Recent content by Spatzimaus

It's an interesting system; the others here have pointed out many of the more questionable aspects, but I'd add a big one. The 1d6 or 2d6 per round recharging: at low levels that's really fast, but at high levels it's horribly slow. Prohibitively slow, IMO. It basically means that your...

In a classic Vancian slot system, replacing core mechanics with skills can be tremendously hard to balance. However, we've done a lot of tweaking for the homebrew my group made up, linked here. The short version: There are a lot of little pieces of the existing spell system you can replace...

It's okay to have multiple levels of proficiency, but now you're requiring even MORE skill points sunk into individual languages. One way to balance this is to crib the "language groups" concept from d20Modern. Basically, if you know one Elvish language you can do similar checks on the related...

Done it. An early version of it was posted here. There were "Chain spells" that were listed as level X. You set the value of X when you memorized/cast it, and that determined the effects. Some spells were straightforward (the cure wounds spell would just heal more as X increased), while...

Unbalanced. Yes, a Psion can cast all of his powers fully augmented if you only have one or two encounters per day. But your suggestion just cripples them, since by expending Psionic Focus you're basically limiting them to one or two high-powered powers per encounter. Even a Wizard can do...

For quite a while now, I've been playing a variant system that uses Racial Levels (similar to the racial HD you're talking about), posted here. In our system, EVERY race has Racial Levels, even the humans (who only have one). In my experience, it works just fine; we've got everything from 1-HD...

There are a few potential abuses, but for the most part, no, there's no reason not to stack them, if you're only adding caster levels for purposes of spell effects. But, you can do more. So, IMC, we long ago made this change: Nature casters (Rangers and Druids) stack their caster levels, and...

Both of those have worked really well. The firearm/ray concept (i.e., the "point and click" aiming system) originally came about because we just had them in sepearate categories separately, but only casters took Ray, and only non-casters took Firearms. So we merged them for bookkeeping...

Yes, they're very underpowered. In general, I dislike Feats that simply give a flat numerical bonus to something the player could already have raised normally. (Weapon Focus is the other culprit here, but since D&D tends to be combat-centric, that's not so bad.) Feats, IMO, should provide...

Done it. In our campaign, it works a bit differently than the UA system. As Griffith noted, it should break down more by how the weapon is used. Basically, our system goes like this: There are 8 Martial Weapon Categories: Bladed (slashing swords) Hafted (axes, polearms) Piercing (daggers...

And what happens if you're wearing light armor made out of materials like Mithral, such that its ACP is 0? You'd take a -0 penalty to all attack rolls, and a lot of skill checks. Yeah, THAT hurts a lot. There are many materials that reduce ACP, even in the DMG. There are armor enchantments...

The Spatzworld system. This was originally just a placeholder name; I was the one who had come up with most of the rules. For a while we tried coming up with something more "cool". But, there were two basic problems: 1> Every fantasy-sounding name can be mocked. 2> We wanted to use this same...

No, that's not the same thing. Example: Class A gets a good Fortitude save, class B gets a good Will save. Under your system, if you went A then B, you'd get the +2 to Fort and not the Will boost, while B then A reverses this. Under the UA system, you'd still get both +2s; you just couldn't...

The sentiment is fine, it's the implementation I'd worry about. > The +2 save problem is already covered by the UA fractional save/BAB system; you only get the +2 "good" save bonus once. I'd just suggest using that system. > The weapon/armor proficiencies are a separate issue. IMC, we use an...

He never said that the x4 applied to the Expert level. In fact, he implicitly said that it WASN'T treated as the first level for the characters; the 1d6 isn't maximized, the max skill ranks aren't increased, there's no free level 1 Feat, etc. So you're reading something into his idea that...