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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Alternate Character Progression System. (Needs an actual name)



GorinichSerpant
2014-05-11, 12:01 AM
Hello Playground, I have been a long time lurker for half a yearish and recently came up with a progression system as the title clearly says. I’m using True20 which is fairly similar to 3.x with the selling point of being generic and usable with any genre. I would have posted this on their forum but sadly it died out :smallfrown: . Off the top of my head the only changes you’d need to know to critique this is that hit points are replaced with a save. If you fail the save you gain a status condition, which can stack up to death or unconsciousness.

I’m hoping this to be as flexible as True20 is. So it could be realistic if the DM gives a limited amount of skill points, or ridiculous shonen battles if the DM is generous. Some skills would be banned for a campaign if it doesn't fit the setting, as computers and firearms won’t be available in the middle ages campaign and you won’t have full plate shouldn’t be an option in one set in the 20th century. If a campaign isn’t combat focused than some skills could be put together and same could go for social skills if a group decides to play hack n’ slash. I also want it to somewhat simulate real life, but not so much as it gets in the way of game play.

Now that I’ve established that, on to the actual system. The basic idea is that everything is turned into skills, and those skills can be messed around with in a two ways. The things I have put in spoilers are things I specifically want to ask about, also please criticize everything else away as well.

Specialized Skills:

Specialization: You can have specialized skills, Ex: like a sub skill of Knowledge (Dragons) to Knowledge (arcana). You can also specialize your subskills Ex: like (red dragons) under (dragons).You need to put at least 1 point into the skill or sub skill broader up then the one you're trying to achieve. Ex: You can’t get dragons unless you have 1 point in arcana and you can’t get red dragons if you don’t have dragons. Specializing would have either this benefit in one of the two ways I’ve listed below, currently I’m leaning to the second, because that is the way bonuses generally work in these kind of systems.



In each specialized skill your effective rank is the amount of points you put into that skill multiplied by the amount of specialization. Ex: Arcana would have a specialization level of none so you multiply the ranks by 1, Dragons would be x2, red dragons would be x3 etc.



Idea B is that a bonus of +1 is added for every level of specialization. Ex: Knowledge (Dragons) would have a specialization bonus of +1, Knowledge (Red Dragons) would get +2 and so forth. Knowledge (arcana) would’t get a bonus as you could guess.







Advanced Skills:

Advanced skills allows you to take several skills and combine them into one. The skills that aren't advanced skills are called Base skills from this point. This new skill can be used for everything that the separate old skills can, and a little bit more. Ex: Combining melee attack+parry= fencing. Once you have this skill you can use it in all situations it would apply. To gain an advanced skill you need to go to have 4 points in each skill and have someone who knows the advanced skill mentor you. If you want to have used a subskill as a part of an advanced skill, you need to have spent at least 4 skill points to get that specialization. Ex: If want Knowledge (dragons) to be part of a Dragon Slaying skill, you must have 1 point in Knowledge (arcana) and 3 points in Knowledge (dragon). Advanced skills replace professions, and can be used to represent classes. After that you can put skill points in an advanced skill as often as you like. Ex: use rope+swim+balance+survival= Sailor. If you've seen this before, then yes I did steal this from this thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?343685-Super-skills!-Combining-skills-to-make-better-ones!



I think that there should there be a limit on the amount of skills you can have inside a advanced skills. So you don’t go around rolling the same exact thing for every situation. I was thinking a limit of 4, or simply not have there be anyone out there who could teach you something like that is another solution.



There should also be a way for players to create their own advanced skills. What I have thought of is that the player needs to be a master in the skills he/she/it wants to make an advanced skill with. Master in this case means is that out of all the people who know those skills, you're in the top 10% of the best. This is so you won’t have people inventing new styles of fighting and professions left and right in a higher power game.



I think survival should be a combination several other skills, but which ones?



Feats and class features:

Many feats are transformed into skills and subskills. Ex: Two weapon fighting is a specialization of melee attack. If a feat can’t be made into a skill, then it would cost skill points and may have prerequisites in a certain skill(s). Ex: Cleave would have a prerequisite of some melee attack skill. Class features become feats that require an advanced skill that represents a class as one of it’s prerequisites. Ex: Sneak attack would have to gotten from Assassin, Thief or some other appropriate advanced skill. Other feats would be gotten from getting an advanced skill. Favored Enemy would be a function of a combination of an advanced skill made of a knowledge skill and an attack skill.



Before this is sorted out, there are other things that need being sorted out.




Now you can critique with all your wrath, :smallbiggrin: at some point when all my effort is sufficiently scrutinized, I’ll post a list of the skills that will also need to be scrutinized. As I’m not that well versed in balance, and many skills are not directly comparable. I’d need help with how broad base skills should be and what their subskills look like.

GorinichSerpant
2014-05-11, 12:02 AM
Reserved for specifics of skills, and other problems.

GorinichSerpant
2014-05-11, 12:04 AM
Reserved just in case the second reserve isn't enough.

GorinichSerpant
2014-05-12, 07:02 PM
Hello? Does anyone have any opinion on this?

Argothair
2015-02-18, 01:54 PM
I like the idea of specialties and subspecialties for classes, and I especially like your mechanic for bonuses and for requiring that players have a level in the general skill before they can delve down intothe next layer of specialization. I might even add that your total skills in a group of specialties cant exceed your skill in the base skill that those specialties use. Have you thought about whether to let players count both the general skill and the specific skill toward a skill check? In other words, if you have 5 ranks in arcana and 3 ranks in arcana (dragons), do you get a bonus of 5 + (3 × 2) = 11, or just 3 × 2 = 6?

I especially like your insight that *everything* is a skill check, from knowledge to attacking to foraging. Using the same mechanic for everyrhing keeps the game balanced and simple.

I am not sure I understand the point of your idea about combining skills for fencing or sailing or whatever. Do you get to apply both skills plus the combo skill (e.g. 4 ranks in attack + 4 ranks in parry + 1 rank in fencing = +9 to your fencing checks?) to the same check? How does that work out mechanically?

GorinichSerpant
2015-02-18, 06:06 PM
Do to no one responding to this I kind of abandoned it.:smallredface: Between now and when I wrote this, I have switched systems several times, forgotten about this and still failed to get my friend group to play a solid session of anything.

You add both the general and the specific skill to your roll. At least, that's how I first imagined this working, the other way might be better, but I haven't run the numbers to decide that nor play tested it.

For the second one, I didn't actually consider how that would work. Maybe the separate skills get "consumed" and become 4 ranks in your advanced skill. Like you train up 4 points in attack 4 points in parry, get mentored, then replace the two with 4 points in fencing.

Argothair
2015-02-19, 11:52 PM
Yeah, well, I have 4 ranks in blogging and 4 in necromancy, so this thread just got revived. :-)

Why would a player want to smush the skill ranks into fencing? What's the advantage?

GorinichSerpant
2015-02-20, 07:57 AM
Once you've got ranks in fencing, and you spend another point in it, you gain the benefit of spending two points one in attack the other in parry for the price of one. Now that I think about it, this makes characters who invest in advanced skills more powerful jack of all trades worse(which could be problematic) and gives incentives to go out into the world and find masters of whatever skill you ant and convince them to mentor you (which can turn out pretty cool). Maybe advanced skills could be called "Master Skills" and you would be allowed to have a limited amount of them. So Master Skills would be this character defining thing, Bob the Mighty could have Mounted Archery(Handle Animal+Archery), Battlefield Tactics (intimidate+investigate+command)and Dirty Fighting(melee attack+grapple+feint) as his Master Skills while Jeff Mage would have Fire Mastery(control element(fire)+blast), Applied Apperation Study(knowledge(forbidden)+medicine) and Scribe(forgery+research) as his. Masterys would be the equivalent of classes in this system.

Say every Mastery Skill would be composed of 3 base skills and you can only have 3 of them.

Zireael
2015-02-20, 10:02 AM
I like the ideas a lot and would like to see more examples of how it works.

Have you seen the BAB as skill and/or spell levels as skill homebrew stuff? I have seen quite a few versions of those, too.