the general idea is that there are two means of travel: Exploration and Quick. Exploration means you move at the relevant movement capability (typically Overland for people ofc, but if you use a mountable 'mon it Swim or Sky could be swapped out where appropriate) in miles instead of meters. This reflects traveling at a "normal" pace, while poking around to look for random items, wild pokemon, etc. It generates random encounters as one would expect, and I imagine it'll be the standard travel method through most of the early game. "Quick" doubles the amount of travel distance in a day (so a party of Overland 5 trainers could make it 10 miles) and has little to no random encounters since they are just blowing through whatever area they're in. However, they get a penalty to notice ambushes due to their hastiness. I imagine this'll be used when they have a specific area they want to get to, or if they're low on supplies/weakened and need to reach a town ASAP. Depending on the scale of the map, some rounding might be required, but I haven't gotten all that figured out yet (this campaign is still in the early development stages in case you couldn't tell, haha). I have that more or less hammered out, my chief question is if I want to give out ways to buff this movement. For instance, allowing Fly to give a pseudo-buff to Sky movement (on top of the normal one it gives) that only applies for the purposes of map travel, and doing the same with Surf for Swim. In the tradition of the games, I might add a bike store somewhere with exorbitantly overpriced bikes, and have Vouchers as a side-quest reward at some point. I also need to figure out how exactly things like mountains, forests, deserts, etc. will effect their movement, but that's the gist of it. EDIT: Didn't say this explicitly, but I have it balanced so that on my map they can travel 1-2 squares a day on foot, depending on the method used. As they get more/better pokemon they should be able to travel faster and gain more mobility, but we'll see if it works out as intended, haha. Edited by TorchicCrossing, Apr 2 2015, 01:23 PM.
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| Doxy | Apr 2 2015, 05:13 PM Post #6 |
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The PTU Guy
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Don't be afraid to use the obvious solutions, yo. I think giving him a few shinies that he can use as the "Base" Unown for some of his Primes is a good idea; be they Type Shifts or even just Unown with access to other moves. Letting his Starter one (but not the others) take Protean is also a cool idea. |
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| DrStraightLord | Apr 2 2015, 05:25 PM Post #7 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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The "obvious" solution doesn't always have to be the boring one. Not every Unown ruin has to be similar - have one carved into a tree with Grass and Bug Types alongside the Unown, or one filled with clockwork that houses Steel Types with them, or one in an ancient arena of combat where Fighting Types gather - this is a good way to make sure the other players aren't off on their own bored while the Rune Master hunts as well, since they'll have something to find in there too. You could even extend the differences to the Unown themselves (making them more likely to have that Type for Hidden Power, giving them a different basic Ability based on the Type, and even making them shifted to that Type if you are comfortable going that far with the themeing). On top of that, giving each one a different sort of challenge to get at the part with the Unowns themselves will make them seem more alive - a Water themed ruin behind a waterfall might require un-flooding the lower levels where the Unown are dormant on the walls, for example. Don't make the puzzles too complicated, granted, unless you plan on having them be part of the main plot, but little things like that are good for keeping the players invested and interested. Finally, good luck in your game, Torch! |
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| TorchicCrossing | Apr 2 2015, 10:54 PM Post #8 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Thanks for the tips, all! Now I'm bummed that the trainer build won't be in my game; I might use some of these ideas anyway, haha. |
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| Estradus | Apr 15 2015, 01:48 AM Post #9 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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I've actually got a very similar character in one of my campaigns, and I actually really like the idea of protean unown... sure, redundant with words of power but it makes things interesting. (actually one of the villains is a hive of glitch-unown, which will be interesting twist). One means of getting around the type weakness was the character accumulated a number of other pokemon that weren't unown (but were unown-like) like bronzong, claydol, solrock, sigilyph... okay, most of them are still psychic, but it does add some versatility. (cryogonal, nosepass, and cofagrigus if you wanted me to stop being sarcastic and provide some non-psychic examples.) |
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| technoRomancer | Apr 15 2015, 08:57 PM Post #10 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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For any other GMs with a committed Rune Master player, a cool idea I saw once was having the player's prime Unown spell words as they added more Unown to the group over time, and giving a Type shift and/or special properties based on the word once it was complete. For example, a prime whose constituent Unown spelled out STONE might be carved directly into a piece of an ancient ruin, becoming Rock type and possible gaining Solid Rock as an ability. |
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