General Combat:
Combat is going to be streamlined. Ideally, players would post their general tactics, and I'd advance the combat until the tactical situation changed. If the PCs are all high-AC warriors, I'll probably just describe them fighting off the Hive gangers pretty much effortlessly, not taking a single scratch.
Custom Material:
I'm not banning anything specifically. If you want to play one of the many homebrew classes floating around the Den, you are welcome to. I'd personally probably grab Koumei's Sohei or Frank's Soulborn if I were playing in this, maybe grab some of my Mystic Dilettante feats. Power creep is only an issue if it means the PCs can easily take on things like the two NPCs mentioned above. But being practically unhittable or throwing out a bunch of attacks that each kill a mook is fine. Throwing out a save or lose that wipes a routine encounter is fine.
Ability Scores:
Pick whatever ability scores fit your character concept. I'd prefer that you not take 17s or 18s, though, since that's going to put you dramatically over the attributes of all the opponents you face. If you decide that your PC should have all 16s, that is perfectly okay.
Initiative and post frequency:
I go with "Them and Us" initiative. In combat, PCs go first unless they are being ambushed. Any action order.
If you don't post for a while, I or another player will take over your PC.
Skills:
I find myself tempted to go with my very lazy skill houserules for this game. They go as follows:
1. You have the same skill list as in regular 3.x
2. For each skill, if it looks like something your character would be good at, give max ranks. If it looks like something your character would be competent at, give a number that reflects how well you think they should do with it.
3. Try and keep things reasonable.
Knowledge Creation
Sometimes, a PC may wish to add something to the game world which is not specified (such a city, organization, place, event, or anything similar) or has not been mentioned before. Characters can use the Knowledge skill to generate such content.
Check: The player who wishes to add the content calls an appropriate Knowledge skill, depending on the content that he or she seeks to add (sometimes, multiple skills may be appropriate here). The DC of the check varies, and is set by the DM based on how plausible it sounds, as well as how well it fits with the world as a whole. If the check succeeds, the given fact is true, the given place or individual exists, etc. On a failed check, the given fact is false, the given individual doesn't exist etc, or, on occasion, a given fact is true, but in an unexpected way.
Example: A player wants to generate a thieves' guild in a city that he is going to, and specifies that he happens to know someone in it. The DM considers this quite plausible, and sets a DC of 20. The player decides that Knowledge (local) is most appropriate skill, but only gets a result of 18. The DM now has two options - he either declares that the thieves' guild doesn't exist, that the guild exists, but the PC doesn't know anyone there, or that the guild exists, and the PC does know someone there, but that someone hates the PC for some reason, or any similar permutation.
Action: As this attempts to answer a question about the world as a whole (even if it never came up previously), this action takes an insignificant amount of time.
Try Again: You cannot usually retry very similar requests, even on different skills. However, it is possible to retry this if used for something significantly new or different.
Special: You cannot use this ability untrained.
Alignment:
Allegiances
Alignment has never worked, in any iteration, and likely never will. As a result, the alignment system is being ditched wholesale. Instead, characters may have up to three Allegiances, which represent individuals, organizations or ideals and concepts that those characters believe in as people. Those who hold Allegiances aren't necessarily totally faithful and obedient – they may well interpret them as they choose, especially when conflicts within their allegiance choices arise. However, a character who has an Allegiance indicates that this person, organization or idea matters to him or her a great deal.
It is possible, though rare, to have characters that have no Allegiances whatsoever. Such individuals have either not made up their minds about the world and their place in it, or are the ultimate loners. While this is certainly possible (and, in some cases, even valid) as a choice, it is fairly rare, and any player who wishes to make a character with no Allegiances at all should justify his or her choice thoroughly.
If a character has multiple Allegiances, they should be ranked in terms of priority. The first Allegiance a character has is always the most important, followed by the second-most-important, and finally by the third-most-important. No character may have more than three Allegiances – while this does not mean a character cannot hold more individuals, philosophies or organizations in high regard, they will not necessarily drive his or her actions, influence their thinking considerably enough, or simply have enough time to divide between them all to make all of them as important as their allegiances.
Allegiances can and do change during gameplay; this is both natural and normal. However, changing an Allegiance is essentially a very big event in a character's life – especially if the Allegiance being changed is a primary one. This represents the character totally changing his or her point of view about themselves and the world around them, and thus, should not be done lightly or frequently. If a player often changes Allegiances, it is quite possible that those Allegiances were never very important to the character to begin with.
HP Rolls:
Let's maximize HP for PCs. Since we may be running combat in several-round chunks at a time, PCs should be more resistant to dying to normal weapon damage.
Special combat maneuvers:
Avoraciopoctules wrote:ubernoob wrote:I'm tweaking my concept to fit a bit better with my ideas of how this character would behave, and I came up with a problem.
How the fuck are the overrun rules supposed to work? As written, it seems to be that you can't combine them with charging (which is stupid) and if the enemy doesn't get out of the way you use up your standard action to overrun them (instead of trampling them as you move). It seems with the 3.5 rules you can't overrun more than one person (due to it taking a standard action to overrun).
Can we make overrun just be part of movement or something that isn't headache inducing?
Sure. You can try to move through an enemy's space. If they don't let you, you can make an opposed Grapple check. If you win, they are shoved aside and you can move through. They normally get an AoO, but not if you've got the Edge.
Character Wealth:
You start with a number of minor magical items equal to your level. Since you've got a CR 3 character with you, I'm willing to allow them an extra item of their own. So you could pick the magic barding or the horseshoes, and spend one of your own 2 or 3 items if you wanted both.
You can also have a "reasonable" number of consumables and nonmagic items. If you want a bandolier with 6 healing potions in it, fine. If you want a half-dozen oils that set your sword on fire for an encounter, fine. A masterwork longbow is also fine.
You start with "some money". You can rent a room at an inn without worrying about going broke, but you can't afford to commission a fancy new magic thinblade yet. You can hire some thugs to watch your back, but you can't pay a random level 5 wizard to lob a stinking cloud through someone's window in exchange for shiny golds. Throw too much money around, and you may go down to "not very much money". This is not fun, so I'll probably warn you first.
