Doccit
2012-02-26, 10:03 PM
Homines Inter Deos, in my broken Latin, means Men Among the Gods.
The Core Rulebook (http://www.mediafire.com/?m9fltymy7emf2b0)
I've been working on this for the past eight months or so, and thought it was time to get some feedback outside of close real life friends & D&D compatriots. It is about 250 pages right now.
It started off a few years ago when I was having a bunch of Lucid Dreams, I started building myself a fantasy world to sleep in and ended up trying to design a DnD campaign (4th Ed) around it. I also had a whole bunch of ideas for game mechanics, and the world was getting pretty expansive. I decided to make a whole game about it.
So what is different? Universe wise there is something that separates the adventurers from the regular folk: magic. Magic in this world is essentially power, there are magic rouges and magic warriors, and even completely illiterate casters, but they all share a gift that elevates them above everyone else. It also isn't hereditary and doesn't necessarily come at birth, it just happens to about one in five hundred people. Because in this world there is a small subset of people which are dramatically more powerful than everyone else (not at the first level, but essentially the limits of human potential don't apply to them) there are some interesting political situations. Most empires are small and ruled over by magical oppressive tyrants who's non-magical children can't succeed them, and don't last very long at all. They are usually overthrown by rebellious magical upstarts who then themselves become tyrants when they become so far removed from who they were before they were magical.
Mechanics wise the main changes are the shake mechanic, dropping AC, and character creation, but there are a multitude of less fundamental changes to almost everything I can think of. The only think I think I took directly from something was the treasure building section from the Pathfinder book, it was just so perfect. I couldn't think of how to a thing I wanted to change about it.
There is no limit to the amount of spells you can cast in combat or per day, but when you cast a spell in combat you gain an amount of shake equal to 1.5xSpellLevel-CharacterLevel. (There are 20 spell levels and 20 character levels, and not many combat actions that aren't called spells) Getting rid of a point of shake is a minor action, meaning if a character casts a high level spell they would just be sitting there for rounds trading standards and moves for more minor actions to be able to cast again. You can still cast a spell while you have shake, but you take 1d4 damage for each point you had before you cast it.
There also isn't AC anymore, there are three separate defences called Block, Dodge, and Dispel. An attacks target things like 2Block 1Dodge, which means the player adds twice their block and their dodge to 10, to determine what would normally called their AC is against that attack. This reflects the idea that there are different ways a character can get out of being hit by something and that their being good at any one of those things only helps them in certain situations.
Now, the character creation. There are no classes. Each level you get three feats (called aspects, because they encompass more than feats did), and spend them on what amounts to class features as you level up. There are many "trees" with prerequisite feats, so people can denominate themselves that way, but it adds a lot of flexibility to the creation process.
Anyway, I would love some feedback. The book isn't done yet, I'm still working on the DMing section and the character build's section. After that I am going to completely restructure the flow of the book (the order it is in now is pretty crazy), nerf and buff practically everything in play testing, etcetera.
The Core Rulebook (http://www.mediafire.com/?m9fltymy7emf2b0)
I've been working on this for the past eight months or so, and thought it was time to get some feedback outside of close real life friends & D&D compatriots. It is about 250 pages right now.
It started off a few years ago when I was having a bunch of Lucid Dreams, I started building myself a fantasy world to sleep in and ended up trying to design a DnD campaign (4th Ed) around it. I also had a whole bunch of ideas for game mechanics, and the world was getting pretty expansive. I decided to make a whole game about it.
So what is different? Universe wise there is something that separates the adventurers from the regular folk: magic. Magic in this world is essentially power, there are magic rouges and magic warriors, and even completely illiterate casters, but they all share a gift that elevates them above everyone else. It also isn't hereditary and doesn't necessarily come at birth, it just happens to about one in five hundred people. Because in this world there is a small subset of people which are dramatically more powerful than everyone else (not at the first level, but essentially the limits of human potential don't apply to them) there are some interesting political situations. Most empires are small and ruled over by magical oppressive tyrants who's non-magical children can't succeed them, and don't last very long at all. They are usually overthrown by rebellious magical upstarts who then themselves become tyrants when they become so far removed from who they were before they were magical.
Mechanics wise the main changes are the shake mechanic, dropping AC, and character creation, but there are a multitude of less fundamental changes to almost everything I can think of. The only think I think I took directly from something was the treasure building section from the Pathfinder book, it was just so perfect. I couldn't think of how to a thing I wanted to change about it.
There is no limit to the amount of spells you can cast in combat or per day, but when you cast a spell in combat you gain an amount of shake equal to 1.5xSpellLevel-CharacterLevel. (There are 20 spell levels and 20 character levels, and not many combat actions that aren't called spells) Getting rid of a point of shake is a minor action, meaning if a character casts a high level spell they would just be sitting there for rounds trading standards and moves for more minor actions to be able to cast again. You can still cast a spell while you have shake, but you take 1d4 damage for each point you had before you cast it.
There also isn't AC anymore, there are three separate defences called Block, Dodge, and Dispel. An attacks target things like 2Block 1Dodge, which means the player adds twice their block and their dodge to 10, to determine what would normally called their AC is against that attack. This reflects the idea that there are different ways a character can get out of being hit by something and that their being good at any one of those things only helps them in certain situations.
Now, the character creation. There are no classes. Each level you get three feats (called aspects, because they encompass more than feats did), and spend them on what amounts to class features as you level up. There are many "trees" with prerequisite feats, so people can denominate themselves that way, but it adds a lot of flexibility to the creation process.
Anyway, I would love some feedback. The book isn't done yet, I'm still working on the DMing section and the character build's section. After that I am going to completely restructure the flow of the book (the order it is in now is pretty crazy), nerf and buff practically everything in play testing, etcetera.