[3.x] What would make you switch to Legend?

[Doc Roc]

Direct link! (http://tinyurl.com/LegendSC2)
Designed to put the heroism back in classic fantasy, Legend marks a return to the tradition of fast, cinematic combat, combined an elegant system for resolving social encounters. Oh and we have a world full of airships, and the pirates who love them.

We'd like to know....
What differences bug you?
Which do you like?
What are the stumbling blocks?
What do you want?
What would you miss about 3.x?
Is there OGL content or homebrew you'd like to see posted or supported?


The title used to be "What would make you upgrade to Legend?" but....
That's a bit loaded, really, I think.

[Particle_Man]

What is Legend?

[RndmNumGen]

Yeah... I would like to know that too. I clicked on the link on your sig, but aside from figuring out cards are important I learned a whole lot of nothing.

[Doc Roc]

Fixed! I'm sorry, I was on my iPhone at the time!

[Yora]

Now I would have to learn an entirely new set of RPG rules. I'd first need some incentive why I would want to read all of it.

[Eldan]

First of all, it would have to be significantly different from both D&D 3.5 and other 3.5 homebrew derivates that it would be worth getting in a new system for.

Then I'd have to find players for it. Which I doubt I ever will, since I can't even find any D&D players.

Apart from those points:
I like the class system, and how you handle multiclassing. It has potential.
What bugs me, really, are a handful of things I've mentioned before:

-Too combat focused. Every character has tons and tons and tons of combat powers, but barely any utility powers. To make things worse, a lot of powers seem very samey, by which I mean that there's a lot of variants of "Deal X damage to enemy Y in area Z". The magic department, especially, seems severely lacking. It just seems to me that any mage who uses his power to blow up stuff is wasting a rare gift on the trivial. You have swords to kill things, use magic for something better than that.

-Barely any fluff so far. The rules may be good, but if there isn't any fluff to break up the rules text, I can't really concentrate it for longer than a few minutes at the time.

-The writing style. I get that you want to be informal &c, but I don't want things like pop culture references in my rules texts. Ruins the mood from the start. Also, so far, your document often seems to be written for people who have already played 3.5, and a lot of things aren't properly defined. Some lack rules at all, where you have to play in the d20srd in order to play.

-How you handle monsters. I've shown your first adventure to three potential players, and two of them, me included, replied with "that's the wimpiest dragon I ever saw. Why can we kill a dragon at this level"?

-Feats that give you magic. I don't have anything against common magic, really, and I know that this is just a prejudice from playing 3.5 for years, but everything in my head screams "FEATS DON'T GIVE MAGIC!"

-Races. Your basic races aren't very interesting, before you spend racial feats on them. There's just not much differentiating the basic elf from the basic human.

[Mulletmanalive]

The ability to dictate my power levels within the system. Your views on fun = mechanical power are not my own.

I'd also like to see a basic primer on the system; last time I read any of your stuff [feeling all excited from the welterweight comments] I got about 20 paragraphs in and stopped bothering because the system as I could find it WASN'T any simpler than core D&D and in character creation, was verging on the bloat that 3.5 had at the end of its life. While that wasn't a dealbreaker for me to play, it was certainly for me to run it, given my group's prejudices and the fact that it's online; i've banned laptops from games long ago because i'm sick of MSN etc...

[Gnaeus]

I am using Eldan's analysis just to organize my own thoughts. Not out of any attempt to say that his opinions are wrong.


First of all, it would have to be significantly different from both D&D 3.5 and other 3.5 homebrew derivates that it would be worth getting in a new system for.

I disagree. I use Pathfinder, which is very like 3.5. It would, however, have to be in print and widely available


Then I'd have to find players for it. Which I doubt I ever will, since I can't even find any D&D players.

Unfortunately, this. It would probably have to sponsor games in local cons so that I can see it in play. I haven't even gotten Mouseguard or Dresden Files, both of which have gotten good gaming reviews and are in settings that I love, because I haven't seen them in play and because I am not sure I could get my group to play them.




I like the class system, and how you handle multiclassing. It has potential.
What bugs me, really, are a handful of things I've mentioned before:

I'm not thrilled with multiclassing. In general, if I can't multiclass freely, I want to move to a point buy system. But it looks like there are a lot of options with guild and racial tracks and all, so I could be convinced.

[Aharon]

Having a group. My current group broke up due to RL differences, and I haven't yet found a new one. Till I find one, learning Legend is something I don't want to invest much time in. I read in the rulesbook from time to time, but I haven't progressed very far yet, since I'm simultaneously reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time :smallsmile:

[dextercorvia]

I've read through part of the Beta. I haven't pored over the entire thing.

I have to admit, I'm a little put off by the promise of no bad choices. It seems either hubristic, boring, or both. Most of the fun I derive from 3.5 is in optimization. Whether that is the theoretical break the game optimization or the practical take a sad song and make it better kind, is immaterial.

For there to be no bad options, means there are no goodbetter options.

[Veyr]

I dunno, to me "no bad options" means like Tome of Battle, without the traps. That's a good thing to me.

The concern about utility abilities does worry me, though.

[Doc Roc]

I dunno, to me "no bad options" means like Tome of Battle, without the traps. That's a good thing to me.

The concern about utility abilities does worry me, though.

Utility abilities are moved out into feats, skills, and items. I am bloody tired of being informed that my fighter must clearly suck at talking to people because he's supposedly good at stabbing things.

No Bad Options isn't about removing optimization head-room. As an optimizer myself, I would be seriously unhappy about that. It's about making it harder to truly, deeply screw up, which is trivially easy in Pathfinder and in 3.5.


The ability to dictate my power levels within the system. Your views on fun = mechanical power are not my own.

I'd also like to see a basic primer on the system; last time I read any of your stuff [feeling all excited from the welterweight comments] I got about 20 paragraphs in and stopped bothering because the system as I could find it WASN'T any simpler than core D&D and in character creation, was verging on the bloat that 3.5 had at the end of its life. While that wasn't a dealbreaker for me to play, it was certainly for me to run it, given my group's prejudices and the fact that it's online; i've banned laptops from games long ago because i'm sick of MSN etc...

Power level can be dictated in Legend a variety of ways. Such as, say... Level. Or access to the Legendary super-type, and the abilities that come with it. Removing guilds also drops net power level considerably. Print copies will be available.

It's about 300 pages shorter than the 3.x core books, and about 150 pages shorter than the PHB for Pathfinder. It has 70 feats rather than the 240 in the SRD, all of which are usable, most of which are good. We have half as many spells, no NPC classes, a compositional system for monsters that reduces net work to specify a monster to about 8-10 minutes, we have about a tenth as many items, though we'd like a third eventually. I'd call that less bloated.

Things we have dropped:
Touch Attacks, and all that go with them.
Incorporeal AC.
Countless tiny bonuses.
Complex feat taxes.
Itemization woes.
Book-keeping in tons of places.
Complex requirements at the PrC level.
PrCs.
Dipping.
Front-loading on classes.
Dead levels.


What would you drop?

[Epsilon Rose]

I haven't gotten to the actual rules yet, but after looking at the player cards I have a fairly major concern.
While some of the cards have neat little effects (I particularly like the archeologist's special) two of them force your death and one of those doesn't give you a choice in the matter. That is a HUGE problem. A random chance (or dm whim) at character creation that literally guarantees your death is a bad thing.

[Doc Roc]

I haven't gotten to the actual rules yet, but after looking at the player cards I have a fairly major concern.
While some of the cards have neat little effects (I particularly like the archeologist's special) two of them force your death and one of those doesn't give you a choice in the matter. That is a HUGE problem. A random chance (or dm whim) at character creation that literally guarantees your death is a bad thing.

Yeah, those need to be updated. I've been worried about them for weeks now.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I actually don't think I'd upgrade, because, really, I'll never have the same experience poring over a Legend sourcebook for some random tidbit or somesuch that works with something silly from the book three printings back. To me, that was integral in 3.5: lots of official stuff, yeah, a lot of it is utter carp, but the joy of realizing that you could mix two feats, an ACF, and a castingless PRC to swift action morph as the fight evolved - or to just spaz out two full full round attack actions in one turn for the lulz.


That's what 3.5 is like for me, and I can still get that feeling with it due to all of those dragon magazines, but with Legend's design goals, I know that will never happen.

[imperialspectre]

Um, let's not talk about player cards in a system discussion. Player cards are for a specific, explicitly horror-themed adventure, which uses the Legend system in conjunction with player cards and plot cards. The main system doesn't do things like guarantee character deaths at chargen, because in most games that's a very bad idea.

[Doc Roc]

-How you handle monsters. I've shown your first adventure to three potential players, and two of them, me included, replied with "that's the wimpiest dragon I ever saw. Why can we kill a dragon at this level"?


Then just don't run dragons at that level, if you don't like it. You aren't forced to, and you could just call them wyverns or wyrmlings.

[Epsilon Rose]

I actually don't think I'd upgrade, because, really, I'll never have the same experience poring over a Legend sourcebook for some random tidbit or somesuch that works with something silly from the book three printings back. To me, that was integral in 3.5: lots of official stuff, yeah, a lot of it is utter carp, but the joy of realizing that you could mix two feats, an ACF, and a castingless PRC to swift action morph as the fight evolved - or to just spaz out two full full round attack actions in one turn for the lulz.


That's what 3.5 is like for me, and I can still get that feeling with it due to all of those dragon magazines, but with Legend's design goals, I know that will never happen.

Yeah after skimming through the rules I'm forced to agree. Character creation just doesn't look very fun and the fact that you're locked into fixed chains at the start does not help it in the slightest. And is there a reason that about half way through the classes they lose a track?

[Tyndmyr]

I dunno, to me "no bad options" means like Tome of Battle, without the traps. That's a good thing to me.

The concern about utility abilities does worry me, though.

I *like* power imbalances and traps. This is probably not normal, and thus, may not be the most valuable of feedback.

That said, I still do plan to trawl through legend and raid rules out of it for personal use, much like I did with Pathfinder.

It's probably a painful thing to implement, but d20srd is a fantastic website. I can pretty much guarantee that if it were laid out like that, it would see more traffic. I'm comfortable with google docs myself, but not everyone will want to bother.

[Doc Roc]

I *like* power imbalances and traps. This is probably not normal, and thus, may not be the most valuable of feedback.

That said, I still do plan to trawl through legend and raid rules out of it for personal use, much like I did with Pathfinder.

It's probably a painful thing to implement, but d20srd is a fantastic website. I can pretty much guarantee that if it were laid out like that, it would see more traffic. I'm comfortable with google docs myself, but not everyone will want to bother.

This will occur, or at least something like it. We won't be OGLing the entire core initially, since we'd like to use it as a charity fund-raiser for japan and possibly make a small amount of money off it. But it will eventually end up as a hypertext document.

In the mean-time, the PDF will be heavily hyper-linked, and will have a quite fine index, I suspect.




Yeah after skimming through the rules I'm forced to agree. Character creation just doesn't look very fun and the fact that you're locked into fixed chains at the start does not help it in the slightest. And is there a reason that about half way through the classes they lose a track?

Each class gets three tracks. You can trade up to two of these for tracks from other classes, monsters, and even some specialized guild tracks. This means that the net set of combinations to choose from is about on par with 3.x, and is rising steadily with each track added.

Some classes have a broader role-slice, and those have a few more tracks to choose from internally. Generating the content for a class like paladin is....

Paladin took about 150-200 hours.

[Glimbur]

I would switch over if I had a group of new players. The philosophy of "no bad options" means that for heroic fantasy I like the idea of Legend. For the parties I have right now... we are in the middle of a 3.5 game and the mechanics and story are pretty tightly entwined. The staggering array of options in 3.5 are being at least modestly utilized, and it is working tolerably.

My concern is monsters... the dragon from The Raid was trivial. That is pretty easily fixed via more advanced dragon or two dragons. The lizardmen worked about right, so numbers is a valid solution.

[Doc Roc]

I would switch over if I had a group of new players. The philosophy of "no bad options" means that for heroic fantasy I like the idea of Legend. For the parties I have right now... we are in the middle of a 3.5 game and the mechanics and story are pretty tightly entwined. The staggering array of options in 3.5 are being at least modestly utilized, and it is working tolerably.

My concern is monsters... the dragon from The Raid was trivial. That is pretty easily fixed via more advanced dragon or two dragons. The lizardmen worked about right, so numbers is a valid solution.

A concern we share. But I have many many a magic trick left, fear not.

[Eldan]

No, same with me. Power imbalances are useful for many reasons. For one, optimization is a joy. Second, you can change the power level of the game to suit your campaign.

[Epsilon Rose]

Each class gets three tracks. You can trade up to two of these for tracks from other classes, monsters, and even some specialized guild tracks. This means that the net set of combinations to choose from is about on par with 3.x, and is rising steadily with each track added.
That's not really true. First from the rules it seems like you only get to trade out one track (and some tracks can't be traded) and you only get to do this on character creation. That combinded with the fact that there's not much to choose with in the tracks means that while you can do some math and say there are X number of possible characters, where x is some impressively large number, you aren't actualy getting nearly the same amount of choice or versatility since in 3.5 you get to make the same kind of choices EVERY LEVEL.



Some classes have a broader role-slice, and those have a few more tracks to choose from internally. Generating the content for a class like paladin is....

Paladin took about 150-200 hours.
That's actually not what I was talking about at all. The classes from sage and down only seem to get two track and there's no note that says they can choose another track from somewhere else.

[Gnaeus]

No, same with me. Power imbalances are useful for many reasons. For one, optimization is a joy. Second, you can change the power level of the game to suit your campaign.

I like power imbalances. Not so fond of traps. New players shouldn't be gimped by bad choices.

[imperialspectre]

Sage doesn't have tracks, exactly.

Shaman and Tactician only have two standard tracks because spellcasting counts as a track. I'm not sure how having spellcasting instead of a standard track counts as having less flexibility.

I'm also unsure how Legend has fewer meaningful choices than 3.5 did. Sure, you could theoretically multiclass out at any point, but multiclassing sucked for casters, and non-casters just sucked in general. You could choose to dump all your new skill points into an entirely different skill, but the math for that was stunningly suboptimal at least 9 times out of 10. You could choose new feats and sometimes new spells/maneuvers, but you can do those things in Legend, too. So I'm not sure exactly what the argument is, here.

Edit: Incidentally, optimization is entirely possible in Legend. The imbalances we try to avoid are traps that make a character worthless in many situations, and exploits that make a character unstoppable. People who want to vary the power level in their games have several options, the most significant ones being changing the characters' level and giving player characters the upcoming Legendary type, which dramatically expands a creature's potential effects on the game world.

[Doc Roc]

No, same with me. Power imbalances are useful for many reasons. For one, optimization is a joy. Second, you can change the power level of the game to suit your campaign.

Further, we like the idea that you can use levels to adjust your power levels. Like the original intent of 3.x.


That's not really true. First from the rules it seems like you only get to trade out one track (and some tracks can't be traded) and you only get to do this on character creation. That combinded with the fact that there's not much to choose with in the tracks means that while you can do some math and say there are X number of possible characters, where x is some impressively large number, you aren't actualy getting nearly the same amount of choice or versatility since in 3.5 you get to make the same kind of choices EVERY LEVEL.


That's actually not what I was talking about at all. The classes from sage and down only seem to get two track and there's no note that says they can choose another track from somewhere else.

The Guild Initiation feat lets you trade out a track at any point, combined with floating feat, you can in theory swap out a third of your character every game week. You'll note I haven't whipped out any numbers, by the way. I'm not making any claims here that we have as many combinations as 3.x. We do, however, have vastly more playable builds. I should know, given that I probably have forgotten more about 3.x than its designers ever knew.


There's also Full-Buy In, that lets you trade your items for another track.

[Cartigan]

-Feats that give you magic. I don't have anything against common magic, really, and I know that this is just a prejudice from playing 3.5 for years, but everything in my head screams "FEATS DON'T GIVE MAGIC!"
Not familiar with the Complete series, eh?

[Epsilon Rose]

Sage doesn't have tracks, exactly.

Shaman and Tactician only have two standard tracks because spellcasting counts as a track. I'm not sure how having spellcasting instead of a standard track counts as having less flexibility.

I'm also unsure how Legend has fewer meaningful choices than 3.5 did. Sure, you could theoretically multiclass out at any point, but multiclassing sucked for casters, and non-casters just sucked in general. You could choose to dump all your new skill points into an entirely different skill, but the math for that was stunningly suboptimal at least 9 times out of 10. You could choose new feats and sometimes new spells/maneuvers, but you can do those things in Legend, too. So I'm not sure exactly what the argument is, here.

Multi-classing into Prc's didn't and some casters had ways to mitigate level dips (or where dips). And while melee might be less powerful than casting it is still viable and often fun as evidenced by the many people who choose to play non-casters and for them multi-classing can be great.
Also there's a difference between Versatility and Customization. Like a wizard who took archmage and another who took Initiate of the 7 fold vale. There both very versatile, but they're both completely different.
Simply saying that certain things where sub-optimal in 3.5 isn't an excuse for you're system to have related (I'd say worse since just because somethings sub-optimal in a high op game doesn't mean it doesn't work) problems or even to enforce the kinds of things that 3.5's problems caused.


Edit: Incidentally, optimization is entirely possible in Legend. The imbalances we try to avoid are traps that make a character worthless in many situations, and exploits that make a character unstoppable. People who want to vary the power level in their games have several options, the most significant ones being changing the characters' level and giving player characters the upcoming Legendary type, which dramatically expands a creature's potential effects on the game world.
Leveling is not the kind of power being discussed here (that should be a reward). That happen within a game not as a result of how players decide to build the character (not as directly anyways).

Edit:

The Guild Initiation feat lets you trade out a track at any point
Doesn't that restrict you to the guild tracks?



There's also Full-Buy In, that lets you trade your items for another track.
What do you fight with after trading away your items.

[Doc Roc]

Multi-classing into Prc's didn't and some casters had ways to mitigate level dips (or where dips). And while melee might be less powerful than casting it is still viable and often fun as evidenced by the many people who choose to play non-casters and for them multi-classing can be great.
Also there's a difference between Versatility and Customization. Like a wizard who took archmage and another who took Initiate of the 7 fold vale. There both very versatile, but they're both completely different.
Simply saying that certain things where sub-optimal in 3.5 isn't an excuse for you're system to have related (I'd say worse since just because somethings sub-optimal in a high op game doesn't mean it doesn't work) problems or even to enforce the kinds of things that 3.5's problems caused.


Leveling is not the kind of power being discussed here (that should be a reward). That happen within a game not as a result of how players decide to build the character (not as directly anyways).

:: raises an eyebrow ::
So, let me get this straight. You honestly think that I don't understand 3.x?

And you honestly think that a system where a barbarian can toss spells, or be an archer, or run on the air as he climbs snowflakes is...
Less versatile? Or less customizable?

I can build hundreds of concepts in Legend that I could never articulate in 3.x, and I can cover most of the ones in 3.x in Legend. More than that, remember, this is only the core rules. The only playable PrCs in Core are Archmage, Horizon walker, and maybe shadow dancer. If you hate yourself.


Re: Edit
Yes, but guild tracks range more broadly than class tracks.

And possibly you should read the rest of the rules before arguing about them.

[Epsilon Rose]

First, apologies for the untimely edit of my previous post.
Second, I never commented on your understanding of D&D. I commented on your understanding of what people do with it.

Just because people who know more about the game make casters and the characters the make are numerically more powerful doesn't mean that the other options are bad or not fun. If that where the case people would actually play pun-pun and you'd never get an experienced player in anything less than tier 2.

[Doc Roc]

First, apologies for the untimely edit of my previous post.
Second, I never commented on your understanding of D&D. I commented on your understanding of what people do with it.

Just because people who know more about the game make casters and the characters the make are numerically more powerful doesn't mean that the other options are bad or not fun. If that where the case people would actually play pun-pun and you'd never get an experienced player in anything less than tier 2.

Ironically, I'm quite more well-known for my T3 builds, and generally refuse to play full casters. To be fair, I have killed pun-pun, too. Not Monty, reliably, though. I've been running games for about four years, and playing in them for six. I have a pretty bloody good idea of what people do with Tier imbalances.

They get killed by dragons with them.

Let's make something clear. Legend contains Tier 3 classes, and some low Tier two track combinations, no Tier four or lower, and no T1 or T0s. In other words, it covers the playable portion of power spectrum, as well as much of what we would call practical optimization. PO is generally thought of as lifting you one tier, versus unoptimized play.

Also, task-linked optimization is still extremely viable. Some builds will be by far the best at specific individual tasks, others may be more like generalists. Still others are more interested in defense than offense, or have other gentle biases. No bad choices and no optimization are orthogonal. We're just so used to a culture of suck-is-good that we've become inured to it.

Thanks a lot, Mark Rosewater!

[Epsilon Rose]

Hm, perhaps it's more of a perception thing then. Making vertical choices seems like a lot less flexibility than making horizontal ones, I guess.
Still doesn't seem interesting enough for me to bother with, but that might just be me.

[Aharon]

Huh? I thought Monty was a more restricted version of Pun-Pun?

Where are you known for T3 builds? I associate you, first and foremost, with Commodore Guff, and this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116469) mean thing.

[Doc Roc]

Hm, perhaps it's more of a perception thing then. Making vertical choices seems like a lot less flexibility than making horizontal ones, I guess.
Still doesn't seem interesting enough for me to bother with, but that might just be me.

What would make it interesting enough?



Huh? I thought Monty was a more restricted version of Pun-Pun?

Where are you known for T3 builds? I associate you, first and foremost, with Commodore Guff, and this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116469) mean thing.

Monty is the one that abuses the far-realms to eliminate free will from the universe.
I used to be well-known on 339 for my melee builds, and in actual play, I'm mostly known as the crusader guy.

You build an immortal monstrosity just three or four times, and that's all people think of! ;)

[Nohwl]

my biggest complaint about 3.5 is that i have to care about how some abilities are worded. i don't want to have to read one ability four times just to confirm that something works the way i originally thought it did. making what every ability does clear would be great in legend.

in 3.5, i like how system mastery matters. balancing the classes is great, but i'd like some room to be able to optimize a character. when i tried 4.0, it didn't seem like some of the choices i made really mattered, and that's one of my bigger complaints about it. for example, in the paladins coldfire ingot, i don't see any real difference between 2 + str mod fire damage and 2 + con mod cold damage. basically, i don't see any reason to pick cold (unless you know you're going to be fighting a large number of things immune to fire) if you have a higher str than con, and i don't see any reason to pick fire if it's the other way around.

[Eldan]

Further, we like the idea that you can use levels to adjust your power levels. Like the original intent of 3.x.


Theoretically, yes. However, a fighter in 3.5 can level 19 times, without getting significantly more powerful. The players, however, could still enjoy seeing their character grow. On the other hand, a wizard would grow quadratically. It's still a different kind of campaign.

[Epsilon Rose]

I'm not entirely sure, if part of the problem actually is perception you could do things to change that. For example from what I've read feats in legend seem to mean a lot more than feats in D&D but since most players are going to be coming from D&D their going to expect more of the same. Why not change the name to break that perception? Call them vectors or talents or special training so when you list them as a way to customize a character people don't immediately think "so I'll get to add +1 to use rope? JOY!"
Also, with the way you have tracks working why do you need classes? Why not just assign points to the different tracks, bab, and save progression and give people an allotment of points to build their character and maybe have a first level feat that kicks in a couple more points so you can get a slightly better combo like you would from multi-classing?

Edit: Also, the fact that you gain items for leveling kinda throws me. I know 3.5 has wbl but that feels a lot less set in stone than having "You gain an item at this level" in the same table as feats. After all if I kill an loot an enemy it shouldn't count against my options when I level, nor should my level prevent me from looting.

[Eldan]

Yeah, actually. That's another thing: it's loaded with 3.5 baggage. For a lot of things, you use names from D&D for things that don't actually share too many things in common anymore. And then there's a few really silly things, like having medium and high, but no low BAB progression.

[Doc Roc]

The items bit is getting changed some. Those are recommended acquisition points, and generally the max you can use at a time.

We can talk about this in more detail if you like. Please remember this is a beta. Expansion one will add a way to build a generic class chassis.

[Tvtyrant]

The monks flight doesn't say the maneuverability.

[Doc Roc]

Now I would have to learn an entirely new set of RPG rules. I'd first need some incentive why I would want to read all of it.

It's faster, slicker, and better describes a world worth playing in. We have a few of these worlds laying around, and I may bribe someone into converting Hourglass to Legend.


The monks flight doesn't say the maneuverability.

Partly because we weren't sure what maneuverabilities we were keeping.



Yeah, actually. That's another thing: it's loaded with 3.5 baggage. For a lot of things, you use names from D&D for things that don't actually share too many things in common anymore. And then there's a few really silly things, like having medium and high, but no low BAB progression.

Seems to work for starbucks. ;)
This seems to me a mighty specific concern. What if we eventually want a Poor BAB for a monster? We may actually need one!

[Eldan]

It's faster, slicker, and better describes a world worth playing in. We have a few of these worlds laying around, and I may bribe someone into converting Hourglass to Legend.


Somehow, I can't help but feel slightly offended by that statement. It seems to imply that either I've been using rules that aren't actually describing my worlds, or my worlds aren't good enough, not worth playing in. I like worlds with versatile magic, thank you very much. With illusions and pacts and mind control and creating fully formed trade goods out of thin air.

[Doc Roc]

Somehow, I can't help but feel slightly offended by that statement. It seems to imply that either I've been using rules that aren't actually describing my worlds, or my worlds aren't good enough, not worth playing in. I like worlds with versatile magic, thank you very much. With illusions and pacts and mind control and creating fully formed trade goods out of thin air.

I have made a thing. Naturally, I think it is a good thing. I have math that gently suggests it's not a bad thing, from a mechanical standpoint. I've built it based on the input of hundreds of people. So yes, I think you'd be better served by it.

We will have illusions, we will have pacts. Mind control is hard to talk about intelligently, because it often denies player agency. Player agency is something we really care about. As for forging trade-goods out of thin air, if you want, I'll put some stuff for that in there.

But I'm not sure why you want that in the rules, since buying magic items is verboten in Legend, a decision I stand by very steadfastly. Instead, it seems to me like this is a rich opportunity to role-play a conjurer's life-and-times. Just make sure he is no conjurer of cheap tricks. We do have some econ rules, but they simply aren't ready for prime-time, and they simply won't be one-size-fits-all. To do that, I would need the game-master to know as much about QGT, Macro-Econ, and nearly-closed-systems far from equilibrium as I do. This is.... what you might call a barrier to entry.

So we'll have some rules, some good and flexible ones. But we're going to call them out as specific, and we're going to put them in our base setting, not in our base game. Splitting magic items from material wealth is what lets us do this, without having to write different games or ask GMs to be conscious of these things when it comes to game balance.

[Eldan]

And that's another thing. I've built entire economies on the sale of alchemical items and minor magic. Eberron is one of the few pre-made worlds I see some potential in. The mysterious shop selling magic items has been a staple of fantasy for longer than it has had the name "fantasy". You are cutting out options. In D&D, I can decide whether I want to have items available for sale, or if they can only be found or made. In Legend, you don't give any costs, so that option is out.

I just think that, if there are thousands and millions of adventurers out there, there will come a time when one of them is forced to sell his magic sword, or decides to retire and sell it all to buy a house.

[Doc Roc]

And that's another thing. I've built entire economies on the sale of alchemical items and minor magic. Eberron is one of the few pre-made worlds I see some potential in. The mysterious shop selling magic items has been a staple of fantasy for longer than it has had the name "fantasy". You are cutting out options. In D&D, I can decide whether I want to have items available for sale, or if they can only be found or made. In Legend, you don't give any costs, so that option is out.

I just think that, if there are thousands and millions of adventurers out there, there will come a time when one of them is forced to sell his magic sword, or decides to retire and sell it all to buy a house.

And when that time comes, you can have your auction. I'm just not interested forcing your players to trawl from auction house to auction house. We don't place any rules on how players get those items, or if wealth is needed. Because that's a huge limiting factor regarding what kind of stories you can tell. If you want those stories to be the only stories in your world, we'll have something for you eventually. Understand that I spent 6 months trying to write generic rules for this. Instead, we'll be offering at some point, a few different systemic options, built on top of this extremely solid foundation.

For now, we've expressed it in terms of level, which is our universal metric for base power.

[Eldan]

Why do items have to be coupled to level? That seems just as limiting to me, in terms of stories, if not more so. Why can't I have a little boy pull a magic sword out of a stone? Why can't the apprentice take up his master's staff? Why can't the young thief steal a magic ring of awesome power?

[Doc Roc]

Why do items have to be coupled to level? That seems just as limiting to me, in terms of stories, if not more so. Why can't I have a little boy pull a magic sword out of a stone? Why can't the apprentice take up his master's staff? Why can't the young thief steal a magic ring of awesome power?

He's welcome to, but you, as a GM, need to know what level we consider that stuff to be appropriate for. Knowing that, you can then build a game around your altered assumptions. In 3.x, that would also be contraindicated by the rules, in the form of WBL.

Also, the Legendary super-type will offer access to an artifact at first level, with GM approval, as one of the abilities associated with it. Don't worry, we've got your back.

[Eldan]

Fair enough, but you should use the word guidelines, then. Not rules. (Though I consider any of the latter to be the former, really). Rules are for people who care about balance.

Another thing. You have, earlier and in this thread again, lost some bold words about your world, or worlds. I distinctly recall the phrase "new Planescape" being tossed about. Though I remain very sceptical and my hopes for that are not high, I must admit that my interest has been piqued. When can we see this? (Though really: replacing Planescape is in all likelihood a goal you will never meet. I doubt any of you has the qualities of a Ray Vallese, when we get down to it.)

[Xefas]

Personally, I don't see any fundamental differences between this and 3.5 D&D. They're both tactical skirmish based man-to-man fighting games that reward system mastery and optimal meta-decision making, and will, aside from emergent behavior independent of the system itself, tell a story about violent wandering hobos that kill things for tenuous reasons and take their stuff.

This is fine. As a game premise, it's not a bad idea. However, if I wanted to play a game like that, there are at least several hundreds of thousands of times as many people in the world who play D&D. The addition of a very basic and ultimately uninteresting and unimportant social combat system doesn't balance that out.

Also, I'm going to put this here so that you can tell I'm trying to be sincerely helpful and not just mean: :smallsmile:

[Epsilon Rose]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Eldan and Xefras.
In particular tying items to level is annoying and illogical. Think about it, if you face anything near the same race as the pc's they're going to need magic items to compete (once the pc's have access to such items) and dragons and the like should theoretically have hoards of the things laying about. Why can't the pc's just take those items and break your incredibly restrictive item reqs (3.5 specified value not number) over their collective knees? Are you going to tell me that every magic doodad in the world is biolocked to it's appropriate owner?

Also about the world thing. I for one see no difference between your world and dnd. the basic character premises and interactions are the same and while the scenery might be a bit different it's not really that important unless a gm feels some compelling urge to play in your world rather than just create their own.
Compare this to BESM and Cthulhutech both of which have wildly different character premises (you're not a murderous hobo-outlaw [because let's face it laws very rarely apply to pc]) and in Cthulhutech's case you have a good reason to play in their world.

[Doc Roc]

Items aren't blocked, but you can only use as many as your frail mortal flesh can sustain. I don't know what to tell you. You seem tohave completely prejudged two years of work.

[Epsilon Rose]

Prejudged? In what way have I prejuged? I've gone back and read some more since I first commented but my opinions haven't really changed all that much and I'm not interested enough to learn you're system, which is actually a fair concern. No one is going to want to have to learn your whole system and play a game to see if it's worth while. They're going to skim your rules and look at the parts that interest them. If that isn't enough there are plenty of other systems where it will be.

Also, and I'm sorry to say this and I mean no offense, I could not care less that it took you 2 years to make this. It is so far from a consideration as to be laughable. ALL I care about as a player is the finished product. If that weren't the case Too human would be the greatest game ever and when it comes out Duke Nukem would herald the rapture.
As the one who actually spent the two years designing the game of course it's important to you and as an aspiring game designer I can respect the effort and resources you've put into this. Unfortunately the production time doesn't help people enjoy the finished product beyond allowing the developers to make a better one. And that's the bit that's important.

Also, The way the item section of leveling up is worded it sounds like that's how many you should have, not how many you can use at any one time. Doing away with item slots (why can't I where six rings without being epic?) and instead increasing the number of magic items a person can power at one time as they level actually makes a lot of sense, but that's not what your rules seem like they're doing.

[Xefas]

Items aren't blocked, but you can only use as many as your frail mortal flesh can sustain. I don't know what to tell you. You seem tohave completely prejudged two years of work.

It might help to know your design goals. Perhaps you could include a section in your pdf about what your design goals are and how you hope to achieve them?

It's important to know how to judge. If your primary design goal was "Make 3.5 edition D&D but slightly better at the things it already does", then I think you've already succeeded, and I commend you for it. If your design goal was (pulling from your original post) "Make a game with fast, cinematic combat, an elegant social conflict system, and an overall rule set that encourages the telling of heroic fantasy stories", then I'm not seeing any of that.

Maybe look at Burning Wheel? It fits that latter design goal pretty much exactly.

[Anzyr]

Prejudged? In what way have I prejuged? I've gone back and read some more since I first commented but my opinions haven't really changed all that much and I'm not interested enough to learn you're system, which is actually a fair concern. No one is going to want to have to learn your whole system and play a game to see if it's worth while. They're going to skim your rules and look at the parts that interest them. If that isn't enough there are plenty of other systems where it will be.

Also, and I'm sorry to say this and I mean no offense, I could not care less that it took you 2 years to make this. It is so far from a consideration as to be laughable. ALL I care about as a player is the finished product. If that weren't the case Too human would be the greatest game ever and when it comes out Duke Nukem would herald the rapture.
As the one who actually spent the two years designing the game of course it's important to you and as an aspiring game designer I can respect the effort and resources you've put into this. Unfortunately the production time doesn't help people enjoy the finished product beyond allowing the developers to make a better one. And that's the bit that's important.

Also, The way the item section of leveling up is worded it sounds like that's how many you should have, not how many you can use at any one time. Doing away with item slots (why can't I where six rings without being epic?) and instead increasing the number of magic items a person can power at one time as they level actually makes a lot of sense, but that's not what your rules seem like they're doing.

I'm rather confused by this post. It would help if you could explain in a cognizant manner how "You can only wear magic items in X number of slots." is less reasonable then "You can only have so many of X type of magic item". Rather the later seems more reasonable from a fantasy story standpoint as it permits one, as you yourself say, "Wear six rings without being epic." (In fact assuming all your magic items are rings you could have 6 Rings by 10th level: 3 Lesser, 2 Greater, and 1 relic.)

The overall concept seems to be vastly easier to explain version of the Wealth by Level charts that honestly were a more fundamental part of 3.5 then they would appear. Perhaps the question I find myself asking after reading this post is, "What in a fantasy RPG interests you?"

As to my own personal interests in a PnP Fantasy RPG, I enjoy rules consistency. (Such as 3.5 using the same rules for building monsters and pcs, 4ths 'wing it' approach is thoroughly unappetizing.) I also enjoy being able to play a character who fits within a genre but is not crucified to it. (I find the ability to trade a track for another classes track to be a strength of the Legend system as well the extra and racial tracks, kudos.) What would get me to upgrade to Legend? Unfair question as I previously mentioned in the beta thread that I find social rules to be incredible, but if I could really push for something to sell me on Legend, well..... I wouldn't say no to a default setting that took stuff like class powers into consideration at world building.

[Ormur]

First of all I have yet to read the complete set of rules which is kind of necessary for me do decide on upgrading but this is a sort of preliminary analysis.

I like the design goals for Legend as a fix for D&D 3,5 but I'm not sure that's enough for me to switch over. Paradoxically as much as I realize that 3,5 is a very flawed game and heretofore I've agreed with most of your complaints and purported fixes, Legends will have to be similar enough to 3,5 so that it'll be easier than just switching to a completely different system.

I've been pretty dependant on 3,5 because it's the only system me and my friends know. For quite some time I've wanted to learn new systems that are either more focused on realism or story and perhaps in different settings than 3,5. For those purposes I'd probably try to get people to play GURPS or Mouse Guard or something rather than a fix for 3,5.

For a more familiar playstyle a 3,5 fix like Legend might be considered but that would probably depend more on how much easier Legend makes it to run encounters rather than balance fixes. By now we know 3,5 well and are gentlemanly enough to avoid pitfalls, agree on a desired level of group-wide optimization and challenge each others. Indeed some of us really enjoy the wealth of options and convoluted character creation of 3,5 for it's own sake. But when running a game, making up encounters on the fly and resolving the complexities of mid level and up encounters can become a royal pain in an undisclosed location. Balancing broken things that still might see play (like a lot of spells) is also something we now have to deal with on an ad hoc basis so a comprehensive fix might be appreciated (but some are already very far along within the group).

[Epsilon Rose]

I'm rather confused by this post. It would help if you could explain in a cognizant manner how "You can only wear magic items in X number of slots." is less reasonable then "You can only have so many of X type of magic item". Rather the later seems more reasonable from a fantasy story standpoint as it permits one, as you yourself say, "Wear six rings without being epic." (In fact assuming all your magic items are rings you could have 6 Rings by 10th level: 3 Lesser, 2 Greater, and 1 relic.)
I think we're agreeing with each other. I'm saying the rules need to be clarified so it's clear that by 10th lvl you can wear six rings and not that by 10thlevel six rings is all you have to your name.


The overall concept seems to be vastly easier to explain version of the Wealth by Level charts that honestly were a more fundamental part of 3.5 then they would appear. Perhaps the question I find myself asking after reading this post is, "What in a fantasy RPG interests you?"

Character creation. How closely I can make a character to my vision and the new directions that the rules suggest. All the little interweaving minutia and bits of complexity. The ability to pull out something odd that know one would have thought of before (or thought to try).
Admittedly allot of that comes from homebrew, but I'm more than ok with that.

Which is another problem with legend, come to think of it. If this is meant as a fix for 3.5 (or at least as a related alternative) than it's biggest two bits of competition are probably 3.5 it self and path finder. Both of those systems have fairly similar rules and can take advantage of a HUGE collection of shared homebrew and splat books that legend does not (if doc upbraiding me about prejudging is any indication) can not. Those are two big negatives big negative.

[Doc Roc]

Converting homebrew is nearly trivial, as is splats. I am rolling lord_gareth's harriers over next week.

[Epsilon Rose]

Converting homebrew is nearly trivial, as is splats. I am rolling lord_gareth's harriers over next week.
Really? Because I don't see an obvious or consistent way to do that, are there rules for it some where?

Also keep in mind that trivial is still exponentially more than none and introduces another chance to bork things like balance.

[Vulaas]

By definition anything is more than none, Epsilon. I'll admit that I am not a good homebrewer by any definition (having never finished a single class, prestige class, race, or anything besides random items) and as such anything seems like more than trivial work to me, but I digress. I am sure that to someone who has homebrewed an entire system, doing another class is hardly a large matter.

Things I like about the Legend system:
It actually seems much more accessible to create ACF's for classes, by means of just making a new tract to run by the DM any time you want to do something new, and plenty of abilities to judge against to keep general power levels kept in the same general area. Also, it seems like even if you're an entirely new player, it will be nigh-impossible to make your character useless.
Items I have very little to say about, as I have only skimmed that thusfar.

Things I disliked:
It's a lot of new stuff to cover. It's just enough variance to be intimidating as a system to me. I can't say anything specific that I dislike, but the entire thing I'm just 'eh, why should I' about. What are some major improvements from 3.x, why is it worth the time to learn, and what are some major points of pride in this for you and the rest of the dev team?

[ffone]

Using the word "upgrade" in the title steals an intellectual base.

[Epsilon Rose]

By definition anything is more than none, Epsilon. I'll admit that I am not a good homebrewer by any definition (having never finished a single class, prestige class, race, or anything besides random items) and as such anything seems like more than trivial work to me, but I digress. I am sure that to someone who has homebrewed an entire system, doing another class is hardly a large matter.
It's not actually none since you have to go through and make sure it's balanced and fits in your setting and you might have to do a few tweaks.

And that bolded bit is a large part of what I was getting at with my last post. What's trivial to convert for Doc Roc who is intimately familiar with both systems and designed one of them isn't necessarily trivial for everyone else. If there where hard and fast rules that could be applied to any class it'd be simpler but those don't seem to exist and I don't see how allot of classes could be converted.

[ffone]

Using the word "upgrade" in the title steals an intellectual base.

[Eldan]

Converting stuff is simple?

Then how would you go about converting, say, the Beguiler, for a splat book? Because I see a lot, and I mean a lot, of splats and homebrew that are entirely different than anything we have seen so far from your system. The Seidkona of the Iron Bands? The Madspark Eccentric? The bard? The chameleon? Sandshaper?

So far, I haven't seen anything in your system that isn't a clear-cut combat power with limited application. How do you handle it?

[imperialspectre]

Converting stuff is simple?

Then how would you go about converting, say, the Beguiler, for a splat book?

Funny that you would ask, since the Tactician spell list contains a huge majority of the SRD portions of the Beguiler spell list. There are a few missing things, and most of them can be grouped and addressed in the following spoilertext:

1) "Social" spells - charms, dominates, confusion, fear. These were turned into feats, because we felt that a lot of character concepts would include space for "mind magic" without necessarily being spellcasters - you know, characters that devote a significant part of their lives to the exploration and use of magic. This is a particularly important concern for us in Legend, because our skill and social combat systems preclude the ridiculous abuse of the Bluff and Diplomacy skills found in 3.x and to a slightly lesser extent in Pathfinder.

Now, the fact that these abilities are available as feats doesn't preclude them being track features. One of the "utility tracks" that I've been working on for a while is tentatively being called the Diplomat track, and it will definitely include some of these abilities.

2) Redundant and weak spells. There aren't a whole lot of weak spells on the beguiler list, but there are a lot of redundant ones - see all of the spells that are named "[Verb] Person" and then higher-leveled ones named "[Verb] Monster". Those have all been consolidated, of course. The only real standout on the "weak" list is Minor Image, which offers so little utility compared to Silent Image that it's been pulled pending a rewrite - it's simply not an appropriate increase in utility for an increase in spell level.

3) Inappropriate spells. This is the stuff that should never have made it into 3.x core for basic game design and verisimilitude reasons. Detect Secret Doors and Knock are the biggest offenders here; the first one makes no sense and is (absurdly) present on an Int-based class with Search on its skill list, and the second one makes no sense without a skill roll. This is particularly true in a system where skills are condensed and available to all classes; I can't conceive of a breaking-and-entering "beguiler" character that doesn't train the Larceny skill.

4) Potentially-valuable material that simply hasn't yet been ported. This is where you find stuff like Suggestion, Mirror Image, the Hypnotism chain, Sending, and Veil. Many of these weren't ported because we felt that they were inappropriate at the level they originally arrived, but would be balanced at a higher level.

That said, even with the similarity in spell lists between the Tactician and Beguiler, there are some significant gameplay differences. Tacticians are primarily focused on combat, so they have two tracks that make them better at combat. If I were going to make a Beguiler class, I would start with the Mage variant class framework, which has two spellcasting tracks (i.e., twice the spells known and the option to access two different spell lists) and one ordinary track. This would be a better fit for a character who focuses most on spellcasting. The ordinary track would probably vary depending on what exactly we were looking for from the Beguiler - if you wanted a heavy social focus, you might see the Diplomat track; alternatively, if you wanted an infiltrator or magical thief, we might build the whole class on the Rogue framework, giving us Esoterica Radica with a double spellcasting track.

[Gametime]

Using the word "upgrade" in the title steals an intellectual base.

Since he's basically asking "What are the conditions under which you'd upgrade?", it isn't as though he's presuming the game is already an upgrade. (I mean, he likely is, having designed it to be just that, but he isn't necessarily simply by virtue of the thread title.) It's asking how to make Legend into a system that is an upgrade and therefore is the sort of thing to which people would upgrade.

At least, that's how I read it.

[Epsilon Rose]

Funny that you would ask, since the Tactician spell list contains a huge majority of the SRD portions of the Beguiler spell list. There are a few missing things, and most of them can be grouped and addressed in the following spoilertext:

1) "Social" spells - charms, dominates, confusion, fear. These were turned into feats, because we felt that a lot of character concepts would include space for "mind magic" without necessarily being spellcasters - you know, characters that devote a significant part of their lives to the exploration and use of magic. This is a particularly important concern for us in Legend, because our skill and social combat systems preclude the ridiculous abuse of the Bluff and Diplomacy skills found in 3.x and to a slightly lesser extent in Pathfinder.

Now, the fact that these abilities are available as feats doesn't preclude them being track features. One of the "utility tracks" that I've been working on for a while is tentatively being called the Diplomat track, and it will definitely include some of these abilities.

2) Redundant and weak spells. There aren't a whole lot of weak spells on the beguiler list, but there are a lot of redundant ones - see all of the spells that are named "[Verb] Person" and then higher-leveled ones named "[Verb] Monster". Those have all been consolidated, of course. The only real standout on the "weak" list is Minor Image, which offers so little utility compared to Silent Image that it's been pulled pending a rewrite - it's simply not an appropriate increase in utility for an increase in spell level.

3) Inappropriate spells. This is the stuff that should never have made it into 3.x core for basic game design and verisimilitude reasons. Detect Secret Doors and Knock are the biggest offenders here; the first one makes no sense and is (absurdly) present on an Int-based class with Search on its skill list, and the second one makes no sense without a skill roll. This is particularly true in a system where skills are condensed and available to all classes; I can't conceive of a breaking-and-entering "beguiler" character that doesn't train the Larceny skill.

4) Potentially-valuable material that simply hasn't yet been ported. This is where you find stuff like Suggestion, Mirror Image, the Hypnotism chain, Sending, and Veil. Many of these weren't ported because we felt that they were inappropriate at the level they originally arrived, but would be balanced at a higher level.

That said, even with the similarity in spell lists between the Tactician and Beguiler, there are some significant gameplay differences. Tacticians are primarily focused on combat, so they have two tracks that make them better at combat. If I were going to make a Beguiler class, I would start with the Mage variant class framework, which has two spellcasting tracks (i.e., twice the spells known and the option to access two different spell lists) and one ordinary track. This would be a better fit for a character who focuses most on spellcasting. The ordinary track would probably vary depending on what exactly we were looking for from the Beguiler - if you wanted a heavy social focus, you might see the Diplomat track; alternatively, if you wanted an infiltrator or magical thief, we might build the whole class on the Rogue framework, giving us Esoterica Radica with a double spellcasting track.

So how about things that are a bit more odd ball like Xenotheurge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122103)or Ozadrin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153536). There are lots of other classes that would cause similar problems, but those are the two that jump to mind.

[Claudius Maximus]

For the Ozadrin at least there are supposed to be mostrous tracks that can be accessed by feats and the like. Throw in an abberation track and you're set. The exact mechanics (with the features and stuff) might not show up but the basic premise can be represented.

Also I will be shocked if Doc Roc doesn't throw in a lot of that sort of Lovecraftian horrorterror material in the game one way or another. I understand he's a big fan. I wouldn't be surprised if there were going to be some guild of Far-Realm cultists either.

[Doc Roc]

Using the word "upgrade" in the title steals an intellectual base.

Gametime is correct, though I do love the theft of bases. I would steal all of them, if I thought there was no risk involved. In fact, in the end-game, all of your bases belong to me.

[PersonMan]

Things we have dropped:

I'll break this down item by item, to make this post more easy to read.



Touch Attacks, and all that go with them.

Hmmm...alright. I'm not sure if this is good or not, at the moment I don't have the time to luck into the rules to see if you've fundamentally changed AC or something, but I'm not seeing benefits from this.


Incorporeal AC.

See above.


Countless tiny bonuses.

Hmmm. Personally, I'm a fan of tiny bonuses-I like being able to say "I descend until I'm one or two stairs above him, then attack" for the +1 to hit. If you've modeled such things in another way it's ok, but if not I think it's an unfilled niche.


Complex feat taxes.

Cool.


Itemization woes.

Not understanding this one.



Book-keeping in tons of places.

Seems good. Sometimes dealing with oodles of abilities is fun, sometimes choosing >9000 spells isn't.


Complex requirements at the PrC level.

Cool. I've always disliked having to take skills or feats just to get into a PrC.


PrCs.

Eh. Can be good or bad, if you include ways to get lots of modular ability packages(ie replace PrCs with something else).


Dipping.

Why? I mean, unless your class has very little impact on what abilities you choose or you can swap abilities with other classes, this seems...not very good.



Front-loading on classes.

Well, if you got rid of dipping it doesn't seem like this would be a problem. It's actually good, in my opinion-I want to have more than one ability that'll eventually scale at level 1, I want a things, even if they're just little flavorful bonuses that lead into more abilities later(like +1 to saves VS whatever, with resistance and immunity eventually following, for example).


Dead levels.

Good. I've always tried to make sure that dead levels are filled with something, even if it's just +1 to an existing ability or something.

---

All in all, what would convince me to switch is a system that:
has an absurd amount of options, like 3.5 DnD does. Subsystems for dozens of things I never knew I wanted, etc.
is absurdly customizable, like GURPS in a way, very modular, perhaps a point/class system fusion-points for high BAB, hit dice, etc. Something that has a good amount of fairly generic premade things and rules/guidelines to make more.
is fairly easy to learn, but gets better when you know it better. More optimization, or being able to deal with "what if I..." situations more easily, at least.
a large(or at least well-sized) player base. I wouldn't like to learn a bunch of rules, only to never use them
stable base rules. I know it's still in production, so I want to be sure that, say, three hours of getting a hang of all the rules won't be flushed down the metaphorical drain when the next update comes out.


EDIT: Oh, and looking through your Beta PDF, in the BAB table on page 8, the level 20 medium BAB is listed as 15/1010. It's fairly obvious what's intended, but...well, you'll want to fix that.

[Flickerdart]

EDIT: Oh, and looking through your Beta PDF, in the BAB table on page 8, the level 20 medium BAB is listed as 15/1010. It's fairly obvious what's intended, but...well, you'll want to fix that.
Actually, that's correct - full BAB is 20/15/15/15. Legend plays a lot with melee numbers (full HP, BAB to AC for instance) so the extra to-hit is necessary.

[PersonMan]

Actually, that's correct - full BAB is 20/15/15/15. Legend plays a lot with melee numbers (full HP, BAB to AC for instance) so the extra to-hit is necessary.

So the medium BAB person has one attack with +15 to hit, and then one with +1,010?

That's what I meant.

[Mulletmanalive]

--snip--

It's about 300 pages shorter than the 3.x core books, and about 150 pages shorter than the PHB for Pathfinder. It has 70 feats rather than the 240 in the SRD, all of which are usable, most of which are good. We have half as many spells, no NPC classes, a compositional system for monsters that reduces net work to specify a monster to about 8-10 minutes, we have about a tenth as many items, though we'd like a third eventually. I'd call that less bloated.

Things we have dropped:
Touch Attacks, and all that go with them.
Incorporeal AC.
Countless tiny bonuses.
Complex feat taxes.
Itemization woes.
Book-keeping in tons of places.
Complex requirements at the PrC level.
PrCs.
Dipping.
Front-loading on classes.
Dead levels.


What would you drop?

This would seem to be the root of my issue. I have no way of finding this out without reading the whole thing. The classes are fairly Byzantine and they're the first thing in the book. There's no summary, no taster. Chaosium did this, Wizards did this; they got a lot of converts out of it. You asked what would convince me to convert and didn't seem to get what i was saying; I'd need to try it, preferably in a cut down manner, to be interested in swapping.

[Doc Roc]

This would seem to be the root of my issue. I have no way of finding this out without reading the whole thing. The classes are fairly Byzantine and they're the first thing in the book. There's no summary, no taster. Chaosium did this, Wizards did this; they got a lot of converts out of it. You asked what would convince me to convert and didn't seem to get what i was saying; I'd need to try it, preferably in a cut down manner, to be interested in swapping.

Well, it is a beta. We go into feature freeze after the next revision at which point we're going to start working on the presentation. I guess I just ask that you bear with us for a while, since it really has been monumental endeavor.



So the medium BAB person has one attack with +15 to hit, and then one with +1,010?

That's what I meant.

I would call that unright, yes.
As for some of the other bits... Touch AC and Incorp had to go due to the fact that they served as a really considerable barrier to entry and scaled very very poorly. As anyone who has fought an orb wizard knows, this can be fatal.

Dipping.... We have a different multiclassing system entirely. I think it is more elegant without cutting into player choice.

[Eldan]

I'm not sure I like the omission of touch AC. There's a considerable amount of attack forms for which it makes sense not to be stopped by a sheet of metal.

[LansXero]

a large(or at least well-sized) player base. I wouldn't like to learn a bunch of rules, only to never use them

I think this is the main issue. Rules imbalance, presentation, etc, you could get right and yet people may read it, love it, learn it, and shelve it/ bury it/ delete it, because there is no one to play it with.

[Doc Roc]

I think this is the main issue. Rules imbalance, presentation, etc, you could get right and yet people may read it, love it, learn it, and shelve it/ bury it/ delete it, because there is no one to play it with.

Your friends would be our best feature. Painful but true. The thing is that games win by nailing down early adopters and word of mouth. Beyond that, market penetration appears totally random. Good art might help, being on a major label would help. I suppose we'll just see what we can do.



I'm not sure I like the omission of touch AC. There's a considerable amount of attack forms for which it makes sense not to be stopped by a sheet of metal.

I definitely agree, and as a result we've opted to gently reduce emphasis on great big sheets of metal, focusing on character skill and player choices wrt fighting style. Don't get me wrong, armor still matters a lot, but the slight reduction in net bonus means that touch AC would be a pretty finicky little bit. Our casters have higher BAB than most 3.x mainline casters, and that actually works out to be about the same as the difference touch AC would have made.

[Eldan]

What exactly do you mean by "reducing the emphasis on"? Metal armour stayed around for millenia for a reason: it's damn good protection.

[Cartigan]

Our casters have higher BAB than most 3.x mainline casters, and that actually works out to be about the same as the difference touch AC would have made.

Impossible considering how touch AC is calculated. An definite increase in to-hit does not mimic a possible decrease in defense.

[Eldan]

Especially taking into account how different creatures have very different AC components. Compare, say, a tiny fey to a huge giant. Both have high AC, but the giant has abysmal touch.

[imperialspectre]

Practically all of the material for which "touch" attacks can be handled would be better handled by Reflex saves. It's a much better solution than creating an arbitrary sub-stat, introducing hacks to make it not suddenly and dramatically screw over half the creatures in the Monster Manual, and then realizing that the only real result of the whole subsystem is to make creatures that can cast spells to manipulate those numbers hugely powerful.

If you spend some time actually working with the numbers involved in game design for a d20-type game, you realize something about the numbers in 3.x. Specifically, you realize that the designers apparently went to a great deal of work maintaining what they felt were key aspects of AD&D numbers (such as rolled hit points), then realized that they created numerical problems elsewhere, then introduced hack upon fix upon hack to try and patch all of these numerical imbalances without regard to whether these hacks created internal inconsistencies or made certain kinds of characters inherently overpowered in unpredictable ways. That's how you get CR 3 monsters with 6 or 7 or 8 hit dice, incredibly arbitrary natural armor bonuses to try to keep some semblance of an RNG for attack rolls (spoiler alert: they failed anyway), and dragons keeling over and dying after being poked by a guy in robes and a pointy hat. Ultimately, it's how you also get Team Solars.

[Eldan]

And yet, I don't see a problem with that. Creatures have vulnerabilities. Huge and slow creatures are easy to touch.

[Lord Loss]

I absolutely love your seperation of combat and noncombat abilities. If it wasn't for the fact that some of my friends have shanghaied (read: started a campaign with a really good DM and I'm kind of tired of DMing myself) me into a 4e campaign, I'd switch immediatley. D&D is pissing me off because I have the choice between playing a rogue and a character who talks his way out of anything (4e is especially strong in this department).

[Doc Roc]

And yet, I don't see a problem with that. Creatures have vulnerabilities. Huge and slow creatures are easy to touch.

Except that many many agile rogues also have relatively trivial touch ACs. I should know, I made a career of blowing the bajeesus out of them. As to the idea that a reductio in defenses is not equivalent to an increase in offense, you are correct. The difference is not undesirable.

The problem is twofold: touch AC is weird and new players have lots of trouble with the tactical implications of it, and to fix touch AC, I'd have needed to change everything about it. It is a huge no win.

[Darrin]

I would "upgrade" in a heartbeat if I had an active group.

I was sold on the "Very Long Trip" scenario and the scene/plot card structure. Unfortunately, I read the plot cards first, before I knew what system you were using, so based on the references and tone, I thought it would be more of a Serenety-ish-style system (or something more cinematic/narrative than D20). When I actually got to the rules, I was a little disappointed to see it was based on the D20 SRD.

So when I say "upgrade", what I mean is there's a good chance I would just take the scene/plot card structure (which is quite brilliant, btw), rip out all the D20 mechanics, and run it with some other system... either Serenity or Feng Shui (actually my system of choice).

However, I did go through the rules, and as far as a D20 game goes, it looks very solid, and I can see how it would work well as a D20 game. So there's a good chance I'd run it as-is.

Design-wise, I have no problem with your take magic items/WBL, because I can see that the focus on the game is on the choices the characters make when thrown into the scene, not how many bonuses they can squeeze into a particular kind of roll. The plot cards and the scene structure helps tie the characters into the setting/game-world/etc., giving them a narrative role and a means to progress the plot other than "I do 300+ damage to it, can we grab its stuff and move on now?" I can also see why that would rub some folks the wrong way or be a deal-breaker.

As far as the mechanics go, I did a read-through and got up through the feats (pages 1-65). This was a quick read-through rather than a completely thorough read-through, so I have a feeling a lot of my beefs/gripes are assumptions I've made on how things work in 3.x/SRD rather than how you want them to work in Legend.

Here's my notes so far:



p. 16. Your multiclassing rules annoy me. The rules are also a bit confusing... to multiclass, you have to give up your 1st level feat, but which one isn't specified (I assume your non-racial feat). Actually, rather than give up a feat, it might be more worthwhile to just create a "Multiclassing" feat, although I'm still puzzled why it would have to be taken at 1st level. Why do I have to pay for multiclassing at 1st level, when I haven't technically taken any levels in other classes? What if I decide later on that I'd like to multiclass, but didn't pay the feat-tax at 1st level? What if my character concept changes significantly at mid- to high-levels? What if I'm forced into some kind of multiclass (lycanthropy?) due to plot reasons? From a design standpoint, I resent the attitude that you want to penalize some players for trying to build a particular character concept that doesn't quite fit into your existing classes/tracks/etc. If an optimizer can cherry-pick a particular class or track for some ubercombo you didn't anticipate, then the problem is not multiclassing, it's probably something out of whack with your classes/tracks. Decide if you want multiclassing or not, and if you do, then make it painless and uncomplicated.

p. 16-17. Extraordinary, SLAs, Supernatural Abilities. State what the "default" action should be: Ex are generally free actions, SLAs and Su are generally standard actions. Yes, you do state that the individual ability will mention what activation it requires, but its best to CYA on sloppy abilities someone else writes later and forgets to mention the activation required. Establish a default activation, and then say individual descriptions may override this default.

p. 18. Rage - How many times can this be used? Per day? Per encounter? Also, temp HP rather than recalculating HP due to Con score is awesome, I have a similar version in my 3.x campaign.

p. 19. Whirlwind. One attack roll? That's... odd. So you pretty much automatically hit everyone, or auto-whiff on everybody? I'm not sure why you'd want only one attack roll, unless you're trying to speed up combat. On the other hand, if I have a PC with the Whirlwind ability, I *WANT* to roll for every target. Dishing out whoopass is *exciting*, and every attack roll enhances that. Making a single roll sounds like a let-down. Also, no criticals? Why are you sucking all the fun out of Whirlwind? Also, how many times per day/encounter can Whirlwind be used?

p. 19. Disrupting Presence - how exactly are they taking damage? If you want to force a concentration check, fine, then do that and specify a DC. If you want a melee attack that autohits, then do that. Does your mere existence cause disruptive ripples in the fabric of magic/space/time? This presence = damage thing sounds like complete batsnot.

p. 19. Shiva's Charge. Please specify if your targets must be in melee range at the *end* of the charge, or if you can attack anyone adjacent to your movement along the entire path of the charge.

p. 19. Deadly Presence. Again, how exactly is this damage being done? Do you just give off negative energy vibes? Is it typed or energy damage? If this is "always on", does that also apply outside of combat? (oy vey, would that completely ruin your love-life...). If you can turn it on/off, what action would that be? I don't like this presence = damage stuff. Barbarians kill things by *HITTING* them, not by standing next to them.

p. 22. Monk. Can we make Wisdom more important? There's no Wisdom bonus to AC, and I'd like to see maybe a Wisdom bonus being used for attack/damage. For example: "Insightful Strike: You may choose to use your Wisdom Bonus instead of Strength bonus for your melee attacks." Then maybe later, "Inner Strength: You add your Wisdom bonus to all your melee attacks and damage rolls."

p. 22. Most players who hear "Ghost Step" are going to think "invisibility". Rename to "Walk Between Worlds". Actually, "Ghost Step" sounds a lot more like "ethereal jaunt", while Empty Body sounds like something you do on the Big White Throne while "reading the newspaper".

p. 22. Phoenix's Rebirth. Awesome. A capstone ability that makes Monk 20 worthwhile.

p. 25. The Few. WTF? So how do I play NPCs that are disguised, hidden, or trying to infiltrate/mislead PCs as spies/turncoats/traitors if Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes can automatically succeed in detecting "naughtiness"? In a game with shifting loyalties and a lot of moral gray areas, this sounds like it would be a mucked up nightmare to adjudicate or enforce. At the very least, give my NPCs an opposed roll so I can build a BBEG that can get past EVIL-DAR. I would much rather see a "discern lies" or "zone of truth" ability here with an activation and a limited number of uses/rounds per day.

p. 25. The Truth. Allow the PC to choose when to use this ability rather than auto-trigger on the first failed save. Otherwise my Pally may blow this ability on a meaningless annoyance or run into a BBEG that spams him with annoying saves until he rolls a 1 and then hit him with the Wave Motion Gun when he knows he's already blown his Truth save.

p. 26. The Ready. "points" isn't particularly descriptive enough. A PC has an assload of different points, it helps to differentiate them. Call them "Bastion Points", "Aura Points", "Readiness Points", or whatever. When the points are granted seems a bit murky... if I eat breakfast with the Pally, I get the points all day... if they never get used, do they go away at midnight or something? If I have unused points from yesterday, do they stack with the new points I get on the next day? I'd rather see this ability with a swift/immediate activation 1/day, and a specific duration... maybe 24 hours, and a maximum equal to 1/2 Pally level, so you can't stockpile several days worth of points.

p. 26. The Strong. "cannot be obviated" too vague, WTF does this mean? There are a lot of different ways to die, need to be more specific about HP (no cure spells, fast healing, regen, temp HP, etc.) or other conditions (like disintegrated). Also, how does this interact with the monk's Pheonix's Rebirth. Allies might want to make this effect voluntary, in case they have some other ability or effect that allows them to avoid or delay death.

p. 27. Should Aleph and Null be "The Alpha and Omega"?

p. 27. Coldfire Ingot. So I pick this up and it increases cold damage. Then I let my buddy borrow it for a round, take it back and now it increases fire damage? And it does this just because I carry it in my backpack? For two effects, make two items, i.e. "blue coldfire" and "red coldfire", or add something like, "dropping this stone in a bucket of cold water for 10 minutes changes the flame to blue, and it adds +2 cold damage to all attacks. Drop it in a campfire for 10 minutes and it turns red, adding +2 fire damage to all attacks." Actually, I'm not so fond of the dual effects. I like the whetstone concept, but I'd prefer if it functions like a whetsone: bladed weapons that are sharpened with this item do an additional 2 points of cold damage for 24 hours.

p. 27 Skirmish. +1 untyped attack bonus for the rest of the encounter?!?! So I can intentionally miss the first few rounds, and then I'm God of Combat against all opponents for the rest of the encounter. Uh... might want to rewrite this one so it only applies against the opponent you missed (although with a lot of opponents, that's a bookkeeping nightmare) or only lasts until the end of next round.

p. 27. Smiting. So, if I have a high enough Charisma bonus and Power Attack, anything I hit with Smiting is pretty much dead. Normally I'm the first guy to say "extra damage is not broken", particularly melee damage, but this seems very Rocket Taggish...

p. 32. Esoterica Radica. The description doesn't explain how these work. It looks like you pick one ability, but after the first three, there's only one choice based on your level. So... I'm guessing this will be expanded with more choices later?

p. 34. Swashbuckling. The song titles are a little jarring, since they don't really have all that much to do with swashbuckling. If you want pop culture references in this section... where is "I Am Not Left-Handed" (EDIT: on page 58, apparently), "Hello, My Name Is...", "To the Pain!", etc.? Also, how about "Convenient Rope/Curtain/Chandelier/Awning", and maybe a "I'm Using Two #$%&ing Swords, I Don't Care What The #$%&ing Designers Say!" ability?

p. 34. Smells Like Victory. Acid damage that also causes any target to catch fire? Is that any target, including non-flammable objects? Even creatures without any clothing? If you want a fire effect, then have it do fire damage. If you want an acid effect that keeps burning, add a damage/round with a duration.

p. 35. Goo bomb. It has to be a crossbow bolt? It can't be an arrow or a grenade?

p. 35. Sapper rods. Sapper = digging/undermining walls, a somewhat non-lethal leather sack full of lead weights used for cold-cocking, a dim-witted individual, or something that bleeds out of a tree. Not sure what this has to do with anti-magic or dispel effects. So... rename this to something else? Maybe "Disruptor Bomb" or "Boggler Bomb"... ok, so I can't think of a better name.

p. 36. I kinda want to rename "Supersonic Man" to "Ludicrous Speed", but I already picked on you for pop-culture references.

p. 36. Shadow Step. I don't quite understand... are you actually teleporting, or just walking around normally with a [teleport] tag for some reason? If the latter, then I assume terrain features (pits, walls, etc.) still prevent movement?

p. 37. [Name] = "Paint It Black", "Fade Into Darkness", "Night's Dark Whisper", "One With Shadows"

p. 37. Improvisation. Granting to an ally, what about range or line-of-sight?

p. 37. Gift of Gab, Better Lucky Than Good, Changing the Odds, Never Tell Me The Odds, Roll With It. Are these free/swift/immediate actions?

p. 39. Guided Strike. Does this ability protect an ally, or an ally's square? Also, how exactly is this a guided strike...? It appears to protect allies from Black Tidings, but that's an area effect, not a strike... it's not guided, nor do your allies make any strikes or guide anything. Rename it to something like "Selective Tidings" or "No Tidings Is Good Tidings".

p. 40. "Binding" too easily confused with [binding] condition. Need to rename this to "Pact", "Bargain", "Infusion", or something else.

p. 43. Incantation. Why is this a ranged attack? If I'm trying to heal someone and he's standing next to me, and I can just reach out and touch him, I still need to roll? Why 2d4 + 1d4 per level? Wouldn't a fixed amount like 3 HP/level be quicker/easier to calculate? If you're trying to harm someone and you have to make an attack roll... why wouldn't it be a "weapon" attack like a ray or an orb? If I'm just chanting "Please Heal Bob, Oh Please Heal Bob" over and over again... why not just pick a target and have it auto-succeed? If not, and I make an attack roll and miss... how exactly did I miss? Was I chanting incorrectly, or did I mispronounce Bob's name? If I'm using this to hurt someone, why not make it an orb or ray effect? Otherwise, pick a target and give them a save to resist/avoid. Hmm... is this an attempt to make Truenaming not suck?

p. 43. Imbue Spell. Is there a limit on how many times you can use this per day/encounter/round etc.?

p. 43. Shaman's Presence. So no activation or duration? Hmmm.

p. 43. Guardian Spirits. I don't think "instantaneous action" is defined in the rules. I think you mean an immediate action?

p. 43. Shallow Grave. Same problem with "The Strong". Need to be more explicit about how to treat cure spells, fast healing, regen, temp HP, disintegrate effects, etc. Also, how does it work with Phoenix's Rebirth?

p. 45. Tactical insight. Move action seems kinda lame. Also... can you make multiple checks and stack the options, or does a new check just let you repick your options? Who picks the ability, the tactician, or is each ally allowed to pick a different ability? Extra Insight: activate at the same time, as in one check = two abilities, or do you mean two separate checks = stack two abilities?

p. 46. Countermeasures. Needs a duration. Do you mean permanent cancellation, until the end of the encounter, or does it come back with a day of rest, etc.

p. 47. Nerveskitter. Rename this to "Hair-Trigger Neckhairs", "Early Warning", "I Have A Bad Feeling About This", or "I Don't Want to be Sued By Wizards of the Coast".

p. 47. Saw That Coming and Checkmate. Specify what action to activate.

p. 54. And I Must Run. Why is this 1st level only?

p. 54. Baptized in Rage. Chains of aether... ok, how does this have anything to do with baptism or rage? Chains of Rage, Chains of Woe, or Chains of the Hunted/Hunter would make more sense. Is this a (Su) ability?

p. 54. By Will Sustained. Fifth/eight/twelfth what? So... if someone teleports me into lunar orbit, I can survive indefinitely... is this a (Su) ability?

p. 54. Chatty Bugger. If I can automatically talk with all animals and magical creatures, why do I even need to bother learning new languages? I guess humanoids aren't animals or magical creatures... what if they cast spells or have (Su) abilities, does that make a humanoid a magical creature?

p. 54. Feign Dead. "attempt to feint", do you mean "attempt to feign dead"? A feint is generally a combat maneuver, or did you mean faint?

p. 55. I Did The Math. What action to activate, or is there a limit on uses per day/encounter/round/etc.? "Daggers and Bolts" Ranger ability, do you mean Send Bullets, Bolts, and Arrows?

p. 55. Objective Analysis. What action to activate?

p. 55. Rune Magic. This probably needs a more careful rewrite... it sounds like I could place rune traps on myself or my allies to trigger buff effects (essentially Glyph Seal abuse). Also, how do you define the enemy, can you key it to a particular race/alignment/creature type as a 3.x-style glyph of warding? Can you specify which allies can pass through or specify a password? How big is the rune, what objects can it be placed on, can you place it on creatures? Also, the "move more than 10 feet" thing, so I can move it 5 feet, wait a round, move it another 5 feet, etc. Does teleport count for moving more than 10 feet, i.e., how does an object with a rune know that it's been teleported more than 10' from its original location? If the rune cast on an object "knows" when it's been moved from its absolute location, then does it matter if the rune has been cast on an object or a specific square?

p. 56. Summon Mote. "Siphon HP", can you suck it dry or down to -9 HP? Also, separate Darkvision 30' ability, because as-written it sounds like you have to Siphon HP to give your mote Darkvision. You may want to specify how to calculate a Mote's AC and saving throws.

p. 56. The Bitter Dregs. +1 on *all* d20 rolls? No activation or uses per day/encounter/rounds? Hmmmm.

p. 56. Right Hand of Death/Left Hand of Creation. How does this work with "delay death" abilities like The Strong or Shallow Grave?

p. 57. The Sky Empties. How do you determine the path of the arc? Chosen by the PC, or a direct line between the square you're leaving and the square you appear in?

p. 57. Smell of Napalm. If this is a "reduce HP" effect, then this isn't damage, and thus ignores DR/resistance/Right Hand of Creation? If it is damage... then what type of damage? Energy damage? Untyped? "Rotten Egg Smell" damage?

p. 57. Sun Grows Dim. Action to activate?

p. 57. So a BBEG can wait until a flunky/minion hits the PC with a melee attack, and then he can move in later that round and ignore the acid blood?

p. 57. Wings of War. So do I get wings once when I take this feat, or can I grow them at will whenever I like? (If the latter, then I want to grow wings made of pure gold or gems, cut them off, and grow another pair of wings...). Also, the "likely supernatural" wording bothers me... the rules should definitively state whether it is (Su) or not. Seems to me like it shouldn't matter, unless you acquire the feat in a permanent anti-magic field.

p. 57. You Will Falter/You Will Fall. Kinda a toothless ability... unless healing auras/effects are very common, seems more like a "You Will Be Annoyed or Slightly Inconvenienced" kinda ability. Not clear how this ability is activated, either. You mention "point per level you possess" but don't specify if this is character level, the number of You Will Falter/Fall effects on the target, or what. I'd rework this as something with a bit more fangs to it.

p. 58. Big Damn Hero. Action to activate?

p. 58. I Am Not Left Handed/My Name is War. Should specify "Each round of combat" , or "At the start of an encounter". Otherwise it sounds like I can rack up infinite Focus points.

p. 59. On a Pale Horse. If it has a limited uses/day and the PC can choose when to use it, then you should specify what action to activate is required.

p. 60. A Song of Arrows. So... what does this have to do with arrows if I can use it with a melee weapon?

p. 60. And My Axe! I'm not entirely sure how this could be abused yet, but I'd recommend putting a maximum or cap on this, maybe equal to character level x2.

p. 60. Kensai. Block a melee attack how, exactly? Several feats/abilities use Focus Points, can they be used interchangeably, or are Focus Points generated via Kendai only usable on Kensai-related abilities?

p. 60. Master of Swordplay. Huh? If I can take that other feat already, why would I take this feat? Or does this allow me to ignore prereqs? Or do you mean, "pick another feat that applies to a specific melee weapon, such as And My Axe! You can now apply that feat to another chosen melee weapon, such as a sword." If that was the intent, this needs to be clarified. Is "Master of Swordplay" supposed to only apply to swords? To all melee weapons? If the intent was "I want to use Axe feats with my Sword", then I guess my issue with that is, why not make the Axe feats compatible with swords or other melee weapons to begin with? What exactly is the advantage from a game design standpoint to have only certain feats work with a particular type of weapon?

p. 60. Musketeer. Ah yes, the "longbows, crossbows, and slings are useless" feat. I'm not sure this feat is really balanced with the other ranged weapons.

p. 60. Perfect Defense. Are the Charge-Cancel and the Power-Attack/Deadly-Aim-Cancel abilities separate 1/day abilities, or if you use one then you don't get to use the other for that day?

p. 60. Pistolero. How exactly do you blind an opponent with a projectile weapon so it only lasts 1 round? "Chosen weapon" is not defined. If I carry a pistol, can my chosen weapon be a flintlock rifle, a 100-lb. cannon, or an axe? (I don't get the bandana joke.) Is Musketeer necessary when the free reload from Pistolero does the same thing? Could Musketeer/Pistolero be combined into one feat?

p. 60. Shadow Blink. Again, is this actual teleport where you can ignore intervening terrain features, or are you just walking around with the [teleport] tag? Why the nerf on Acrobatics?

p. 60. Spectactular Beats. Awesome ability, but you might want to put a disclaimer in there about using enemies/allies/important NPCs/living creatures as "improvised weapons".

p. 60. Tell Them, Still Angry. Again, need to specify if "reduce HP" is the same as "damage", and if it's damage, then what type of energy? And how does this work with "delay death" effects or Monk 20's Phoenix's Rebirth?

p. 61. To Pierce the Heavens. Specify action to activate? As in, if it's triggered with an attack, what if I choose not to attack that round, or cast a spell, or whatever?

p. 61. Way of the Gun. As a swift action or free action?

p. 62. Cloaked Spellcasting. What kind of action to activate?

p. 62. Deft Strike. And if the opponent has no DR, this is useless? Can I ignore an armor bonus, natural armor bonus, or treat the target as flat-footed?

p. 63. Battleforged. Awesome, but I don't recall seeing "Sentient Construct" in the Races section.

p. 64. Lich. Draining Ray, Cause Fear need to specify an action to activate. For Chill Touch, specify if it can be used with multiple attacks, on out-of-turn attacks (AoOs), or is a once-per-turn ability.

p. 64. Mummy. Once per round, but is this a free/swift/immediate action?

[Eldan]

So when I say "upgrade", what I mean is there's a good chance I would just take the scene/plot card structure (which is quite brilliant, btw), rip out all the D20 mechanics, and run it with some other system... either Serenity or Feng Shui (actually my system of choice).


Aye. I've considered that as well, I must admit. Potatocubed's Fatescape (port of some D&D style mechanics and flavour to FATE), probably. Or, if I couldn't find a group for that, normal 3.5.

[IthilanorStPete]

Cross-posting my comments from the other thread:

A few notes and questions (some of which may be answered as I continue to read):
-On page 69, there's no description for the Withdraw action.
-what's up with the 5-foot step? You seemed to have removed it, which is a fine idea, but it's still mentioned as a way of avoiding AoO's. (page 68)
-Is there truly no way to grapple someone, or are you guys just trying to work out a decent grapple system?
-Would it be possible to simply swift actions like Saga Edition does and just have it be Standard>Move>Swift, with a character getting one of each per turn?
-Could you split Mettle into two abilities - one for Fort and one for Will - to make it match up better with Evasion, and still be worthwhile?
-The skill system somewhat confuses me - chapter 2 seems to suggest that your trained skills are fixed at character creation, while chapter 4's wording on buying skills suggests that you pick where you want to put your ranks each time you level up. Which one is it?
-Into the Breach seems weird without prerequisites...giving 1st lvl characters the ability to teleport their allies around seems very odd.
-Can you only multiclass once, or can you give up both your 1st lvl feats to multiclass twice?
-You should specify whether you get the general feat or only a racial feat when you multiclass.

[imperialspectre]

Holy epic feedback, batman!

Darrin: I'll get to you in a minute. It's a huge post, so it'll take a while to write up a response. I wanted to respond to the short post quickly.

I. St. Pete:

A number of the bugs have already been found and corrected, but the fixes are in the document that's waiting for release.

We want to put together a set of grapple rules that's fun and simple. I doubt very much that we can do that with a system that even slightly resembles the 3.x grapple mechanics. However, we do intend to make grappling available.

I don't have Saga Edition, and my only exposure to it was skimming through it in a Barnes & Noble about two years ago. Could you explain, please?

Regarding Mettle, which is being renamed for legal reasons in the next review cycle: It's largely a soft counter to [death] effects - things that remove a huge level-based chunk of HP and add a nasty condition. As such, we'll probably keep it as-is, because those are basically the only effects in the game that would trigger it. On the other hand, Reflex saves are much more important in Legend, because we're leaning toward making almost all of the spells that used to be touch attacks "Reflex negates." So I think it'll stay as-is for now.

The contradictory wording in Chapter 4 is a bug from a very old version of Legend; the skills chapter was originally written as a potential 3.5.x fix.

Into the Breach is intended to be available at a very low level, and we didn't want to tie it to a spellcasting track because, much like mind control, we could imagine a lot of character concepts that would have some minor teleportation talents without any real dedication to spellcasting or magic. I'm planning to add a couple feats for the next review cycle that give a few cantrips as at-will abilities; I might make one of them a prereq for Into the Breach. What do you think?

"Multiclass," in the next review cycle, will be a feat that allows you to access a new track and to switch ability DCs in that track to be based on a new ability modifier (physical for physical, and mental for mental, so we're not suddenly making spell DCs Strength-based on a Barbarian). We're probably going to make it so you can spend either your racial feat or your general feat to multiclass, as either one can be really valuable on a situational basis. It's capped at one, but you can also take the Guild Initiation feat at any level to go through a ritual that swaps out a second track.

[IthilanorStPete]

We want to put together a set of grapple rules that's fun and simple. I doubt very much that we can do that with a system that even slightly resembles the 3.x grapple mechanics. However, we do intend to make grappling available.

All right, sounds good. I agree with you on totally ditching the 3.x mechanics - I was just wondering if it was going to be there at all.


I don't have Saga Edition, and my only exposure to it was skimming through it in a Barnes & Noble about two years ago. Could you explain, please?

In Saga Ed, each character gets a standard, a move, and a swift per turn. A standard can be swapped for a move or a swift, and a move can be swapped for a swift. They don't really have immediate actions, so I'm not sure how you'd incorporate those, but it simplifies things by only having one "scale" of actions as opposed to 3.5's separatated standard/move and swift actions.


Regarding Mettle, which is being renamed for legal reasons in the next review cycle: It's largely a soft counter to [death] effects - things that remove a huge level-based chunk of HP and add a nasty condition. As such, we'll probably keep it as-is, because those are basically the only effects in the game that would trigger it. On the other hand, Reflex saves are much more important in Legend, because we're leaning toward making almost all of the spells that used to be touch attacks "Reflex negates." So I think it'll stay as-is for now.

Ah, that sounds good then.


The contradictory wording in Chapter 4 is a bug from a very old version of Legend; the skills chapter was originally written as a potential 3.5.x fix.

Gotcha.


Into the Breach is intended to be available at a very low level, and we didn't want to tie it to a spellcasting track because, much like mind control, we could imagine a lot of character concepts that would have some minor teleportation talents without any real dedication to spellcasting or magic. I'm planning to add a couple feats for the next review cycle that give a few cantrips as at-will abilities; I might make one of them a prereq for Into the Breach. What do you think?

I think that would be fine - it is a fairly minor ability, but having it available at level 3 with some investment seems like it would separate it enough from the current state of any random shmuck being able to take it.


"Multiclass," in the next review cycle, will be a feat that allows you to access a new track and to switch ability DCs in that track to be based on a new ability modifier (physical for physical, and mental for mental, so we're not suddenly making spell DCs Strength-based on a Barbarian). We're probably going to make it so you can spend either your racial feat or your general feat to multiclass, as either one can be really valuable on a situational basis. It's capped at one, but you can also take the Guild Initiation feat at any level to go through a ritual that swaps out a second track.

Ok, that sounds good then!

[Yora]

Wouldn't this thread belong into the homebrew forum?

[Fox Box Socks]

Yeah, I'm never going to back to systems that use Hit Dice.

[Veyr]

Wouldn't this thread belong into the homebrew forum?
Seeing as they're planning on selling this... not really? Besides, it's specifically a question of how the new system looks to 3.5 players.

Anyway, I'm not convinced that multiclassing needs to cost a feat. There might be a few corner cases that are strictly superior than the base classes, but from the way tracks work it seems like the majority of combinations are worse. Considering that and the fact that you have only 8 feats and no/little way to get more (that I've seen?), that's a large cost for something that could very well downgrade your character...

[Darrin]

Wouldn't this thread belong into the homebrew forum?

The core mechanics are based on d20, and it is close enough to 3.x that it probably belongs here. Might also belong in homebrew... but the original post in this forum was directed specifically at 3.x players.

I posted my notes here because this thread was active and I wasn't sure if the older thread still was.

[imperialspectre]

I would "upgrade" in a heartbeat if I had an active group.

I was sold on the "Very Long Trip" scenario and the scene/plot card structure. Unfortunately, I read the plot cards first, before I knew what system you were using, so based on the references and tone, I thought it would be more of a Serenety-ish-style system (or something more cinematic/narrative than D20). When I actually got to the rules, I was a little disappointed to see it was based on the D20 SRD.

So when I say "upgrade", what I mean is there's a good chance I would just take the scene/plot card structure (which is quite brilliant, btw), rip out all the D20 mechanics, and run it with some other system... either Serenity or Feng Shui (actually my system of choice).

I'm fairly certain that we are going to release scene and plot cards, and the general concept for AVLT, as a separate supplement (possibly CC 3.0 it, so that Serenity/FATE/etc GMs can hack it to work with those systems).

We have made a lot of effort to make Legend smoother to play and inclusive of more cinematic and generally awesome abilities than 3.x. We would be open to making more of that effort, if people were interested and gave us feedback and suggestions to that end.


However, I did go through the rules, and as far as a D20 game goes, it looks very solid, and I can see how it would work well as a D20 game. So there's a good chance I'd run it as-is.

Glad you like it.


Design-wise, I have no problem with your take magic items/WBL, because I can see that the focus on the game is on the choices the characters make when thrown into the scene, not how many bonuses they can squeeze into a particular kind of roll. The plot cards and the scene structure helps tie the characters into the setting/game-world/etc., giving them a narrative role and a means to progress the plot other than "I do 300+ damage to it, can we grab its stuff and move on now?" I can also see why that would rub some folks the wrong way or be a deal-breaker.

Oddly, several people in the thread said that they were okay with a fluff system saying that the item schedule was how many items you could attune to, which we were already going to implement in upcoming review cycles. In general, we have started with mechanics and fluff has been something to be retroactively added; perhaps this was a mistake on our part.


As far as the mechanics go, I did a read-through and got up through the feats (pages 1-65). This was a quick read-through rather than a completely thorough read-through, so I have a feeling a lot of my beefs/gripes are assumptions I've made on how things work in 3.x/SRD rather than how you want them to work in Legend.

There's something you might want to know right up front. Speed of play is really important to us, which means that we generally try to limit the number of dice rolls on a player's or GM's turn. I have a feeling that this explains a number of your issues with Barbarian. :smallsmile:


p. 16. Your multiclassing rules annoy me. The rules are also a bit confusing... to multiclass, you have to give up your 1st level feat, but which one isn't specified (I assume your non-racial feat). Actually, rather than give up a feat, it might be more worthwhile to just create a "Multiclassing" feat, although I'm still puzzled why it would have to be taken at 1st level. Why do I have to pay for multiclassing at 1st level, when I haven't technically taken any levels in other classes? What if I decide later on that I'd like to multiclass, but didn't pay the feat-tax at 1st level? What if my character concept changes significantly at mid- to high-levels? What if I'm forced into some kind of multiclass (lycanthropy?) due to plot reasons? From a design standpoint, I resent the attitude that you want to penalize some players for trying to build a particular character concept that doesn't quite fit into your existing classes/tracks/etc. If an optimizer can cherry-pick a particular class or track for some ubercombo you didn't anticipate, then the problem is not multiclassing, it's probably something out of whack with your classes/tracks. Decide if you want multiclassing or not, and if you do, then make it painless and uncomplicated.

Let me explain. Wait, there's not enough time. Let me sum up.

Multiclassing is not "you take a level of Rogue and then a level of Tactician." Multiclassing is "you're a Rogue, but you chose to learn some Tactician techniques instead of the traditional arts of a Rogue." Multiclassing defaults to first level because you're trading an ability track (which has roughly a 2/3 chance of starting at level 1) for another ability track. It is possible to swap out a track "late" by using the Guild Initiation feat, which represents going through a ritual that takes away abilities you've already learned in exchange for getting the new track from your chosen organization/sponsor/dark overlord.

Multiclassing costs a feat not because we didn't anticipate the ubercombos (I explicitly intended design choices to include trading out defense for upgraded offense, etc), but because versatility is its own form of power. The upcoming Multiclass feat is going to clarify some of the multiclassing process. Also, since the Multiclass feat will let you change out the ability modifier for your new track's DCs (physical ability for physical ability, mental for mental), I can see adding a note that a GM could waive the feat cost for a multiclassing player - the player just wouldn't get the benefits of the Multiclass feat.


p. 16-17. Extraordinary, SLAs, Supernatural Abilities. State what the "default" action should be: Ex are generally free actions, SLAs and Su are generally standard actions. Yes, you do state that the individual ability will mention what activation it requires, but its best to CYA on sloppy abilities someone else writes later and forgets to mention the activation required. Establish a default activation, and then say individual descriptions may override this default.

I'll discuss this with Jake. It sounds reasonable.


p. 18. Rage - How many times can this be used? Per day? Per encounter? Also, temp HP rather than recalculating HP due to Con score is awesome, I have a similar version in my 3.x campaign.

In general, if we don't give you a number of uses, it's at will, subject to any other restrictions in the ability text. In this case, the restriction is the "cooldown" while you are fatigued after the rage ends.


p. 19. Whirlwind. One attack roll? That's... odd. So you pretty much automatically hit everyone, or auto-whiff on everybody? I'm not sure why you'd want only one attack roll, unless you're trying to speed up combat. On the other hand, if I have a PC with the Whirlwind ability, I *WANT* to roll for every target. Dishing out whoopass is *exciting*, and every attack roll enhances that. Making a single roll sounds like a let-down. Also, no criticals? Why are you sucking all the fun out of Whirlwind? Also, how many times per day/encounter can Whirlwind be used?

It's at will, as explained above. We most definitely are trying to speed up and smooth out combat.

In general, I'm okay with GMs and players agreeing that they want to make more d20 rolls. There will be a sidebar explaining that. However, I would rather err on the fast option than the slow option.


p. 19. Disrupting Presence - how exactly are they taking damage? If you want to force a concentration check, fine, then do that and specify a DC. If you want a melee attack that autohits, then do that. Does your mere existence cause disruptive ripples in the fabric of magic/space/time? This presence = damage thing sounds like complete batsnot.

Barbarians give off an aura of rage and anger, which hurts people who are trying to focus their minds on something complex. ;)

We tend to think that the range between 6th and 8th level is a really important transition in power levels, as people cross from "'realistic' badass" to "superhero". This is where you start to see people give off disruptive auras, sprout wings, jump into 10th-story windows, etc. You can explain it, but chances are you're better off just recognizing it as something that happens in universes that scale to much higher power levels than ours appears to.


p. 19. Shiva's Charge. Please specify if your targets must be in melee range at the *end* of the charge, or if you can attack anyone adjacent to your movement along the entire path of the charge.

Intent is the latter. Barbarians cut through a LOT of mooks. It's part of their intended combat role.


p. 19. Deadly Presence. Again, how exactly is this damage being done? Do you just give off negative energy vibes? Is it typed or energy damage? If this is "always on", does that also apply outside of combat? (oy vey, would that completely ruin your love-life...). If you can turn it on/off, what action would that be? I don't like this presence = damage stuff. Barbarians kill things by *HITTING* them, not by standing next to them.

Hit points are largely an abstraction, in all systems I've encountered that aren't Burning Wheel. Sometimes you lose them because just being around an avatar of horrible destruction saps your resolve and makes you more vulnerable to more direct forms of damage, and sometimes you've already taken a couple blows and you just give up and die of shock. (People have been known to die of shock from being shot in the hand with a small-caliber bullet. That's basically the kind of thing I'm talking about here.)


p. 22. Monk. Can we make Wisdom more important? There's no Wisdom bonus to AC, and I'd like to see maybe a Wisdom bonus being used for attack/damage. For example: "Insightful Strike: You may choose to use your Wisdom Bonus instead of Strength bonus for your melee attacks." Then maybe later, "Inner Strength: You add your Wisdom bonus to all your melee attacks and damage rolls."

The Monk class has to provide space for character concepts like Neo , as well as concepts for a more traditionally meditative character. We believe that forcing a Wisdom dependence into the Monk mechanics would not serve this goal, so we explicitly chose to make it so that there were no Monk levels where you had to choose a Wisdom-dependent ability.

I would be fairly open to adding more Wisdom-based options. However, I guarantee that, for game design reasons, you won't see 2x Wisdom to attack rolls.


p. 22. Most players who hear "Ghost Step" are going to think "invisibility". Rename to "Walk Between Worlds". Actually, "Ghost Step" sounds a lot more like "ethereal jaunt", while Empty Body sounds like something you do on the Big White Throne while "reading the newspaper".

Will discuss.


p. 22. Phoenix's Rebirth. Awesome. A capstone ability that makes Monk 20 worthwhile.

Glad you like. Remember that we don't have Monk 19/X 1, however.


p. 25. The Few. WTF? So how do I play NPCs that are disguised, hidden, or trying to infiltrate/mislead PCs as spies/turncoats/traitors if Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes can automatically succeed in detecting "naughtiness"? In a game with shifting loyalties and a lot of moral gray areas, this sounds like it would be a mucked up nightmare to adjudicate or enforce. At the very least, give my NPCs an opposed roll so I can build a BBEG that can get past EVIL-DAR. I would much rather see a "discern lies" or "zone of truth" ability here with an activation and a limited number of uses/rounds per day.

p. 25. The Truth. Allow the PC to choose when to use this ability rather than auto-trigger on the first failed save. Otherwise my Pally may blow this ability on a meaningless annoyance or run into a BBEG that spams him with annoying saves until he rolls a 1 and then hit him with the Wave Motion Gun when he knows he's already blown his Truth save.

p. 26. The Ready. "points" isn't particularly descriptive enough. A PC has an assload of different points, it helps to differentiate them. Call them "Bastion Points", "Aura Points", "Readiness Points", or whatever. When the points are granted seems a bit murky... if I eat breakfast with the Pally, I get the points all day... if they never get used, do they go away at midnight or something? If I have unused points from yesterday, do they stack with the new points I get on the next day? I'd rather see this ability with a swift/immediate activation 1/day, and a specific duration... maybe 24 hours, and a maximum equal to 1/2 Pally level, so you can't stockpile several days worth of points.

p. 26. The Strong. "cannot be obviated" too vague, WTF does this mean? There are a lot of different ways to die, need to be more specific about HP (no cure spells, fast healing, regen, temp HP, etc.) or other conditions (like disintegrated). Also, how does this interact with the monk's Pheonix's Rebirth. Allies might want to make this effect voluntary, in case they have some other ability or effect that allows them to avoid or delay death.

p. 27. Should Aleph and Null be "The Alpha and Omega"?

Strand of Judgment will probably be largely modified. It was originally written when Paladin was a 3.x project; back then, absolutist language made a lot of sense. In Legend, hard counters and no-save effects make much less sense.


p. 27. Coldfire Ingot. So I pick this up and it increases cold damage. Then I let my buddy borrow it for a round, take it back and now it increases fire damage? And it does this just because I carry it in my backpack? For two effects, make two items, i.e. "blue coldfire" and "red coldfire", or add something like, "dropping this stone in a bucket of cold water for 10 minutes changes the flame to blue, and it adds +2 cold damage to all attacks. Drop it in a campfire for 10 minutes and it turns red, adding +2 fire damage to all attacks." Actually, I'm not so fond of the dual effects. I like the whetstone concept, but I'd prefer if it functions like a whetsone: bladed weapons that are sharpened with this item do an additional 2 points of cold damage for 24 hours.

We could probably add more fluff to the item. Right now, it provides a fairly straightforward mechanical effect, and we have been really busy writing content and not so busy writing explanations for how the content works in the game universe. Very soon, we'll be freezing content generation and working to present the explanations and in-character information.


p. 27 Skirmish. +1 untyped attack bonus for the rest of the encounter?!?! So I can intentionally miss the first few rounds, and then I'm God of Combat against all opponents for the rest of the encounter. Uh... might want to rewrite this one so it only applies against the opponent you missed (although with a lot of opponents, that's a bookkeeping nightmare) or only lasts until the end of next round.

You cannot intentionally miss ("I swing my sword close to him, but I'm not trying to hit him" is actually attacking a point in space that is not your opponent, which is not the same as the metagame concept of intentionally failing a d20 roll). Intentionally failing d20 rolls was one of the dumbest exploits in 3.x.


p. 27. Smiting. So, if I have a high enough Charisma bonus and Power Attack, anything I hit with Smiting is pretty much dead. Normally I'm the first guy to say "extra damage is not broken", particularly melee damage, but this seems very Rocket Taggish...

Not so much. If you trigger every single condition in this track, which can only be done situationally and takes at least two combat rounds to "power up," you're looking at 6xCHA bonus damage on maybe one or two attacks (after which you have to make more successful attack rolls). You might be able to get a +10 Charisma modifier around level 20, but doing so means you're sacrificing to-hit bonuses since you never get Charisma to attack rolls.

The bottom line is, we've done the math and this is well within the realm of "reasonable damage steroid". Also, I object on principle to terming anything "rocket tag" if you can't do it for the first couple rounds of combat.


p. 32. Esoterica Radica. The description doesn't explain how these work. It looks like you pick one ability, but after the first three, there's only one choice based on your level. So... I'm guessing this will be expanded with more choices later?

I think there's a misunderstanding as far as how ability tracks work. Ability tracks are a series of abilities that you acquire on a schedule, based on your class. In the case of the Rogue, you always get Esoterica Radica, and then you pick two other tracks (one each from the "offensive" and "defensive" track lists). You then automatically get the abilities of those two tracks, on the schedule defined in the class table.

Does that help?


p. 34. Swashbuckling. The song titles are a little jarring, since they don't really have all that much to do with swashbuckling. If you want pop culture references in this section... where is "I Am Not Left-Handed" (EDIT: on page 58, apparently), "Hello, My Name Is...", "To the Pain!", etc.? Also, how about "Convenient Rope/Curtain/Chandelier/Awning", and maybe a "I'm Using Two #$%&ing Swords, I Don't Care What The #$%&ing Designers Say!" ability?

The ability titles were a joke. I mean, seriously, rickrolling our readers? That's pretty low, even for Doc Roc. :smallwink:


p. 34. Smells Like Victory. Acid damage that also causes any target to catch fire? Is that any target, including non-flammable objects? Even creatures without any clothing? If you want a fire effect, then have it do fire damage. If you want an acid effect that keeps burning, add a damage/round with a duration.

It's a two-chambered Molotov containing two caustic chemicals (acid damage). When the chemicals combine, they react exothermically (fire damage) and, in an environment containing oxygen, will start fires. I'm perfectly willing to put this explanation in the ability text.


p. 35. Goo bomb. It has to be a crossbow bolt? It can't be an arrow or a grenade?

Jake liked crossbow bolts for some reason. I would be okay with broadening it.


p. 35. Sapper rods. Sapper = digging/undermining walls, a somewhat non-lethal leather sack full of lead weights used for cold-cocking, a dim-witted individual, or something that bleeds out of a tree. Not sure what this has to do with anti-magic or dispel effects. So... rename this to something else? Maybe "Disruptor Bomb" or "Boggler Bomb"... ok, so I can't think of a better name.

I didn't name it. I'm not very good at naming things, though.


p. 36. I kinda want to rename "Supersonic Man" to "Ludicrous Speed", but I already picked on you for pop-culture references.

Um..."Ludicrous Speed," if I included it in the document, would be a video game reference. And I've already included enough DotA and Heroes of Newerth references.


p. 36. Shadow Step. I don't quite understand... are you actually teleporting, or just walking around normally with a [teleport] tag for some reason? If the latter, then I assume terrain features (pits, walls, etc.) still prevent movement?

Hopefully it will be clearer when I define the [teleportation] tag properly. In short, the [teleportation] tag means that you poof from one place to another, and only incur AoOs from people who threatened your starting square.


p. 37. [Name] = "Paint It Black", "Fade Into Darkness", "Night's Dark Whisper", "One With Shadows"

Cool. I'll give you credit for it.


p. 37. Improvisation. Granting to an ally, what about range or line-of-sight?

Should be "ally within Close range."


p. 37. Gift of Gab, Better Lucky Than Good, Changing the Odds, Never Tell Me The Odds, Roll With It. Are these free/swift/immediate actions?

Gift of Gab is not an action, since it triggers when you use a free action to talk. Better Lucky and Good is supposed to be a swift. Never Tell Me the Odds should be immediate. The other two are meant to be non-actions.


p. 39. Guided Strike. Does this ability protect an ally, or an ally's square? Also, how exactly is this a guided strike...? It appears to protect allies from Black Tidings, but that's an area effect, not a strike... it's not guided, nor do your allies make any strikes or guide anything. Rename it to something like "Selective Tidings" or "No Tidings Is Good Tidings".

It protects an ally's square. I really like "No Tidings Is Good Tidings."


p. 40. "Binding" too easily confused with [binding] condition. Need to rename this to "Pact", "Bargain", "Infusion", or something else.

Actually, those effects should be tagged as [Binding] effects.


p. 43. Incantation. Why is this a ranged attack? If I'm trying to heal someone and he's standing next to me, and I can just reach out and touch him, I still need to roll? Why 2d4 + 1d4 per level? Wouldn't a fixed amount like 3 HP/level be quicker/easier to calculate? If you're trying to harm someone and you have to make an attack roll... why wouldn't it be a "weapon" attack like a ray or an orb? If I'm just chanting "Please Heal Bob, Oh Please Heal Bob" over and over again... why not just pick a target and have it auto-succeed? If not, and I make an attack roll and miss... how exactly did I miss? Was I chanting incorrectly, or did I mispronounce Bob's name? If I'm using this to hurt someone, why not make it an orb or ray effect? Otherwise, pick a target and give them a save to resist/avoid. Hmm... is this an attempt to make Truenaming not suck?

It's not supposed to be a ranged attack to hit an ally, so I'll fix that. The attack tag restriction is meant to indicate that you can't add sneak attack or other forms of bonus damage to it; we'll probably rewrite that restriction in some way, but it's a fairly important restriction.

I don't do truenaming. Jake wanted a couple truenaming-flavored feats, so I let him.


p. 43. Imbue Spell. Is there a limit on how many times you can use this per day/encounter/round etc.?

Not right now. It might get a limit later.


p. 43. Shaman's Presence. So no activation or duration? Hmmm.

Healing aura.


p. 43. Guardian Spirits. I don't think "instantaneous action" is defined in the rules. I think you mean an immediate action?

"Instantaneous action" is an immediate action that draws from your free action pool; we were introducing these at one point but eventually chose not to do so anymore.


p. 43. Shallow Grave. Same problem with "The Strong". Need to be more explicit about how to treat cure spells, fast healing, regen, temp HP, disintegrate effects, etc. Also, how does it work with Phoenix's Rebirth?

Things that kill you after they protect you can still trigger Phoenix's Rebirth and similar effects, and the target can still be resurrected after the fact. I'll try to clean up the wording.


p. 45. Tactical insight. Move action seems kinda lame. Also... can you make multiple checks and stack the options, or does a new check just let you repick your options? Who picks the ability, the tactician, or is each ally allowed to pick a different ability? Extra Insight: activate at the same time, as in one check = two abilities, or do you mean two separate checks = stack two abilities?

The move action comes from 3.x legacy; it's less of a cost than swift or standard, which is basically the intent.

You can make new checks against creature types you didn't originally cover, and pick new options against them. You can't make multiple checks against the same creature type.

Extra Insight is one check = two abilities.


p. 46. Countermeasures. Needs a duration. Do you mean permanent cancellation, until the end of the encounter, or does it come back with a day of rest, etc.

The ability that is countered auto-fails and the use is wasted. The slot that was used is refreshed whenever it would normally be (5 minute rest for encounter, 8 hour rest for per-day effects, etc).


p. 47. Nerveskitter. Rename this to "Hair-Trigger Neckhairs", "Early Warning", "I Have A Bad Feeling About This", or "I Don't Want to be Sued By Wizards of the Coast".

Will do.


p. 47. Saw That Coming and Checkmate. Specify what action to activate.

Immediate and standard, respectively.


p. 54. And I Must Run. Why is this 1st level only?

Sometimes we feel that a feat is good enough and sufficiently character-defining that it should trade off with multiclassing and other 1st-level-only feat options.


p. 54. Baptized in Rage. Chains of aether... ok, how does this have anything to do with baptism or rage? Chains of Rage, Chains of Woe, or Chains of the Hunted/Hunter would make more sense. Is this a (Su) ability?

It's probably (Su). I didn't name it.


p. 54. By Will Sustained. Fifth/eight/twelfth what? So... if someone teleports me into lunar orbit, I can survive indefinitely... is this a (Su) ability?

The numbers are referring to level. I don't know if I would tag it as (Su)...it would default to (Ex).


p. 54. Chatty Bugger. If I can automatically talk with all animals and magical creatures, why do I even need to bother learning new languages? I guess humanoids aren't animals or magical creatures... what if they cast spells or have (Su) abilities, does that make a humanoid a magical creature?

I didn't write this ability, and I'm not sure what Jake meant by "magical creature." I'll check with him.


p. 54. Feign Dead. "attempt to feint", do you mean "attempt to feign dead"? A feint is generally a combat maneuver, or did you mean faint?

I didn't write it. Jake can answer this.


p. 55. I Did The Math. What action to activate, or is there a limit on uses per day/encounter/round/etc.? "Daggers and Bolts" Ranger ability, do you mean Send Bullets, Bolts, and Arrows?

It's a feat like Melee Finesse; the intent is it's always on. "Daggers and Bolts" is a Ranger ability that no longer exists.


p. 55. Objective Analysis. What action to activate?

It's meant to be a lesser Legend Lore. So probably holding it and going into a trace for a few minutes.


p. 55. Rune Magic. This probably needs a more careful rewrite... it sounds like I could place rune traps on myself or my allies to trigger buff effects (essentially Glyph Seal abuse). Also, how do you define the enemy, can you key it to a particular race/alignment/creature type as a 3.x-style glyph of warding? Can you specify which allies can pass through or specify a password? How big is the rune, what objects can it be placed on, can you place it on creatures? Also, the "move more than 10 feet" thing, so I can move it 5 feet, wait a round, move it another 5 feet, etc. Does teleport count for moving more than 10 feet, i.e., how does an object with a rune know that it's been teleported more than 10' from its original location? If the rune cast on an object "knows" when it's been moved from its absolute location, then does it matter if the rune has been cast on an object or a specific square?

Check with Jake.


p. 56. Summon Mote. "Siphon HP", can you suck it dry or down to -9 HP? Also, separate Darkvision 30' ability, because as-written it sounds like you have to Siphon HP to give your mote Darkvision. You may want to specify how to calculate a Mote's AC and saving throws.

Check with Jake.


p. 56. The Bitter Dregs. +1 on *all* d20 rolls? No activation or uses per day/encounter/rounds? Hmmmm.

This basically represents the cold sobriety of a character who avoids intoxicating substances, at a level where character traits are dramatically larger than life. It trades off with an ability that gives you a ton of healing and some strong combat abilities.


p. 56. Right Hand of Death/Left Hand of Creation. How does this work with "delay death" abilities like The Strong or Shallow Grave?

Check with Jake.


p. 57. The Sky Empties. How do you determine the path of the arc? Chosen by the PC, or a direct line between the square you're leaving and the square you appear in?

The latter.


p. 57. Smell of Napalm. If this is a "reduce HP" effect, then this isn't damage, and thus ignores DR/resistance/Right Hand of Creation? If it is damage... then what type of damage? Energy damage? Untyped? "Rotten Egg Smell" damage?

Max HP reduction is different from damage, and does ignore resistances. However, if you've already lost that much HP, you don't lose more. It's sort of the reverse of temporary hit points.


p. 57. Sun Grows Dim. Action to activate?

I assume you're asking how long it takes to create the servitors. They're not really good in-combat, and I imagine it would take a few rounds.


p. 57. So a BBEG can wait until a flunky/minion hits the PC with a melee attack, and then he can move in later that round and ignore the acid blood?

Probably.


p. 57. Wings of War. So do I get wings once when I take this feat, or can I grow them at will whenever I like? (If the latter, then I want to grow wings made of pure gold or gems, cut them off, and grow another pair of wings...). Also, the "likely supernatural" wording bothers me... the rules should definitively state whether it is (Su) or not. Seems to me like it shouldn't matter, unless you acquire the feat in a permanent anti-magic field.

Check with Jake regarding growing them back, although I suspect that growing wings made of pure gold wouldn't work because you can't use them to fly. :smalltongue:


p. 57. You Will Falter/You Will Fall. Kinda a toothless ability... unless healing auras/effects are very common, seems more like a "You Will Be Annoyed or Slightly Inconvenienced" kinda ability. Not clear how this ability is activated, either. You mention "point per level you possess" but don't specify if this is character level, the number of You Will Falter/Fall effects on the target, or what. I'd rework this as something with a bit more fangs to it.

Healing auras and effects are, to quote Joe Biden, a big f-ing deal. It's a passive aura of magical disruption. The reduction is equal to your character level.


p. 58. Big Damn Hero. Action to activate?

One of the reasons that Iron Heart Surge was broken is that it specified an action, but many of the effects it would cancel would prevent you from taking that action. So it was literally broken insofar as it required GM adjudication to even use.

So instead, we simply said it has no action cost, but gave it a very tight limit on how many times you can use it (unlike IHS, which could theoretically be used every other turn).


p. 58. I Am Not Left Handed/My Name is War. Should specify "Each round of combat", or "At the start of an encounter". Otherwise it sounds like I can rack up infinite Focus points.

You're right.


p. 59. On a Pale Horse. If it has a limited uses/day and the PC can choose when to use it, then you should specify what action to activate is required.

Probably meant to be a free action.


p. 60. A Song of Arrows. So... what does this have to do with arrows if I can use it with a melee weapon?

Given that the prerequisite is "Use a longbow," I'm not sure how you can use it with a melee weapon. :smalltongue:


p. 60. And My Axe! I'm not entirely sure how this could be abused yet, but I'd recommend putting a maximum or cap on this, maybe equal to character level x2.

It's not so much "abuse" (since we don't have traditional TWF, there's no way to dramatically increase your attacks per round) as a guarantee that eventually combat will end. I think I'm okay with that.


p. 60. Kensai. Block a melee attack how, exactly? Several feats/abilities use Focus Points, can they be used interchangeably, or are Focus Points generated via Kendai only usable on Kensai-related abilities?

Focus Points are pooled with all abilities that generate them. In my experience, there are lots of ways to block attacks, and the fluff would probably allow you to auto-dodge them as an alternative.


p. 60. Master of Swordplay. Huh? If I can take that other feat already, why would I take this feat? Or does this allow me to ignore prereqs? Or do you mean, "pick another feat that applies to a specific melee weapon, such as And My Axe! You can now apply that feat to another chosen melee weapon, such as a sword." If that was the intent, this needs to be clarified. Is "Master of Swordplay" supposed to only apply to swords? To all melee weapons? If the intent was "I want to use Axe feats with my Sword", then I guess my issue with that is, why not make the Axe feats compatible with swords or other melee weapons to begin with? What exactly is the advantage from a game design standpoint to have only certain feats work with a particular type of weapon?

We deeply simplified the weapon system, and created the weapon-specific feats as a way to provide mechanical differences in what you could do with different weapons.

Master of Swordplay stems from the fact that swords are extremely flexible weapons and aren't used the same across the board - one sword might be used very much like a spear, in terms of punching through armor with a zweihander, while another sword might be much more like an axe in the way that you use it. So instead of giving one mechanical use for swords, we let you define how you use your particular sword by saying "I use it like an axe," or "I use it like a spear," or "I use it like a dagger."


p. 60. Musketeer. Ah yes, the "longbows, crossbows, and slings are useless" feat. I'm not sure this feat is really balanced with the other ranged weapons.

It's definitely balanced with "you get extra attacks" and "you can break magic" and "you can blind people."


p. 60. Perfect Defense. Are the Charge-Cancel and the Power-Attack/Deadly-Aim-Cancel abilities separate 1/day abilities, or if you use one then you don't get to use the other for that day?

They are separate 1/encounter abilities.


p. 60. Pistolero. How exactly do you blind an opponent with a projectile weapon so it only lasts 1 round? "Chosen weapon" is not defined. If I carry a pistol, can my chosen weapon be a flintlock rifle, a 100-lb. cannon, or an axe? (I don't get the bandana joke.) Is Musketeer necessary when the free reload from Pistolero does the same thing? Could Musketeer/Pistolero be combined into one feat?

I don't know how the blinding is being fluffed. "Chosen weapon" means the weapon of choice that is a prerequisite for the feat; it's ambiguous because you can use a pistol or a hand crossbow.

The intent was to provide feat support for long guns and snipers (Musketeer), and feat support for gunslingers (Pistolero).


p. 60. Shadow Blink. Again, is this actual teleport where you can ignore intervening terrain features, or are you just walking around with the [teleport] tag? Why the nerf on Acrobatics?

Teleportation lets you ignore LoS (but not LoE, unless the ability specifically says so - yes, this is being fixed/implemented throughout the game) and you don't incur AoOs in the area that you just poof through. You get AoOs from the people who threaten you when you start because they get to take advantage of the moment of concentration as you activate the blink; it would be silly to let you back-flip around them when your movement is teleportation. It's not a nerf to Acrobatics.


p. 60. Spectactular Beats. Awesome ability, but you might want to put a disclaimer in there about using enemies/allies/important NPCs/living creatures as "improvised weapons".

I can see that being an important disclaimer. On the other hand, I'm okay with using dead creatures as improvised weapons.


p. 60. Tell Them, Still Angry. Again, need to specify if "reduce HP" is the same as "damage", and if it's damage, then what type of energy? And how does this work with "delay death" effects or Monk 20's Phoenix's Rebirth?

Anyone who has both the Rage track and the track that gives Phoenix's Rebirth will get to resurrect from the urn. I don't anticipate that as a common track combination, though; it's neither particularly compelling from a flavor standpoint nor particularly strong from a power standpoint.


p. 61. To Pierce the Heavens. Specify action to activate? As in, if it's triggered with an attack, what if I choose not to attack that round, or cast a spell, or whatever?

Swift action.


p. 61. Way of the Gun. As a swift action or free action?

Swift, probably.


p. 62. Cloaked Spellcasting. What kind of action to activate?

Free action.


p. 62. Deft Strike. And if the opponent has no DR, this is useless? Can I ignore an armor bonus, natural armor bonus, or treat the target as flat-footed?

This one may be rewritten. It goes back to when we were planning on implementing most armors as providing primarily Damage Resistance, and we haven't decided one way or another on that yet.


p. 63. Battleforged. Awesome, but I don't recall seeing "Sentient Construct" in the Races section.

It's linked to a racial track, so right now it's in Chapter 10 under "Racial Tracks." It may be moved in the pending reorganization.


p. 64. Lich. Draining Ray, Cause Fear need to specify an action to activate. For Chill Touch, specify if it can be used with multiple attacks, on out-of-turn attacks (AoOs), or is a once-per-turn ability.

Will do.


p. 64. Mummy. Once per round, but is this a free/swift/immediate action?

It's probably a free action.

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll incorporate the mechanical stuff into the document that I'm preparing right now for the next review cycle. Once that document is up, we'll be freezing most new mechanical content and focusing on presentation and fluff for a while.

[Veyr]

Multiclassing costs a feat not because we didn't anticipate the ubercombos (I explicitly intended design choices to include trading out defense for upgraded offense, etc), but because versatility is its own form of power.
I disagree here. Or rather, I think you need to distinguish between actual versatility and potential versatility. In some sense, multiclassing does increase versatility - you have more options. However, you cannot change your choice after first level. You lose access to all of the other options you could have chosen (including the choice not to multiclass in the first place) when you finalize your character and begin play.

In short, the fact that my multiclass could have chosen to not multiclass, or multiclass into a different class, doesn't matter now that the choice is finalized. As such, that potential versatility is gone, and now you're not inherently more versatile than any other character.


The upcoming Multiclass feat is going to clarify some of the multiclassing process. Also, since the Multiclass feat will let you change out the ability modifier for your new track's DCs (physical ability for physical ability, mental for mental), I can see adding a note that a GM could waive the feat cost for a multiclassing player - the player just wouldn't get the benefits of the Multiclass feat.
On the other hand, the ability to swap around ability scores might be worth a feat... especially if you take a track that was maybe using what was a tertiary score for the original class, but is now using your primary, or something. Maybe. But I'm sort of dubious about this; assuming all classes use two or three ability scores, this swap only maintains a given level of power, rather than improving it (because you're swapping a track that would have used the same ability or whatever).

[imperialspectre]

I disagree here. Or rather, I think you need to distinguish between actual versatility and potential versatility. In some sense, multiclassing does increase versatility - you have more options. However, you cannot change your choice after first level. You lose access to all of the other options you could have chosen (including the choice not to multiclass in the first place) when you finalize your character and begin play.

In short, the fact that my multiclass could have chosen to not multiclass, or multiclass into a different class, doesn't matter now that the choice is finalized. As such, that potential versatility is gone, and now you're not inherently more versatile than any other character.


That's a really interesting argument. I'll have to think about it more.

[imperialspectre]

I disagree here. Or rather, I think you need to distinguish between actual versatility and potential versatility. In some sense, multiclassing does increase versatility - you have more options. However, you cannot change your choice after first level. You lose access to all of the other options you could have chosen (including the choice not to multiclass in the first place) when you finalize your character and begin play.

In short, the fact that my multiclass could have chosen to not multiclass, or multiclass into a different class, doesn't matter now that the choice is finalized. As such, that potential versatility is gone, and now you're not inherently more versatile than any other character.


That's a really interesting argument. I'll have to think about it more.

[Tehnar]

To get me to buy your products, to attract me, you need a really strong setting. Something that ties in well with the mechanics. For some RPG's, mechanics don't even matter much.

For example; Dark Heresy could use better mechanics. I love playing it however because of its rich setting.

Ctuhlutech on the other hand; I never liked the setting idea; I never bothered to read more and learn the mechanics.

[Doc Roc]

Yeah, I'm never going to back to systems that use Hit Dice.

Good thing we use static HP per Level with bonus from con...

[Endarire]

I prefer 3 maneuverabilities, Bad, Good, and Perfect.

Bad; You can't hover. You must move at least half your flight speed each round or fall. Flying straight up costs double. (Equivalent to Average, Poor, and Clumsy in 3.5.)

Good: You can hover. You need not move at least half your flight speed each round or fall. Flying straight up still costs double.

Perfect: You can hover. You need not move at least half your flight speed each round or fall. Flying straight up has no extra cost.

PS: Red Wizards are core. They're only playable if your GM says so.

[Nohwl]

You cannot intentionally miss ("I swing my sword close to him, but I'm not trying to hit him" is actually attacking a point in space that is not your opponent, which is not the same as the metagame concept of intentionally failing a d20 roll). Intentionally failing d20 rolls was one of the dumbest exploits in 3.x.

what if you take kensai?

[Doc Roc]

what if you take kensai?

Hehehe, that is intentional, actually. Glad you found it!

As to rune magic, it definitely needs a rewrite, and I'd love a hand wih that. I also quite prefer chains of fury to baptism in rage. Thank you for re help, D, I'll get to the other stuff when I am not on my iPhone.

[The Rabbler]

I have a question relating to the 3.x conversion discussion. How does Legend convert/replicate specific abilities? I was always partial to shadow pouncing and I can't really see a way to do this in legend without creating a new track designed around shadow pouncing. The only way to do it in 3.5 was via PrC and there's no way (AFAIK) to replicate going three levels into a PrC and then continuing with more useful class levels.

I know I've articulated it poorly, but my problem is with the idea that in order to replicate a D&D 3.5 character idea (maybe this only applies with shadow pounce) you need to make up a track and there are no guidelines for the creation of a balanced track that uses a unique mechanic.

[imperialspectre]

Some of these abilities are a lot less unique outside of 3.5, and a lot of them can just be condensed to feats. In the case of shadowpouncing, the mechanic as I understood it was "when you teleport, you get to make a full attack at the end of your teleportation." Since full attacks are a standard action, and there are several ways to get move-action teleportation available to anyone, it's...extremely easy to shadowpounce in Legend.

Right now, we haven't really moved toward creating guidelines for making a balance track, other than the common sense principle that the track should be similar to other published tracks in power level. We were planning to put that in the second core book, which right now is called "the monster book" as a working name, since that's where a lot of the new racial tracks and extra tracks are going to show up.

[Doc Roc]

I would be more likely to make it a feat chain. A lot of feats are really life-paths in disguise.

[true_shinken]

The one thing I dislike is calling it an 'upgrade'.

[Doc Roc]

The one thing I dislike is calling it an 'upgrade'.

It's still supported, and you can yell at us, and we'll listen. That's an upgrade in this sense. Honestly, that was just a wording fail on my part though, and not intended as an offense.

You will find that, magically, this has ceased to be an issue. :)

[Rei_Jin]

As a homebrewer, writer, and gamer myself, I'm rather interested in your system. It seems to me, to be a melding of D20 Modern and D&D 3.5, with a lot of unnecessary gunk removed, then new stuff put in. I started a similar project a few years ago, then I had kids.

Feel free to get in touch with me via email (as I rarely haunt these boards nowadays) if you'd like to discuss things further.

[email protected]


EDIT: By discuss things further, I mean get specific input on various elements of it. There's a lot to go over, and I'd like it if you narrowed down what you'd like critiqued, as well as discussing some of the thinking behind different things.

[Eldan]

Oddly, several people in the thread said that they were okay with a fluff system saying that the item schedule was how many items you could attune to, which we were already going to implement in upcoming review cycles. In general, we have started with mechanics and fluff has been something to be retroactively added; perhaps this was a mistake on our part.


This is, I think, the biggest problem I have so far with this system, as I've already told the bird doctor. So far, it's just not very interesting to read, and the mechanics feel disjointed. Often, I have problems to see how things would be integrated into a working world. There's another thing: how are NPCs generated in your world? Not antagonists, normal people. How common are powers supposed to be? Because if everyone can pick up destructive magic with a feat, the world would have to be vastly, vastly different to accommodate that.
Which would probably be another problem for many people: you can't really play this system in any of the normal D&D worlds, it's too different. I don't really use any of those other than Planescape, where I could perhaps make it work with some moderate rewrites of the setting.

[Doc Roc]

The lack of fluff and art are basically the reason this is a beta. It is not going to stay a beta. It is not going to stay fluffless. It will have a charming default setting or two. Right now, though, before we build on the rules we'd like to know we're building on a solid foundation.

[dextercorvia]

page 106. The spell Silence grants 20% concealment?

page 117. The effect line and the description of the effect in Wall of Thorns don't match.

[Doc Roc]

I believe the second is a mistake, but he first one may be intentional, though I find it very odd. I'll talk to chris.

[true_shinken]

It's still supported, and you can yell at us, and we'll listen. That's an upgrade in this sense. Honestly, that was just a wording fail on my part though, and not intended as an offense.

You will find that, magically, this has ceased to be an issue. :)

Ah, that is very very good. :smallsmile:
+1 to the guy saying you need a strong setting. Let me know if you need help with that, btw.

[dextercorvia]

Is Shaman's Path intended to let you take Esoterica Radica?

What happened to the Skald?

[Doc Roc]

Is Shaman's Path intended to let you take Esoterica Radica?

What happened to the Skald?

All the math in Skald needed a rewrite. It's been pushed to Expansion 1, which will likely include:

A simple econ system as an optional sub-system.
More material for the Legendary Type.
Thoughts on customizing the econ.
A good consumables system.
About 80 items.
Skald.

[stainboy]

What's your design goal with the Legend ranger? I get that the ranger's defining class features (dualwielding, animal companions, 4/9 casting) don't work in Legend but I'm not sure what you were going for with the new abilities.


-Why split the overtly magical stuff between two tracks? You have Last Argument of Kings in Einherjar's Discipline, and A Crashing of the Heavens in Battle's Tempering.

-Similarly, why split the bonuses vs flat-footed between two tracks? Will Kill You is in Hunter's Mastery, Harder is Stronger is in Einherjar's Discipline.

-Battle's Tempering and Einherjar's Discipline don't really have an overriding theme. Battle's Tempering is half trick shots, half lightning magic. Einherjar's Discipline is Sudden Strike, defensive buffs, and storms/earthquakes. Einherjar's Discipline looks really attractive for a multiclass rogue, which means at 15th level rogues start summoning earthquakes for no reason.

-Speaking of which, do Harder is Stronger and rogue Sneak Attack stack?

-How does Will Kill You work? Does it stack with Harder is Stronger or Sneak Attack? If the target makes the save, does the target survive even if it would have died without the bonus damage? Do I activate it before the attack roll or after? If after, does taking that swift action force me to end my attack action even if I have more iteratives?

-Overall, why diverge so much from the 3.5 ranger? I would have expected one guerilla tactics/Favored Enemy track, one druidy track, and choice of either a melee track or an archery track. Why the new direction?

[Claudius Maximus]

So is Expansion 1 going to be something other than a book of monsters and alternative tracks?

Sorry, it's just that that's the last I heard of it.

[imperialspectre]

What's your design goal with the Legend ranger? I get that the ranger's defining class features (dualwielding, animal companions, 4/9 casting) don't work in Legend but I'm not sure what you were going for with the new abilities.

The Ranger class was actually rewritten for the new beta document, which is coming out tonight or tomorrow morning. The design goal was to create a scouting-oriented combat class with soft battlefield control and moderately competent assassination/sniping abilities. The existing Ranger class didn't do these things very well, so we rewrote it.


-Overall, why diverge so much from the 3.5 ranger? I would have expected one guerilla tactics/Favored Enemy track, one druidy track, and choice of either a melee track or an archery track. Why the new direction?

The 3.5 ranger was, to put it bluntly, terrible. It had no actual role and didn't do anything well at all. The Mystic Ranger variant, with Sword of the Arcane Order, and the Wildshape Ranger variant were both decent, but one of those is a multiclass build and one of them requires material that isn't going to be released until the Monster Book.

We wanted a class that would perform a useful role on Legend's battlefields. Ultimately, we ended up drawing more inspiration from the idea of a magitech-using special forces soldier (like what you'd get if you had a Ranger that used Spell Compendium and Sword of the Arcane Order) than a vaguely-racist hunter who also happened to be a total hippie.

Also, Shamans can be flavored as druidic just as easily as they can be flavored as clerical. It didn't make sense to have an additional druidic class when "mundane hunter" can be handled with any low-level combat class.


So is Expansion 1 going to be something other than a book of monsters and alternative tracks?

Sorry, it's just that that's the last I heard of it.

We think of the monster book as half of the Legend core rules, with the first half being beta tested right now. Think PHB/MM1.

[Doc Roc]

We actually just rewrote ranger again, Stain, so it's probably worth re-reading when the new beta version goes up.

Edit: And it's up!

[dextercorvia]

Another question on the Shaman's Path: They gain the abilities of the chosen track from second level onward. Does that mean they miss out on the first circle ability of any track that begins at 1st level?

[imperialspectre]

Nope. Just as with multiclassing, you simply rip the track abilities out and apply them in order.

[dextercorvia]

Do you have an answer to Shaman's Path for Esoterica Radica?

[Tyndmyr]

Juicy settings will likely make me buy books. Especially if they are usable with vanilla 3.x/PF.

I'm a sucker for settings. I even own a stack of Kingdoms of Kalimar, which is an utterly terrible setting. And Dragonlance.

[dextercorvia]

Sorry for the stream of consciousness. It seems that Death Ward is superior to Freedom of Movement in every way.

Immunity to [Death],[Binding],negative levels, and spell based ability damage/drain for the entire Scene from a third circle Shaman spell vs. Immunity to [Binding] for one encounter from a 4th circle Tactician spell.

Even if the disparity is supposed to reflect the difference in focus between the two classes, that is pretty chasmic.

[Nohwl]

the link in the first post doesn't seem to be working. is there another link to the current version i missed?

[imperialspectre]

I have no idea how [binding] got into Death Ward.

Esoterica Radica cannot be accessed by Shaman's Path; not mentioning it was a mistake that has since been fixed.

Tyndmyr, the default Legend setting is something that very well may have resulted from the abuses of free wishes, chain-gating, and weird radars. A horrible cataclysm and resulting interplanar war destroyed practically all of existence. The last remnants of the material plane are basically a Dyson sphere where each individual satellite (called a "plate") is run by a distant and uncaring intelligence (called an "angel", for reasons known only to Jake) that exists only to preserve its plate, and thereby itself. Although it would never make it into official material, I personally think that the angels are what's left of elemental weirds who recovered autonomy and used the radars to figure out how to preserve little bits of existence.

Since Hallow is made up of many little bits, some of which have no communication with each other, we have a ton of narrative space for different settings, cultures, and levels of magic and technology. Oh, and there are a few places where people gather. Places where you'll end up eventually, if you piss off the wrong people or make friends with the right people. Places like Bron or Far Aday end up looking a lot like Sigil - full of magic and technology, with highly diverse populations who are forced to get along. On the other hand, there are a few places that are kind of backwaters, where "civilization" is basically medieval and nobody really bothers with advanced magical research and fireballs and stuff.

Edit: Nowhl, apologies. Jake has the new document, and hasn't quite uploaded it yet. It'll be out at some point today.

[Doc Roc]

Should be fixed! Sorry, my VPS exploded so I had to use google docs... again.... And docs is held together with what appears to be human collagen and sinew.

There'll be another new version sometime today.

[Eldan]

Huh. Right.

So, that makes it even easier than I thought to steal half your adventures and adapt them to Etherworld if I want to. Nice.

[Doc Roc]

Our adventures are CC3.0 licensed under sharealike attributable. Feel free to take them and adapt them, but you should read the terms of the license. IP rights are a real and meaningful concern.

[Eldan]

Yes, I know. I was just saying that the setting sounds similar to my Etherworlds.

[IthilanorStPete]

As I've said before, I'm liking Legend a lot. Comments posted in the spring cleaning thread.

[stainboy]

We actually just rewrote ranger again, Stain, so it's probably worth re-reading when the new beta version goes up.

Edit: And it's up!

I think I got some paint chips in my cereal this morning, because I can't find the new document to save my life.

[Doc Roc]

Try this? (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B4dLcxsM7Nx0ZTEzYzdlOWEtODA0NS00M2Y4LWEyYjM tZmNkYjZhNzg0NTRm&hl=en&authkey=CK_1m5cO) It should work... Also, we added another track to ranger that helps provide a best-of-both-worlds solution. It's not in core yet, but it can be found here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oE-GUMoJUWwoxq5pqpPHCnzog5RJasoU-NpK-eccHnI/edit?hl=en&authkey=CLrIkP8D&pli=1#). Next rev will include it.

We really are trying to make ranger something that people can love.

[Aharon]

Hi Doc Roc!

I just wanted to inform you that I opened a thread about Legend on the Den, because I'm curious about their opinion. I know you disagree with some of them and dislike their style of discussion, IIRC, but in case you're interested, here's the link (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52252).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You know, I really do like this system... particularly the naming of the tracks and abilities. Well, maybe not all of them, I'd like to play a swashbuckler without getting rickroll'd... :smalltongue:

Seriously, it's going to take some time to go through everything, but it seems solid to me. I particularly like the paradigm you've created for the Paladin.

[Doc Roc]

Next revision drops the rickroll for a variety of reasons, not the least of them rights concerns. Glad you like it and oh god the den.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Next revision drops the rickroll for a variety of reasons, not the least of them rights concerns. Glad you like it and oh god the den.

I like the basic mechanics. You've really streamlined things and made it a lot less convoluted and complicated. You don't have nested DO loops to determine what should be used/applied when. For this alone, I would try the system.

I like, and worry about, giving BAB as a bonus to the character's AC. On the one hand, those classes with a full BAB are also the ones who are probably pretty decent at avoiding attacks. On the other hand, I worry about mudflation of stats.

Wouldn't it be easier, for example, to say that the Fast BAB individuals start with a +1 to attack and AC, with an additional +1 every 4 levels thereafter (5th, 9th, 13th, 17th)? That is, after all, what it boils down to.

As far as iterative attacks, I've always felt that marrying it to iterative attacks was... kludgy. I also thought that letting a stoogy wizard who probably never stepped foot in the training halls to have iterative attacks just because he hit a certain level was silly.

If you really want to, make a 'combo' system. At 6th level for Fast BAB classes, or at 8th level for 'normal' BAB classes, they can start a 'combo', which normally requires a full attack action to commit. The second and successive hits are at a -5 penalty. Fast BAB classes gain an additional hit in their combo every five levels, Normal BAB classes gain an additional hit every seven levels.

That would perfectly duplicate the iterative attacks from the BAB chart. If you want to fiddle with it from there, by all means, it is now much easier to do so.

[Doc Roc]

Thing is, we have no stodgy wizards. We have people who have a bit less training at hitting people, and a bit more. In this case, we've opted to keep a simple mechanic by reducing what it actively models in core.

[imperialspectre]

I like, and worry about, giving BAB as a bonus to the character's AC. On the one hand, those classes with a full BAB are also the ones who are probably pretty decent at avoiding attacks. On the other hand, I worry about mudflation of stats.

Wouldn't it be easier, for example, to say that the Fast BAB individuals start with a +1 to attack and AC, with an additional +1 every 4 levels thereafter (5th, 9th, 13th, 17th)? That is, after all, what it boils down to.

Back when we added BAB to AC, which was ages ago, we had two main reasons for doing so. The first one was a simple game theory reason: by basing attack bonus and AC on the same theoretical formula (scaling bonus + ability mod + mods), we had a much better shot at keeping our bonuses "on the RNG" (in a numerical relationship where d20 rolls were a significant influence).

We also were making a conscious decision to reduce the need for spells and items that increase AC just to make AC a relevant stat. One of our core design concepts was emphasizing player abilities over items, and we wanted to avoid the arbitrary kludge of tacking on huge natural armor bonuses, so we needed a formula for AC that incorporated limited item bonuses.

Now, there's actually a very good reason to promote "stat inflation," as you call it. We explicitly intended to set up a situation where being around 5 levels higher than a creature makes you more or less out of their league. (It makes encounter level calculations much simpler; you and I both know that it's the case in 3.x, too, with the caveat that a fighter of any level doesn't have class features and feats to take on a 10th-level wizard. I guess a couple specific samurai builds do, but that's neither here nor there.) Making BAB and AC scale the way that they do in Legend helps us model how the game dramatically changes every few levels in terms of how the player characters interact with the world.


As far as iterative attacks, I've always felt that marrying it to iterative attacks was... kludgy. I also thought that letting a stoogy wizard who probably never stepped foot in the training halls to have iterative attacks just because he hit a certain level was silly.

If you really want to, make a 'combo' system. At 6th level for Fast BAB classes, or at 8th level for 'normal' BAB classes, they can start a 'combo', which normally requires a full attack action to commit. The second and successive hits are at a -5 penalty. Fast BAB classes gain an additional hit in their combo every five levels, Normal BAB classes gain an additional hit every seven levels.

That would perfectly duplicate the iterative attacks from the BAB chart. If you want to fiddle with it from there, by all means, it is now much easier to do so.

Jake already mentioned that we haven't currently released material for "stodgy wizard." If I were writing a class framework for characters who aren't naturally good at attack rolls (spoiler alert: I am!), I would create an extra "Slow" BAB progression, at 1/2 levels, specifically remove iterative attacks from that progression, and create scaling "True Strike" and "Mage Armor" powers, usable as swift actions, that would increase AC and +hit respectively for 1 round to a level that would put you back on the RNG for those situations where you're casting an attack roll spell or about to get hit by 500 pounds of troll.

But as it is, I just can't see a reason we would want to restrict iteratives from our currently-released classes, all of which are explicitly focused on combat in terms of the track features they have. I particularly wouldn't write iteratives in a way that restricts full attacks to full-round actions or anything similar, since the ability to move and then make every attack you're normally able to has been a central feature of our combat system ever since Legend started being written as a new system instead of a 3.5.x expansion.

[Eldan]

Thing is, we have no stodgy wizards. We have people who have a bit less training at hitting people, and a bit more. In this case, we've opted to keep a simple mechanic by reducing what it actively models in core.

Out of interest: how would you build a stodgy wizard in your system? I've always liked the concept a lot.

Edit: I should really read all posts before posting, shouldn't I?

Another thing: I like how you de-emphasize magical items. They shouldn't provide just numerical boni, on that I agree. But what about mundane items? I think Plate or mail should be a viable choice and provide a large and tangible benefit.

So far, you have written quite often how Legend is a different system from 3.5 and I must say, I still don't really see it. It still looks a lot like 3.5 to me and not sufficiently different to be called a new system.

[Doc Roc]

Out of interest: how would you build a stodgy wizard in your system? I've always liked the concept a lot.

Edit: I should really read all posts before posting, shouldn't I?

Another thing: I like how you de-emphasize magical items. They shouldn't provide just numerical boni, on that I agree. But what about mundane items? I think Plate or mail should be a viable choice and provide a large and tangible benefit.

So far, you have written quite often how Legend is a different system from 3.5 and I must say, I still don't really see it. It still looks a lot like 3.5 to me and not sufficiently different to be called a new system.

Then I would politely argue you don't know 3.5 very well.

[Eldan]

It still has AC, saves, hit points, classes, levels, skills, feats attack rolls and so on and so forth. The basic framework is the same, though the mathematics of it are better and the details have changed.

[Esser-Z]

It still has AC, saves, hit points, classes, levels, skills, feats attack rolls and so on and so forth. The basic framework is the same, though the mathematics of it are better and the details have changed.

Hm, so does 4e! There's no arguing that that's quite different from 3.5, though, is there? I propose that Legend has a similar relationship. Same base core mechanics, but significantly different implementation, especially of character design.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I wonder if you are going to be using DR for armor, rather than AC bonuses. After all, you've already got plenty of AC, and typically armor is used to absorb as much as deflect damage.

[Glimbur]

I wonder if you are going to be using DR for armor, rather than AC bonuses. After all, you've already got plenty of AC, and typically armor is used to absorb as much as deflect damage.

Note: I don't know the actual design philosophy behind the armor decision, but here's what I think.

Armor in 3.5 is boring. In Core there are three types of armor worth wearing: Chain Shirt, Breastplate, and Full Plate. Breastplate is only a good choice if you want more AC, can take the speed hit and lower max dex, but do not have heavy armor prof. Barbarians can just dip Fighter to evade this issue, so mostly Chain Shirt and Full Plate reign supreme. That's all well and good, but it is boring for everyone to wear the same armor. By making armor less important or giving it more variables then a wider variety of choices is possible. That's... maybe good.

tl;dr Probably not armor as DR because Legend wants to be less gear-focused.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Note: I don't know the actual design philosophy behind the armor decision, but here's what I think.

Armor in 3.5 is boring. In Core there are three types of armor worth wearing: Chain Shirt, Breastplate, and Full Plate. Breastplate is only a good choice if you want more AC, can take the speed hit and lower max dex, but do not have heavy armor prof. Barbarians can just dip Fighter to evade this issue, so mostly Chain Shirt and Full Plate reign supreme. That's all well and good, but it is boring for everyone to wear the same armor. By making armor less important or giving it more variables then a wider variety of choices is possible. That's... maybe good.

tl;dr Probably not armor as DR because Legend wants to be less gear-focused.

Well, maybe make a tradeoff. Armor may grant DR, but at the cost of reducing AC. Or maybe reducing Reflex saves. Or maybe make it part of a class feature.

[Flickerdart]

Note: I don't know the actual design philosophy behind the armor decision, but here's what I think.

Armor in 3.5 is boring. In Core there are three types of armor worth wearing: Chain Shirt, Breastplate, and Full Plate. Breastplate is only a good choice if you want more AC, can take the speed hit and lower max dex, but do not have heavy armor prof. Barbarians can just dip Fighter to evade this issue, so mostly Chain Shirt and Full Plate reign supreme. That's all well and good, but it is boring for everyone to wear the same armor. By making armor less important or giving it more variables then a wider variety of choices is possible. That's... maybe good.

tl;dr Probably not armor as DR because Legend wants to be less gear-focused.
If you have Light Armour prof, you wear Mithral Full Plate. So Breastplates are of questionable use even then.

[Eldan]

Breastplates are for characters with not much dex and only light proficiency. Mithral Breastplates are some of the best light armour. (Really high dex people use gnome twistcloth).

[stainboy]

Note: I don't know the actual design philosophy behind the armor decision, but here's what I think.

Armor in 3.5 is boring. In Core there are three types of armor worth wearing: Chain Shirt, Breastplate, and Full Plate.

Some of the lighter light armors are viable just because of the dex cap on chain shirts. And masterwork studded leather has a weird niche for psions. Highest AC they can get before special materials without taking check penalty to their ranged touch attacks.

[Cartigan]

If you have Light Armour prof, you wear Mithral Full Plate. So Breastplates are of questionable use even then.

Mithral Full Plate is Medium Armor in 3.5. Have fun with the -3 to attack rolls trying to wear it with only Light Armor prof.

[Doc Roc]

Some of the lighter light armors are viable just because of the dex cap on chain shirts. And masterwork studded leather has a weird niche for psions. Highest AC they can get before special materials without taking check penalty to their ranged touch attacks.

Actually, I find armor almost totally useless as high op except for the enchants you can put on it. So a lot of my barbarians end up wearing wizard robes. Do agree with MW studded leather, though.

Our armoring schema for Legend is a lot more simple, and a lot more free from a stylistic standpoint. I'll let Chris talk about it, since he handled it. With aplomb, I might add.

[Your Nemesis]

One question about Legend: is there a difference between an 'attack action,' and a full attack?

[Doc Roc]

Could you clarify the question a little?

Most attack actions, barring a charge, are full attacks.

[Your Nemesis]

SO any "attack action" will give you a fill attack, for example into the breach will give you a full attack, and anything that replaces an attack action will deny you all of your attacks, while an attack is just a part of a full attack action, correct?

[Doc Roc]

Example of such a replacement?

[Your Nemesis]

I'm sorry; I just checked the rules for combat maneuvers again:I thought that they replaced a single attack in a full attack action when in fact they require you to spend an entire standard action attacking. Sorry!

MY question has been answered, in its own, roundabout way; sorry for the inconvenience.