Okay, I posted some of Combat Feats for the revamped project I am working on already. Its a work in progress, and a long and tedious one at that. Before I post anything else, I wanted to explain a bit more precisely what it is I am doing.
This game system has four classes. These classes are in no way to be levelled exclusively, as classes in other systems. Instead, they merely represent the specialisation of the individual character. By having more levels in, for example, the Combat class, the character has chosen to specialise himself more in either melee or ranged combat than he has chosen to specialise in skills or magic. It is possible to level a character that has evenly levelled all four classes, but such a character would be a jack of all trades, but the master of none.
Combat Class
The Combat Class represents the characters ability to fight using melee weapons, ranged weapons, or even fighting unarmed. It is not entirely similar to the Fighter or Warrior classes in other games, as it doesn’t make the character much tougher to have a high Combat Class level. The Combat Class has the highest bonus to Base Attack of all classes.
Toughness Class
The Toughness Class represents the characters ability to survive hardship and damage. The Toughness Class has the highest bonuses to the three types of Saving Throw, as well as the highest Defence bonus of any class. All of the feats in the Toughness Class increase the characters ability to resist physical or magical damage.
Magic Class
The Magic Class represents the characters ability to wield magic, to cast spells and craft items imbued with magic. The Magic Class is further specialised into eight different sub-schools of magic that will be described in the Magic chapter.
Artisan Class
The Artisan Class represents the characters non-combat abilities that aren’t directly related to magic. This includes lock picking, stealth, armor-smithing, herbalism, alchemy and a host of other skills that somehow augment a character, often without having a direct impact on his combat abilities.
Experience Points
Experience Points are used to determine when a character will level in one of the four classes. Experience points are divided into five types. Combat Experience, Toughness Experience, Artisan Experience, Magic Experience and Free Experience. Combat Experience can only be used in the Combat Class, and the same applies to the three other class related types of experience. Free Experience is a special type of experience that is gained in small amounts from combat, or given from the Dungeon Master on special occasions. Whenever a character has defeated an opponent, that opponent grants him an amount of Experience. That Experience is divided into the five types of Experience as follows. 50% of the Experience becomes the type of Experience of the classes that was most dominant in defeating the opponent. That means, that if a character uses magic to defeat an opponent, 50% of the Experience gained from that opponent will be Magic Experience. 25% of the Experience will be Toughness Experience if the opponent injured the character during the fight. If the character didn’t sustain any injuries, the Toughness Experience will instead be of the same type of Experience as the character gained for defeating the opponent. The last 25% of the Experience gained will always be Free Experience.
Example 1: A character builds a clever trap to capture an enemy soldier. The soldier walks directly into the trap and is captured without the character ever taking any damage. The XP awarded will be 75% Artisan Experience and 25% Free Experience, since the character used his skills to defeat his opponent, and didn’t suffer any damage while doing so.
Example 2: A character faces an enemy on the battlefield and the two of them fight it out. The character comes out victorious after having suffered some minor wounds. The XP awarded will be 50% Combat Experience, 25% Toughness Experience and 25% Free Experience, since the character used his combat skills to defeat the opponent and he suffered damage while doing so.
NOW, thats how the classes operate. Each class gains a feat each level, and two at level 1, so that means that there are quite many feats more than in regular D20. There are no regular feats, only class specific feats. There are no prestige classes either. So the feats are intended to be so diverse and specialised that you can build a very unique character, without having to resort to a PrC.
Magic
Magic is divided into eight schools, similar to regular D20. The schools are different here though, they are: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, Dark, Nature and Arcane. Each time you gain a level in the Magic class, you gain a School point that you can use to increase your level in one of the eight schools of magic. Your maximum level in a school of magic is half your magic level. That means, at level 3, the maximum level in a school is 2. So you can choose to either specialise in two schools of magic, or divide your points out over different schools. That means that you can't have all spells like regular D20, you have to specialise. In addition, there are so called "cross-school" spells, that requires you to have levels in more than one school. For example, Magma spells requires levels in both Earth and Fire. Blackfire spells requires levels in Dark and Fire. Gas spells requires levels in Water and Air. I am making quite a bit of cross-school spells.
School levels are also prequisites for some combat feats. If you have Fire level 3, you might be able to choose Combat feats that allows you to summon a blade out of fire, or similar effects. Since Dark spells deals with the same areas as Necromancy, having Dark level 3 might allow you to learn a Combat feat that drains health when you damage an opponent, and so on. So not only are there cross-school spells, there's also cross-class effects.
Some of you might remember the crafting system that I made for making weapons and armor. That is going to be implemented as well, and it will be made to include weapon enchantments. They again depend on magic levels, so different magic levels gives access to different enchants. That means that you can't simply make one character and expect him to be able to make all enchantments, but you can make a character that can specialise himself in one or two schools of magic, and then focus on the Artisan class to gain the crafting skills to make some powerful enchants inside those schools.
Anyways, there's lots of other minor stuff I am changing. The system uses the grim'n'gritty way of dealing with health, instead of Hit Points. It also uses the "No Absolutes" as visualised by Upper_Krust, as a way of dealing with elemental resistances and immunities. Monsters are also different, as they no longer have a fixed HD, but instead have levels in the four classes. Ogres, for example, would have many levels in Toughness and quite a bit in Combat, while Goblins would have only one level in Toughness and one in Combat, but maybe 2 or 3 in Artisan. This allows for some more realistic depiction of the actual abilities of a monster, instead of having everything tied to HD. The Artisan class doesn't give any HD or any combat advantages, so it is generally possible to makes a "level 20 peasant", without him being a lean, mean combat-machine at the same time. Anyways, lots of rambling, hope it makes sense.
This game system has four classes. These classes are in no way to be levelled exclusively, as classes in other systems. Instead, they merely represent the specialisation of the individual character. By having more levels in, for example, the Combat class, the character has chosen to specialise himself more in either melee or ranged combat than he has chosen to specialise in skills or magic. It is possible to level a character that has evenly levelled all four classes, but such a character would be a jack of all trades, but the master of none.
Combat Class
The Combat Class represents the characters ability to fight using melee weapons, ranged weapons, or even fighting unarmed. It is not entirely similar to the Fighter or Warrior classes in other games, as it doesn’t make the character much tougher to have a high Combat Class level. The Combat Class has the highest bonus to Base Attack of all classes.
Toughness Class
The Toughness Class represents the characters ability to survive hardship and damage. The Toughness Class has the highest bonuses to the three types of Saving Throw, as well as the highest Defence bonus of any class. All of the feats in the Toughness Class increase the characters ability to resist physical or magical damage.
Magic Class
The Magic Class represents the characters ability to wield magic, to cast spells and craft items imbued with magic. The Magic Class is further specialised into eight different sub-schools of magic that will be described in the Magic chapter.
Artisan Class
The Artisan Class represents the characters non-combat abilities that aren’t directly related to magic. This includes lock picking, stealth, armor-smithing, herbalism, alchemy and a host of other skills that somehow augment a character, often without having a direct impact on his combat abilities.
Experience Points
Experience Points are used to determine when a character will level in one of the four classes. Experience points are divided into five types. Combat Experience, Toughness Experience, Artisan Experience, Magic Experience and Free Experience. Combat Experience can only be used in the Combat Class, and the same applies to the three other class related types of experience. Free Experience is a special type of experience that is gained in small amounts from combat, or given from the Dungeon Master on special occasions. Whenever a character has defeated an opponent, that opponent grants him an amount of Experience. That Experience is divided into the five types of Experience as follows. 50% of the Experience becomes the type of Experience of the classes that was most dominant in defeating the opponent. That means, that if a character uses magic to defeat an opponent, 50% of the Experience gained from that opponent will be Magic Experience. 25% of the Experience will be Toughness Experience if the opponent injured the character during the fight. If the character didn’t sustain any injuries, the Toughness Experience will instead be of the same type of Experience as the character gained for defeating the opponent. The last 25% of the Experience gained will always be Free Experience.
Example 1: A character builds a clever trap to capture an enemy soldier. The soldier walks directly into the trap and is captured without the character ever taking any damage. The XP awarded will be 75% Artisan Experience and 25% Free Experience, since the character used his skills to defeat his opponent, and didn’t suffer any damage while doing so.
Example 2: A character faces an enemy on the battlefield and the two of them fight it out. The character comes out victorious after having suffered some minor wounds. The XP awarded will be 50% Combat Experience, 25% Toughness Experience and 25% Free Experience, since the character used his combat skills to defeat the opponent and he suffered damage while doing so.
NOW, thats how the classes operate. Each class gains a feat each level, and two at level 1, so that means that there are quite many feats more than in regular D20. There are no regular feats, only class specific feats. There are no prestige classes either. So the feats are intended to be so diverse and specialised that you can build a very unique character, without having to resort to a PrC.
Magic
Magic is divided into eight schools, similar to regular D20. The schools are different here though, they are: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, Dark, Nature and Arcane. Each time you gain a level in the Magic class, you gain a School point that you can use to increase your level in one of the eight schools of magic. Your maximum level in a school of magic is half your magic level. That means, at level 3, the maximum level in a school is 2. So you can choose to either specialise in two schools of magic, or divide your points out over different schools. That means that you can't have all spells like regular D20, you have to specialise. In addition, there are so called "cross-school" spells, that requires you to have levels in more than one school. For example, Magma spells requires levels in both Earth and Fire. Blackfire spells requires levels in Dark and Fire. Gas spells requires levels in Water and Air. I am making quite a bit of cross-school spells.
School levels are also prequisites for some combat feats. If you have Fire level 3, you might be able to choose Combat feats that allows you to summon a blade out of fire, or similar effects. Since Dark spells deals with the same areas as Necromancy, having Dark level 3 might allow you to learn a Combat feat that drains health when you damage an opponent, and so on. So not only are there cross-school spells, there's also cross-class effects.
Some of you might remember the crafting system that I made for making weapons and armor. That is going to be implemented as well, and it will be made to include weapon enchantments. They again depend on magic levels, so different magic levels gives access to different enchants. That means that you can't simply make one character and expect him to be able to make all enchantments, but you can make a character that can specialise himself in one or two schools of magic, and then focus on the Artisan class to gain the crafting skills to make some powerful enchants inside those schools.
Anyways, there's lots of other minor stuff I am changing. The system uses the grim'n'gritty way of dealing with health, instead of Hit Points. It also uses the "No Absolutes" as visualised by Upper_Krust, as a way of dealing with elemental resistances and immunities. Monsters are also different, as they no longer have a fixed HD, but instead have levels in the four classes. Ogres, for example, would have many levels in Toughness and quite a bit in Combat, while Goblins would have only one level in Toughness and one in Combat, but maybe 2 or 3 in Artisan. This allows for some more realistic depiction of the actual abilities of a monster, instead of having everything tied to HD. The Artisan class doesn't give any HD or any combat advantages, so it is generally possible to makes a "level 20 peasant", without him being a lean, mean combat-machine at the same time. Anyways, lots of rambling, hope it makes sense.
