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Peregrine
2007-08-17, 10:45 AM
For a while now I've been quietly working on a homebrew system, based on the SRD material and some other OGL stuff (notably some of the Unearthed Arcana rules variants). This incorporates a few neat ideas of my own (well, I think they're neat), which I planned to eventually post here in search of general acclaim and adulation helpful feedback.

Now that's all gone out the window, with the announcement of 4th edition (which I've probably heard about after everyone else on these boards, but hey). Now I have to slap them all up here now, before (a) I read about upcoming 4e changes (because then I might find that Wizards had the same neat ideas, and if I don't post them now I can't claim independent invention), and (b) before everyone else reads about 4e changes (because then, if there are similarities, the only feedback I'll ever get is "bleh, it's been done").

This homebrew is based on a certain popular fantasy series, although I intend to make the crunch as generic as possible so that the OGL aspects of the system are unencumbered by the copyrights on said fantasy series. It has its own classes (generally fleshed out) and its own magic system (much more vague at the moment, but will be strictly non-Vancian -- much more like psionics if anything).

Classes

Agent: Similar to the rogue, with more of a stealth and espionage focus than a trap-breaking and thievery one. (Both paths will be quite possible, of course, just as they are now; but as the rogue gets specifically trap-oriented class features, so the agent will get stealth/trickery-oriented class features.)

Aristocrat: Much more than the SRD's NPC class of the same name, the aristocrat is actually sort of bard-like in its execution. Aristocrats will make good party faces, and have class abilities that help them lead and inspire others, and daunt their foes.

Champion: Similar crunch-wise to the barbarian, the champion is a front-line fighter whose skills come more from natural talent than from disciplined study. Instead of rage, you gets champion's valour: it will provide similar bonuses, but the exact flavour (and probably some of the benefits) will vary from character to character, depending on whether you're a glorious knight, a ferocious berserker, or something else. (Note that in the SRD, a dwarven defender also gets a reflavoured, slightly recrunched ability that's very much like rage. Same deal here.)

Magician: The first of the magic-using classes, magicians work by dealing with various kinds of spirits (nature spirits, demons, departed souls...). Probably Cha-based magic.

Priest: The second magic-user, priests draw power from the gods. Their power is tied to the worshippers of their deity, so their magic is going to be focused along those lines (support, healing, a bit like SRD clerics... as you'd expect). Wis-based magic.

Soldier: The fighter-like class of the set, the soldier gets his or her combat prowess from long, hard training and study (so feats, basically). They'll also be more capable with military tactics and other such benefits of study than the SRD fighter.

Sorcerer: The third magic-user, sorcerers shape the world around them by envisioning changes and then willing them to occur. This takes a pretty detailed understanding of what changes you're trying to make (physics and biology and the like), so sorcery will be Int-based, possibly even tied to Knowledge skills. (There are a few exceptions, where such characters seem to have an intuitive rather than intellectual understanding of what they're doing, but I can work that out with feats or something.)

Statistics

Hero-ness: The setting this is aimed at has a big "heroes are extraordinary" thing going on. Children being the most powerful sorcerers ever, that sort of thing. (Well, not quite that bad, but you get the idea.) And it's all tied to these prophecies they have going. Well, that's going to be represented by a rank describing how important to the prophecies you are.
Rank 0: Mundane. Most of the world is of this rank. You have pretty much no effect on the course of prophecy.
Rank 1: Minor. PCs will normally be of this rank. You have some effect on the course of prophecy. You get a few benefits from this fact, which will (for instance) help ensure you survive a particular encounter, in accordance with the prophecy.
Rank 2: Major. PCs will sometimes be of this rank. You're named in a prophecy somewhere (by some obscure prophetic title, of course), and have a significant role in the events described therein. You get even bigger benefits from this rank, so you're much less likely to be killed by random mooks.
Rank 3: Chosen One. You are the focus of prophecy. There are only two of these anywhere in the universe at any given moment (one for the Good side, one for Evil), and they're normally fated to meet. These two get some serious bonuses, but they're so constrained by destiny that they'd make bad PCs. (Really, they shouldn't even need to roll...)

Rank benefits will probably be implemented by some combination of bonuses, rerolls, and action points. Rank is a variable thing, so PCs might move between ranks 1 and 2 at different stages of the campaign, and one of them might even be raised to rank 3 at a climactic moment.

Skills: Are much the same as ever, though some are dropped as being inappropriate to the setting. (For instance, there's not really any "magic devices" to use.) As mentioned above, though, magic (at least some forms, possibly all of them) may be skill-based to some extent.

Saves: Are renamed to resistance rolls. I know, I know, "saving throw" has a long and entrenched history, but really, it just doesn't fit with the other terminology of the game. We have "rolls" and "checks", but then these (and only these) are called "throws" for whatever reason. So now...
Fort saves: Are called physical resistance rolls.
Will saves: Are called mental resistance rolls.
Reflex saves: Are scrapped as being too problematic. See, the idea of a saving throw is that it lets you resist something (see where I got the new name from?) that's definitely hit you. It negates or mitigates the effect. If there's a chance of it missing, that's what Armor Class is for. Reflex saves blur this distinction. Sure, ordinarily, you can say that they represent you covering your vital areas, but then you have (a) Evasion, which always seems to be imagined as dodging the effect somehow, and (b) the fact that even covering up requires movement, while Reflex saves technically don't. So, Reflex saves are now part of...

Armor Class: Is renamed to defence to remove the association with armour. Now, this is blurrier, because here I haven't quite settled on the rules yet. But I'm simplifying the number of bonuses you get; so far my list is:
Base Defence Bonus: Here's big AC change number one. It's like the defence bonus variant from UA, basically.
Blocking: My favourite change. Shield bonuses are now called blocking bonuses, and so are bonuses you get from parrying. So now parrying is a simple and clearly defined part of the normal rules! Yay!
Dodge: Same as ever.
Deflection: I'm planning on using this name to represent bonuses from heavy armour, because it makes attacks glance off. But I know this may confuse some people, since "deflection" in the SRD is a magical "it veers away from you" bonus. That aside, apart from deflection bonuses, armour will use a damage reduction variant... or will it? See the Combat section for a problem with this idea. It might become damage conversion instead.

And here's big AC change number too: making defence rolls. I'm not sure about this, since it adds to the number of rolls being made in combat. But I think it'll work OK; it will only be rolled once per round, and I've put some thought into reducing rolls elsewhere.

Defence rolls work particularly well with my Reflex save replacement. Besides just being used to avoid being hit by normal attacks (as per AC), you make a defence roll to avoid area attacks too. Normally, characters can only use this to cover up vulnerable areas, typically for half damage. You can instead ready an action to dive aside when such an attack goes off. And Evasion has become the ability to make such a dive as an immediate action.

Combat

This is even blurrier, because I'm still mulling over ideas for this system. But besides the changes to AC described above (including defence rolls), there's some other major changes to be made, primarily...

Injury variant: As per UA, you make a Fort save physical resistance roll to resist being injured when you get hit. No hit points! The problem with this is that it again increases the number of rolls in combat. We have defence rolls (normally just once per round), then attack rolls (can be several of these), then damage rolls (one per successful attack), then physical resistance rolls (one per successful attack). No thanks!

With that in mind, I first toyed with the idea of making each weapon's damage a fixed value, applied to the physical resistance DC. But I've since had a possibly better idea (somewhat inspired by a thread on this very forum)...

Unified Attack and Damage Rolls: Now, the higher your attack roll, the more solidly you strike. The amount you exceed the minimum to-hit roll by determines how damaging your attack is. No more rolling all 1s on your damage after a critical hit! This runs into several problems, of course. Firstly, each weapon must now have a bonus to this unified attack roll to show how damaging it is, so these will have to be figured out, tested, and balanced. Secondly, the armour as damage reduction variant becomes meaningless. When your attack roll is your damage roll, damage reduction is Armor Class. Err, I mean, a defence bonus. Thirdly, it messes with some feats, most notably Power Attack. Trading attack for damage is meaningless, at least when done point-for-point. So...

Feats

I'm hoping to change these as little as possible, since a great many of them will still apply and it's nice to have something familiar. However:

Power Attack: Now trades attack for damage in a 1:2 ratio. If you roll a 17 on your (unified) attack roll, but you power attacked for 3 points, you only hit a 14 or lower... but you then determine damage as if the roll was 20.

Terminology

I've done it to saving throws, I've done it to Armour Class. Why not try and make some more terminology make sense? This is more just a general idea, not specific to this particular system. In fact, some of the ideas aren't even applicable.

Level (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html): The worst offender, of course. Shall now be used exclusively for those things which are otherwise known as Hit Dice. Which, incidentally, is obsoleted as a term of classification... your hit dice are merely a benefit of having levels. Why say "this creature has 10 Hit Dice" when you could just say "this creature has 10 levels"? You probably don't even need the term "hit dice" at all, then, as it's just rolling hit points and need never be referred to again.

Particular types of levels are...
Caster Level: As normal. It's the number of levels you have that are applied to your spellcasting. Can vary from your actual levels, say with an appropriate domain.
Character Level: As normal. The total number of levels that a character has, normally the sum of all its...
Class Level: As normal. The levels taken in any particular class.
Creature Level: Replaces the term "racial Hit Dice". (I did toy with the idea of this being the total level -- the character level -- of anything not considered a "character". That's what it might seem to imply at first glance, with the game's general distinction of "character" from "creature". But that (a) doubles up on terms for "total number of levels", and (b) leaves us short a term for "racial Hit Dice only". So now, Character Level = Class Level(s) + Creature Level.)
Effective Character Level and Level Adjustment: Can probably be used as normal.

Deprecated uses of the word "level":
Encounter Level: Why oh why do we even have this? Why can't we just call it a Challenge Rating? Each individual element of the encounter has a Challenge Rating; why does the sum of the parts get the completely divergent term "Encounter Level"? No, now everything is just a Challenge Rating. (I can only imagine that they did it to stop people thinking that you just added Challenge Ratings together. But people think that anyway, and those who know you don't, won't be confused if the words are different.)
Spell Level: Call it a spell degree instead. (Others have tried terms like "circle". But that's loaded with fluffy connotations about "circles of magic". It seems more like another word for school than for level. Degree is nice and neutral, to my ears at least.)

And of course...
Dungeon Level: Just call it a floor or something, okay? "You're on the fifth floor of the dungeon. You're going down a floor." Problem solved.

Matthew
2007-08-17, 06:52 PM
Sounds interesting, but shouldn't this be in Home brew?

Heroism sounds fine to me, though I prefer Destiny Points (which I recently discovered are also part of Saga - they steal all my ideas :smallbiggrin: - well, I stole that one from WFRP...)

Saving Throws/Resistances sound like they have been unnecessarily reformed, Defence Bonuses might have done as well.

Defence Rolls sound interesting, but I will have to see the data. I prefer a mix of static and opposed defences.

I have often considered the advantages and disadvanatges of Unifying Attack and Damage. Main disadvantage is that you don't get to roll Weapon Damage anymore, which is silly, as it's only a nostalgia disadvantage!

Presumably there's more to come?

MMad
2007-08-17, 10:26 PM
I don't have any particular feedback, just wanted to say that I like the flavour of this and agree with many of your changes. Your new classes sound cool as well. :)

Peregrine
2007-08-19, 09:38 AM
Sounds interesting, but shouldn't this be in Home brew?

I noticed that myself. A mod kindly moved it for me. :smallredface: (It was an accident, the tabs are right next to each other... seriously -- Gaming and Homebrew are almost permanently open in my browser.)


Heroism sounds fine to me, though I prefer Destiny Points (which I recently discovered are also part of Saga - they steal all my ideas :smallbiggrin: - well, I stole that one from WFRP...)

Never heard of them. If they're anything like action points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm), which are OGL and likely to be part of my implementation of what your "prophecy rank" actually does for you, then there's not so much difference at all. :smallsmile:


Saving Throws/Resistances sound like they have been unnecessarily reformed, Defence Bonuses might have done as well.

How do you mean unnecessarily reformed?

And since we're on the subject of these two... now that I've posted this up here to stake a claim to independent invention, I've let myself into some 4e discussions, and lo and behold, I was right. I was specifically afraid of my scrapping of Reflex saves being done -- it just seemed a sensible thing to do, to me. And it seems I was right; people are saying Reflex saves are now just part of your normal AC defence.

And that defence was another thing I expected would be changed. I didn't know how exactly, but I wasn't the originator of the idea of a class-based, increasing defence, it just seemed like a perfectly good idea, and I had a feeling WotC might see it the same way if the rumoured 4e ever came along. They have -- and I hear that they've also scrapped the name "Armor Class", as I did myself. (Although I think d20 Modern always had it named that way...)


Defence Rolls sound interesting, but I will have to see the data. I prefer a mix of static and opposed defences.

Well, the defence actions I briefly touched on (the replacements for the "cover up" and "dive aside" conceptions of reflex saves, and likely other defence actions too) already take the part of opposed defences. The single defence roll per round is essentially a static defence; not a static value, but static in that it doesn't require that it be declared and doesn't take any action.


I have often considered the advantages and disadvanatges of Unifying Attack and Damage. Main disadvantage is that you don't get to roll Weapon Damage anymore, which is silly, as it's only a nostalgia disadvantage!

Presumably there's more to come?

Yes, as I invent it... sadly, what I've got here is most of what I've dreamt up so far. Most, because there are a good many fanciful ideas I've had that are so ephemeral that I dare not post about them yet... :smallsmile:

Matthew
2007-08-26, 04:36 AM
Never heard of them. If they're anything like action points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm), which are OGL and likely to be part of my implementation of what your "prophecy rank" actually does for you, then there's not so much difference at all. :smallsmile:

I think they are just about exactly the same.


How do you mean unnecessarily reformed?

I think the three Saving Throw Categories as they stand in D&D are fine, but an alternative would be to simply 'test' against the appropriate Attribute modified by Character Level.


And since we're on the subject of these two... now that I've posted this up here to stake a claim to independent invention, I've let myself into some 4e discussions, and lo and behold, I was right. I was specifically afraid of my scrapping of Reflex saves being done -- it just seemed a sensible thing to do, to me. And it seems I was right; people are saying Reflex saves are now just part of your normal AC defence.

And that defence was another thing I expected would be changed. I didn't know how exactly, but I wasn't the originator of the idea of a class-based, increasing defence, it just seemed like a perfectly good idea, and I had a feeling WotC might see it the same way if the rumoured 4e ever came along. They have -- and I hear that they've also scrapped the name "Armor Class", as I did myself. (Although I think d20 Modern always had it named that way...)

They're probably just running it like Saga, where your Reflex Defence is equal to:
10 + Character Level + Dexterity

Same goes for the other Saves, modified by the relevant Attribute Score. I have been using this system since about 2000-2001 for my Homebrewed and Houseruled Game, so it was nice to see them print it up and I might be biased.


Well, the defence actions I briefly touched on (the replacements for the "cover up" and "dive aside" conceptions of reflex saves, and likely other defence actions too) already take the part of opposed defences. The single defence roll per round is essentially a static defence; not a static value, but static in that it doesn't require that it be declared and doesn't take any action.

Sounds a lot like the DMG Variant for Variable Defence Values. As i said, I would have to see exactly how it works to comment further.


Yes, as I invent it... sadly, what I've got here is most of what I've dreamt up so far. Most, because there are a good many fanciful ideas I've had that are so ephemeral that I dare not post about them yet... :smallsmile:
Ah well, it's an interesting time to undertake this sort of project.