Critique my gameplay tweaks / house rules please?

[Khevtol]

Wanted critique on a rules doc I drafted up for my game.

You can find the doc HERE on google drive.

My goals were:

• Fewer rules roadblocks between a fleshed out concept and a character.
  
• Focus on letting characters be more versatile, rather than increasing vertical power. (especially martials)
  
• Make things a bit smoother and more engaging for players and easier to run for me.
  
• Don't overload players by making them need to digest a ton of complexity/specific cases before diving in. Consolidate where possible, and keep wording light.
  
• Try to keep bookkeeping and metagame planning to a minimum. It slows down the game and doesn't add much.

I would love any questions, critique or feedback you have on the rules. Also, do you have any rules that would be good to add in?

[Bardarok]

Hi Khevtol,

Here are some random thoughts and suggestions take from them what you will:

Ability scores: It may be simpler to give characters a high point buy like 20 or 25 and do rules normally. That should give characters plenty of leeway and still allow people to follow published rules which is simpler for everyone.

Races: You should clarify weather you are allowing players to build their own race or to choose any race from the list with RP below 15. Also as a general rule RP are not a well balanced mechanic so you might have some issues there for inter-party balance.

If you do want to use it however you might allow players of particularly low RP races to gain alternate racial traits to even out their power. For example the 6 RP grippli could get the jumper, glider, and toxic skin racial traits on top of their base traits and still be at 12 RP.

Also vanilla halflings get +2 Dex -2 Str not +/- 4.

Feats: You are giving out a ton of feats between free feats, flavor feats, and automatic feat progression. From a design principle more is not always better. Making meaningful choices is part of making a character and if they have enough feats to get everything they want all the time it will take some of the fun out of it. I'd suggest nixing flavor feats after 1st level.

Death saves: consider how this might work with the ferocity orc ability or similar abilities and how you will replace them.

[Khevtol]

Thanks for the feedback!

Bardarok wrote:

Ability scores: It may be simpler to give characters a high point buy like 20 or 25 and do rules normally. That should give characters plenty of leeway and still allow people to follow published rules which is simpler for everyone.

Sorry, had a few edits that weren't mine applied. Made it so you get an 8, 18 and 15 points, and removed the race thing. The optional rule is still there, but I will look into how it affects everything. That's mostly meant to compensate for MAD classes.

Bardarok wrote:

Races: You should clarify weather you are allowing players to build their own race or to choose any race from the list with RP below 15. Also as a general rule RP are not a well balanced mechanic so you might have some issues there for inter-party balance.

If you do want to use it however you might allow players of particularly low RP races to gain alternate racial traits to even out their power. For example the 6 RP grippli could get the jumper, glider, and toxic skin racial traits on top of their base traits and still be at 12 RP.

Agreed with the RP thing. That wasn't my edit. Will change it back to specifying non-monstrous/very powerful races, with listed exceptions (munavari, sverfnebin etc). I can see giving additional bonuses for weak races, but i'll probably add that under adjustments. Building custom races goes under "3rd party content you should ask about". I didn't intend to suggest that was default.

Bardarok wrote:

Feats: You are giving out a ton of feats between free feats, flavor feats, and automatic feat progression. From a design principle more is not always better.

There were two goals for the feat stuff. The first was similar to the feat tax stuff you usually see. Cut down on having to take tax-feats just to take the cool stuff you really wanted, and having to take 3 feats just to be reasonably competent at a thing you wanted. The other (mainly flavour feats), was to increase versatility, and let people take the interesting weird stuff that they don't usually take because it competes with a combat option/improving their main thing.

I agree it might be too much, and will look into it. I was already slightly wary of people just abusing the feat chain thing to overload capabilities.

Bardarok wrote:

Death saves: consider how this might work with the ferocity orc ability or similar abilities and how you will replace them.

Good point. Death saves just replace the negative HP thing while "bleeding out", so ferocity and similar just applying to the same period makes sense. Other stuff might need adjustment.

[Covent]

So, I really dislike your "Improvisation" rule. To me it feels like it would be very easy for a convincing player to get a whole ton of benefit from it and punishes anyone who really likes playing the build game.

I would nix that.

I do not like the adjusting skills rule for the same reasons as above.

For races I would be specific, with what is allowed and add the caveat of if a concept requires a certain race you would work with the player on it as long as it is not disruptive.

When spending vigor to get back Ki or Lay on Hands, how many uses do I get back per point of vigor? Is it one point per one use or one point for all uses?

Death saves are unclear to me. Is it a fort save, an unmodified D20 roll, or what?

I hope this helps and happy gaming.

[Cyrad]

For races, you should specify a discrete list of acceptable races. Don't just say "whatever is 16 RP or lower."

I like the flavor feat rule, but it's nebulous.

"Players roll dice" feels a little odd even though I might understand the motivation (I always liked that about Numenera).

I'm not particularly a fan of vigor. It feels way too powerful for spellcasters.

The kit idea is actually quite intriguing. I like that, but I'd like to see it explained a bit more and list specific circumstances when you would need it.

I personally hate the 3 death saving throw thing. I hated in 4th Edition. I hated it in 5th Edition. I'd hate it in a Pathfinder game. It totally removes your Con out of the equation of how hard it is for you to die.

[Here4daFreeSwag]

Good to have some free gameplay tweak stuff out there. ;)