Shah...D20 variant

[DMReckless]

I’m working on a D20 variant system for some teens I run D&D for, and I’m posting here because I know the people of this board to be A) Brutally honest and B) Great number crunchers/flaw spotters.

The system will be heavily tied into the setting, so a basic synopsis will be required. The setting is Shah, a world that was once part of a vast multi-dimensional empire spanning an almost infinite number of worlds and dimensions. The primary inhabitants of this world during the heyday of the multi-dimensional empire were the Shaciir, vastly powerful beings able to use innate gifts and awesome psionic abilities to mold reality to their desires by tapping into the energies of the cosmos itself.
The Shaciir were one of the races that served the creators and masters of the empire. They, in turn, created other beings to serve them. Among these created races were the Harman, the Oruk, and the Sha’Krii. The Harman were made for adaptabilty and flexibility, the Oruk to serve as protectors and guardians, and the Sha’Krii for speed and precision.
But the Shaciir were not the only powerful servants of the Shaluum Empire. The Eshiim, a race of living machines serving the Shaluum, grew jealous of the Shaciir’s place of honor. They considered themselves superior to all of the other servant races, and, indeed, some among them came to the conclusion that the Shaluum’s blindness to the Eshiim’s obvious perfection was itself so great a flaw that the Shaluum themselves were lesser beings than the Eshiim. Their ideals quickly took route in the other Eshiim, spreading through their shared consciousness until rebellion was the only conclusion. The Eshiim Rebellion, coordinated by this shared consciousness, was swift and brutal, catching many worlds by surprise and devastating whole dimensions.
Shah was an exception to this rule, as the Shaciir’s abilities to read even Eshiim minds detected the thoughts of betrayal and warned their Shaluum masters on time to crush the Eshiim on Shah and other worlds the Shaciir dwelled on. It was Shah, therefore, with the greatest concentration of Shaciir presence, that became the center of the Empire’s efforts to contain and destroy the rebellious machines. With the might of the Shaluum and the loyalist servitor races turned against them, the Eshiim’s supposed superiority was quickly outmatched.
The Shaciir began an effort to control the shared consciousness and force surrender, not wishing to destroy their “cousins” if reprogramming could be achieved instead. This forced the Eshiim to break from the consciousness, and, for many of them, think as individuals on a level they had never faced before. With this came confusion, befuddlement, and, in some cases, insanity.
A group of Eshiim afflicted with this newfound individuality developed a weapon to fight against the Shaluum and their hated servant Shaciir. A complex biological weapon, it was designed to destroy the Shaluum’s neural pathways, and disrupt the Shaciir’s in such a way as to prevent them from using their abilities. The difficulty lay in the delivery. The Shaluum Empire was so vast, delivery of the weapon across the Empire without the shared consciousness seemed an impossible task, and it was too great a risk of discovery to attempt to access the consciousness.
The solution came to one of the group’s members. They would use the inter-dimensional gates to transmit the plague. These “gates” were actually another servitor race for the Shaluum, not too different from the Eshiim, but partially biological. The Eshiim could use that biological aspect to carry the weapon throughout the Empire nearly instantaneously.
The Eshiim Plague was released into the gate system, ravaging the Empire in seconds. In those seconds, however, the gates, underestimated by the Eshiim, were able to identify and modify the Plague. Unable to eradicate the weapon, they instead turned it against its creators, allowing it to affect machine lifeforms as well as biological ones, and weakening its affects greatly. In doing so, however, the gates sealed their own fate, destroying their own intelligence.
On Shah, for the Shaluum, it was too little too late. They were degenerated by the weapon into little more than gigantic, ravenous vermin. For Shaciir throughout the multi-verse, it brought death and madness. Some Shaciir, however, were able to maintain sanity by clinging to one aspect of their power, focusing on a single energy source for salvation. Some turned to long-forbidden sources of energy to survive as the Plague swept over them. Still others were protected by the last vestiges of intelligence remaining in the gates before the plague finally eradicated their minds.
Nor were the Shaciir’s own servant races unaffected. While beneath the Eshiim’s contemptuous radar, and not specifically designed into the weapon’s matrix, these races were often plunged into madness. For millennia, Shah was plunged into darkness and savagery. The Harman, Oruk, and Sha’Krii, least affected by the Plague, became the foundation of the new civilization on Shah which developed from the ashes of the old. It is this world, crawling out of the darkness, that the players will be partaking of.

Goals of design:

1) Give players lots of developmental and tactical decisions while keeping the math solid.

2) Making race matter throughout the character’s development.
a) Races will have levels, and a character will gain both a Racial level and a class level every time he levels up.
b) Each race will have standard features, but will also have a selection of Feats and Talents they can choose from as they develop.

3) Keep the idea that monsters live in the same world and follow the same rules as characters while evening out the challenge rating system- using the Racial level rules to accomplish this.

4) Fold/Convert BAB, AC, and Weapon Proficiencies into the skill system. Use this platform to even out math on weapon and spell/ability damages.

5) Develop magic, psionic, and racial abilities that follow a level-appropriate mathematical curve and offer options while not automatically winning the game.

6) Make “magic” healing rare and/or difficult, especially at lower levels.

7) Turn back the dial to have "Name Level" style signature abilities at earlier levels... ie lvl 20 is too damn late....

8).....

[angelfromanotherpin]

2) Making race matter throughout the character’s development.
a) Races will have levels, and a character will gain both a Racial level and a class level every time he levels up.

This really makes hash of the level system - what does it even mean? You're probably better off representing race with Tome-style scaling Feats.

4) Fold/Convert BAB, AC, and Weapon Proficiencies into the skill system. Use this platform to even out math on weapon and spell/ability damages.

5) Develop magic, psionic, and racial abilities that follow a level-appropriate mathematical curve and offer options while not automatically winning the game.

Um, good luck? The skill system is among the most problematic parts of the game; and rewriting the magic effects is so much work you might as well build a game from scratch and not deal with all of d20's problems.

6) Make “magic” healing rare and/or difficult, especially at lower levels.

I'm curious as to why this is a goal? What's the point of it? I mean, it's not like it's a low-magic setting...

[DMReckless]

This really makes hash of the level system - what does it even mean? You're probably better off representing race with Tome-style scaling Feats.

What it means will be revealed as I begin posting my races here. It will work similarly to gestalt characters.

Um, good luck? The skill system is among the most problematic parts of the game; and rewriting the magic effects is so much work you might as well build a game from scratch and not deal with all of d20's problems.

Honestly, I'm sticking with the D20 framework due to its familiarity for my players, but you're right in that I'm reinventing a lot of it.

I'm curious as to why this is a goal? What's the point of it? I mean, it's not like it's a low-magic setting...

The point, I guess, is to try to rework hit points so that they work more like they're supposed to, acting as a combination of skill and actual health, and making it so that any combination of heroic archtypes can adventure without absolutely needing a healer.

So natural healing will be a good alternative to magical healing at low levels especially.

[Judging__Eagle]

On healing:

Just make it a now unintelligent "servitor" race.

You place these creatures on you, or eat them, or place them on the wound, and they give their life up to repair/heal you.


Really, you just want the "healer" role to not be necessary.

On mathing weapon and spell/ability damages:

Shortswords and Greatclubs are low lvl weapons, they deal decent damage and are either reliable (short swords) or cheap (greatclubs). Falchions, Scythes and Kukris are 'high lvl' weapons; they either multiply your damage more (Falchions and Kukris) or they allow you to utterly destroy a helpless target (Scythes).

Don't sweat that fact, players will instead pick either what they want or what works best for them.

Spell damage.... usually sucks. SoDs are what really work., Again, don't sweat fireballs, even if the PCs could cast them at lvl 1, it wouldn't always work that effectively.

Ability damages... can get healed at a rate of 1 per stat per amount of time rested. Ability Drain is more brutal and needs magic (or bio-science gear; whatever).


Honestly, you'll have enough work cut out for you just setting up the campaign world; statting up the base races and statting up common monsters to even begin thinking about changing the mechanics.

If you really want a skills as combat ability system, I think GURPS does that. I'm not sure how well it does that though.

[CatharzGodfoot]

It sounds like you have a backstory for the campaign world, but what about the world that you will actually be gaming in?


If you want to use precedence, Unearthed Arcana has a system for 'racial class levels'. They suck, but iff you mandate them for everyone (and hopefully give them more stuff to play with), it should work out fine. Coming up with 20-level balanced progressions for every race, however, is quite a difficult task..


If you want to avoid healing magic, consider using some sort of a 'wound point' system. You could keep the flavor very close to D&D by making HP act as a buffer to wounds: once you run out of HP (which heal completely after a short rest), you start taking wounds (which heal only after a long while and can be fatal). You could instead use a 'damage soak' system with fixed [wound|hit] points and a damage resistance check.
Either would probably be quite simple to implement in comparison to some of the other changes you're talking about.


Finally, how exactly are you thinking of using the skill system? As it stands, Use Rope won't be balanced with 'Use Sword'. Five ranks in 'Use Sword' and 5 ranks in 'Use Axe' won't be balanced with 10 ranks in 'Use Sword' either. Are you thinking of using opposed checks or static DCs?

[Leress]

2) Making race matter throughout the character’s development.
a) Races will have levels, and a character will gain both a Racial level and a class level every time he levels up.
b) Each race will have standard features, but will also have a selection of Feats and Talents they can choose from as they develop.

This sounds just like what fantasy flight's Dawn Forge campaign setting. Of course it also created a virtual level adjustment for the characters.

3) Keep the idea that monsters live in the same world and follow the same rules as characters while evening out the challenge rating system- using the Racial level rules to accomplish this.

This could work but since most monster will not have the awesome gear like the PCs, that needs to be compensated.

4) Fold/Convert BAB, AC, and Weapon Proficiencies into the skill system. Use this platform to even out math on weapon and spell/ability damages.

BESM d20 did this, and it could get ridiculous when skill boosters are added. The skill system is very abusable and swingy

5) Develop magic, psionic, and racial abilities that follow a level-appropriate mathematical curve and offer options while not automatically winning the game.

Generally anything that deals with pure numbers are not over power (Fireball), and sometime under powered (polar ray). It's the ones that ignore math (Forcecage) that cause problems.

6) Make “magic” healing rare and/or difficult, especially at lower levels.

Unless you make it so characters are more durable this is can get bad quick at lower levels definitely with the swinginess of the first 3 levels of the game.

7) Turn back the dial to have "Name Level" style signature abilities at earlier levels... ie lvl 20 is too damn late....

I agree with that.

[Maxus]

Well, one could have a "Melee Combat" general skill, and then "Ranged Combat", and have different weapons give different bonuses to attack, damage, AC, or some combat function. Likewise, classes could get special features for particular skill uses.

But I'd really draw a dividing line between "Combat skills" and "non-combat skills", and give classes two different amounts of skill points for each of them. A classic wizard, for example, would have a low amount of Combat skill points to put into Attack and AC, while he could get away with have a good number of skill points for stuff that doesn't have direct combat application (although he could be the business at recognizing monsters).

As for low-level healing with the Heal skill, I think Captain Bleach and I threw around some ideas for that quite a while back. It basically comes down to letting someone patch people up after a battle for actual hit point recovery they'd care about.

Something that just occurred to me: Lethal damage only stays lethal for a while, before the body adjusts to being hurt and it becomes non-lethal damage or just disappears entirely.

So someone gets slashed on the chest, it hurts and stings, but they survive the battle and afterwards get bandaged up and treated, to turn that damage into non-lethal damage, and after an hour or two, they're feeling well enough to function more or less normally.

[DMReckless]

Something that just occurred to me: Lethal damage only stays lethal for a while, before the body adjusts to being hurt and it becomes non-lethal damage or just disappears entirely.

So someone gets slashed on the chest, it hurts and stings, but they survive the battle and afterwards get bandaged up and treated, to turn that damage into non-lethal damage, and after an hour or two, they're feeling well enough to function more or less normally.

The thought I was bouncing around was after combat 1/4 of your damage (round down) becomes "Wound" damage and the other 75% becomes "Scratch" damage, which can be bound/ recovered from much more quickly.

This attempts to accomplish the followings:
1) During combat, loosing all your HP and falling unconscious remains a possibility.
2) You still get tougher as you go up in levels, and can take more damage throughout the day. (As opposed to a static wound point total which never increases as you level)
3) Puts the possibility in play to say " A critical hit is ALL wound damage" without necessarily being auto-kill.
4) Every time you get hit, it still means something....

Example, Gringo has 40 HP, and has taken 22 points in his first fight of the day. After the fight, he marks 5 points as wound, and the other 17 as scratches. A friend binds up his wounds, he takes a few minutes to catch his breath, and is ready for his next fight at 35 effective hit points.....

I'm thinking scratch damage will heal at something like 4 per minute for high HD types, 3 for avg HD types, and 2 for low HD types, whereas wounds will heal 2 points per HD per 8 hours rest, more like the standard natural healing....

I have more to say about my skill system, but it's not quite coherently typed up yet....

[DMReckless]

3) Puts the possibility in play to say " A critical hit is ALL wound damage" without necessarily being auto-kill.
.

Ok, just realized this morning how this unfairly penalizes PCs for surviving so strike that.