Amy's typical homebrew terms and rules

[An Amy]

Just putting down some of my homebrew terms and such here. And things that I find that I like and want to use. I hope that's what this forum is used for... (Not putting my convoluted multi-death, free-rez rules here. Yet). Not looking for suggestions or comments here. If you want to comment, I welcome them in PMs, please. Never mind, discussion here is just fine. I was thinking of keeping it clean, free of discussion, but I can link updated posts and such here for such and still get feedback right into the topic instead of filling up messages.

I'll update this post with indices and such.

[An Amy]

Threshold

This represents your ability to resist and take damage. Threshold is a representation of your life as well. In the beginning, your threshold is equal to your Constitution score. Some of the following rules regarding threshold may be omitted depending on the campaign. As a general idea, think of Threshold as Wound points from the original Star Wars d20. There are a few of these alternatives mentioned in a few other places too, such as massive damage threshold variants. Again, not all of these are used at the same time. Combinations of the following can create an easier experience for lower level characters or a more deadly one.



Threshold is equal to your Constitution Score. Feats or abilities may modify this value.
At first level, you gain your threshold in Hit Points instead of a maximum of your class's hit die type. This could result in a lower starting HP than expected if your threshold is lower than, say, 12 if you are a barbarian.
At any level, your HP maximum is at least your threshold. As such, a Fighter with 10 Constitution and a Wizard with 10 Constitution would have the same starting HP. At second level, the Fighter increases his maximum HP beyond 10, though the Wizard would continue to have 10 HP for a couple more levels.
You die when your hit points reaches negative threshold. Thus, for at least a starting character, you essentially can take damage equal to twice your threshold. There is a limit of -20 HP, however. This also applies to dying from non-lethal damage (the whole HP + 10 ) and positive energy overload.
If your hit points are reduced to your threshold amount, damage is considered actually physical to your body. Actual wounds, etc. This is more for flavor than mechanics, though it could provide a source for scars and body-placement rolls for the hits.
Undead creatures treat their threshold as a 10. They follow normal rules for everything, really.
If you take damage equal to twice your threshold in a single attack and a single source of damage (similar to massive damage rules) you must make a Fortitude save against the damage or 15, whichever is less. If you fail, you become dazed for a round.
If you take damage equal to thrice your threshold in a single attack, you must make a save or become stunned. DC here will most likely be 15 as 3x threshold is unlikely to be less than 15.
If you take damage equal to four times your threshold, it's save or die, similar to normal save against 50 pts of massive damage. But with PCs that have a higher con, the limit is higher than the typical 50.
If you take damage equal to five times your threshold, it's save or die, just as the four-times above. Both the 4x and 5x mass damage thresholds are not used at the same time, obviously. Five times indicates something back to the 50 points massive damage threshold mentioned in the PHB. An average Constitution of 10 would yield a 10 threshold. And five times that is 50 as originally written.
Use your threshold instead of your Con score for figuring out how long you can hold your breath. Any ability that would increase this based on Constitution instead increases this based on Threshold.
Temporary increases to Con also increase threshold. Adjust HP based on this accordingly. If you have 10 HD and a 12 Con, you have 12 HP + 9 (1 per levels 2-10) for a total of 21 HP just from Constitution. Bears Endurance would increase your Constitution score by 4. This increases your modifier by 2. You'd gain 22 HP (+4 to threshold + 18 for 9 levels) instead of just 20 (+2 modifier for all 10 levels). It's a touch more math, sure.



Feats that Modify Threshold or are modified by Threshold rules.

Toughness: Increases your threshold by 3, not your HP. This indirectly increases your HP.
Improved Toughness: You increase your threshold by 1 per HD to a maximum of 20. Any additional HD that do not increase threshold increase hit points as was normal. While your threshold can be greater than 20, this feat cannot increase your threshold above 20. Ultimately, you still get your HD in hit points.
Endurance: Increases your threshold by 2.
Diehard: Increases your threshold by 2 as well. Also, if you drop to -10 or below, assuming your threshold is greater than 10, you must make a save each round. DC is equal to 10 + current negative HP (thus beginning at 20). Failure means your HP drops by 1. If you take a standard action, your HP always drops by 1. These can stack for a drop by 2 to your HP each round you are less than -10 HP.

Greater Damage Reduction (new feat): Your damage reduction increases by 1 for any hit point damage that reduces your current hit points to your threshold or less. Basically, if you have DR 1/- and a threshold of 15 with 20 current hit points. You suffer 10 points of damage. Your natural DR reduces this to 9. This would reduce your hit points to less than 15, thus it is reduced again by 1 and you take 8 points of damage instead and are left with 12 current hit points. This feat requires you to have natural DR as a supernatural or extraordinary ability, such as a barbarians class feature. If you lose your damage reduction, you also lose this feat's benefit.
Clarification: Apply natural DR first before determining if this feat would trigger. If in the above example you would take 6 points instead of 10, your natural DR would reduce the damage to 5, thus leaving you at your threshold for current hit points. This feat would trigger still and reduce the damage by 1 again, leaving you with 16. If the damage taken was 5 instead of 10, your natural DR would reduce the damage first to 4 leaving you with 16 as well. This would not trigger the feat.

Supreme Damage Reduction (new fea): As Greater Damage Reduction, except that your damage reduction increases by 2 or to a minimum of 5. Again, as above, apply natural damage reduction first before figuring if this feat would trigger. Requires previous feat and character level 15.


Change log:
* 2x threshold damage used to say stunned. Dazed is now the effect. Also lowered the 3x threshold effect to stunned to try and high-level adjust the rules.
* Added the 5x threshold damage. Added max HP minimum. Clarified that the rules for threshold are not meant to be all used at once.

[aimlessPolymath]

Huh. The main effect of this is that low-level survivability is significantly changed for low die-size characters (yay rogues!), but also if you take more than 2x your Con in one hit, you must save or be stunned (or worse, could go to unconcious).


Use your threshold instead of your Con score for figuring out how long you can hold your breath. Any ability that would increase this based on Constitution increases Threshold.
Lizardfolk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lizardfolk.htm) OP plz nerf (fix the wording so that Hold Breath doesn't multiply your Threshold)


Undead creatures treat their threshold as a 10. They follow normal rules for everything, really. This is sort of bad for undead, but not a lot. 20 or more damage or save with your bad save (Which if you're in 3.5 instead of Pathfinder doesn't add the charisma bonus) could come up pretty often, except that they're immune to stunning, although technically not unconciousness. 30 or more damage is less common, but more brutal.

I could see this shifting combat somewhat towards one high-power attack (Vital Strike + high-damage weapon + Furious Focus -> Power Attack) vs. lots of little hits, and somewhat towards blasting as a combat option.

At high levels, due to higher Con scores, there will be less odds of getting knocked out in one hit, but stunning could occur fairly often- rogues can deal something like 30+ damage in one attack at higher levels, and get to the 40s eventually. Also, martial maneuvers which replace full-attacks with single swings get much better, despite doing around the same damage!
I can also see abilities which give rerolls getting more milage.

[An Amy]

Huh. The main effect of this is that low-level survivability is significantly changed for low die-size characters (yay rogues!), but also if you take more than 2x your Con in one hit, you must save or be stunned (or worse, could go to unconcious).


Lizardfolk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lizardfolk.htm) OP plz nerf (fix the wording so that Hold Breath doesn't multiply your Threshold)

This is sort of bad for undead, but not a lot. 20 or more damage or save with your bad save (Which if you're in 3.5 instead of Pathfinder doesn't add the charisma bonus) could come up pretty often, except that they're immune to stunning, although technically not unconciousness. 30 or more damage is less common, but more brutal.

I could see this shifting combat somewhat towards one high-power attack (Vital Strike + high-damage weapon + Furious Focus -> Power Attack) vs. lots of little hits, and somewhat towards blasting as a combat option.

At high levels, due to higher Con scores, there will be less odds of getting knocked out in one hit, but stunning could occur fairly often- rogues can deal something like 30+ damage in one attack at higher levels, and get to the 40s eventually. Also, martial maneuvers which replace full-attacks with single swings get much better, despite doing around the same damage!
I can also see abilities which give rerolls getting more milage.

The main purpose is to increase chances of survival for lower-level campaigns. It's really just extensions of some alternatives to massive damage thresholds. Undead, when I run them, do not follow these rules and thus immune to threshold damage effects with the exception of the x4. You can obliterate something physically regardless if it was a critical hit or not. I've never used this or been in a game where these were used and the levels were above 10. So, with higher levels and higher damage outputs more easily available, not sure yet how to adapt except by putting in HD/levels to push the relative massive damage effects higher or eliminate them.

By nature, the lizardfolk get 4x Con to breathe underwater. This would be 4x threshold to breathe underwater a well. I don't see how this is over-powered. With some feats, they can push this to an extra 24 rounds (+6 to threshold). But I could put that the hold breath works as written and does not use threshold for calculating how long they can hold their breath.

[aimlessPolymath]

Nah, the thing I was talking about was this line:

Use your threshold instead of your Con score for figuring out how long you can hold your breath. Any ability that would increase this based on Constitution increases Threshold.
You need to adjust it to

Use your threshold instead of your Con score for figuring out how long you can hold your breath. Any ability that would increase this based on Constitution instead increases it based on Threshold.
Otherwise, lizardfolk would have 4x their Con as Threshhold by RAW ("increases Threshold"). RAI is clear, RAW just needs to catch up a little.

I'm not actually sure that the changes to massive damage rules increases low-level survivability that much. The existing massive damage threshold is unlikely to be hit by anything that doesn't just kill the PCs outright at low levels! My guesses of what happens at high levels are pretty much guesswork- you could consider looking at high-level NPCs from a wiki to guesstimate Con scores and the resulting thresholds.

The hit point change is more significant at low levels. It has relatively little effect on front-liners, but bumps up their hit points a bit. Low hit-point characters get more of a buff, of course. The larger effect(maybe unintentional) which I see is on mook creatures with 1 or 2 HD- orcs (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/orcs/orc/), kobolds (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/kobold/), skeletons (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/skeleton-medium/), and goblins (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/goblin/) have their hit points doubled, for example. 2 HD creatures like zombies (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/zombie/)have them increased by around 50%.
I'd guess that their CR goes up about one step, up to a maximum of 1, to compensate.

[An Amy]

Nah, the thing I was talking about was this line:

You need to adjust it to

Otherwise, lizardfolk would have 4x their Con as Threshhold by RAW ("increases Threshold"). RAI is clear, RAW just needs to catch up a little.

I'm not actually sure that the changes to massive damage rules increases low-level survivability that much. The existing massive damage threshold is unlikely to be hit by anything that doesn't just kill the PCs outright at low levels! My guesses of what happens at high levels are pretty much guesswork- you could consider looking at high-level NPCs from a wiki to guesstimate Con scores and the resulting thresholds.

The hit point change is more significant at low levels. It has relatively little effect on front-liners, but bumps up their hit points a bit. Low hit-point characters get more of a buff, of course. The larger effect(maybe unintentional) which I see is on mook creatures with 1 or 2 HD- orcs (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/orcs/orc/), kobolds (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/kobold/), skeletons (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/skeleton-medium/), and goblins (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/goblin/) have their hit points doubled, for example. 2 HD creatures like zombies (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/zombie/)have them increased by around 50%.
I'd guess that their CR goes up about one step, up to a maximum of 1, to compensate.

The rules are not meant to be taken all at once. I've used it for dangerous campaigns or to give low-level characters a boost. Such as giving more HP to start potentially, not using the 2x or 3x damage thresholds and only using the 4x or 5x (which I just added after realizing I am currently using it in a game). I don't really use this for the minions unless I want that encounter to be a little more challenging.

I made the change to wording. I'm sure the wording could use a technical writer prior to being published beyond a post ^^ RAI is needed...