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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 310273" data-attributes="member: 3146">Spell damages: I don't think you'll be able to avoid a complete rewrite without eliminating damaging spells. From what I've seen (not that I've used it) Ken Hood's system works because magic is very very rare and thus the imbalances don't come up too much. The problem is that limiting the damage dice won't adequately account for most of the spells.Summon Monster I-IX will cause problems because high damage monsters (dire wolves, dire bears, crocodiles, dire tigers, greater elementals, etc) are much much much much more deadly on a fixed hit point system. Heck, even the celestial/fiendish smite ability will cause instant kills often enough.Spells like Ice storm will become much more powerful since their limited damage is not a factor when hit points are lower (and the damage limitation you proposed won't hurt them much--Ice storm would still do 4d6 damage--just a reduction of 3.5 points of average damage) and the lack of a save will be much more significant when they can potentially kill a character.Similarly spells with damage as a secondary effect (phantasmal killer, slay living, destruction, disintegrate, etc) will be much more deadly than they're supposed to be unless that damage is toned down to well below the cap.Normal weapons: I think you're underestimating the problem. According to your figures (which I don't think are quite right--Grug should have about a 3% chance to kill Bob in one hit because he will only confirm the crit 65% of the time) the chance of a raging Grug scoring a one hit kill is more than 4 times as high in your system. That in and of itself would add much more randomness to the system, making it quite likely that over the course of several sessions, every front line character would be killed at least once in the surprise round.But that's not the primary issue. Looking at your figures, the average survival time is very similar at an 18 strength but rapidly deviates from the normal D&D model when strengths hit 22 (with rage). Consider that Grug in the example is not really min-maxed very much. Grug started with a 15 strength modified to 17 for being a half-orc and then modified to 18 at 4th level. Slap a Bull's strength spell on Grug and the one hit kill percentage will probably approach 50. Allow Grug to start out with a 19 or a 20 strength, and the rage figures are your starting point. Give Grug a sorceror level for true strike (actually, I guess in your system, Grug could spend skill points on this and wouldn't need to nerf his BAB or hit points) and the power attack feat and the one hit kill percentage will probably be 95% (although on the second round).If you start buffing Grug in other ways, the same thing will happen. Give Grug a flaming weapon or worse still, a holy weapon (if Bob is evil) and all Grug has to do is hit. Stack a prayer spell and a bardsong and Grug is hitting much more often. It will be very difficult to keep Bob's armor class high enough that Grug will have difficulty hitting without giving Bob lots of magic items.And, of course, if Grug wins initiative, Bob doesn't get his dex bonus. This will make it even easier for Grug to hit--especially if Grug charges. Using the rage example, Grug will have a 65% chance to hit Bob if he partial charges in a surprise round. And he need only do 2 points above average damage to drop Bob in a single hit. If Grug has great cleave, there's a reasonable chance that a raging Grug could drop the entire party in the surprise round. Now that won't usually happen, but even one out of every 20 encounters ending that way will be a very bad thing for a game.</blockquote>

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