Valkar's page

In our group we use the Hero points from APG, and we use the stamina/deadly damage as written in http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/houseRules/someMinorChangesToHitPoints
With those rules, crits and failed save spells cause deadly damage (can not be slept away), and all other damage is stamina damage (it taxes on your resources). This also removes subdual damage. It works really good, and speed up recovery. My players love it, and it doesn't change any mechanic during combat for me. I just have to inform them when it was a crit, which I am pretty sure they will know anyways.

We don't use spell components, except perhaps for true res (5K is a bit much to remove), wish and ironskin. All minor components I don't care about. It is troubling to keep track of, and what epic hero would want to spend several days finding sand, dust, feathers etc? Are you an epic wizard or not? It is an annoying game mechanism, that does nothing to reflect reality or to balance the game. It only provides annoying waste of time to the players.

We also use the "roleplay is a die-roll", meaning that if you can conjure one hell of a story instead of making that diplomacy check, I will let it slide without a roll. You simply succeed. It is a roleplay after all, and if the players actually for once (rarely happens) do some decent roleplaying, they should be awarded for it.

Likewise in combat. If my players are incredible innovative, I will award a +something bonus to their actions. I have a few times given a +2 bonus to attacks because of these innovative ideas. Likewise I have often given a penalty where it applies (the guy does not have cover, per se, but he is standing between some trees with hanging branches; -2).

Oh, I almost forgot. We also use the rule of the die:
When in doubt, instead of having a long discussion, we roll a die.
1-3 = Yes you can do that.
4-6 = No you can't do that.
Then we find out the correct rule until the next session. It's all about speeding up the boring stuff. After all, you only have 4 hours to play each time, and many more hours before next session!

I completely agree with Weapon Finesse. Howcome you cannot duel without hacking at your opponent?
What I don't know is the rules about damage. Why is it still strength that applies to damage when using a finesse weapon? Isn't the point of a rapier that you hit precise instead of hard? And doesn't it hurt just as much to get your lungs pierced by a rapier that having a greatsword cut your arm off?
I think finesse should be a weapon quality, and weapon finesse as a feat should allow you to also use your dex bonus as bonus damage on the weapon. It makes sence that you need to train a bit more than everyone else to be able to fully exploit the weapon and deal that extra damage. And those finesse weapons should not allow strength bonus damage at all. It is a finesse weapon after all, and not a cleaver.

I disagree on Leadership. If your GM allows Cohorts (I do), people should not get this one for free. How to balance it better I do not know though. I had a sorcerer once, who took a sorcerer cohort. I effectively gained ½ my own spells to use extra, and additional known spells, and the ability to cast 2 spells in 1 round. When you look at the feat like that, no other feat can even come close to giving you that bonus. +1 to hit from weapon focus, or 20 extra spells pr day? Way to overpowered if you ask me.

I agree with TWF should be just 1 scaleable feat, giving you additional attacks when you can (bab +6/+11 etc).

Some feats that are never chosen in my group are crafting feats. They simply do not provide enough. First of all you can buy items, so you don't really miss out on any option (albeit more expensive), the classes who craft magic items do not have that many feats after all (wizards etc.), and even if you took the feats, they apply to so few items. A good group would like to have crafted both that nifty armor, a nice sword, and then some amulets and necklases. Which wizard you know have 3 feats they don't need for anything else but crafting feats? And that is after wasting 3+ skills on crafting on top!
I would like to see crafting put into fewer categories, perhaps based on material type;
Silver/gold (Necklases, amulets etc)
Metal (metal armor, swords etc)
Wood+leather (leather armor, bows etc). (you use a knife as your basic tool for making both leather and wood items).

This way you would have 3 feats instead of many, and a crafter could still make both a full plate and a magical sword, or that nice figurine of power, ioun stone and headband of vast intelligence. It simplifies things, and doesn't hurt the crafter as much.

Or perhaps we could just make it 1 craft skill:
You have the ability to magically enchant an item of superior quality (masterwork etc) thereby making it a magical item. You must possess the corresponding level and spellcasting class, or have another character cast the appropriate spell.

Just my 5 cents to this thread.

As GentleGiant wrote, we tested the system.

We had the encounter with 2 Hell Hounds and a level 2 wizard, deadly armed with a dagger (apparently of autocritting if you ask the dices).

When making a breath attack, reflex for half, it is an extra effort for the GM to explain 4 wound damage to you, 8 stamina damage to you, but after only 1 fight, I believe it is easier allready.

Now we did only have that one encounter, so I cannot say how it will work inside a dungeon with multiple encounters, which will have to be tested soon I guess, but the system works really well.

One important note:
I believe my players had a much better understanding of pain. I felt it like the players took the (much lesser) wound damage (compared to RAW) much more serious than they ever did before. Not that it meant anything during combat, but it ment alot more after the combat.

All in all, even though I was very sceptical about the system at first, I will use it from now on. Possibly forever, because it really works. With this system you DO NOT need a dedicated healbot, and a party can actually consist of any mix of characters you like. A wand of cure light will still be needed from time to time, but players can much easier understand what is happening; You tire from combat!

MORE PLAYTEST PLEASE :-)

EDIT: I have been thinking about that with saves and wound damage. For the Hell Hounds breath, it was awsome that it was wound damage. AUCH it hurts. But for a fireball it should not be wound damage. You cannot burn anything with a fireball, so how can you deal wound damage? I think the whole issue about spells is a pain. Flaming sphere is wound damage for sure, force effects for sure not, and so on. I think we need to work more on this issue, instead of simply saying save=stamina, failure=wound. No matter how much you fail from a save, being hit by a force spell will still be stamina damage in my opinion.

Other opinions?

I have just read through the entire post (which in itself should give bonus xp - damn a long thread).

What I understand is, that you try to accomplish 2 things:

1. More ease when describing injuries.
2. Less downtime between encounters.

I believe you accomplish the first, but a decent GM should have no trouble describing this anyways, as long as he remembers that a "hit" is not a "your arm gets smashed by the greataxe", but more of a glancing blow; "You luckily dodge out of the way, as the greataxe hits the ground where your foot was just a split second ago".

The second one, less downtime, is managed simply by a faster regain rule.

I do not like the 20% pr 20 minutes, as this would cause all characters to be completely ready for battle in less than 2 hours, making it possible to do as many as 5 encounters during a day, in which everyone drops to 0, and as long as there is no crits involved, there is no other penalty but some downtime.

I understand the need to avoid players spending a fortune on cure-wands, but if you instead add a wand as drops every once in a while I don't see the issue here either. Or just add a little extra gold drops, and it becomes the same anyways.

In my group I will give thought to how faster regain can be accomplished, because I see the need to avoid the "Cleric is out of healing, and we cannot afford more cure wands - therefore we sleep" scenario.

One thing that repeats itself in this thread is the need to penalize players for being subject to a critical hit. This can be solved with a "critical hit list", where penalties are applied based on a d100 roll. Bonus to the roll is added based on damage dealt. The list could then go from 1 to 151+, where the higher the total (roll+damage) the worse the injury. Also a simple roll could state where the player were hit. This was done for 2.0, 3.0 and I'm sure you can find a list somewhere to modify as needed.

In my campaign I will discuss this thread with my players tuesday evening (17.05.2011), and find out what they think. Gworeth has allready stated his opinion. But my feeling is that faster Out-of-Combat healing is all that is required. And that certainly is not hard to keep track of.

br. Valkar