Latest revision as of 09:26, 12 June 2016

This page outlines the rules for mementos for the trainer class.

Mementos

This section will outline, in general terms, how mementos work. Notable sections will be what it means for a creature to be a memento, translating creatures to mementos, memento roles, and rules specific to mementos regarding their function.

Memento Overview

Mementos are essentially very specific creatures. Like characters, mementos have classes; like creatures, they have different creature types and subtypes. However, mementos become divorced from their original stat block: once a creature becomes a memento, it follows its memento progression, and not its natural progression.

Memento Level

Mementos have levels independent of the trainer that controls them; a creature turned into a memento has a number of levels in its role equal to its HD.

Trainers can grow their mementos, giving them levels, to a maximum of the trainer's memeticist level. A memento with more levels than the trainer's memeticist level cannot be controlled by that trainer. A trainer can have any number of mementos in meme crystals, but can only have so many controlled at a time (see the trainer class for more details).

Memento Type

As with all creatures, mementos have creature types. A number of Technics exist that are specific to each type; for instance, an Animal cannot learn a Vermin technic.

In addition, only certain creature types can become mementos. The valid creature types that can become mementos are:

• Aberration
• Animal
• Dragon
• Magical Beast
• Ooze
• Plant
• Vermin

It is important to note that a creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or greater cannot become a memento. Such creatures are too complex to be imprinted into a meme crystal, and thus trainers cannot exert control over them.

Notes (16/01/10): Nevermind this garbage, creature types in d20 are flipping weird and crap anyway, don't sweat it.

Memento Role

Rather than each creature having a unique progression - which, while appropriate, would be entirely too overwhelming to author, and would also preclude new creatures from being tamable and controllable right off the bat - mementos are instead divided into roles, which dictates their progressions.

In addition, unlike classes, mementos cannot change roles once their decision is made: once a memento selects a role, they progress in that role for all of their levels.

Roles are effectively classes, though they carry more information: roles also dictate a memento's AC progression, and a memento's role can modify the effectiveness of some of their Technics.

A memento can have any role; as this is akin to class, even two mementos of the same species may specialize in different areas, leading to different sets of abilities.

As with type, there are a number of Technics that are specific to each role; thus a Sentinel could not learn a Ravager technic, or vice versa (but see below).

Each role has a maximum number of technics the memento can know at any one time. If the memento would learn a new technic that would put its total known over its maximum number, it must immediately forget a technic to learn the new one. Trainers can voluntarily force their mementos to forget moves known at any time.

Some mementos have abilities that modify their maximum technics known, or that alter the progressions of their other statistics.

Memento Affinity

Most mementos have an affinity for a particular energy type; for normal d20 creatures, this would be an energy subtype, but for mementos, this is referred to as the memento's affinity.

Affinity plays an important role in how the memento responds to energy damage, as well as usage of their technics. Technics which have a descriptor that matches one of the memento's affinities are more effective, while effects that are strong against one of their affinities deals more damage or is otherwise more effective against the memento.

Put the table here.

Technics

All of a memento's active abilities - that is, abilities with an activation time, or otherwise defined as a "special attack" - are defined as technics. When a creature that is not a standard memento is converted into a memento, all of its special attacks are converted into technics.

All mementos begin knowing two technics, and can learn automatically learn a new technic at each even level. A memento can only select technics that have a sublibrary of the memento's Role or a descriptor that matches the memento's creature type or one of the memento's energy affinities. A memento cannot learn a technic with an energy descriptor to which any of its energy affinities are weak against, unless the memento also has that energy descriptor (e.g., a memento with the [ice] affinity cannot learn a [fire] technic, unless that memento also has the [fire] affinity).

Skills

Mementos have skills.

At memento creation, choose a number of skills equal to the number on the table above for the memento's role; the memento treats those skills as class skills, and always has a number of ranks in those skills equal to its level.

For each memento species, the specie's entry has a list of ability scores for which the memento receives a bonus, and those to which the memento receives a penalty. These bonuses and penalties apply only to the memento's skills; they do not impact the memento's other stats in any way.

When turning a creature into a memento, select the appropriate number of skills that it has ranks in; those become its class skills as a memento.

Feats

Mementos do not gain feats, unless otherwise noted (e.g., trainers possess the ability to grant feats to mementos).

Design Notes

Okay, so here's a thought on evolution, real quick.

What do evolutions do in the source material? Make your stats better, but slow down move progression.

So to evolve, a memento has to expend it's ability to gain a Technic instead. This automagically slows down move progression.

This obviously only works for mementos that evolve by level... wait, no. It's fine. If a memento does not spend a move gain to evolve, then it automatically loses its next move gain.

Some evolutions automagically come with move gains: for instance, I can see the eevee evolutions all automatically gaining a technic relevant to the new energy type. ...in general, I think it's safe to say that if an evolution would change your elemental affinity, you get to automatically learn a technic of that type (it is only fair).

You still lose out on the next move, tho.

Now the question is... dafuq does evolution do for you? The answer is: stat buffs and what-not. Basic stuff, but still useful.

STAB is represented by the memento being able to put STAB-able moves into belief-space. So a fire memento with a fire technic is just going to get more oomph out of it than a non-fire memento.

Memento Stuff

Okay, so here's some thoughts.

We can translate Pokemon - actual Pokemon - stats into d20. I've come up with what looks like a reasonable conversion table. To use this, take the given Pokemon's base stats and translate the values (ie, like 90 for Attack) into the following modifiers.

   < 21		- 4
 21 -  40	- 2
 41 -  60	+ 0
 61 -  80	+ 2
 81 - 105	+ 4
106 - 130	+ 6
131 - 160	+ 8
  161 +		+10

Okay, so now you have those numbers. Now, for each stat, they get translated like this.

HP 		=>	Constitution
Attack		=>	Strength
Defense		=>	AC
Special Atk	=>	Intelligence
Special Def	=>	Wisdom
Speed		=>	Dexterity
Friendship	=>	Charisma

Friendship is listed in a weird spot, and is also referred to as "Base Happiness", if you're using this (for example). Okay, and since that links to Pikachu, we'll use it real quick to explain how this works.

16/03/27: Defense is weird now because we got rid of AC, but that's okay. For Bravery, use catch rate and invert the above table (so 161+ gets a -4, while <21 gets a +10).

So Pikachu has the following listed base stats (at the bottom of that page):

• HP: 35
• Attack: 55
• Defense: 40
• Sp. Attack: 50
• Sp. Defense: 50
• Speed: 90
• Friendship: 70

Following our conversion table, then, Pikachu has a -2 Con, a -2 to AC, a +4 to Dex, and a +2 to Cha. This seems pretty accurate: Pikachu aren't as solid as other pokemon, and don't have a tough hide or anything, but they are quick little bastards, and are cute and friendly.

This lets us rapidly translate actual Pokemon into friggin... T20 stats. The only issue here is Perception, but there's no real good way to do that since Pokemon doesn't give a crap about that sort of th... or maybe it does.

Just did a test with Shuckle, using Sentinel. Results are very extreme: 26 AC, 6 Ref, 8 Fort, 19 Will, 6 hp. But that doesn't sound unreasonable; a first-level defender will probably have around a 20 AC, but also has built-in DR, way better saves, and way more hp. Shuckle then is not an "omg why wouldn't you do this" option, and since its probably one of the most extreme pokemon (-4 to all stats except Wis, Cha, and AC, at +10, +2, and +10, respectively), that indicates to me that these formulae are probably mostly balanced.

Moving on to solving the Perception problem... unfortunately Mystery Dungeon has no exploration-related stats, so that's a non-starter. So no, all pokemon just have a +0 perception, whatever.