Quote Originally Posted by Guizonde View Post

i decided i was better than rulebooks and with less than 2 years of dnd play under my belt decided to do my own system with no playtesting and only chutzpah and ego to guide it. 6 years later, that "ruleset" is still going strong with my friends being dedicated players but we've seen so many of its flaws and limits it's kind of shameful this thing has been going on for so long. we're actually trying to update it now because this game is either "rocket tag" or "i'm stronger than an m1 abrams in the roman empire" in terms of difficulty. and so was born the dalarium chronicles. a messy blender of ideas with borked rules at the best of times. would i do it again? yes, but only with my current experience and hindsight, what a mess i created. at least people are having fun despite its flaws.

learn from my fail: don't try to improvise what you don't know.
had a similar experience here, where i tried to fix some problems of d&d by heavily houseruling the game. but i consider it a mixed success: the resulting system was no worse than the original, really, and i learned much.
Now I am more confident that I can improve the mess that is d&d 3.5 for my table, but i would have never learned how to do it if i hadn't barged in at the beginning. sometimes a failed experiment will teach you much more, in terms of "what happens if i do this", than any successful run.
And by the way, my brother learned to use a pc when he was a kid in the same way, and now he's a pro.

No, I think my greatest failure was bestowing this armor to the party cleric during a high level campaign
Armor of unwavering dedication
properties:
can only be worn by a good character striving to fulfill a good quest/geas (basically, you place a quest/geas on you when wearing it)
can't be removed before the quest/geas is over except by miracle/wish. Can be slept in without penalties.
+8 AC (nonmagical, full plate)
+2 supermasterwork bonus
counts as medium for encumbrance (supermasterwork bonus)
raise max dex to +5 (supermasterwork bonus)
+8 enhancement bonus
spell resistance 30
damage reduction 30/- against all elements, negative energy and magic damage
damage reduction 15/
regenerates 10 hp/round
immunity to fear, mind control, death effects, level drain
freedom of movement, true sight always active
zone of truth centered on it always active (DC 25, 3 meters)
+8 to will and fortitude saving throws
unwavering dedication

unwavering dedication: if the wearer is killed, he returns as a ghost, wearing this armor, until his quest/geas is fulfilled.
i did it because the cleric wanted his thing to be "really hard to kill", and he was mostly running support, and so i thought there would be no hard in making him effectively immortal.
enters the big boss lich with his elite lich team and his army of mid-high level liches.
and the cleric can cast mass heal. over a half dozen times per day. with a greater rod of quicken metamagic.
to make it worse, i ruled that artifacts cannot be dispelled or suppressed, so there's even no way to reduce its protection.
if we ever play again in the same world, i'll retcon that armor to something more human.