New Edition of Rules

[NoDot]

1197579950[/unixtime]]My question is: why have Str-based Two handed Sword maneuvers at all?

I mean, what is so special about a Two-handed sword that it does something that a Battleax or a Guisarme can't do, or even a dagger or a punch?

In the crunch, nothing.

In the flavor, the Two-Handed Weapon is Astaroth. It's big; it's slow; it packs a whallop when it hits!

[K]

1197580879[/unixtime]]I think the plan here is that Psycic attacks will sometimes target your willpower (Charisma) and sometimes target your fortitude (Constitution), and sometimes target your perception (Wisdom) and sometimes target your tenacity (Strength).

Since you're generally speaking only looking at +4 or so to target a character's weak Armor Classes vs. their strong ones, it's merely a mini-game rather than a be-all-end-all insta-gib-fest.

---

The goal is to have players feel that they have a logical and comprehensible reason why they would want to use "Whispers of Madness" on an opponent rather than "Wave of Force". Player engagement is the number one priority of the combat system after all.

-Username17

I think I can get behind that. I mean, we do want some weaknesses, but we don't want autokills.

So a Samurai might have Frightening Kiaiii! that targets a mental stat when he's fighting a bunch of weak-willed bandits but a Subtle Cut of the Black Lotus that targets physical stats that is perfect against mental stat heavy imperial consorts.

Just to be clear: we agree that stats increasing offenses is bad, right? A defense stat system works?

[CalibronXXX]

I think it works, defenses and untrained skills get bonuses from stats, offense is solely dependent on the action taken, and trained skills work purely from ranks. Actually, if the stat bonuses aren't too huge, I don't see a problem with stats adding to trained skills.

[JonSetanta]

I've stayed quiet until this point cuz there's no use repeating an idea, if someone else has pretty much stated what I was going to write.

However, I would like to recommend that contrary to 4e D&D, this system (whatever it is) should have less defenses then 6. One for each ability score really is a bit much.
I really liked the 3-save system of 3.x, but throwing in that "AC" to boot was dumb.

So, my idea is 3 defenses of Body (fortitude, muscle-resistance, size), Dodge (AC, reflex save, evasion-like effect), and Mind (will save-like, but also for opposing social checks) for practically everything.
Boosting any one of these would be costly, and to have all 3 very high would require high levels (not just something like levels of "Monk" or "Outsider") which means everyone will have some sort of weak point.

edit: Although..... given some time, I'll stew on the "ability scores as defenses" idea and see if it'll grow on me. It's a new concept but very much WoD or SAME... just a bit odd with D&D or d20.

[Username17]

I think I can get behind that. I mean, we do want some weaknesses, but we don't want autokills.

Precisely. I'm thinking of having the correct attack type to be roughly the equivalent of having positional advantage or something. Nice, but not an auto-win by itself and not something which reduces the battle to an initiative check.

Just to be clear: we agree that stats increasing offenses is bad, right? A defense stat system works?

Hmmm... I'm not sure. Defense-Only attributes is certainly a possibility. It does work.

What I'm worried about is that characters and monsters will end up having defenses which feel extremely arbitrary. It could very easily end up in video game land (or Gygaxitopia) where unless you manage to hit the enemy with a scanner (or read its monster manual entry) that you'll have no reason to believe any particular attack types are more appropriate than any other. I'm thinking specifically of Disgaea where each character was vulnerable to one of the elements actually at random. And if characters don't derive an active benefit from them I worry that it'll end up like that. It's actually fine in games where you can just see all the enemy stats like Final Fantasy Tactics, but it would a pain to implement tabletop in a way that would be fun.

My thought is that a character's three highest stats sholdn't provide a bonus on a d20 that is more than two points off from each other. So a character can get an attack bonus from their stats without being completely locked into one mode of doing things. But at the same time, people proficient with the system should be able to figure out what a guy's strong points are simply from the abilities that they use (which are also the abilities that he knows, and presumably ones keyed to stats that he has decent numbers on).

Things which need to definitely not happen include:

• Stat disparity being such that characters always hit or always miss.
  
  
• Characters being able to make an entire character around a single giant attribute and having that mean that they win D&D.
  
  
• Attributes having such a limited set of applications that a character with a specific attribute choice set can't have nice things.

The last one I think needs especial attention. I was dead serious when I said that Necromancer should be a sample class with a bunch of Strength related abilities on it. From Dracula to Mum-Ra, necromancers have the strength of 20 men all the time in literature. And so a character with a Strength Focus should be a perfectly decent platform for the Dark Arts.

-Username17

[K]

1197588202[/unixtime]]
The last one I think needs especial attention. I was dead serious when I said that Necromancer should be a sample class with a bunch of Strength related abilities on it. From Dracula to Mum-Ra, necromancers have the strength of 20 men all the time in literature. And so a character with a Strength Focus should be a perfectly decent platform for the Dark Arts.

-Username17

Here's how I think that works:

As a vampire, you have a Blood Drain power. To use it you have to Grapple.

Grapples work like this: Its an attack that goes against Str, and it if suceeds you are Grappled (we'll decide exactly what that means later, but it probably means you can't move until you break the grapple). Breaking a grapple requires a Grapple action.

Here's our example:
Dracula attacks Mina, a low Str girl. He performs his Grapple attack and it checks against her Str. She fails, because she has a low Str.

Her action comes up, and she tries to break the grapple, and possibly escape or something. She makes a Grapple check and it checks against Dracula's Str. He has a high Str, so he succeeds. Mina has failed to break the grapple, and is still grappled.

-----------------
I imagine a system where you can have Liches who are high Str Necromancers who suck life with their hands and low Str White Necromancers with high Cha who fight ghosts and need to resist unearthly fear attacks.

In the middle is the Vampire Hunter Necromancer who splits his stats between Str and Cha because he wants to be able to reasonably resist both Vampire Blood-drain Grapples and Vampire Charms.

[JonSetanta]

1197588202[/unixtime]]
The last one I think needs especial attention. I was dead serious when I said that Necromancer should be a sample class with a bunch of Strength related abilities on it. From Dracula to Mum-Ra, necromancers have the strength of 20 men all the time in literature. And so a character with a Strength Focus should be a perfectly decent platform for the Dark Arts.

Uh, I believe you have that backwards. Their strength is a result of certain powers (Dark Arts, be it pact with whatever god of the dead, or stolen blood of thousands), not fuel for such.
However, in a general sense I do agree with you there. The game does need support for supernatural strength-based
spellcaster' effects, but not just Necromancers.
All Strength-mages.
Hell, a 'platform' for each type of mage specializing in a specific stat.

[Koumei]

K: And also because he needs to look cool in a wide-brimmed black hat. Charisma helps you look stylish.

Regarding using ability scores to determine the bonus for untrained skills, wouldn't this mean that, for skills based on an ability score of (for example) +3, putting less than 4 ranks in is worthless?

Or are we using the idea of "I have spent a point making this a trained skill. I have (number that scales with level or whatever, but is likely larger than +3) as my modifier"?

[Maxus]

Grapples work like this: Its an attack that goes against Str, and it if suceeds you are Grappled (we'll decide exactly what that means later, but it probably means you can't move until you break the grapple). Breaking a grapple requires a Grapple action.

All this talk about Grappling is making me consider a series of abilities based on grappling. So if the fancy took you to make a grappling character who breaks out pro wrestling moves or throws from Soul Caliber (like Astaroth wrapping someone around the handle of his axe), you could.

As it is, Grapple just seems to be "You roll around on the ground and hit on the other person, and you can hold them down."

Not that I actually watch wrasslin'. Just some of the moves are fun to pull in games.

[MagnaSecuris]

So, my idea is 3 defenses of Body (fortitude, muscle-resistance, size), Dodge (AC, reflex save, evasion-like effect), and Mind (will save-like, but also for opposing social checks) for practically everything.

This works well, except that it doesn't distinguish between types of mental attacks. In reality, you would want two of each. But. As is. Body = Str/Con Dodge = Dex/Wis (perception?) Mind = Int/Cha (strength of personality?).

But I would rather have six. Especially if four of my numbers are probably going to be the same.

On a separate note, one that you're probably already considering:
Learning a skill might be based off your attribute. So in order to learn Power Attack, you have to have a strength score of 12 (10+the level of the attack). In order to learn Mindrot, you need an Int of 17. In order to learn Subtle Cut of the Black Lotus you need a Wis of 14. This also allows people to potentially focus on one stat so they can get the Level 9 Attack for it when they go Epic.
Unfortunately, this means that we'll need to write at least 54 attacks. So that each attribute can have a 1-9 progression. Preferably thrice that number, for variety.

[ckafrica]

Some general thoughts:

Armor and weapons don't really need to be that specific in what they are in relation to their ability. Just have set heavy, medium and light armor stats and allow the actual make up be up to the imagination of the player. So heavy armor can thick plate or specially treated rhino hide, the start at the same base.
Same with weapons. I don't want to fell railroaded into choosing one weapon over the other because of its stats. Just have maybe 6 categories of melee weapons (light, 1handed, and 2handed for both martial and simple weapons; or even drop the simple/martial differentiation). Then have the option of having special abilities to be chosen like extra crit range, reach, disarm bonus, or whatever at the players leasure. For me this allows greater player creativity.

Considering HP
What about starting with HP= to Con + a smaller bonus every level based on class. We would have to scale down damage output but I think that would be a good thing anyways and we could push more for incremental DR so the reason that high level characters can wade through mooks is not that they have boatloads of hp but because they are doing negligible damage most of the time.

We could also have some sort of wound threshold like Earthdawn has were taking X damage based on how tough you are wears you down adds incremental penalties when you take a hard hit

[Username17]

The point I'm at is to have the classes be literally samples of ability choices. So while you should be able to say "I'm a 6th level Rogue (or Cleric, or Onion Knight, or whatever)" and have that that mean something to other players, and you should be able to make a 9th level Stormwarrior out of the box in less than five minutes, you should also be able to simply choose different abilities which are level appropriate when you go up a level next. The organic character should be covered with so much crazy he can't stand up.

So basically I don't see any way or reason for Hit Points or Base Attack Bonus to be different based on classes. If you want to be an 8th level character who is bad at hitting people with a hammer, don't take any hammer related abilities. And if we end up making strength add to those strikes, you could give yourself a low strength.

---

The only way I could see a class giving more hit points is if there was a passive ability that you could choose which just gave you extra hit points (like Toughness) and that ability was one of the pre-chosen options for a sample class. And I suppose that is a possibility.

---

We could also have some sort of wound threshold like Earthdawn has were taking X damage based on how tough you are wears you down adds incremental penalties when you take a hard hit

I'm thinking that abilitie should in general have side effects which only trigger if you deal out 10% of the target's hit points. So if you hit someone with a "Crushing Blow" attack and you deal out 10% of their hit points they fall down. If you hit someone with a "Mind Blast" and you deal out 10% of their hit points they get staggered. That kind of thing.

And people should take wounds at certain specific times:

• Whenever an attack deals out some percentage of your hit points (1/4th? 1/5th? Half even? Not sure).
  
  
• Whenever you get dropped by an attack.
  
  
• Whenever you've already been dropped and an attack does you damage anyway.

By keeping the thresholds for secondary effects and wound levels constant you can write down on your character sheet exactly what those thresholds are and then you don't have to do mid-game math.

----

I don't have strong opinions on weapons and weapon categories. Parts of me seriously want to distinguish between the reach of a greatsword and the reach of a scimitar and the reach of a dagger. Parts of me want to abstract the reach of a spear and the reach of a gladius.

But I'm quite adamant that the difference between "chainmail" and "ringmail" shold be cosmetic at best.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

1197588202[/unixtime]]Things which need to definitely not happen include:

• Stat disparity being such that characters always hit or always miss.
  
  
• Characters being able to make an entire character around a single giant attribute and having that mean that they win D&D.
  
  
• Attributes having such a limited set of applications that a character with a specific attribute choice set can't have nice things.

I like where this is headed. I want a guy with a two handed sword who uses telekinesis/lightning. It needs to be actively disadvantageous to have all your attacks based off one stat. Some guy using strength for his melee and a thrown weapon that is also strength based sucks because he is getting better ability synergy than a swordsman/archer(dex).

Would having each attack be based on two stats help? At the least that would mean everyone would need two good stats. If any combination had attacks based on it you would have variety there.

[Edit]Un-Rooted quote tags[/Edit]

[Username17]

Would having each attack be based on two stats help? At the least that would mean everyone would need two good stats. If any combination had attacks based on it you would have variety there.

Superficially yes. With every attack getting one stat to-hit and another to damage you're looking at every min/maxer walking around with probably 3 good stats and rotating one's techniques with a variable bonus going up and down about 1-3 for damage and to-hit.

Something I am worried about is the possibility of action inflation. Given the limit of unlimited source material you could make a character who only had two good attributes and just tagged off between spells which targetted with Wisdom and struck with Charisma or vice versa (or whatever).

---

Thoughts on combatting that possibility include source materual discipline (not sure if this is practical or even possible), specific attribute combination targetting resrictions (possibly you're simply not allowed to have a Wis + Cha ability which targets a Wisdom or Charisma Armor Class), and of course just plain not offering available stat arrays which "get something" for only having 2 good stats.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1197634631[/unixtime]]
So basically I don't see any way or reason for Hit Points or Base Attack Bonus to be different based on classes. If you want to be an 8th level character who is bad at hitting people with a hammer, don't take any hammer related abilities. And if we end up making strength add to those strikes, you could give yourself a low strength.

I can see hit points being different between classes. Sometimes you really want a class to have a weakness, like the fragile wizard. You don't want him to be able to stand up front in melee and fight stuff, otherwise you have no real need for a "tank" class.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I can see hit points being different between classes. Sometimes you really want a class to have a weakness, like the fragile wizard. You don't want him to be able to stand up front in melee and fight stuff, otherwise you have no real need for a "tank" class.

But that can be handled by defense differentials. A wizard with poor physical/melee defenses will take more damage from close combat, and require fewer hits to drop despite having the same number of hit points as the 'tank.'

[SphereOfFeetMan]

I'm thinking that abilitie should in general have side effects which only trigger if you deal out 10% of the target's hit points. So if you hit someone with a "Crushing Blow" attack and you deal out 10% of their hit points they fall down. If you hit someone with a "Mind Blast" and you deal out 10% of their hit points they get staggered. That kind of thing.

And people should take wounds at certain specific times:
Whenever an attack deals out some percentage of your hit points (1/4th? 1/5th? Half even? Not sure).

Maybe you could make hit points much less granular? It would make it more difficult for some players if they had 43 hp and had to make fractions out of that. Maybe have all hit points be divisible by 10, 5, or 2, depending upon how granular you want hp to be, and what you want the break points to be.

[Joy_Division]

The easiest way to keep track would be to make hitpoints the last digit on your "damageometer" and every time you run out you take a wound level and go back up to full, subtract any excess etc.

I'm guessing though that we want some other specific condition to happen when HP's drop to zero that isn't equivalent to "add a new wound level."

[Username17]

1197663663[/unixtime]]

I can see hit points being different between classes. Sometimes you really want a class to have a weakness, like the fragile wizard. You don't want him to be able to stand up front in melee and fight stuff, otherwise you have no real need for a "tank" class.

But that can be handled by defense differentials. A wizard with poor physical/melee defenses will take more damage from close combat, and require fewer hits to drop despite having the same number of hit points as the 'tank.'

I forsee heavy armor, for example, causing characters to take less damage in melee.

-Username17

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Mixed feelings about that one. On one hand, I don't want the guy in robes in front of a guy that wields an over-sized sword. On the other hand, I want the guy in robes to cast <bubble shield thing> and rescue a nearby comrade from the sword-blow.

To add to the earlier discussion of how we hate weak mages and low charisma warriors, someone asked me once in the "Wizard Handbook" (I use the term lightly) why a character with 14 Int couldn't go to wizard school. I responded that the other wizards beat him up because they cast more spells that did more things more often.

Oh, and a similar story to the one that said his Wizard carried a battle-axe that he wasn't proficient in: I had a Illusionist that entered the campaign with Glamored Robes to be disguised as a fighter in Full Plate. Whenever combat was just about over (Charm Person, and other near-undetectable spells were used), I would use an illusion spell to wade into combat wielding a longsword. Since no one can ever make Spellcraft checks, even the party thought that I was a cowardly fighter for the first 4 sessions.

[K]

I think having stats apply to offense is still a mistake. I mean, when has minmaxxing ever been cool? Sometimes its necessary, and fun as an intellectual challenge, but when has it ever done anything other than made people feel bad about their their non-minmaxxed character because someone else is better or make the minmaxxer feel like a cheater?

Honestly, less numbers is better because there is less of chance to fail during character creation. Just let people pick some abilities and allocate stats according to defenses they want.

That way you can have low Str Pixies Fey Warriors who grapple people to pull off Pixie Sleep Touches and because they are OK with guys wasting an action to breaking those Grapples, and you can have Ogre Beast Grapplers who grapple to immobilize big monsters.

---------------------------
HP and BAB: Based on char level, and not anything else. That way you don't have the situation "crap, thats a fighter sized attack and it just one-shot killed the wizard!" and you don't have to have weirdness like touch AC thats unbalanced on first principles just to let a Wizzy use Shocking Touch.
---------------------

Armor: How about armor subtracting to-hit for AC, straight up. That way an unarmored guy running out of the prison or the monk has some tradeoff vs the guy who wears fullplate and a tower shield.

-----------------

HPs and Wounds. I'm serious about Wounds. Make a little chart and every time someone crits you or hits you when you are out of HPs you get one. If you get more than half your level, you die.

Simple. Elegant.

Either the Wounds give a penalty based on the number you have, or they are things like "Lost Arm." I don't even care.

[RandomCasualty]

1197681892[/unixtime]]
I forsee heavy armor, for example, causing characters to take less damage in melee.

If you're doing armor as DR, how do you plan on addressing the invulnerability problem, where you rapidly become invulnerable to weaker creatures. So basically you'll be able to fight an army of low level creatures and they can't touch you, pretty much at all, because your DR is better than their max damage.

That's always the main problem I had with armor DR, pretty much a swarm of goblins no longer even matters because there's no way they can hurt you. I considering having an armor bypass attack option that lets you ignore someone's armor DR at the cost of -5 to hit, but even then I figure it won't help low level creatures since they won't be able to hit you easily either.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1197684242[/unixtime]]That's always the main problem I had with armor DR, pretty much a swarm of goblins no longer even matters because there's no way they can hurt you. I considering having an armor bypass attack option that lets you ignore someone's armor DR at the cost of -5 to hit, but even then I figure it won't help low level creatures since they won't be able to hit you easily either.

Well, thematically, there is a point where a swarm of goblins no longer even matters. That's when you're Zatoichi and there really is no number of Yakuza mooks large enough to bother you, except to take up your valuable time. There's a point in your career when you leave goblins to your own mooks and relegate ogres to the niche that goblins used to have in your tactical playbook.

On the other hand, if damage in this system functions in a manner similar to, for instance, the SAME system, then it's very possible to scale it so that tiny things have a remote possibility of harming you even while things your level have some difficulty.

[Koumei]

Frank said at the beginning that you should be able to mow through heaps and heaps of mooks. Being actually immune to them is a really good start.

So I like to think of "DR > Mook Damage" as a feature, not a bug.

[Username17]

HPs and Wounds. I'm serious about Wounds. Make a little chart and every time someone crits you or hits you when you are out of HPs you get one. If you get more than half your level, you die.

That's reasonable. With the added caveat that a "crit" should be defined as an attack which inflicts a specific amount amount of damage on you rather than an attack with the right unmodified attack roll. The thing in SAGA where being a badass reduces the number of mook normal hits but not the number of mook critical hits is totally unacceptable.

If there must be an attack roll related effect effect, it should be something like getting an extra die for every full +5 your attack roll exceeds the relevent Armor Class.

Armor: How about armor subtracting to-hit for AC, straight up. That way an unarmored guy running out of the prison or the monk has some tradeoff vs the guy who wears fullplate and a tower shield.

I don't want to be in the 3.5 D&D situation where the're no real reason to give a damn about the armored warrior. Proper tactics probably shouldn't be "ignore the guy in heavy armor" - I'm OK with people wanting to figure out how to skirmish and harry the weaker targets and such, but I don't want people to just ignore the hoplite.

So I'd like armor to not weaken a character's offense. I'd prefer it if it penalized mobility and made you more dangerous in melee. Hell, I think I'd get more of the rubric I want if heavy armor made your attacks better at the cost of having worse mobility. I'd really like some sort of scissors/paper/stone outlay between Heavy/Medium/Light Armor setups. But I'm not super clear on how that would work.

HP and BAB: Based on char level, and not anything else. That way you don't have the situation "crap, thats a fighter sized attack and it just one-shot killed the wizard!" and you don't have to have weirdness like touch AC thats unbalanced on first principles just to let a Wizzy use Shocking Touch.

Yes exactly.

I think having stats apply to offense is still a mistake.

I agree. But I also think not having stats apply to offense is a mistake. I really don't see a perfect option.

• If attacks are not tied to your defenses, then there's no reason for any character to have any particular set of defenses and that's bad.
  
  
• If attacks are tied to your defenses, then your stat choices are prescriptive about what your character can ever do and min/maxing exists for attacks and that's bad.

I'm leaning more towards the second option just because I can think of ways to mitigate that (large ability lists to choose from, fixed available attribute arrays). But I'm looking at problem mitigation, not problem solving, either way.

-Username17