NicheD20 (New System)

[Dan Arcueid]

Hi, I've come here to post about a new system that I and others have been working on that past couple years.

NicheD20 is a new system designed by people who were big fans of 3.5 and Pathfinder and over the years even dabbled into some of the side homebrew communities around that. After we disliked the direction 5e, Pathfinder 2e, and even some of those homebrew communities decided to take I decided to try and make a system rather than complain about the state of others.

At a high level Niche d20 is meant to be a ground-up new system with inspiration from these various systems that we enjoyed in addition to our own spin on things. One of our main goal was rather than try to make something glued onto another system with duct-tape fixes we would instead try to make a new system from the ground up attempting to fix as what we saw as core issues.

A few things we focused on:

Move towards core stat progression rather than reliance on magic item.
Move towards making magic items tools with interesting effects rather than static bonuses.
A move to making later levels in classes more rewarding so continuing to level a class feels more rewarding.
A move to options being part of character creation rather than front-loading classes.
More inherent multiclassing support (With the various adjustments to mitigate dipping we didn't want to discourage multiclassing).
Overall a focus on options and choice.


So why am i posting here?
Because we're at a point now where we would like some outside eyes on the system and people to begin giving feedback.
Right now the system is in a bit of a late-alpha/early-beta state, in which there is enough to play with, but there is always more to be done.

If anyone is interested we have a wiki with our content: https://niched20.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
and a discord: https://discord.gg/EtvTQUtacV
If anyone has questions or would like more info I'll try to answer them here, but I do encourage using our discord as we're more likely to notice comments there.


Apologies ahead of time on the wiki if its slow, we plan to migrate our content to a different wiki eventually, but until we have more eyes on our stuff we decided to go with a free wiki for now.

Also if this needs to be moved to the homebrew forum, I apologize, as It seemed appropriate here as it wasn't content for an existing system and is a d20-based system.

[pabelfly]

Had a quick look at the system, a few thoughts:

Intelligent Weapon is interesting, but doesn't quite make sense to me. Do I also need to make an NPC for it to be controlled with? And how do I create said NPC, is it the same character creation rules as regular characters?

The classes don't have any sort of flavour text. Even a paragraph about the intent of the class would be helpful if I were to actually use the system, especially for new additions.

Dex fighting seems like it's accessible through a Major Perk, but without looking at the attack maths, I'd opine that dex fighting should be available for free, if things are anything like 3.5 and Pathfinder.

"Starting at 5th level, a fighter selects one of the following keywords: Blade, Dueling, Hammer, Spear, Axe, Bow, Flails, Trigger, Polearm, Monastic, Shield, or Sling."

I'd probably use the phrase "weapon type", would feel slightly less awkward in wording.

[Dan Arcueid]

Had a quick look at the system, a few thoughts:

Intelligent Weapon is interesting, but doesn't quite make sense to me. Do I also need to make an NPC for it to be controlled with? And how do I create said NPC, is it the same character creation rules as regular characters?

The classes don't have any sort of flavour text. Even a paragraph about the intent of the class would be helpful if I were to actually use the system, especially for new additions.

Dex fighting seems like it's accessible through a Major Perk, but without looking at the attack maths, I'd opine that dex fighting should be available for free, if things are anything like 3.5 and Pathfinder.

"Starting at 5th level, a fighter selects one of the following keywords: Blade, Dueling, Hammer, Spear, Axe, Bow, Flails, Trigger, Polearm, Monastic, Shield, or Sling."

I'd probably use the phrase "weapon type", would feel slightly less awkward in wording.


Intelligent weapon is due for a rewrite to be more in-line with the other races, buuut the idea is you're supposed to coordinate with other party members or get the feats that allow you to effectively wield yourself. Right now the rewrites are to make heritages like other races so you have different types, but the author of that one has been busy so I might need to do the rewrite myself soon. As a small note you can be a spellcaster and a living weapon, so asking one of your party members who have a free hand to hold a sword that randomly shoots fireballs out and casts buffs on him probably isn't that hard of a decision for them.
- (edit)Also you could always play a character with the summon companion spell and summon a creature to do so, at which point there would be effectively NPC creation rules.
Flavor text is something we're planning to do eventually, but we're very focused on core rules right now, and lore is something we have in the background that we're cooking up but haven't really put to paper yet.
Actually dex fighting is minor perk, which you get 2 of which means you can have dex to hit and damage (or dex to hit str to damage and go with other methods to pump damage) using your 2 minor perks. The idea was to move that out of the feat tax and into more of the character-defining perk system. This is why stat to AC isn't a 1 level dip in monk, its a major perk. Though with pathfinder dex fighting wasn't really free outside of a couple classes that granted weapon finesse for free, but our idea was mostly for that to be a choice you make at this step rather than front-loading classes with it.
our system is attempting to go with a "keyword" based system, so there's more than just those keywords. So its a bit of a streamlining of language choice, as well as we didn't want to be like PF with the "fighter weapon group" thing where there was an entire word system referenced by a single class. The keyword system was a little inspired by 4e which did a similar method, but generally its just because alot of things use keywords; so its supposed to be more of a universal grouping system beyond just weapons.

[pabelfly]

Intelligent weapon is due for a rewrite to be more in-line with the other races, buuut the idea is you're supposed to coordinate with other party members or get the feats that allow you to effectively wield yourself. Right now the rewrites are to make heritages like other races so you have different types, but the author of that one has been busy so I might need to do the rewrite myself soon. As a small note you can be a spellcaster and a living weapon, so asking one of your party members who have a free hand to hold a sword that randomly shoots fireballs out and casts buffs on him probably isn't that hard of a decision for them.
- (edit)Also you could always play a character with the summon companion spell and summon a creature to do so, at which point there would be effectively NPC creation rules.
Flavor text is something we're planning to do eventually, but we're very focused on core rules right now, and lore is something we have in the background that we're cooking up but haven't really put to paper yet.
Actually dex fighting is minor perk, which you get 2 of which means you can have dex to hit and damage (or dex to hit str to damage and go with other methods to pump damage) using your 2 minor perks. The idea was to move that out of the feat tax and into more of the character-defining perk system. This is why stat to AC isn't a 1 level dip in monk, its a major perk. Though with pathfinder dex fighting wasn't really free outside of a couple classes that granted weapon finesse for free, but our idea was mostly for that to be a choice you make at this step rather than front-loading classes with it.
our system is attempting to go with a "keyword" based system, so there's more than just those keywords. So its a bit of a streamlining of language choice, as well as we didn't want to be like PF with the "fighter weapon group" thing where there was an entire word system referenced by a single class. The keyword system was a little inspired by 4e which did a similar method, but generally its just because alot of things use keywords; so its supposed to be more of a universal grouping system beyond just weapons.


Okay. Thanks for taking the time to respond, its much appreciated.

[themightyjello]

We do appreciate (and encourage) the feedback in whatever form. It would be almost impossible to catch every little mistake but we're certainly trying, and having more fresh sets of eyes is a great way to help us ensure quality both in terms of consistency and making sure that what we're putting out is something that you can jive with.

On the topic of the lack of flavor text, that is largely due to this being essentially an "alpha test" stage of development where we've prioritized getting the big things tackled and then filling in the empty spaces in order of priority. Because of this, when making classes (and other things, such as the weapon list being mostly statistics rather than flavorful descriptions) we've been focusing on getting the mechanical aspects right with the mindset that there will be another pass-through later to add flavor text.

It's not something that we don't want to do (and honestly it's hard to avoid doing it sometimes) but it's one of those "for the sake of consistency we don't want to do this sometimes and not do it other times" so we're currently at the stage where UNNECESSARY flavor text (some class features are designed around flavor, after all) is being avoided on purpose.

Responding to your concern about "keywords" (since if you've played Pathfinder you're more familiar with fighters having "weapon groups" that are referenced in their class features) - we made an early on design decision to use "keywords" as a specific term in the system to describe a large number of things, essentially highlighting those words as a tag on the feature that is referenced by other things in the system (such as feats). It may feel a bit odd at first because it's different, but we strongly believe that this approach will make the system more consistent as more content is added in the future.

I hope that these answers are helpful, and we're glad that you took the time to look over this labor-of-love we're setting up.

[Dan Arcueid]

Okay. Thanks for taking the time to respond, its much appreciated.

As a bit of a follow-up; I've made some adjustments to intelligent weapon as a bit of a half-step until the larger rewrite occurs.

1. Added a bit more wording clarification on it; moved the bulk of the text to "Race-Feature:" section and added a trait to them that grants some proficiency.
2. Adjusted the self telekinesis feat to be a little more functional for effectively "self-wielding" right away, though you'll still want to grab the dancing weapon feat later to further reduce the penalties for doing so (though the big benefit is still early-game flight so it makes the 2 feat investment still fairly strong early on). But this should make those who don't want to coordinate with another to not feel 100% obligated to burn both of their starting Race and Anything feat at 1st on these two feats.

This is a bit of a half-step as this was the original plan was to make this move before breaking the race into heritages like the other ones to effectively have different "specialized" options. Though the Race-Feature likely will get a heavier rewrite as some of the wording in it is redundant as the writer wrote it before i had made the creature types for the system and defined Construct(Living). And thus will need to be rewritten with this in mind. I'm doing this now primarily as I do want to leave this to the original writer, but would like to at least get layout and formatting things out of the way now.

As a bit of an extra thing is our main design goal is to not treat errata like a dirty word. Primarily in the fact that we don't want to be afraid to rewrite what doesn't work; and thus if something is bad or broken on either extreme we want to be willing to put in the effort to adjust it rather than making duct-tape adjustments while never addressing the root problem. Its not to say we're going to change everything right away; but we're definitely willing to do what needs to be done to make this system work.

[QuadraticGish]

Taking my time combing through this all, but I can that I like having snek people off the bat. Though, is there a way to buy off undersized weapons?

[exelsisxax]

Had a cursory skim. Also enjoy the inclusion of snek.

on general character advancement:
Characters seem to have a whole lot of disparate bits that seems unwieldly, and entirely counterproductive for a new system. Making ability scores scale without magic items is great, the rest is not. 3.PF needs less fiddly bits, not more.

Why do both major perks and minor perks exist? Hell, why do EITHER of them exist? you get 22 feats from character levels alone, why have this one-off system for tiny feats? Why turn base saves into a points system? more complicated for no benefit I can see - it's capped hard enough anyway that there's marginal differences. More bookkeeping to merely end up at slightly less borked 3.PF math. The set feat progression wouldn't be too bad alone but it's just too many parallel lines of progression added to everything else. In my cursory look, it also appears that there are not enough racial feats to fill out all your choices and sometimes not enough to actually still have choices by your last racial feats.

[themightyjello]

Taking my time combing through this all, but I can that I like having snek people off the bat. Though, is there a way to buy off undersized weapons?

Yes!

As you're probably aware, undersized weapons is the feature that's usually slapped onto large-size races which are only supposed to be "kind-of large" so that they don't get to stack benefits on benefits on benefits.

However a character of any race can qualify for the Giant's Grip (Combat) feat, which allows you to wield weapons as if you were a size category larger, and Titan's Grip (Combat) which allows for you to go up an additional size. Likewise, Larger than Life (Race) is a feat available to any race which reduces penalties based on size (including the penalty applied by Giant's Grip).

Sorry, I had links included but the forum won't let me post them until this account has 10 posts.

[themightyjello]

Why do both major perks and minor perks exist? Hell, why do EITHER of them exist? you get 22 feats from character levels alone, why have this one-off system for tiny feats? Why turn base saves into a points system? more complicated for no benefit I can see - it's capped hard enough anyway that there's marginal differences. More bookkeeping to merely end up at slightly less borked 3.PF math. The set feat progression wouldn't be too bad alone but it's just too many parallel lines of progression added to everything else. In my cursory look, it also appears that there are not enough racial feats to fill out all your choices and sometimes not enough to actually still have choices by your last racial feats.

1. Major and Minor Perks were the result of deciding whether we wanted to include "background packages" or something of the sort at character creation. Much like how Pathfinder allows you to choose traits, we wanted to have a few extra things that your character can choose on creation to reflect what sets them apart from someone else who has the same race and class.

If you'll notice, the perks are where we moved most of the "substitute one stat for another" features. No longer will everyone who wants to apply Wisdom to their defense be required to dip a level into Monk, and a character who wants to use Dex for melee attacks won't be forced to spend a feat on it. Because this is where we relocated these, we also moved them OUT of classes (and subsequently designed classes around the possibility of various build choices, such as a heavy armor monk).

We'd hoped that being able to take a minor perk like Musclehead would be a fun way to add some unique twists to your character, and felt this was preferable to having background packages such as "you used to be a pirate, but took an arrow to the knee".

2. In regards to saves, although this does result in more bookkeeping because the player is assigning the points him/herself, the reason why we ended up making the call to do it like this is twofold. First, we wanted to decouple save progression from class. Now, being a Fighter doesn't mean that you have a high Fortitude save and low Will and Reflex saves. But taking that a step further, we also didn't want to simply tell players to choose two high saves and one low save and leave it like that for their entire progression. Going with a (capped) point system allows players the flexibility to adjust their saves the way that works for them (perhaps you want to be the most grizzled wizard in the land?) and also facilitates multiclassing and build pivoting more freely, because rather than stacking up something you already have an advantage in you may prefer to cover one of your weaknesses, or be an all-rounder with even saves across the board.

You're right that there are "marginal" differences but as you go up that gap can widen if you choose to let it. You have enough points to spend that even if you try to maximize 2 saves you will still have points to put into the third, but it ends up being a lower number overall than what a "low save" would have been under another system (when you take into account that some base numbers generally will be higher in this system because we're trying to remove "essential" items such as the Resistance bonus to all saves).

3. Keep in mind that your Racial feats can be spent on the (Any) race feat list as well, not just the ones specific to your race or heritage. This can considerably broaden your options, but the system is still a work in progress and because of that some of the lists ARE a bit short right now. Some classes, for example, have "just enough" talent choices and we have plans to add more but it's a process of a few here and a few there, coming back to it. As an example, Chosen has over 100 talents on their list. This is actually the MINIMUM number to not run out of choices (excluding ones that can be taken multiple times) considering that they pick a combination of 2 packages and the talents they get are based on which packages they have.

We appreciate both your interest and your understanding in this regard, and will be continually adding more content as well as making adjustments to current content as necessary.

[Dan Arcueid]

Taking my time combing through this all, but I can that I like having snek people off the bat. Though, is there a way to buy off undersized weapons?
Yes/No. The main idea is due to being a large creature with the torso of a medium sized creature (same things with Centaurs), the logic is its going to limit your capability to hold weapons outside of that size category. But as themightyjello already pointed out there's ways to get up further in weapon sizes.


Had a cursory skim. Also enjoy the inclusion of snek.

on general character advancement:
Characters seem to have a whole lot of disparate bits that seems unwieldly, and entirely counterproductive for a new system. Making ability scores scale without magic items is great, the rest is not. 3.PF needs less fiddly bits, not more.

Why do both major perks and minor perks exist? Hell, why do EITHER of them exist? you get 22 feats from character levels alone, why have this one-off system for tiny feats? Why turn base saves into a points system? more complicated for no benefit I can see - it's capped hard enough anyway that there's marginal differences. More bookkeeping to merely end up at slightly less borked 3.PF math. The set feat progression wouldn't be too bad alone but it's just too many parallel lines of progression added to everything else. In my cursory look, it also appears that there are not enough racial feats to fill out all your choices and sometimes not enough to actually still have choices by your last racial feats.

themightyjello already responded but i thought i'd try to expand upon it.

Perks
The main idea behind perks was they were meant to be something limited to 1st level. Major perks are meant to be a bit more than a feat while minor perks are roughly feat-tier; but both are meant to change your interaction with ability scores (Stat to AC, stat to Hit, stat to damage, etc..) or have some other major unique effect. They are meant to be something that can't be taken outside of the 1st level and are basically an option instead of front-loading the classes.
A major issue in PF was generally your character didn't or barely functioned until 5th level where suddenly the core of what you're trying to build for starts to turn online, and suddenly your character can do unique things. And while later PF and certain 3rd party systems tried to do they instead tried to front-load classes harder, which has the unfortunate side effect that suddenly dipping becomes king. This has that sorta front-loaded aspect so your character can feel less awful in lower levels, but its less tied to your classes so dipping 1 level in 5 different classes isn't more beneficial than 5 levels in a single class.

Feats
While there's alot of feats, things like skill feats and race feats were broken out as well to try and do two things.
1. Make races not be a front-loaded bonus but rather something that can also be built upon and see growth of your character. As having played PF it was very rare the feats were worthwhile, while sometimes the starting race bonuses were somewhat absurd.
2. Skill feats are to try and make skills feel more useful for characters without cutting into their combat ability, and as a result allow certain characters to pick up utility and options without feeling bad. Comparing to PF even as a fighter it was common to feel like your feats were set in stone to 7th level minimum and you couldn't stray into the "nice to haves" or "neat and flavorful" without giving up something for combat that you might regret not having later. I generally have the feeling that having an option, even if you never use it, is better than having no options; which is why for skill feats generally a good number of them aren't likely to see much in-combat usage, but you might grab for exploration purposes.

Saves
In a d20 based system 1 point is still 5% better odd; and you can in theory leave one of those 3 saves in the dust (17/17/8) which at a 9 point difference is basically a 45% lower chance of making that save (and if the associated stat is bad that gets worse). Alternatively you could do 14 across the board, which is 3 less (15%) compared to the highs, and 6 higher (30%) for the bad one, so i would say thats not entirely marginal.
A thing to note is this system goes for opposed rolls on attacks and saves (though alternative rules exist for this for DMs that want to reduce rolling); but bonuses matter more here you're not going against a flat number, you're also in a battle against the dice.

Race Feats
We do have a category on the main page for racial feats that can be taken by any race and some that can be taken more than once (and some that can be only taken once). Though i can agree we need more content there, we're generally trying to work on and add more content across the system.

[exelsisxax]

First on the math:
I did not notice that all rolls are opposed in my skim. I subjectively think that's a poor idea because it's slow and obnoxious for table play that requires more math and more people dropping math rocks. More importantly, your understanding that 'bonuses matter more with opposed rolls' is incorrect. There is no point where a +1 matters more with opposed rolls, and exactly one point where it is just as valuable as 5% - the opposed roll probability distribution margin ranges from that single peak down to as low as .25%. It generates a nonflat distribution, as it is mathematically identical to 1d20-1d20+(bonus1-bonus2). This may or may not be very impactful to your desired probability outcomes.

Regarding perks you seem to have missed my point. Getting up and running at 1st level is good. I specifically want to know why this requires creating two completely new silos of content that you can't buy into, therefore cutting most of them off, and increasing build complexity at the same time.
This is specifically bizarre because you've gutted race features to almost nil beyond ability scores (some races even lost the 1st level race feat!). The justification that you don't want frontloading directly contradicts the weird way you invented perks to replace traits but be more complicated and less accessible, because you also do want frontloading. Pick a goal!

Why can't perks just be feats and you get 1-3 more feats at 1st level? a feat is even a major perk option! this reduces complexity and bloat while simplifying builds while making them more diverse. It allows you to pick none of them, or over more levels many of them.

Similarly, why am I locked into a racial feat progression? Why can't I start off with a very dwarfy dwarf, or never be a super stereotypical dwarf? this fixed progression means you start off invariably not very whatever your race is, but inevitably get more of your race. There's no variety there, even discounting that currently there may literally be no variety because there's no enough feats. Subjectively I also think it's bonkers that every single race apparently needs to learn to have venom or be resistant to magic or have armored skin.

Merging everything down into N feats per level is certainly not the ideal solution, but i think it could be better than this weird inflexible and extraordinarily silo'd progression. Some random suggestions:
Have the feat progression only require a certain number of not combat feats (requires making sure all your combat stuff is tagged even if it's also magic or skill) so you have more flexibility in all ways while still limiting single-minded murder build
cut everything down into two lines like feats+perks you gain per level, and you get a large pile of perks at 1st level, where perks are minor, skill, or ribbon abilities and feats are chunkier more combat focused stuff.
more reachy: just let people use other attributes without this weird system that is almost entirely about doing that in a straightjacket. Give each skill two, maybe sometimes only one or up to three, key attributes. Let dex work for the relevant melee attacks inherently. Make saves use one of two like 4e. If you want to give several of these things to literally every PC, why don't you just make it the rule rather than making 50 exceptions?

[QuadraticGish]

Alright, I stuff to bring up I ran into while stating up a 1st level magus.

Undercasting - I'd revise the language to note the minimum BCB is 1 as the language there reads as a minimum of 1 below your BCB to me.

Hybrids - The biggest thing that bugs me is that all of their armor proficencies are absolutely meaningless unless you either specialize in very long duration spells(or those like animate dead where it doesn't matter), pay the feat tax required to cast in armor, or pay in perks for unarmored.

Magus - As above, but I would say it's even more harsh on the Magus as they do only have 3/4ths bab and need to make use of magic in combat off the bat or else Spellstrike and their Foci become dead features. Would like an option to upgrade Mystic Combat to Combat Casting- or at least some way open up Aoe buffing while fighting or just casting AoEs or spells without a target in general while fighting. Would also like a Spellblade focus that's a ranged magus with precision stance.

Spontaneous casting - Seems like for Mystic Pool classes it has them at knife point threatening to leave them if they think about dipping into a magic class.

Somatic Mastery: Seems weird to have a feat that grants another feat.

Casting type benefits: I wish I didn't need to dig all the way into the magic page just to find them. Can we have a chart on the relevant classes for the spells and talents gained from each type at first level?

[Kalkra]

Been going through it, I noticed that Barbarian's Mounted Fury says Barbarian level - 3, but Monster Rider says - 4. Also, Monster Rider has "Mountry Fury bond" as its prerequisite. I wouldn't have noticed the typo if I wasn't already looking at the ability.

[themightyjello]

Let me see if I can address a few of these without sounding like it's merely arguing preference...


The justification that you don't want frontloading directly contradicts the weird way you invented perks to replace traits but be more complicated and less accessible, because you also do want frontloading. Pick a goal!
The goal of reducing frontloading was not necessarily about making 1st level characters feel barren, it was specifically addressing the first level of classes. Due to a heavy tendency in some systems to frontload all the features of a build onto the early levels of a class, it can make multiclassing 1-2 levels in different things far more rewarding than actually continuing to level a class. Because of that we moved a lot of that focus into other places.

For example, every class now has bonuses that are gained only if you take it as your 1st level (or in some cases "your 1st level in a casting class", as an example). Likewise, we removed all of the stat substitution features from classes and put them into the perk choices with the goal of making those character-defining choices something that you pick up independently of taking a dip into one class or another.

So when "reducing frontloading" was mentioned, it was specifically the goal of not having a level 5 character have 1 level in 5 different classes feel more rewarding every time. With many other systems we've looked at or participated in design discussions for, this became a routine problem and we sought to avoid falling into the same trap.


Why can't perks just be feats and you get 1-3 more feats at 1st level? a feat is even a major perk option! this reduces complexity and bloat while simplifying builds while making them more diverse. It allows you to pick none of them, or over more levels many of them.
You'll be happy to know that thanks to your feedback we're discussing whether to recategorize this into something like "background feats" that can only be taken at 1st level.


Similarly, why am I locked into a racial feat progression? Why can't I start off with a very dwarfy dwarf, or never be a super stereotypical dwarf?
You can spend general feats on anything, including racial feats or skill feats. So a character that gets a bonus feat at 1st level (such as a human) could spend their 1st level race feat, their 1st level general feat, their 1st level bonus feat, and a major perk to get an additional bonus feat, and be the most human human that ever humaned.

Of course this doesn't mitigate the part where this is still an alpha build and we need to populate the option lists further!


cut everything down into two lines like feats+perks you gain per level, and you get a large pile of perks at 1st level, where perks are minor, skill, or ribbon abilities and feats are chunkier more combat focused stuff
It's really just 3 lines once you get past 1st level though.

The race feat progression being separate was intended to be to not cut into your normal feat choices, but the choice to move many of the racial bonuses into them was deliberate both as a means to avoid race choice being one of the most defining things at level 1 (as some builds in DND/PF essentially require certain races to be used to get a build off the ground before levels 3-5) but also to give some sense of growth/evolution as your character advances. Perhaps your Kheldzean is systematically replacing his fleshy, human limbs with superior cybernetic ones piece by piece? We wanted some of this to feel like organic character growth over time, rather than stepping a foot into the first map as a paragon of your race and the pride of your ancestors.

Similarly, the skill feat progression was intended to be separate to prevent forcing players to make the difficult choice between out-of-combat utility and grabbing the next add-on to their favorite stance. It also allowed us the flexibility in the future to add more ridiculous skill interactions behind feat access, perhaps with prerequisites, without simply making it a matter of whether you've min-maxed a skill check DC.


more reachy: just let people use other attributes without this weird system that is almost entirely about doing that in a straightjacket. Give each skill two, maybe sometimes only one or up to three, key attributes. Let dex work for the relevant melee attacks inherently. Make saves use one of two like 4e. If you want to give several of these things to literally every PC, why don't you just make it the rule rather than making 50 exceptions?
This is a valid point and will be taken into consideration! Thank you for the feedback!

[themightyjello]

Hybrids - The biggest thing that bugs me is that all of their armor proficencies are absolutely meaningless unless you either specialize in very long duration spells(or those like animate dead where it doesn't matter), pay the feat tax required to cast in armor, or pay in perks for unarmored.
One thing you might not have noticed is that when a character gains casting for the first time they get to choose a Discipline feat in addition to choosing prepared/spontaneous as a casting type. We don't have a LOT in this section yet because it was a choice made later on; we moved a few metamagic talents and (magic) feats over to this category. Particularly the desire here was to give characters a stylistic choice of how their style of casting might be different than everyone else's.

So one of the options is Somatic Mastery, which grants you Armored Caster as a bonus feat and thus allows the hybrid class ability to extend casting time to ignore spell failure to function even in heavy armor. At that point, it's a choice of whether you want to invest that extra feet to have completely unfettered casting or whether you're okay with casting spells as 1 round rather than standard action. I realize that I forgot to include in this that without investing any further you'd be unfettered casting in light armor at that point, so this statement is mostly based on if you wanted to cast in heavy armor.

Some history on this design choice: this interaction was something that was originally put onto the Champion class with the expectation that they would be more reliant on duration-based buff spells or the few that have swift action activations. It ended up being expanded out to a general feature of the hybrid class category later on, but the general idea persisted that you can be a fully armored caster even at level 1 (by immediately buying that extra freedom) or plan to cast mostly outside of a turn-based time period but don't want to have to remove your armor every time that you do.


Magus - As above, but I would say it's even more harsh on the Magus as they do only have 3/4ths bab and need to make use of magic in combat off the bat or else Spellstrike and their Foci become dead features.
I'm not sure that I follow what you're saying here. Could you be more specific?


Spontaneous casting - Seems like for Mystic Pool classes it has them at knife point threatening to leave them if they think about dipping into a magic class.
Keep in mind that if you dip into a magic class and gain a spell pool, it is separate from your mystic pool.

Part of this is why Stamina pools and Spell Point pools add your relevant stat to the pool size, but mystic pools scale with level but gain additional points faster as they level. It was an attempt to head off the size of the advantage of taking a single level in one or the other and then just having tremendously more points to spend.

There is definitely an advantage to it though. Because although most class features on hybrid classes will ask for a point from the mystic pool, they could spend spell pool points to cast magic and could spend stamina pool points to activate feat bonuses or gain a second wind, and this wouldn't cut into their supply of hybrid points for burning on class features!


Somatic Mastery: Seems weird to have a feat that grants another feat.
I agree, but see above. It may be better to categorize disciplines as something other than feats, but we wanted you to be able to buy in further once we flesh out the list more. This is definitely a "work in progress" section.


Casting type benefits: I wish I didn't need to dig all the way into the magic page just to find them. Can we have a chart on the relevant classes for the spells and talents gained from each type at first level?
We'll see about making them more visible and possibly pushing that onto the sub-page for character creation!

Thank you for the feedback, we truly appreciate it! Exclamation point!

[themightyjello]

Been going through it, I noticed that Barbarian's Mounted Fury says Barbarian level - 3, but Monster Rider says - 4. Also, Monster Rider has "Mountry Fury bond" as its prerequisite. I wouldn't have noticed the typo if I wasn't already looking at the ability.
What an awful typo. It should be "Mountie Fury" as we intended to limit that feature to Canadians only.

We'll get those fixed.

Much appreciation for your vigilance.

[Dan Arcueid]

Been going through it, I noticed that Barbarian's Mounted Fury says Barbarian level - 3, but Monster Rider says - 4. Also, Monster Rider has "Mountry Fury bond" as its prerequisite. I wouldn't have noticed the typo if I wasn't already looking at the ability.

Yeah the scaling on mounted fury used to be a little worse, so i guess i missed that wording update. Fixed the typo now as well.



Alright, I stuff to bring up I ran into while stating up a 1st level magus.

Undercasting - I'd revise the language to note the minimum BCB is 1 as the language there reads as a minimum of 1 below your BCB to me.

Hybrids - The biggest thing that bugs me is that all of their armor proficencies are absolutely meaningless unless you either specialize in very long duration spells(or those like animate dead where it doesn't matter), pay the feat tax required to cast in armor, or pay in perks for unarmored.

Magus - As above, but I would say it's even more harsh on the Magus as they do only have 3/4ths bab and need to make use of magic in combat off the bat or else Spellstrike and their Foci become dead features. Would like an option to upgrade Mystic Combat to Combat Casting- or at least some way open up Aoe buffing while fighting or just casting AoEs or spells without a target in general while fighting. Would also like a Spellblade focus that's a ranged magus with precision stance.

Spontaneous casting - Seems like for Mystic Pool classes it has them at knife point threatening to leave them if they think about dipping into a magic class.

Somatic Mastery: Seems weird to have a feat that grants another feat.

Casting type benefits: I wish I didn't need to dig all the way into the magic page just to find them. Can we have a chart on the relevant classes for the spells and talents gained from each type at first level?

1. Undercasting - I've updated it and attempted to make it a bit more clear.

2. Hybrids - Being that stat to AC is an option, one isn't forced into armor; but as themightyjello pointed out the bonus feat that casters get do allow you to circumvent this easier. The main decision was hybrids got to either put off the armor thing (or ignore it), and casters needed to invest a bit more for it (buying off light then heavy). We decided not to go with a failure % system and more of an on/off switch that was bypassed with effectively "training" as we didn't feel like we needed to keep casters out of armor, but we didn't want it to be free either.

3. Mystic Pool - While its very level based it scales with other hybrids and is a separate pool to play with for spells and stamina abilities. Dipping into a wizard as a magus means you'll have spell point and mystic pool; thus yes your mystic pool wouldn't scale and thus its stamina-related capabilities would be worse, but you've gained a spell point pool to play around with; in that point its not that different from a fighter going into wizard, but unlike a fighter their stamina pool isn't dual-use.
I assume you have this under spontaneous casting because you saw it attached to that rule; though that rule applies to hybrids who chose spontaneous over prepared; just because all spontaneous casters get more spell points; and we didn't want the mystic pool to gain more uses via that so they get a couple of extra points for only spells to work with; dipping into a caster would then integrate that extra pool into the pool normal casters get. So i don't feel like there's any sorta of extra punishment going on here unless there's a misunderstanding on the ability.

4. Somatic Mastery - It is a bit weird, but the discipline feats are one of those "you can only get one of each category" (though we only have one category right now) and they're a bonus each class gets for taking casting. The decision was mostly two-fold of granting the feat allowed us to effectively reference the effects of that feat and how it stacks with itself without needless extra wording, but also the discipline feats being effectively mini-perks for casters and limited in scope of how many you could take allowed us to go "this is better than a normal feat".

5. In early and even mid-game 3/4 BAB isn't that detrimental, and yes later-on you'd likely consider more buffs for this. Not all Focus are entirely casting and some grant benefits based on the stance itself rather than just casting; and there is some magus arcana stuff that work for this. The point of the class is to be more in-tune with their magic, and the elemental blast spell is effectively a "scaling cantrip" at its base-level and thus can be used right away; so there is also options for the magus to utilize magic without needing to burn their resources.
The way much of the system is built we have a number of benefits for attack-action attacks, focusing into one attack over the standard full-attack. Much of the magus is built around this and thus Mystic Combat is designed with the intention of the magus being able to self-buff as a move and smash-down someone with a big hit. Its also why one of their arcana buffs for a single attack versus multiple.

I have been mulling over the idea of ranged magus with precision stance. So it is a general goal to eventually have a focus for every stance.

[Dan Arcueid]

Casting type benefits: I wish I didn't need to dig all the way into the magic page just to find them. Can we have a chart on the relevant classes for the spells and talents gained from each type at first level?

I missed this one; so casting type is something you choose so its not really class-tied; and its something with enough text to it that it would be a bit cumbersome to include on the class page, so the general magic rules page seemed the best location.

I can maybe look into giving its own dedicated page link on the front page for ease of access. I don't think the spells/talents change for the casting type; just more that you get more spell points as spontaneous and more talents as prepared; but otherwise i think wizard has the most direct integration (as its built a little more around it).



Magus - As above, but I would say it's even more harsh on the Magus as they do only have 3/4ths bab and need to make use of magic in combat off the bat or else Spellstrike and their Foci become dead features. Would like an option to upgrade Mystic Combat to Combat Casting- or at least some way open up Aoe buffing while fighting or just casting AoEs or spells without a target in general while fighting. Would also like a Spellblade focus that's a ranged magus with precision stance.

I've thought about it a bit more and I did add a new talent for the class that allows them to use their mystic combat at the start of combat for a lower action cost. So it'll allow some more start-off buffing for them. Its a 10th level talent, as i had been meaning to get some more later game options for that.

[Crake]

In light of the OGL controversy going on, my biggest suggestion would be to rebrand as simply “Niche20”, as having “d20” in the name might draw the wrath of lizards of the coast.

[Crake]

There is no point where a +1 matters more with opposed rolls,

Thats not true. With opposed rolls, a person with +0 is capable of beating a person with +15, wheras he is not able to beat an DC of 25. Each point up to +5 (or +6 if nat20 is auto success) actually has value in an opposed roll, but vs a flat DC value, it has no value until it hits +5 (or +6 as noted before)

[themightyjello]

In light of the OGL controversy going on, my biggest suggestion would be to rebrand as simply “Niche20”, as having “d20” in the name might draw the wrath of lizards of the coast.
Let me take off my night-job hat of rules lawyer to answer this question and put on my day-job hat of regular lawyer.

While the term "d20" is commonly associated with OGL products and obviously has been popularized by D&D's use of it (as opposed to other recognizable systems using d10s, d100s, or a shotgun blast of d6s) the term itself is not something copyrightable as it is inherently descriptive of the primary die size used for play.

You'd more likely to run into a trademark suit rather than a copyright suit, because, as I just said, the common understanding is that term is used to describe the rules system that WotC (arguably) copyrighted under the OGL. Therefore, you COULD argue that it's misleading to a consumer because they might mistakenly believe that this is a product published by WotC. And the workaround to that is just taking measures to make the distinction clear at a glance.

Alternatively once we start in on the setting/lore material we make that the bigger word on the front cover.

[Crake]

Let me take off my night-job hat of rules lawyer to answer this question and put on my day-job hat of regular lawyer.

While the term "d20" is commonly associated with OGL products and obviously has been popularized by D&D's use of it (as opposed to other recognizable systems using d10s, d100s, or a shotgun blast of d6s) the term itself is not something copyrightable as it is inherently descriptive of the primary die size used for play.

You'd more likely to run into a trademark suit rather than a copyright suit, because, as I just said, the common understanding is that term is used to describe the rules system that WotC (arguably) copyrighted under the OGL. Therefore, you COULD argue that it's misleading to a consumer because they might mistakenly believe that this is a product published by WotC. And the workaround to that is just taking measures to make the distinction clear at a glance.

Alternatively once we start in on the setting/lore material we make that the bigger word on the front cover.

I personally would avoid tying the system too heavily to a setting, dnd and pathfinder have their own settings, sure, but they dont brand their products around it, and for good reason, one of the great things about tabletop rpgs is being able to make your own world, but if you start feeling like you need to be running in the published world, that starts to pull away from that feeling.

[themightyjello]

I personally would avoid tying the system too heavily to a setting, dnd and pathfinder have their own settings, sure, but they dont brand their products around it
That's a large part of why we've focused on the core system components first and will be tackling things like that later. Even among the people that play D&D, relatively few know what "Greyhawk" is and most people just assume that the Forgotten Realms setting is part of the core system and not merely an option.

The ideal tabletop game should be a toolbox with some suggested premade templates for things like nations, religions, and factions that you can drop in if you want or need them and aren't going to make up your own.

[Dan Arcueid]

I personally would avoid tying the system too heavily to a setting, dnd and pathfinder have their own settings, sure, but they dont brand their products around it, and for good reason, one of the great things about tabletop rpgs is being able to make your own world, but if you start feeling like you need to be running in the published world, that starts to pull away from that feeling.



That's a large part of why we've focused on the core system components first and will be tackling things like that later. Even among the people that play D&D, relatively few know what "Greyhawk" is and most people just assume that the Forgotten Realms setting is part of the core system and not merely an option.

The ideal tabletop game should be a toolbox with some suggested premade templates for things like nations, religions, and factions that you can drop in if you want or need them and aren't going to make up your own.

That said we do have our own setting that we're planning to utilize. And there is some little reference to this setting we've worked in (see Kheldzean humans, or how goblinoids, magic, and extraplaner creatures work) but its definitely something we want to hammer out the core of the system of before we really sit down and really set up all that info (we have the world/nation/settings setup to some degree already), but we figure we'd likely make a campaign setting book before that goes.

Tldr; Its not like we don't have anything planned there, we just haven't gotten to that step yet.

[Dan Arcueid]

As an update. We've finished our planned rewrite of the Intelligent Weapon race.

The primary piece of the update is to break the race into heritages like the other races; now allowing for "Cursed Object", "Dancing Weapon" and "Sapient Implement".

Cursed Object
This one is designed for players looking to work with other players to be wielded. While it can potentially be used to their wielder's detriment, the cursed object can also do things such as using themselves to block attacks for their wielder (taking control of their movement to do so). The general theme of this one is an object that controls the actions of their wielder, for which the cursed object can use for both good or evil.

Dancing Weapon
The dancing weapon is for those who don't wish to work that closely with others and instead wield themselves. Dancing weapons get a start on the self telekinesis and dancing weapon feats allowing them to be self-sufficient as a normal weapon. This is the one for players who just want to play as a floating sword rather than deal with all the extra rules and mechanics of the other two heritages.

Sapient Implement
This one is meant for those who want to all-in on spellcasting. The main benefit is a more mental-stat-focus and the ability to start as an implement instead of a weapon. You can get feats to provide benefits to your wielder as well if they are also a spellcaster, or simply occupy the hands of a character who would like the support of a spellcaster close by.

Alignment
As a bit of an aside. A big thing we would like some feedback and hear people's thoughts on is alignment. This is generally a sticking point for many groups with lots of arguments. The biggest problem that usually stems from this is alignment creates very odd and rigid expectations of how a character would act, or you have the others who simply pick chaotic neutral to have a pass to just avoid having to deal with it.

Niche does not use the traditional alignment system and instead we've looked into alternatives; but they quickly ran into the issue of being a system in which the player was simply opting-in on things for the DM to exploit on their character, and while it could be interesting for the narrative, having a bastion of neutrality with no strong feelings one way or the other was likely most optimal there.

As such while to a certain degree we're fine with just dropping such a system entirely and letting people just be people; we also know alignment is a bit ubiquitous across the tabletop scene and such some players like it; as such we're wondering if people have a preference on this and what they would like to see out of a new system regarding this.

[pabelfly]

Alignment is good in that the concepts of good and evil, and law and chaos, and the conflict between these dualities make for good story-telling, and could be tools a DM wants for their game. It's nice that there are mechanics that let you model that conflict. I'm thinking spells to detect Good/Evil/Law/Chaos, the Smite ability, and so forth.

Where it goes wrong in 3.5, I think, is when specific alignments gatekeep mechanics or bonuses that you want to use as a player. For example, Ur-Priest is an interesting class, but you need to be Evil to play it. If you don't want to play an evil character, you can't be an Ur-Priest, no matter how arbitrary it feels or how interesting the character build or concept you have is. Examples of bonuses behind alignments include Paladin's Divine Grace and Barbarian's Pounce.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is though. Maybe other posters have ideas.

[themightyjello]

One of the natural issues that that leads into, however, is the idea of subjective values.

Classic fantasy storytelling usually involves some sort of clash between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and oftentimes these manifest in some kind of iconic "evil" being that most people would agree is evil based on the things they do and the goals that they have. The objectively evil villain... which, often times can also mean a flat, two-dimensional villain. Because a well-rounded character always has motivations for what they do, and those motivations may be selfish or they may be tribal ("what is good for me and my people, but bad for everyone else") but when you move away from cartoon villainy what you end up with is subjective evil. The hero of one tribe is the bloodthirsty warlord to another. You rob from the rich and give to the poor but do you shed a tear for the dozens of wage-earning guards that were killed in the process?

We'd like to think that the line gets clearer when we move into supernatural questions, but does it? D&D tells us that all undead are automatically evil (even though they make rare exceptions when they feel like it), and that the act of creating undead is automatically evil, but that really feels like something based in cultural norms. Suppose that you have a culture of fierce warriors that wish to fight on even in death, and it is not only a perfectly normal but also expected thing that a warrior makes arrangements to be raised as undead so that they can continue on for generations to come protecting their family home. Entire family lineages guarding the ancestral home from invaders out of duty, responsibility, and love for their family. But this is automatically evil, right?

[exelsisxax]

I see no reason at all to retain alignment. it's a bad system descriptively and proscriptively and ends up in the mechanical mess that 3.PF had. No spells or abilities need to be based on alignment, shown by the ones that currently exist being bonkers narratively and ruining entire categories of storytelling (detect X is very stupid).

For the thematic stuff that should still exist, just rip alignment out of it. Smite X can just be, well, smite. It doesn't limit any possible kinds of storytelling, and brings back several (like making a mistake and smiting someone you should not have!).

Positive/negative energy could still exist depending on setting but that is a compositional fact rather than a moral fact. Note that even some D&D settings have built-in positive-energy aligned undead - just drop the alignment part and everything gets much simpler.

[Dan Arcueid]

Alignment is good in that the concepts of good and evil, and law and chaos, and the conflict between these dualities make for good story-telling, and could be tools a DM wants for their game. It's nice that there are mechanics that let you model that conflict. I'm thinking spells to detect Good/Evil/Law/Chaos, the Smite ability, and so forth.

Where it goes wrong in 3.5, I think, is when specific alignments gatekeep mechanics or bonuses that you want to use as a player. For example, Ur-Priest is an interesting class, but you need to be Evil to play it. If you don't want to play an evil character, you can't be an Ur-Priest, no matter how arbitrary it feels or how interesting the character build or concept you have is. Examples of bonuses behind alignments include Paladin's Divine Grace and Barbarian's Pounce.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is though. Maybe other posters have ideas.

Bit of a delay, but have a chance to post again.
While i like the narrative capabilities of alignment it does have its drawbacks.

The pros are that it can allow for a reason for your character to be constrained in a specific way, moral code, etc.. and thus you have a reason out of character to act in a specific way without a self-imposed restriction. And while some players can do fine with those, others I've found generally can't do that, or feel bad for doing that, unless effectively the game is forcing them to behave that way.

Gatekeeping mechanics i think can be fine but it has to be done well. Prestige classes are a great way to do it if that prestige class has a lot of lore and implications around it; but generally the mechanics need to uphold that alignment to not make it feel arbitrary. The worst way its done is with base classes because rather than organically falling into a alignment/style it can be restrictive right out the gate.

Paladin is likely the worst case just because firstly Paladin really should've never been a base class and should've been a prestige (the idea of a level 1 paladin is a bit silly imo). But the main problem is they're a collection of somewhat silly and in some cases overpowered class features for the tradeoff of the roleplay implications and limitations, and the ever-looming threat that the DM is going to take away your powers.

Its actually why we made champion with its various oaths; just because its a lot easier to work within those limitations than something as nasty (and somewhat highly subjective reading) as the paladin code can be. We do want to make a paladin class but it would likely be an advanced class as a result; but I'm getting slightly off topic.

Overall there may not be a great solution; Its generally something I've been mulling over as it was something that potentially had little to no impact on your character mechanically, but forced the player to think a bit more of "how would i act with them". (paladins ofc being the exception as that had nothing but mechanical impact)


I see no reason at all to retain alignment. it's a bad system descriptively and proscriptively and ends up in the mechanical mess that 3.PF had. No spells or abilities need to be based on alignment, shown by the ones that currently exist being bonkers narratively and ruining entire categories of storytelling (detect X is very stupid).

For the thematic stuff that should still exist, just rip alignment out of it. Smite X can just be, well, smite. It doesn't limit any possible kinds of storytelling, and brings back several (like making a mistake and smiting someone you should not have!).

Positive/negative energy could still exist depending on setting but that is a compositional fact rather than a moral fact. Note that even some D&D settings have built-in positive-energy aligned undead - just drop the alignment part and everything gets much simpler.

The detect spells are likely one of the worst inventions as the unfortunate conclusion is the world is full of SWAT paladins who just do random alignment checks and slay peasants who detect evil; especially with how over the years I've even seen official works describe "lawful evil" and "neutral evil" as someone who joins the army so they can kill people without having to deal with the law; aka no crime committed, but by the paladin code if they detect as evil at all the paladin is required to slay them. Even better is effectively detect evil for paladins is just to make 1st level feel less awful considering otherwise your only class feature is smite evil once a day, at a level where there's a good chance if anything feels like you NEED to smite it at 1st, you're probably already dead.

As i said in the above bit, some things can't have alignment ripped out of them without needing to also be re-balanced as effectively half their balance is the annoyance of dealing with their alignment-restrictions; which is a poor system.

I don't 100% think restrictions are a bad thing; but when they're mechanical restrictions sometimes the fun is creatively working around them. Alignment is always in a sticky scenario where it can work, but only if every class feature is so blatantly X-alignment; like an evil class whose every class feature has to be preceded by consuming a live infant whole you'd at least go "yeah I guess that's pretty evil"; and you'd bare minimum have a lot harder time convincing you GM "no i can totally prove its not evil" though even then you know someone will pull out the "needs of the many" argument for this hypothetical, and you're back to alignment squabbling at the table all over again.

Alignment at its core needs to be handled better considering PF for example had the amazing logic of "casting protection against good is evil, but then using that to cast the planar binding spell to bind an angel to do your bidding is good, making it a neutral action" or just the general "i cast this X number of times, i just shifted alignment from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil, but don't worry, I'll cast this good spell at this orphanage, thankfully because they're neutral creatures and the spell is good I'm a better person for this"; and man i wish i was exaggerating with this scenario.

Once again, i think in its current form for other systems its bad and clunky which is why when making this system we didn't make such a thing. For all of its faults though the classes with alignment restrictions I've found it does sometimes make the players think more about their characters and in others simply the alignment helps them choose their class/theme easier.

[Batcathat]

I haven't read the discussion in detail, so perhaps this is something that's already been suggested, but if I were to include alignment in a system, I would do it in the most literal sense, meaning that it just means that character A is aligned with the forces of X or the god of Y, without it directly saying anything about character A's personality (it could still give indirect hints, of course. Someone aligned with the god of Healing is likely a nicer person than someone aligned with the goddess of Sadistic Torture).

[QuadraticGish]

If I'm reading the armor section correctly, you essentially need 20 strength to wear any heavy armor that's non-exotic without penalty? Considering the recommended 20 point buy, what is the expected stat array for your average strength beatstick fighter?

[themightyjello]

If I'm reading the armor section correctly, you essentially need 20 strength to wear any heavy armor that's non-exotic without penalty? Considering the recommended 20 point buy, what is the expected stat array for your average strength beatstick fighter?
That's a soft yes, in that you're reading the armor section correctly but there's additional context.

The Strength Rating on armor is the minimum strength modifier required to avoid having a penalty due to the armor's weight. When comparing this to what you'd see in 3.5e or Pathfinder, the Strength Rating is the armor check penalty AND the movement speed reduction AND a penalty on attack rolls.

Which means that when you meet or exceed the strength rating requirement on armor, then you are wearing it with NO penalties (including reduced movement speed that most players are familiar with being a part of heavy armor). So there's a bit more of a balancing factor in making the choice of whether you want to take a penalty and how big you're okay with it being.

Likewise, it was intended for the heaviest of heavy armors to be something that a character works up to, rather than starting with at 1st level.

In your question you asked what the average strength for a beatstick fighter would be at level 1? Well with a 20 point buy you could afford to spend the 17 points to get an 18 out the gate and then also get a +2 racial bonus and also gain a +1 inherent bonus at 1st level. So if that's the one stat that you care about more than anything else, your beatstick fighter could start with a 21 strength.

If you didn't want to spend as many points and only started with a natural 16, that would put you at 19 strength at level 1. When wearing armor with a strength rating of 5 you'd be taking a -1 penalty on attack rolls and certain skill checks, as well as a 5 ft penalty to movement speed. At 3rd level you could put another +1 inherent bonus into strength to bring it up to 20, and then the penalty would be gone (unless you moved to a heavier type of armor or also picked up a shield).

Armor in Niche functions somewhat differently, as in addition to simply making it harder to be hit it also doubles as a second HP pool. Heavy armor can make your character significantly more durable even if you are being consistently hit, and because of that we wanted it to feel like something that rewards an investment rather than every single character's best option being a mithril breastplate.

[themightyjello]

I haven't read the discussion in detail, so perhaps this is something that's already been suggested, but if I were to include alignment in a system, I would do it in the most literal sense, meaning that it just means that character A is aligned with the forces of X or the god of Y, without it directly saying anything about character A's personality (it could still give indirect hints, of course. Someone aligned with the god of Healing is likely a nicer person than someone aligned with the goddess of Sadistic Torture).
This is something I tried to achieve when writing the Champion class (although that is pending another rewrite to try and make it really come together a bit more), where your character chooses what ideals s/he stands for and takes penalties for straying from them. We knew early on that we wanted to do away with conventional alignment and have tried to approach the design of several areas with that in mind.

Because we have 10 elements now rather than D&D's soft 5 (fire, cold, acid, electricity and sonic, and then the oddball energy types of positive, negative and force), many of the magic types that would have gotten the [evil] descriptor on a D&D spell list are instead being categorized under the elements of dark, cold, and entropy.

In more direct response to what you said, we just have some generic placeholder gods in place now and will obviously flesh that list out as we move further towards pushing out setting information and not just pure mechanical content. I hope to be able to pull a bit more of that "you worship the god of sadistic torture" into both the theme and the functionality of classes such as Champion and Priest as we continue to develop the system (and clearly need to add a blessing of torture for priests to pick up... VIVA TORTURE! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEOJmHvLrlI))

[QuadraticGish]

That's a soft yes, in that you're reading the armor section correctly but there's additional context.

The Strength Rating on armor is the minimum strength modifier required to avoid having a penalty due to the armor's weight. When comparing this to what you'd see in 3.5e or Pathfinder, the Strength Rating is the armor check penalty AND the movement speed reduction AND a penalty on attack rolls.

Which means that when you meet or exceed the strength rating requirement on armor, then you are wearing it with NO penalties (including reduced movement speed that most players are familiar with being a part of heavy armor). So there's a bit more of a balancing factor in making the choice of whether you want to take a penalty and how big you're okay with it being.

Likewise, it was intended for the heaviest of heavy armors to be something that a character works up to, rather than starting with at 1st level.

In your question you asked what the average strength for a beatstick fighter would be at level 1? Well with a 20 point buy you could afford to spend the 17 points to get an 18 out the gate and then also get a +2 racial bonus and also gain a +1 inherent bonus at 1st level. So if that's the one stat that you care about more than anything else, your beatstick fighter could start with a 21 strength.

If you didn't want to spend as many points and only started with a natural 16, that would put you at 19 strength at level 1. When wearing armor with a strength rating of 5 you'd be taking a -1 penalty on attack rolls and certain skill checks, as well as a 5 ft penalty to movement speed. At 3rd level you could put another +1 inherent bonus into strength to bring it up to 20, and then the penalty would be gone (unless you moved to a heavier type of armor or also picked up a shield).

Armor in Niche functions somewhat differently, as in addition to simply making it harder to be hit it also doubles as a second HP pool. Heavy armor can make your character significantly more durable even if you are being consistently hit, and because of that we wanted it to feel like something that rewards an investment rather than every single character's best option being a mithril breastplate.

In practice, how has light armor worked out against heavy armor? At a glance, Dex and Light armor might pull through on the tanky side since they end up with higher AC. The difference between light and heavy armor HP I think is more than offset by having strong bonuses against the two things that bypass armor HP. The first being having much higher touch AC in most cases so they simple don't need to use armor HP against touch attacks and then having a higher Ref by virtue of having a high dex.

[Dan Arcueid]

If I'm reading the armor section correctly, you essentially need 20 strength to wear any heavy armor that's non-exotic without penalty? Considering the recommended 20 point buy, what is the expected stat array for your average strength beatstick fighter?

Yeah the main thing as "themightyjello" pointed out is that your stats go up as you level rather than being linked to items. Thus it doesn't take that long to bypass some of those restrictions, and in our playtests having a -1 or -2 from strength rating isn't that crippling given the general survivability benefits armor grants (see the damage redirection stuff if you haven't read that).

As a quick aside point buy in this system is suggested around 20 as the "standard"; so that is something to keep in mind.

Armor is generally meant to be something you wear the heaviest you're comfortable getting away with, and then trading up should you decide to boost those stats further. The main benefit is due to the fact every character starts with crap versions of their armor you can start with full plate if you want, the balancing factor is your stats; but in addition to that you don't feel as pressured to try and start with proficiency in fortress plate because there's a real chance you'll struggle to move in that; so you'll likely trade up into that later, especially when you can afford it. While I did also introduce armor special abilities to make armor have a little more spice to it than flat AC bonuses, I do wish to eventually add some more/expand upon those a bit more later; so you're meant to also select the armor you like in terms of special options alongside the defense, so you might see a wider array of armors in a party rather than everyone in the same because its just "stastically the best"


General Aside About Armor

Primarily our design with armor went as follows.
1. Strength Rating
We thought the idea that armor always slowed you and hindered you despite its weight being downright negligible for some characters to be somewhat silly. Thus we decided to go for a system that had some repercussions for using armor you're not meant to wear, but you could eventually stat out of those penalties. Thus strength rating was effectively a replacement for the armor check and movement speed penalty systems.

2. AC, Dexterity, and Damage Mitigation
We decided armor should be more for absorbing hits, and while AC was useful, we wanted to address the fact that armor never felt good to wear, and was mostly just a punishment for having bad dexterity, or worse not being a monk. Thus you had the issue where at a certain stage of the game due to the hard cap of how high AC could go, armor nearly stopped mattering.
Max dex was worse because this was the most your stats could apply meaning all armor had this hard ceiling to it that many things attacks just skyrocketed above; even worse was stat to AC classes could soar past these numbers and with the right feats feel immortal while the guy in full plate was miles behind.

Thus we decided to split armor from being light/medium/heavy to just being light/heavy with proficiency versions of simple/martial/exotic.

More importantly we effectively created 3 types of characters.
1. Characters in heavy armor who don't utilize dex to AC, but soak damage like non-other. Their AC likely won't scale as high in the end, but the armor will do its job and soak hits for them.
2. Characters in Light armor who can utilize dex to AC, and thus can get more out of their AC, but still have some cushion of protection.
3. Stat to AC characters (via the perk system) who forgo all armor, but will likely end up with the highest numbers for AC as their AC has no real ceiling and is scaling off 2 sources.

Now funny enough we had to buff the stat to AC option a little with the stamina system and a few other things as we found that these all balance out well in the late game, the early game armor soak was so good that before the stat to AC guy really started to scale up they were the most likely to die; and thus we added some options for them in the stamina system.

Combat in Niche
A big thing with Niche as a system is we generally wanted combats to not only last longer, but not turn into high-stakes rocket-tag in which if combat went past round 2 someone in the party was likely going to die. Not only that but round/level buffs felt useless to cast if you couldn't pre-buff for a fight, because eating an entire turn to cast a small buff wasn't usually worth the turn; even better it also made in-combat healing something people never did.

Thus we wanted combats to take go beyond 2 rounds to help shift the focus of characters. This also meant providing more active options for characters so it wasn't all basic attack rolls. But the main way we achieved this was just upping the HP of everything, so comparatively we're working with a die size higher for everyone; healing is a bit more effective, and armor provides effectively an extra layer of hit points for characters.
The biggest downside to armor is there isn't a great way to fix that armor should it break mid-combat, or worse be destroyed. This also means that sunder characters will feel alot better due to you wanting to bypass that armor even moreso.


I probably didn't cover everything, but this seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the armor system alongside our general thought process for it.

[Dan Arcueid]

In practice, how has light armor worked out against heavy armor? At a glance, Dex and Light armor might pull through on the tanky side since they end up with higher AC. The difference between light and heavy armor HP I think is more than offset by having strong bonuses against the two things that bypass armor HP. The first being having much higher touch AC in most cases so they simple don't need to use armor HP against touch attacks and then having a higher Ref by virtue of having a high dex.

Saw this after i finished making my last post. Cover this a bit in my post above this. Armor HP does scale better based on the AC of the armor, and armors like full plate and fortress plate have extra as well.

The general shake-out is light armor in alot of cases does lag a bit behind heavy armor in AC meaning the benefits for the dex aren't immediate at the early game. High dex will assist with reflex and such; though shields also do provide assistance in that department as well, and will potentially be paired more with heavy armor (as they come with their own strength rating for anything above a buckler).
Due to how the HP scales the full plate will gain a large amount more health pool over the light armor as the game progresses.

So light armor is undoubtedly pretty good; striking a balance between the no-armor and heavy armor characters. But the heavy armor character is going to have alot more "bad luck" protection via that larger HP pool against enemies who do keep hitting them; they'll likely be paired with a heavier shield also as they'll have the strength rating later to achieve it. And the no-armor will likely get hit less, but have less options to soak that damage once the bad luck hits.

Fighters also have a unique bonus in this department; but thats class-specific and not a generalized bonus for any build.

[Castilonium]

I searched the Niched20 wiki for intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. It seems that charisma is still a dump stat if you're not playing a class that specifically relies on charisma. It gains no inherent new benefits compared to other d20 systems, while wisdom gains the extra benefit of granting more reactions. Also, the skills that use charisma can be switched to use intelligence or wisdom via minor perks. I feel this is a big problem.

To be explicitly clear, here are the non-skill benefits of each mental stat:
Intelligence: Extra skill points and languages.
Wisdom: Will save and extra reactions.
Charisma: Nothing.

It'd be cool if this system made things more equitable for charisma.

[themightyjello]

It seems that charisma is still a dump stat if you're not playing a class that specifically relies on charisma.
I'm rushing out the door so I can't pull language to support this, but Charisma affects activated magic items; sometimes increasing uses per day sometimes increasing save attack rolls sometimes modifying other effects.

Please check the magic items page. I'm sure we have it written somewhere else because it was the intention from the outset to have Charisma function in this way, but as I said, on my way out the door...

[Castilonium]

I'm rushing out the door so I can't pull language to support this, but Charisma affects activated magic items; sometimes increasing uses per day sometimes increasing save attack rolls sometimes modifying other effects.

Please check the magic items page. I'm sure we have it written somewhere else because it was the intention from the outset to have Charisma function in this way, but as I said, on my way out the door...

Alright, I looked at the magic item page, and I see what you mean. I see a couple problems:

1) If high-charisma characters want to get the full benefit of their charisma, they need to specifically seek out and use magic items with activated abilities. This isn't everyone's cup of tea. A lot of players and character concepts prefer to use passive magic items and have their power focused on their characters' own abilities (class features, feats, etc) rather than rely on external ones.

2) A lot of the magic items say "your charisma modifier (minimum 1 or 2)." This means that characters with 5 charisma and characters with 13 or 15 charisma get exactly the same benefit from those magic items despite their large differences in charisma. It's the same problem that Arcanists (https://www.aonprd.com/ClassDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Arcanist) in Pathfinder 1e have with their arcane reservoir. Having 10 or 12 charisma is pointless. It's difficult for non-charisma-based characters to justify spending 5 points for 14 charisma with 20 point buy. They'd usually be better served dumping charisma and getting more points for other, better stats, and being satisfied with the (minimum 1 or 2) the magic items have.

[QuadraticGish]

I see, okay. Definitely different from what I'm used to. Though I note that 16 Str characters are stuck in a really weird place in terms of armor choices when starting out. I do feel like how armor works will pull people towards one extreme or the other in terms of Dex as far as armor is concerned.

[themightyjello]

1) If high-charisma characters want to get the full benefit of their charisma, they need to specifically seek out and use magic items with activated abilities. This isn't everyone's cup of tea. A lot of players and character concepts prefer to use passive magic items and have their power focused on their characters' own abilities (class features, feats, etc) rather than rely on external ones.
Phone post but, one of the focus shifts we wanted to do with magic item design and the system as a whole was to remove a lot of that constant hunt for static bonuses that makes up a lot of conventional play.

For magic items this meant we wanted to shift focus from being a menagerie of magical knick-knacks holding your character up as passive background buffs, and make magic item selections more like a toolbelt. You have these additional options available to you, you can use them this many times between recharges, etc. It will certainly need some fine tuning (as you mentioned, the bonus uses don't feel as rewarding as they could when you compare someone with a bonus to someone with a penalty) as we continue on... but hopefully the spirit of it is there.

The goal was to make magic items (non weapon and armor types) into Batman's utility belt, rather than Thor's hammer.

[themightyjello]

I do feel like how armor works will pull people towards one extreme or the other in terms of Dex as far as armor is concerned.
If the middle feels bad then we will have to make adjustments to make it feel rewarding again. There are some options that facilitate having a small amount of dex in heavy armor, and light armor has enough benefits that there are clear advantages over the risk-reward of an unarmored build... but as you said, we need to be careful that players who want to have dex as a secondary or tertiary stat don't feel bad for having some but not extreme amounts (despite all the other advantages dex offers).