d20 Modern: What Would you change part II

[Vigilance]

Yeah pretty much. It seems like for a modern game that is probably the most accurate way of depicting skills, feats, talents, etc. It almost seems like for this system you might be reverting to the CoC D20 way of doing it. Perhaps your occupations and life path identify what you class skills are, and then your 'class' identifies your BAB, Saves, HPs, etc.

I'm not doing a full-on lifepath. I've just broken out Occupation into two things: Background and Occupation.

Background will give you some bonus skill ranks and some wealth, while occupations will give you wealth, perks and enhanced skill and feat access, basically modifying your class.

This solves the idea that class=profession to me nicely, and puts classes on the job of identifying your adventuring role.

For example, if your Occupation is Assassin, do you get up close and deliver a devastating series of hits with a sword (Powerhouse), take out the target with a well-placed shot from a distance then run like hell (Speedfreak), wade in through the crowd Terminator style to get to your target (Tank), brilliantly bypass the target's alarms and slip poison into his cognac (Brainiac), weasle your way onto his cooking staff (Empath) or make the target fall in love with you and kill him on your honeymoon (Star).

On another subject I was looking at your blog about adding the combat skills (firearms, weapons, unarmed). Now you said that you are viewing those not as a skill based combat system but to identify what weapons a character can use. So would it be that for a character to use a handgun they need firearms rank 1, and to used autofire they need firearms rank4. Also how does that apply for unarmed combat, does unarmed rank 1 = nonlethal punching at 1d4, and unarmed rank 6 = combat martial arts with 1d4 lethal damage?


salcor

I actually posted the Unarmed SKill on my blog to give folks an idea of what I was going for.

As you can see, the Unarmed Skill determines your base unarmed damage, and then brings together a series of abilities (disarm, trip, grapple) that are often spread out all over d20 books in a confusing mess between combat, feats and skills.

These are brought together under the skill and given a clean, unified resolution method. No more hunting for the grapple rules in one place, the trip rules somewhere else and when you find them, realizing knowing how one works doesn't help you AT ALL to figure out how the other works, because they're written like they come from completely different games.

The Firearms and Weapons skills will be similar, bringing things under the skill that used to be all over the place, like burst fire and weapon proficiencies.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

I really, really think classes are integral to the appeal of d20.



Actually, you more or less nailed the direction I'm leaning.

Current working class names are Muscle, Speed, Tank, Brains, Empath and Star.



Characters in modern fiction frequently ARE however, modeled around concepts that I would consider to be a core attribute.

Willow was the "Brains", Buffy was the "Muscle", Cordelia was the Star.

<snip>

Xander was the Zeppo.

 

[FraserRonald]

Hm... ok, you guys convinced me. A feat it is.

Then my work here is done.

Hang on, no it isn't! I want to see how this thing freakin' turns out!

 

[Vigilance]

Hang on, no it isn't! I want to see how this thing freakin' turns out!

Awesome! I keep having doubts about A) giving too much away or B) giving away the wrong bits and convincing everyone not to buy this book

Anyhoo... general status update: book is currently at 68 pages... combat is pretty far along (I started with lethal and non-lethal damage because... oh god).

Weapons and armor are done... movement... it's pretty much fully functioning at this point, which means my players have been unleashed on it to wreak hav- err- playtest!

Edit: Though I am currently asking myself whether this needs to be "complete".

I'm not sure anyone really needs another explanation of dice, how to generate a character... but it's going to be damn near a self-contained game anyway. So I'm waffling.

 

[Vigilance]

BTW- playtesting has begun.

There are some sample characters here and here

 

[Roudi]

I am so very jealous of your playtesters right now.

 

[tinktinktinktink]

I'm sure some (maybe all) of this has been covered already. Skills are too fragmented in d20 Modern:

Athletics - Climb, Jump, Swim
Persuasion - Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate

Balance should be a function of Tumble. Breaking that into a separate skill was needless fragmentation.

I'm still on the fence about Hide/Move Silently versus Spot/Listen. On the one hand, those who say that stealth becomes nearly impossible when you have four people making eight opposed rolls. On the other hand, I like the image of a guard who heard something, but comes over, can't find the source of the noise and ... falls dead of a silenced double-tap.

Knowledge skills - Get rid of some of them, please.

Advanced Firearms Proficiency and Burstfire, like Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting in D&D 3.0, should be one feat instead of two.

The driving rules in d20 Modern absolutely sucked.

Expanded use of skill points. Possibly make them reset between adventures instead of being expendable for all time and then, bam, you're out of luck.

 

[Vigilance]

I'm sure some (maybe all) of this has been covered already. Skills are too fragmented in d20 Modern:

Athletics - Climb, Jump, Swim
Persuasion - Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate

Done and done (except its athletics and Influence).

Balance should be a function of Tumble. Breaking that into a separate skill was needless fragmentation.

Done.

I'm still on the fence about Hide/Move Silently versus Spot/Listen. On the one hand, those who say that stealth becomes nearly impossible when you have four people making eight opposed rolls. On the other hand, I like the image of a guard who heard something, but comes over, can't find the source of the noise and ... falls dead of a silenced double-tap.

I went with a Perception skill for spot listen and a Stealth skill for Hide/Move Silently.

In any case I could combine skills, I did.

Knowledge skills - Get rid of some of them, please.

A lot of knowledge skills are merged into other skills, such as Chemistry, Engineering, Legal etc.

Advanced Firearms Proficiency and Burstfire, like Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting in D&D 3.0, should be one feat instead of two.

These are gone entirely. Autofire is a function of the Firearms skill, Two-Weapon Fighting a function of the Weapons skill.

The driving rules in d20 Modern absolutely sucked.

I'm not sure I want to tackle vehicles and vehicle combat in this book. It's already 68 pages and that's something I'm starting to think will get bumped.

Expanded use of skill points. Possibly make them reset between adventures instead of being expendable for all time and then, bam, you're out of luck.

This I'm not prepared to do, but I was so aggressive about merging skills, and allowing knowledge contacts, that there are far fewer cases of players hitting their heads on tables wishing they had skill "X" so far.

 

[Committed Hero]

A lot of knowledge skills are merged into other skills, such as Chemistry, Engineering, Legal etc.

Do you think it's possible to integrate knowledge checks into a character's background, occupation, and/or hobby?

 

[Vigilance]

Do you think it's possible to integrate knowledge checks into a character's background, occupation, and/or hobby?

Well, all three are granting skills, so if you wanted to do that, you could.

Also, Backgrounds and Hobbies grant 4 ranks in various skills, and most feats that have a skill requirement require 4 ranks. I did this to expand the range of feat options, as well as the primary purpose of giving PCs a basic proficiency in a wide range of skills.