I was thinking of running a PF game with some alt rules. If you see any immediate or potential problems with it please let me know.
1. No WBL (You don't NEED gear but that does not mean you won't get it)
2. No Big 6 items (Deflection bonus, Resistance bonuses, Enhancement bonuses to armor, weapons, Natural armor, or stats). Items with these effects have these effects removed (like Robe of the Archmagi resistance bonus)
3. Arms and armor do not need a plus 1 to have a special effect. All ten bonuses can be special effects. You do not automatically bypass DR with a +X weapon since there is no base enhancement bonus. Effective +6 still bypasses Epic as normal.
4. Characters get a Dodge bonus to their armor equal to their BAB. (BAB no longer adds to CMD. Instead add this dodge bonus)
5. Best saves progress at 1:1 with levels. Worst saves progress at the same rate as 3/4 BAB. (So a fighter would have from class features at level 20 +20 fort, +15 will, +15 ref)
6. Attributes are increased at every even level. You can only select each attribute once. After selecting an attribute, that attribute increases by one at even even level. (So at 12th all stats go up by one. At 20 your first stat selected at 2 increased a total of +10)
7. You cannot put ranks into perception.
8. Your perception check is equal to your BAB+wis mod. If perception is a class skill, you get a plus 3 bonus. Feats and abilities dependent on skill ranks in perception treat your BAB as your ranks in perception.
All spells and class features work as normal.
The characters are going to be massively more powerful. You may or may not be okay with that. Also #7/8 is weird. Wizards are suddenly unobservant?
Why would they be more powerful?
Wizards still get BAB. They just are not as eagle-eyed as rangers without some spell assistance.
|
Your Base Attack Bonus being added to your Armor Class I don't mind specifically, it's just that you're treating it as a dodge bonus (and thus, stackable with Dodge.) It reminds me of Star Wars: Saga Edition, which I totally love the hell out of, but even Saga Edition said "Dude, I know you wanna be the next scruffy scoundrel with a cool starship, badass Wookie sidekick, and hot slave girl bikini-clad space princess girlfriend, but you gotta make a choice; either your character level or your armor's bonus applies to your Defense, not both." (Unless you were a Soldier and took Armored Defense, which let you use the better bonus, and Improved Armored Defense, which let you use either the armor's bonus or your level plus half the armor's bonus, whichever helped you more.)
Some samples
Level 14 fighter under normal rules
Same fighter with these rules instead
NOTE: I forgot to mention no inherent bonus tomes.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lot of reasons.
Some issues.
I forgot to mention no tomes/inherent bonuses.
The level increases replace the normal ones. So wizard caps out at 30 int or 34 with a buff spell on.
Saves go from +6/+6/+12 to +15/+15/+20
Barbar lost ring, amulet, and magic armor for a total of -15. He gets +20 but it is slower than how magic items went up. You net higher AC only at the highest levels.
Monsters would stay the same, unless they had class levels and gear. Racial HD BAB does not confer the dodge bonus.
I see a big problem with the BAB to AC. It invalidates full-attacks. The reason why AC doesn't scale with level (except for magic gear so far) is that martials do additional attacks with much lower bonuses that are expected to hit. With this a fighter will only have one reasonable chance to hit another fighter, every iterative attack will just be a gamble.
On the other hand I can also see the value in this, maybe it will give martials more reason to move around, but I think they need something to make single attacks more effective then.
A question : what is your goal(s) with these houserules ? I find that declaring a clear goal for each houserule helps in understanding and accepting the rule.
The rules are separated for clarity. The individual goals stretch over several rules.
The main goal is to eliminate the NEED for magic items to keep up with CR. I dislike that every high-level adventure has to be about Batman and friends if it wants to stay remotely balance. I also want people to have cooler magic items instead of the "standard".
I think overall the changes buff martials, which I don't have a problem with. DPR goes down but defenses goes up, especially at high levels.
The perception change was made because I am annoyed at how perception is basically a mandatory skill. I think it makes sense to scale of BAB since the heightened awareness is probably needed to dodge attacks.
I've also been annoyed at how a PF characters defenses are completely dependent on magic items and not their martial prowess.
The Rogue is interesting. Uncanny dodge is really important in this mode. By the time her perception falls behind, trapfinding is keeping it up enough such that she can still auto-find traps. Not being able to enchant her buckler really hurts her melee AC. What is interesting is that since so much of AC is because of dodge, hitting flat-footed/dex-denied AC is a real boon. A feint rogue could tear through most things with class levels. She clearly has problems, but all the other 3/4 BAB classes can self buff.
I am going to make the monk next (probably just convert an old one)
|
I was thinking of running a PF game with some alt rules. If you see any immediate or potential problems with it please let me know.
1. No WBL (You don't NEED gear but that does not mean you won't get it)
I'm interested in going the other way around as well: a situation where PCs don't break the game if they're too wealthy. If your storyline leads to the PCs taking control of an empire, or an interplanar merchant consortium, that shouldn't break the game system. Because these are appropriate epic goals for PCs.
2. No Big 6 items (Deflection bonus, Resistance bonuses, Enhancement bonuses to armor, weapons, Natural armor, or stats). Items with these effects have these effects removed (like Robe of the Archmagi resistance bonus)
With some price adjustment to items that lose 80% of their functionality, I suppose. And I agree in general.
However, I wonder if this won't just move the goalposts towards a new line of "best in their slot" items that provide different bonuses.
3. Arms and armor do not need a plus 1 to have a special effect. All ten bonuses can be special effects. You do not automatically bypass DR with a +X weapon since there is no base enhancement bonus. Effective +6 still bypasses Epic as normal.
This will lead to some grumbling from players of martial classes, because they'll need multiple weapons to deal with DR X/(Y and Z). However, on the quadratic item pricing scale, removing one mandatory +1 makes a big difference.
4. Characters get a Dodge bonus to their armor equal to their BAB. (BAB no longer adds to CMD. Instead add this dodge bonus)
This will definitely benefit barbarians, much more than fighters, because of Uncanny Dodge.
It also makes shield-users look pretty stupid. Normally shields are a relatively cheap source of a lot of AC, but without magical enhancements, shields really aren't worth it.
This needs more work.
5. Best saves progress at 1:1 with levels. Worst saves progress at the same rate as 3/4 BAB. (So a fighter would have from class features at level 20 +20 fort, +15 will, +15 ref)
Not really sure how that'd pan out.
6. Attributes are increased at every even level. You can only select each attribute once. After selecting an attribute, that attribute increases by one at even even level. (So at 12th all stats go up by one. At 20 your first stat selected at 2 increased a total of +10)
This is somewhat to the relative advantage of MAD classes.
7. You cannot put ranks into perception.
8. Your perception check is equal to your BAB+wis mod. If perception is a class skill, you get a plus 3 bonus. Feats and abilities dependent on skill ranks in perception treat your BAB as your ranks in perception.
Many Perception-oriented classes are 3/4 BAB, like rogues, bards, investigators, inquisitors, ninjas and so forth. I think this one might cause a weird shift in which classes are good at perception.
Yeah, consider treating certain specialist class HD as bab for perception. Pretty easy fix.
To expand on the question of goals: why did you shy away from something akin to this method?
It seems like you had a goal and chose a very roundabout way of achieving it, which is why I ask.
It's a little meta.
He also only addresses the big 4. You will still need to tredmill weapons and armor. Also his progression is off. You will max out a cloak of resistance long before 18. A more elegant method is just to say, "upon level up you get WBL points that you can spend on only big 6 effects". There is very little reason as a martial to branch your WBL outside of the big 6 until you have maxed them out.
Why this route instead of just directly making comparable bonuses to the Big Six part of the character?
Mainly because I am trying to do more here than just addressing the Big 6 issue.
I'm more looking for thematic and mechanical issues. Some have already pointed out how many traditionally high perception classes are SOL from tieing perception to BAB. I am debating whether or not Perception should scale off HD for anyone who has it as a class skill.
I was thinking of running a PF game with some alt rules. If you see any immediate or potential problems with it please let me know.
1. No WBL (You don't NEED gear but that does not mean you won't get it)
2. No Big 6 items (Deflection bonus, Resistance bonuses, Enhancement bonuses to armor, weapons, Natural armor, or stats). Items with these effects have these effects removed (like Robe of the Archmagi resistance bonus)
3. Arms and armor do not need a plus 1 to have a special effect. All ten bonuses can be special effects. You do not automatically bypass DR with a +X weapon since there is no base enhancement bonus. Effective +6 still bypasses Epic as normal.
4. Characters get a Dodge bonus to their armor equal to their BAB. (BAB no longer adds to CMD. Instead add this dodge bonus)
5. Best saves progress at 1:1 with levels. Worst saves progress at the same rate as 3/4 BAB. (So a fighter would have from class features at level 20 +20 fort, +15 will, +15 ref)
6. Attributes are increased at every even level. You can only select each attribute once. After selecting an attribute, that attribute increases by one at even even level. (So at 12th all stats go up by one. At 20 your first stat selected at 2 increased a total of +10)
7. You cannot put ranks into perception.
8. Your perception check is equal to your BAB+wis mod. If perception is a class skill, you get a plus 3 bonus. Feats and abilities dependent on skill ranks in perception treat your BAB as your ranks in perception.All spells and class features work as normal.
1) Not a big deal; it's more of a guideline anyways.
2) Very big deal. Now that ability scores boosts apparently can't stack except as a kind of capstone, there will effectively be no way beyond their initial starting scores for most characters. At least before, Master Craftsman gave a non magic-user the ability to create things like a Belt of Physical Perfection.3) Sounds fine.
4) Interesting. It's going to make it harder to hit a lot of things, though. Monsters, for instance, are going to get a BIG boost in their defenses from this. Or is it something only class levels give you? Also, all ray spells and effects are essentially now worth nothing against a full-BAB character. With the changes to how ability scores work and how character saves are going up, why would the fighter ever need to fear an enemy caster?
5) Interesting idea. Could work.
6) This one I'll admit I just don't like. The idea that a fighter who spends weeks, months, even years trying his strength against deadly opponents on the battlefield will never really get any stronger than he was when he started UNLESS he's level 20? Yeah, that's just not fun.
7 & 8) This is a weird choice. I get that you're trying to centralize a number of things around a single level-dependent stat, but I just don't see the connection between how good you are at punching someone and how sharp your senses are. Maybe make it a function of overall level instead of BAB? I dunno.
@Cerberus
Please look at the example characters to see how stat increases work.
Yes racial HD does not confer the dodge bonus. For the most part monsters will be ran as written.
There is no belt of Physical Perfection crafted or otherwise. The big 6 items do not exist.
Ah, I misread it earlier. Okay, so it's like old-school favored enemy bonus increases for rangers. That'll work.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I look forward to see how this works out for you. Personally every single rules besides #1 #3 make me flinch.
However, if this is what your gaming group desires, this is what you should run with. I see a few problems, the BAB to dodge Ac could lead to a harsh time having creatures actually hitting PCs, at least martial ones. And leads to ray attacks sincerely sucking later on.
And the rest I will avoid going on a rant about, because it would just be a rant about enjoying the familiar, and how far out that is.
However I wish you the best of luck, and hope that you let us know how your sessions go in the future.
I'm going to pass on most of these.
Being able to choose between +1 to hit and damage, +1 deflection, or +1 to a stat each level or even every other level is a better system. Since deflection maxes out at 8, this makes healers and rogues viable.
Magic resistance shouldn't be tossed out with the big 6. It justifies armor and shields. Someone's going to ask why their level and BAB don't give magic resistance, and your house of cards may fall down. Negative energy resistance also justifies a mithral chain shirt.
BAB is a combat thing and I can't understand it. Is that the total normal attack bonus, or defense bonus?
Barbarians get damage resistance because muscles are tougher than normal flesh. You shouldn't touch that.
Magic resistance shouldn't be tossed out with the big 6. It justifies armor and shields. Someone's going to ask why their level and BAB don't give magic resistance, and your house of cards may fall down. Negative energy resistance also justifies a mithral chain shirt.
Magic resistances are not thrown out, just big 6 increases to AC and saves.
BAB is base attack bonus. Every class gets this.
I didn't touch the barbarian...