d20 Modern: What Would you change part II

[ashockney]

I truly, honestly, have no idea what you're talking about here.

The system I'm using (everything is feats, classes get a feat every level, there's a general feat list and a feat list for each class) is exactly how True 20 does things, and I haven't run into a lot of "hyper-optimized one-note" characters.

I also have no idea what you mean by "lateral development". Is that where everyone flees the base classes at their first opportunity because there's only a few good talents they want?

I'm really not being snarky here.

A hyper optimized one note character example: Frenzied Barbarian Berserker.

So, what's your character do? Well, he can, um, swing an axe. And, what about roleplaying? Well, he talks to his axe...alot. Ok, so what happens if he gets upset/attacked/confronted? Oh, then he gets mad and is forced to swing his axe. Ok, so at least you are like a tactical mastermind with the axe, right? No, I pretty much either kill it by hacking it to bits, sunder it, or I may try to intimidate it by yelling really loud. Oh? Ok, that will be fun, I guess...

 

[ashockney]

Occupations 2.5

http://rpgdesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/occupations-umm-25.html

(sorry, not sure how to do links)

Your improved feats look exactly like what I was thinking for talents. Excellent execution. I'd love to have several to choose from that might make sense with how I ended up being an actor.

The whole profession gels together well. Only seeing three professional skills made me want to have either another profession (and the related skills) or to have access to a bunch more skills. Need to see how that pans out...

Perks:
Love it! Love it! Love it!
Again, would love to see more choices (perk/talent trees)?

I'm sure my asking for more choices is just a designers bestest dream!!!



Keep it up. It's tight.

 

[Vigilance]

A hyper optimized one note character example: Frenzied Barbarian Berserker.

Right, I'm not saying I haven't seen characters that were highly optimized for one thing, I was more asking how getting rid of talents and class abilities, and merging all character choices into one group called "feats", made this problem more prevalent.

Which I think is what Psion is saying.

That hasn't been my impression playing True 20, which works similarly.

In fact, like your Frenzied Berserker example, where I tend to see that is with classes, where each class further narrows the character concept.

 

[Vigilance]

http://rpgdesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/occupations-umm-25.html

(sorry, not sure how to do links)

Your improved feats look exactly like what I was thinking for talents. Excellent execution. I'd love to have several to choose from that might make sense with how I ended up being an actor.

The whole profession gels together well. Only seeing three professional skills made me want to have either another profession (and the related skills) or to have access to a bunch more skills. Need to see how that pans out...

Perks:
Love it! Love it! Love it!
Again, would love to see more choices (perk/talent trees)?

I'm sure my asking for more choices is just a designers bestest dream!!!



Keep it up. It's tight.

Thanks for all the encouragement!

A couple things to keep in mind: Occupations are fluid. If you need a different Improved Feat, you can change jobs and gain access to new ones. I can see possibly offering a choice though... maybe pick two from a list of four or something.

That might be hard to do for every occupation though. As for asking for more choices being my bestest dream, it's much better than not caring at all

And I'm trying to offer a lot of choice in character development. You're going to have highly flexible classes (since everything is feats, you get to pick and choose a la carte from a general list and your class feat list), Backgrounds, Occupations and Hobbies.

Also for the skills, those are just added to your class skill list. You'll still get most of your skills from classes. It's tough to offer a lot of skills, because I've pared the skill list down considerably. Eventually you reach a point where everyone has access to every skill.

Though that doesn't bother me too awfully much.

And again, if you want access to different skills, you can change occupations. When you change occupations, you don't forget the skills you learned, your class skill list will just change, with you no longer being able to treat the skills from the old profession as class skills, while being able to treat the new skills as class skills.

Likewise with Improved Feats, you don't forget them, they just go back to being regular feats, while a new pair of feats become improved for you.

 

[Vigilance]

Work continues. I'm over 30 pages. Not a bad week

I've added one more skill: Leadership, putting the total skills at 21 (d20 Modern has 39).

The feats, Backgrounds, and Skills sections are just about put to bed, barring any re-writes that are needed.

I'm beginning to look long and hard at that empty section of the outline labeled "classes".

 

[Urizen]

Chuck,

This project sounds like it's gonna be an outstanding piece of work.

I'm wondering, what_if anything_you'll be changing about combat?

 

[Vigilance]

Chuck,

This project sounds like it's gonna be an outstanding piece of work.

I'm wondering, what_if anything_you'll be changing about combat?

A lot.

Injuries are going to replace massive damage in a streamlined way that allows non-lethal and lethal damage to work using regular hit points and virtually no more book keeping than was required before.

Healing, armor, and the way firearms work is also changing again, in ways that make combat a little more realistic, a lot more cinematic, and no more complicated.

I've sort of been known as the martial arts and combat guy in my d20M books, and I'm able to do a lot more now that I can change some of the foundations around, rather than prettying up the designs on the ceiling.

 

[jonrog1]

May I make a suggestion that's a bit "meta"?

Even if you don't have Knowledge (X) skills, I'd consider going back and grouping the skills in the write-up a certain way, so that you can bang out one introductory section on "DC's for what you know, DC's for crafiting, etc." and then just peg the specifics to each skill in the each description. Just feels like more efficient manual structure.

 

[Mokona]

"DC's for what you know, DC's for crafiting, etc." and then just peg the specifics to each skill in the each description.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean but here is something (I think) that's similar.

Knowledge rolls should be part of the underlying skill. It doesn't make sense that a mechanic knows nothing about (car) technology without Knowledge: technology. It also confounds me, as a DM, when I have to pick between using the active skill and the knowledge skill associated with the same topic.

Treat knowledges differently. All active skills (like mechanics) include the ability to make knowledge rolls on that topic. However, if you character knows a topic (mechanics) from only academia and couldn't do it in practice he can take a hyper-specialized version of mechanics that only applies to knowledge rolls. These knowledge specialties are half-price.

If you use skill points (I would use Saga skill training) you get two points in knowledges for each skill point spent. If you use Saga you get skill training in two knowledges for each slot used. I might also give a character a knowledge skill for each point of Intelligence bonus (like languages) or if it is a low language universe you could use your language slots for knowledge slots instead.

 

[EditorBFG]

I'm beginning to look long and hard at that empty section of the outline labeled "classes".

Here's a crazy idea-- don't have any.

Seriously, if you are doing away with talents, the only classes you have are attack guy, hit points guy, defense guy, and skill guy-- maybe saves guy if you're feeling saucy that day. Sure, if you add "Reputation guy" (what a great class that would be), these basically map to the six Modern core classes, but is that a good thing?

If talents are just feats for specialized roles, it seems like the rationale for getting rid of them is that Modern characters do not necessarily conform to the extremely focused archetypes that Fantasy characters do. If this is the case, then having classes-- a form of these specialized roles-- seems like a regression.

My opinion is kind of a matter of public record already, because The Versatile Hero (and, yeah, I know I keep referencing my own work, but only because I ended up putting so much thought into Modern over the years, much of it unused) is essentially a classless character generation system for Modern. Basically, I think a simple bit of customization in character creation would be better than an arbitrary spread of archetypes for a game designed to tackle multiple genres and settings.

I don't know if you'd do it in remotely the same way I did, but just to illustrate my point I'll put up a temporary link to a doc of Versatile Hero, stripped down to only MSRD-derived open content and OGL notice: http://gameslab.wikidot.com/local--files/start/VERSATILE_HERO_Open_Content.rtf

I'm not trying to say you should use what I did, but I think it demonstrates that, since a system like Modern boils down to a really small handful of traits as the only mechanical differences between classes (attack, saves, defense, hit points)-- traits with only come in 3 or 4 different options-- creating a means to tailor these aspects of a character can be really simple and clean, rather than the messy point-buy calculatorfests you see in other systems.

Given the rationales behind other aspects of this project, I think classes would be a big step backwards for you.