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I noticed the link up top to a retroclone of The Fantasy Trip and thought it might be cool to mention one of the non-D&D style games in the thread. For those who don't know about it, this game originally started out as a board game called Melee where the object was to create a warrior with a simple 2 stat spread (STR & DEX) and then have him fight to the death in a hex-grid arena against your friends warrior. Strength was your HP and determined what kind of weapon you used & Dexterity determined your accuracy with weapon attacks. It was a simple little game, and kind of a proto-fighting game in a way, but then the company later released Wizard, which introduced the Intelligence (IQ) stat that determined the level of spell you could learn and how well you cast them. Your spells ran on your Strength/HP instead of any kind of spells-per-day or mana point system, so if you made your wizard too frail he'd cast himself to death trying to kill his opponent. Eventually the game expanded to beyond an arena-combat game with the release of Into the Labyrinth, which introduced skills and adventuring rules. The company that made the game eventually folded, but the games designer Steve Jackson later used a lot of the framework from this game to create GURPS. The rules for Legends of the Ancient World, which is the name of the clone in the OP are incredibly simple and fit on just a few pages and its a pretty good game for introducing friends to rpg's since it doesn't require nearly as much set up or explanation to run as even the most bare bones D&D game.
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Aug 15, 2012 03:57
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VacuumJockey posted:Yeah, Fantasy Trip was a cool little RPG. It works pretty well with Heroscape too... Huh, thats actually pretty cool. I'd imagine it would get expensive playing like that though since Heroscape is out of print.
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Aug 15, 2012 20:30
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VacuumJockey posted:Yes - but luckily I still have oodles of the stuff laying around! Besides, it's not that pricey. Huh, that is pretty drat cool! I should see about getting some off ebay and maybe doing some of that 3d TFT with my group, it would be an interesting change of pace.
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Aug 15, 2012 23:54
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DalaranJ posted:Okay. I have a few questions and I think this is the place for them. I kind of like roll-under attribute myself since it means that a Strong character will almost always succeed at a task that requires great Strength while a weak character is less likely to do so (as opposed to the almost insignificant bump that attribute modifiers give). If you want something to be really difficult you say they have to roll under 1/2 attribute or impose a flat penalty of some sort to the roll (-5 or what have you). Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Dec 22, 2012 |
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Dec 22, 2012 22:50
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Silhouette posted:Encounter Critical is a joke game, it's not meant to actually be played. Use Mutant Future instead. Seconding this. Mutant Future is completely badass and can be really fun for a quick one-shot or a long term game.
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Feb 5, 2013 19:30
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Halloween Jack posted:I have too much on my plate at the moment, but if I did a sword-and-planet mashup of Labyrinth Lord (B/X Basic) and Mutant Future (Gamma World) would that have any appeal? Jack Vance died, and I've decided to read all his major works. I'd say go for it, but I'm a big goddamn nerd who loves that particular genre and also really likes Mutant Future so I might be a biased audience.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:28
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If I wanted advice on hacking up an existing Retroclone (in this case Basic Fantasy RPG) as well as information about older editions of the game which might be useful sources for interesting rules, would this be the place to post?
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Dec 21, 2014 16:35
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Gasperkun posted:I believe you are in the right place. Or at least the one most likely to get you useful answers. Alright then - forgive me if the post is long, I've just been thinking on things a lot and scouring the internet for interesting rules and wondered how these would work out together. I can come back later and edit it out if its redundant. Class Changes Thief : I wanted to ditch the Thief entirely since their percentile based abilities have almost no chance of working at low level and they almost never fail at high level. It seems to me that just having a guy whose party role is "can roll to pick lock" can be gotten around by just having the rest of the party either find the key, break down the door or attempt to pick the lock themselves without having to be a specific class that is solely for that kind of thing. Thief type skills would just be handled as the standard Ability checks for characters to attempt, without anything else in the way of a more complex skill system. Fighter: I wanted to run something with really simple rules, but the Fighter in this particular version of the game has been oversimplified to the point of extreme weakness - he's limited to single attacks just like every other character and aside from having a higher attack bonus, good saves and hp he's pretty unremarkable. I'd read that in an older edition of the game there was the "chop till you drop" rule where Fighter's could continue attacking if they successfully killed an enemy in a single attack (like Cleave but without the whole pain in the rear end process of going through the feat system). It would give the Fighter some much needed OOMPH and let them chew threw low level mooks nicely. I thought that still might not be enough though - I'm trying to decide if also giving Fighters a flat damage bonus every few levels + extra attacks every few levels would be good (and maybe a defense/AC bonus so you can have lightly armored nimble fighters who are competitive with the traditional full-plate battle tank?) What else could be added in to improve them (or at least bring them up to the level of the non-fighter classes), without over-complicating the game? I've looked into the Weapon Mastery rules, and while they have a lot of fun stuff in them they make your guy extremely specialized in one or two particular things and the rules as a whole don't really jive with how I want to handle weapon damage. Combat Changes Weapon Damage: I wanted to do away with damage based on weapon type, but didn't want to just give all characters a flat 1d6 damage. I was thinking that it could be class based - Mage does 1d4 (one handed) and 1d6 (two handed), Cleric gets 1d6 (one handed) and 2d4 (two handed) & Fighters get 1d8 (one handed) & 2d6 (two handed). I'm not sure if those numbers might be a bit too much on the two handed weapon side, they just kind of felt right. Two Weapon Fighting: Rather than having two weapon fighting result in two attacks that each have poor chances to hit I thought it would be better to just roll it as a normal attack but on a hit you roll two sets of 1 hand weapon dice and use the higher result - so you don't lose chance to hit but still slightly increase your damage output. A player could also choose to fight defensively and just treat the off-hand weapon as +1 AC against melee attacks (but not against missile weapons). Shields: Players equipped with a shield can attempt to use it to block one incoming Missile or Melee attack a round by rolling a save. If they fail they just get hit, which would have happened anyway so its not imposing anything extra bad on the player, just making shields a bit more useful than "+1 AC". Dodge: If a player is attacked before they have a chance to act they can roll a save to try and Dodge the attack, but if they do so they give up their action for the turn and you only get 1 Dodge attempt a round. I figured this would help give low-hp characters a little more survivability if they get into the thick of it. Sneak Attacks and Helpless Targets: Since the Thief is gone I also wanted to give anyone the chance to Backstab/Sneak Attack since getting stabbed in the kidneys while unaware is probably pretty bad no matter who is doing it to you. I was even thinking it might be cool to steal that old Assassin ability and force the target to Save vs Death on when you get a sneak attack on them and they take the regular double damage if they pass the check. -- None of these ideas are really that groundbreaking and I've seen most of them done before, I was just wondering if there were any suggestions for improvements or additions that could be used or sources I could look up for further inspiration? Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Dec 21, 2014 |
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Dec 21, 2014 19:32
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OtspIII posted:I like pretty much all of these, and actually do similar things to a bunch of them. Dropping thieves is a good choice, and I really like the simplifying weapon damage. The fighter changes are actually almost exactly how ACKS does fighters, which works really well. Hmm, maybe I should stick Fighters with 1d10 for 2-handers and give Clerics 1d8 for 2 handers then? The extra damage might be a bit too much at low levels after all. How do you think I should work out extra attack progressions for Fighters? I want all attacks to use the same flat bonus if possible - I didn't like the way 3.5 handled iterative attacks at all. I was also thinking a bit on the role of Cleric - they occupy such a strange niche too since they have that jack-of-all-trades thing with their mid level HP/Attack Bonus as well as their spellcasting ability. While Fighter and Magic User are really generic and can be re-fluffed to fit pretty much anything, Clerics seem oddly restrictive in their whole priest role since it ties them to a particular profession and assumptions about the game world. I do want to keep Clerics (or a Cleric-like role) in the game as well, but I'm wondering how they could be re-fluffed and their mechanics re-tweaked to give them the same amount of versatility that the other classes enjoy.
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Dec 21, 2014 20:49
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OtspIII posted:ACKS just gives a flat +1 damage per level, I think. Honestly, with how low HP is in earlier D&Ds that's plenty. The game I'm using as a base to bolt all this stuff onto (Basic Fantasy RPG) gives Fighters +1 to hit every Odd level or so and maxes out at +10, so maybe I can give them +1 to damage every Even level, that way the numbers don't get too big for the low HP & the player still gets an increase of some sort every level? The Fighter should have some pretty big flat bonuses when all is said and done (Weapon Damage + STR mod + Level based damage bonus), and combine that with the Cleave thing mentioned earlier, it should allow them to cut a swathe through quite a few enemies without keeping it restricted to just 1HD creatures. Gasperkun posted:This article might have an idea for you. It basically uses Turning as a method to emulate some general magical effects. Having clerics stay on as a support role, but using different mechanics from the magic user sounds good. That article with the Turning-as-Spellcasting seems pretty interesting, and maybe combining it with some Bardic music type effects could be good. They would still be able to serve as backup fighters and have utility spells and abilities to help the party, but it wouldn't be as OP as full casting + heavy armor & since they wouldn't be using traditional "spell slots" they wouldn't have to worry about getting turned purely into healbots to keep the party afloat. Fluff wise I'm not really sure what exactly to call this kind of character - they seem like they'd be someone who has picked up a little bit of everything along the way. Moriatti posted:Just treat their divine spells like the wizard's arcane, and explain the focus/restricted list as a function of their martial training? I wanted to do it in one of those hokey old-school 'Weird Fantasy' settings, with the usual mishmash of magic and the buried remains of technologically advanced civilizations and the like. Actually, if I just fluff the "clerics" abilities to be willpower based psionic type effects instead of weird other-planar energy arcane effects it would go along with the science-fantasy theme, so thanks for the suggestion! Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 21, 2014 |
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Dec 21, 2014 23:20
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Moriatti posted:Oh, I love that setting! Exactly - functionally there's no difference between draining a ray guns battery and running out of wand charges, a ring that summons a cloud of AI controlled nanites is basically the same thing as having a limited sort of genie at your command (provided you know at least a few words of the ancient language needed to command it) & it lets you mix and match bits of odd futuristic technology (or more durable versions of current tech) in with the usual monster loot and actual magical stuff. Plus it just feels right to use Vancian casting in an actual Dying Earth type of setting. I'm still trying to figure out how to do the 'cleric' exactly. They would still be the middle of the road option in terms of HP/Attack Bonus/Weapon Damage, but I think if I give them some sort of limited magical/psionic effects geared towards healing and buffing it would be a decent substitute. The Turning as Spellcasting article was really vague in terms of actual solid mechanics - but I am thinking that the gist would be that these characters would be able to roll checks to manifest certain effects (heal an injured party member, an aura that gives bonuses in combat, magical light, compulsion, etc.). Though if their effects are too weak and limited they would probably be better off either playing a Fighter or Magic User and I could just fold the Clerics utility & healing spells into the general MU list? I'm not sure if players would find that too limiting though since that would leave just 2 viable classes on the table.
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Dec 22, 2014 01:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:These are all good ideas. I don't think I've ever run across the idea of doing combat maneuvers as ability checks before, but I really like it! It would probably be good to list out a few of the most basic ones (Trip, Disarm, Shove) and outline what they do & then just let the DM work out the little corner cases if the player comes up with something really fun. That way the Fighter can cleave through goblins without a care, but if you are dueling an actually tough opponent you can try to neutralize him with a tactic that isn't necessarily "stand here and beat each other till one of us dies". Throwing in things like bolas or nets to try and trip or entangle guys from a distance could be cool too, as well as the usual jars of oil and alchemical potions - it might make the fighter a bit too equipment based, but so is Batman and he's a pretty popular fellow. (on that note I would also say that every truly intelligent character should probably carry some pocket sand just in case they need a one-time "get out of an rear end beating" card - that gnoll can't hit what he can't see) Grappling is always kind of a hassle, but it would be worth keeping in too. There's probably an easier way to do it than 3.5, so I'll try and find a good one. EDIT "" posted:3. Scarlet Heroes does weapon damage almost exactly the same way: you can use any weapon you want, but the actual damage dice you use is still capped by your class. Keeps things simple. It just occurred to me that if weapon damage is based on class rather than weapon type, is there any reason why Magic Users should be restricted to the standard Dagger/Staff/Dart setup? A first level mage could have a bow & plink away at enemies for 1d4 damage, contributing something to the fight after having expended his single spell - or he could have a sword for flavor (which would still do 1d4 damage because he barely knows how to use the drat thing). Letting the mage have a bow wouldn't even really steal the Fighters thunder since he does 1d8 damage with it & at higher levels is able to mow down enemies with a stream of arrows while the mage would still be restricted to his 1 shot per round. They'd still be near-useless in actual close-in combat and would want to avoid it at all costs, but would have more to do in any given encounter than than a standard magic user who has expended their spell slots. Heck, since Sneak Attack is a standard combat maneuver that anyone can attempt now that the Thief is gone, a Magic User could even try to slit some throats if they were feeling particularly bold enough and thought that they could get away with it. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 01:57
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I have just one last post to make of questions and ideas here and then I'll try to stop cluttering up this thread with my nonsense: Magic User: This class is kind of a tricky one to deal with since they are always just outside of the curve. At first level they are basically helpless (outside of a single encounter-ending use of Sleep) & at higher levels they are near unstoppable engines of death, so figuring out exactly what to do with them is giving me a bit of a hard time. For lower level improvements I think that allowing them to wear non-metal armor like a druid would make them at least somewhat more survivable at the time when attacks by Kobolds are an actual challenge, and allowing them to use any weapon (including a bow) doesn't seem too unfair to the Fighter since combat damage is class based and not weapon based. A first level wizard plinking away at enemies with a bow for 1d4 damage would allow them to actually contribute after their one spell slot gets spent but wouldn't overshadow the Fighters bigger damage and bonus Cleave attacks. Giving them simple at will Cantrips also seems like a good way to add some more magical flavor to the class that won't really come up in combat, but could still allow for fun and creative uses of character power. At higher levels the Magic User will probably drop the bow forever since they have access to many more options for what to do during combat. Aside from just going through the spell list and axing all the completely broken (and completely useless) spells, is there any way to bring high level MU's to a point where they don't completely dominate the Mid-to-End game scene? Spell-points+Spontaneous Casting seem like they would give more flexibility and also make it so that fewer high-level spells would be cast in one day, but I'm not sure if they would be more fiddly to track than standard Vancian spell slots. Another solution I've seen suggested is to make it so that the total number of spells that the caster knows of any given level is equal to the number of slots they have available in that level (so a 3rd level MU would know two 1st level spells and a single 2nd level spell). Empire of the Petal Throne apparently took that idea a step further and made it so that the MU couldn't memorize multiple copies of the same spell - you could cast every spell you knew once per day, but the number of spells you knew was limited by the available slots granted by your level. It seems odd, but kind of flavorful - though at the same time I wonder if it might be too restrictive? Are there any particular systems or strategies that have been tried that work better? Critical Hits: Thinking about combat maneuvers made me think that it would be fun to add something like that into the Critical Hit system. Normally the player has the option to attack as normal and deal damage, or do an ability check, like gradneko suggested, to try some sort of maneuver like disarming or grappling with the enemy. I thought it would be cool to add something like that onto a Critical Hit roll - on a natural 20 you choose whether you want to deal Double damage OR to deal regular attack damage AND also perform a maneuver of your choice. If your roll to confirm the crit is also a natural 20 then you deal double damage and get the maneuver as a freebie. Critical Hit maneuvers can even go a bit beyond the usual, such as blinding a dragon in one eye or maybe lopping off a limb or something similarly gruesome/ridiculous. I don't think its something that would come up too often (well, around 5% of the time I guess), but I think it could make rolling a crit a bit more interesting than it normally is.
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Dec 23, 2014 05:08
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OtspIII posted:I am 100% in favor of making mages only able to memorize one copy of each spell. A lot of spell levels have obvious best choices (Sleep at level 1, for example), so I have a really hard time justifying not taking multiple copies of it if I have the option, even though that's not nearly as fun as spending the session intent on finding ways to save everyone's life with Ventriloquism. If you're worried that's too restrictive letting them cast any spell they know frees things up a bit, too. (So, like, a second level MU can cast two spells, and doesn't have to memorize them before hand, but they can't be the same thing.) Yeah, the more I think about it the more I really like the 'only memorize one copy of a spell' rule - it gives the MU's spell-list more of a workout and would probably encourage a little more flexibility beyond just using multiple charges of your "go-to" spell for that level. I'm sort of on the fence about the flat total number of spells idea though - in theory it sounds really good (and a lot more genuinely "Vancian" than the standard D&D system), but I can see it having some serious balance issues. Having the ability to cast 10 total spells at max level isn't nearly as many total spells as the MU could cast normally, but that could also mean that they would be able to fire off 10 spells of the highest level they could cast where normally they might only get 4 slots in that area. I really like the idea of how much it would simplify the book-keeping for the MU player though since they wouldn't have to track lots of little discrete slots for spell levels, and when combined with the 'single copy' rule it could be really good. Would probably need to be tested though to find a good balance for it. OtspIII posted:Crits can be a dangerous topic. HP is so low that giving double damage on a crit really ups the odds of players suddenly exploding unexpectedly, even against trivial foes. I usually just roll damage twice and pick the higher (unless I pick a different crit effect--more on that in a second)--it's enough of a boost that it still generates that 'oh poo poo, this is going to hurt' feeling without feeling too unfairly unavoidable. Yeah, the crit stuff was kind of an afterthought. I liked the idea of there being a simple system in place to allow for interesting non-damaging effects (hence the ability checks for combat maneuvers) and thought that tacking them on as an extra bonus to crits would be a way to make rolling a crit seem more special than just "double damage". Though as you said, player survivability is an issue at low levels and no one likes the idea of being one-shotted by a Kobold about 5% of the time. gradenko_2000 posted:Changing Vancian magic is trickier. I don't like it either, but muck around with it too much and you're basically playing armchair designer and/or are better off playing a different system entirely. That's one of my worries too because I think a lot of the game math is built around the assumption of Vancian casting as the standard. It's kind of frustrating and overly fiddly, but I worry that just changing too much would end up wrecking the game completely. gradenko_2000 posted:You could also do something like attack rolls are always used for everything; damage OR effect if you just make the needed roll; damage AND effect if you exceed the needed roll by 4 or better. It might be slower to process since there's more math involved as far as getting the margin of success, but the advantage is that you won't have players with 18 in their main attribute inflicting effects left and right (although the "don't use the same effect twice" rule is supposed to already curb that, and it depends on the tone and narrative of your game). Hmm, I hadn't considered the "18 Stat character dominates the encounter" problem. I guess folding it into the standard attack system wouldn't be a bad idea. If your success is dependent on attack bonus it means that Fighters would be better at it, but if it was based solely on ability then a STR 18 mage could go around suplexing orcs with impunity which might cut a bit too far into the Fighters wheelhouse. gradenko_2000 posted:Finally, you can also do something like "If you crit an attack roll, you also get to inflict an effect. If you crit an ability check (a 1 on a roll-under d20), you also get to inflict damage.", but remember that crits only really happen 5% of the time so I don't know if it's worth adding on a bunch more edge cases. This seems like an idea solution - it's straightforward and elegant. -- Forgive me for sperging out a big on this next part - its kind of dumb, but I thought it was funny. I was crunching the math on some of the Fighter ideas I'd mentioned earlier (Cleave ability + Bonus Damage based on level) and came up with some pretty interesting results: A 20th level Fighter making an attack roll does damage of either 1d8 or 1d10 (depending on their weapon), plus their Fighter damage bonus of +10. They may also be able to make up to 19 bonus cleave attacks in total for the round if they continue to slay their targets in one hit apiece. The potential total Damage per attack depending on STR bonus and Weapon Enhancement is between 11-24 for one handed weapons and 11-26 for two handed weapons - which means that on average a Max level Fighter is able to kill a 4-5HD creature in a single swing. I checked the MM and the 1st 4HD creature I came across was Bear, Black. I'm sort of digging the idea that a max level Fighter is so badass that he could wade into a horde of angry bears and come out the winner - in 10 seconds. EDIT I sort of wonder if I've gone too far with the damage bonuses though? I'm unfamiliar with a lot of older systems except for what I've read here and there, but I don't think that bonus damage was awarded too often (and probably not to the level of +10 points at level 20) - will setting things up like this gently caress the math up too much? I also know that in earlier versions of the game the 'Cleave' attacks were limited to enemies of 1HD or less, but to me that just seemed like a really weird idea - letting a Fighter plow through a wave of goblins but only being able to attack a single Hobgoblin because he had +1 HP seemed nonsensical. I also got to thinking about the whole 'up to 19 potential bonus attacks' thing and thought that it sounds good in theory but waiting out for the result of up to 40 consecutive die rolls for a single players turn sounds tedious as hell. Maybe it would work out better if the player made a single attack roll and if his damage was enough to kill the target he would use the same attack roll result against the next target and roll damage automatically until he either ran out of bonus attacks, available targets or didn't roll damage high enough to kill the opponent? That might be a bit too overpowered though since it would discount the chance of one of the attacks missing - is there a better solution that I'm not seeing? Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 02:12
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FRINGE posted:(Secretly) Make players (mostly) immune to crits until level 3 or 5 or so. You can pretend its a "crit" when they take max damage from the orc spear. Normally I will fudge things all the time to keep a session running, but lately I thought it would be interesting to try and do things strictly by the books and just let the dice fall where they lie - make it more of a game. Of course, my desire to do so is also why I'm trying to find all these alternate rules and patches to apply to the base game in the first place - if I'm going to play exactly by the rules then I want the rules to be fun to play with. I think if all the players of the game are aware for what sort of game they are going to be in for and everyone agrees that this style is something that they'd want to try that there isn't anything wrong with playing this way.
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Dec 24, 2014 05:30
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FRINGE posted:Theres always crit = take another swing. Crit's as a a PC / named NPC only thing sounds like a good idea - though the idea of having posters around a town warning about the sheer number of unsuspecting people killed every year by vicious stray cats does have a certain morbid appeal to it too.
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Dec 24, 2014 06:08
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CountingWizard posted:Empire of the petal throne has a much better system where character level determines what HD you get multiple attacks against. Do you remember how it worked? I've heard some good things about that game but I'm not sure it was even in print when I was old enough to read, so I haven't had a chance to check out the rules for it. EDIT I really want to beef up the Fighter and make them more active/viable in mid-late game play (without being wholly dependent on equipment for effectiveness), but I like using simple mechanics whenever possible to do so. Maybe making your total number of attacks per round via Cleave linked to your Attack bonus rather than character level would be a decent solution? You could still potentially kill a bear in one swing, but no more than 10 bears in a round (the game I'm working with has a max +10 to-hit)? EDIT EDIT Someone had mentioned that Adventurer, Conqueror, King handled fighters pretty much the same way I had first posted about and in a little research I found this: http://www.autarch.co/blog/heroic-combat-adventurer-conqueror-king -where the creator basically outlines his thoughts on improving the fighter class which turned out to be nearly identical. The only major difference is that his Fighters max out at +5 to class based damage instead of +10, so while they could easily cut down a swathe of 2HD (or even 3HD guys) on a good swing they wouldn't be able to singlehandedly cleave their way through a batallion of Ogres or several circuses worth of bear. It does still leave the "rolling up to 20 attacks" problem though as a potential annoyance and could bring the game to a halt once you get past 5th or 6th level when the Fighters turn starts to take up to 8 or 9 minutes. AlphaDog posted:Speaking here from the perspective of BECMI's Basic set: Do it strictly by the books, but first generate a big (like ~20) pile of spare characters on premade sheets. Place those sheets face down on the table. If a PC dies, they take the next sheet in the pile (or take the top 2 and choose one and place the other back on the bottom), and arrive on scene in 1d4 rounds (ie, probably during the current fight, if there's a current fight). A lighthearted death-heavy game sounds interesting - sort of like running the dungeon as a murder-gameshow where the players work together to see who will win Fabulous Prizes (and also hopefully live long enough to spend/use them). AlphaDog posted:I'd fix this problem by not calling for initiative or attack rolls when a cat scratches someone or in any other situation where it would be silly or uninteresting to do a combat. This is also a great solution - even if you don't want to play a "heroic" style game there's really no point in getting locked into combat with housepets. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 16:38
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CountingWizard posted:Breakdown of the Empire of Petal Throne protocleave: here That's kind of a cool idea - though I really don't like charts all in all. Having to stop and consult how many dice the Fighter gets to throw per attack sounds like sort of a hassle, and if the group encounters a group of mixed HD enemies then you could get some really weird game behavior. CountingWizard posted:As you can probably tell I'm of a more grognard bent. I believe in simple game rules and mechanics. I don't hedge players in with mechanical abilities, because I think it can actually restrict creativity and choice among more experienced players. My games emphasize player skill rather than character skill. But just because I don't have special abilities hard coded to each class doesn't mean players can't take actions like throwing a goblin into a bunch of orcs or kill a bunch of monsters in a single stroke. I just have to make a ruling on the fly for nonstandard actions. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about simple rules and such myself - one of the things that drew me to wanting to run an older/simpler version of the game (in this case a retroclone of B/X) was the fact that I don't like having a big hedge of rules to cover every specific corner case, or break down what the players are able to do into discrete little boxes of allowed moves. That being said, I don't think that any of the changes I'm wanting to do to the B/X Fighter are actually all that restricting. Giving a buff to damage based on their To-Hit bonus & allowing for bonus cleave attacks on a kill isn't quite in the same league as having them get locked into feat-trees or weapon specializations, or selecting out moves from a list. I figured if you are playing a Fighter, you probably want to do so because you want to play as a tough guy who wades into combat and hits stuff - so to me the ideal solution is to make it so your guy gets better at hitting stuff & becomes able to hit even more stuff every round as he grows stronger. There's also the fact that the Magic User, as written, exactly has special hard coded abilities for its class in the form of spells, and that their access to this expanding list of ever changing and more wondrous abilities as they level up while the standard B/X Fighter only gets +1 to hit every few levels and maybe a nice sword seems to be the cause of the whole Fighter vs. Wizard argument that gets brought up on every tradgames forum across the internet. I personally love letting players try to improvise cool tactics mid-fight, like having the fighter toss their cloak up in the orc warlords face to blind him while the thief comes in for the surprise backstab from behind - but those things all work on this kind of wishy-washy principle where a timid or obstinate DM might not be so inclined to let players do much outside of the standard rules. Unless you bake a General Maneuver rule into the combat system that lets players declare non-damaging attacks to gain advantage in a fight then its always going to come down to "mother may I?" for the melee classes while the casters can perform a variety of spectacular actions one after another without even needing to roll for success. Sorry - hope I didn't come off hostile or anything, that isn't my intent. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 01:21
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Ryuujin posted:Yeah I would suggest looking at There's Always a Chance, like someone else suggested. For one thing the Fighter gets a d10 hit die. It gets Cleaving Attacks where any excess Melee Damage beyond killing an enemy is splashed over to another nearby enemy. They get a Battle Cry where they can try and intimidate an enemy, and can keep doing it to one enemy after another until an enemy succeeds on the Morale Check. Otherwise it is basically an encounter power. They get a Signature Weapon where as they level they get a bonus to to-hit/damage and Intimidate with their signature weapon. Few classes in that system get anything like that. They are one of the few classes that get Critical Hits on one number out of 20 on the d20. They eventually get even better crits on that same number and the weaker crit on a slightly larger range. Looks like they might be a little faster than some classes. And they even get a protective ability if they haven't used their action that lets them leap in front of an ally to take a hit, with a save to possibly take only have damage. While that does sound like a good game, to be honest I'd prefer just trying to find fair ways simplify the MU over further increasing the complexity of the Fighter beyond those modest changes I mentioned earlier. I think limiting the MU to only a single casting of a given spell in a day would go a long way to evening things out between the classes, and maybe finding a way to incorporate the generic spell slots idea that OtspIII had would keep them interesting to play. They would still have more tricks available to them than the Fighter, but now they wouldn't be able to use all of them at once or just spam multiple instances of their most effective trick till the encounter collapses. EDIT Thinking of character classes like tools I would want the ideal Fighter to be like a hammer - sturdy, built for a particular job & if used right it can do that job better than any other tool in the box. The Magic User should be more like a Swiss-army knife - delicate, fiddly & full of useful tools for specific jobs but it should be absolutely terrible at anything related to putting nails into things. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 02:14
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Payndz posted:Glad TAAC is getting some props! I beefed up the fighter with things like Cleaving Attack (which is always active and automatic) as a reaction to the Next playtest with the Caves of Chaos, where the 30 rats resulted in a TPK in the very first room. Just read through your game and I really like the way you handled Wizards and the spell-lists between the different classes - actually there's just a ton of cool stuff in general in there.
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Dec 26, 2014 01:46
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I think I also specified that wizards only get one "copy" of a spell memorised at once, so no more Fireball x4.
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gradenko_2000 posted:TAAC is really good as a retroclone that isn't just a rewrite of old D&D books and actually improves on the game in a lot of ways beyond one good Fantasy Heartbreaker idea that the author had. The one thing I wasn't really that big on was the idea of using Roll Under for everything - I like that it's elegant and has all of its mechanics run on the same base instead of having separate fiddly little subsystems for everything. People like rolling Big Numbers though, or at least the people I've gamed with in the past anyway. The way that TAAC uses AC as a negative modifier makes me think of a blog post I'd seen somewhere where the writer had suggested a way of using the Pre-3.0 descending AC system as a modifier on your roll to hit and aiming for a target number of 20+. So an attack roll would look like: 1d20+Modifiers (magic weapon, class bonus, etc.) +Target AC (9-0) > or = 20 is a Hit. I kind of liked the idea of using '20' as a target number - its simple enough, and with descending AC the numbers you add up don't really inflate too far. 1st Level Fighter vs AC 9 Kobold would be 1d20+1 (1st level Attack Bonus) +9 (Kobold AC) -> 10+ on the d20 would be enough to score a hit. Fighting a creature with AC 0 with only a +1 bonus would require a 19 or 20 to hit. Actually I think this is just THAC0 but without requiring a big table or anything - it would all be addition instead of subtraction so things would probably go a lot faster (even if Descending AC looks kind of screwy to people now since we intuitively think that bigger = better). I also started thinking that you could use '20' as a target number for pretty much any check actually: like instead of doing a Roll Under for Ability checks, just do "d20+Ability > or = 20 is a Success". It's mathematically identical. Ditto for Saving Throws - just invert the numbers on the tables and it works out to the same thing. I'm almost positive someones already thought of all of this though and maybe it didn't work out as easily as I think it would. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 04:21
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Dagon posted:Darker Dungeons does this and it works good. gradenko_2000 posted:Yes! "Target 20" is a totally legit and awesome thing. [d20 + attack bonus + target's AC + other modifier] means you hit. It's mathematically the same as THAC0, except better because addition doesn't care what order you put the modifiers in. You still have to figure out your "attack bonus" manually from the hit matrix since D&D didn't use that concept until 3E, but otherwise yes it's cool. Awesome! I'll be able to use monsters from older editions now without having to convert them to ascending AC like I thought I would. I think unifying all Saves, Attacks & Ability Checks to a single 20+ target number should prove a little useful when it comes to speeding things up in the game.
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Dec 27, 2014 05:12
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OtspIII posted:Yeah, I'd also be super interested in an alternate way to handle healing/clerics. Maybe go more into the whole "HP does not directly equal physical injury" idea and let the party take a short uninterrupted rest after combat to heal 1HD + CON bonus in damage (maybe with the caveat thrown in that a resting character can't recover more HP than they had at the start of the fight)? Or maybe you could give the Cleric's heal spells to the MU (or combine it with the Rest option above & re-fluff the spells to "Revitalize" instead of "Cure Wounds")?
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Dec 28, 2014 16:47
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FRINGE posted:I think the drive to remove both thief and cleric is going to leave a less-rich game. Its better to tune them a bit (or more than a bit for the old-style thief) and keep the theme alive IMO. If you push to have a group of all fighters and combat mages you will (without meaning to) narrow the focus of the players creativity and RP a lot. If you want an all-tactics kill-everything game then thats not a big problem, but its definitely different. I rarely ran "kill em all" crawls so my opinions are from a different perspective than that. I'm not seeing how it would be made less rich honestly- you could still play a character who is a thief by profession without needing to have Thief written on a character sheet. Removing the percentile Thief skill system just means using ability checks to do thief stuff (or magic). Ditto for clerics - in terms of roleplaying potential being able to heal someone doesn't add much to a characters personality, and your average Fighter or Mage could still be a devout worshiper of their particular god without it having to be their big class thing. I like to think of character class as being what they DO but the characters personality as being what they ARE. Evil Mastermind posted:Oh, I just had an idea on how to make clerics/thieves interesting while keeping the BECMI mold. That sounds pretty cool - would these abilities have a cooldown linked to them (Grandmaster Healer may use this ability X times/day) or would they be encounter action based? Which actions would you link their abilities to? I could see Turning undead easily linking to an attack against an undead creature (and Buffs/Debuffs follow easily from that as bolstering your allies faith when you strike down an enemy), but it's the healing one that kind of puzzles me conceptually. Maybe it would be healing as them getting inspired by your zeal? Though that also ties back into the Buffs/Debuffs thing... -- I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the Magic User myself - I don't hate Vancian casting or anything, but I just want there to be a simpler/more elegant system to use for spell-casting. I still like the preparing spells mechanic as opposed to spontaneous casting, and I think the less bookkeeping required in a class the better it is overall since it means less confusion and quicker play. I keep going back to Spell Points since I can't find any way to make Generic Spell Slots work without either being too stingy with them or finding ways to prevent players from just loading up every slot with their highest powered spell(s), but the numbers for the Spell Point systems I've seen online get ridiculously inflated at high levels to the point where they require just as much fiddly book-keeping as Vancian casting (or maybe more). I saw one hybrid casting scheme online where the MU had spell-points equal to their level & had to prepare/memorize their spells beforehand, BUT they were allowed to try and cast spells straight from their spellbooks as well in the form of much slower rituals (making them unable to be spammed in combat). So a 12th level MU could prepare 12 points worth of spell (three 4th level, or six 2nd level, etc.) & then if they needed to perform a utility spell later they would make an Intelligence check (with a penalty equal to the spell level) and cast it straight from the book, but it took about 10 minutes per spell level to do so (so casting a 6th level spell takes an hour when done from the book). Would that go too far and end up severely under-powering the MU compared to the Fighter? Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Dec 28, 2014 |
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Dec 28, 2014 20:58
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FRINGE posted:Keep the vancian for the "leveled" spells and let them have a permanent at-will 2e Cantrip for every level (or two) gained? (I wold abstract them so that "creak" "groan" and "footfall" (or whatever they were called) all became "create small noises" etc...) The ability to light fires at will, move small objects, change the color of things, makes noises, etc gives a lot of creative utility without impacting the combat stuff. If you turned up the spark/fire ones from a fixed 1 damage to 1-2 or 1-3 then they have a permanent short range weapon. At-will cantrips would probably take the sting out of running out of slots/points for low level characters - especially if creative uses could be found for them as you said. Letting the MU do more magic without actually granting more combat spells sounds like it would keep them flavorful, but not at the expense of other classes.
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Dec 28, 2014 21:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:Mastery isn't so much about being tied to stats as it is a case of "each level of mastery improves your existing abilities or gives you a new one". I loved a lot of stuff about Mastery when I read through Dark Dungeons, but the thing that kind of annoys me about it is that it really ties your Fighter to just one or two weapons that he is absolutely amazing with & with anything else he rolls for base damage. I like the fact that you gain all these really cool abilities beyond "swing for damage", but they sort of force you to pick your fighting style early on and just stick with it through many levels in order to reap the benefits of your weapon choice. I sort of like the idea of giving Fighters universal bonuses that don't tie to a particular weapon, but then having weapons of different types/categories that provide their own unique tricks or gimmicks independent of any resource investment by the player (but only when used by the Fighter). I guess it might not be as 'realistic' if the Fighter who's never seen a weighted chain before in his life can pick it up and then immediately use it to make trips and disarms at a bonus, but it would give them versatility and remove any situation of "that DM" who destroys/steals the players chosen weapon or randomly rolls for the treasure and the Longsword Master has to sigh and add another +2 Mace to the pile of poo poo to sell when they get back home.
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Dec 31, 2014 02:11
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gradenko_2000 posted:Going back to the topic of low-level Magic-Users and their lack of spells, a neat little mechanic I picked up from Crypts and Things was to use Saving Throws. In that game, you needed to make a save whenever you used "Grey" magic (mental manipulation, illusionist, transfiguration spells) and "Black" magic (direct damage, destruction, necromancy). That sounds pretty cool - though I imagine they seriously altered the spell list in order to not completely screw the balance if caster's could potentially toss out spells every round without consuming any resources (except for possibly HP/Sanity of course). Is the damage for failure dependent on the level of spell? I think I figured out how to get generic spell slots to work - the results give similar limits to normal Vancian casting, but with fewer spell slots in total available to work with. Basically a Magic User gets 1 spell slot at 1st level and gains an extra one every level (max level in the game would be 10, so 10 possible spells prepared in total). They'd get access to higher level spell every odd level, maxing out at 5th level spells. The maximum number of spells of any given level that they could prepare is equal to their character level/spell level. So a 3rd level character could prepare 3 spells total per day, but only one of them could be a 2nd level spell. So a 10th level caster could prepare up to 10 total spells in one day and do it as a combination of up to: Ten 1st level spells, five 2nd level spells, three 3rd level spells, two 4th level spells & two 5th level spells. Also, is it just me or is the word 'Level' used way too often in D&D? Why didn't they just classify spells by Ranks? Or characters by Ranks?
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Jan 1, 2015 01:36
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Lightning Lord posted:It's inspired me to look into making some modular retroclone-y type rules where instead of Fighters just having attack mode, Fighters specifically get narrative abilities to do poo poo. Sort of like the Mighty Deeds of Arms mechanic from Dungeon Crawl Classics, but with a bit more player agency hardwired in. Basically codify Fighter being for people who like making poo poo up and Wizard for those who like picking from lists of specific powers. Maybe that's kind of reinventing the wheel but I dunno, seems worthwhile to think about. gradenko_2000 posted:I really like the Mighty Deed Die as a concept, but the odd die sizes make it impractical to use unless you're running a game online / with a digital die roller. I'm in favor of having mechanics that allow Fighters to be able to take actions to control the narrative in combat - fixes like that would go a long way to making the class more fun in general. I'm not a big fan of variable dice based attack bonuses though - I get that they average out to about the same thing as flat bonuses if you space them right, but it's got to be really irritating as a high level attacker with +d12 to hit and then end up rolling a '1' as opposed to just taking the flat +7. The 3.5 Grapple/Trip/Disarm mechanics kind of left a bad taste in my mouth since they were needlessly complex and made anything you attempted beyond a standard attack come at both a heavy penalty (making them unlikely to actually work unless you'd specifically made a build for it) and at a cost to your DPR as well which sort of reduced your utility overall. I want to make called-shot/deeds style attacks work on a simple framework - you declare your attempted action (disarm, shove, trip, blind, etc.) against your target, roll a standard attack with no penalties & on a hit you deal 1/2 your normal damage & they have to make a Save or suffer the effect of your declared action (with the added caveat that if your Attack/To Hit total was greater than their Save total your effect still happens anyway). Since the Fighters attack bonus increases about as fast, or faster, than the Save tables it means you should be able to reliably pull it off a decent amount of times against enemies of your own level, and easily clown weak/low HD opponents if you don't feel like just splattering them outright.
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Jan 1, 2015 16:27
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Doctor Goggles posted:There was a great Super Simple Combat Maneuvers writeup that's basically that. Maneuvers are handled the same way as a regular attack and if they hit, the GM/player has to make the choice between taking the effect or taking regular damage. I like how simple the mechanic is, though something about the DM being able to decide if the monster really gets disarmed/tripped/shoved off a cliff or just takes normal damage sort of gives me pause. It moves the mechanic away from "player declares a cool thing they are trying and then rolls to succeed" over to "player declares a cool thing they are trying and the DM decides whether it worked or not" (though the auto-success on a crit is nice). Though after looking at that article I'm thinking of re-working my combat maneuver thing to: 1) Declare maneuver and roll to hit, if you hit proceed to step two 2) Target attempts to save - if they fail or if your Attack roll > than their Save roll then your maneuver goes through as planned. If they make the save they take regular damage instead. 3) Critical hit equals automatic no-save maneuver success plus regular damage dealt to the target. I figure this would probably lead to martial characters declaring maneuvers a lot since there aren't any complicated sub-systems and no risk to their DPR for attempting them since even a fail counts as a standard attack - but I really like the idea since it means that they would be more invested in trying cool things in the middle of the fight as opposed to being resigned to declaring standard attacks every round for maximum efficiency.
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Jan 6, 2015 03:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:I started a new game of B/X yesterday, and the way I've been doing it is: Interesting - so in your case a combat maneuver is something that happens in addition to a standard attack instead of replacing a standard attack during the players turn on the combat round? That sounds like it would work really well too - I should probably give both methods a shot and see which fits best with my players since they are the ones who would be using it after all.
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Jan 6, 2015 04:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:Yup, I'm hedging my bets a bit because it can be difficult to adjudicate whether an effect you're creating is more or less valuable than simply dealing damage. That is a pretty good point & it does make the martial's turn slightly more complex (and thus more interesting to play). How do you account for the uneven stat distribution problem? Like, I could easily see this working flawlessly in TAAC since your stats start between 8-13 and improve at the players choice as they level up, but in Basic aren't you fixed to a single stat distribution? So a 12 STR fighter is always going to have no more than a 60% chance to akido anything regardless of level, whereas the guy who got a 15 in his initial roll is flat out better and always will be no matter what. Mormon Star Wars posted:I wonder if it would be any fun to make simple casters by giving them choices for magic at-will attacks and then making a Weapons Mastery style bonus chart that would give it better abilities as they leveled. That could be fun, though as gradenko said, it would be tricky to come up with a totally new framework for that from the ground up that would be balanced with the rest of the game. If you went full Weapons Mastery style you could try a list of different powers/effects that you could choose to specialize in which would add different things as you put ranks in them (stunning/slowing effects for Ice magic, maybe some Damage over Time effects for Fire, etc.), but you'd probably want to add in regular Weapon Mastery also so that they wouldn't overwhelm the non-caster characters in terms of having fun stuff to do.
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Jan 6, 2015 14:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:With regards to one Fighter being flat-out better than the other guy because of their stat rolls: every player does [4d6 drop lowest] six times, but then everyone agrees to use the same set of 6 numbers. The Thief could be just as good as the Fighter in pulling off STR-related combat maneuvers, but at the cost of having lower DEX than he might otherwise want, because he's using the same set of ability scores as the other guy. Ah I see - that makes a lot more sense now... also, I don't think I've ever seen a setup like that where the PC's share stats before. It sounds like a pretty neat mechanic!
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Jan 7, 2015 00:29
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ascendance posted:The house rule is you can keep rolling each HP die every time you level, and if you roll better, you get more HP. I think I remember reading that was the default rule in Empire of the Petal Throne as well. I was also surprised to discover that they were the inventor of the first Critical Hit set-up in games, which is a neat little bit of history. I really liked what I had read about that game setting, but it's a shame that it's so hyper-detailed and specific that no-one really wants to adventure there compared to 'generic Tolkienesque/Sword-n-Sorcery grab-bag-world'.
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Jan 10, 2015 14:58
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ascendance posted:lol, you know this is a classic rant from Tarnowski, right? He thinks the classic, high adventure setting from Barker got ruined by a bunch of spergy nerds. I'm not sure how that makes sense - isn't Tekkumel's inherent sperginess what makes it basically unplayable by pretty much anyone in the first place? Completely unique settings with their own detailed history and language and cultures and stuff are fun to read about in books, but expecting a bunch of people who aren't fanatically devoted to that same setting to try and figure out how to play games in it just sounds like a tedious chore. gradenko_2000 posted:Someone posted about "Dagger" in the general chat thread, which is a simplified version of the OSR for kids, and it has some interesting ideas: Those are some pretty neat ideas all around, and I'm glad to hear that someone is trying to make more RPG's for the younger crowd. Is there a link to a website for this project that I could check out? I want to see if they've simplified the spells too and maybe mine it for ideas for the game I'm gonna run. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 01:36
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How do people feel about Saving Throws in general? Because in the various retroclones that I've checked out the ones that aren't trying to do a 100% faithful recreation of 'Edition X' almost always simplify them from the original tables. I prefer the idea of a simpler save myself, but good saves is one of the Fighters distinguishing traits on the older editions and giving everyone the exact same target numbers would sort of strip them of that. I thought a good compromise would be to have a single save number for each class, but the Fighter's save would still be the best overall and the Magic User would just get a bonus to their Save if it's against a spell (since vs. Spells was the only category where the MU had a better score than the Fighter). I also like the idea of adding stat bonuses to your roll depending on the type (DEX bonus to your save for dodging, etc.)
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Jan 13, 2015 01:15
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AlphaDog posted:That's a good change. Well, applying the ability modifiers wouldn't really be strictly necessary, but at really low levels your saves suck pretty bad so being able to possibly bump your success chances up between 5-15% could be helpful. The stat that gets used would probably get determined by the DM... I think it would go along the same lines as trying to eyeball whether a particular situation was more of a "Save vs. Death Ray" or "Save vs. Wands" thing. I think RAW you got to apply CON modifiers to saves vs. poison & WIS to saves to disbelieve illusion spells, so I think that would be a good guideline. gradenko_2000 posted:I usually just run it RAW for whatever particular retroclone I'm running. I don't see the need for trying to simplify it too much because it's just "number you roll against" which is already really simple on its own. If I have one number as a saving throw but then I apply a modifier depending on the effect I'm saving against, I don't really have just the one number and I'd still be writing down "saving throw vs spells" and "saving throw vs other stuff" at least. I would see it more like treating the single Save the same as the characters Attack modifier is usually treated & any relevant Ability bonuses to a particular roll being the same as the little bonuses or penalties that may come up in specific situations. It probably wouldn't be necessary to apply them to every saving throw, but only for really specific ones where it's clear what exactly is being tested by the situation. gradenko_2000 posted:My other reason is that I can't always grok how the Fighter's supposed to have better saves than everyone, so I just take everyone's word for it and don't muck around with it. I think it's just a legacy thing to make them better at their "front line combatant" role, since you probably wouldn't want your battletank to fold up like a wet napkin against the first special attack aimed at them. Really though it only amounts to a few points difference as far as I can see, so its not that big a deal I guess.
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Jan 13, 2015 05:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:Oh no, I totally get why they have better saves, it's just that I see tables of 5 different saving throws spread out over the classes, spread out over the levels, and my eyes just glaze over. If you guys tell me that theirs are better I'm just going to roll with it. Yeah, I get kind of the same glaze-over factor myself which is one of the reasons I was really digging the unified save idea. I'd probably just have Fighters start with +7 to their Save roll & Magic Users start with +5 (with a bonus of +2 vs. Spells) & then have it improve by 1 at each level since the max level in my setup is 10. Almost all of the mods I've been working on are subtractive in nature really - trying to clean up messy bits and trim some of the extraneous chaff from the game and replace it with more unified things. Anything that I can possibly do to eliminate a table and still have the math hang together is a major priority. Converting Attack rolls, Ability Checks & Saving Throws all into the same Target20 system gets rid of the whole bit where sometimes rolling high is good and sometimes rolling low is good and replaces it with "roll die, add number -> a total of 20+ means you win" which is easier on the eyes and brain.
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Jan 13, 2015 05:38
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After thinking about player survivability, especially at low levels, I started looking up different house rules on the subject and came across this one: http://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/2008/06/playing-with-death-and-dismemberment.html It's a death and dismemberment kind of table, but its intended to actually make characters last longer than they normally would. If you use it then when a character hits 0 HP instead of being killed you roll 2d6 on the table. 2 is instant death 3 is a "fatal wound" which will kill you in 1d6 turns (but which you can heal with cure wounds), 4 is a severed limb of DM's choice (you bleed out in 3d6 rounds unless you can cauterize, tourniquet or use magic healing to stop the bleeding) 5 or 6 is a broken bone which will take a few weeks to heal on its own 7 or 8 you are knocked out for 2d6 rounds 9 you are stunned for one round 10 you are just knocked to the floor 11 nothing happens 12 adrenaline surge and regain 1d4 hp +1d4 for every other level. It wears off at the end of the battle and you pass out for a few rounds. Since the most likely result on 2d6 is 7 most characters will just be knocked out for a bit rather than flat out killed and if the rest of the party can pull through or drag them to safety there's no reason they won't survive.
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Jan 15, 2015 00:41
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CountingWizard posted:I came up with a similar injury table for my Conan ruleset, but I abstract the results far more and split physical injuries into minor injuries and major injuries. Each possesses certain effects and risks for continued adventuring. These systems mainly make sense only if you remove clerics from the game. Village healers and such take on the role of helping characters heal, and the journey back to town is more about managing your injured characters. I was gonna use the death/dismemberment rules in conjunction with the big weird list of houserules I've been gathering (that's practically its own little game at this point), and it doesn't include Clerics in the setup. Healing magic in the form of the Cure Wounds spells are still available (and castable by Magic-Users), but there is no Resurrection spell. Dead is Dead.
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Jan 15, 2015 03:07
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I've been wondering if I should make Called Shots/Combat Stunts a Fighter-only thing? (a la DCC) So far they have Deadliness (+1 damage to all attacks per level), Precision (Critical Hit on a roll of 19 or 20) & Cleave (can attack a number of times per round equal to their level IF each attack drops an enemy - a miss or a hit that wounds but doesn't kill an enemy ends their attacks for the round). All of that stuff makes them good at the 'hitting stuff till it dies' side of the combat game but doesn't give them anything unique in the realm of narrative/tactical stuff. Granted, with their much higher attack bonuses the Fighter is at least 2x as likely to pull off Called Shots (as I've worked them out) in combat as any other class, but if they were the only ones able to attempt them maybe it would give them a little more oomph? It might also serve as a more solid line between character roles - the MU is more worried about not being skewered if he ends up in melee combat with an enemy while the Fighter is keeping his cool and thinking of ways to use the terrain to his advantage (knocking a guy over a ledge) or how to neutralize an opponents threat factor (disarm, blind, cripple,etc.). I was also thinking about Magic, specifically thinking about ways for it to be used outside of the spell-memorization framework. I like the idea of implementing both slow-to cast 4e style Ritual magic that anyone can attempt (with very little risk) & also allowing anyone to try and cast a spell from a scroll (with an Intelligence roll that has its difficulty modified by the spell level). I thought it would be fun to use something like the "Klaatu Barada Nikto effect", where botching your roll to cast a spell scroll by too-low a number might result in a reversal of the spell.
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Jan 18, 2015 07:24
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