Using a combination of house rules, seeking advice

[Illusees]

So in designing my own homebrew world, I decided to implement a few minor house rules. This idea snowballed and lead to me incorporating a great deal of alternate rules from various Pathfinder books, as well the Spheres of Power system. Right now, the alternate rules I'm using from Pathfinder supplements are:

Armor as damage reduction (Ultimate Combat)
Wound thresholds (Pathfinder Unchained)
Automatic bonus progression (Pathfinder Unchained)
Revised action economy (Pathfinder Unchained)

Now, I'm aware that adding all of these rules, in addition to the Spheres of Power system, changes the entire game. I will need to add or change minor things about all of these rules to make them fit together with one another. However, I'm worried that even after tweaking everything, there will still be some glaring problems with the system that I'm not seeing, or that the rules themselves will not mesh together the way I'd like them to.

What I'm asking is for anyone rules-savvy to tell me how a game like this would play, and to offer advice on how to fix any potentially major problems with such a system. For instance, using wound thresholds means that healing magic becomes more important, but is a party without a dedicated healer doomed? Armor as DR means that attacks will probably hit more frequently, and the revised action economy allows up to three attacks per round right at first level - does this mean melee combat will be too deadly? Will higher CR monsters be horribly unbalanced?

Please note that this is a work in progress, and I have not yet had the time to actually playtest any of this.

[GM Rednal]

The extra attacks have -5 and -10 penalties, respectively, which means the odds of successfully landing the extra attacks at low levels start at bad and get rapidly worse from there. It's not likely to be a problem. XD

The biggest thing to note here is WBL, I think. Automatic Bonus Progression means you'll have to reduce the amount of treasure they get. Personally, I suggest having the PCs' main source of funding be some kind of external group. The reason depends on the plot you have. XD Having the funding come from a set group makes it easier to manage, especially if you... discourage looting enemies.

Ultimately, I think your ruleset will be fine. I don't see anything my instincts say is horribly unbalanced, so while it will be a bit different (especially since you're using Spheres - good call, by the way, 'cuz that's a fun system), you should be fine in the end. Go ahead and roll with it - and let your players know that the first few sessions are also meant to be a test of the rules you're using, and that you'd both like their feedback and may end up changing things if you ultimately decide a fix is needed.

[Secret Wizard]

Ok, I'm not super rules savvy, but I think two of your changes are abstraction issues - that is, Armor as DR and Wound Thresholds.

I would never implement either of those systems in one of my games because they both try to think about the same thing: "all attacks that hit cause injury and all attacks that fail to hit don't touch the target".

I think that's a problem for abstraction of hit points.

For example, an attack that fails to bypass AC could be a blow that glances off armor safely. Meanwhile an attack that penetrates AC doesn't have to be a blade sinking into the PC's flesh, it could as well be a slice that went by so close that it took the air out of the PC's stomach.

A character could be sitting at 1 HP without a single bruise.

HP is, at least in the way I abstract the game, how much longer the PC can go without being fatally struck. This is modified by CON, because physical endurance is part of the equation, but it's not just it - the main part of the equation is NARRATIVE.

A Fighter can take more hits than a Wizard because NARRATIVELY, a Fighter should.

All in all, I think that applying both of those systems is going to end up very unbalanced for classes that get into the fray.

ABP and RAE are good systems though. I'm not totally against Spheres of Power but I haven't playtested it thoroughly.

Quote:

the revised action economy allows up to three attacks per round right at first level

You can't make more attacks than allowed by BAB though, if I'm not mistaken.