Rakmakallan
2011-07-23, 06:21 AM
Good day ladies and gentlemen, avid rpg fans. Despite having lurked around the forums for quite a while, now that aid is required, I have decided to make my first post.
The idea is as follows: convert D&D 3.5 to a diceless and (almost) randomless system, while reclaiming all the balance that was lost with the multitude of books and supplements. The notion was born as I was designing stuff for my homebrew setting, called Heavenless (might post some details in world design later) and under the pressure of all members of my gaming group residing hours away from each other, thus forcing us to play over skype. Ergo, the system should be oriented towards a text-narrativist basis, less inclined to be rules-heavy, straying to increasingly far distances from traditional 3.x and maintaining the setting's flavor. Without further ado, those are the rule used in combat:
Basics
In any instance when a dice roll would determine the outcome of an action the average result of the dice roll is always used before modifiers applying (rounded up for all except d20 which is rounded down to 10). This, in effect, means that d20=10, d4=3, d6=4, d8=5, d10=6, d12=7. After modifiers are applied, the final value is compared to the DC as normal. Taking 20 in skill is possible as has been. A critical hit is one that overcomes the target's AC by 10 or more (this cancels the prior need for confrimation rolls).
The Death Spiral
In Heavenless Narrative, hit points represent an abastraction of the general resistance to injury. As health decreases, a character suffers from fatigue and a decrease in skill.
75% HP: Wounded, -1 to all rolls
50% HP: Injured, -2 to all rolls, -10' speed
25% HP: Maimed, -4 to all rolls and fatigued(fatigue speed or 10' whichever is lower)
0 HP: Staggered, same as normal+exhausted
-(10+CON score): Dead
Rule for bleeding out and stabilising remain uchanged. Whenever a character receives more than 75% of their total HP in damage from a single blow they must succeed in a Fortitude Save DC=20 or pass out from the shock and start bleeding out. They can regain consciousness after stabilising, being magically healed, or after a DC=15 Heal check. To compensate for the overall grittiness of combat, PCs should be allowed to receive maximum HP (or even more) whenever they gain a level.
Called shots
An attack can be targeted at a specific body part or not targeted. In the latter case, it deals damage as normal, however in a called shot the defender receives a bonus to AC depending on the size of the body part or organ being targeted. Any such attack imposes a penalty on skills and abilities related to that body part unless defender succeeds at a Fort save, DC=10+damage dealt+4/each previous successful attack on the part. Total damage equal to ½ total HP to that body part or ¼ total hp in a single attack cripples it, effectively rendering it useless. Depending on the attack that did the job, body part crippling can occur in different ways eg slashing damage severs it off, piercing damage incapacitates all body tissue and muscular activity, bludgeoning damage breaks the bone, fire damage chars it to coal and so on. Attacks on internal organs increase the critical hit multiplier of the weapon by 1 for the purposes of the strike. To attack internal organs a Knowledge (Biology/Medicine/Anatomy/Nature) is required DC=depending on creature.
Legs: -1 size category, -10' cumulative speed penalty, if crippled no use of legs possible(speed reduced to 5')
Arms: -1 size, -2 cumulative penalty for all related tasks, drops anything held and can't use the arm
Head and head areas(eyes,ears): -3 size, nauseated for 1 round or sickened if the initial save succeeded/ -2 cumulative to eye or ear related skills, dead, blind, deafened if part crippled respectively
Internal organs: size modifier depends according to the organ from -2 for lungs to -4 for kidneys or spleen, crippling or damage penalties vary
Combat stances (taken from dyasdesigns-dot-com
Non Transitive Attacks - via Keywords.
To quote the players handbook.... "The actions in a combat encounter happen almost simultaneously in the game world"
Bringing this truly into the actual turn sequence we can add a simultaneous revealment of preselected "attack powers",*these can manifest in the form of key word based "strategic" variants. Easy to do for the basic melee and ranged attacks. Other specialty attacks may be defined as always employing one or two of the key words
Lets call these keywords Normal, Guided, Deceptive
Normal Attacks operate well like a normal take 10 on your performance
Guided Attacks have there benefit inverted when confront by deceptive opposition, and should be markedly superior than a Normal non modified version in one version or another.
"Defend and strike" might be a guided effect which improves it users defense by 4 and reduces damage taken by 2 (but which becomes a reduction of a defense against a deceptive attack).
"Aimed Strike" variant would also have the guided attack and improve its attack action by 4 and increases damage dealt by 2 (or be reduced by 4 and damage reduced by 2 when opposed by a deceptive action on there opponents part.)
Deceptive
"Feint and Strike" though inferior in damage to a Normal Attack reduce by 2 it inverses the advantages of an opposed guided actions (essentially by presenting false openings and hard to follow or indirect attacks).
"Complex Combination" actions are harder to implement, -2 on your attack and figure out same base damage as the normal attack and also inverse the advantages of an opposed Guided Attack.
Improving attack aka focus and delay (again stolen from dyasdesigns with modifications and additions of my own)
Improve Take 10
You can decide how patient or rushed or how much you are paying attention to defense while performing actions.
Taking X
The following rules in some sense take the place of the standard rules of taking 10, These rules even work in a combat context and to that extent replace certain feats and combat options they do offer more options to every combatant and in general more choices about how long you take attempting an action.
Basic Action Performance : focus + skill + associated attribute +/- time effects + the impact of luck.
non combat actions difficulties generally assume full focus while combat actions assume split focus
Taking Focus up to +5 / Focusing on Defense down to -5
Focusing completely on "action" can imporove it considerably but reduces your armor class by 1 for each point spent in this way. Note this applies to attacking an opponent as well as general skills.. Outside of combat taking focus is very nearly the norm it makes you highly vulnerable to being interupted.
Focusing on defense has the opposite effect reduces the performance quality by 1 and increases defense by 1 per point. Changing focus is a swift action that can be used once per round during your turn. Everyone starts the battle as unfocused.
Taking Extra Time up to +5 / Rushing It down to -5
Can add 1 to 5 from your performance
Rushing your performance can subtract 1 to 5 from your performance quality.
For each +1 you drop 1 position in the initiative count and for each rush you move up by 1. This could either make you lose this round completely and the bonus affecting you next round or if at the top, gaining an extra attack with all the penalties applying at the cost of the penalty maximising.
Narration
Since Heavenless Narrative is designed to be played as a text-based rpg over the internet (eg Skype) the GM may award bonuses or penalties depending on the quality of description for the action (modifiers greater that +/- 4 are advised against). As a GM you are advised to roleplay the combat options of monsters according to their intelligence, wisdome, overall combat savvy etc.
Expertise points
Expertise points represent the edge in battle that a character receives over time. They are equal to ECL(Effective character level= HD+class levels+level adjustment) and refresh at the beginning of every round and can be spent at any time as an immediate action and in any fashion to boost a non-ability modifier on a 1:1 ratio (+1 for every 1 point spent) for the remainder of the round.
The element of luck
Once per encounter a character is allowed to make an intuitive action trusting on luck to guide his movements rather than simple knowledge and training. For this action, roll a d6 and add the result to the modifiers already present. 1= -6, 2= -4, 3= -2, 4= +2, 5= +4, 6= +6. As an optional rule the GM may also allow once per week each PC to treat a roll as a 20 instead of 10 regardless of circumstances, but no more than one such “Lucky Shot” can be used for each encounter. Use this last optional rule with care because you might have your BBEG getting their head sliced off in a jiffy.
Other non-combat rules that will be changed
No alignment(aka subjective alignment system), no save-or-die, no save-or-suck, alignment-based spells become protection/etc against infidel, no enchantment school, all classes will be rewritten
The idea is as follows: convert D&D 3.5 to a diceless and (almost) randomless system, while reclaiming all the balance that was lost with the multitude of books and supplements. The notion was born as I was designing stuff for my homebrew setting, called Heavenless (might post some details in world design later) and under the pressure of all members of my gaming group residing hours away from each other, thus forcing us to play over skype. Ergo, the system should be oriented towards a text-narrativist basis, less inclined to be rules-heavy, straying to increasingly far distances from traditional 3.x and maintaining the setting's flavor. Without further ado, those are the rule used in combat:
Basics
In any instance when a dice roll would determine the outcome of an action the average result of the dice roll is always used before modifiers applying (rounded up for all except d20 which is rounded down to 10). This, in effect, means that d20=10, d4=3, d6=4, d8=5, d10=6, d12=7. After modifiers are applied, the final value is compared to the DC as normal. Taking 20 in skill is possible as has been. A critical hit is one that overcomes the target's AC by 10 or more (this cancels the prior need for confrimation rolls).
The Death Spiral
In Heavenless Narrative, hit points represent an abastraction of the general resistance to injury. As health decreases, a character suffers from fatigue and a decrease in skill.
75% HP: Wounded, -1 to all rolls
50% HP: Injured, -2 to all rolls, -10' speed
25% HP: Maimed, -4 to all rolls and fatigued(fatigue speed or 10' whichever is lower)
0 HP: Staggered, same as normal+exhausted
-(10+CON score): Dead
Rule for bleeding out and stabilising remain uchanged. Whenever a character receives more than 75% of their total HP in damage from a single blow they must succeed in a Fortitude Save DC=20 or pass out from the shock and start bleeding out. They can regain consciousness after stabilising, being magically healed, or after a DC=15 Heal check. To compensate for the overall grittiness of combat, PCs should be allowed to receive maximum HP (or even more) whenever they gain a level.
Called shots
An attack can be targeted at a specific body part or not targeted. In the latter case, it deals damage as normal, however in a called shot the defender receives a bonus to AC depending on the size of the body part or organ being targeted. Any such attack imposes a penalty on skills and abilities related to that body part unless defender succeeds at a Fort save, DC=10+damage dealt+4/each previous successful attack on the part. Total damage equal to ½ total HP to that body part or ¼ total hp in a single attack cripples it, effectively rendering it useless. Depending on the attack that did the job, body part crippling can occur in different ways eg slashing damage severs it off, piercing damage incapacitates all body tissue and muscular activity, bludgeoning damage breaks the bone, fire damage chars it to coal and so on. Attacks on internal organs increase the critical hit multiplier of the weapon by 1 for the purposes of the strike. To attack internal organs a Knowledge (Biology/Medicine/Anatomy/Nature) is required DC=depending on creature.
Legs: -1 size category, -10' cumulative speed penalty, if crippled no use of legs possible(speed reduced to 5')
Arms: -1 size, -2 cumulative penalty for all related tasks, drops anything held and can't use the arm
Head and head areas(eyes,ears): -3 size, nauseated for 1 round or sickened if the initial save succeeded/ -2 cumulative to eye or ear related skills, dead, blind, deafened if part crippled respectively
Internal organs: size modifier depends according to the organ from -2 for lungs to -4 for kidneys or spleen, crippling or damage penalties vary
Combat stances (taken from dyasdesigns-dot-com
Non Transitive Attacks - via Keywords.
To quote the players handbook.... "The actions in a combat encounter happen almost simultaneously in the game world"
Bringing this truly into the actual turn sequence we can add a simultaneous revealment of preselected "attack powers",*these can manifest in the form of key word based "strategic" variants. Easy to do for the basic melee and ranged attacks. Other specialty attacks may be defined as always employing one or two of the key words
Lets call these keywords Normal, Guided, Deceptive
Normal Attacks operate well like a normal take 10 on your performance
Guided Attacks have there benefit inverted when confront by deceptive opposition, and should be markedly superior than a Normal non modified version in one version or another.
"Defend and strike" might be a guided effect which improves it users defense by 4 and reduces damage taken by 2 (but which becomes a reduction of a defense against a deceptive attack).
"Aimed Strike" variant would also have the guided attack and improve its attack action by 4 and increases damage dealt by 2 (or be reduced by 4 and damage reduced by 2 when opposed by a deceptive action on there opponents part.)
Deceptive
"Feint and Strike" though inferior in damage to a Normal Attack reduce by 2 it inverses the advantages of an opposed guided actions (essentially by presenting false openings and hard to follow or indirect attacks).
"Complex Combination" actions are harder to implement, -2 on your attack and figure out same base damage as the normal attack and also inverse the advantages of an opposed Guided Attack.
Improving attack aka focus and delay (again stolen from dyasdesigns with modifications and additions of my own)
Improve Take 10
You can decide how patient or rushed or how much you are paying attention to defense while performing actions.
Taking X
The following rules in some sense take the place of the standard rules of taking 10, These rules even work in a combat context and to that extent replace certain feats and combat options they do offer more options to every combatant and in general more choices about how long you take attempting an action.
Basic Action Performance : focus + skill + associated attribute +/- time effects + the impact of luck.
non combat actions difficulties generally assume full focus while combat actions assume split focus
Taking Focus up to +5 / Focusing on Defense down to -5
Focusing completely on "action" can imporove it considerably but reduces your armor class by 1 for each point spent in this way. Note this applies to attacking an opponent as well as general skills.. Outside of combat taking focus is very nearly the norm it makes you highly vulnerable to being interupted.
Focusing on defense has the opposite effect reduces the performance quality by 1 and increases defense by 1 per point. Changing focus is a swift action that can be used once per round during your turn. Everyone starts the battle as unfocused.
Taking Extra Time up to +5 / Rushing It down to -5
Can add 1 to 5 from your performance
Rushing your performance can subtract 1 to 5 from your performance quality.
For each +1 you drop 1 position in the initiative count and for each rush you move up by 1. This could either make you lose this round completely and the bonus affecting you next round or if at the top, gaining an extra attack with all the penalties applying at the cost of the penalty maximising.
Narration
Since Heavenless Narrative is designed to be played as a text-based rpg over the internet (eg Skype) the GM may award bonuses or penalties depending on the quality of description for the action (modifiers greater that +/- 4 are advised against). As a GM you are advised to roleplay the combat options of monsters according to their intelligence, wisdome, overall combat savvy etc.
Expertise points
Expertise points represent the edge in battle that a character receives over time. They are equal to ECL(Effective character level= HD+class levels+level adjustment) and refresh at the beginning of every round and can be spent at any time as an immediate action and in any fashion to boost a non-ability modifier on a 1:1 ratio (+1 for every 1 point spent) for the remainder of the round.
The element of luck
Once per encounter a character is allowed to make an intuitive action trusting on luck to guide his movements rather than simple knowledge and training. For this action, roll a d6 and add the result to the modifiers already present. 1= -6, 2= -4, 3= -2, 4= +2, 5= +4, 6= +6. As an optional rule the GM may also allow once per week each PC to treat a roll as a 20 instead of 10 regardless of circumstances, but no more than one such “Lucky Shot” can be used for each encounter. Use this last optional rule with care because you might have your BBEG getting their head sliced off in a jiffy.
Other non-combat rules that will be changed
No alignment(aka subjective alignment system), no save-or-die, no save-or-suck, alignment-based spells become protection/etc against infidel, no enchantment school, all classes will be rewritten