New Rulesystem ARRGS

[dazzlerdal]

Wondering about Spell Failure chance today.

Why is it only arcane casters suffers spell failure chance (i know the official rational in that arcane casters use more somatic gestures), to my mind a spell is a spell regardless of its source, it requires a certain amount of finesse in somatic, material, and verbal gesturing and armour interferes with the exactness of that process.


So would it be completely anathema to DnD to inflict the spell failure chance of armour on all casters? I can easily grant the armoured caster class option to druids, and clerics.

Furthermore is spell failure chance a good way to represent how armour interferes with this process. It occurred to me earlier that armour already interferes with some of the more physical skills that require a certain amount of finesse and agility in order to perform.

Would Armour Check Penalty not be a better way to represent how armour interferes with spellcasting by imposing a penalty on casting rather than just having a flat chance of failure (and therefore another roll).



So pro's and con's for applying spell failure to all classes

Pro - Makes the system fairer, a druid or cleric focusing on spellcasting will operate under exactly the same rules as a wizard.

Con - Not been done before so might annoy fans of druids and clerics

Con - spell failure will affect hybrid classes like the paladin and ranger more because they wear heavier armour.



Then pro's and con's for changing spell failure to armour check penalty

Pro - Eliminates another roll that interrupts speed of play

Pro - Swaps an automatic failure chance for an increased chance of spell failing by missing.

Pro - Hybrid classes wearing heavy armour will not be as affected if spell failure is applied to non arcane casters because Armour Training reduces the Armour Check Penalty.

Con - Not been done before so might annoy casters (although i cannot see why)



Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Anyone have any thoughts?

In fourteen years of playing 3E and Pathfinder, I have never seen a single character roll for spell failure. Rather, I've seen a number of characters go through any number of hoops to remove any possibility of spell failure, should the concept involve an arcane caster wearing armor.

For that reason alone, I don't think it would matter whether you used the listed ASF mechanic or swapped it out for a penalty to hit with spells. If someone cares about hitting with spells, then they either won't armor, or they'll take the class option that lets them ignore the penalty. (Which might mean they have fewer points left to take other class options.)

One benefit of going through with both changes is that it would allow paladins and clerics to not need that option, as long as they stick to spells that aren't attacks. The typical cleric spends most of its spells on healing and buffing, which shouldn't require attack rolls (unless I missed something about your system). The divine fire cleric, which is essentially trying to be a "plate wizard" by throwing out attack spells, would need to pay points for that privilege.

 

[dazzlerdal]

You are quite right about it not interfering with buff spells or healing spells and to be honest a platemail wearing cleric could probably do with a bit of a power reduction if he wanted to chuck around spells like a wizard. And there are plenty of ways of reducing the penalty to zero - masterwork, special materials, magic items, class options, feats, etc which is pretty much how it operates in 3.5/pathfinder anyway.

I think I will go for abandoning ASF completely and using Armour Check Penalty for Spell Attack rolls. That way I'm removing one mechanic and using an already existing mechanic.

As an aside it will mean that any class can wear leather armour and cast spells without penalty, but that's not necessarily a bad thing as its only leather armour and it means a bard will not be adversely affected by this change either. So the only class I am adversely affecting is the cleric.

 

[dazzlerdal]

Having a go at ritual casting now which will exist as part of the Arcana, Religion, and Nature skills.

It allows anyone trained in those skills to perform existing rituals (that i will be making up shortly to replicate spells taking longer than 1 action to cast such as reincarnation), unique magics that they determine themselves, or reproduce any spell at any spell level. The DC varies according to what you want to do and higher level spells are of course more difficult to replicate.

The big upside to this check i suppose is that players will never run out of spells. The downside is that it is difficult to do, takes a really long time, and failure may result in the death of the caster (or serious damage)



Ritual Casting (Int) (Trained Only)
Check: You may attempt to shape magical energies in a ritual to reproduce the results of an existing spell or some unique magic.
The total DC to perform a ritual is equal to 10 + the spell level of the spell you wish to replicate (see Spells section) or the DC of the ritual you wish to perform (see Rituals section) with modifiers below.
The total DC required to perform a ritual may be split up over several days by the player (reducing it into smaller manageable chunks) giving the character an identical target DC for each day (sometimes requiring multiple rolls one for each day of the ritual).
If your Arcana check result is equal to or higher than the DC then you succeed in progressing with the ritual (if the ritual has a small enough DC then you can perform the ritual in a single day, maybe even less time, but only if you can achieve the task with a single Arcana check).
If your check result fails by 4 or less then you make no progress on the ritual that day and suffer an arcane backlash of 1d6 energy damage (all types) per point you failed the check by. If you fail your check result by 5 or more then the ritual is a complete failure, all progress is reset and you suffer an arcane backlash of 1d6 energy damage (all types) per point you failed the check by (note if the ritual was spread over several days then you suffer 1d6 damage per point of DC remaining) or the ritual manifests as some random wild magic effect determined by the GM with a random set of parameters.
Modifier DC
Ritual uses specialist school -5
Ritual uses prohibited school +10
Perform ritual in 1 hour +10
Perform ritual in 1 minute +20
Perform ritual as a Standard Action +30
For every 100 xp sacrificed -1
For every 100 gp sacrificed -1
For every 1d6 hitpoints sacrificed -1
For every point of ability score damage sacrificed -1
For every level of spell slot sacrificed -1
Action: Performing a ritual takes a number of days to complete that vary depending upon the complexity of the item to be enchanted (if the attempt fails utterly and all progress is wasted then roll randomly to determine upon which day it failed). Checks are made per day.
Try Again: Yes, if progress is not wasted
Passive: No
Take 20: No
Special: You can be assisted by other characters in this endeavour in one of two ways. Either the character aiding you uses the Aid Another Action to provide you with a boost to your checks, or you can split the checks into even smaller chunks (up to twice as many chunks) and allow the assisting character to perform his own Arcana (Perform Ritual) checks on a portion of the DC for that day (in essence two checks are made in that day, one by you and one by the assisting character). Failure by either the assisting or main enchanter blocks all progress that day or wastes the progress of the ritual and causes the process to start over from the beginning (as determined by the check results) so the greater the number of assistants the greater chance of slight or total failure. Any backlash incurred is distributed as determined by the main ritual caster.

 

[dazzlerdal]

Done a few more updates.

Added plenty more class options. Expanding the use of Immediate Actions now to increase the numbers of attacks each class can make but only in certain situations. For instance the knight can take an option that gives him a melee attack as an immediate action against anyone attacking an ally adjacent to him.

Expanded the skills up to Stealth. Trying to work out how to work in the various senses into Perception and Stealth. I'm thinking a +2 Circumstance bonus to Perception per extra sense (i.e. more than one) being used (so normally you can get +2 for sight and sound, those with Scent get +4 for smell, those with tremorsense, blindsight, blindsense, can get much more).

Working on a new idea now called Themes. Basically a version of Prestige Class so that I can lump together similar themed class options (with a few new ones that don't necessarily fit any existing class but aren't universal to all of them). So one suggestion was a Witcher theme, or Monster Hunter if you haven't played the computer game, bringing together weapon skills, magic use, monster knowledge, potion use, trap use, and a few others. A summoner theme could allow for the addition of templates to summoned creatures and adding all the summoning spells to a spell list, etc.

Also reworked Flanking to be a condition and be much easier to obtain (easier as in you could do it to any enemy with a single ally in every combat). To balance it out I am thinking of giving sneak attack a limited number of uses and a special attack rather than a melee attack like all the other abilities for other classes

 

[dazzlerdal]

Added a Themes document for a few ideas on the method of multiclassing I intend to use.

Its bare bones at the moment, but if anyone has an idea for a theme then let me know.

 

[dazzlerdal]

Updated lots of races (orc, Halfling, gnome are now available and you can make true halfbreeds by taking one race option from each class), some classes, and plenty more themes. Move paladin and blackguard out to a theme now so you can become a blackguard if you are any evil alignment and you can become a paladin if you are any good alignment. Obviously some classes make better paladins or blackguards since its primarily a combat class.

 

[dazzlerdal]

I was thinking of a way to work in the Discipline (used to be Concentration) check into combat so that it applied to all characters (not just spell casters), and also didn't require yet another d20 roll to implement. After all, getting stabbed in the gut is as likely to disrupt your swing or aim as it is your spellcasting, and there are enough d20 rolls in the system without adding yet another one for people to forget.

So I decided to use a Damage modifier to all checks equal to the amount of damaged sustained so far in a round, and then the character's Discipline modifier could be used to reduce that penalty (minimum 0). Then I realised the skills and attacks didn't scale well but had a brainwave, why not use skills for attacks and armour checks and saving throws, so I did just that (took a few hours to rewrite the system but now everything uses the same framework).

Now all attack checks, armour checks, and save checks use a skill modifier. Melee Attacks use the Melee Weaponry skill, Ranged Attacks use the Missile Weaponry skill, Armour checks use the Defence skill, Spell Attacks use the Arcana, Religion, or Nature skill (depending on the type of caster).

That way people can train to be better at attacking in anything, rather than it being by virtue of what class they have chosen. The Weaponry and Defence skills have Expertise that approximate to the Weapon Group Feats, and when you take the Skill Training feat you can select an Expertise or gain a cumulative +1 bonus to the skill check (take it multiple times to get a higher bonus or become equally skilled with multiple weapon types). If you use a weapon or armour not within your area of expertise then you only apply half your skill modifier to the check. So now i've reduced the number of Feats (Universal Options) to less than a handful and made character creation much easier because you now get between 6 and 10 Skill Training feats at first level, and 2 class options per level, and thats it, nothing else.

When you take damage a Circumstance penalty is applied to all checks made that round equal to the amount of damage suffered in that round minus your Discipline modifier. That way not only spellcasters can have their attacks interrupted, and its never an outright failure, there is always a chance of success.

As far as armour checks go. All armour imposes an Item penalty (used to be Armour check penalty) that applies to all checks (including armour checks. This can be offset and even eliminated (even providing a bonus) by taking the Defence skill to show you are trained in using certain types of armour. That way characters with light armour, heavy armour, no armour, or just shields are just as easy/difficult to hit as each other and is dependent upon the skill level of the character in question. The only advantage for having armour is that it grants Damage Resistance to reduce the amount of damage you receive.

It adds an extra level of complexity without increasing workload too much (all combat actions now comprise of one dice roll and that should be it, the reaction check is just a value lookup and there is no need for spell check failures or discipline checks, its just a modifier to the action check). So should you employ hit and run tactics to reduce the damage you take, should you concentrate on big baddies to reduce their effectiveness, should you kill the minions first, should you work in pairs so one takes the damage while the other strikes at full effectiveness.

I'll be uploading the changes tonight for those that want to see. The Combat, Classes, and Skills documents have been altered.

 

[dazzlerdal]

Updated skills and combat to make them work with the idea of attacks, saves, and armour checks being skill based.

The skills document should be pretty much finished apart from a few examples and bits of tidying up.

 

[dazzlerdal]

Pretty much finished the Combat section now.

Looking at Classes again and I'm wondering if I should take the simplification one step further.

I moved Monk and Barbarian out to a theme because they were more like a job or a person's background than a stereotypical grouping of adventurer. A barbarian is (ignoring the rage ability which not all barbarian people would have) really just a fighter that hasn't got access to expensive armours and shields (and so rely on light armour and bigger weapons. A bard is really just a rogue that can cast a few spells.

Using that logic, there are only really 3 types of classes: Rogue/Expert, Fighter, Prepared Magic User, and Spontaneous Magic User

So do I simplify it so that all the more complex classes (druid, cleric, wizard, ranger, bard, barbarian, monk) are merely just expanded themes for a base class. If so, what options should I give to the base class. I could use the base class to determine HD, spellcasting ability (caster level), and skills, then all options are from the themes.

The benefit is that when designing an NPC you use exactly the same base classes and process for creating an NPC as creating PCs (except that you wouldn't add a theme with all its complexities unless you wanted a major NPC).

The downside is that I either need to allow players to have multiple themes, or make the themes very broad and expansive to allow lots of customisation (so for instance a Wilderness Warrior theme that includes everything a ranger and druid can do, then a Holy Warrior theme that includes everything a paladin and cleric can do. Also there might be some problem with hybrid classes (i.e. if I had a ranger theme that did not have a caster level option then the player would need to pick a Magic User base class). Plus i'll also need to rewrite the Classes document, but it makes it simpler and smaller to deal with in the end.