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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 5038613" data-attributes="member: 1210">So not long after the last previous post in this thread, I moved and was without regular Intarweb access for a while, and I let the project I was working on- which I have been referring to as "D&D Jazz Edition"- recede to the back of my mind for a while. Now that I'm living in the middle of nowhere and am what we jokingly call "funemployed", I have lots of time to think about it again.I'll be posting a new thread on the topic of my D&D Jazz Edition and the thoughts that I've had about it, but I wanted to bump this one too, because the "everyone starts at 1st level" thing is a HUGE part of the design goal. Back in the day- which is to say, as late as early 3.0- that was a strict part of my policy when I dmed. My experiences with it in 3e proved that it was no longer viable; 1st level pcs starting off in a 4th level party just plain weren't fun any more. (I know someone is gonna argue that they weren't fun before that; I strongly disagree, and played with that approach as well as dmed with it for many years. It worked fine in 1e and 2e, imho and ime.)Sadly, since my move placed me about 3 hours from the group that had done some moderate amounts of playtesting of the system, I have not had the chance to do any further testing of it. We haven't gotten to the "Mixed level" tests yet, so I'm not sure if it works. However, the playtesting, and my subsequent thinking about it, did reveal that there were a few things that weren't working as intended with other parts of the system; primarily, character generation should take 10-20 minutes, and it didn't; it took much too long. This was because I had too many choices in the character generation process: feats, exploits, etc. I am going to largely do away with these things... and instead, allow all characters a limited menu of mix and match abilities that they can trigger at will with action points. One of the big differences between a low level and a high level pc will be how many action points they get.So, for instance, a pc might be able to push an enemy 5' by spending an action point on a hit. A pc might be able to knock an enemy prone by spending 2 action points on a hit, with the enemy getting a save; or knock them prone, no save, for 4 action points. Part of what will make a high-level fighter cool will be the ability to layer more special effects on an attack because they have more APs, rather than more feats that allow them to do so. Yes, the fighter 10 will have more hps than a fighter 1; yes, he'll have a better chance to hit. But the REAL difference will lie in his ability to do more cool things in combat by having more action points. Also, action points will have mechanisms to let them refresh in combat; for instance, maybe a fighter will get an action point whenever he drops an enemy or scores a critical hit. More to come... prolly in a new thread.</blockquote>

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