Making a Houserule, and I Need Your Guy's Help.

[Oversquid]

One of my ongoing projects is to remake D&D 3.5 into a version that I myself would find ideal. Currently, my focus is on the Spellcasting System thats already in there. Now, there's a lot of stuff in the Spellcasting System, and it will take a lot of stuff to realign it to make it seem less like a "Wizard Edition". But right now, its best to take any kind of change in baby steps, and the changes to the Spellcasting System is no exception.

This current baby step involves taking a look at spells, abilities, and effects that come out to being a "Save or Eat Dung" spell. Spells like "Hold Person", which cuts out all actions but Mental Actions for a while if you fail your saving throw, and "Finger of Death" which if you fail your saving throw, you die.

On a personal note, I have no problem with the effects or even the existence of those spells, as I believe that magic should circumvent a lot of reality, because its magic. But at the same time, when a player dies before they can act in a battle due to a single Finger of Death, or when a creature to installed into the game as a challenge ends up being kept in stasis for all time for the rest of combat, its anti-climactic, and possibly frustrating.

So I'm considering instilling a new mechanic to scrape the problem of an instant KO like that away. This mechanic is what I want to call Defense. Defense contains Defense Points which can be used to augment any Saving Throw type in a pinch. You have only as many Defense Points as is in this formula: 5 + Total HD.

What you do with Defenses is that when you are presented with a situation where you need to make a Saving Throw, you can spend Defense Points before you roll the Saving Throw to augment the Saving Throw, with 1 Defense Point coming to be equal to a +1 Modifier to the Saving Throw in question.

For example, a scorpion stings you, and you need to make a Fortitude Save, or else become poisoned. Because you're not confident about fully resisting it, you exert yourself a little more, and spend 5 Defense Points on this saving throw to resist poisoning. Then you roll the saving throw with a +5 Modifier to the save (due to spending 5 Defense Points).

I should also mention that Defenses only occur on special characters, whatever and whoever they might be (So definitely PCs, but not necessarily the "Red Shirts", unless you want them to).

One more thing before I toss you the mic, I want to answer a FAQ I get all the time, and am honestly tired of answering in all shapes and forms.

FAQ: Why not just play a different system? Because I can find no other system that is ideal to me. I enjoy a lot of other systems, but none that I find ideal. I figure if you want a job done right, you should do it yourself. Besides, D&D has a lot of what I'm looking for, and I've already houseruled a lot of 3.5, so I may as well start there, and see it through.

In other words, finding a new system is out of question to me.

Also, I looked at Trailblazer, and they used Action Points to remedy what I'm remedying myself, which is all fun and good. But I'm of the belief that Action Points should be an optional fun thing, and not a core mechanic, so I'm not using Action Points.

I'm sure I'm also missing a few odd details, but I'll get into those details when they come up.

Otherwise, do you guys have anything to say for or against my proposed homebrew rule? If you see problems, how can it potentially work? If I didn't word something well enough, feel free to ask for clarification.

 

[airwalkrr]

Why not just use action points? I know you stated you have looked at other systems, but action points is practically the same. Don't like the dice mechanic? Make it +2 at 1st level, +3 at 8th level and +4 at 15th level. Only give important NPCs the action points. Don't even have to give them to players or tell them you are using them, unless you're one of those DMs who never uses a screen and tells his players beforehand what all the monster saving throw bonuses are. Just saying there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[airwalkrr]

Or here's a novel idea. Don't use a system for it at all. If you use a screen, then the climactic monster boss always gets a natural 20 behind the screen. If you don't find this fair, just tell the players that monsters or NPCs who are the climax of an adventure. Save or suck spells are meant to work on minions and make the fight easier that way.

 

[Oversquid]

Why not just use action points? I know you stated you have looked at other systems, but action points is practically the same. Don't like the dice mechanic? Make it +2 at 1st level, +3 at 8th level and +4 at 15th level. Only give important NPCs the action points. Don't even have to give them to players or tell them you are using them, unless you're one of those DMs who never uses a screen and tells his players beforehand what all the monster saving throw bonuses are. Just saying there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

Like I stated above, I'm of the belief that Action Points should be an optional thing. In my homebrew edition, Action Points fit a whole other niche than the Action Points in other systems.

To explain briefly, I don't even use the traditional Experience system, because I have no fun calculating experience of each thing that the players do. Instead, you get a consistent amount of experience at any level, and you use that experience as a currency to spend on things for your character. For a large sum of experience, you can buy 1 Action Point. For a bunch of other experience, you can buy new uses for Action Points, as well as general Action Point upgrades. Or if you save enough of them, you get a Legend Point, which alone can turn the tide of battle.

You can even use experience on real life things, such as being able to eat the snacks other people brought to the game table without needing to bring your own snack for the remainer of the game session.

In the end though, Action Points fill out the "perk" niche that I already set up, and I want the stuff purchased with experience to be optional, but recommended.

And I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, I'm just trying to make a new wheel that better fits with what I'm working on.

 

[Greenfield]

By your proposed formula, PCs would have a universal 6 points, since their hit dice is almost always equal to their character level. Exception s only occur with a racial template that includes an ECL.

Monsters,on the other hand, have an infinite number of points, since their "character level" is often zero: A Bear, for example,may have six hit dice, but no character levels.

His points would be calculates as 5 + 6/0.

Sorry, but I'm a numbers guy, and dividing by zero doesn't work, even when magic is involved.

 

[Oversquid]

By your proposed formula, PCs would have a universal 6 points, since their hit dice is almost always equal to their character level. Exception s only occur with a racial template that includes an ECL.

Monsters,on the other hand, have an infinite number of points, since their "character level" is often zero: A Bear, for example,may have six hit dice, but no character levels.

His points would be calculates as 5 + 6/0.

Sorry, but I'm a numbers guy, and dividing by zero doesn't work, even when magic is involved.

By the "/", I meant it as a lingual notation for HD or Character Level, and not as a division symbol. But if it bothers you, I'll delete the Character Level thing from the original post.

 

[Greenfield]

Oh don't change anything for me. The misunderstanding was mine.

The way D&D currently runs, high level characters seldom fail saves. Spell saves go up only for higher level spells, so at a rate of +1 per two caster levels, plus or minus any ability score changes. Saves, on the other hand, can go up a lot faster than that, between normal level advancement and defensive items and spells. (Ring of Free Action, Cloak of Protection +whatever, Heroes Feast and Energy Immunity etc.)

So I suspect that, in practice, the net-net will be a mechanic that says that making the Save will be the default, effectively removing the Save or Die spells from the game.

 

[timASW]

I dislike the idea. Honestly I would either change your opinion of action points or change save or suck spells to give a save each round rather then just one at the beginning. I tried that once and it solved pretty much all the problems.

 

[Oversquid]

Oh don't change anything for me. The misunderstanding was mine.

The way D&D currently runs, high level characters seldom fail saves. Spell saves go up only for higher level spells, so at a rate of +1 per two caster levels, plus or minus any ability score changes. Saves, on the other hand, can go up a lot faster than that, between normal level advancement and defensive items and spells. (Ring of Free Action, Cloak of Protection +whatever, Heroes Feast and Energy Immunity etc.)

So I suspect that, in practice, the net-net will be a mechanic that says that making the Save will be the default, effectively removing the Save or Die spells from the game.

I can see the Saves not being a problem so much for the players who play classes who have those saves as "Good Saves". But the "Poor" Saves, those as a whole from what I've seen tend to be a tad too poor, which is why I'm making the mechanic I am, in that it can cover a base or two before the character has no more chances. Yes, by that time, theres usually more in the way of "immunities" floating about. This also brings up yet another point I missed.

Though I like to use magic items in my games a lot, I'm also not of the belief that they required. Rather, magical items are there to give an even greater edge to its wearer's existing abilities. Many people don't agree with this, and thats all good, but this is what I agree with, which means that, assuming no magical items, there will be very few immunities and other wonderous items around.

I guess one reason I'm homebrewing my own version of D&D is because I also want an edition broken out of an assumed High Magic world that exists in the 3.5 Edition system (At least, thats what I'm getting out of it).

So, I'm making these changes in mind that magic only exists on character classes that use magic in some way (Such as Wizards or Druids), mostly so that this Edition can better support a Low to No Magic World better than the edition I'm building it off of. I hope I'm making sense, and I hope I'm understanding you correctly too.

 

[Oversquid]

I dislike the idea. Honestly I would either change your opinion of action points or change save or suck spells to give a save each round rather then just one at the beginning. I tried that once and it solved pretty much all the problems.

Sadly, there is no changing my opinion on Action Points, but as for your statement on changing "Save or Suck" spells, I think I can give some more background on this.

My first course of action before coming up with the Defense System I am proposing here was to go through the spell-list of "Save or Suck" spells, and its many relatives and friends, and what I'm proposing here was an off-shoot of my thinking about those spells to see if I can simplify them some more (Cue the worms squirming out of their 500 pound cans).

In the end, my intention for the above proposed homebrew was to make the spellcasters have to contend with a "Hitpoint System" without them being hitpoints no matter the spell they cast, which I felt was one of the ways in which spellcasters gained their rather... "Overpowered" reputation from. So, I intended the above homebrew to be a form of hitpoints for Casters to have to break through to get their spells to affect their targets at full power.

Now, I still intend to tweak a lot more spells, but I want to see if I can save some of the labor.