Abstract Stunt System

[Stalker0]

I've been using your stunt system (pretty close, a little bit more freeform) and its gone fine so far. I'm still having to coax my players to using them, but they are starting to get the hang of them. Generally I've been using the hard DCs, and I'll slap on a +2/-2 on certain skills depending on the conditions.

One idea you might try for extreme stunt to simplify it is to make the bonus +3 and the penalty -5, with no change in the DC. Quicker and easier to calculate, but still makes for a bigger gamble on the player's part.

 

[dammitbiscuit]

This sounds like the spirit of Swords and Wizardry's D&D 0e (Swords & Wizardry home page) "try anything; imagine the hell out of it!" approach mixed with 3.X's approach of "yeah, we've got [rules for] that". I don't think I'd want to refer to this system every time because it's so comprehensive, but on the other hand, if I can't quickly come up with an answer for a player, your system is pretty comprehensive and I should be able to grab something appropriate. Thanks for the nice extension of DMG pg 42!

 

[Xeviat]

Dude, I've been working on the exact same thing for my games, and I was about to start writing an article to submit to Dragon about it. I won't now, since you got to publishing before me, but if you want 77IM, I'd love to work with you on refining the article for submission.

One thing I observed is that Feint and Aid Another are very similar to these, but each of those require a Standard Action. I think that's fine because you have a drawback built into it (and combat advantage from feint has other ... advantages), but it is something to consider. This is just an expansion of "the DM's best friend", as you mentioned, so it's sort of already in the game.

Also, you need to keep the scaling damage bonus. I agree that +2/+4/+6 works, and extreme damage stunt should be +5/+8/+11 not +5/+10/+15. I'm not 100% certain the extreme stunt is fair for bonuses, though, but for applying non-bonus effects (like ignoring difficult terrain or prone) it is great. Notice that all damage bonuses in this vein scale, such as Weapon Focus and items which grant circumstantial bonuses.

All in all, great work. I won't hold it against you that you beat me to it.

 

[77IM]

Wow, thanks Xeviat! That is some high praise (especially coming from such a well-known rules engineer). I didn't know Dragon published articles like this, with entire new rules subsystems (especially one so free-form -- I thought the Wizards business strategy would be to produce a Big Book of Stunts and Big Book of Stunts II).

I'm really curious about the system you were building (since I'm sure it differed in some respects), and what you think it would take to turn this idea into an article.

-- 77IM