Campaign:Dungeon Fantasy/Progression Items

Templates serve as the underpinning of Dungeon Fantasy. They serve as a guide for new players who would otherwise find the free form structure of putting together a character from a myriad of abilities rather daunting. Beyond that, the enforce specialization if you require characters to only spend character points to gain skills or abilities that are part of their template.

Enforcing specialization makes the characters more distinct. One of the issues I had with what the D20 system became was that dipping into other classes was typically simple and without penalty. This allowed players to mix and match various class abilities to be able to assemble the mix/max abomination of their choice.

To offer up but one brief example, in D&D 3.5 the Paladin class allowed for a character to add his Charisma bonus to all saving throws. That's a great ability, and fits the Paladin well. However, when you have a class like Sorcerer, that is built around the single attribute of Charisma, why not dip into a single level of Paladin to add your massive CHA bonus to all saves? The resulting, "Sorcerer with a pinch of Paladin" can become the standard "build" for making a Charisma based arcane caster.

These selected mix/max paths become their own character classes of a sort. Unfortunately, these mix/max character paths, which are often game breaking, can create a division between casual players and power gamers. Casual players tend to play what's in the book, but power gamers research their character builds extensively and often tend to show up overpower players who just stick to their single class in terms of game effect.

The enforced specialization of Dungeon Fantasy solve this problem. Training Expenses, on P.93 of Exploits, offers a compromise:

• Increasing an attribute or secondary characteristic is free.
• Increasing a trait you have off of your professional template is also free
• Adding on a totally new advantage from your professional template costs $40 x the character point cost of the advantage
• Adding on OR INCREASING a totally new advantage from ANOTHER professional template costs $80 per character point spent

To think of this in D20 terms, we have created a tax for min / maxing. I rather like it. It also lends itself to treasure items. How about an ancient tome that, if studied, allows you to buy the Magery advantage for free? That's a specific item of interest to some players, but not of general interest to others who will want to sell it. This makes treasure less generic and more specified. Adding utility to treasure adds flavor.

Towards that end, I am creating "Progression Items" that I can drop into my existing campaign.