Created my world and now I want to alter the rules to better suit it?

[Kafana]

I've been DMing for a year and a half on and off. I have successfully completed 2 campaigns so far, the first starting at level 2 and going all the way up to 9. This was mostly a free for all in the part of the world I have created - I made up quests or quest lines that lasted for 2-4 sessions, but that virtually weren't connected at all. This was mostly so that I could experiment with various things and hoping to learn to adapt as much as possible.

After the first campaign I started major world building, and even got two assistant DMs to do smaller parts of the world for me by leading their games in regions of my world.

Anyway when I started DMing I had 1 kingdom of one continent created, and now I added 4 more kingdoms on that continent, and two whole other continents, each as unique as possible.

I still have 2 smaller and simpler continents to define, but I'm mostly done with this planet on the large scale (obviously 95% of content I did create was explored, so it hasn't been detailed out yet.

Anyway, since I had the core books under my belt (PHB 1&2, DMG 1&2, MM 1-3 (skimmed 4 and 5), as well as most of the completes and a large world for my second campaign I managed to construct a good storyline that made sense and that, once completed, felt like a whole. The characters themselves had stories, and personal questlines that obviously couldn't have all concluded, but I logically took the characters off stage at the end, providing an opportunity for that player to continue that character at one point, if he asks for a continuation of the story.

All of that being said, I think I now ready to modify the rules by using variants.

I read Unearthed Arcana and some of the variants really suited me, but I wanted to ask you guys what are your experiences with some or all of the following variants, and I also have a specific question, which is:

Can I use a variant in parts of my world, or do I have to use it in the whole world in order for it to make sense? I realize that I, as the DM, could do anything at any point, but I want to have players embrace the world in which I've put a lot of time to create and detail. For example, since I have a continent that's similar to the Caribbean, a bunch of exotic islands and hundreds of small ones. For this I'd like to use the variant rule that your AC is dependant on the level of your class (Defense Bonus) because I don't want the paladins and fighters of the game to be left out. I suppose that I should explain that no full plate paladin or warrior would ever find themselves in such a place (which also makes sense).

Now, the variants I need your opinions on: Defense Bonus, Armor as Damage Reduction, Damage Conversion, Action Points, Combat Facing, Contacts, Reputation, Honor, Sanity

I'm definitely going to add Action Points and Contacts, seeing as how I always found that PCs need to get treasure far too often to satisfy the balance, so I'd be subtracting an amount because of the action point addition. And Contacts are just an awesome idea to make the character better connect to the world, seeing as how if you lived in that world surely you have some connections. I also really like Combat Facing, but I'm a bit worried it might slow the game down, and though I find it extremely fun and realistic I'm not sure if all of my players will appreciate the added complexity.

[HammeredWharf]

Armor as DR: Haven't used it, but it would be mostly inconsequential after a couple of levels. Having a slightly lower AC and some DR could alter the outcome of combat, but won't affect the "feel" of it much, if at all.

Action points: I like them. Take a look at Eberron's rules for some extra action points goodness and AP feats.

Sanity: The idea is good, but it's mechanically the system isn't quite there. I prefer Ravenloft's rules for mental illnesses and Taint.

Facing: It's an interesting set of rules, but I think it's not a good idea mechanically. It slows combat down and makes melee characters even worse than they already are.

Defense bonus: Unlikely to change much. It makes touch attacks worse (good) but gives druids a free set of armor that stays on while wildshaped and goes up to +10 AC (bad). It's a reasonable ruleset if you want to have a swashbuckling adventure, but then again, you could just refluff all armor for that. It may have an impact in a low-op game, but in a high-op game it'll most likely not be noticeable.

Damage conversion: This is a rule I hadn't noticed before and I like it. It makes armor more useful, which is a really good thing. I'd rule that the conversion only applies to real armor and not spells like Mage Armor or Luminous Armor.

[Kafana]

Action points: I like them. Take a look at Eberron's rules for some extra action points goodness and AP feats.

Where can I find that?

[HammeredWharf]

Where can I find that?

Eberron Campaign Setting has the main mechanics, but Eberron's splatbooks also contain some AP feats and such.

[Eldest]

I read Unearthed Arcana and some of the variants really suited me, but I wanted to ask you guys what are your experiences with some or all of the following variants, and I also have a specific question, which is:

Can I use a variant in parts of my world, or do I have to use it in the whole world in order for it to make sense? I realize that I, as the DM, could do anything at any point, but I want to have players embrace the world in which I've put a lot of time to create and detail. For example, since I have a continent that's similar to the Caribbean, a bunch of exotic islands and hundreds of small ones. For this I'd like to use the variant rule that your AC is dependant on the level of your class (Defense Bonus) because I don't want the paladins and fighters of the game to be left out. I suppose that I should explain that no full plate paladin or warrior would ever find themselves in such a place (which also makes sense).

Now, the variants I need your opinions on: Defense Bonus, Armor as Damage Reduction, Damage Conversion, Action Points, Combat Facing, Contacts, Reputation, Honor, Sanity

I'm definitely going to add Action Points and Contacts, seeing as how I always found that PCs need to get treasure far too often to satisfy the balance, so I'd be subtracting an amount because of the action point addition. And Contacts are just an awesome idea to make the character better connect to the world, seeing as how if you lived in that world surely you have some connections. I also really like Combat Facing, but I'm a bit worried it might slow the game down, and though I find it extremely fun and realistic I'm not sure if all of my players will appreciate the added complexity.

For the first question, it'd be a good idea to have the variant work the same everywhere.

For the second, combat facing is a bit complex, yes, honor is an alternate alignment system, and a bit contraining but can work depending on the setting. Action points and contacts are good, but action points don't make up for treasure. I suggest looking at something like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?134805-Balanced-Low-Magic-Item-System) if you wish to lower the amount of treasure, since the math of the game assumes you will have certain benchmarks.

[Kafana]

Action points and contacts are good, but action points don't make up for treasure. I suggest looking at something like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?134805-Balanced-Low-Magic-Item-System) if you wish to lower the amount of treasure, since the math of the game assumes you will have certain benchmarks.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that they would replace treasure, but since Unearthed Arcana states that an action point is worth 100 gp times the character level, I'd subtract maybe half or a quarter of that amount from the needed gp.

The system you're suggesting seems nice, but I think it might add too much complexity for some of my players.

[NichG]

I want to divide those variants into two categories.

Category I is the variants that represent something that might just never come up due to society/creatures encountered/etc. These can be 'made sense of' by saying 'the system that applies to the world as a whole is more general, and each specific subset of the world sees a specific part of that general whole'.

- Honor: There's nothing weird about having Honor as an alternate alignment in a society that cares about Honor. The generalization that repairs this is that alignment is actually based not on cosmic absolutes, but based on the system used by the gods of the society to which a character belongs. The L,C/G,E system then belongs to a particular pantheon, whereas the Honor system belongs to a different pantheon. This means that alignment can still be a tangible force in the world, but a particular system simply isn't 'cosmic'. You can even do something more complex where alignment is actually cosmic, but it has a quantum mechanical aspect where it can be 'projected into different bases', which is pretty consistent with the picture given by the UA rules since it gives a way to calculate Honor from traditional alignment. Someone coming from a 'traditional-alignment society' and interacting with things that use Honor rules would just look up the 'starting honor' for that traditional alignment and maybe adjust a bit for their history to figure out how they interact, and someone from an Honor-only region would look up the closest traditional alignment to their honor score and adjust a bit for their character.

- Sanity: Easy to generalize, by excluding the 'everyday adventurer' sanity harming effects like seeing a corpse. If only certain monsters cause sanity damage, then a region which is not exposed to those monsters will never have to use this system.

- Reputation, Contacts: A little odd, but you could have one region of the world where society is very tightly networked, versus another region that is more like the Wild West and there's less social connectivity. Someone from the Wild West region just wouldn't initially have contacts in the high society place until they had time to naturalize, and someone from high society would find that their contacts and reputation might evaporate when they go out West.

Category 2 is the stuff that feels more like game mechanical abstractions or underlying physics. It would be a little weird for, e.g., the world to explicitly and in-character follow a hex grid in one country and a square grid and another, because both grids are supposed to be game approximations and not story components. E.g. having that feature change exposes the 'game' nature of the universe as an in-character feature, which causes problems. Action points, combat facing, alternate AC rules, alternate damage rules, alternate armor rules, etc all beg the question - why does this work differently when I get in a boat and go somewhere else? You might be able to explain some of this, but my guess is in most cases this stuff will feel forced.

What you can do however is attach these things as class abilities for racial substitution levels, and then give inhabitants of the far-away regions a specific subrace that enables them to take that substitution level. So for example, people growing up in the islands have the Islander subrace that lets them take an Islander substitution level at 1st level that gives them a Defense Bonus with class level. Or make it an Alternate Class Feature of martial classes that instead of getting Armor Proficiency they get the Defense Bonus. If someone wants to play a character from the islands up in the frigid north where everyone wears armor, they can do so, and there's a construct in the game to model exactly that. Some of these things though, like combat facing, are probably simply not salvageable - you should either use it or not.

[Deophaun]

Defense bonus: Unlikely to change much. It makes touch attacks worse (good) but gives druids a free set of armor that stays on while wildshaped and goes up to +10 AC (bad).
Meh, not really bad. Druids are already the least gear dependent, and the premium for wilding clasps is tiny at the high levels. The druid will be more powerful in the mid-levels, though.

It does make sword and board types slightly more effective, as there's only one set of defensive enhancements to worry about spending money on. In general it's a good money saver for the mundanes, who need it.

[Mnemnosyne]

Can I use a variant in parts of my world, or do I have to use it in the whole world in order for it to make sense? I realize that I, as the DM, could do anything at any point, but I want to have players embrace the world in which I've put a lot of time to create and detail. For example, since I have a continent that's similar to the Caribbean, a bunch of exotic islands and hundreds of small ones. For this I'd like to use the variant rule that your AC is dependant on the level of your class (Defense Bonus) because I don't want the paladins and fighters of the game to be left out. I suppose that I should explain that no full plate paladin or warrior would ever find themselves in such a place (which also makes sense).
It doesn't make sense, actually. A world with typical access to D&D spells will have travel between all major trading areas, and people will reasonably trade back and forth. Certainly common folk will never travel back and forth, but important people will. And a rather significant section of primary spellcasters use heavy armor pretty often: clerics. Thus, lack of access to travel magic isn't even a reasonable explanation.

If you want to do this, I would tie it to some sort of training. If you are local to the area, you gain that training automatically, and if you're from somewhere else, you don't. A character from elsewhere should also be able to get trained that way by a local, but make sure to have the training require a considerable amount of in-character time and cost. If you set the cost at 1500 gp minimum, it's equivalent to full plate's cost and will be unavailable to starting characters.

Now, the variants I need your opinions on: Defense Bonus, Armor as Damage Reduction, Damage Conversion, Action Points, Combat Facing, Contacts, Reputation, Honor, Sanity

I'm definitely going to add Action Points and Contacts, seeing as how I always found that PCs need to get treasure far too often to satisfy the balance, so I'd be subtracting an amount because of the action point addition. And Contacts are just an awesome idea to make the character better connect to the world, seeing as how if you lived in that world surely you have some connections. I also really like Combat Facing, but I'm a bit worried it might slow the game down, and though I find it extremely fun and realistic I'm not sure if all of my players will appreciate the added complexity.
One of the things I hate most about action points is how they create an intrinsic difference between NPCs and PCs by not giving NPCs action points. I find them much more palatable when NPCs also have action points on the same standing as the players.

I like the damage conversion rules, but have never actually played with them. They seem very nice, however, especially in making it so that people don't always die, making it easier to interrogate captured prisoners...as well as presenting the interesting question of what to do with captured prisoners. I do not agree with the printed suggestion that such characters should inexplicably choose not to return for vengeance, if left alive. They should make the decision based on their personality; some will want vengeance, some will see no profit in it, some should be afraid to go up against the same people again.

Sanity, as written, is terrible. So many perfectly normal things result in sanity loss in UA's system that it's just not useful for a standard D&D game. Worse is that even on successful checks, a lot of the events cause some sanity loss regardless. This is a variant that is useful only if the setting is one in which it is firmly established that everyone should eventually go insane over the course of their life, or in a setting where most monsters and such are hidden from the general populace so that people encountering things that cause sanity loss is actually extremely rare.

The others, I have no real experience with and haven't even looked into them that closely, so can't give much of any useful commentary. Some of them like Honor seem reasonable to be a local thing - some cultures may focus on honor, others may not. Things like combat facing and armor as damage reduction have to be applied universally; here we're pretty much talking 'laws of physics' type stuff for the setting. The only way those could reasonably change from place to place is different planes with different laws of physical behavior.

[Kafana]

The only addition I would use only in one part of the world is the Defense Bonus in my archipelago continent.

That being said, I was wondering if somebody played Combat Facing in general? How does it affect downtime? From where I'm standing it seems like a rule like any other that adds a lot to realism, but usually rules that add to realism slow the game down. I do believe, however, that it would make combat more of a puzzle.