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So I got this idea while I was dinking around with roll20 for the first time, discovering what all I could mess with, when I discovered Token auras. I started thinking of creative ways to use these. What if we used auras to show a weapon's effective reach?

Here's what I came up with:
Each weapon has an effective length and a dead-zone that is typically 25% of the weapon's reach (will probably change the specifics of the dead-zone later). Any creature standing within the effective range of another creature is threatened. Any creature standing in the dead-zone of another creature cannot be attacked for the weapon's full damage bonus, instead receiving damage as if the attacker were unarmed.

For example: Helen has an 8 foot long spear, dead zone 2 feet. The goblin thug has a 3 foot long axe, dead zone < 1 foot. Helen's rad spear can pierce the Goblin from quite far, but if the Goblin advances right up to her, but still remains far enough so that she is not within his dead zone, she has to retreat to be able to effectively damage him again. Certain combat maneuvers, such as brace, can prevent an enemy from advancing into your dead zone, or even repel them from it, as with bull rush.

This mechanic gives players who use smaller weapons, like daggers an entirely new tactic to try against foes wielding larger weapons- and even gives players a reason to pick up different weapons. In current rules, there is zero advantage to dual wielding daggers as opposed to dual wielding a sword-dagger combo, but in this idea dual daggers is viable and logical to use to take full advantage of an enemy's dead zone.

Thoughts?

Here's the skippy: I want running from cover to trigger an attack of oppurtunity from ranged weapons. That's what started this mess. I'm running a western campaign where cover and ranged combat play a heavier role, but I think there are many standard fantasy scenarios that could benefit from this, the only problem is you have to kind of fajigger the whole attack of oppurtunity thing for ranged weapons for it to make sense. Does entering a weapon's range threaten? How about moving at all while within range? There's a lot to think about, which is probably why AoE's are melee only, but lets tinker a bit here, guys. What are your thoughts?

What would happen if you re-tooled the game to nerf down the insane amounts of damage that you can do with high level abilities, and eradicated hit die so that your HP was simply your Constitution score? The idea here is to make a gritty feeling system that makes you seriously weigh the situational pros and cons of getting into combat, because a critical hit can be an instant kill. A game where a lowly goblin thug can kill an experienced knight if he lets his guard down.

But mostly this is just a thought experiment, so let's hear your thoughts.

I'm having trouble finding an activation roll system as an alternate for X/day spells. I heard Savage Worlds had a good one, particularly Deadlands had one that I'm interested in, but next to no material exists online that I've found.

So basically, I'm looking for a system that lets you roll to try to use your spells, makes it harder when you fail, and doesnt have an X/day mechanic. Anylinks or resources you guys can find would be super helpful.

Please feel free to slap me upside the head with links if this, or something similar has been done before.

The idea is to see what would happen if you replaced the standard action system with one where you had a limited number of points you could spend each round. Each action, whether it is moving a space, pulling a lever, casting a spell, or swinging a weapon costs a certain amount of points. How many points you have would vary from class to class and with levels. There may be a stamina system in place that you can use to go beyond your battle points at a penalty.

What do you guys think? Has it been done before? Is it a waste of time?

In current rules, players begin play with as many languages as they have intelligence modifiers, and gain more later on, not by studying them, but by tripping over them. In comparison, how many languages are you fluent in in meatspace? And how suddenly does comprehension of entire languages come to you?

A realistic suggestion is to play languages as skills. Figuring out a language you do not know is perhaps a DC 20 skill check plus your ranks in the given language plus Intelligence. Maybe make a feat where you can substitute you Charisma for this check instead of Intelligence (or Dex if you're one of those guys who talk with their hands. Lol). When you reach 20 ranks, you become fluent and you dont have to roll.

An optional idea is to include a language like latin. No one speaks it, but taking it lets you add half your Latin bonus to checks for all other romance languages.

Seems legit?

So I've been dinking around with classless systems, where skills and feats are bought a-la-carte, and I came up with an idea that I'm sure has been done somewhere else: Occupations.

Basically, you pick from 9 broad occupations, that determine various crap at the start of the game (the amount of skill points you have in a given area, feats, starting gear, starting gold). After that you narrow it down to what exactly you do in your occupation (You're not just a Craftsman, but a Blacksmith), and you have a nice and neat package of feats, skills, gear, and gold to start the game with.

The 9 Occupations are:

Lawman
Military
Clergy
Craftsman
Hermit
Alumni
Outlaw
Elite
Entertainer

The appeal, to me at least, is that none are strictly related to any single class- Military could mean anything from Chaplain to Sniper to Battle Mage. Instead, they offer various degrees of broadness and specializations, a neat way to determine starting gear and gold, and great for role play.

This idea is still in the womb, so I haven't really fleshed out the stats, just general ideas of what occupation should have more of this or that than the other, which is why I was hoping to get some feedback or ideas from you guys. Tell me what ya think! :D

Currently, without any feats or anything, the rules for two weapon fighting state that you can make an attack at -6 to your main weapon and -10 to your off hand. Now I understand game balance and limiting damage output at low levels and yadda yadda, but I think the rules are kinda ridiculous, considering that in real life, I as a level 1 Jerkwad can pick up a pipe with my left hand and have a better than godawful chance of nailing some poor hobo with it, and it wouldn't even affect what I did with my right hand.

What I propose instead is that you use your full normal main hand stat bonuses, and your off hand maintains a Strength and Dexterity that is only half of the full attributes. ie; a character with a +0 (10) strength gets a -5 (5) in his off hand.

Taking the Two-Weapon Fighting feat would bump up your off-hand STR/DEX by 4 points, while taking Improved would raise it to your full STR/DEX.

This bumps up the power of the players, but I think it makes a little more sense. Any thoughts?

So in my homebrew campaign, one of the common races are Golems. I haven't made them playable yet because I haven't quite fleshed them out, stat-wise. The golems come in a large variety of shapes and sizes to do a variety of different tasks in the world. The material used to construct them also varies wildly.

The church uses stone gargoyles to guard their assets.

The government uses hulking wooden golems resembling nutcrackers to fight wars.

The nobility use elegant golems made of porcelain as servants, resembling porcelain dolls, and these are particularly adept at magic.

And the common folk use ones made of straw and burlap, scarecrows, for day-to-day manual labor.

And of course, these are just examples. They appear as everything from wooden ventriloquist dummies to steel robots.

The problem, of course, is how do I implement these as a playable race with one set of rules? Obviously there would have to be different sets of racial HD since Nutcrackers are so durable and porcelains are so fragile, so how would I go about that? Thoughts?

What do you guys think of adding a little more emphasis to what kind of damage a weapon can do for the purpose of bypassing damage reduction on kinds of armors (assuming we're using the armor as DR variant), and for adding different effects to criticals?

Players must declare how they attack, if they use a weapon with different damage types, and where, if called shots are being implemented.

Thoughts?

Pretty simple idea this time, nothing game-changing.

What if you were allowed to reroll your hit die every time you sleep? This would simulate the effects of a good nights rest. Certain factors may add bonuses or penalties to the reroll like the quality of the bed, how many hours of sleep you received, etc.

This is kind of an update to my last thread on the subject.

If you were too lazy to click the link, here's the gist: Instead of your Armor Class being Dex + Armor + 10, we have Dex + Armor + 1d20. You roll simultaneously with your attacker, and the group I playtested with had a ton of fun doing it. The biggest benefit was that players felt that they had an active hand in dodging blows instead of just standing around and hoping they wouldn't get hit. And if the player is lazy, or there are too many critters for the DM to roll for all of them, they can always 'take 10' and use the normal rules.

It opens up various opportunities, like landing a Critical Defense, where you are able to make an Attack of Opportunity by landing a natural 20 on your Defensive Roll. Certain shields may have a 19-20 or 18-20 Critical Defense, just as weapons would have varying crit ranges.

If both Attacker and Defender roll the exact same number, then a Weapon Clash occurs and the players can either make a strength check to overpower the other, or attempt various combat maneuvers.

Only two things I haven't worked out yet-

What happens on a critical fail. (I'm thinking a critical hit against the defender, but if there's a better idea out there....)

And what happens on a Critical Fail/Success Weapon Clash.
What would be neat is on the successes, maybe both participants receive critical hits, anime sword slash style, but as for Fail Clash, no idea. Something hilarious probably.

Any thoughts, questions, or especially ideas? :D

Normally whenever one creature attacks another, they roll a d20, add up their attack bonuses, and see if it beats their opponents armor class which is just the opponent's Dex Bonus and Armor Bonus +10. So if the party gets swarmed by 42 goblins, there's a lot of sitting around waiting for goblins to stop attacking you, so you can try to hit them one at a time, and then back to sitting and waiting.

So what if instead of a static armor class, players could roll a d20 of their own against the opponents dice in a defensive roll? You'd add up your defense bonuses as usual, and then see who can roll the higher number. And if you have a particularly boring player who would rather not roll defensively, he can just 'take 10' on the roll and use the regular rules.

A defender can roll a 20, maybe giving him an attack of opportunity against his attacker or something, he can roll a 1 which would be a critical fail. Maybe double damage against the defender? And if the attacker and defender roll the same number, their weapons clash and they can duel again by making a strength check (or an "Endurance Check" if you read my last thread) to win a critical hit off the loser.

What do you guys think?

What if there was a save for every stat?

Strength- Endurance: How long you can struggle with a heavy load.
Example: The ceiling beginst to collapse on the party. Klort the barbarian attempts to hold it up to keep from crushing his comrades. Roll for endurance

Dexterity- Reflex

Constitution- Fortitude

Wisdom- Conviction: The ability to withstand allignment based attacks.
Example: Shaggyscrote the Necromancer casts Turn Away Good on Fondletouch the Cleric. Roll for conviction to negate the spell.

Charisma- Willpower

Intelligence- Memory: this one is a little more meta-gamey. If the players are stuck, the DM rolls each characters Memory in secret to determine whos character remembers the hint that NPC Grundletaint the Goblin gave you three caves back. Could be used as a maguffin or a creative DM could probably do something neat with it.

Of course, in my game we use 9 attributes instead of 6. So it would look more like:

Strength- Endurance

Dexterity- Reflex: Pertaining more towards your ability to catch things. Snatch Arrows would use a Reflex save.
Example: As Phat Hung Kok the sorcerrer runs from his flaming pagoda carrying the vial of eternal life spunk, he trips on the jade staircase, sending the fragile bottle soaring! Roll for reflex to catch it.

Agility (your ability to move)- Dodge: the job that Reflex typically does.

Constitution- Fortitude

Faith (Spellcasting stat for clerics)- Conviction: As above

Perception (Takes over the nonmagical benefits of Wisdom, like survival and etc.)- Notice: Does the job of the Perception skill, but made secretly by the DM.
Example: As Sneakyspank the Peeping Tom creeps up to Hillary Clintons window (Roll Notice...) he hears a branch break behind him and turns to see Creeper the Creeper-Creeper. He creeps creepers!

Charisma- Willpower

Intelligence- Memory

Spirit (Spellcasting stat for sorcerers, aids magic device and weapon use, takes over non-social side of charisma)- Resist: Your ability to withstand magic damage.
Example: Son-Goku the Saiyan Warrior takes a massive load to the face from Freeza the Hermaphrodite. Grunt for three episodes and roll Resist... Next time on Dragonball D&D...

I recently came across and downloaded an interesting set of word documents someone wrote up for a Pathfinder without classes. I forget where I found it, I'll post a link if I rediscover it.

In it, most of the feats are purchased in ranks, similar to skills. Among the feats were this modifications 'level' equivalent, the Hand To Hand Combat and Fire Combat feats. A rank in either of these gives you an attack bonus with melee weapons or ranged, ray, and energy attacks, respectively, and both gave 1d10 hit points.

As per usual, iterative attacks were gained every 5 attack bonuses, but that got me thinking, why should a great hammer have the same amount of attacks as a dagger, if all other things are equal?

So here is my solution:
Nix the HTH and Fire Combat feats, and instead replace it with Weapon Proficiency feats. Every time you put a rank in a Weapon Proficiency with your chosen weapon group, your attack bonus with that weapon increases by one, BUT here is the key difference from Pathfinder- Iterative attacks are earned when your ranks equal your weapon groups damage dice. For instance, Weapon Proficiency (Knives) rank 4 makes your attack bonus +4/+1. Weapon Proficiency (Shortswords) rank 13 makes +13/+8/+3.

This makes it to where a small weapon like a dagger can attack faster and thus many more times in a round than a big-ol troll squishing hammer, without being game-breaking, as rank 12 in knives gives you four attacks that average out to 8 damage, if they all connect, whereas rank 12 in a d12 weapon gives you two attacks that average out to 12 damage.

I thought it would be a clever solution to classless attack bonuses and wanted to hear what you guys thought.

And as for what to do about Hit Points, f&#@ if I know. Lol.

How does an automatic weapon's attack work? Would it ignore the iterative attacks granted by your BAB in favore of its own?

Say Miguolio the goblin, who has a BAB of +6/+1, picks up a gattling gun that has a fire rate of 8 shots and makes an attack. Clearly, he wouldn't just get 2 shots off, so what do?

The house rule I have in place is that he can fire all 8 shots, but the iterative attacks allow him to split up the shots however he chooses between different enemies.

If you guys have a better idea, please let me know! I havent read d20 modern, so I dont know what that says on the subject.

So, I want to run a campaign where sorcerers have a mana pool instead of spells per day, which would make them feel more organic and sorcerery. A vague consensus from what little I've seen on the net about how to implement a system like this is to simply add up the spell slots and spells known into points (a 2nd level spell is worth two points, a third level is worth three points, so a sorcerer at level 2 has 4 first level spells, thus 4 spell points).

So then I got in to making a system that allows a player to make a custom spell on the fly, you know, like a sorcerer would. Basically, it costs a spell point and a move action to draw upon your mana and focus it into a ball of energy in your hand. From there it only costs a standard action to make a variety of attacks with it, like throwing it, making a melee attack, making a touch attack, etc. You can spend extra points to make it do extra damage or increase the range or burst radius or make a ray attack, that kind of thing. The damage type that it deals is typically in line with your bloodline (infernals do fire, aberrants do acid, etc). Playtesting this was actually incredibly fun, but it isn't yet fully developed to wholly implement.

Then I thought, hey wouldn't it be cool if when you were out of mana, you could draw on your stamina for a spell, but it would leave you exhausted? But I realized there isn't much out there in the way of stamina systems either. I did find this one, which is more like ki points for fighters, but it still looks super awesome:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2n5ia?Alternate-Fighter-Prototype#1
So now, alongside a mana system, I want to implement a stamina system to complement it, and any character can use it to perform combat feats or move additional spaces per round, or things like that. Maybe even have Grit and Ki use stamina, but be class restricted feats or something.

So maybe have stamina progression use hit die, and mana points use spells slots as above? What do you guys think?