We were starting to go off into character creation system customizations on the Better Fighter thread, so I figured I'd make this one to keep from polluting the other thread too much.
For myself, I started down the road of rebuilding d20 into a completely classless system based entirely around skills and feats. For all interested, here's as far as I got. I started trying to put the thing into a wiki format (need to dig around for that link...), but that effort got lost in the process of buying a new house and such.
I ended up scrapping the project after version 0.5 as it was too much work for my players (they don't like to twink rules around like I do) and the long-shot of commercial viability for such an effort seemed pointless. I'd love to keep working on the project with any like-minded folks, see other peoples' systems, talk about ideas/chunks that could be pulled off for general d20 use, etc.
In any case everything is (or should be, if you spot a problem please let me know) fully OGC. I built the system using ideas and material from the d20 SRD, d20 Modern, the Book of Distinctions and Drawbacks, the Book of Distinctions & Drawbacks Modern, Iron Heroes, Legends of Sorcery, and Mythic Earth: Elements of Magic.
And all that said, here's the link to the doc (it's a ZIPped Word DOC):
Conceptually similar to this.
Looks interesting. I think the "minor feats" take is pretty cool. I struggled with the same limitation of breaking entirely from the leveling system. I considered some sort of "use a skill X times and it can be increased" (similar to the game Fallout) but that seemed unwieldy in anything short of a computer-monitored system.
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I contemplated doing a system of tiers.
You start off as tier one, so every 100 xp you collect you gain a minor feat.
Once you collect 10 minor feats, you advance to tier 2, and now it is 200 xp per minor feat...
ad infinitum.
so it is either a smooth power curve, surges...
i like smooth better but neither way has been tested
Wow, Erian. Too much for me to take in all at once... but it looks like just what the doctor ordered, at the end of the day.
My solution took a different turn early on; I used a skill-based system, in which extra ranks cost progressively higher amounts of XP; feats were subsumed into certain skills; and powers had scaling xp costs as well. So, characters spent earned xp on stuff they wanted, and therefore had no class and no "level."
I really dont see the point of the experience penalty for multiple classes or cross classing or whatever you want to call it.
I think the the whole combat system needs reworking as well as the magic system; lol Armor for instance needs reworking as well as saves for magic without making things cumbersome, though a lot of options given in various books are in the right direction as these authors see the same need as I do :)
The feat system needs reworking; I suggest breaking them into two or more separate sections and award a lot more feats than the current game generates or perhaps make a lot of things that are feats into skills as some of these are very borderline.
the idea of game balance needs help so that we all have the same concept of what balance the game is shooting for as a goal.
Why so much magic restriction; who cares how many magic rings somebody wears; why just two; seems very arbitrary to me without sound reason backing it up.
well, just some thoughts my players and I have been kicking around for years and have tried lots of different options.
Wow, Erian. Too much for me to take in all at once... but it looks like just what the doctor ordered, at the end of the day.
Yeah, it got pretty lengthy (and some sections are obviously unfinished). There are some sections I've improved on since that time (turning the Paladin class abilities into feats and work on the Called Shot system--two things I'm planning on using in my RotR PbP campaign).
My solution took a different turn early on; I used a skill-based system, in which extra ranks cost progressively higher amounts of XP; feats were subsumed into certain skills; and powers had scaling xp costs as well. So, characters spent earned xp on stuff they wanted, and therefore had no class and no "level."
I considered a system as you describe above as well, but started running into issues of figuring out how "powerful" one character was vs. another. I initially thought it also made conversion of other d20 material more difficult, though as it ended up my system was obviously no walk in the park here.
I really dont see the point of the experience penalty for multiple classes or cross classing or whatever you want to call it.
I think the the whole combat system needs reworking as well as the magic system; lol Armor for instance needs reworking as well as saves for magic without making things cumbersome, though a lot of options given in various books are in the right direction as these authors see the same need as I do :)
The feat system needs reworking; I suggest breaking them into two or more separate sections and award a lot more feats than the current game generates or perhaps make a lot of things that are feats into skills as some of these are very borderline.
the idea of game balance needs help so that we all have the same concept of what balance the game is shooting for as a goal.
Why so much magic restriction; who cares how many magic rings somebody wears; why just two; seems very arbitrary to me without sound reason backing it up.
well, just some thoughts my players and I have been kicking around for years and have tried lots of different options.
Assuming these are all comments for standard d20, not any of these conversions. For specifics...
My system has no penalty for multiclassing, as there are no classes!
Combat and magic are both re-worked into a skill-based system. Attack skills (assigned by weapon group) are opposed by Defense skills (assigned by armor type). Armor itself provides DR (and additional body location specific protection vs. called shots). For magic, the caster uses an appropriate Skill check to tcast spells. The result may cause the spell to fail, may harm the caster, may result in greater spell results, etc. Saving throws (called Resistance checks; there are four, based on Dex, Con, Wis, and Cha) are skills as well and I was working on a way to make the caster's skill check to cast a spell in some way related to the DC of the Resistance check.
For feats, my system awards a certain number of points each level--the character is free to spend these on skills and/or feats as desired.
For game balance, I actually tried to keep it as close to standard d20 as possible, sop that you could throw an ECL 5 at an APL 5 and have it still work fairly well. I don't know that this piece every came fully to fruition, as I didn't have enough play-test to prove, disprove, or find issues.
For magic items, I didn't get too much into this area. I did work in a system to explain spell failure due to armor (basing it around the concept of "dead" matter blocking magical energy--interfered both with casting spells and gave Resistance bonuses to the armor wearer).
I considered a system as you describe above as well, but started running into issues of figuring out how "powerful" one character was vs. another.
I kept a running tally of total xp spent since character creation, which eliminated that problem (in-system, anyway; out-of-system problems with gear still came up, as described below).
I initially thought it also made conversion of other d20 material more difficult, though as it ended up my system was obviously no walk in the park here.
That aspect, as I mentioned, was the downfall of my experiment. As long as I had time to design the adventures, it worked perfectly for our group--better than D&D ever did, in any edition. New feats, classes, items, etc. were easily incorporated, too. But trying to run a pregen adventure (which presupposes a rigid class system) with characters used to near-limitless flexibility in character design... that made things difficult. Because items had to be "bought," the pregen 3.5-ed. NPCs were usually much better-equipped than the PCs, causing all kinds of confusion.
I really dont see the point of the experience penalty for multiple classes or cross classing or whatever you want to call it.
Agreed. I like the Mongoose's Conan RPG take on multiclassing, in that you are free to multiclass as much as you like without penalty. The Conan RPG still has favored classes, but they work differently. Their system rewards playing the genre by giving bonus feats (for taking levels in a favored class) at levels 1, 5, and 10. I think rewarding a player's voluntary cooperation is much better than penalizing a player's attempt to be unique.
I think the the whole combat system needs reworking as well as the magic system; lol Armor for instance needs reworking as well as saves for magic without making things cumbersome, though a lot of options given in various books are in the right direction as these authors see the same need as I do :)
I definitely think armor should provide DR. Both the Conan RPG & Iron Heroes have interesting takes on the approach thereof. And I've posted recently here the encumerance system & armor effect on movement should be simplified. Someone once mentioned a system using "stones" that sounded much more intuitive.
The feat system needs reworking; I suggest breaking them into two or more separate sections and award a lot more feats than the current game generates or perhaps make a lot of things that are feats into skills as some of these are very borderline.
Definitely. More feats & separating great feats (like Weapon Finesse & Power Attack) from the crappy ones (like Skill Focus, etc) would encourage PC's to broaden their character's more.
the idea of game balance needs help so that we all have the same concept of what balance the game is shooting for as a goal.
Also agreed, they need some sort mechanic, even if they don't publish it, that balances new classes, like Warlock & Scout, with the core classes, most of which are self-evidently inferior to many, if not most, of the newer ones.
Why so much magic restriction; who cares how many magic rings somebody wears; why just two; seems very arbitrary to me without sound reason backing it up.
I see your point, but it's almost moot if they're going to rework the *entire* magic system. Otherwise, I disagree with the 2 rings limitation, although I do so for balance in the Monty Hall Magic Items System - but that's just a personal bias (obviously). ;^)
Myself, I'm working on an Iron Heroes / Conan RPG system using R. E. Howard's setting & Mongoose's magic system, along with IH classes, skills, challenges, tokens and feats, and so far, I'm quite pleased with how things are going.
- FM
The feat system needs reworking; I suggest breaking them into two or more separate sections and award a lot more feats than the current game generates or perhaps make a lot of things that are feats into skills as some of these are very borderline.Definitely. More feats & separating great feats (like Weapon Finesse & Power Attack) from the crappy ones (like Skill Focus, etc) would encourage PC's to broaden their character's more.
I took a different approach for sub-par feats, trying to make them better overall. For instance:
Skill Focus in my system grants 2 bonus ranks, that may exceed the level limitation of level+3 and thta also may count toward qualification for feats.
Dodge may be taken multiple times, stacks with itself (allowing either a higher bonus vs. 1 opponent or a split bonus vs. multiple targets), and leads into Improved Dodge (bonus applies to all targets).
Combat Casting grants characters the ability to cast defensively (in this case, I changed the magic system moreso than the feat--it seemed strange to me that every caster on the planet knew how to cast defensively...)
just a few examples. The IH Feat Mastery concept, of course, provides another approach to feats
I seesaw between hammering out my homebrew system, Fantasia, and my d&d homebrew. Unfortunately for this discussion I'm absorbed with revamping epic levels for d&d.
I'm nowhere near finishing Fantasia, but I can talk about my design philosophy behind it. I like, in general terms, the d20 system and the level structure. It might feel a bit stilted, but it provides a great frame of reference for everyone who plays. Anyway, my goal with Fantasia is to basically slim down and streamline d&d.
For example, we don't need umpteen classes to provide the opportunity to customize. Heck, we don't even need 11. Currently, I have 5 classes: 3 casters (Int, Wis, Cha), the warrior and the rogue. The casters, though I haven't completed this chapter yet, will all use a per-encounter mana point system. Each class gets a combination of class feats and general feats as they progress. Class feats are things like weapon focus, rage, sneak attack, skirmish, metamagic and so on. General feats are everything else. Warriors and rogues get a feat at each level, so I'm considering creating templates like "archer", "knight", "scout", etc. with their feats already picked out for those players who don't like to worry about feats at every level.
I’ve frequently toyed with the idea of giving characters max HTK at first level and never giving any more, just rearrange the fighting rules to actively include parrying and intensifying the skill and/or ability models to allow for selecting emphasis on offense or defense each combat round. That way, even a well-placed dagger thrust can still take even a heavily experienced and armored fighter out, if it gets past ALL his defenses. It also turns projectile weapons (bows, x-bow, thrown axes and daggers, etc.) back into serious threats, not the low-grade jokes they’ve become. Of course, it also required re-vamping armor to account for damage soaking on the part of armor, and the record keeping for that lead to cost- per-point repair analyses….
Eventually I blew it off and decided to use the rules as they were. It was a lot easier. Someone else had already done the heavy lifting. After all, once the wheel has been invented, everything else is just a variation on that theme. A new way of rolling is still rolling.
I've long been a fan of the game Powers & Perils, released in the early 80's. It was our fantasy game of choice until 3.0 was released. Frankly, it sounds a lot like the system some of you should be playing.
If interested, there is an online website that features its four core books and all the information you need to get going.
You might ask why we don't currently play it?
1: New player familiarity. If I advertise on these boards that I am in need of a Powers & Perils player (even if the game is in fact superior to D&D) in the Las Vegas area, I get ZERO responses. If I advertise that I am running any kind of D&D game, I might have more players than I need responding.
2: Availability. Avalon Hill no longer publishes Powers & Perils; outside of photocopies (or potentialy PDFs), the books are hard to come by.
3: Inherent Weaknesses. P&Ps skill and combat system is the best fantasy system I've seen yet. Its magic system, unfortunately, is as bad as the combat system is good. Further, creating a character requires some Algebra skills. Monsters arelacking as well; however, this is an area that is easy to overcome.
4: Entrenchment. My players have invested a LOT of money in WotC materials. For that reason alone is why we have played this god-awful game in excess of 3 years straight.
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I considered some sort of "use a skill X times and it can be increased" (similar to the game Fallout) but that seemed unwieldy in anything short of a computer-monitored system.
Somebody may need to check me on this, but IIRC, Call of Cthulhu uses a level-less, skill-heavy system. You start off assigning skill points like in d20. As you play, each time you successfully use a skill you put a little mark next to that skill on your character sheet, and once you've succeeded a certain number of times (5?), you MIGHT get a skill point bump. To find out, you make a special skill check versus your own skill level, which you have to FAIL; the logic being that it easy for novice characters to gain basic proficiency in their skills but hard for experts to attain true mastery. If you successfully fail, you add 1d10 skill points (CoC uses a 1-100 scale, not 1-20 like d20).
And EVERYTHING, including combat and magic, are skills.
God, I may have just made a lot of that up. I haven't read the CoC book in a few years (and I never actually played), but it seemed innovative at the time.
Somebody may need to check me on this, but IIRC, Call of Cthulhu uses a level-less, skill-heavy system. You start off assigning skill points like in d20. As you play, each time you successfully use a skill you put a little mark next to that skill on your character sheet, and once you've succeeded a certain number of times (5?), you MIGHT get a skill point bump. To find out, you make a special skill check versus your own skill level, which you have to FAIL; the logic being that it easy for novice characters to gain basic proficiency in their skills but hard for experts to attain true mastery. If you successfully fail, you add 1d10 skill points (CoC uses a 1-100 scale, not 1-20 like d20).
And EVERYTHING, including combat and magic, are skills.
God, I may have just made a lot of that up. I haven't read the CoC book in a few years (and I never actually played), but it seemed innovative at the time.
That's very similar to the system I considered. In the end, it became apparent that the bookkeeping would be anightmare, what with everything (attack rolls, defense rolls, and resistance rolls included) being a skill check.
For GURPS, it was on my mind during the process, but I also wanted to stick close to d20 (thus being able to pull from OGC) and shore up areas of concern (like balancing encounters vs. players). I have never checked out GURPS 4th ed. since Steve Jackson released it, though, and I know it's supposed to address several issues from the older system.