d20 Modern: What Would you change part II
ogre
First Post
Vigilance,
Nice work so far, I like what I've read about your changes. One thing that I found enlightening was the move to take 'proficiencies' out of feats and into skills. It makes me wonder why 3E ever did that in the first place. I mean, being proficient is hardly 'feat-like'.
Anyway, are there other feats that would make better skills? I agree with weapons, and armor, are there more?
Also, did you decide to make them skills for simplicity rather than introducing proficiencies back into the game? Do you see an issue with 'non-combat' classes gaining combat skills too easily?
Nice work so far, I like what I've read about your changes. One thing that I found enlightening was the move to take 'proficiencies' out of feats and into skills. It makes me wonder why 3E ever did that in the first place. I mean, being proficient is hardly 'feat-like'.
Anyway, are there other feats that would make better skills? I agree with weapons, and armor, are there more?
Also, did you decide to make them skills for simplicity rather than introducing proficiencies back into the game? Do you see an issue with 'non-combat' classes gaining combat skills too easily?
Vigilance
Explorer
Thanks ogre!
I got rid of the proficiency feats for weapons and armor because I felt like they were a legacy of a class based system that didn't really fit in the modern world.
There are some other things I folded into skills, like the d20M fast hero talents that increased your movement, those are now part of the Athletics skill.
Except, to make it cleaner, I made several movement modes for humans: running, climbing, swimming and jumping.
So as you gain ranks in Athletics, your run speed, climb speed, swim speed and jumping "speed" (distance) increase.
Similarly, endurance is now part of the Athletics skill.
Burst Fire, which was a feat, and Double Tap, are part of the Firearms skill.
Power Attack is part of the Weapons and Unarmed skill, Shield use is part of the Weapons skill, and Two-Weapon fighting is part of the Weapon skill.
Most of these require perks, which are things you get from your occupation in Modern20. Everyone gets two perks, and you can take a feat to get more perks.
Best of all, perks can be changed over time, so you aren't locked into your perks.
Explaining why your job's on the job training involves two-weapon fighting? That's the fun part!
So as you can see, things that are basically facets of being good with weapons, unarmed combat and firearms that are folded into the skills.
THis means that a character with 4 ranks in Weapons but a +15 BAB is a tremendously gifted natural fighter, but there would be things a character with a +10 BAB and and 10 ranks in Weapons would be better at (like targeting a specific area of the body or counterattacking).
As for non-combat classes gaining combat skills, only one of the classes has a poor BAB (the Star), and only one has a good BAB (the Powerhouse). The other four classes have a medium BAB.
So while the Brainiac and Empath are considered skill specialists, they can become excellent combatants in their own right.
In fact, during the character balancing playtests, both the Brainiac and Empath did well in the combat roles their players chose. The Brainiac was an assassin and the Empath a martial arts specialist.
BTW... for those wondering why the Star has a low BAB, all the classes were built to be equal, with Defense, BAB and Reputation balanced. Each class either has a low, a medium and a high, or two mediums and a low.
So the Star has a low BAB, a medium Def, and a high Rep.
But he also did VERY well in playtesting, winning several of the combats with his group of well-armed (the Star is *the* class for high Wealth) followers (recruited with the Star's high Reputation) that were very well coordinated (with the Star's high Leadership skill).
In fact, the Star was the only class in the playtest that had to be made less powerful TWICE.
And the players advocated nerfing him down again, but I felt the Star was just doing well because he had numbers on his side, and because being a party coordinator and fixer (the guy who goes out and gets the equipment for the combat characters) was his role, so he always had the best equipment.
I got rid of the proficiency feats for weapons and armor because I felt like they were a legacy of a class based system that didn't really fit in the modern world.
There are some other things I folded into skills, like the d20M fast hero talents that increased your movement, those are now part of the Athletics skill.
Except, to make it cleaner, I made several movement modes for humans: running, climbing, swimming and jumping.
So as you gain ranks in Athletics, your run speed, climb speed, swim speed and jumping "speed" (distance) increase.
Similarly, endurance is now part of the Athletics skill.
Burst Fire, which was a feat, and Double Tap, are part of the Firearms skill.
Power Attack is part of the Weapons and Unarmed skill, Shield use is part of the Weapons skill, and Two-Weapon fighting is part of the Weapon skill.
Most of these require perks, which are things you get from your occupation in Modern20. Everyone gets two perks, and you can take a feat to get more perks.
Best of all, perks can be changed over time, so you aren't locked into your perks.
Explaining why your job's on the job training involves two-weapon fighting? That's the fun part!
So as you can see, things that are basically facets of being good with weapons, unarmed combat and firearms that are folded into the skills.
THis means that a character with 4 ranks in Weapons but a +15 BAB is a tremendously gifted natural fighter, but there would be things a character with a +10 BAB and and 10 ranks in Weapons would be better at (like targeting a specific area of the body or counterattacking).
As for non-combat classes gaining combat skills, only one of the classes has a poor BAB (the Star), and only one has a good BAB (the Powerhouse). The other four classes have a medium BAB.
So while the Brainiac and Empath are considered skill specialists, they can become excellent combatants in their own right.
In fact, during the character balancing playtests, both the Brainiac and Empath did well in the combat roles their players chose. The Brainiac was an assassin and the Empath a martial arts specialist.
BTW... for those wondering why the Star has a low BAB, all the classes were built to be equal, with Defense, BAB and Reputation balanced. Each class either has a low, a medium and a high, or two mediums and a low.
So the Star has a low BAB, a medium Def, and a high Rep.
But he also did VERY well in playtesting, winning several of the combats with his group of well-armed (the Star is *the* class for high Wealth) followers (recruited with the Star's high Reputation) that were very well coordinated (with the Star's high Leadership skill).
In fact, the Star was the only class in the playtest that had to be made less powerful TWICE.
And the players advocated nerfing him down again, but I felt the Star was just doing well because he had numbers on his side, and because being a party coordinator and fixer (the guy who goes out and gets the equipment for the combat characters) was his role, so he always had the best equipment.
ogre
First Post
Appreciate the extended response. What are you doing up so late 
Must be somewhere else in the world, at least I hope your not on night shift like me, blahhhh
So, yeah I think I'm falling in RPG love with it! Now, my big question... can I use it for non-personal use? Are you going to publish it OGL? The reason I'm asking is because I have been working on a d20 PA game for some time now and I think the skills system work fit perfectly. Of course, with the onslaught of 4E, I suppose when I finally release it, the 3E version will be an alternative, as I plan on converting to 4E asap and hopefully riding the wave. Anyway, I've got a playtest session starting this Sunday and lasting the next 8 weeks (a campaign test so to speak), so if it's available, I might try some of it. One main difference, I have setting specific classes
Now, I'm not one to steal peoples stuff, so just set me straight before I do anything rash.
Must be somewhere else in the world, at least I hope your not on night shift like me, blahhhhSo, yeah I think I'm falling in RPG love with it! Now, my big question... can I use it for non-personal use? Are you going to publish it OGL? The reason I'm asking is because I have been working on a d20 PA game for some time now and I think the skills system work fit perfectly. Of course, with the onslaught of 4E, I suppose when I finally release it, the 3E version will be an alternative, as I plan on converting to 4E asap and hopefully riding the wave
. Anyway, I've got a playtest session starting this Sunday and lasting the next 8 weeks (a campaign test so to speak), so if it's available, I might try some of it. One main difference, I have setting specific classesNow, I'm not one to steal peoples stuff, so just set me straight before I do anything rash.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
This is a very difficult question.Vigilance said:
I think, a good setting is required if you want to continually create material for it. For a real success, you need a few adventures for the game, otherwise many people will shy away due to the big preperation need. Rule Books are fine and dandy, but if I don't have a story to use them with, they are worthless.
D&D has a great advantage over d20 Modern - the D&D settings have been established a long time ago, and people are also accustomed to its "implied setting" (even if you don't use a specific setting).
It's a lot harder to point out something like this for the Modern World. There are just so many things you can do in the Modern World, and it's hard to find a D&D implied setting equivalent for D20 Modern.
In some way, D&D has an "everything including the kitchen sink"-approach to its setting. It got magic, dark gods, monsters of all kinds and all mythologies.
A D20 Modern setting that is equivalent to this needs to combine a lot of modern elements:
- Espionage (Realistic & James Bond Like)
- Private Detective / Film Noir Stories)
- Law Enforcement
- Gangsters and other Criminals
- High Level Action (Martial Arts & Shot them up)
- Tactical Military (Mercenaries or Soldiers)
- Superheroes (Heroes, X-Men, Genetic Engineering)
- Conspiracy Theories (X-Files, Alien Invasions, Secret Organizations)
- Sci Fi / Fantasy Elements (including Alternate Histories, like "Cold War didn't end/turn hot", "Fatherland", "Terrorists Nuke Washington DC", Dragons terrorize Europe)
To put this all together in a campaign setting _and_ in a rule setting isn't that easy.
Mechanically, the Superheroes part needs probably be cut to a lower level (Dark Angel Style instead of Heroes or even X-Men).
The rest? It might work. The question is - how do you present it in a way that makes it clear that you can do it all. How do you create a back story that is complex enough to fit it all in, and yet not too over-defined and not too important to the setting (so it's easy to ignore it if you don't like it.)
How much focus do you want to give on current themes in the world ("War on Terror" is big today, but how does it interact with conspiracies, magical beings, superheroes? Can it be an offending to some if you include the theme and mix them? Will the setting make sense without them? Maybe people are more interested in older stories - like the Cold War spying.)
The above list isn't well thought out. Make a better one and polling the themes might be interesting to find the most interesting campaign setting.
What I think is generally a good idea:
Research the real themes you use enough so that people who know about them don't get annoyed by all the wrong "facts" put in the game. Alternately, put in a disclaimer "this is not Earth, it's a parallel world. Many things are as they are with us. But a few things only appear to be that way, and other things are outright different.
Basically, if someone designs a D&D fantasy setting the first time, he can make up all kinds of stories and history to the setting he likes. You can't do it as easily with the modern world, because the modern world has a real history. If you diverge from it, people will notice it, and if you don't present it correctly and make clear where our knowledge of the real world diverges from the game world, people might find it ... well, annoying, uncomfortable. It's especially difficult because gamers can have very different types of knowledge for a topic, and if they base their expectations on it, and the setting diverges without notifying for it (or accounting for the expectation and give an explanation why it is actually different, contrary to what even a normal person in that world would assume), it's annyoing.
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