Fairly New DM Pursuing Realism

[Scarch]

Edit: Perhaps "fairly new dm" is a bit missleading. I am an experienced roleplayer who was GMed a lot of games, but I haven't DMed D&D specifically very many times.

Hi, I haven't posted here in ages, nor have I played much D&D in several years. I recently got inspired to get back into D&D, but my biggest concern when it comes to D&D is realism. I find Battletech much more realistic with its Life Path system, Hit Location Injuries, and Skill based gradual levelling. The idea of suddenly acquiring a large amount of skills and abilities is absurd, as is the idea of being fine regardless of being stabbed and beaten up until suddenly dropping dead. For D&D I prefer 3.5 or Pathfinder. Right now I'm using Pathfinder, but I have more experience with 3.5. I do not like 4th or 5th edition at all. In the past I tried to do a conversion of D&D to Battletech and found it to be just too much work. So now I'm taking the approach of using the Pathfinder rules as they are, and gradually supplementing Variant and Homebrewn rules.

Armor Variant Rule: One issue I have with the standard rules is the armor AC. It doesn't make sense to me that wearing armor gives you an all-or-nothing damage evasion. Armor can deflect blows, but it can also mean being stabbed or smashed simply does less damage. Thus I am considering some Damage Reduction(DR) variant rules. So far I've encountered two options. Option one is that AC is completely translated to DR, and the other is that AC is cut in half and that value is added as DR. The problem with all of the AC being transferred to DR is someone with a knife can't hurt someone in plate mail, and that is not realistic. Someone skilled with a knife can stab in the crevices and gaps in the armor, and someone skilled in archery can shoot an armored knight in the slit in their visor with surprising accuracy (consider British longbows versus French cavalry). In the case of someone skilled getting into the weak spots of armor it wouldn't offer any DR at all. I was thinking of doing my own improvised rule where AC is cut in half and that value is added as DR (So +8 AC gives +4 AC and 4 DR), critical hits bypass DR, and adding a Feat for skilled fighters to completely bypass armor DR (or at least have a higher chance). Alternatively I could do something like giving armor its full value in AC and DR, and/or allowing any fighter to bypass armor DR once they have reached a certain level or some other combat value.

Hit Location Injuries from Battletech: This is a rule that I just straight up borrowed from Battletech. Whenever someone is hit by an attack it targets only a specific part of the body, and any injury has added effects such as bleeding, reducing the function of limbs, shock, and can have long-term effects such as a permanent limp, brain damage, post-traumatic stress, etc...

Diminished Healing Effects and Longer Recover Time: This rule is a combination of something borrowed from Battletech and something I've homebrewn. I run a low/dark fantasy setting, that means magic is less common, but also has some diminished effects and extra restrictions. Mage classes level slower. Healing effects are not instant, but gradual. Magic healing does not necessarily 100% restore injuries. For example: Normally if someone gets their elbow smashed with a mace and heals naturally over time without magic their arm will never be fully functional again and it will take weeks before they can even get out of bed. That's in a society that doesn't use some form of superstitious healing method that's even worse for you, like leeching. And they will have chronic pain for the rest of their life. That type of injury can put an ordinary soldier into early retirement. With magic healing, there is a broad spectrum of effects depending on the quality of the magic used. It could speed up the healing process a little or a lot, and it could remove the long-term effects entirely or only partially. These rules make players much more careful about the risks of combat. One single encounter, even one in which victory is assured and quick, could still leave permanent scars and/or put characters permanently out of commission without killing them. I do rely heavily on roleplaying for these rules to function as I have not encountered a ton of technical rules for this sort of thing.

Gradual Levelling: Instead of players reaching the experience level needed to level up, and then acquiring all of the features of the next level, players must decide in advance which aspects they want to work on next, and they will acquire aspects of their next level gradually between scenarios. The game starts with a character creation session. During this time we cover their family background, culture, early and late childhood, education, adulthood, and life events leading up to them becoming a full-fledged level one character. This is somewhat based on Battletech's Life Path system. It is very play-by-ear and relies on roleplaying, but players are rewarded for creativity and roleplaying ability. After level one is fully achieved they decide where to progress next. Getting experience from going on adventures, looting dungeons, killing monsters, and such things is only going to give them experience in those areas. If they want to fully acquire the aspects of their next level they have to actually pursue roleplaying scenarios related to those aspects. That may involve spending time studying at an academy, or being tutored by a mentor, spending countless hours training, etc... HP is gained 1 HP at a time spread out over the course of levelling up.

Accomplishing Tasks and the Passage of Time: Time leaps can be made, but essentially my rule is: to acquire something you must roleplay it; for anything to happen it must be written. At least some form of roleplaying scenario has to transpire for a player to improve, acquire, or accomplish anything. Even for making a time leap I require something written in story form that depicts the passage of time and transpired events.

If anyone knows of any good variant rules for added realism I would greatly appreciate it, and any tips or thoughtful insights are welcome.
(Should this thread be moved to the Homebrew Design or Roleplaying Games section?)

[Florian]

Oh boy... Sorry, it´s basically impossible to change/mod 3.5E/PF to a a more grounded level of realism without throwing everything into the bin, just keeping the core mechanic (12d20+mod vs. DC) and starting totally from scratch. I suggest you take a look at Shadow of the Demon Lord and then Dark Heresy.

[RFLS]

So...this is probably not what you're looking to hear, but I think it's important. D&D is not a game for realism. Is not, never has been, and (assuming current design paths) never will be. It deliberately abstracts large parts of the world in ways it finds useful, and does that from ground up. Attempting to patch it to find realism is going to be a difficult prospect at best. On top of that, every change you make is going to have unintended consequences in other parts of the system; some of which will not be discovered for a long time.

In short: this is the wrong game for what you want to do.

[flappeercraft]

I have to agree with the other answers. 3.5 is definitely not the system for this, neither are 3.0 or PF. Not only does the balance get messed up when changing rules but the balance is already basically wasted, fell down 3 sets of stairs, ended up on a skateboard, got ran over by a bus and then fell on the toilet and got flushed, twice. Add changing thr rules and it only gets worse, regardless of how small the change, unintended fundamental changes tend to happen in the rules. Also, considering this is a game where flying lizards that can spit fire exist and those same lizards can transform into humans, dogs, cats, elves, etc, realism is already thrown out the window.

[Troacctid]

Gradual Levelling: Instead of players reaching the experience level needed to level up, and then acquiring all of the features of the next level, players must decide in advance which aspects they want to work on next, and they will acquire aspects of their next level gradually between scenarios. The game starts with a character creation session. During this time we cover their family background, culture, early and late childhood, education, adulthood, and life events leading up to them becoming a full-fledged level one character. This is somewhat based on Battletech's Life Path system. It is very play-by-ear and relies on roleplaying, but players are rewarded for creativity and roleplaying ability. After level one is fully achieved they decide where to progress next. Getting experience from going on adventures, looting dungeons, killing monsters, and such things is only going to give them experience in those areas. If they want to fully acquire the aspects of their next level they have to actually pursue roleplaying scenarios related to those aspects. That may involve spending time studying at an academy, or being tutored by a mentor, spending countless hours training, etc... HP is gained 1 HP at a time spread out over the course of levelling up.
I want to just comment on this one for a moment because there is a big problem with it: what if the players want to level up different things? Alice wants to study magic; Carol wants to train at a combat academy; Dylan wants to join a thieves' guild. Are you going to have lengthy roleplaying sections for each of them individually while everyone else at the table sits there and plays with their phones? That's not good gameplay. Are you going to quickly wave through each scenario? Then you won't get the roleplaying you want. Are you going to have all the players do the same thing? Then they won't be able to level up the aspects of their character that they want to.

I have had DMs who have tried to do things like this, asking each player what they want to do individually in their downtime and playing through it. It was some of the least compelling gaming I've ever had. Please don't inflict the same thing on your group.

EDIT: I guess I can cover some of the others too.

Armor Variant Rule: One issue I have with the standard rules is the armor AC. It doesn't make sense to me that wearing armor gives you an all-or-nothing damage evasion. Armor can deflect blows, but it can also mean being stabbed or smashed simply does less damage. Thus I am considering some Damage Reduction(DR) variant rules. So far I've encountered two options. Option one is that AC is completely translated to DR, and the other is that AC is cut in half and that value is added as DR. The problem with all of the AC being transferred to DR is someone with a knife can't hurt someone in plate mail, and that is not realistic. Someone skilled with a knife can stab in the crevices and gaps in the armor, and someone skilled in archery can shoot an armored knight in the slit in their visor with surprising accuracy (consider British longbows versus French cavalry). In the case of someone skilled getting into the weak spots of armor it wouldn't offer any DR at all. I was thinking of doing my own improvised rule where AC is cut in half and that value is added as DR (So +8 AC gives +4 AC and 4 DR), critical hits bypass DR, and adding a Feat for skilled fighters to completely bypass armor DR (or at least have a higher chance). Alternatively I could do something like giving armor its full value in AC and DR, and/or allowing any fighter to bypass armor DR once they have reached a certain level or some other combat value.
This variant exists in published material, and can be found in the SRD here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm). The Metagame Analysis paragraph there is spot-on IMO. It's a mechanic that can work, but challenges some of the game's basic notions of balance, and may have unintended consequences for the power level of some classes.


Hit Location Injuries from Battletech: This is a rule that I just straight up borrowed from Battletech. Whenever someone is hit by an attack it targets only a specific part of the body, and any injury has added effects such as bleeding, reducing the function of limbs, shock, and can have long-term effects such as a permanent limp, brain damage, post-traumatic stress, etc...
This sounds like the most reasonable of these rules to me.


Diminished Healing Effects and Longer Recover Time: This rule is a combination of something borrowed from Battletech and something I've homebrewn. I run a low/dark fantasy setting, that means magic is less common, but also has some diminished effects and extra restrictions. Mage classes level slower. Healing effects are not instant, but gradual. Magic healing does not necessarily 100% restore injuries. For example: Normally if someone gets their elbow smashed with a mace and heals naturally over time without magic their arm will never be fully functional again and it will take weeks before they can even get out of bed. That's in a society that doesn't use some form of superstitious healing method that's even worse for you, like leeching. And they will have chronic pain for the rest of their life. That type of injury can put an ordinary soldier into early retirement. With magic healing, there is a broad spectrum of effects depending on the quality of the magic used. It could speed up the healing process a little or a lot, and it could remove the long-term effects entirely or only partially. These rules make players much more careful about the risks of combat. One single encounter, even one in which victory is assured and quick, could still leave permanent scars and/or put characters permanently out of commission without killing them. I do rely heavily on roleplaying for these rules to function as I have not encountered a ton of technical rules for this sort of thing.
D&D is designed to be a high-magic system with lots of combat, so you're messing with some of the fundamental aspects of the game. I am extremely skeptical that you'll be able to pull this off, especially as an inexperienced DM, especially in 3.5 (which has wonky balance already). A low-magic game like this would be better suited for 5e, where the balance is much tighter between classes and there's less of a chance of making everything horrible by mistake. (I have some thoughts on how to do it in 5e if you're interested.)


Accomplishing Tasks and the Passage of Time: Time leaps can be made, but essentially my rule is: to acquire something you must roleplay it; for anything to happen it must be written. At least some form of roleplaying scenario has to transpire for a player to improve, acquire, or accomplish anything. Even for making a time leap I require something written in story form that depicts the passage of time and transpired events.
Time skips exist for a reason. Nobody wants to watch a movie where the protagonist goes to sleep and the camera just lingers on them for 8 hours of real time until they wake up in the morning. It's the same with D&D. There's an important narrative function to skipping things like that. Players are there to have fun, not to roleplay brushing their teeth and doing their taxes.

[Fizban]

Armor Variant Rule: One issue I have with the standard rules is the armor AC. It doesn't make sense to me that wearing armor gives you an all-or-nothing damage evasion. Armor can deflect blows, but it can also mean being stabbed or smashed simply does less damage. Thus I am considering some Damage Reduction(DR) variant rules. So far I've encountered two options. Option one is that AC is completely translated to DR, and the other is that AC is cut in half and that value is added as DR. The problem with all of the AC being transferred to DR is someone with a knife can't hurt someone in plate mail, and that is not realistic. Someone skilled with a knife can stab in the crevices and gaps in the armor, and someone skilled in archery can shoot an armored knight in the slit in their visor with surprising accuracy (consider British longbows versus French cavalry). In the case of someone skilled getting into the weak spots of armor it wouldn't offer any DR at all. I was thinking of doing my own improvised rule where AC is cut in half and that value is added as DR (So +8 AC gives +4 AC and 4 DR), critical hits bypass DR, and adding a Feat for skilled fighters to completely bypass armor DR (or at least have a higher chance). Alternatively I could do something like giving armor its full value in AC and DR, and/or allowing any fighter to bypass armor DR once they have reached a certain level or some other combat value.
This is mostly your perception. The fact that sometimes armor makes it so being stabbed or smashed does less damage is why it gives you more AC, while those less damage bruises and minor cuts are superficial and don't count as damage- the same way there's no rules for damage if you walk into a table or fall from less than 10'. Stabbing through weak points in armor with skill is literally the whole point of attack bonuses, and having a friend grapple them or using a trip attack to put them on the ground negates most of the AC from armor, possibly even more, allowing you to stab them (furthermore, critical hits are already the model for hitting vital spots). The only missing bit is that daggers explicitly deal less damage than other weapons in dnd because that's how the standing combat mechanics work. And forcing players to pull out a dagger to finish someone on the ground when they're supposed to be an adventurer with a cool magic sword is just lame. You could add an incentive where daggers deal double damage to people on the ground or something, but penalizing people for using weapons normally is a bad idea.


Hit Location Injuries from Battletech: This is a rule that I just straight up borrowed from Battletech. Whenever someone is hit by an attack it targets only a specific part of the body, and any injury has added effects such as bleeding, reducing the function of limbs, shock, and can have long-term effects such as a permanent limp, brain damage, post-traumatic stress, etc...
You know what's worse than critical hit tables? Fumble tables, and critical hit tables that apply to every hit. Unless your players are gluttons for punishment there's no way they're going to like this. Rules for individual limb damage work when you're fighting a miniatures battle with units that aren't important. When you're supposed to be playing a character, they eclipse the entire rest of the game.


Diminished Healing Effects and Longer Recover Time: This rule is a combination of something borrowed from Battletech and something I've homebrewn. I run a low/dark fantasy setting, that means magic is less common, but also has some diminished effects and extra restrictions. Mage classes level slower. Healing effects are not instant, but gradual. Magic healing does not necessarily 100% restore injuries. For example: Normally if someone gets their elbow smashed with a mace and heals naturally over time without magic their arm will never be fully functional again and it will take weeks before they can even get out of bed.
Normally in dnd there's no such thing as "getting your elbow smashed with a mace" -while some people write the fluff on healing spells as mending broken bones (and those people should not have done that), there are essentially no effects in the game that actually break bones in any way that gives you a penalty other than hit point damage. So you're penalizing healing for the sin of doing something that you've assumed it should do, because neither hit point healing, nor hit point damage has anything to do with broken bones or other permanent damage. Its the pool of greater stamina and skill that lets you turn life/permanent injury-threatening blows into superficial damage, until you're exhausted and the next blow will be lethal (dropping you to negative where you'll most likely bleed out even if you don't hit -10 immediately).

That's in a society that doesn't use some form of superstitious healing method that's even worse for you, like leeching. And they will have chronic pain for the rest of their life. That type of injury can put an ordinary soldier into early retirement. With magic healing, there is a broad spectrum of effects depending on the quality of the magic used. It could speed up the healing process a little or a lot, and it could remove the long-term effects entirely or only partially. These rules make players much more careful about the risks of combat. One single encounter, even one in which victory is assured and quick, could still leave permanent scars and/or put characters permanently out of commission without killing them. I do rely heavily on roleplaying for these rules to function as I have not encountered a ton of technical rules for this sort of thing.
So. . . what? "Mage" classes level some undefined amount slower, but even if clerics are "mages" they're still clerics. Basically all you've done is add a chance of maiming on every hit, and then leave no ability to heal those injuries. Unless they're phrased in terms of ability damage or drain, they won't be reparable short of the 7th level Regenerate, and if you're delaying cleric levels then how long is it going to take for the PCs to be able to fix the wounds they've been accrruing literally every fight since level 1? Do you know how many attacks a PC will suffer in that amount of time? Have you accounted for the fact that the frontline characters who can least afford these penalties are those who will suffer them first?


Gradual Levelling: . . . If they want to fully acquire the aspects of their next level they have to actually pursue roleplaying scenarios related to those aspects. That may involve spending time studying at an academy, or being tutored by a mentor, spending countless hours training, etc... HP is gained 1 HP at a time spread out over the course of levelling up.
Gradual leveling is a fine idea, but it raises the question of what level you ever expect them to even reach. You clearly seem to want a super-lethal gritty game, which is the exact opposite of dnd 3.5 from about 3rd level onward.


Accomplishing Tasks and the Passage of Time: Time leaps can be made, but essentially my rule is: to acquire something you must roleplay it; for anything to happen it must be written. At least some form of roleplaying scenario has to transpire for a player to improve, acquire, or accomplish anything. Even for making a time leap I require something written in story form that depicts the passage of time and transpired events.
And this is literally the opposite of a roleplaying game. So if I fight something and I don't roleplay enough I don't get xp? If I don't describe every single roll in sufficient detail I don't count as playing the game? Why bother using one of the most intricate rules-based mechanically sprawling tabletops if you're going to contradict the core mechanics at every turn?


If anyone knows of any good variant rules for added realism I would greatly appreciate it, and any tips or thoughtful insights are welcome.
(Should this thread be moved to the Homebrew Design or Roleplaying Games section?)
I have a bunch of weapon and armor revisions, of which I've been planning on further overhauling the armor into more historical basis, and some feat triangles, but I'd suggest taking a good look at what system you should actually be using. There's a grittier d20 based on the Black Company books, but while it lacked dnd casters and has injury tables, I'm pretty sure they still weren't "every hit" tier tables and characters could still reach high enough levels to fight an "unrealistic" number of foes- assuming those foes were properly 1st level.

'Cause that tends to be a standard problem with this type of gritifying, not understanding that the whole point of those levels is that you're climbing out of the grit and into being a superhero. The popular "E6" designation caps things based on the appearance of 3rd level spells and several common models that but real-life experts and olympians (and even many fantasy characters) at 6th level or lower (and then people want to char-op it because of course). That's more than 2/3 of the levels, 2/3 of the spellcasting system gone, but it's just a level limit so it still runs like dnd in those levels.

But some people think an accomplished warrior is like a 8th or 10th level Fighter, and the best has to be like 18th or 20th, and that army of soldiers is all like 3rd or 4th, and now you need a grievous injury table to make those characters afraid of being hit- nevermind that they could never reach those levels alive if such a rule was in effect. The answer to keeping dnd lethal is to keep your armies full of 1st level NPC Warriors, and your PCs never go past 5th or 6th. and that may be your aim, but it's a heck of a lot more important than mandating roleplay for every possible aspect of level up (which incidentally, hoses skill based characters while leaving casters almost untouched). Removing spellcasters entirely has certain obvious effects (and is common for E6 games that want to be gritty), but keeping them in the game at some mysteriously reduced capacity just means that there's a good chance they won't be able to do their jobs at any level.

Further, trying to turn dnd into a PVP game. No, not the PCs vs other PCs, but the enemies all being "realistic" Player Character classed foes. DnD classes are not balanced for PvP, spellcasting is ridiculous specifically to fight giant supernatural monsters (or if you like, monsters were made ridiculous so that spellcasters could be powerful)- and even weapon user abilities are built to let you fight higher and higher level monsters, with even moderately optimized melee characters tearing each other apart in seconds with no give or take. Looking at X level bland fighter vs X level b;amd fighter is a false comparison and not what the game is balanced for at all (even if it is balanced initially to allow bland fighters). Trying to make the rest of the game fit two high level fighters having a "realistic" fight means that the moment you involve magic or monsters it all falls apart. I'll bet that with all this focus on roleplay you're also aiming for people trying to avoid or realistically scum their way through fights and maybe not using monsters at all.

But if you don't like the core mechanics, the armor, weapons, wounds, magic, leveling, not going to use the monsters. . . why 3.5? What you're trying to do is just homebrew your own d20 system without looking like it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Forgive me if this comes off as sarcastic but you are aware there are other RPGs out there? If you're going to change so much about basic game mechanics then it really seems like what you want is a different, grittier system than D&D.

[Scarch]

Sorry, it´s basically impossible...

Oh, I didn't say I haven't already done it did I?


I suggest you take a look at Shadow of the Demon Lord and then Dark Heresy.

I've played Only War and didn't find it very realistic, but it was fun. I'll check out Demon Lord and Dark Heresy though, thanks.


D&D is not a game for realism. Is not, never has been, and (assuming current design paths) never will be.

The thing about realism in fiction is nothing is entirely realistic or unrealistic. Those adjectives refer to degrees. D&D is not very realistic, but it is, has always been, and always will be somewhat realistic. My question is not how to make it completely realistic, but merely how to make it more realistic. I've already made it more realistic in a lot of ways, and I'm just always looking for more ways to enhance the realism, because that's how I like to play D&D. If you think it can't be done, then I'm already living proof that you're wrong.


In short: this is the wrong game for what you want to do.

And yet I'm doing it, and enjoying it immensely. Although I still like Battletech more, because it's the most realistic roleplaying game I've played, it doesn't have mechanics for a lot of D&D material that I also enjoy such as magic and monsters. So of all the roleplaying games I've played over the years, right now I am finding D&D the most suitable for what I want to do.


Considering this is a game where flying lizards that can spit fire exist and those same lizards can transform into humans, dogs, cats, elves, etc, realism is already thrown out the window.

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of suspension of disbelief. People can accept that magic, monsters, and other things that don't exist in real life can exist in a fictional setting as long as they adhere consistently to the rules of their established setting and function in such a way as they would if they existed. Things like Dragons are more realistic when they are based on actual folklore then when they are based on other fiction. In ancient history people actually did believe that Dragons really existed. How do you know they never existed? If they could have actually existed, then there is nothing "unrealistic" about them anyway. What if such beings exist elsewhere in the universe on alien planets? Realism is not based on whether those things exist, but on how they should function if they existed. The unrealistic approach is to not even bother considering how their existence would actually affect society just because some people don't think they ever existed or ever could actually exist.


So far all of these responses have been from the misunderstanding that I am asking how I can make D&D realistic or implement the rule variants and homebrewn aspects I've mentioned. I have already implemented them and used them. I and my players thoroughly enjoy them. The question is, how to implement them better, how to implement more realistic rules, how to expand these concepts, and what other options are out there?

I do find it quite hilarious when people call things impossible that I have already accomplished. :)

[RFLS]

The thing about realism in fiction is nothing is entirely realistic or unrealistic. Those adjectives refer to degrees. D&D is not very realistic, but it is, has always been, and always will be somewhat realistic. My question is not how to make it completely realistic, but merely how to make it more realistic. I've already made it more realistic in a lot of ways, and I'm just always looking for more ways to enhance the realism, because that's how I like to play D&D. If you think it can't be done, then I'm already living proof that you're wrong.

And yet I'm doing it, and enjoying it immensely. Although I still like Battletech more, because it's the most realistic roleplaying game I've played, it doesn't have mechanics for a lot of D&D material that I also enjoy such as magic and monsters. So of all the roleplaying games I've played over the years, right now I am finding D&D the most suitable for what I want to do.

Buddy, I didn't say it was impossible. I said it was very hard, and would cause a lot of headache. If you're hellbent on crunching the whole thing out, then have fun, I guess. Be aware that however you go about it, you are going to absolutely destroy the modicum of balance present in 3.5.

If that doesn't bother you, then....snag the rules CoC has for getting better at skills by using them (divide by 5; iirc it's a d100 roll-under system), assign XP value to all class abilities, saves, skills, BAB, HD, etc, and require that acquiring new -whatevers- costs both XP and attempts at doing something (sparring practice, study of magic, practice healing, etc). You'll have to abandon the core design principle of D&D being a permissive game (you're not allowed to do something in D&D unless you have a piece of text stating you can) so that people can try to do the things they want to do, so to speak. Ditch iterative attacks; no one is going to make 4+ attacks in 6 seconds, ever (unless you want to hold on to that to avoid screwing over archers/TWFers). Assuming you've kept Vancian casting as part of the premise of your setting realism, be sure to provide rules for acquiring and tracking spell components. Ditch the spell component pouch; it abstracts away something that's both balance (ish) and an interesting part of the fiction. Maybe instead of HD, just lay the rules out so that DR and AC go up over time. Introduce death spirals (the more HP damage you take, the worse you are at stuff (pick your stuff carefully (do casters get worse? For auto-spells, how do you represent that?) (Maybe barbarians get better at hitting things as they get hurt?)). Maybe have an endurance track that ticks down during combat based on certain actions (full-attack takes X endurance, single attack takes X-Y endurance, standing still takes no endurance, casting a spell takes Z*spell level endurance, etc), and also when you're really hoofing it overland. Oh, your acquiring new -whatevers- (see above) also requires a certain number of successes at those things (which, if you're not careful, means that it's actually easier to get better the better you get at something. I'll leave fixing that to you), given that it wouldn't be realistic to get better if all you do is fail at it. I'd recommend ditching AoOs entirely, for the multiple attacks reason listed above. Be sure to have your injury-tracking system modify rolls in and out of combat, as well as denying permissions for certain actions (an archer with a sliced bicep is going to be worthless). I'd up the number of elemental damage types, as well; having 6-ish seems a little low. Adjust falling damage rules; people shouldn't be able to fall from arbitrary heights and survive (unless you've already done away with HD at this point. If so, good job, I suppose). Make stabilizing either much harder or impossible. Somebody dying on the ground of a dozen stab wounds isn't going to magically stop bleeding (unless the cleric gets to them, obv). You might consider adding a few new ability scores in; off the top of my head, it's patently ridiculous that Dexterity determines both how agile you are and how deft with your hands you are.

And most importantly, next time you come ask a group of people for help, read their replies, consider them carefully (even if they disagree with you/what you are trying to do), and, instead of acting incredibly condescending, politely redirect back to "I want to do X and would like advice with doing X, and I acknowledge that you have said Y about it."

God help you.

[Scarch]

What if the players want to level up different things?Alice wants to study magic; Carol wants to train at a combat academy; Dylan wants to join a thieves' guild. Are you going to have lengthy roleplaying sections for each of them individually while everyone else at the table sits there and plays with their phones? That's not good gameplay. Are you going to quickly wave through each scenario? Then you won't get the roleplaying you want. Are you going to have all the players do the same thing? Then they won't be able to level up the aspects of their character that they want to.

I have had DMs who have tried to do things like this, asking each player what they want to do individually in their downtime and playing through it. It was some of the least compelling gaming I've ever had. Please don't inflict the same thing on your group.

Well first of all we mutually agree upon what we want to do going into the session. Then if and when players branch off and things separate from each other there are some options. Other players may simultaneously be roleplaying what they are doing in the meantime. Other players may take on NPC cameos in each others separate scenarios. Or players may break up into small groups. Yes sometimes some players do get a little bored on the sideline, but this is usually do to a lack of preparation on the DM's part or a lack of creativity on their own part. In a situation with five players where four players each broke off into two separate groups the fifth player spent the time working on material for their own character, NPCs, and material for other scenarios so no one was actually bored or left out.



This variant exists in published material, and can be found in the SRD here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm). The Metagame Analysis paragraph there is spot-on IMO. It's a mechanic that can work, but challenges some of the game's basic notions of balance, and may have unintended consequences for the power level of some classes.

I think this sort of thing is more a problem of a lack of a fundamental understanding of roleplaying and an unbalanced focus on board-game style playing by the textbook rules. D&D is not a videogame where you are limited by the mechanics of the game. It is a completely unrestrained game in which you can do anything you want and your only limitation is your imagination. When I look at the scenario of platemail versus a goblin and the scenario of platemail versus an ogre I ask myself what makes the most sense. Should a goblin hit someone in platemail more often but do less damage? Absolutely, that makes perfect sense. Should a more experienced character be clobbered by an Ogre? If he's just taking it head on, then yes. That person is either suicidal or caught in an unavoidable and unfortunate situation in which they absolutely should be crushed by the Ogre. I think this comes down to a misunderstanding of the nature of power and what constitutes a higher level character. A higher level character is a more experienced person. A more experienced person can overcome a more difficult situation not because they have taken so many steroids an Ogre's club doesn't hurt them as much. A more experienced person has more life skills and situational awareness to overcome the obstacle. A smart experienced warrior would know that he can not defeat an Ogre head on simply because he's wearing plate mail. He would use strategy, tactics, and skills to outwit the Ogre and defeat it through other means than brute force and head-on collision. Roleplaying is more than just playing Hero Quest, moving down corridors, opening doors, and attacking monsters. Roleplaying is acting and storytelling.



D&D is designed to be a high-magic system with lots of combat, so you're messing with some of the fundamental aspects of the game. I am extremely skeptical that you'll be able to pull this off, especially as an inexperienced DM, especially in 3.5 (which has wonky balance already).

Actually I don't think high-magic and lots of combat are fundamental to D&D at all. D&D is first and foremost a roleplaying game, and roleplaying doesn't require any magic or any combat. I can play D&D with no magic and no combat and have fun and use the rules and roleplay and it all works out great. I've had roleplaying sessions where a farmer's daughter leaves home with her best friend, travels along the road and meets other travelers, and goes to a big city and gets kidnapped and forced to serve as a waitress in a seedy bar, gets abused, escapes with the help of a mercenary who then in turn makes her serve the mercenary camp as a servant. I made hardly any combat rolls, but mostly situational rolls and skill rolls. It was lots of fun and I still cherish that story. I kept her as a level 1 commoner for the entire game. She learned a few skills along the way and I added those skills without bothering to level her up. It was messy with lots of homebrewing, but it was way more fun then I've ever had playing D&D completely by the books.


A low-magic game like this would be better suited for 5e, where the balance is much tighter between classes and there's less of a chance of making everything horrible by mistake. (I have some thoughts on how to do it in 5e if you're interested.)

I admit I am somewhat curious. I haven't really explored 5e much, but I looked over it a bit when it first came out and wasn't really interested. I've already invested a lot into Pathfinder at the moment, so I'm not really looking to uproot my progress to a new system and start over again. There are quite a few more Pathfinder books I have my heart set on buying, so I don't really want to start buying books for a new version of D&D.



Time skips exist for a reason. Nobody wants to watch a movie where the protagonist goes to sleep and the camera just lingers on them for 8 hours of real time until they wake up in the morning. It's the same with D&D. There's an important narrative function to skipping things like that. Players are there to have fun, not to roleplay brushing their teeth and doing their taxes.

We have time skips. We just don't have players ignoring spell preparation and components as if they aren't there at all like I see in so many games. I've played games where people just say they attack the goblin and roll their dice, and I find it extremely boring. I find it more fun to describe things in more detail that most people take for granted. It enriches the immersion.

[Doctor Awkward]

To the OP:


Based on your suggestions and the content of your post, it's not necessarily the level of realism in D&D 3.5 that you have an issue with. Rather, it seems that it's the high-fantasy, super-heroic aspect of D&D that you don't like.

If you are interested in a more grounded, dark, and gritty setting to run a D&D-style game, I would recommend Thieves' World, put out by Green Ronin in 2005. It's a campaign setting based on a series of anthology novels written in the late 80's and early 90's. It is still the d20 system as is available under the OGL, but has quite a few changes, most prominently is how magic functions. It's a lot like the Conan the Barbarian universe where magic is a very powerful and prevalent force, but it is also very methodical and slow-- often involving lots of rituals, drawing diagrams, and several hours of chanting around a lit brazier. Magical healing, while available, is also different in that it does little beyond speeding up the natural healing process. Medical care is also very Middle Ages, in that they still practice things like leech craft and the humor theory of medicine. Combat is also incredibly dangerous and generally only done as a last resort at there are also rules for severe injury and infection. So no matter how much of a mechanical advantage you have over your opponent, there is always a chance you might take a vicious sword wound the you can get a septic infection and die from, or wind up with a crippling injury that is reflected in a mechanical penalty.


To Everyone Else:

The myth that 3.5 D&D is utterly incapable of modeling reality is something that really needs to be put to rest.

While it is true that 1st-level adventurers are capable of superhuman feats of strength, speed, and endurance... that's basically the point. Player characters are intended to represent those types of fictional heroes. But at the same time, the math behind mechanics of the world in which they operate are surprisingly close to real life: from material strength, to common DC's for skill checks, to the binary nature of abstract concepts like attack rolls. Breaking down a door is about as likely for the average commoner as it would be for the average person in real life, the odds of a house cat killing a 1st-level commoner is about the same as it would be in real life, and the odds of shooting a deer with a bow and arrow are pretty much what they would be for someone attempting it in real life. It's only when you get into the mid to high levels that you start to regularly accomplish tasks with mundane skill checks that are clearly beyond feasible abilities of human beings. But again, that is the entire point.

One of the best features of 3rd Edition is its ability to handle different levels of play, from gritty low-fantasy, to super-heroic fantasy.

[Anonymouswizard]

You don't want D&D at all, your adjustments will completely unbalance the game. In a game that's already completely unbalanced in favour of casters. Even worse, unbalance it in the favour of casters, as they don't have to deal with armour as DR, are behind the meat shields and so don't have to worry about hit locations or disabling hits, and don't have to deal with the new healing rules because they aren't taking (as much) damage.

What you want is essentially a lower fantasy version of Ars Magica. Characters are essentially created by picking merits and flaws, assigning characteristics, going through their early childhood, and then assigning experience points for each year. A magus has to go through an apprenticeship, but then gets more points to spend on both Abilities (skills) and spells. Throw in some hit location rules and more detailed wounds and you should be sorted.

[Scarch]

And most importantly, next time you come ask a group of people for help, read their replies, consider them carefully (even if they disagree with you/what you are trying to do), and, instead of acting incredibly condescending, politely redirect back to "I want to do X and would like advice with doing X, and I acknowledge that you have said Y about it."

God help you.

I never asked anyone for help. I wasn't being condescending. I don't want to debate with anyone here. I simply want to have fun, share my ideas, and see if anyone else wants to share their ideas. What's with all the nay saying and negativity? What's with the attacks on my personal character? If you have nothing to contribute then please just leave. I'm not going to argue with you or bow down to your superiority complex.

[Scarch]

Based on your suggestions and the content of your post, it's not necessarily the level of realism in D&D 3.5 that you have an issue with. Rather, it seems that it's the high-fantasy, super-heroic aspect of D&D that you don't like.

Yeah, that sounds pretty acurate. I don't really like high fantasy because it's too hard to make sense of how so much magic should affect society. I also dislike it when people want to get really powerful really quickly.


If you are interested in a more grounded, dark, and gritty setting to run a D&D-style game, I would recommend Thieves' World, put out by Green Ronin in 2005.

Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.



The myth that 3.5 D&D is utterly incapable of modeling reality is something that really needs to be put to rest.

Finally someone with a voice of reason.

[Zombimode]

I still think that you should look for a different system. GURPS might exactly be what you want.

This is not a question of it being possible of impossible to re-model 3.5 into the shape you want. It's the label and honesty to your Players. If you say to your Players that you have game of 3.5 prepared that probably not only expect an actual 3.5 game to happen but this expectation might even be the main reason for them showing up.

[exelsisxax]

I think you've missed the point. It absolutely is a fool's errand to try to change D&D in these ways, because D&D is implicitly and explicitly on the opposite ends of the spectrum. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much effort you put in, you can never make D&D do these things at an even moderate level. You could, with a very large amount of time and effort, turn D&D into something that is definitely not D&D, and possibly do some of these things well.

People aren't saying "you can't do realism", they have tried to save you from fantasy heartbreak syndrome by telling you to start from a non-terrible platform for what you want to do. When people say that D&D is bad for this, it's not merely opinion. They are objectively correct in that D&D is, in fact, not a good starting point.

I think a lot of the problem may stem from you simply not having played other games - you have a very "only D&D" viewpoint. People have mentioned things for you to look at, but I think you should just shelve this whole idea until you play a lot of other wildly different systems. If you don't start with broken legs and a severe muscular disorder you're a lot more likely to succeed at athletic endevours. Aspiring for realism and starting from D&D is like that.

[Recherché]

I have to say that as a player your houserules would send me running. Being bogged down in minutae and attempts at realism tend to be a lot less than fun for me. I'd much rather get on with the action in most cases. Also I'm not really a fan of spending large amounts of time playing NPCs or knitting while my character heals up or someone else is describing all their downtime activities. Having characters come back maimed from every fight means that I spend very little time with a particular character before they're too banged up to be played and I don't tend to bond to characters I spend little time playing. The more I'm forced to switch around characters quickly the more they end up feeling like chess pieces instead of people to me. In the end your rules may work for your group but they'd strongly discourage me from actually role playing and would be far more of a burden than fun for me. As such I'd stay away from your table in favor of knitting and video games.

[ComaVision]

I'd be pretty upset if I signed up to play D&D and was presented with what you seem to be playing.

"Roleplaying" through the rules and making up how things work as you go along is not D&D. I've played in games where I didn't know what my character could do because everything was subject to the DM's whims and I did not enjoy it. When I make a character in D&D, I have expectations on what they can do based on my knowledge of the rules.

[Geddy2112]

I second that as a player, any house rules more than a couple pages or major overhauls are going to send me away. I was once offered a dumpster fire of a campaign that focused on "gritty realism" in 5E, and after wading through pages of text, no thanks. I even gave it a chance to watch a session and I recoiled in horror. I agree that you can have realism in 3.X and just because there is magic firebreathing lizards does not invalidate gravity, how hard it is to break a door, etc. All fantasy settings have a lot of realism, but they have a lot of fantasy too.

The major thing being, that so many other systems do exactly what you want so much better. Dark heresy and similar systems use armor and injury the exact same way you use it. Call of Cthulhu has the "gain experience in skills by using them" on top of armor functioning like you want, injuries leaving permanant damage, what have you. There are just so many other systems that are designed to run with this kind of thing from the get go. Why reinvent the wheel, or in the case of 3.X shove a square peg in a round hole? As others have said, this much hosueruling has far more impact on balance and the functionality of the game as a whole. At best, this leads to minor power changes, and at worst, the game is unplayable.

Rules, for whatever system, are agreed on conventions on how to play the game. When I sit down to play pathfinder, I assume the DM and players follow the same rules and mechanics as written unless otherwise stated. What I personally want to strange DM's for doing is making ad hoc changes to those rules on the fly. With all the things 3.X has ruleswise, are you sure you got all of them? I am not saying hiding from the players, but that if you missed something, what happens when it comes up, and it changes how a player's character acts. If it changes their whole strategy for combat, build, or god forbid, character as a whole? In my opinion, that is incredibly bullcrap and I will get up and walk out on tables for doing so. I am glad you have fun tinkering with the system, and I know every DM and group has their house rules. If you like that, great, but this is not skyrim. Your players have to agree and want to play this. If your players like it and are having fun too, then by all means go right ahead. That said, coming here asking for advice as what we collectively would want as players, most seem to oppose it., myself included.

If anyone in my group wanted to run this kind of campaign, I would be totally on board. I love me some rogue trader dark heresy CoC and all the other great systems that do this. If they want to run it in a homebrewed 3.X, I will pass.

[BowStreetRunner]

With regard to gradual levelling, one thing you may want to look into is Epic 6 rules. E6 (or for Pathfinder P6) allows for a steep progression from level 1-6, but then a very gradual, feat-based progression afterward. It reflects a bit more of a realistic progression (from experience I can tell you the jump from green soldier to veteran is pretty steep, but the curve does level out as you ascend toward truly elite status), while still using the core of the existing system and therefore requiring less of an overhaul. Check out http://p6codex.com/ if that interests you.

[Fizban]

I never asked anyone for help.

If anyone knows of any good variant rules for added realism I would greatly appreciate it, and any tips or thoughtful insights are welcome.
(Should this thread be moved to the Homebrew Design or Roleplaying Games section?)
That's asking for help. The biggest tip is to use a game that's built for this from the start. The general meaning of a "good" variant is one that accomplishes the goal without otherwise disrupting the game design. Turning armor into DR, adding maim chances on every hit, and applying unspecified penalties to half the core class design, are highly disruptive. I can't very well suggest "good" variants since my definition of good says these are not. So since you aren't interested in looking at other systems designed for grittier realism, the only tip I have left is to follow through and finish writing your own.

[Eldariel]

I have to agree with the other answers. 3.5 is definitely not the system for this, neither are 3.0 or PF. Not only does the balance get messed up when changing rules but the balance is already basically wasted, fell down 3 sets of stairs, ended up on a skateboard, got ran over by a bus and then fell on the toilet and got flushed, twice. Add changing thr rules and it only gets worse, regardless of how small the change, unintended fundamental changes tend to happen in the rules. Also, considering this is a game where flying lizards that can spit fire exist and those same lizards can transform into humans, dogs, cats, elves, etc, realism is already thrown out the window.

This is definitely a nonsequitor. The rules are messed up - changing them rarely makes it worse. They aren't built for balance so changing them doesn't break any hardwrought balance status quo since there's no such thing in the first place. Balance is not an excuse not to change things in 3.X/P if only because the systems barely pay lip service to the concept at best even by default and balancing the individual parties is always down to the players in the group. The system barely lends you even half a severed thumb to that end. One of the strengths of 3.X is actually that you can change just about anything and the system still functions about the same - that is to say, it's down to the DM and the players. You can just eliminate non-casting classes entirely and the system barely changes for instance; all the actual content is in the caster classes. You can also eliminate basically any of the big combat mechanics without meaningfully hurting game design since the game has enough hedges built into it that on the appropriate level of optimization you can easily roll with it anyways. The cap of the system is literal omnipotence from level 1 so the system can handle a lot.

That is not to say 3.X is the best system to run for gritty realism. It's not (though the ballparks of the skill system and all the mundane limits are actually crafted rather well for what real humans are capable of). However, balance isn't the issue as much as style. Who cares if you nerf or buff Fighter or whatever when the class gets clowned by non-Fighters anyways and still does its thing regardless. It takes drastic changes for it to really matter. But trying to bend epic fantasy to gritty fantasy is an exercise in frustration. E6 is a good place to start though, as it keeps only the "gritty" levels of the game and removes the superherohood.

[Feantar]

Seriously, use GURPS.

If, however, we did not convince you, let's address your issue:





Armor Variant Rule: (...) The problem with all of the AC being transferred to DR is someone with a knife can't hurt someone in plate mail, and that is not realistic. Someone skilled with a knife can stab in the crevices and gaps in the armor, and someone skilled in archery can shoot an armored knight in the slit in their visor with surprising accuracy (consider British longbows versus French cavalry). (...)


That's not a problem, that is what precision damage (Critical Hit, Sneak Attack, etc) is for. If you wanted to make them more devastating, you could rule that this type of DR is halved or ignored in case of precision damage. Note, however, that since that makes randomness more lethal, it hurts the pcs more - maybe make it so that only sneak attacks (and variants of such, ie death attack) ignore this DR but criticals don't.



Hit Location Injuries from Battletech: This is a rule that I just straight up borrowed from Battletech. Whenever someone is hit by an attack it targets only a specific part of the body, and any injury has added effects such as bleeding, reducing the function of limbs, shock, and can have long-term effects such as a permanent limp, brain damage, post-traumatic stress, etc...


Bad, bad, bad idea. This, once again, harms the PCs who need to go through a lot of battles much more than NPCs. Still if you wish to persist, maybe make it similar to called shot in NWN (http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Called_shot). Something really temporary. Sole exception: You don't plan for your game to have more than, say, 2 battles per campaign. That way, each battle counts as permanent wounds accrue and characters need to readjust (see, retrain) their capabilities.



Diminished Healing Effects and Longer Recover Time: (...)


Same issues as above; a very very mild approximation of this would be vitality and wound points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm). Maybe use this instead.



Gradual Levelling:


Nope. Just, nope. This breaks things, at least to the extent you want it to happen. Let me be clear, this is an awesome way to advance, it just breaks D&D. The closest thing I could think of would be to divide levels in 3 points, and give the skill points of the next level in the first, the feats on the second and the rest on the 3rd, or something similar. Couple that with requiring downtime which you can narrate (but not RP through, unless you're planning on doing n solo sessions, where n is the number of players in your campaign). The way I described above makes characters a bit stronger (as they gain 1/3 of the XP and get 1/3 of the power so to speak) and breaks crafting (for 3.5, not PF) but it's the closest. Still problematic.



Accomplishing Tasks and the Passage of Time: Time leaps can be made, but essentially my rule is: to acquire something you must roleplay it; for anything to happen it must be written. At least some form of roleplaying scenario has to transpire for a player to improve, acquire, or accomplish anything. Even for making a time leap I require something written in story form that depicts the passage of time and transpired events.


Depends on what you mean by that. Example: You have downtime. The wizard wants to learn how to empower spells, so they say, "I go to the academy, pay the fee, and learn the spell". You respond "You get to the spire of the academy and delve into their records. It is a reinvigorating experience, being surrounded by your intellectual peers." That's cool. If you mean, let's roleplay you learning Empower spell for the next 15 minutes, and let's repeat that for every single thing you do and learn in your downtime, then, well, see the solo sessions comment above multiplied by 10.



If anyone knows of any good variant rules for added realism I would greatly appreciate it, and any tips or thoughtful insights are welcome.


Check Here (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/variantAdventuring.htm). There are also some sanity checked rules in the homebrew section (I think Grod has done some?)

[Anonymouswizard]

Heck, in Roleplaying Games General we could likely tell you the exact combination of alternate rules and potentially setting books you'd need to do this with GURPS.

The only thing that isn't a GURPS rule is life path character creation, and you really could fit that into GURPS. Say start with a template for species and culture (we should give humans a benefit beyond 'blank character sheet' or give other species less advantages and more drawbacks than they'd normally get), which gives day 50CP of traits. Then puck an early childhood package that gives day 20CP, a basic education package of 20CP, an adult experience package of 10CP, then let players take up to X more adult experience packages by taking drawbacks or reducing Attributes. I actually want to make this system for the setting I'm currently designing, I might have to write a version.

So, for example, an elven ranger might take the following.
Species: elf.
Culture: tribal.
Early childhood: inquisitive.
Basic education: hunter.
Adult experience: wandering.

[martixy]

I'm not about to beat a dead horse, but I do want to express my agreement with the majority of posters here.

As for those additional variants you're looking for, I would suggest the damage conversion variant:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/damageConversion.htm
It is a good one in that it sort of models what you're after, without messing with too many of the game's basic assumptions.
You could also easily rule that critical hits bypass this conversion.

[Thurbane]

I'll chime in here as well: D&D/d20 may not be the best system for this.

I was once in a game with a friend of mine as DM. He wanted to go for more realism, and made a system that was a home-brew mix of 3.5, 1E and home-brew rules.

Even though he had the best of intentions, the game was a disaster. It was abandoned after about 4 or 5 sessions, due to player dissatisfaction.

The most important thing if you are going to heavily home-brew/house-rule a system, is to make sure the players are OK with the changes...

[Mike Miller]

I don't think anyone mentioned this yet, but Grim-n-Gritty may be something to look at. It is a modification of the 3.5 rules to make it "more realistic" , which is what you seem to be looking for. I enjoy the system, but I want to echo Thurbane and say make sure you know what your players want.

If not GnG, check out GURPS. For what it's worth, if you already know 3.5, GnG will be much easier to run than learning GURPS.

[Bohandas]

It seems to me that the main obstacle to fixing the armor system is each hit becoming too complicated. It would be better if there was some way to automate things

[RFLS]

fixing

I think "adjusting" is the word you want. Fixing it would mean making it better. This is making it different in pursuit of a different goal.

[Scarch]

Dark heresy and similar systems use armor and injury the exact same way you use it. Call of Cthulhu has the "gain experience in skills by using them" on top of armor functioning like you want, injuries leaving permanant damage, what have you.

Thanks, I'll check them out. Someone else mentioned Dark Heresy too, so now I'm really curious. Sometimes I like simply drawing a collage of rules from various systems and making my own game out of it, so I always like gleaning more ideas for how to do various things from different games.


With regard to gradual levelling, one thing you may want to look into is Epic 6 rules.

Oh yes, I've seen that before. I might look into it in the future, but at the moment I'm already quite invested in my current endeavour. So for now I'm going to see this through, and I'll make a note of that for the future.


This is definitely a nonsequitor. The rules are messed up - changing them rarely makes it worse. They aren't built for balance so changing them doesn't break any hardwrought balance status quo since there's no such thing in the first place. Balance is not an excuse not to change things in 3.X/P if only because the systems barely pay lip service to the concept at best even by default and balancing the individual parties is always down to the players in the group. The system barely lends you even half a severed thumb to that end. One of the strengths of 3.X is actually that you can change just about anything and the system still functions about the same - that is to say, it's down to the DM and the players. You can just eliminate non-casting classes entirely and the system barely changes for instance; all the actual content is in the caster classes. You can also eliminate basically any of the big combat mechanics without meaningfully hurting game design since the game has enough hedges built into it that on the appropriate level of optimization you can easily roll with it anyways. The cap of the system is literal omnipotence from level 1 so the system can handle a lot.

That is not to say 3.X is the best system to run for gritty realism. It's not (though the ballparks of the skill system and all the mundane limits are actually crafted rather well for what real humans are capable of). However, balance isn't the issue as much as style. Who cares if you nerf or buff Fighter or whatever when the class gets clowned by non-Fighters anyways and still does its thing regardless. It takes drastic changes for it to really matter. But trying to bend epic fantasy to gritty fantasy is an exercise in frustration. E6 is a good place to start though, as it keeps only the "gritty" levels of the game and removes the superherohood.

I appreciate this post, and you make a lot of fair points. I'm curious, why do you think bending epic fantasy to gritty fantasy is an exercise in frustration? I have been thoroughly enjoying it so far.

I might consider E6 in the future, but I do want to see what happens at higher levels first. Although I don't know if any of my players will reach very high levels. I do want to spend a lot of time exploring things at level 1 before adding more to the plate. I am doing some solo stuff right now, world building, and creating tables and charts for a lot of situations. I put NPCs through various scenarios to see how it pans out in terms of the rules, rolls, and results. I will probably do a one on one session with my first player and then see what needs to be tweaked. I don't plan on adding a second player until I get a good feeling for what I'm doing with one player first.


Seriously, use GURPS.

I'll check it out. I have looked at it briefly in the past.


That's not a problem, that is what precision damage (Critical Hit, Sneak Attack, etc) is for. If you wanted to make them more devastating, you could rule that this type of DR is halved or ignored in case of precision damage. Note, however, that since that makes randomness more lethal, it hurts the pcs more - maybe make it so that only sneak attacks (and variants of such, ie death attack) ignore this DR but criticals don't.

That's an interesting point. How much would plate mail cause blows to do nothing more than an insignificant bruise, or glance off completely in real life? They certainly wouldn't offer any evasion mobility-wise, in fact they probably make it harder to evade even for the person with average dexterity (10). I might even consider giving armor wearers penalties that don't merely reduce their dex bonus, but give them a dex penalty. Anyway, I think I'll try the full DR and see how it plays out.


Bad, bad, bad idea. This, once again, harms the PCs who need to go through a lot of battles much more than NPCs. Still if you wish to persist, maybe make it similar to called shot in NWN (http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Called_shot). Something really temporary. Sole exception: You don't plan for your game to have more than, say, 2 battles per campaign. That way, each battle counts as permanent wounds accrue and characters need to readjust (see, retrain) their capabilities.

Well, the hit location injuries are actually one of my favorite things in all of the roleplaying experiences I've ever had. Have you ever been punched in the face in real life? Have you ever been in a real fight? In real life we avoid walking down dark alleys at night, we hear a gunshot and run, we see a knife and hand over our wallet. Real combat should not be so casual, it should be terrifying. I want my players to be terrified of dying. I want them to consider very carefully before they enter a battlefield. I want them to consider running from danger, or using NPCs as meat shields, or using wit to outmaneuver circumstances and defeat their foes in ways besides brute force. That's not to say someone can't become a very successful soldier. But then I'm not going to scale encounters to their levels either. Combat under these circumstances becomes much more viable when they're level 3 and still encounter a lot of CR1 combat scenarios. And then they even have to be careful that they don't underestimate low level monsters because they do have to treat every injury seriously. The CR of combat situations will scale not to their level, but to the circumstances they enter them in roleplay-wise. If there is a Litch King and they go confront him at level one, then they're committing suicide. If they're level 6 and spend their time hunting Goblins, they aren't going to encounter a higher level enemy unless the goblins go get an Ogre to back them up or something like that.

I have to go now, but I'll reply to more when I have time.

Edit:


Nope. Just, nope. This breaks things, at least to the extent you want it to happen. Let me be clear, this is an awesome way to advance, it just breaks D&D. The closest thing I could think of would be to divide levels in 3 points, and give the skill points of the next level in the first, the feats on the second and the rest on the 3rd, or something similar. Couple that with requiring downtime which you can narrate (but not RP through, unless you're planning on doing n solo sessions, where n is the number of players in your campaign). The way I described above makes characters a bit stronger (as they gain 1/3 of the XP and get 1/3 of the power so to speak) and breaks crafting (for 3.5, not PF) but it's the closest. Still problematic.

Breaking D&D is the point. You can't play with these rules the same way you would normally play D&D. You have to play differently. With one NPC that I am test playing she's just a Lv 1 Commoner, and she's learned a few skills along the way. She's had very little combat. Travelled, been kidnapped and sold into slavery, escaped, was picked up by a mercenary, was forced to serve the mercenaries as a cook, and stabbed one soldier in the back with a spear before running away. I can play D&D indefinitely without levelling up, or just adding skills when I feel the situation calls for it. I can look at any class feature and add it to any character under any circumstance that makes sense. If you just think about how things work in real life and remove the arbitrary limitations in your mind, then you are free to do anything your imagination can think of. It breaks the game and frees it to become real roleplaying, which is storytelling and acting enhanced by die rolling and rule mechanics. You don't need the battle between an armor clad veteran warrior and an ogre to be ballanced, you just need it to make sense.


Depends on what you mean by that. Example: You have downtime. The wizard wants to learn how to empower spells, so they say, "I go to the academy, pay the fee, and learn the spell". You respond "You get to the spire of the academy and delve into their records. It is a reinvigorating experience, being surrounded by your intellectual peers." That's cool. If you mean, let's roleplay you learning Empower spell for the next 15 minutes, and let's repeat that for every single thing you do and learn in your downtime, then, well, see the solo sessions comment above multiplied by 10.

Why are you so concerned about this? Don't worry, it isn't going to affect you personally. We will play by ear anyway and only roleplay the things we want to. I have just noticed in the past as a player that a lot of DMs don't pay any attention to things like spell components and preparation or training, and they just move on through the levels really quickly leaving me feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing as a level 9 Paladin until I fight a hydra and die. And then I reflect, why on earth was I fighting a hydra anyway? I hate that feeling of being pushed through events without understanding what's going on. I'm going to make my players progress slowly and go through events and situations thoroughly. I'm not going to bore them to death by spending 5 minutes on the toilet three times a day.



Check Here (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/variantAdventuring.htm). There are also some sanity checked rules in the homebrew section (I think Grod has done some?)

Thanks for that. I am familiar with d20srd.org, but that specific link is very helpful.

[GrayDeath]

Looking at all you have listed so far it looks to me this is what you want:

More Detail, more Grittiness, more "Realism", more Danger due to Battle, less OP magic, less strong Higher Level CHaracters, less abstraction, keeping a D20 based System. Correct?

If so, what you want is The Dark Eye (DSA). Its more or less German D&D and started with just about exactly your criticism to D&D and went on from there (and has been evolving since the 80ies).
The 5th Edition is out, and it offers CHaracter Creation and evolution without real" Levels no sudden HP extras or new abilities, just raised limits to your abilities), a lower Fantasy Magic System an a very very developed world.

Just a warning: even in its most recent evolution it is a slow, step by step, detailed Game that focusses on many details other Systems ignore(or "Hartwurst as it is jokingly called in German^^).


Now I am not saying D&D (or more likely D0 as it wont BE D&D afterwards) cannot be made to be semirealistic", its just better to use a system already going for something like it. ;)

[Florian]

Ah, yes, DSA 5. That actually turned out to be a very decent edition and Aventurien can really be counted amongst the best developed, maintained and in detail fleshed out setting there is around today.

[Mordaedil]

I have been punched in the face before. Headbutted too. By some strangers assaulting me in an alley outside of my apartment while I was studying in England.

It's not an experience I'd like to reexperience or recreate in a game format, honestly.

[Zombimode]

Its more or less German D&D

"more or less"? A game cannot be more german then DSA :smallamused:




Just a warning: even in its most recent evolution it is a slow, step by step, detailed Game that focusses on many details other Systems ignore(or "Hartwurst as it is jokingly called in German^^).

Yeah, "bis zur Hartwurst gehen" (Translation: "push it to the hard cured sausage") is a common expression in german RPG circles meaning that a game indulges itself with excessive Detail that other systems handle in a more abstract way (like simply having "rations").

Another amusing example: there is a "trade secret: marshmellow creation". You buy this incredibly usefull skill with the same character points you use to enhance you dexterity or spell knowledge. This is Craft(Basketweaving) up to eleven.

[Scarch]

I have been punched in the face before. Headbutted too. By some strangers assaulting me in an alley outside of my apartment while I was studying in England.

It's not an experience I'd like to reexperience or recreate in a game format, honestly.

And would you want your characters to be able to go down alleys, get punched in the face, kill their assailant mercilessly without consequences, maintain a lawful good alignment despite having just comitted murder, feel no pain from being punched in the face, have the bruise heal instantly, and then eagerly seek to do it again immediately? Because that is how most people here seem to think D&D has to be played. And they seem to think telling your players if they go down a dark alley they will feel the pain and suffer the consequences is subjecting my players to boredom, won't be fun, and can't be done in D&D. I may be exagerating a little, but I hope my point comes across.



If so, what you want is The Dark Eye (DSA).
Sounds interesting. I'll check it out.

[Recherché]

I honestly can't say that having to specify where the punch hit makes things more interesting to me. And making my character sit out parts of the game from having a bruise that can't be healed in any reasonable amount of time means I'm spending more time on the sidelines knitting or playing an NPC I'm not terribly fond of.

And I'm not going to have any character that even hints at Lawful Good do that and if they did then yeah their alignment deserves to shift but that's something that really needs much in the way of houserules. I role play my character because that's what the game is about and that's what makes it fun, not because of some arbitrary rules that the GM puts in place about it. I also don't particularly like being forced to Rp parts that are relatively boring about going shopping. I'd rather save my time and energy for the bits of the story that have serious consequences. You know saving the princess and destroying the world. I only have so many hours per week to spend on role playing and if you make me spend them feeling pain and waiting for other people to train then I'm leaving your table to go do something more fun for me. I already get to satisfy my masochism other places. Again if it works for you then fine but as pretty much everyone else here is telling you it's not a style that appeals to most people.

[Florian]

And would you want your characters to be able to go down alleys, get punched in the face, kill their assailant mercilessly without consequences, maintain a lawful good alignment despite having just comitted murder, feel no pain from being punched in the face, have the bruise heal instantly, and then eagerly seek to do it again immediately? Because that is how most people here seem to think D&D has to be played. And they seem to think telling your players if they go down a dark alley they will feel the pain and suffer the consequences is subjecting my players to boredom, won't be fun, and can't be done in D&D. I may be exagerating a little, but I hope my point comes across.

System matters. I chose the system that fits the intended style of a campaign the closest and run with it. So, yeah, when I want to play the above, then I pay D&D/PF. When I want to play samurai drama, I play L5R (and gods no, not the D&D-based variant), if I want grim and gritty, then Warhammer it is, and so on.

[Troacctid]

I think this system is plenty capable of modeling injuries like that without breaking down.

[Yahzi]

realism
You're swimming the wrong way. Trying to make D&D into a realistic simulation is a waste of time. The scale is wrong (the difference between a mundane slob and a professional warrior is a feat and six STR points, not 20 levels), classes and levels simply do not translate (there is no logical reason a wise old sage also has more HP than a buffalo), and trying to change them so they do destroys the entire flavor of the game (so why even play D&D at that point?). If you want realism, try GURPS.

Or you could go with the flow and embrace the craziness. Instead of trying to make levels represent reality, make levels real.

In my game, levels and XP are real, tangible things. People accrue magic dust and gain supernatural abilities because of it. Suddenly all the stupid things about D&D become actual facts of the game world. In practice the game plays exactly as it always had, but the fluff now aligns with the crunch. People do sidequests for XP, are unnaturally bloodthirsty, monsters exist that live solely off of a diet of humanoids, gold has a fixed price everywhere in the world - really, it all just works out naturally. And players love the control it gives them.

It works so well I wrote a whole series of novels (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J1HDEH4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) about it. Or you can check out my free game stuff here (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/217953/Lords-of-Prime).

[RFLS]

And if we're bull-headidly ignoring the plethora of problem, check Tippyverse. It treats the rules as reality and follows them to their logical, in-game outcome. The realism of the game comes from following the game's rules.

[Gnaeus]

If you don’t like GURPs, my second choice would be Rolemaster. The critical hit tables are the high point of the system. Combat is brutal. Not much healing. Detailed chargen. I would at the very least steal the critical hit charts.

[Feantar]

Why are you so concerned about this? Don't worry, it isn't going to affect you personally. We will play by ear anyway and only roleplay the things we want to. I have just noticed in the past as a player that a lot of DMs don't pay any attention to things like spell components and preparation or training, and they just move on through the levels really quickly leaving me feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing as a level 9 Paladin until I fight a hydra and die. And then I reflect, why on earth was I fighting a hydra anyway? I hate that feeling of being pushed through events without understanding what's going on. I'm going to make my players progress slowly and go through events and situations thoroughly. I'm not going to bore them to death by spending 5 minutes on the toilet three times a day.


You are right. It's due to a bad tendency I have as a DM to focus on innocuous details and constantly go into mini solo sessions with players interrupting game flow, which makes the campaign drag. I came off too strong on this, and I apologise.

[Quarian Rex]

I've already made it more realistic in a lot of ways, and I'm just always looking for more ways to enhance the realism, because that's how I like to play D&D. If you think it can't be done, then I'm already living proof that you're wrong.


Which of your suggestions have you already implemented in game? Under what circumstances? Over what level range? With PCs or with NPCs? I am genuinely curious. Most of what you posted sounds like it would be excruciating in play (as has been mentioned) but if you have had success then I would really like to hear the details.




In real life we avoid walking down dark alleys at night, we hear a gunshot and run, we see a knife and hand over our wallet. Real combat should not be so casual, it should be terrifying. I want my players to be terrified of dying. I want them to consider very carefully before they enter a battlefield.


For the average cobbler? Yes, you are correct, it should be terrifying. For a viking berzerker, would-be knight, or even just a mercenary who wants to get hired again then I would say that you are way off the mark. If you are implementing rules that make every man-at-arms feel like a vulnerable chambermaid then perhaps you might want to rethink that. To the bold go the spoils and all that, and boldness is a key to victory in fantasy (high or low) just as it has been in our own world. What you have described sounds like the very death of anything that could even vaguely be called heroic.



If there is a Litch King and they go confront him at level one, then they're committing suicide. If they're level 6 and spend their time hunting Goblins, they aren't going to encounter a higher level enemy unless the goblins go get an Ogre to back them up or something like that.


No one is arguing what constitutes a level appropriate encounter, even if in your campaign the PCs are in charge of who they encounter based on where they go. You are seeing push-back here because (with the changes you are proposing) no one can see how the PCs are supposed to get to the point where they can actually fight an ogre (much less an actual Lich) when they are crippled from all the goblin based maimings they suffered in their youth. It is things like the proposed hit location injuries and diminished healing changes that can lead to an even greater breakdown of in-world realism. For example, will every mid to high level warrior in your world be a cripple? I guarantee that they won't. Will every dragon, orc, ogre, gnoll, goblin, and brigand past adolescence be sporting such mechanical hindrances due to their far more violent base lifestyles? I guarantee that they won't.

There is a fine line between trying to add more realism to the game and just looking for opportunities to hinder the players. When it comes to this sort of thing, ask yourself what you are actually trying to accomplish and whether these changes, both to the PCs and the game world at large, will actually accomplish that.

Please don't take any of this as an attack or the like. I just think that most of us have had extremely poor experiences with this sort of thing, usually resulting in unplayable characters, or walking away from the game entirely when it seems like the DMs main goal is to just torture the PCs. You have a lot of vets trying to steer a new DM away from such a horrible fate. Try and take the criticism from that perspective.

But I do have something that might be helpful with this...


Gradual Levelling


Might I suggest looking at the Eclipse (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/51255/Eclipse-The-Codex-Persona-Shareware?manufacturers_id=617) rules? They essentially take every base class and breaks them down (everything from BAB, to skills, to caster level, to special abilities) to a point buy system, and it matches up surprisingly well. It would require some slight tweaking for Pathfinder but not much. You could give them X amount of character points for every fraction of a level and it would give you a lot of the freedom of a system like GURPS in a D&D game.

It's free shareware so take a look and see if you like it.

[Fizban]

It is things like the proposed hit location injuries and diminished healing changes that can lead to an even greater breakdown of in-world realism. For example, will every mid to high level warrior in your world be a cripple? I guarantee that they won't. Will every dragon, orc, ogre, gnoll, goblin, and brigand past adolescence be sporting such mechanical hindrances due to their far more violent base lifestyles? I guarantee that they won't.
I mentioned this before, but to elaborate:

It (normally) takes 13 encounters to go up a level. Taking an extremely conservative estimate, lets say a given character takes two incoming attack rolls at 50% accuracy in each encounter, for a mere one confirmed hit per encounter on average (even if the back row doesn't, the front row should). That's 13 chances per level of gaining a crippling injury. I don't know how crippling the Battletech rules are (and googling does not give a quick answer), but lets say you want 10% of hits to have crippling wounds. Combined with the massively conservative 1 hit per encounter, that's a cumulative 75% chance of crippling by the time you reach 2nd level, or 99% by 3rd level. Dropping that to 5% still gives a cumulative 87% chance of being crippled by 4th, again assuming that the frontline character doesn't get hit more than once per fight. And if these higher level character with more hit points are expected to actually use those hit points to absorb more attacks, to fight and risk being hit by things that are worth less xp, it gets worse.

Which is of course is what you've said you want, and you said your players like it, for now. Will they like it once they start taking permanent wounds though? This sort of "every hit is permanent" campaign relies on the PCs being able to rig fights against their opponents and gain xp even when they clearly didn't do any actual fighting. Classic examples are xp for collapsing or burning down buildings full of foes, dropping logs into narrow valleys, and smoking people out of caves into lethal crossfire. All of which are obvious tactical advantages that reduce risk and by the DMG should be awarding less xp, and involve no actual swordplay. Which leads to the situation where your swordsman can't level up by training because they haven't dropped enough logs on people to qualify for the next level of sword training, while actually swordfighting someone is a terrible idea. And the moment the DM forces a confrontation that the PCs can't rig, and it always must happen eventually else the game remains completely stagnant, well then these supposedly accomplished characters get crippled because the DM said so.

You could also ya know, post the permanent injury rules you're using so they can be evaluated properly and suggestions could be made.

[Mordaedil]

And would you want your characters to be able to go down alleys, get punched in the face, kill their assailant mercilessly without consequences, maintain a lawful good alignment despite having just comitted murder, feel no pain from being punched in the face, have the bruise heal instantly, and then eagerly seek to do it again immediately? Because that is how most people here seem to think D&D has to be played. And they seem to think telling your players if they go down a dark alley they will feel the pain and suffer the consequences is subjecting my players to boredom, won't be fun, and can't be done in D&D. I may be exagerating a little, but I hope my point comes across.
Yes, I like my characters to not be afraid of every moving shadow, because I don't think that's especially heroic or "fun".

Realistic, maybe, but playing for realism is a fools errand.

[Florian]

@Fizban:

I fear the OP is not talking about Mechwarrior or A Time of War (the Battletech RPGs), but rather about BattleTech, the skirmish-level war-game. Now that is actually quite "deadly", as during combat, mechs are pretty much wrecked and reduced to smoking ruins.

Basics: Structure, armor and components are mapped out in full detail across the "body" of a mech. Armor works "ablative", so equivalent of hp and you use big damage weapons to melt thru armor. Hits have a chance to crit and penetrate, damaging the components below the armor, either reducing their effectiveness or knocking them out altogether, so you use fast multi-hit weapons as crit-seekers. Once structure gets damaged, things start to fall off of the mech and are lost (and never forget, lucky hits against the pilot or reactor...).

It´s great for a standard game when everyone starts with some fresh mechs, but multi-battle campaigns or series of linked campaigns, the scavenging and maintenance rules, and so on, it gets tough. Play on a higher tech level, TO and SO and it gets even tougher.

Add to that, classic BatlleTech skirmishes take some hours and can operate on a rules complexity that manages to make 3.5E look like rules light. (Fun, nonetheless)

[Fizban]

@Florian

I googled battltech and got some wikis with hit location tables, but those don't include whatever the rules are for damage to those locations, hence it would require more digging. And no guarantee that the damage part is being run exactly the same even if I did.

[Scarch]

If you are implementing rules that make every man-at-arms feel like a vulnerable chambermaid then perhaps you might want to rethink that.

There is no difference between a man-at-arms and a chambermaid. They both die the exact same way when sharp metal objects protrude from their bodies, and they should both be equally terrified of that. Being a man-at-arms doesn't make you inherently brave.



You are seeing push-back here because (with the changes you are proposing) no one can see how the PCs are supposed to get to the point where they can actually fight an ogre (much less an actual Lich) when they are crippled from all the goblin based maimings they suffered in their youth.

Haven't you ever heard of strategy? Can't you imagine what would happen in real life if Goblins and Ogres existed?



It is things like the proposed hit location injuries and diminished healing changes that can lead to an even greater breakdown of in-world realism. For example, will every mid to high level warrior in your world be a cripple? I guarantee that they won't. Will every dragon, orc, ogre, gnoll, goblin, and brigand past adolescence be sporting such mechanical hindrances due to their far more violent base lifestyles? I guarantee that they won't.

Don't you know any war veterans in real life? I know a few, and yeah they are crippled and suffer from PTSD, and they don't go off on any more "adventures." I've watched documentaries about war and soldiers, and after the war people come back and try to live a normal life, crippled and emotionally scared as they are, and a lot of people don't come back. Not every mission they went on was packed with action. I think the way most people play D&D cheapens and diminishes the experience. In Arma and Dayz, because those games are so realistic, you get an incredible rush from killing another player. Your hands tremble and your heart feels like it's going to burst out of your chest when you're 30 feet from someone and all the cover you have is a tree, and you're leaning out and shooting at each other, and you know one single bullet could kill or cripple you. That is the real thrill. Not tons of action, but even a small amount of action being as terrifying and deadly as possible. It's not like only the players suffer injuries and the monsters don't. Being able to withstand less injury also means you don't have to inflict as much. So there is a lot more attention being paid to not being hit at all and landing one single hit. In real life most urban gunfights consist of people fire blind from behind cover and emptying entire magazines without hitting anything. In my game players will encounter monsters already sporting injuries and hindrances. The monsters and enemies are in the same boat as the players, so in that sense it balances out.



Please don't take any of this as an attack or the like. I just think that most of us have had extremely poor experiences with this sort of thing, usually resulting in unplayable characters, or walking away from the game entirely when it seems like the DMs main goal is to just torture the PCs. You have a lot of vets trying to steer a new DM away from such a horrible fate. Try and take the criticism from that perspective.

Really? You played with hit location charts before? You played with bleeding, brain damage, post traumatic stress? You've played entire sessions of training with social roleplay and no combat? You've played entire campaigns without leveling? I think maybe you're just skeptical of creative exploration because it might not pan out and want to stick with the tried, tested, and true. There's nothing wrong with sticking with the tried, tested, and true. Standard D&D works for a lot of people for a good reason. It's fun, but where I'm at now, after experiencing more realistic games like Battletech, standard D&D just isn't fun anymore. I like reality more than fantasy. I like living life rather than pretending to or watching it on screens or playing it in virtual worlds as escapism. And I just want more out of my roleplaying experiences. I don't think you've experienced roleplaying the way I have. Maybe you tried to make D&D more realistic yourself before and it didn't pan out. But maybe it takes more tries to get the execution down, or maybe it takes different variants and homebrewn rules than what you used? I'm not the kind of person who's afraid of experimenting just because it might not pan out. And I'm not the kind of person to give up just because it doesn't work the first try.


Which of your suggestions have you already implemented in game? Under what circumstances? Over what level range? With PCs or with NPCs? I am genuinely curious. Most of what you posted sounds like it would be excruciating in play (as has been mentioned) but if you have had success then I would really like to hear the details.

I have not implemented the armor variant rule before. I was going to use it in the past, but didn't end up getting to. I'm just going to try it and study the results.

I have implemented the hit location charts in several different roleplaying games in play by post and in roleplaying in online gaming. It is one of my favorite things in all of roleplaying ever, and it has been a tremendous success in the past. Of course a lot of people aren't willing to try it, but I always find players willing to try it who end up loving it. I've never had anyone say anything bad about it after trying it. People only nay say who've never even tried it. It makes roleplaying much more immersive. It makes people behave very differently in life and death situations. You are much more careful about what you say to someone with a crossbow pointed at you if you know that they can kill you. If you know you'll survive regardless then you might say something foolish without caring about the consequences. It really makes you stand by your actions and your words when you have to choose them more carefully and know you might die no matter what you do or say.

Diminished healing effects and longer recovery time is something I've only implemented in SWTOR roleplay, but it was a lot of fun. While some characters were healing players used other characters they had.

Gradual leveling is also something I've only used in SWTOR. I ran a guild of acolytes who rarely levelled up. The highest level character by the end was only level 6, and the Sith instructor was level 12. It was fun delving into the acolyte experience in more depth rather than rushing through it as most people did.

Accomplishing tasks and the passage of time just makes roleplaying the lives of characters have more depth rather than quickly going on consecutive "adventures." It involves a lot more social situations. I implement this in most of my roleplaying and it gives characters more personality and a fuller life. It explores the world in much more depth. And players don't have to constantly get injured or have short life spans when they spend a lot of time doing other things and train carefully before going into battle.





Might I suggest looking at the Eclipse (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/51255/Eclipse-The-Codex-Persona-Shareware?manufacturers_id=617) rules? They essentially take every base class and breaks them down (everything from BAB, to skills, to caster level, to special abilities) to a point buy system, and it matches up surprisingly well. It would require some slight tweaking for Pathfinder but not much. You could give them X amount of character points for every fraction of a level and it would give you a lot of the freedom of a system like GURPS in a D&D game.

It's free shareware so take a look and see if you like it.

Eclipse sounds worth checking out. Thanks. Do you know any 2D6 games? Battletech uses 2D6 and I find it much better than D20. In D20 every value is 5%, so you are just as likely to roll a 10 as a 20. In 2D6 you are more likely to roll an average result and less likely to roll an extreme result. So you have a 17% chance of rolling a 7 and a 3% chance of rolling a 12 or a 2. I think it makes more sense that you would roll average results more often. I am just going to go with the D20 for D&D for now, but at least for in the future I'd like to run a game with 2D6.

[Florian]

I googled battltech and got some wikis with hit location tables, but those don't include whatever the rules are for damage to those locations, hence it would require more digging. And no guarantee that the damage part is being run exactly the same even if I did.

Well, what's static is the "Determine Critical Hit" table and the "Mech Hit location" table.
For the rest, you'd actually have to build the entire mech, equip it with components and build up the exact hit locations table for each mech to see what happens when something critical happens or armor is breached. So one mech could have a right arm crit table of 1: Shoulder Activator, 2-8: Gauss Canon, and a for the left arm a table of: 1: Shoulder, 2-3: ECM, 4: Elbow, 5-6 Medium Laser, 7: Hand.

@Scarch:

The glorious days of playing Phoenix Command. I never had so much fun as when my character broke a shin, fever, blood poisoning, exodus, while my fellow players tried to rescue my character and fight of the Vietcong, while all I could do was trying to make stabilizing rolls and checks to suppress the screaming.

[Matrota]

You are not playing D&D. You are trying to change some of the most basic and vital aspects of the system. And in this, I mean it both in terms of rules and in general fluff.

I agree that actual fights are crippling and that there are real consequences for such things. However, 3.5 is a most commonly a system for playing a superhero and for experiencing simple (yet often quite mechanically complicated) fun, not for suffering through horrific fights, stress, permanent injuries, etc. 3.5 is blissfully ignorant escapism, not a simulation of middle age combat with the danger levels cranked up even higherdue to the addition of dangerous monsters and magic.

No one comes to D&D looking to play the knight who lost his ability to fight after being hit by some Kobold darts his second day on the job. If that were to happen, they'd either get it fixed or play a new character. The homebrew rulings in the setting of D&D wouldn't replicate the fear and horror of real combat, but rather frustration with a character's inability to do combat. The dread your players will feel is not from the dangerous battle they just had and its psychological and physical consequences, but rather from having to add another penalty to the list of growing reasons why they can never experience a growing stotyline and expansive combat-based adventure. Now that may be me misundestanding the gravity of the penalties you wish to implement, but these penalties will certainly hinder your players much more than standard D&D. I played a game for two years that used a forgiving system and we burned out after a while. If your players are constantly facing negative circumstances in a reward-based tabletop like this, it's gonna hurt morale and make you burn out even faster.

After all, people come to D&D to play the untouchable protagonist who outsmarted the dark lord. The legendary wizard who took out a legion of demonic invaders with overwhelming power. The grizzly barbarian who emerged from a swarm of enemies, outnumbered ten to one, covered in blood that was not their own. In D&D, it is often the most unpractical of things that bring the most enjoyment.

A realistic type tabletop can be loads of fun if done right, but it shouldnt be done in a system where the original design is to allow almost any sort of outlandish tomfoolery. As ATHATH once so eloquently said, 3.5 has "a PrC for skydiving dwarves and a feat that lets you to turn Turn Undead into Rebuke Hippos." This is not a realistic game to begin with, and you should avoid it if realism is what you're aiming for. I believe many people in this thread feel jaded because the concept could possibly seem anti-d&d to begin with, so forcing it into a system such as this is not only impractacle but also illogical.

[Alabenson]

To reiterate what many people are saying, D&D, particularly 3.5e D&D, is not really a system that seems well suited to the sort of game you've indicated that you'd want to play.

Now, just to be clear, if you and your group want to play a realistic, gritty, highly lethal type of game then there's nothing wrong with that. No one has the right to tell you what sort of game you can or cannot play. That being said, what you're trying to do is the equivalent of taking a Dodge Viper and trying to modify it so you can use it for serious off-roading. With the amount of modifications you'd need to make to reach your goal it would make far more sense to simply use a different system that's designed with the sort of game you want in mind rather than trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

[Mordaedil]

It's also going to get really weird when you have all these systems for sword and bow combat, but then you have spellcasters that throw fireballs around and you suddenly have a huge problem where you either abstract the fireball to the point where it's completely incompatible with your system, or you adopt the magic system into the game as well and they become utterly crippling.

[Pugwampy]

It's not supposed to be realistic and it's impossible for you to make it realistic , also trying to make it more realistic for players probably means they will have alot less fun. Realism and having Fun are not friends .

Your job as DM is to make it as much fun as possible for players .

It's just a game . So enjoy the 100 000 000 gold in your tiny lil belt pouch and raising from the dead over and over again.

[edathompson2]

A couple of points.

#1 Your subject line read "fairly new DM". So most assume you have not had or have very little experience running RPG games. That was a bit misleading. It's apparent you do have a great deal of GM or DM experience.

#2 You did ask for feedback. So with the above point, you got the reactions from "experienced DMs" telling a "fairly new DM" it's a bad idea. They are 100% correct, based upon what you gave them.

Fast forward, knowing you have had allot of experiences in role play games, go ahead.

This is no right or wrong way to play D&D. That's just dumb. I can take monopoly and add role-play to it. That doesn't mean it's not monopoly anymore. That's traditionalists freaking out that something they love is being changed.

I think you should run a full campaign for about 6 months and get "honest" feedback from your players. And don't try to derail their experience by rationalizing why their feeling about your game is wrong. SO many DMs do this. Most important thing is everyone is having fun.

Then report back in a post. You may get the "I told you so guys" but it would be a good post for people thinking about trying new things. You may even get "I don't believe that guy" for some of the positive things your players say, but you can ignore that.

Good luck and fun gaming.

[Scarch]

Well, what's static is the "Determine Critical Hit" table and the "Mech Hit location" table.
For the rest, you'd actually have to build the entire mech, equip it with components and build up the exact hit locations table for each mech to see what happens when something critical happens or armor is breached. So one mech could have a right arm crit table of 1: Shoulder Activator, 2-8: Gauss Canon, and a for the left arm a table of: 1: Shoulder, 2-3: ECM, 4: Elbow, 5-6 Medium Laser, 7: Hand.

I'm borrowing from Classic Battletech RPG which has all the stats for playing characters outside of mechs. The table for hit location is:

2d10
2 crit
3 left foot
4-5 left leg
6 left hand
7-8 left arm
9-11 chest
12-13 abdomen
14-15 right arm
16 right hand
17-18 right leg
19 right foot
20 head

I don't use it every time. It results in a totally random body part with it being more likely to hit in the torso/arms. I use it for unaimed attacks generally towards the upper body. For attacks that are going in the general direction of a part of the body there is a scatter diagram, it is also good for artillery.

You can use d6 or d10 depending on how many directional degrees you want. Say someone is making an overhead strike coming down towards an opponent's head.
1 face
2 left collar
3 left shoulder
4 right collar
5 right shoulder
6 head

You can make x the target area and assign a value to each direction in a hexagonal pattern. Then assign appropriate body parts.

There are descriptors and penalties for wounds of various degrees depending on the part of the body in the Hit Location Effects section of the rulebook. I just modify it to something relatively equivalent and roleplay it.

What I often do is consider a situation, make a list of outcomes, and roll. If I don't want to know what will happen next I make a roll. Otherwise I don't need dice at all to roleplay.

Battletech has a different system for damage. Characters don't have HP, instead they have a Body attribute that governs resistance to injury, and how much damage an attack does generates an injury of a certain severity. I was thinking of using the percentage of health lost to govern the severity of the injury. But I will need to do some test playing and then possibly tweek it or try a different approach. I mainly just try to find whatever makes the most sense. It's hard to gague how HP relates to injuries. I think a less exoerienced person had less pain tollerance and a less serious wound would incapacitate them in some form or another. Pain tollerance isn't necessarily related to experience though. Anyway, it doesn't have to be perfect as long as it works and it's fun.

I'm trying to visualize being incapacitated from the perspective of a level 1 commoner versus a level 5 barbarian. The commoner gets punched in the face and lies on the floor curled up in a ball sobbing. The barbarian gets his stomach sliced open and holds onto his intestines while still standing.


The glorious days of playing Phoenix Command. I never had so much fun as when my character broke a shin, fever, blood poisoning, exodus, while my fellow players tried to rescue my character and fight of the Vietcong, while all I could do was trying to make stabilizing rolls and checks to suppress the screaming.

Sounds awesome!

[Scarch]

You could also ya know, post the permanent injury rules you're using so they can be evaluated properly and suggestions could be made.

Your breakdown was pretty accurate. I want to award xp for more than just combat though. I want to reward quality roleplaying. People should be able to get better at skills simply by practicing them. People can become excellent fencers and martial artists by training at schools. Real life and death combat has things to teach a person that no amount of sparring can, but a person can be a regular infantry or a special forces expert sniper with the same length of time training and zero combat experience because one person is more skilled and trains harder.

A person going through fifteen encounters having a high chance of being crippled makes sense to me. I think in reality only a small percentage of people should be able to progress upwards of level 4 Fighter before retiring due to injuries.

But while I want there to be less magic, and diminished magic healing, I still do want there to be more powerful healing that can cure crippled injuries and bring people back from the dead.

The injuries can be found in the Classic Battletech RPG rulebook, Combat section, pg. 116-118 and 122-126

Wound Effects:
Stun: Any wound beyond "fatigue only" will result in the character being stunned.
Knockout: A serious wound or worse may cause knockout by pain or shock.
Knockdown: A significant amount of damage has a chance to knock the character off their feet. (They use a Body attribute, so I'll probably try Str, Con, or base it off a Fortitude save.)

Wound Types:

Fatigue Only: Non-lethal damage inflicts fatigue, this represents scrapes, bruises, and being winded.

Graze: Attacks that barely hit the target. The only immediate effect is stun. Multiple can add up to bleeding and shock.

Minor: Significant pain and requires medical treatment to heal properly. Includes cracked bones, deep cuts into muscle, or slow bleeding wounds. Each of these wounds inflicts stun and a - 1 penalty modifier to any rolls affecting the wounded area.

Serious: Characters can only take one or two of these and keep fighting. They need prompt first aid or could suffer permanent disability or even die. Examples include compound fractures and damage to minor organs. These wounds inflict stun, knockout, and - 2 to rolls. If the character does not receive medical treatment within five minutes the wound value increases by bleeding and does so every five minites until they receive treatment or fall unconscious.

Critical: Only very strong willed characters can continue to fight after taking one of these. Examples include severed limbs, serious damage to major organs, and arterial bleeding. The effects are stun, immediate knockout, - 3 to rolls, and half movement. If they don't receive medical treatment in one minute they suffer bleeding effects every minute.

Deadly: Only immediate advanced surgical care can have any chance to save the inflicted character's life. Examples include catastrophic brain or heart damage, the destruction of multiple major organs such as lungs or liver, or the severing of multiple limbs at the trunk. The only effect is immediate unconsciousness. The character has mere minutes to live.

Fatal: Death is immediate and certain. There probably isn't much left to put in a coffin either.

[Arbane]

Don't you know any war veterans in real life? I know a few, and yeah they are crippled and suffer from PTSD, and they don't go off on any more "adventures."

Might I suggest looking at Unknown Armies? It has a very good sanity system for traumatizing players.

And their characters.

But I'll point out that PTSD _might_ be a feature of modern warfare and its 'random death from anywhere, anytime' model that isn't necessarily applicable to earlier-era warfare. And some people get through entire wars without a scratch.


Really? You played with hit location charts before? You played with bleeding, brain damage, post traumatic stress? You've played entire sessions of training with social roleplay and no combat? You've played entire campaigns without leveling? I think maybe you're just skeptical of creative exploration because it might not pan out and want to stick with the tried, tested, and true.

Dood, you DO understand that some people here have in fact played games other than D&D, right? Some games do indeed have combat rules that have a non-zero chance of leaving a PC face-down with a sucking chest wound on Round One of a battle. Some people enjoy these games. I PERSONALLY am not that huge on Fantasy F***ing Vietnam Gaming, and choose my rulesets accordingly. So stop acting like you're some groundbreaking iconoclastic pioneer for creating Fantasy Heartbreaker Ruleset #6289151.

What rules are you going to have for spellcasters crippling themselves for life by trying to do their jobs? Fair's fair, after all.


It's fun, but where I'm at now, after experiencing more realistic games like Battletech, standard D&D just isn't fun anymore. I like reality more than fantasy. I like living life rather than pretending to or watching it on screens or playing it in virtual worlds as escapism. And I just want more out of my roleplaying experiences.

...what....then why are you.... ARGH



@Scarch:

The glorious days of playing Phoenix Command. I never had so much fun as when my character broke a shin, fever, blood poisoning, exodus, while my fellow players tried to rescue my character and fight of the Vietcong, while all I could do was trying to make stabilizing rolls and checks to suppress the screaming.

Are you being sarcastic? This being the Internet, it's impossible for me to tell.

[Eldariel]

Dood, you DO understand that some people here have in fact played games other than D&D, right? Some games do indeed have combat rules that have a non-zero chance of leaving a PC face-down with a sucking chest wound on Round One of a battle. Some people enjoy these games.

Eh, D&D is one of those games to be honest. Crits from particularly high multiplier weapons can easily one-shot characters on almost any level, to say nothing of spells like Slay Living, Finger of Death, Phantasmal Killer, etc. Just a random CR ½ Orc Warrior with a Greataxe rolling lucky 20 and decently on the second roll is going to 3d12+12 someone and few level 1-2 characters are favoured to survive that. Level 3 might have enough HP (it averages 31,5 so a Barbarian 3 with 18 Con would have 12+6,5*2+4*3 = 37 to survive the average hit at 6 HP) but that is still a CR ½ challenge.

[Arbane]

Eh, D&D is one of those games to be honest. Crits from particularly high multiplier weapons can easily one-shot characters on almost any level, to say nothing of spells like Slay Living, Finger of Death, Phantasmal Killer, etc. Just a random CR ½ Orc Warrior with a Greataxe rolling lucky 20 and decently on the second roll is going to 3d12+12 someone and few level 1-2 characters are favoured to survive that. Level 3 might have enough HP (it averages 31,5 so a Barbarian 3 with 18 Con would have 12+6,5*2+4*3 = 37 to survive the average hit at 6 HP) but that is still a CR ½ challenge.

Orcs OP, plz nerf.

D&D is weird - the first level is pretty much one-hit-kills (less so than in older editions, but still), after that PCs start racking up some Plot Armor except against really unlucky criticals and such, and then at the high levels it's all Save-or-Cry spells.

@Scarch: I'm pretty sure someone already suggested it, but I'll suggest it again: Check out RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. They use pretty much the same system, it allows improving skills by using it, it has hit locations, characters stay fairly non-invulnerable at all experience stages, and by combining RQ's dismemberment rules with COC's insanity rules, you can glory in the Roleplaying(tm) of every PC eventually being mentally and physically crippled to the point of uselessness!

[chimaeraUndying]

What sort of narrative are you intending these rules modifications to produce?

It seems to me like you're essentially circumscribing a small section of what D&D can already do and excluding everything else it can, which for a roleplaying game will leave a lot of potential players out in the cold.

[Segev]

If I'm reading later posts the OP has made in this thread correctly (particularly the second and third), he's already implemented these and is happy with the results, and is sharing them with us out of a desire to share his cool toy. To which I say: More power to you, OP! Glad it's working for you and your group.

It is HEAVY modification to D&D, however, and I suspect that it isn't what most people on this board look for in their D&D games. Many of us would just use a different underlying system, which is why most people offering advice have advised other systems to start with.

[Florian]

Are you being sarcastic? This being the Internet, it's impossible for me to tell.

50/50. See, I've grown up in an occupied country and started roleplaying with the kids (and their parents as gm) in the nearby army base, where most of the gms of that time were Korea or Vietnam vets. The level of detail that system offered was astonishing, especially when you have folks at the table that actually have first hand knowledge about what is modeled. If you remember the old TV series Nam, that's what we tried to play.

Just turned out that it wasn't worth playing so close to real life. A good simulation? Yes. A good and fulfilling game on a Saturday afternoon? Eff no.

Your other point gives food for thought. I know my share of war, got conscripted to Bosnia as an UN Blue Helmet, friends of mine work police or jail detail and are also pretty accustomed to violence. Work for my political party has me get in touch with WWII vets, former Stasi members and victims and such, myself having relatives that went to Stalingrad on both sides of the war to get massacred, so I wonder what changed to get that PTSD response?

[Quarian Rex]

There is no difference between a man-at-arms and a chambermaid. They both die the exact same way when sharp metal objects protrude from their bodies, and they should both be equally terrified of that. Being a man-at-arms doesn't make you inherently brave.


Saying that they both die the same way after fatal impalement is misleading. It is not about how they die after a fatal injury, it is about how capable they are at preventing that injury when someone else wants to inflict it. That, I think, is the fundamental flaw in your proposals. It excludes the possibility of competence. That is counter to any kind of fantasy, low or otherwise.



Haven't you ever heard of strategy? Can't you imagine what would happen in real life if Goblins and Ogres existed?


I've also heard that no plan survives contact with the enemy. But, yes, I am quite familiar with strategy. I'm also aware that the usefulness of any strategy is almost solely dependent on the ability to control a given situation. That is something that can be nigh impossible in D&D (even more so than in real life) as the characters we are discussing are low level and of limited resources, not to mention the DM throwing a monkey-wrench into their plans just to keep things 'interesting'. This is a necessary part of the game, but it also means that even the best plans can, and will, be made useless at a moments notice. Then the players will be engaged regardless of their best intentions and, at least in your proposed reworks, then be made useless.



Don't you know any war veterans in real life? I know a few, and yeah they are crippled and suffer from PTSD, and they don't go off on any more "adventures." I've watched documentaries about war and soldiers, and after the war people come back and try to live a normal life, crippled and emotionally scared as they are, and a lot of people don't come back. Not every mission they went on was packed with action.


I used to be in the military and I know people who have spent a lot of time overseas. None of them have come back crippled (though they know some who have suffered serious injury). And many of them volunteered for tour after tour (going off on more "adventures"), some out of a sense of duty, some for money, some because it was all they really knew. And this was all without the motivation of non-human marauders threatening their homes on a daily basis. It is statements like the above that make me think that you really haven't thought this through, or perhaps have thought this through in the completely wrong way.



I think the way most people play D&D cheapens and diminishes the experience. In Arma and Dayz, because those games are so realistic, you get an incredible rush from killing another player. Your hands tremble and your heart feels like it's going to burst out of your chest when you're 30 feet from someone and all the cover you have is a tree, and you're leaning out and shooting at each other, and you know one single bullet could kill or cripple you. That is the real thrill. Not tons of action, but even a small amount of action being as terrifying and deadly as possible.


If you are using Arma and DayZ as your templates then you must recognize what makes their features work and what doesn't. While they have penalties for combat damage they are never crippling, merely mildly debilitating, slowing the character but never disabling him. And all combat damage can be cured completely. Sometimes in nigh magical ways (apparently a dose of morphine can completely heal broken bones instantly. The more you know... ). Now imagine trying to play DayZ if those penalties never went away. Or if your character lost an arm and couldn't use firearms anymore (pistols you say? Good luck with the reload). What if you were playing the game because you wanted to play a realistic shooter? You can't do the thing that drew you to the game. Is the game playable? Sure. You could hobble around hoping to find food and water. Perhaps occasionally set up a desperate ambush and pray for success, and that moment could be quite exciting. Would you log on the next day to keep doing it? And the next? How long would you bother playing a 'game' that has made it impossible to accomplish the things you want to? You wouldn't. You would just respawn and try again with a fresh start. Because that character is disposable. And disposable characters are anathema to roleplaying.

Permanent injury on player characters (without the ability to be removed) is usually death to a game. There is a reason why you were having such a hard time finding comparable rules in other RPGs. Permanent disablement of a character removes their ability to act and removal of player agency in an RPG is one of the most damaging things you can do.



It's not like only the players suffer injuries and the monsters don't. Being able to withstand less injury also means you don't have to inflict as much. So there is a lot more attention being paid to not being hit at all and landing one single hit.


I get that this sort of thing is your goal, it is also the reason you keep hearing the same chorus over and over. Past level two (if that) D&D is not a game where landing that single hit will be decisive (outside extremely niche, and usually TO, builds, and even then not till later levels).



In real life most urban gunfights consist of people fire blind from behind cover and emptying entire magazines without hitting anything.


Yup, cover fire is a great luxury in ranged combat, one that is currently heavily exploited since ranged is the default medium of war. That is not the case in medieval times, melee was the default and 3.P is set up to reflect this. Trying to force the modern war meta into a fantasy game is probably a mistake.



In my game players will encounter monsters already sporting injuries and hindrances. The monsters and enemies are in the same boat as the players, so in that sense it balances out.


See, this is where I think you are being disingenuous. So, will every foe the PCs encounter of 4 HD or higher be a cripple (you have already stated that character shouldn't get to be a 4th level martial without crippling injuries)? No, they won't. Because the BBEG trying to swing a sword from a wheelchair is not threatening. The bandit leader will have a stylish scar across one eye (perhaps giving him a -1 to perception, for balance) and "Lucky" Harold will be in the back with a peg leg as a reminder to the group that this is a grim and dirty environment. The rest will remain a threat, and so be relatively unpenalized. To do otherwise is to remove the threat from the antagonists and that is something that a DM cannot do.



Really? You played with hit location charts before? You played with bleeding, brain damage, post traumatic stress? You've played entire sessions of training with social roleplay and no combat? You've played entire campaigns without leveling?


Yes to all four. I've had social RP games where negotiating with dragons was the primary form of conflict resolution. I've had games were we didn't level up for the better part of a year because the DM was trying something new with how he wanted to handle progression. One of the first RPGs that I got into (way back in the day) was Rolemaster which is a modular system designed to have any component split off and dropped into another system, character creation, combat, magic, etc., to varying levels of success. It is famous for its critical hit tables and their unmitigated brutality. Just a few examples...



- Strike to chest. If foe has plate chest armor, he drops and dies in 9 rounds. If not, he dies instantly.
- Strike through foe's neck breaks backbone and severs spine. Foe is paralyzed from the neck down.
- Strike through brain makes life difficult for foe. You have a half round left to act.


So, yes, I am very familiar with location based non-HP based crippling injuries. Such options were horribly glorious and could make or break a session. You know what made that even vaguely playable? The ability to actually deal with that kind of damage. It had entire spell lists dedicated to various forms of bone, muscle, and nerve repair. And such things were available relatively early, starting around 3-4th level, early enough that it makes sense that the village priest may have the capability to repair some of the crippling penalties that come with a violent lifestyle. If you want to have such casually available crippling penalties you must also provide the means to overcome them, something other than just avoidance. That seems to be an element that eludes you.



I don't think you've experienced roleplaying the way I have.


Oh, perhaps, who is to say. But I think that I have. I (and many, many, others) have experienced gripping moments of storytelling and emergent gameplay. It's one of the things that keeps drawing me back to the hobby. I have also experienced many failed attempts at such. Attempts that failed largely because attempts were made to shoehorn in elements that did not mesh and had unforeseen effects on the rest of the campaign.



I'm not the kind of person who's afraid of experimenting just because it might not pan out. And I'm not the kind of person to give up just because it doesn't work the first try.


Not saying that you should give up, just saying that you should start from a valid design perspective. From your OP and further posts it seems like you are approaching this from a very punitive point of view. Spellcasters have restricted progression, martials are saddled with crippling and permanent penalties should they actually enter combat, and magical healing is made near useless. You can't 'fix' a game by penalizing anyone who plays it. That is just poor game design.

I don't think your goals are without merit, I just think that the methods that you have proposed are shortsighted and detrimental to the long term health of the campaign.



I have not implemented the armor variant rule before. I was going to use it in the past, but didn't end up getting to. I'm just going to try it and study the results.

I have implemented the hit location charts in several different roleplaying games in play by post and in roleplaying in online gaming. It is one of my favorite things in all of roleplaying ever, and it has been a tremendous success in the past. Of course a lot of people aren't willing to try it, but I always find players willing to try it who end up loving it. I've never had anyone say anything bad about it after trying it. People only nay say who've never even tried it. It makes roleplaying much more immersive. It makes people behave very differently in life and death situations. You are much more careful about what you say to someone with a crossbow pointed at you if you know that they can kill you. If you know you'll survive regardless then you might say something foolish without caring about the consequences. It really makes you stand by your actions and your words when you have to choose them more carefully and know you might die no matter what you do or say.


I think that there is a bit of a disconnect here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that you were planning to use such things in an actual real-time game. Adding more fluff text to a play by post response and having hit locations automatically handled in an online game are a world apart from bogging down an actual game turn with an extra 2-3 rolls for every attack. The solution that I believe you have mentioned is something along the lines of, "Trust me, I'll use it when appropriate", which opens up another danger. You are a bad judge of when to use such things. This isn't a slight to you personally, just an aspect of human nature. Like playing the slap game, where two people are told to take turns slapping each other but only as hard as the other person hits. It always results in a full force brawling match. No exceptions. What you see as dramatically appropriate someone else will inevitably see as a spiteful hit when a character is down, or a cheap way to snatch away a well earned victory.

If you want to do something like this you have to separate it from your personal judgement, allowing it to harm your own plans as much as it might the players. You also have to make it far more rare than what you are proposing, both to maintain the impact of such things but also to allow the martial aspects of the game to be functional. Every strike should carry the threat of maimings, not the actual maimings.



Diminished healing effects and longer recovery time is something I've only implemented in SWTOR roleplay, but it was a lot of fun.


Diminished healing tends to just slow gameplay to a crawl but it can be handled. It is the combination of diminished healing with permanent crippling injuries that makes things unplayable. This really is a one or the other situation. Either diminished healing with temporary penalties that will heal, or permanent penalties that have achievable magical countermeasures. Doubling down on these will just kill your game as each character eventually becomes useless.



While some characters were healing players used other characters they had.


If your solution to a character becoming unplayable is for them to play other characters, I see a problem. This leads players to see their characters as disposable, and that lack of player investment is the enemy of any kind of effective RP.



Gradual leveling is also something I've only used in SWTOR. I ran a guild of acolytes who rarely levelled up. The highest level character by the end was only level 6, and the Sith instructor was level 12. It was fun delving into the acolyte experience in more depth rather than rushing through it as most people did.


See, this just sounds like standard slow leveling. This is a far cry from making a player RP a training montage for every single HP they gain. Forced RP for every single aspect of character progression is purely unsustainable. Doing that for a single character for a single level would be a campaign derailing exercise in tedium. Doing that for an entire party every single level would be an act of self-destructive masochism. This is really something that needs to be streamlined and codified ahead of time. The players need to know the details of this ahead of time so they can plan for it. Just saying, "Surprise! For you to get your 4th level Fighter feat you need to go to the misty mountains and train under Pai Mei for the next six months!", is poor form at best.



Accomplishing tasks and the passage of time just makes roleplaying the lives of characters have more depth rather than quickly going on consecutive "adventures." It involves a lot more social situations. I implement this in most of my roleplaying and it gives characters more personality and a fuller life. It explores the world in much more depth. And players don't have to constantly get injured or have short life spans when they spend a lot of time doing other things and train carefully before going into battle.


This is just one of the many standard ways to play D&D. Some games have a higher pace, some have a slower pace. Just try not to put an over emphasis on training (a recurring theme I have seen in your posts). Training can only get someone so far, then it requires experience to actually progress. I think that is my main concern with much of your proposals. It seems like you think that the best way to be a fighter is to never actually use their skills for fear of injury but to instead just train in the dojo and that this somehow teaches them how to be a master of combat. That is so far removed from reality that it would actually break my suspension if disbelief in your game.



Eclipse sounds worth checking out. Thanks. Do you know any 2D6 games? Battletech uses 2D6 and I find it much better than D20. In D20 every value is 5%, so you are just as likely to roll a 10 as a 20. In 2D6 you are more likely to roll an average result and less likely to roll an extreme result. So you have a 17% chance of rolling a 7 and a 3% chance of rolling a 12 or a 2. I think it makes more sense that you would roll average results more often. I am just going to go with the D20 for D&D for now, but at least for in the future I'd like to run a game with 2D6.


Ever thought of using the Bell Curve Rolls (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/bellCurveRolls.htm) optional rule? It standardizes the outcome somewhat and takes away some of the insane swing inherent to D20 systems. Some other suggestions that might be useful to achieve your ends (in a way that I don't think would be as destructive) would be to use something like the Damage Conversion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/damageConversion.htm). While this might seem counter-intuitive, since it effectively makes combat 'less' dangerous because being dropped in combat is more likely to result in unconsciousness rather than death. The key here is that armor now actually provides real protection from death (as it should) but not defeat. This gives them a reason to risk themselves (with appropriate protection) without providing an actual edge in combat. Use this as a means to incorporate the hit location rules. Say that anyone rendered unconscious in combat gets to roll for wounds (as you like). That way you have a mechanical way for war survivors to actually come back wearing their wounds, one that is non-arbitrary and a result of actual defeat (and therefore is earned).

Still want casual maimings to be a threat? Tie them to crits. If the crit confirmation would also be a crit then roll on the wound tables, use the Rolemaster crit tables in Arms Law (a google search will find you something) and use the severity column based on the crit multiplier of the weapon (x2 on column A, x3 on column B, etc., perhaps increase the column on a natural 20 or something). Allow the Restoration spells to undo the damage at varying effectiveness with additional casting times (3hrs for Lesser, 1hr for Restoration, standard casting time for Greater, maybe even restrict this use to Clerics with the Healing Domain?) with additional material component costs (100gp? 1,000gp? Balance to taste). The key here is to make injuries at low level (and even higher levels) a tough call as to whether to live with an injury or spend money you don't have to remove it, but allow magic in the world to work actual magic. Access to this magic does not need to a trivial concern but actual curative options, at all levels of the campaign, has to be something that exists. Characters (and players) need to have hope, and the hope for recovery is something that really shouldn't be denied.

This went on way longer than I thought. Just some thoughts.

[Scarch]

Dood, you DO understand that some people here have in fact played games other than D&D, right? Some games do indeed have combat rules that have a non-zero chance of leaving a PC face-down with a sucking chest wound on Round One of a battle. Some people enjoy these games. I PERSONALLY am not that huge on Fantasy F***ing Vietnam Gaming, and choose my rulesets accordingly. So stop acting like you're some groundbreaking iconoclastic pioneer for creating Fantasy Heartbreaker Ruleset #6289151.

You completely missed my point. You may have played other realistic games and/or tried to make D&D, but you are criticising my playstyle without experiencing it or knowing much about it. You haven't tried to play D&D with my exact set of adjustments, or my approach to roleplaying in general. If you did you might actually enjoy it. Did you ever consider that? Deciding you won't like something without giving it a fair chance is pretty closed minded.

[Zombimode]

I get that this sort of thing is your goal, it is also the reason you keep hearing the same chorus over and over. Past level two (if that) D&D is not a game where landing that single hit will be decisive (outside extremely niche, and usually TO, builds, and even then not till later levels).

I do very much argee with you points, but there is more to be said about this point.

While true that past the very low levels D&D 3.5 is seldom about single hits, single full attack routines ARE what are decisive. And since full attack routines are pretty much a D&D thing the difference to "single hit matters" systems is smaller than you would think.

Sure, the single hit with a bow shot by a 4th Level fighter is by itself not a threat to a 10th Level character. But the full attack routine of a CR 10 melee threat very much is.

Simply Standing there and taking the full attack is often a death sentence at higher levels. But 3.5 actually provides means to take on combat from the angle of Action denial with the requirement of a full round Action for a full attack as the most Basic part. This is why I'm so vehemently against full attacks as standart Action and would never employ such a houserule in my games since it removes one of the most vital aspects of the higher Level melee metagame (which is MUCH more important than typical forum talk make it out to be....).

[Scarch]

It is HEAVY modification to D&D, however, and I suspect that it isn't what most people on this board look for in their D&D games. Many of us would just use a different underlying system, which is why most people offering advice have advised other systems to start with.

Yeah, well I'm happy to hear about other systems that I can draw resources from, but I'm still using D&D as a base. If I end up changing my base I'll consider the recommendations. I have been keeping track of them. But I am at least committed to D&D for this project. I want to try it for a while and see how it goes. I am making full use of my D&D rulebooks and only cetain sections of Battletch, the rest is just my personal philosophy of roleplaying. I really don't like it when people come in and post just to say they don't like or agree with my approach to roleplaying. Lol, it sounds like a lot of people are opposed to creativity and innovation. I wasn't expecting such a large number of those posts.

[XionUnborn01]

Yeah, well I'm happy to hear about other systems that I can draw resources from, but I'm still using D&D as a base. If I end up changing my base I'll consider the recommendations. I have been keeping track of them. But I am at least committed to D&D for this project. I want to try it for a while and see how it goes. I am making full use of my D&D rulebooks and only cetain sections of Battletch, the rest is just my personal philosophy of roleplaying. I really don't like it when people come in and post just to say they don't like or agree with my approach to roleplaying. Lol, it sounds like a lot of people are opposed to creativity and innovation. I wasn't expecting such a large number of those posts.

People aren't opposed to creativity and innovation, that's what this game is about. They're against what you're doing because there's other, better ways to do most of it and some parts people generally don't think should be part of a game.

You're taking a Chevy impala and trying to modify it to win races when you could start with a Lamborghini instead.

[Scarch]

I think one mistake a lot of people make is when you make the rules more realistic you also have to make your characters behave more realistically. People need to stop trying to imagine hack and slash with realism. But personally I enjoy going through multiple characters to their deaths, even if many die early. I also use NPC classes a lot for PC's. One guy I met played a peasant with a pitch fork who was paranoid of mages and would run away whenever he encountered them, even if they were members of his own party. So he regularly abandoned the party he was playing with. I thought it was hilarious and I love this sort of thing.

Another assumption I think a lot of people make is that the CR of encounters needs to go up steadily with the party as they level. I'm not going to do that. In a battlefield environment for example, there will be lots of level one fighters even if my players are level 4 or higher. And even when my players are level 1 there will be higher level enemies on the battlefield who could easily one hit KO them. How do you survive? Not by being a higher level necessarily, or by wearing armor necessarily. You survive by being smart and using your brain. Rushing into the fray is not a smart thing to do if you want to live very long, but a lot of people get sweapt up in the frenzy of battle and get killed.

It's not about wether they can survive to reach level 20. Roleplaying to me is more about telling a story. If it's a story about a young soldier who goes to war and gets himself killed, that isn't a good ir bad story based on how young he is when he dies (or how quickly he dies in game). It's a good story if it's executed well. The quality of roleplaying is what I'm most concerned about, and rules are mearly tools to enhance the experience.

[Grod_The_Giant]

To be honest, I don't... know that you really want a ruleset at all.

From everything you've posted, you seem to be interested in a very freeform sort of experience-- using the dice occasionally when random chance is necessary, and otherwise handling everything else via collaborative storytelling ("You pour oil on the stairs so the knight slips and falls, then jump down and shove a dagger in the eye slot before he can get up? Awesome. He goes down hard.") Which is fine! I've done similar things and had a lot of fun doing so. But... more than power levels, more than realism, more than progression, D&D as a system* is almost entirely dedicated to "roll-playing," to being able to look at the numbers on your sheet and say "I have X that lets me do Y." If you want "X" to be "player creativity" rather than "the rules say I can," that's totally valid, but you're not going to get much out of D&D. Look at class features and spells and feats and such to get an idea for things your characters can learn, maybe use classes as templates for how a character can advance, maybe even use abilities and even skills for random resolution, but otherwise don't sweat precise rules about... anything, from the sounds of it.



*And note that by "D&D" I mean "the modern versions of Dungeons and Dragons, as published by Wizards of the Coast," rather than "roleplaying games in general." As has persistently been mentioned, there are games all up and down the spectrum, from extremely high-powered ones to extremely gritty, from painfully intricate to almost mechanically nonexistent.

[Scarch]

You're taking a Chevy impala and trying to modify it to win races when you could start with a Lamborghini instead.

I guess you don't know much about street racing. Well I think it's just a bad analogy. If I want to modify an Impala that's no one's business but my own. I don't appreciate people telling me to start with a Lamborghini. I may try modifying a Lamborghini later, but right now I only asked for tips on modifying an Impala. Don't come into a thread about modifying Impalas and tell people to forget about the car they want to use and already purchased and soent time working on and start all over again with only cars you think are suited to racing.

Well do whatever you want and say whatever you want, but I'm not going to stop modifying my Impala no matter what you say.

[Scarch]

To be honest, I don't... know that you really want a ruleset at all.

From everything you've posted, you seem to be interested in a very freeform sort of experience-- using the dice occasionally when random chance is necessary, and otherwise handling everything else via collaborative storytelling ("You pour oil on the stairs so the knight slips and falls, then jump down and shove a dagger in the eye slot before he can get up? Awesome. He goes down hard.") Which is fine! I've done similar things and had a lot of fun doing so. But... more than power levels, more than realism, more than progression, D&D as a system* is almost entirely dedicated to "roll-playing," to being able to look at the numbers on your sheet and say "I have X that lets me do Y." If you want "X" to be "player creativity" rather than "the rules say I can," that's totally valid, but you're not going to get much out of D&D. Look at class features and spells and feats and such to get an idea for things your characters can learn, maybe use classes as templates for how a character can advance, maybe even use abilities and even skills for random resolution, but otherwise don't sweat precise rules about... anything, from the sounds of it.



*And note that by "D&D" I mean "the modern versions of Dungeons and Dragons, as published by Wizards of the Coast," rather than "roleplaying games in general." As has persistently been mentioned, there are games all up and down the spectrum, from extremely high-powered ones to extremely gritty, from painfully intricate to almost mechanically nonexistent.

Thanks for the response. Personally I don't really look at D&D rules as things that have to be followed at all. I treat all rules like options to make my own game with. As far as the balance between freeform and rolling, I do try to find a balance that lets gameplay flow smoothly and involves a decent amount of rolling. I like making scenario charts, like when the players are travelling on the road from point A to B, will they encounter bandits, wild animals, peasants on the road, or nothing at all. If I roll nothing at all I'm actually going to make them walk or ride down the road for a while and nothing will happen. They may make perception checks to watch the tree line or just casually chat. If you constantly throw enemies at them then they never let down their guard. But if nothing happens then next time when there actually is a bandit lurking they might not even bother to make perception checks and get caught off guard. I never want them to be able to expect what will happen next. Some people think that's boring and they prefer constant action. I appreciate a good conversation, and enjoy the routine pleasures in life. I also prefer delayed gratification, so I'm willing to make action oriented encounters rarer and more deadly, that makes them more thrilling to me

[Grod_The_Giant]

I like making scenario charts
Like I said-- mine the system for ideas, but otherwise stick to freeform.

And, like... if you must use D&D rules, it sounds like you don't want characters to progress past level...3? Level 1, even? You could try an "epic 3" game, so there's some room to distinguish amateurs from professionals and customize a build, but even a tough character will go down in two or three whacks with a sword. Or heck, stick to first level, but allow training to increase HD size, skill points, spells known, feats, and pick up extra class features. (Sort of like gestalting, but piecemeal). If you drop to 0, roll on your horrible injury table to see how you got maimed. That way you're engaging with the rules in a predictable fashion without going too far past your upper bound of realism.

[zergling.exe]

That's an interesting point. How much would plate mail cause blows to do nothing more than an insignificant bruise, or glance off completely in real life? They certainly wouldn't offer any evasion mobility-wise, in fact they probably make it harder to evade even for the person with average dexterity (10). I might even consider giving armor wearers penalties that don't merely reduce their dex bonus, but give them a dex penalty. Anyway, I think I'll try the full DR and see how it plays out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzI1UvlQqw

[upho]

I agree with what most posters have already said - D&D in general, and arguably 3/PF in particular, makes for a very poor starting point for the system you're looking for. In other words, I believe there are considerable risks the mechanics will be detrimental to the play style.

And yes, I have "played with hit location charts", "with bleeding, brain damage, post traumatic stress", and certainly "entire sessions of training with social roleplay and no combat" and "entire campaigns without leveling". The first two are generally not my thing, as it involves way too much mechanics and way too much fluke for something that should be a very minor part of a game with actually realistic consequences of medieval combat and healthcare. At least if we're talking about an actual campaign rather than a one-shot thing. And if the campaign does include more than maybe one or two fights, the high risks of a PC dying or becoming unplayable only works fine if you play a CoC style game IME, not if the intent is that a player should be able to keep and develop the character they started with through an entire campaign.

The latter two usually work best in a game with as little mechanics as possible IME. I think it would be a far better investment for you and your player to take a course in improvisational acting than buying expensive books full of mechanics that won't enrich the game.

And when it comes to realism, you may very well run into some serious problems if you have a player that, say, knows more about medieval combat than you do. It may very well be that things you believe to be realistic actually turn out to be completely unrealistic. For example, I think the following statements are highly inaccurate:

The problem with all of the AC being transferred to DR is someone with a knife can't hurt someone in plate mail, and that is not realistic. Someone skilled with a knife can stab in the crevices and gaps in the armor, and someone skilled in archery can shoot an armored knight in the slit in their visor with surprising accuracy (consider British longbows versus French cavalry).
How much would plate mail cause blows to do nothing more than an insignificant bruise, or glance off completely in real life? They certainly wouldn't offer any evasion mobility-wise, in fact they probably make it harder to evade even for the person with average dexterity (10). I might even consider giving armor wearers penalties that don't merely reduce their dex bonus, but give them a dex penalty.Based on insights from experts in the field and my personal (limited) experiences of jousting and fighting with sharp longswords wearing an accurate remake of a late medieval full plate:

"Realistic" rules for full plate protection would likely be something like "DR 30/crit and DR 60/bludgeoning and piercing". It's near impossible to seriously hurt someone in full plate with most medieval weapons unless they're unable to move (I've personally been hit with a jousting lance so hard I was unhorsed, easily enough to run me straight through twice over had I been unarmored. There was barely a dent in the breastplate - properly hardened and tempered steel is seriously tough.)
In order to successfully hurt someone in full plate by stabbing a dagger through the gaps, you'd first need to basically have them pinned. In general, I'd say a person in full plate wielding no weapons is more dangerous to an unarmored or lightly armored person wielding a dagger than vice versa. To have a reasonable chance against an opponent in full plate, you typically need a weapon actually designed for the task, like a pollaxe, warhammer or siege crossbow (the former two enabling you to potentially lay down the hurt without having to hit a gap or even penetrate the steel).
It's virtually impossible to get an arrow through the slit in the visor of a helmet designed to protect against arrows (which they typically were). Even a professional archer who has trained their entire life and is capable of accurately firing a very powerful longbow is highly unlikely to be able to seriously hurt someone wearing high quality full plate. (I think there's actually at least one historical document which give a first-hand account of advancing across a battlefield in full plate while being hit by repeated barrages of arrows from longbows. And British longbows weren't effective against French knights in full plate (but probably against their horses), hence why so many of them were captured alive in the battle of Agincourt, see for example here (https://youtu.be/ukvlZcxNAVY).)
A properly made and fitted full plate doesn't decrease your mobility much (https://youtu.be/qzTwBQniLSc), and wearing for example a 13th century knight's mail is typically more of a detriment to your combat prowess. So the full plate's Max Dex bonus should actually be higher and the ACP lower than what they are in the current rules, and the speed penalty should be removed from all movement actions except perhaps a -5' to the run action. (You do however tire much more quickly when doing taxing physical stuff - like fighting - in heavy armor, a fact which the rules generally disregard.)

More importantly, if you actually introduce "realistic" rules to simulate the huge advantage a combatant gains by wearing full plate in fights with medieval weapons, those rules will completely invalidate a huge number of other options, just like full plate did historically. Not to mention that you may very well also have to deal with all the more or less highly unrealistic rules for other options related to martial combat, such as those for mounted combat, crossbows, damage types vs armor types, dire flails, two-bladed swords, ripsaw glaives, throwing shields, longswords/bastard swords, katanas, etc, etc.

So how do you decide what is "realistic" and what is not?

[Scarch]

And, like... if you must use D&D rules, it sounds like you don't want characters to progress past level...3? Level 1, even? You could try an "epic 3" game, so there's some room to distinguish amateurs from professionals and customize a build, but even a tough character will go down in two or three whacks with a sword. Or heck, stick to first level, but allow training to increase HD size, skill points, spells known, feats, and pick up extra class features. (Sort of like gestalting, but piecemeal). If you drop to 0, roll on your horrible injury table to see how you got maimed. That way you're engaging with the rules in a predictable fashion without going too far past your upper bound of realism.

The first player I'm going to test this with is my brother. He does play and DM a fair bit of traditional superheroic high-fantasy hack and slash. But I think most people here have way more D&D experience than him, and he's never roleplayed outside of D&D as far as I know. So we'll see how it goes. He might find it boring, but he's at least willing to give it a go.

He usually rushes to high levels, and I think his games are really sloppy, even though he puts a lot of work into them, because he doesn't fully grasp the basics before moving on.

So I intend to spend a lot of time on character creation and level one. We'll see if we get past level one.

After getting some results from my brother I'll consider what tweeks may be needed. Then I want to do a solo play by post online. But I do have a couple of other friends who might want to play, but they are new to tabletop Roleplaying. I don't think they've ever played D&D.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzI1UvlQqw

Interesting. Seeing the firefighter also reminds me of how I've played D&D in the past with loads of gear without considering its effects beyond the weight category. The knight didn't even have a pack on. He'd be even slower than the army guy.

I thought this video was interesting:

https://youtu.be/-uWDCDJD_4w

Leather armor should be rare, and padded armor is just as good.

[Scarch]

And when it comes to realism, you may very well run into some serious problems if you have a player that, say, knows more about medieval combat than you do. It may very well be that things you believe to be realistic actually turn out to be completely unrealistic.

I would love that actually. That way they could help me make the game even more realistic.


Based on insights from experts in the field and my personal (limited) experiences of jousting and fighting with sharp longswords wearing an accurate remake of a late medieval full plate:

"Realistic" rules for full plate protection would likely be something like "DR 30/crit and DR 60/bludgeoning and piercing". It's near impossible to seriously hurt someone in full plate with most medieval weapons unless they're unable to move (I've personally been hit with a jousting lance so hard I was unhorsed, easily enough to run me straight through twice over had I been unarmored. There was barely a dent in the breastplate - properly hardened and tempered steel is seriously tough.)
In order to successfully hurt someone in full plate by stabbing a dagger through the gaps, you'd first need to basically have them pinned. In general, I'd say a person in full plate wielding no weapons is more dangerous to an unarmored or lightly armored person wielding a dagger than vice versa. To have a reasonable chance against an opponent in full plate, you typically need a weapon actually designed for the task, like a pollaxe, warhammer or siege crossbow (the former two enabling you to potentially lay down the hurt without having to hit a gap or even penetrate the steel).
It's virtually impossible to get an arrow through the slit in the visor of a helmet designed to protect against arrows (which they typically were). Even a professional archer who has trained their entire life and is capable of accurately firing a very powerful longbow is highly unlikely to be able to seriously hurt someone wearing high quality full plate. (I think there's actually at least one historical document which give a first-hand account of advancing across a battlefield in full plate while being hit by repeated barrages of arrows from longbows. And British longbows weren't effective against French knights in full plate (but probably against their horses), hence why so many of them were captured alive in the battle of Agincourt, see for example here (https://youtu.be/ukvlZcxNAVY).)
A properly made and fitted full plate doesn't decrease your mobility much (https://youtu.be/qzTwBQniLSc), and wearing for example a 13th century knight's mail is typically more of a detriment to your combat prowess. So the full plate's Max Dex bonus should actually be higher and the ACP lower than what they are in the current rules, and the speed penalty should be removed from all movement actions except perhaps a -5' to the run action. (You do however tire much more quickly when doing taxing physical stuff - like fighting - in heavy armor, a fact which the rules generally disregard.)

More importantly, if you actually introduce "realistic" rules to simulate the huge advantage a combatant gains by wearing full plate in fights with medieval weapons, those rules will completely invalidate a huge number of other options, just like full plate did historically. Not to mention that you may very well also have to deal with all the more or less highly unrealistic rules for other options related to martial combat, such as those for mounted combat, crossbows, damage types vs armor types, dire flails, two-bladed swords, ripsaw glaives, throwing shields, longswords/bastard swords, katanas, etc, etc.

So how do you decide what is "realistic" and what is not?

This was all very helpful. I had no idea the story of archers sniping knights through the slits of their visors was such a myth. I like your idea of reducing the ACP and Dex penalty. I will do that.

The way I'm going to approach the overall attitude of realism in game is gradually. I will try not to make it overbearing, but implement as much as I can comfortably handle without bogging down the pace and making the combat rules too complex. I've erred on the side of over complexity in the past. I am a perfectionist, I've come to realise.

Upho, do you have any other videos on different medieval weapons and armor? Those videos were really informative.

In the world I'm building for my game I have one large continent and one large Island, and two eras in history. I think my brother will want to play in a medieval setting, in which case platemail will be prevalent for wealthy knights. In that case I'll only use the large island which has a fleshed out human kingdom on the brink of civil war and barbarian invasion. My other era is similar to Hyborean from Conan the Barbarian, but also draws from the Sword and Sandal era of ancient Greece/Rome. If my brother is up for trying that era then the only people I want to have platemail are the Elves. Humans will be in the iron or bronze age, and there will be a lot more Orcs, Goblins, Troglodites, etc...

[BassoonHero]

I really don't like it when people come in and post just to say they don't like or agree with my approach to roleplaying.
You misunderstand the response you're getting. The fact is, in order to modify D&D 3.5 to accommodate the roleplaying you want to do, you're going to have to rewrite most of it, from the base advancement mechanics on up. This is because D&D 3.5 is fundamentally designed for a very different roleplaying experience than the one you're looking for.

There is no shortage of RPG systems. Many of them can do what you want. D&D 3.5 cannot do what you want. Modifying 3.5 to the necessary degree is tantamount to writing your own system from scratch. It's possible to bolt on changes piecemeal, but doing so without addressing the underlying assumptions of the system will most likely lead to poor gameplay that does not provide the experience you're looking for.

This is not a judgement of the way you want to roleplay, but of the selection of D&D 3.5 as the system to do it in.

[upho]

I would love that actually. That way they could help me make the game even more realistic.Which is great if your aim is to develop a new system, not so much if you actually want to play an existing one.

My point was that your pursuit of realism may very well lead to constant changes of the rules, which in turn may lead to players feeling very uncertain as to what effect character options actually have in the end and what capabilities they can expect their characters to have. And this is especially true if you have players with wildly varying degrees of knowledge in (and experiences from) niche fields like medieval technology, HEMA fighting and various related reenactment stuff. So when you present the game as being a "realistic" version of PF, players may (and will) come to very different or even completely opposite conclusions on what to expect. Using the example of the characteristics of full plate armor, player A might expect a full plate makes their character practically immune to archery and that it imposes very minor penalties to mobility on a tactical scale, but also that it comes with fatigue mechanics along with serious penalties to say Perception checks and max overland speed. Player B might on the other hand expect that wearing full plate means you'll have trouble even standing up from prone, not to mention mounting horses or performing any kind of basic acrobatics/athletics beyond hacking away with your weapon.


This was all very helpful. I had no idea the story of archers sniping knights through the slits of their visors was such a myth.I'm glad to be of assistance, but keep in mind that what I (and the experts in the video) said may very well not be true in another context or if you change another parameter slightly, and that today's experts may not have an answer to similar questions. For example, the bulk of the British army during the Hundred Years' War were made up of longbow archers, and it was obviously very effective in many battles, despite not being be able to penetrate the full plate worn by most French knights during the latter half of the war. So the longbows worked just fine against opponents in almost any type of armor other than the most recently invented hardened steel full plate. And people on the French side noted with surprise and horror that for example the thinner sides of visors (of presumably less modern helmets) were indeed penetrated by longbow arrows shoot by flanking British archers.

When translated into "realistic" game mechanics, the question of whether a longbow archer in your game should be a real threat to a character in full plate therefore obviously depends on what "full plate" refers to in your game.https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d7bd01fdff7f9f1d357514a76b6a5d52-chttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aBaL-Srb0bk/VCyCSsfA0uI/AAAAAAAAsqA/IH2d9xKH8SI/s1600/Tobias%2BCapwell4.jpgProbably no more than 50 years separated the manufacturing of the type of armor exemplified in the first pic (ca 1400) from that of the type exemplified in the second (ca 1450). Still, the level of protection against longbows and similar powerful piercing weapons offered by these two suits likely differs quite significantly, with the first being made of (probably case hardened) iron and the second of hardened and tempered "medium carbon" steel, on top of having far fewer and smaller vulnerable areas.


I like your idea of reducing the ACP and Dex penalty. I will do that.Note that while I do think this would make full plate more "realistic", I don't think it's a good idea to make certain options no-brainer choices. And I don't mean that in just a meta-game sense, because realistically, anyone with at least half a brain in your game world would also understand the superiority of full plate. And anyone in a profession or circumstances where significantly increased risks of violent conflict can be expected - which PCs typically are in - would of course wear the best armor they can afford.


The way I'm going to approach the overall attitude of realism in game is gradually. I will try not to make it overbearing, but implement as much as I can comfortably handle without bogging down the pace and making the combat rules too complex. I've erred on the side of over complexity in the past. I am a perfectionist, I've come to realise.Heh, I can definitely sympathize with this, as I've also fallen into the "overly complicated"-trap quite a few times. Unfortunately, I think the risk of introducing too much complexity is greater in (what I assume to be) the type of game you want to run, since any meta-game elements requiring concentration will typically shift the brain's focus away from RP and immersion. If I was to run a game in a style similar to yours, I'd keep the mechanics as short and simple as absolutely possible, removing stuff from the original rules rather than adding to them.


Upho, do you have any other videos on different medieval weapons and armor? Those videos were really informative.There are actually tons of them on Youtube. I seem to recall Shad ("shadiversity") which you linked to in your previous post has made some nerdy stuff specifically related to RPG's, and I believe he's usually pretty well informed. Otherwise, when it comes to medieval combat, weapons and armor, I really recommend you read and watch what you can find from Tobias Capwell (the Wallace Collection curator and armor expert in the video I linked to, who also happens to have been one of the world's greatest jouster and the man hiding in the black armor in the second pic above) and check out Youtube channels such as "scholagladiatoria" and "skallagrim".


In the world I'm building for my game I have one large continent and one large Island, and two eras in history. I think my brother will want to play in a medieval setting, in which case platemail will be prevalent for wealthy knights. In that case I'll only use the large island which has a fleshed out human kingdom on the brink of civil war and barbarian invasion. My other era is similar to Hyborean from Conan the Barbarian, but also draws from the Sword and Sandal era of ancient Greece/Rome. If my brother is up for trying that era then the only people I want to have platemail are the Elves. Humans will be in the iron or bronze age, and there will be a lot more Orcs, Goblins, Troglodites, etc...Again, just keep in mind that our medieval era included great technological developments, not least in the area of how to best murder things. So if you want to up your realism, you may want to focus on replicating stuff from a shorter time period and a specific geographic location, like say 15th century Europe.


You misunderstand the response you're getting. The fact is, in order to modify D&D 3.5 to accommodate the roleplaying you want to do, you're going to have to rewrite most of it, from the base advancement mechanics on up. This is because D&D 3.5 is fundamentally designed for a very different roleplaying experience than the one you're looking for.

There is no shortage of RPG systems. Many of them can do what you want. D&D 3.5 cannot do what you want. Modifying 3.5 to the necessary degree is tantamount to writing your own system from scratch. It's possible to bolt on changes piecemeal, but doing so without addressing the underlying assumptions of the system will most likely lead to poor gameplay that does not provide the experience you're looking for.

This is not a judgement of the way you want to roleplay, but of the selection of D&D 3.5 as the system to do it in.This.