ouini said:
Well, I've had a chance to look it over more completely. It's a great tool, especially with the d12 and other extensions (thanks again!), though I'm sure I'll completely revamp the costs.
Somehow I figured you would.
And your welcome! I was really hoping you, of all people, would enjoy messing around with it.
ouini said:
The skills cost, I like. As others have noted, it seems a good baseline for each SP beyond 4/lvl costing 1 CB. The original hit die costs, I like (d6 free, d8 costs 2, d10 costs 4...) The BAB cost, too, was good. All these things are good, because the math is pretty straightforward, whether you're buying a "class" as a whole, or if you're buying bonuses a la carte at each level.
By "original HD costs" do you mean what we'd priced them at when we were working on this together over a year ago? 'Cuz now I believe I have them at 0-1-2-3 for a d6-d8-d10-d12; I'm probably going to stick with those. Why? Because you gain,
on average, a single Hit Point by increasing your HD size one step. I personally don't feel a single HP, on average, should cost more than a single CB, even if you can potentially roll something much greater than that (because it could also be much less
).
You may remember that I'm not fond of "random ability scores" and "random hit point rolls"; they are the
only random things about character generation and levelling. There are so many other places in the game where d20 randomness is welcome and a much-needed factor.
However, missing a few attack rolls or saves during a session only very rarely drastically alters the "fun-ness" and playability of a character (and many/most of those save-or-die situations have been addressed with the 3.5 revision already), but when rolling for abilities and HPs while levelling a few poor rolls can dramatically impact whatever concept a player is working towards. And this can work both ways; remember "Astronaut" & Meeshka which definitely colored the tenor of our playgroup, and not usually in a good way.
ouini said:
The save bonuses, then, are tricky. Yes, they can be bought a la carte, where you get .33 each level, and can pay to increase by .4 or .5 instead if you like. But that's hard math for many gamers (tracking three values which might soon add up to 2.56 or 1.73, or some such). It works out pretty close if either A) each +1 simply costs a single amount, probably 2, or B) each +1 costs 3, but you get a free +1 in one save at every level.
I remember this being troublesome for us back when as well. If you can figure out a flat cost to buy them at +1 each, then I'd love to see it. However, these fractional bonuses from UA are what got me working on this whole classless generation system again.
From a design standpoint, I really like the fact that everything continues to improve based on your character level, but you have to pay to get something better. Even in the Core rules the worst you can do is a Commoner; at every level you can do no worse than: d4, poor BAB, poor Fort/Refl/Will saves, 2 SPs/lvl, no Feats, no Magic. I like how that is mirrored with the system I've laid out. If you don't want to spend any points on buffing your Reflex save, fine, you'll still end up with +6 at 20th level just like you would in Core.
For that reason, I'd prefer to go with your option B, and I remember looking at this before. With only one good save over all 20 levels you'd end up with +12, +6 & +6 for a total of +24, however you got a +2 bonus at 1st level on your good save, so you're only "paying" for +22. That's only slightly different than getting a free +2 at 1st level and then a free +1 for the next 19 levels, totaling +21.
So it'd probably work. I'm just not sure it's worth it. You have a good point that you may have to do fractional math for each save every time you level, but that's not an overly significant burden, IMO, even for someone who's scared of the calculator. After all, there's a fair amount of work involved whenever you level between Ability point allocation q4, SPs distribution, Feat choice & Magic/Spells. Doing a little bit of math and then rounding it down isn't unreasonable, IMO, especially since you only have to keep track of the
total of each save on your character sheet, and not how you got there (though if I use this worksheet IMC I'll probably be providing people with a blank worksheet of some kind so we can see how they've allocated their points at each level).
ouini said:
Presently, I value feats at much higher costs than skills. For instance, to me, the ever-popular non-combat feat which gives you +2 in two different skills should be worth certainly no fewer than four times as much as a skill point. However, I value it even higher than that, since it allows players to exceed the level-cap for skills (you always pay a premium to be ahead of the learning-curve). I'm working with numbers, but presently I'm trying out non-com feats at 5, and combat feats at 8 or so.
See, to me being "ahead of the learning curve" is spending enough CBs on Skill Points to max out those particular skills in the first place, then actually spending
more CBs on the General Feat to improve them further. You've
already paid a significant cost in my mind by allocating all those CBs to this particular skill set. Penalizing you even further for the choice you've made of
not putting those CBs elsewhere is, IMO, ... mean. Sorry!
Having said that, I can see that valuing the "+2 to 2 skills" feat at anything less than what it costs to actually buy 2 ranks in 2 skills is counterproductive, as the munchkins of the world would simply buy the Feat instead of actual skill ranks to save CBs. Since I, too, like the 1 CB = 1 SP cost we've got going, along with the fact that the "+2 to 2 skills" are General Feats to me, that means General Feats need to be priced at 4, meaning Combat Feats are probably worth 6 or 8, pushing Half and Full Magic up to something much greater than the cost I've allocated now.
Ugh. I think this is what starts to bother me with this system. Saying you have 23 CBs at 1st level and 17 to spend at each later level isn't
so intimidating. But somehow it just
seems more daunting when you're up to allocating 40-50 pts at 1st level and 30-40 for later levels. Bleah. :\
ouini said:
DrSpunj, do you have a rule-of-thumb for why you figure some feats and special abilities are combat feats, and others aren't?
Any time a feat/ability gives a substantial benefit in combat (even if only situational) I chose to make it a Combat Feat. Skill-related feats/abilities are almost always General Feats (I'd say always 'cuz I can't think of a situation where it'd be Combat, but there's probably one out there). Spell-related and Metamagic are almost always Combat, while Item Creation would usually be General.
As I said in the sheet, the best example I can think of is Woodland Stride. While it does increase your speed traveling cross-country, it is a dramatic bonus when fighting in undergrowth (just ask our Human Druid during a night battle with Orcs!), so to me it's a Combat Feat. Trackless Step, OTOH, may be helpful at avoiding a battle entirely, but doesn't do anything significant in the midst of one (that I've thought of) so it's a General Feat.
ouini said:
Defense I'm getting rid of entirely for now. It may be a great mechanic, but I'm completely unfamiliar with its specifics. I agree, though, that defense is almost always cheaper than offense.
Yeah, it's not for everyone, and now that I've (hopefully) fixed the sheets properly, putting '0's in there for everything shouldn't detract anything.
ouini said:
Restrictions, I agree, should be assigned point costs ahead of time when possible. Some of the more common ones (armor-limited casting, metal-wearing, alignment restrictions) especially. Most others, I think, can often be worked out between GM and player during creation.
I'm still not sure what I'll do with those if faced with a request for one or more of them for my campaign this summer. Guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. But I
am now pretty firmly convinced that an ability like ignoring Arcane Spell Failure as a Divine Caster in a campaign that doesn't recognize Arcane vs Divine magic is...something that needs to be worked out with the DM.
ouini said:
A lot of the sheet, I admit, I'm lost on. I'm not familiar with any of the non-core classes, or Monte's magic system ... is there a link?. Regardless, I 'get' the idea of half and full magic levels, the costs of which I'm playing with (6 and 12, for now).
I'm afraid not, and I don't want to upset anyone by publically posting copyrighted material, but I'll try and email it to you personally if I get the chance soon. I can, though, safely outline what he does with his magic system since you're not familiar with it.
All spellcasters use the same spell list, and like Core divine casters they potentially have access to every spell on that list. I say potentially because the spells are separated into Simple, Complex & Exotic spell categories.
If you can cast spells of a given Spell level, then you can cast any Simple spell of that level. To cast the Complex spells of a given level you have to take the Complex Spell Feat for that level of spells (look at the sheet, the Magister gets this for "free" in AU since he's the big-wig caster, hence my giving him that Combat Feat at every odd level when he gains access to a new level of spells). Exotic spells, OTOH, are so special and unique that
each exotic spell requires you to take the Exotic Spell feat. They are meant to be signature spells so carry a significant cost.
The AU magic system only recognizes two kinds of casters: those with a slower spell progression and those with a faster spell progression. The slower spell progression tops out with access to 7th level spells with fewer spells cast and readied per day while the faster progression reaches 9th level spells and has more spells cast and readied per day. So while each magic-using class has tables in their class description for spells cast per day and spells readied per day, there are truly only two sets of tables being used; one for the slower classes and one for the faster classes.
So all casters have access to the same spell list like a Core Divine caster. They all have a limited number of "slots" castable per day like a Sorcerer, that reset after a good night's rest. However, any time they spend an hour in meditation they can "ready" a certain number of spells for each level; how many is delineated in the the "Spells Readied at One Time" table. As long as they have the proper level slot available they can cast any of the spells of that level that they've readied.
To further add some flexibility you can "weave" and "unweave" spell slots. By combining three slots of a lower level you can weave a single slot of the next higher level (so 3 unused 1st level slots can be weaved into a single 2nd level slot, and if you had 2 other 2nd level slots available you could further weave all 3 of them into a single 3rd level slot). Unweaving wastes some spell energy, so you only get 2 lower level slots when you unweave a higher level slot (and you can't further unweave those new lower level slots to prevent a 20th level caster from having over a hundred 1st level magic missile slots!
). Obviously with "un/weaving" available you can't use a higher level slot to cast a lower level spell like a Sorcerer can in the Core rules.
Hope that helps.
Thanks.
DrSpunj
)
