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The numbers do seem a little high, I'd consider making child 0 hit dice, adolescent 1 HD and young adult 2 HD. A child is still gonna get class HD on top.
My biggest concern with this is age, what exactly happens when my 1st level child fighter becomes an adolescent at 5th level? or a young adult at 12th? and how would this affect my stats? a child is no where near as strong or as wise as an adult.
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...A child gets 1 racial hit die and 1x the racial skill points.
An adolescent gets 2 racial hit dice and 2x the racial skill points.
A young adult gets 3 racial hit dice and 3x the racial skill points...
I actually like most of your idea, if only for its elegant coherence in allowing for "background" skills. The only problem I have is with the above: "racial HD" results in way too many hps. You won't get any commoner vs housecats jokes, but then 6-year-olds will be able to take on goblin warriors.... unless you also adjust for goblin racial development.
But then, the backward compatibility is starting to take a fairly big hit IMO.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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The first question I have is why (aside from RP reasons) would you ever play a character younger than adult under this system? Seems overly complicated for little actual gain and x4 hit points is excessive for many games.
If you really feel strongly about this system however I would recomend instead of full HD a 0 level character would get a static hp total per age category and no Con adjustment until they take either a commoner level or adventurer level.
Example: Frail Races could get 1hp as a child, 2hp (total) as a young adult, and 4 (total) as an adult.
Standard races get 2hp per age category (2-4-6 total)
and the hearty races get 2hp as a child, 5hp (total) as a young adult, and 8 (total) as an adult.
Your ideas seem similar to what I've done in my games for many years. Based on the idea that all 1HD humanoid creatures in the MM (e.g. goblin, orc, githyanki, etc) receive 1d8 hp, I give assume the PCs had "racial hp" before they began their adventuring careers. That is, they each get hit points equal to 1d8 + Con mod simply because they are alive. THEN, they roll their class HD for 1st level (+ Con mod). While this doesn't always equate to "max at 1st," it's usually pretty close and definitely favors the lowly arcane spellcasters.
My option, as well as the one introduced in this thread, seem to have the same basic idea in mind: the characters were SOMETHING before they became PCs, and so they should have hit points prior to attaining their first class level.
As a DM, I'm not intent on killing the PCs as quickly as possible, so I don't overwhelm them with situations that will easily wipe out their hit point totals. For this reason, I don't see starting hit points as a very big issue.
I think your concept is very good, maybe brilliant.
When starting a new campaign, my group always started at around 3rd-4th level, mainly because of hit points.
This 0-level should just be a "background". In the actual 3.5 rules, all races have this "background level" includes in their racial bonuses. Example: Dwarves are trained to receive a +4AC against giants during this 0-level time.
When creating a new PC, you achieve 1st-level. What happens when you get a new level? Look P58 in PHB. You get a class level, which means:
- You get BAB
- Base saves
- Ability score at every 4 level
- Hit points, according to your class level (HD+CON bonus)
- Skill points (like 4+INT bonus)
- Feat at every 3 level (1st level is not divide by 3...)
When you look at it, 1st level does not follow the rules for any other level. You get A LOT more skills, you get a FEAT, you get MAX HP, your base saves are +2 (not +1).
To adjust 1st-level to work the same way as other level do, you have to remove many things. That's why your concept of 0-level is good because it is a way to put all those bonuses somewhere. Like posted before, the 0-level is basicaly a race level.
0-level/race-level includes:
- a feat (or not, depending if the feat progression is PFRPG or 3.5)
- +1 bonus to a save (so class levels don't start at +2)
- no BAB
- ability score (already include in racial bonuses)
- 3x skill points (or equivalent) reducing 1st-class level at standard skill points
- and, the most important, HP
The amount of HP/HD is race dependant (fixed or not). A creature of 1HD or less would not have to replace is racial HD when getting a 1st-level class. (see MM P.290)
Maybe HP at 0st-level include 3x CON Bonus, to be consistent with the 3x skill points
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I suggested something similar in the thread 'The Great Skill Debate at Paizo'. This was purely relating to skill points, and made no reference to starting hp, but followed the same logic, to discourage first-level dipping into Rogue...
If you like x4, but it is too front-loaded, perhaps it should be x2 at each of the first 3 levels. This would allow multiclassed chars who start early to get a better blend. A Rogue/Fighter/Fighter/Rogue and a Fighter/Rogue/Rogue/Fighter would still be different, but not as much.
There is already a temptation in 3.5 to pick a level of Rogue at first level, due to the x4 skill multiplier.
What if, instead of multiplying the skill points for one's first class level (or racial HD), one gained one level's worth (or one HD worth) of skill points, plus 12, or plus 18 (ie 3 times 4, or 3 times 6, depending on your desired power level)? (modified by race and INT)
That way,
- the order you take your classes/racial HD would make less difference,
- it would give a one-off aid to those classes with a traditionally poor skill points,
- it would make calculating total skill points for multi-classed or high-level NPCs easier
Rogues would still be ahead of the pack, but not to the same extent, and if the combined skills are being used, they may still be ahead, since rolling several skills together means they are getting a 2-for-1 deal on many of their traditional skills, so being granted 6 or 12 less at character creation would not be as penalising.
3) We can alter the x4 skill points at 1st level. This causes unintended problems for characters that multiclass and characters that begin with racial levels. Every other 'class benefit' scales up at an even progression, from 1 to 20. Skills break the rule by starting high and then progressing at an even progression. Could you imagine if we started fighters with a BAB of 4, clerics and rogues with +2 and wizards a +1 - why do we do something similar with skills.
4) If we eliminate the x4 bonus, to keep things balanced we must give a slightly faster progression. This means that at 1st-3rd level the number of skills will be just a little lower than 3.5 (no multiplication) but will quickly even out and exceed the levels of other characters.
I don't think we would need to raise the skill points/level for any class, since the fact that several skills are being rolled together means that the PCs are getting effective discounts each level.
My previous post suggested that, instead of giving beginning characters '4 levels of class skill points', we give 'one level of class points', plus '3 levels of 'adolescence' or 'racial' skill points', which could be 4/level, or 6/level, for absolutely everyone (except mindless creatures obviously!), depending on what power level you believe is required.
So, if we were to grant, say one level's worth of skill points +18 at level 1, rogues would still effectively be at the same skill level, despite apparently losing 6 skill points. Everyone else would be slightly better off, from the initial boost, and the combining of skills, so would also have no cause to complain.
With regard to hp, it may not hurt to have a larger pool at level 1, which goes upwards at a slower rate (proportionally). This would reduce the apparent doubling of hp upon reaching level 2.
It would also reflect the hp situation in Rolemaster, which seems to have been a big influence on the development of 3.0, with the designers (IIRC, Jonathan Tweet for sure) being ex-Iron Crown Enterprises staff? :)
In fact, I do believe our own Erik Mona got his break on that game, am I right?
If I am following this train of thought correctly.
The first step in character creation would be to roll your ability scores.
The second step would be to choose a race and adjust your ability scores. Then "roll" for racial hit points. Acquire basic racial skill points. Then advance your "0" level character by choosing your first class level and rolling additional hp by class and adding on your class skill points.
This would be similar to starting at double your max class hp but more in line with the racial adjustments and the tradition of dice in the character creation process.
If I have the concept right, I think I like it.
So looking at the core races, might they be something like this?
Halfling d4 +1
Gnome d4 +2
Elf d6 + 1
Human d6 +2
half-elf d6 +1
Dwarf d8 +1
half orc d8 +2
They would each have "racial skill points, plus class skill points" at level one.
This helps reducing the inbalance of skills from the first class in a multiclass caracter.
If I want a rogue/fighter/sorcerer/whatever, a good choice was to have rogue at 1st-level for huge amount of skill points. Having a level of rogue at a later time was not equally powerful.
Racial level (0-level) is the solution for a more balance per-level bonuses, specificaly skills points and base saves.
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We tried a system very near to this in our last campaign (the one we ran before Pathfinder).
We ended up having a lot of problems, with it, which I'll explain in a moment. Our final determination, while the idea is good in theory, in practice it simply doesn't work very well.
1) If you give all humans 3 racial HD, you must increase the racial HD of all other races by 3 as well. This is hard to do 'on the fly' and effectively renders your pre-published modules and monster manuals useless.
2) Having three extra HD makes a huge difference to make spells less effective. Spells that deal 1d6 points of damage/level are not nearly as threatening due to the significantly higher number of hit points. Worse, spells with a HD limit (sleep, etc) are completely inaffective. In addition, every creature has at least an extra +3, +1, +1 to their saves, which again makes spells much harder to use effectively.
Logically, it makes sense to have a child version of a human, as well as an adolescent version, but it has far ranging effects.
3) Critical hits at low levels are not deadly. Simply put, unless you're attacking a child or adolescent, a critical hit with a longsword will not kill anyone. I do have a bit of a problem with every adult in the world being able to withstand a shortsword through the heart.
If those problems are addressed, the system might be worthwhile, but those are some pretty big ones. Once they're addressed, I may support such a system because it does make logical sense and every living creature must have HD of some sort.
Persoanlly, after having tried this system, I think the better way to do this is to simply give young humanoids a fractional HD. They gain their skills officially when they gain their real HD. Also, have a rule that describes how an NPC class can 'upgrade' to a PC class.
My thought there is that they would have a faster progression, so it would be as easy to be a warrior 3 as a fighter 2, but most people would think the fighter 2 makes more sense. If you get to War 3 but you're going to think about doing something dangerous (like adventuring) you can upgrade those warrior levels to fighter levels (for instance).
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At least someone seems to understand what I am getting at. ;)
Why do people, when others don't immediately say "what a great idea", assume that people don't understand? As though if they did understand they couldn't possibly disagree... :)
Anyway... I think this could be an overly complicated mechanic. The "fluff" around why you get the boost at the beginning of a career (ie. max HP, 4x skill points) is that presumably what you've been doing with your life up until that point has been working toward learning all you need to learn until you're "qualified" as a <insert class here for level 1>. If you separate it out for pre-class skill points... what skills can you take? Are they all considered class skills, or how do you know which ones are class and which are cross-class?
I definitely see what you're trying to get to, but I'm not sure this is the right way to go. If you wanted to you could always say "everyone gets one level of expert for free" and go from there. I like what you're trying to do, but I think it unnecessarily complicates the character creation process.
As for the saves... we, a couple years ago, went with the fractional calculations from Unearthed Arcana. It stops the silliness of the save boosting when you flip into multiple classes with overlapping good saves.
My main objection to the OP's system is that it increases the hp of all characters by the same amount. This makes the benefit of having a fighter's HD at 1st level less profound, which I believe is an important distinction to maintain. I much prefer double max class HD at 1st level (or allowing players to roll 4x class HD which has about the same result on average).