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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sylrae" data-source="post: 4995510" data-attributes="member: 48520">As for what I'm trying to achieve: I'm not so much looking to up the lethality drastically. I suppose my goals are: 1) Have a MUCH smaller power gap between levels. (Players will have more comparable hit point totals between say, level 5 and level 10, to choose two numbers.)2) Comparable Levels of Lethality to standard D&D, though making low levels more survivable.3) Allow for Custom built armor to player specifications (without me having to design lots of suits of armor)4) More cinematic choices for players. I'll probably find more feats/class abilities that I think should be standard combat actions.5) Make damage mean damage, as opposed to damage meaning youre getting more tired.6) Not Emulate perfect realism, but just be more direct about whats happening. I get hit, and so I take damage. The damage is actually damage. What I intend to run with it is an Avatar: The Last Airbender type campaign, with asian weapons, different fighting styles and techniques, and Element Manipulation in combat classes. Plus, that saves me on making all the monsters and spells converted over before I can run a game. eventually I'd probably use these variants in all my games. Essentially I want something a bit closer to the Storyteller system, but with faster combat, the possibility for tactics, and a doable fantasy game. If I make it d20 based, but have similarities to storyteller, then I can try to get the best of both worlds. I'm pretty sure Grim n gritty is trying to achieve something else, with more realism and lethality.  -Now For my thoughts. If you use Piecemeal armor, and everything contributes, then full suits of armor go out the window, and instead you would just have individual armor pieces you would buy. So you could theoretically get more than core D&D armor would give you, but that won't make a big difference when the regular Armor is unavailable. I quickly noticed flat DR was too big for armor, thas why I proposed the random DR. It is extra math though, and would slow down combat.  Armor as hitpoints makes more sense, I think. And yeah, it adds an extra element to the game.  Now you have to either: A) Repair your armor.B) Assume your armor gets healed when you do.C) Armor regenerates over time. Those are the three things I see extra in complexity. It does lack the realism of hits & locations, but Thats a layeer of complexity I don't want to track. I dont want separate pools of Hp for different body parts. That's just painful. Unless I have everything being tracked by a computer for all players and monsters automatically, its too much. Size+Con Score+Natural ArmorNatural Armor is going to just add hitpoints (though more than the armor was worth most likely).  Yes, something like that. However, I'm in favor of players not dying in one hit. Less realistic, but 1 hit kills just suck, and its more cinematic if they can get hit a couple times. Say a first level unarmored character has an Average of 22 hit points. An Armored one, like Double that. At first level, they'll never take more than 16 from one non-critical attack.  Critical attacks will usually do double, which can down an unarmored character doing up to 32 damage. If a critical has an x3, it does up to 52 damage. That's assuming the critical doesn't explode (which we only allow on natural 20s). So criticals are dangerous that way, true. That's also assuming I don't lower basic damage.  Lets assume The Str Bonus doesn't get multiplied. max x2=28, max x3=40 Damage could also be lowered. if x3 Damage gets lowered to max at say, 28 (by scaling down weapon damage)(I'd look at the other elements first and then see if scaling down damage is still as necessary), that will help. In addition, players bleeding to -Size+Con(Hit points - natural armor), or even bleeding to -hitpoints, with the random chance being turned into a FORT save will help that as well. I may use Paizo's critical hit decks, which tend to make criticals have secondary effects, instead of doing huge damage. (Like giving someone bleed, or ability damage, etc.) At High Levels, damage should probably average around 25-30, but by then, the player has gotten 15-35 bonus hit points (level 15), and could still be wearing armor. Say it was half damage if you beat DB by less than 5. "Would force you to totally revise half of the games feats and combat subsystems." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />ossibly "You'd probably also need to make base hit points a multiple of constitution to compensate."Why would I need to do this? Clunky = bad Yeah, so the goal is to make it a bit more realistic, by HP = damage you can take, but streamline the idea as much as possible. I'm not expecting full realism, just trying to remove the concept of hitpoints = avoiding damage, and armor=avoiding damage. Spell Failure: I suppose. The main issue is I thought having a % chance of error instead of a check/save was silly and too far from D&D mechanics.  Combat Expertise/Power Attack/Acrobatic ChargeIt's just a combat action, that anyone can take. Like Charge, or Grapple. Now you can fight offensively or defensively, and you can make cinematic maneuvers in your turn on a charge. It should be noted that the game I'm thinking about running these kinds of rules with is a game where most of the oponents will be human, base classes will include Kerrick's Project Phoenix Monk, Mayhaps, a Bo9S Fighter, A Roguey class (probably a merger of many Rogue Classes), and Low Magic. Other classes will be available, but these suggestions here will be the 'core' classes.So the NPCs will have similar mechanics. Monsters won't need to be revised much before I can start playing, because they simply won't come up as often.</blockquote>

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