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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mirivor" data-source="post: 2743784" data-attributes="member: 7478">Last night a friend and I stayed up talking in the bitter cold parking lot of our local gaming shop talking about D&D and what we might alter. The central theme revolved around the idea that fighters fighting, wizards casting, and rogues roguing never, ever seemed to wear anyone out. They could stand there all year long and fight, cast, and rogue without ever tiring so long as they rest at night. So, we decided to create a vitality system.Mind everyone that my campaign is house rules heavy. I could type a post as long as a flatbed truck about all of the tweaks and changes... spell points, armor as DR, vitality and wound, using Dex to hit and something else (???) for initiative, the list goes on and on. What I would like to do is develop a system where most actions cost a character a certain amount of vitality points to do. In the old Dragonlance campaign, if I recall correctly, casters burdened themselves by casting spells. Their head swam and buzzed, and they leaned heavily on their staffs for a bit to recoup. I would like to sort of replicate this, but for ALL classes. One important thing to note is that I do use the vitality and wound system in Unearthed Arcana, so the transition shouldn't be awful.Under such a system, vitality points go from being able to turn aside a blow to so much more. They represent fatigue, mental acuity, etc. So the first thing that needs to be done is the ditching of the current hit die structure. Casters should get more than 1d4 vitality points per level. Should everyone be given a flat D10, allowing armor to be the warrior's advantage over a sorcerer (I use class defense bonus equal to 1/2 the character's BAB rounded down)? I sort of thought that having spells cost their minimum caster level in vitality was a good spring board. A ninth level spell costs 17 or 18 points to cast, etc. Should I make casters pay extra points to cast beyong that minimum level? A magic missile with 5 missiles would cost 9 points, a summon monster I spell with a 10 round duration would cost 10 points, etc.? Something else that needs to be done is to determine how expensive it is to do other things. How many points is it to make a full round attack (I want this to remain static... it represents a warrior's increasing skill and finesse; more attacks with his weapon for the same amount of energy as his skill grows) What about running? Movement? How would magical healing work? Should I axe it? Etc.The real beauty of the system is that characters now measure fatigue, as well as have to accept that they cannot fight until the end of days without rest. Warriors may fight for  a couple of minutes before being worn out and needing a break, casters can unload only a few spells at low levels before they are exhausted. To help ease this burden, vitality heals at the rate of 1 point per hour per character level. Thus even taking a short break would mean a lot to them.Any input on ideas, sources of similar systems, etc. would be most welcome.</blockquote>

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