Homebrew D&D System- Would like opinions and help if available

[Arctic Wolf]

Good. Relaxing. Hope you had a happy holiday.

Aye it was good, same stuff really but relaxing as expected.

That's fine so long as the ED bonus is static across all PCs. If you're going to give individual PCs a choice of how fragile they are you should have a way to balance the extra fragility. More fatigue, maybe.


It has advantages over HP and death saves.

Yeah, probably static across all PCs since it would be a bit too random in combat. Again like I said I really need to come up with a ED system to determine how much they have.

It really depends on the fatigue costs of attacks. I devoted whole spreadsheets to this problem two years ago.

Well the cost would be 1 fatigue per each special move. Wizards would probably be the only class that could use more fatigue per turn because of the cost of higher level abilties.

I don't see the bonus. Explain?

Well I meant that it would also help combat go faster. And to get the 20, assuming you actually maxed out a stat and have a masterwork weapon, you would need to roll a 15. Maybe I should change it to a 21+. It is mainly for combat reasons.

I'm definitely not understanding something about the way damage is calculated in this system. It's possible I misread something.

Ah. So I don't know if I said this earlier, but basically anything below a 20 but still hits is just a *regular hit*, if it is a 20+, it is a *soft crit*, which basically means you were close to doing devesating hit, and a crit is a devesating hit. Does that help? I mean the highest you can get as an atk roll is 25.

Well, thematically it is interesting. I'd have to see more numbers before passing judgment on it as a mechanic, but it doesn't sound too different than having multiclassing feats, as D&D4 does.

True, I really need to come up with soe numbers to throw out there and yeah I guess it would be like that but with runes, I was going to do it so that you could spend your class features from leveling on learning abilties and such from the rune you have equiped.

 

[DMZ2112]

Well the cost would be 1 fatigue per each special move. Wizards would probably be the only class that could use more fatigue per turn because of the cost of higher level abilties.

So you're doing away with the idea of encounter and daily powers for non-casters?

Well I meant that it would also help combat go faster. And to get the 20, assuming you actually maxed out a stat and have a masterwork weapon, you would need to roll a 15. Maybe I should change it to a 21+. It is mainly for combat reasons.

I'm not communicating my question correctly. Let me start over.

If you roll something that totals up to 20 it is considered a "soft" crit. You roll the dmg and it is affected by armor.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=6242479#ixzz2qO243YkF

So if I roll a 15, and have a maxed stat and a magic weapon, I get a 20, which is a soft crit. I roll the damage and the quantity of damage is reduced by my opponent's armor. Yes? So what makes a "soft crit" better than simply hitting normally, for instance if I had rolled a 14?

From context, I assume that a "hard crit" does double damage and ignores armor?

True, I really need to come up with soe numbers to throw out there and yeah I guess it would be like that but with runes, I was going to do it so that you could spend your class features from leveling on learning abilties and such from the rune you have equiped.

It's a good concept although it will have you balancing a lot of "feats." The multiclassing feats from D&D4 are probably a good starting place for building a rune system. Runes could be handled as incomplete classes. Abbreviated themed power lists.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

So you're doing away with the idea of encounter and daily powers for non-casters?.

Well I am getting read of the idea of encounter and daily powers for everyone. As long as you have ED you can still keep on using special abilties.

I'm not communicating my question correctly. Let me start over.

So if I roll a 15, and have a maxed stat and a magic weapon, I get a 20, which is a soft crit. I roll the damage and the quantity of damage is reduced by my opponent's armor. Yes? So what makes a "soft crit" better than simply hitting normally, for instance if I had rolled a 14?

From context, I assume that a "hard crit" does double damage and ignores armor?.

Ah, a *soft crit* does max dmg that is reduced by armor where as a *hard crit* aka a nat 20 does full dmg and isn't reduced by armor. Don't know if I said that.

It's a good concept although it will have you balancing a lot of "feats." The multiclassing feats from D&D4 are probably a good starting place for building a rune system. Runes could be handled as incomplete classes. Abbreviated themed power lists.

True, a lot of balancing will be required xD. And yeah, runes will only let you have access to abilties that are related to that rune.

 

[DMZ2112]

Well I am getting read of the idea of encounter and daily powers for everyone. As long as you have ED you can still keep on using special abilties.

Sorry, that was vague. What I should have said was, "So you're doing away with the idea of /tiered/ powers for non-casters?" Or do all classes have abilities that cost varying amounts of stamina?

Ah, a *soft crit* does max dmg that is reduced by armor where as a *hard crit* aka a nat 20 does full dmg and isn't reduced by armor. Don't know if I said that.

There it is. I thought that might be where you were going, but thanks for the clarification.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

Sorry, that was vague. What I should have said was, "So you're doing away with the idea of /tiered/ powers for non-casters?" Or do all classes have abilities that cost varying amounts of stamina?



There it is. I thought that might be where you were going, but thanks for the clarification.

Yeah, it just seems weird to me that as a caster, you can only use that spell once a day, unless you prepared more. And pretty much all melee atks fall under the same category, so that would be weird. I guess this seems more like a resource management theme with making sure you have enough Fatigue to use for the ability and spending turns to regain some.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

Well it has been awhile since I have had the free time to get back to this thread heh. I will probbaly modify stuff in the next week and starting working on it again. Figured I would throw that out there if anyone was still interested heh.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

Update:

Updated stats since I couldn't really make it work.

Endurance is now called stamina and wounds update.

Fatigue removed.

Levels ideas added in.

Race ideas added in.

Feat ideas added in.

Also I am having trouble with wondering how to do classes. I am thinking of just making subclasses of each class that will cover most concepts or going with that and having a multiclass system where you need to spend one lvl for the lvl 0 of the class/subclass you want to do. Any advice is appreciated!

 

[GMMichael]

Also I am having trouble with wondering how to do classes. I am thinking of just making subclasses of each class that will cover most concepts or going with that and having a multiclass system where you need to spend one lvl for the lvl 0 of the class/subclass you want to do. Any advice is appreciated!

You know, I started a not-so-unanimous thread about classes being dead. D.O.A. So...

1) Skip classes. Why pigeonhole people? Go "point-buy." (Really, classes are just play-tested collections of features anyway.)

2) What's OLD Is NEW has an awesome class idea: build it with backgrounds. If I read it right (IIRIR - I'm starting a new acronym) you don't take the Wizard class; you just take a level of Wizard. And that's one building block of your character. Several building-blocks make a full character, and there's no multiclassing.

3) Steal 5e's system, which might be toward what you were leaning: design primary classes, and flesh them out with secondary classes. Which is pretty much the opposite of idea (1), so you'd better throw tertiary classes in for good measure.

And a brand-new one (this one's a freebie):

Syllasses (syllable-classes)
You have one class for each syllable of another class. Like:
Figh - gains +1 CON and power-attack
Ter - gains +1 STR and armor training
Wiz - gains +1 INT and spellcasting
Ard - gains +1 WIS and good saves
Cler - gains +1 CHA and armor training
Ric - gains +1 WIS and undead-turning
The - gains + DEX and trapfinding
If - gains +1 INT and logical reasoning

A little like W.O.I.N. but you pick only two syllasses. So, players could build the:

Terard - strength and good saves make you the hero of your village. But being low in intelligence makes him the brunt of the village jokes too...

 

[Arctic Wolf]

You know, I started a not-so-unanimous thread about classes being dead. D.O.A. So...

1) Skip classes. Why pigeonhole people? Go "point-buy." (Really, classes are just play-tested collections of features anyway.)

2) What's OLD Is NEW has an awesome class idea: build it with backgrounds. If I read it right (IIRIR - I'm starting a new acronym) you don't take the Wizard class; you just take a level of Wizard. And that's one building block of your character. Several building-blocks make a full character, and there's no multiclassing.

3) Steal 5e's system, which might be toward what you were leaning: design primary classes, and flesh them out with secondary classes. Which is pretty much the opposite of idea (1), so you'd better throw tertiary classes in for good measure.

And a brand-new one (this one's a freebie):

Syllasses (syllable-classes)
You have one class for each syllable of another class. Like:
Figh - gains +1 CON and power-attack
Ter - gains +1 STR and armor training
Wiz - gains +1 INT and spellcasting
Ard - gains +1 WIS and good saves
Cler - gains +1 CHA and armor training
Ric - gains +1 WIS and undead-turning
The - gains + DEX and trapfinding
If - gains +1 INT and logical reasoning

A little like W.O.I.N. but you pick only two syllasses. So, players could build the:

Terard - strength and good saves make you the hero of your village. But being low in intelligence makes him the brunt of the village jokes too...

Well I have have to check out that post then sir and thanks for the advice .

1) I am not sure how I would go about it but I am sure if I read your post and think on it I can come up with something

2) I do like the idea of backgrounds and was thinking that would be a way to customize your character more. I do like how 5th has the trait, ideal, bond, and flaw that go along with it so we will see how that goes.

3) Yeah I think you are right that I am heading towards this way. I think the thing that sorta stops me from going this way is casters because of different number of tiered spells for different casters of the same class. Like a warmage and wizard (the warmage is a secondary class of the wizard.). That is why I am thinking of going this route.

Hmm, that does help me a bit with 1. What do you think about the Rune system that I want to add in?