u/Bill_Nihilist

I was listening to a recent episode of Push the Roll, where after a series of exceptionally bad dice rolls, the plucky post-apocalyptic racoon junkyard society was faced with an outbreak of fire. One player asked if the raccoons had any sort of fire sprinkler system. The story had gone so far from expectations that even in this highly improvisational gameplay, the GM hesitated for just a moment and that's when I had an idea.

I think in moments of indecision, the setting or theme or tone of a story could be called on to suggest a way forward. To return to the example, we had a complex story underway with multiple themes present. There was the overarching dread of the Call of Cthulhu system they were playing, there was the whimsy of the raccoon story their were telling, and there was the gritty post-apocalyptic setting (to name just a few). Imagine a Tone Table that the players had filled out at the onset of play, 1-40 = Dread, 41-60 = Whimsy, 61-80 = Gritty, etc. In moments of uncertainty, a simple die roll can show the story which way to go. Rather than a positive/negative valence, these results would provide a qualitative flavor.

Like PtR, my game strives to be improvisational. I really try to emphasize Contribute But Not Control, meaning no one can expect to have control over where the story is going. Ideally, my game is played GMless, so that also contributes to the usefulness of these Tone Tables.

I assume something like this already exists in some system that I've either not played or forgotten about. Where can I find more like this?

I came across an interesting combination of class and ancestry features that I think would grant reliable 15' reach at level 1. The build relies on two things:

1. Tentacular Limbs from the Aberrant Sorcerer bloodline. This is a one action focus spell that says: > Your arms turn into long, pliable tentacles, increasing your reach when you're delivering touch range spells and making unarmed Strikes with your arms (such as fist and claw Strikes) to 10 feet

(emphasis mine)

2. Morphic Strike from the Yaoguai ancetsry / Born of Vegetation heritage, which gives an unarmed attack with the Reach property. The Reach property states:

>This weapon can be used to attack enemies up to 10 feet away instead of only adjacent enemies. For creatures with reach, the weapon increases their reach by 5 feet.

(emphasis mine)

The emphasized segments lead me to think that TL would achieve granting the creature reach, hence the Reach trait on MS would trigger the second sentence, increasing the reach by 5 feet. This is in contrast to feats like the Leshy's Grasping Reach which grant 10' reach to the weapon. I'm curious whether others would read things similarly.

I know there are other ways of getting here, like Well-Armed, or Enlarge, but this approach comes online as early as level 1 (for a sorcerer) or level 4 for anyone with +2 CHA willing to archetype into sorcerer.

I just have to figure out what it means to be an aberrant plant...