Homebrew Attacks System Help!

[Anachronity]

This is a proposed homebrew combat mechanics system. The primary intention is to make more combat styles viable than are currently.

Ultimately this will be part of a hombrew which focuses on bridging the gap between casters and non-casters without resorting to the "everything is casters!" approach of ToB. While casters in general are being nerfed (especially control spells and save-or-else spells), I want the two playstyles to meet halfway. What I am doing here is trying to lay the groundwork for the martial half.

While two-handers and leap chargers are limited but functional, it is well-known that two-weapon melee fighters and other characters with a large number of melee attacks per round are essentially useless unless they can start their turn next to an opponent, gain bonus movement, or gain the pounce ability.

On the other hand, the number of attacks it is possible for a character to gain when optimizing two-weapon fighting or when delving into the world of natural attacks ranges from excessive to ludicrous. The objective is to make dual wielding more mobile by default but also to limit full attacks to a reasonable number.

The system should allow more than one attack to be made as a standard action (but not necessarily ALL of the attacks), and also limit the number of attacks that may be taken in a full attack action.

What I have thus far is the following.

New Attack Rules
The number of attacks a character can make in a single action is now a separate statistic called an attack routine (AR). It is independent from the number of different weapons, natural weapons, and weapon-wielding limbs possessed by the character, collectively referred to as available attacks (AA).

When attacking as a standard action or as part of a charge, the character may make a number of attacks equal to his attack routine. A character's attack routine is initially one attack and gains an additional attack for each 5 points by which the character's base attack bonus exceeds 1. (thus fighter's attack routine increases from 1 to 2 when leveling up from 5th to 6th level, just like in normal D&D).

When taking a full-attack action, the character's attack routine increases by 1 for that round.

Attacks made in this manner are selected from the character's available attacks. If a specific available attack is used more than once per round, each use after the first incurs a cumulative -3 penalty for the attack role. This attack system does not otherwise involve iterative penalties, so possessing many available attacks can allow a character to use his full attack bonus for a larger number of attacks.

Improving a character's attack routine for standard attacks would be difficult, with dual-wielding being by far the easiest means to increase it. Dual-wielding will require fewer feats to function, but will have more feats which give extra dual-wielding benefits or increase a character's attack routine.

While full attacks only give one additional attack by default, many more feats, items, and effects will exist which increase a character's attack routine or grant additional benefits only when making a full attack than will exist to do the same for standard attacks.

Available Attacks
A character's available attacks are the attacks that whatever equipped or natural weapons he has enable him to make. This means that any natural attacks possessed are simply a part of this list, rather than independent secondary attacks that are made during a full attack action.

The available attack includes characteristics of the attack such as range/reach, damage type, classifications of the attack (ranged, melee, main, secondary, natural, off-handed, two-handed, etc.), the attack bonus of the attack, the damage that the attack will deal on a successful hit, any effects that will apply on a hit, the critical threat range and multiplier of the attack, and so on.

When a character makes an attack through an attack action (standard or full), through an attack of opportunity, or through the effects of feats, spells, etc., he selects an appropriate attack from his available attacks. Some attacks can only be made with an available attack of a certain classification, such as how the extra attack gained from dual-wielding must be made with an off-hand weapon.

As mentioned above, a particular available attack receives a -3 penalty to the attack roll for each time it is used beyond the first in a given turn.

Some monsters with many natural attacks still possess extraordinary abilities which increase their attack routines, but the more rediculous examples (sword spiders, mariliths, fully grown dragons, etc.) are more limited by these new rules.

A new version of pounce might be the following:
Pounce (ex): When charging this creature adds two additional attacks to its attack routine which must be made with natural weapons.

Grappling
A character may, as a standard action, make a number of grapple checks equal to his attack routine, increasing as normal for a full attack action. Additional attacks which can only be made with a certain type of available attack (such as from dual-wielding or a monk's flurry of blows) can only be used to attempt to damage a grappled opponent with the appropriate attack, and may not be used to attempt other grapple actions.

Dual/Multi-wielding
A character who possesses one or more secondary natural attacks, who carries more than one manufactured weapon, or who is fighting unarmed may take a -4 penalty to all attacks made during his turn to add an attack to his attack routine which must be made with an off-hand or secondary weapon, or an unarmed attack. This penalty is in addition to the normal penalty for an off-hand/secondary attack. Both penalties can be reduced through the two-weapon fighting feat.

The typical unoptimized fighter will get more attacks in a full attack action with this system, but a fighter optimized for attacks per round will have far fewer.

I like the idea of more standard attacks versus more full attacks because it allows differentiation between a 'skirmisher' who focuses on speed and hit-and-run and a more badger-like character who slowly presses forward with a whirlwind of nasty attacks that enemies must back away from. The natural advantages of two-handed weapons in traditional Pathfinder will hopefully be balanced by the larger number of standard attacks that a dual-wielder can make in this homebrew version.

So then, what I am looking for is the following:

-revisions people think should be made

-potential improvements to the grappling rules, in particular

-reading improvements such as better terminology or clearer/more concise descriptions.

-balancing the different forms of combat (ranged, two-handed, and dual-wielding)

-some additional help with natural attacks and dual-wielding

-general opinions.


EDIT! 1/13/14 - Changed iterative attacks, changed terminology to shorten and clarify the post.

[NichG]

Somehow you have to address the versatility problem. Melee isn't actually behind casters by that much when it comes to dealing damage - it tends to be behind when it comes to dealing with things that are more complex to deal with than simply doing hitpoint damage. The canonical example is a flying enemy.

What I would focus on perhaps is an attack system that basically lets melee give themselves (or others) certain short-duration buffs along with making an attack. The non-stacking nature of these buffs would naturally prevent it from being advantageous to basically use the same move every round, so you wouldn't have to have a maneuver/refresh system like ToB has. At higher levels, you could gain the ability to trade attacks out of a full attack sequence in order to get more impressive buffs.

These buffs wouldn't be focused on numerical bonuses, but might instead be all about mobility. One might extend the warrior's 5ft step into a 10ft step; another might give the warrior an extra move action next round; another might let the warrior vault up to 30ft into the air as part of their next move following the attack (jump off of the enemy's back, sort of thing); another might give the warrior the ability to pierce miss chance or DR against an enemy that they've successfully hit before; and so on.

The big issue of course is 'what if the PC tries to attack an ally in order to self-buff?'.

[Anachronity]

Thank you for the advice!

The new mechanics are primarily intended to increase mobility, not damage. A full attack from a character using this system should actually deal less damage than a traditional martial character.

Though the system offers 1.2 extra attacks by default, additional attacks are harder to come by than in traditional Pathfinder. Perhaps I should reduce the default number of attacks in a full attack action to 1 by default, but I feel like the full attack action should give an advantage over the standard attack action even at lower levels.

I intend to make weapons in general more versatile, and to make it easier for a given character build to effectively use multiple different weapons. A charger, for example, might be able to do decent damage with a bow or use it to bring a winged flying creature to the ground (while magical, wingless flight would be delayed to higher levels by the aforementioned caster nerfs).

However I think that your ideas for trading attacks for short buffs like that could be really fun to play if pulled off correctly. The flavor is also justifiable with a wider variety of effects than standard weapons. It would probably be something for the later levels of martial characters to keep them in line with casters.

[Anachronity]

Bump!

I'm especially interested in any inconsistencies with unmodified rules or balance issues created (i.e. "x makes y useless" or "having multiple grapple checks per standard action causes problems with z and q")

[Anachronity]

Bump!

Has this sort of thing been done before too many times for people to care?

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Bump!

Has this sort of thing been done before too many times for people to care?

It's more what NicheG stated: this is a nice little boost for increasing mobility a bit, but martial (& melee specifically) characters suffer note from a lack of competitive options. We see a lot of "fixes" that don't actually address the real problem, so this might be overlooked because of that.

[Anachronity]

It's more what NicheG stated: this is a nice little boost for increasing mobility a bit, but martial (& melee specifically) characters suffer note from a lack of competitive options. We see a lot of "fixes" that don't actually address the real problem, so this might be overlooked because of that.

It's not that I expect this to single-handedly fix fighters. I'm more interested to know if anyone sees any problems that will be caused by using this system in place of the normal one.

Will grappling be overpowered? Will low-level characters deal too much more damage with the increased number of attacks? Are too many natural-attack-reliant monsters useless now? Do I explain everything clearly enough (I'm aiming to use Pathfinder text conventions)? Is dual-wielding still useless without pounce? That sort of stuff.

[Kamai]

As a quick question, are there still iterative penalties outside of the -3 per attack with the same weapon in a full attack? If not, you may need to completely overhaul AC, because AC isn't supposed to make every attack miss, it's more towards making iterative/power attacks miss.

The other thing I see is that while it does give an incentive for a 1st level character to use a full attack action, higher level characters are already going to need to sink more feats to come back near what they could do before outside of TWF. This risks crippling Barbarians and Paladins severely. Others could make do with TWF or Archery, while the Fighter would have enough feats to slog through it. As you poke through a solution to that one, keep in mind what splitting Improved Combat Maneuvers into 2 feats did (especially Improved Trip).

[Just to Browse]

My problem with this is twofold:
You're using a lot of words to describe what could be a simple concept.
Your numbers are very weird and cause strange power spikes. Ex: At level 5, I become faster at stabbing while standing still, but you don't gain any increased stabbing capacity when moving for two more levels.

If you are looking to encourage mobility, let people make full attacks as a standard action. The only people who will be bothered by this are initiators.

If you'd like to encourage mobility, while not totally invalidating people who want to stand and roll, then you should offer easy-scaling numerical boosts for people who don't move. Like +BAB to damage or something, iunno.

[DoomHat]

Just what exactly is wrong with 'everything is casters' ?

I don't see how offering a boring beat stick the opportunity to swing their stick more times per turn will make them any less boring.

The truth is that casters aren't better in all ways only because their options are better, but because their options are vastly more varied. This doesn't seem to address that...

[Anachronity]

@ Kamai

As a quick question, are there still iterative penalties outside of the -3 per attack with the same weapon in a full attack? If not, you may need to completely overhaul AC, because AC isn't supposed to make every attack miss, it's more towards making iterative/power attacks miss.

The other thing I see is that while it does give an incentive for a 1st level character to use a full attack action, higher level characters are already going to need to sink more feats to come back near what they could do before outside of TWF. This risks crippling Barbarians and Paladins severely. Others could make do with TWF or Archery, while the Fighter would have enough feats to slog through it. As you poke through a solution to that one, keep in mind what splitting Improved Combat Maneuvers into 2 feats did (especially Improved Trip).

I intended to have further iterative attacks be gained with feats. I want there to be some benefit for possessing multiple attack options without necessarily giving more attacks, and avoiding the iterative penalty seemed like a good way to do it. This does cause more of a problem with your second point about feats, however. I think the best option would simply be to apply the iterative penalty to repeated use of a specific attack, but not limit the maximum number of times it can be chosen.

Would it be better to simply keep the normal iterative attack penalty? Since un-optimized characters will get more attacks in this system, is it reasonable to reduce the iterative penalty to -3 or should it remain at -5?

I'm not sure I understand how this cripples Barbarians and Paladins. Do they rely on a large number of natural attacks, or do you simply mean TWF would invalidate them, or are you referring to the 2-use limit on attack types? I do agree that the limit should be removed.

I am not familiar with the Improved Combat Maneuvers split. Could you elaborate?


@ Just to Browse



You're using a lot of words to describe what could be a simple concept.



I tend to do this a lot in D&D... and in life :smallfrown:
I'll try to cut down on the wordiness. I suspected I had gone wrong somewhere when I started needing to differentiate between attacks, available attacks, and additional attacks.



Your numbers are very weird and cause strange power spikes. Ex: At level 5, I become faster at stabbing while standing still, but you don't gain any increased stabbing capacity when moving for two more levels.


I want standard attacks to scale more slowly than full attacks, perhaps that is not necessary?


If you are looking to encourage mobility, let people make full attacks as a standard action. The only people who will be bothered by this are initiators.

If you'd like to encourage mobility, while not totally invalidating people who want to stand and roll, then you should offer easy-scaling numerical boosts for people who don't move. Like +BAB to damage or something, iunno.

That would be a much simpler solution, but would still not address rampant extra attacks from natural weapons. I am also concerned that two-weapon fighting would become overpowered.


@ DoomHat

Just what exactly is wrong with 'everything is casters' ?

I don't see how offering a boring beat stick the opportunity to swing their stick more times per turn will make them any less boring.

The truth is that casters aren't better in all ways only because their options are better, but because their options are vastly more varied. This doesn't seem to address that...

In terms of balance nothing is wrong with ToB except for a few poorly-worded maneuvers. However, I feel like making everything casters takes away from the variety of the different classes. I think a distinction should be made between magical types, semi-magical types, and non-magical types, and I think it can be done without making the latter inherently less powerful. I also like to keep high fantasy separate from anime-style "ultimate final sword cutter strike of light technique" types of games, and ToB leans too far in that direction for me.

I realize that this alone doesn't address the caster/martial power disparity, and that the dominance of casters is indeed a result of possessing many more options. I'm more interested in how this system stacks up against the old one.

I intend to give martial types more options by making weapons much more varied, where each type of weapon might enable special types of attack rather than just causing different die sizes of damage that ultimately mean less than the static damage bonuses from Strength, feats, etc. Those sorts of changes will come later after I lay the groundwork here.



I'll update the iterative attacks part of the main post later tonight.

[Just to Browse]

I tend to do this a lot in D&D... and in life :smallfrown:
I'll try to cut down on the wordiness. I suspected I had gone wrong somewhere when I started needing to differentiate between attacks, available attacks, and additional attacks.It's not so bad. Just when your rule requires 5 spoilers to explain... my eyes tend to glaze over.


I want standard attacks to scale more slowly than full attacks, perhaps that is not necessary?I wouldn't think so. Your goal is to make standard attacks better without removing the power of full attacks, so doing something as simple as granting 1 extra attack when not moving is an excellent bonus.


That would be a much simpler solution, but would still not address rampant extra attacks from natural weapons. I am also concerned that two-weapon fighting would become overpowered.Natural attacks are indeed a problem. Perhaps available attacks are a good idea, but that bothers me... I would take some more time to think of another solution, just in the hope that there's a cleaner fix.

At least for TWF, I wouldn't be too worried. TWF is such a huge feat sink (compared to combos like power attack and leap attack with THF) that the boost brings them out from the gutter of haste-dependency and into the light of usefulness.

[Kamai]

@ Kamai
Would it be better to simply keep the normal iterative attack penalty? Since un-optimized characters will get more attacks in this system, is it reasonable to reduce the iterative penalty to -3 or should it remain at -5?



As a random thought, maybe remove the penalty for a full attack, but leave it at either -3 or -5 for a standard attack.




I'm not sure I understand how this cripples Barbarians and Paladins. Do they rely on a large number of natural attacks, or do you simply mean TWF would invalidate them, or are you referring to the 2-use limit on attack types? I do agree that the limit should be removed.



I'm referring to the 2-use limit on attack types. Since neither archetype really goes to multiple weapon usage, and neither really gets the feat slots to support the new feats that come around to give them the attacks back, they both get hit pretty hard. Fighters/Rangers have the extra feats, Rogues that want to murder things already go for the TWF chain (which I presume would have the extra attacks).

Now that I think about it, why shouldn't it be a martial class feature to get more than 2 attacks with a weapon? Maybe the Barbarian has to be raging to get the attacks, while the Fighter can do it with weapon groups, and a Paladin has to be smiting an enemy. Feats then let have non-martials have access to it, or let the martials do it in any situation.



I am not familiar with the Improved Combat Maneuvers split. Could you elaborate?



So, in 3.5 Improved Trip was one feat to get +4 to trip attempts and to get a free attack on someone you tripped. In Pathfinder, you now need two feats to get 3.5's Improved Trip, and it's still worse (you also have to spend an attack of opportunity to get the attack). This system as it is has a pretty distinct danger of nerfing to do the same thing.

[Anachronity]

Bump!

I would love more opinions. Are the grapple rules okay?

[Yakk]

Champion

Champion Talents are (usually) extraordinary abilities you learn as you adventure. All Champion Talents can be used at-will, an unlimited number of times per day.

Some Talents requires a Focus item, such as a Keen magical weapon for Subtle Cut. Other Talents require a Key to unlock them, such as the heart-blood of an adult dragon you have slain in combat. Keys are usually associated with Supernatural Champion Talents.

Unless otherwise noted, Champion Talents require a Standard Action to use.

The DC to save against a Champion Talent is your 10+your level.

You have 1 champion talent per champion class level, plus 1. The max champion talent you can learn when you gain a level is your total champion class levels divided by 3, rounded down. You can save up "empty talent slots" to learn a talent later, and when you gain a level you can swap out 1 talent (in addition to learning a new one), but cannot spend slots on talents higher than the level you originally gained them at. (I could do a table if that is not clear)

The Champion classes are Fighter, Barbarian and Rogue.

Sample Talents:

Level 0
Inspiring Speech: You make an inspiring speech. All allies who can hear you gain a +1 resistance bonus on saves that lasts for 1 minute.

Level 1
True Aim: You focus and gain a +20 insight bonus to your next attack before the end of your next round. You also ignore all miss chances due to concealment.

Level 2
Mastery: Bull: You gain a +4 enhancement bonus to strength that is always on.

Level 3
Trusted Companion III: Key: meeting the appropriate creature in a non-hostile context. You gain a trusted companion, who behaves in your best interest. If the trusted companion dies, you can replace it by simply finding another creature that qualifies. Any creature of CR 3 or less that shares at least 1 of your alignments qualifies.

Level 4:
Freedom of Movement: Always on. You are always able to move freely. You always succeed at grapple and escape artists checks to resist or escape a grapple or pin. You cannot be paralyzed, you ignore web and solid fog and slow and similar spells. You can move and attack freely underwater.

Level 5:
Pressure Point(Pain): By making a successful touch attack, you wrack a target with pain for 1 hour. They suffer a -4 penalty to attack rolls, skill checks and ability checks. Fortitude negates.

Level 6
Mass Slaughter: You slay 2d6*10 HD of creatures, none of which are greater than 9 HD. All of these creatures must be in range of your weapon, but you can move your speed while using this ability. Creatures killed with Ranged or Thrown weapons cost twice as many HD (but you can still kill up to 9 HD creatures). Fort negates.

---

This gets rid of some of the quirks of ToB. Talents are on-par with similar level spells, often refluffed, but you progress and gain them slower.

[Anachronity]

@Yakk I'm trying to stay away from 'everything is casters'. I can appreciate that there are differences (i.e. that your abilities are primarily extraordinary and have no daily use limits), but many of these outright replicate a spell.

If I were going to use something like this I would default to ToB, though I appreciate the suggestion.

I plan to add extra options to fighters later to make them more versatile (as well as making casters less so). I will be focusing on making weapons much more varied than they are now (e.g. war hammers and battle axes are effectively identical), making them easier for any martial character to use competently, and adding special attacks to them which increase a martial character's options in a fight. but for now I'm laying the groundwork so that I know what I'm working with.

I want to know if there are any balance issues with what I have above, with respect to only characters and monsters who primarily use attacks.

I think I'll add an edit to the main post to make this more clear.

[Yakk]

Yes, they are clones of spells done as extraordinary abilities.

You could invent brand new abilities with about that power level.

The point is that each such ability produces yet another rules exception, starting with minor ones and ending up with ridiculously powerful and extreme ones, and that the character gets LOTS of such rules exceptions by high level.

The ability to break the rules of the game is what makes spellcasters powerful and versatile. They have entire books of ways to break the rules of the game, and can select the best ones, and use them to solve problems.

To match this as a non-spellcaster, you need your own source of rules exceptions. One way this has been approached is via skills (and skill tricks): but spellcasters have as many (if not more) skills than mundanes.

If you don't want to give mundane D&D classes access to ways to break the baseline rules that a commoner has to follow to solve a task, then the commoner is about as good as the mundane.

While you may find the idea of picking abilities to be a spellcaster system, the pre-Gygax thief used a system very much like the above: they would learn "pick locks" as a level 1 thief skill, and be able to pick all locks once they had the skill. Everyone else would roll a d6, and on a 5-6 could unlock it.

[Anachronity]

Bump!

Can I get some input on the grapple rules? Will naive (i.e. unoptimized) caster players get crushed too quickly for their friends to save them? I tend to play with a lot of people who don't understand how to optimize casters, so this is important for me.