Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8431455" data-attributes="member: 82106">Sure, but I'm not convinced there needed to be 6 ways to represent it mechanically that are intended to model basically the same thing, vs 1! So, here's how my feat design exercise seems to be playing out. There are a couple of 'core' feats (I'm just going to discuss combat for the moment, but I think similar concepts work everywhere). For example there is 'Basic Attack', and 'Opportunity Attack', and maybe a few others. So, lets take a cue from Essentials and just build riders. That is, Basic Attack has 4 possible outcomes, Failed (whiff), Success (1DD of damage), Complete Success(2DD of damage), and Enhanced Success(3DD of damage). Enhanced requires spending a power point, it makes a success complete, and a complete success 'enhanced'. Now you can have rider feats, say 'Sweeping Blow' where your complete success and enhanced success levels get some bennies, like doing damage to a secondary adjacent target. These riders are just free action stuff you invoke when you want. Some might have usage restrictions or whatever is required to keep them in line. They can also be formulated in the style of stances or other 'turn it on' options (rages, forms, etc. 4e has several options).  Obviously you can also still have your Aura type stances and whatnot.Also, I think AEDU in a strict sense is simply a complication. You get one Major Boon per level, and each one can bring in one (or technically multiple) feats. So, given that most (maybe not all) are these sorts of 'rider', things that you can use as kickers when you do something, then we have basically almost an AEDU like feat structure. Even if you constantly end up with boons that give out strong attack riders, you only get 8 power points to use to trigger them, basically (recharge mechanics can exist, I was suggesting one power point recovered per rest). Assuming that circumstances in the narrative are responsible for a decent amount of your boons, vs "I picked this specifically as a build plan" I think that works well. Wish lists and whatnot can still be a thing, and if the GM formulates a decently responsive game where "I want to make a magic sword" translates to "you have to find the lost dwarf tribe that has the magic forge" and the sword is the cherry on top, then it works great for everyone.I think the whole idea has legs. I am still just baking the idea of defenses. The idea is instead of having REF, FORT, and WILL for PCs the players just get to 'name a defense' and try to use it. If your defense is "I cut the arrow out of the air." then clearly you have an attack roll of some sort, but is it just "chop with your sword?" maybe some things are easier than others! I mean, any random guy won't cut an arrow of the air, but the guy with 'Arrow Cutting' certainly can. But what is it? A feat? OK, but it sounds pretty niche, so why would you have it? I mean, maybe it isn't all that niche.One nifty thing about the 'active defense' model is that you are no longer tied to being a passive defender of yourself. Technically your defense can be in anyone's hands. Another character can leap in and cut the arrow, or jam his shield in the path of the blow, or trigger some magical defense for you. I just have to work out the mechanics of how a feat translates into a defense. I guess one option is simply some boons that give out basic foundational defenses, or some generic ones similar to BA, like 'Dodge' which you can attach riders to, though I'm not sure what rider you need for defending... I guess at least in terms of melee weapon combat its not so hard to come up with some 'riposte' type defense riders. Well, this model would work well for a 'magical duel' too! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification