Grim Variant Rules

[DanMcS]

- Spellcasting, for the trained, is exhausting. It deals strength damage. To make it slightly less debilitating, allow the caster to apportion dice between Strength and Dex, before he rolls them. Or allow this as an additional talent.

- Spells cast to affect yourself are beaten about the head by the ability damage. Sure, you can Alter Self to look like the chief villain, but you're gimped up for the whole duration of the spell, and then some. When a caster targets himself with a spell of duration other than instaneous, apply the ability damage at the end of the spell effect. When he targets someone else, he takes it at casting time as normal.

- What are they called, advanced talents? The ones you can only pick up at 3rd level in a base class. Super talents should start at level 5, and include things like prestige class abilities, pulp hero-ish superpowers, etc. I'll have to write some of these up.

 

[DanMcS]

Point buy: Do away with character classes. Shoo. Bye-bye.

25 point buy for stats.

Then everybody gets 10 character points, a d6+con hp, and their int bonus in skills per level.

For 2 points, buy a feat.
For 3 points, buy a talent.
For 1 point, buy a hp or skill point.

To increase a stat, act like you're spending points at character creation; to raise from 15 to 16 costs 2, for instance.

For a point of BAB, pay 3.
For a point of BDB, pay 2.
For a point of fort, reflex, or will save, pay 1.

Skills, saves, BAB, and BDB are all capped by level, or you can use level +3 as traditional for skills if you like.

Instead of XP, hand out points. When they hit the next 10 point border, they get the base hp and skill points as well.

 

[takyris]

What system is this for? d20 Modern?

I ran up a chart in Excel a few weeks ago to try to figure out what stuff should cost. I ended up giving up on it when I realized that it was all going to be subjective anyway -- if Reputation is important in your game, then it should cost something, but since it comes up so rarely in my game, it shouldn't factor in much.

What I can tell you right now, looking at it, is that your cost for saves is pretty low. A 10th level hero might have a BAB of +7, but his saves will either total +13 (for +5/+5/+3) or +11 (for +5/+3/+3) -- only two base classes get +13: Charismatic, who gets lousy attacks and defense, and Dedicated, who gets decent attacks and defense, mediocre skill points, and talents that don't help much in combat. +11 is the standard, then, which would mean that an average +7 BAB and +11 saves means that BAB should only cost 50% more than saves. I'd bump up the price of saves to 2 per +1, possibly leaving Will at 1 per +1 (unless you're playing in an FX campaign where will saves are more common -- that was the one that consistently ended up being low when I tried to balance the classes numerically).

 

[DanMcS]

What system is this for? d20 Modern?

Grim tales, badaxe press, it's based on d20 modern rules

I ran up a chart in Excel a few weeks ago to try to figure out what stuff should cost. I ended up giving up on it when I realized that it was all going to be subjective anyway -- if Reputation is important in your game, then it should cost something, but since it comes up so rarely in my game, it shouldn't factor in much.

What I can tell you right now, looking at it, is that your cost for saves is pretty low. A 10th level hero might have a BAB of +7, but his saves will either total +13 (for +5/+5/+3) or +11 (for +5/+3/+3) -- only two base classes get +13: Charismatic, who gets lousy attacks and defense, and Dedicated, who gets decent attacks and defense, mediocre skill points, and talents that don't help much in combat. +11 is the standard, then, which would mean that an average +7 BAB and +11 saves means that BAB should only cost 50% more than saves. I'd bump up the price of saves to 2 per +1, possibly leaving Will at 1 per +1 (unless you're playing in an FX campaign where will saves are more common -- that was the one that consistently ended up being low when I tried to balance the classes numerically).

Honestly, I based the prices straight off of Mutants and Masterminds prices; MnM gives 15 points per level, but has superpowers to buy, so I dropped it down. And for all the things there are to save against in MnM, saves are among the least-bought things I've seen in MnM games, except for the damage save, which is the hit-point equivalent.

So I'm not too concerned with the low price of saves. It seems to work out in MnM, and between low cost and lack of superpowers to buy, maybe my players will actually buy some save bonuses now

I'm just brainstorming right now, and encouraging others to do the same. Grim Tales is the kind of book that makes me think about twiddling with rules, that's why I like it.

 

[takyris]

I thought of the M&M aspect, too, but in M&M, you can also spend 2 points to get the ability to throw blasts of energy. There's one more save to spend points on (the Damage save), and saves come up a lot more often, meaning that they have to be less expensive to purchase. Also, when you add the number of purchasable immunities and "ignore this type of damage" powers, not to mention things like Protection, which is like a save but better, saves are a lot less useful.

In a d20 Modern game, though, they're hugely important -- and I'm guessing they're pretty critical in Grim Tales games, too.

Anyway, keep twiddling. Since I was coming at it from the d20 Modern perspective, it's probably not as useful to you.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

- Spellcasting, for the trained, is exhausting. It deals strength damage. To make it slightly less debilitating, allow the caster to apportion dice between Strength and Dex, before he rolls them. Or allow this as an additional talent.

I started preliminary work on tying the ability score that takes spell burn to the school of magic. Something for you there?

- Spells cast to affect yourself are beaten about the head by the ability damage. Sure, you can Alter Self to look like the chief villain, but you're gimped up for the whole duration of the spell, and then some.

I'm terrible with probablities. But for a "sincere" magical adept, 3 points of spell burn resistance isn't unusual; I'd say the spell burn on a 2nd level spell is about 2-3 STR, which hardly counts as leaving you "gimped up." (And for a "sincere" magical adept, that is to say a Smart, Dedicated, or Charismatic hero, a loss of STR is unlikely to greatly impact your key character abilities...)

I'm just brainstorming right now, and encouraging others to do the same. Grim Tales is the kind of book that makes me think about twiddling with rules, that's why I like it.

That's a fine compliment. Glad it's workin' your brain pan.


Wulf

 

[DanMcS]

I thought of the M&M aspect, too, but in M&M, you can also spend 2 points to get the ability to throw blasts of energy. There's one more save to spend points on (the Damage save), and saves come up a lot more often, meaning that they have to be less expensive to purchase. Also, when you add the number of purchasable immunities and "ignore this type of damage" powers, not to mention things like Protection, which is like a save but better, saves are a lot less useful.

In a d20 Modern game, though, they're hugely important -- and I'm guessing they're pretty critical in Grim Tales games, too.

Anyway, keep twiddling. Since I was coming at it from the d20 Modern perspective, it's probably not as useful to you.

How much do you do saves in Modern? In our games, it never seemed to be that much. Once in a blue moon we'd fight something with poison and make Fort Saves; grenades force Reflex saves; strange fx powers force will saves.

In an fx-less game, you'll make Fort saves for massive damage, Reflex for explosions (every good game has explosions), and Will pretty much never.

I based the costs on MnM, but I would use this for a medieval or modern game just as well. Sometimes point-buy instead of levels is fun.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

In an fx-less game, you'll make Fort saves for massive damage, Reflex for explosions (every good game has explosions), and Will pretty much never.

Grim Tales has Will saves for Horror (in at least one iteration, that is).

 

[takyris]

Let's see, in the current campaign, which I've modeled as "X-Files, but with magic instead of aliens" -- magic exists but is always unprovable -- I've had all kinds of saves. I used Will saves for things that would have caused San loss in CoC: Party sees a grisly murder and everyone has to make Will saves or become shaken, with a save that fails by 5 or more indicating that the PC could not willingly approach the crime scene. Also, because the town's water supply was contaminated by a psychotropic drug, the PCs kept having to make Will saves as they saw hallucinations. The latter won't come up too often, but the former can be good even in non-FX situations. If it's stressful and would require a cool head, make it a Will save.

We've used Reflex saves against autofire, not grenades, but yeah, pretty much like you said. I also tend to use Reflex saves as reactive action requirements out of initiative -- if somebody drops the precious Ming vase, it's a Reflex save to make a diving grab for it.

Fort saves come up less often, true, but they're important enough to make up for it. My recent game was nasty -- skeletal bikers, one of whom had an M-16, and another of whom had a semiautomatic shotgun and Double-Tap -- and the PCs were making Massive Damage checks all the time. In the previous game, Fort saves came up when the party ran afoul of a barroom bruiser (first PC made his first two massive damage saves and failed the third, getting knocked out fro Brawl damage, and second PC went the distance with the bruiser and ended up earning his respect), and when two of the PCs were hit by a car. Not pretty -- while falling damage is still pretty weak in d20, an Acura doing 50 mph is still pretty effective as a weapon.

 

[DanMcS]

action points: instead of getting these babies per level, the d20 modern way, you get them per session, the MnM way.

There are a bazillion variants of this- you get a number equal to your level every session, can spend them at any time, but each just adds a +1 to the roll, for instance.

Superhero points: You get a number of points. Character level or 1/2 character level maybe. Each one can be used to add +1 to a roll. You can spend them every round.

That is, suppose you have 10 superhero points. You want to make a jump, that's your only action that round, add 10 to it. In combat, if you have two attacks every round, you might add 5 to each, or 3 to each, 2 to your defense, and save 2 for saving throws that round.