InkPen Productions

As promised, here's the first of many Inside Look articles about my design and development process for the OLYMPVS Campaing Setting. First up, we're looking at the mechanics I'm working on for demigods.

Demigods are the mortal offspring that result from the union of a god and a mortal. The gods and goddesses of Olympus frequently had affairs with mortals, and the resulting children usually became great heroes of legend. Some of the more well-known demigods included Heracles and Perseus, both sons of Zeus. (I basically just told you what you already know.)

Integrating demigods into the rules of D&D has proved challenging. I didn't want the powers of a demigod to be just a "gimme," nor did I want being a demigod to require excessive expenditure of options. I toyed around with several approaches before finding the one that fit.

First, and explanation. My design balance philosophy has two main rules:

1. Every option you choose for your character comes at the expense of having not chosen something else.
In other words, the price of playing an elf and gaining that race's benefits is that you don't have access to the benefits of any other race.
2. Every option available to the player should be so appealing that they want to select it, but can't select them all.
If every paragon path or class feature in the book is so cool that you have a hard time choosing which one to do, then the options have been designed well.

So I wanted the demigod to be an option that you had to choose at the expense of not choosing some other option. The first rule I thought of emulating was the new "theme" mechanic from Dark Sun. However, I felt that it came in conflict with the essential purpose of themes. Why shouldn't a demigod also be able to be a Spartan Protector or a Delphic Prophet? So that was out.

Next, I looked at the spellscar rules from Forgotten Realms. These mechanics were a better fit, but spellscar power functions like multiclassing, and requires a significant expenditure of feats for the PC to harness the full power of his or her spellscar.

Finally, I arrived at working out the demigod as a race. Since the traditional D&D core races don't fit into the setting (no dragons = no dragonborn; no feywild = no eladrin; etc.), humans are the race that most players will be using (I've worked out racial stats for centaurs and satyrs, but that's another article).

Demigods gain a +2 bonus to any two ability scores and are considered human for the purpose selecting feats, paragon paths, an what have you. They have the immortal origin type due to their divine parentage. They gain an encounter power based on who their parent-god is, and they have access to a list of additional attack and utility powers they can select in place of their class powers. My favorite feature that I've developed for the demigod are their "Deific Advantages." Every demigod character can choose two Deific Advantages that reflect their Olympian blood. These Advantages include bonuses to skills and saving throws, energy resistance, increased speed, and many more.

As of this writing, I've developed almost 20 different Deific Advantages, and allowing the player to choose any two he or she wants enables them to customize their demigod in countless ways. Many Advantages are inspired by the features of other core races, so you can mix and match your favorites. You can build your demigod to emulate the features of a dragonborn, or you can combine a tiefling-like fire resistance with an eladrin-inspired saving throw bonus against Charm effects. The possibilities are nearly endless!

That's it for this Inside Look. Next time, I'll likely discuss the other races I've built: the centaur and the satyr.