For those that want some 'brief' intro rambling click the spoiler)
So, despite being of a youngish age I have played D&D for 11 years now. I knew I would love it the moment it was explained When I first learned of D&D I was also shown that there was a Diablo 2... This is important because i had played diablo 1 for a few years before that... Well, I chose to learn numbers, charts, and READ rather than go smash some zombie skulls.
Well, needless to say I am still a huge fan of the concept. My problem is that when I look at everything, its all... Its so very restricting for character abilities, IE Classes. The combat gets dull and unrealistic at times.
So, me and a few friends attempted to try and build our own system. It fell apart because, well honestly, 1/2 of the people in my group are power gaming douche nozzles.
So here are some of the things, why we (read as I) added them into the system.
Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 3:21 pm
(Oops, hit submit on accident... Well... Oops)
Character Creation
So first thing we wanted was a new "class system"
We started with Archetypes.
Characters chose 2 of the following:
Holy, Unholy, Fighter, Arcane, Nature, Psionic, Subterfuge, Thief, and Range
This choice would decide a few things. Skills mostly It would also define the character a bit.
We essentially left it open to interpretation.
What is very important about this system is player-DM trust and communication during the character creation.
TheVulgarUnicorn
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TheVulgarUnicorn
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Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 3:27 pm
Feats
Second we decided that we would break feats into two categories:
Racial: Can only be taken at level one Free: Everything else
Feats encompass everything. Special powers, racial traits, etc. On top of this they were open. Everything came down to the DM's discretion. You would propose a feat, the DM would either shoot you down, tweak it, or give you the A-OK. When leveling up you get 2 feats, you start with 4. You can expand feats to a second 'level', but first you have to meet some requirements. The most solid rule was that you had to have secondary feats that supported the first.
Ex. I took witchcraft as a level 1 feat. At level two I take Ritual Hexing and Herbal remedies as my two feats. Having two feats that are arguably linked to the the generic "witchcraft" feat I am able to take it up to a higher tier. So when I hit level 3 I take Witchcraft tier 2.
What this allowed was for characters to be far more focused, have a consistent progression, and of course far more variation.
If you wanted your character to be the best swordsman that ever lived, relying entirely on her ability to beat her opponents with skill? Absolutely viable. Your character gets to have this constant progression of feeling stronger, without sitting there with a 5th level fighter trolling through 3rd party material for left over feats. Just waiting to hit 7th so you can take improved crit. Or some other silliness.
If your mage wishes to be a fire mage, nothing else. You set everything on fire, Well, good for you. And its far more possible.
This system also allows for a more diverse system of spell casting. Some people want to essentially be a fire-bender from Avatar, some wish to be a wizard casting fireballs. Both are easily worked in with this system. Its flexible.
And yes, I am not aware that it feels a lot like M&M's power system. When we saw that we were all pretty happy that we had a manual to actually look at a very thick list of abilities and tiers and what not.
Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 3:50 pm
Skills
So skills. These are based on a primary stat rather than class specific mumbo jumbo. Depending on the character archetype they would have an array of class skills, that are quite obvious.
Skill points can also be multiplied with feats.
The math for this one tends to change based upon the DM. Usually its something like 5-10 x the modifier and any feats added.
Increasing a skill however is done much like in CoC At the end of an adventure, or upon leveling up (DM discretion) characters would roll to increase skills they have used-- and succeeded in using-- more than once.
The higher the skill the harder the roll is to increase it.
Also, important, we use a mix of d20 and d100 system in this. Its wonky feeling at times, but it also takes the best elements of both in my opinion.
TheVulgarUnicorn
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TheVulgarUnicorn
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Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:03 pm
Combat and equipment changes:
Along with all the other changes we also turned the world a little darker, low magic, and deadly.
First we dropped Hit points, we dropped them hard. Second we increased weapon damage, and gave each type of weapon a special ability, and made damage types more important. Third we gave armor latent damage reduction. Fourth we added a fatigue system (That really needs balancing). Fifth we divided damage reduction between the three types of physical damage. sixth we created a "where did i hit" system. Seventh we added a "combat capability" system (will be explained)
These changes were supposed to make the combat less dull, feel more interactive, and rewarding.
So lets start from the beginning.
The hit point drop is important, because we HATE that newer editions are piling up the hitpoints. We hate the concept of hit die to begin with, but they are really needed for this sort of system.
So, hit die are lower and based upon the important attributes for your character to continue fighting: Con and Will. Oh right, we added a 7th stat Will... because wisdom and will are two different ******** things people!
Anyway, its the average of those two + your level + whatever feats you have to augment this. Basically this leads to people that have around 12 hp at level one pretty easily. However we made most of the weapons do no less than a D8.
Also your hitpoints are spread out across your body, you can die from 5 hp of dmg if your hit in the head but wont die no matter how much dmg your arm takes-- though you will lose it.
10% for head 30 % for torso 15% for each arm 15% for each leg
What this means is that say you have 10 hp. A head injury of any kind and your unconscious 3* said body parts hp into the negative and said body part is dead. Destroyed. Removed. 4 dmg to your head and your dead. Just like that. Torso has 3 hp, so if it takes 3 dmg unconscious. 12 dmg and your dead,.
Now for where you are struck, or strike, is based upon this chart
5% head, 35% torso, 30% arms, 30% legs. Divided so that you know which arm is struck. Ontop of this there is CC and dodge. NPC's that are not bosses or such do not get either CC or dodge to streamline things. Now CC is your ability to manipulate and aim where you land your blows. This starts off small or even non existent. Increasing it, gaining it, and improving it all require feats. Dodge is the same concept only the defensive version. These two share a pool of sorts, Feats will allow for a character to focus into one more then the other However using up all your points on CC will leave you vulnerable to an enemy being able to hit you without any control over it. There is also a soft-cap mechanism players can use to keep a blow from being moved, but that's not super important right now
So, ontop of all this changed deadliness crit's are still the same but there is a secondary thing you can do. You can bypass half the enemies armors DR To do this you aim in to hit the cusp between the body parts (read pieces of armor). Ill show an example of this later when I do a full round combat example.
Armor changes
Armor has changed. As i said it gives damage reduction not AC. its durability is now something you have to keep track of, maintain, and be wary of rust and other shitty things. So, light, med, and heavy are three broad catagories that armor fits under. This is good, we like this. And its very very important for your characters fatigue system. But we will get to that later.
For now, lets look at how you can mix and match. Lets say you wish to play a monk, that seems really hard with this system. I understand. But actually it can be a lot funner. With specialized martial arts feats, dodge boosting feats, and the new armor system you can be a bad a**.
Now, a monk needs to be light on his feat. Ok, thats true. But now he will lose an arm when he takes damage, thats no good. So, as long as your monk's armor is averaged out to be light then its still A-OK. How does this work? Well you can equip individual body parts with different pieces of equipment. So, lets say you want your forearms to beable to block attacks. You want to have thick rings of steel coiled around like in the bad a** kungfu movies. That works great. You can have no armor on your chest and head. Have some light chain mail on your legs, and thick heavy rings on your arms.
With a high enough Str, a feat, and some talking to your DM Now you can use a high dodge to move weapon attacks away from your vitals to the high DR protection on your forearms.
Example combat round:
Bob is a fighter wearing chainmail on his chest, arms, and head. Upon his legs he has thick plate mail. He wields a kite shield and a scimitar.
His opponents are Joe and his wanda. Wanda is barefoot, wearing robes everywhere but upon her arms. Her arms are covered in thick metal plating ending in spiked gauntlets. Joe is clad in leather armor and is a few paces behind Wanda readying a short but powerful bow.
Bob charges, so that the archer is less effective. Once in range he takes a swing at the woman (rolls a 90). Seeing his blow is going to scape across the girls arm he aims a little higher (Adds 6 points of his CC to move the roll to a 96, attempting to remove the womans head. Because of feats this only uses 3 of his 5 points this round, leaving him with 2 points to throw off his opponents attack should she get one))
Wanda ducks the blow, and uses the enemies clumsy approach to strike back. (Wanda moved the blow up 5 points to 101. This cost her 3 of her 5 points, just as bob was focused into CC she was focused into her dodge. Moving the die to 101 means it went OVER her head. Wanda also strikes back, her attack of oppertunity). Wanda strikes, but she simply hits the shield in her way. (A large shield like the kite shield gives the wearer a 40% chance to block. Dodge and CC can be used to bypass or use the shield just as usual). The shield has a DR of 8/12/15 (bashing/piercing/slashing). Wanda's attack is a mix of piercing and bashing, the damge is not nearly enough to cause Bob any trouble, but it does leave 4 distinct indents where the spikes landed.
As the two trade blows Joe fires off a shot. Its a lucky shot missing his ally (Witha 30% chance to his his ally, dropped down from 50% because of a feat, he rolled a 60.), barely skidding pass the kite shield (Joe rolled a 43, bob doesn't use his 2 remaining points to dodge because it would be futile). The shot slams into poor bobs chest, (A roll of 75. Joe soft caps this shot with all 5 of his points, because of extensive feats into his CC this is 15 CC. Soft capping gave it a bonus 7.5 to burn through with dodge before it could be moved from that 75 mark).
Joe's arrow tears through the poor warriars chain main, dropping the man instantly. (Joe rolled a 2d6 + dex, the final number came up as 10. Bobs chainmail gave protection of 4/5/12. Being poor protection against a bashing weapon or piercing weapon but exceptional against slashing. The 10 damage is reduced by 5, but Bob only had a total of 12 hp. this means his chest has a health pool of 4. At -1 hp for his chest his lung is punctured and he is rendered unable to continue fighting.)
Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 6:46 pm
Overview
In the end the concept for these rules is to allow us to set up games that aren't as predictable. To allow people to make mutants in a fantasy setting. To make combat intense, realistic, quick, and pull players in more.
Issues
This system ends up with a lot of rolling per turn. It also takes time to get the balance of the feats for each setting. Its not meant for players who can't deal with 1-2 of the party members dying. Its also not super great for players that cant think of better ways to take care of problems then just bum rushing into combat.
