DOTA School Hack: Initial Concept

Okay, so I've been mulling over various ways to structure character classes and certain monsters for my Neo School Hack of Old School Hack.  OSH gives six unique talents per class, with the option of "multiclassing" by taking talents from other classes as you level up.  OSH doesn't provide for improving talents you already have, although there is a talent or two which you could take more than once to stack the effects.  Andrew Shield's Fictive Hack has some great talent improvement ideas.

But I was thinking about the ability (talent) structure in Warcraft III and the later derivative multi-player arena game Death of the Ancients (DOTA).  In Warcraft III each hero had a basic attack which was ranged or melee, three spells or abilities with three levels each, and an ultimate ability which unlocked once you'd bought all the nine ability levels below it.  So what if we adopt that structure of "three of three, plus one ultimate" for OSH?  One of my favorite heroes was the Naga Sea Witch.  She had a regular ranged bow attack, core abilities of forked lightning, frost arrows, and mana shield, plus an ultimate tornado spell.

Lady Vashj by strannytsa (at deviantart.com)

In OSH terms we could build her like this:

HP: 3, plus 1 per level to a maximum of 12 HP
AC: 12, plus 1 every three levels to a maximum of AC 15
Attack: Bow, 1 x 2d10, 1 wound; gain one extra attack at level 6
Attack: Dagger, 1 x 3d10, 1 wound ; gain one extra attack at level 6

Frost Arrow 1/encounter
- Imbue an arrow with magical frost, doing extra damage and slowing the victim; +1 wound of damage and enemy moves at half speed and must pass a Brawn save to make other actions.

Frost Arrow 2/encounter
- Imbue an arrow with magical frost, doing extra damage and slowing the victim; +2 wounds of damage and enemy moves at half speed and must pass a Brawn save at -1 to make other actions.

Frost Arrow 3/encounter
- Imbue an arrow with magical frost, doing extra damage and slowing the victim; +3 wounds of damage and enemy moves at half speed and must pass a Brawn save at -2 to make other actions.

Forked Lightning 1/focus,encounter
- Blast of magical forked lightning strikes three targets in a 60 foot long, 45-degree cone, doing 2 wounds to each; a Daring save dodges 1 wound of damage.

Forked Lightning 2/focus,encounter
- Blast of magical forked lightning strikes three targets in a 60 foot long, 45-degree cone, doing 2 wounds to each; a Daring save dodges 1 wound of damage.

Forked Lightning 3/focus,encounter
- Blast of magical forked lightning strikes three targets in a 60 foot long, 45-degree cone, doing 3 wounds to each; a Daring save dodges 1 wound of damage.

 Mana Shield 1/encounter
 - Radiate mana in a swirling shield which absorbs damage; will absorb two wounds of damage and then dissipate.

Mana Shield 2/encounter
 - Radiate mana in a swirling shield which absorbs damage; will absorb three wounds of damage and then dissipate.

Mana Shield 3/encounter
 - Radiate mana in a swirling shield which absorbs damage; will absorb four wounds of damage and then dissipate.

Tornado/ultimate, focus, rested
- Unleash a magical ocean tornado at a spot up to 90 feet away; raging wind and salt water toss everyone with in a 30 foot radius up 30 feet into the air and brutally buffet them; creatures take 3 wounds per round for two rounds, but a Brawn save each round will reduce the damage by 1 wound; objects in the tornado's radius also take similar damage but get no save; on the third round all creatures and objects in the tornado fall to the ground, suffering a further wound but get a Daring save to land safely.

This structure takes character classes in a definite direction.  Each now has four different talents (three core and one ultimate) instead of six.  So, less variety but more depth per talent plus a very powerful ultimate if you stick with the class.  Multi-classing would be taking the first level of a core talent from another class. This multi-class talent replaces one of your original core talents and so you must have one core talent available in which you have not taken any levels--which also means you cannot multi-class after level seven.  You could limit each PC to just ten levels, resulting in a quick ramp up in abilities (but capping the overall power level) or maybe go up to level 20 with talent buys only allowed at odd levels.


In addition to PCs, this template would work well for monsters--particularly intelligent creatures which are likely to show up as "boss" monsters.  It allows you to easily scale up the creature to the PCs' levels and provides a bit of uncertainty as to what exactly the creature's abilities will be at a given level.