Major D20 Combat Change: Suggestions?

[Sylrae]

Well, make up your armor and then put it into one of the three categories--Light, Medium or Heavy. And just tweak the numbers. If your going to increase AC bonus, increase ACP or reduce Max Dex, or both and don't forget to mess with ASF too if the armor is going to be clunky.

Individual armor items are too much to keep track of, plus you're digging yourself a deep hole when it comes to getting those individual pieces enchanted. How screwed are you when your breastplate is ghost touch, but nothing else is? And just how resistant are you to critical hits when your bracers have Heavy Fortification but nothing else does? You may be immune to getting your arms chopped off, but how does that protect the rest of you?

Hmm. I was just thinking the magic things would apply everywhere regardless of which armor piece they were on. Maybe though.

If you want to get into helmets, make different helmets have have them provide varying degrees of protection against critical hits. If a critical threat is rolled maybe one type of helm gives a +2 AC bonus on the confirming roll only, while another gives +4 or +7. And these could be treated as magic item slots also. Do you take the Goggles of Minute Seeing, or stick with the helmet for better protection?

This idea is nifty. I may do that one instead of individual Armor Pieces. Just Helmets. I'm using some rules that make cloaks relevent too. I found them on here somewhere. They came with thinks to make cloak and rapier style fighters and some other things. I dont remember where they were exactly, and theyre not bookmarked on this pc.

I get the armor as DR and I use it in my games frequently. I usually give DR 1/- for light armor, 2 for Medium and 4 for Heavy. And it would stack with things like Adamantite and other untyped DR.

Yeah, something like this would work. But I am thinking no AC bonus if it does DR. Move AC Back into dodging and deflecting. Natural Armor would also all become DR of some kind.

You can still use hit points and also use wound points too. Hit points can remain the same and wound points would be analogous to a character's negative hit point score. This way you don't have to mess up your game recalculating damage for EVERYTHING. This way you still get the skill at avoiding injury and a critical hit would still be dangerous (you could have, say, one multiple of the critical damage apply to your wound points; otherwise wound points don't get touched until someone runs out of hit points).

Hmm. That's a possibility. That means nobody ever gets hit until they're unconscious or something though. That seems goofy to me. I was thinking along the lines of the "You have a small number of mostly unchanging hit points, and depending on how much damage you have taken, you receive a penalty to do stuff". But yeah, it would involve alot of damage recalculating, and determining. On the plus side, working with smaller numbers means faster combat.

If you do class defense, you need to mitigate it somehow with armor, unless the rate you gain these bonuses is pathetically slow, but then no one would care about them.

Mitigate it with armor in what way? Armor would be providing a small DR, instead of an AC. I would think that AC simply wouldn't climb as quickly.

ASF: Change it to a Concentration check whenever someone casts in armor. Maybe DC 18 for Light, 23 for medium and 28 for heavy, +1 per level of the spell. Maybe allow the bonus from Combat Casting to apply to these checks, or not. And since those checks will soon be easy, make a stipulation that casting in armor changes the casting time from a standard action to a full round action. If someone wants to do it, they can, but there will be a price to pay.

That's something like what I was thinking, but add penalties for encumberance levels, and include an easily referencable situational modifier table, for if the caster wants to try something weird, like casting with one hand, while on horseback, underwater, or using the wrong appendages (you're shackled, so you kick off your boots and try with great difficulty to cast freedom of movement with your feet).

Those feats, yeah, anyone should be able to do them, but someone taking the feat should get a better bonus. Say for Power Attack, maybe trade on a 2 for 1 ratio; 2 pts of attack gets you 1 extra pt of damage, and maybe 3:2 for two handed weapons. And if you get the actual feat, the exchange is 1:1 normally, or 2:1 for two handed weapons.

Have a feat that trades BAB for damage, one that trades BAB for AC, one that trades damage for BAB and maybe even one that allows an extra attack but at a -5 to damage AND BAB--trading precision and power for speed.

I suppose, I was thinking ditch the feats entirely and just treat everyone as though they had them.

Dude, isn't 3e combat slow enough already?

Alot of the changes listed would speed up combat. With the exception of the additional modifiers for ASF and changing it to a check of some kind.

 

[Sunking]

argh tried to post a big post about my own house rulz but it just looked **** becaus it removed my lineshifts ill be back whe i have worked out this little setback

 

[Sylrae]

IIRC this forum does that. Just sort with line breaks, cause indenting doesn't work well.

 

[ValhallaGH]

1. Piecemeal Armor Rules:

This only matters if you want to have:

• Hit locations.
• Partial armors as treasure rewards (ala World of Warcraft).
• Multiple types of enchantments cheaply or all enchantments extremely expensive.

Since you don't seem married to any but the second, something closer to Hawken's advice is probably the way to go.

2. Armor as DR: Armor is for reducing the injuries you take if you get hit. I could see deflecting attacks using your weapons, or a shield, but not as much with armor.

Two points I'll mention because they bear consideration.
First, Armor as DR is difficult to balance due to how it (mechanically) favors single powerful hits instead of many light blows. Guys in heavy armor can actually be immune to low damage foes but are extra-dead against high damage foes (heavy armor generally reduces Defense, but the DR is not commensurate with the defense penalties); this leads to the oddity of "Okay knights, we're going to fight the dragon, so everyone take off all your armor."
Second, Armor as AC is the super-simplified version of Armor as DR. The armor either totally absorbs the blow (i.e. "miss") or it absorbs none of it (i.e. "hit"). I understand, and respect, that not everyone likes that implied flavor text; and if it doesn't work for you and yours then you should change it. But it's worth being aware of.

3. Static, CON Based Hit Points:

Right, so everyone has a number of Body equal to their Constitution score. Getting hit subtracts from Body. So, how often do you want PCs (the central characters of the story) to die? That should give you a solid guideline on how damaging to make weapons.

Alternatively, you can adopt a Wound / Vitality model. Vitality Points (vp) go up with level, and are your ability to avoid damage. Wound Points (wp) are your actual ability to absorb damage and are fairly static (Con Score plus bonuses for size, feats, and other features). Most attacks hit Vitality and anything past current Vitality points goes to Wound points; though critical hits usually do some Wound damage.
Generally in W/V systems, armor is DR but only for Wound damage. Also common, characters with Wound damage take a -2 (or more) penalty to everything, and may or may not be bleeding to death.

4. Damage output adjusted to match the new, not-rapidly increasing hit points: If you have less hit points, damage should be adjusted down. I'm not going for "Everything Kills You", I'm going for Toughness != Dodging Ability.

I don't know if you've ever looked at it, but the Grim-N-Gritty Revised rules may be what you want. It's certainly worth looking at.

5. Class Defense Bonuses:

Be very, very careful when numbering this up. Too low and your PCs will die by the truck load. Too high and they'll be invincible. I'd recommend taking a long and careful look at the applicable Trailblazer tables.
Also, decide how it will interact with surprise and being flat-footed.

6. Arcane Spell Failure Change:

Eh. The % was to keep it relevant at every level, no matter the build. The idea is that PC skill has no bearing upon Spell Failure; only luck and the whims of magic matter.
Re-flavoring it to caster skill, which any sort of check automatically does, is a major statement about how magic works in your games.

7. ...
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10. ...

Word.

11. Altered Counterspelling: I want counterspelling to be a more commonly tried maneuver which is more doable. The spellcasting will be along the lines of what I discussed here.

Interesting. Should meet the stated goals, though I have no idea how well it will work.


Good luck. And you may want to take a look at Iron Heroes, which did a lot of the things you've proposed, in ways that worked pretty well.

 

[Hawken]

Syl, you've got to be careful about armor, as Valhalla suggested. Star Wars tried to do what you do, but it falls short because level bonuses increase faster and more than what armor gives you, so at high levels, no one wears armor unless they are Boba Fett or Darth Vader (you need two talents or feats just to get 1/2 your armor bonus added to your level bonus to AC). By mitigating, I meant have them rise to comparable points and maybe overlap that way you could either use armor or not and not be at a significant disadvantage either way and at higher levels they could maybe overlap so that an armored person might still get some level based bonus to AC, but not all of it since they're wearing armor.

As for the Wound point thing. Have a hit take away 1 Wound point if their AC is beaten by maybe 3 or 5 or more, otherwise have 1 die worth of critical damage apply to Wounds. That should solve your concern there.

I concede Valhalla's point about ASF. It should be independent of skill, but I think the values are too low anyway. Maybe treat it like Fortification; Light armor = 25% ASF, Medium = 50% ASF, Heavy = 75%, and adjust by 10% or 15% for light or heavy shields.

I've got some ideas about armor/DR. I may post them later when I have time.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Syl, you've got to be careful about armor, as Valhalla suggested. Star Wars tried to do what you do, but it falls short because level bonuses increase faster and more than what armor gives you, so at high levels, no one wears armor unless they are Boba Fett or Darth Vader

To be fair, that was a goal of their system design, since no one in the films who matters wore armor, except for Boba Fett and Darth Vader.

I concede Valhalla's point about ASF. It should be independent of skill, but I think the values are too low anyway. Maybe treat it like Fortification; Light armor = 25% ASF, Medium = 50% ASF, Heavy = 75%, and adjust by 10% or 15% for light or heavy shields.

I'm not arguing for or against, I'm just pointing out one of the underlying (and easily overlooked) effects of the arcane spell failure system.

That said, I do like Hawken's numbers. As for Spellswords and other hybrid warrior-caster characters, give them something like the Bard's armored casting feature and they should be good. Simply limit it to the level of armor that you deem good for them.

I've got some ideas about armor/DR. I may post them later when I have time.

I, for one, would be interested to see them.

I'll throw out a suggestion about armor that makes it both better and worse than written. Armor provides a level of Fortification (25% / 50% / 75%), instead of DR or AC. It protects your vitals, preventing a number of hits from being as deadly, but it isn't perfect and it doesn't do much for normal hits.
I haven't tried it, haven't run the numbers at all, and simply thought of it while writing this post. But it is yet another way to alter armors so that they are useful but not required.

 

[Hawken]

Here's a suggestion for Counterspelling (adapted partially from Revised Elements of Magic).

Counterspelling requires that the caster have a readied action prepared to counter a spell. To counter a spell, the opposing caster, or the area of effect of the spell to be countered must be within range. Casters have a couple of options when it comes to countering another spell.

1) They can use Dispel Magic to counter spells from 0 to 5th level, or Greater Dispel Magic to counter a spell of any level.

2) If they have the exact same spell prepared as the one they want to counter, they can expend their spell without having to make any checks and the spell is countered.

3) The caster can convert any spell into raw magical energy and attempt to counter a spell with this. Doing this is not a precise art and increases the DC of the check to counter by +2.

To counter, as part of the caster's readied action, he makes a Spellcraft check (DC = 15 + spell level) to identify the spell. If he is successful, he learns the level of the spell, and if the spell is available on the list of spells available to his class, he learns the name of the spell. If the caster does not know the spell (not in his spellbook or among his known spells), increase the DC by +5. If the spell is not on his spell list, increase the DC by +10.

The caster then makes a second Spellcraft check to attempt the counter.

Base DC = 11 + caster level.

Known Spell: If the caster fails his check to identify the spell or the spell is not on his spell list, increase the DC by +10. If the spell is on his spell list but not known by the caster, increase the DC by +5. If you make the check AND know the spell, then the DC does not increase. If you are attempting the counter with (Greater) Dispel Magic, you do not need to know the spell and the DC does not increase because of this factor.

Spell Level: For every level the spell is higher than the spell the caster is using to counter, increase the DC by +1. The exception to this is if (Greater) Dispel Magic is being used to attempt the counter, then a higher spell level does not increase the DC.

Personal Spell: Increase the DC by +5 if the spell to be countered is a personal spell that is being cast only on the caster using it (ex: Invisibility, Teleport, etc.).

Using these rules, any caster can attempt to counter any other spell within range. All that is required is to make a successful Spellcraft check with the above modifiers.

 

[garrowolf]

Solved

I've already created a d20 system that does most of what you want. It's called Nexus D20

Nexus D20 Wiki

Check it out. It uses a wound system and a base damage system that makes combat deadly at every level but you can still have heroic characters.
It is fast as hell! There is only one roll per action - no separate damage roll or defense roll. No crit threat rolls. Just one roll!
Damage is versus armor DR. There is no armor improvement to Defense. Defenses are skill based and make sense.
There is a total list of weapons and equipment for many tech levels.
Character creation is very fast - just take a template, modify it and go.
Magic is skill based and not spell based. Very flexible.
There is a nice skill list but even better there is a feat list PER skill! This means that you can create any character type that you like and there will be feats for it.
Check it out!

 

[Sylrae]

Having just recently played some nWoD this week, the 1 roll in combat thing is not good.
The rest of it sounds decent, except: I like the vancian spells.
lol.
anyways. I'll check it out in a bit.

 

[CardboardTube Knight]

I thought about changing the system, but its just like with video games, when you get more realistic there's more rules on what you can do and what you can't do and then eventually people start to get mad they're dying all of the time. Realism can be fun, but role playing seems to be more about escapism.