Been playing with these rules for years, hoping to revise them.

[Avianmosquito]

Basically, the guys I used to play 3.5 with have a long list of houserules that we've never played without or violated in the years I've played with them. Since I have lost contact with them, I'm looking at now as a good opportunity to make revisions before I find new people.

I should note that our houserules completely rework a number of key systems in D&D, so please keep a cool head if the changes are not to your liking. Of particular import and the way damage types have been altered to better differentiate them, the way armour has been redone, and changes to base stats make the game play quite differently from regular D&D. So different I can't really consider it the same game.

I'm almost certain this list is incomplete, but this is all I can remember at the moment. What I'm looking for is simple: help with rule revisions. There are a few problems with how these are written, and I'm looking for help changing them. I'll list problems I'd like to resolve in blue.

Damage types:

In this version of the system, every kind of damage has been given some kind of special effect.

Bludgeoning: Ignores any DR or AC provided by armour.

Piercing: Negates an amount of damage reduction equal to the damage modifier. (IE: +2 rapier negates 2 points of DR.) Critical threat and critical damage are both doubled.

Slashing: Double listed damage dice. (IE: Longsword now does 2d8.)

Fire: Subject takes 1d2 secondary fire damage next round, plus an additional 1d2 for every ten points of damage taken. (IE: a 30-damage fireball has 4d2 secondary.) Subject may make a fortitude save as a free action and with a DC equal to half the initial fire damage to negate this effect, they may also attempt to extenguish the fire manually as a move action, this uses the modifiers for reflex saves and has the same DC. Complete imersion in water automatically extinguishes the fire. The secondary fire damage triggers tertiary fire damage, tertiary triggers quaternary, and so on until a save is made or the flame is otherwise extinguished. If this effect kills a character and brings their hitpoint total to a negative with the same absolute value as their health, they are incinerated.

Electricity: Target must make a fortitude save equal to half the damage or lost their next action. If affected by several of these effects, the save DCs are added together. This effect does not function against creatures immune to paralysis.

Frost damage: Deals one point of attribute damage plus an additional one for every ten points of damage. The attribute affected is selected randomly. (d6) A successful fortitude cuts the damage in half. (Rounded down.)

Sonic: Ignores line of sight. (Meaning it can damage you through objects, although the lack of visibility impacts attack rolls.) A creature damaged is deafened for one round, plus an additional round for every ten points of damage. A fortitude save with a DC equal to half the damage changes this to a -4 penalty to listen checks and a 5% chance of spell failure to spells with verbal components.

Light: Blinds a character for one round plus an additional round for every round for every ten damage done. A fortitude save with a DC equal to half the damage changes this to a -4 to attack rolls, search and spot checks, with all enemies considered to have concealment. (20% miss chance.)

Force: Causes a character to fall over. A successful reflex save with a DC equal to half the damage negates this effect.

Nonlethal: Normal weapons can no longer cause nonlethal damage. You can't set a sword to stun. Weapons specifically built to deal nonlethal damage (such as saps) now do normal damage, but can deal nonlethal with a -4 penalty to attack rolls. However, this only applies to rolled damage, the modifier is dealt as regular damage. (For instance, a +1 sap would deal 1d6 nonlethal and 2 normal.) Unarmed strikes fall under this category. Nonlethal damage can still kill, if the damage reaches twice their health. (IE: an 8hp character taking would be killed by 16hp of "nonlethal" damage, not including the damage to their health buffer.) A character disabled by nonlethal damage can also die of exertion.

Positive/negative energy: Subtracts 1 from attack rolls and armour class, with an additional one for each point of damage. A will save equal to half the damage negates this effect.

Armour, gauntlets, helmets, boots & shields:

Body armour no longer provides a bonus to AC. (Although an enchantment on it still may.) Now, it provides two things. Damage reduction and a "health buffer" (see below.) These effects are equal to the original AC bonus. The max dex modifier now applies to all uses of the dexterity score. The armour check penalty for body armour now applies directly to the dexterity score and nothing else. (Unless you are not proficient, then it penalizes attack rolls as well.)

Gauntlets are now linked to a set of armour. They use that armour's stats for protection and armour check, providing an equal health buffer, but no damage reduction or AC bonus. This effect is stackable. They do not cap dexterity, but they apply the armour check penalty to all actions taking fine motor skills. Specifically, open lock, slight of hand and disable device.

Other skill checks may be deemed to require fine motor skills, consult your DM.

Boots are also linked to a suit of armour. They provide a health buffer. They apply an armour check penalty to move silently, jump, tumble, swim and balance checks, as well as reflex saves. They do not cap dexterity.

Helmets are linked as well, and use the same stats. They provide an AC bonus and health buffer. They do not cap dexterity, and their armour check penalty to spot, search and listen checks.

Shields are also linked to a set of armour, but are now counted as a weapon. They provide damage reduction equal to the linked armour, and have an AC bonus dependent on their size. (IE: bucklers provide 1, small shields 2, large shields 3 and so on.) They do not trigger a two-weapon penalty, even when wielded with another weapon. They give an attack penalty equal to their AC bonus, which can be neutralized by the appropriate feat. They can be struck with and do the same damage as an unarmed strike, but do not get dexterity modifiers to attack (see below), with a critical range of 20 and 2x critical damage. They their AC bonus to attack and DR to damage.

For instance, a full suit of leather, with a small leather shield, would provide a damage reduction of 4, AC bonus of 4 and health buffer of 8.

Missing adequate penalties for lack of proficiency from gauntlets, boots, helmets and shields.

Health buffer:

Health buffer is a new effect. Every character has a health buffer (normally a little more than their health) which keeps them from dying. When a character reaches 0 HP, they are now disabled and dying but not unconscious. Additional damage (including exertion) is taken out of their health buffer until it reaches 0. The dying character's health buffer and health are both damaged by one point each round due to blood loss, but regardless of health they are not unconscious unless their health buffer reaches 0. When a character takes nonlethal damage greater than their hit points, they are not considered dying (and do not bleed) but they are considered disabled (and take exertion damage) and their health buffer is reduced by further nonlethal damage. Healing a character through any means restores their health buffer by an equal amount. Armour adds to a character's health buffer when equipped, and subtracts from it when removed. A character's maximum health buffer is the sum of their health and any bonuses they are recieving. Any bonus to constitution also adds to health buffer. (IE: Barbarian rage gives +4 constitution, so it would also give +4 to health buffer.) It is quite possible to bleed to death without ever losing consciousness.

Note that characters now die at a negative number of equal absolute value to their health. (IE: An 8hp character dies at -8, a 40hp character dies at -40.)

Unarmed strike:

Unarmed strikes now have 18-20 critical threat, 2x critical damage. Medium creatures deal 1d6 bludgeoning damage, small deals 1d4, tiny deals 1d2, diminutive deals 1, fine 0. Large creatures deal 1d8, huge deals 1d12, gargantuan 2d8, and colossal 2d12. Can deal nonlethal damage at a -4 penalty to attack, although modifier damage is still regular bludgeoning. Uses both strength and dexterity modifiers on attack rolls, adds strength modifier to damage. (IE: 12STR & 12DEX = +2 attack) Unarmed attacks still provoke attacks of opportunity, which recieve a +10 attack bonus. If the improved unarmed strike is used, attacks still provoke attacks of opportunity, but the attack of opportunity no longer gains a +10, and you no longer suffer a -4 attack penalty to deal nonlethal damage. Two new feats, entitled "martial artist" and "pugilist" are added, which change critical threat to 16-20 and critical damage to 4x, respectively. With all of these, high strength and dexterity, hand to hand is now a decent option for melee combat. Without them it's still not as good as a melee weapon, but it isn't worthless anymore and will easily beat a ranged weapon if within range.

Children:

Most of us were children when we started playing, so naturally we wanted to play as children, but the child template was unplayable, innacurate and extremely offensive. So we changed it.

Now, there are five age categories below adult. From the eldest to youngest, they are adolescent, youth, child, toddler and infant.

Infant: 0-13% adult age.
Toddler: 14-27% adult age.
Child: 28-47% adult age.
Youth: 48-73% adult age.
Adolescent: 74-99% adult age.

For each age category they are younger than adult, they gain -1 strength as well as a -10 to intimidate checks, but +1 dexterity, +5% to all health restoration and a 10% experience bonus. For instance, an infant would have -5 strength, but +5 dexterity, with a 50% experience bonus. Adolescents are the same size as adults, youths and children are one size lower, infants and toddlers are two sizes lower.

Any character adolescent or younger is restricted to classes with a "simple" starting age, (or a number of homebrewed child classes) but no other. At youth or younger, they gain a -10 to diplomacy when dealing with adults. At child or younger, they gain a -4 on knowledge checks, which can be fixed by spending one skill point. At toddler or younger, they gain the "Illeteracy" feat. They also have a -4 on swim, jump and balance checks. An infant cannot walk, and must crawl at half rate. They also cannot speak. These effects can be removed by spending four skill points each.

I'm at a loss as to what aging is supposed to do with child-only classes. I'm thinking about having the child-only class levels convert to levels of a normal class, but that would mean a loss of class features.

The sexes:

Sex is not an aesthetic difference, there are physical differences between men and women. This had to be addressed, but it had to be addressed in an accurate manner, and it's not going to be the same between species. How we did it was simple. Each species has modifiers to their physical abilities (NEVER mental) for each sex, some positive and some negative. The net gain is always 2. For instance, human males have +2 strength, while females have +2 dexterity. Overall balanced, but it shifts the playstyles for each sex significantly.

Pregnancy:

If you should so desire, a female character can get pregnant. This happened often enough our DM actually had to make rules for it, and here's what he came up with.

Overall, the effects of pregnancy (physical and mental) are detrimental. During pregnancy, ten times the wieght of the child is added to her encumbrance, although only three times the child's wieght is actually added to her. The wieght of the child starts at 0, and increases by 1/9th birth wieght (1/180th adult wieght) each ninth of the pregnancy. A pregnant woman recieves a -1 on balance, climb, hide, jump, move silently, ride, swim and tumble checks and -1 to AC and dexterity for each ninth of the pregnancy that has passed.

When the child is born, the mother makes a fortitude save with a DC of 10 or take 1d8 damage and an additional 1d4 constitution damage. If successful, she does not take constitution damage but still takes health damage. If it fails, roll a d2. Subtract this from the d4 roll, this amount of constitution damage is permanant. Negative values count as 0.

Generally, the child was the offspring of a PC, possibly of two PCs. There were arguements over who would get to play the baby, and in fact they were quite frequent. This isn't a request for help, just a heads-up.

The child inherits 1-10% of its parents collective experience. (Roll a d10.) It's class is treated as "commoner," but this may be changed as soon as the infant is born. It starts of classified as nine age categories younger than an infant, (see the "child" section above) and each ninth of the pregnancy that passes is one age category older. If the mother dies and the child is still alive, the child must make a fortitude save with a DC of 45 minus 5 for each ninth of the pregnancy elapsed or automatically die. (IE: 1/3 way through the DC is 30.) If successful, the child survives and is born premature. Since they took the damage their mother took, it's quite likely they'll still die.

If a child is born prematurely, a fortitude save with a DC of 90 minus 10 for each ninth of the pregnancy elapsed. (IE: 5/9 of the way through, the DC is 40.) If failed, the child suffers a permanant -1 strength and constitution for each ninth of the pregnancy skipped, if successful it suffers these penalties anyway, but they gradually wear off until the date it would have otherwise been born.

The elderly:

We aren't nice at the expense of reality. The elderly are NOT mentally superior to the young, quite the opposite. People who can't remember their own names half the time should not have a natural intelligence bonus.

Each age category above adult now gives a -1 penalty to all physical attributes, -1 to search, -2 spot and listen, -5% healing and experience. It also gives +2 wisdom, +4 to will saves, +1 gather information, bluff & knowledge, +2 appraise & concentration, and +4 diplomacy, proffession & sense motive.

Other system changes:

Melee attackers (armed or otherwise) get a +10 bonus to attacks against enemies using ranged weapons.

Base AC is now ten points lower for all creatures. You can choose to actively defend yourself at any time, which adds 5 to your AC, but takes it out of your attack.

Magic missile can miss. It now counts as a +20 ranged touch attack, using base attack modifier, caster level and intelligence (or wisdom/charisma, whatever you use to cast) as modifiers. This makes it missing virtually, but not completely, impossible to miss with.

1 is not an automatic failure, 20 is not an automatic success. You can fail with a 20, and hit with a 1. Both are quite easy, in fact.

Spot and listen are now constitution-based, not wisdom based.

[Siosilvar]

Nonlethal: Normal weapons can no longer cause nonlethal damage. You can't set a sword to stun. ...

I'll look at the rest of the post soon, but this stuck out like a sore thumb. You can hit someone with the flat of the blade. That's quite a bit more nonlethal than the edge. Likewise, you can hit someone in the stomach instead of the ribs with a blunt weapon.

It's harder to do, so you take a -4 penalty to hit when you try (under the normal rules).
1
Before I get into this, I should mention that the base AC is now 0. You're not going to miss somebody directly in front of you for no reason.
...
Base AC is now ten points lower for all creatures.Base AC of 10 assumes that the person standing directly in front of you is moving around a bit and actively defending themselves. If they're not, they lose their Dex bonus (and you probably get a +4 bonus for being unseen). If they can't move at all, their Dex is effectively 0 (-5) and they take another -4 penalty to AC, so their base AC is 1, or you could coup-de-grace and automatically hit them.

Taking away 10 points of AC also terribly unbalances the game. It's already not a problem to hit people with the first two iterative attacks.

1Slashing is strictly better than Piercing without static damage multipliers (like a Strength bonus - I'd have to do the math to figure out when Piercing overtakes). Double damage all the time is much better than double damage half the time.

Bludgeoning ignoring DR that doesn't specify bludgeoning doesn't work out well. DR never specifies the types that it defends against, only the types that are effective against it. DR 5/slashing on a zombie effectively means "Resist piercing 5" and "Resist bludgeoning 5".
Bludgeoning is also strictly better than the other two damage types, if only because making touch attacks is a big deal. Hitting with twice as many attacks (at high levels) as everybody else is more effective than doubling damage occasionally or doubling base damage only.

Electricity is terribly overpowered compared to all the other damage types. If you're set on the effect, it should stagger the target for 1 round unless they make their save.

DCs equal to damage dealt quickly outstrip even the most optimized saves. There's no chance that you're going to succeed on the saves, except against rounds 3+ of fire damage.

1Armor as DR doesn't work too well, because damage scales very quickly. It makes some amount of sense that armor would give both AC and DR, though.

Why do gauntlets and boots give AC? They don't have much of an effect on how well you can dodge or how good your armor is at turning a blow away.

Shields giving two-weapon fighting penalties is terrible. It already wasn't worth using a shield, and now they penalize your attacks as well. I doubt the DR is worth it.

The health buffer works as a mechanic, but is rather complex. I'm not sure if the added complexity adds anything to the game, though having a bigger window for that conscious but bleeding out stage is nice.

1The difference between the sexes isn't significant enough for most races to have a mechanical impact. I might point out that female humans have a higher pain tolerance than men, so a Constitution penalty is undeserved.

-1/+1 modifiers can't be balanced with 3.5's stat modifiers every 2 points. It's too easy to set each stat with an odd score and reap the benefits of the bonuses without the drawbacks of the penalties.

1
The child inherits 0.5-50% of its parents collective experience.
So, two 6th-level parents produce, on average, a 4th level kid, before he does anything?

[Avianmosquito]

I'll look at the rest of the post soon, but this stuck out like a sore thumb. You can hit someone with the flat of the blade. That's quite a bit more nonlethal than the edge. Likewise, you can hit someone in the stomach instead of the ribs with a blunt weapon.

It's harder to do, so you take a -4 penalty to hit when you try (under the normal rules).

The flat of a blade would still cause lethal damage, just less of it. It'd be like hitting somebody with a steel bar, it's going to break their ribs, flatten their lungs, that kind of thing. You'd also damage your sword.

As for the stomach blow, a mace still rips a massive, jagged hole in a human body, while smashing everything in its way. You'd still kill them, it'd just take them longer to die.

The idea that a melee weapon can cause non-lethal damage is only present in people's minds because they really don't know what a melee weapon does to a human body. One look at the wounds these things leave and you'd understand just how hard it would be to hit somebody without killing them. Sword wounds aren't tiny little scratches like TSR thinks they are. They're massive, jagged wounds reaching deep into vitals every time. People wounded by these weapons are immediately incapacitated and bleed to death in seconds. Short of strapping a bomb to their chest, there's no faster death. A mace does the same thing, just less efficiently. Actual blunt weapons such as clubs and hammers destroy vitals and rip open blood vessels no matter where you hit. Even your bare hands are quite likely to kill somebody, and do so surprisingly fast. There's no way to incapacitate somebody without the potential of death, because it takes more damage to incapacitate than to kill.

[Saidoro]

Just going through this and putting down my thoughts as they come up. If any of this comes off as harsh please be aware that that was not my intent.


Bludgeoning: Ignores any damage reduction other than an outright immunity, or any that effects bludgeoning damage in particular. (For instance, it does full damage against a zombie or demon, but nothing to a ghost, and a spell that specifically reduces bludgeoning damage will still work.) Any attack dealing bludgeoning damage is considered a touch attack.

Piercing: Negates an amount of damage reduction equal to the damage modifier. (IE: +2 rapier negates 2 points of DR.) Critical threat and critical damage are both doubled.

Slashing: Double listed damage dice. (IE: Longsword now does 2d8.)
It's worth noting that in a moderate or higher optimization environment slashing is rather less powerful than the other two(at least once you get past the first few levels, anyway.) Also, bludgeoning is the strongest, touch attacks mean power attacking for full and still hitting. Not sure if that's a problem in the sort of games you play but I'm putting it out there anyway.

Fire: Subject takes 1d2 secondary fire damage next round, plus an additional 1d2 for every ten points of damage taken. (IE: a 30-damage fireball has 4d2 secondary.) Subject may make a fortitude save as a free action and with a DC equal to the initial fire damage to negate this effect, they may also attempt to extenguish the fire manually as a move action, this uses the modifiers for reflex saves and has the same DC. Complete imersion in water automatically extinguishes the fire. The secondary fire damage triggers tertiary fire damage, tertiary triggers quaternary, and so on until a save is made or the flame is otherwise extinguished. If this effect kills a character and brings their hitpoint total to a negative with the same absolute value as their health, they are incinerated.
Those are some really high DCs, recall that at tenth level a caster will be doing on average 35 points of damage with a fireball, but a spell of the higest level they can cast will have a DC of 19-21.

Electricity: For one round, plus an additional round for every ten points of damage, the target must make a fortitude save with a DC equal to the damage or lose their action. Once a save is made, this effect is terminated. If affected by several of these effects, the save DCs are added together. This effect does not function against creatures immune to paralysis.
Again, massive DC. I guess I'll stop mentioning that because the rest are probably the same.


Force: Causes a character to fall over. A successful reflex save with a DC equal to damage negates this effect.

It's a bit underpowered. Any ideas on how to balance this effect against the others?
Force is generally balanced by the fact that it works against absolutely anything.

Positive and negative energy are unnafected.

Again, a bit underpowered. I guess their ability to heal is something, but it isn't enough. Anything I can do to balance these two? I would prefer something symettrical, so their effects are opposites when applied against the living and the undead.
A small temporary penalty to d20 rolls and caster level that stacks with itself. Think negative level-light.


Gauntlets are now linked to a set of armour. They use that armour's stats for protection and armour check, providing an equal health buffer. Instead of damage reduction, however, they provide an AC bonus. (IE: Leather gloves provide a health buffer and AC bonus of 2.) This effect is stackable. They do not cap dexterity, but they apply the armour check penalty to all actions taking fine motor skills. Specifically, open lock, slight of hand and disable device.

Other skill checks may be deemed to require fine motor skills, consult your DM.
Why would you even need to separate this out from the rest of your armor?

For instance, a full suit of leather, with a small leather shield, would provide a damage reduction of 4, AC bonus of 8 and health buffer of 8.

Missing adequate penalties for lack of proficiency from gauntlets, boots, helmets and shields.
That is a lot of AC. So basically no one will be hitting each other at low levels without bludgeoning weapons. Also, all your rogues will be using quarterstaffs now.


Health buffer is a new effect. Every character has a health buffer (normally a little more than their health) which keeps them from dying. When a character reaches 0 HP, they are now disabled and dying but not unconscious. Additional damage (including exertion) is taken out of their health buffer until it reaches 0. The dying character's health buffer and health are both damaged by one point each round due to blood loss, but regardless of health they are not unconscious unless their health buffer reaches 0. When a character takes nonlethal damage greater than their hit points, they are not considered dying (and do not bleed) but they are considered disabled (and take exertion damage) and their health buffer is reduced by further nonlethal damage. Healing a character through any means restores their health buffer by an equal amount. Armour adds to a character's health buffer when equipped, and subtracts from it when removed. A character's maximum health buffer is the sum of their health and any bonuses they are recieving. Any bonus to constitution also adds to health buffer. (IE: Barbarian rage gives +4 constitution, so it would also give +4 to health buffer.) It is quite possible to bleed to death without ever losing consciousness.
Not just possible, likely. You haven't done anything about the fact that characters die at -10 and at higher levels it's really easy to overshoot those 10 hit points entirely.


Most of us were children when we started playing, so naturally we wanted to play as children, but the child template was unplayable, innacurate and extremely offensive. So we changed it.
DnD is by it's very nature an inaccurate game, and I really don't see what could be so offensive about a template. But then I've never seen the template in question so maybe it is just that bad, who knows.

Now, there are five age categories below adult. From the eldest to youngest, they are adolescent, youth, child, toddler and infant. For each age category they are younger than adult, they gain -1 strength and wisdom as well as a -4 to intimidate checks, but +1 dexterity and intelligence, +10% to all health restoration and a 20% experience bonus. For instance, an infant would have -5 strength and wisdom, but +5 dexterity and intelligence, with a 100% experience bonus. Adolescents are the same size as adults, youths and children are one size lower, infants and toddlers are two sizes lower.

Any character adolescent or younger is restricted to classes with a "simple" starting age, (or a number of homebrewed child classes) but no other. At youth or younger, they gain a -10 to diplomacy when dealing with adults. At child or younger, they gain a -4 on knowledge checks, which can be fixed by spending one skill point. At toddler or younger, they gain the "Illeteracy" feat. They also have a -4 on swim, jump and balance checks. An infant cannot walk, and must crawl at half rate. This effect can be removed by spending four skill points.

The initial idea was that children would start of weaker than adults, but level faster and be able to shed some of their weaknesses, becoming stronger than adults if given enough time. This is working fine, but I'm at a loss as to what aging is supposed to do with child-only classes. I'm thinking about having the child-only class levels convert to levels of a normal class, but that would mean a loss of class features.
You have completely failed at your initial idea. Not only are children not significantly less powerful than adults they are actually far stronger in some cases(toddler rogue == death). Also there's the fact that "suck now, awesome later" mechanics are generally seen as bad. Finally, some of the bonuses just don't make sense. Why is a toddler smarter than a wizard? or faster than a rogue? You don't generally see children going into high-risk areas because in just about every sense except learning certain types of new things children are at an objective disadvantage compared to adults. That's not to say there's no way of making child adventurers but I think you're going about it the wrong way.


Sex is not an aesthetic difference, there are physical differences between men and women. This had to be addressed, but it had to be addressed in an accurate manner, and it's not going to be the same between species. How we did it was simple. Each species has modifiers to their physical abilities (NEVER mental) for each sex, some positive and some negative. The net gain is always 0. For instance, human males have +2 strength but -2 dexterity, while females have -1 strength and constitution but +2 dexterity. This means that if their stats were rolled the same, he would have three higher strength and one higher constitution, but she would have four higher dexterity. Overall balanced, but it shifts the playstyles for each sex significantly.
Odd racial adjustments are bad game design. They mean that a character can either get a negligible benefit (if the stat enhanced started off even) or a significant benefit(if the stat started off odd) based on a fairly random factor.
Also, a dexterity differential of 4 points between sexes is rather massive, that's bigger than the difference between dwarves and elves.

Overall, the effects of pregnancy (physical and mental) are detrimental. During pregnancy, ten times the wieght of the child is added to her encumbrance, although only three times the child's wieght is actually added to her. The wieght of the child starts at 0, and increases by 1/9th birth wieght (1/180th adult wieght) each ninth of the pregnancy. A pregnant woman recieves a -1 on balance, climb, hide, jump, move silently, ride, swim and tumble checks and -1 to AC for each ninth of the pregnancy that has passed.

This is really harsh. It pretty much takes her out of combat for the duration. It needs to be lightened, the question is how. I'm thinking about shedding some of the skill penalties, possibly the AC penalty too, but which ones to keep?
Or you could just say pregnant women shouldn't be adventuring... I mean really, there are reasons why pregnant people don't go into combat in real life, if anything the later penalties aren't large enough.

Each time you rest, determine the effects of your hormones, which can be positive or negative. Take two four-sided die, choose one to subtract from the other and then roll. This is the modifier for your intelligence. Repeat, this time wisdom, and again for charisma.
This is...strange.

The child inherits 0.5-50% of its parents collective experience. (Roll a d100, divide by 2.) It's class is treated as "commoner," but this may be changed as soon as the infant is born. It starts of classified as nine age categories younger than an infant, (see the "child" section above) and each ninth of the pregnancy that passes is one age category older. If the mother dies and the child is still alive, the child must make a fortitude save with a DC of 45 minus 5 for each ninth of the pregnancy elapsed or die. (IE: 1/3 way through the DC is 30.) If successful, the child survives and is born premature.
So your world works on Lamarkian evolution then? I suppose stranger things have happened in fantasy worlds. It might be better to say that the parents are able to raise a child to have the average of their experiences if they take the time to do so though.
Also: 1 in 20 fetuses can survive having their mother killed one week after being conceived, gotcha.

We aren't nice at the expense of reality.
Yeah, you kind of are.

The elderly are NOT mentally superior to the young, quite the opposite. People who can't remember their own names half the time should not have a natural intelligence bonus.
So, newborns shouldn't have an intelligence bonus, gotcha.

Each age category above adult now gives a -1 penalty to all physical attributes as well as intelligence and charisma, -1 to search, -2 spot and listen, -5% healing and -10% experience. It also gives +2 wisdom, +4 to will saves, +1 gather information, bluff & knowledge, +2 appraise & concentration, and +4 diplomacy, proffession & sense motive. Classes with older starting ages now get at least one small advantage to balance out the weakness of being old. (IE: Wizards now get two additional cantrips and one additional level-one spell to start with, and a few extra bonus spells as time goes on. The end number is now 10 cantrips, 5 of every other spell.)

It's hard deciding on appropriate bonuses for non-caster classes. I might need some help with that, but I'm not sure yet.
It feels really weird to be making children significantly better adventurers than adults when in reality they would be much worse and simultaneously making the middle aged significantly worse adventurers when in reality they would be about the same.

Base AC is now ten points lower for all creatures.
Oh, so that's how you're counteracting the major AC expansion of using armor, okay carry on then.


Magic missile can miss. It now counts as a +20 ranged touch attack, using base attack modifier, caster level and intelligence (or wisdom/charisma, whatever you use to cast) as modifiers. This makes it missing virtually, but not completely, impossible to miss with.
Why?

1 is not an automatic failure, 20 is not an automatic success. You can fail with a 20, and hit with a 1. Both are quite easy, in fact.
Why?

Characters die at a negative number of equal absolute value to their health. (IE: An 8hp character dies at -8, a 40hp character dies at -40.)Disregard what I said above at health buffers, you may want to put these two rules next to each other.


Spot and listen are now intelligence-based, not wisdom based.
Why?

[Avianmosquito]

1Base AC of 10 assumes that the person standing directly in front of you is moving around a bit and actively defending themselves. If they're not, they lose their Dex bonus (and you probably get a +4 bonus for being unseen). If they can't move at all, their Dex is effectively 0 (-5) and they take another -4 penalty to AC, so their base AC is 1, or you could coup-de-grace and automatically hit them.

Taking away 10 points of AC also terribly unbalances the game. It's already not a problem to hit people with the first two iterative attacks.

When this rule was made, we had another rule in place that greatly increased modifiers. Since that has been scrapped, this one can be too.


1Slashing is strictly better than Piercing without static damage multipliers (like a Strength bonus - I'd have to do the math to figure out when Piercing overtakes). Double damage all the time is much better than double damage half the time.

The balance was supposed to be that piercing damage was more effective against DR of all forms. This way a rogue with a bow isn't completely hopeless against absolutely everything undead. Basically, the few points removed from all DR was supposed to make it better against armoured opponents than slashing, and the additional critical chance and damage was supposed to even it out overall.


Bludgeoning ignoring DR that doesn't specify bludgeoning doesn't work out well. DR never specifies the types that it defends against, only the types that are effective against it. DR 5/slashing on a zombie effectively means "Resist piercing 5" and "Resist bludgeoning 5".
Bludgeoning is also strictly better than the other two damage types, if only because making touch attacks is a big deal. Hitting with twice as many attacks (at high levels) as everybody else is more effective than doubling damage occasionally or doubling base damage only.

This was set to allow it to bypass armour. The effect was supposed to be so it was only affected by immunities, like that a ghost possessed. We also had spells that affected only one kind. Still, just making it a touch attack and setting armour to DR X/bludgeoning should do it.


Electricity is terribly overpowered compared to all the other damage types. If you're set on the effect, it should stagger the target for 1 round unless they make their save.

DCs equal to damage dealt quickly outstrip even the most optimized saves. There's no chance that you're going to succeed on the saves, except against rounds 3+ of fire damage.

How about half the damage? And yes, one round for electricity will work.


1Armor as DR doesn't work too well, because damage scales very quickly. It makes some amount of sense that armor would give both AC and DR, though.

Why do gauntlets and boots give AC? They don't have much of an effect on how well you can dodge or how good your armor is at turning a blow away.

Actually, DR should be fine. Full plate armour would be DR 8/bludgeon. I suppose it should be a bit higher, though. As for AC from gauntlets and boots, it only makes sense for the former. It's a deflection bonus, you can't use a bare hard to deflect the weapon away from yourself. I suppose that should be an active thing, really, and the boots shouldn't do it at all.


Shields giving two-weapon fighting penalties is terrible. It already wasn't worth using a shield, and now they penalize your attacks as well. I doubt the DR is worth it.

Hmmm... How about removing the two-weapon fighting penalty, and just going for a normal attack penalty? 1-5 points, depending on size, reduced to 0 by a feat. That's better than what they had. Hell, the shield doesn't count towards arcane spell failure or cap dexterity anymore, and it doesn't even give an armour check penalty. You're got to have a trade off somewhere.


The health buffer works as a mechanic, but is rather complex. I'm not sure if the added complexity adds anything to the game, though having a bigger window for that conscious but bleeding out stage is nice.

It's always worked out fine for us. There's probably a more elegant way to do it, but this is what we have.


1The difference between the sexes isn't significant enough for most races to have a mechanical impact. I might point out that female humans have a higher pain tolerance than men, so a Constitution penalty is undeserved.

Would you rather -2 strength instead?


-1/+1 modifiers can't be balanced with 3.5's stat modifiers every 2 points. It's too easy to set each stat with an odd score and reap the benefits of the bonuses without the drawbacks of the penalties.

Alrighty then. +2/-2 only that should fix that.


1
So, two 6th-level parents produce, on average, a 4th level kid, before he does anything?

Strong parents should mean a strong child, although I see what you're getting at. 1-20% would be better. It starts the little one off nice and strong, but still shows his complete lack of experience.

[Avianmosquito]

Just going through this and putting down my thoughts as they come up. If any of this comes off as harsh please be aware that that was not my intent.


It's worth noting that in a moderate or higher optimization environment slashing is rather less powerful than the other two(at least once you get past the first few levels, anyway.) Also, bludgeoning is the strongest, touch attacks mean power attacking for full and still hitting. Not sure if that's a problem in the sort of games you play but I'm putting it out there anyway.

Well, how about just explicitly saying it ignores armour AC/DR and leaving it at that? That way anything but armour will work as it did previously, but armour itself won't help. (Because really, armour doesn't help with a blunt weapon.)


Those are some really high DCs, recall that at tenth level a caster will be doing on average 35 points of damage with a fireball, but a spell of the higest level they can cast will have a DC of 19-21.

Again, massive DC. I guess I'll stop mentioning that because the rest are probably the same.

I'll set that to 1/2 damage, rounded down. That should do it. When we made this rule, another rule was boosting modifiers by 5 points, but that one doesn't exist anymore so I should change to compensate.



Force is generally balanced by the fact that it works against absolutely anything.

Well, yes. I suppose that's true.


A small temporary penalty to d20 rolls and caster level that stacks with itself. Think negative level-light.

Right. One, then another for each point after, DC 1/2 damage.


Why would you even need to separate this out from the rest of your armor?

That is a lot of AC. So basically no one will be hitting each other at low levels without bludgeoning weapons. Also, all your rogues will be using quarterstaffs now.

Yeah, I'm removing the boot AC entirely and making guantlet AC an active defense. That should do it.


Not just possible, likely. You haven't done anything about the fact that characters die at -10 and at higher levels it's really easy to overshoot those 10 hit points entirely.

Actually, I have. You die at a negative number equal to your hit points, and your enemy isn't waiting for you to bleed out. Your health buffer will probably be overshot entirely at higher levels, and at lower ones it keeps you on your feet another couple rounds.


DnD is by it's very nature an inaccurate game, and I really don't see what could be so offensive about a template. But then I've never seen the template in question so maybe it is just that bad, who knows.

It really is. It basically says "Cut all stats in half, including hit points, give massive attack penalty. Lock XP in place so children never gain XP at all ever." I started playing D&D when I was ten years old, when I read that I took my sourcebook outside and blasted it with a shotgun.


You have completely failed at your initial idea. Not only are children not significantly less powerful than adults they are actually far stronger in some cases(toddler rogue == death).

...Except they are forced to use a tiny bow, which deals 1d3 damage. Don't forget how crippling size adjustment is.


Also there's the fact that "suck now, awesome later" mechanics are generally seen as bad.

If we didn't like that kind of mechanic, we wouldn't play spellcasters at all. Still, I can always scrap it and work out new balances.


Finally, some of the bonuses just don't make sense. Why is a toddler smarter than a wizard? or faster than a rogue?

The former is because intelligence is a measure of processing power and learning ability, and children are objectively better at both of these things. The latter is because of square-cube law, which basically says "smaller scale, higher strength-wieght ratio."


You don't generally see children going into high-risk areas because in just about every sense except learning certain types of new things children are at an objective disadvantage compared to adults.

Not really. They are at a physical disadvantage only, and even then they've got better motor-control and the full benefit of square-cube law.


That's not to say there's no way of making child adventurers but I think you're going about it the wrong way.

Ug. I can just remove the mental differences, lessen their limitations and reduce their XP and health bonuses. Then it's just a question of smaller and more dextrous or larger and more powerful. If you like ranged combat, play a child. Like melee combat, play an adult. Simple.



Odd racial adjustments are bad game design. They mean that a character can either get a negligible benefit (if the stat enhanced started off even) or a significant benefit(if the stat started off odd) based on a fairly random factor.
Also, a dexterity differential of 4 points between sexes is rather massive, that's bigger than the difference between dwarves and elves.

Well, setting it so only multiples of 2 are used is easy. I can also make it so neither of them has a negative, it's just +2 strength for the male and +2 dexterity for the female. Problem solved.


Or you could just say pregnant women shouldn't be adventuring... I mean really, there are reasons why pregnant people don't go into combat in real life, if anything the later penalties aren't large enough.

Well, no they shouldn't. Maybe adding on a growing DEX penalty to compliment their increasing encumbrance?


This is...strange.

He threw it in as a joke. It stuck because the players loved gambling with their stats. I never did, so I can scrap it without remorse.


So your world works on Lamarkian evolution then? I suppose stranger things have happened in fantasy worlds. It might be better to say that the parents are able to raise a child to have the average of their experiences if they take the time to do so though.

Strong parents will have a strong child, we already know this. I decided to reduce it to 1-20% instead.


Also: 1 in 20 fetuses can survive having their mother killed one week after being conceived, gotcha.

Like anybody can really make a fortitude save of 45, when there's no more automatic success.


So, newborns shouldn't have an intelligence bonus, gotcha.

There's a difference between "not remembering because your brain is mostly dead" and "not being able to say it because you haven't learned any languages." It's an obvious one, too.


It feels really weird to be making children significantly better adventurers than adults when in reality they would be much worse and simultaneously making the middle aged significantly worse adventurers when in reality they would be about the same.

They have slightly lower stats overall. Hell, I'm just going to cut off the mental penalties and just let the physical ones sit there as they are. That would mean childhood would only affect strength, dexterity, healing and experience. Their disadvantages such as illiteracy will remain.

Being old would be -x strength, -x constitution, +2x wisdom, and -10x% experience. A 40-year old adventurer will be only slightly worse than a 20-year old adventurer. When in reality most 40-year old men can't run 100 metres without having to stop and catch their breath.


Why?

Because the spell fires a projectile. Even homing projectiles miss. The immense modifier should mean it'll only miss if fired at an opponent that dodges very well, in which case it's because they dove out of the way of a spell that normally would never have a problem.


Why?

Because a competent individual should not screw up automatically 5% of the time, and an incompetant individual should not succeed automatically 5% of the time.


Disregard what I said above at health buffers, you may want to put these two rules next to each other.

Agreed.


Why?

Because, as has been repeatedly pointed out, your wisdom score increases as you age. When you age your vision and hearing should get worse, not better. Then again, intelligence doesn't make sense for this either, so I'll tie it to constitution. A healthy individual should have better senses than an unhealthy one, after all, while brainpower and senses have little to do with one another.

Oh, and a note: You commented in a thread that was double-posted. There's a good chance that it'll be deleted.

[Talentless]

Well, how about just explicitly saying it ignores armour AC/DR and leaving it at that? That way anything but armour will work as it did previously, but armour itself won't help. (Because really, armour doesn't help with a blunt weapon.)


False. Armor does help, especially the non metal kind. Take a hammer, hit your hand with enough force to bruise. Repeat while wearing a leather work glove, the blow will be noticeably softer.

Blunt Force trauma is a great plate armor killer, but properly made plate can still block or blunt the blows from a mace. It isn't as effective as against a sword, but it still works.

I'd say Halve your current rules effect to be more accurate, and remove it's effect from the light armor classification.




It really is. It basically says "Cut all stats in half, including hit points, give massive attack penalty. Lock XP in place so children never gain XP at all ever." I started playing D&D when I was ten years old, when I read that I took my sourcebook outside and blasted it with a shotgun.



...Except they are forced to use a tiny bow, which deals 1d3 damage. Don't forget how crippling size adjustment is.


But... children aren't supposed to even BE adventurers except by necessity.
And I'd like you to find me a real life child (11 or younger) who can use a full sized English Longbow without hurting themselves. If one even exists, it is a 1 in a million longshot of genetics.





The former is because intelligence is a measure of processing power and learning ability, and children are objectively better at both of these things. The latter is because of square-cube law, which basically says "smaller scale, higher strength-wieght ratio."


Not really. They are at a physical disadvantage only, and even then they've got better motor-control and the full benefit of square-cube law.


... do you even understand what you are trying to use as justification? A child cannot apply any more strength to what they are doing than an adult can on a proportional basis. Kids do not have anywhere near as much of a strength-weight ratio as you are assuming.

As for the intelligence, it isn't just a function of learning ability, it is also a function of information retention, memory, and ability to grasp advanced concepts built from a broader base. 99% of all children cannot do that last bit.

And why would you even want to play a child in the first place? If you want to play something small, there are halflings and gnomes for that.




Well, no they shouldn't. Maybe adding on a growing DEX penalty to compliment their increasing encumbrance?



Do you even need this? Why not just DM fiat, your character is pregnant, you can't use her for *gestation period* in game months.



I can understand a bit of what you are doing. And the all this isn't meant as criticism, but you are trying to add realism to the game of Dungeons and Dragons. It isn't built to be realistic.

GURPS or other rule sets are much better for what you want done.

Also, I don't mean to be as harsh as I am, but I would really like you to actually take some time and do some research into the physics and abilities of children compared to adults in real life, then see just how much more unrealistic your children template rules are compared to the one WotC put out.

[Spiryt]

Bludgeoning damage is seriosuly broken. That for a quick tip.

Definitely all of them are a bit too potent changes, but bludgeoning screws stuff seriously.

There's absolutely no point for it either.



Then it's just a question of smaller and more dextrous or larger and more powerful. If you like ranged combat, play a child. Like melee combat, play an adult. Simple.

That doesn't make any sense.

Children are not more dexterous than adult beings, nor are they better shooters, archers, or whatever...

[Avianmosquito]

I'm going to be direct. Do not be insulted. I am not trying to offend you.



But... children aren't supposed to even BE adventurers except by necessity.
And I'd like you to find me a real life child (11 or younger) who can use a full sized English Longbow without hurting themselves. If one even exists, it is a 1 in a million longshot of genetics.

That's called a size limitation. Children are small, so they cannot use medium longbows. Just like halflings cannot either.


... do you even understand what you are trying to use as justification? A child cannot apply any more strength to what they are doing than an adult can on a proportional basis. Kids do not have anywhere near as much of a strength-weight ratio as you are assuming.

Yes they can, and then some. A male child of 8 years should have about half the strength of an adult, but a quarter of the wieght. That's a twice the strength-wieght ratio, which means ~40% better acceleration. Children can also become very strong, very fast. My daughter, age 10, is stronger than most grown men, and she got that strong through play alone. So it isn't very far fetched that a child regularly involved in actual combat would quickly gain power as well, now is it?


As for the intelligence, it isn't just a function of learning ability, it is also a function of information retention, memory, and ability to grasp advanced concepts built from a broader base. 99% of all children cannot do that last bit.

Congratulations. That was one of the most ageist things I have ever heard in my life.

Actually, there are NO differences in the basic though processes of children and adults. They can grasp any concept just as well as an adult, and the very fact that you believe they cannot is a sign of a complete and total lack of experience with children. Just having been a child once should have told you that was not true.


And why would you even want to play a child in the first place? If you want to play something small, there are halflings and gnomes for that.

I started playing D&D when I was 10. My daughter plays it now. She plays a child because she is one, just like I did. I usually play an adult, but it's her I'm concerned about.


Do you even need this? Why not just DM fiat, your character is pregnant, you can't use her for *gestation period* in game months.

Sometimes the plot can't wait that long. Especially since the math says elf gestation time is nine years.


I can understand a bit of what you are doing. And the all this isn't meant as criticism, but you are trying to add realism to the game of Dungeons and Dragons. It isn't built to be realistic.

GURPS or other rule sets are much better for what you want done.

I have D&D 3.5, I do not have GURPS. I have played D&D for years. I have never played GURPS. I have played rules quite similar to these in D&D and they worked fine. I haven't a clue how they'd work in GURPS. That's about enough said.


Also, I don't mean to be as harsh as I am, but I would really like you to actually take some time and do some research into the physics and abilities of children compared to adults in real life, then see just how much more unrealistic your children template rules are compared to the one WotC put out.

What, the one that said "children are worse at everything and can never learn anything?" That one? NOTHING could EVER be further from the truth. I know kids. I spend a lot of time with kids. Being a father tends to turn out that way. I know the physical abilities of children quite well, while all you have are huge, strongly ageist preconcieved notions with no basis in fact at all. If you applied similar logic to any other group, what you just said would be considered hate speech, but for some reason, people tend to be more lenient when you're insulting children.

I have actually measured a number of these things. After all, I have a child available that will do almost anything, as long as it doesn't hurt her, and her friends are willing to pitch in as well. She has a lot of friends. Just upper body strength has been measured, by me, on over 100 different occasions across multiple age groups. Why? Because I'm bored and the equipment is available. Dexterity is another easy one to measure, and children score better univerally. I can only measure constitution as the health of the circulatory and respiratory systems, but I've done that well enough.

That's all I have, though. Intelligence is hard to measure, wisdom isn't real and charisma is subjective. All I have is a basic idea of the former from observation alone, and what I can see (and what I remember) says children are so much more intelligent than adults their view of us as mentally deficient, closed-minded morons is entirely justified.

[Avianmosquito]

Children are not more dexterous than adult beings, nor are they better shooters, archers, or whatever...

Actually, they are more dextrous. There are a number of tests for measuring dexterity. Most common one is a trace test, where a pattern is traced to measure motor control. Children perform universally better at it. Which makes sense, actually. Their joints are much looser, so their movements should be much smoother.

And also, children are naturally better shots than adults, because they have steadier hands and better eyes. I've taught my daughter, and a few other children, to fire a number of weapons, modern and historical. I've also taught adults. The children start off noticeably better shots than adults, and then improve by far faster. Their natural abilities are partitularly well suited to this, and they learn quickly.

[Ashtagon]

My daughter, age 10, is stronger than most grown men, and she got that strong through play alone. So it isn't very far fetched that a child regularly involved in actual combat would quickly gain power as well, now is it?

I think you'll find that most grown men in an arm wrestling contest with a 10 year old girl will not use their full strength, because they are well aware that they could easily hurt her.

[lunar2]

on children. this is a bit rough, but i had to work through this before, mostly for npcs related to the pcs. it's based on humans, but could be reworked for any race with a bit of effort.

ability scores are rolled at birth.

strength: an infant (0-6 months) has str 1, no matter what their roll is. at 6 months, they gain 1 str (str 2). at 1 year, they gain 1 str (str 3). every two years after that, they gain 1 str (4 at 3 years, 5 at 5, etc.) so that at 15, they will have the full (average) strength. if they rolled above average strength, then starting at 3, they gain one additional point every other year until the above average portion of their strength is gained. if there are any leftover points, such as from an 18 base strength, they are all gained at 15.

dexterity: an infant has dexterity 1. every 6 months after birth, they gain 1 point of dexterity, until they reach their base value. for an average human, this would result in full dexterity at age 5, when most kids get the hang of skills like hand-eye coordination.

constitution: start at 1, add 1 per year. at 15, any leftover constitution is gained then.

intelligence: start at 3, add 1 per 3 months. children gain proficiency with their first language when their intelligence hits 10. from the ages of 5 to 10, children get a +2 to intelligence.

wisdom:start at 1, gain 1 per month. young children don't have the developed mental aspects of wisdom, but they are extremely perceptive (spot, listen, sense motive), and often stubborn (will save), so their effective wisdom is the same as an adult from early on.

charisma: start at 1, gain 1 per year, gain leftovers at 15.

size: tiny until 4. small until 12. no ability score changes based on size.

speed: 10 until 2. 20 until 12.

experience: children under 5 are still building the underlying framework to process their experiences. they don't gain experience, do not have feats or skill points, but do have a single d4 hit die. children from 5 to 10 gain 10% more experience from encounters, because their minds are geared towards learning at this point. they can only gain levels in simple classes, however, and do not have access to class features.

[Avianmosquito]

I think you'll find that most grown men in an arm wrestling contest with a 10 year old girl will not use their full strength, because they are well aware that they could easily hurt her.

One, that's not how these things are measured. I use gravity and a machine. They show no bias. The average for a female in her age group is ~300n on their dominant arm. My sample size was small, though, so she propably offset it a fair bit. She came in at ~540n. The average for an adult male is 450n. I come in at ~840n. The wieghts were all 3 kilograms. That's as precise as I could get.

Two, she'd be pretty hard to injure with that kind of force. Childrens bones are softer and more flexible than an adult's. Her arm would bend rather than breaking, and the bending is so obvious nobody could fail to notice it in time. Especially since it would hurt.

Three, nobody ever uses their full strength unless they absolutely half to, otherwise they will seriously injure themselves. If those measurements up above had been using full strength, they would be about five times as high.

Also, adults who know her are more afraid of her than they are of hurting her. Last time an adult, other than me, pissed her off she punched him and nearly killed him.

[Avianmosquito]

on children. this is a bit rough, but i had to work through this before, mostly for npcs related to the pcs. it's based on humans, but could be reworked for any race with a bit of effort.

ability scores are rolled at birth.

strength: an infant (0-6 months) has str 1, no matter what their roll is. at 6 months, they gain 1 str (str 2). at 1 year, they gain 1 str (str 3). every two years after that, they gain 1 str (4 at 3 years, 5 at 5, etc.) so that at 15, they will have the full (average) strength. if they rolled above average strength, then starting at 3, they gain one additional point every other year until the above average portion of their strength is gained. if there are any leftover points, such as from an 18 base strength, they are all gained at 15.

dexterity: an infant has dexterity 1. every 6 months after birth, they gain 1 point of dexterity, until they reach their base value. for an average human, this would result in full dexterity at age 5, when most kids get the hang of skills like hand-eye coordination.

constitution: start at 1, add 1 per year. at 15, any leftover constitution is gained then.

intelligence: start at 3, add 1 per 3 months. children gain proficiency with their first language when their intelligence hits 10. from the ages of 5 to 10, children get a +2 to intelligence.

wisdom:start at 1, gain 1 per month. young children don't have the developed mental aspects of wisdom, but they are extremely perceptive (spot, listen, sense motive), and often stubborn (will save), so their effective wisdom is the same as an adult from early on.

charisma: start at 1, gain 1 per year, gain leftovers at 15.

size: tiny until 4. small until 12. no ability score changes based on size.

speed: 10 until 2. 20 until 12.

experience: children under 5 are still building the underlying framework to process their experiences. they don't gain experience, do not have feats or skill points, but do have a single d4 hit die. children from 5 to 10 gain 10% more experience from encounters, because their minds are geared towards learning at this point. they can only gain levels in simple classes, however, and do not have access to class features.

I prefer the way I did it. The age groups are simple and clear-cut, and the modifiers fit quite well. It plays very well, actually. Not only that, it actually fits the abilities of real-world children.

[Spiryt]

And also, children are naturally better shots than adults, because they have steadier hands and better eyes. I've taught my daughter, and a few other children, to fire a number of weapons, modern and historical. I've also taught adults. The children start off noticeably better shots than adults, and then improve by far faster. Their natural abilities are partitularly well suited to this, and they learn quickly.

Children do improve much faster than adults, it's whole point of being children.

Adults can learn that well, but still when children taught shooting will grow adult, they will be much better archers than in their kid years.

Anyway, I'm not really sure why children should have 'steadier hands and better eyes" to be honest.

Humans motion coordination gets much better after they mature, that's one of the main reason why older kids can easily bully (and do other 'richard' things younger ones in schools, even if there's not much size difference.

I, for example, was much more active as a kid than I am now, and yet I'm much more coordinated and agile than I was as a kid.

Kids are still not fully developed as far as motion goes, obviously.



Actually, they are more dextrous. There are a number of tests for measuring dexterity. Most common one is a trace test, where a pattern is traced to measure motor control. Children perform universally better at it. Which makes sense, actually. Their joints are much looser, so their movements should be much smoother.

Interesting. Any data on this? Looser joints do allow easier motion in many cases, I guess, but that would probably constitute for greater "agility" at most. Not actual precision.




My daughter, age 10, is stronger than most grown men, and she got that strong through play alone.

That's simply silly.

Don't know what are your kids doing, and how, but it's impossible for 10, at most 100 poundish girl to be stronger than any healthy male adult.

Maybe in simple, rigorously trained powerlifting activities, but it's not healthy for 10 years old girl.



The former is because intelligence is a measure of processing power and learning ability, and children are objectively better at both of these things. The latter is because of square-cube law, which basically says "smaller scale, higher strength-wieght ratio."

Seriously? There are 1 in 2000 children who are able to finish college at 12 years old, or something, but it doesn't change the fact the children are not better at processing things, performing math, chemistry or whatever. There's reason education is gradual, after all.

Not only you need some knowledge before you can gain some more complicated ones, your brain must be also more 'trimmed' into it.

There's no way in which I would get some stuff I'm able to understand now, while I was 12. And I'm much more lazy and unmotivated than when I was 12....





Also, adults who know her are more afraid of her than they are of hurting her. Last time an adult pissed her off she punched him and nearly killed him.

Are you really hoping that anyone will believe it?

No matter how strong is 10 years old girl, she cannot really hurt adult, because, as you pointed out yourself:

Her bones are smaller, softer, more flexible in joints ,so cannot in any way carry enough impact to seriously injure any adult person.... :smallconfused:

[Mulletmanalive]

Actually, they are more dextrous. There are a number of tests for measuring dexterity. Most common one is a trace test, where a pattern is traced to measure motor control. Children perform universally better at it. Which makes sense, actually. Their joints are much looser, so their movements should be much smoother.

And also, children are naturally better shots than adults, because they have steadier hands and better eyes. I've taught my daughter, and a few other children, to fire a number of weapons, modern and historical. I've also taught adults. The children start off noticeably better shots than adults, and then improve by far faster. Their natural abilities are partitularly well suited to this, and they learn quickly.

As an archery instructor, I'm going to say that this is mostly bunk. No child under 14 i've ever taught has been able to draw my bow and it's not even that powerful. It doesn't matter if a child is pretty good with a zero strain weapon, such things won't penetrate armour. That is not half adult strenght. For reference, by the weight tables, i'm about strength 11-12.

Firing a crossbow, great, but again, i don't know any children who could possibly draw a crossbow with a draw necessary to punch through armour. One of my friends is a reenactor and he has to get teams of 4 10 year olds to work together to wind his arbalest.

I work teaching art to kids as well. Fine motor control on an 8 year old is not a +3 Dex, it's a -3 and they can't grasp concepts of fine control or restraint. The idea that you can do something other than simply mash a paintbrush against the paper escapes them and i've also found that the golden age for actually retaining skills is about 9-10, where you can finally actually expect them to come back next week with what they were doing last time more or less in tact. I really doubt that leaves those younger qualifying for an XP bonus.

Feel free to disagree, you have kids and i'm just a professional educator.

A passable option is to simply make a child a small adult with a ranks cap of 1 + Level in any skill. That's -4 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +4 on Hide, massively reduced lifting and carrying and a reduced weapon size. Endurance as a bonus feat is probably also appropriate.

Also, don't assume that just because modern 40 year olds are unfit that people were historically. A good proportion of navigators [road, rail and canal builders] were 40+ and could dig for 10 hours a day without issue. I know men in their 60s who can do a great deal [perhaps not running but they aren't so inclined] without complaint and i know several folks who run marathons at that age.

[Avianmosquito]

Children do improve much faster than adults, it's whole point of being children.

Adults can learn that well, but still when children taught shooting will grow adult, they will be much better archers than in their kid years.

Anyway, I'm not really sure why children should have 'steadier hands and better eyes" to be honest.

Humans motion coordination gets much better after they mature, that's one of the main reason why older kids can easily bully (and do other 'richard' things younger ones in schools, even if there's not much size difference.

I, for example, was much more active as a kid than I am now, and yet I'm much more coordinated and agile than I was as a kid.

Kids are still not fully developed as far as motion goes, obviously.

Not true. You have more experience with most things that you did as a child, so you'd developed more skill at it, but in terms of actual coordination and agility, you'll find you've fallen quite a bit. Introduce a child and an adult at a new activity dependent on agility, the child will perform better. Same for dexterity. For instance, take a child will do better when using a game controller for the first time than an adult would. A child will perform better first time at anything revolving around complex motion than an adult would as well, freerunning for example.


Interesting. Any data on this? Looser joints do allow easier motion in many cases, I guess, but that would probably constitute for greater "agility" at most. Not actual precision.

Just my own data. The trace test is run through a scanner, the computer gives you back the accuracy. It is very sensitive. I, for instance, scored 57%. My daughter scored 89%. The average from the adult males was 32%. The average for young females was 56%. However, this is more a "sex" thing than an "age" thing. Adult females scored 44%. Young males scored 42%. So basically, children are more dextrous than adults, and females are more dextrous than males.


That's simply silly.

Don't know what are your kids doing, and how, but it's impossible for 10, at most 100 poundish girl to be stronger than any healthy male adult.

Maybe in simple, rigorously trained powerlifting activities, but it's not healthy for 10 years old girl.

She's 50kg. She doesn't train or anything. She spends a lot of time rough-housing, and she fights a lot. That's it. Yet she's still stronger than more grown men, despite being ~60% of their size. She really shouldn't be so strong, especially since she looks like any other pubescent child.


Seriously? There are 1 in 2000 children who are able to finish college at 12 years old, or something, but it doesn't change the fact the children are not better at processing things, performing math, chemistry or whatever. There's reason education is gradual, after all.

Not only you need some knowledge before you can gain some more complicated ones, your brain must be also more 'trimmed' into it.

There's no way in which I would get some stuff I'm able to understand now, while I was 12. And I'm much more lazy and unmotivated than when I was 12....

The reason they can't finish college at age 12 because it takes time to learn all the things required. Same reason you understand things that you didn't used to. You've learned a lot during the time. You're learning slower now. You're much dumber now. But you still know more because you've had time to learn.

[Avianmosquito]

As an archery instructor, I'm going to say that this is mostly bunk. No child under 14 i've ever taught has been able to draw my bow and it's not even that powerful. It doesn't matter if a child is pretty good with a zero strain weapon, such things won't penetrate armour. That is not half adult strenght. For reference, by the weight tables, i'm about strength 11-12.

Firing a crossbow, great, but again, i don't know any children who could possibly draw a crossbow with a draw necessary to punch through armour. One of my friends is a reenactor and he has to get teams of 4 10 year olds to work together to wind his arbalest.

I work teaching art to kids as well. Fine motor control on an 8 year old is not a +3 Dex, it's a -3 and they can't grasp concepts of fine control or restraint. The idea that you can do something other than simply mash a paintbrush against the paper escapes them and i've also found that the golden age for actually retaining skills is about 9-10, where you can finally actually expect them to come back next week with what they were doing last time more or less in tact. I really doubt that leaves those younger qualifying for an XP bonus.

Feel free to disagree, you have kids and i'm just a professional educator.

A passable option is to simply make a child a small adult with a ranks cap of 1 + Level in any skill. That's -4 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +4 on Hide, massively reduced lifting and carrying and a reduced weapon size. Endurance as a bonus feat is probably also appropriate.

Also, don't assume that just because modern 40 year olds are unfit that people were historically. A good proportion of navigators [road, rail and canal builders] were 40+ and could dig for 10 hours a day without issue. I know men in their 60s who can do a great deal [perhaps not running but they aren't so inclined] without complaint and i know several folks who run marathons at that age.

1. They can't fire the bow because they're too small. You need arms of a certain length to work a bow, and children don't have that. It isn't about strength because children aren't that weak.
2. Again, I've actually measured a number of these things to see how they stacked up. Dexterity was their best trait. All you can claim is a penalty to Profession(painter), and a size-based weapon restriction.
3. Technically, if their heart rate, blood pressure and lung capacity are anything to go by, they should have a constitution bonus as well. I didn't give them that because size should balance that out.
4. It's true, historical 40-year olds weren't out of shape... because they were DEAD.

[Avianmosquito]

Note: Sex modifiers are +2 for adults and adolescents, +1 for youths and children, and +0 for toddlers and infants.

I've got a better way to preserve the parent's traits than giving the child starting experience. Basically, the child gets their attributes from their parents instead of rolling.

Pick three ability scores and use the higher base ability score (before race, sex and age modifiers, but after level increases) from the child's parents. The other three use the lower measurements. At least two must come from each parent, if possible. Simple, and if the parents were high-level and rolled well, their child should have good starting attributes as a level 1 infant.

IE:

If a human's mother reads:
12STR
16DEX
12CON
12INT
12WIS
12CHA
76 Total

And the father reads:
16STR
12DEX
14CON
14INT
10WIS
10CHA
76 Total

Then you might pick the mother's DEX, WIS and CHA, but the father's STR, CON and INT. The father's +2 STR(sex) and the mother's +2 DEX(sex) are removed.

For an infant this would read:
9STR
19DEX
14CON
14INT
12WIS
12CHA
80 Total

Keep in mind that the child's ability scores will rise as he/she levels.

[Keinnicht]

One, that's not how these things are measured. I use gravity and a machine. They show no bias. The average for a female in her age group is ~300n on their dominant arm. My sample size was small, though, so she propably offset it a fair bit. She came in at ~540n. The average for an adult male is 450n. I come in at ~840n. The wieghts were all 3 kilograms. That's as precise as I could get.



Unless your daughter has a myostatin deficiency, or an unusual amount of anabolic steroids in her diet, I find your numbers implausible. About as implausible as I find your claim to be able to exert enough force to lift 188 pounds with your dominant arm, and your claim that the average female "in her age group" can lift 70 pounds. Most girls around that age weigh under 70 pounds, and I'm pretty sure most of them cannot pick each other up one-handed.



9STR
19DEX
14CON
14INT
12WIS
12CHA
80 Total

Keep in mind that the child's ability scores will rise as he/she levels.

Allow me to present a counterpoint:

An infant can drown in 2 inches of water. This pretty soundly demonstrates that they have neither a wisdom nor an intelligence bonus, regardless of whether or not they'd have one later in life.

[Avianmosquito]

Unless your daughter has a myostatin deficiency, or an unusual amount of anabolic steroids in her diet, I find your numbers implausible. About as implausible as I find your claim to be able to exert enough force to lift 188 pounds with your dominant arm, and your claim that the average female "in her age group" can lift 70 pounds. Most girls around that age weigh under 70 pounds, and I'm pretty sure most of them cannot pick each other up one-handed.

You think a 50kg, that's 110lb, pubescent female can't lift that much? Really? Also, that's the force put on a plate in front and to the side of the subject from a sitting position. That's the arm and a fair bit of the trunk. I used that because it's the best way to measure punching power.

She's 10. She's chest hieght, is a bit heavy for her hieght (which is normal in puberty) and technically qualifies as an adolescent. She's growing body hair and breasts, her voice is changing, the whole deal. Development wise, she's about that of a normal 11-12 year old girl.

[Keinnicht]

You think a 50kg, that's 110lb, pubescent female can't lift that much? Really? Also, that's the force put on a plate in front and to the side of the subject from a sitting position. That's the arm and a fair bit of the trunk. I used that because it's the best way to measure punching power.

Oh, okay. That makes a lot more sense.

My issue wasn't that I didn't think they could lift that much, it was that I didn't think they could lift that much with one arm. I thought we were talking a bicep-curl style, purely arm lift.

...So you can see why I thought those numbers sounded totally nuts.

[Avianmosquito]

Oh, okay. That makes a lot more sense.

My issue wasn't that I didn't think they could lift that much, it was that I didn't think they could lift that much with one arm. I thought we were talking a bicep-curl style, purely arm lift.

...So you can see why I thought those numbers sounded totally nuts.

Yes I can, I'm sorry I snapped at you.

[Chambers]

Actually, there are NO differences in the basic though processes of children and adults. They can grasp any concept just as well as an adult, and the very fact that you believe they cannot is a sign of a complete and total lack of experience with children. Just having been a child once should have told you that was not true.

Oh really? Jean Piaget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget) would like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development) a (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3U_T6C9NtU&feature=related) word with you (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRF27F2bn-A&feature=related). In brief, you're wrong.

---

In regard to your house rules, I would stop using all of them. I recommend playing HârnMaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A2rnMaster) instead. It has intricate rules for Armor and Weapons and will be more balanced (via years of playtesting by lots of groups) than your set of house rules.

[Avianmosquito]

Oh really? Jean Piaget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget) would like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development) a (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3U_T6C9NtU&feature=related) word with you (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRF27F2bn-A&feature=related). In brief, you're wrong.

---

In regard to your house rules, I would stop using all of them. I recommend playing HârnMaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A2rnMaster) instead. It has intricate rules for Armor and Weapons and will be more balanced (via years of playtesting by lots of groups) than your set of house rules.

Psychologists are quacks, child psychologists all the more so.

[Mystic Muse]

Same warning as Saidoro. If this comes off as harsh, that was not my intent. I know there are specific things you wanted help with, but I think you definitely need to re-examine a few of these rules if you're going to be playing 3.5 with other people because of some of the changes you've made.


First I'd like to ask a question. Why did you make these rules? A few of them seem to be trying to imitate real life (The rules for old age and the difference between sexes for example) whereas others look like they're trying to make it less realistic (Rules for pregnant PCs, damage that is by definition not lethal being potentially lethal, and Toddlers and Infants adventuring)

Now I'll go on to mechanical changes that don't have anything in particular to do with those.

There's no reason to make the changes you've made to magic missile. It's already a really weak spell.

I see no reason for the +10 bonus to attack rolls on characters using ranged weapons, especially when you've already decreased AC so much, and ranged is already a pretty lousy weapon style. It doesn't need to be nerfed further.



Unarmed strikes now have 18-20 critical threat, 2x critical damage. Medium creatures deal 1d6 bludgeoning damage, small deals 1d4, tiny deals 1d2, diminutive deals 1, fine 0. Large creatures deal 1d8, huge deals 1d12, gargantuan 2d8, and colossal 2d12. Can deal nonlethal damage at a -4 penalty to attack, although modifier damage is still regular bludgeoning. Uses both strength and dexterity modifiers on attack rolls, adds strength modifier to damage. (IE: 12STR & 12DEX = +2 attack) Unarmed attacks still provoke attacks of opportunity, which recieve a +10 attack bonus. If the improved unarmed strike is used, attacks still provoke attacks of opportunity, but the attack of opportunity no longer gains a +10, and you no longer suffer a -4 attack penalty to deal nonlethal damage. Two new feats, entitled "martial artist" and "pugilist" are added, which change critical threat to 16-20 and critical damage to 4x, respectively. With all of these, high strength and dexterity, hand to hand is now a decent option for melee combat. Without them it's still not as good as a melee weapon, but it isn't worthless anymore and will easily beat a ranged weapon if within range. This has made unarmed attacks worse actually. Let's say you're a level 11 Monk facing off against a 12 headed Hydra. You attack 3 times, and in response the 12 Headed Hydra gets to attack you twenty four times. Considering how much lower AC is, the Monk is going to be hydra food. There's really no reason to use unarmed attacks when you get attacked in response. I suggest taking out the bit about being hit by an attack of opportunity in response.

[Avianmosquito]

Same warning as Saidoro. If this comes off as harsh, that was not my intent. I know there are specific things you wanted help with, but I think you definitely need to re-examine a few of these rules if you're going to be playing 3.5 with other people because of some of the changes you've made.


First I'd like to ask a question. Why did you make these rules? A few of them seem to be trying to imitate real life (The rules for old age and the difference between sexes for example) whereas others look like they're trying to make it less realistic (Rules for pregnant PCs, damage that is by definition not lethal being potentially lethal, and Toddlers and Infants adventuring)

Now I'll go on to mechanical changes that don't have anything in particular to do with those.

There's no reason to make the changes you've made to magic missile. It's already a really weak spell.

I see no reason for the +10 bonus to attack rolls on characters using ranged weapons, especially when you've already decreased AC so much, and ranged is already a pretty lousy weapon style. It doesn't need to be nerfed further.

This has made unarmed attacks worse actually. Let's say you're a level 11 Monk facing off against a 12 headed Hydra. You attack 3 times, and in response the 12 Headed Hydra gets to attack you twenty four times. Considering how much lower AC is, the Monk is going to be hydra food. There's really no reason to use unarmed attacks when you get attacked in response. I suggest taking out the bit about being hit by an attack of opportunity in response.

Only if the hydra has the "combat reflexes" feat. And also, unarmed attacks already provoke attacks of opportunity. Finally, the damage is greatly increased, the crit and damage are much higher, and the accuracy is the best of any weapon. It's better by far.

Oh, and the infants and toddlers weren't meant to go adventuring, at least not by themselves, they were meant to function better as NPCs. That's not to say you can't have them in a party, that's quite realistic... If you and the others are related. An adventurer that can't leave their child behind has to take them with.

[Chambers]

Psychologists are quacks, child psychologists all the more so.

I'm leaving the discussion, and honestly feel sad for you that you feel that way.

[Avianmosquito]

I'm leaving the discussion, and honestly feel sad for you that you feel that way.

I apologize if I offended you, but "that which can be claimed without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." Until they have some actual evidence other than experiments specifically designed so that any result supports their crackpot theories, I will give them 0 credit.

[Chambers]

To clarify, I'm not offended. I feel pity for you. But this is out of bounds of the rules of the forum so we should drop it

[Avianmosquito]

To clarify, I'm not offended. I feel pity for you. But this is out of bounds of the rules of the forum so we should drop it

I've already said all I needed to anyway, so alright, let's drop it.

[Mystic Muse]

Only if the hydra has the "combat reflexes" feat. And also, unarmed attacks already provoke attacks of opportunity. Finally, the damage is greatly increased, the crit and damage are much higher, and the accuracy is the best of any weapon. It's better by far.

The standard Hydra does have combat reflexes, which is why I brought it up. Even if it doesn't, it still gets to attack you 12 times, and you're still likely to be Hydra food.

As for unarmed strikes already provoking attacks of opportunity, I meant that improved ones shouldn't. Yes, the attack and damage are increased, but it's irrelevant if your enemy drops you before you actually deal any damage. Plus, as far as I saw, you don't have any houserules for critical hits. Unless you just never use Oozes, constructs, undead, plants, or elementals, there are enemies where the increased critical hit range and damage are irrelevant because they're immune.

And I brought up the Hydra because it isn't some obscure monster in the back of the monster manual, it's one of the most iconic fantasy monsters there is.

I did miss the part about the increased attack in the first readthrough. I suggest taking that, and the bit about it provoking attacks of opportunity out. The increased damage will still make it an attractive option. The increased Crit range and damage cost two feats, and are rather limited in application so those aren't as big of a deal as you make them out to be.

A few other things.



Positive/negative energy: Subtracts 1 from attack rolls and armour class, with an additional one for each point of damage. A will save equal to half the damage negates this effect. This seems kinda strong, and there's no duration listed. So, if they fail, they would technically take these penalties forever.



Electricity: Target must make a fortitude save equal to half the damage or lost their next action. If affected by several of these effects, the save DCs are added together. This effect does not function against creatures immune to paralysis.

Frost damage: Deals one point of attribute damage plus an additional one for every ten points of damage. The attribute affected is selected randomly. (d6) A successful fortitude cuts the damage in half. (Rounded down.) These seem significantly better than the other effects of specific types of damage. Also "Lose their next action" is kind of poorly defined. Mind explaining?


Lastly, I would like an answer to my question about why certain rules seem to contradict others in the reason for their existence.

[Avianmosquito]

The standard Hydra does have combat reflexes, which is why I brought it up. Even if it doesn't, it still gets to attack you 12 times, and you're still likely to be Hydra food.

And your math is scewed anyway. One enemy only gets one attack of opportunity to a full attack from a hand to hand character. Not sure if the hydra's twelve heads override that or not.


As for unarmed strikes already provoking attacks of opportunity, I meant that improved ones shouldn't. Yes, the attack and damage are increased, but it's irrelevant if your enemy drops you before you actually deal any damage. Plus, as far as I saw, you don't have any houserules for critical hits. Unless you just never use Oozes, constructs, undead, plants, or elementals, there are enemies where the increased critical hit range and damage are irrelevant because they're immune.

Maybe just not fight hand to hand against enemies it can't get it's 16-20, x4 crit on? I mean really, that's the draw of hand to hand.



I did miss the part about the increased attack in the first readthrough. I suggest taking that, and the bit about it provoking attacks of opportunity out. The increased damage will still make it an attractive option. The increased Crit range and damage cost two feats, and are rather limited in application so those aren't as big of a deal as you make them out to be.

Yes, but its starting crit is already an impressive 18-20, x2. The attack boost isn't actually a boost. It just gets both strength and dexterity modifiers, so its accuracy is extremely high. Combine that with good damage and an impressive critical threat and it can put out enemies quite fast.

Yes, improved attacks should no longer provoke an attack of opportunity. But in that case, the feat will now require the others instead of the other way around. (Because otherwise it'd be a bit overpowered. Making you wait until your third feat is a good compromise.)

So basically, an unarmed, fully improved attack can deal non-lethal (really more of less-lethal now, isn't it?) with no penalty, deals 1d6+STR+3, (an extra point each for pugilist, martial artist and improved unarmed) with an attack mod of STR+DEX+3, (same) and have a crit of 16-20, x4. And whatever you can get out of weapon focus, weapon specialization, and their respective feat trees.


This seems kinda strong, and there's no duration listed. So, if they fail, they would technically take these penalties forever.

Sorry, only supposed to be one round.


These seem significantly better than the other effects of specific types of damage. Also "Lose their next action" is kind of poorly defined. Mind explaining?

Same as in the spell "bestow curse." Their action just doesn't happen, they don't act in one round. The temporary attribute damage of frost is too random to rely on, and only lasts as long as other temporary damage. It's also usually only a few points, and tends to land on an attribute the attacker doesn't care about. (Like a fighter's charisma. Or wisdom. Or intelligence.) Bards will friggin' hate it, though, because all their attributes are important.


Lastly, I would like an answer to my question about why certain rules seem to contradict others in the reason for their existence.

Because I didn't write them. They were written by comittee (my old DM and his friends) over the course of several years of play. I'm just looking to improve on them now that I've lost contact with them.

EDIT: These are the revised version, still under revision, not the originals.

[Mystic Muse]

And your math is scewed anyway. One enemy only gets one attack of opportunity to a full attack from a hand to hand character. Not sure if the hydra's twelve heads override that or not. Both a single and a full attack by a Hydra involve all 12 of its heads. Unless you decide to be really nitpicky about the reading (By which I mean specifically have to interpret it a certain way, and that way is questionable), it gets 12 attacks on an opportunity attack.




Maybe just not fight hand to hand against enemies it can't get it's 16-20, x4 crit on? I mean really, that's the draw of hand to hand. Well, considering the number of enemies that you can't get that on, that might not be an option. Especially if your party is fighting them. A character that has to sit out because they can't crit an enemy is a character that won't have a party for much longer.




Yes, but its starting crit is already an impressive 18-20, x2. The attack boost isn't actually a boost. It just gets both strength and dexterity modifiers, so its accuracy is extremely high. Combine that with good damage and an impressive critical threat and it can put out enemies quite fast.

Kukris, Rapiers, Scimitars and Falchions all also start out with that same threat range. As for an "Extremely High" attack bonus, that really depends on stat generation.



Yes, improved attacks should no longer provoke an attack of opportunity. But in that case, the feat will now require the others instead of the other way around. (Because otherwise it'd be a bit overpowered. Making you wait until your third feat is a good compromise.) You'll have to modify the Monk then, as they get Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat at first level.



So basically, an unarmed, fully improved attack can deal non-lethal (really more of less-lethal now, isn't it?) with no penalty, deals 1d6+STR+3, (an extra point each for pugilist, martial artist and improved unarmed) with an attack mod of STR+DEX+3, (same) and have a crit of 16-20, x4. And whatever you can get out of weapon focus, weapon specialization, and their respective feat trees. Again, to determine just how much this is, and how effective, it really requires a baseline for what you expect the character to have for its stats at what level. Plus, STR+DEX+3 on one handed weapons still loses out to a power attacker with a 2 handed weapon. While it's not usable in all cases, a charging build easily outdamages this. I think, when not particularly trying to optimize the build too much, on a Paladin I multiplied all damage I dealt on a charge by 5. So, with a lance, I dealt 5d8+ 7.5x Strength modifier damage. That's on one attack, before criticals, and a not particularly well optimized charging build. An even slightly more well optimized build would have had pounce.




Same as in the spell "bestow curse." Their action just doesn't happen, they don't act in one round. The temporary attribute damage of frost is too random to rely on, and only lasts as long as other temporary damage. It's also usually only a few points, and tends to land on an attribute the attacker doesn't care about. (Like a fighter's charisma. Or wisdom. Or intelligence.) Bards will friggin' hate it, though, because all their attributes are important. Ah. Eh, I still dislike the attribute damage personally. I'll drop it though until I can articulate my problem with it better.




Because I didn't write them. They were written by committee (my old DM and his friends) over the course of several years of play. I'm just looking to improve on them now that I've lost contact with them. Alright. I suggest for going towards a specific goal of some sort, and just ditching any that don't fit that goal. I'm making my own houserules for my own setting, and I have specific goals in mind when I make them. A few I had are
1. Get rid of anything that doesn't fit the setting.
2. Get rid of anything that I personally find squicky (Mind control, and soul stealing shenanigans. Eeeugh.)
3. Make various concepts more easily playable.

It would be best to get some specific goals in mind to work towards, and then we might be able to help you better.

[Avianmosquito]

Well, considering the number of enemies that you can't get that on, that might not be an option. Especially if your party is fighting them. A character that has to sit out because they can't crit an enemy is a character that won't have a party for much longer.

Monk is a crappy class anyway. Any other class with these feats can just swith to another weapon or cast spells. Hell, my favourite for unarmed was a cleric. They're important wether they can get their crits or not.


Kukris, Rapiers, Scimitars and Falchions all also start out with that same threat range. As for an "Extremely High" attack bonus, that really depends on stat generation.

Well, if you want pure hand to hand, you'd put your highest scores on strength and dexterity. If you're a caster, like the cleric I used this with, then put the highest on your casting stat and the next highest on your strength and dexterity. Either way, your numbers should be positive.


You'll have to modify the Monk then, as they get Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat at first level.

Martial artist or pugilist, improve your crit and get a +1 Attack/Damage for each one.


Again, to determine just how much this is, and how effective, it really requires a baseline for what you expect the character to have for its stats at what level. Plus, STR+DEX+3 on one handed weapons still loses out to a power attacker with a 2 handed weapon. While it's not usable in all cases, a charging build easily outdamages this. I think, when not particularly trying to optimize the build too much, on a Paladin I multiplied all damage I dealt on a charge by 5. So, with a lance, I dealt 5d8+ 7.5x Strength modifier damage. That's on one attack, before criticals, and a not particularly well optimized charging build. An even slightly more well optimized build would have had pounce.

Still better than the original 1d3+STR, 20, 2x. Oh, and the "STR+DEX+3" is for attack. It's just "1d6+STR+3" for damage. Unless you have other feats that I didn't add, which would improve this. And you'd have a 25% chance to crit for 4x damage. A maximum of 36+(4xSTR). As opposed to the original 5% chance of 2x crit, for up to 6+(2xSTR).


It would be best to get some specific goals in mind to work towards, and then we might be able to help you better.

My goal? Make the game as all-inclusive and possible, and improve the realism at least a little bit at every step I can. Basically, I want to be able to make the game work for every setting, plot and character bio I can think of while improving the realism where I can. Note that being all-inclusive outranks being realistic to a certain degree.

[Mystic Muse]

Monk is a crappy class anyway. Any other class with these feats can just swith to another weapon or cast spells. Hell, my favourite for unarmed was a cleric. They're important wether they can get their crits or not. If you're spending 3 out of your 7 feats on a specific fighting style, you want them to be useful in all situations. Not 2 out of the 3 be useless against 1/3 of the creature types you could come up against.




Well, if you want pure hand to hand, you'd put your highest scores on strength and dexterity. If you're a caster, like the cleric I used this with, then put the highest on your casting stat and the next highest on your strength and dexterity. Either way, your numbers should be positive. I'm aware. It's just easier to talk about something like this when we have a specific point to both work from.




Martial artist or pugilist, improve your crit and get a +1 Attack/Damage for each one. +3 to attack and damage really isn't all that much, especially when it requires you take two feats that are going to be useless against one third of the monster types.



Still better than the original 1d3+STR, 20, 2x. Oh, and the "STR+DEX+3" is for attack. It's just "1d6+STR+3" for damage. Unless you have other feats that I didn't add, which would improve this. And you'd have a 25% chance to crit for 4x damage. A maximum of 36+(4xSTR). As opposed to the original 5% chance of 2x crit, for up to 6+(2xSTR). It's really only better if it doesn't provoke attacks of Opportunity. Even with the original rules, you could dip Monk or fighter for a level to get Improved unarmed Strike. The crit range, attack, and damage are lower than in your modified version, but taking an opportunity attack for every unarmed strike you make is such a horrible debuff I wouldn't even consider using unarmed strike in any capacity.

And yes, I did miss that it's only 1d6+Strength mod(Plus bonus damage from feats).

It sounds like you're modifying it so that you won't necessarily take the opportunity attacks, but to me, it still sounds like a very big cost to make unarmed strikes viable.

My goal? Make the game as all-inclusive and possible, and improve the realism at least a little bit at every step I can. Basically, I want to be able to make the game work for every setting, plot and character bio I can think of while improving the realism where I can. Note that being all-inclusive outranks being realistic to a certain degree. Then I would at least get rid of the differences between sexes. Removing it is more all-inclusive, less work for you, and less likely to offend potential players. Honestly, if I saw a DM using that rule, I would avoid the game because I would expect bad things.

[Avianmosquito]

If you're spending 3 out of your 7 feats on a specific fighting style, you want them to be useful in all situations. Not 2 out of the 3 be useless against 1/3 of the creature types you could come up against.

+3 to attack and damage really isn't all that much, especially when it requires you take two feats that are going to be useless against one third of the monster types.

It's really only better if it doesn't provoke attacks of Opportunity. Even with the original rules, you could dip Monk or fighter for a level to get Improved unarmed Strike. The crit range, attack, and damage are lower than in your modified version, but taking an opportunity attack for every unarmed strike you make is such a horrible debuff I wouldn't even consider using unarmed strike in any capacity.

And yes, I did miss that it's only 1d6+Strength mod(Plus bonus damage from feats).

It sounds like you're modifying it so that you won't necessarily take the opportunity attacks, but to me, it still sounds like a very big cost to make unarmed strikes viable.

As opposed to them being flat-out worthless no matter what you did as they were in the original game? And yes, the improved unarmed feat lets you attack without provoking attacks of opportunity now. It also allows switching between lethal and non-lethal damage on a whim with no penalty. Even in the middle of an attack sequence. "I want two non-lethal and one lethal." Why you'd do that is beyond me, but it's there. The thing revolves around crits, though. So it's better against enemies with vulnerabilities to crits. However, against crit-immune enemies it's still better than the original, and if you use it on a cleric, paladin, or to a lesser extent any other caster you have something with you that remaining 1/3 is devestated by, and it's a damn fine option.


Then I would at least get rid of the differences between sexes. Removing it is more all-inclusive, less work for you, and less likely to offend potential players. Honestly, if I saw a DM using that rule, I would avoid the game because I would expect bad things.

I didn't mean that kind of all-iclusive. I meant "The Dev Team Thinks of Everything" all-inclusive. No matter what kind of character you wish to play or what kind of story you wish to tell, the rules will support it. That kind of all-inclusive.

The difference between the sexes is entirely positive, actually. Neither of them loses anything, the female gets a DEX bonus, the male gets a STR bonus. There are no penalties at all. It's not even a big difference, so while it's a boost to certain play styles, it doesn't force you into them and a bit of clever optimization can make them work in any class in surprising ways.

Also, the differences are not absolute. The +2 bonuses apply to the adults and adolescents of all species, but which physical attribute they fall upon is dependent on the race. (Halfling males, for instance, get a CON bonus instead of a STR bonus.) Further, for youths and children, the bonus is +1. Toddlers and infants do not get a bonus.

[Avianmosquito]

I mentioned that children had some classes unique to them, but I never really gave any examples. So here is one.

"Wild Child."

Any nonlawful.

d12.

The wild child’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Listen (Wis), Ride (Dex), Survival (Wis), and Swim (Str).

(4 + Int modifier) ×4 starting skill points.

4 + Int modifier skill points per level.

Class Features:

A wild child's class features are identical to those of a barbarian, except they do not gain general damage reduction at levels 7, 10, 13, 16 or 19, nor do they gain mighty rage at 20.

A wild child also gains damage reduction of 1/piercing-slashing and a +1 AC bonus against piercing weapons at level 2, which is increased by one every other every other level.

Ex-wild children:

Only a youth or younger may be a wild child. If a wild child ages to adolescence, their class levels in wild child are exchanged for levels in barbarian, with all the associated class features.

If a wild child becomes lawful, they lose their ability to rage and cannot gain more levels as a wild child, but retain their other class features.

If they age to adolescence after becoming lawful, they exchange all their levels of wild child for barbarian levels, but cannot take more barbarian levels and cannot use rage.

[Realms of Chaos]

Children:

Most of us were children when we started playing, so naturally we wanted to play as children, but the child template was unplayable, innacurate and extremely offensive. So we changed it.

Now, there are five age categories below adult. From the eldest to youngest, they are adolescent, youth, child, toddler and infant.

Infant: 0-13% adult age.
Toddler: 14-27% adult age.
Child: 28-47% adult age.
Youth: 48-73% adult age.
Adolescent: 74-99% adult age.

For each age category they are younger than adult, they gain -1 strength as well as a -10 to intimidate checks, but +1 dexterity, +5% to all health restoration and a 10% experience bonus. For instance, an infant would have -5 strength, but +5 dexterity, with a 50% experience bonus. Adolescents are the same size as adults, youths and children are one size lower, infants and toddlers are two sizes lower.

Any character adolescent or younger is restricted to classes with a "simple" starting age, (or a number of homebrewed child classes) but no other. At youth or younger, they gain a -10 to diplomacy when dealing with adults. At child or younger, they gain a -4 on knowledge checks, which can be fixed by spending one skill point. At toddler or younger, they gain the "Illeteracy" feat. They also have a -4 on swim, jump and balance checks. An infant cannot walk, and must crawl at half rate. They also cannot speak. These effects can be removed by spending four skill points each.

Possible Problems

1. No minimum age: This is a big one that kills all semblance of verismilitude. By these rules, a child can literally pop out of the womb as a rogue 1 who can walk, talk, and read. It's one thing to allow this if you're after a particularly zany feel but you seem to be claiming that this is an imitation of reality.

2. No accumulation of skills: In the OP, you say that the inability of children to gain XP is extremely offensive. In another post, however, you point out that the only reason we don't see 12 years olds in colleges is that knowledge takes a certain amount of time to build up. Assuming that this need to build-up skills extends to more than simple knowledge, these two views seem to be in conflict. By letting children gain experience and levels, you are letting children effectively build up any skill of their choice to any extent without spending the appropriate time to gain these skills. Assuming the traditional 3.33 encounter day and the 13.33 encounters needed to level, it takes about 80 days for a character to grow from level 1 to 20. While it may seem silly for an adult or anyone go gain experience so fast, it is plain ridiculous to picture a 1-year-old human wondering out into the world and returning as one of the most talented beings on the planet before the end of the season. While this is a problem with D&D in general, I'd say that this system draws particular notice to this issue.

3. Children are Better: Earlier in this thread, you say that children should be used for Dex-based classes (or perhaps casters like Sorcerer) while adults should handle Str-based classes. In such a situation, however, the children clearly have an unfair advantage. Putting aside that children get many benefits (dex bonuses, faster healing, smaller size categories) and that most of their penalties can be removed through one-time expenditures of skill points, the single biggest problem here is XP boost. As adults won't necessarily be using more powerful classes, having children level up faster by up to 50% for years of gameplay seems unfair to anyone who wants to be an adult (and thus anyone who wants to use an Str-based class). If anything, this seems ageist in the opposite direction from the original template.

4. Children Open the Road to New Avenues of Min-Maxing: If you want to keep the above benefits for longer, you are going to choose a longer-living class. If you want your size benefits to be particularly impressive, you'll be a small creature (tiny creatures [medium -2 categories] get a +2 size bonus while diminutive creatures [small - 2 categories] get double that). If you want stealth, play as a toddler whisper gnome for the +18 bonus to hide checks before actual ranks/feats. Even better, play as an infant whisper gnome sorcerer 1 and use reduce person to double your size bonuses again (seriously, that's 21 AC even if you start with 10 Dex and wear no armor). Just as venerable spellcasters with better spellcasting creates room for min-maxers, so do these rules.



Pregnancy:

If you should so desire, a female character can get pregnant. This happened often enough our DM actually had to make rules for it, and here's what he came up with.

Overall, the effects of pregnancy (physical and mental) are detrimental. During pregnancy, ten times the wieght of the child is added to her encumbrance, although only three times the child's wieght is actually added to her. The wieght of the child starts at 0, and increases by 1/9th birth wieght (1/180th adult wieght) each ninth of the pregnancy. A pregnant woman recieves a -1 on balance, climb, hide, jump, move silently, ride, swim and tumble checks and -1 to AC and dexterity for each ninth of the pregnancy that has passed.

When the child is born, the mother makes a fortitude save with a DC of 10 or take 1d8 damage and an additional 1d4 constitution damage. If successful, she does not take constitution damage but still takes health damage. If it fails, roll a d2. Subtract this from the d4 roll, this amount of constitution damage is permanant. Negative values count as 0.

Generally, the child was the offspring of a PC, possibly of two PCs. There were arguements over who would get to play the baby, and in fact they were quite frequent. This isn't a request for help, just a heads-up.

The child inherits 1-10% of its parents collective experience. (Roll a d10.) It's class is treated as "commoner," but this may be changed as soon as the infant is born. It starts of classified as nine age categories younger than an infant, (see the "child" section above) and each ninth of the pregnancy that passes is one age category older. If the mother dies and the child is still alive, the child must make a fortitude save with a DC of 45 minus 5 for each ninth of the pregnancy elapsed or automatically die. (IE: 1/3 way through the DC is 30.) If successful, the child survives and is born premature. Since they took the damage their mother took, it's quite likely they'll still die.

If a child is born prematurely, a fortitude save with a DC of 90 minus 10 for each ninth of the pregnancy elapsed. (IE: 5/9 of the way through, the DC is 40.) If failed, the child suffers a permanant -1 strength and constitution for each ninth of the pregnancy skipped, if successful it suffers these penalties anyway, but they gradually wear off until the date it would have otherwise been born.

5. Lamarkian Genetics: You are really starting to step into lammarkian territories when the child of 2 level 4 commoners (total experience 12,000 between them) can come together and have a level 2 baby (10% of 12,000 = 1,200 xp). Considering the amount of detail given to physics and similar matters of the real world in your other considerations, this seems wierd. It doesn't even add to the field of all-inclusiveness unless the child's PC parents want to take him/her on wallks in kobold dens and let him bash them with a club or something like Bambam.

6. No Minimum Age Part 2: The extremely high Fortitude DCs early on in pregnancy help ensure that most children born too early will never live. The fact that there is a DC, however, implies that it is technically possible for the child to survive. Given the right magic and powerful enough parents to get it to high levels with its inherited XP, these rules allow someone to reach into a mother the day after she has concieved and pull out a living baby (though perhaps a rather deformed one). This potential kind of disturbs me. Why is there no minimum age of survivability? Was this sort of thing your express intention?



The elderly:

We aren't nice at the expense of reality. The elderly are NOT mentally superior to the young, quite the opposite. People who can't remember their own names half the time should not have a natural intelligence bonus.

Each age category above adult now gives a -1 penalty to all physical attributes, -1 to search, -2 spot and listen, -5% healing and experience. It also gives +2 wisdom, +4 to will saves, +1 gather information, bluff & knowledge, +2 appraise & concentration, and +4 diplomacy, proffession & sense motive.

7. You Just Mechanically Acknowledged that Accumulation of Skills Should Take Time: First, these additions kind of bring me back to point #2. That the elderly are given these skill bonuses suggests that they have accumulated experience over the course of age. Comparing this with the way that children players don't have any requirement of time (not even 1% of adult age) spent getting knowledge to gain levels (apparantly being capable of it long before birth as you can be born above 1st level), this seems odd.

8. You Are Punishing the Elderly: Remember how I said in point #3 how children are better as they get more XP and how this is unfair. Giving the elderly a penalty to XP is just as much of a punishment for them and no amount of other benefits can ever really outweigh this. For a fix claiming to put all-inclusiveness above realism, it seems odd that you'd punish everyone above a certain age.

9. Being Elderly is an Uneven Benefit/Trap: Though this may seem to counter my previous point, you claim to have weakened old age but have actually strengthened it. venerable cleric 1 with 24 Wisdom is now possible and this is terrifying. Furthermore, that same cleric gets a +15 bonus to will saves from old age alone (which seems far above "jaded" and somewhere in the realm of "mind-control-immune") and a "free" +12 bonus to diplomacy checks to make diplomancers drool as well. While this may seem to even out the previous point, you are not by any means giving a truly equal exchange. Rather, you are giving players an ungodly lump sum of special abilities that initially don't have any cost but that the player never stops paying for, ever (thus making the character less and less enjoyable as the game goes on and he falls further and further behind).



Other system changes:

Melee attackers (armed or otherwise)
get a +10 bonus to attacks against enemies using ranged weapons.

10. Slight Wording Shift (?): How does holding a bow in your hand make you so much easier to hit than if you were holding nothing at all? Perhaps alter this rule so the penalty only applies if a ranged attack was made using the weapon within the past round. :smallconfused:

[jiriku]

As I look at this, I see three areas for improvement. Many rules are more complicated than they need to be, and could be streamlined to play more efficiently. Other rules are complicated, and don't have any real game impact or are not logically consistent; they should probably be scrapped or completely overhauled. And certain rules are unbalanced, and should be rebalanced. Some rules fit into two or three of these categories.

Damage
The damage changes worsen the existing caster/noncaster imbalance in D&D, because options are power in D&D, and the changes to energy damage offer more options, while the changes to weapon damage just deal more damage. Also, the changes are not well-balanced with respect to one another. For example, bludgeoning is improved much more than piercing, and electricity is improved much more than fire. The elemental damage changes could be made more lightweight while still being just as interesting.

1. Fire damage involves a lot of calculation, but won't often have a meaningful effect on combat. A simpler damage rider that refers to the standard rules for catching fire would serve just as well and allow you to skip most of the rolls and calculations. For example, "A target damaged by a fire effect automatically catches fire. It takes 1 point of damage per caster level or hit die of the effect's source, or 1d6 points per round for environmental sources. A creature that catches fire continues to burn according to the normal rules, and can douse itself according to the normal rules."

2. Electricity can be simplified by associating it with a standard condition. For example "A target damaged by an electricity effect is paralyzed for one round (Fort negates, DC - half the damage taken)."

3. Frost damage. You can again simplify the effect (and fix a balance problem). I'd also suggest returning to the label "cold". For example "A creature damaged by a cold effect takes one point of Dexterity damage."

You can similarly change the other energy specials along the same lines. The general idea is that you replace an effect that requires several calculations and die rolls with one that requires fewer (or no) calculations and die rolls, while still producing an interesting result. Combat will run much faster but you'll still get the special effects you're looking for.

Armor + Health Buffer
Health buffer isn't logically consistent. If I am mortally wounded and happen to be wearing leather boots, I may remain conscious. If you take my boots off, I might pass out. If I am heroically tough (high Con), I'm not any better at remaining conscious. But if I am of average toughness and receive a temporary bonus (like rage or bear's endurance), I do get better at it. While the Health Buffer idea is interesting, it should probably be tied to Constitution, level or saves, and specific pieces of magical gear, rather than nonmagical pieces of equipment.

The armor system itself is clunky. It tries to assign significant defensive benefits to pieces that are really of marginal value, like gauntlets and boots, while disregarding armor components that are of more significant value, like arm and leg protection. The penalties to specific skills also don't map well to real-world effects (for example, heavy steel gauntlets should impair Swim checks, while an open helm would likely have no effect on Search checks. Overall, the armor system feels like an effort to make D&D armor more like armor in many RPG video games. I'd suggest you scrap this system and replace it with a more generalized piecemeal armor system, if indeed you think it's important to track individual armor components at all.

Children rules
The correct spelling for "Illeteracy" is "illiteracy". :smallbiggrin:

In general, the children houserules don't successfully model the capabilities of small children. It's natural to want to try to model small nuances of difference, but in D&D, that's a trap - D&D's power scale is superheroic, and doesn't effectively model slight differences in normal people (some of the differences you're trying to show would need to be represented with some small fraction of a +1 bonus or -1 penalty).

I'd recommend you simply give children -1 size category and slow speed, -2 to all physical attributes (lack of physical maturity), and call it a day. For children reasonably close to adult size, just use adult stats. For children more than one size category smaller than adult, assume they're too undeveloped to adventure. For example, infants can't even feed themselves on their own, let alone go on traditional adventures; it's not necessary to create PC-ready stats for someone who's major developmental accomplishment will be learning to crawl and chew food.

Gender differences
Again, on D&D's superheroic scale, accurate sexual differentiation would need to be a fraction of a +1 bonus... too small to be measurable. I'd recommend letting this rule go. Players who want to accentuate a gender difference in their character can simply assign their ability scores to taste.

Pregnancy
These rules are both over-complicated and somewhat clunky. I won't pick apart the individual issues with it, but just suggest it should be replaced with something simpler. For example, a woman who is recently pregnant might be mechanically unaffected, while one whose pregnancy has advanced significantly might have a light load and one approaching childbirth might have a heavy load. I would suggest that fetuses and embryos do not need stats of their own, since they do not take actions and cannot be targeted by the overwhelming majority of effects. Likewise, it's probably not necessary to create game mechanics for childbirth or premature birth. I would suggest that children should not possess class levels at birth, and, again, beware of the trap of trying to create meaninglessly fine detail (most of the rolls and rules involved in selecting heritage actually do nothing).

The elderly
Like the child rules, the elderly houserules don't successfully map to real elderly people. Again, most of the bonuses and penalties are too large, and most of the effects you're trying to create a game mechanic for would represent less than a +1 or -1 on a d20, and thus, can't be modeled. I'd suggest simply applying the old age penalties for physical ability scores to all stats across the board and calling it a day.

Unarmed Combat and Other Changes
In general, none of these changes seem designed to make a bad rule work better, make a boring rule more interesting, or create rules for something important that previously wasn't addressed in the rules. I would recommend that you only keep houserules that serve one of those three purposes. Making a rule slightly different just for the sake of being slightly different creates a lot of unnecessary homebrew. Also, if you keep any of these rules, I'd suggest carefully reconsidering the size of the bonuses granted. Adding a +10 to a d20 roll all but guarantees success in many situations, and there's no point in rolling the dice if everyone already knows the outcome. Keep the bonuses small enough so that success is still in doubt.

[Avianmosquito]

Most of these have been addressed already.

1. Easy fix. Add "cannot be repaired on level 1." Now they have to level up at least once while they can't walk or read in order to fix that. Add on an inability to speak with the same cost to fix and same requirement. Now they won't be able to walk, talk and read until they've levelled up. Also, I'm going to set it so at toddler you can no longer use original classes, just speciel "child" and "baby" classes. When you age beyond their limits they become regular class levels.

2. Absolutely not. This is just a problem with D&D. You gain XP way too fast. I turned down encounter rates to ~1 each month to counteract this. There's nothing else to do about it but slow XP gain.

3. Simply limit the XP bonus. How about "1X0% XP, -10% per level, minimum 100%." This means it starts off with a boost to help them get started, but quickly withers until they are at normal again.

4. And this is a bad thing? (Sorry, munchkin moment.)

5. Altered significantly. I gave a new system a couple posts up. The child no longer inherits XP, just ability scores. So a strong parent can have a strong child, and a smart parent can have a smart child. However, you can only take three higher and three lower scores, and you must take at least two from each parent.

6. Make that DC 180, 20 less for each ninth of the pregnancy passed. Being born one month early means a DC20 save.

7, 8 &9. Not a contradiction, see above. This penalty is only experience they gain at that age. Experience gained earlier would be unnafected. This penalty is in place because of the HUGE benefits they have. Like the +4 will save you mentioned, which I am reducint to +2. The diplomacy one uses The Giant's diplomacy rules. So it isn't unbeatable. I'm also restricting the +4 diplomacy to use against lawful creatures, and their diplomacy bonus for age (if they have one) cancels an equal amount of this out. It's +2 for neutral creatures and +1 for chaotic ones. A paladin will respect you as their elder, a rogue... well, you're welcome to try. The profession bonus is starting skill now, not a check bonus. Dispense amongst sub-skills as you see fit. For instance, put them all in chef or maybe a some to architect or blacksmith. Whatever you so desire. A maximum of 12 profession points to do with as you please, because you had to do something to get so friggin' old.

However, I'm also adding permanant diseases due to old age. There are six options, each of which is a -4 penalty to an attribute that gets 4 points stronger for each age group after aquiring it. Pick one for middle age, one for old, and one for venerable. Then make a fortitude save with a DC of 20 for each. If successful, they were never actually contracted.

Finally, I'm adding a new difference. Starting level. A character above adult starts 1 level higher for each age category above. That venerable cleric would start level 4. He's clearly wasted his life if he's still so low level at his age, but he's bound to have learned something. His twelve points of bonus profession skills are a nice touch, too. You can now flavour in a backstory just with his skills. "+12 chef" implies the man spent his long life cooking rather than fighting, explaining his low level.

10. Point taken. Instead of a hit bonus for attacking somebody with a ranged weapon, it's just that you can only fight defensively with a melee weapon against another melee weapon or unarmed against another unarmed combatant, and wielding any weapon penalizes grapple checks by -4 for a one-handed weapon, -10 for a two-handed weapon. This means a ranged weapon penalizes grappling and doesn't help defense.

[Ziegander]

I would change the thread title to remove "hoping to revise them." There are HUGE issues with just about every one of your rules changes, and many people have pointed them out to you in varying levels of minutiae, but from what I've seen (I haven't read through absolutely everything, mind you) you've categorically ignored all criticism.

[Avianmosquito]

[QUOTE=jiriku;12168660]As I look at this, I see three areas for improvement. Many rules are more complicated than they need to be, and could be streamlined to play more efficiently. Other rules are complicated, and don't have any real game impact or are not logically consistent; they should probably be scrapped or completely overhauled. And certain rules are unbalanced, and should be rebalanced. Some rules fit into two or three of these categories.

Damage
The damage changes worsen the existing caster/noncaster imbalance in D&D, because options are power in D&D, and the changes to energy damage offer more options, while the changes to weapon damage just deal more damage. Also, the changes are not well-balanced with respect to one another. For example, bludgeoning is improved much more than piercing, and electricity is improved much more than fire. The elemental damage changes could be made more lightweight while still being just as interesting.

1. Fire damage involves a lot of calculation, but won't often have a meaningful effect on combat. A simpler damage rider that refers to the standard rules for catching fire would serve just as well and allow you to skip most of the rolls and calculations. For example, "A target damaged by a fire effect automatically catches fire. It takes 1 point of damage per caster level or hit die of the effect's source, or 1d6 points per round for environmental sources. A creature that catches fire continues to burn according to the normal rules, and can douse itself according to the normal rules." Agreed, but using spell level instead.

2. Electricity can be simplified by associating it with a standard condition. For example "A target damaged by an electricity effect is paralyzed for one round (Fort negates, DC - half the damage taken)." Right, but a lower save would proably be smart. Maybe a base DC of -10, so it might not happen at all.

3. Frost damage. You can again simplify the effect (and fix a balance problem). I'd also suggest returning to the label "cold". Typo, forgive me. For example "A creature damaged by a cold effect takes one point of Dexterity damage." But increase it based on spell level instead. 0 on a cantrip, 1 for each spel level above.

You can similarly change the other energy specials along the same lines. The general idea is that you replace an effect that requires several calculations and die rolls with one that requires fewer (or no) calculations and die rolls, while still producing an interesting result. Combat will run much faster but you'll still get the special effects you're looking for.

Armor + Health Buffer
Health buffer isn't logically consistent. If I am mortally wounded and happen to be wearing leather boots, I may remain conscious. If you take my boots off, I might pass out. If I am heroically tough (high Con), I'm not any better at remaining conscious. But if I am of average toughness and receive a temporary bonus (like rage or bear's endurance), I do get better at it. While the Health Buffer idea is interesting, it should probably be tied to Constitution, level or saves, and specific pieces of magical gear, rather than nonmagical pieces of equipment.

Actually, having a negative health buffer does nothing to you. It just won't protect you at 0 or lower. Removeing the boots wouldn't make you pass out, but the next attack would. High con actually would increase it, because your basic health buffer is equal to your health. The CON modifier is added to the top of that, then armour. Remove these effects and they dissappear and your health buffer may go negative, but you won't pass out unless your HP total was already negative.

The armor system itself is clunky. It tries to assign significant defensive benefits to pieces that are really of marginal value, like gauntlets and boots, while disregarding armor components that are of more significant value, like arm and leg protection. The penalties to specific skills also don't map well to real-world effects (for example, heavy steel gauntlets should impair Swim checks, while an open helm would likely have no effect on Search checks. Overall, the armor system feels like an effort to make D&D armor more like armor in many RPG video games. I'd suggest you scrap this system and replace it with a more generalized piecemeal armor system, if indeed you think it's important to track individual armor components at all.

Like what, a small AC/DR/HB bonus for each piece? Maybe 1/4 of the total? I'll think about it.

[Mystic Muse]

I would change the thread title to remove "hoping to revise them." There are HUGE issues with just about every one of your rules changes, and many people have pointed them out to you in varying levels of minutiae, but from what I've seen (I haven't read through absolutely everything, mind you) you've categorically ignored all criticism.

No he hasn't. He has actually listened to several pieces of Criticism.

[Ziegander]

No he hasn't. He has actually listened to several pieces of Criticism.

Like I said, I haven't read the whole thread, but from what I've seen he's ignored a lot of especially valid criticism.

[jiriku]

Fire
Agreed, but using spell level instead.

Yeah, that can work. Although the difference between 0 - 9 and 1d6 is so small that at that point you could almost just say "you catch fire when you take fire damage" and just use the regular rules for damage and everything. Still, the difference is there. I suppose it's a matter of taste, really.


2. Electricity Right, but a lower save would proably be smart. Maybe a base DC of -10, so it might not happen at all.

Sure. Or set the DC to the normal DC of the effect would have, or something.


3. Cold
But increase it based on spell level instead. 0 on a cantrip, 1 for each spel level above.[/COLOR]

This I'd be a little wary of. High-level spellcasters are already very efficient at disabling large numbers of foes quickly. Throwing in buckets of free ability damage is like pouring gasoline on that fire. Encounters might be over almost before they started.

Armor + Health Buffer
Like what, a small AC/DR/HB bonus for each piece? Maybe 1/4 of the total? I'll think about it.

I guess I really don't understand your health buffer system then. Next task: rewrite health buffer to be simple enough for dummies on the internet like me! :smalltongue::smalltongue::smalltongue:

Well, you want the choice of armor pieces to feel significant. It should affect gameplay in a meaningful way. So yeah, AC/DR/HB. Let me look at the existing armors and break that down, see what it might look like.

Edit: That was kinda fun. I reverse-engineered what the armor pieces might look like if you retrofitted your current AC/DR setup onto the armors in the Player's Handbook (disregarding HB for the moment). Tables are spoilered.

I'm not very knowledgeable about historical armors, so in determining what pieces each "stock" suit is composed of, I just used the descriptions and pictures in the Player's Handbook. For each suit, I assumed that a suit of armor has an "invisible" +10 Max Dex bonus to AC, and that the individual pieces reduce that maximum. I started counting it down from +10, rather than +8, to leave room for various armor special materials that improve Max Dex bonus.

Looking at this setup, all of the pieces look pretty well-balanced to me except the steel cap. That piece is only used on the chain shirt armor, which is in fact abnormally good for a suit of light armor. I think this points to the chain shirt as something the designers intentionally inflated to create a "super" light armor, rather than any flaw in the system. For an extra dose of realism, the steel cap should probably have the same stats as the open-face helm.

For this piecemeal system to remain balanced, a suit of armor should have a grade equal to its heaviest component. Only chest armors can be stacked. With the chain shirt as a notable exception, two shirts can be stacked only if the undershirt is light and the overshirt is not. Extras that improve an armor's statistics, like masterwork or mithril, should be applied to the suit as a whole, rather than to any individual component. Piecemealing the armor like this does create room for people to optimize their armor a bit, mostly by exploiting small inequities in the system to assemble a suit that's slightly better than standard armor, but the overall impact should be minor.

While we're talking about armor providing DR, I'd like to suggest that you grant limited damage immunity, applicable against energy damage and weapon damage, rather than only damage reduction. Providing a cheap source of damage reduction severely nerfs weapon-wielders, and if you don't provide a corresponding nerf to energy-wielders, you create an imbalance.

{table=head]Armor|Pieces
padded armor|padded suit
leather armor|leather shirt, leather leggings
studded leather armor|studded leather shirt, studded leather leggings
chain shirt|chain shirt, padded shirt, steel cap
hide armor|hide shirt, hide leggings, hide vambraces
scale mail armor|scale coat, scale leggings, scale vambraces, gauntlets
chainmail armor|chain shirt, padded shirt, chain leggings, gauntlets
breastplate armor|breastplate, studded leather shirt, open-face helm, greaves
splint mail armor|splint jacket, padded shirt, chain leggings, splint vambraces, gauntlets
banded mail|banded jacket, leather shirt, chain leggings, banded vambraces, gauntlets
half-plate|half-plate, padded shirt, open-face helm, greaves, plate vambraces, gauntlets
full plate armor|plate, padded shirt, closed-face helm, greaves, plate vambraces, gauntlets[/table]

{table=head]Chest Armor|AC|DR|Max Dex|ACP|Armor Grade
padded shirt|1|1|-2|0|light
leather shirt|1|1|-2|0|light
studded leather shirt|2|2|-3|-1|light
chain shirt|2|2|-3|-1|light
hide shirt|2|2|-3|-2|medium
scale coat|2|2|-3|-2|medium
breastplate|2|2|-2|-1|medium
splint jacket|3|3|-3|-3|heavy
banded jacket|3|3|-2|-2|heavy
half-plate|3|3|-3|-3|heavy
plate|3|4|-2|-1|heavy[/table]

{table=head]Head Armor|AC|DR|Max Dex|ACP|Armor Grade
steel cap|1|1|-1|-1|light
open-face helm|0|1|-1|-1|medium
closed-face helm|1|1|-1|-2|heavy[/table]

{table=head]Leg Armor|AC|DR|Max Dex|ACP|Armor Grade
leather leggings|1|1|-2|0|light
studded leather leggings|1|1|-2|0|light
hide leggings|1|0|-2|-1|medium
scale leggings|1|0|-2|-1|medium
chain leggings|1|1|-2|-2|medium
greaves|1|0|-1|-1|medium[/table]

{table=head]Arm Armor|AC|DR|Max Dex|ACP|Armor Grade
hide vambraces|0|1|-1|0|medium
scale vambraces|0|1|-1|0|medium
splint vambraces|1|1|-2|-1|heavy
banded vambraces|1|1|-2|-1|heavy
plate vambraces|1|1|-2|-1|heavy[/table]

{table=head]Hand Armor|AC|DR|Max Dex|ACP|Armor Grade
gauntlets|1|1|-1|-1|medium[/table]

[Ashtagon]

Psychologists are quacks, child psychologists all the more so.

My entire industry disagrees with you.

[Glimbur]

I have a concern with your alterations to damage. In the old system, weapon damage modifiers were a minor thing and only really mattered around DR. In this system, well, let's investigate some sample armies.

Army 1) Heavy infantry with swords. Heavy armor is really expensive, so we'll assume scale armor all over and "scale shields" (which aren't currently supported by the base rules). That's DR 4(armor)+4(shield), Health Buffer 4(armor)+4(gauntlets)+4(boots)+4(Helmet) and AC +4(helmet) +3(shield). We also take a -2 to AC from the armor check penalty to Dex. Cost per melee troop is about 85 gold, assuming long swords. These melee troops will generally be able to not go unconscious before dying due to their health buffer. Assuming the first level feat is spent on competent shield use, and commoner array (10's and 11's) they attack with a +1 and have an AC of 5. They do 2d8 damage per attack with longswords and have DR of 8, so on average they will hit each other but be unable to hurt each other.

Army 2) Halfling slingers. No armor. Clubs for melee. Each attack does 1d3 at +4 due to halfling bonuses and small size and such. Because AC from armor does not help against blunt attacks, the halflings will be able to automatically hit at three range increments i.e. 150'. DR does not apply either, so as long as you can fire five sling bullets at each soldier from Army 1 you will win. Halflings have a base 20' move speed, as do soldiers in medium armor, but halflings can run at X4 (or x5, we haven't spend their feat yet) and men in armor run at x3. But surely once the heavy infantry close they can defeat the halflings? Well, the halfings swing their clubs at +2(BAB + size) and the AC of the heavy infantry is still -2 so they cannot miss. The heavy infantry swing at +1 and the AC of the halflings is 2 so, again, they cannot miss. The heavy infantry do 2d8 versus the halfing's 1d4, so going armor-less is a poor choice for the halflings. But they have no reason to go to melee when the halfling rocks are death. Seriously, death.

The actual counter to halfling slingers would be unarmored longbowmen who have a much longer range increment than slings do. Add in the blunt arrows from Races of the Wild and longbowmen will reign supreme in wars(except blunt arrows have a range increment of 50 or 60', which equals the halflings). That's right, blunting arrows makes them more dangerous, because against only scale mail arrows do 1d8 versus DR 8, meaning only crits will matter. If bludgeoning weapons did not ignore DR and AC from armor, halfling slingers would be massacred by armored infantry.

tl;dr Armies will use exclusively blunt weapons in your system, which strains verisimilitude.

[Avianmosquito]

I have a concern with your alterations to damage. In the old system, weapon damage modifiers were a minor thing and only really mattered around DR. In this system, well, let's investigate some sample armies.

Army 1) Heavy infantry with swords. Heavy armor is really expensive, so we'll assume scale armor all over and "scale shields" (which aren't currently supported by the base rules). That's DR 4(armor)+4(shield), Health Buffer 4(armor)+4(gauntlets)+4(boots)+4(Helmet) and AC +4(helmet) +3(shield). We also take a -2 to AC from the armor check penalty to Dex. Cost per melee troop is about 85 gold, assuming long swords. These melee troops will generally be able to not go unconscious before dying due to their health buffer. Assuming the first level feat is spent on competent shield use, and commoner array (10's and 11's) they attack with a +1 and have an AC of 5. They do 2d8 damage per attack with longswords and have DR of 8, so on average they will hit each other but be unable to hurt each other.

Army 2) Halfling slingers. No armor. Clubs for melee. Each attack does 1d3 at +4 due to halfling bonuses and small size and such. Because AC from armor does not help against blunt attacks, the halflings will be able to automatically hit at three range increments i.e. 150'. DR does not apply either, so as long as you can fire five sling bullets at each soldier from Army 1 you will win. Halflings have a base 20' move speed, as do soldiers in medium armor, but halflings can run at X4 (or x5, we haven't spend their feat yet) and men in armor run at x3. But surely once the heavy infantry close they can defeat the halflings? Well, the halfings swing their clubs at +2(BAB + size) and the AC of the heavy infantry is still -2 so they cannot miss. The heavy infantry swing at +1 and the AC of the halflings is 2 so, again, they cannot miss. The heavy infantry do 2d8 versus the halfing's 1d4, so going armor-less is a poor choice for the halflings. But they have no reason to go to melee when the halfling rocks are death. Seriously, death.

The actual counter to halfling slingers would be unarmored longbowmen who have a much longer range increment than slings do. Add in the blunt arrows from Races of the Wild and longbowmen will reign supreme in wars(except blunt arrows have a range increment of 50 or 60', which equals the halflings). That's right, blunting arrows makes them more dangerous, because against only scale mail arrows do 1d8 versus DR 8, meaning only crits will matter. If bludgeoning weapons did not ignore DR and AC from armor, halfling slingers would be massacred by armored infantry.

tl;dr Armies will use exclusively blunt weapons in your system, which strains verisimilitude.

Simply making the bludgeoning weapon behave as normal, but setting armour (and not neccesarily all armour) to DR X/Bludgeon already fixed that. Also, armour AC is no longer affected by boots or gauntlets. An army would likely use chainmail, not scale, which means a full suit would be +10 AC, DR 10/Bludgeon, and I'm cutting the armour health buffer. A sword deals 2d8+STR. Strength should be at least 14 for melee infantry, so +2. So they would be able to hit, but only injure a little under half the time.

And yes, running away from soldiers that idiotically didn't bring cavalry or ranged weapons makes them unable to harm you. That's just basic tactics. A real army would likely have cavalry, which would run the little bastards right down. Or archers, which would rip them to shreds before they got in range. That's the point of a balanced unit. Matching an homogeneous army (which is already a tactical error) against soldiers particularly effective against their unit is suicide.

[Avianmosquito]

My entire industry disagrees with you.

Your entire industry is included in that statement.

[Glimbur]

A morning star does 1d8+2 and ignores DR from armor. A sword does 2d8+2 and does not ignore DR. When DR is 10/Bludgeoning, why would anyone use a sword against a heavily armored opponent?

As a secondary question, the morningstar does both bludgeoning and piercing damage. Does that mean it gets the effects of both? Because, if so, bites (which are all three damage types) just became much more dangerous.

Regular longbow arrows have a range increment of 100', do 1d8 with a crit of 19-20 x(4? 6?). Blunt longbow arrows have a range increment of 50', do 1d8 with a crit of 20 x2, but ignore DR. There are situations (enemy is somewhat close) in which a blunt arrow is more effective than a sharp one.

The optimal weapon choices with these houserules are different from historical weapon choices, especially in terms of arrow choice. Is this intentional?

[lunar2]

I think that you should vary the armors a bit more.

so, cloth and leather armors would be DR/slashing, Chain armors would be DR/piercing, and scale and plate armors would be DR/bludgeoning.

[PotatoNinja]

{{scrubbed}}

[Avianmosquito]

I think that you should vary the armors a bit more.

so, cloth and leather armors would be DR/slashing, Chain armors would be DR/piercing, and scale and plate armors would be DR/bludgeoning.

Already thought of that, and implemented it. And said I was implementing it in a comment on this page.

EDIT:

Actually, here's how it stands:

Padded, leather and all shields: DR X/-
Chain, scale and banded: DR X/Bludgeon-Piercing
Plate of all forms: DR X/Bludgeon

Also, there's a new armour type avalable, O-yoroi. Heavy armour, 65lbs, DR 6/Bludgeon, max dex bonus: +4, arcane spell failure: 20%, hardness: 8, hit points: 30, 2500gp. Always treated as masterwork for the purposes of crafting. Does not have an equivalent shield.

The o-yoroi is a form of armour consisting of a steel plate and leather over the torso, and lamellar armour protecting the rest of the body. The suit is designed for better mobility than any other form of heavy armour.

[Avianmosquito]

A morning star does 1d8+2 and ignores DR from armor. A sword does 2d8+2 and does not ignore DR. When DR is 10/Bludgeoning, why would anyone use a sword against a heavily armored opponent?

...You wouldn't. Just like a real soldier wouldn't. Heavy armour was why blunt weapons came into polular use in the first place. If the enemy was wearing lighter armour, or even no armour, then a sword would be a better weapon. It's that kind of choice.


As a secondary question, the morningstar does both bludgeoning and piercing damage. Does that mean it gets the effects of both? Because, if so, bites (which are all three damage types) just became much more dangerous.

Now that, I truly did not think of. Maybe a reduced version? If it does two, it gets half the effect of each, something like that.

Bludgeoning doesn't really have an effect, it's that most armour is DR X/Bludgeon-Y. Only leather and padded do not get voided by bludgeoning. Only plate and variations are voided only by bludgeoning. So I'd say against DR, it'd work the same way it does on a zombie's DR. (Which is pretty vague...) Chain is X/Bludgeon-Pierce, so it'd be full either way. Maybe have a two-type damage effect with pierce give up the extra crit damage, but keep the crit range. Slashing I'm not sure about. Increase the size of the damage dice instead, maybe. Make a 1d8 into 1d12, something like that. I'll have to think about it.


Regular longbow arrows have a range increment of 100', do 1d8 with a crit of 19-20 x(4? 6?). Blunt longbow arrows have a range increment of 50', do 1d8 with a crit of 20 x2, but ignore DR. There are situations (enemy is somewhat close) in which a blunt arrow is more effective than a sharp one.

I'd cut the damage dice to 1/2 the normal number of sides, and set them to "Exotic weapon proficiency: Blunt arrow." So without a proficiency, you'd get a -4 to attack, and either way do only 1d4. (1d3 with a shortbow, 1d6 with a greatbow.)

Then again, I've also triple range increments, but whatever.


The optimal weapon choices with these houserules are different from historical weapon choices, especially in terms of arrow choice. Is this intentional?

Not entirely. There are going to be differences in a world with monsters and magic, but those I want to follow what the real world choices would have been with those present.

EDIT: Just started a new game of D&D 3.5 using these rules. I'm playing as half a ten-character party, my daughter's playing the other half and my wife is DM.

Party composition:
"Vati," Immortal halfling(homebrew) male, ageless, speedster(homebrew): me
"Fell," Human female, youth age 10, child soldier(homebrew): me
"Lyn," Human female, youth age 8, spellmaster(homebrew): me
"Falsie," Halfling female, child age 6, alter child(homebrew): me
"Mafre," Halfling male, child age 6, wild child(homebrew): me
"Aid," Gnome female, child age 6, alter child(homebrew): Sam
"Blue," Halfling female, child age 5, prodigy(homebrew): Sam
"Silfr," Halfling female, child age 5, woodschild(homebrew): Sam
"Tia," Halfling female, child age 4, delinquent(homebrew): Sam
"Hana," Wind naga(homebrew) female, toddler age 2, prodigy(homebrew): Sam

We just went through several hours of character creation, we haven't really started yet. We'll see how it turns out. If you want any homebrews explained, ask. All I know of the plot so far is that Vati is the children's adoptive father. He's just adopted the eldest two, and is on his way back home. Other than that, I don't know, although I do know there will be goblins involved.

Speedster: melee caster. Simple weapon proficiency, no armour, limited spell list, very fast move rate, extremely high dodge bonus to AC. High levels can dodge bullets with minimal effort.
Child soldier: child version of fighter. Higher attack mod, lower saves. Feat every level, d8 hit dice.
Spellmaster: simple version of wizard. WAY more spells, but gets new spell levels later.
Alter child: child version of cleric. More spells, gets new spell levels later.
Wild child: child version of barbarian. See above.
Prodigy: child version of sorceror. More spells, gets... you get the point.
Woodschild: child version of ranger. Gets spells later, (8th level) and get fewer when you do, but you have higher attack and better saves.
Delinquent: child version of rogue. Lower will saves, higher reflex. Slightly lower fortitude saves, more skill points per level. Lower attack mod, modifiers to sneak attack accuracy. (+1 at 1st, +10 by 19th.)

The formula for these spellcasters is simple. At any level, double the base spell number of the adult equivalent two levels below you. IE: a third level spellmaster has a base spell number of six cantrips, two first level spells, twice that of a 1st-level wizard. Meanwhile, a 3rd-level wizard has four cantrips, two first level spells, and one third level one. Which is better. However, a 20th level spellmaster has eight zero-sixth level spells, six 7th and eighth level, and four ninth level, where a wizard has 4 of all levels.

In addition, at 1st-level a spellmaster have 4 cantrips, a prodigy has eight cantrips and two first level, and a alter child has four cantrips and one 1st-level domain spells. At second level, the spellmaster has six cantrips, the prodigy has ten cantrips and four first level, and the alter child has six cantrips and one first-level domain spell. You can do the rest.

Well, we noticed a glaring flaw. No matter how low your roll, it's extremely easy to hit somebody, even with a ranged weapon. So we changed base AC to 5. Now it makes sense you'd never miss with a melee weapon, so we changed the melee attack bonus to +5. This was brought to our attention by a goblin in our first confrontation making a hit with a crossbow with a roll of 1 and a +3 bonus.

This proved insufficient. We turned the base AC back to 10 for ranged weapons, 5 for melee. That worked perfectly.

[Avianmosquito]

{{scrubbed}}

[Avianmosquito]

The game has been completed, and here are the changes made over the course of the campaign:

1. Base AC is now 10 for ranged weapons, 5 for melee.

2. If a weapon does more than one damage type, just split it evenly before rolling. If one is bludgeon, it gets the remainder. If not, slashing gets the remainder. For instance, a 1d6+3 bite would do 1d2+1 bludgeon, 1d2+1 piercing and 2d2+1 slashing. Note that this does, yes, make such weapons inherently more powerful, so give them an attack penalty of 2 for two-type weapons and 4 for three-type weapons.

3. While magic effects were enjoyable, they were overpowered. So they were all tones down a bit. I decided to make fire damage set people on fire as normal if the save was not made. (1d6, normal rules.) Electricity uses one-round paralysis. Ice does random stat damage, 1pt. Force is now always lethal damage, regardless of rules, but has no other special. (So, for instance, a troll wouldn't take nonlethal from it.)

4. Adolescents (and younger) now take a wisdom penalty, the XP bonus is reduced by 5% every level until it's at normal. For instance, an infant's 50% bonus would be 45% at level 2, 5% at level 10. However, they also can (DM's discretion) get a circumstance bonus to the skills bluff, diplomacy, gather information and perform, equal to their age modifier (1 for an adolescent, 5 for an infant) added to their CHA modifier, +1 at youth or child, +2 at toddler or infant. The DM can also multiply the bonus by as much as 2 or as little as 0.5 if he/she desires. (IE: An infant, CHA 18, would get a bonus of 10.) This effect is a result of the child's cuteness, so if the target isn't likely to find them cute, it doesn't work.

5. Any action requiring a rest period between uses (such as running) requires a rest period 10% shorter for each age category below adult, and 20% longer for each age category above adult. An adult must normally rest for one minute between sprints, but an infant must only rest for five rounds and a venerable character must rest for sixteen rounds.

EDIT:

6. Unarmed attacks only provoke attacks of opportunity against armed enemies. Unarmed ones, such as dogs and zombies, do not get an attack of opportunity. Also, the attacks of unarmed creatures ("natural weapons") count as unarmed attacks and provoke such attacks of opportunity. Finally, bites always provoke these attacks, even against unarmed opponents. Lastly, with the improved unarmed feat, you now count as armed and can land attacks of opportunity when attacked by unarmed opponents.

Note: The O-yoroi is overpowered. A level 10 samurai almost TPK'd us with it, the associated gear, and a +5 katana. Not sure what, if anything, should be done about this. I'm still not sure what the samurai had to do with the plot (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere), however.