Lord Villastir

Vil-hatarn's page

RPG Superstar 8 Season Star Voter. Organized Play Member. 277 posts (959 including aliases). No reviews. No lists. 1 wishlist. 1 Organized Play character. 7 aliases.




As part of a set of houserules I'm working on, I've been heavily tweaking the combat action system with two aims; first, to simplify the system as a whole, and second, to provide greater tactical mobility in melee and less tactical mobility for casters and ranged attackers who wind up in melee. Here's what I have currently:

Combat Actions:

There are five action types: double, single, swift, free, and immediate. You can perform one double or two single, as well as a swift and any number of free actions on your turn.

Threatened Area and AoO: Movement only provokes an AoO if you leave an enemy's threatened area.

Attack: You can make one attack as a single action. This action is non-repeatable; to spend the whole round attacking, use the full attack action.
Full Attack: You can make all of your attacks as a double action. You may move up to half your speed at any point before, between, or after these attacks. If you do not have multiple attacks, you can instead make a single attack with +2 to hit.
Cast a Spell: Spells require a double action to cast.
Withdraw: As a single action, you can move half your speed and not take AoO for leaving the space you started in.

Almost all other actions (move, draw a weapon, drink a potion) are single actions. 5-ft steps are no more; a caster or archer in melee must use the withdraw action, after which the caster can begin casting (but remains vulnerable to interruption, as they must finish the spell the following round) and the archer can make a single attack.


Feedback on any part is welcome, but I'd particularly appreciate any comments regarding the withdraw action/movement as part of a full attack/removal of 5 ft step--it doesn't feel quite right yet.


I don't want the upcoming releases in the PFRPG line (including the Beginner Box), so please cancel my subscription.


I've been considering adapting the spell point system described here for use in Pathfinder and/or my home rule set. It works well for sorcerers and wizards as presented, but I ran into a problem looking at divine casters, because they also have different numbers of spells per day. While I'm certain to tweak the actual point values all around, what would you consider good ratios of strain points between casters? I'm currently thinking:

Wizard/Cleric: 1
Sorcerer/Oracle: 1.5
Druid (without domain): 0.8? 0.75?
Partial Casters: not a clue


I'm working on some houserules, and I'm looking at the d20PFSRD equipment list and finding it a bit...excessive. So, which items do you think are absolutely critical to any adventurer? Are there items listed that you can't even imagine a use for? Has anyone ever actually needed to buy a basket or a block and tackle?


I'm working on a full system rewrite, and all the recent talk of hit points and vitality points and whatnot got me to thinking about how I wanted to handle hit points myself. One of my main goals is to keep the system elegant and approachable without sacrificing the complexity we all love; so I'm hoping for something a little more intuitive than some of the other systems I've seen. Here's what I've got:

Vil-hatarn's HP/Wound System:

Hit Points and Wound Points: Your hit points represent your ability to turn a potentially deadly blow into a minor wound, and are determined by rolling your Hit Dice (note, no Con bonus). Your wound points represent your physical capacity for damage, and are equal to your Constitution score. Hit points are lost before wound points, with the following exceptions:
Any time you suffer a critical hit, you take wound points equal to the weapon's critical modifier.
???

Once your hit points reach 0, all further damage (including remaining damage from the current hit) is dealt to your wound points. If you have lost any wound points, you suffer from the fatigued condition.

Once your wound points reach 0, the existing rules for death/dying apply as if you had reached 0 hit points, including death at -CON.

My primary concern is that it low-HD creatures (including 1st-level characters) far, far tougher. Though I suppose one could just rule that most creatures give up/fall unconscious/run away upon taking Wound damage. Alternatively, Wound Points could be limited to be no higher than Hit Points--though that feels a little artificial to me, especially since it only applies for probably the first two levels. Thoughts?


There seems to be something of a consensus that high-level play is broken. I have also frequently heard people say that the middle levels (somewhere in the 6 to 10 region, depending on who you ask) are the strongest part of the game. I see two main reasons for both of these observations. First, magic. It simply starts to get out of hand at the highest levels. Second, the ever-widening gap between 'good' and 'bad' progressions; by 20th level, the difference between a good save and a poor save is large; the difference between full and 1/2 BAB is massive. It reaches a point where, against the same enemy, a fighter can auto-hit while a wizard auto-misses. A wizard at that level shouldn't be attacking all that often, but it still strikes me as too large of a variance.

My proposed solution is changing BAB from 1/1, 3/4, 1/2 HD to 5/6, 4/6 or 2/3, and 3/6 or 1/2 HD. This means that the various max BABs are 16, 13, and 10, which seems like a much more manageable spread.

As for magic, I'm looking at a full rewrite of the spell system, with 7 spell levels, and a new one gained every 3rd level. That's a little much to get into just yet though.

Thoughts?


Oops, sorry, forgot to switch off the alias...


This order included one of the Pathfinder launch posters; I just opened the tube recently and found that one edge had dozens of small rips and tears running along it...is there any chance I could get a replacement?

Thanks.