"Further, this opens up yet further complexity by having to account for the effects of armor materials and type versus a given type of damage. Metal armors would be more vulnerable to shock damage, leather or hide less so. Chainmail works better against bludgeoning or slashing, but doesn't handle piercing damage very well."
I wasn't envisioning going quite this far.
###
As for the severly handicapped ac of low/med bab folks, the entire point is to make it impossible to have decent toughness and avoidance together without really focusing on that, and I see that as becoming one of the strengths of martials over casters.
I want it to generally be a choice between hard to hit vs hard to hurt.
However I'll post an alternative that still gets rid of hp but keeps the simple armor.
###
Recovery skill
Don't need to include the skill if don't want.
I like it because that seems to be me in real life. I land in trouble yet never seem to be as hurt by it as others. For the active stunts I've done biking and tumbling down 40 degree mountainsides as fast as I could run, I've never so much as bonked my head, not even once. Trips nearly always recover (actually can't think of two occasions in my entire life not including on ice), bike crashes and I come out rather unscathed, much to the envy of friends, etc.
Optional rule module A Alternate,
Health
Attacks are all against touch AC, and BAB adds to touch AC (BAB can now be called BCB or base combat bonus).
When flatfooted (I use my own rules for this which basically amounts to whenever a character is surprised by the attack but still perceive it. Those who don't have a chance to perceive it before it actually makes contact are attacked like moving objects. Rarely will this second option ever come into play.), roll reflex save instead of ac. Any bonuses to ff ac apply to this reflex save instead.
If an attack hits, damage is rolled normally.
The damage is the DC the soak roll is rolled against. The soak roll is a fort save (and thus benefits from bonuses to fort saves) plus dr or resistances, armor (and similar), minus wound points.
If the soak roll succeeds, a wound point is gained per 10 damage dealt minimum 1 (just truncate the ones place, so 28 damage becomes 2 wound points).
If the soak roll fails, then twice as many wound points are gained and an injury is rolled. The injury has a severity and location.
Roll severity 2d6 + opponent's str/size (or their weapon's str/size if ranged weapon) - your con modifier. The result is the injury severity.
Optional rule module F
Same tier advancement
As has been discussed in other places, d20 can roughly be split into four tiers of play, though rather tham calling them gritty, heroic, wuxia, and superheroes, I prefer natural, enhanced, supernatural, and demi-divine.
The idea here is to allow more advancement within a tier, and to preferably stay in the same tier throughout the campaign.
The concept is to slow numerical progressions such as bab and max ranks, but to give extra feats and skill points and continue non-numerical advancements such as gaining higher level abilities.
Basically this means that characters would grow more in breadth of ability and scope over 20 levels, yet still keep lvl 1 and lvl 20 about as far from each other as lvl 1 to lvl 5 normally would be. Thus lvl 1s could enter the same battlefield as a lvl 20 amd while they would be obviously outclassed, they would still be close enough to actually be a danger if the lvl 20 isn't careful. The lvl 20 certainly wouldn't be able to treat the lvl 1s as one hit minions at any rate.
I'l have to go into detail latr/
Well, that's way too much for me to want to learn/play with, so I'll drop out. Good game, everypony.
Umm, those are the optional things to get feedback on from potential players. They are not set. You can vote against them. After all, if every player votes against them, they won't be used.
B, C, and D don't seem to far off of a stock Pathfinder game, so those I wouldn't mind. Thing is, I'm still learning PF (started with that Humble Bundle earlier in the year), so I'd like to get those rules down before I go too far off the beaten path with custom stuff all over :D.
I'm looking at Spheres of Power for another campaign submission, and those rules don't seem too bad either, though there is a bunch of reading involved.
There's enough rules you want to change that I feel like there's little advantage to actually running it as Ponyfinder (if the players voted to shut down all the optional rules you're proposing, would you still want to run the game? if not, something may be going wrong).
That said:
A: This seems inordinately complex and has a lot of bookkeeping (though as Sam pointed out, that's not as big of a deal in a PBP)
A alternate: Little better. Do wound points function as a penalty? Or do they simply slow down the accumulation of damage and give a better barometer for how hurt you're getting? How many wound points do you take before incapacitation? Death?
B: Pretty indifferent, this mostly just makes rolling a little smoother.
C: Pretty indifferent on this as well, although to be honest I like it more than option B (and I would prefer only doing one of the two) Tentative upvote?
D: This seams neat.
E: So you spend luck? Like you accumulate it by rolling crits, and then it goes away as you spend it. But since recovery is keyed to luck, and recovery helps you not die, is there any reason why you shouldn't just keep all your luck and become an unkillable godmachine?
F: I like the sound of this, but...
TL;DR: You should just play Savage Worlds. You want wounds instead of HP? Savage Worlds. You want a more even curvature of rolls? Savage Worlds. You want to roll dice that increase in proportion to your skills? Savage Worlds. You want tiers of advancement that are flexible and tend to lead to more feats than skills? Savage Worlds. You want a spendable metagame currency that allows you to shrug off the consequences of failure or bend the rules of probability? Savage Worlds. It even has power based magic that you can either base on a mana pool, skill or stat instead of a Vancian system. Savage Worlds.
I'd really like to play a Pathfinder game, since I'm running one and playing another Savage Worlds game, but honestly every single thing you're talking about is already accommodated in SW. Why try to make Pathfinder something it isn't?
Lol. The complete system Equestrian Expanses is like a mix of d20 and savage worlds.
As I said upfront, I'd like to play Equestrian Expanses, but almost everyone wanted ponyfinder.
"A: This seems inordinately complex and has a lot of bookkeeping"
I'm not sure where the extra bookkeeping is. Basically using the same info, just changing where it is used. Max dex gets removed, penetration gets added. Hp get removed and wp added. Regular and ff ac are removed, soak roll modifiers for the fort save added. Most of the extra stuff (like piercing having less damage) is before session stuff and changes current info rather than adding. Once playing, it doesn't matter how you determined using 1d4 for damage as long as looking at your sheet says 1d4. All in all, you actually end up with one fewer things to track, though I admit ability damage comes up more often.
Unless referring to the accumulation of injuries, but that builds on what is already in the system, like ability damage or reducing speed. How they are handled can keep them easy. (around the table, I'd use little cards.)
And yes, wound points penalize further soak rolls, meaning even damage that fails to cause injury have an effect and bring you closer to death.
Honestly, if you want to run Equestrian Expanses, I'd just take the Ponyfinder option off the table. You're shortchanging yourself of the experience you want as a GM before the game even starts.
"But since recovery is keyed to luck, and recovery helps you not die, is there any reason why you shouldn't just keep all your luck and become an unkillable godmachine?"
I was tired and wrote crazytalk, using recovery consumes luck. Besides, it doesn't make you succeed, and in cases where failure is death (like failing a soak roll upon being struck by a falling skyscraper), recovery won't help.
Honestly, if you want to run Equestrian Expanses, I'd just take the Ponyfinder option off the table. You're shortchanging yourself of the experience you want as a GM before the game even starts.
As much as I want to play EE (hmm I think that works), I alao want to develop the story. As a non-railroading, build on the fly GM, playing does more for fleshing out the world than sitting around thinking about it. My reapling race for example, 80% of their history, lore, and makeup came from playing. Even their very existence stems from creating a random encounter monster because I forgot my monster manual, and were inspired by one player bothering another with flashing dancing lights in their face.
My desire to play using the Ponyfinder rules is mostly for ease-of-use. It bolts on, so to speak, fairly seamlessly to the Pathfinder stuff I'm currently using, which easier is on my time, energy, and wallet as a result :p.
If AlicornSage truly craves running his campaign under the EE rules, I'll give them a look, but I don't make any promises.
Spellcasting rules, concepts intro.
8 parts to a spell
1- area/target/strike [choice]
2- reach [scale]
3- range [scale]
4- intensity [scale]
5- duration [choice/scale]
6- origin point/rope [choice/scale]
7- cast speed [choice]
8- effect [choice]
Most of these can be prebuilt as a spell, but changing the parameters on the fly is still possible. Using a spell is cheaper though.
Each parameter affects the difficulty to cast (complexity) and/or the power consumed (drain). Within certain levels, these need not be rolled, but going beyond those levels can still be attempted, but a roll is needed (or rather tracking mp in the case of drain).
The first aspect, area/target/strike. Area fills an area with the effect, costs a lot of power but is simple. Target affects a target, wrapping around them and forming to them, complex but fairly power efficient. Strike affects what is struck, not the whole thing struck but just the part struck, much like an arrow hitting a target, it pokes a hole only where struck.
Reach is for area or size of target. It covers how much is to be affected, whether how much volume or how big a target.
Range is how far the spell reachs. In the case of area, this is the range of the spell origin, but not the farthest the spell area reaches.
Intensity is the power of the effect. I.E. higher damage, or lifts heavier weight, or telekinesis holding the minigun more solidly so it doesn't kick itself out of the telekinetic field.
90% of the time, concentration will be the duration. It is easy and simple, adding cost to neither complexity nor drain (though holding it for rounds requires drain each round, but no extra cost). Giving a spell a duration has three options, each getting more difficult. First and simplist, the spell gets a "mana reservoir" which you add all the required mp at the time of casting. Second and more difficult, acts like option one but can add mp to it after it is cast, refilling the reservoir. Third and most difficult, is semi-/permanent, by building a spell component that feeds on the surrounding mana to fuel itself. The third option has dangers, such potentially sucking too much, but also provides a set amount of mp each round so the spell must be cheaper in upkeep drain, or as soon as there is not enough mp, the spell falters.
The origin point can alternatively be an origin rope, treating the entire length of the "rope" as the source of the spell. Those d20 spells that use 10' cubes that must be contiguous, are basically using an origin rope. Origin rope are more difficult and costly than origin points.
Cast speed, taking longer to cast the spell makes it easier to cast, or even allows taking 10/100 on the cast check, thus allowing casting more powerful effects by turning them basically into long cast rituals.
Effects, these are the actual effects of the spell. Each effect is a broad category. I.E. while words of power has multiple acid effect words, this here has one, with the exact effect determined by the player/gm.
Old magic vs amniomorphic spells. Old magic is very difficult and draining but has the greatest flexibility. Amniomorphic casting is much easier, but each spell has significant limits and prebuilt effects. This makes twisting such a spell very difficult, but alao allows safety features to be built in I.E. I imagine starswirl's spell to go into the past as having a safety feature to make a stable time loop or fizzle, to prevent corruption of the timeline, hence the one week limit.
Advanced effects require certain understanding of simpler effects or combining multiple simple effects.
Yeah, I'm gonna bow out of this one as well. Shine on you pony diamond.
*Bangs head on table repeatedly.*
Why is it so hard to find people who are willing to try new things.
I love new things that challange my preconceptions, that make me wonder about the nature of the world and lets me know I'm making assumptions I didn't realize I was making. I like exploring strange new things. But everyone is so concerned with the familiar, I sometimes marvel that new things ever get accepted at all.
As I mentioned, for me it's about time and energy, mostly. I can spare the brain cells to manage a few smaller variant d20 rules, or one big custom rule. And your magic system is a pretty big one, I'd say.
I am sorry, because I know how frustrating it is to have this game you're itching to play, but not find any takers.
It is still unpublished. It has been under development for several years, and recently fluff has been adapted to foe since that system we were using wasn't working so well. The mechanics seem down (but need to play to be sure) but is short on native options, however, most d20 options are compatible with little or no alteration, usually just adapting where a bonus goes.
Mostly I'll be copying from the test game that fell through (mostly from inactivity as far as I can tell. No one seemed to have much feedback but with only a couple prospective players, even a popular system would likely fall through.)
In fact, some of the above options are inspired by what EE does. Fpr example, the basic roll is a tier die (ponies would be one tier, alicorns a higher tier) plus a die from attribute and skill, making a bell curve while also representing the stats.
A1 is basically a direct port of the EE health system, though I don't mind adjusting it as suggested.
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Please don't try to make it some kind of "You're just a slave of the establishment, man!" thing. You're combining and homebrewing loads of things at the same time and doing it on the fly, which is not usually a recipe for a good game. Pretty much every time somebody has responded to something in the thread you've responded with "Well, actually, that's different in my canon" or "Well, actually, I don't like those rules". But people can't read your mind and know what you want out of the world, you have to tell them, and you're doing that in a slow, piecemeal way that makes it really difficult to maintain any interest.
You're throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and that's fine, but with the amount of changes you're trying to make it comes off feeling schizophrenic and like you're trying to do too much. That does not bode well for a campaign and gives me an unsteady feeling about you as a GM. Plus, at the rate you're going, it could be a long time before you actually have it together for people to even make characters. I'm not interested in waiting that long when there are multiple playable systems that already, y'know, exist.
Trying Ponyfinder is trying something new (for the record: I have never played Pathfinder, so we're already at least two steps removed from my comfort zone by way of Pathfinder>Ponyfinder). Your homebrew/EE/FOE/Ponyfinder/more homebrew chimera isn't something new though, it's a twinkle in your eye for something not yet created. If you actually write up your homebrew, I'd love to try it. But don't say "Hey, I'd like to run this!" if the rules for it don't even exist and your canon (which cannot be contradicted) is still in your head.
God Speed You! Pony Emperor.
"You're just a slave of the establishment, man!"
I'm just trying to find a balance that works. Posting a new system makes everyone run away (except maybe one or two folks which I have yet to see any game, mine or not, run with only one or two players on pbp). Posting modifications not so bad. But then the question is "How much can I change?"
Honestly I have a bit of a stressed out rant. Probably not my most diplomatic writing, and I suck at that anyway, but the points I make are all true if you actually want to read it. I spent time writing it, so might as well let the adventurous read it.
And honestly, d20 magic is incapable of what I want. The setting I have has magic very commonplace but yet the actually capabilities of magic much more limited compared to the standard "magic can do anything" concept most systems do.
It is all well and good to claim there are playable systems out there, but if they don't do what I need, then they don't actually help do they?
Perhaps the trouble is I have a world to explore instead of a story to tell. A story can have the setting changed easy enough, but a world needs rules that represent how it works.
Unfortunately piecemeal is the only way I can accomplish anything. All I have is a phone to use. It takes ages to write a post like this (a half hour or more at least). I also don't get much time for writing lots of long posts, and I'm tired of waiting for more time off because it never comes.
As for doing it on the fly, that is how I do everything. I've GMd entire campaigns built from nothing on the fly. In fact only once have I ever tried to run something premade or prepared and the group broke shortly after that (nothing to do with the game, it was for other reasons) so I honestly I don't even have any real experience running something precrafted. On the fly is the only way I know.
"Well, actually, that's different in my canon"
That is kinda the point though, it is a unique setting that is different from standard stereotypes and the idea is for the players to explore the setting. This does inevitably limit however the changes players can make. I.E. They can't add gods to a setting that has no gods (religion can be found of course, though ponies don't have much considering they control all the things usually attributed to gods, and Celestia already has a non-god place).
"Well, actually, I don't like those rules"
I think this came up as soon as system became a topic, in which discussing what system works or not is a perfectly valid concrn for me just as much as the players. Why should I have miserable time running a system I don't like? Of course that means compromise is in order, but then just putting out a long list of things I'd like to change wil again just scare people away instead of encouraging them to discuss things to see just how far they are willing to adjust.
As can be noted above, even with an extremely limited set of changes, mostly existing alternatives and even before discussing magic, still scares people away as "too much."
And sometimes I get the impression that players expect me to be heavy handed in ways I don't think I should be, yet also complain about the few ways I do try to maintain consistency (of course one player I had a good conversation with said he didn't care about consistency nor about things making sense, two things I do care very much about).
So just what am I supposed to do? Butcher my idea just to fit a system I don't want to use anyway for a great many reasons? Sacrifice everything I want from the game just to make players happy? (pay me money to gm, then I'll place player happiness on a pedestal above all other considerations)
"Your homebrew/EE/FOE/Ponyfinder/more homebrew chimera"
I'm trying to mod pf to fit the world and fix a handful of things I don't like.
From the beginning I said I'd run a straight EE game which does exist even it isn't published. Granted, using options from d20 vastly improves the available options, but those are just options, not mechanics, and yes there is a difference.
With regards to your rant: no worries, I was already way ruder than that. :P
If the story you want to tell (or world you want to explore, whatever) requires all these changes to the rules in order to make it work, that's okay, but you need to be upfront about that. If there are changes to the way the world works compared to what people see in the show, that's also just fine. But if writing up all the rules you need to run that vision is a serious problem for you right now, there's always the option of just not running the game yet. I know writing on your phone sucks.
Your profile mentions Asperger's. If you're serious about that, I think it might be where some of the difficulty comes from. We don't know what you know, or see things the way you see them. You didn't explain up front exactly what you're going for with these changes and it makes it difficult on our end to understand. We get the what (you're making a lot of changes to the rules) but not the why (you have a very specific vision in mind). Since we don't share your vision, you haven't explained it to us (and can't do so except very slowly due to your phone troubles) the rule changes seem arbitrary and difficult. You know what you're going for here, and we don't. So when we suggest something that gets shot down, or you respond with your personal headcanon, it makes you seem persnickety.
I get what you mean about doing things on the fly. I would personally suggest against it, but I'm not you and you might be able to do it a lot better than I do. Not speaking for anyone else though, it is a huge red flag for me when a GM changes things on the fly, and it gives me the impression you're not going to be a fair or balanced GM and are not going to run a fun campaign. It's possible that I'm wrong! But that's the concern and that's where it comes from.
More constructively:
I'm still going to suggest you just don't run Ponyfinder. Finding a system that actually does things you want and adapting that is going to be a lot simpler than making Pathfinder into something it isn't. If EE isn't out yet, is there a way we can legitimately get our hands on a copy of the rules? I'd be willing to learn it. Alternatively, I'm almost positive somebody has homebrewed a MLP Savage Worlds (and as long as I don't end up running it, I could bang out almost any changes you want within hours if you couldn't find a setting rule that accommodates you).
If you're deadest on running Ponyfinder with a bunch of rule changes, I would suggest using a pastebin or something, writing up all your changes and canon in one go and then giving people the option to accept or reject it for what it is. Changing a piece at a time until you're running a different system just makes me feel like you don't know what you're doing.
I'd like to help 'cause your heart's in the right place and you clearly just want to make something happen. The way you're trying to "compromise" doesn't please anybody though, including you.
Just to point out here, I was actually the one who initially raised Ponyfinder as a starting point for character creation, not TheAlicornSage. His starting point was the EE rules he mentioned, I countered with PF because that's what I had available. A few other folks then chimed in expressing interest in PF. He, with great reluctance, decided tentatively on PF, but modded to suit what he wanted to run.
That's true. I think most of the points still stand though.
Having just read only this page (searching for a Savage Worlds [SW] game), I just want to post my two copper's worth.
After playing and especially GM'ing in Pathfinder for a few years, I was sick of it. I too started to "tweak" major sections of it to force it into what I wanted - limited AoO's, an add-on ruleset for dying, simpler HTH rules, and I can't begin to tell you how much I *detest* Vancian magic!
Then, I discovered SW! It was everything Pathfinder was not. Everything Aloha-Shirt-Samurai (private note - a terrible acronym comes out of that name! :) said about SW is spot-on, and more. It's way simpler than PF, yet allows for a richness of characters and combat options that's up to the players and GM to create. What's more, the game is *intended* to be tweaked by the GM! When I GM in it, I have about a dozen simple major-impact house-rules and another dozen minor-impact ones.
I've never looked back at Pathfinder. I can't urge you strongly enough to take a look at SW. See a free 16-page introduction to the rules HERE.
@ ZenFox42
I know of sw. There are many great things about it.
D20 has a lot of big things I don't like, like classes, but many of the small things such as 3.0 jump dcs and carry capacity. D20 has many such simulationist things. I like d20's objective number scale better as well.
SW is a rather loose system. That is good for some playstyles, but I like the casual relatability to realism contained in most of the secondary parts of d20. It is easier to take real life experience and determine what it should be in the mechanics, how to represent it mechanically.
That is why I like where EE is going. It brings that from d20 while also adding a bunch from SW and unique stuff that solves a lot of things.
To be honest though, the SW only has two advantages in terms of richness of characters, A, lack of classes, and B, lack of what I call comfort cage. The comfort cage is when players see the rules as binding, as something that needs to be followed as strictly as when playing chess. Of course, the more defined and specific the rules are, the more likely players are to feel the comfort cage, the more likely to feel uncomfortable treating the rules as mere guidelines. SW thus has the advantage of looser defined rules meaning the players don't feel as uncomfortable treating them as pure guidelines. That said, the casual realism of d20 can only be obtained by being better defined and if you can get players out of the comfort cage, they can make characters just as rich and deep as SW.
I'll take the advice and stick with EE. I'll see about trying to post it somewhere.