What are Capstone Talents, and How Do I Make Some?

Capstone talents are kind of tricky.  Even I’ve had some trouble wrapping my brain around them, and I came up with the idea. I think there are two main reasons for this.  First, they’ve changed purpose a few times. At first I had characters receive +1 to all ability scores …

Apotheosis in Echelon

Ascension to godhood, apotheosis, is handled like other character development matters — using talents.  The rules for this are inspired by those from Mongoose Press’ Classic Play: Book of Immortals. Talent selection in Echelon is generally pretty freeform.  As far as the rules are concerned, apart from the distinction between ‘upgrading’ and …

First Draft Character Creation

Okay, first draft for character creation.  It’s pretty simple overall: Come up with a character concept; Choose cornerstone talents that suit the concept; Choose common talents that suit the concept; Choose capstone talents that suit the concept; Choose gear (I usually give starting characters gear that matches their talents); Choose …

First Draft Talents: Iron Heroes Mastery Feats

Iron Heroes (originally from Malhavoc Press, now from Fiery Dragon Press) has ‘mastery feats’, groups of related feats that can only be accessed by characters with particular ‘mastery levels’ of a sort suitable for the feats. Classes provide different progression rates in the different masteries. Some might focus on “Power …

First Draft Talents: Combat Talents from FantasyCraft

These talents are derived directly from FantasyCraft feat trees. FantasyCraft makes heavy use of some mechanisms that I have not decided to incorporate in Echelon yet. I will translate as I can, but will not at this time invest a lot of time in them. The talents in this document …

First Draft Talents: Divine Talents from Agents of Faith

Agents of Faith: Crusaders of the Gods from Living Imagination Inc. provides a set of six feats for each domain described in the book. They are made available for characters of any class, but may be taken only with the feat slots gained every third character level. It is possible …

Simplification and Complexity: Actions

Actions in Dungeons & Dragons 3.x and Pathfinder come in a wide range of types.  Not-an-action, Free, Immediate, Swift, Move Equivalent, Standard, Full-Round… I think that covers all the ones that come up.  Some… things done by characters don’t fit the round-based action model, such as spells that take more …

Simplification and Complexity: Character Creation

Character creation is a very important activity, since it establishes what abilities the players’ avatars bring to the table.  However, it can be a fiddly pain sometimes (often, or even usually!), and I am trying to avoid that in Echelon. There are two primary considerations, building a new character and …

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